The Universe's Mixer

There was calm in the bar. But not the kind of calm that says everybody is having a good time, and everyone is going to leave happy. It was the kind of peace that only comes before a big storm. Where every moment that goes by without words or laughter just makes everyone more tense. The only sounds that could be heard were the scraping of chairs across the floor and drinks being put down. The music in the background was loud, but it seemed to be faded out. As if it were a soundtrack being played over the top instead of coming from the jukebox.

People had been ill at ease lately. The City not moving, then suddenly starting again. The citizens were confused, they were ready to break.

All it took was one guy lightly bumping into another as he tried to get by, a drink spilling a small drop onto a shoe. Then the shouting match started. Soon, almost everyone in the bar was on their feet, taking sides, even if they had no personal quarrel. The noise became great, then. People turning to the person closest to them to start their own fight over more little slights that wouldn't have gotten more than a harsh look on any other day.

Nobody could have said later who did it. Who threw the first punch. But it happened.

Then, chaos.

( notes )

Jake had finally seemed ready to move out of Wayne Manor and into a new place shortly before Christmas. They'd found a townhouse that had just enough room for them both to have their space, but was small enough to be cozy. It even had a tiny back yard. It was a new start for them, and Dinah only hoped that it went well. She had gone all out with decorating and there were more than a few presents under the tree for Jake. She couldn't help herself-she'd wanted to give him the type of Christmas that every kid deserved to have. Especially after the year he'd had.

Christmas Eve presented an opportunity to give Harry the chance to meet Jake. He'd asked about it months ago, and while she'd agreed to it there had been a part of her that had been hesitant. She didn't want to introduce them and then have things not last. So she'd waited. But she wanted to spend the holiday with both Harry and Jake so now was hopefully a good time. She was just a little nervous that they might not get along.

Dinah was just waiting for the oven to finish cooking the lasagna. She'd gone with lasagna mainly because it was the only thing she could make without screwing it up. Her dad had been a great lover of lasagnas and so had taught Dinah to make them during the weekends that he'd spent puttering around the kitchen, making his favorite dish. Unfortunately, that hadn't translated into cooking anything else and with how busy both her parents had been during the week, there had been a lot of takeout and frozen pizzas growing up.

She turned to Jake once he entered the kitchen and gave him a reassuring smile.

"You'll let me know if you start to feel uncomfortable tonight, right?" she asked Jake. She'd already made it clear that she had no problem asking Harry to leave if Jake was stepping too far out of his comfort zone. She knew Harry would understand, and she wanted Jake to feel safe in his new home.

( And to all a Good Night )

Raylan didn't know what to make of The City. His first full week in the expansive metropolitan bubble had been strange, to say the least. The City had provided him with everything he needed, as judged by an outsider's perspective. They provided him with a home, a motel room similar to the one he'd left in Kentucky (but thankfully not owned by that monochromatic fellow on the hill,) and a job with local law enforcement. In fact, so far as he could tell, The City was fixin' to keep him around for a while. An officer of the peace? On his first day, he jokingly paid a visit to the civil enforcers who'd left a message on his phone and was surprised to find himself greeted with a nameplate and a badge. An amusing dream, right? But then the dream lingered into a second day. And then a week. And then two weeks. Or was it that he only imagined time to have past so quickly? Raylan never pretended to be a very smart man. Quick witted and aware of his surroundings, but no genius. Maybe there was some truth to this illusion.

He'd been told on his first day that he was far too calm in his accepting on the bizarre and unexpected. He could only surmise that his reaction was half laced in shock and half in whiskey. But it spoke something of his character that he didn't have a nervous breakdown, nor cry himself to sleep.

Keep yourself busy.
( Go then. There are other worlds than these. )

He didn't like being locked up. Caged in. The room was enormous, but the more he stayed inside of it, the more the walls seemed to close in on him. He kept throwing items at the walls; small things at first starting with a piece of toast or a napkin. They didn't always sail as far as the wall, and that was okay. If they fell before they struck, he knew the walls were too far to contain him. ( It reminded him this wasn't a prison. )

Arkham Asylum loomed into view as Dinah pulled her car to a stop near the entrance to the bridge. The gothic looking manor that housed the asylum awaited them on the island, seemingly quiet from the outside.

Dinah waited for everyone else to catch up, her eyes sweeping the streets for any sign of the Batmobile. She tapped her communicator once to connect with the Clocktower.

"Are we up and running, Fred?"

She still wasn't completely confident in the plan. A part of her worried that she was just sending the people she cared about to their deaths-or worse, knowing the Joker. But she had to try, had to believe that Jake was in there and could be saved.

Takes place immediately after this thread

Dinah reluctantly followed Harry away from Dr. McCoy and Willow. Her mind was still a haze of painful thoughts, still trying to process everything that had been discovered in the last hour. She didn't let go of Harry, a part of her calmed by his arm around her and a part of her thinking that her knees really just might buckle if she didn't have that support.

They were halfway down the street when she clapped her free hand to her forehead.

"Manners," she muttered. "Sorry, I should have introduced you back there. Well, I mean, Willow wasn't someone I'd met before. But the young man-that was Dr. Hank McCoy." She looked up at Harry, realizing that she probably should have mentioned the near miss bullet graze. Things had just been so hectic and, quite honestly, she'd been somewhat avoiding him ever since Murphy had moved in.

It wasn't that she was angry so much as just feeling put out and not capable of dealing with those emotions on top of everything going on with Jake and, for that matter, the arrival of the Oliver from another world and Barbara from the past, whom she still hadn't had all that much of a conversation with and she couldn't quite figure out what things from the future to explain and what to leave unsaid.

"He took care of me when I was in the hospital for this," she explained, gesturing to the stitches on her arm. "He was very kind and actually made sure I was able to get out of there quickly without the uncomfortable questions that generally come from this sort of injury."

(takes place at the same time as this thread)

Willow was starting to get the hang of this place. The streets changing still threw her off guard plenty of times, but at least she had a place to stay now. Apparently she was enrolled in school, doing something between psychology and computers. Not that she minded - those were both subjects she appreciated enough to be pleased about her schedule. She had her own room in the dorms as well. Another plus - she didn't want to deal with a roommate right now. Though the single bed was still unbearably lonely at times.

For now, the tactic was to stay away as much as possible, going back to her room only to change clothes or sleep. Studying was done on her laptop, wherever she wanted. Wifi connections were abundant in the City, it seemed.

Since it was a nice day, she was currently sitting under a tree, browsing a few websites for an upcoming paper on behavior modification and operant conditioning.

At the same time, Jake was enjoying his first day on his own. Without Father, that was. Father had given Jake the promised razor, and the plates that had been in his satchel. Not the satchel itself, but the plates were now stored in a low-slung leather bag lined in silk. He'd taken it from a woman and man as they were leaving a dinner place. They had slipped into an alley and made grunting noises while they touched one another. The way they were touching was violent, possessive. It had reminded Jake of a woman, sexy in a scrawny way, who had taken pills and gone to bed with sick friends. Someone he had known once, who hadn't returned the sparse love he'd tried to give.

Their grunting had driven him on, using the razor Father had gifted to him. The bag had very little blood on it when he was done, and he had emptied the contents to store the precious plates. Nothing in the bag had interested him. Both man and woman had been left in that alley, their mouths delicately carved into wide smiles even as their cold, empty eyes held shock and fear.

( Father would have liked that. )

( ''After my haircut, can we go out and play, Father?'' Jake's smile was sharp, eyes sharper than a 'Riza. ''I want to play.'' )

There was no consistency. It wasn't long before Jake didn't know which he dreaded more - the time he was alone to dwell on his own, or the times he got his "visits" from Jack. It hurt, it hurt more than anything had before. It hurt more than the slow, steady drip of insanity when he and Roland had been separated. It hurt more than being told that Babs was gone, that someone had taken her away. It hurt more than hearing Dinah had been hurt and he wasn't there to help her.

It hurt more than having to withdraw from Oy, knowing his pain was hurting the billy-bumbler. Jake was locked in his own mind, alone and lost.

He wanted to stay there. Close up his mind, lock it behind him, and pull the metaphorical blanket over his eyes until the boogeyman went away. But there was nowhere to hide from the specters in his mind. Haunting shadows of Roland walking into an ocean, hearing the lobstrosities calling out to him. Did-a-chik? Dum-a-chum? Dinah, flickering in and out of place as she sat down, telling him that there was simply no way for her to be there for him. That, in the end, the City wins all. Babs, turning towards him with empty eyes to say that she couldn't, wouldn't come back.

Jake was strong, a gunslinger. But he was a child, and Jack was a professional. The cuts, the burns, scratches, the bruises - all were administered with precision. Jake cringed when he found himself welcoming them, just to have someone else in the room. Welcoming the agony to escape from the silence, from the loneliness. Someone to save him from the ghosts.

It was the kindness he hated the most, he craved the most. Those gentle moments in his arms, having his wounds tended to, soothed. The caring touches, the softly-spoken words. Comfort like Jake had never had in his life. His own parents had failed in that regard. Greta Shaw had been too professional. The gunslinger had raised him hard, the only way he knew. Babs had gone too soon. Dinah was too unsure of her place with him. But Jack, the Joker, showed him more kindness than Jake had ever known.

It was all starting to blur. The hate and the craving, the hurt and the home, the loneliness and the wanting. Ghosts in the shadows. Cool water trickling down his raw throat. Ice cream, to his childish delight. Once, he had the companionship of a kitten. A warm, soft kitten that nuzzled at his fingers and slept against his shoulder. Some time later (hours, minutes, day, night, those things had ceased to hold meaning) the bloody skin and fur had adorned his head like a cap, while Jack had hung the organs on him like ornaments on a Christmas tree. The next time a rat had crept into his room, Jake had thrown things at it until it went away.

No day. No night. Just alone, or with Jack.

Jake was on his own. Alone, and lost.

When Jack got the boy back to the asylum, the first thing he was strap the kid down in one of the beds made to restrain more difficult patients. The second thing he did was tend to the wounds the hyenas left. He had plans for the boy, after all, and him bleeding to death didn't count among them. He then left for a little while to fix the hyenas up best he could and then return them to where he'd found them. He didn't think that he'd need them for the rest of this.


( After all, he had Jake's little creature. )

( Jack gets a new toy. )

[Backdated. Should have been right after this post, but life is complicated. Apologies all around.]

On one hand, Jake could understand the need to have someone else in the tower with him. He wasn’t a teenager yet, and in a city that boasted werewolves, vampires, and the Joker, it was pretty unreasonable to leave someone his age alone. On the other hand, Jake knew he’d been in worse situations, and he was entirely capable of taking care of himself.

He didn’t let Dinah hear him grumbling over the phone, but once she’d hung up, Jake had grumbled and grumbled some more. He didn’t know who this guy was, or why Dinah had been with him, but...

...but Jake was worried about his foster mother, annoyed at being helpless, and frustrated at being left to sit and wait all the time. So while he was waiting, he ate some food, fed Oy, did the dishes, and ( got started on his homework. )

Takes place after all the threads on this post


Dean was definitely smirking when she asked 'what?'. She'd just proven his point. The next thing she said proved his point even more, even he'd prefer she hadn't.

The hunter moved quickly around the table, the pizza and beer forgotten. She wasn't lying about bleeding on his floor, not that he was all that worried about the floor. He stepped away from the slumped over Dinah long enough to grab up a clean towel. More than one thought went through his mind, but they all focused on making sure Dinah didn't die. She was too hot to die.

"Okay, Dinah? Dinah, you need to keep talking to me." He pressed the towel to her side. "You need to stay with me." Dean hated how much that sounded like some bullshit he'd see on tv, but it actually were the words he'd said a few times now. "Just talk to me, okay, Dinah?"

Dean didn't call her "baby," "sweetheart," not even "Legs." He also didn't stay by her. He stepped away long enough to grab up his belt, boots, and jacket (along with his Colt). The boots were yanked on without the socks; he'd pay for it later probably. The jacket waited until he used the belt to hold the towel in place over the wound.

"Dinah?"

( Slowly, all other versions of Dinah stopped being in the other places. )

Dinah looked at the instructions that came with the mysterious parting gift from the masquerade. She was just about finished folding the intricate paper flower and exhaustion was setting in when her phone beeped. She glanced at the text alert from the Clock tower computers and sighed. She looked at her bed longingly and then changed into her suit.

Before leaving, she picked up the origami once more and turned it over in her hand. Gold lettering that she could have sworn wasn’t there while she was folding the paper caught her eye.

Make a wish

“A wish, huh?” she muttered skeptically. “Well, it sure would be nice to have the ability to be everywhere that I’m needed at the same time.”

Lately she’d been feeling pulled in all directions more than ever, and she was definitely losing the battle. It seemed like she was never where she should be, never able to do enough

She rolled her eyes and tossed it aside. Wishes. That was about the same thing as fortunes in fortune cookies and supposed happy endings. A fairytale.

Even as the origami left her hand, something strange happened. Suddenly, Dinah’s feet touched the ground in front of a man who was running away from something, a large sack in his hands. Behind him, alarms blared and Dinah noticed a jewelry shop with a window that had been shattered.

Before the man ran straight into her, she moved quickly and caught him, using his forward momentum to knock him to the ground.

Across town, Dinah looked out from a rooftop over the warehouse that housed the City’s most notorious drug trade. She blinked in surprise, trying to understand how she was somehow in two places at once.

Even as Dinah tried to process that, she was suddenly in an alley way, face to face with a mugging in progress.

It continued on throughout the night. She was suddenly able to be everywhere at once. Able to help so many. She didn’t have to think about her destination, didn’t have to focus on someone in need. When she was needed, she just… appeared. It was hard to get used to paying attention to so many situations at once, but her mind kept up with the multi-tasking well, save for the few lulls of confusion where one thing or another commanded her full attention.

Dinah grinned as she sat on a rooftop and watched the sun’s first pinkish rays appeared over the city’s skyline, even as she ended up in the kitchen with plenty of time to make Jake a big breakfast and get things ready to drive him to school, and as she ended up at the Sherwood Florist well before opening with enough time, for once, to give the store the reorganization it badly needed. Somehow, she had gotten her wish.


OOC/explanation: Dinah's about to get way more than she bargained for and end up anywhere someone needs something that she could help with. This could be anything from needing a rescue, a friendly word of advice, or needing help getting your kitten out of the tree. There's lots of room for brief drive-by posts if you just want to put your character in for a short scene, or for a longer scene. And this thread does not have to be linear in comments. Each interaction may end up taking place simultaneously.

Dinah parked and then led Jake into the bowling alley. There was only a small sense of trepidation at the thought of bowling-not one of her strong suits. But Jake had chosen, and Dinah was glad to give Jake the chance to do something that other kids his age enjoyed, something that didn't revolve around death or crimefighting or any of the other bizarre aspects of either of their lives.

Granted, the main reason for the outing was so that she could meet his much older potential friend who just happened to be a gunslinger. So, not quite normal. But she wasn't about to tell him that he had to make friends his own age and couldn't have any friends beside that. It wasn't a fair thing to do to a kid who had seen and experienced so much more than anyone his age could imagine. This wasn't Star City, where there had been a school that nurtured children from tough, violent upbringings. Not that that had gone over so well for Sin anyway, but Dinah shoved those memories to the back of her mind.

She'd asked around, checked every possible place she could, and the Institute was the only school. There were no other choices, no programs that would allow Jake to meet others that might have more in common with him than some of the kids at school.

And the fact remained that this man had saved Jake's life. For that, Dinah was grateful. She was wary about the idea of Jake spending time with someone that might encourage him towards gunslinging, but she would have a hard time disliking someone who had gone out of his way to save Jake.

Dinah glanced down at Jake as they neared the counter.

"Let me know when you see Snake. He did say he would meet us here?"

To say things had been 'chaotic' over the last few days was more of an understatement than Jake was willing to admit. As far as he knew, he'd slept through about five years. Five years, just gone. Waking up to find Barbara gone was bad, painful to his heart. She had understood things, had understood him in a way that Jake had been sure no one but his ka-tet would have.

He didn't know Dinah enough to know if she would be the same, and that worried him. Especially now, especially when he was coming home from school. She would understand if he explained his lateness, Jake knew. The streets of the City always winded, warped, changed at their own whim.

But the blood on his clothes, the saturated sleeve and the blood-smeared plates that he had tried to clean off, caked now with the dirt he had used for that purpose... would she understand that? And his reasons?

Jake hoped she would. And he hoped she would know something to do with the belts he'd taken and stuffed into his satchel. They were evil things, corrupted things, and Jake knew they couldn't be left there for anyone to take. Something in him had told him to take them home, to bring them to Dinah, and he had obeyed that intuition.

“Dinah?” he called once the door was shut behind him. His first impulse was to get to the bathroom, to clean off himself and Oy, and that was where his footsteps were taking them. “Dinah, are you home?”

( Dinah was still getting used to being responsible for a 12 year old. )

( Gods it felt good to hold a gun again. )

How ironic that she should find some solitude in a public transit. Mrs. Coulter! In a public transit! When she had her own flying zeppelin and a whole staff catering to her needs and now she travels with the masses.

But it did not really matter in a world who did not know who she was. Well, certainly not until that scandalous press release from the daily periodical, which continued to flood her apartment and cause incessant ringing of that communicative device, the 'phone'.

It was not the slightest bit amusing. It did not tickle her fancy those flirtatious phrases and the excruciating cliches. If anything, they were honey coated knives.

Those pamphlets so harmless, so common, so ubiquitous the past few days held information. Secrets, insider information, shamelessly displayed for all to see. Daemon the word flashed at her at the edge of the page. Never, had she even imagined of disclosing the nature of the golden monkey to anyone in that world, as was only wise. He was a 'pet', an animal companion, a poodle trotting after his mistress, one that just happened to be very intelligent one it seemed it had a mind of it own, and in which it did, but no one was supposed to know that. It should end in speculation.

Yet someone in the City has uncovered it, and published it so.

Mrs. Coulter should not be too worried yet, it was not as though it linked the word to the monkey, but any moment, it would, it could...They will see the monkey for what it is. Her heartbeat.

How much did the City know about her? About them? Was there an intention behind their placement? Were they not there by accident? By unfortunate circumstances? Experiments gone out of hand?

The nagging questions set her in a foul mood in that City bus, and her temper was already sore to begin with since her faithful spyflies remained missing for already the fourth day. She had no new information, no new names and places, the gathering of which has not--and likely will never--conclude as the City continues to shift like a child's daemon. But if her precious flies, her eyes in the City, were utterly paralyzed then it would be much akin to blindness. A certain danger in a City that probes and spies back with increasing and malicious fervour.

Her thoughts were interrupted as the bus stopped to accomodate new passengers. There was plenty of space at the back where she was seated, and the lady Coulter had such a comely face, if not just for the monkey on her lap who glared at everything.

Jake couldn't remember the dream when he woke. It had been long, but how could you really tell how long a dream was? All he remembered was the burst of fear at the end, the sense of something slipping away, and when he rose in his bed, the name of his mother, his adopted mother, was on his lips.

"Barbara?"

It was the name they had decided on for now. In public, he called her 'Mom'. When formality required it, he called her 'Mother', or 'Mia' per the High Speech. The times were growing when he called her 'mom' between them, but the impulse for now was still her full name. "Barbara?"

The dream was fading. Jake shook off the last of his sleep, looking around his room in the Tower. Not the Tower he'd quested for, but the Tower that was now his home. With Barbara Gordon. His adopted mother. She'd understood that he'd wanted to keep his own name, and that was fine by her. But in recognition, he had changed his legal name to John Gordon Chambers. Everyone who mattered called him Jake. As always.

Oy curned against his belly, and Jake started to settle back to sleep. He hoped he hadn't woken Babs. He knew she worried, but a dream was just a dream.