Reality Crisis

Dinah didn't know that Bruce was back in town. If she did, she might have looked for him first. She definitely needed to talk to someone on the team that was still in the tentative formation stages about what was going on in this world. On top of the alternate version of Dean, she'd heard stories of other duplicates showing up.

She hadn't yet met up with another version of herself, which was a tiny relief. But overall, something seemed to have gone haywire. This wasn't quite on the scale of the biblical rain of creatures, but there was a chance it could get to that point and fast.

She also really wanted to check on Bruce. She hadn't heard from him in awhile and she was worried about him being out in that cave by himself. Anything could happen and she might not even find out about it for days or possibly weeks. And no matter how much someone might say they liked being alone, that much alone time wasn't healthy for anyone.

It didn't help that she knew Bruce-or at least a version of Bruce-and she knew him well enough to know that he might try to push people away, but he also had his connections. He seemed to need people just like everyone else. He just had a habit of letting them get close and then pushing them away out of fear of losing them.

She would go back out and find Bruce soon, she decided. But for now, she was in the lobby of the apartment complex, trying to decide who she should look for first. Eventually they would need to try to get the potential team together and maybe with all of them, they could come up with some theories as to why this was happening and possibly figure out ways to make sure that the duplicates didn't throw off some sort of balance, assuming tat was a danger.

Ted wasn’t sure what happened. One minute he was on his way to give Jo the flowers he’d gotten her, and the next thing he knew, he was in some... well, he could only really call it a wasteland. He knew in his gut that he wasn’t in the City anymore, but he still turned around to look for the sidewalk he’d just been on, or the street lamp he’d just passed. When he didn’t see them, he kept turning until he was right back to the direction that he’d started in.

His head drooped and he covered his eyes with his hand.

This couldn’t be happening. Really, it couldn’t. He’d already been taken from his own world once, it just wasn’t fair for it to happen again. He’d gotten so comfortable with the way things had been in the City. He’d actually been happy there. He had his best friend. The horse. A woman he liked. A really good job. Now where was he?

Silently, he kept hoping that when he took his hand away, he’d be on the couch in the house, waking up from a nap with the worst nightmare he’d ever had. Because of that, he didn’t want to move at all.

( Flowers and Nightmares... )

Boots ran along the outer walls of the skyscraper, leaving marks on the windows as he passed by. His feet moved with a remarkable sense of speed, and then suddenly left the window panes, to send the figure sailing through the air; a streak of red and blue that twisted through the air before suddenly going inverted and heading face first for hundreds of stories below. He fell through the canyons of New York City with an unmatched grace, the sleek uniform gleaming against the sunlight that reflected off the windows, and shone brightly on the brightly colored skydiver. He fell, the winds whipped past him, the streaks of the buildings becoming almost like streaks in a painting next to him, and he then reached down towards his utility belt and hit a quick switch. Motley Crue's "Kickstart my Heart" threw itself on and then the man whipped himself around, twisting before webbing the nearest building and sailing back towards the streets.

He was suddenly right side up, and shot between two large buses, to the shouts and cries of gleeful children cheering for ( The Amazing Spider-Man )