Edward Nigma (riddle_riddle) wrote in newalliance, @ 2012-04-27 22:40:00 |
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Entry tags: | cypher, harley quinn, riddler |
Who: Doug, the Riddler, Harley Quinn
Where: Gotham City
When: Friday, April 27, 2012, evening
What: Doug becomes partners with Riddler!
Rating: PG-13
Status: Complete in Gdocs
Faith required a leap. That’s what all the books and movies seemed to say. It didn’t seem very logical, but then, people weren’t logical beings. Even people like Edward Nigma, who, despite his extraordinarily... controversial... life, displayed a power of intellect that deserved respect. It was respect, and a feeling of kinship, that convinced Doug Ramsey to be proactive in this friendship with the Riddler... despite the sensible warnings that the mysterious Oracle had provided. He respected Oracle as much as Eddie. It was clear he was a masterful hacker and a force for justice in the city. It simply felt like mercy didn’t enter into the equation, though... only a swift return to the madhouse. He may only be seventeen, but Doug knew that Eddie was more than his crimes and more than his brilliance. He knew that if he could somehow help Riddler... the world would be better for it.
It could serve as redemption. Arthur Brown’s daughter deserved that much. Doug knew that Oracle wouldn’t understand... it was something he had to do.
Doug looked down at the folded note in his hands, unfolding it again, and looking up at the sign above the restaurant he was about to enter. Fin Fang’s Food.
The door chimed as he pulled it open, stepping into a place that smelled of peppermint and old wood. At this hour, the restaurant was nearly empty. Most of the people who came here for dinner were long gone. Doug walked up to the counter, which was currently empty. There was a small dragon statue resting on it. It didn’t look like a traditional chinese dragon. It had a humanlike body, but the head was similar. He picked it up, turning it over. Nothing on the inside.
“How many?” A man with a dangerous glint in his eye came around the corner, looking at Doug with narrowed eyes. He looked physically imposing, like he’d served time. “That item is not for sale.”
Doug felt the hair on his neck rise... not exactly the friendly reception he was expecting. “I thought it looked cool. The way he’s standing...” Doug traced the outline from head to waist. Kind of looks like a giant green question mark, doesn’t it?” He set it back down carefully.
“Not many people would see it.”
Dough laughed nervously. “Well, I’m not many people.”
The man reached below the counter, pulling up a fortune cookie. “Here, for you. Now leave.”
Nodding stiffly, Doug took the cookie and walked back outside. He shifted his very heavy backpack off and set it against the building, folding up the first clue and putting it in the top section, zipping it. He looked around, watching the city traffic move by for a moment. Then, despite himself, he looked up at nearby rooftops. Satisfied there was nothing up there, he opened the wrapper and broke the cookie in half. He tossed it into a nearby trash can, and unfolded the fortune. “8 locks and 30 keys, 207 is one of these.”
Doug frowned. Number games weren’t the usual thing with Riddler. Then he looked up at the street corner, realizing he was on 8th Street, and the pieces started to fall into place. He smiled; this beat the pants out of cub scout scavenger hunts, and not just from the adrenaline rush. He picked up and slid his backpack back on, then kept close to the building’s walls as he walked down the Gotham streets, looking at the addresses as they ascended...
* * * *
It was a test, this sending Doug on a wild goose chase from one place to another. A test for his loyalty, a test to see if he would try to contact somebody, a test to see if he was being followed. The Riddler was not so naive to think that Doug might’ve gone to the cops, or perhaps somehow found a way to contact the Oracle again... Doug had said he’d contacted her before. From one place to the other, The Riddler kept to the shadows and followed, watching. Using a variety of gadgets from a distance, he made sure that there were no cops radioing in the area, that Doug wasn’t wearing a bug, and using infrared technology, ensuring that nobody was following Doug... besides himself, of course.
From the Chinese restaurant to a storage facility, to a musty used book store... then finally to the Gotham Zoo. The gates were found to be unlocked, and the security system taken down. The last message given to Doug told him to follow the ‘elephant prints’, and sure enough, in fresh yellow paint, somebody had stamped upon the paved ground a trail of elephant footprints. It led Doug to a concession stand, right up to the unlocked door at the side.
Testing the door, the young man carefully opened it; the smell of warm cotton candy filled the air, but the silence and darkness otherwise weren’t terribly welcome. Shifting the weight of his backpack, he stepped in, carefully closing the door behind him quietly. He took a cautious step forward, shoving the last clue in his back pocket. “Hello?”
Harley had been told to wait and welcome the young, potential sidekick for Eddie. Being the welcoming party was easy. All it took was a little pizazz and a lot more razzle dazzle and she would have the kid hooked...or scared out of his wits, but that was part of test! If the one and only Harley Quinn scared the poor kid away, what good would he be in the real rough and tumble world.
The creak of the door sent her tiptoeing forward and she hid in the shadows. The clicking of a gun sounded at his side and a silver barrel was in his face. “Put ‘em up, buckaroo,” the clown sidekick drawled in her best, stereotypical mobster accent. Whether the kid complied or not, the trigger was pulled without warning at a loud BANG! escaped. A spray of sparkles and confetti coated him as a bright red flag was waved in his face. “Aw, too early? Oh well! We’re all premature now and then!”
He stumbled back against the door, putting his arms up a second later as the gun fired. Doug closed his eyes and threw his arms in front of his face. “Aaah!” He didn’t feel anything, he lowered his arms, looking at the flag in front of him, and grimaced. It was a smile too, but out of relief and not enjoyment. He looked at the woman, white face paint and bright colors all, and thought for a moment he’d stumbled into the Joker’s lair. “Who... are you Harley Quinn?” He recognized her name from the paper a few weeks back that said she’d broken the Joker out of prison... and was worried he wouldn’t be getting out of this alive. “I... I’m Cypher. The Riddler is expecting me,” he said, voice cracking slightly as he tried to put on a brave face. He shoved his hands into his pockets to stop them from shaking, adrenaline pumping through him.
“Yes, I am,” the Riddler said, slipping in the door behind Doug, closing and locking them inside. He too, smiled, but there was something unwholesome about his smile; not friendly, but touched with madness. Clothed in his trademark suit and hat, he had a purple mask upon his face, which did little to cover the bruises that had not completely healed after his encounter with the Spoiler. “I’m sorry it took a while to get back to you since our last meeting, but I was... detained.” The double meaning of the word pleased him. “ I see you’ve met my friend, Harley. She’s been dying to meet you. Harley, please get Doug here a refreshment, while Doug shows me his laptop. Do did bring your laptop with you, Doug? And your iPhone, just like I asked?”
With Eddie’s appearance, Harley had stepped out of the way to let the boys catch up. She used the flag protruding from the gag gun to scratch her temple and by the time she was called upon again, her tongue had poked out of the corner of her mouth, clearly finding some sweet relief in the rubbing.
“Huh? Oh! Snow Cones!” Harley bounded to the back of the room with a single flip and found herself in front of the shredded ice machine. The machine creaked to life as she filled up two paper cups with the frozen substance and then added a squirt of each of the different syrups to both cones. Though the final color was a dark, unappetizing color, she still seemed pleased with it. She hummed her way back to the duo and extended a frozen treat to each.
Doug removed his backpack, setting it down on the counter and unzipping it. Inside was his laptop. He dug into his pocket and set the iPhone next to the computer. “Uh.. thanks,” he said, examining the sno-cone, sniffing it, then venturing a lick. Not exactly pleasant. He wondered how long he could nurse a sno-cone before melting ice would make it impossible to hold. As Eddie flipped up the laptop, Doug turned to Harley. She seemed completely at ease, and he wondered if it was real or part of a performance. Unfortunately, he didn’t know much more than that she’d apparently helped the Joker escape. “Nice to meet you,” he decided, was the best thing he could say at the time.
Something about the Riddler and Harley Quinn made him uneasy, until he realized he was finding it hard to focus. The back of his head buzzed, like it would when picking up a new language, but it felt more like feedback... like he was swimming in chaos. People said they were crazy; that was why they were put in Arkham originally, instead of a prison. It tasted like... Doug looked down at his sno-cone again.
“So... nice Riddles, E...,” Doug added, looking up from the ‘treat’, “though was it me, or were you making them a little easier this time?”
Ignoring the snowcone offered to him, Eddie went straight into the the laptop, opening it up and turning to Doug. “Password?”
“5-L-1-N-G-S-N-4-R-R-zero-W-5... with an exclamation point at the end.”
Typing the password as it was dictated, Eddie paused and looked up, “‘Of outrageous fortune?’” He then quirked a smile and hit Enter. While the laptop booted up, he dipped his fingers past the collar of his shirt to remove a chain, upon which there hung a flash drive. Sliding it into the usb port, he ran the program and as the information downloaded, he worked to connect the iPhone to the laptop. He worked with precision and focus, ignoring all other distractions until he was finished. Once the iPhone was connected, he ran the same program from the flash drive on the device.
“My english teacher was impressed that Shakespeare came so easily to me...” Doug admitted. “I sometimes think of this... ‘power’...” he rubbed his temples, trying to clear the buzzing, “as cheating. A shortcut to language comprehension. That’s why I enjoy... abstract challenges.” He wanted to say more, but looked at Harley and decided not to. He didn’t really know her, or what she might do. It was what drew him to ‘Mr. E’ on the web... because riddles weren’t a language. His power was useless in decoding them. He could only rely on his wits. Eddie was a friend... Doug wanted him to know, but he had to be careful with what he said... and who could hear it.
The positive greeting made Harley beam in appreciation and, once Doug has set up the ritual tech, she forced his hand into hers and gave it a few firm shakes. “I got a fan, Eddie!”
The hard part of the job started and Harley, stepping away with the discarded treat, stood back and waited. There were plenty of things she wanted to say, do, and ask for Eddie, but with the kid around she just pretended to know what was happening. A hum here and an oh there escaped her at the strangest times to signal that she clearly understood what was happening.
Even as Doug began to tell the tale of his abilities, Harley seemed more absorbed in her multi-colored dessert than in anything he had to say. It seemed to her that Doug was just as bored as she was in that moment, rattling off a story to simply break the quiet as Eddie worked. She understood the Riddler’s silence. It was something she had accepted long ago when he was on a job, but any quiet from the kid would seem suspect. She focused her attention on him the moment after she had discarded the sno-cone on the ground.
“Ya like jokes, Doug? Of course ya do! I got a good one. A polar bear walks into a bar-”
Doug leaned forward slightly, waiting for the rest of the joke... she watched him expectantly. He was terrified of interrupting. Not knowing what else to say, he smiled and asked, “Why the big pause...?”
“Hey! Focus! I ain’t talkin’ about his paws!” Harley held up her hands and opened and closed them a few times to get the pun across. “Jeeze, Eddie, I thought this kid would be tryin’ to impress me.” Despite how annoyed she sounded, she was smiling. A good joke went a long way when it came to making friends.
“Hrm?” Throughout the conversation between Harley and Doug, the Riddler was so focused upon what he was doing on the computer that he was only marginally paying attention to what was being said, until he heard his name. “Hrm? Oh, yeah.” He caught her last comment. “Doug here has impressive talents, alright. But he’s still got a lot to learn.” He turned to Doug and told him, “I intentionally made the riddles easy for you to solve, because the purpose wasn’t to have you standing on the street corner for hours, scratching your head and wondering where to go next. My intention was to follow you while you moved from one location to the next, making sure you weren’t being trailed by the police or Batman. Or if you were bugged. To see if you had ratted out on me.”
“I took precautions,” Doug said, pulling an item out of his backpack. “Ebay, shipped from China. It was almost 200 dollars, but...” he handed the device to Eddie. It was the size of a standard cell phone, pocket-sized and currently in the ‘on’ position, a small green LED light glowing in the dim sweet shop. “Oracle is definitely better than me... and I didn’t want to take any chances.” That she had abducted Doug to try and scare him straight... might concern the Riddler too much, so Doug decided to keep that piece of information to himself. “It has about a ten foot radius.”
Eddie took the device and turned it in his hand, opening and inspecting it with interest. “Nice. Very useful.” He handed it back to Doug and then pulled back the sleeve of his jacket to expose his wrist to reveal a small electronic device of his own, the size of a watch. “Same thing, but I made it myself. Blocks other signals, too.” He was cheery telling Doug about his tech, but frowned a bit, serious now. “Is Oracle tracking you?”
“I don’t think so, but I got spooked. She knows I go to Gotham Heights.” Doug defensively folded his arms, looking out the mostly-blocked window.
“Why’s everyone scared of some digital ghost?” Harley asked from a walking handstand. The moment the conversation had turned boring, she found her own entertainment. The lithe harlequin was now wandering back and forth in the concession stand on her hands. “It’s not like she can catch Eddie. He’s too smart for that.”
“Of course she can’t catch me,” Eddie replied, proudly, rather ignoring the fact that he’d recently been caught and sent to Akrham. “I’m always one step ahead of her, and I want to keep it that way. I’m not scared. I’m being cautious.”
“So what’s the next step?” Doug asked tentatively, looking back at Nigma and the computer. “If Oracle isn’t following me... maybe there could be something...” he looked over at Harley, still walking on her hands, and though he didn’t really direct the statement at her, said quietly, “productive?”
Folding his arms across his chest, Eddie leaned back in his seat and said, “Right now I’m downloading a program onto your laptop and iPod to prevent people from the outside to hack into your system as well as act as a firewall to protect you when somebody may try to trace where you’re hacking from.” The program did more than just that, but Eddie did not feel like telling Doug that it also enabled Eddie to access Doug’s computer from his own, even if Doug should change his password. These were all safeguards, he felt was necessary to keep his operation safe. The programs were also designed to self destruct if tampered with or changed, utterly erasing the program and destroying the hard drive along with it. - this was to keep people from figuring out his programs to exploit, later.
“There’s a job I want you to do. Have you ever heard of SHIELD?”
The teenager’s eyes widened. “Strategic Homela- yes.” He felt the hairs on his arms rise, and couldn’t help but rub them. “An intelligence agency with a flying base of operations. That could bring down a lot of heat...”
“Yes!” Eddie’s entire demeanor perked up when Doug began reciting SHIELD’s acronym, bouncing once in his seat out of excitement. “YES!” was his response after Doug voiced his concern about the trouble hacking into SHIELD might bring. His grin grew to maniacal proportions and his eyes beamed with a fevered glow. “I’ve already done it once. Did I tell you I did it, Harley?” Eddie looked over his shoulder at his sometimes-partner-in-crime. “They sent one of their agents to talk to me at Arkham! He admitted I was brilliant!” That was a paraphrase, blown out of proportion by the Riddler’s memory, neglecting how Agent Coulson was simply flattering to get more information out of him.
Harley had given up on walking her hands and was currently sitting on the floor, legs stretched out, with her feet bobbing to the music she was currently humming. It was hard to tell what pop song of the day it was, but it was something in the Top 40. Probably.
“Ya shoulda told me sooner, Eddie. I woulda baked a cake!” Or stolen one. There weren’t a lot of sanitary options at the card factory to allow a proper cake to be baked. The gravity of the task at hand did not seem to daunt her in the least.
Eddie was so proud, but his emotions turned on a dime when the hateful memory of how Coulson had left him in the lurch, cutting their conversation short and in essence, snubbing him. Eddie’s face darkened,, the grin turned into a serious scowl. He turned to Doug and told him, “And we’re going to do it again. You and I.” He smirked, dangerously.
Doug couldn’t help but smile. The thrill of the challenge certainly wasn’t something he had to fake... and this way, if he was involved, he might be able to pull the plug to keep anyone else from dying. It would be double... no, triple the challenge. Keep Oracle in the dark. Keep an eye on the Riddler’s game. Hack into SHIELD.
He certainly wouldn’t have resisted the temptation before. Now he got to do it with Eddie, and peek into their secrets. He bet he could even find out more leads on that mutant thing he was getting paranoid about. It wasn’t often Doug was filled with this kind of confidence, and he seized upon it. “Riddler and Cypher take on the biggest spooks in town. And Harley with the cute smile here knows K-Pop songs? Epic win. We should be selling tickets.”
“HA!” Eddie blurted out a loud laugh. “For a while I was worried that you wouldn’t have the stomach for it. I’m glad you’re onboard!” He rose from his seat and slapped his hand into Doug’s to shake, but to also place within the palm of Doug’s hand, one of those prepaid phones, a simple cell that you could buy anywhere, but had been opened up and tinkered with and souped up by the Riddler. “If you need to communicate with me, use this, I’ll also call you at that number. But don’t use it for anything else. THIS!” he said, placing a CD Rom disk into Doug’s other hand, “Is a digital record of how I hacked into SHIELD’s operation before and what they did to block me and tried to trace me. Study it, but don’t do anything yet. I have a plan for a two-pronged attack, and if you jump the gun and try something before, it will spoil the plan.” Eddie smiled, deviously.
Doug nodded, holding the CD carefully and putting the pre-paid phone into his other pocket. “I’ll be ready,” he said, if not with confidence then a certain amount of bravado. He was going to need to really study Eddie’s original attempt. Maybe the power would do the rest for him. He smiled at E, and then at Harley, picked up his things, and left the sweet shop behind.
Once Doug had gone, Eddie was so elated by how everything had worked so well thus far, he laughed out loud and did a little dance in place. Spinning around to face Harley with his arms open wide, he announced, “Harley! I feel like celebrating! What shall we do? You choose!”
“Byeeeeeee Doogles!” Harley had leapt to her feet the moment that Doug was making his exit and waved him off in a proper fashion. The kid was good. She could certainly see why Eddie liked him, though a small part of her was worried that the Rid Kid was going to take up a little too much of her friend’s time. Oh well, Harl. Ya’ve got plans of your own!
Eddie’s celebration was met with a torrent of giggles and Harley’s own bouncing. It was nice to see him in such high spirits. “Oh! Oh oh! I know!” She jumped up and down, waving her right hand in the air. “Let’s go toy shopping!”