Batgirl was the first to snap out of the shock of a car barreling through a wall and into their fight.

“Dr. Merlyn has three copies of the Markov prototype spread out across the city all synced to trigger from a signal from that machine,” she pointed at the device in question. “I need time to send the shutdown code to all of them or Gotham is going to look a lot more like a parking lot!”

Oh, this was serious then.

“Why didn’t Nightwing tell me about this?” Ghost Spider wondered while moving to cut off Croc from going after Batgirl.

“He doesn’t know, Merlyn uploaded a virus into the city power grid as a distraction and jammed our comms.” Robin helpfully informed her as he flipped around Solomon Grundy. Unfortunately for him, the zombie didn’t seem all that phased by the teenager’s attacks. He was too slow to actually catch the Boy Wonder though, so Ghost Spider felt safe leaving them be for a while and focus on the other supervillain in the mix.

Killer Croc was a weird mix of foriegn and familiar for Ghost Spider. Dodging a large bipedal creature covered in scales was nothing new. The Lizard, both versions, had desensitized Ghost Spider to that even though technically this was the first time she was dealing with it…

“Hey, question. Your name isn’t Peter by any chance is it?” She asked, dodging a clawed hand at the same time.

Croc snarled. “It's not, now get back here!”

He lunged but Ghost Spider sidestepped enough to grab him by the ankle and throw him into Grundy a short distance away.

…and that's why it felt foreign. That move wouldn’t have worked on the Lizard without her getting a tail to the face unless she got very lucky. It was also good to confirm she was probably facing Waylon Jones and not an ironic multiversal copy of one of her friends.

That was a sentence she never thought she would mean seriously.

Croc crashed to the floor in a heap and Robin took advantage of that, dropkicking Grundy in the face and causing the zombie to trip over the other villain.

“Nice kick.” Ghost Spider complimented the younger hero and held a hand up for a high-five.

Robin smirked and returned the gesture before turning back to the two thrashing villains. “Thanks, but that isn’t going to keep them down long. You think your webs can hold them?”

“If I wrap them with enough of it, probably. But unless we wear them down some more, they’ll probably tear right out of it.”

Robin grimaced. “Well crap, Grundy doesn’t get tired.”

“How do you normally beat him?”

“Get someone on the magical side of things to restrain him or break something important. Other than that, and if he’s weak enough that time around, pin him with something heavy.”

Ghost Spider side eyed Robin, one eye going wide in an imitation of a raised eyebrow. “That time around?”

“Yeah, sometimes he comes back strong enough to give multiple Leaguers trouble. Thankfully it’s usually out of major areas when that happens. Doesn’t seem like he’s that strong this time either.”

Ghost Spider looked back at the two villains just in time to see Croc manage to push Grundy off of him and clamber back to his feet. The saurian looking villain looked rapidly around the room before fixing her with a death glare. Grundy rose to his feet much more slowly and rather than looking at the two heroes, looked back to where Batgirl had dismantled six mercenaries and left them unconscious and tied up and was now frantically typing away at the console responsible for activating the Markov devices.

“Grundy told to keep people away from box. Grundy smash bat person.” The zombie moaned, heading her way.

“Looks like he came back short in the smarts department too.” Ghost Spider commented.

“That happens. The range tends to be from ‘stupid’ to ‘slightly smarter than a rock’ though, so this is pretty normal.”

“So we have to stop a super-powered zombie too dumb to quit. Yay.”

Robin shrugged. “Someone’s gotta.”

The two heroes were interrupted by a snarling Croc pouncing at them. Robin lept away and headed towards Grundy while Ghost Spider tangled with Killer Croc.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

“You know,” She started, punching Croc in the jaw and dodging a claw swipe. “I get the Doctor and even Grundy. Guy with a grudge and zombie too stupid to do anything but follow orders. What’s your deal, Schnappi?”

The sudden nickname froze Croc long enough for Ghost Spider to plant a foot in his ribs, launching him through the air and giving her enough time to try tangling Grundy’s feet with her webs while Robin knocked him over with some exploding birdarangs. Unfortunately that was little more than an annoyance for the zombie who easily tore the webbing off his feet and rose back to his feet. He did stop heading towards Batgirl in favor of trying to attack Robin though, so progress.

“What did you call me?!” A visibly angry Croc growled, “What’s that supposed to mean?” He didn’t seem incredibly invested in the answer as he started hurling boxes and debris at the wall-crawler since being up close wasn’t working out for him.

“Not very cultured are you? I just called you a cute little alligator. No need to blow a gasket.” Ghost Spider snarked as she ducked under a box, webbed it as it went by, and returned to sender.

Too bad for her the wooden crate was empty and easily smashed to sawdust by her opponent.

“Hard to get all ‘cultured’ when everyone is gawking at you for looking like this.” Croc said bitterly, making Ghost Spider feel a bit bad for the comment. “So when I got the chance to put all those bastards on the streets like me and make some huge stacks doing it? You bet I signed up for that.” And bad feelings gone just like that.

So she webbed him in the face.

While Croc was temporarily blind and cursing up a storm, Ghost Spider yanked herself back towards Grundy. Robin was doing a good job being annoying but at the end of the day he was still a teenager that weighed at most a hundred and fifteen pounds going up against a super zombie somewhere around five times his weight.

“Robin, go for his knee!”

The Boy Wonder had been enhancing his hits with a metal Bo staff and wasted no time slamming the pole into Grundy’s knee. Even his best hit barely staggered him, but it knocked Grundy off balance enough that when Ghost Spider slammed into his chest like a web guided missile she flattened the giant zombie.

“Nice hit, you okay though?” Robin asked. It didn’t look like Ghost Spider had gotten hit anywhere but when she landed, she had clutched her side painfully.

“Yeah… just feeling a bit sore from the car crash.”

“You’re going to be feeling more than that in a second!” Croc announced his return to the fight by backhanding Robin out of the way and shoulder checking Ghost Spider. Clawed hands pinned her until Croc slammed both of them into one of the machines nearby. Ghost Spider felt something crack but didn’t have time to give it attention. She was too busy focusing on stopping Croc from taking a bite out of her even as he tried crushing her between his arms and the machine.

“Gah -- Personal space, scaly!”

Croc’s response was to squeeze harder and go for another bite. And between her battered ribs, the lack of air, and the pain in her torso Ghost Spider’s arms were actually starting to give ground and Croc was ignoring her repeated knees to the chest pretty well.

His teeth were only a few centimeters from her collarbone when a whistling object flew through the air, slammed into Croc’s head, and exploded.

Both of them flinched at the boom and turned to where the object had come from. Batgirl had either finished or stopped working at the terminal for a second to help Ghost Spider out and had already thrown another object. A small metal canister landed almost perfectly in Croc’s open mouth and when he reflexively bit down, sprayed a green colored gas directly into his face.

“Guuuhhh…”

Whatever was in that canister worked fast. Croc went from murderous to knocked out in a few seconds. The saurian villain’s eyes rolled back and he fell over, releasing Ghost Spider in the process.

The heroine stumbled as her feet hit the ground and leaned back into the machine she had been getting crushed into for support before looking over to her friend.

“Nice throw, thanks for the help. Thought I might gag from his breath.” She joked, weakly giving Batgirl a thumbs up.

“I saw. Good thing I had a breath mint. You okay?”

“Ribs are going to be feeling tonight for a couple days but I’m good. I’m guessing you stopped the signal?”

Batgirl nodded. “Stopped and put all the devices into lockdown. They aren’t going to go off without a full system reset and recalibration. Should give us enough time to find and secure them without someone trying to set them off manually.”

“That's good. Then the only thing left is –”

“Hey guys! A little help!?”

Right, the only thing left was Grundy.

Now that they had handled the city destroying plot and knocked out the rest of the bad guys they could afford to take their time a bit, but Grundy was still very dangerous and needed to be handled carefully.

“Any ideas on how to bring him down? I'm guessing that gas won’t work and he looks fine even though I hit him pretty hard earlier.” Ghost Spider could probably shatter his spine or tear off a limb if she needed to…but she didn’t exactly want to start tearing sentient creatures limb from limb even if they would recover if she didn’t have to. That went waaay past her comfort zone for acceptable violence.

Batgirl looked around the warehouse, eyes flickering to the crashed car, the machines around them, and the spot where Robin was keeping Grundy occupied.

“I think I have an idea…”

-o-

’I don’t think I like this plan.’ “Hey Grundy! Look, I’m touching the console!” Ghost Spider yelled, patting the top of the machine.

“Whuh?” Grundy stopped chasing Robin to look back towards her. Sure enough, the sight of someone touching the thing he was supposed to be protecting was enough to get the Zombie’s full attention for the time being. “Grrr, Grundy smash bug person!”

“I’m an arachnid!”

“Grundy not care!”

It was really hard to just stand there as a five hundred pound zombie came running at you. But that was the plan, and Ghost Spider had to deal with it. As she dodged the first overhand blow she idly noticed Robin had made his way over to Batgirl to get caught up on the plan but then she was too busy trying to guide Grundy into position to pay attention to them.

Really the hard part was making sure he stayed in one spot without going into a rage and charging off somewhere. That meant intentionally dodging narrowly and staying close even when moving away and just repeatedly blinding him with webs might have worked better.

Ghost Spider didn’t just dodge though. She landed some heavy punches and kicks that had rattled the undead’s bones, they just didn’t slow him down any.

After what felt like an eternity of intense focus and careful attacks, Ghost Spider heard an engine roar to life and tires squeal as they burned out. Batgirl had managed to hotwire the drug dealer’s car back to life despite it going through a wall. It wasn’t going to run much longer by the look of it, but it was fine for one more drive. A drive straight for Grundy for a matter of fact.

Ghost Spider stopped pretending to have issues getting away from the Zombie and did her best to glue him to the floor with as many webs as possible. That distracted Grundy long enough to let her web away up to the ceiling and get in position for the next step.

Bracing herself on the thick steel beams supporting the roof, she watched as Batgirl jumped out of the car a few feet from Solomon Grundy, attached a webline to the grill, and pulled up. The beaten up car lifted off it’s front tires and hit Grundy in the chest at somewhere around forty-five miles an hour. Spread out over a much larger area and with more weight than one superpowered spider person the car did…significant damage to the zombie, but even that wasn’t enough to knock the fight out of him.

That was fine.

The car had only been the first step in Batgirl’s plan. With Grundy wounded and knocked even closer to the large racks of machines near the console he didn’t even notice Robin straining to tip one of them over until it was falling on him.

Batgirl, Robin, and Ghost Spider watched carefully as the dust settled. Grundy had been pinned by the machine but he was still technically in the fight. Once their view cleared, they saw the gray-skinned zombie half buried in metal and circuits but beyond some groaning he made no effort to escape.

“Woo! City saved and bad guys caught, who’s up for pizza?” Robin cheered.

“As long as you’re buying.” Ghost Spider chuckled. Now that the fight was over her ribs were making their displeasure known.

“We still need to secure the Markov prototypes,” Batgirl said. “But yeah pizza sounds good.”

Despite the joking comments, all the heroes went about securing their defeated foes first.

No need to ruin pizza time by having one of them escape, right?