The Universe's Mixer

King Kong was contained. All was calm again which meant it was back to working through the systems to orient them with his programs. It was a time consuming process that required his attention for the most part. This translated to junk food, stimulant beverages and snacks. While he ran one of the systems through a beta test with his OS he did a fuel run for coffee, donuts and reading material. (See: skin and/or gossip rags.) A half hour later he was back in the lab successful.

The beta was still running so he sat at the station with his feet up on the console, box of donuts in his lap, ginormous coffee cup at his elbow and the latest rumor mill in hand. He hadn't looked closely at it when he grabbed it along with Busty Redheads with Guns or the errand might have taken longer. He was getting an eyeful now though.

There on the front page was Fred in a liplock with apparently the City mayor. He blinked with his jaw falling open barely comprehending the headline of Has the Mayoral Heart Been Filled Once More?!. Once it did penetrate the haze of buh his brain was seized on he read through the article. Half way into his his legs dropped from the console with his jaw closing finally. By the end of it he'd lost interest in the rest of the rag and the skin mag, tossing the latter to the side while he ate his donut in thought filled silence.

Takes place immediately following this thread

Hank was there awfully quickly. Dinah was grateful for that. She was still holding onto her wrist, her breathing shallow now that the adrenaline had worn off. Without it, the pain was definitely distracting.

She heard the suggestion to sit and did so, squatting down on the curb.

"Just got swatted into a wall. Good thing the canary cry worked," she said with a weak smile. "I think it's just my wrist. Everything else is sore, but nothing else feels broken or out of place."

The investigation was going pretty well.

It was tiring, and Veronica really had expected that. She was an intern. She did a lot of grunt work that was beneath her. Some of it really wasn't, but she thought it was. And that did a lot to color her perception of it.

After Christmas with Logan, it was back to the office and pouring over crime scene photos. Veronica was running out of puns.

There'd been a new lead, one she was hoping to check out this afternoon. Veronica would be heading back to the crime scene, just to do a once-over, then back to the office. She'd been to that damn tree more times than she cared to count.

There was a press release sitting in her in-basket that she hadn't seen yet. Veronica knew the press agent was fishing for things to feed a hungry bunch of reporters who really wanted to print more on the story.

Just as she picked the release up, and started to curse, Veronica's phone started to ring. The phone on her desk.

"Mars," she said. It was both a greeting and a question.