The Universe's Mixer

The Slice of Life cut through the waves easily. Dexter had taken it out every day this week. He still hadn't really found anyone in the City that was capable of keeping him in check. He'd not killed anyone since he'd returned, despite the fact that he wanted so much to kill the girl, Effie.

He'd avoided Red, though he knew that if she wanted to find him, she would. She hadn't, and he was thankful. Something about her was very dangerous to him. He hadn't seen the cop, Charlie Crews, either. Nor had he stumbled upon his strange neighbor, Wash. That would have at least given his mind something to focus on. Currently he had nothing. There was nobody. Almost daily he'd gone through his phone, hoping that George's or Deb's name would spring up, or Selina's.

There was something wrong with the City, things were off. Twice now he'd spied another land mass while in his boat, but he hadn't quite had the gumption to go explore it. There were other things, too. The guy at his favorite coffee stand was not the same guy, and he'd told Dexter that that guy hadn't been there for almost a year. Which didn't make any kind of sense at all. His apartment had been coated in dust, and that was just ... well. Dexter was a clean kind of guy. Yet the papers all stated that the date was what he thought it should be. Time had always been fluid in the City's walls, of course. But 2013 was 2013, no matter what. Wasn't it? Hadn't it always been?

The confusion and lack of anybody to talk to had driven Dexter to his boat. And while he was on the water, he felt peace. There was nobody out there to fake it for. Nobody he had to be careful around. Just him and the open water. Not really the ocean, of course. If he went far enough, there was a wall. The ocean didn't have a wall. But on some days, the expanse of water between the City proper and the wall was large enough that it took a whole day to cross it.

Dexter pulled the Slice of Life into the dock slip he'd bought, and went about securing the vessel safely.

There weren't people here that Dexter had to fake it for. He had his job, and he had to put a good front up for them, but other than that, he was alone. He had not discovered anybody within the City that he had known prior other than Red. Red was only going to continue to encourage him toward the darkness, and more and more, Dexter was beginning to think that she was right.

He had desperately hoped that he might find George. George had been perfect at keeping him in an even keel. She knew what he was, and what he did, and she didn't judge him for it, but she kept him on the right path. He had found he wanted her to look at him and see a guy who was helping, killing for the greater good. But there was no George. There was also no Selina. He had something of a strange relationship with her. He hadn't really known what to do with her, but she had been a friend. And knowing she was out there had helped. There was no Deb. There was no Betty. There was no Angel or Masuka. And there was no Harry.

The threads keeping him together, keeping him a well hidden monster, were coming unraveled.

Only one project kept him in focus, and it wasn't anything he could work on consistently. He knew that he wanted to track down Effie. He knew that he needed to put an end to her. She had lied. She had escaped. She was now free to torment the City. He should have put an end to her when he had the chance, and he was kicking himself for thinking that she was actually going to try to be good.

But she was nowhere to be found.

He had not hunted in too long. Effie had mentioned something about bigger fish, and Dexter had given consideration to tracking them down, to ending them, but the need to finish what he'd already started stood in his way. Until Effie was gone, he couldn't turn his focus elsewhere.

The frustration in him was quite high.

Dexter sat at an outside table at a little coffee shop, a cup circled by his hands, but he wasn't drinking it, just staring into it like it had all the answers he wanted.

The kiss had done nothing for him sexually. Dexter didn't care about things like that. Neither his body nor his mind responded to it as a normal man might have. Though, Dexter was aware of how a normal man would have reacted. Red was a beautiful woman. Sensual. She had all the markers of what would be attractive to somebody else.

There had been, however, a reaction.

Her power tugged at him. She had given him a taste of what he had been before. The Dark Passenger delighted at what was felt there. Urged Dexter on. Encouraged more contact between the pair. Her darkness called to his. Her violence riled his needs. Deepened the hunger that he was already feeling.

It wasn't safe.

He knew he could very easily give in to her, to the Dark Passenger. He could be everything that he wanted to be. Deep, deep down, Dexter wanted to let go and see the blood. Let it flow. The self control he'd practiced for so long, however, held tight. He needed a lifeline. He needed something, or he was going to team up with this woman who wished nothing more than for him to be a destructive force within the City.

He would lose himself in her.

Already, he was slipping.

Dexter knew that he wouldn't tell Charlie of what he'd found. He would let Red and her partner kill the last Arkham employee. He would eagerly await seeing what they did. What they produced. He had warned her to do whatever it was she was going to do as soon as she could. Because the police currently had nothing. And once it was all over with, there would be no hope in finding anything. The case would go cold. He would pretend to be looking over the information given him, and he would pretend to find nothing new in any of it. He would give his expert opinions on what he saw there in the blood, and he would possibly give them more than they had, but it would never be enough to find the killers.

He had gone from wanting to help the police by either discovering clues that would aid them, or by ending the lives of the murderers himself to helping out on the other side of the line.

There was no chance, Dexter knew, that Red would bring him in to the circle on this one. Whomever she was working with currently - playing with, really - was the one who would finish the job. They were bonding, the two of them. Sharing an intimacy. Maybe one day Dexter would know who the other hands belonged to, and maybe one day he would even meet those hands face to face. For now, he would be kept out of it, and it had nothing to do with who he worked for. It had everything to do with how things had been done up until now. With only one name left to cross off, they would want their crescendo.

As soon as Charlie left, Dexter knew that he was going to do something that he shouldn't. He set the facial recognition program to run on the Violetta murders, putting in the mathematical parameters to seek out the face that the victims matched, and left his lab. He locked the door to assure that nobody would go in there and interrupt the program, though that particular part of this quest was more than legal, and definitely sanctioned since it had been requested by a detective.

In his mind, he held the address to the most recent murder. Still closed off by the police as a crime scene, and out of bounds for him to enter since he didn't have the clearance yet that Charlie had promised him. This was not his case. He would get into a good deal of trouble if he was caught. That didn't even slow Dexter down, though.

He had not really hunted since he'd been in the City. He had let Effie go, which he shouldn't have done. Now nobody knew where she was. She'd escaped the jail somehow. Her cell was empty. There was an APB out on her, every cop in the City was keeping their eyes peeled. Dexter was regretting again that he hadn't killed her. Especially after the offer he'd made. That if she could detach herself from her father completely, he'd take her under his wing. So much for that.

Dexter entered the house by jumping over the back fence, and nudging open the basement window. He knew that the murder had occurred on a higher floor, but this way he wasn't breaking any crime scene tape, and any trace of himself would be easier to remove. One of the latex gloves he wore caught on a nail, so he had to take a moment to not only replace it, but clean up the powder and any hint of his skin cells that might have been exposed, but all in all, he was within the scene in a matter of minutes.

He moved slowly up the basement stares, checking for creaks before he let his full weight onto them. He didn't expect anybody to be in the house, but there was no reason to not be careful. He had syringes on him filled with his usual, just in case. He would give anybody within enough to make them think they'd fallen asleep while on guard duty, and nobody would ever know.

But the house was as empty as he had expected it to be when he opened the basement door. Dexter moved easier from there, and quicker. He found the room where the massacre had taken place, his eyes taking in the blood left behind.

Charlie was good at hiding his anger. He was very good at hiding it when he didn't want people to know he was angry. He didn't always have time to give into it. Of course, he could be very strange and a little eccentric - he had the money at one time to be called eccentric. He had someone he needed to speak to, and he was going to start getting answers.

"I'm going to talk to one of the lab techs; then, I need to see you. Find that file if you can." He left the message for his partner. He needed to know that she was kept up to speed. He hadn't exactly told the message box all the information - he needed to see her face to do that. Beauty's story wasn't one he would keep completely to himself, not when it came to his partner and things that needed to be done.

The detective didn't stop to have a conversation with anyone, not like he usually did. He headed straight to the lab where he hoped Tech Morgan was working. He had a few questions; he also wanted to borrow the tech's computer for a little private searching.

It hadn't taken long at all for the word to reach Dexter of the girl who had been arrested and taken to await trial in the cells below the courts. She had sounded suspiciously familiar to him, and he'd looked up the name he'd gotten and verified with the fingerprints he'd taken from her. The computer spat out information about the criminal and it matched up perfectly with the one he'd let go. It was something he'd regretted doing, and now he was kicking himself extra hard for doing it.

At first she'd been stuck in the system with no way for him to get to her. Then she'd been allowed visitors, but only those that were required. Police, psychiatrists, her lawyer. Those kinds of things. Dexter hadn't had a good enough reason to go. The system already had her fingerprints on file, she hadn't been caught doing anything so there were no scrapings to get under her nails.

But he watched. And waited.

He gathered all the facts that he could surrounding her arrest and the crimes she'd been accused of. He snuck through certain restrictions that had been placed and saw things that a lab tech shouldn't have access to. When he'd let her go, he'd thought to do these things and know everything that he could know about her. He hadn't done it though, because he'd gotten swamped with other things, and there was a part of him that really wanted to believe that she was going to try to turn herself around. It wasn't hope, really, Dexter didn't know if he truly understood hope. It was akin to hope, hope adjacent, maybe.

After she was visited by a psychiatrist working up a profile on her to present to the courts on her fitness to stand trial, the restrictions were lifted on what visitors she could have, and Dexter made his plans to pay a visit.

Very carefully, he picked a time when no others were scheduled to be there. He didn't want to run into a family member or a friend who might question his presence. He didn't know how well her social circle might know one another, and knew just how odd it would look for somebody they'd never heard about to be visiting her in jail instead of placing a phone call or writing a letter. Even in the City, where nothing was further away than a couple of miles, it was all a little more effort than a casual acquaintance would put in.

The guards did recognize him because of his police work. That was unavoidable. So he made polite chitchat with them, hoping that they'd not think it too odd that he was there. He didn't lie and try to say that he was a part of the investigation. There was no reason for blood spatter to be involved with theft. He told them that she was a friend and he was worried about her. He just wanted to make sure that she was doing okay. He said that he'd been at the building anyway, waiting to testify on a case and that he'd been told he wasn't needed. Which would explain, if the guards happened to ask, why nobody had seen him.

He made his way slowly to her cell, unsure of what exactly he thought he was going to do. Obviously he couldn't kill her. Not here, and not now. There were too many records of his visit for him to get away with anything. Was he there to talk? He supposed he'd figure it out sooner or later. Hopefully sooner.

Dexter smiled at the guard who unlocked her door for him even though he felt nothing inside that should have produced any kind of happy facial expression.

Once in the room, he opted to stand in the corner instead of sit in the chair.

He had done a lot to hold himself back since he'd returned to the City. Throwing himself into work, trying to meet new people. The one time that he'd thought that he needed to go out and hunt, the sun had been up in the middle of the night, which had stopped him cold.

But with the night surrounding him at all times, the periods of complete blackness when there were no street lights or store signs, no moon and only stars to illuminate the darkness, Dexter found it much harder to keep himself restrained.

The Dark Passenger within him understood that this was their time, their moment. They could do whatever they wished, and would never be seen. They could have all that they wanted, the things that they craved. That imperative that was biological to them but not to others could be exercised, flexed.

Eventually, he had to give in.

Eventually, Dexter found himself on the streets, his bag in the trunk of the car, watching. Waiting. The car was tucked back in an alley, away from curious eyes, and Dexter stood at a bus stop, tracking potential victims. He didn't want to mess up. He didn't want to take anybody who didn't deserve it. But it was difficult. Harry wasn't here, Harry had never been here, the code was nothing here. This was the place where he could do as he wished. Nobody here was counting on him to be The Forensics Guy and only that. Nobody here expected him to be a brother, a lover.

Not even George was here to remind him of what happened when he killed. To be his friend and try to lure him away from the darkness with the promise of waffles.

The idea that he could have anybody he wanted and not have to really think about it, it was enticing. He could be that thing that he had started to become before he'd gone back to Miami and put his life back together. That thing that had been taken by the hand by a strange little woman. That thing that had killed Cupid.

Dexter's eyes swept the people around him, seeking.

The sun that had stayed up too long was bad enough. This? This was just beyond what Dexter was willing to consider alright. This was the sun moving backward in the sky. On the complete opposite path of what it should have been.

There was also news about a girl named Fred dying. He'd met a girl named Fred before. He didn't know if it was the same Fred he'd known, or if it was another version of her. But he was pretty sure that it was still Fred. There couldn't be too many of those floating around. There had been a crime scene for it, of course, but he'd not been called in for it. There was no blood. No blood meant no Dexter. It didn't mean, though, that he couldn't snoop in the file and see what was going on.

He'd thought to find Wash to talk about this new change in the sun's habits. The other man had been bothered about the sun not going down. It had created a moment for bonding. Bonding was good. Bonding meant that there was another person in this place that would rely on him to behave normally. Or, as normally as he could stand to. Dexter needed all the people he could get who needed him to be a human being.

But he was a bit distracted from that by a strange phone call directing him to Stark Tower. It was vague, and the voice on the other end insisted that it needed to be him to take the call, but wouldn't say why, or what was needed from him. Dexter had his work box with him, because that was the only reason he could think of that he'd be needed. Work. He arrived at the building and announced his presence in a professional manner.

Wash stood stiffly on the rooftop of his tall narrow apartment building. His hands were twitching, fingers clawing inward. The sun shown down brightly through a beautiful azure sky. White, puffy clouds were floating by lazily.

Wash had to squint when he looked up into the sky. The warmth of the sun soaked into his skin like a hot shower beating down on his back and forehead and heating him from the top of his head to his feet. The air smelled fresh, like spring.

It was 3am.

Wash was furious.

Dexter had plunged himself face first into the pile of work that he'd found to do. He'd sent off the things that Detective Crews had asked for the same day that he'd asked for them. He'd even found a few other things that the detective might find interesting, and sent those too. He took on extra shifts, and found himself accepting assignments before what he was currently doing was done.

When he wasn't at work, he felt a little lost. A little alone. There was no sign of George, or any of the other Reapers. No Selina. Nobody that he was familiar with. Nobody to take his mind off of things. Nobody to hold him back when it came to parts of his darker nature. It was dangerous. So dangerous. Dexter was free of responsibility to keep himself in check. He couldn't have that. He couldn't return to what he'd been right before he'd been sent back to Miami.

And thus Dexter found himself at a crime scene in the early morning. It wasn't a murder, he was sure of that. It looked to be an industrial accident. There was heavy machinery involved. A few shaken up workers. But they'd called him in to make sure that the deceased wasn't pushed. Or tripped on purpose. Dexter discovered himself disappointed that it wasn't more complicated. That would have taken time. He would have needed to collect samples to take back to the lab. As it was, he hadn't even cracked open his case.

Sometimes, blood talked too much.

"Morgan." An officer walked up behind him. "Can you go assure the press that this was an accident, please. We've already got too many murders happening in this city. We don't need another."

"Yeah." He said. He wanted to say that he didn't usually deal with press. But this was another thing that would keep him out of the apartment and solitude longer.

Work.

It was the one thing that he could do and fall into without worrying about what other people thought of him. It was normal for people to think that forensics guys were strange, and that anybody specializing in blood was an extra bit off, so Dexter took it in stride. When you could spout off about directional spatter and the differences between a swipe and a wipe, you knew that people were going to stop listening pretty quickly unless it was a part of their job to hear what you were saying. Kids didn't find it entertaining at Parents Day, and it wasn't exactly a thing you could turn into a party trick.

People expected him to be abnormal, but quiet. Dexter could do abnormal but quiet. He could even do professional. Professional was easy, especially when the subject matter was something so close to his heart. Blood didn't always calm him, sometimes it made him more antsy, set him on edge. But it was always, always, something he knew about.

His lab was already set up for him when he went in. Like he'd never left. The officers he passed nodded at him, as if he'd never left. There was mail waiting on his desk, samples sitting at his equipment, and files waiting in a tray, as if he'd never left. Dexter began to wonder if he had, in fact, ever left. Perhaps there had been another him while he'd been gone. Maybe he'd replaced this Other!Dexter. It had happened to Deb, why not him? Maybe he would get scores of people who began to talk to him about the things that they'd done together, and he'd have to inform them that he wasn't the same man. He wondered if that would suck as much from the telling end as it had from the receiving end.

Dexter sat on his stool and began to sort through the mail. He didn't get a lot of mail at work. Forensics Quarterly, The Forensic Examiner, and Forensic Magazine being some of that. As well as second-opinion letters answering queries he'd sent out. They were sometimes required by the courts.

He had been home.

Dexter had returned to Miami, he had gone back to his life. Three years he'd worked to overcome the things he'd experienced in the City, three years he'd taken to piece himself - and the Code - back together. He'd settled back into routine, work, and Rita. Things between himself and the Dark Passenger had settled back down. They were back to the way they had been. Killing on schedule, killing carefully, no longer warring, no longer sliding into one another.

It had not been easy.

After the freedoms he'd discovered, after the things he'd experienced, the things he'd done, it was difficult to go back to restraint, to rules, to always pretending to be human.

But now, he was back.

It had not taken very long for Dexter to understand where he was. When the neighborhood surrounding his apartment ceased to be the familiar scene that he was used to in Miami literally as he was walking through it, and when the buildings shifted their positions as he watched, Dexter felt his heart sink. He did not want to be in this place again. It wasn't safe for him, and it wasn't safe for other people. There was too much risk here that he could lose all control. People didn't know him here. Not like they did in Miami. He didn't need to wear the Dexter mask at all times when walking these streets. It slipped too easily. Deb had joined him in the City a couple of times, but she had not remained long enough.

He needed somebody who knew him, who expected him to behave like a human being so that he could keep himself in check. There weren't people like that here. There were people who knew him at work, but he'd always kept them at work. He wondered if he would find any familiar faces at all, since he knew that sometimes the City sent them back. It had done just that to him, after all. George? Red? They were friends, but they knew what he really was. They were aware he wasn't human and didn't require that he pretend with them. Still, it might be nice to see them.

Dexter fiddled with the laminate badge hanging around his neck. Not Miami Police anymore, but City Police once again. No Rita, no Deb, no Doakes, no Astor or Cody. The only hope he had at the moment was work. He could drown himself in work. Just stay busy.

Selina has been bad about keeping in touch with Dexter. She hadn't seen him since before the scar, which was still visibly, although not as angry looking.

So, trusting in The City and its weird ways, Selina Kyle went for a walk in the park. She figured that if she didn't run into Dexter, then she'd run into someone else... which was always interesting. Perhaps that optimism wasn't such a good thing in The City.

There was so much to think about. So much going on at the moment that caused great bit rolling blackouts of thought in his head. He couldn't help it.

Dexter called out of work for the week because he couldn't keep his focus on anything.

Baba had talked to him about being himself. Really being himself. And yes, he'd thought about that before. That he didn't have the same worries here that he had back in Miami. He didn't have to follow the same rules, really. There was nobody here worried about him like that. Except Deb now. But if he were to be sure to keep her out of it, to make sure that SHE never knew, then it would be okay, wouldn't it?

That was the only thing holding him back, really. And she knew what he was, what he did. Even if she didn't want to talk about it. There was the fact that she was his sister, and loved him no matter what.

Oh. But there was something else, wasn't there? Somebody else.

Dexter thought about her while he sipped his coffee at the outdoor table of a cafe.

"What about George?" He said it in a low voice, without really realizing that he'd said it out loud.

Violence warning

Dexter understood now, what it was that had made him feel. It hadn't been that Baba had been anything different than other women. It hadn't been a miracle. It had been another sick joke played by the City. A mutated Cupid, going around shooting arrows at random people and causing chaos.

Again, chaos.

The strange thing was that she was different than anybody he'd ever met. She wanted to encourage his darkness. Wanted to play with him in it.

Her words echoed through his brain, circling around again and again.

"Wouldn't you like to see what it's like to enjoy the bloodletting without worrying about what may come? ... Wouldn't you like to know?"

Oh, and he did. He did so very much. They had stood, staring at the young couple for what seemed to him to be an eternity. His urges tugging him in their direction, and the words of Harry gnawing at his gut.

He'd had this before, hadn't he. He'd been able to kill who he wanted, when he wanted. But it had been a curse by that knife. It had given him that freedom, but had taken from him his human face. Had given him the face of the Dark Passenger. It wasn't exactly the trade off that he'd bargained for.

This. This would be different. This would be true freedom.

And with her.

They'd both been diverted by the thing flying by, that Cupid. Baba had changed her mind. Instead of the sweet young couple, they were going to kill that thing. They were going to do it together. There might even be some torture involved. She'd had to capture it, of course. Dexter had no ability to do that. It was too quick, and flew too high. It seemed to be easy for her to do. The thing was in her grasp in no time at all.

Now they stood in an abandoned building. Dexter was looking down at it, it wiggling on the table there. He'd not put it out like he normally did to them. It had been awake for the tying down. He wasn't even going to take care with gloves and a smock. No. This was going to get messy, and he was going to get into it.

The feeling of love had faded before they'd gotten here. He was still wondering at it. The feeling. False as it had been, he'd still felt it. He would never forget that. Never.

Dexter glanced up and smiled.

Crime scenes.

There were so few actual crime scenes since he'd been here. He usually found himself able to finish all the paperwork and lab work for one case before another one even popped up. He wasn't at all used to that. The lack of constant work would have driven him crazy normally. Nothing to hide himself behind. Nothing to keep himself occupied. It could have been dangerous. But there were people here to discover, new things. Every once in a while, they sent him a case, and he was able to sink into his work happily.

That's what he'd been doing most of the day today. Working a case. Going and taking photos of the scene - what a lot of blood there had been - getting samples. Doing his forensics thing. He'd sent the samples and his equipment back to the office with somebody else, though. He'd decided it was a good day for a walk.

Which might have been a really bad idea, in hind sight.

He'd just passed under a tree when a shadow swooped past him. Dexter turned, catching it out of the corner of his eye. Thinking for a brief second that somebody might be stalking him. Instead, he saw nothing. Perhaps a bird flying by.

He was ready to let it go, but the shadow kept appearing and disappearing. Darting in and out of his sightline. Making him all the more paranoid. Finally, he managed to turn the right way at just the right time and see it. A really fucking ugly thing it was, too. Then something else flew at him. Dexter ducked to try to ensure it would miss him, but he felt a pinch and stood up quickly, finding nothing.

It had been a long time since he'd seen or talked to Deb, which he thought was sort of odd. Why he hadn't thought about it before now was also kind of odd, he supposed. He'd just gotten so used to her not being around, that her being here had been the strange thing. It had been just the opposite at first, he remembered.

The reminder came when he had gone downstairs to drop a file off for one of the other cops. He'd seen his sister's name on the door along with another one. Anita Blake. They were partners now.

Dex hung around waiting for her to show up. Just to say hi. He thought maybe he'd offer to take her to lunch, see how things had been for her. Surprise her. She'd like that. Maybe she hadn't called because she'd gotten so settled in. Found somebody to occupy her time.

Well, he'd find out wouldn't he?

Dexter checked his watch and then looked up, smiling when he saw the familiar form of his sister walking toward him.

(For Dexter, Ace, Dean, Claire, Venkman, Firekeeper, Logan E.)

It'd been fun for a little while. Traipsing through the snow. It became a little more difficult as the snow kept coming; it simply wasn't physically possible for this much snow to drop like that. And, when she noticed the dog fighting to get free of what had to have been a little old lady now turned lump of ice and snow, Fred decided it was time to get inside. Well, only after trying to free the little dog from its frozen mistress, which didn't work out so well, seeing as the damn dog tried to bite her rather than let her help.

Fred didn't want to leave the little yapper out in the snow, now falling in clumps, but she couldn't stay out in it either. No, she started looking for some place that was still open and could take her. Unfortunately, the only place she found that still had its doors open, figuratively speaking, was an old movie house. Actually, Fred didn't mind it; she remembered her mom and dad talking about places like this, and she supposed it could have been a lot worse. She even giggled at the posters hanging up; yeah, it could have been a lot worse.

She didn't seem anyone around quite yet, and supposing that concessions weren't open, she settled down on one of the velvet like couches in the theatre's lobby - sure, it'd seen much better days, dust rising as she sat, but there was something reassuring about a place this old still standing. Plus, the place was a lot warmer than it was outside. She just hoped she wasn't about to be all alone, or maybe that wouldn't have been a bad thing. She'd done alone in bad times before...

The actual meaning of life is in one of 10,000 books you're locked in a room with. You have time enough to check every single one, but you can't. You can only open 10 books total.

Note: All the books have normal titles. None gives a clue as to if it holds the secret

"Sir, you'll have to put that out," said the woman at the front desk. "City Ordinance #331 states no smoking on City property. That includes the Police Station."

"So that's what I have to do to get attention around here? Commit a crime? Jesus." J. Jonah Jameson chucked the partially-finished cigar into the soil of a potted plant. "I've been waiting around for damn near four minutes for someone to help me out."

"What's your problem, sir?" The woman asked, not especially interested in the answer.

"I'm here to report a missing person."

The woman suddenly gained a little interest.

"Me," Jameson stated. "One minute I'm in my office at the Daily Bugle in New York City, the next I'm in an office of some newspaper called the City Voice. And to top it all off, nobody will tell me *what* city I'm in."

"Take a brochure, sir," the woman directed, now losing interest again. She pointed to a wall covered with a variety of brochures. A sign above the display read, NEW TO THE CITY?

"I don't need a brochure, I wanna talk to somebody. Listen, peaches, I'm the Executive Editor of the Daily Bugle, and when I get back home I'm gonna give this podunk little town such a bad rap it'll make Baltimore seem like Disneyland."

"Your tag says City Voice," the woman pointed out.

Jameson took a look at his chest. The ID tag that had previously marked him as Executive Editor of the Daily Bugle now indicated he held the same position for the City Voice. "That's right," he said, jumping on the opportunity. "I've got your little burg wrapped around my finger. If I say you're all crooked, that's what the people will believe. Now let me talk to someone before I get unreasonable."