Nikolai's Room at the Arms Hotel, Monday Morning

[spin_kick_snap]

Sunday night, Kathy and Nikolai had gone to bed a happily--and, uhh, enthusiastically--married couple who had been together for twenty years at that point. They had survived a zombie apocalypse, the death of almost everyone they had known and loved, an old enemy of Nick's who could control the undead, a man who could control minds by use of a code phrase, and a bunch of other really weird stuff in that time. They knew one another in and out, up and down, and there was no question in either of their minds that they belonged together.

This was not true of the Kathy and Nick who would be waking up together. Twenty years and multiple catastrophes younger, they couldn't be called strangers, but they weren't yet entirely friends, either. Allies, was a good word for it, perhaps even partners, on those nights when one or the other of them ended up on the opposite coast and decided to go out for a night of costumed vigilante justice. Even patching Nick up after a bullet wound didn't really prepare either of them for the morning after a weekend like that.

Add that to the already fading memories of said zombie apocalypse and that resulted in a Kathy whose state up mind upon awakening could be summed up as something along the lines of oh god oh god oh god oh god.

Good times.

[For the guy mentioned please and SP!]

Comments

[gunslingerpose]

Other narrative should know by now that, when given the opportunity to birb...

"We know it's relatively soon," Nikolai offered. "And... something about teeth?"

He frowned. Even just the moment taken to discuss what the hell to do about this was enough to make things start to get fuzzy.

"Shit, I mean, like, more than the usual zombie 'don't let them bite you' common sense, you know?"

[spin_kick_snap]

"There were other heroes, too," Kathy said. "Ones we don't know yet? Like...Jim, maybe? Colonel America? Zipper?"

Damn it. None of those sounded quite right.

[gunslingerpose]

"I'm mostly sure the Colonel is actually a character in a comic book movie I helped cast for," Nick pointed out, raising an eyebrow. "That said, I wouldn't be surprised if more heroes did start crawling out of the woodwork. I mean, look at how many of us there are in just a few years. There never used to be."

And then, because that wasn't actually helpful for remembering in the least.

"I do remember something about Barry's handiwork saving your ass once, though."

That seemed important. That seemed... more important than a lot of the rest of it, for some reason. Still, even now, going by the little pang he felt when he mentioned it.

[spin_kick_snap]

"Wait--you helped cast the Revengers movie?!" Kathy asked, because, hi, comics nerd. "Is he really as adorable as--"

No. Hang on. She needed to focus. Zombies. Right.

"You do?" she asked, brow furrowed. "It did? I don't supposed you remember how?" This was definitely something Kathy didn't remember but felt she should.

[gunslingerpose]

No, no, the Colonel was in his own solo flick before the Revengers. Nick would have loved to have bragging rights for casting Manos for that end credits scene.

"That's... a good... question." Nick frowned, trying to remember how the story had gone. "I mean, zombies, so it's gotta be a bite, right? What's so special about that costume of yours, anyway?"

It had pockets!

[spin_kick_snap]

DON'T YOU SASS THE POCKETS!

"Umm, Barry is kind of a supergenius," Kathy explained. "My suit's actually a bullet...resistant? Not bulletproof, especially at point blank range, but definitely bullet-resistant."

[gunslingerpose]

"So, I'm guessing it'd take a lot of doing for a zombie to actually get his teeth directly into you...?"

Seemed worth a wager.

"Bullet-resistant, huh? Shit, I need to talk to this kid about maybe doing something up for me. Not in the mood to get myself shot again."

Which was a detour in the conversation, and he verbally smacked himself for going there when so many things were fading.

"What heroes that we know did we talk about, do you remember? Regnerator? Dragon? Did we even mention the Awesome Ape, or that creepy fucker, Cairax?"

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy's brow furrowed. "I don't...I don't remember mentioning Dragon much," she said, looking worried. "I know we talked about him a bit when we were telling Eliot, Parker, and Hardison about everything. But the rest of the weekend? When we were talking about our current life? We didn't mention Mighty Dragon or Regenerator."

[gunslingerpose]

"I don't remember the Ape, either," Nick sighed. "Cairax... maybe. Something about... something."

He frowned.

"That was super helpful. Great."

[spin_kick_snap]

"So..." Kathy was trying to think of reasons why they might only be mentioning new heroes and not the ones they already knew. "Maybe we weren't the only group of survivors?" she suggested. "And so we split up the heroes to keep each group safe?"

[gunslingerpose]

"That... is a shitload more optimistic than what I was thinking," Nick admitted, biting the inside of his cheek. "It leaves humans as an endangered species, I mean. And there are a lot more of them than there are of us."

After a pause, he offered a slightly less pessimistic option.

"... Of course, if there's nobody left, maybe we just don't have any reason to bother with secret identities all that much."

With the once-again-pessimistic reasoning of... who would they be protecting if all their loved ones were dead anyway?

[spin_kick_snap]

"It's not like the zombies care whether they eat us as heroes or as civilians," Kathy admitted, gloomily. "And...yeah. I know that option isn't likely. Odds are, we're not mentioning them because they're dead. But...until we start planning for real, I'd rather keep at least hoping it's something less bleak, regardless of how likely that is."