The Universe's Mixer

Anger fueled the storm. Probably one of the more powerful ways of fueling anything when it came to magic. Blood, death, sex were all good, but this was emotional and definitely magic. The City's power, what made streets and buildings move or put food in recently empty cupboards and refrigerators, was being used against it to wreck havoc. The dogs of war hadn't exactly been slipped, but a gauntlet was being thrown down. This was bigger than anything done against the City before.

For over forty-eight hours, the sky was dark, so dark that the only way of telling that it was actually morning was a simple bit of clockwork (or digital for those who can't read watches). The sun never came out from behind the broody, bulging clouds that let loose rain and hail, thunder and lightning. Tornadoes formed, ripping up the park, creating those freak of nature scenes of chickens through wooden light posts, or straws embedded into concrete. Windows burst from pressure and the painful rolling thunder. Lightning touched down, killing trees in flashes or turning once clean pavement into scorched cracked rubble.

Power went out for most of the night, leaving the Hospital, Library, and Police Station to work on limited generators' power. Loss of electricity wasn't all that hit these City landmarks. Areas of each were flooded from the onslaught of rain after windows were destroyed or simply from the lack of proper drainage. The City had never had this problem before.

Car alarms went off constantly, and what few animals were in the City cried for attention along with the children. Store fronts and the goods there were ruined or gone. Kiosks were torn apart or moved so far away that not even those used to the moving streets would find them. The world was coming undone.



( important for you to know )

Jesse stood in front of a shop and looked out at the devastation the storm had brought to The City. The place had hardly seen such foul weather, and here it spent a good two days with something far worse than the snow had brought upon them.

Funny thing was, he knew it wasn't the City that did it.

What could be out there that would be powerful enough to cause such weather in this place, without this place lashing back at them? Him, he could do it. He wouldn't do it, but he could have. He'd not met any other being capable. It worried him a little, not knowing who or what it was, not being able to put a face to the power behind this. Was it somebody new, or had they been here the whole time? Had he managed to not encounter them? And he'd thought everybody eventually met everybody.

He chewed his lip a little bit, and then put his cigarette back in his mouth. The idea that kept swirling around in his head was that he was going to have to find this being. For good or for bad, he was going to have to seek them out. Not that he knew what he was going to do or say once he'd discovered them. But he couldn't just sit back and let something like this happen.

And what about the City? Why had it allowed this?

Something was amiss. The preacher couldn't figure it out, but he'd find the truth.

"Hell of a thing." He muttered, looking across the street at a building that had all of it's windows broken, and what looked like massive water damage inside. He thought it had been some kind of corner store previously, but all the wares were so severely soaked, he couldn't really make much of it out. Save the shrink wrapped items that he was fairly positive could survive Armageddon without their wrappers. Those he was able to identify.

The storm had turned everything topsy-turvy. With some of his fellow police officers, Charlie was out canvasing streets in hopes of preventing looting, what there could be of it. He didn't even understand how the City wasn't cleaning things up; hadn't there been a Godzilla attack once? He was pretty certain someone had said that that had happened. He like those other police officers, who knew he was a detective but let him help out anyway, weren't worried about what the City wasn't doing; they had to worry about the citizen's of the City.

The detective had left a message with Ted, telling him that the damage to their mansion was minimal, not that they really had to worry about up keep. Ted had a large some of money after all, and Charlie wasn't that concerned with what happened to what he possessed. Possessions were nothing in the end. He had called someone to come look after the trees though; the orchard needed to be tended.

Charlie then called his partner. He hadn't talked to her in a while, at least socially. They'd had a few brushes at work, but nothing that had them working together which was a little odd seeing as they were partners. He missed her. He thought he might have scared her after their last big discussion. In fact, he missed her enough to call her back after he got a report that some woman was locked in her house. While it wasn't murder, Charlie felt they could try to figure this out together anyway. He got her on the phone the second time he called, and while he headed over, he gave her the address and the situation.

It seemed that neighbors had noticed that some woman was screaming bloody murder, or just yelling really loudly depending on who was asked. She wasn't coming out, and she might be locked in. Being locked in a house was odd, seeing as most of the buildings on the street had lost windows and some doors to the storm. Yet, the house seemed to have weathered things rather well. That was a small mystery in itself.

The detective headed up slowly to the front door. If he were one to put much faith in movies, he'd say this was one of those places horror movies happened. It was rife with the mystique and creep necessary to pull of a good horror movie. Thankfully, Charlie chalked it all up to this being a house recovering from a storm, a very lucky house.

"Unless it's not." He stood a few steps from the door. "Could have monsters inside, but what self-respecting monster would be inside when there is murder and mayhem to be had? Unless it's not one of those monsters." He had to give this one a small think through. Eventually he would get to the door.

Rufio jogged through the trees that had survived the storm, leaping from branch to branch and kicking a soccer ball between his knees as he went. He was playing with the stolen item mostly to kill time, but it was also keeping his mind off the storm that had ravaged the City for so long. Rufio had been thoroughly frightened by the natural disaster, though he’d never admit it as long as there was breath in his body. It had been unnerving enough when the electricity had been knocked out and plunged him into utter and completely darkness in his warehouse, the howling wind and storming keeping him up all night. When Rufio had been convinced that it couldn’t get worse a section of the roof had been ripped off and the interior of his fortress had been decimated. Rufio had never lived through a storm like that, and then even when there had been thunderstorms in Neverland, he and others had been too focused on making the youngest boys feel better to be afraid themselves. This was the first time it had just been him, alone in the dark, at the mercy of the weather.

But now it was over, and causing some low key chaos was helping him put the unnerving feeling of the past nights behind him. And he was able to practice his flying as he dodged branches and trunks. He was getting pretty good at moving through the air faster and with more grace, he hadn’t slammed into a branch yet tonight, even when the men he’d stolen the ball from had thrown their bottles at him.

Rufio smirked at the thought, jumping onto another branch and kicking up the ball higher than ever, blinking as the white and black toy soared up.... and then out of sight. He darted to the next tree, but the ball was already too far down for him to catch in time, and he grunted in agitation as it hit the ground and bounced out into a clearing, disappearing in some large bushes.

Oh well. Nothing like a quick acrobatic dismount to quicken the blood when you got complacent flying. Aerial ability or no, Rufio couldn’t resist the rush of leaping forward and letting himself free fall, catching a branch and swinging around the limb before sending himself soaring out into the center of the clearing, landing heavily and laughing at the rush. Now he just needed to find the ball. Rufio looked around, starting to dig through the thick brush.

( This got boring quickly, of course, and soon anybody entering the clearing would find a much more irritated boy hacking at the plant life with his sword. )