The Universe's Mixer

The City had it's merits. It had dark little corners that most people did not care to notice. It was best for most people to ignore them because sometimes the little dark corners looked back.

It was one of these dark corners that found Walter amusing himself. A young rail thin man moved cards rapidly on a cardboard box that was set upon a garbage can. 2 marks watched him intently betting 20$ a pass. "Follow the queen, and get the green!" the jumpy man hawked to the crowd, "Find the honey and get my Money!" He moved the cards rapidly as the crowd bet, rarely winning. Walter assumed the weed eater that was running the scam had a shill working with him as well.

"Where's the red queen?" he asked and flipped over a black jack. Walter answered "in your shirt sleeve" to himself, not loud enough to hear. He had spent a life time following a Red King, so why not find a crimson queen. The man in Black spotted a fading tagline of grafitti "Bango Skank was here!" and smiled to himself. This place had possibility.

( Forgive me Father, for I have sinned. It's been months since my last confession... )

Angel stood over The City, looking down from the edge of a tall building staring over and ever changing skyline. He learned forward with his hands on the ledge, face molded into a perpetual frown. To his right was a large, black bird perched next to him. Angel had been talking incessantly for about twenty minutes. It felt good to babble. Not that he didn't occasionally babble to his co-workers, but this was the sort of thing he liked to keep to himself.

The former vampire's brows knitted together in thought as he continued to speak: "I just feel like I've been phoning it in. I mean sure, most the gang is back together and all of them seem okay, but that just makes it feel more like a trick somehow. I mean, just like that, everything we ever accomplished doesn't mean anything anymore? Everything we've sacrificed is wiped clean? New City, no hell dimensions? There's got to be a catch.

"And then there's that Sam kid. I mean, he seems like a smart, perfectly capable guy. And Fred just shoves him on me like she wanted me to mentor him or something. Not that wouldn't want to, but I don't even know if he really needs it and even if he did that's kind of a big responsibility, demon heritage or not. You don't have to have demon in you to turn into an asshole. Sure we might have some things in common, being a former vampire and all but that doesn't automatically make me the right person.

"Then there's Buffy. I can't just walk back into her life and say Hey, I'm human now! Can I take you out to dinner? Our relationship was based more on being in constant danger together. What if I'm not exciting enough anymore? I'd probably just get in the way. Anita seemed alright, but it's kind of the same story."

Angel frowned.


ooc note: This is a space holder for when Nat is no longer on hiatus.

The snow was really quite lovely, it was also nearly the only thing that reminded her of home. Everything here was so strange, carriages that ran themselves without benefit of horses, people who dressed in so little as to be parading around in their underclothes and yet it was not remarked on. Women of grown age with hair as short as a man's.
It was simply not at all what she was used to but this, the falling white, it was like home. At least at first it had been. It just kept falling. Marian had taken to the street when she had trouble opening her door, she walked down the road, soon having to trudge through banks of snow up to her shin. Everywhere looked as blanketed in white as everywhere else and soon enough she could not tell from which direction she had come.
All these buildings looked so similar, with the temperature dropping and no end to the snowfall she had no choice but to seek refuge somewhere. By the time she fought her way up the steps to the nearest door the snow had piled knee deep. She had to shovel it away with her hands just to get to the door properly, leaving quite the trail behind her in the mounds of white.
Marian swung the door open calling out to the interior. "Hello? Please forgive the intrusion, but ...I simply must come in from the cold. I will not misuse your hospitality for long." Marian stamped the snow off her shoes and shook it from her heavy woolen cloak. She stepped deeper into the home and was delighted to find a blanket draped over a chair. Used to harsh winters Marian wrapped herself up and curled up in the chair, eyes peering out the window, yet more of that expensive clear glass that seemed everywhere. Beyond the pane the snow continued to fall.

To say that Fred was a little unsure about this was an understatement. She hadn't really thought he'd agree to the job offer, and she knew well she didn't exactly have the right to offer a job to anyone. But, she also knew that Sam needed to do something, and that Angel understood that need. Heroes were heroes, and Sam and Angel had that much in common.

Now, not wanting to send either male into the fray, because she had a bad feeling there would be something of a fray, or at least a fracas, she decided that she should be there, at least to make introductions anyway. She was even pleased that she didn't have to bring Angel all the way to the Hospital - Sam got permission to leave not long after the coffee. Maybe it was magic coffee, or maybe the time dilation that occurred in the City were enough to create a better environment for quick healing - she was leaning to the second theory.

So, there she was with Sam, looking for Angel.

"Angel?" She didn't see the new receptionist, but that didn't mean the woman wasn't around somewhere. "Angel? I have someone I'd like you to meet?"

She mumbled much softer, "Someone you already met, but now he's alive and can talk fine..." Hopefully human Angel didn't hear that, and Sam was too tall to catch it.

The newspaper ad red like this: WANTED. Receptionist for private investigation firm. If interested please submit resume in person to the offices of Angel Investigations. In a city where the roads constantly shifted, no address was necessary. Unfortunately the pool of applicants were reduced entirely to whomever The City decided to present.

There's a room filled with 500 rare and expensive birds. They all need to be caged, individually, and carefully. No feather must be out of place. No bird harmed. Magic doesn't work on them. There are perches high in the room that the birds can get to easily, and the birds themselves have rather sharp beaks.

Angel walked The City, ego bruised as badly as his body. Curing Sam, being part of a team and no longer in Hell didn't feel as good as it should have. Angel was secretly jealous of Sam's curse; the abilities it gave the young hunter meant that Sam would never be obsolete. In Hell, the healing spells and other magic Wesley used to keep up vampire appearances might have been slowly killing Angel but it at least enabled him to continue posing as a champion.

The former vampire didn't know who he was or what he was going to do with himself any more.

The sight of his old basement apartment and office building surprised him. Angel entered the original sight of Angel Investigations. Everything was just as he'd left it before Wolfram & Hart had blown it to pieces. Even the elevator which lead to what Doyle had dubbed The Bat Cave, a very dated computer, the work mini-fridge stocked with butcher's blood, the receptionist desk Cordelia used...

Angel frowned.

( Read more... )

So this was what it felt like to be one of Buffy's friends? Angel hadn't really gotten it until now but he (almost) had a new appreciation for Xander. Without the powers or the magical support, Angel felt like just another white hat trying not to get himself killed. The former vampire with a soul never posed as bait before. At least not like this. Anita, champion of another world, was somewhere just out of Angel's sight. Just as well. It allowed Angel to mope a bit, something he hadn't had time for while LA had been submersed in a Hell dimension.

"Here zombie, zombie, zombie..." The eye brows of Angel's brooding forehead went up as he scoped out the streets in the direction that the zombie with powers was last seen. Sam's brother had gotten in the way last time and Angel wondered what sort of person the zombie was when he wasn't craving flesh. At least now Angel could punch the jerk in the face that had cracked a few of his ribs. Not that Sam could help it anymore than Angel could have as Angelus, but at least now he didn't have a random redneck threatening him with a shot gun for trying to do his job.

Said redneck did have a very nice car. As evil as Wolfram & Hart had been, Angel missed the cars. A lot. Of course now that he could actually enjoy having the top down in the middle of the day, it figured Angel no longer owned a 1967 Plymouth GTX convertible. Or a dragon. Dragons made even better rides. How many people could say their ride breathed fire?

"Zombie? Oh Mr. Zombie...? Come out, come out wherever you are...?"

Anita has literally spent a month trapped inside her apartment. This was not her idea of fun. Not at all.

She had woken up that morning, she later found out it was the first day of the zombie plague, planning on spending her day filing through paperwork at the police station. Maybe something exciting would happen for once. She hadn't had a chance to scare anyone for days. She felt out of practice.

She absentmindedly noticed it was darker than usual in her room, but didn't realize yet it was because all her windows had disappeared. As in, gone. Closed up.

She wandered into the kitchen and opened the fridge. Now the missing windows were starting to break through that early morning, no-coffee-yet fog.

Anita walked with her mug of coffee out to the living room with a sinking feeling. No door outside. Shit. What was she going to do?

Obviously the City wanted her kept inside for some reason. She decided to put on the news to try and see what was going on. Of course, since half the City was busy getting zombified and the other half was running away like crazy, the news from the City suffered a bit.

Suffice it to say that a lot of time was spent watching HBO, reality tv shows (which somehow mad' the City;s cut for acceptable viewing) and opening the fridge to see if more food would magically appear every time it was opened. It usually worked. She now knew way too much about designing clothes, being a model, what an amuse bouche is and how far Survivors were really willing to go to backstab each other.

Anita was about ready to try punching a hole through the wall when the news started broadcasting again. She watched the show with growing interest, and then, understanding.

These zombies came about through a disease, not through death and necromancy reanimating the bodies. This was a whole new world. Anita figured there were three options if she had been out and tried to use her powers to lay the zombies back in their graves, as she had been taught.

1. It wouldn't work and she would be attacked.

2. It would work and she would have laid to rest those who were not truly dead, leading to big effing problems.

3. It would backfire and she would wind up with an undead army.

No matter which option would have happened, the City did not want it. So Anita was effectively put in a cage for the entire duration of ZombieFest.

Shrugging on her black suede winter coat, Anita cursed and muttered under her breath while opening the much-missed doorknob.

"Just my fucking luck. Something preturnatura finally happens in this damn City and I get purposely kept out of it. I hate this life."

Demon blood infected a human body in much the same way a virus did. It took over some things and warped others, changing the mind and its capabilities with a decidedly inhuman potency. No one knew if it affected the soul or not, but it was impossible not to see what a small amount of demon blood could do to a human--and what, in turn, that human could do to demons. That virus made angels quake, and it was something that no mortal or immortal being understood completely.

The virus that killed Sam was something else. It was, in some ways, more potent than the demon blood. It moved quicker and inhibited action rather than encouraged it. However, being dead did not stop Sam from being part demon. Indeed, the two viruses warred with each other in such a way that the thing that had been Sam Winchester was now a thing apart. It did not have identity. Being dead, it did not have memory, either. However, it had something its fellows did not.

Those others did not truly have a consciousness (if one followed the Cogito ergo sum theory: I think, therefore I am) because those zombies did not think. Instead, they hungered. To go from point A to point B, they would follow a straight line until stopped, be it through rivers, over obstacles, into buildings, ad nauseam. The thing that used to be Sam Winchester also hungered, but it hungered so much more that it was willing to wait, to focus, until the demon and the virus wanted the same thing.

A glazed, dead eye turned and watched the black car speed away without recognition. The other eye did not move, stained with red and half closed. Cracked blood caked that side of its face, and colorful smears of blue imprinted the edge of its mouth into a permanent sneer. Slowly but implacably, the form limped forward. Its right leg did not work like its left, but that did not matter as long as it, as a whole, could move forward. It followed the black burnt rubber trail of the car, and when that ran out, it kept going, lurching, dragging, forward and on, following a trail that the hunger made bright and tempting.

There were others too. They did not follow him or the trail. Instead, they moved as water, going where the buildings separated into spaces and stopping when they were blocked to flow around or over. They came after the first thing because its path was the easiest.

The thing that had been Sam Winchester did not go around. It would not be blocked. It went through. An abandoned car lay askew in the road before it, and as the thing limped forward, the car screeched aside as if shoved by a giant invisible hand. Sparks flew from the friction of metal on pavement and singed the torn jacket on the thing's back. A flame caught, and it burned one jacket sleeve to ash in moments. Without warning, the flames went out, choked of oxygen in one potent shift of focus. Smoke curled up from the thing's charred arm and chest. It did not notice.

Now an instrument of simple and pure demonic purpose, it continued forward, hungry.

[OOC Note: This can be open, just don't completely destroy Sam in the physical way, please. Be aware this zombie is both relatively intelligent and telekinetic; he's got lots of other zombies with him, even if they aren't choreographed. xD]