DOA? A-Okay! [IC]

[Dr Archeville]

Date: November [late], 2010. Early evening, about an hour after sunset.

In light of the previous month's events, necromancer and cultist activity in Freedom City had taken a large dip, but it had not gone away entirely. A handful of undead monsters still lurked here and there, and a few cultists were still active, either trying to take advantage of the sudden void or working fervently to bring back lost associates and minions. And there was never any end to graverobbers. Yes, Dead Head's particular niche was still a viable one.

Dead Head was in a small cemetery in Hanover, tracking down leads on a particularly worrisome graverobber. He was grad student, attempting to do the Frankenstein thing and reanimate a patchwork man made from several corpses. He oversaw the work of two assistants -- undergrads he had coerced into working with him via selective brain surgery -- as they hefted a fresh coffin up out of the cold ground, illuminating the work area with the electric blue light coming off the top end of the large metal staff he carried.

"Y'all best put the feller right back where ya found 'im, an' be sure t'tuck 'im in real tight," a voice called out.

"Ah, it's you!," the would-be resurrectionist hissed. "I had wondered how long it would take the city's self-appointed 'Guardian of the Dead' to show!" The two assistants looked up and around, trying to find the hero's hiding spot.

"So y'all know me. Good -- then y'all know I don't like what yer doin', and you are gonna stop, one way or the other."

"I'll stop when I am done! My work is far too important to be stopped by some deluded metahuman freak who thinks he's some sort of 'super-zombie'! I shall make an army of the un-dead, and with it I shall rule the world! Muah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah!!!"

Dead Head stepped out from between two large headstones, shovel at the ready. "That ain't gonna happWHOA!"

"Ha! You think you can catch me that easily? I knew the most likely paths you would use to get to me, and had my minions dig very deep pits there! Pits filled with spikes! But I guess I do not need to tell you that, now, do I? Nyah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah!!!"

"Well, this is just embarassin'...." Dead Head grumbled.

Even with his regenerative powers, Dead Head could use some help -- before he could even get out of the pit, he'd need to extricate himself from the spikes. Fortunately, help did show up, in the form of Miss Americana, who at that moment just happened to be passing by overhead...

[Electra]

Miss Americana paused in her flight when she saw something odd going down in the cemetery. She'd been working late and had been headed home, but this situation looked like it might need a hero. It already had one, she realized suddenly, recognizing the unmistakably grim visage of Dead Head, one of Freedom City's more unique heroes. He didn't seem to be doing well, though. She winced sympathetically as he fell into the pit trap set for him. Hopefully he'd recover, but he looked like he was down for the count for this precise moment.

She sized up the trio of graverobbers, for that was obviously what they'd been up to. They looked human, and had elected to build a trap instead of fighting, which suggested they might be regular humans. Her laser beam was theoretically safe for humans, but she felt just a little bit uncomfortable trying it, especially when two of them looked like they were still teenagers. A better plan was in order. After a second's worth of recalibration, she aimed her hands at the leader and fired, bathing him in a totally harmless blue light that bounced off the others to a lesser, reflected extent.

Before they could react, Miss A flew down towards them, staying overhead and out of reach, but plenty close enough for them to get a really good look at her. "Stop, evil magic... oh no!" she cried, covering her mouth with her fingers in exaggerated horror. "You're really human, aren't you? I had no idea, or I never would've used my radiation blasts! You poor children, you must be feeling awful already. Clammy, nauseous, lightheaded... Why without the antidote, I'm afraid you may have only minutes left!"

[Dr Archeville]

"No!" the mad scientist shrieked. "Quickly, my minions -- back to my... laboratory... which is on the other side of the... argh! Curses!" He shook his fist at the heavens, and the two assistants mimicked him.

"You have me now, my pretty, but this is not the last you shall hear of..."

He paused, and actually posed for the heroine. Feet apart, left hand with staff held out, right hand curled into a clutching gesture and held before his face. The staff flashed with an impressive (but not blinding) light when next he spoke.

"Doctor Nekropoliz!"

"Hey, what's goin' on up there?," Dead Head called from the pit. "Fulcrum, izzat you? Mind helpin' me outta here?"

[Electra]

"Just a moment!" Miss A called sweetly, not taking her eyes off the villains. "It's me, Miss Americana. I seem to have accidentally irradiated these poor boys. The police are coming, and when they get here, I'll make sure they get the antidote before their internal organs begin to liquefy. You should probably sit down," she told the miscreants sympathetically. "I hope you're not seeing spots in front of your eyes yet. That's a bad sign. Laying down with your legs elevated will keep blood circulating to your heads and slow the effects of the radiation."

Leaving them to chew on that information for a moment, she nipped down into the hole. "Oh dear, you really have gotten yourself into a pickle," she told Dead Head sympathetically. "Well, here we go. Brace yourself." Trying to be careful, she lifted him off the spikes and carried him out of the pit.

[Dr Archeville]

As Miss A went to the pit, she heard the mad scientist -- who was probably not a doctor -- mutter something about getting her on her back and with her legs up.

The sight in the pit was most unpleasant. It had been lined with long sharpened sticks all along the bottom, which Dead Head was impaled on in several places. Enough to kill a man many times over, in fact. Yet he seemed no worse for wear, and in no pain, though he had fallen face down so it was impossible to tell what sort of face he was making. Fortunately, the hole it was not terribly deep, only a yard or so.

"Pleased ta meetcha, Miss! Uh. I tihnk it'll work best if'n ya work my shoulders an' arms free, then I can push the rest'a meself up."

But why do that when she could just lift him up like a doll? So she did, to his surprise. "Dang, girl, you don't mess around, do ya?"

Seeing him from the front was much worse, because now she could see inside him.

[Electra]

Oddly enough, Miss A didn't seem put off by the glimpse of Dead Head's inner workings. Instead, she looked with interest down at the zombie even as she hauled him out of the pit and back to solid ground where the prone villains were waiting. "All your parts in working order?" she asked. "Nothing fell out that I need to retrieve out of the pit for you?" The sight of the zombie was certainly objectively unpleasant, but the distance conferred by her unique perspective allowed her to appreciate the interesting parts without being nearly so nauseated.

[Dr Archeville]

"Lemme see here," he replied as he began poking a finger into the already-closing puncture wounds. Curiously, the few drips of clotted blood that were force out of the wounds seeped back up into him, as if his injuries were not so much healing at an accelerated rate as they were reversing themselves! "Brain... eyeballs... lungs... heart... spleen.. liver... stomach... gallbladder... pancreas... large intestine... kidneys... small intestine... bladder... weddin' tackle... yup, all there!"

In moments the wounds were completely healed over, and he looked like any other... well, unwrapped mummy was the closest thing Gina could think of to compare him to.

He looked down at his clothing, which did not repair itself, and kicked the ground. "Dangit, I just got these pants patched up, too!"

[Electra]

"That's okay," Miss A assured him. "We can take care of that." As sirens began to sound in the distance, Miss A went up to the three graverobbers, who were now all laying on the ground with their legs in the air. One of them was moaning about how lightheaded he was, and the spots in front of his eyes. "All right,' she told them urgently, "I have the antidote, but there isn't much time! I need to inject it into each of your upper thigh, the large amount of muscle tissue there will allow for optimal absorption and save all your lives. Hurry now, take off your shoes and pants, then lay on your stomachs."

[Dr Archeville]

Dead Head slid a bit closer to the heroine. "I 'preciate th' offer, Miss," he whispered, "but I ain't too keen on wearin' another man's clothes. I still ain't comfortable wearin' 'Venger's stuff, an' I've known him fer months! 'Sides, just cuz they ain't treatin' the Dead with no dignity don't mean we gotta do the same to them."

The two minions had dutifully removed their pants, after pausing to look at Nekropoliz. The scientist himself muttered something about getting Miss Americana's pants off, while undoing his own.

"Hunh, he got his minions goin' Commando."

[Electra]

"Consider it a twofer," Miss a murmured back. "Without pants or shoes, they're substantially less likely to attempt escape. And I would consider it a fair trade, since they ruined your pants on purpose, and tried to kill you in the process. But if you don't want them, I'll hand it all over to the police." Taking her keys from a uniform pocket and palming them, she raised her voice to a normal level as she went over to them. "All right, boys, just a little poke now. Be brave!" Perfectly straightfaced, she poked each one in the thigh with the pointy end of her house key, just enough so they would feel something. While she was at it, she collected the discarded clothing and the staff with the light in it, even as the police cars pulled up.

[Dr Archeville]

Now that Miss A was closer, she could see that the two assistants weren't just "going commando," they'd been neutered! She also saw fine stitching on the two assistants legs -- it appeared they'd both received full leg transplants!

"Admiring my handiwork, eh? They are crude, yes, but a solid first step towards total reanimation!"

"Man, that's just wrong! Bad enough ya rob from the' Dead, ya gotta mangle the livin', too?"

"Bah!," the scientist balked, still face-down in the gravedirt, "what would you know of science? Or progress?"

[Electra]

"Oh my god," Miss A murmured, more shocked now than she had been by Dead Head's rotting interior. "Look after them for a moment, would you?" she asked Dead Head. "I need to make a phone call." She stepped away for a few minutes, and though she kept her voice low, her gestures were animated as she talked on her cell phone. By the time she came back, the police had arrived and were affixing more proper restraints to the three mooks.

Miss A stepped up to the officer in charge, her charm on, if not full blast, certainly enough to hold his attention. "Detective, the man in the underwear is deranged and may have some metahuman powers. You'll need to handle him carefully. The other two are damaged, but loyal to the first. When you've finished booking them, if you could call this number at ArcheTech, someone is going to come and look at the damage that's been done to their bodies. I appreciate it so much."

[Dr Archeville]

The officer, clearly taken with the heroine, agreed to all she said; they also called in the local gravedigger to come cover the mess. They carted them off, the minions in one car, Dr. Nekropoliz in the other (and his staff in the trunk).

"Thanks a heap, Miss 'Mericana!," the zombie in badly tattered clothes said, smiling. "Woulda taken me a while t'get outta that predicament, an' by the time I did they might've cleared outta here!"

He shambled over to the open grave, and checked the coffin. "Ah, good, they didn't get in yet. All's I gotta do is pull his covers back over 'im." He unstrapped the shovel from his back and set to work refilling the hole. After a few shovelfulls he turned to Miss A, "so, you from around here?"

[Electra]

"I am now," Miss A told him with an easy smile, even as she tested the ground for other traps and began removing the spikes that had impaled Dead Head. "I'm a little bit new to the heroing game, but so far I enjoy it immensely. I'm just glad I happened to be passing by tonight. You're Dead Head, aren't you?" she asked, just for confirmation's sake. She doubted there were many heroes with his look or M.O. running around. "I've heard a little bit about you. Are you really a zombie?"

[Dr Archeville]

"Yes an' no," he said after a moment. "The word zombi comes from Voodoo, an' refers to a mindless servant made from a corpse, or from someone who think he's a corpse. I ain't mindless, but my mojo came from one'a the Voodoo loa. An' unlike the ones in Romero's flicks -- or Snyder's," he rolled his eyes, "I don't crave the flesh'a th' livin'. Used to be that my ability t' bounce back from harm could be amped up by eatin' meat -- usually raw hamburger, sometimes pork -- but now I don't even need that. Fun fact, in his first flick, they was only called 'ghouls'!"

There were three other pits, and Miss A finished clearing those around the same time Dead Head finished refilling the grave.

He sunk his shovel into the ground, and leaned back against it. "So, ya gotta rush off anywhere? I got a few more things t'check here 'fore movin' on, and I'm always happy fer company. Most'a them's happy fer it, too."

[Electra]

"Not I," said Miss A, shaking her head. "I'd like to learn more about you though. You seem to have a very unique physiology, and that intrigues me." She sat down on a nearby bench, folding her long legs decorously. "You see, in my day job, I work at ArcheTech, helping to create medical prostheses for amputees. One thing we always have to watch out for with our implanted prostheses is cell degredation, where the damaged tissue continues to degrade, despite our best efforts, and eventually the nerve tissues are destroyed. I wonder if I could persuade you to visit my lab sometime?"

[Dr Archeville]

"ArcheTech, hunh? That's the company run by that German feller, Arkeville, right? I met him, not too long ago," he said, nodding. "Got word he was lookin' er medical cadavers t' keep his surgical skills from gettin' rusty, I went over'n volunteered. Figured it'd be a good way t'make some cash. Didn't work out as well as he'd hoped, though, but I was able t'help him brush up on his musculoskeletal anatomy."

"So, sure, soon as we's done here," he stood upright and removed his shovel from the ground, "I'm happy t'head t'yer lab. 'less somethin' else comes up, a'course."

After filling in the trap-pits Miss A had removed the spikes from, he lead her on a short tour of the cemetery. I was not very big, but was quite old; "they stopped usin' headstones like this 'bout sixty years ago!"

[Electra]

Miss A followed him along gamely as he gave his tour, listening avidly as he described what he knew about graveyards in general and this one in particular. They weren't exactly her area of expertise, but you never knew when a tidbit of information was going to come in handy. "I'll be happy to pay you for your time," she told him as the tour was winding down. "What happened when you went to Doktor Archeville's lab?" She couldn't help but ask, and hoped it wasn't anything that would doom her own research.

[Dr Archeville]

"Well, like I said, he tried practicin' his surgical skills on me... but it didn't work so well," he chuckled. "Seems my body'd heal up too fast for 'im to work. So instead, he jes' peeled back my skin, pinned it with some clamps an' such -- had ta use silver ones, 'cuz those's the only ones what'd work -- an' we went through him namin' all my muscles and bones. Even yanked out a few for him t'inspect up close! Like this!"

He held up his right hand, grabbed it with his left, and pulled. It came off with a sickening snap, and he offered it to the heroine. It was dry and leathery, and discolored as if sporting a bruise over the entire surface. Neither the hand not his stump bled, though the end where he had broken it off was slightly damp with dark red gunk.

"An' after that," he continued cheerily, "we decided ta check just how well I heal up, do it all scientific-like, measurin' an' such. Shot me, chopped me, burned me, all sorts'a stuff! I even fought a robot!"

[Electra]

"Did it hurt?" Miss A asked, using a little penlight from her pocket to examine the hand. It looked more like a museum artifact than something that had just come off a moving sentient being, and the fact that the fingers were still flexing was slightly... well, more than slightly off-putting. Miss A stood very still for a moment, studying the hand intently, before she seemed to shake herself and offered the discarded hand back to him. "That's a very interesting ability, I'd like to see how it reads on my sensors. Can I give you a lift?"

[Dr Archeville]

"Didn't hurt at all," he said as he watched her watching his hand. "Fact is, I don't feel pain no more. Haven't fer a long, looong time."

When she handed him his hand back, it twitched and flipped out of her hand, landing on the ground. It flipped around, and crawled, spider-lke, up Dead Head's pants leg, up and around his back, and down his arm, setting itself back onto his wrist. Wen it had, he held the hand up and flexed; there was no seam or scarring or anything indicating that it had been snapped off just moments ago.

"A lift? Ya mean, carry me as ya fly?" He smiled again, "well, now, it'd be downright rude'a me t'say 'no' to an offer like that!"

[Electra]

"Well then, alley-oop!" Miss A swept Dead Head up in her arms and took to the sky, flying the short distance to the office park where she kept her personal laboratory. Even now that she had access to the labs at ArcheTech and the group project in Hanover, she preferred working on her own much of the time. The building her lab was in was entirely nondescript from the outside, but inside was a sophisticated technology laboratory. "Would you like anything to eat or drink?" she asked as they walked in and she turned on the lights. "Do you need that anymore?"

[Dr Archeville]

"WHEEEEEEE!"

Apparently he really enjoyed flying. Or being carried by a stunningly attractive woman. Probably both. While flying, his face peeled back and flopped at the back of his head like a hoodie, but he quickly pulled it back down.

The sight of her lab was equally impressive to the revenant, who let out a low whistle when he first entered. "This here's a nice set-up! How long it take t'get it all set up? D'ya live her, too?"

"Nah, don't need food no more, an' it'd jes' sit in my stomach if'n I tried t'eat, so I'd have ta find some place t'dump it out later."

[Electra]

"Sounds unpleasant," Miss A said with a chuckle, shrugging a white lab coat on over her uniform. "I won't offer you a snack, then. I don't actually live here, but I do spent about as much time here as I do at my house most days. If you don't mind, go ahead and strip down and lay on the table over there, in front of the MRI scanner. If you feel modest, there's a blanket under the table that you can use. I'll be over there in just a few moments."

[Dr Archeville]

Dead Head chuckled, "If'n I had a nickel fer ev'ry time a girl asked me t'strip down... I'd have half a dime."

He stripped and laid on the table. Modesty was clearly not a concern. But as he lay there, he quieted.

"Been a while since I been in one'a these, but I cain't count th' number'a times I been in one. When I was younger, see, I had lots'a migraines. Lots of 'em. Well, not migraines, 'xactly, but that was th' best diagnosis th' docs could come up with. Started when I was little, had 'em off an' on fer years, on up till college."

The MRI showed nothing. No activity, not even a flicker. All signs indicated nothing more than a corpse was in the machine.