The Universe's Mixer

The late afternoon was balmy, even pleasant, but to Dick, who had been running, leaping, fighting and lifting the entire day, it was unbearably hot and sticky. The sun glared down on him as it started to sink, and he was actually missing his suit, which though dark, actually breathed well and used small, weightless chemical packs to regulate temperature. Dick hauled his single remaining crutch up off the ground and hooked it on the end of the fire escape, looking down as a clowder of cats streaked through the alley below, hissing to themselves as they bounded and twisted. "Always wanted to use 'clowder,' in a sentence," Dick commented to himself, tearing a piece of his shirt into a long stripe so he could bind the wound on his arm. This would probably only stop the bleeding at best; the bite was deep and ugly, courtesy of what he could have sworn was a raccoon.

His leg wasn't holding up all that well, and he was lucky that the dog he'd first come across that morning had decided to bite the crutch on his other side instead of his leg. He'd been helping people get to higher, safer ground all day, moving over the roofs as only he or one of his trained kind could; he'd managed to avoid getting bit right up until about ten minutes ago, and he was still cursing the mistake. He took in his breath in a long hiss as he tried to get the bleeding to stop, and looked around into the windows of the building behind him. He might have to break into one and find something to clean the wound with, or this was going to get ugly fast. "Wonder what a bunch of raccoons are called."

Dinah crouched on the edge of a four story building, surveying the alley below. She was waiting for her target for questioning for the night to appear. She stifled a yawn and did her best to keep herself awake. It was difficult to make sleep a priority and it was especially difficult to get any sleep at the Clocktower, which was so empty without Jake.

At least when she'd been able to go to Harry's, she'd gotten a little bit more sleep. But that was out of the question until Murphy found her place.

So, Dinah was more than a little on edge. She was probably more trigger happy than she should be at the moment.

Another day, another trip into the library. Hannibal found that he couldn't stay away for very long. Even if it hadn't been filled with books about various people he met around the city, it was still filled with more books than he'd ever imagined in his life. That alone would have had him coming back again and again. He was determined to read every book in this place, and that would be a feat, he knew. It seemed like every day there were more of them. More shelves to hold them. More rooms to contain the shelves.

As it was, he really enjoyed looking to see if any of the new people he met came from books like he did. It was a little bit of cheating, he supposed, knowing that this was here. Being able to discover anything he wanted about certain members of the new society. Not sharing that fact with anybody else.

At first, it was all like usual. Smile at the clerk at the front counter. Nod slightly to those who he passed and saw on a regular basis because they, too, were lovers of the library. Making his way to the computer terminals to look up a name or a place.

But this time he was struck by a brief flash of red hair. It shouldn't have been unusual, really. It wasn't as if there were no redheads where he came from. But today, it felt as if his heart skipped. And that, well. That was new. That didn't happen all the time. Hannibal's heartbeat generally stayed the same all the time. Why should red hair spark it?

To find out, he sought out the source, the woman who it was attached to. Popping around the corner of a stack and seeing her face. One look. That's all there was before his heart felt like it fell into his stomach.

Oh, he knew it was absurd. He loved River. River was where home was. River held his heart. But this. He didn't know how to explain it. For once in his life he was without descriptive ability. He felt like he needed to be near her. Needed to touch her. Run his fingers through that hair.

Absurd.

Hannibal cleared his throat to get her attention.

Elle wasn't a fan of snow, or water in general when it wasn't in shower or pool form. Rain made it hard for her to do things she liked to do, and snow was just as bothersome. Right now she wanted the comforts, small they may be, of her own personal apartment. She had meant to try and call the company, but what her cellphone did not allow was those calls. Apparently she was nowhere and somewhere at the same time. The snow kept falling and moving through it was getting to be more than just a feat. She might have to try and swim through it. She tried to melt it with a zap, but since she was a twinge wet from it it just back fired. With a little cry and kept going.

She hated this place now. Hated it. Elle stormed forward, she needed to get inside, and dry and figure this out quick. Survival skills she did have, trained as she was. She missed her father. She only knew one person here and he was a runner. She needed Nathan, or maybe Peter. They could fly. She could use someone who could fly.

Ha, leather uniforms. Made her think of superman rather than the Petrelli's.

Elle finally came face to face, literally, with a glass door. How the hell had she ended up here. She pulled with some difficulty and finally wedged it open enough to make it inside. It looked like a gas station, yes, that was what it was. She pulled the door shut from the cold and let her teeth chatter. She hopped up onto the counter, not wanting to explore yet. No one seemed to be around. Fine. Maybe she'd just light this place on fire. She looked at her hands again, she was still wet. Had to dry first.

The city sucked.

Barbara looked at the rack of pamphlets the cat had led her to. They were bright and kitschy, like something out of the 1950's archives at the Gotham Public Library. New to the City? one of them proclaimed, We've got all the information you need!

She glanced at the back cover of the pamphlet before flipping it open. From the amount of text spread through the pages, it looked like she was going to need a lot of information. It took her ten minutes to read the booklet from cover to cover, and another five to complete processing it. Okay. I've walked into another dimension of some sort. This could be amazing. She dropped the pamphlet into her purse. The sheer possibilities!

It didn't take Barbara long to check in at the front desk of the shelter; she would only be staying for one night after all. They didn't ask her for identification, possibly because many people who ended up in this City might not have one on them. The shelter looked lived-in without being unsanitary, but Barbara was mostly just thankful for the warmth. A quick glance at the clock in the lobby told her she had arrived in the middle of the night, so she padded across the room with the beds to an empty bottom bunk.

But Barbara was far too excited to sleep. She tip-toed out of the room into the common area, in the hopes that someone else would be awake and up for conversation out there.

Barbara loosened the scarf around her neck slightly as she left the library. It wasn't as cold outside as it had been when she had come into work, and between the sweater, the jacket and the pea-coat, she was more than warm enough. The walk to her father's place (yes, Barbara still lived at home at almost-twenty-one) was less than ten minutes long, so she didn't bother taking a layer off. Barbara wondered idly whether her father, deeming it unlikely as it was only six o'clock, and he had three underworld cases to supervise. She felt a little guilty being happy about the Commissioner being at work late, but it was the perfect time for her to go help Bruce Wayne as Batgirl.

She was too preoccupied with imagining possibilities for what she'd be doing tonight to notice the slight shift in the air around her. A gust caught her from behind, blowing her long ponytail forward and around her face. A light in one of the windows of the apartments next to her caught her eye. She had walked this street twice a day everyday for the last three years, but she had never noticed that odd orange light, or the arches around those windows, or the molding between floors.

Wait a minute. Where was she? This wasn't the way she usually went home. Barbara wasn't the type to get lost no matter how distracted she got, so being in unfamiliar territory, no matter how subtle, was starting to weird her out. She decided to walk to the street corner and read the sign, just so she could get a better grip on where she was. Impatient to find her bearings, Barbara half-jogged to the street corner, only to find that there were no street signs. To make things worse, none of the other buildings around her looked familiar either.