ZOMBIE COPS: SECOND 24 HOURS
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!
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!
"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.
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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.
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"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."
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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.
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"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."
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"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.
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"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.
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"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."
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"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.
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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.
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"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."
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"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.
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"How do you know that there were people I knew here? You still haven't explained how you know me." She paused, trying to find a way to explain. "Which, is actually a really good place to start. Most of the people who've recognized me who I don't know turned out to be dangerous." And, here she was in his batcave prime, letting him drain her blood? Priorities, Claire, these are the kind of things she needed to learn to ask before she offered to help. Still. Batman was one of the good guys, right? Even if he did seem... horribly unapproachable.
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"You were here before. More accurately an alternate version of you or a future version was. So were Peter Petrelli, Adam Monroe, Hiro Nakamura, and Charlie Andrews."
Of course, this Claire was much closer to the one he had hallucinated than the one that had been here for some time. The one he had hallucinated had been chipper, if a bit tongue-in-cheek, but largely still a normal teenage girl. The one who had been here was brunette, professional, and hellbent on taking out Peter Petrelli. It was an interesting dichotomy, to hear that to this version of her, Peter was someone who had tried to save her.
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Of course, there was also the distinct possibility, Batman knew, that only one given individual would ever be brought from any given world, and that some alternate universes were so similar with differences so minor to the individuals involved that they would be unable to tell the difference were they to be juxtaposed. There was also, of course, the theory that Edgeworth had proposed, that they were not, in fact, the real individuals they thought they were but projections, based on the various individuals from various different realities, which would explain why nothing here ever changed the timelines significantly. But for now, it was best to offer the simplest answer; the information she had learned just from this meeting alone was enough to overwhelm most.
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