Many have heard me, but nobody has seen me, and I will not speak

Well! Here is someone I wasn’t expecting today. For the unaware ones, this is ‘Professor Scarlet’, commonly known as Bookworm. Oh do trust me, the first time I heard about him, I was just as confused as you readers might be right now. I had to verify whether he was real or not. If he was a mock rogue or not, among other things.

His name as a whole hasn’t popped up in quite a long time, and if it has, well, what can I say, I had better things in my plate in the past few months to bother with such apparitions.

But back to the question. I didn’t know about this as the news never got to me. As you just pointed out in your own inquiry, ‘nearly’ being recruited means that I was never informed, and hence I couldn’t have a thought or acted upon it. However, if it is an hypothesis you want Professor, I’ll be happy to indulge.

If the GCPD actually had recruited me to save Batman, the situation would have been over in less than three seconds. Not to demerit the efforts you put in your contraptions Booky, but being quite honest, when you put them against the brightest mind in Gotham, they become quite tedious chores.

While on one hand, I’m glad I was never actually asked to complete such a dull task, as it would have killed some of my brain cells just looking at the poorly rigged scenario, on the other it would had also made me sad that I couldn’t show you how it is actually done, or showed the caped crusader and his companion how a trap is actually built.

But I guess I can’t ask for much.

There are easy ways, and hard ways, I like to lean for whatever gives me more of a stage without getting my hands too dirty. 

But as of the follow up questions. I’m not looking for anything permanent or temporal.

At least buy a girl dinner first, Eddie~

I’ll disregard how silly you’re being about the joke-riddle thing, but just because, well.

You did give this one a punchline.

Not a single person in this planet is ever lucky enough to be born with this babys naturally. Would be aganist all the odds, and to top it for them to become the Riddler? Would be funny above all, almost predestined. 

Of course I am the prettiest, that is just a given. Second place, its just the first loser. Either way.

Yousee, becoming the Riddler takes more of a wanting, as moreso a needing. But I’mgoing to assume you want my tipping point, and not of an entire list ofevents that could have originated the Riddler. And since you will, I’mgoing to elaborate.

The tipping pointI remember. I was working for Treemur Labs. I was leading a small group ofscientists on a project to what would be a breakthrough, it would launch me as‘must have’ in the history books. 

But, yet oncewe got there, Victor Stanwick happened. He was a doctor for GothamLabs. And he decided to take my research and everything I’ve worked for years,as his own. 

Justice fell into deafears and I saw my entire future stolen before my eyes. My fame, my job, myspotlight. And I couldn’t just let it happen. He couldn’t just have done itfirst, there was no way he could have gotten results before I did, he hadstolen everything.So I decided to put him to test.

Thanks to a littlehelp of one of my assistants, the younger and smarter one at that, who hadpersonal perks against Stanwick, I put Victor to test. On a battle of wits, me againsthim. And of course, he failed. And he fell hard. He didn’t know anything. 

I won. He died.And while the experiment never progressed due our sudden… new status. My nameis the one forged in history books, permanently.

But now I was acriminal and you know what? I wasn’t going to go down just a criminal,this city doesn’t know what true intelligence is yet. And hence… here weare.