[Open] Earthquake

[thepull_mods]

Who: OPEN! It's an event log of seismic proportions!
When: Tuesday 16th, 9:45am onward.
Where: Citywide
(When starting up your own scenario, locations and dates go in subject line)
Summary: An 5.0 earthquake shakes things up, and the city hurries to get everything back in order before nightfall.
Warnings: Natural Disasters? Everything that needs a

Comments

[ Graveyard Shift, Skye Medical Center ]

[gaveherwings]

[When he showed up at the hospital earlier that morning, along with several other doctors on call, he was turned away and told to come back for night shift.

Dr. Yumeno quietly dreaded that, knowing it would be much worse, whoever was admitted after siren, than cases like dear old Mrs. Pottsdon whose china collection fell on her foot in the morning.

Sure enough, the night is busy, and the waiting room is clogged with the temporarily displaced, and the EMS sirens keep rolling in with new emergencies and new monsters right at their heels.

Skye's picked up double the security volunteers, who have kept the parking lot and the roof helipad mostly cleared of dangers. The medical center is bustling. It's well after 3am before Daedalus can slip off to catch a breather.

...it's then that a motorcycle roars up a bit away from the bustle of paramedics, and capping his water bottle, the doctor's eyes dart shrewdly to the difficult outline of a distinctive cowl in the dark. There's another body on the bike, and knowing just enough of Batman's nightly activities, he can guess that it's another delivered patient. Giving a cautionary glance around at the skies overhead, he hurries forward into the dark of the lot to intercept them, and to thank the vigilante before he roars off into the night.]

[kingofrooks]

[ Skye is usually the place he goes to when he has injured, simply because he knows one of the doctors there and said doctor owes him a favour. Which means that there's less of a chance of the doctors and nurses trying to be overly smart and try to shoot him with a tranquilizer in order to claim the bounty on him. (And no, he doesn't think that him having to consider that to be strange.)

This time it's a girl who has been buried underneath rubble for a little too long. One arm is bend out of shape and hugged towards her body, but she's conscious enough to hold onto him with the other arm, even though she seems half unconscious already. Bruce breathes in quietly as he drives into the lot, getting off the bike and pulling the girl into his arms. She barely resists, and that worries him even as he sees Daedalus out of the corner of his eyes. ]

Broken arm. [ And he's moving over to him, eyes glancing around for a wheelchair or a stretcher. ] She might be going into shock. She was half-buried underneath a three-storey building before I found her.

[ The infra-red glasses fixed onto his cowl is useful.

And no, he doesn't even mention his own physical condition. The monsters are angry tonight, and have been getting angrier and angrier every single time he snatches prey out of their jaws. His armour reeks of the Darkness, and there's four very distinct claw marks at the back of his neck, bleeding sluggishly and blackened at the edges; one of his shin guards have been torn off; three lines of vivid bruises on his arm that's obviously from a tentacled monster; and two fingers seem broken and hurriedly set. Below the chest armour, he has two slashes that are roughly stitches up - one on his side, a little too close to a kidney, and one just on the bottom left edge of the 'S' shield.

But he's still standing, he can move, and he's running on adrenaline. That's more than enough for now. Other people matter more. ]

[gaveherwings]

[Half-buried...

Usually, descriptions of accidents are something to transfer swiftly and directly to the nurse handling paperwork, but there have been too many cases tonight that have made his hands shake, filled him with a feeling of tense nausea not unlike that sensation upon his arrival in the Port.

...underneath a three-story building, before I found her....

Daedalus watches the girl numbly as Batman takes her into his arms, knowing there hadn't been any masked crusading heroes or winged angels willing to save him from a collapsing city he'd tilted into motion. All dead, or fled, except Re-l. And when he'd known the concrete and steel had crushed too much of his ribcage, when he couldn't feel his legs, he'd told her to run, save herself.

Dying seems both distant and newly visceral, now. Sometimes it's easier to tell himself that the end of Romdeau was a nightmare. Sometimes, that lie is too difficult to swallow.

But he briskly shakes the tremors from his hands and shifts his weight quietly from foot to foot as if to prove to himself that his legs are more than just phantom limbs, squishing perfectly functioning toes into well worn sneaker gelpads.

At least Batman hasn't come here tonight with Re-l Mayer slung into his arms again.]

Come with me- [Daedalus motions him across the parking lot, closer to the ER entrance.] Not all the way into the light. [But he stops him before the line of defenders, jogging back himself to fetch a wheelchair, and one standby paramedic he trusts not to blurt out something incredibly stupid upon sighting a wanted man.]

[kingofrooks]

[ He notices it, that sudden flash of fear, the trembling of his hands. Bruce's eyes narrow for a moment, and he makes to step forward and shake Daedalus out of it- but he thinks better of that move at the last moment, staying where he is and instead steadying the girl in his hands.

That's another clue about that world that he doesn't know and cannot know unless it's from the lips of three of the most reticent people on the island. He doesn't miss the fact that the trigger isn't the girl, ut his own words- the mention of being buried, of a building collapsing, and he thinks that perhaps Daedalus is like what he once thought himself to be. A dead man walking in Siren's Port, except he comes from a dying world, and there is no Superman or Justice League to save it.

When he paramedic arrives, he keeps himself in the shadow and hooks the chair over to him before he places the girl into it. The less people who sees him, the better - the less anyone of them needs to lie. Then, he's pushing her back- without supporting the wheelchair, and with a perfectly calculated amount of force to send her into the medic's hands.

Then he focuses on Daedalus. ]

The hospital's proofing is secure, isn'it it?

[gaveherwings]

Not completely, as anything that's open-door operational 24 hours.

[Daedalus frowns, glancing around at the decaying world. This is about as immersive as he's willing to enter the Darkness, already somewhat eager to get back inside. The foul smell of the night is by no means "a quick breath of fresh air" on break, but it is a moment's respite from all the people, staff milling about hollering orders, all the active motion and human suffering.

He looks back towards the ER's double set of sliding doors- the seepage has crept in about halfway to the second barrier, licking like tar across the white tile.]

It's always a bit exposed in the lobby, but we have enough support security to handle whatever decides it ought to breach the building.

[kingofrooks]

[ It's sometimes a shock. Bruce has almost equated Siren's Port as a stranger Gotham that he's finding difficult to love, but Gotham's equivalent, nonetheless. But now, with the black creeping up the white tile, the fact of a hospital during an emergency was still under relentless attack by a mindless, merciless enemy- in Gotham, the hospitals had been left mostly alone even during No Man's Land. Only the most desperate had tried to loot it.

This... he watched the decay for a long moment, and is reminded absurdly of movies. Maybe a scene played in slow motion.

Then, he turns back to Daedalus. ]

Keep her safe. [ He pauses, then shakes his head sharply. ]

Don't come out if you hear me again. You can risk being known for having a line to me.

[ Especially when you don't. ]

[gaveherwings]

[ He nods- the paramedics have already wheeled the girl off, and she'll be processed so quickly like all of the others that he'll have to catch up on her progress by the time he's back on task, but he can at least promise to check in on her, once he's figured out how she's been ID-banded.]

I doubt anyone would presume that, unless it matters that we're both newcomers.

[kingofrooks]

I wouldn't be surprised. To the majority, we are still a group, indistinguishable. [ A thin smile. ] But you know that better than I do.

[ He turns away- but hesitates, for a moment. ]

She won't remember who brought her here. Don't mention my name.

[ Because the last thing he needs are unscrupulous hunters using the innocent to try to lure him into a trap. He doesn't need accolades or acknowledgments and gratitude - she's safe, and she will continue to be safe. That's all he needs. ]

[gaveherwings]

I do.

[A thin smile. It's a shame, that most of the city will lump every newcomer with the likes of the Joker, even when they don't mean the Port any harm]

Your secret's safe with me.

[Daedalus smiles- because he holds an intimate understanding of good deeds done in secret, of necessity.

All the same...his mind, later on, will keep running back to the fact that this man risks everything, uncredited, to play hero. The dangerous and unloved sort.

It will leave him wondering why.]