Reality Crisis

(takes place shortly after the Bruce/Bane confrontation)

The zombies were gone and still, Bruce was nowhere to be seen. It wasn't unusual for him to go off on his own for hours or sometimes days at a time. But it was unusual that he wouldn't check in at some point. Especially after something like the dead rising and declaring war. She was trying not to worry. She really was.

She decided that it was time she checked the cave. There was a good chance that he would be there. He might have lost track of time, or he might have something pressing that needed time alone to deal with. She hoped that was all it was. She didn't worry too much about interrupting whatever quiet time that Bruce might need because she felt a little like it was her job to make sure he didn't retreat too far within himself. Especially when he didn't have Alfred there to keep an eye on him and give him a little bit of company.

The snow was starting to melt so Dinah trudged through a mixture of slush and mud on her way to the cave. By the time she got there, her boots were caked in it, but she was there without incident. Knowing Bruce, he probably knew she was coming by now. If he was there. She was sure he'd set up some sort of alarms for when people were on the perimeter of the cave.

Once she'd gotten past the entry, she headed for the living quarters first.

"Bruce?"

She tried not to think about how much she really hoped to hear an answer. Tried not to think about what might be going on if he wasn't here and wasn't in Sanctuary or anywhere else she'd looked.

The apartment wasn't bad, Bruce had to say. I've got lots of room to myself. And the top floor means the Other Guy will be able to jump his way out of the city. He could only hope that's what he'd want. Bruce didn't like trying to get inside the Other Guy's head, it just- wait for it- made him angry.

He'd done his best to clean the place up, but there was only so much to be done. He'd been tempted to stay inside and keep a low profile, but the rain of reptiles had brought out his altruistic side. He'd set up a makeshift lab in the biggest of his bedrooms, and begun synthesizing anti-venom. The doctors (if you could really call them that) at the medical clinic had been astounded when he showed up with a crate of the stuff.

Since then Bruce had stayed under the radar, trying to find a way to get the equipment that had come through the hole in reality with him to work. For the most part they were in good repair, but they were bleeding-edge pieces of lab technology- even slight misalignments would destroy their ability to function properly.

So he'd spent the morning scrounging for parts and now he was in the local saloon, promising pieces of equipment strewn across the table. A server brought over a plate of grilled lizard and a cup of cider for him. I think everyone is going to be eating reptiles for a while.

Belia Ohorek sat at her desk, waiting. They'd gotten word to her rather quickly about the strange sites outside the city as well as the strange one who entered with one of the hunters. She had her own network always watching for something or someone new, as she felt the more information she had, the better she could serve her people.

She had to make choices everyday that she knew most wouldn't understand, certainly not the Chosen. One of these choices had long ago been that she would make sure she knew everything that came and went in her city and around her city. Now, she had someone new to deal with, although the attitude was that this new one was much stranger than any they'd seen.

Belia was willing to overlook strange if it came with a way to save her people and her world. Of course, she knew that all of this came with a price. Currently the price was quickly becoming a sense of distrust among the Chosen, which she would accept as long as they stayed. She would find away to save everyone, possibly not matter the cost.

Wet.

He tried to inhale, and water filled his mouth and nose. Bruce erupted in a fit of coughing, and jerked his head to the side. His face had been half submerged in a puddle. He spat out a mouthful of muddy water and opened his eyes. What he saw didn't make him feel much better. Concrete streets and sidewalks overrun with grass and foliage, half collapsed skyscrapers towering all around him.

Bruce pulled his aching body up from the ground, looking around him in awe. "Alright..." he said evenly, going over the last thing he remembered. Stark Tower, the lab, 2:30 in the morning. My research. Time for coffee. Then a point of light, tearing across the wall. The Tesseract? Similar, but it lacked the blue-hue. And none of my Gamma instruments gave any kind of warning. A portal of some kind. And then- white. All white.

Bruce paced up to what had once been an intersection, and looked down one street, then the next, then the next. In every direction it was the same thing. Empty streets, cracked pavement, rodents and small game grazing next to traffic signals and deserted vehicles. He thought about yelling, but his instincts prevented him. The gravity of the situation began to dawn on him. "Right, so I'm alone, in what looks like a major metropolitan city. Aaand it's deserted..." He nodded, interlacing his fingers, turning in circles as he considered his predicament.

This isn't right... A sinking feeling came to his stomach, the kind that happened when the data was inevitably pointing in a direction the researcher didn't want it to. Bruce was too well read to have missed a major city of this size suddenly being deserted. The vegetation suggested it had been this way for some time- at least a year at his best guess.

"So there are three possible explanations, " Bruce muttered to himself. "One, that I've been away long enough for some disaster to strike, for a major city to be deserted, and for vegetation to overrun it. Two, that I'm experiencing some sort of hallucination, or have finally lost my goddamned mind. Or three, that I'm not on Earth at all...". He thought about Thor and Loki- maybe this was one of the nine realms they talked about? He took a deep breath for a moment, closing his eyes, accepting the crushing terror and hopelessness of the situation. That it was a distinct possibility that he had had a complete break from reality, or that the world had finally descended into nuclear war. That he would likely never see any of his friends ever again. Exhaling his eyes snapped open, a serene expression on his face. "So par for the course, really."

--
An hour later saw Bruce in full-scale survival mode. A lifetime spent on the run from every government agency had given the man more than a few skills that would come in handy in this bleak new world. He'd located some shelter in a ruined storefront, then had set about gathering whatever resources he could. He'd quickly discovered that a number of items from the laboratory had been pulled through the rift with him, and he scoured the are for anything he could find.

As night fell, he made his way back into his shelter and hunkered down for the night. A small pile of objects sat at the opposing side of his small fire. There were a few pieces of lab equipment which wouldn't be of any immediate use, but it was nice to have all the same. The real find had been his "go-bag". Really it was just a canvas shoulder bag any college professor might carry, but Bruce was always ready for the possibility of running at a moment's notice. He had a change of clothes, some dehydrated fruit and energy bars, a bottle of water, a shaving kit, an empty shoe polish tin filled with basic survival supplies, and his laptop, the real gem of the collection. A Stark Granitebook- the same model used in combat zones, but Bruce's titanium casing had a drab green sheen- Tony's idea of a joke. Add to that the smartphone he'd had in his pocket, his wallet, his watch, his glasses, and the clothes on his back. He'd been worse off.

Something rattled in the street. Bruce looked up with concern, his heartbeat jumping. His fire was small and concealed behind rubble, but Bruce quickly stomped it out all the same. Peeking over the edge, Bruce saw there were figures in the street. He stayed silent, prepared to wait out the night unless he heard some actual human voices...