The Universe's Mixer

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."

He hadn't done a whole lot since he'd been overcome by the zombies. They'd caught up to him, and he'd done everything he could to keep their attention on him, and away from Sweeney, for as long as he could manage. They'd overtaken him and started biting. Emotion might have been foreign to him, but physical pain was not. It was possibly the only time in his life that he wished he was less human.

Of course, it wasn't long before he got his wish.

The infection ran it's course in a matter of hours. He'd hidden himself in hopes that he could avoid further bites. He felt he'd given enough flesh to the zombies. There hadn't been a whole lot he could do to make himself comfortable. The idea of blowing his own head off crossed through his mind more than once. Of course, he didn't have a gun, and by that point, didn't have the energy to get up and find one.

So Dexter Morgan died.

When he rose, he wasn't all the way absent like he'd seen the other zombies be. Mindless flesh eaters massing on one victim at a time. Thousands of teeth gnashing and gnawing. He had more. Perhaps it was the Dark Passenger that made it possible, but he was still thinking on a very limited basis. He knew that he was fundamentally different. He couldn't reach the higher brain function that he'd had before - that he knew he'd been capable of (that memory was fading quickly anyway), but he could still think. He knew there was food out there. And he knew he could hunt it better than the others. He knew that a group wasn't the best way to go about it. Solitary feeding would produce more food for him.

He was wandering the street, still slow, still incapable of reflexive movement in any sort of timely manner - the bird flying into his face and his painfully slow reaction to it attested to that - the only thing he had was determination. A will to feed himself. To find his own way.

When Sweeney fell asleep outside his apartment door, he had been a dog. Outside it because he lacked the dexterity and thumbs, not to mention overall height, required to turn a door knob and let himself in. When he woke up, curled up on the floor of the hallway, he was a man again.

Oh when he got his hands on that Djinn, she was in for it. She was really in for it.

( He was Mad Sweeney. Suibhne Geilt. )

Dexter hadn't at all gotten over how disturbing it was that he was so good at the inane sport of bowling. There was no reason for it. It wasn't like he had done much in the way of practice. Just one day he'd been looking for a way to hide himself in plain sight, joined the bowling team, picked up a ball, and the rest is history.

With nothing else much to do in the City, taking up bowling again seemed like the best way to kill time. There were great long periods of time where nobody was murdered, and there was no blood spatter for him to analyze. After that came the time when he'd finished catching up on reports, and had absolutely no reason to go into work.

And then, of course, was the idea that he'd just died himself and needed some time off anyway to sort through the feelings that had come along with that. So he didn't particularly mind the lack of anything when it came down to it. But there were still the nights that he felt restless. Amazingly, he'd looked into his closet and found the Bowl Till You Bleed shirt he'd worn back in Miami. That was what had given him the idea in the first place.

So here he was now, bowling. It wasn't as much fun by himself, but it was better than nothing.

One second he was talking to George and trying to comfort her about his own death, and the next he's in his own apartment, staring at the ceiling of his bedroom, as alive as he'd ever remembered being.

He could actually feel his own heart beating hard enough that it might have broken out of his chest at any moment.

Through the strangeness of it all, he couldn't help but feel concern for how George might be taking this. She had been worried that he was going to move on, and his sudden disappearance must have looked like just that.

Dexter fumbled on his bedside table without looking at it, finding his phone and dialing George.

He listened to it ring.

Oh this was just too good. A better situation could be planned like this. After one but got another in bonus. It was too perfect. From body language as I watched one couldn't mistake he thought she did it and she probably thought the same of him. Wouldn't it be a surprise to them both that they were wrong?

One good shot would have been nice but complicated. The moment had to be right.

He left and the moment was right. She stood in the room alone now. It was time.

Ready
Aim.


Fire.

The shot was good and the scope moved down.

Waiting.
Planning.

He exited out onto the sidewalk and footsteps barely started when the action was repeated.

Ready.
Aim.


Fire.

Quick.
Hide.
Run.
Escape.



The City is appeased.

OOC: Did you die in the MM plot? Feel free to join in.

This was out of her league. Not only had her work load doubled during the reign of the mass murderer but none of the souls were moving on. She was pretty sure they were just being stubborn, but dirty looks weren't working. Ignoring them wasn't enough either; dead people were near impossible to ditch. Something about being able to walk through walls.

Eventually the reaper hunkered down in her apartment, sitting on a love-seat she'd salvaged dumpster diving, and hoped someone would just catch the serial killer already. She was half tempted to ask the recently deceased so she could pass on the information to Dexter, but if she did that she realized it would only encourage them to stay that much longer.

After the first week George finally posted a sign on her wall that read: YOU ARE DEAD. GET OVER IT.

Dexter had two people on his list.

Two people who he knew it could be. Three, if he included himself, and he couldn't really take himself off that list yet, because of the recent dealings with that fucking knife. There was no way he could be absolutely sure that he wasn't blacking out and doing these things, except for the fact that this wasn't really his style, and according to his timecard, he'd been at work for at least one of the killings.

That, and he'd never harm an animal.

One of the dead was a cat.

One of the people was in the hospital, impossible to get to. Dexter wouldn't be able to get his hands on Hannibal Lecter until the kid walked outside. In the mean time, he was going to have a conversation with the other.

He'd met her only once. But he'd known then what she was. Mostly because she'd told him. These murders needed to stop, one way or the other.

Dexter stalked her through the streets, half sure that she knew he was there. It didn't matter though, if she did or not. She would slip up eventually, and that's when he'd be there, ready.

Of course, it took her quite a while to slip. To become too comfortable with her surroundings. To let her guard down. It happened inside of an apartment. She stopped being Super Spy Girl and started acting like she belonged where she was. Which meant this was likely her home. Or the home of somebody she knew very well. He climbed in through a back window and moved through the space with absolutely no sound. He was hunting.

She passed by and it was perfection. She was in his arms, a twitch and pressure would stop her ability to breathe and blood flow to her brain. He had his own arm caught with his hand, and was limber enough to have a needle just barely breaking the skin at the same time.

"What are you doing?" His voice was low, close to her ear. After he said it, he realized he might not have been entirely clear in his meaning.

There was a pile of new work on his desk when he went in to work. He didn't really want to go in to work. He wanted to be out there, in the world, catching whoever it was. He had some ideas. Some of them didn't make sense, others did. Suspects in mind.

First he thought that it might be Lecter, but when he got the details of the case, it didn't feel right. It didn't dial him out entirely, it just put him at the back of the pile.

"Any word?" He asked the guy who had the desk next to his.

"Nothing since this morning."

"That could be a good thing."

"We recovered the bullet from Coffey. They're testing it now."

"Maybe it's the same person. Whoever did Coffey is doing these new murders."

"The last murder was done by a knife, Dexter."

And? Dexter wanted to ask. But, of course, the more that the police and forensics team kept to the idea that killers always used the same instruments, the safer he'd be.

"Yeah. You're right." He said instead and went to his desk. Jack Napier, he thought as he looked at the new file. How do I know that name?

George was missing. Deb had been here, and now she wasn't anymore. The strange girl at the shop where he'd gotten the knife was even gone. He couldn't find Selina, but at least her apartment was still around, so that told Dex that she was still somewhere.

Everybody he'd met since being here seemed to have vanished.

Oddly, it didn't sit well with Dexter. He wanted very much to have that nest. That surrounding of people who thought that he was normal. That thought that he was just a blood spatter analyst. He felt the need to blend in.

After everything that had happened with the knife, he'd learned just how important it was to him to appear like everybody else. He'd had his chance at being what his Dark Passenger wanted him to be, and while it had been fun, it wasn't ultimately what he wanted from life.

Sulking a little, he sat in the park.

The newspaper had said that the man, John Coffey had been found dead. That somebody had shot him. There was, of course, an idea in his head brewing. That this 'somebody' needed to be found. John Coffey should never have been killed. He was an innocent.

Dexter set the paper aside and looked at the children playing.

He knew in his heart that he shouldn't have put off calling Deb for so long. Dexter couldn't say why he'd done it, but he had. He supposed a part of him was hoping that she'd adjust to this place just a little before he had any contact with her so she'd be just a little bit calmer.

It wasn't likely, though.

Especially since he'd not returned her call quickly. She was going to be pissed off.

Dexter hit callback on his phone and listened to it ring. The side of himself that was really ashamed at what he'd done hoped that he'd just get an answering machine. So she could call him back later and yell at him. He knew though, really knew, that he needed her to answer so he could talk to her and let her know that he was here too. That she wasn't alone.

He sighed and sat on the couch, listening to the phone ring.
Christ, didn't she even have voicemail? How long had she set this thing to keep ringing?

Baseball was one of those things that normal people did, right?

Dexter had this intense need to feel normal. Even if it was just for one afternoon. Just a few hours. Away from life. Away from the police station. Away from knowing that he was some special cog in the universe of Death. Away from George, though she was his best friend. He could be himself around her, but around her, he wasn't a human being. He was Dexter. The killer. And she knew. And he knew about her. It was really really hard to feel normal when you were chatting with a reaper, no matter how cute she might be.

He'd wandered around thinking normal to himself, and what the City had provided him with was a baseball game.

He supposed he was enjoying it. As much as one could enjoy things when they were sitting outside under a hot Spring sun, watching a game that went slower than a dead snail and had no physical contact or confrontation to break up the monotony while eating six days expired hot dogs in stale buns. The hot dogs were the only things keeping him there. He'd already gotten up to get three. Now he was up to get more. And soda. He should have been drinking water, he knew. But if he was going to digest the disgusting food, he needed something sweet.

Thank whoever he'd been born and raised in Miami.

When he reached the counter, there was a little polite smile to the guy standing in the line next to his.

He'd left the meeting with Willow and the ghost with an odd feeling resting on his shoulders. What he'd been told, that secret that the wolf girl had bent down to whisper into his ear hadn't been something he'd expected to hear, and he wasn't sure how to take it.

Dexter wasn't sure that George would understand any more than he did, but he felt like she needed to know.

Returning to his apartment was logical because that's where he'd left her. She wasn't there, of course. Or wasn't there and responding to him. Maybe she already knew and she was pissed off about it. But he felt like she was gone. He felt like he couldn't feel her there and had before.

"George?" He did call her name while roaming the rooms just to be sure. Got no answer just like he'd expected.

The only thing to do, and probably the best thing to do considering the fact that he couldn't see her, was just to sit and wait. To stare at the flour and hope that she made some kind of mark showing him that she was there. Soon.