What happened

The world had moved on.

And the world was still moving on, and Roland felt as though he were falling farther and farther behind.

He'd found the boy and it had lifted some of his pain and mental anguish. For a time he thought that if only he could find the boy -- Jake Chambers -- that everything would become clear. That the path to the Tower would be open and he would be on his way to fulfilling the destiny left to him many years ago. Even before he knew about the Tower, it had marked him. Back in his days at Gilead. Maybe even long before his birth.

But he was wrong. Finding the boy didn't change the gunslinger's feelings concerning the Tower. And now he was lost. The Path of the Beam had disappeared. His ka-tet was gone. The boy that wasn't became the boy that was and had found himself a new calling amongst this strange world. A world that was trying to move on, but had become stuck. Confused.

Roland hadn't been ignoring those who helped him. He hadn't been ignoring the boy. He'd been trying to continue his quest. Trying to find the Tower. But every direction he took, every walk, every step, every corner turned, only brought him closer and closer to his starting point.

And now he found himself stopped. Standing outside of The City Industries, staring up at three skyscrapers that nearly touched the clouds. They were all clouded by a certain darkness that caught the gunslinger's attention.

LexCorp. Wayne Tech. Stark Industries.

Towers.

Perhaps one of them was his.

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She hadn't really wanted to head into The City Commons, spaces like it made her nervous and the fact that little bits of Central Park had seemed to have found there way here? Well it made her break out into a cold sweat. She comforted herself with the fact that it was light out, this was not New York, and she would be prepared now if anything should happen.

The Kate Bishop who had been attacked in New York's Central Park hadn't been a Young Avenger, and she hadn't been … well whatever Kate was now. She was going to have to mention to Max that they needed a name (especially if they where bringing this Jake on board).

Names could be worried about later, because Kate had come here on a mission, she needed to practice her aim. She had been all right in the dust up with those robbers, but she needed more practice, and she wanted to practice outside where there was wind, and noise and other distractions.

So here she was, in an out of the way section of the City Commons and taking aim at a tree she had sketched out a target on. In retrospect she wished she had invited Max along for this session the other girl could have helped her carry some real targets.

Sure, she figured she might look strange, but this City was full of the weird and odd. Kate figured next to some of the things she had seen (like that guy in the cloak with the glowing eyes on her first day here) a teenager girl playing Robin Hood would seem downright normal.

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She should have known better, just from hanging out with Terry for so long, that crime fighting was not all action and adventure. And if the lesson hadn't stuck from hanging with Terry, then she should have gotten it just from spending so much time with the Bat-Clan in the City. Either way, Max shouldn't have been surprised with the utter boredom that came with sitting in a cramped dusty corner with Kate, computer sitting in her lap as she watched the entrances.

They were waiting for a small local gang of robbers to come in so that they could truss them up and leave them and the stolen merchandise in front of the local precinct all pretty-like. It was their first run at this superhero gig, almost a test-run, really. All the electronics set up and ready to go, costumes were on, and they even had what gadgets Max had managed to get her hands on. They even had a quick getaway route planned from here back to the Lair. Granted, they were lucky this time and the Lair was pretty much in the area, but it was still good to start!

Max drew her knees in, staring down at the laptop and concentrating on the exits. She was wishing the guys would just hurry up and get there with the stolen goods already. Some of the loot from previous nights was already in the warehouse and very tempting, the electronics anyway. Any longer in this place and she was going to completely rewire the Lair in her mind with the new stuff she could see. As if she hadn't just done an overhaul of the place a few days ago.

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Kate didn't like to think of herself as her fathers daughter, she liked to think that she was her mothers daughter. Helping the oppressed and downtrodden, standing up to bullies and the like. She didn't think of herself as "pushy" her father was pushy, Kate simply liked to get her way ….

And she had. Granted the whole costuming thing had been a bit more difficult than Kate had anticipated, and had really brought home that this was not her world. No one knew who Kate Bishop was, no one was impressed by that, and she didn't have the contacts that she had had back in her New York.

Kate however was a girl who enjoyed a challenge (and much like her father the only thing she enjoyed more than a challenge was winning said challenge). She had haggled with what apparently was the local fashion crowd and come away a winner. Not only had she gotten a costume for Max out of the deal, she had also gotten a new belt for herself.

She left the costume in The Lair with a note for Max;

Hope this is okay. If not let me know.

Hawkeye

Signing her name that way made her feel a little self conscious, but she had a secret identity (of sorts) to protect. She couldn't just go around signing her own name to notes like that.


ooc: Piper, I suck. I lost the think you sent me for the picture of Max's costume :P Sorry!

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On Monday afternoon Max went and put Babs' birthday present to her to good use. It was during her lunch period that she ventured out into the real world to the electronics store in the heart of the City. There wasn't much she could pick up with just the two hundred dollar certificate Babs had gotten her, but she had some extra money picked up from various computer jobs she'd been handling here and there. The total more than covered the things that she wanted to start off with.

Max had plans, oh yes she did. They weren't fully formed, they weren't all quite realistic, and maybe they were a mite bit crazy, but they were plans. Sort of.

She wandered back into school about five minutes before sixth period started carrying a brown bag in one arm and two small monitors in another, heading towards her locker. She had to keep this stuff somewhere. Not that it was all going to fit, but Max was willing to make a valliant effort.

More than six months now and she still hadn't compltely gotten the hang of the stupid twisty lock combos. They were complicated, moreso when you had a bunch of stuff in your arms.

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The good was that she'd found 'The Lair' (really a defunct Bishop Publishing warehouse) and that it had her costume and her weapons in it. The bad was that it was empty of everything else, wherever she was, she was here alone. The very bad, well that was what the last few days where filed under.

That had just been … weird. In fact, the less thought she gave to the last few days, the better. Whatever had possessed the city (whatever had possessed her) was done. Things where back to normal. Or whatever passed for normal around here.

So Kate was out, doing what passed for normal for her. Which was currently poking around in her third abandoned warehouse of the evening, there had be some wrong doer's somewhere. Hopefully un-powered wrong doer's as she was without any type of back up … having Stature here would be nice. Or Wiccan. Or even Patriot.

A noise made her spin around, drawing an arrow as she did so, and than sigh as she realized it was just a rat. "Go on, scurry off, shoo."

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Kate had a cell phone, but it wasn't on her person, no she could see it sitting on her bed where she had left it when she had dashed out of her room, convinced she was going to be late for school. Well, that meant the cell phone was back .. wherever the hell her apartment was. So, no cell phone meant Kate was turning to a payphone, in her attempt to phone her father. She dialed the number for her father's office, and held her breath while it rang and than ..

"Hello, Maratha's Pizza."

"Oh, sorry. Wrong number."

She hung up the phone, not exactly … surprised. Next she tried her sisters cell phone, that number wasn't in service. Muttering that the third time was the charm Kate dialed her hone number only to hear, that much like her sisters cell phone, that number was no longer in service.

"Dammit!" She placed the phone back on the hook with more force than necessary. Back to plan B it seemed, trying to find that newspaper place. Kate wasn't a fan of adults, after all tended to confiscate her weapons (okay, so that had happened once, and to be fair she had "borrowed" said weapons, but really it wasn't like any of the Avengers had been using them ...) and tell her to go home. But in this case maybe an adult could shed some light on this situation.

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It seemed that the City had a working system in which the existing Reapers were put on rotating shifts, perhaps, for Death did not notice a surge in deaths, but had suddenly found himself with some time in which to persue leisurely activities.

On this day, he could be found sitting in a small Indian restaurant that had a sign outside boasting "world's best curry", with a napkin tucked around the clasp on his collar, cutlery at the ready. Death was waiting for his order to arrive.

Curry rice, extra spicy. It was the way he preferred the dish.

If any normal person looked in his direction, they would find their eyes unfocusing slightly. They would try to remember what they had been looking at for the next 10 seconds or so, then turn their attention back to their food and/or companion. Those who were more sensitive to the supernatural would find it easier to identify him, and may or may not eventually forget about the encounter.

Death would not be seen if he did not wish to be, but sometimes, it couldn't be helped.

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