Electra
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"No, not long," Erin confirmed, "I just ran a little early. Do you know how fast this guy we're going to see works? I've never really done this before, but if we're going to be bringing a dress back, we should probably take my truck. Unless you've got a really big secret compartment on your bike," she joked. "Be tough to carry home on my lap, I think." There, if she could joke, she obviously wasn't too nervous about this. Trevor wasn't making a big deal about it, so why should she?
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Erin fidgeted as she waited outside by the garage for Trevor, wondering once again if this was a good idea. Agreeing to go to the dance with him had been an impulse, curiosity mixed with bravado and, she had to admit, the small thrill of being asked out at all. Trevor was fun to spend time with, and she was willing to bet he cleaned up really well. She hadn't really considered all that would be involved in cleaning herself up until it had been too late to back out without looking silly. And she did appreciate that he was going to help her not make a fool of herself, really. But a fitting at an actual tailor? Erin hadn't actually known there were such things. When she heard tailor, she tended to think of fairy tale folks who killed seven flies in one blow or something like that. She knew about designers, obviously, but the way Trevor talked, this wasn't quite the same. She wondered what she was getting herself into.
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Vaulting up from the floor, Erin dove for Chris, trying to knock him out of the way of a threat he couldn't yet see coming. "Stop it, Mr. Lucas!" she yelled to the air. "You don't want to do this! He's a hero, he's Mark's friend, he's just a kid!" Even as she leapt, she wondered if being deleted hurt, and what happened after that. She wondered if they were both about to find out.
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Whatever Derrick thought about his own efforts, they did seem to help. It took a little while, but eventually Stesha began to pull herself together, sniffling and blowing her nose a few times before taking a deep breath of release. "All right, I may do that again later, but I think I'm okay for now." She smiled at Derrick and touched his cheek affectionately. "Thanks." There was a moment's pause as she looked at her own hand. "Is it just the light in here, you think, or am I kind of... greener than I was?" she asked hesitantly.
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Normal bat attack, 1d20+14=34 Since it's not a power attack, but she is using the bat, that's a DC 34 Toughness save.
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"Chris!" Wander called as soon as she appeared, "listen to me! You need to do and say whatever you think Edge would do in this situation. It's really important, and I'll explain later." She didn't dare make it any more clear, lest she start breaking whatever the rules of this bizarre world were herself. Readying herself, she looked up at the flying Spellbound and used the line she'd made up on the way down. "All right, evildoer, you like flying creatures? Let me introduce you to a bat!" With that, she leapt into the air, swinging to try and and knock the crazy villainess off her broom.
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It was hard to shake free of the memories even once the mental assault let up; Erin had to struggle her way back to reality even as the voice of the zombie droned in her ears. When she could focus again, all she saw was the thing laying there, saying something about trying to avert something. "You son of a bitch," she hissed, hands still clenched around her bat, tears still running in wet trails down her face. Digging the bat into the ground and using it as a pivot point, she kicked the thing twice, once in the chest and once in the head, right where it had hurt her. Without waiting to see whether anyone had witnessed any of that, she ran off once again, this time in the direction of the school.
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All out power attack, lethal damage, unarmed, 1d20+14=29. DC 32 tougness save Spend an HP to surge. All out power attack, lethal damage, unarmed, 1d20+14=34. DH is immune to critical hits, so DC 32 toughness save.
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So given all that, how long would that little interlude have taken?
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Erin's hand went for her bat as the creature's eyes flared, but before she could do more than grab it from her belt, a cone of sickly green light spilled forth from the zombie's burning eyes. It spilled over her, and suddenly she was dragged helplessly back into her own past while Dead Head got a good look at her memories of everyone she'd ever lost or killed. It started off slow, a child's memories of the loss of her first dog to old age, a grandmother's passing, and the understanding that things don't live forever. Then, without warning, the trickle became a flood of images and memories, watching trucks full of bodies leaving the local hospital as the line at the emergency room stretched out the door, then watching from a passenger side window as her father, doubled over with coughing, was left behind to perish in the hopes that his family would be spared. News programs reporting on the death tolls skyrocketing into the millions, and the phone call reporting that her father, her best friend, most of the people she'd known all her life were all dead. And then the zombies began appearing. The memories that had before been tinged with dread were now soaked in blood, starting with the screaming, frantic memory of her mother being torn apart by a mob of zombies while Erin and her sister hid shaking inside a compost heap. The memories of that loss were nearly unbearable, splashed across her mind as vividly as the day it had happened. In the present, Erin's knees buckled, and she leaned on her bat to hold herself upright. There were more memories of the zombie-eaten dead, her uncle, people she'd made friends with, the only adults left in her life. Then the killing started, as she used her new powers to protect herself and her sister from the zombies, clumsily at first, but with a steadily increasing finesse and focus. Erin tried to fight back against the mental assault, but her command of her mind was far weaker than her command of her body, and she couldn't break free. She cringed as another set of memories unfolded, losing the last thing she had left in the world, her little sister, even as she'd fought her way through yet another crowd of zombies to try and find some medicine, some anything that would save her. That was the loss that had broken her, and for a long time there was nothing but the memory of violence, destroying as many zombies as possible, hundreds or maybe thousands, a useless effort in a world where there was nothing left to save. There was more after that, the brief coda of her time in this world, fighting with Young Freedom, staving off the end of the new world that was now her home, but it was nothing compared to what had come before. It was overwhelming to live through it all again, and for a moment after it was done, Erin just stood there, dazed and with tears running down her cheeks.
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Oh, and can she feel/see the memories he's picking out as he gets them, sort of a shared recollection?
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He's getting every thought in her mind related to death and killing? My god, they're going to be there all night! :D
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"That's none of your business," Erin told him coldly, forcing herself to meet that unsettling regard. It wasn't the kind of zombie she'd dealt with, and whatever threat it posed, it wasn't the kind she could recognize and deal with. And it hadn't been a drug, if the zombie could be believed. What reason would it have to lie? Maybe this world really had escaped altogether from the drug cocktail that had destroyed what the hero flu had left of her home world. She spun the bat closed and returned it to her belt. "All right, you can go," she told the zombie. "I'll leave you alone."
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"Zombies are a threat to human beings," Erin said impatiently, as though the answer were entirely obvious. "They kill and eat people, and the only way to stop them is to take them apart until they can't anymore." She seemed entirely certain of that fact. "Some people in there are keeping an eye on you already, and they seem to think you haven't killed anybody lately. If there's only one of you and you're not running loose, then the threat is contained. But I didn't know that at the time. You didn't take any drugs or eat or drink anything at that party that might have done this, did you?"
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Erin ignored the question, tightening her fingers on the bat till her knuckles went dead white. "What created you?" she demanded. "Was it some kind of accident, or were you made on purpose? And are there more of you?" Despite everything she'd seen and done, the creature frightened Erin in a way she couldn't quite explain. It had the rotting visage, the awkward, shambling movements, the stench, everything she was familiar with, but worse. Worse because even though she didn't want to see, it was impossible to miss the intelligence burning in the dead eyes. It was a zombie that could think, and that was terrifying.
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Erin ignored the beginning of the next fight and kept moving, deciding against taking a seat after all when she saw the zombie leaving. Maybe nobody here saw it as any danger, but she couldn't just let it go. She needed some answers. Dropping neatly through a broken place in the stands, she slipped underneath them and followed the undead thing out of the stadium and into the never-quite-darkness of the Freedom City night. Once outside, she let him get just far enough ahead of her that he was between some buildings and out of easy sight of the stadium, then put on a burst of speed and caught up. In a heartbeat, she was behind him, her bat drawn, but hanging back at the edge of her own range. "Hey, you," she snapped. It was weird trying to talk to one of them, but this one seemed to be able to speak, after a fashion. "I want to talk to you. Answer my questions and I'll leave you alone."
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She studied him for a long, quiet moment, looking into his eyes, then drew in a deep breath. "Good," she murmured finally, "I'm so glad. I don't... I don't know what I would do without you." The dam broke then and she cried for real. venting some of the overwhelming emotions of the last few days and turning her cheeks a blotchy pink and green. It didn't feel good, but it did start to make her feel a little better.
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Erin watched Geckoman's battle playing out on the screen, her fingers clenched on the back of a seat hard enough to leave dents. "He doesn't know about the deletions," she said tersely. "He doesn't know that he could get erased if he doesn't play by Rick's rules." She turned to James. "Send me down there," she told him. "I can deal with Spellbound and get him out of there. Even back in the day, girls could hit other girls." She smiled grimly, opening her bat.
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If that's how he makes friends, I'd hate to see how he deals with enemies! ;)
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"One to remember," Erin agreed with a smile. "And a lot more fun than hanging around with a video game. We should do it again sometime." They walked up to the common room together, to the point where they'd split up to go to their own floors. It was still empty at this hour, teenagers not exactly being known for their early-rising tendencies. Erin hesitated for just a moment, then simply said, "See you at breakfast, then?"
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Erin resisted the urge to punch the smug, grinning bastard in the face, less for the insults and more for presuming he knew anything about her and where she came from. She repressed the urge, reminding herself that he wasn't worth adding to her troubles for, and covered it over with a layer of impassivity. Being distracted for a moment by the sight of the zombie's disembodied arm crawling back to the body, apparently of its own volition, didn't hurt either. The zombies she was familiar with certainly didn't do that, something for which she'd never before thought to be thankful. Rising from her seat, she shot a quick grateful look in Chris' direction before addressing Jack of all Blades. "Thanks, Geckoman. I'm not going to fight him. I'd have to give a damn what he thought of me first. And that seems really unlikely." Giving her back to the obnoxious swordsman, she walked away to find another place to sit.
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"You're right," she murmured, "there's no point in thinking about it now when I'm rattled anyway. I don't want to make any decisions that I'll regret. I just... I guess I've always been sheltered, even before I started doing hero stuff. Even when I did dangerous stuff, I didn't really feel like I was in danger, it felt like I was in a movie or something like that. But now I know it's real. It's not a movie or a game." She was quiet for a minute, resting in his arms and feeling the warmth of his breath in her hair. At times like this, it was easy to forget he spent a lot of his time as something untouchable and not quite human. "I'm not making any decisions right now," she finally said, "but I need to know. If I decided to give it up, all of it, hang up my costume, stop using my powers, and just go back to being a florist, would you still love me?"
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"Even if you give it a pet name, it's still a zombie," Erin said flatly, drawing her arms in closer to her chest defensively. It was that or reveal that she was nearly shaking from the urge to put a final end to the grotesque imitation of life down there on the floor. She looked with some confusion towards Lukos and Avenger, giving Avenger an extra-thorough examination. Lukos seemed to be trying to draw some parallel between Avenger and the zombie, but unless he was trying to call the man in the suit a corporate zombie or something, Erin couldn't figure out what it might be.
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"Oh, God," Erin murmured as she watched the screen, hands clenched into fists. "That's Rick's power, it's got to be. It looks just the same. He may be dead, but he's not done changing things. If something doesn't fit into this world, it gets... undone? Erased? I don't know what those dots do, but we probably don't want to find out." She looked at the others. "If we don't act like we belong here, at least enough to get by, we could be in even more trouble than we already are."
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"Well, that explains why I don't see much of you during the day," Erin joked, heading out the door. "I sort of thought you were just sneaky." The sky was still very dark, but there were signs of life, the earliest commuters heading out to their cars for the drive into the city, the newspaper carriers out on their routes. "We should check the news when we get back to make sure the police took care of those robbers," she suggested. "I doubt they proved much of a problem, but you never know." She climbed back onto the pillion seat of the motorcycle and put her arms around Trevor's waist, sitting like an expert now.