revivalproject | Obsolete

Entry tags:

Obsolete

WHO: Tony and open!
WHERE: The university, the mine hole...?, the beach caves
WHAT: Fixing the zombie problem
WHEN: Through the October biohazard event
WARNINGS: Gore, probably! Zombie stuff.

a. the beach
It was quiet, like the sand and the fog that hung so densely over the water cushioned any sound. Even Tony's footsteps, which had been so trudgingly heavy to Tony's ears on the road, were deadened as he reached the beach, and the creak and rattle of his armor as he moved was softened to static, like the hush of the waves. The fog was thick enough here that he had to pause and squint through it as he broke through the treeline, trying to spot the shape of the radio tower that should have been a clear landmark. It was leaning, precariously. If anyone not yet accounted for had made their way down here, and Tony suspected they had, to keep the water to one side and away from where the zombies must have been congregating around the sounds and lights of the city, the tower might not have been working for them. Tony hissed, and started a jog toward the caves, slowed by the heavy metal, and the regular ring of the scabbard at his side bouncing into his armored thigh.

It was only as he was hauling the weight of the metal up the rocks that he heard it. He had to stop, sweat from the effort quickly chilling in the cool air to raise goosebumps along his skin as he listened. A slap-slap-slap, like someone running, barefoot across the stones, echoing in the caves. Not the shamble of the zombies struggling to animate their limbs. Tony took a breath, could feel the call at the back of his throat, and it came out as a sigh when he realized it wasn't just one set of footsteps. Slap-slap-slap-slap.

The fog didn't seem so smothering as Tony turned to climb quickly, the clanking of his armor like an alarm and every rattling breath a siren.

b. the mine
Littering the city with as many posters as possible to draw people to the safety of the university was only really effective if the entire zombie horde didn't descend on the same building. And it was temporary, armor against a battering that had to be redirected. On a small scale, that was easy; Tony could spot movement in the fog, and shout, "Hey, come and get it!," or bang a metal fist against a concrete wall to ring like a dinner bell. Any sound, any movement, and they'd come lurching after him, immediately distracted from whatever had been driving their struggling brains a moment ago. As a mass, though, they were formidable.

The bigger problem was, even Tony's fireworks had been confiscated. The more complex devices, with controlled chemical reactions, timers, pressurizers, remote controls and kill switches, all of those were all his, and all immediately useless in the dead city. What their alien babysitter recognized as more computer, or less immediately as explosive, suddenly didn't work like the systems Tony built were sensitive to the whims of the weather. And what he needed, something that just blew up if he threw it hard enough, had to be built again, against the hope that whoever was keeping his toys away from him wouldn't notice for long enough.

The top of the greenhouse provided a clear vantage point over the gaping void that was the hole in the earth where he was supposed to die. Making a quick explosion, that was easy; Tony could assemble a grenade with his eyes completely unfocused, staring into the darkness all the while, until he had the mass drawn back by his shoulder in a slingshot to send in a perfect arc toward that emptiness. Most of them exploded before they reached the mine; some hit the wall a few feet deep, and rained fire into the depths of it, a silent lightshow at this distance. They were all as effective as Tony thought, drawing huddled groups of zombies toward the commotion, managing to lure a few of them over the edge. As a mass, though...

There had to be some way to set up a show.

c. the university
D.A.T.A.'s aperture looked dull and still. Watching over the grounds would be his job right now, if he wasn't in Tony's lap, his motherboard exposed to search fruitlessly for some loosened wire, sign of discharge, warped board, that could be fixed to bring him back to life. Instead, it was Tony that glanced up occasionally, his muttered apologies long since fallen silent, peering out into the dark through the narrow gap at the top of the window's reinforcement. The view was always the same. A dense carpet of fog, swirled by slow, jerky movements, and a brilliant ceiling of stars. The thunder continued to rumble, like it came from the fog itself, the stormclouds clinging to the earth. Tony barely heard it anymore, like the occasional pop from the candles flickering around the foyer. His busy hands slowed as he watched the stars with longing.

It was the strange light that darted between them, fizzing like lightning, that snapped his focus down to an unfamiliar movement outside by the gates. It wasn't loping or shambling, but moved with awareness. Intent. D.A.T.A. bounced as he hit the ground and Tony vaulted himself off of the ladder he was perched on to see over the barrier, then went sliding to a stop on the polished floors in front of the lever that he had to haul up and over to crank the doors open. They groaned, and thundered like the fog as they reluctantly parted, pouring light out into the night. Tony cut through it like a shadow, and could feel all of the hungry attention snap toward the signs of life. He didn't hesitate, winding back and pitching something into the sky, where it popped with a shriek and a flare of light, exposing him just long enough to wave impatiently to the figure in the dark while the zombies tracked the noise with their dead eyes.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

By this point it seemed like going anywhere was a bad idea. At least Cal had been used to operating without the Force long enough that whenever the storms cut him off like it did now, it wasn't completely disorienting, although it was still noticeable to him, akin to having some temporary sensory blindness.

The other main downside to this sort of thing was the fact that his primary choice of weapon required power, and that wasn't happening so long as other things were shut down. It was really annoying, and walking around with a length of pipe in hand just didn't have the same feel, although when it came between being unarmed and that, he much preferred having at least something to keep the slavering hordes at bay.

And hordes there were, much more swarms of shambling undead than even the ones he'd deal with on Dathomir. That in itself is a bit unsettling considering there'd been a lot of undead Nightsisters. He wasn't particularly impressed when a few of the zombies here looked to be dressed in the tattered reds of the dead witches. As such, he wasn't too surprised to see the zombies out here moving so quickly. That was about the speed of the undead Sisters, which made it even more unfortunate to be lacking a working lightsaber.

BD-1 trilled an alarm by his ear, and the Jedi squinted into the fog. Movement, although not towards them- not yet. His Force senses might be dulled, but his other senses weren't. If those things were moving elsewhere, that means they found another target. Cal glanced at his droid, who gave a small beep, by now well familiar with his human to know the Jedi's intent, and quite frankly, it usually matched the droid's own.

Cal gave the pipe a spin, still too weighty compared to his lightsaber, but he grasped the end firmly in hand as he started to move in the direction of the noise, another sound becoming quite clear beyond the number of footsteps. Metal? The fog made it hard to discern as he came nearer to the caves, but not so much the humanoid forms. Wait, were they coming from within?

"Oh great," he groaned, right before he turned and swung the pipe towards one just as it locked eyes with him and made a lunge.

The shuffling, groaning, and sound of creaking metal in his own ears was interrupted by something new--a wet thunk, and the hollow ring of an empty pipe. It twisted Tony's stomach, and he had to turn, crouched in his climb and barely an arms length above a climbing zombie below. This, he had to ignore, because he was staring down onto the beach, where he recognized, "Cal?" What he didn't have to say was what are you doing here?, and why are you doing that?.

He let himself slide down into a seat on the edge of the rock, where he could kick a heavy boot out into the face of the climbing zombie and knock them back down onto the sand. They had barely landed when Tony said, "Don't--try not to hurt them." The zombie he had dislodged was flailing weakly, getting its bearing back, and not making the request sound very serious. Not when several more came thoughtlessly trampling over it to reach the rocks themselves.

Cal would be grateful that he was spared the inquisition, especially when he was a little busy. He danced back, sweeping his makeshift weapon in a wide arc to make sure he had plenty of space before glancing in Tony's direction.

Somehow he wasn't surprised to see the man, and he might even envy him the extra layer of protection, but that couldn't have been easy to be moving in. "Hate to say it but they're not giving us much choice otherwise," he noted, eyes tracking the jerking movements as something else came running at them. He brought the pipe up, the metal ringing dully as it deflected the wild swing of arms.

"I know, but..." Tony breathed, and had to leave the point aside to kick another one off of the rocks, which only got his ankle grabbed by a third. They were climbing fast, faster than their shambling in the city suggested they could. He had to elbow the new one hard enough to feel the cartilage of their nose slip sickeningly easily to the side, snatching the scabbard from his waist as he did.

"I don't think they have much choice, either," he finally articulated as he used the sheathed sword to jam between a zombie's teeth.

The Jedi was putting in the effort, although sticking to the defensive was rapidly looking like a bad tactic as it did nothing to keep the zombies from continuing to come at them.

"-we're not given a chance and I'm thinking the whole point of any of this is to make us as vulnerable as they think they can get away with," he countered.

All the hits against the pipe were really jarring him all the way up his arms for how hard the undead were managing to hit. Cal dropped down to snap a leg out and kick one of them in the knee, wincing as he felt it cave in and back, sending the zombie staggering. "Did not intend that..!"

The argument was important, but only as long as both of them could still talk to have it, so Tony had to pause again with his tongue between his teeth while he held back another zombie with its teeth bearing down on gauntlet and tried to solve the puzzle of getting Cal up off of the sand and out of the fray. Hopefully, the kid wasn't too distracted in the meantime, because Tony had to act impulsively, and his only warning over the sudden rumbling and clattering of the first loosened stones was, "Heads up!" Moments later, a great, black boulder was tumbling free from the rock face, where Tony was barely hanging on to his sword that he had shoved between the stones to work one free, his feet scrabbling for purchase on the freshly exposed glass of ground sand below it.

The boulder crushed a path through the climbing zombies, throwing itself down onto the beach. Hanging by one hand on his lodged sword, Tony gestured with the free one for Cal to take, urging, "Come on!"

At the very least Cal hadn't considered the necessity of apologizing to a zombie, which was pretty easy when most of them still got right back up and resumed their intent of trying to rip your face off. "Uh-oh," he groaned as BD-1 also gave a startled beep, both of them catching the flash of red as a Nightsister wove her way through the clawing hands.

He didn't think twice once he heard Tony shout, glancing back before he threw himself to the side as the boulder came careening through. The plan was obvious then, and the moment it had gone past, Cal pushed a hand into the sand to shove himself up, sliding the pipe between the strap over his utility vest before making a leap for the rising rocks to start his own climb. Not touching the Force for five years had insured that at the very least he had built up his own strength to be able to climb and hang around the dangerous wrecks of starships as a scrapper. Once he got close enough to Tony, he reached for that hand to get up that tricky spot.

For leverage, Tony had to force a heel into the rocks with a screech of protesting metal, so he could pull Cal up and get him closer to the ledge above where they could keep climbing, out of undead reach. Theoretically. The zombies weren't slowed down by a difficult climb, letting their nails break off and flesh scrape raw as they dragged it across the rocks.

Tony struggled considerably more, plate armor weighing him down and chainmail catching on ledges as he hauled himself up, legs kicking fruitlessly. Still, he wheezed as he climbed, "The point of this," like there hadn't been an interruption at all, "might be to make us do something we regret. We might be able to help them. I know some of these people."

Cal scrambled up, digging the toe of his boots into whatever bit of purchase he could find them. BD-1 watched anxiously as he clung to the Jedi's back, squealing a warning as a couple of grasping hands were getting uncomfortably close. Cal responded with a well-aimed foot, not watching as the undead figure went tumbling back towards the ground.

"That would be extra twisted if they imported people we knew and made them undead, just for us." He paused to catch his breath once he'd caught up with Tony, resuming his climb after a glance over his shoulder. "Think we're that special?" he asked, wondering just what lengths anyone would go through just for a response.

"I know if it were Merrin in my place she'd tell me 'I would not have hesitated to smite your undead face,'" he intoned in his attempt at an impression of the Nightsister. Behind him his droid buddy gave a strange mix of sounds, making Cal laugh in spite of things, even as he winced.

"Okay, so my Dathomirian accent needs work!"

On a reasonably stable ledge, Tony had to collapse onto his hip, catching his breath, leaning against the rock and gripping his scabbard tightly, watching the zombies drag each other down in an effort to find purchase. BD's heckling was enough to make him attempt a laugh as well, cutting the pair a sidelong glance, then indicating down at the horde with his chin. "And you? You wouldn't hesitate, if that was her?" he asked, sure he knew the answer. It could be her, any one of those faces; she had already been here before. "Even if it's not intentional, fine, let's pretend we don't know we're special, and we're not a select group of test subjects under a microscope: any time in the last two hours, anyone could have woken up at that fountain, completely disoriented, and gotten immediately bitten. Where would they be now?"

"Of course I'd hesitate. Sure, she's only tried to kill me a few times back when we first met..." Cal hauls himself up beside Tony, looking back down at the persistent climbers.

"Bitten..?" He blinks and looks over at Tony, confused. "That's a very specific point. I would've just been worried about being clawed and dog-piled. Nightsisters were brought to life by Merrin's magic and this...connection their clan has to each other. Is this different?"

Now they were both just staring at each other in confusion, briefly forgetting to watch the pursuing horde, until one grunted loud enough and went sliding down the rock face to draw Tony's attention again. Staring at them again, they did very much look like zombies to Tony, though now he realized he didn't have any reason to be sure about that. "You don't have zombies...?" he ventured, flicking a finger down at the bodies, like Cal could have missed them at some point. "It's like rabies--you know rabies?--sickness, gets in the brain, highly contagious, you get bit, you turn into one of them. Not something I'd think anyone would do to their family on purpose." His eyebrow lifted inquisitively, not sure he really understood, but his lip did, too, because he didn't understand a lot of what magic-users did and couldn't claim to be surprised.

Cal looked back down again as well, slowly shaking his head by the time he brought his attention back towards Tony.

"The only thing I'd ever come across like this was back on Dathomir, back when I first met Merrin. It wasn't a sickness, it was a deliberate summoning. From what I understand, the she was the last of her kind. The rest of the Nightsisters were wiped out by a Separatist general named Grievous. But I guess the power they use connects them even in death." He grimaced, looking back down at the grasping figures that tried to make their way up to them.

"So this...is different?"

There was no reason to assume that connection was important here, so Tony had to admit, "I have no idea." With a contemplative breath, he noted, "That would make things easier, you know, knowing this was just a bunch of dead people, and there's one guy out there somewhere chanting that we can punch in the jaw." At least, mechanically easier. That didn't make scanning the group of them for another face that Tony recognized any emotionally easier.

"...maybe that's the point of this," Cal considered. "What's the origin? Is there even one? Part of what keeps us second-guessing ourselves, make things more difficult and they don't have to do a thing except watch as we dig ourselves further into a hole."

Which...was a pretty crappy thing to do to anyone, but then the so-called powers that be running this twisted show weren't exactly aiming to make things nice for them. The Jedi wrinkled his nose as he looked back down.

"Can't stay up here forever. If they're getting power boosts from the cave, we're going to be in even more trouble eventually."

If the whole point was the second-guessing, this debating, about the causes and reactions, then there was a black hole of despair ready to collapse in Tony's chest. If there was never any figuring out why something was happening, he didn't see how there was any way to fix it. Magic rules.

He had to force himself to nod his acknowledgement to shake off his glassy eyes, only actually hearing Cal after he had torn his focus back from that abyss. Right, they had to move. "I just came out here to fix this," he said, indicating up at the leaning tower just a short climb now above them. "If you can keep them distracted, two--five minutes, tops."

Cal brought a hand up, dropping it on a metal shoulder. "We're still here. We do what we think we need to do, because doing nothing isn't an option." No matter how much they didn't understand, they weren't doing this alone.

Slowly, he got to his feet, bracing himself against the uneven terrain as he looked down at the hungry faces and the reaching hands.

"Got it. I'll try not to do anything too damaging." It was the least he could promise, given that the zombies were already in a precarious situation as it was.

It should have been an encouraging sentiment, but Tony's smile was tight, and his nod brief and sharp so he could quickly look away, fixing his attention on the climb ahead of him. Mostly, it served as a reminder that the general consensus seemed to be that Tony was better off doing nothing than whatever destructive thing he thought was the correct answer, and he might have just roped Cal into yet another terrible idea. He could feel the Soldier's warning glare boring a hole through his armor as he scaled the rocky wall.

At the top, where the cliff flattened and looked out over the water, Tony knelt to catch his breath again, searching where he paused for handfuls of loose stones to gather up before twisting around to assess Cal's predicament. With a protesting creak of strained leather, he wound back to pitch the rocks out onto the beach, catching the attention of a few of the zombies to break away from the group and scatter across the sand.

The Jedi glanced back up the way Tony had gone, brow arching as if to say 'I thought distraction was my job.' The grin that followed was brief as he was already turning his attention back to where it was supposed to be. Right, this wasn't fun and games, but if he kept looking at things too grimly, their unseen watchers were already winning, weren't they?

He toed at some loose rocks, stooping down to pick one up and toss it up and down in his palm. Scanning the rocky face beneath him, he sent the rock flying off to the side of the climbers, watching as they took the bait and followed the sound, some too quickly as they lost their grip, others scrambling back down.

Cal picked up another rock, watching. No point in exhausting his ammo if they'd still need to worry about getting back down, but he'd still take care of any who started getting too close for comfort.

Tony responded with an innocently raised hand, he couldn't help it, he was multitasking, was he supposed to just leave Cal to the possibly-magic-zombies?, then was up on his feet to do what he came here for. Two sets of bolts had been torn free from the rock, and the result was the tower looking like it was being buffeted by the wind, bracing on its back foot. Tony had to stretch up to grab it by its nearest brace, then use the weight of the armor he was bearing to try to draw it back down, bending the twisted metal back into place with a chilling, whale-call groan of metal that echoed across the water.

Cal had to wince at the sound. Well, hopefully it wasn't too easy for these things to track where that had come from, otherwise it'd be getting busier over here.

He glanced back down, fingers flexing as he could barely make out the movement of bodies still attempting to climb back up. There was also something else, unseen, but familiar. He closed his eyes briefly, lips tugging in the faintest of smiles. His connection to the Force was tentative but there, and he wasn't about to waste it.

As he looked down, he held his hand out, making a grasping motion as one of the zombies below was plucked off the rocks and then tossed into the milling bodies on the ground. The movement drew others off the rocks, a false alarm but still something to keep them from converging too quickly. He flung off a few more towards the sands, already feeling it start to fade as the storm above shifted.

It felt like hours to draw the tower back down onto its full foundation, screeching its protest through the whole process. By the time Tony could draw himself up again, it was clear the sound was very easily trackable. At his vantage point, at the top of the cliff, he could see groups of poorly animated bodies crashing through the treeline and stumbling onto the beach, all of their heads turned toward the cave. There was no stopping to take stock of just how bad it was going to get; Tony had to work fast, dropping back down to his knees to start jamming the bolts back into place.

"Exit strategy!" he prompted over the cliff's edge, shouting through the clanging of metal as he hammered. "Quick, just start talking, something's going to stick!"

Maybe Cal's efforts would have been better used towards assisting with the tower, but he'd at least managed to keep things clear. For now.

"There's no way we can find a better place to climb back down, can we?" Maybe he should have spent more time exploring this area. "Don't suppose you have anything we can use to slide on..." Like a giant chirodactyl...although if they had one of those then they'd have been dealing with worse problems.

A different way down, okay, the way they came was the cave, so, "Water, maybe, I'd have to get out of the armor," Tony rationalized, "Don't think they can swim." It didn't feel like a great option, it's own dead end that required leaving a resource behind, so Tony chanced glancing up from his work finally to consider the last available direction; across the rock ridge, leading back into the woods, where a pair of zombies just came stumbling over the dry leaves. There must have been an easy way up, somewhere in the foliage. They weren't moving fast, so Tony still had a few good seconds to set his jaw and finish his hammering. "Slide...?" he grit out, shoulders pinching and reaching fruitlessly for the full inventory that Extremis would have been able to provide. He had to try to account for everything on his back by pure, brain-meat memory, and blurted, "Would a body work?" He was out of time, and had to spring up to use the hilt of his sword to slam into the nearest zombie's face, sending its jaw careening over the edge of the cliff in an arc of black blood. He had a pair of them up here, if that was an acceptable offer.

"Thought about the water- ruled it out because of the armor," Cal admitted. Also he wasn't sure that coming up on the beach waterlogged and still having to outrun zombies would be any better a situation.

"Iiii was going to suggest bodies if we are disregarding injuries to them."

The Jedi started scrambling up to where Tony was, mostly at the sound of-

He jumped to the side, clinging to a small overhang as he saw something fly past, but the brief whiff of the liquid that went with it was enough to give him a hint not to ask what it had been.

"-think they'll hold up?" he asked as he got back to a point he could upon.

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