Oh YJ, your fashion game was always a bit dire wasn’t it?
I need a finer tipped pen. This guy’s face is so busy, and the details got blunted too much, I feel.
YJ tried, he really did. But it’s hard to get respect when you aren’t like the other villains. He joined an underground terrorist group that believed mankind could only improve through adversity, which he took to mean overcoming challenges, but it turned out to just be eugenics again. Now YJ’s never been a killer, and he knew better than to think he wouldn’t be on the chopping block eventually, so he attempted to destroy the groups digital infrastructure and escape.
He was hunted for years, but Family had his back. Eventually, the group came apart, and YJ was free to settle into the Detective’s footsteps, as a private investigator.
YJ is gentle, thoughtful, and helpful. He is the responsible eldest brother and takes what he sees as his duties very seriously. Underneath, he is as hungry for acknowledgement and attention as the rest of them, typically expressing this through acts of service and making himself indispensable to others.
YJ keeps a variety of tools and weapons in specially designed capsules, hidden away on his person. These are all theoretically nonlethal, but some can be pretty unpleasant to experience, anything from smoke bombs and flashbangs, to sleeping gas and pepper spray. He also rides an motorcycle, which makes him look much cooler than he actually is.
Puzzles is often impulsive, and initially had some Ideas about the separation of masculine and feminine.
Song: 6 Underground-Sneaker Pimps
@cardwrecks @captainbaddecisions
He hunkered down behind his sturdy ancient couch as bullets and other objects whizzed by. Blood blossomed dark on the sleeve of his kelly green suit. It was only a flesh wound, only one bullet, it wasn't that deep. Sure, it seemed like a lot of blood, and it had to soak through his shirt, and the suit lining before showing up on the surface like that, so it was actually more blood than it seemed, but...
The stranger wailed in horror, firing again. The bullet tore a hole through a weak point in the couch, and he dropped down lower, phone pressed to his ear.
“Come on, pick up. Pick up you skinny lunatic!”
There was a soft click, then an exasperated voice.
“All right puzzle boy, you'd better have a damn good reason for waking me up at this hour...never mind. I can hear it. What have you gotten yourself into this time?”
“I'll have you know I didn't instigate this at all.” he protested. “Some weirdo showed up and claimed to be me! Which is impossible because, number one: I'm me, and number two: he's wearing a dress! What kind of self-respecting man does that?”
“What, claim to be you, or wear a dress?”
“Jonathan! This is serious! I've been shot! This man is deranged!”
“Did you hit him with my fear toxin? Is that what's going on?”
He hesitated.
“Eddie? Did you-”
“He touched me!” Eddie snapped. Jonathan heaved a heavy sigh.
“Fool child. Wait it out. The stuff I sell you works fast, but it burns out fast too. It's meant for distraction and escape, not much more.”
“Did you miss the part where I've been shot? You know, with a bullet?”
“You dying?”
“I...don't know?”
“Then suck it up and-”
He missed the rest of what Jonathan said, his eye catching the flash of light off a thread-thin filament looping towards his face.
With a yelp, he threw himself flat on the floor, slipping away from the garrote before it could snare his neck.
“He's got razor floss!” he cried into the phone. “He's trying to take my head off!”
“It's coming! I will stop it!” The stranger yowled. “Sweet mother, I'll protect us this time!”
He braced his good shoulder against the couch, and toppled it over on top of the deranged stranger, diving behind a nearby recliner. He was beginning to get light headed. He couldn't have lost that much blood, could he? But his arm was soaked, and hard to move, cold but burning.
Cephalic vein. Trouble. Either that stranger had better aim than Robin Hood, or he was the luckiest bastard on the planet.
“You said he claimed to be you?” Jonathan asked.
“Ridiculous, I know-”
“No, the same thing happened to me. Some muppet-looking fellow with a burlap mask, but he had my fear toxin formula. He knew things I'd never told anyone. Pamela tells me that she also met such a being.”
“You're not being serious!”
“Don't you already know someone from another world?”
“He's not-”
The Monster wasn't from another world. He was merely...attached to a being that was. And that was only if the 'Hell' that being claimed to come from was an actual physical place somewhere other than this material reality. It was a whole complicated thing, and he hadn't winkled all of the information out of his acquaintance yet.
And this was not the time to think about it!
“Jonathan, I am actively dying as we speak!”
“Well, what do you want me to do about it?”
He paused.
“Don't let them put the wrong name on my headstone.”
“Oh, come on now.”
The sound of a scuffle. Someone else was in his apartment now, wrestling with the homicidal stranger.
“Jonathan, someone new has shown up, I don't know how much longer-”
A figure vaulted the overstuffed recliner he was hiding behind, landing astride him. This new man glared down with dark brown eyes, and took a palm sized capsule from his belt, holding it threateningly in front of Eddie's face.
“Stay still.” the new man demanded, soft lisp slipping between a gap in his teeth. “What did you do to them?”
“I defended myself...” he began, faltering both when he noticed the mans expression harden, and when he noticed the question mark on the shoulder of the mans green jacket.
“It's fear toxin.” he said. Fine. If this really was another Riddler, he'd know what that meant.
The stranger climbed up on the chair, his bright orange hair a wild mess. The new man snatched another capsule from his belt and thrust it into the strangers face, pressing a small button.
A puff of aerosol surrounded the stranger's head, and he reeled back, coughing, collapsing into a moaning sprawl on the floor. Some kind of antidote to the toxin? The new man replaced the empty capsule on his belt.
“Why would you do this?” the brown-eyed man asked. “It's not very mannerly to poison a guest.”
“Some stranger showing up at my door with a cockamamie story and a questionable fashion sense is...not...pardon me...I think I'm...bleeding out...”
The brown-eyed man glanced down at the capsule still held threateningly in front of Eddie's face, and pushed the button.
A whiff of gas entered his lungs. His head spun into darkness, and he knew nothing more.
Unexpectedly, he woke up.
He felt awful, but he was very, extremely alive.
His apartment seemed to have been converted into an emergency medical center, just for him. The makeshift yet professional equipment had all the hallmarks of...
Jonathan. He could hear his deep voice murmuring. Jonathan and...another, smaller Jonathan?
He blinked, trying to clear his vision. No, there really were two of them.
The other men were there as well, the stranger having fixed his mussed hair and rumpled clothes. Aside from a bruise on his cheek, he looked as if there had been no altercation at all.
And that annoyed Eddie.
“You unbalanced, effeminate psycho!” he snapped. “You nearly killed me!”
The stranger drew himself up to his paltry height, hand over his heart like a scandalized matron.
“I?” he huffed in his fluting voice. “You hit me in the face and injected me with fear toxin, you young ruffian!”
“You showed up at my door dressed like a strumpet, with a story only an idiot would fall for-”
The brown-eyed man raised one thick eyebrow at him.
“-and expected anything from me?” He continued. “Anyone claiming to be me ought to at least know what basic caution is!”
“I was pleased to have found you.” the stranger said, turning his nose up. “If I've made any mistakes today, it is that!”
“Oh just that? Not shooting me, not trying to garrote me, not nearly murdering me? Just having an unpleasant time?”
“Unpleasant? Do you know what you made me experience? I would have done none of those things if you hadn't drugged me, scoundrel!”
“Sorry excuse for a drag queen!”
“Hooligan!”
“Come on everyone, let's not start another fight.” the brown-eyed man cajoled. Eddie tensed, but the stranger closed their eyes and sighed.
“I beg your pardon, dear one. That was all very undignified.”
The brown-eyed man patted the stranger's hand consolingly.
“You weren't exactly in your right mind. I've worked with Jonathan Crane on my world, and so I had a reason to have an antidote with me. After all, why would you expect to be drugged like that when talking to one of us?”
Again with that nonsense. The brown-eyed man at least seemed competent, but he was pushing that fairy tale too.
He struggled to sit up, but Jonathan placed a thin hand on his shoulder to hold him down. The smaller Jonathan looked him over impassively.
“Stay down, puzzle boy.” 'his' Jonathan said. “Good to see you've still got your fire, but that body needs rest.”
“I don't want them in my apartment!” he groused. “Going through my things.”
Offense sprouted across both mens faces.
“We're not thieves!” the brown-eyed man asserted.
“Oh?” Eddie drawled insolently. “Weren't you trying to tell me that you're the Riddler?”
Jonathan chuckled, but the stranger scowled.
“How shall we prove this to you?” he asked.
“How can you prove it?” Eddie countered. “It's a ridiculous story, pure imagination! You are untethered from reality, and I have no intentions of joining in on you and your friend's little folie à deux.”
“And what of me?” the smaller Jonathan asked.
He looked so much like 'his' Jonathan, a little shorter, perhaps a little older, but they could easily have been brothers. It proved nothing.
“Jonathan Crane is not unknown for his habit of mindfucking people.” Eddie pointed out. “Myself included.”
'His' Jonathan shrugged.
“S'not wrong.” he admitted. “But this guy is me. Somehow.”
“You experiment on your friends?” the stranger inquired.
“We're not friends.” Eddie said quickly.
“He's just a reliable customer.” Jonathan backed him up. “And this way, he knows for sure that my wares are reliable.”
“And that's good enough for me. I don't need friends.”
“Well, wait. What about that odd fellow from outside of town? The one with the weird eyes?”
“I...guess he counts? We're more like acquaintances.”
“What about Jervis?”
“Occasional partners in crime do not a friendship make.”
“Your standards are bullshit.” Jonathan sighed.
“I should like to meet your Jervis.” The stranger said. “I wonder if he is anything like my Jervis? We are partners, though not in crime~”
He said that last part with some defiance flavoring his sing-song voice. Eddie shrugged.
“Good for you? Is there a reason I should care about your home life, or do you just like to overshare?”
“Actually, given your incredibly negative reaction to my physical appearance, I expected you to have a thing or two to say about my romantic proclivities.”
Eddie rolled his eyes.
“Whatever. I don't care. If you're gay, you're gay, but you don't need to pretend to be a woman because of it.”
The stranger blinked.
“Oh, I think there's been a miscommunication. I am not a man.”
Eddie looked the stranger carefully up and down. He-she?-was wearing a very elegant and classy dress that reached nearly to the ankles. It wasn't revealing, but it was perfectly tailored. Eddie could see the shape of the shoulders, the chest, the waist and hips. The jewelry didn't hide the adam's apple, the curve of the jaw. Still...it was possible wasn't it? That this was a woman? Eddie didn't really get along well with many women, and never cared to focus on the shapes and forms they could take.
“Ah, don't mistake me. I am not a woman either. I am...both. Upon occasion.”
“They're sort of in between.” the brown-eyed man offered.
Eddie's eyes narrowed. They. He'd heard of this before, but hadn't taken the concept seriously. Then again, he'd also never personally met such an individual, and rarely believed anything he was told without proof. But on the other hand, as a person of logic, he also could not refuse proof when it was presented to him. 'They' it was then. That was easy enough.
“Well how was I supposed to know that?” he complained.
“I'm afraid you didn't give me much time to explain before poisoning me with fear toxin.” the stranger said coldly.
“Again, you just showed up at my door out of the blue and began babbling about what seemed to be nonsense, and touching me. How could I have possibly known you weren't an enemy? Are you telling me that the Riddlers don't have enemies?” he scoffed.
The two looked at each other.
“Well...” the stranger said slowly. “I...don't really. Not anymore.”
“I have a lot of enemies.” the brown-eyed man admitted. “But none of them would just show up at my door to say hello!”
“Well mine do! Some of them think it's funny, some of them do it as some kind of domination tactic, whatever. I have to dodge death weekly, and that isn't even counting the Bat and the cops!”
“You seem a bit young to be facing so much danger.” the stranger said gently. Eddie bristled again, hating for the thousanth time how slowly he seemed to be maturing.
“I am an adult, and have been for years.” he grumbled. “That should be all that matters. And your opinion about it isn't going to change the minds of my enemies.”
The stranger had enough grace to look abashed.
“I suppose I did not give you enough time to explain either.” they conceded.
