Edward Nigma (riddle_riddle) wrote in newalliance, @ 2012-05-07 01:12:00 |
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Entry tags: | riddler, scarecrow, shadowcat |
Who: Eddie Nigma, Jonathan Crane and mentions of Kitty Pryde
Where: The Lair
When: Dawn/Early morning on Sunday, May 6th (backdated)
What: What went on behind the scenes during this scene
Rating: PG-13? There's cussing and explosive death and sexual references at the end
Status: Complete in gdocs
The camera showed the scene: a construction site on the water’s edge, the river in the background, and beyond it, Gotham’s skyline, pinpointing the area somewhere on the Northern banks of West Harrow. The sky was red with the coming of the dawn, and in the frame of the camera shot, there was a huge tower crane. Into the frame, the Riddler leaped, swinging his cane around like a bo staff, finally tucking it under his arm.
“It is I, the Riddler! Having returned after a short hiatus, I’m back and better than ever! This time, I’ve brought an old friend!”
The Riddler stepped to the side and pointed with his cane and the camera zoomed in to the area just below the crane. A pair of thugs was carrying a man who was tied to a chair, hands bound behind his back. His face was ragged and frightened, but the image was undeniable: it was Dr Jonathan Crane, the man whom the Riddler had kidnapped, a few days before. Clothes dirty and worn, there was a gag around his mouth and, more notable, a large number of explosives strapped around his torso with black duct tape. He struggled for his life, but in vain. The thugs placed the man in the chair down as the hook lowered. The camera zoomed out again and the Riddler stepped fully into the frame, announcing with glee, “A Crane on a crane! You don’t want to leave him hanging around, or he goes to pieces!” The Riddler stepped back again, and from afar one could see one of the thugs pushing a burlap hood over Crane’s head while the other attached the hook to the back of the chair. Both of them stepped back as the cable hoisted Dr Crane high in the air, like a perverse piñata.
“The clock is running out! If nobody comes to save poor, Dr Crane, the piñata’s going to BURST!” He opened his fingers in an explosive way, accompanied with a maniacal, “BOOM!” followed by laughter. “I won’t give you any false hope for his survival, otherwise. We’ll just have to keep the cameras rolling as witness to your attempts! Arrivederci, my beloved fans!”
With a final laugh, he stepped out of view of the camera, which kept focused upon the body of Dr Crane, swaying in midair.
*********************
It was all a sham. Eddie had made it look as though they were videotaping live at the scene, but actually, most of the footage was staged beforehand, cleverly edited to make it seem as though Dr Crane was hanging from a crane with explosives strapped to him. The fact was, Dr Jonathan Crane was sitting right beside him, watching the live feed on Eddie’s monitors. There was indeed somebody dangling from the cable, but it was somebody else... a poor victim they’d lifted from the streets. That was the true purpose for putting the hood over his head, so he would not be easily identified.
It all worked out so flawlessly, that Eddie was beside himself with happiness, bouncing up and down in his seat, eyes riveted to the monitors. HIs heart and mind soared higher than that crane, practically bursting with excitement. “Who’s going to come? I wonder who will come?” he asked, eager to watch the drama unfold.
Jonathan leaned back in his chair, bouncing it slowly as he watched what was going on, worrying at his lip as he watched their plan unfold. “Popcorn?” he asked, offering the bowl, not taking his eyes off of the monitor. “And I doubt anyone will show, Edward, I have a sneaking suspicion that most of this city would rather I die, so that they can destroy Arkham,”
He then laughed. “Then again, it’s your game, maybe they’ll come just to watch you fail,” he added, tossing a piece of popcorn into the air to catch it in his mouth.
Grabbing a handful of popcorn without taking his eyes off the monitor,, Eddie said confidently but in a teasing way, “Oh, stop being so melodramatic. They’re goodie-two-shoes. They’ll have to save you. It’s... it’s in their codebook. And Arkham isn’t going anywhere. It’s as fixed an institution as the Batman.” Animated as he was, a few kernels fell to the floor as his hyperactive body moved about. He laughed loudly at Jonathan’s second remark. “It’s they who will fail! Your poor double doesn’t have a chance. Who was he anyway? “ Jonathan was the one who picked the victim out.
Finally remembering that he had popcorn in his hand, he shoved what hadn’t fallen to the floor into his mouth and chewed, enthusiastically, washing it down with a ginger ale. Ah! The Breakfast of Villains!
“Some prostitute I found trying to hustle up some money despite his...age,” Jonathan said with a snort, remembering the man’s broken, haunted eyes. “Pathetic, really, he should be happy his death will at least mean something, considering the waste of his life,”
He sat up suddenly, grabbing his own soda from the desk, spinning the chair for a moment, suddenly stopping while facing Edward. “How can you be so sure they won’t find a way to grab him?”
“You’re really harshing my mellow,” Eddie said, lightly, without much malice. In fact, he laughed as if he hadn’t a care in the world, then pointed to the old skool atari joystick on the desk beside the keyboard. “See this? I control everything from here, including the crane. Including the explosives. It doesn’t matter what they do. The moment they get close enough and I think they’re going to save him.... “ Eddie hovered his finger above the bright, red button, but did not press. “BOOM! Your friend has so much explosives strapped to him, they’ll never be able to identify who he was.”
“Ingenious,” Jonathan said, voice softly amused though it seemed he was almost...disinterested. He turned back to the monitors watching as he nibbled on his popcorn, foot resting against the lip of the desk to bounce him some more.
In due time, one of Eddie’s cameras on site revealed a woman, coming upon the scene. He leaned forward to look closer at the image on the monitor. “Who is that?” He did not recognize who she was, had never encountered the woman before or even seen her upon Gotham’s scene. “Is she yet another Bat-brat?”
“I’ve never seen her,” Jonathan said, leaning forward in his chair, licking his lips as he took in the action on the screen. The girl was nervous, he could see it in her movements and the way she kept glancing up at the swaying body. “She’s new to our scene at least, I wonder how she’ll handle herself...”
He smirked, leaning back in his chair, feeling excited about what was to come for the first time in a while...ever since that annoying dream had wiped out many of his emotions. “How many trials between her and I?” he asked, looking at Edward.
“No worries,” Eddie said, dismissively. He picked up a microphone that was nearby, pressed the button and spoke, dramatically, “A new-comer to the scene! Welcome, welcome, whoever you are. Let’s see how well you get through our first line of defense!”
His attention was now narrowly focused and intense upon the lady, telling Jonathan, “There is one in the crane’s control booth, and another up at the top. It doesn’t matter, anyway. This Death Trap is rigged. She’s not going to win, no matter what she does. The riddle is not trying to solve the Death Trap.... it’s figuring out that the victim up there really isn’t you.” He glanced out of the corner of his eye at Jonathan and smirked.
“They’re not always rigged?” Jonathan asked with a snort, before smiling softly, drawing a knee up to his chest, relaxing fully into his chair. “I can’t wait to see the look of utter anguish on her face when I go boom, after she tried so hard to save me...it’ll be a delicious spice to the day,” he said, lips curling up wickedly. “I just wish I could see it in person, to savor it fully,”
Slightly hurt by the question, Eddie answered, “No. My Traps are never rigged. At least... not in that way. They may be difficult, but I always give a way out. It depends on how clever the victim is, whether or not he or she escapes. But there is always an escape. It’s... only fair.” This was something Eddie felt passionate about, it was part of his obsession - it was a set of rules, which he created, but there were still rules.
Eddie looked at the monitor again to watch the action upon the monitor, smiling at Jonathan’s second comment. His interest was similar, but not the same. He was more interested in watching her try to get through his riddles.
Jonathan’s mouth dropped open as he watched the girl, a kernel of popcorn falling out, ignored as he leaned forward in his seat, taking in the action on screen. “Um...Edward..what exactly is she?”
Jonathan had never seen anything like what the girl on the screen was displaying and it stirred the scientist in him, wanting to know how and why she was able to do what she appeared to be doing. He had a feeling that investigating her powers was going to become a new remedy for the long nights when he couldn’t sleep, but didn’t have the proper amount of brain cells to focus on his toxin.
At least it was something other than staring at psychological texts and articles...or the random celebrity gossip rag.
The smile had completely disappeared from Eddie’s face, replaced by an intense expression of anger and bewilderment. “He’s not that poor of a shot,” he muttered, leaning forward in his seat to get a better look, even remotely zooming the camera to get a better view of what was happening. “The bullets are going right through her!” he declared. “She’s cheating!”
He grabbed the microphone and shouted at her, “You’re CHEATING!” and then slammed it back on the desk. “Damn her. Damn her! I hate these fucking mutants.” He licked his lips, anxiously, watching her moves.
Jonathan had leaned forward, grabbing their sodas before Edward could knock them over with his raging blinking slightly. “What the hell is a mutant?” he asked, confused. He had not been paying attention to the news..or most science articles outside his little area of psychology in a while, and the term (and girl) confused him.
He wondered if Edward would even answer, considering how focused he was on the girl and her ‘cheating’, which was understandable...Edward hated those who didn’t play by the rules, even as warped and twisted as they may be.
In utter frustration, he rose violently from his chair, turned around and gave it a kick, knocking it to the floor with a clatter. “A mutant... is a human being born with extraordinary DNA, which gives them powers far above the normal human,” he growled, glaring at the monitor. “Obviously, this one can become intangible...”
As Edward kicked his own chair over, Jonathan sent his wheeling across the room out of range, still holding the sodas and popcorn. He digested Edward’s words, fascinated (and starting to wish he had paid closer attention to recent discoveries...or anything outside of psychology after medical school).
He stood, setting the snacks on his chair before crossing back over to the monitor, studying the images on the screen. “Can I have her?” he asked, his curiosity brimming, wanting nothing more then to take her apart and see what made her...her. Her blood would keep him busy for days, let alone the experiments he could perform...her reaction to the toxin, how it interacted with her abilities...hell, just figuring out how her body managed to become intangible...
Eddie returned to the desk, slightly more calmer than before, and uprighted his chair to sit upon it and watch the woman’s progress. “If I don’t kill her, yes. Why not?”
How he hated cheaters. His elaborate plans and riddle, the time and energy to come up with them, all bypassed by some superpowered slut.
“If you do kill her, I want her body,” Jonathan said, wheeling his chair and the snacks back, setting everything to rights again before stealing another handful of popcorn from the shared bowl. “Or at least her blood, it would make for fascinating research,” he said, studying the monitors still, mind already swirling with ideas and plans of what he could do with even the tiniest amount.
Granted, he hadn’t finished with the pregnant woman’s samples, but there was always room for more research.
Sulking in his chair with his arms folded across his chest, Eddie tapped his toe restlessly, glaring at the woman on the monitor. The moment she entered the cabin of the control booth, Eddie reached over to tap a key to change camera positions, to the inside of the cabin. It gave a clear frontal view of her face, and Eddie then sprung into action, telling Jonathan as he worked, “I’m taking a screencap of her face and run it through the FBI search via Gotham City Police Station, thank you mad hacking skills. She’s wearing a mask, but it might be possible to get a match, somewhere.”
Looking at the live feed, Eddie huffed, angrily, and then picked up the microphone to tell her, “Time is running out! Soon Crane will be dead!”
By ‘time’, Eddie was referring to his patience in this instance. Usually, his modus operandi was to put pressure upon the person, giving him or her a set amount of time to perform the action and solve the riddle, and would even include a timer to count down the seconds they had remaining. Those that had more experience with the Riddler and his Death Traps might notice this slight discrepancy. As he told Jonathan, the riddle was not to solve the puzzles he left on-site, but to realize that it wasn’t Dr Crane being held hostage.
Jonathan raised an eyebrow at Edward’s movements and action, leaning back as he watched the monitors with a lazy eye, mostly his attention drifting back to Edward, focusing on the man more then her. “She’s really bugging you, isn’t she?” he asked, losing track of what the woman was doing as he watched Edward work, a small smile on his lips.
Eddie’s lips curled into a fierce sneer. “She’s really bugging me,” he repeated in a near-snarl. After he finished putting her photo into the FBI scanning program, there wasn’t much else he could do but sit back in his seat and watch the monitor, oblivious to how Jonathan was watching him. “She’s obviously from out of town. Not Bat-trained. Somebody who’s not familiar with my line of work.” There wasn’t a microphone in the control booth to pick up her voice, but he noticed her mouth moving. “Who... who the hell is she talking to?!” He leaned forward and narrowed his eyes; he’d learned how to read lips a long time ago, but rarely got to use the skill, so he was a bit rusty. “She’s wearing a communications device in her ear!” he declared, noticing it for the first time, throwing her hands up in the air in frustration. “She’s getting help from the outside? Okay. She figured out my ceiling riddle, now let’s see how long this mental midget takes to solve... okay. There she goes, outside. If this was the Batman, we’d be done by now!”
“Not everyone is Batman, Edward,” Jonathan said, smiling to himself as he watched the man. He glanced back at the monitors, a bit annoyed himself at how long this all taking. He took a sip of his soda, gently bouncing in his chair. “And she’s not the only one with a communication device, Batman has one as well,” he said, remember seeing the vigilante use it many a time on the news.
“Hrmph.” Eddie didn’t like this, he didn’t like it at all Perhaps he was still sore at her ‘cheating’ earlier, with her super powers. Or maybe he was used to how Batman and his team worked, and was thus impatient. But on a more practical side, the longer she stalled, the more likely the police or other hero types would show up and complicate the situation. Perhaps it was all of this, plus the anxiety coming from not being in control of events, which was paramount for Eddie’s psyche. When she began counting on her fingers the number of letters in each word, then hesitated to type in those numbers, Eddie shouted at the screen, “Oh, come on! She’s actually asking me what will it do? As if I’m going to give you a hint?”
He snatched up the microphone and said, “You’re boooooring meeeee!” Eddie’s annoyed voice came over the loudspeaker. “Either piss or get off the pot! Jesus H. Christ! Why didn’t the Batman come? Why do all these little girls show up?”
Instead of doing what he expected, she took a completely different approach and started to climb the tower. “She’s cheating again! That’s it! I’ve had enough.” He picked up the joystick controller and was about to press the red button, but paused. The corner of his right eye twitched as he watched, curious as to what she was attempting to do.
“Hey boss. You want I should gun her down?” A voice came over the intercom in the computer room. It was the second of Riddler’s thugs, who were down at the site. The one that had been knocked out by the girl a few minutes ago had drawn the short straw and was assigned to an obvious position, where it would be easier to be attacked; this second one was placed in a hidden area to act primarily as a sniper, but to also help his colleague should he be hurt.
Eddie spoke out loud, where the microphones in the computer lab could pick up the sound of his voice and relay the information, “No.” He glanced at Jonathan. “Grab Frank and get out of there.” He checked another monitor and then said, “We have two police vehicles on their way, coming South on Woodlawn. Take West 94, then across the bridge to escape. Hang low until further orders.”
“Okay, boss.”
“By the way, did you happen to see how she arrived?”
“She came by some car.”
“Try to get the license plate number, if there is one.”
“Sure thing.”
“Looks like the show is almost over,” Jonathan said, standing and stretching before flopping back into his chair again, allowing it to wheel a bit back before he scooted to the desk again. He sighed, leaning in, watching the monitor before frowning. “Um, Edward, she’s rescuing me,” he said, pointing out the obvious as the double started to move. Jonathan frowned at the screen, not liking this turn of events.
Honestly, this hadn’t been worth the time. There was no emotion, no drama, just some little girl in over her head, having to resort to methods outside normal humanity to even attempt a rescue. The only good of the afternoon had been watching Edward’s flip out and even that had bothered Jonathan as most of Edward’s heightened emotions did; he never knew when the man would calm down and not go over the deep end of his mania.
“I think it’s time for Jonathan Crane to go boom,” he said, looking at Edward.
“Wait for it... waaaaaait for it...” Eddie’s attention was fully focused upon the monitor, watching every move the lady made, his finger lightly tapping on the red button, but without the amount of pressure to push it, just yet. He shook his head at how smug and confident she was. “Look at that expression,” he said, more to himself than to Jonathan. “Does she think she can win?” He pulled the microphone to his mouth and said, “You are so dumb. You are really dumb, for real. Do you think I’m going to tolerate this kind of cheating? You had the right answer, you idiot! You’re just killed him!”
With a grand flourish, he pushed the red button; the massive explosion upon the screen was mimicked by Eddie in his computer room with him flinging his arms open wide and shouting at the top of his lungs, “KA-BOOOOOOM!” This was followed by a burst of self congratulatory laughter.
““And now I lay me down to sleep, my life in tatters at my feet. If I should die before I wake, I pray these tatters wings can fly,” Jonathan sung softly, a grin spreading across his lips as he watched first ‘himself’ explode, then Eddie, drinking in the other man’s laughter and excitement.
He couldn’t help himself, an manic Edward was a beautiful sight.
“Look at her now! Look at her now!” Still riding on his high, he was pointed at the image of the woman on the screen, spattered with gore, defeated and weeping. He was victorious and still in control. He was not speaking to Jonathan when he addressed the screen, “So close! But you lose! YOU LOSE!”
The euphoria Eddie experienced was far from ordinary, and his hand straying down to smooth over the front of his trousers was evidence that it was more than a bit arousing. And yet, he was reminded of Jonathan, sitting beside him. Trying to contain himself was a struggle, and yet he managed, though his eyes were wild and breathing shallow. “It’s done. We did it. Dr Crane is dead.” He was gloating. “I think it’s time to celebrate.”
Jonathan licked his lips, eyes following Edward’s hand before glancing back up at Edward’s face as the man spoke, neck and cheeks flushed. “Yes, we did,” he breathed before glancing away, worrying at his lip for a moment, trying to get control over his emotions and actions before he did something stupid like lean in and kiss Edward, trying to break the other man’s control.
“How do you want to celebrate?” he asked, looking back at Edward, keeping his eyes firmly locked on the man’s face lest his eyes drift to...other locations.
Eddie was in such a state that he didn’t even notice that Jonathan noticed. He grazed his teeth along his bottom lip and rolled his eyes, thinking. “There’s a bottle of champagne. And WAFFLES!” He suddenly rose from his chair, unexpectedly. “But first I need... I need...” Eddie looked around the room as if he might find the answer in some corner, but the fact was he needed to get off really really bad, but wasn’t about to do so in front of or with Jonathan Crane. “I need to change clothes!” That made sense, right? Changing clothes was a perfectly valid excuse to excuse himself, wasn’t it? “YOU make the waffles and I’ll go and change my clothes.”
Jonathan raised an eyebrow, first at Edward’s idea for celebrating, then higher at Edward’s ‘changing clothes’. He shrugged, standing as well, the positioning of his chair making him end up closer to Edward after he had jumped up. A small smirk curled over Jonathan’s lips and he took a chance, suddenly leaning into Edward, his lips near the other man’s ear, not touching. “As you wish, enjoy your...changing,” he breathed before pulling away and heading for the kitchen, trying to ignore the tingling in his skin from the feel of Edward’s body heat and the smell of the other man.
He started humming softly as he got the ingredients together, smiling at the start of his new life.
Eddie froze in place and did not move for several moments after Jonathan whispered his words. Could he tell? Did he guess? No, no... that wasn’t possible. Eddie told himself this lie because he simply did not want to dwell on the alternative. Sexualtiy was not something Eddie wanted to disturb himself with on any regular basis, and intimacy even less. Let him pretend the lie. Although, in the back of Eddie’s consciousness, they both knew. Eddie hung his head momentarily before stiffly marching toward his room, where he would hide behind his locked door and thick concrete walls that muffled all sound.