The Universe's Mixer

The late afternoon was balmy, even pleasant, but to Dick, who had been running, leaping, fighting and lifting the entire day, it was unbearably hot and sticky. The sun glared down on him as it started to sink, and he was actually missing his suit, which though dark, actually breathed well and used small, weightless chemical packs to regulate temperature. Dick hauled his single remaining crutch up off the ground and hooked it on the end of the fire escape, looking down as a clowder of cats streaked through the alley below, hissing to themselves as they bounded and twisted. "Always wanted to use 'clowder,' in a sentence," Dick commented to himself, tearing a piece of his shirt into a long stripe so he could bind the wound on his arm. This would probably only stop the bleeding at best; the bite was deep and ugly, courtesy of what he could have sworn was a raccoon.

His leg wasn't holding up all that well, and he was lucky that the dog he'd first come across that morning had decided to bite the crutch on his other side instead of his leg. He'd been helping people get to higher, safer ground all day, moving over the roofs as only he or one of his trained kind could; he'd managed to avoid getting bit right up until about ten minutes ago, and he was still cursing the mistake. He took in his breath in a long hiss as he tried to get the bleeding to stop, and looked around into the windows of the building behind him. He might have to break into one and find something to clean the wound with, or this was going to get ugly fast. "Wonder what a bunch of raccoons are called."

Jack woke up on a couch that he'd never seen before, in an apartment that he didn't recognize. It took him a few minutes to fully wake up and remember where he'd been. In his groggy half-asleep state, he'd wondered if the night before had just been a very strange dream.

As he started to wake up, he tried to wrap his head around the events of the previous morning.

There had been a girl. A very pretty, somewhat unusual girl. He was in a strange city, or City with a capital C if the girl was correct. He was in said girl's apartment, having been invited to stay after he'd rescued her and she'd kissed him. Or had that been a dream as well?

He sat up on the couch and looked down at the borrowed clothes he was wearing, then around at the room once again as he tried to sort out reality from hallucination.

What was it with things in this City wanting to bite him? Logan wondered to himself absently as he walked through campus on his way back to the dorms. He'd just spent the entire day in the hospital after a bite from a rabid dog of some sort this morning. He was cranky, his head ached, and he was starting to get extremely itchy.

He resisted the urge to scratch and instead focused on just how much this City sucked sometimes.

Demons were one thing. Demons he could almost deal with, given that his boss was a demon and a pretty okay guy. Vampires? He still wasn't crazy about the fact that one had bitten him and he didn't even remember.

But now rabid dogs, and the crappiest healthcare he'd ever received in a hospital? That was just not right. He'd never had to wait so long for anything in his life. The Echolls name generally opened doors, but here it didn't seem to mean a hell of a lot.

Well, that was an understatement, really.

All the same, Logan was not in the best of moods as he walked back to his dorm.