Ethan Nashton (ME-1)

Enigma/E.Nigma/Mr. E
Enigma
Character Statistics
Aliases	Emil Nigma/E.Nigma Mister E/Mr. E Arthur Brown
Nicknames	The Question The Riddler Cluemaster The World's Greatest Everything Evil Edward Snowden Edward Snowden with a Black Belt
Affiliation	None Formerly Checkmate
Base of Operations	Unknown
Relatives	Unknown
Alignment	Unknown
Marital Status	Single
Identity Status	Known to Law Enforcement
Occupation	Cyber-terrorist Formerly Checkmate Agent
Education	Unknown
Citizenship	American
Religion	None
Physical Attributes
Gender	Male
Height	5' 11"
Weight	175 pounds
Eye Color	Unknown
Hair Color	Unknown
Unusual Features	Unknown
Description
Universe	ME-1
Place of Birth	Probably Florida
Date of Birth	Approx. 1987-1992
Created by	RoninTheMasterless

"Question: What is the question you can never say "yes" to? ... Answer: Are you dead?"

Personality

"What is this guy's problem?" - Michael Holt or Sophronia

"If I had to take a guess know I'm fairly confident he's a former Knight from Checkmate. Michael, you and I both know how she loves to use people. Something tells me she used him too much."

Powers and Abilities

Powers

None

As an unaltered Homo sapiens sapien, Ethan lacks any superhuman powers.

Abilities

Genius Intellect 

Ethan is one of the smartest humans on the planet. According to himself and Maya Waller, he possesses an IQ north of 170. Nashton was able to hack into Holt Industries systems to override a shipment of T-Spheres, in addition to regularly hacking Checkmate in order to gain information on Waller and the locations of other operatives.

Multilingual

In addition to his native English, Nashton is a polyglot with fluency in French, Spanish, Russian, Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, and Farsi. He is also capable of reading Latin, Greek, Arabic. 

Author's Note

In addition to being based on the Batman Rogue The Riddler, Bond villain Raoul Silva, and Marvel's The Punisher, Enigma is based a lot on me, in my boundless narcissism. Ethan reflects the kind of person that matches what I wanted to be when I was younger (about middle school age), and what would have most likely happened to that person, with some additions that never really applied to me. When I was in middle school I wanted to be a soldier and transition into the kind of Jason Bourne/Daniel Craig James Bond type of spy stuff (Although it was probably more accurately compared to DC's Peacemaker for better or worse...it's definitely worse). I specifically had my eyes on the C.I.A.'s Special Activities Division or S.A.D., because even then my sense of humor ran a lot of my decisions. Fast forward to now, Checkmate is basically a more robust amalgam of Interpol and both branches of the Special Activities Division (The Special Operations Group/SOG, which is primarily concerned with the typical "black ops" stuff you would see in movies, and the Political Action Group/PAG, which is more concerned with less direct methods such as political influence, psychological warfare/propaganda, and economic warfare). Despite being more inclined to accept the American Exceptionalist view of the world, I was still concerned with the global perspective and knew peace to be more cooperative than a American world police project. The early fiction I wrote in school reflected this sort of odd combination of values, in which my POV character was invariably a solider (typically a sniper because I thought of them as archers which I had a notable skill at and interest in), who is then recruited to something like S.H.I.E.L.D., Checkmate, Treadstone, etc. However, with Ethan Nashton/Enigma there are notable twists on this model I add now as I my moral exemplar has shifted from a noble solider to a superhero: Ethan, like my earlier protagonists (and to some degree even Knight Owl) gets royally fucked over by the system he put his trust and allegiance to due to his arrogance as well as the morally dubious nature of the organizations he uncritically decided to serve despite his extreme intelligence. The big difference is Ethan is primary a hacker, which I never really had a desire to be. However, Ethan, is one of the rare characters that excelled at both the SOG and PAG styles of Special Activities (it's one of the reasons he overestimated his usefulness as an asset, meaning Enigma is, at least on paper, better than William, because he possesses roughly equivalent physical prowess as Knight Owl, but much more intellectual skill at his disposal. It is a kind of inversion of Batman and The Riddler, where the Riddler only has intellectual gifts, Batman is not only physically imposing where Riddler is not, he is also generally more intelligent and easily defeats him even on his own terrain. In contrast, KO is an inverse Riddler in that is primary skills are physical, and ultimately he is superior to Enigma is that field.

Trivia

• Based on the Riddler from Batman: The Enemy Within , and Raoul Silva/Tiago Rodriguez from the twenty-fourth James Bond film: Skyfall.