Re: [quicklog: gotham ground zero]
[The drill was adapted to affix a top the shoulders, right hand inserted into casing housed in shank, the masonry bit responsive to pressure of palm and crush grip for torque. It was a hydraulic pressure drill, serving up to 2,500 blows per minute, with the bit between 0-250 RPM. Contractor-grade and lighter weight than one would imagine, it had a lot of power, with greater precision than a crane—and much less weight, which was ideal on unstable ground. With the lay of Wonder City beneath Gotham—or more accurately, with Gotham dropped as it were atop Wonder City, it was especially risky to trek across the depressions, subsidences, and ridges of tumulted asphalt and building ruins. It was too difficult to ascertain which portions of the great collapse held up over caverns, piles, and seams, and which only appeared to, requiring only a small breach of effective stress to crumble. The slurry of debris flow, hundreds of thousands of tons of concrete, steel, mortar and brick pitched hummocky, and Damian knew there were places where the city below the city had been a good thousand feet deep. It was implausible for the two from Marvel to have made such a fall and survived, especially with the crushing force of the Fashion District over them, and that was the man's only consolation.—It was likely they only had a hundred or so feet, or less, to drill through.
It was risky even still. If they didn't offset the pressure load correctly, or they did it too quickly or too ham-fistedly, they would simply bury the pair in their rescue effort. Damian wished they had some estimations of the size of entombment, but he said nothing of it to Barbara just then, even as her voice rang out 'holy crap!' in the man's ear.—Anticipating her discovery, he crossed the blocks between them carefully (as bulky as he was in the machinery), joining the redhead and her tablet, with the drill assembled over the width of his shoulders, and he looked closely at the screen and its orange-flame shape moving in blue-black.
He nodded and affixed the soft respirator mask of the drill over his head. It was attached to a small canister of O2, so he could breathe easily, even as dust shored up from the metal grinding into aggregate and cement. His voice was muffled over the comm, but understandable.] Stand back. If it collapses as we are now, it will swallow the both of us. [Of course, he did not wait for her to agree or not. He assumed she would and he crouched to begin, sparks flying in thick dust. He paused only once to tell Barbara:] We'll need a support. Find something suitable. [Before he got back to it.]