ArchivedLogs:Do the Necronomicon

Do the Necronomicon
Dramatis Personae Daniel Bruce, Trib, Cage
In Absentia	2013-11-06 Luke volunteers Trib and himself to help the CDC make some live captures, and they make friends along the way. (Part of Infected TP.)
Location <NYC> Times Square
Lights and billboards scattered over the skyscrapers that line Times Square. A gaggle (murder?) of tourists are spread through the square at all hours of day and night, gawking at the tall buildings and taking photos of nothing in particular. Times Square is a place of theatre, certainly, but mostly it is one giant tourist trap that no self-respecting New Yorker would be seen in for longer than it takes to leave. It's nearly 9pm in Times Square on a Wednesday night. Sure, Wednesday nights are never the /busiest/ night in town, but they're not deserted. Tonight, hardly anyone is around. Cars move through, almost like normal, but foot traffic is limited to almost nil. Luke Cage is here, speaking to some men who are sitting inside of an unmarked, black Suburban. He nods, finishing the conversation, but the SUV remains where it is, even though it's parked in a no-stopping zone. Luke is in a bright yellow t-shirt, dark jeans, and biker boots. Walking away from the SUV he sticks his hands in his pockets and strolls across the square, peering around, apparently looking for something. Several members of the paparazzi are here too, shouting questions and snapping pictures, but for some reason, they don't get too close. Cage is not responding to them. Daniel just got out of his shift at one of the many convenience stores in the area. When you don't exactly have a ton of documentation on you, cheap hourly jobs at hole in the wall joints are your best bet for scraping together enough cash to rent a closet somewhere in the city. After a rough day, Daniel often likes to take walks around the city, just taking in the light and the landmarks, reminding himself that, shitty day-jobs aside, he lives in the greatest city in the world. Or a close facsimile thereof. So it's likely that that draws the young mutant to Time Square, unaware that there might be danger afoot. Cage lifts his chin in a friendly gesture in Daniel's direction. "Hey, buddy," he calls, clearly trying to flag down the young man. "Hey, it could get ugly in the square here, you might wanna clear out-" Cage winces slightly when the black SUV starts blasting some of the more energetic movements of Ravel's Bolero. The sound isn't anything close to deafening, it just highlights how quiet it was before. Cage is turning quickly, scanning the edges of the square. Daniel looks up from under his hoodie as he hears a voice calling his name. ".. huh? What's going-", he begins to asks, looking confused, but then he notices who's actually speaking to him. He doesn't react immediately, rather, it seems to take him a moment to decide how he should react. For just a fraction of a second, he just freezes in place, his face expressionless, almost a little creepy, but the moment passes, and his eyes widen. "Oh, wow, you're.. you're Luke Cage! Right? Holy crap! Oh, wow, you're, like.. like a hero! Oh man, I can't believe I'm meeting the real Luke Cage! I, uhm, I was gonna vote for you, but I'm kinda not registered to vote yet 'cause I've only been in the city a few weeks and anyway I-", he begins to blather, clearly excited to be meeting a real live hero. "-wait, are you really Luke Cage? Not one of those lookalikes that ask for money to let you take a picture with them, right?", he asks, before the music starts up, and he blinks again. "... what? Wait. Ugly? What?" Cage turns and scowls at the truck briefly. "Dammit, I said to wait for my signal," he mutters himself. He turns back to Daniel and offers his hand, even while his gaze continues to scan the edge of the square. "Hey guy, yeah, Luke Cage. Nice ta meetcha." He seems too distracted to give Daniel a smile. "Ok man, you probably better just stick close to me now. We're trying to round up some sick people in the area." He eyes the paparazzi briefly, and squints his eyes against the flashes before averting his eyes again. "Uh, apparently, when the flu going around goes far enough, the people are... you know, combination catatonic and violent. Anyway, I need to round up the few who turned up out here." "Whoa.. really? Damn. Not like any flu I've ever heard of. Alright man. Yeah, yeah, I'll, uhm, I'll stick close. Don't, like, worry too much about me, though. I can take care of myself if I gotta, okay?", Daniel offers, then grins. "Name's Daniel." He looks around then. "What's with the music, anyway? Does it, like, draw the sick people out or something?" Luke nods and starts walking back towards the middle of the Square, checking over his shoulder to mark where Daniel is. "Yeah, Danny, they hate loud noises at this point. Hopefully we can-" he's cut off by the sound of a scuffle in the direction of the paparazzi, and then a howl of pain. Luke whirls and is running toward the cameramen before he even fully processes the scene. The scene, as it were, looks like someone walked up and tackled a paparazzo from behind. A crazed-looking man in a bathrobe, and pajama pants, but no shirt is kneeling on the man's back. Apparently he bit at the man, because he's working at something chewy in his mouth. Upon closer inspection, it becomes clear the sick man tore off the cameraman's ear with his teeth, and is currently trying to chew it. The man on the ground is squealing and trying to free himself from the weight of his assailant, while the other paparazzi all backpedal away from the horror scene. Daniel is nodding along to the explanation, keeping close behind Luke, at least until the far, far bigger man starts running towards the scene of the attack. Again, there's that moment of hesitation.. or maybe not hesitation, just a fraction of a second of frozen nothingness as Daniel tries to process the new stimulus and how he should react, and then he's running after. ".. oh *shit* that's gotta hurt.", he mutters under his breath. Cage barrels forward, but actually slides to a halt when he gets close. The zombie doesn't even flinch when Luke rolls up. Once there, Luke reaches one hand around behind the pajama-man's head, and jams his fingers into the guy's mouth, pries out the ear and lets it fall on the ground. "Get him some help!" he shouts at the useless paparazzi standing around. Luke proceeds to try and snake his arm around the sick man, while he gnaws on Luke's fingers harmlessly. Omnom Lukefingers. Daniel skids to a halt and looks around once Luke's got the ragezombie dude under control, trying to see if he can spot any others that have been flushed out by the music. "What's the plan, Mr. Cage?", he asks, bouncing excitedly on his feet. Noticing all the papparazzi (who, thankfully, have yet to notice him much, not that he's the type that normally gets noticed), he quickly pulls his hoodie down a bit, to at least somewhat mask his face.. in case he's gotta make with the waterworks. Timing is everything. Ordinarily, a text from Cage asking for help with /charity work/ would be ignored by Trib. But, as usual, here the boxer is, and it's something he's clearly not pleased about. Dressed in jeans and a denim jacket over a thermal undershirt, Trib doesn't look very much like any sort of medical professional, especially with a blue bandana wound around his lower jaw. The big man can't help but notice the commotion, and it's in that direction he moves, his expression unsurprised to find Cage in the middle of things. He eyes the car, wrinkling his nose at the music as he steps forward. He doesn't acknowledge the smaller guy, either unaware of or ambivalent about his presence at the moment. Or maybe he's just focused on the zombie, and its Cage-cage. "Goddamn, Boss," he growls, his brow lowering as he fishes around in the pocket of his jacket. "Can't you fuckin' do /nothin'/ without it bein' a goddamned /spectacle/?" Cage wrangles the man around in front of him, frees his hand from the mouth, and hoists the guy around to face out from him. He holds him around the middle while the man continues to wriggle and struggle against the iron grasp of Luke's arms. Best. Hugger. Ever. "It's about time, Trib!" Luke shouts. The music isn't /that/ loud, but Cage is probably a little pumped about wrestling a zombie into submission. He stands and starts awkwardly walking the guy towards the truck, when he glances back at Daniel and his eyes go wide. "Oh shit, LOOKOUT!" From behind, Daniel is being charged by a dead-eyed business man in the remnants of a gray business suit. That businessman's right arm looks to be chewed off from about half-way up the forearm, but he isn't slowing for anything. Apparently he heard about a deal on Dan-wiches. Daniel looks behind himself as the businesszombie charges at him. No time to dodge! The little dude (seriously, next to Cage and Trib, he's like a hobbit) is tackled down to the ground! Oh no, will he be the zombie's next lunch?! The pair of them fall to the ground with a loud splash, and- wait. Splash? The zombie is now on all fours pawing at what looks like a set of empty clothes, while a couple dozen gallons of water flow out and away from under him.. and then the water begins to flow up into the air, forming a vaguely humanoid figure behind the zombie. It reaches out one watery 'arm' and envelopes the businesszombie's head in a bubble of water, forcing liquid into its mouth and nose, drowning it on dry land. Time to see if these zombies need to breathe. The emergence of a /second/ zombie does not seem to do anything to lift Trib's spirits. He turns, suddenly, jerking a video camera out of the hands of a startled paparazzo, and gives the guy a glare that gets him backpedalling. "This kind of shit," he grunts at Cage as he moves in the direction of the zombie-tackle, "is exactly why I didn't fuckin' vote for your ass." Then he's moving, lifting the camera like a gallon of milk, already backing into a mighty swing when the tackled guy disappears, and the swing is forgotten as the boxer watches the shift of water around the zombie's face with a flat, hard sort of expression. "Guy's missin' half his fuckin' arm," he growls, possibly addressing the watery sphere. "What makes you fuckin' think that's goin' to work?" Cage's eyes go wide at Daniel's impending doom, and then he just sighs, backwards-walking the trapped zombie closer to the noisy SUV. "Nice one, Danny! Just try an hold him till I drop this one off. Stow it, Trib. I know you secretly /love/ this shit..." "No, don't hurt 'em Trib!" he calls, when Trib winds up to swing with the camera. "They gotta study 'em." Cage jerks his head in the direction of the Suburban. "That's why we're here. Live capture." Luke is almost to the SUV now, but that means he's a long distance from being able to help Trib and Daniel yet. "Shut off the damn music!" he calls as he gets closer. The Living Puddle (Daniel's really gotta find a better superhero name someday) gives Cage a watery thumbs-up with his free arm/pseudopod, then focuses on trying to keep the businesszombie drowning. If he could talk he'd probably tell Trib something about sick people still needing to breathe, but talking's not really an option in his water-form, not without shifting enough of his body back to human form to make things uncomfortable for everyone involved. Splish-splash-drown. Trib's expression above the bandana is an incredulous lift of his eyebrows when Cage mentions the reason for being here. Then they slam down into a severe V, and his grip tightens on the camera. For a moment, it looks like he might throw it at Cage, but he drops his hand and he might be frowning. "Jesus," he says, his tone dark. "This whole city's full of fuckin' idiots. /Live capture/." He waves the camera in a bit of an indignant sort of gesture, apparently no longer concerned about the aqua-zombie. "Don't nobody watch fuckin' /movies/ no more? Ain't your chick /done/ this fuckin' plot? 'The Living Zombie'?" "This /ain't/ - " Struggle, haul, draaaag. "A damn - " The zombie wriggles in Luke's grasp, and finally gets an angle to gnawing on his neck and face. Of course, it doesn't hurt him at all, but he does recoil, grossed out. "Movie!" he finally finishes, just as he gets close to the back of the SUV. When he does, right on cue for some Hollywood irony, the music shuts off and two men in hazmat suits jump out, deploying a stretcher with restraints. Together with Luke, they get the bathrobe guy strapped down and injected with something from a kit from inside the truck. It doesn't seem to do anything to the guy, but who knows? Once the zombie is tied down, Luke turns to go and help Trib and Daniel again. Meanwhile, the business zombie is struggling against his watery bonds, but doesn't seem otherwise affected by having his airways cut off. Apparently the hungry beastie has lost interest in the non-meaty water guy, and focuses his eyes on the biggest, meatiest, noisiest thing around: Trib. He starts shambling in Trib's direction, only slightly hampered by the globe of water over his head. Daniel would make a concerned frown if he currently had a face, but he doesn't. The zombie doesn't need to breathe? Huh. Most things need to breathe, as long as they're alive- ew! As if suddenly realizing he's got part of himself inside of a dead man, Puddle-Daniel retracts his pseudopod from the zombie's head, ew-ing silently to himself over and over. Which means that the zombie is no longer even partially restrained as it shambles towards Trib! Trib just gives Cage a flat look at his response, and raises his half hand to offer an awkward-looking bird. Then he's turning back to the no-longer-drowning one-armed business zombie, his gaze tightening as he raises the camera. "'Don't hurt 'em, Trib,'" he growls in a sotto voice. "Just let 'em come an' fuckin' chew on you, an' turn you into one." He rolls his eyes before he adds his head to the rolling, cracking his neck. "I swear to God," he says to the detective, stepping back and readying himself as the business zombie approaches. "If I turn into a fuckin' zombie an' get disqualified from my card, I'm comin' for your stupid ass first." "Hey HEY /HEY/!" Cage shouts, clapping his hands with incredible force. The noise seems to distract the file shuffler, and the thing turns to Cage's walking approach, and seems even more interested in Cage waving his arms. The uninjured paparazzi may actually be human after all, because they are /helping/ their injured colleague to his feet and away from the melee. "C'mon," he says, ribbing Trib. "Gonna make me do all the work?" He digs his in his pocket and flips a shiny quarter to arc through the air in Trib's direction. "Suit up! My treat. I think your fight night is fuckin' /delayed/ anyway, man." After spending months trying to uphold a 'proper' public image, Cage seems relieved to be 'shootin the shit', just getting his hands dirty, doing some good old fashioned community service. Well, the zombie's distracted. There's that at least. PuddleDaniel can't really do nearly as much damage as the other two likely can, but he's got a few tricks up his sleeves. Even if he doesn't have sleeves. Anyway. He joins both his 'arms' together into a thicker watery pseudopod, then sort of scrunches up.. and launches it out like a watery battering ram, aiming at the back of the zombie's head! It probably doesn't do more damage than a regular solid punch might, the very definition on non-lethal attack, but it might knock the thing over or at least slow it before it can take a bite out of Trib! "Well, you seem like you're fuckin' enjoyin' yourself." Trib catches the quarter, squinting at Cage as he pops it in his mouth and chews it a couple of times before he swallows. The zombie is side-stepped, the boxer's skin already shifting and taking on a metallic sheen. Like he's slowly being nickel-plated. "It better not be cancelled," he growls, rolling his shoulders. "It took me forever to find a fuckin' card that'd take me, with no manager." That said, he begins moving after the business zombie, albeit in a slow, steady approach. "Who's the water guy?" Seems like shooting the shit is S.O.P. for the Heroes for Hire crew. "That's Danny," Luke says, lifting his chin in Daniel's direction. With the zombie focused on him, Trib should be able to make good on a sneak attack. "Kind of a wrong place, wrong time thing. Seems alright to me tho-" Cage is interrupted by a loud banging back over by the Suburban. The truck is locked up tight, and there isn't much to see through the tinted windows, but two more zombies have essentially tackled the truck, and are rocking it back and forth. One looks like she was a body builder, and the other is a reedy looking guy with broken glasses half-stabbed into his own face. Additionally, the little guy is rippling and sparking with electricity. Luke spins and shouts, "Oh shit... Wrangle this one, guys..." And he backs away from Buziness Time, circling in his approach of the truck, feeling out how he'll make the attack. With Trib handling BusinessZombie, and two new zombies (one with extra electricity because this is New York and that's just the kind of thing you see around here even when there isn't a zombie plague happening) appearing, PuddleDan realizes he's going to need more ammo. A quick swirl around, and he spots what he was looking for: a nearby hot dog cart. He begins flowing towards it like a living wave, and as soon as he reaches it, he becomes half-solid. At least, his top half. Shirtless Dan... who's also a blob of water from the waist down. He starts pulling out water bottles from the cart and pouring them onto himself, increasing his mass... "Come on, come on, just a few more.." By the time Trib reaches the business zombie, he looks to be entirely nickel-plated under his clothing. When he latches onto the zombie's good arm, it growls, and twists in his vice-like grip to bite at the air in front of his face. Trib seems unimpressed with this show, and gives the dead guy a little shake. "Stop that," he grunts. Like it's bad kitty or something. He begins moving towards the EMTs, heedless of the moment the zombie abadons trying to reach his face to focus on his arm, instead. When Daniel moves, and partially re-forms, the boxer stops to watch with an unreadable in his gaze. "Huh," he says, and nods approvingly. Then the dragging resumes, along with the biting. "Never seen /that/ before." Cage just stops a moment, frankly staring at Daniel's transformation, and tactic for 'resupply'. He blinks, shakes his head and regards the two new ones until Trib makes his commentary. "See?" he calls over his shoulder to Trib. "Didn't I say? I /said/ with HfH you'll see new places, and meet interesting people." Cage rubs at his face and then claps a few more times to get the newcomers' attention. It doesn't do much. They're pretty intent on opening that can of sardines. So he just rushes in, like a Luke Cage would. He scrapes them off the side of the van with a whole host of terrible noises. They hiss and chomp their teeth at him, combined with the snapping, popping hiss as Sparkler gets agitated. Cage winds up in a puppy pile with both of them, and the shocking impulse doesn't seem to slow down Ms. body-builder at all, aside from the involuntary spasming of her muscles. Luke seems a little more insulated from the electricity, but he's definitely growling through gritted teeth. It takes Daniel a few moments while the two brawlers do their brawling, but he goes through every water bottle in that cart, adding a couple extra gallons of watery mass to himself. Enough to at least have a bit of ammo. Just in time, too. The previously solid upper half of him melts away into water, and a considerably larger wave of water flows back towards where Luke is having his wrestling match with the muscle-girl and Sparklezombie. Water and electricity don't normally mix, so let's see what happens.. he'd apologize to Luke if he had vocal chords at the moment. He doesn't, though, so instead, all that happens is a silent flow and then several water bottles worth of, well.. 'water bullets' shoot from him at high speed, aimed mostly for the electric zombie, hoping to short-circuit it by drenching it (and maybe leaving a bruise or two) "Trib frowns at Cage as he speaks. "You never said that," he says, furrowing his brow as he extends his arm to hold out his captive for the guys in hazmats, who don't seem eager to put hands on the snapping business man. "You just said I'd be bodyguardin'. Not playin' fuckin Buffy the Vampire Slayer or some shit." He steps forward as the zombie's wrestled onto the gurney, and slaps a hand against its chest to hold it in place while restraints are placed. Luckily, Daniel and Cage and their dance partners are putting on a nice show for him to watch while he acts as a human zombieweight. Cage is pummeled by water blasts in his zombie pile while Trib turns his prize in for the upgrade of 'no prize'. The hazmat suited CDC officers get Business Time into restraints, and stowed away 'safely'. Back in the sog pile? It's getting messy. All three of the bodies there jerk and shudder as the electrical mutant's power is overloaded by all the standing water, until all at once the end of their suffering is heralded by a wet 'POP'. The reedy, mutant zombie won't be needing his glasses anymore, because he doesn't have a head to put them on. Apparently the overload was enough to damage the bodybuilder's brain too, because she's laying still, steaming. Cage, on the other hand, is sitting up gingerly, groaning, even as angry welts across his newly exposed torso begin to heal before their eyes. It looks like much of his clothes were burned off in the electrical overload, save for his jeans, and boots. They're tattered, but intact, unlike his shirt. He gives Daniel a weary thumbs up. "Thanks," he croaks. There... might be steam coming from his ears, nose and mouth. Good thing the zombie popped, since Daniel was running out of extra water-mass to shoot. As Luke sits up, steaming, PuddleDaniel has the good grace to look a little embarrassed. Well, as embarrassed as a sentient puddle can look. He flows back towards the pile of clothes on the floor that he used to be wearing, and then reforms back into human shape, a process that takes several seconds, as opposed to the almost instantaneous dissolution into liquid form when he was originally tackled. "Sorry Mr. Cage! You ok?", he calls, even as he's grabbing at his clothes to cover up, because naked in the middle of Times Square is not how he intended to end tonight originally. Trib lifts his hand as the restraints are strapped down, and begins moving towards the pile -- right as they short out en masse. He blinks at the steaming pile of Cage and zombies, and his inhalation is a dark and angry thing that deflates as soon as Cage sits up. Then he's moving fractionally faster in that direction, metallic fingers of his left hand flexing irritably. "How come /he/ gets to hurt 'em, an' I couldn't?" he demands when he gets there, waving his half-hand at Danny. "He ain't even on the goddamned payroll."