Nightshift 38: Entry Room

[scarletspeedstr]

[from here]The Entry Room was a lot like he remembered it, or at least, a lot like what he remembered from when he'd run into Clark here on his first night. Admittedly most of what he remembered was dark, blurred from speed, and full of argument but this was a lot like that. Just without the blurring and the arguments

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[sheisthecause]

They were still standing there. Just talking. Did they think this was a goddamned cocktail party or something?! "I'm not playing around!" Meche shouted. "You don't think I'll shoot you? Then just keep standing around! But you'd better save your breath, because you're not going to be taking too many more of them!" Her voice was still strained to the breaking point, but there was a terrible ring of authority in it at the same time. She swung her gun arm up and pointed the barrel straight at them.

When she'd started to say that--that they wouldn't be breathing much longer--she'd thought she was bluffing. Meche had never killed anyone, had never even shot anyone for real. She read children's stories in hospices, for God's sake. The problem wasn't the aim--she'd come close enough to know she was a decent shot, and this ammo was a lot smarter than the average bullet anyway. The problem was that even now that she knew what was on the other side, she didn't know whether she could actually shoot another human being. Even to save Manny.

And then the one guy bolted and the other guy started charging toward her, bizarrely fast; he was almost blurred with motion in the darkness, as though adrenaline and fear and anger had finally gotten the better of her and she was seeing things. And he was mocking her.

And so Meche got her answer.

She fired once straight at him. The dart slammed out of the gun and for a second she couldn't tell whether the shot had gone wild. The sproutella gun didn't recoil at all. She kept it trained on him, ready to pull the trigger again if he kept coming at her--and the door.

She was surprised by how easy it had been.

[scarletspeedstr]

He'd been expecting her to shoot at him, though he'd still hoped that she wouldn't. Not for his own safety, though he had to admit that with how his powers were he was in a lot more danger than he was used to, but because it would have meant that she didn't really want to hurt them. Then he might have been able to get the gun away from her and convince her to stand down without having to hurt her.

But the gun fired anyway, though it didn't fire the bullet he was expecting from such a big gun. Instead there was this weird dart flying a lot faster than he was used to and coming right at him. He barely had time to react, and even though he dodged to the side, the damn thing caught his leg anyway and exploded.

Wally yelped, but surprisingly it didn't hurt as much as he thought it would. Sure it stung, but it didn't feel like the dart had even managed to break the skin and he'd only slowed down because he was trying to avoid it. "Hey! Is that the best you can do?" he mocked, picking up his pace again and rapidly closing the gap between them. If that was all she had to shoot at him with, then there wasn't even much need to try avoiding the bullets.

Something wrapped tightly around his leg and threw his rhythm off, forcing him to slow down again much too close to his target. Wally flicked his gaze down to his leg then back up... And then dragged it back down again to stare in surprise. A mess of vines, leaves, and flowers was wrapped around his thigh tightly and it seemed to be growing at an insane rate, meaning that the faint pressure and extra weight he'd noticed to begin with was now even stronger.

She'd shot him with plants? "What the hell?!" he stopped moving completely and tried to grab a hold of the writhing vines, but that just seemed to make them cling all the more tightly and it was beginning to get painful.

Okay, Flash, he told himself, we can still handle this. Just get the gun off the crazy plant lady before she shoots you again and then we find a way to get these things off. And he better do it quick, because if the plants got much lower they were going to lock his knee up.

[sheisthecause]

The entry room was dark, but not so dark that she couldn't see the flowers starting to burst into bloom around his leg. Brilliant orange marigolds sprouted out of the thickening vines. It was like watching a nature video at dozens of times its normal speed. It looked like it hurt, too.

Meche held her breath as she watched the man stop and clutch as the growing plant. She had no idea how sproutella would affect a living person. As far as she knew, there was nothing to stop the plant from growing until it covered him completely the way it would a soul, just expanding tendril after leaf after bud until it bloomed down his throat and killed her. They hadn't told her when they'd given her the gun what it would do. All they'd told her was that they had Manny, and if she let anyone through that door, they were going to kill him. And it would be all her fault. Letting Manny down, she half-remembered one of the doctors telling her, seemed to be what she did best.

But she didn't have time to think now. Get them away from the door. Just get them away. Having slowed down the first threat, Meche looked around for the other one still in the room--that girl. But that girl wasn't there anymore. She was gone.

And the door to the outside was broken open.

Meche almost sobbed with frustration. Now what was she supposed to do?! What if she'd already failed? No, there was no way; they had to give her another chance. They had to. She'd deal with this guy, and then she'd go after the girl and drag her back. She couldn't have gotten far. Meche would get her back and then things would be all right again. She'd still have a shot at keeping him safe. But there would be no more room to screw up again, and no room for pity. She'd save her sympathy for the one person who deserved it, not these scumbags who were trying to break the rules--and killing him.

So she stared impassively at the man she'd shot until it looked like the vine was slowing down. The gun didn't waver. "Ready to turn around and go back to bed like a good boy yet?" she demanded. "Or do you enjoy being fertilizer?"

[scarletspeedstr]

There was just no way that Wally was going to let himself get beaten up by plants of all things, but the more he tried to pry them loose, the tighter they seemed to wrap around him and in the end he was forced to give up for the time being. They were already tight enough around his thigh that it was going to make moving difficult, and if he wasted his time fighting off the plants then the woman with the plant gun was going to end up shooting someone else.

At least luck was on his side and the plant didn't seem to be trying to spread that much higher up his leg, it seemed pretty happy to just keep working its way down. Which was great news for the rest of him but not so much for that leg. He'd have to get moving before he couldn't bend his knee any more.

"Hate to break it to you, lady, but I stopped having normal bedtimes years ago, so it's gonna take a bit more than that to make me leave!" Okay, so maybe not his best comeback ever, but it was all he could think of on the spur of the moment before he forced himself into a lurching run, hoping to get close enough to try and knock the gun away before she had the chance to stop him.

[sheisthecause]

She should've known he wouldn't give up that easily. He was coming at her again, a little off-kilter now but still unnervingly fast. Fortunately for Meche, he was also close, which meant that she felt pretty good about her chances of hitting him. She fired again, trying to aim for his other leg before he could close in on her. Then she tried to get back from him, but she only had so much room to maneuver here--she had to keep her body between him and the door.

"I think you mean 'to make you leaf," she shot back. "But keep coming, tough guy. They say redheads look good in green."

That hint of desperation was still there, but it was being overwhelmed by anger--and authority. Now that she'd made that decision, fired those shots...Meche felt strangely calm.

[scarletspeedstr]

"Hey, I'm the only one allowed to make bad jokes around here!" Wally snapped in return. First she was shooting him with plants, then she was making jokes even he thought were lame. Well, okay, maybe he wished he'd thought of it first, but he'd never admit that out loud anyway. "And anyway, didn't anyone ever tell you that it's supposed to be a green thumb, not a green gun?"

Damn, she was shooting at him again and at this distance he didn't even have time to try and get out of the way. The dart exploded with a stinging pain on his other leg, causing another fountain of vines and flowers to erupt and begin their desperate plan to make him the first human vine-covered statue. And it was working too, his other leg was having difficulty bending at the knee and he could feel the constant throb as the plants worked to cut off his circulation.

But there was one thing in his favour, and that was how the crazy plant lady didn't want to move away from the door. She didn't have room to manoeuvre as much any more, and Wally was close enough now that he could throw himself forward in a half-jump, half-fall at her.

[sheisthecause]

"Just trying to do my part to make this place a little easier on the eyes. A flower bush right there would be just the thing for the entryway," Meche snapped, but she wasn't quite as cocky this time--sproutella-ed or not, he was on her. She fell backwards under the force of his leap and hit the floor hard. Her hat went flying, sending her cropped hair swishing into her eyes. More importantly, her trigger finger tightened reflexively as she went down; a sproutella dart went wild and slammed harmlessly into the wall. She barely managed to keep her grip on the gun.

Meche tried to skitter backward, completely unsucessfully--this guy was a lot bigger and stronger than she was, and her legs were pinned underneath him. In desperation, she swung her gun arm up and tried to bring the butt of the gun down hard on his head. If she could stun him for a couple of seconds, he might let up enough for her to get back to her feet. "I usually wait until the second date for this kind of thing," she hissed at him.

[scarletspeedstr]

"Didn't you notice? I like to take things fast," Wally managed, though it wasn't exactly easy to joke about stuff when he was trying to avoid getting shot again and trying to get the gun away from her, and all the while the plants were happily keeping his legs from moving properly. Unfortunately she fought pretty well for being smaller and slighter than him, desperation or maybe some kind of drug they might have used giving her strength enough to clock him one with the butt of the gun while he was busy trying to keep a hold of her.

It wasn't hard enough to knock him out, but it did daze Wally enough to allow her time to get free. "Hey! Don't think you're getting away that easy! It takes more than that to stop me!" He was a hero after all, even if he was depowered by a lot here. He couldn't, wouldn't, give up so long as he could keep fighting.

Of course actually standing up was going to be pretty difficult with how tangled he was, but he was going to keep trying regardless. She'd have to shoot him somewhere a lot more serious to stop him from doing that, and he doubted that she was the type for that kind of stuff.

But he wasn't going to say that out loud, just in case.

[sheisthecause]

"Not fast enough!" That wasn't even close to being true; he was a hell of a lot faster than she was and they both knew it. Sometimes you just had to go for the good line.

Meche scrambled to her feet, her back now literally pressed against the door. No time to make a grab for her hat. He was starting to get up, and she was going to end up right back where she'd started--or worse--if she let him. The problem now was that with him right at her feet, she couldn't tell how the sproutella would react to her. So far it seemed to be stopping at one limb, but if she was within range of her own shot, there was nothing to guarantee that the vines wouldn't snake around her own legs and pin her down. She'd just have to try to shoot him somewhere that would keep him down and risk getting away from the door while the sproutella worked.

So she turned the gun straight down on his chest and fired. Then she made a break for it. Meche was hoping to get far enough away to get her hat and get back quickly, but somewhere in the mess of man and marigolds her ankle got caught and she went sprawling again. She scrabbled on free hand and knees toward her hat, hoping she could make it there before he could get to her. "That enough to stop you?" she half-shouted over her shoulder.

[scarletspeedstr]

"And here I was trying to take it easy on you," Wally griped. His head still hurt from where she'd hit him with the gun, but he wasn't letting that slow him down much as he started pushing himself to his feet, using what he could reach of the wall to help him get his vine covered legs to cooperate.

And then she shot him again. This really wasn't his night. The dart shattered on his chest this time, overbalancing him and knocking him back down to the floor where he had a front row seat to the rush of vines and vivid orange flowers that took hold there, wrapping around his torso faster than even he could try and get them off. There was one advantage though, as he was close enough that the crazy plant-gun lady couldn't get away in time before something caught her leg and tripped her.

Quick as, hah, a flash, Wally's arm snaked out and made a grab for her ankle. If he wasn't going to be getting up thanks to stupid vines wrapping around most of his body, then he was going to try and make sure she didn't get up either.

"Next time we fight, I am so bringing the weed killer," he complained. Or at least tried to, as he only got part of the sentence out before he had a mouthful of marigold and the rest of the complaint became a choked cough. He struggled instinctively, his free hand clawing at the plants wrapping around his chest and working their way up to his neck and face. Okay, that was definitely not a good thing, and it occurred to him that maybe he should have called for help before now, but what with the flower in the way, he couldn't get out much more than a muffled grunt that could have meant anything.

So instead he hung on to the crazy lady grimly, free hand still trying to loosen the grip of the plants, and hoped that Bats would find the damn files and be back some time soon.

[sheisthecause]

Damn! This really wasn't Meche's night. That glutton for punishment had her ankle, and he didn't look like he was planning on letting go any time soon. He also didn't look like he was getting up and making a break for it anytime soon, but that was small comfort. Someone else could walk in and waltz right over them any minute. And she still had to find some way of getting that stupid girl back.

No amount of stretching was going to get her fingertips to that hat. She still had the gun, but she couldn't risk firing on him again--not only was he clinging to her like a madman, but she didn't want to risk hurting him any more. The sproutella was already getting too close to his face, way closer than she had anticipated with that shot. Panic rose in her chest again--she might really kill him, and she'd realized she didn't want to; she couldn't; not only that, they had ordered her not to; she might as well suffocate Manny herself if she let this guy die. So Meche stretched her free leg back (he'd better not be looking up her skirt) and tried to hook the heel of her pump around the stem of the flower in his mouth.

"I hope there won't be a next time," she said quietly. "You've gotta understand, this is nothing personal."

Then she used that same high heel to deliver several sharp kicks to the hand that was wrapped around her ankle. It might not be personal, but like hell was that going to stop her from doing whatever she had to short of murder to keep him and the rest of them inside the building.

[gothamnight]

[back from here.]

A hand grabbed the woman's ankle mid-kick, stopping the blow with a grip strong enough to bruise.

Simply put, this had not been the scene he was expecting when he finished retrieving the files; the Entry room had been noisy after he left, but even with all the sounds of running and breaking Bruce had been able to concentrate on getting the files so long as he could still hear the Flash's and the woman's voices. By the time he finished, however, the two had stopped bantering; though he should have expected the worst the Batman had almost hoped that perhaps the Flash had indeed "handled" the situation.

He had been wrong.

There was no more time to think as the plants choking the Flash and partially entangling the woman made their way to Bruce, quickly latching onto an ankle. Bruce yanked his foot instinctively backwards, snapping the ankle free but suffering a serious friction burn that cut through skin and made it bleed; eyes narrowing, Bruce placed the folders between his teeth to have both hands free as he let go of the woman's ankle and went straight to deliver heavy blows to her head and neck. Maybe the Flash had underestimated her, but the Batman wouldn't make that mistake. Confident he had her at least dazed (if not unconscious), Bruce grabbed her right wrist and snapped it sharply upwards with enough force to sprain it. He snatched the strange handgun from her hands and threw it in the general direction of the door leading back inside.

The plants. They were latching onto his arms and torso now, spreading and constricting the flesh in a way that would no doubt immobilize if he didn't do something about it quickly. He smashed the flashlight hard onto some of the vines crawling towards him; the top of the flashlight broke with a loud, shattering sound on the tile and caused the plants to stop for a moment in their tracks and recoil.

That was all the time he needed.

Bruce ignored the small cuts on his hands as he went to Wally's side, slashing away at the vines wrapping around Wally and himself with the sharp, broken edges. Pulling and yanking tangles of leaves and flowers from Wally's mouth and slicing through as much as he could of the stuff choking the Flash's torso, he realized that with his legs having been so bound for so long, the Flash might not be able to walk or run as quickly as they might need to--never mind use superspeed. When it seemed as if the plants would overwhelm him and the Flash was (for the most part) freed, Bruce turned on the flashlight and smashed the lightbulb against a growing vine, yanking Wally's body away from the rest of the plants as the electric shock froze and stunned the greenery.

Shoving the darker ideas from his mind, Bruce grabbed Wally's arm and slung it around his shoulder.

"Can you stand?" he asked, removing the folder from his mouth and checking on the woman from the corner of his eye.

This is nothing personal.

...no, he supposed it wasn't.

[scarletspeedstr]

One minute Wally was trying to find a mouthful of air that didn't contain flower (thank god he didn't have any allergies to pollen, 'cause that would really suck right about now) while the crazy brainwashed lady kicked him, the next the kicks had stopped and there was a really, really angry Batman standing over him. Geez, Wally hadn't seen him this angry since the last time he'd screwed up in a mission and nearly gotten himself killed. But he hadn't really been about to die or anything now, unless you really could die from embarrassment. Sure there was a flower in his mouth making it harder to breath, but right before Bats had shown up the crazy lady had tried to help get it free. She hadn't really wanted to kill him.

But while he could think all of that, there wasn't anything he could say other than a general muffled sound of protest as Bats rounded on the woman and attacked and disarmed her before she or Wally had much of an idea what was happening. There was a smashing sound as Bruce's flashlight came down hard enough on some vines to shatter on the tile below them, then Bats was crouching over him and using the shattered remains of the light to cut away at the plants trapping him.

The moment he could, Wally coughed out a few remaining petals and leaves and sucking in some air that still tasted like marigold, but at least it wasn't actually marigold. "Dude, Bats! Does the word 'overkill' mean anything to you?"

He flinched as the last of the flashlight was slammed down again, then before he had the chance to react, Bats dragged him bodily free of the remaining plants, leaving only a few tendrils of vine and the odd leaf or flower caught on his clothing. It was probably a good thing that Bats grabbed him though, 'cause having had his legs wrapped up pretty tight for a while meant he had pins and needles like nothing else now.

"I'll be okay," he answered, "but what about her? It's not her fault she did this. Not really anyway."

[sheisthecause]

Meche never even saw it coming. One second she was trying to get the marigold guy off her leg; the next, she was being battered six ways from Sunday. The pain hit her first as a viselike grip around her ankle, and then it was exploding in stars behind her eyes as blows rained down on her head, which bounced off the floor in turn with a noise that sickened her. She still hadn't figured out what was happening to her as her wrist was--she screamed--being, oh God, what? Broken? No, not broken, but that had to be the sound of the gun landing across the room, miles out of her reach, because it was out of her hand now. And then of course she realized it: the other man had come back.

It took her a good minute to see anything but those stars, although she could hear the two men talking dimly somewhere in the background. When she opened her eyes again, they were still there, sproutella-free, and now she was unarmed. Oh, God, they were going to kill him. She had to get to the gun and stop them from getting through. And now she heard other voices in the room. She could get close enough now to grab her hat; she put it back on and tried to stand. Even if she got the sproutella gun back, how the hell was she going to fire it? What the hell was she going to do?

"Was it that important?" she spat at them, still struggling to get up. "Was that it? You two are the big damn heroes who are going to save us all, and the only way you can do it is by going through this room?" Huh? I want answers! Being here was such a big deal that you're willing to take an innocent man's life to do it?! Well, good job, heroes!"

[gothamnight]

He didn't let go of Wally, helping the man to his feet as the woman screamed. She was still conscious, but now that the gun was out of her way she wouldn't be as big a threat as she was before. Keeping his eye on the gun, Bruce directed a brief warning glare at Wally before looking back at the woman, listening to her as she spoke. Voice cracked and desperate, she tried but failed to get up again; strange that she wasn't after the gun, but the hat...

There was no time for that. The plants didn't have her in any life-threatening danger, and in terms of recalling this incident...Bruce had a feeling that despite the lack of light this face was burned into his memory already. The door opened again and two more individuals entered--Bruce didn't look directly at them but got a general impression. The red-haired woman's voice in particular was too familiar for comfort.

"Walk," he whispered to Wally, voice low and harsh. He started moving without another word, half-supporting half-dragging the Flash out the door as quickly as he could. Dashing to the gun he'd thrown earlier, Bruce stopped momentarily to pick it up from the ground. Unloading and palming the single dart that was left before discarding the rest of it onto the ground again, he turned back to shoot the woman an unreadable look.

Being here was such a big deal that you're willing to take an innocent man's life to do it?! Well, good job, heroes!

"......sorry."

[going back now to here.]