Legend of the Seven Lights

46. The Night Before

Sandman and Rupert get action today! And a number cipher!

Chapter 46: The Night Before

Kentucky; Raiders' Valley

The sun had gone down over this region, and the cloudy sky was totally black. Sandman, Coldman, and Wiccan marched across a grass road between the short walls of a trench. The wind was filthy with the dirt of the country, so the heroes kept their masks and hoods on. "I received an email telling me to come to this location, on the night of Nigel's funeral." Sandman said. "Now I'm waiting for this guy to reply to me."

"You just trust whatever some Internet stranger emails you?" Wiccan asked.

"Well, I did backtrack to a couple areas to pick up Riddler Trophies, soooo... Ah, here he is." Someone was calling Sandman's wristwatch.

"Hi-diddly ho, a-riddling we go!" the perky voice exclaimed on the other end.

"It's Bill Cipher!" Coldman gasped.

"Very funny, Gladius. No, this is the Riddler, reporting to you live from an undisclosed location! I'm so glad Sandman found the time to go back and find my trophies while he was busy breaking into government facilities. I see you were also able to discover which people among those enemy guards were actually my henchmen."

"They weren't hard to figure out after sending a Game-and-Watch copy to your email." Sandman informed.

"See, this is why videogame walkthroughers shouldn't offscreen, because now I'm totally lost." Crystal smacked her forehead.

"Yes, your little game character was an interesting trick. Too bad I blocked him. I sensed you were getting tired of backtracking, however, so I thought I'd give you a pointer to your next mission. This is a rather secluded valley in Kentucky, called the Raiders' Valley, after the outlaws who used to run around here in the 1980s. Milkmen used this passage to cart milk to various stores and such, and the Raiders had a gimmick with breaking their cargo. Don't understand the story behind that, all you need to know is Hugo Strange found an interest for it."

"What are you saying?" Nolan asked.

"I'm saying that I have a couple of boys among these people as well, so they know that Dr. Strange is planning to ship what seem like ordinary milk bottles, which are actually filled with a peculiar substance, to the stores. Search me for whatever that is, my boys didn't seem to know."

"So Dr. Strange is trying to put this stuff on the shelves in place of milk? Where's the actual milk?"

"The actual milk is mixed in with it, it looks like. I don't know if the farmers were persuaded to turn a blind eye, but it might've been behind their backs."

"If this is true, then I can't let them make it to the stores. We have to steal these bottles from the trucks."

"How are we supposed to do that? Our own personal truck?" Wiccan asked rhetorically. "They couldn't all fit in the Sandmobile, could they?"

"Ahem." Riddler coughed. "It so happens I have a special carrier craft hovering over the area. It's watching your movements down there; just hold the bottles outside and it'll reach down to take them off your hands."

"You expect me to trust you with this unknown substance? What's in this for you, anyway?"

"What I want is not important. But you can certainly trust I wouldn't want any minds dirtied because of this stuff, and I'm sure you don't, either."

"Hmph... I'll play along, but don't think I won't take some for my own research."

"I was counting on that, Sandy. Just don't take more than you can drink." (Play "Infiltration of Hyrule Castle" from Zelda: Four Swords Adventures.)