What happened

He'd done his best to keep himself from picking at the skin under the bandage that House had placed on his hand, but in the end, curiosity and morbid obsession won out, and he'd made the bandage bloody. Thankfully, it wasn't dripping through the white, he'd just gotten the sterile plain color all prettied up with red.

In one hand he held a black bag. It could have been flung over one shoulder, but then he might have ended up looking like one of those foofy men who carried a fucking murse and got their nails done. Jack did not get his nails done. Vanity was one thing, bordering on feminine was another.

Barbra's outfit was a little worse for wear. He'd worn it all the way home, and then for some time after. He'd played with the boys in it. Not thinking about it at all. Bud had so completely enjoyed the smell of the hem that he'd left with it, and Lou had decided to sleep on it when it'd been removed from Jack's body. He hoped Babs didn't mind a little hyena drool.

All day he'd been hanging out in her usual spots, waiting for her to turn up. She hadn't shown anywhere. He'd stopped in a coffee shop and had gotten himself a giant thing consisting of caffiene, chocolate, and some other things that maybe shouldn't have been mixed in with the previous two, but he'd insisted.

He stood outside drinking it and trying to think of where to look for Babs next.
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Who: Babs and Matt
When: the morning after this
Where: Matt's apartment
Summary: Babs confronts Matt on a little suspicion she has.


She truely hoped that Mr. Murdock wasn't surprised when she rapped sharply on his door directly the next morning. She gave him time to wake up and eat breakfast, but no more than that. Babs was tense, and having more and more things piled on top of her already large pile wasn't helping.

At least this was one thing that could be solved. Hopefully quickly and with this one visit. Then she could get back to her clock tower and check problem number gazillion off of her list. It would be back to Jack.

Babs knocked on the door again and then settled her hands back into her lap, right on top of the pile of materials she'd brought along with her.

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The days following the trial had left her feeling odd, as if there was something unfinished. Maybe there was or maybe it was her own frustration of the legal system. Somethings were just not as they should be. A man like that Napier should have gone away for a good long time, not been given the chance to break free and cause what seemed like even more damage then before.

Even now as she curled up on the paisley sofa of the Starbucks and sipped the frothy overpriced mocha, she could see it. Mostly because it was front page in the City Voice in front of her. Headlines as to the atrocities committed since the inmates quite literally took over the aslyum. She sighed and flipped back to page one. Break in the gas line at City Hall, that sounded bad. The picture was vivid it captured the destruction with a skilled eye.

Gasp.

The mug rolled from her fingertips and fell to the floor shattering into white shards and foamy coffee. Eyes could not look away from the photo, or more correctly the credit line beneath it. Trembling fingers manged to pull her cell phone from her purse.

"The number for the City Voice please?"

Heart beats pause as the connection was made.

"Yes, 'Voice?"
She could not keep the tremor from her own voice.
"Could you put me through to Peter Parker?"

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Some people were just not cut out for hospitality. Shannon hated the sushi shop, hated everything about it. But she needed to eat, and she needed to live. Moving out of Harry's apartment was not an option right now- Shannon didn't want to admit it, but even though it seemed like he was never around these days, he kept the bills paid.

They were paying her fortnightly. With her first paycheck she filled up the fridge; with her second paycheck she bought toiletries; with her third paycheck she got herself some stylish yet practical shoes. She was getting used to The City, resigned to the fact that she was never going to get out of there, wondering if it was good or a bad thing that she was breathing the air in this strange place, rather than lying dead in a ditch on the island.

And she still wanted to find Vincent.

With her fourth paycheck she bought a handbag. It came as a surprise when she got home and opened it, and out poured all of her official documents, as well as the credit cards and bank cards she thought destroyed when the plane crashed.

Shannon quit her job the next day. She really did hate the sushi shop.

She had free time, and money, and could finally get coffees and cheesecakes from Starbucks without feeling guilty.

Somewhere above the City skyline, an invisible citadel appeared. It wasn't really invisible, or a citadel, per se, the combination of those words just sounded impressive.

A tiny figure dropped down from the house that was visible to select few, a great distance, considering. By the way it landed on its feet, you'd think that maybe it was a cat.

SQUEAK.

The Death of Rats didn't like cats all that much.

Is it supposed to burn?

That had been the departing question from the Joker. House didn’t know for sure if it was supposed to or not. He hadn’t experienced the initial treatment which had colored the man’s skin. He’d left soon after. Skin grew back and comical history showed that the Joker loved pain. So the burning meant very little to House.

His attention, between the dreary cycles of the clinic, had found its way back to his lame leg. It was throbbing. The pain had doubled since he’d arrived. The humdrum of the clinic provided only so much pills and now he’d graduated. He was taking whole rims of morphine shoots on his way out. One day he’d have to send the mayor a fruit basket because it had all started the day the bodies came in from the gas-line explosion.

But House wasn’t from a ‘verse where people actually bought into air-balloons causing mushroom clouds. House came from a very cynical world. He knew something was being covered up but there was very little he cared to do about it. What would a cripple do? Hop over there and pry? No, he was in far too much pain to just be annoying.

Though, he did like to be annoying.

It was his third shot of morphine right into the leg. His eyes were glazed over like doughnuts at a police conference. Sheets of paper lay astray across his apartment. The never-used dining table had vials of green, blue, orange and pink. Some bubbled.

House slumped back. There was sweat on his brow but he was freezing.

Everything told him that this was the cure. This time. This was it. It had to be.

Is it supposed to burn?

House poured it into a small container and stuck it behind the meatloaf.

Characters: Jennie, Kyle
Location: Kyle's apartment

She had been back in the City for three days now. Long enough to see that, while things were ever-changing, they still felt pretty much the same.

Sure, the landmarks moved, and people even popped in and out. But there was something comforting about consistency, even if the only constant was change.

She'd had yet to run into Kyle, though she had run into some of her old co-workers, who made snide comments about her stint in rehab. Most likely the cover story made up to explain her disappearance from work, she'd thought with indifference.

Didn't matter, really. They would think what they would. The job didn't matter. Her public image didn't matter.

Really, all she wanted was to be left alone to do her own thing, not to live the City's version of Jennie's life.

And what she wanted right now was to find Kyle. She still worried about this Kyle, worried that he hadn't made it back from whatever task he'd been doing when he'd left that letter.

She needed to reassure herself.

And moreover, she needed to talk to him. She missed her Kyle, but she'd missed the Kyle that lived here too.

And so she headed to the most sensible place to find him-his apartment.

Finding it locked and empty, she sat down outside the door, hoping he wasn't out patrolling-meaning he would come in through the window, and not through the door. But it was broad daylight, so this made the most sense. She reached in her bag for a magazine, busying herself with it while she waited for him.

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The world had moved on.

And the world was still moving on, and Roland felt as though he were falling farther and farther behind.

He'd found the boy and it had lifted some of his pain and mental anguish. For a time he thought that if only he could find the boy -- Jake Chambers -- that everything would become clear. That the path to the Tower would be open and he would be on his way to fulfilling the destiny left to him many years ago. Even before he knew about the Tower, it had marked him. Back in his days at Gilead. Maybe even long before his birth.

But he was wrong. Finding the boy didn't change the gunslinger's feelings concerning the Tower. And now he was lost. The Path of the Beam had disappeared. His ka-tet was gone. The boy that wasn't became the boy that was and had found himself a new calling amongst this strange world. A world that was trying to move on, but had become stuck. Confused.

Roland hadn't been ignoring those who helped him. He hadn't been ignoring the boy. He'd been trying to continue his quest. Trying to find the Tower. But every direction he took, every walk, every step, every corner turned, only brought him closer and closer to his starting point.

And now he found himself stopped. Standing outside of The City Industries, staring up at three skyscrapers that nearly touched the clouds. They were all clouded by a certain darkness that caught the gunslinger's attention.

LexCorp. Wayne Tech. Stark Industries.

Towers.

Perhaps one of them was his.

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Who: Evil!Willow & Oz
What: Meet. And it's all sunshine and lollipops and rainbows everywhere! Or not. It's actually the opposite really.
When: Now Like?
Ect: I just wanted to use this icon. It's so very OOC for this log,

Oz: Oz wasn't sure if running away from problems was an Oz skill, or a werewolf skill. Well, okay, so his big problems had started when he became a werewolf so maybe it was an Oz skill that had just been dormant until he been bit. Didn't mater, what mattered in the end was that Oz was running. Again.

He was on the street moving fast, keeping his eyes downcast. He had gone back to his apartment and changed into his own clothes, and felt a little more … human now. But he could still see the bodies. Maybe it had been there time … sure, but he had sure played a part in their death. That could not be denied.

His apartment wasn't completely packed up, Oz did have vague plans to return. Just not anytime soon. So he walked, head down, hands in pockets and tried to think nice happy, completely human thoughts.

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Sticking away from Bigby was all just a careful process of avoidance. Very simple. Every time they'd had the opportunity to be together in the same room, she'd made sure she'd had somewhere else to be. She'd gone shopping on that first day, and had returned with enough clothes to last her for a little while. Or at least until she'd found herself her own apartment, with which she could fill with clothing and her own furniture and all sorts of things like that.

Today, she'd decided to have a talk to Kristy, or Kirsty or whatever her name was that Charming was so intent on wooing this week. There were some apartments free in the building, on the top few floors, but she wasn't the one who controlled the rental situation. Snow was given a card with contact details, and a quick phonecall later, Snow had set up an appointment with the realtor in charge of the Woodlands.

After that, she'd put on her finest business suit, a nice checkered ensemble, and some comfortable flats, and had begun the short walk from the Woodlands to the Realtor's office. Normally she would've taken a Taxi, but the more she relied on other methods to get herself around the city, the less likely she was to heal properly.

Besides, it meant that getting to and from her appointment would take longer, which would mean she'd be avoiding Bigby for longer.

It was a win-win situation.

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Harvey Dent screamed like a skinned cat and leapt out of his hospital bed. The IV stand toppled over and clattered to the floor. Frantically looking around, trying to get his bearings after coming out of his coma, he spotted his relfection in the glass covering a painting on the wall. Bandages covered most of his head and all of his left arm. He hobbled across the room, dragging the IV behind him, and went in for a closer look.

He remembered it all now - the monstrous miscarriage of justice that put Jack back into Arkham instead of the chair, where he belonged. God only knew what Jack might do once he was back in the asylum. He remembered Jack throwing acid in his face, and the sudden resurgence of the traumatic memory caused him to instinctively claw at the bandages covering his face. Pulling them free, he looked at the two faces staring back at him. One side was Handsome Harvey Dent, the dashing district attorney and defender of law. The other side was Big Bad Harv. He recognized the face at once, as if he'd known it all his life - curdled, purple skin, uneven tufts of bleached, white hair, a skeletal sneer, and that wide, staring eye permanently shot through with angry blood.

An orderly burst into the room, responding to the noise. Harvey's head snapped around to look at the young man who choked back a shriek of horror at the twisted visage. Without thinking, Harvey picked up a lamp on a nearby table and hurled it at the orderly. He went down immediately.

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on the curb.
in alleys.
on trash cans.
in the park.
on the street.
in subtle places, where the eye lingers to.

the words are bold and in chalk mostly, but they clearly read: BAD WOLF

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Characters: Huntress (of New Earth), Oracle, and any roommates/protectors
Setting: The Clock Tower
Summary: Morning can't come soon enough. After Oracle returns home, and Helena Wayne calls, Helena Bertinelli drops in for tea unexpectedly...

Blending with the pre-dawn sky of navy and purple, Huntress plummeted from one of The City Institute's tallest structures. Her midnight hair whipping back against her ears, her cape fluttering like a frightened fish on a hook, she fell until the swing of the jumpline thrust her upwards. Hurtling up and up, Huntress gained enough momentum to release and retract the grapple mechanism of the 'line. She soared the remainder of the distance to her destination.

Her destination: the face of the Clock Tower.

As a substitute teacher, Ms. Bertinelli's assigned classroom had afforded her a nickel-tour view of the Institute's Clock Tower. Seeing it from the school's grounds, Helena had been jarred by how familiar it was. From a distance, it merely appeared to be similar, but from her classroom, Huntress had been certain that it was the same. The clock tower was identical to the one Barbara Gordon had destroyed in Gotham City. Through her incipient understanding of The City's metaphysics, Helena could only assume that the clock tower had not been destroyed during Gotham's gang war games. Rather, it had been absorbed by The City. And if the clock tower was here, it's sole resident may have been brought along as well.

After class, Helena had returned to her own home for a power nap. Having fallen out of the practice of living a constant double-life, she slept through most of the night. She chided herself for missing out on her chance to investigate the clock tower, and resolved to visit at a decent hour of the morning.

No one ever won an argument with Helena by calling for decency, least of all Helena herself.

Scaling down the side of the clock face, Helena knew precisely how to avoid the clock tower's security systems. She had done it before, and, for a time, she had been given free access to the building. If the clock tower had been brought here at the time of its seeming destruction, she should still have access to it; alternatively, it had been quite some time since it's arrival in The City. Plenty of time for Barbara to have changed the locks. In the spirit of the trust Babs had shared with her, Helena stood passively at the doorway beside the clock face, removed her right glove, and placed her hand on the sensor pad. A bar of amber light slid down the pad, recording Helena's handprint, body temperature, and for all she knew, her DNA signature. Another moment would tell her if she received an open door, or an intruder alert countermeasures...

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The vexation, sadness, shock and exhaustion in Mayor Richard Wilkins’s voice said more than the words he was saying and they were bad enough. He was providing to the mass-media a lifetime of information about the dozens who had died.

An unsecured gas system that worked from the centre of the building out toward the street had been detonated. The City’s fire department has not yet found out what caused the gas-line to blow but believe it a dilemma with the current electrical schematic. To ensure that this will never happen again, the building (along with reconstruction work) will be getting a new electrical structure far away from any gas-lines.

Wilkins sounded defeated by the implications. Children had died because of a structural issue. That was a horrific truth that the press continued to harbor. The possibility that The City might have another event like this in a government building seemed utterly likely to Wilkins who, to many of his listeners, dedicated that each building in the business district will have inspections this upcoming week. Specifications of where gas-lines, water-lines and electrical systems will all meet the health codes.

The government building had literally blown out (from the mayor’s office to the street). Wilkins told the crowd he had seen a body, probably many, on his escape from the building.

“I still see that body,” he said. “I see his position. I see the color of the clothes he had on.”

He’d seen hell where a kind of heaven should be.

Just because there are heroes, don't mean there isn't crime.

And not all crime is garish and threatening. Some of it is simple, the broken window of a storefront, jewelry missing. Some of it is pedestrian, a parking ticket on an expensive windshield. Other crime is just cheap and easy.

It doesn't take a cape or superpowers to spot that kind, just find a darker corner of the night, a loud bar, a broken down home. This is the routne stuff that the supertypes don't mess with, it's not their place. Even the uniformed officers stare sidelong on dirtieer streets, as if they didn't want to be there either.

Neither did the perps. There were the stupid types, those who walked the line, others who had no other choice but all came to the same end on the other side of the law.

Then again, there were those in the wrong place at the wrong time.

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The room waited in reptilian darkness. Grotesque figurines on particle board shelves and laserjet demons coiled patiently in preparation for attack, and the circle drawn in charcoal on the grimy linoleum floor in the center of the room welcomed arrivals with open arms. Little wax candles, frozen to their cracked plastic holders with their own blood, suddenly popped to life in expectaion of the return of the sorceror. Hanging censers began to sway and book pages turned, and in a brief flash of daylight, Two robed men appeared in the room.

The larger man clapped twice and cheap desk lamps around the room turned on, revealing the scene in all its bizarre, anachronistic splendor. He was helping to prop up the thinner man, but now let him slide to the floor in exhaustion.

"I mean you no harm at this time, Doctor Strange," spoke the large man, striding to a corner. "I believe you will concur that the defeat of the recent arrival to this plane requires more power or strategy than either of us posesses seperately, or perhaps even combined." He leaned into an ornate mirror draped with silks and painted on the surface with arcane, yellow symbols, and began grooming his beard. "This room is a part of the business establishment of a man by the name of Midnite. Beyond that door we will likely find some mortal or demon or other variety of being who will gladly rally to our cause. When you are ready, you may join me without and mingle with these folk."

He walked over to this door and opened it. Infernal cackling, strange music, and more than ten varieties of smoke wafted through the crack. He turned back to the other man. "Oh, and Stephen," he smiled darkly, "I believe this rescue constitutes a favor."

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Trip to the apartment complex done, Max headed back out. Time to try safe harbor number four. It was the last one, and she wasn't honestly sure how safe the Lair would be. Sure, she'd done all the security herself, but it was no Clock Tower, she didn't have any delusions of this. But she did know it was someplace she could get work done and not feel scarily alone.

So to the dock area Max went. The walking was hard in the ever present heels, but she headed anyway because she knew a lot of cabbies were starting to charge more to take customers down there. Ever since the crime rates had spiked.

Maybe she could work at getting out of this dress too. Max planned on trying. The frills were getting ridiculous and the coat she wore to cover it was hot. She stripped it off once she was deep into the docks, stopping in a spot she remembered, Ace's favorite spot to pee in front of the abandoned buildings. She pulled her backpack off and began stuffing the jacket in.

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Having determined that yes, Inara was alive, Eddie had hung around for a bit and than decided that enough was enough. He needed to go for a walk. The hospital and Eddie wasn't a good match, he figured if he stayed there long enough someone was going to ask him what his relation was to Inara, or someone was going to ask him about his gun, or … well there was all kinds of reasons for him ducking outside for a walk to clear his head.

He turned to look at the Hospital muttered a; "Okay, stay." When neither the streets nor the hospital shifted he grinned. "Good hospital. I'll be back in a bit."

A few blocks later Eddie paused in front of a place that called it's self 'Bruce's Video' and glanced in the window. What the hell where DVD's? And what was that ... Lethal Weapon 4? "Jesus." He could vaguely recall Lethal Weapon being out in the theaters. He hadn't gone and seen it, but ..."Must have been good if they made four of them …"

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The gingham dress was not her style. Neither was sulking, as Babs had so astutely pointed out. Max had had her fill of both over the past few days. She couldn't help the first, the blue and white dress was a constant companion along with random out bursts of 'Over the Rainbow' and 'Follow the Yellow-brick Road'. As much as she tried, she couldn't get the thing off.

Sometimes Max found herself thinking that maybe it was a good thing Jesse didn't want to see her right now (at least she assumed he wouldn't want to see her). Unfortunately, that tended to bring on the sulking, and she really was trying to get over that.

She'd started to resent Jesse for it, for making her feel this way over something so stupid. And it really was just that. Stupid. And it was his fault. Max had no qualms about blaming him for the entire thing, possibly because she was still mad at him. She felt… disillusioned. Yes, that was the right word. She'd somehow managed to fall in love with a man who didn't want to 'play house', so to speak. Not that she was ready to play house either, but privately the imagined thought of setting up home and family with Jesse had made her a bit warm inside.

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