Author's Notes: Hello again! Welcome back to the continuing adventures of Edward Nigma, Private Investigator. This one is a bit of a change of pace. We won't be advancing the overall story arc all that much, but we will get to meet someone very important. Eddie's got no idea what he's in for...

The worst part about not having a secretary, Edward Nigma decided, was having to get up early and open the office himself. He brought this on himself, he supposed. He had fired Tracy after all, after being told by Selina just how little she cared about his four day disappearance. Last thing he needed was a secretary that tied up his phone line while he was being brainwashed by a former friend. That had been three weeks ago. His phone bill was down now, but he was still out a secretary. And so, at 8:00 in the morning in late August, Edward Nigma found himself climbing the steps into his office building, coffee cup in one hand and newspaper held under his other arm. He stifled a yawn as he climbed up towards his office, with nothing to look forward to but reading through the news for new cases, sorting through his mail, sending the death threats to the GCPD for them to do nothing about and check in with his informants. Just another day really.

Edward stopped suddenly as he reached the top of the stairs. Maybe not. Sitting on the floor just by his office door was a girl. From first glance, she looked to be in her teens, but her large headphones obscured his view of her face. She didn't look up as he approached, engrossed by a sketchpad and tapping her foot to the music he could hear blaring out of her headphones. He stopped when he was just an inch away from her and she didn't even look up. Edward cocked his head a bit, unsure what to make of this development. He certainly was used to seeing clients first thing in the morning, but they tended to be approaching middle age. Most who were younger couldn't pay the necessary fees. Well, he thought, he wasn't going to get any answers just standing over the girl like this. He cleared his throat. The girl made no response, continuing to sketch away. Edward frowned. If he was going to be bothered this early in the morning, he could at least be acknowledged. He poked the girl in the shoulder with the tip of his cane.

This finally got her attention. She ripped her headphones from her ears and looked upward. "What the fu-" Her expletive was cut off mid-sentence as she looked up at Edward for the first time. Edward was able to get a good look at the girl for the first time. She was indeed young, no more than 16 if Edward had to hazard a guess. Her bright red hair tied up in pigtails and the baby fat on her face only emphasized her youth. Her green eyes were wide with surprise and something akin to awe as she looked up at Edward. It was becoming a bit disconcerting.

"May I help you?" Edward asked her.

The girl jumped to her feet then, shoving her sketchpad and Walkman into her knapsack and pulling it on. She was petite indeed, only coming up to Edward's shoulder. "Holy crap!" she cried out. "It's you! It's really you!" Her expression turned from surprise to barely contained excitement. "I can't believe it!" She moved to approach him, then took a step back. "You-you're...you're a lot taller than I thought you'd be."

Edward raised an eyebrow. "Well, that's one I haven't heard before," he said acerbically. "Now, was there something you needed-?"

"Yeah!" The girl almost shouted, clasping her hands. "I mean," she said, calming herself down a bit. "Yes, D-Mr. Nigma. I've been wanting to talk to you for a long time."

"I'm sure," Edward replied, unlocking his office door. "I hate to disappoint you, but I don't take cases from minors. Too much of a liability risk, you see." He gently brushed the girl aside as he opened the door. "If you have some need of assistance, I'd recommend going to the-" Before he could finish his sentence, the girl had walked through the open door and into his office. Edward paused, momentarily taken aback by her boldness. "Well," he muttered, "Go on in." Edward followed her into his office, closing the door behind him.

The girl took no notice of him as he followed her into the waiting room, instead reading all of the newspaper clippings posted along the walls. She seemed to take her being in his office as her birthright, rather than the imposition it was on Edward. "These are so cool," she said. "Did you really fight that guy in the park during the Arkham memorial? That's bad ass."

"If you say so," Edward said testily, as he walked into his main office. The girl dutifully followed him, stopping along the way to admire the old trophies he had on his shelf. While she was distracted, Edward took a moment to study her. Had he met her before? Probably not, as she had said she had been wanting to meet him for some time before today, but still. There was something familiar about her. Edward hung his cane up on the wall and sat down behind his desk. "Now," he said. "As I said before you barged in, I don't take cases from minors."

The girl walked over to his desk then. "I'm not here about a case," she said.

Edward chuckled a bit. "Let me guess: you want me to be the subject of your book report?"

The girl shook her head. "I don't go back to school for another week." She rubbed her arm somewhat nervously. "I, uh-this is kind of personal."

Edward rested his hand on his face as he considered this information. If this was personal and she wasn't here for a case...oh no. Edward was no stranger to groupies, but this girl was really too young for that kind of nonsense. "Young lady," he began sternly. "I know what you're going to say and that's not remotely appropriate. I'm old enough to be your father." Well, barely.

The girl pulled a face then. "Gross! It's not like that!"

Edward was beginning to lose his patience. He had enough on his plate without playing a guessing game with a highschooler. "Well then, what do you want? What do you need? What possible reason do you have for ambushing me outside my office at 8:00 in the morning?

The girl opened her mouth, then shut it again. "I-" she started and stopped. Her eyes went to her feet. The girl shuffled a bit, twirling a lock of her red pigtail. "This sounded a lot better in my head," she mumbled. Edward was about to ask her to come to the point when she took a deep breath. "OK," she said. "My name's Ellen Dixon." She bit down her bottom lip a bit, then continued in a rushed tone, "This is going to sound really weird...but I'm pretty sure I'm your daughter."

For a moment, there was nothing but silence as Edward processed what he had just heard. He had just heard that, hadn't he? "C-Come again?" he asked, hating how flustered he sounded.

"My name's Ellen Dixon," she repeated, in a bolder tone of voice, looking up to make eye contact with him this time. "And I'm your daughter."

Edward shut his eyes and felt a headache coming on. This was a dream. This was a dream and he was about to wake up in his cramped apartment 30 minutes before his alarm went off. He in no way had some teenager in his office claiming to be his spawn. He was going to open his eyes and he would be back home. He opened his eyes again and he was still in his office, the girl, Ellen Dixon she called herself, staring intently at him with those green eyes. She seemed to be waiting for him to respond to her. So he responded in the only way that seemed even remotely appropriate for this situation. He laughed.

Now it was the girl's turn to be flustered. "What's so funny?" she asked. "I just said I'm your daughter!"

Edward just laughed harder, clutching at his sides. Finally, he calmed down enough to look back up at her, wiping the tears of mirth from his eyes. "Alright," he said, voice cracking slightly. "Who sent you? Oswald? Was this his idea of a joke?"

The girl looked confused. "No one sent me. I came here on my own."

"So this was your idea of a joke? I'll give you credit: I certainly didn't see that coming." Edward straightened his posture and fixed the girl with a serious gaze. "Now young lady-"

"Ellen," she interrupted, not seeming to be intimidated at all by him. Did she have any real idea who he was? "My name's Ellen, not 'young lady'."

"Miss Dixon," Edward calmly, but forcefully addressed her. "I really have a lot of work to do today, so go run off to the mall or whatever street corner you kids like to hang out at nowadays." He pulled open his desk drawer and began to look over the job applications he'd had for his secretarial position. When he looked back up, the girl was still standing in front of his desk, eyes blazing. "Good bye, Miss Dixon." he said, emphasizing his words.

"That's it?" she asked him. "I just told you I'm your kid and you just tell me to buzz off?"

"If I gave an audience to every crank that came in here I'd never get any work done! What exactly do you want from me?"

"I'm not a crank!" she shouted at him, stomping her foot. "I'm not making this up! You're my dad!"

Edward took a deep breath and massaged his temple with the tips of his fingers. Good God, this girl was serious, wasn't she?

"So you've said," he seethed. "Very well," he pushed himself back from his desk and looked her dead in the eye. "I'll indulge you: how old exactly are you?"

"15," Ellen answered. "I was born on July 15th, 1991."

Edward frowned a bit. July 15th 1991...that would put her date of conception in October of 1990. He would have only been 20 years old then. His memories of that period of his life were vague at best. "And who is your mother?"

"My mother's name is Diane Dixon. Was Diane Dixon." Ellen's face fell a bit. "She died in a car wreck when I was 10."

There was an awkward pause as Edward tried to think of what to say. "That's...unfortunate," he settled on. For her and for him, he thought. A living mother would make disproving this a lot easier. "I don't recall anyone by that name however." That much was true.

Ellen didn't look deterred though. "No offense, but I heard that there's a lot you don't remember. Maybe my mom is one of them?"

Edward's eyes narrowed. "Isn't that convenient for you?" he growled out. The girl for the first time seemed to realize that she was speaking with a reformed super villain and paled a bit, but she didn't take a step back. In other circumstances, Edward could almost admire her courage. He forced himself to calm down a bit. If this girl was trying to take him for a ride, he'd know soon enough. "Before her demise, did your mother tell you that I was your father?"

Ellen shook her head. "No," she said. "She never talked about you. She never told me anything about who my Dad was."

"So then, how did you come to the conclusion that I was your father?"

Ellen chewed the bottom of her lip a bit. "All my life," she said, in a tone of voice that betrayed just how young she really was. "I saw other kids with their dads and I felt like half of me was missing. At least with the kids who didn't have dads, they knew why. I never did. My Mom never told me, my Grandma or anyone who he was. She just shut down whenever I asked. I thought I'd never know. Then, when I was about eight, I saw you on the news, doing some theft." She looked up at him, conviction or mania lighting up her face. Edward wasn't sure he wanted to know which. "They showed a picture of you when you were younger for the news segment and you looked like me! I don't look like anyone in my family, but you looked like me!" She pointed her fingers at her face. "We have the same eyes, we've both got red hair, we've even got the same chin!"

Edward wasn't moved by either the backstory or the 'evidence'. Poison Ivy had red hair and green eyes, would this girl claim that she was her mother next? "I have auburn hair actually, not true red," Edward pointed out. "And I hardly think an 8 year old thinking a man she saw briefly on the television shares a few physical traits with her is enough to establish paternity."

"There's more," she argued. "When my Mom walked in, she flipped out. She sent me to my room and told me to never talk about what I saw on the TV. She spent the rest of the day crying. Any time you were on the TV, she'd change the channel. She never acted like that when any of the other Rogues were on the news."

Edward chewed the tip of his pen in thought. It did seem to be a bit of a dramatic response, but there were a million other reasonable explanations. "It sounds like your mother may have ran afoul of me in my criminal days. That or she just didn't like Riddles. Now, if you've been convinced so long that I was your father, why are you only now coming to me? Why didn't you try reaching out sooner?"

Ellen threw her hands up in frustration. "What was I going to do, hop a bus to Arkham and tell the front desk 'Hey, the Riddler's my Dad! Can we have some father-daughter time in the rec room!?'"

"It would have made you a bit more convincing," Edward said. "It seems a bit convenient that you didn't decide to contact me until after I'd lost my memory and reformed. What exactly do you want? Money? Notoriety?"

The girl looked stricken for a moment, then she set her jaw. "You really are a bitter asshole," she seethed. "I don't want your money. I just want to know who my father is! Is that a crime?"

Of course. It was the ideal of a father this girl wanted, not him. That somehow made this ordeal worse. "No," Edward admitted. "You have every right to know your identity." Edward tried to be as patient and measured as he could be when speaking to the girl. "I don't know why your mother kept your father's identity from you, but I'm sure she had her reasons. I'd recommend speaking to a counselor. You clearly have some deep seated issues about this. At any rate, I think you've wasted my time long enough. I've heard nothing whatsoever to convince me that is more than the fantasy of a girl with too much time on her hands."

"You want proof? I'll prove it!" The girl shouted. "I'll do a DNA test! I'll prove that your my Dad!"

Edward narrowed his eyes. "If you think I'm going to consent to an invasive procedure on your say so, you're even more delusional than I thought. Now get out of my office."

Ellen looked almost desperately at him, then turned angry again. "You can't just-"

Edward had had just about all he could take of this. He got up out of his chair and glowered at the girl. "Leave now," he said in a low tone. "Or I'll call building security and have them escort you out. Do not contact me again."

For a moment, the girl held his gaze. "I'm not crazy," she said finally. "I'm your daughter. I'm your daughter and I'm going to prove it!" Then she turned and left his office, slamming the office door behind her. Edward sank back down into his chair and returned to his paperwork. He shook his head ruefully. A girl claiming to be his daughter. That was something he never expected to have to deal with. He wondered if Oswald had ever had an encounter like this.

For the next three days, Edward gave no thought to the girl. She hadn't been by his office again, which gave further credence to the idea that she was nothing more than an attention seeker with too much time on her hands. Edward busied himself with his work, conducting two interviews for his secretary position and taking another straying spouse case to pay the bills. He was in his apartment tonight, going over the photographs he'd taken over some lukewarm Chinese take out. He was interrupted in his musings by the sound of his cell phone ringing. "Edward Nigma, Private Investigator." he answered.

"Edward?"

Edward raised an eyebrow. "Oswald? What can I do for you tonight?"

"Are you near a television?"

Edward was surprised by the bemused tone in Oswald's voice. "Why? Something interesting happening?"

"You tell me Edward."

Edward walked over to his coffee table and picked up his TV remote with his free hand. For Oswald to call him at this hour over a news story? Something was going on. Something big. Something he could perhaps capitalize on. He turned on his TV and switched it to the news station, where Vicki Vale was doing a live news report. He turned the volume up on his TV.

"This is Vicki Vale, reporting live from Saul's Deli in Gotham's West End. Tonight, this was the scene of an attempted robbery. A robbery that was averted by a new costumed hero."

Edward's interest, piqued by Oswald's demeanor, was beginning to wane. "A new vigilante? Oswald, those are a dime a dozen in this town. Why would you think I'd-"

-"Witnesses describe her as a teenaged girl, with red hair and wearing a shirt with a question marked emblem-"

Edward stopped short. A question mark emblem? It couldn't be...

"-She called herself Enigma and declared that she was the daughter of no other than Edward Nigma, formerly known as the super villain, the Riddler."

Edward dropped the remote. He'd known the girl was delusional. He clearly didn't realize just how much though. He stood rooted to the spot as Vale continued.

"Witnesses also said that she spray painted the wall of the deli with her father's trademark green question mark-"

Vale had already declared him the brat's father. Edward's fist clenched and he felt his face flush. How dare that reckless, childish little fool try to cash in on his legacy? The gall, the presumption-

"One thing seems clear: whoever this girl is, whether she's the Riddler's daughter or not, she's already won over the crowd at Saul's Deli. This is Vicki Vale, reporting for Gotham Insider."

Edward had almost forgotten he was still on the phone with Oswald when he heard the man on the other line clear his throat.

"Edward? Is there something you'd like to tell me?"

Edward's horrid night gave way to a worse morning. After violently assuring Oswald that he was not in fact the girl's father, he had retired for the evening, hoping against hope that when he woke up the following morning, the events of the previous week would have been a nightmare. Instead, he woke up to a barrage of voice messages on his cell phone, ranging from an amused one from Selina wondering why he'd kept being a father from her, to a message from Jack Ryder asking for an official comment, to even Harvey Bullock of all people, demanding that he get a handle on the situation before the media blew it out of control. He ignored Selina's message entirely, told Ryder that he had no comment, and told Bullock to go fuck himself. By 7:45, when he finally dragged himself out of his apartment and made his way to his office, he had already swallowed more than the recommended dose of headache medicine. Thankfully, the media wasn't waiting for him outside his office building. Edward scowled. Any other circumstance, he would soak up the limelight, consider it his proper due. In this circumstance though? He'd come too far and had too much on his plate to get pulled into something so tawdry. If he was going to be the subject of scrutiny, let it be for something he actually did, not because some crackpot decided to use him to get five minutes of fame.

He walked up the steps, toward his office and was greeted by a familiar sight. The girl was outside his door, standing this time, and waiting for him. She looked at him and gave him a smug smirk. "Hiya Pops," she drawled. "How'd you like my debut?"

Edward, already irritated, became infuriated. "You stupid, reckless child!" he yelled as he came closer to her. "Do you have any idea what you've done!?"

The girl didn't so much as flinch. "I stopped some punk from robbing my favorite deli," she said. "I'm alright, by the way."

"That's all well and good, but you dragged my name into it!" Edward shouted, stopping when he was about an inch away from her. "I've had tabloids calling me non stop since last night! What were you thinking? Were you even thinking!?" Edward took a deep breath to calm himself down. "You do realize," he said to her, "That if anyone at that deli recognized you, you would have invited a lot of trouble on you and the poor soul who's looking after you, don't you?"

The girl rolled her eyes at him. "Well duh. I'm not stupid. That's why I wore a mask."

Edward sputtered an incoherent reply at her. "That's not-that's not the point. That's so far from being the point it's not even on the same map!" Edward slapped his hand against his forehead and massaged his temples. This wasn't his life. He was still trapped in whatever fantasy world Jervis had put him in three weeks ago. "Well," he said finally. "You got your five minutes of fame. Was it worth it?"

"Sure was," the girl said. She glared up at him. "It got your attention, didn't it? Now I'm not just some crazy kid anymore. I'm a superhero. Now you have to deal with me."

Edward grit his teeth. This girl was either very smart or very, very dumb. "You are a far cry from being a superhero," he said. "You're a little girl playing make believe and meddling in affairs you have no business in." The girl did not respond to that, but just continued to hold his gaze.

"I'm not going to go away," she said finally. "What are you going to about it, old man?"

Edward was the smartest man in Gotham. He was formerly the Riddler, the man who put Batman himself through challenges that would make lesser men break. How had he fallen so low that he was challenged by a 15 year old girl?

"Alright," he said. "I'll make a deal with you. I'll investigate the question of your paternity. I'll even see if I can track down your actual sperm donor. And when I prove that I'm not your father, you will never contact me again and you will never, ever use my insignia again. If you want to put on tights and fight crime, that's your affair, but you won't use anything even remotely connected to me. Deal?"

Ellen nodded. "And if you are my father?"

"I'm not."

"But what if you are!?"

Edward didn't answer her, instead entering his office and slamming the door behind him before she could even think of following him. He threw his cane and coat on Tracy's old desk and stalked towards his file cabinets. Who was Ellen Dixon? Was she a scheming attention seeker who wanted to ride his coat tails? A delusional girl who believed her own fiction? Or was she truly a lonely orphan who wanted the truth about her origins? Or was she all of the above? Whatever she was, Edward realized that he wouldn't get any peace from her until she knew the truth. Until he knew the truth.