Very Puzzling Part 1

Very Puzzling is the 3rd and 4th episode in the adventures of Red Ryder

Part 1
While David is testing out the Ryder-Cycle, an alarm goes off in the lab, indicating a crime in progress, so David speeds off. On the way to the scene of the crime, Ryder gets a communication message from Francis about a Museum Robbery, and Ryder hurries along. Ryder arrives at the museum and gets to the roof, where the robber has already killed 2 security guards and has taken everyone else hostage, Ryder hops into the museum and fights the robber, during the fight, accidently breaking the robbers jaw. Ryder is able to arrest the robber (During a news report, it was revealed that the robber's name was Damien Derek), while an unseen man is watching the report. Later that day, David revieces a package, which he didn't order, and opens it up to reveal a jigsaw puzzle, which he decides to solve. Meanwhile, at Rollins Asylum, a man is seen carrying a box towards a cell, and it is revealed that the cell was that of Damien, the museum robber, the man reveals his name as Eugene Dixon and gives Damien a piece of headgear to realign his jaw, and also giving him the jaw strength of a crocodile, after which, the 2 work together to escape the asylum. Meanwhile, David has just finished the jigsaw puzzle, revealing it to be a picture of Rollins Asylum, however, when David is about to box it up again, he notices a message on the back, telling him to go to Rollins Asylum and look for a specific cell, David is able to piece together which cell since the person that sent it used 3 numbers to replace words. Later, Red Ryder arrives at Rollins Asylum and heads to the cell he was told to go to, but instead of finding a person in the cell, he finds an envelope, inside is a Riddle from a person called The Puzzler. Ryder is able to solve the riddle and find that he needs to go to the church. Ryder reaches the church and is able to piece together what he needs to do, get to the pipe organ and play the chorus to the song heart and soul. After Ryder performs the song, a piece of paper flies out of the organ's pipes and reads it to discover map coordinates which lead him to an old toy factory, inside the factory are a tape recorder and a Rubix Cube, the tape recorder telling Ryder that he needs to solve the Rubix Cube to continue. Ryder grabs the cube and returns to the lab.

Part 2
Red Ryder is still working on the Rubix Cube, while still wondering what happened to Damien Derek, the robber from the museum. At Eugene Dixon's hideout, Eugene has adopted a new look, and insists on being called The Puzzler, while Damien insists on being called Ripjaw. Meanwhile, Ryder has finished with the Rubix Cube and finds a message written on one side, only readable when the cube is solved, telling him to go to the theatre. At the theatre, Ryder notices 3 coffins hanging from the stage, a shadowed version of The Puzzler appears on a monitor, saying that Police Officer, James Danielson is inside one casket and there are incinerators below the caskets, when the montor turned off, the caskets shuffled around and Ryder tackled one of them, and the incinerators burned the 2 other coffins, Ryder opened up the casket he tackled to reveal that he had chosen the right one, James thanks Ryder for saving him before giving him the map that was inside the casket with him, which lead Ryder to a Rec Centre, where there was a piece of paper covered in random words, and a note saying that they hope Ryder knew Origami, which Ryder did, as he was able to fold the paper into a swan with ease. The message on the swan said to go to a school in Ambrose City main street, however, this confused Ryder as there are no schools in main street. Ryder took the clue back to the lab to ask Angelo for assistance, but Angelo was stumped too. Ryder decided to take a break to think it over and went upstairs to work on a scale model of the city, before realising the answer. Ryder arrived at an abandoned apartment building, when Angelo asked how Ryder figured it out, Ryder revealed that a scientist called Dr. Harris Rhodes used to live in the aparment building, but he was home-schooled, so the building was his school. Ryder arrives at the necessary apartment and went in, needing to look for a library, which was a metaphor for the resident's book collection. Ryder grabs a book on Puzzles and Games and finds a message inside written in Roman Numerals. After arriving back home, Ryder is able to de-code the numerals into numbers, but the numbers made even less sense, however, Ryder was then able to substitute each number for it's corresponding letter and the message made complete sense. The message from the code lead Ryder to the museum, where a new maze exhibit was opened, Ryder was able to get in and get out with the clue, telling him to go to Francis' home. Ryder was easily able to sneak in and get the clue undetected. Ryder reads the clue telling him to go to the abandoned warehouse. Ryder follows the clue and heads to the warehouse, where he comes face to face with Puzzler and Ripjaw, however, Puzzler reveals he still has one more game, and turns the floor into an electrified grid, before betraying Ripjaw and getting away with a helecopter. Ryder notices the symbols on the panels were all linked to the games in the scavenger hunt he was sent on by Puzzler, and Ryder is able to get across the room and save Ripjaw, however, he still arrested him, unfortunately, Puzzler still got away. Later, it is revealed that Puzzler knows that David Young is Red Ryder.

Trivia

 * This was the first time, and so far the only time, where a villain was able to get away
 * The villains, The Puzzler and Ripjaw, are based on Batman Villains, The Riddler and Killer Croc.
 * Originally, Puzzler was going to work alone in this episode, however, the author decided to add Ripjaw to introduce more villains faster.
 * It took 3 days for the author to finish this chapter, even though he knew what games to do and where the games would send Red Ryder, he had trouble making all of the games accurate.
 * Dr. Harris Rhodes, who was mentioned in this episode, would later appear as his own character in season 3, under the villain alias, Turncoat.