The Universe's Mixer

They had gals. They had jobs. They had money and lives. It seemed that they were set.

Charlie wondered if they were. If they were truly set.

Rather than keep wondering, the City detective left a message for his housemate join him for some dinner. They hadn't talked much lately, and he wanted to revisit how life was going, where it was going. He wanted to know that Ted was doing well.

Unfortunately, as it was bound to happen, the plans were ruined by a crime. It wasn't a difficult one; Jennifer and Charlie had discovered the truth, solving the case in record time. The butler actually did do it. The case kept Charlie away from one of his longest best friends, and Charlie wished all the other cases that came across the desk he shared with Jennifer were solved as easily and cleanly.

The detective stood in the kitchen and stared into the refrigerator. What did he want for breakfast? Should he see if Ted was around to have the conversation over breakfast instead? Was that milk fresh? What did 42 really mean?

A long, black town car pulled up to Ted's driveway, and two grim men in grimmer suits stepped out. In the night, they nearly faded from existence, but for their faces and their hands.

"Thank you," Beauty said sincerely, squeezing both hands of the beautiful woman who rode in the back seat with her. "I'll never forget what you did for me, Christine."

And then it was the long stretch of driveway, the crunch of gravel under boots, and a strong rapping on the door before her. The bodyguards stayed with her, flanking either side, while Beauty waited. Pale and miserable, she realized that the plastic bracelet was still on her wrist. It said her name in reverse order: BELLAFORTE, HONOUR

She was in the process of tugging at the band when the door swung open.

After the first day of total darkness, Maxine started to fret. She used the internet to look up when the sun was supposed to rise and set. Then there was the alarms. Maxine set every single alarm in the house, all for different times. Without the sun, the animals wouldn't know when it was their bedtime. Maxine had to fix that.

As obnoxious as it was, the owls and crickets were only heard during the nighttime hours. The rodents and other creatures only ventured out during the safety of the dark days. With or without the sun, the animals continued the best they could under Maxine's ernest direction. To the untrained eye, however, Maxine was a nightmare of a house guest -- waking up at all hours and going out into the yard, concentrating with all her five year old might.

It was a strange sight in the least.

Getting up at all hours of the night meant sleeping at all hours, too. Maxine had curled up in the living room with a blanket. When sleeping deeply, she didn't hear Jo coming or going. She did, however, hear the knock on the door. Her hair was comically disheveled. Maxine rubbed the sleep from her eyes when she looked up at the older man at the door.

"...Are you Jo's dad?" she yawned.

Ted stood out in front of City Hall, looking at the building.

He had seen the news spot about it being burned down and rebuilt. He knew that the City was capable of a lot of things. He shouldn't doubt that it would be able to restore a building almost as soon as it was taken out. But he did. He was looking for differences. Flaws. Changes. Anything. Even a window that was cracked.

Either this was some other building that the City had moved to replace the old City Hall, or the fire had never happened. He was sure of it. Okay, so he wasn't sure of it. But he didn't believe that the whole thing had burned down and nobody inside had noticed. Not one employee had witnessed it. Not one. Even his office was perfect, and nothing smelled of smoke. It bothered Ted more than many other things about this place did.

How can a building burn with nobody to see it?

He wondered if Charlie would turn it into one of those trees falling in an empty forest questions.

It wasn't that Ted was afraid to go inside. He'd been in already. He'd been in a lot, actually. They'd only just found out about this fire, and they'd gone into work the next day as if everything was normal. All of them.

Ted made a bit of a face at the building.

Jo hadn't seen all that much of Ted over the past few weeks. Mostly, she'd been busy trying to figure out what the hell she was going to do about the bar situation. She also wasn't quite ready to tell him that she was staying in a motel or explain the reasons behind it. But she thought she might have some ideas as to how to make sure that the situation didn't turn into a bloodbath, maybe.

So now that she thought that she might be able to get things under control, she'd left Ted a message inviting him to meet her for coffee. They never had gotten around to that second date, after all. Coffee wasn't exactly the most original date, but it would be nice to do something normal for a change. Spending two weeks together in an alternate reality that was even more bizarre than the City didn't exactly count as normal.

Unfortunately, while she was waiting at the coffee shop, she got a call. The voice on the other end of the line was a little hesitant and vague about how they'd gotten her number, but seemed to really need the help. Something about a rental property that kept scaring off and sometimes even killing off its tenants.

Jo had promised that she'd look into it, but she wasn't going to simply leave and stand Ted up. She waited to see if he'd get there soon. Maybe she could still squeeze in time for a coffee before she went ghost hunting.

The entire day felt like a weight. Once the books were properly shelved, the rest of her hours at work stretched impossibly long. Errol was up in front, researching something... a topic too familiar for her tastes. Honour retreated to the rare books room - which was as far away from the front of the store as she could get - and spent the rest of the day pacing or restlessly changing positions in one of the bookstore's upholstered chairs. There'd been only one chime from the door, and she'd avoided coming out for that. She tried reading, but ended up going over the same two paragraphs again and again. Nothing was sticking, and she couldn't get her thoughts straight.

Something gnawed at her ruthlessly, and she was doing her best to hide it -- or at least hide away until she mastered it. When it came time for the end of her shift, Honour uncharacteristically rushed through closing duties and hurried out the door with hardly a word to her colleague. It shouldn't have been so difficult to be around him, she reflected, but she'd stopped meeting his eyes when they happened on her.

The warm early evening felt like a blanket around her. She hurried home and went to the room that felt the most comforting - her new library. Again, nothing seemed to take her mind off things; nothing helped at all. It was useless, all these attempts to distract herself. But maybe...

30 minutes later, Honour knocked on the beautiful doors of a friend. Over one arm she carried a basket filled to the brim with apples and carrots. When she dropped her hand to her side again, she tried plastering on a smile, but it felt so awful that she let it slide almost immediately.

There were rooms and closest in the house that nobody used. The house was just too big for two people to actively inhabit all the space. Ted had a bedroom and an office, Charlie had a bedroom, Lucy-belle had a bedroom downstairs, as did the horse. And still there was a lot of room to be had.

So when Ted opened his closet and discovered the suit hanging there, he knew it was for him, and hadn't been accidentally left by or for somebody else. He didn't think his partner would do something like this. Not that it was too elaborate, but Charlie had other sorts of jokes he liked to play. Nothing about this had his friend's name on it.

The thing was fairly ugly. A deep purple color with black boots and a pair of little black... over... underpants... it also came with a belt and a cape which were an almost-forest green. On the chest in a color similar to the cape and belt was what could only be called a logo.

ℵ

Ted frowned on it. Aleph essentially measured sets of infinity.

"Charlie?" He called out, but the house was quiet around him. His roommate wasn't home. "Charlie," He said anyway. "I think the City wants me to be a mathematics superhero... Charlie I don't want to be a superhero... And this logo doesn't make sense."

Being back in the City after being on that horrible planet made Ted realize just how much he appreciated certain things about his life. Also, how much he'd taken some for granted. Or not even taken the time to explore them properly.

Like the park.

The park was a vast and beautiful place filled with lots of trees and really random food choices. The park had a small lake in it. Or a large pond. Whatever. The park had children laughing and parents watching. Balloons, and grass.

Just in the park were a hundred things that the planet he and Jo had been on didn't even remotely come close to pretending to have. Which was why Ted was there today. Walking around and not caring about work - which he might get yelled at for later, but that was later - and looking at every single thing that he could look at.

A man who has been to prison knows how to enjoy the world outside of the walls. A man who has been to an apocalyptic planet knows how to enjoy the world as a whole. Ted was a man who was both.

It was fortunate and a moment of relief when Ted discovered himself back in the City. He had had enough of the place he'd been put, and was ready to return to the oddness and moving streets. That he could handle. Apocalypse, he wasn't too gung ho for.

It was unfortunate that he returned without Jo by his side. No way of knowing if she was alright either, other than calling her number, leaving a message and sending a quick text right after. Which he did. Ted knew that in some places where call service didn't work, the short burst of a text would get through. If she wasn't in the City, maybe she could still get it. Of course, if she was back as well, hopefully she'd take it as worry and not him being some crazy stalker.

The only thing he could think to do immediately was to return to Charlie and the horse and the house. He'd learned that he had many things to tell his friend, and he wanted to see if Charlie had gone to the other place, too.

Ted found the door unlocked - as usual - and immediately headed up the stairs.

It seemed there could be no reason for a woman of her age to be clutching a book of fables, but that's exactly what Honour Bellaforte was doing -- walking down the streets of the City, almost aimless, and clutching a heavily-embossed, slim hardcover full of fables. She'd been walking for an hour, the sun was sliding behind the buildings of this place she now called her home, and she still hadn't settled matters in her head.

The street was winding her in and out of shops; some she recognized, some she didn't. None of them were appealing....but then, she wasn't in a mood to shop. Long shadows traversed the sidewalk in front of her. She stepped through them, eyes focused ahead, but seeing very little.

As preoccupied as she was, Beauty very nearly collided with the far larger man just exiting the shop to her right.

Ted was good at picking out flowers if they were apology flowers, birthday flowers, Mother's Day flowers or Valentine's Day flowers. He'd never really gotten flowers for his wife after their first couple of months together unless for one of the above reasons. Sometimes she thought the apology flowers were just-because-flowers, and he never felt the need to correct her otherwise during that time. Eventually, she'd figured it out.

What he wanted today, though, was none of those things. He wanted to send something to Jo. He hadn't quite had a crush like this one since his younger days, and wasn't sure exactly what would be appropriate.

Walking around, he kept his eyes open for a good place, and when he saw Sherwood Florist, he was too amused by the name to not go in. And he was very happy he had. The selection was very nice, and none of the flowers looked dead or dying. Even though they technically were. They all looked fresh and nice, and there were plenty of types he couldn't name, but were very pretty.

He wandered to the counter and looked around.

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.