ZOMBIE COPS: SECOND 24 HOURS

[capemods]

WHO: Everyone!
WHERE: All over the City
WHEN: 10PM on Fri 10/30 to 10PM on Sat 10/31
SUMMARY: The second day of the zombie cop invasion

Continue logging your epic zombie fighting/hiding from adventures here! Start/join a thread and tag yourself in!

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[invincigirl]

There were several things that Claire had learned over the course of being chased by The Company and from having a basic sense of common sense that her (adoptive) father had not let her grow past 12 without, and a certain degree of unwillingness to simply... climb up mysterious not-rope ladders? Was definitely one of them. Still, she forced herself to grab the first rung of the ladder, tossing the crowbar aside and climbing into the cockpit of the jet hastily. She wasn't exactly eager to get off the roof, because the chances of her going somewhere else where the zombies were actually still a problem was relatively high. Still.

When she got into the plane, she started pulling the ladder up after her, looking up towards whoever was piloting it. She bit her lip, and a million questions rushed to the forefront of her mind. She was eager to get some answers and she had a feeling that this man would have them. However, she bit her tongue and just came to sit beside him, staring at controls that she didn't trust herself to even breath on. Awkwardly, she cleared her throat.

"Uh... thanks. For, uh, picking me up." She looked over at him sheepishly and then back out the window. "So, you know who I am. What's your name?"

[darkknightfall]

With the flick of a switch, the ladder began to retract back into its compartment in the get on its own, and as it finished, the cockpit slid closed, and the jet began to rise before setting off quickly for their next destination as he managed the controls.

"Batman."

It was no surprise she didn't remember him; he hadn't expected her to, mask on or off, given he didn't actually know her-- he only knew a hallucination of her which had proven in ways scarily accurate to what he had seen so far of this particular version, though it was inconsistent with the version he had seen here before-- the version, supposedly, from her future, or a possible future.

"If you're still certain you want to try to use your blood as an antidote, there will be safety measures. I'll be monitoring your vitals, and if they drop below homeostasis, we stop until we understand what went wrong. The teleporter can give powers, but it can also weaken them significantly. Is that clear?"

Like in Clark's case. He wasn't going to have a girl's death on his hands just because the teleporter reduced her healing factor.

[invincigirl]

"You're Batman?" Claire gave him a look as if he were entirely off his rocker. Then again, maybe he was - he was dressed in a batsuit, flying a jet around a city she'd never seen before. Well. Things had been worse. She just laughed it off, looking him over and then nodding hesitantly. "Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. I don't think the teleporter's... weakened my powers or whatever, though. I..." Hesitantly, as if she were afraid she was going to get thrown out of the plane for it, she turned over her arm. There was a tear in her jean jacket near the cuff, covered in what was probably at one time her own, flowing blood, but past the tattered fabric, there was no wound.

"When I was running, I had to go through a window. It healed. I think I'm probably immune to the bites, too, but I didn't want to test it. Not before I made sure you weren't going to quarantine me for it or something first." She held up her arms in a universal sign of surrender - driven by a paranoia and a certain level of discomfort with how... antisocial he seemed. Wasn't Batman supposed to be a hero? This didn't feel very... heroic. It felt... normal.

[darkknightfall]

"Yes."

He saw the look she gave him in his periphery, but he didn't bother to try to convince her any further. It didn't really matter whether or not she thought he was Batman; what mattered was that she trusted him enough to cooperate in helping with the antidote. Lives were at risk, and they were working against the clock. The longer the eight thousand zombies ran rampant, the more would die or be turned. True, the teleporter had brought in approximately 300 metahumans, but not all of them had powers or abilities that would allow them to take down the zombies safely, and of them, only a handful had healing powers, or even magic.

"Good."

Exactly what he was referring to, he didn't bother to clarify, but he was relieved she was smart enough to avoid the zombies for now, even with her healing factor. He knew some, especially those determined to help, might get reckless, and the last thing any of them needed on their hands was a zombie with a healing factor.

As they reached their destination, nestled in a hidden part of the warehouses of the City, the Dark Knight descended, sending the signal to open the hanger he had had built. There was a back-up computer here, along with a lab, and several defense mechanisms. Rapidly, he input a series of passwords and voice commands to disable them. When they were landed, the cockpit opened again, and a more solid ladder extended from the side of the plane to the ground.

"Follow me."

Sweeping out of the plane, he moved from the plane and out of the hanger, into the command center, the computer constantly updating him on the movements of the zombies, the police, and various heroes he was tracking.

[invincigirl]

"Right," she followed him closely, wondering exactly what she'd done that could be classified as "good". She didn't complain, though, because she was becoming increasingly aware that compliments - or words of any kind, for that matter - were sparse coming from this man. 'Batman.' Yeah, right. She looked up at all the tech in the command center, amazed by it. She certainly hadn't been expecting that. But, coming from Batman, she supposed it was standard. She still couldn't swallow that as truth. She tried to keep up with him but somehow he just kept vanishing and it was like chasing a shadow or a ghost.

"Hey, is this all yours? Like, do you live here or something?" She looked around, gesturing vaguely to the entirety of the command center. "Are you going to fill me in or is this just me donating blood and then sending me off to go back to testing the extents of my powers?" Which reminded her - she needed to get her hands on a video camera. Not that it was exactly priority number one, but if he was telling the truth about the teleporter doing wacky things to powers, she'd have to go back to attempt #1.

[darkknightfall]

"Yes, no, yes, no, in that order."

He watched the screen carefully. There was a metahuman among them that several seemed to congregate about, but one he hadn't identified yet. He'd have to track down who that was. He might be related to this-- or it could be part of his power to control them even if he hadn't created them in the first place.

"The zombies were all former policemen in the City. Slightly more than a year ago, however, they all vanished. Tests so far indicate these zombies have been dead for months, possibly over a year, though I can't determine yet when they were reanimated. Who did it or why, no one knows. The teleporter, as a contingency, has been bringing in people from various universes, apparently by means of space-time manipulation to act as heroes to save the City. It uses an algorithm to sort out who seems most likely to be able to save the City at any given time, ether those with powers or those without. The latter, it imbues with superhuman abilities. There appear to be errors in it; it's brought in murderers, thieves, and psychopaths as well. It sends those brought here back home by a similar process. Some have been here a full year without returning home. Others are sent back after a few weeks. In all, there are only three hundred of us, trying to do the jobs of what tens of thousands of policemen did.

"Recently, the teleporter was infected with a sentient computer virus. The extent of its control over the teleporter and who is brought in and sent back is unknown, but it has shown a degree of control over our powers. Just recently, she shuffled the powers of several of us for a week before returning them to normal.

"I suspect the attack by the zombies was orchestrated by the HIVE, a criminal organization including both humans and metahumans native to this reality. They control the underworld of the west coast. Given that only eight thousand were sent when they could have used far more could mean any number of things. This may well be a test run to see how much we can handle, or how much we can't. It may also be due to limits in whatever force is controlling or animating them."

Having learned all he needed at the moment from the map, he moved from there to the lab, entering a few quick commands into the computers there before beginning to prepare the equipment they'd need. If she had any more questions, she'd have to ask them of her own volition-- he had work to do.

[invincigirl]

Waiting until he turned his back, she held up her fingers, ticking off questions as she tried to recall the order and put the 'yes' and 'no''s with the right questions. Huh. Sounded like a pretty sweet deal, by her calculations. When he started explaining, she snapped her attention back up. So far, the teleporter was sounding like Hiro Nakamura on steroids which was... bad luck for everyone who got caught in its sights, really, if it was under the control of a sentient virus.

"Wait," she jumped in, "it shuffled powers? You mean, like, swapped them? That's not--" If that kind of thing happened to Claire, she knew, she'd die. Without a doubt. She had no immune system, her ability had made it unnecessary. Never getting sick was only awesome until the power wore off. She bit her lip, trying to quiet while he continued to explain. In her mind, she made a quick association between HIVE and Pinehearst. It was important to keep things black and white in her mind so that there was no chance of things mixing up. "So, basically, you think it might be this... supervillain league, or League of Injustice or whatever, and you're going off of that? I mean, not to say your theory doesn't sound solid, but I think the better plan is to just... wipe out all the zombies and not care who sent them." She paused, considering how self-righteous that might have sounded. "I mean, that's just from where I'm standing."

[darkknightfall]

"Yes, it shuffled powers, and can probably do so again at any time, and, yes, that's the theory we're working with. Focusing on finding an antidote now to stem the casualties is top priority, and dealing with the zombies is secondary to that. Whoever's behind is it tertiary at the moment, but just as important to make sure it doesn't happen again. It could be the HIVE, it could be a hidden third party. Either way, not caring who sent them is treating symptoms without taking care of the disease."

Having finished the set up, the Dark Knight gestured towards a hospital bed he had set up.

"Sit."

Assembled nearby on a cart were several basic medical tools for checking temperature, blood pressure, heart rate-- it looked almost as if he were about to run her through a routine checkup.

[invincigirl]

Obediently, she went and sit down. His explanation was sound, and she wasn't about to question Batman. I mean, he was like... king of superheroes or something, right? For the first time in her life, Claire wished she'd spent more weekends at home reading comic books. She swallowed hard, pulling off her jean jacket so he could get to her vein to draw blood from. She'd obviously done this before. She looked at all the equipment, surprised he had this just... lying around.

"This isn't a hospital, is it?" She asked. It was a rhetorical question. She continued. "Is it the batcave? I thought you had to be... special to see the inside of that or something. I don't know."

[darkknightfall]

He didn't take the blood at first, though, instead making sure that all her vitals were within normal ranges. When he was done, he hooked her up to monitoring devices, then, finally, to a sort of reverse-IV drip that would slowly fill the bag with her blood.

"No. This isn't."

If Tim or Dick were here, there might well have been a crack about how without a robotic dinosaur or a giant penny-- which, somehow, the actual Batcave here did have, for some reason-- it wasn't the Batcave, but they weren't, so she had to make do with what terse explanation the Caped Crusader would provide.

"Just a backup."

They were scattered around the city. Locations chosen for one reason or another, some from a strategic standpoint, other simply because it was practical. This one was one of the latter, as there were few other places he could store the Batjet unseen. They were places he could recuperate, if he was hurt too badly in a fight and couldn't get back to the cave, backups, in case the main cave was compromised, and places where he could take people like Claire... or meet people like Poison Ivy, when she had agreed to work with him on the antidote to Crane's fear toxin a few months back.

[invincigirl]

"Oh." She said simply, sitting in silence as he set all the equipment up, watching the bag fill with her blood slowly, listening to the quiet, steady beeping of the monitoring machinery. She chewed on her lip for a minute, considering confronting the man about his comic identity. But, that wasn't exactly smalltalk - not that he seemed to want to make smalltalk. Not that she cared if he wanted to talk or not. It made her more comfortable to ramble, and ramble she did.

"You know, most of the people who know who I am before I meet them try to hurt me. You're the first that's actually tried to keep me from hurting myself, I think. Well... second maybe. I guess Peter counts as first. -- That's my uncle, though. Not that he knew it at the time, I guess... Uh." She paused, considering. "So, are you really Batman? I mean. I like... grew up on those cartoons. That stuff's not real. Did that just... you know. Motivate you to do good deeds in a bat suit? Because, I'm totally not judging. I mean. More power to you. I wish I'd thought of that kind of thing, I mean, not that I really have an ability that's exactly used to save people... well, not that you do either, but you found a way to do that on your own and that's really cool. I wish I could do something like that." She snapped her jaw shut finally, realizing just how bad the rambling had gotten. Not that he seemed like the type to go around telling other people's secrets - he wouldn't even tell his own - but she needed to play it close to the vest. She always needed to. Just because there were a bunch of other people with abilities here didn't mean she could be open with hers.

[darkknightfall]

As she talked, he continued to monitor both her vitals and the situation with the zombies in the City, fingers flying swiftly but quietly across the keyboard, to all appearances ignoring her until finally she stopped. Not looking up from the screens, though, he actually answered.

"The teleporter manipulates space-time to reach other dimensions. A series of alternate dimensions. In several, apparently including yours, I'm fictional. But if you're asking if I was inspired by a fictional character named Batman, no, I wasn't. I'm a version of him. There have been three so far, none concurrently with the others. As far as I can gather, others that are commonly perceived as fictional but have been here are Spider-Man and Godzilla, neither of whom were from my dimension. There's footage of when Godzilla attacked the City available online."

[invincigirl]

"Godzilla? Seriously? That's... okay, that's weird. This whole place is weird." And, she was ready to go home, but whining to Batman about how hard her life was seemed... juvenile. And, it sounded a lot like a bad idea that might just get her glared at and Batman was intimidating enough as it was. But, if he was really Batman then...

"So, you're one of the heroes who does the whole secret identity thing. Do you think the other versions were different people under the mask?" The urge to reach out and pull it up was there, but it's not like she'd recognize Bruce Wayne in real life anyway. Christian Bale maybe? She certainly wouldn't complain. She folded her hands in her lap to quell the urge.

[darkknightfall]

"Yes, it is."

Batman paused at this second question, looking up at her, eyes narrowing ever so slightly. He wasn't actually upset with her, but it was critical to impress upon her the importance of secret identities here, even if she knew them. His voice was completely steady and even, perhaps even a little flat as he spoke.

"The current Batman's presence in the City wasn't confirmed until mid-April. Bruce Wayne, according to all reports, didn't arrive until mid-June. There have also been records of two vigilantes operating under the alias 'Batman' simultaneously; one in a cape and cowl, the other in a capeless black outfit with a red bat on the chest. Possibly nanotech. The latter is no longer present, to all appearances."

Of course, even that, in and of itself, answered her question: Yes, he was Bruce Wayne, but he had taken painstaking measures to ensure that no one who wasn't already aware of that fact would make any connections between the two.

[invincigirl]

At first, the variance in dates confused her. In fact, him jumping to Bruce Wayne right away at all had her confused but then she put it together, slowly, before she decided to open her mouth - thankfully. She nodded, slow at first.

"So, obviously, Batman can't be Bruce Wayne, if they showed up at different times. Got it." Something in her tone was assuring that his secret was safe - Claire had kept her share of them. Hell, her entire family was inundated in them. "I wonder if I should try a mask out - once I've figured out my way around and everything. I mean, I'd like to help people." She chewed the inside of her lip, considering. "I don't know yet."

[darkknightfall]

That settled, the Dark Knight returned to work. So far, her vitals remained stable-- in fact, they hardly showed any fluctuation at all, despite the amount of blood she was steadily losing. It seemed her healing factor could handle this much easily. He filed that away for later reference, along with other personality traits like her own skepticism, curiosity, and altruism that would go into the profile he was compiling on her.

"Whether or not you wear a mask is up to you. Several heroes, including Tony Stark, alias Iron Man and Garfield Logan, alias Beast Boy don't keep their identities secret for various reasons. Some, like Raven, don't bother with an alias at all. Those of us who do wear masks wear them for a number of reasons; some to protect our identities and those close to us. Though several individuals from your dimension have been here previously, no others are at this time. That said, it is possible others will arrive. Another reason is symbolism. A highly trained athlete and martial artist with an array of gadgets tends to inspire less fear than a caped and cowled figure known for terrorizing criminals. However, that also runs the risk of alienating the public, which is one of the reasons Wonder Woman and Superman forgo them."

It was clear the girl had a lot to learn about this, and it was clear she wasn't prepared at all. Well, he could teach her the basics right now; it was an efficient use of time. But as for actual training? It was far more likely she'd be able to learn more, or be more willing to learn from, others her own age who had gone through what she was going through right now: the Titans, or the Initiative, or the Young Avengers, or the Runaways, or the X-Academy. Which she'd choose, however, remained to be seen, and would probably have to wait until after the zombie invasion had been repulsed.