The Universe's Mixer

Fresh from her escape through the broken window, Beauty all but fled the scene of the bar fight and headed straight for where she last saw the Police station. Jennifer Government, Jennifer Government, she repeated to herself, and as she ran into the upcoming intersection, she stopped long enough to note the cross streets, then added them to her litany of things to be repeated and remembered.

Heart still racing, throat still clogged with fear, she sped onward toward her goal. If she was reading the signs correctly and remembering her way around the City, she had but a few more turns to make. People were staring at this woman running breakneck through the streets -- but she didn't care. She'd left her savior in the middle of a mess, and her savior had asked for her help. Beauty wouldn't stop until she'd gotten Jennifer the help she'd asked for.

At the next corner, she turned -- and there it was, the City Department. She didn't slow as she raced for the steps, for the door.

The City, Erik quickly discovered, had given him more than just a face. Apparently, this time around, he was also the City Opera House manager. Legitimately. Without coercion, theatrics, or bumbling idiots in the manager's office. He had arrived. And he had been immediately treated by the whole of the staff with deference and respect.

Even during the rosy time spent in Mazenderan, none had treated him with the type of respect he was given now. Fear, yes. Horror, yes. But never the sort of respect that the City Opera crew were showing him. This was the sort of respect that he'd seen master stonemasons receive. Honest, genuine regard for work well managed. It seemed that he had a reputation already. It was not, however, the one he earned in any other time in his life. This one was...

It was altogether maddening, learning this new role. It was the role he'd always secretly wanted -- the well-renowned, eccentric genius who deigned to take on the role as the Opera House manager -- but he never had believed he could ever attain it. Not with his deformity. Not with his heart so twisted by his hatred and fear and loathing of humanity. And his heart was twisted, even now. Even now.

But Erik also knew when to retain what was his. Now was such a time as that. And so, he worked relentlessly for the first two weeks, and worked his staff mercilessly in the process, until he knew exactly what state the City Opera House was in and where he needed to pull in new talent. It didn't take long for people to start asking questions. Billboards, flyers, advertisements -- all suggested a dramatic change in the City Opera House leadership, and the more rumors flew from the mouths of the Opera House workers, the more requests for interviews came in to Erik's office. He refused all of them, discontent with the thought of spending time yammering with an investigator who should have enough sense to stay out of his way.

And when he was done with his work every night, one of his personal assistants drove him in a motorized carriage to a mansion in the northern corner of the City -- a corner that others whispered had never before contained this mansion until Erik arrived. Apparently, his darkly-earned spoils from his past life had translated to a wealthy living here in the City. Erik could not complain.

But all of this was foreign, new, and uneasy to him. It would take some getting used to.

Tonight, he eyed another written note from an assistant -- another petition for an interview. This one, his assistant noted, was special. This one, his assistant noted, would garner a great amount of respectable publicity for the Opera House. And his Opera House needed patrons, he knew. Erik fingered the paper on his desk, then against his better judgment, scrawled in cramped and sharp letters, his grudging acceptance.