What happened

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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It was when she returned home, for what was supposed to be a short break to grab some supplies, that she finally got a camera to work. One camera in the entire building, which was outfitted with over thirty, but it was still a major accomplishment and Babs wasn't going to complain. She got the thing to face away from one of the dirty toilets first off. She was tired of staring at the things, but had been for a good few hours now as she tried to fix her connections in Arkham. She wanted her video back, she wanted her camera mobility back, and she wanted sound.

She'd finally stopped trying to get sound right before lunch, but she was determined to be able to move the damned cameras. Maybe it was something about her hacking abilities from her home computer or maybe Jack was just having a little fun. Either way, Babs was glad for it

She wrote down each thing she'd done before the camera had started working, hoping to be able to repeat it when she got back to the manor. There were quite a few steps to the process, some which Babs wasn't even sure had effected it at all, but she was willing to write them down anyway. She didn't mind the wracking of her brain, it just took staying focused. A task which was harder than it seemed when she was concentrating on the view her one camera afforded her as well.

Babs was an attentive person, and her eyes kept flicking up to the screen, hoping to see something of note. Perhaps a guard left alive whose frequency she could hack into to contact. A group of the remaining prisoners so that she could get an approximate body count for Bruce. A note of some sort left lying around, and sort of clue.

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"Oy! Stop!"

Jake didn't have the time to wonder if it was something inherent in the billy-bumbler. Some genetic trait leftover from the part of him that was canine.

"Come back here!"

Maybe it was some kind of racial memory. Or maybe, somewhere in Mid-world, there were some smaller versions of the cougars they had seen in the Callah that had prompted Oy's reaction.

"Oy!"

He didn't have time to wonder these things. Because as soon as Oy had spotted the orange tabby, the bumbler's mind had been dead-set on one thing: catching it.

So Jake had chased, and was trying to catch the billy-bumbler with both hands and mind, using a fairly uncommon approach. But the bumbler stopped short, his mind going strangely blank, and Jake saw it through Oy's eyes before his own.

The Tower.

His breath caught in his throat and he almost fell over, trying to move around the man who was standing in the way. Part of his mind registered that the frame was too small, that it was only a painting, but the part of him that knew (Tower! Key! Rose!) thought that maybe, just maybe, this could be a door. Like the one that had brought Eddie and Susannah to Roland, like the one Eddie had used to draw Jake himself.

Can'-Ka No Rey. A place he had only seen in his dreams, but a place he knew intimately. A red field, so deep a red that it took a moment, and a skilled eye, to realize that the red was not blood, but a field of roses. And there, standing in the center, with brick of dark, not-quite-black ash and soot, was the Dark Tower.

Jake was helpless to stop himself. One hand reached out, moving towards the door -- (the canvas? the DOOR) -- and his feet moved him closer.

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Judge McRiley entered the court room and sat down. The room was eerily silent.

"Bailiff, enter the jury, please."

The group arrived in a single file line and filled in the seats. The judge remained quite for a good five minutes after everybody had settled in. He was gathering his strength for this. There was no telling which way the jury had voted. No way to know what they were thinking right now. And he wouldn't know until he called for his answer.

It had to be done. Putting it off would not make things better.

"Miss Forman, have you come to a decision?" He asked.

"We have, your honor." Said a slight blonde woman.

The judge motioned for the slip of paper. It was brought to him, and he read it. He wasn't sure if he was relieved or not. He passed the paper back.

"Please read it for the court."

She nodded. "On the count of malicious harassment we find the defendant guilty." She paused and went on. "On the count of assult, we find the defendant guilty. On the multiple counts of murder, we find the defendant guilty."

"Thank you."

"Sir? We have a recommendation."

"Go ahead."

"Given the light of the situation surrounding these crimes, and what we've seen in this court, we have deemed Jack Napier unfit for the public. We see him as severely mentally ill, and would request the court take that in stride with the sentancing."

"Thank you, Miss Forman, you may sit."

The judge, frankly, felt the same way himself. Jack Napier should not, in any case, ever, be allowed to commune with the populus. It wasn't right. There was too much danger in it, and in him.

"I don't think I need any time to think this over. I am ready for ruling now. Please stand, Jack Napier, and hear your fate." He waited for Jack to stand, and was surprised that there wasn't anything wild or scary going on. "Given the decision of the jury, and their recommendation, and given the state of this entire trial, I have to agree with the idea that you are completely mentally unfit. For anything. I cannot in good conscience send you to prison and hope that you get the help that you need. And that society needs for you. So. My ruling is this: Life imprisonment in Arkham Asylum with a strick rehabilitation program. I have no faith that you'll ever actually get help, but, we can hope."

The gavel banged. It was over.

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Judge McRiley had the world's biggest headache. Between the trial itself and the pending end of it, his head was almost constantly protesting. His body was tense to the point that he thought he'd have to take a week off and fill it with near constant massages in order to relax his muscles.

They were so very close to the end of all of this.

He turned ot the jury and sighed heavily.

"We have heard the closing statements of the lawyers, and I believe that they have both made their cases as best could be done considering the situation at hand. I have decided to strike absolutely none of this from record, so in your deliberations, you are to take every bit of it into account. I want you to all consider long and hard what your decision will be. The results of this case will have effects on many, many people. An entire city, if you will."

He was silent for a moment, and then nodded, as if he'd made a choice. "It's unusual to do, but I'm going to request that there be no hung jury. You will have to make a decision one way or another, and I don't care how long it takes. This will not be dismissed."

McRiley banged the gavel once and stood. The bailiff couldn't do his duty, the judge left so quickly.

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It had begun like any other trial. Smoothly. Calmly. The judge entered and the people silenced. The baliff called for everybody to stand, and they did so, respectably. They sat just as silently, just as calmly when the judge called for them to do so. Judge Scott McRiley presiding...

It was just as the judge was settling in that the first mishap occured.

Jack Napier stood up to introduce himself to the court. And to the audience of people attending. He did so with a flourish and a bout of laughter so nerve-wracking that it took Judge McRiley a good ten minutes to quiet everybody down again.

"That is the last we'll have of that, I hope." He stated, looking Jack directly in the eye as he spoke.

Little did the poor judge know that this was only a pre-cursor to the sorts of things that could go on in a trial like this. A trial against Jack Napier. Maybe the only truly insane genius The City had ever seen. The misguided fellow might actually mistake to think he'd be able to control The Joker.

Jack himself spent a good few moments blowing kisses at Harvey Dent while Judge McRiley tried to call for order and the beginning of the trial.

He looked out at the lawyers and nodded. "Prosecution? You may begin."

And then he sat back, ready to hear this fantastic case.

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Who: Kyle Rayner, and Morpheus (Special guest appearances by Nada, Azazel, and the full cast of Hell)
What: War and Spoils
Where: Hell. The Dreaming. Home.
When: Immediately before this
Note: Part 2. This log was over 18 pages in MS Word.

[Morpheus]: "We do not need to ssssstrike, Dreamlord," the demon-insect buzzed. "Death would only be a releassssse."

The demons were getting themselves worked up into a frenzy. He was taunting them, egging them on. Until he saw the glow drop from the gates. Dream swung the blade in his hand, drawing attention back on himself.

Azazel began to laugh. "Methinks the Endless is afraid," he said in a mocking tone. "Resorting to empty threats and bad cliche, Morpheus?"

The blade flashed in the crimson light, and bolts of light seared through Beelzebub, bringing the insect-like demon to a spluttering end. Dream’s midnight eyes burned, glaring at Azazel. "Remember to whom you speak, little demon. I am Dream of the Endless. You would do good to respect me." His gaze was on the many eyes on the demonlord, but in the corner of his vision, he saw the green glow return, and a similar-colored streak moving quickly towards him.

"Enough of this talk," said Azazel, angered by the attack. "Seize him!" The hoards on all sides of him charged at once.

The wings folded under Dream's cloak, and the Prince of Stories dropped like a stone from the sky.

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Who: Kyle Rayner, and Morpheus (Special guest appearance by Nada)
What: Unfinished Business
Where: The Dreaming, The Gates of Hell, The Wood of Suicides, and the City of Dis
When:: Before Desire's 'Gift'
Note: This log was over 18 pages in MS Word.

[Kyle]: He knew that he had to sleep that night, but never before had it been so hard for his mind to drift off to slumber. Kyle was tired, that much was for sure. After his 'dream' that morning he'd gone to work and tried to act as if everything was normal, but that facade had been hard, to say the least, and exhausting to keep up.

He'd been too nervous to eat anything for the day either other than a small bag of chips. None of his normal caffeine was running through his system. Poor Frank had been awfully confused when Kyle walked through the store on his way back to his apartment in the evening without stopping for coffee. Instead, he'd gone straight upstairs, put his things away, and sat down in bed.

It was three hours later now, 11:30. Kyle was on his back, eyes drooping though not even under the covers, just continuously pondering exactly what was in store for this night. Hell. How many people got to say that they were going to visit hell for a night...

...and possibly not come back.

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Jennie,
I can't be taking patrol tonight, as I'm pretty sure I won't be around. You don't have to take it or anything, I'm sure the City'll be alright just for one night. There're other people running around in their pajamas too, they'll cover for us.

I'm going on an 'excursion' that I was recruited for this morning before work by this guy calling himself Dream. It's your standard should-be-routine-mission-but-could-become-life-threatening-as-it-goes-on thing. Routine. So, don't worry too much. I just wanted to let you know, y'know... just in case.

But don't worry. I'm going to go through hell and back to make sure I come home. Literally. Dying is just not on my list of things to do yet.
Love

-Kyle

P.S-- I didn't break in the leave this, I swear. The sliding doors were just sort of... blowing open. After I nudged them with the ring

Never make a deal with the Devil. You always ended up on the losing side.

Dream knew that. He'd known it for millenia. But sometimes, deals were inescapable.

Traveling in the City, he began to seek out some of the superpowered humans, the metas, the ones who might be able to assist him in this kind of ordeal. A journey into Hell was no light matter, by any stretch of the imagination. Across all the span of time, among all the creatures capable of having dreams, not once had the Prince of Stories ever encountered a single entity whose dreams of Hell were anything short of a nightmare. Especially of those who resided there.

Morpheus found himself in a diner. It seemed the mortal way - when one is searching for answers, to find it in the bottom of either a whiskey glass, or a coffee mug. Dream wondered briefly if answers could be found in such a way. Time would tell, perhaps?

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Summary: After the explosions, Jennie gets hurt and Kyle takes her back to his place. Heh.

Kyle was still working to procress Jennie's last words --him? A member of the Justice League? Right. She had to be kidding-- when he saw the chunk fall out from the ceiling. He wasn't quick enough to knock Jennie out of the way, and he couldn't use the ring. Too much energy was going towards getting the injured out. Though, now Jennie seemed to be one of those.

Kyle moved over as fast as he could to catch Jennie before she fell. Balanced in his arms, he prevented her from completely hitting the floor. "Jade? Can you hear me?"
WeasleySister: She vaguely heard Kyle's voice above her somewhere. Something was nagging at her. She needed to... do something.

Wake up. That's what she needed to do here. She was needed.

Her eyes fluttered open as she followed the sound of his voice back to consciousness.

"Ky-Lantern," she forced herself to sit up. "I'm fine," she insisted, and then looked around. "The building's unstable. We need to get the rest of these people out of here."

"Agreed," Kyle said as the rumble from another explosive device shook the building. It hadn't happened from inside, lucky or else they might have lost the building then and there. Kyle looked towards the window and saw a new plume of smoke coming from a few blocks down.

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The first thought Kyle had when he felt the earth shake was, 'Damn. There aren't any signs up about how to handle earthquakes. We never had earthquake drills'. Then he looked at his light board which had fallen off of his desk smashed to the floor, and thought, 'Fuck.'

Then he saw the smoke.

That was when he finally thought to stand up and look away from his desk. How were his coworkers handling the impromptu earthquake. Or whatever it was. They weren't handling it very well at all, actually. For all he could see, they were running through the resulting smoke like chickens with their heads cut off. Kyle couldn't really blame them; they probably weren't used to stuff like this. Hell, he wasn't even completely used to stuff like this.

The art department for The City's newspaper was on one of the lower floors, so when Kyle finally got his wits together and started yelling and ushering people out of the doors, he could at least have some comfort in knowing they all had a good chance of getting out safely. No one seemed to notice when he backed away from the stairwell and ran back into the main area of the floor where all the artists had their desks set up.

He moved slowly through the smoke, making sure no one else was trapped in the room and once he was relatively sure, he raised his hand. A green gas mask covered his face, and Kyle took a deep breath, hoping that he hadn't already inhaled too much smoke. Next he created a lantern, which shined brightly through the smoke, allowing him to move quickly to the large windows.

Where was the smoke coming from? Kyle wasn't immediately sure, but he was definitely leaning more towards an explosion now. He just didn't know from where. Looking out of the windows, he could see smoke pouring from some of the lowers floors as well, and a slightly grey tinge in the air above make him think that something had to going on on the higher floors as well. Across the street people were pouring out of another office building and onto the street, pointing up at both buildings. Grey smoke was pouring from their windows as well.

The building shook again, and this time Kyle could hear an explosion coming from upstairs. It was time to get out.

Kyle backed away from the window, back into the smoke where he was sure no one would be able to see him as a green glow engulfed his body. When it died down, he was suited up completely, mask included. He had to help somehow.

Though, as he started breaking through the window so that he could fly out, Kyle couldn't help but hope that some of the other heroes in this place had heard the explosions. Because he was pretty damn sure that alone he wasn't going to be much good.

OOC: Just a note, as stated before, everyone can participate in this, whether your character wants to be a bystander or wants to try to rescue people or even wants to try and make the situation worse. Any of those options is cool! NPCs may even come and interact with your characters.

Don't worry. Something will come of this. So yes. Post!

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ooc: In typical life fashion my copy of Wizard And Glass has gone AWOL -- there is sad empty place on my bookshelf where it belongs - so I'm not 100% sure if the newspaper they find in Kansas in that story calls the super-flu Captain Trips or not. If it doesn't' … well … it did this time *twists canon to make it more to her liking* . Oh, hi by the way, my name is Kelly, I play Eddie, and I'm new :D

He was pretty sure he wasn't dreaming. For one thing, when he dreamed he dreamed of New York. Or one of the many variations of it. But standing here on the corner and looking around, well this didn't look like New York. Still, he could be dreaming ..

"Wonderful, fan-fucking-tastic."

It did occur to Eddie that standing on the corner talking to himself wasn't exactly making a case for his other option. That is to say the option behind door (because it always came back to doors didn't it?) number two. That it was all real, and somehow, he had slipped away from the others. Gone on to one of the other worlds.

So the question was. .. what world was he in? And when in this world was he in? So far things looked like .. well not exactly like his home turf of New Yawk City, in the year of nineteen-eighty-seven, for one thing he didn't know half of these buildings. Yet the place was too .. alive to be part of Roland's world. Things didn't look like they where breaking down here, and hell he could see some people walking down the other side of the street.

Which meant he was decidedly was not in the Kansas he had jut been in. That place had been permanent population zero every carried off by something the local paper -- or what was left of it -- had labeled; 'Captain Trips'. So, not in Kansas. Not in Mid-World. So where?

"Well that's the million dollar question isn't it?"

He looked up; "Buildings Buildings everywhere, and not a fucking sign saying; 'Welcome To ….' To see. Someone needs to let the tourist board know that weary travelers like to know where the hell they are." Not panicked not yet, Eddie was just pissed off.

While looking upwards at the buildings that towered (hah) above him he noticed something. Something that made his stomach do a little flip flop. The clouds. The clouds now moved in a rather … cloud like way. Not flowing straight and true along the Beam. For the first time since he had lost the others, Eddie Dean began to feel like maybe, just maybe, he was up that fabled shit creek sans paddle.

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Setting: Kyle's apartment
Summary: Anyone else ever wake up after a great date to find the guy awol?

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After his first day in the City, Darien had gone back to his apartment and slept, hoping that he'd wake up and be back in San Digeo. It hadn't worked, of course. Maybe he should've clicked his heels together and asked really nicely.

He had been awoken by the telephone ringing. Though he wasn't unused to that happening, he hadn't been able to stumble out of bed fast enough to reach the phone before the answering machine kicked in. There had been an unfamiliar voice on the line, asking where Darien was and why he hadn't came into work today, and did he really want the boss mad at him again?

Darien had stood by the phone until the machine turned off. That wasn't like his wakeup call would be if it had been the Agency. He didn't know what sort of job he was supposed to have, and right now, it was the least of his worries anyway.

He had ventured back outside that day, taking in the unfamiliar sights and trying to get used to navigating the streets. By some sort of miracle, he had made it back to his apartment before the shootings started. Some of it had scattered over into his street, but Darien had done like any other normal person would and huddled up in his kitchenette, safely out of the path of any windows.

Now on his third day, he slept through the next message on his answering machine, and left his apartment again.

Darien thought he had gotten at least a little used to the shifting streets yesterday, he really had. What little skill he might've picked up seemed gone today. They just kept changing on him, skipping from streets full of shops to residental districts to distinctly run-down looking areas. At one point, he took a shortcut through an open alley in desperation, trying to hurry before the streets changed on him again.

Then he heard footsteps behind him, and the unmistakeable sound of a gun being cocked.

"Hold it. Turn around, slow-like."

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It soon occured to Kyle that he needed a job, because apparently his nice apartment in this dimension wasn't paying for itself. The money he'd initially found in his wallet was beginning to run low and his debit cards didn't work in The City's ATMs. He needed to set up an account with The City Bank, but to do that he needed money.

Which brought him back to needing a job.

Sometimes he really wished the whole superhero gig actually paid. Kyle was all for doing things out of the goodness of his heart, but when it started making it impossible to hold down a steady job it got annoying. His Green Lantern alter-ego was one of the reasons he had to work freelance, being confined to an office didn't really work when you had to go rushing off at a moments notice. And he really needed a job now, preferably something in an office that would pay him well to just sit around and draw. Wishfull thinking, yeah, but a guy could hope.

Kyle was holding the classifieds section of the paper in one hand when he entered the coffee shop down the street from his unpaid for apartment. He considered it a blessing of sorts that at least this world had decent coffee. He couldn't concentrate without it and he needed to find himself a job.

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The gun war began at rush hour. Or rather, at what should have been rush hour. People should have been driving home from work in the evening, getting ready to settle into their house shoes to eat dinner, or just getting back with little Jimmy, from soccer practice. Getting back with Candace, from ballet.

Throughout the City, no one could have not heard it. The first shot was more like a car backfiring than anything else. A sharp, rough sound at City Centre. And then there was a second, and a third. A downpour of these hard, piercing bursts of noise came.

No one wanted to step outside, to brave the criss-crossing of bullets.

The City was shifting, through all of this, scattering the firefight to every end and every beginning of its streets. Citizens kept their eyes down, and hoped from inside their safe, warm homes or their drab office buildings. The City didn't have a masked protector. Not that had shown his face yet.

Not really.


(( Bombs away, kiddies. All you do-gooders, go out and do good. All you baddies, soak in the chaos and join in the fun!))

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Kyle was pretty sure that the 6 train went down to The Village. Not Gotham. Definately not Gotham. Because the 6 train was a New York subway and it didn't even leave the island, much less go to an entire other city. He'd gotten on uptown, by the Met where he'd spent the day sketching and fine tuning some techniques, and after a twenty minute ride, he'd gotten off at St. Marks... well what was supposed to be St. Marks.

He hadn't really noticed anything odd at first (Kyle counted the number of stops rather than listening to the speaker) but then he'd finally gotten up the steps and out into what was supposed to be St. Marks, but it wasn't. NYU was gone and after a bit of walking around he couldn't find known landmarks like Washington Square Park or the small things like The Peanut Butter Factor. He couldn't even find his apartment.

It was Gotham, or more to the point, part of Gotham. He saw Gotham State University (a building which moments later he couldn't find again) but at the same time parts of the building looked like NYU, which Kyle knew wasn't the case in reality. GSU was a stony gothic looking place, not like NYU at all. He kept walking through the streets getting lost more than once, as he didn't know the Gotham layout well at all.

The darkness of Gotham was lost in a few blocks time and Kyle found himself in New York again... though as Gotham had been, it was only partly so. He saw some familiar building in the landscape, but interspersed in between were buildings he'd never seen before in his life. It was confusing, especially from the ground.

He glanced down at his right hand and ran his thumb over the green ring on his finger. There was a better way to explore. And as the saying went, you were safer in the air than you were on the ground.

At least the allyways hadn't changed. They were still dark, dingy, disgusting... and extremely convienent changing areas. Kyle created a backpack for his sketchpad and suplies and then suited up, slinging the pack over his shoulder. Surrounded by a slight green glow, he took off, shooting quickly up into the sky before slowing down and coming to rest on the nearest roof.

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