The Universe's Mixer

After mulling it over, Bruce decided that it was time to reach out to Liv about the completion of the project he was working on for her. The final test was needed to ensure the endeavor was successful. He hoped it had been, and that it brought some measure of comfort and peace to her. He couldn't cure her ailment, it was unique like his own, but that didn't mean they couldn't suppress it for at least some length of time to give her a normal-ish sort of life.

The chemistry had been complex. Bruce had never touched a drug before that and the process of synthesizing something and manufacturing it from scratch had been exhausting in itself. Long, grueling hours spent in the lab, perfecting each component. His little trash receptacle next to his desk had been full of small, crumpled balls of paper too often for him to recall what it looked like empty. Many nights he had collapsed at his desk from exhaustion, or somehow managed to find the comfort of the sagging, brown couch without knowing how he had ended up there.

Bruce had made himself eat, made himself shower and change clothes, but once engrossed in a project those appearances of him outside of the lab was rare and infrequent at best.

Not that anyone had been keeping tabs on his whereabouts, and Jarvis had always chimed in to remind him to nourish himself. That was always an annoying comfort. Maybe someone had been keeping up with him after all.

But now it was complete. Had been for a few days and Bruce had finally gotten himself cleaned up. After talking to Tony, and having a beer or two with his best friend, Bruce knew the time had come to see Liv.

He hoped it would be with good news.

In his pocket Bruce carried a small, metal tin that once had held mints, in which the small tabs of the formula were being kept. Outside of her apartment building, standing on he sidewalk, the scientist pulled out his cell phone, opened a new text box and sent Liv a small message to see if she was home:

Hey Liv, it's Bruce. Sorry to bother you. Didn't know if you were home. I'm outside in front of the building. Have something for you if you have a minute.

He debated on sending more, but he didn't. Instead, Bruce sent the message and waited for a response back.

Liv was used to the flash of memories from the dead. As a zombie that was part of her new reality. They hadn't come in use now that she was in The City, but back home part of the way she dealt with her new undead life was using her abilities to help people.

So when the first flash came, she thought it was from the brains she ate yesterday. Except they weren't from the deceased. They were Liv's memories. And it wasn't just one flash. It was flash after flash after flash.

( Cut for iZombie Season 1 spoilers. Spoiler warning for the rest of the log from here on out. )

Bruce Banner was her closest neighbor. She might have gone to Matt Murdock if he hadn't been a few floors above her. These new memories, reliving everything that had happened to her in Seattle all at once? It was too much to process. Liv didn't want them anymore. She didn't want to be a disgusting brain eating zombie anymore.

She couldn't help it. She was bawling her eyes out on the other side of Dr. Banner's door, the man who she barely knew but had given her ghost pepper jelly, her hand slapping it frantically, hoping he was there to let her in before someone saw her.

"Crow! Flank!"

The black Church Griffin, small as it was in comparison to the hadrosaurs, did a remarkably good job of spooking them. He skimmed the left side of the small herd, turning them right, while Alex pedaled behind on a bicycle.

The first thing Alex was going to do after this, he vowed, was to get a street motorcycle. He knew that he looked less than formidible with his backpack dangling from one strap, wearing his work khakis and nametag clip, and pedaling like a lunatic on a blue bike after eight hadrosaurs (probably Edmontosaurs given their size) and yelling at something that either looked like a mutant bird or a flying cat.

The mutant bird/flying cat circled back around to pace his bike, for once cooperating with Alex's directions. Together the two worked to herd the giant herbivores into the park.

Once they were properly corralled, Alex got off of his bike, sweating and panting. He fished around in his backpack for a spare dead rat to toss the Church Griffen as a treat for a job well done. Crow caught it in midair and flew with it to a tree, growling as he ripped into it with his sharp claws and beak.

Alex sighed, staring at the now placid Edmontosaurs. Now what?

Liv was hungry.

Her last meal was just a few cats short of full on animal control disaster. Thankfully the only neighbors that caught on had been more than understanding. She managed to forever homes and that was that. The next person she chose needed to be different, boring. The problem was no one was really boring. Everyone had their own little quirks and eccentricities; things that they loved, things they were good at, habits that made them unique. Liv had never eaten a boring person because as far as she could tell boring people didn't exist.

But that didn't mean she couldn't try, even if she was uniquely qualified to understand that such a brain probably didn't exist. On paper, quite a few of the bodies that came in sounded remarkably similar in their lack of remarkableness. It wasn't a pattern exactly, or perhaps Liv just refused to believe so. She picked the brain of a boring shop girl who died in a car accident and hoped for the best.

As far as she could tell, it seemed to be working. At her apartment, Liv found a message from Dr. Banner telling her to meet him at his office. She didn't notice anything off about the brains she'd eaten at first. The request seemed perfectly agreeable. It wasn't until she met him at Stark Tower, Liv had a vague notion that this brain was different from the others.

She had no strong feelings about Dr. Banner, about The City, about the people brought in or why. She would have described it as contentment, but it wasn't as deep of a feeling as that. It just was. She just was. She was at Stark Tower to have tests done. Because she was asked. The reasoning wasn't so important anymore. The spark in her eyes that differentiated her and the others brought into The City faded until it was barely visible.

If it weren't for Liv's pale skin and hair, she would have passed for native. Instead she looked more zombie than ever before.

She waited patiently in the lobby for Dr. Banner to be escorted through the secured areas of the building.

He wasn't quite used to the idea of being two Erics in one, but he had to get back to the idea of normal that he'd had before all this shit had gone down. If he didn't press himself into it now, he wasn't ever going to get to it naturally. He knew that. He'd just drift and become bitter. Possibly excessively violent.

It had happened for a time when he'd become a vampire. Only reined in by his maker and the commands he'd been given to stop.

So Eric was at Purgatory, ready to play his part. All his vampires needed to work, and that included him. Of course, his place at the establishment was relatively easy. Running it happened naturally, so even the big problems were taken care of quickly. His work within the club itself was much simpler than being a bartender or waitstaff. He didn't even have to man the door.

His place was on the resplendent throne, looking like the king he was. Menacing the patrons into terrified giggles. It was boring, it was tedious, but at least he got to sit the whole time, and looking bored seemed to be part of the charm for the tourists.

Eric's eyes scanned the room, taking in all the patrons. From where his throne sat, he could even see the hunter side. He wondered where Jo was. He'd not seen hide nor hair of her since he'd been back.

It was three am.

With no crimes to solve, Liv hadn't illegally opened a human corpse since the Cat Lady. She was down to two cats now. There was little desire to keep them anymore. She didn't want to be responsible. Without the motivation of murder victim brains, Liv had settled back into listlessness. All she had to comfort her was the Ghost Pepper jelly, which she currently ate on toast watching late night infomercials.

Bruce Banner was living in the same building. So was Matt. It was like The City had offered her it's own version of Major and Ravi for her company. It made Liv wonder what mattered to her, really. The relationships were important, but she felt most alive solving crimes. She needed Detective Babinaux.

But in a City where there were other people with powers, did anyone have use for a mere psychic?

It was just one of the questions that kept her up at night.

The Hulk was back. It had been in the papers. Liv was too new to have known there was a Hulk in the first place but she was sympathetic to the mindless monster of destruction. Without a steady supply of brains, that could be her, in a smaller, self-replicating sort of way.

The green indestructible giant wasn’t the most interesting part, however. Out of all the stories covering the Hulk only one mentioned Dr. Bruce Banner in tandem, and when she dug deeper into the subject, she found the connection buried in the public record. Yes, it was awful Dr. Banner sometimes became the Hulk, but what she was really interested was his level of experience and knowledge in biochemical research.

Sure, he might not have been able to cure his own condition, but what about a rabies-like zombie virus that may or may not be connected to a new designer drug? Her friend former supervisor Ravi seemed to think there might be a cure, and she was pretty sure he didn’t have the genius required himself to turn himself into Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

It just so happened that Dr. Banner’s name was added to the hospital directory. Liv arrived at work early to see if she could catch him in his office. When she arrived, Liv tapped her pale knuckles on the glass.

“Dr. Banner?”

( Read more... )

It was lonely in The City. She missed having a boss that knew her secret, her potential zombie boyfriend Lowell, and even the friends and family that had known her when she was still alive who had to keep at arm's length for their own safety. The lawyer Matt Murdock seemed to know something was up, but Liv wasn't sure just how much she wanted to confide in him. The hearing her lack of regular heartbeat was just weird.

Liv finished up in the morgue with the recently deceased Mrs. Winkle, who died at the age of ninety-seven due to a stroke. She looked like a nice enough old lady. Maybe Liv would develop a fondness for playing Bridge, knitting, or go check out a lively game of Bingo.

It wasn't until the next day that Liv realized she'd eaten half the brain of a unrepentant cat lady. Just because she was aware of Mrs. Winkle's tendency to take in strays didn't mean she had the willpower to stop doing it. She'd already taken in three cats from the shelter and due to Mrs. Winkle's cunning, charmed all the neighborhood stray cats with milk and other treats.

Part of Liv knew she was going to be in trouble. Even if she managed to hide all her newfound four legged companions from the building manager and her neighbors, what was she going to do with the cats once the old woman was out of her system?

The Mrs. Winkle part of her didn't care. For the first time since coming to The City, Liv wasn't lonely anymore. It was nice having company that wouldn't judge her for her dietary needs.

Liv passed two cats inside the building on the way to her apartment, trying to walk as quietly as possible with her grocery bags filled with milk, tunafish, cat food, catnip and other paraphernalia. Another cat zipped out her apartment door the moment she opened it.

"Wait, Charlie, no!" she whispered with a wince.

The day felt strange to Matt.

It felt more right than anything else had been before and he wasn't sure as to why. Why. It was a good question to ask though it seemed like such a small thing to struggle with. Had he been normal, not so in tune with his surroundings perhaps that subtle shift would have gone unnoticed. It felt a little like it had when he got close to the TARDIS. It felt a touch like the bit of energy across his skin and then it had faded as fast as it had come. He would mention it to Rose, see if she could tell him exactly what had happened. Matt had not had the chance to pick up that day's newspaper or he would have discovered the change instantly. Before the dates had been reading November...December...and now that same paper was claiming the date had been shifted forward. May 1. That was a pretty big shift and that the City was capable of such a thing...Matt doubted it would have surprised him. This place did have a power, he could feel it.

Trying to shake the strangeness of the day, the lawyer and vigilante hero made his way down the sidewalk. His baton swung back and forth as he moved, though he didn't need it. He had even taken to not using his sunglasses hardly anymore. Rose had seen the scars, the haze over his eyes and she hadn't run screaming. He figured that the same chance should be given to the rest of the people in town. Maybe they wouldn't be as giving as the Brit, but he would never know if he didn't try.

Laurel had vanished. She had been his new partner at the firm and while Matt hated giving up Foggy's office, his best friend hadn't exactly been there to stake claim on it. The name of the firm had not changed, it was still the same Nelson and Murdock that it had been before. Except now it was just him again. Him, and Rose and Paulina the receptionist. And he hadn't even had to pull out his costume from the back of the closet and dust it off, either, lately. It had been sort of nice knowing he could fall into the comfort of warmth of Rose's body heat and the invitation of comforters and pillows. That the City didn't need his mask, his services or his protection. That helped him keep his promise to Rose that he would always make it back to her, one way or the other.

Of course all of Matt's thoughts ceased to exist as a strange sound floated into his ears. It was definitely a heart beat, but it wasn't the usual lub-dub that the organ made. The pace was much slower, for one. And two...well, it was the sound of someone dying. On alert, Matt stopped abruptly in the middle of the sidewalk, pedestrian traffic be damned, and waited to find the source of the beat. He hoped he would make it in time.