The Universe's Mixer

Fred paced slowly back and forth. She still couldn't believe that they were being forced to do that. How could the City actually think that it could have that much control? Actually Fred knew exactly how. The City could do almost anything it wanted, and she got tired of sometimes. Though it did make for an interesting life, sort of. She sighed softly, pacing again.


The brainy scientist had agreed to show Jensen the ropes, but she didn't think that they'd take a long time. He was smart; he'd broken into the system after all - of course, it had been with the City's help. But, Jensen had actually kept her very busy, extremely busy, and she still didn't feel like she had done enough. At least he'd be able to close up any other leaks; he'd be ready for other people to try to take things over. Yet, Fred still felt like she could have done more, that she had failed somehow in protecting the Tower.

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Fred had been woken from a somewhat pleasant sleep by knocking upstairs. The knocking was rather demanding, and she was a little afraid that it would break something soon. She grabbed a robe, put on her slippers, and headed upstairs to find a rather large gruff looking man banging at the office outer door. She opened it and didn't get a chance to say anything. The man shoved paper at her and walked away with a grunt. She looked from the large man to the paper.

"But he said it was okay." She was more than a little confused.

Hours later she was sitting in an appointed room in a building she'd only passed by but never entered. City Courts. She was being sued. The room was seen as neutral territory. It looked like some room she'd seen on tv, when she had one that worked. She expected some really nice looking lawyers to come in to tell her what was going on. Maybe it was some weird joke. Maybe Jensen had broken into the court system and put out the summons. It was to get back for the rough handling?

She sat there in a nice skirt and sweater set. She had dressed up a little to look presentable. She didn't know who her lawyer would be, it was court appointed? She thought people usually picked their own lawyers when they were being sued. Didn't they see judges or something too? Let's just say this didn't seem right to her and her limited experience with courts and lawyers - it was all tv based.

"Jake Jensen vs. Winifred 'Fred' Burkle, Dinah Lance. Sexual Harassment, suing for emotional and physical abuse." Fred's nose wrinkled. "I didn't even think he knew who she was. This just don't make any sense." She wasn't even certain the summons looked right. Someone was playing at someone, surely.

He was cuffed to a chair by two pretty women after they had drugged him then undrugged him. Normally, this might be a dream come true for Jensen, but this was an interrogation. They hadn't gotten around to the actual torture but he did have one of them rifling through his pants. That counts!

"All right, look." He gave them both a bland smile. "We all know where the drive is. There is only one way it's coming to light. There are three choices here. Fred here can continue pawing my lap which don't think I don't appreciate even if it is a little rougher than I prefer, but I'm open to experimentation in being a bottom. Fishnets there could go after the drive, but I think that's rougher than any man can handle. Or," he jangled the cuff against the arm of the chair.

Fred had slept on it like Jack had asked. She'd eaten on it, walked on it, and was now computing on it. Her walking away wasn't something she took lightly, but she wasn't sure what she really wanted when it came to Mayor Jack Heart. If he called, it was easy to ignore, which was cheating. The pager was easily put to the side and forgotten, especially when she was busy doing something else. Fred was busy working on reconfiguring the comms for the soon to be Justice League, City chapter. Or JLC, just seemed a more efficient moniker.

Fred's fingers flew once more over the many keyboards, pulling up schematics, networks, files. Her mind buzzed with plans and information. Thinking about the future for superheroes and the ones they'd save was helping in putting off a decision she really did have to make. She'd thought she'd made it, but the talk with Logan, what there was of it, had nudged the decision from definitely made to not so sure. It was a little aggravating.

"Not like I ever had to deal with this problem before. You'd think that this sort of thing would be easy, but it isn't? Sure, I can recite pi out to how many places? A bunch. 3.141592653589793..." Her voice trailed off as she continued to recite and look for something in the files. What was it again?

"But then he shows up. All pretty. Charles had been pretty, Wesley too. Only they weren't Jack. Jack's pretty, and Eric. Eric." There was another issue that she really did not want to think about. No one knew about Eric, her secret. "And, you're talking to yourself." A pause. "Who else are you gonna talk to? Not like you can just ring up Bruce Wayne and ask him if he'd like to get a coffee." Another pause. "Right? No, that'd be rude. Can't act like you know who he is, right?"

"...whoa." Jensen looked around himself at the kind of posh, upscale shopping center. There were more than a couple of reasons he was out of place. The least of which was the pink Petunias tshirt he was wearing, but it could be the gun he had in his hand, the comm headset in his ear. Y'know. The little things. Hastily he tucked the gun into his pants in the small of his back and touched the button on the comm bud. "Clay. Clay it's Jensen and this really isn't funny. Clay?"

He gave his best charming smile to a middle aged woman who was walking by giving him the stink eye and replayed the last twenty minutes of his life. Miami. Shipyards. A drug cartel expecting a shipment of the latest product, a portion of the proceeds of which were finding their way into certain state government officials. But the last expected payment had gone awry (Thank you, Jensen. Oh, you're very welcome! No, really. That redirection of funds by scattering it into the public school systems of Miami-Dade county was the most beautiful piece of genius we have ever seen. Stop it! You're embarrassing me!) so the governor himself was going to be at the docks to meet the shipment to find out why. Threats to be delivered and all that. Meanwhile the Losers were set up to take down both the drug runners and expose the governor.

There was a sleek black car. A forklift moving a load of cargo boxes. Some south of the border looking men, a well dressed white bread guy getting out of the car and it was show time. Jensen and Pooch moved into position. Pooch went around the freight container first then Jensen...only when he rounded the corner he came out from a set of planters with artfully trimmed topiary trees, gun aimed on some socialites out buying new shoes with price tags in the triple digits. To say Jensen was confused would be a mild understatement.

"...Clay?"