The Universe's Mixer

Fred was grateful for Dinah, but she wasn't in the mood for pasta, even if it was heavenly or orgasmic. The brainy female didn't want anything to eat, which was odd for her perhaps. She didn't want to talk. She didn't want to do anything. Instead, she walked around the City, getting used to the stationary streets. Well, the streets had always been stationary, just not the same sort of stationary. The buildings weren't moving.

She roamed the City streets until dusk; it'd been a while since she felt like this. Actually she wasn't even sure what she felt. Going home she curled up in bed and waited for the sun to rise.

The next day, Fred got out of bed, got cleaned up, and got out of the house. She wasn't in the mood to be strong, but she didn't have much choice. The world wouldn't stop just for her. She really did need to figure out what the world had stopped though. Help to figure it out anyway.

What was she going to do about it? First, she was going to have her go to, and she thought doing it with someone she hoped would give her something to work with. If not that, he was good for a hug...she hoped.

It took her a while to get to the proper diner that served the best waffles. Using the diner's pay phone, she placed the call to her favorite Southern boy.

Dinah had given him a job to do. Regardless of what Jensen thought about the blood crap with the Nordic Vampire God this was way more important. He'd see it through. So he sat down with his laptop and sent out a generic message to everyone, then one more private.

To: Batdude(batman@jlc.com); DrHank(hmccoy@jlc.com); Fred (fredcutie@jlc.com); RobinHood(oliverqueen@jlc.com); MagicLegs(zatanna@jlc.com)

Hey guys,

FYI. Dinah's going on hiatus for a bit. Jake is missing. I'm running as many searches as I can and I'm coming up with nothing. No record. At all. As if he never existed. Consider her backup for now. Nothing less than Priority Apocalypse to draw her out for JL related stuff.

Any questions, let me know.

Jensen

He sighed after he hit Send then started composing an email to Fred.

To: Fred(fredcutie@jlc.com)

Hey

Regardless of what's going on personally, I wanted you to know she's hurting. Like bad. She called me by my first name. I'm going to check in on her once in a while under the guise of giving her updates on the search, but I'm not that kind of friend to her.

Thought you should know.

J

This time there was a heavier sigh as he hit Send. He ran a hand over his face then put the laptop to the side to return his attention to the searches.

The streets were still behaving themselves. She still had to go food shopping, but she was lucky in that Shadowcrest cleaned itself. She did have to do laundry though. Her house drew the line there. And she could still teleport, but she wasn't doing that today. Today she was going for a walk.

She was worried about Dinah. Her friend and collegue in fishnets was really hurting. Zee wanted her help her as much as possible, but when you're that hurt sometimes the best help was to be left alone. She didn't want to pressure Dinah at all so she stuck to calling her to check in and dropping by if she didn't answer.

Having a leader for the League was another thought occupying her mind. And Lindsey. He was usually in the back of her mind somewhere, and thoughts of him never failed to make her smile, but not today. Unfortunately, he would have to take a back seat to the other things that demanded her attention. She'd call him, but she didn't want to take her problems there.

Needless to say she was a bit distracted on her stroll.

Dinah was doing the avoiding thing for the most part. Zee had tried to call and she'd sent a text telling her friend that she just needed some time and would call when she was ready. She didn't want to talk to her friends right now, but she did want to keep busy. Which meant that she'd been spending a lot of time working on getting the shop fixed up. She was currently sweeping up the glass and soon she would be installing the new windows that had just been delivered. Unlike the last time the shop had gotten trashed when the materials to fix it up had just magically appeared, Dinah had had to wait for everything to be delivered.

But it was here now, and working with her hands was exactly what she needed.

Working with her hands and... answers, really. She needed answers. She wanted to know what had happened to Jake. She needed to know if he had made it back home-even if she dreaded the confirmation of that news.

She knew how his story turned out. She knew that if he'd made it back home, he didn't have long before his death.

She knew all that.

But she still needed to know. Not knowing was driving her crazy.

Somewhere in the middle of sweeping up the last of the glass, it hit her. There might be someone in the City who could answer her questions. Someone who had shown up when they'd needed him most. She still didn't know if he was a god-or God, capital G, or just a guy with god-like abilities. She really didn't know what to believe in that.

She also didn't know how to get ahold of him, and she wasn't usually much for praying.

All the same, she did say a little prayer. She wasn't sure if she should say it silently or out loud. And she wasn't really sure if she was wasting her time or not.

"Um, Jesse. If you're out there, I could really use someone to talk to right now. I suppose if you are around, you're probably busy with more important things. Assuming you can hear me at all. But if you can hear me and you're not too busy... I could really use your help."

A tear slipped down her cheek as she admitted out loud that she needed help, but she just swiped at it and went back to sweeping. She didn't expect an answer, but she'd tried anyway.

Lois was not amused. At all. She'd spent the last few weeks reading all of the comics she could at the library. And watching the movies. And the TV show.

This was all...

Clark was an alien? Who flew around wearing his underwear outside his pants? And she was supposed to fall in love with him?

Which was all secondary to the fact that she was an actual freaking comic book character.

What had Arthur said-the ideal of a determined female journalist?

And apparently the dumbest person on Earth because nearly every version had her fooled by a simple pair of glasses.

Glasses. How dumb did they think she was?

Or worse, if one of those was her supposed future if the City hadn't shanghaied her, how dumb was she?

Everything was topsy turvy. Everything.

She was still keeping on top of her assignments and she'd gotten a front row seat to a nice riot instead of a press conference. It had given her another front page headline, though she wasn't happy about the state of fear that everyone in the City was in. She didn't know exactly where the Justice League had been lately, but she had a feeling that the mayor's anti-heroes stance had cowed them to some extent.

Which also didn't make her happy.

All in all, she was a little bit cranky as she hit the streets to interview random citizens for her follow-up article on the state of the City. She intended to get genuine man-on-the-street reactions to everything that was going on at the moment so she could piece together something on the current mood of the City. She also planned to slip in questions to find out how the citizens felt about the heroes who had taken down King Kong and the mayor's treatment of said heroes.