The Universe's Mixer

To say things had been 'chaotic' over the last few days was more of an understatement than Jake was willing to admit. As far as he knew, he'd slept through about five years. Five years, just gone. Waking up to find Barbara gone was bad, painful to his heart. She had understood things, had understood him in a way that Jake had been sure no one but his ka-tet would have.

He didn't know Dinah enough to know if she would be the same, and that worried him. Especially now, especially when he was coming home from school. She would understand if he explained his lateness, Jake knew. The streets of the City always winded, warped, changed at their own whim.

But the blood on his clothes, the saturated sleeve and the blood-smeared plates that he had tried to clean off, caked now with the dirt he had used for that purpose... would she understand that? And his reasons?

Jake hoped she would. And he hoped she would know something to do with the belts he'd taken and stuffed into his satchel. They were evil things, corrupted things, and Jake knew they couldn't be left there for anyone to take. Something in him had told him to take them home, to bring them to Dinah, and he had obeyed that intuition.

“Dinah?” he called once the door was shut behind him. His first impulse was to get to the bathroom, to clean off himself and Oy, and that was where his footsteps were taking them. “Dinah, are you home?”

( Dinah was still getting used to being responsible for a 12 year old. )

(OOC: Backdated to the day right after this.)

Dinah made it back to the Clock Tower after her encounter with the strange vampire and Dean Winchester. She let herself into the computer command center and looked down at her tights, which were torn to shreds from her fall on the pavement. She sighed. She had certainly spent enough time meeting the pavement since her arrival in the City, and the tights just didn’t quite provide the protection that the rest of her costume did.

Not to mention that this City just didn’t seem to have the same acceptance of costumes on heroes. At least, not fishnet type costumes. While she wasn’t ashamed of her outfit, and treasured the resemblance to her mother’s outfit, even she could recognize that sometimes it was better to blend in.

Dinah rummaged through the costume closet off the Clock Tower, hoping that her old costume might be there. She found it quickly and pulled it out to look it over. A gift from Oracle when they’d first begun working together, the costume was a long legged, long sleeved bodysuit made out of a kevlar weave. Effective in providing some protection against bullets and, she noted, the high neckline would help when it came to the vampires she’d been facing lately. Not to mention that the utility built would provide more room to hide tools against the supernatural. Given the nature of the City’s darker elements, it seemed as though she needed a wider array of weaponry than she had in anywhere else she’d lived.

Maybe the change wouldn’t be permanent, but this seemed to be the best costume for the time being. Dinah glanced down at the torn fishnets, revealing several scraps and cement burns, and sighed.

( Tomorrow, she would have to head for the library. )