The Universe's Mixer

Fresh from her makeover with Pixie at the helm, Beauty bounded up to the door of the mansion she knew was Charlie's. And Ted's. And the Horse's! Her hair was streaked with pastel multicolors that managed not to clash with the wispy bit of pink and pattern that she liked the most of all the dresses she and her friend selected together. She wasn't completely sure of herself in this new look, but she was determined to try it. She lifted her hand and knocked, pleased with the jangling chiming sound the movement produced. Thin silver, bronze, black and gold bracelets settled back down against the delicate bones of her wrist when she dropped her hand again.

On that arm also hung a basket filled with fruit and croissants. Some of it was for Horse. Some of it was for her and Charlie (and Ted, if he happened to be a fruit eater...or croissant eater). The other arm was occupied with hugging Ted's stickered laptop against her side. She shifted her weight in the chunky platform heels she wore, then stared down at her toes. They'd been painted a candy pink. Wriggling her toes again, she speculated just how women had started the practice of painting their toenails. She would have laughed at the notion, back in Paris.

Then again, she'd never heard of bronzer before, either. Beauty sucked in her cheeks, wrinkled her nose, and stared at the door expectantly. Her lips felt sticky and heavy from the almost-clear, pinky gloss. The test, she thought, was how other people would react to what she looked like. If no one gasped, she was going to count it as a success.

Beauty realized she was a little nervous about how Ted and Charlie would react to her new look, under the buzzy excitement she'd felt with Megan. She shifted her weight again. Lifted a foot. Set it down carefully again. Platform shoes. She was getting used to them.

Jo wasn't usually the type to wear a dress, except for when she was going undercover for something or other. In fact, she very rarely wore anything other than jeans. Which was why she was a little frustrated with the City (or whomever might have broken into her apartment and left clothes in her closet) for filling her closet with dresses and dressy pants and shirts.

Not that she would have shown up for dinner in jeans and a ratty flannel shirt, but she resented that the choice was being taken out of her hands. She finally grudgingly settled on a flowered sundress that was cute but not overly formal.

She didn't really know what to make of her dinner plans for the night. Ted was sweet, if not her normal type in many ways. All the same, there was something sort of refreshing about that. He wasn't a hunter, which was extremely appealing actually. Most hunters seemed to be loners who didn't do all that well with relationships. Or they just went off and... well, she wasn't going to think about what had happened to her first boyfriend.

While it was all she knew, and there was a part of her that was definitely drawn to those types, the idea of getting out of her wheelhouse sounded kind of nice.

She was more nervous than she'd expected so by the time she pulled her truck into the parking lot of the building that housed the mayor's office, Jo's mind was a bit blank. She had kept the shotgun as well as a few other hunting supplies in a lockbox in the back of her truck. It never did hurt to be prepared and Ted had seemed more than willing to have that extra protection around. There was also a small vial of holy water, a knife, and some salt in her purse.

Once a hunter, always a hunter. She might look like a normal twenty-something woman, but she never really left the hunter side of her personality at home.

Ted had gotten Jo's message about the ghost, and had been about to run over to the house and buy it up when the streets and everything else had begun to move again. Which was also about the time when the coffers had filled themselves back up, and his efforts of looking for investments to tide the City over were nullified.

Partly glad for it, and partly annoyed because of the amount of work, Ted hadn't known quite what to do. He sat at his desk for a while, staring at the top of it. Jo's number was scribbled on the front of his planner, right under his nose. When his eyes floated over it, he made a decision.

He dialed her number before he could talk himself out of it. Listened to it ring, making sure he didn't overthink things as he waited. There was a click that told him either she'd picked up, or her voicemail had, and he just started talking.

"Jo. This is Ted, from the haunted house. Haunted house. That sounds really stupid said out loud. Do you call it something different? Probably. Anyway. I was thinking I'd like to take you to dinner as a thanks, if you'd want to do that. Maybe drinks after? There's this Italian place that everyone in the office keeps talking about. We could go there. Or anywhere you'd like."

Realizing that he'd just spit out a whole lot of words and hadn't any idea if there was somebody actually on the other end of the line, he paused, waiting to see if there would be an answer, or the telltale beep of a message run too long.

The City Hall was chosen because it held a room within it that was big enough to accommodate the droves of people that were sure to come. Plus, being inside space, there were no worries over weather that couldn't be controlled. The people could sit and listen and not have to try to hear past traffic or wind.

Even with the late notice, everything was done well before the scheduled start time, which Thomas was proud of. He was glad that the ones who were born here weren't entirely useless without him around. They were keeping their heads together, doing what needed to be done. Of course, it also could have been the fact that they believed Thomas was who he claimed to be, and with his presence there with them, they felt better about the situation they were currently in.

Thomas looked at the stage. That's where he would be standing, talking to the people he had brought here. He had no doubts that they would be the ones with the questions, the ones who demanded answers. He was ready. He could do this.

He sat in a seat hidden by a curtain, where he could still see the stage and the rows of chairs beyond, and waited.

Ted was checking out houses and condos for investment purposes. He'd had an idea shortly after Lois Lane had left his office for keeping the City in money and helping it's residents at the same time. City housing. The City would buy the houses and keep them maintained, while the rent would be cheaper so that the poorer and disabled residents of the City could afford to be in nicer areas with better resources around them.

Property generally only rose in value. Even when the market failed, the property itself didn't really lose it's spot, just what one could charge for it did. But it always rose again eventually.

He'd decided to scout some locations and draw up a proposal before going to the Mayor with it. A vague idea wasn't any good, you had to have numbers to back it up. Evidence that it was a good idea. Ted knew this. He also knew that the mayor was a busy guy and that bothering him with the very beginnings of a plan would probably only cause more work for him. He liked the mayor, he didn't want to add pressure to a job that was already difficult with the things going on.

There were already spots that Ted liked, his list was growing, but it was all condos and co-ops so far. No actual houses. He felt that having a house, some place that could have more than one person in them at a time possibly, would be a good idea too. There was a bigger side to this plan, of course, in the name of buying a whole apartment building, but that had to be worked up to.

Seeing an address without a door number attached to it attracted Ted and he skipped down several spots to visit that one next. He'd get to the others, he was sure. But houses went quickly. He wanted to see this one before anybody else had a chance to put a bid on it.

And it was a big house. He could see that from the outside when he arrived. But it looked so empty. Like nobody had lived there in a really long time. It wasn't so much neglect. Somebody was coming around to cut the grass and trim the hedges. But there was dust in the corners of the windows. The door knob looked shiny and untouched. The lock, when he got close enough to see, seemed freshly oiled.

But the door opened smoothly enough. He stepped inside and began to take notes on the things that he saw. Sure, every listing provided square footage and number of rooms. But seeing stuff for yourself always provided a much different view. A room with large footage might actually not fit a bed because it was an odd shape. Or a kitchen that seemed spacious might be so stuffed with cabinetry that you couldn't move.

Ted saw none of these issues. It made him all the more curious as to why nobody was living here, and why it seemed nobody had for a very long time.

He thought he heard something fall in another room and went to investigate, but found nothing. Then there was a scraping noise that he could feel into his bones, followed by a very disturbing giggling.

In a place where nothing could be ruled out anymore, Ted felt immediately suspicious and afraid. He went to the front door to leave, but discovered it wouldn't open. As he turned to try to find the back door, something flashed by him. Something unpleasant. He got a vague sense of blood and maybe a missing half of a face.

Ted became very still.

If there were one thing anyone could say about Beauty, it was that she knew her way around books. And in a library, there was no one who could find what was needed as quickly as she -- just as long as the knowledge was contained within the book (and not one of those boxes with the clicky rat).

But when the librarian showed her the yellow book full of names and addresses and digits, even she was surprised how quickly someone could find an address. Charlie Crews. Now that the buildings weren't moving, addresses meant more than what they had in the past. Armed with her new-found knowledge and a hand-drawn map and a basket of fruit, cheese, croissants, and bordeaux on her arm, Beauty struck out one late afternoon, intent on inviting her new fruit friend on a makeshift picnic. There were still the wonders of the African horned fruit to discover.

Lightly traipsing up the winding walk to the door, Beauty was humming to herself as she knocked. A big, delighted grin spread itself across her mouth when she heard the lock turn in the door. She bounced on her slippered toes.

Interviewed?

Ted got the memo on his desk and sat staring at it for a really long time, trying to understand if this was really for him or if it had been meant for somebody else, but accidentally dropped at his desk. Because, who would want to interview the guy who was dealing with the City's finances? His job was really boring to most people. He knew because when he started to talk about what he did for a living, in previous jobs along these lines, their eyes had a tendency to glaze over after just a few words spilled out of his mouth, and once or twice, Ted even caught them drooling.

"Excuse me." He asked his secretary (HIS SECRETARY!) when she passed by. "Are you sure that you didn't take this message for somebody else?"

"Of course, Mr Earley, that's for you. She'll be here soon." His secretary was the kind of girl that he might have gotten into trouble with when he'd been a CEO, but now he just wanted to know why her parents let her out of the house in skirts that small.

"She?" He took off his glasses and sat back in his chair. "Who she?"

"Oh, Lois Lane, sir."

"What?"

"Lois Lane? She's a reporter at the City Voice."

"Lois Lane."

"Yes, sir."

"Lois Lane is coming here."

"Yes, sir. Is there a problem? Do you want to reschedule? Should I have not said yes to her?"

"No. No, it's okay." He closed his eyes, trying to think of his secretary's name. She'd only just started and with this Lois Lane business he was having trouble remembering. "Mandy. Mandy?"

"Mandy." She agreed.

"Thank you, Mandy. I'm just a little overwhelmed that Lois Lane would want to interview me. Me. Sure, Charlie, yeah, I can see that. But me? That's just..."

"Sir?"

"Never mind. You can go back to your desk now."

She smiled at him and he exhaled as she exited the room. What was he going to do? What was he supposed to say to Lois Lane? How was Lois Lane here without Superman? Wasn't that a breach of some Universal covenant or something?

Ted tried to work while he waited for her, feeling entirely too nervous.

Ted couldn't exactly say that he was upset that The City had stopped moving around. He'd never particularly liked that bit about this place anyway. He was, however, a little sad that he actually had to do the grocery shopping now.

He was also a little sad that he was the one cleaning up cat litter and horse poo.

But it was all evened out by the mere fact that he had a job now - an actual job. One that meant something and wasn't just teaching a class every once in a while or working on somebody's portfolio because he was bored and had nothing else to do.

And this particular evening, he was in good spirits because he and Charlie were finally getting to have that dinner that they'd been talking about for a long while. It seemed that they both finally had some free time - or rather, Charlie had some free time - and they could meet up. Since he had more than one really exciting thing to share with his housemate, Ted was really looking forward to the evening.

Charlie had left a note on the counter in the kitchen telling Ted a time and a place. Ted had done some research and discovered that the place was a little bit fancy, and so dressed accordingly. He'd debated for some time if he should bring something for Charlie, it might have been a man-date, but it was still a date, and finally settled on a card. He hadn't been able to find exactly what he'd wanted, so instead improvised.

The card said "CONGRATULATIONS" very big across the top in colorful lettering on a yellow background. It had a balloon on it that Ted sharpied to look like a chubby little batman. On the inside he crossed out the "It's a boy!" Statement and replaced it with "You're not Batman!"

He carried the card in his hand as he entered the restaurant looking for his friend.

After speaking with Charlie, Jack was ready to offer the job to Ted. He still wasn't going to give the man carte blanche with the City's finances, but he wouldn't do that with any new hire.

However, he was happy to have the help and he did trust Charlie's word enough that he would give Ted the benefit of the doubt even in the face of his criminal history. He saw coming to the City as a clean slate for most. There were others who had become something very different upon arriving here and it sounded like Ted had tried to turn over a new leaf even before he'd shown up here.

Jack picked up his office phone and dialed.

Ted was excited to hear from the Mayor and learn if he had a new job or not. He'd managed to keep it from Charlie, to keep from even hinting at it, which wasn't easy. But he didn't want to jinx it. He wanted to be able to go to his friend and say 'Hey! I got a job with the Mayor!' and have it be a complete surprise. Though, since the Mayor was going to use Charlie as a reference, maybe it wasn't going to work out quite like that.

But at least Ted would get to say the confirming words.

He was just leaving his favorite little coffee shop to go home. It was almost dinner time. He was hoping to get to have dinner with his friend and a quiet evening just reading or something along those lines. Maybe they could pop in a movie.

If he'd spoken this aloud, maybe Ted would have had the thought that he and Charlie had become like a married couple. Since he didn't, he wasn't worrying about it at all. Just looking forward to the potential night.

As he turned the corner, he ran into somebody. He backed up and tried to scoot out of the way with a muttered apology, but the guy mimicked his movements. Ted's attention centered, then. The guy was wearing a hooded sweatshirt with his hand in the front pocket, and there seemed to be a heavy bulge there.

Ted sighed.

The bulge - a gun, Ted was sure - was waved at him, and he looked behind. There was an alley there. He was going to be mugged in an alley. That was great. That was really fantastic.

He carefully backed himself into it. He wasn't the kind of guy to fight back. He just hoped this ended with the mugging and didn't get any more serious. If he just did what the man wanted him to do, maybe then he'd get away with his life.

How could he not be happy? It had been a long time since something weird had happened in the City. He'd had a very nice couple of holidays with Charlie and their cat. He was teaching at the City Institute a couple of days a week. He had a couple of investment clients that were very satisfied with what he was doing for them. There was very little to be unhappy about. Currently.

The pessimist side of him kept wondering when the other shoe was going to drop, when he was going to end up on the bad side of something. But it was easy right now to push that side away and make it shut up.

Today he'd decided he was going to take a stroll. The weather was warm. As if it was still spring. Though, he'd noticed, that's the way that it was most of the time. Occasional rain, some wind, but for the most part, it was like they were in a controlled environment. Always the perfect temperature. Until the City threw some big snowstorm at them, or like that massive storm a few months back. Ted supposed that not having to deal with that kind of thing all the time made up for the few days that they did have to.

Really, this place wasn't all that bad in the end. It sure as hell was better than prison. Though, honestly, Ted was confident that living in a sewer was better than prison.

Ted stopped to look in a store window and admire some things inside. He knew that technically he could go in there and buy everything he was seeing, but it still felt a little weird. He still thought of it as Charlie's money. Charlie's house. It was like he was living Charlie's life. He wasn't used to just doing what he wanted with all of it.

Ted had decided that he was going to stay inside until the whole werewolf thing was over. Once he heard the news about the big escaped animal from the news and the following joke about the naked guy running around, he'd put two and two together and it equaled not stepping a single toe out the door.

He didn't want to be bitten, he didn't want to become anything else. He had a hard enough time being Ted and getting used to the weird new life that he had here in The City. He didn't want to add becoming an animal on top of that.

A day after the reports of animals stopped appearing in the newspapers and on the television, Ted wondered if it was all over. If somebody had found a way to stop the spread, or if everyone had been cured, or maybe they were all in the zoo now. Any of those meant that it was okay to leave the house again. The outside would be safe.

Carefully, he peeked out the door and edged himself onto the walkway. It was a long journey to the sidewalk, and he made it slowly. Stopping at every noise. Inspecting any wildlife and trying to determine if it was actual wildlife, or if it was werewildlife. Nothing big came near him. Just birds and butterflies. One little wayward snail. Nothing threatening.

He made it all the way to a coffee shop before he even saw a person. They all looked normal. Ted slid into the shop and found himself a seat in the way back where he could see everybody.

Lorne felt pretty good.

He was glad he'd hired Logan Echolls. The kid could use the help, and from what Lorne had seen when Logan sang, it was all going to work out well for him and for Caritas. Having more time free to entertain, to sing, and to put people right on their paths... that was going to make him a much happier demon. It wasn't all altruistic, though; he intended to use some of his free time to try and get out of here, or to find more people like Angel and Fred.

He missed some of that. Not the part with his head getting cut off in his home dimension, but still. He wanted that family aspect back.

Still, though, the demon whistled his way down the street, shades on, hat on, flashy suit on, wing tip shoes on, the tune this time 'Almost Like Being in Love.'

He stopped to grab a newspaper, and thought he'd catch a bus downtown and grab a good lunch, too. The bus was going to be late, it looked like, or his watch was slow. That was fine. Lorne didn't stop humming.

It was a beautiful day out. Dinah had returned to work over the past week, but today she'd taken a half day. It was time to go car shopping. But first, she had resolved to take time to enjoy her lunch.

She'd returned to the Clock Tower to find the Italian restaurant that she'd loved back in Gotham. It was right across the street, as though it had always been there. Ordering the shrimp capers had been a no-brainer, though Dinah was reminded with a twinge of all the times she and Barbara had shared dishes from that restaurant.

There were times when she could settle in and the City was beginning to feel like home. Times when having Jake and Harry and Fred and even Dean, along with her flower shop and all the people that worked there made it almost too easy to forget to miss the ones she loved the most from back home. Then there were times when she would walk into the Clock tower apartment and expect to see Barbara. Times when she'd even go upstairs to the computer command center in search of her best friend. There were times when people on the street would remind her of Zinda or Helena. And times when nothing at all reminded her of her friends back home and the sheer absence hurt deeply.

As Dinah made her way to the park-perhaps thankfully she was on an end far from the gardens, which she had yet to see in their changed state-she tried to push aside the painful emptiness that came along with the reminder of Barbara and Gotham. Instead, she decided to take the chance to eat one of her favorite meals as a sign that today was going to be a good day.

Her stitches had finally started to dissolve and the knife wound was healing up nicely, though it was clear it would leave a mark. But for the first time in awhile, she was pretty sure it would be safe to resume her old activities without risking reopening the wound. It would scar, but that didn't bother her. Scars were just a reminder of the near-misses-a reminder of the fact that she still had more to learn. At any rate, she was going stir-crazy spending all of her evenings inside without being able to help.

Tonight, she promised herself, she would take the bike out for awhile. See if there was anywhere she could help.

And for now, she found a bench facing the water fountain. She began to unwrap her to go box and basked in the sun, reminding herself that today was going to be a good day.

Ted had spent his morning looking at bookstores for cat books. He had only bought one, but from what he'd gleaned from others, cats weren't exactly the hardest thing in the world to take care of. They were independent. They had very basic needs like food and water and somewhere to use the bathroom. The rest of it they could really take care of themselves. And from what he could tell, from the books, they could actually take care of all of it themselves, but if you wanted to keep one as a pet, the nicer you were the more likely you would reap the benefits of cat love.

Though he saw that it was easy and though Charlie seemed to have confidence, Ted still worried about having to take care of another living thing. But the house did seem pretty empty now. He'd gotten used to having two women and a wolf running around, and now it was back to him and Charlie and nobody else. Not even a horse.

About mid-afternoon, Ted decided that he was just going to go for it. He was going to find a cat and take it home. His first thought was a human society or pound situation, where he would be rescuing a cat from certain doom, but the City didn't seem to have one of those. Which made a certain sort of sense, he supposed. All the animals here were wanted, if by nothing else, than by the City itself. The next step was a pet store. But he didn't find any cats there that he bonded with. They were all kittens, really, and Ted wasn't sure he was ready for a kitten. Kittens were small and fragile.

The last stop he made, and he'd decided he would be giving up if he didn't find a cat here, was some place called Kelly's Kitty Korner. Ted would never understand why businesses would willingly take on the triple K initials, it was like nobody really thought about the implications of it. As if the KKK were something in the very distant past instead of rampant everywhere. He'd met a few members in prison, and they weren't exactly pleasant people. He also detested the use of the K instead of a C in corner, but that was really just being nitpicky.

Inside there were cats of all shapes and sizes. Ted was a little overwhelmed. But Kelly, the owner and manager, put him at ease. She said that all the cats were super friendly and super lovey and really super. Ted wondered if she'd eaten many paint chips as a child. But she was correct. Cats came up to him left and right, smelling him, letting him pet them. As each cat had its turn, Ted became more comfortable with the idea.

Then a very fluffy white cat sauntered up to him. She jumped into his lap and laid down, purring louder than anything he'd heard in his life.

"Oh, that's Lucy-Belle." Kelly told him. "She just wandered in one day. I think she likes you."

"Yeah." Ted nodded. "I think I like her too."

The murders were still on the detective's mind when he came home much later that day. Thankfully, the woman he'd been entertaining before he left had seen her way out some time during the day. Hopefully she hadn't bothered Ted. Charlie wouldn't have liked it if she had bothered his housemate and best friend. Jennifer was slowly growing to be friend, but Ted was his best friend. Ted was a part of him, as much as any man could be a part of another man in the nonsexual sense.

The murders were on his mind when he cleaned up, had a snack, and then went to bed. The murders were on his mind when he got up the next morning and started breakfast. An orange grove had developed behind the mansion, and he had collected a few oranges for the fresh juice. If they could somehow grow other fruit trees, Charlie would be a very happy man. Then again, they weren't really "growing" the orange trees, so he supposed he should be happy with what they had.

Charlie was currently working slicing fruit. He'd managed to get an order set up while in the City, so they had fresh fruit almost every morning. It wasn't always the same fruit, but it was good fruit. Charlie looked at the mango and wondered if there was ever bad fruit, not rotten fruit, but bad fruit. Of course, he supposed fruit could be bad to someone if they were allergic, but that really wasn't the fruit's fault. The fruit was just being a fruit. So, maybe it couldn't be bad. But, if it couldn't be bad, could it really be good?

He stared at the mango as it sat there on the cutting board surrounded by other fruit in various stages of slaughter. What made anything good, bad, or...hungry?

"Why did they bite the heart and not eat anything else?" He picked up a slice of kiwi and bit into it, enjoying the seeds' bursting.

"Nice picture? What picture?" Ted was talking to himself.

There were a lot of messages on his phone. A lot. Certainly more than usual. And all of them having to do with things that were not finance. It seemed to Ted that there were a lot of people looking for a date from him, and he didn't know why. Then the message from Charlie telling him that the picture of him was good and they should have dinner.

At least he knew that Charlie was still here. Out there. Somewhere.

"Do I owe somebody dinner?" He asked his phone, confused, as he pushed the button to go to the next message. He listened for a moment and then blinked. "I'm pretty sure that's illegal to do in the greater United States area..."

Where had all of these requests come from?

Ted put his phone down and looked at it, more than slightly confused. The City provided many things, he was coming to understand, but a dating service as well? That seemed to be more than a little bit too personal to him. Something that perhaps a man should decide for himself if he wanted to partake in.

He picked his coffee up from the table. He'd been spending more time in coffee shops lately, glad to be away from Arkham. Needing to be out of the house. But also trying to find Charlie. He figured if he stayed in one place for a prolonged period, eventually Charlie would wander by.

So far, the theory hadn't worked.

The phone jingled again, Ted picked it up and hit the button for voice mail. He listened for a moment before blushing and putting it back down. "Now that's just dirty."

Dr. Simon was making the rounds. He hadn't seen Dr. Strange since their last meeting, but he suspected the man was working hard to help the patients. Unless he had slipped back into talking about his strange obsession with doormen. Or just the one named Mu. Dr. Simon was still trying to figure out why anyone would want to be part of an immortal fishing hole, not that he'd ever been to a fishing hole. He supposed it could be pleasant and calming.

At the moment, Dr. Simon was out in the courtyard. There had been an incident recently with an armed patient, but it had been settled. Dr. Simon had warned the staff that sporks were evil; while they may be efficient and decrease clutter, sporks were certainly acts against nature in their hybridized form. Chop sticks were much cleaner. The staff had told Dr. Simon in no uncertain terms that chop sticks were more dangerous than sporks. That had been that.

The good doctor walked slowly along the outer part of the courtyard, watching the patients, making sure they were interacting well when they did interact. It seemed to be a nice calm place, and Dr. Simon was rather happy to be out of the building proper. He was beginning to get restless; something didn't feel right, as if he'd forgotten something. He knew it couldn't have been leaving the oven or the iron on as he had neither. No, he felt as if he weren't complete. It was a disturbing feeling no matter the source, so he hoped that helping one of the patients would ease that unsettling/disturbed feeling.

Things had been weird. Ted felt weird. If he turned his head too quickly, things started to tilt. It wasn't quite being dizzy, he knew that feeling. But it definitely wasn't what things should normally do.

It had been a while since he'd lost count of the days. Counting had been automatic. He'd been locked up before, he knew that. He hadn't liked it before, he knew that too. But this was different. They gave him jell-o here. They let him have a nice bed. They let him roam around. The food wasn't horrible. He had little slippers that were fuzzy and warm, and a pair of jammies that were comfortable. On the days when he was cold, he had a nice warm fuzzy robe to wear that matched the slippers.

He couldn't be sure what he was doing in this place, however. He recalled no trial. He didn't even remember being brought in. Just that he was here. The days passed, and he was still here.

A few times he thought he recognized people. But he was never sure enough to go introduce himself. Or ask them. Mostly, he just looked. Ted watched, and he kept to himself. That seemed like the best thing to do. Safest. He was abnormally concerned with safety, he realized. Nobody else seemed to be as worried about certain things as he was. He'd ask if certain things were safe, or if he was going to have a guard when he did some things - like shower, and they obliged him. Though it didn't seem to him that they took him very seriously.

Ted sat in a chair in the cafeteria where he ate his meals every day and watched other people while he ate a bowl of red jell-o. Thinking about being in this place. Thinking about not being in this place. Thinking about getting some more jell-o.

Ted had gotten into a kind of routine with things. He had work to do for George, making sure that her money increased and that there was the right amount set aside for taxes. Not that he was at all sure that people paid taxes in the City, but just in case. He didn't want to have her fall short somehow, or get into any trouble for not paying.

There were two females and one wolf living in the house with him and Charlie. He was, finally, comfortable with all of them being there. They even had furniture now. Beds for everybody - including the wolf - to sleep on. Couches. A television. Things normal people had in their homes.

Things in this place were abnormal, but in their abnormality, they'd become normal. Normal wasn't normal anymore. And that was okay. Ted was okay with that.

He was also okay with the moving buildings and streets. He'd started thinking of it all kind of like an adventure. New places and new people every single day.

The only unfortunate thing about that was that every day he found a new coffee shop and had to relearn what he wanted to drink and how to say it in their specific coffee shop lingo.

Which is what he was currently contemplating while standing outside and looking at what he was sure was the hundredth coffee shop he'd been to.