The Universe's Mixer

Backdated to Christmas day and before this thread

Dinah kept herself busy on Christmas day. She had presents to deliver after all. She'd dropped in on a few of her friends and dropped off gifts. The peace offering that she'd brought to Beauty had been particularly well-received as the young woman had invited her in for tea. They might not see eye to eye on Eric, but Dinah felt bad for how she'd left their last conversation and she believed that Beauty truly did mean well.

One by one her gifts were delivered until she finally pulled her bike up the driveway to Wayne Manor. She hadn't forgotten the butler who was so much more. Not in the slightest. Alfred had been there for her through two very tough times since her time in the City. More importantly, he had been there for Jake. Dinah could never forget him on a holiday and she just hoped that he was enjoying a quiet Christmas off. After all, she knew that Zoe didn't live in the Manor and so she assumed that it was empty. She also wondered if perhaps the butler missed having people to tend to.

Neatly wrapped box in hand, Dinah rang the doorbell. She wondered if she should have called ahead. She had been wondering that on each of her stops throughout the day but she hadn't wanted to over-schedule Christmas. She had simply prepared herself to drop presents on doorsteps if she had to. Besides, she thought that surprise visits from friends might be a nice thing for this holiday.

The Batman watched this ginger-headed detective for three days and nights, establishing the man's routines and haunts, learning more about the man from his actions than from the facts he and Alfred uncovered about him. The man had been falsely accused, had served years of time for crimes he'd never committed. He'd come out of prison life and re-assimilated himself back into the police force. All these facts buried in the banks of his computer served as an excellent frame of reference -- but to know the man, to know if he could be trusted, to know if he could be used, required far more investigation.

At the end of the third day, when night settled in around the building where Charlie Crews worked, the Batman found himself waiting on the roof for the most of the building to empty, for most of the traffic to die. When it did, he dropped soundlessly onto the fire escape just outside the window closest to the office of the man he'd been surveiling. It took no time to move silently through the hall to the doorway of the office where Charlie Crews worked.

There were no fewer than five places for the Batman to disappear; it's why he chose this particular place to make his first appearance. But now was no time for hiding. Instead, he stepped silently into the office and waited for the man to turn. He was careful to keep his gloved hands open and relaxed at his sides.

Alfred made it clear that the Batman's responsibilities had been assumed by a remarkable woman - a veteran of a war far in the future. She was, from all accounts, a capable warrior and a fine strategist. Bruce's own research into the woman's history and background revealed few details. She was, apparently, a woman who valued her privacy. Bruce could understand that -- and even approve.

The white walls and polished steel of his office building winked at him as he passed under the stairwell door frame and onto the floor to which Alfred directed him. It was very quiet. Naturally, it was.

Resisting the urge to explore what this woman had done with an entire floor of the Wayne Enterprises building, Bruce crossed his arms and waited in front of the stairwell. Night was only 30 minutes away. Did she wear a utility suit similar to his own? Did she wear the hood and cowl? Had she made professional connections with the police force here, and was she aware of the Scarecrow and Riddler and Enigma inside these City walls?

The questions piled like bodies at a crime scene in front of him, slowly oozing importance into sticky puddles around his feet. Patience was a virtue hard won in him. He drew on it slowly, as a schoolboy would take his medicine. And he waited.

After weeks of practice and fine-tuning, the newest performance opened at the City Opera House. Unlike before, the star diva was Enigma, in the title role. Another bright point of the evening came from the inventive interpretation of the classical score from Dr. Hannibal Lecter, on piano.

Again, Opening Night came with its victory gala at the end of the performance. Again, the featured stars invited special guests, and again, the City Opera provided complimentary tickets to one Ms. Lois Lane and the City Mayor (plus 1, naturally). But the performance and gala were also open to all. And as the performance came to a close, the gala sprung to life downstairs in the Grand Foyer.

As Alfred navigated through the midnight Gotham streets, Bruce Wayne tugged his tie free of its collar. He'd left the ladies at the gala to enjoy themselves, after having given instructions to the staff at the hotel to quietly arrange for transportation to... wherever it was that they'd end up going after their revels were ended. There was work ahead of him, and he was eager to begin. Now that his duty as Bruce Wayne was complete, the night unfolded.

He rubbed the back of his neck briefly, but when he dropped his hand and looked up again, he wasn't in his car. Alfred wasn't driving. He was, in fact, at home in Wayne Manor, sitting instead in a chair -- a chair that he promptly overturned in his swiftness to stand. Before it fell, he caught the back and set it back under the table again. What had just happened? Had he been drugged?

He felt no side effects whatsoever. Pressing his back against the wall of his dining room, Bruce edged to the doorway and looked quickly around the corner. Nothing. No one. Cautiously, he slid into the next room and cleared it -- then the next -- then upstairs... his bedroom... his study. Nothing.

At last he called, tentatively, "Alfred?"

The man appeared a moment later, smiling. "Master Bruce? It's good to see you again." And for the next two hours, Alfred patiently explained just where he was.

Bruce expected there to be some kind of argument as he packed his things and signed the papers to hand Wayne Manor and all of his money off to Zoe. He expected to hear some kind of protest as he logged the keywords to change the voice recognition software from his voice to hers. He expected to be asked for last minute assurances as he set his copies of the keys down on his - not his anymore - desk.

But Alfred did none of that. For which Bruce was quite grateful. This was all hard enough as it was. He was walking away from the life that he'd constructed for himself. Walking away from everything that he knew.

He couldn't do it anymore.

Alfred had told him that Zoe had shown up. So at least Bruce didn't have to worry about things being okay with him gone. He was leaving everything in very capable hands. He thought about sticking around long enough to find out how she'd come to her decision, but in the end figured that it might be too painful for her to talk about.

So he left with his singular bag, and the new identity he'd set up for himself. A long hug for Alfred, and a last glance at the property.

Without a single doubt in his mind, Bruce Wayne faded into the City to become somebody else, and try to live a normal life.

Recent events, recent things that he'd read, recent everything that was going on in his life had gotten Bruce to thinking. It hadn't been particularly happy thinking, either. There was a lot of issue with what he wanted to do for this City that was his home now, and what he could do because of circumstances.

Too many people here knew him. Knew his life. His true identity. The people that he loved. Too many of those people were the bad guys. There was too much threat to himself and those he kept company with.

He had, in fact, come to something of a decision. But it didn't come down to a choice he could make. It all rested on the acceptance of another.

Bruce checked his watch and saw that it was about time for the training lesson today. Something that he'd gotten quite used to over the past few weeks. It was good to have somebody under his wing again - so to speak. Somebody to show things to, to teach. She was already pretty good at a lot of things. Bruce didn't agree with her penchant for guns, but he wasn't going to give her lectures about it. She was a grown woman, and he wasn't going to change her at this point. Though, he knew in all honesty that even if she'd been very young he could never have changed anything about her. She was very headstrong and very sure of her ideals and her way of things. He imagined that she always had been.

It was one of the many reasons that he liked her.

He looked up just as Alfred came through the door. "Miss Zoe to see you, sir. Should I ready the training room?"

"Please, Alfred. And send her in."

The streets were dark. A panic had not risen in The City from the Joker's little prank. Despite the fact that Batman had found some households with the threatened goods in them. The Smallpox was, indeed, on the toast in some of the toasters. Not all of them. The Diphtheria, it seemed only a randomized few had that. But it would spread, no doubt, if nothing was done about it. There was also a third seemingly ancient disease roaming through some of the homes, the Mumps, given by specialty wall hangings. Clearly chosen because of the absurdity of the name.

Bruce could envision Jack Napier saying it out loud over and over again to himself, giggling each time. Until his laughter rolled through the hallways of Arkham Asylum, bouncing off of the leaded mesh glass.

Perhaps that knowledge meant he was far too close to the Clown Prince of Crime. Knew too much about him and his ways. Walked too closely to the line of insanity and criminals.

It was surprisingly difficult to get people to part with their toasters. Even more so to get them to give up their loaves of bread. Not a lot of people were excited to find a giant black bat in their homes with scientific equipment, testing their air ducts, bread, toasters and home decor for disease.

Maybe he'd been out of the loop for far too long, or maybe it was just that nobody believed anybody would do something such as break into their homes for the sole purpose of putting smallpox in their toasters.

He was, admittedly, tired of The Joker's pranks.

Carefully, the almost-shadow figure of Batman lifted the window of the next house. His head was already inside, ready for the first part of the roll he would take silently into the kitchen.

Batman stood crouched at the edge of a building. He'd taken up patrolling again some time ago. Today seemed particularly special. In his mailbox at Wayne Manor, he'd gotten a very disturbing note. He knew the handiwork. He knew that he couldn't trust it to just be a prank. He wondered how many other people got the same thing.

Tim was gone. Had vanished again. Bruce was once again alone in the big house.

There'd been some activity in the Tower, but he had yet to check it out. He didn't want to get his hopes up that Barbara had returned just to find out that it was somebody else. He didn't know how anybody else could get in, but this place was strange. Things happened.

He needed to find Zoe. Needed to train her. He couldn't keep an eye on this entire city by himself, unfortunately. There were too many shifting streets, too many characters of ill repute walking around. Not enough police to pick up the slack. As far as he knew, there weren't any other vigilantes out there working, either.

Damn, he needed Barbara.

He'd let himself fall apart the last while. Everything had gone to the wayside. He'd given up the nightly rounds. He'd stopped monitoring the City. Stopped trying to discover who was out there, who he had to watch and who he could trust. He was pretty sure he'd let the last little bit of it slide away after Tim had died. When all the murders happened. The slip had started when he'd lost Max, and Babs. Clark. He'd let that all get to him.

He'd let a lot of things get to him.

Bruce Wayne was not the same man he'd been when he'd gotten here.

Robin had not wanted to let her go out alone, he worried overly much for her. But Marian insisted that she need some air some space. In reality she just needed time away from him. The more time she spent close to him the more she felt...the more she felt inclined to him. She had no idea how or why she was growing more attached to him but it had come to the point that even her dreams were filled with images of him some memories some possible portents of the future he foretold. She did not hate him, not by any means but this was all so overwhelming she needed time to cope with it, time to understand her own feelings and how things could proceed from here.

Robin had not pushed more on her, though his tiny shows of affection were far more effective than they had been upon his return from the Holy Land. Why her heart jumped when he took her hand, or her breath stilled when she turned to find his gaze lingering on her, were beyond her. Even more baffling was the fact that she had all but stopped chiding him about it. She was warming to him, she knew that much, but things were happening very fast and the recent appearance of a version of her home, set up to hold a half dozen people, well that had given her reason enough to need the time to think.

Walking in the fresh air, or as fresh as could be had in this city, had been bracing for her. It made her feel more at ease even if her surroundings were more than alien, walking was soothing and her newly gifted horse, which she needed to stable soon, was rejuvenating. Marian took her time on the ride, a long meandering ride through the park from whence she had originally emerged. Dark was beginning to set in when she hit one of the shadowy paths near the edge of the forest, where some prettily lit eatery sat in the park.

Marian allowed her gaze to leave the path as she looked on at the fancy dining place and the people who were seated nearest the garden path, a handsome man sat surrounded by pretty women in ornate jewels and not much else to speak of. Her low laugh at the pomposity of such a man who entertained such company was cut short by a thorn of some such jabbing into her thigh. She brushed it off and checked her skirt but could find no hole, as if it had dissolved off like mist. She frowned before turning back to the diners, this time her breath catching with a full on look at the man. He was...handsome. He was beautiful. Marian could not stop herself as she edged the horse closer over to the railed patio that housed this man of such noble countance that she felt she had to see him without the distance between them.

After all that had happened in The City in the past month or so, it was any wonder that her mind lingered on the visit that she was about to make. The scar on her face had healed, leaving an angry red scar. He still didn't know what had happened as far as she knew, although there were probably pictures involved. She needed to talk to Bruce. More than anything, she needed a friend.

She arrived at the manor and walked up to the door. Ringing the doorbell she could only hope that he was at home.

Alfred opened the door, and as always, showed no surprise that she was there. Alfred let her know that Bruce was in and showed her to the library. And there she sat, waiting for Mr. Wayne to arrive.

Jack wasn't the brightest bulb in the box. Ever. He tended to use words and phrases to make himself look smarter than he actually was, and unfortunately, managed to convince himself that he was rather intelligent. Trouble was, he was a bit on the dim side. Which is probably why he found himself leaning against a building, grinning like a fool that someone was obsessed enough with him to not go away.

( 'Ok, I get it, you like me. But haven't you heard of a shower?' )

Halloween.  Tony Stark's favorite time of the year.  The weather was perfect, not too hot or cold, trees around the city were changing colors.  And he had no reason in the world to complain here.  He and Pepper were together, and it'd been a blissful few weeks since their initial union.  For the first time in years, Tony could say he was happy and satisfied.

He'd sent out invitations city wide in hopes of drawing in the citizens to his home for him to have a chance to meet them.  He hadn't ventured out much since he'd been here, mostly because even if he was ever the social butterfly, Tony was too focused on fixing the once damaged relationship between him and Pepper.  Now that was all taken care of and here he stood in his bedroom putting on his costume.  He'd laid his choice of cstume out on Pepper's bed for her to put on, chosen since she'd lost to him in a little game they'd played to determine what they'd spend this night as.  It was custom tailored to fit her form perfectly, having taken the dress she'd worn for their first night together and used its measurements.

He stared at himself in the mirror, thinking that his goatee would make wearing the mask a little awkward at best, but he didn't care.  He thought since he should play the mysterious host of the night, that he should don the look of someone just as mysterious.  Taking a step back from the mirror, he attempted to twirl the cape, almost tangling himself up in it the first few times until he got the hang of it and smiled.  Affixing his mask to his face, he smirked as he gave his appearance one last once over.

The Phantom of the Opera was ready for his grand entrance.

[ooc: If you're character is showing up, feel free to start your own thread under this.  Tony will attempt to greet everyone but might not for getting sidetracked by others.  If you plan to crash the party, I will start a separate thread after a day or two to give people a chance to do regular party stuff.  Have fun, and don't be shy with your characters!  This is a very social log!]

It felt like forever since he'd been out here, like this.

Watching everything. Waiting. But it had felt fruitless before now. Bruce realized that he'd given up. Barbara gone. Maxine gone. Everybody gone. Gone back to where they'd come from, was all that he could assume. Everything had changed very quickly. Everybody had vanished on him. Clark had gotten himself turned to stone. He hadn't known what to do.

Never before had he given up as completely as he had the past few months.

But now?

Now a good chunk of the City had been murdered, brought back, but murdered. Now Tim was back. Now Jack Napier - The Joker - was back in his life, making his subtle threats with giant penises on the front of his buildings. Now there had been sightings of Harley Quinn and even Poison Ivy.

Now things were turning back to the way that they had been when he'd been really needed. Before everything had fallen down.

He felt like he needed to reconnect with this city. With this place that had become his home. It needed him again. He needed to stop feeling sorry for himself, stop missing the scores of friends and compatriots that he'd lost in the big shift, and do his job.

This was his job.

Sitting above the City, keeping a watch. Protecting. This was him. Bruce Wayne was the mask. Batman was his essence. He'd changed, sure. People had gotten close to him. He'd allowed that. He'd opened himself up. And he found he'd be willing to do it again. He was changed, and yet different. He knew in his heart that this man that he was now would never have been had he not been pulled here. He wasn't sure if that was good or bad. But it was what it was, and he had to live with it. Accept it.

He was Batman. And The City was his home.

Life was hard. Zoe knew that. Nothing was just given in life. Zoe knew that too. Life could flip in an instant, and the survivors picked themselves up and went on. Zoe knew as much as lived that. But, being lost, Zoe had never really been lost in her life. Yes, she'd lost her location; she'd even come close to dying. But, she'd never not known what to do before.

She had hoped that maybe finding Mal would have given her a direction. He wanted to fix Serenity, but the warrior woman doubted that Serenity would fly anytime soon; if she did fly, she wasn't going where Mal wanted her to go. Zoe didn't want to go back to the Black if it meant losing Serenity's true pilot. She didn't want to stay on this rock if it meant she could die or lose her husband and nothing would...could be done about it.

Zoe Washburne did the one thing she knew she could do; she started moving. Sometimes, staying still was the best choice; perhaps, if she sat still long enough, the person she was looking for would actually come by. Zoe wasn't in the mood to stay still, and how she ended up where she ended up, she couldn't guess. Although, it had been the last time she'd actually laughed, and understood the world.

Wayne Industries. The penis was gone, but she smiled anyway. The tactics, Zoe could certainly understand.

Bruce sprang out of bed, breathing hard. The last thing he remembered was Tim going down. The sight of blood. And then nothing.

Nothing.

He very distinctly remembered the nothing that was there. The not living. Not being alive. It hadn't been a dream, as much as he wanted it to be, and the look on Alfred's face when he encountered his loyal friend at the door of the bedroom told him that he had, in fact, been dead.

Which meant that Tim had been dead too.

Bruce wondered if Tim had remained that way while he, Bruce, had somehow managed to pull a Lazarus and was breathing now as if nothing had gone wrong.

He found himself sprinting toward the boy's room, calling his name as he moved. Hoping that Tim would pop out of somewhere before he could get to the bedroom door.

"Tim!" One final time as he got his hand around the knob and burst in.

Now this was different. Not on the street or on a rooftop or in the park, but in a house. And one hellava house too. I looked for signs of security but it seems The City took care of that for me, at least for a little while.

What luck, finding them both, here together.

Resting the rifle on the wall, the target was easily spotted in the scope. The older one had been targeted first, but the younger moved in the way. That would just be his bad luck.

Take a breath. Hold it.

Fire.

Quickly I recovered, focused on the goal. And found the other. Didn't want to let too much time pass or give him too long to get away.

So I didn't.

Take a breath. Hold it.

Fire.


His fancy cars wouldn't help him now. Nor would his money or his technology or skills. It would help either of them at all.

"What do you mean by 'Jack Napier is dead', Alfred?" Bruce had come home after finishing his date with Aeon to all kinds of bizarre and interesting news, not to mention news of murders happening all over the city. But this took the cake.

"I mean, sir, that he's dead. He was the first victim in this rash of new murders." Alfred stood, watching Bruce, an eyebrow lifted. Curious to see what would happen next.

"So he draws a giant penis on my building and then gets killed." Bruce couldn't help but feel like it was some natural retribution for everything The Joker had done to him over the years, including his time here. The Joker here was, quite regrettably, much more violent. He had his moments back home, yes, but something about the City had brought out the worst in him.

"Well." Bruce wasn't sure what to say.

"There's something else, sir."

"Something like what?"

"On my routine today I discovered there are things in Master Tim's room again."

"What kind of things?"

"Stuff, sir. Like things belonging to him."

Bruce stopped thinking about everything else. He looked directly at Alfred. His old friend would never joke about anything like that. Even so, the look on his face solidified it.

"Is it..."

"The same Tim? I can't tell, sir. None of the things are age restrictive."

"Is he..."

"Actually here? Not that I've seen, sir. There's been no show of him on the property at all from what I've seen on the cameras. But he's here somewhere, sir."

He was flying low over the City's streets, catching the attention of the occasional dog walker or snowcone-eating child as he listened for problems on the evening air. Ever since he was released from his stone prison, he hadn't wanted to stop moving. Sleeping was so impossible that it didn't even cross his thoughts. There were several times already that he found himself tempted to fly straight at the sky despite the knowledge that he couldn't get out of the atmosphere to view the Earth. This wasn't Earth. But there was nothing Clark enjoyed more than ripping through the air with a cape on his back.

Superman's restlessness had resulted in a severe drop in the City's crime tonight. He was sure he'd been recorded on at least eighteen different cellphones, which was an odd thought for a reporter, not to mention the sightings by various police officers. If he kept it up, Superman knew he'd be on the frontpage for the next week or so. That didn't give him much time to see Bruce before the billionaire got offended.

The crude S signal in the sky was funny the first night it went up. He'd been ready to fly over there immediately, just to make some wisecrack about why Batman's signal was so much better looking than his own, but found he couldn't. The banter was appealing, if only because it would annoy Bruce. Clark didn't go because found there was a bitterness in him. Not over the signal, but over the fact that it'd taken a young witch whom he didn't know to bring him out of stone. He was going to be grateful to her for a long time. He had already set the idea in his mind to help her, somehow. From what Clark could tell, he had been in stone for a very long time. A whole network of superheroes had existed here, who insisted that he trust them, and yet none of them came to get him out of there. Not even the one he'd stood in front of to save.

It wasn't like him to be angry. So he kept flying, hoping the emotion would go away.

Superman had turned toward the docks when he saw the signal break through the clouds again. This was the fourth night. He tried to imagine Batman waiting up on a rooftop, perhaps in a lawn chair, next to a big spotlight. He smiled.

Alright, so it was still funny.

He made a sharp turn and shot off toward the rooftop of Wayne Tech, where the light was coming from.

How had he agreed to this?

How had this seemed like it would ever be a good idea? Somebody after a meeting had told him they had a perfect match for him, and he'd said -rather offhandedly- Yeah, sure, set it up, and then he'd completely forgotten about it. He'd put it out of his mind.

Then, two weeks later, he'd gotten a phone call which he'd promptly forgotten about. But then this morning, his secretary had reminded him of the date. That he was to meet the young lady out front of some Italian place. That he needed to wear a blue tie and bring exactly three orange poppies so that he would be easily spotable.

This was rediculous.

The only reason that he was here now was because he didn't want the poor young lady, whomever she was, to feel badly. He didn't want her to think that it was something to do with her, rather than the fact that Bruce just didn't date.

He really needed to find a way to let her down easily. Whoever she was.