eddie goes to mass effect Who: Eddie Nigma Where: DC -> Mass Effect door, Citadel When: over the weekend, while Stephanie is on her vacay What: Trying something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue Warnings: violence
Eddie was alone again and wasn't that funny? He spent all day lost in flower arrangements, shouting where he wanted the wedding table and personally inviting every, single drag queen who lived in his apartment building. Oh, wasn't he a responsible green man? Working his horologia heart to pieces for a goal that was now only weeks away? Sometimes he could imagine it. He could see the white lace, the vibrant colors and that smile on Stephanie's face. Sometimes he could see the sky crashing down, Gotham burning and someone demanding he finally pay for all his sins. Reformation isn't penance a retired cop said once to him after church. Waving a crutch in his face and spitting at his feet. Eddie didn't give a shit about paying his dues did he? Nah, Eddie liked to pretend he did, though.
But, most of all, he could see the dead. Yes, the dead of Earth-3 had been creeping lately. Inky shadows on the edges of his vision. Blood on their mouths and necks sliced open to reveal gaping nothing, nothing. Eddie smiled at these ghosts, sometimes he talked to them as an ultimate fuck you to his own twisted brain. Tonight, alone in the half lit church he was going to marry Stephanie in, here came one of these imagined ghosts. It was Jokester carrying his head. The ghost grinned and it made the riddle man feel feral. He grinned back, dipping into the madness like honey.
"Here to wish me good luck, buddy?" All smooth indifference to a flickering memory. Jokester didn't respond. He didn't do anything but grin back and Eddie wasn't sure who he was anymore. On Earth-3 he was a war hero. In Gotham he was all grey. And, before that? He was a rogue who spoke in neon and loved himself more than the entire world. Here? God, he was was an anomaly to himself and a simple riddle to everyone around him. Justice League. Stephanie's man. A man who should have his own signal in the sky. Those were things people called him. Eddie only identified himself as Stephanie's other half and that was not enough. His blonde bat would have agreed.
Eddie thought about what she'd say if she saw him there with his demons. He looked away, pushing his fingers along the smooth, wooden pew and sighed. He glanced up like a shy schoolboy. Jokester was still there, dripping in his own blood. His mouth moved. Eddie couldn't guess what he said. His riddled skin crawled and he needed to get out.
One hour later, Eddie Nigma found the Mass Effect door. He sold "antiques" and got himself a place to stay on the Citadel. If he and Stephanie ever needed to hide from the world or take time off, this was the place. And, Eddie loved it here. The technology, the clean streets and the dirty underground. The buzzing electronic music and the humming hover cars. He loved it all.
It was easy to mesh Machina's space magic to what was essentially more space magic and in a night he had her installed into an omnitool. By the morning she operated as his advanced combat drone and he had an understanding of all the different skills he could recite by heart after playing the games. The entire day was spent practicing his new found tech. Hours and hours of incinerate, combat drone, sentry, sabotage, overload, cyro blast, repeat. Over and over. He wasn't a man who did much combat before Earth-3, but being an engineer here felt like making a complicated web out of taking down an entire army at once.
Day three? He bought a good heavy pistol (no need to practice with that), light green armor modeled after Salarian design and made his way to the Presidium. Black markets, bounties and back street trades were the same in every door. Eddie had been dealing with them his whole life and it only took a little smooth-talking to get a job. A man wanted his hands on some ancient artifacts (Eddie guessed that was a baaad idea and barely managed to keep his mouth shut) and the only place to get them were from a collector. Eddie didn't ask what the collector did. He didn't want to know if he was black or white. He only wanted a puzzle to solve. He wanted to see if there was still a Riddler deep down inside of him.
Eddie was good at finding people. This collector lived on his own in a pretty penthouse with all kinds of pretty things ripe for the taking. He was an eccentric (Eddie liked eccentrics) that tended to keep to himself. Lately, he had been keeping to himself a lot with only his bodyguards to keep him company. Now, the Cat would sneak in and take it without him knowing. Riddler? Riddler always showed his colors bright.
Day four was all about finding a way inside. Hacking the security was going to be a piece of cake. Eddie made quick friends with a dissenting guard. He found floor plans through a merc. The give and take, the wheeling and dealin felt like Gotham and that made Eddie smile. He hadn't felt Gotham in a long time. He saw the city as a place that was changing, evolving into a world he barely recognized. Here? There were characters with grime under their nails, diamonds in their eyes and madness in their smiles. That felt like home.
Day five? Please. Riddler was so good he didn't need to wait for day five. He boom tubed in, dressed like the future and landed on the eccentric's balcony. Eddie put on a little music in his earpiece and smirked. Below the penthouse, the ritzy (and yet still so shady) part of the Citadel hustled and bustled. Above, he could see the curve of the space station out into nothing. His arm lit up in a shimmer of color and he sent out Machina and scanned for guards. Weren't they supposed to be out here? You know, guarding? Eddie gave a shrug and strolled inside.
"Riddle me this! Where the hell is everyone?" Eddie called as he shoved the sliding glass door open to reveal a mess of furniture and broken, swinging lamps. Dead guards and guests of the eccentric lay strewn around the floor. He heard a familiar electronic mumble of a communicator and smiled brightly at the sight of white armor quickly ducking behind cover. "I, with my three heads and howl, gnaw on the dead that try to escape hell. What am I?" Cerberus. This was his lucky day.
With a pop, pop he took down two Cerberus agents that didn't get down fast enough and sent out a hurling ball of electric flame at another, making him scream in pain. Eddie hopped over the couch he was hiding behind, threw a sentry down into the hallway ahead of him and heard Machina electrocute another soldier trying to flank him. Cerberus? Cerberus was grey sliding towards deep, dark black. He had practice killing these mooks in a video game and he felt no remorse for dropping them dead here.
Something shimmered from the corner of his eye and a woman appeared, blade at her side ready to slice. She was faster than Eddie was and cut him up the side before he could respond. The light armor didn't do much to shield him from these futuristic blades and he fell over, feeling thick blood well up under that bright green. He gasped for air, shot his arm up and overloaded her system with sparks. Grabbing her by her arm, he shoved a cold blast of cryo down her throat, turning her to ice before shooting her into a beautiful, twinkling explosion. Oh yeah, Eddie could get used to this.
Slapping some medi-gel on his side, he got to his feet and hobbled down the hallway towards the penthouse safe. His sentry and Machina-drone took care of most of the low level mooks and Eddie was happy to supply the others with a mix of fire power and electronic pain. Finally, the room went quiet. The last of them was a scientist and he huddled behind a table, pleading for his life.
Eddie stopped, powering down his sentry as Machina rolled around the showroom. The green man took his helmet off, holstering his gun and looked at the different artifacts that had been shattered by the gun fights. A shame. He identified a few as Prothean and looked at the one in the back. The only one kept whole. The black, sleek one that scared the shit out of him? That was Reaper.
"I- I didn't want to kill all these people." The human scientist stuttered, hands in the air. Eddie stepped closer, broken glass cracking under his boots. The scientists eyes were an unnatural blue. Eddie sighed.
"You're Cerberus. I don't have time to talk about how hilariously hypocritical you guys are." Eddie shrugged, edging around that artifact that wanted to send its Lovecraft siren call to him.
"Why are you here? Do you even know how dangerous that is?" The scientist pointed to the Reaper artifact and Eddie could see the romance in his eyes. He had already fallen for the curse, hadn't he? How long had they been here, and he was already head over heels for universe destroying space squids?
"Riddle me this. Do you?" Eddie didn't want to know how much exposure it took to become a Reaper slave, so he shot an exploding blast of fire at the artifact, breaking it apart into a thousand obsidian-like shards. Before the scientist could so much as scream, Eddie pointed his gun at the man's head and pulled the trigger. He waited. He waited to feel something and found himself comfortable in the vast nothing.
Eddie didn't know if destroying the artifact did any good. He only knew he didn't want to be around those shards anymore. Yeah, his first mission failed. He couldn't exactly tell an idiot black market guy that the artifact he wanted was super fucking evil, so he would blame it on Cerberus and give evidence. A bad name like those assholes always made a good story.
He boom tubed back to his brand new apartment. What did tonight make him? White, black or grey? Well, that was really a question of intention wasn't? And, what was he was going to do with all these Cerberus datapads?
Eddie carefully pulled off his armor as he walked into the apartment, looking at the healing gash on his torso and smiled fondly at it. He set the datapads down, changed into a t-shirt and sweatpants and paced in front of a purple, digital fireplace. The rest of the Justice League had motives for being good. They liked to help people, they believed in justice, they wanted to return order, etc etc. All things Eddie didn't care about and didn't even begin to understand. He only fought Owlman because he threatened his way of life and he was a formidable foe. He only joined the Justice League because he liked the people in it and he was good at what he did. What could he do here? A universe doomed without Shepard? What did he believe in?
The riddled man paced towards his giant window, overlooking a neon, bustling world. Eddie hadn't taken a moment to feel introspective in a long, long time. There wasn't a place for it on Earth-3, so he got out of the habit quickly. He was just a program now, a computer made to stop the pain of others with the power of his intellect. Was there a reason? Well, a safe Gotham for his future bride and the children they were going to have together seemed good enough. But, this place, this Citadel, had its future sealed in a bloody stone. Stopping Cerberus was pointless without a Shepard.
Tomorrow he'd go see the Citadel water. He'd look for the fish everyone said weren't there. He'd ask them if they had any answers.