The Universe's Mixer

Bill had been cooped up in his apartment writing comics. The work was steady and he was surprised to discover how well The City paid, desperate for new strips. Bill produced two for The City, which was more work than he initially realized. The first was a super heroine comic who very closely resembled Promethea who usually fought robots or nazis, and flirted with a handsome FBI agent between action sequences. The second was a continuation of Rex Morgan, MD. Bill was careful to keep with the style of ever sentence ending in either an exclamation mark, ellipses or question. He also introduced new characters based on the friendly City Hospital medical staff.

The City was otherwise quiet. Bill kept a police scanner handy on his desk in case he heard of anything needing his intervention. Promethea had not made an appearance since her change but that didn't stop both mild mannered comic artist and science heroine from feeling cooped up. So it wasn't a mistake at nearly midnight when working on the latest Sofia: Science Heroine! strip that Bill imagined himself in a happier place and transformed.

Flying from her apartment, Promethea spied on The City below. Landing softly in The City Commons, she decided to take a walk. From each step, beautiful flowers blossomed from the trees and ground, figments from the realm of imagination which slowly faded, creating a trail of botanical wonder in her wake.

Her mind was like no other. There was a chorus of voices, both avatars of the past, present and future wound together into a song that made up Promethea's existence as a living story. Her thoughts had the intangibility of a goddess with the tangibility of a song, making it pretty to hear but nearly impossible to discern.

It was good to be out. Promethea stretched out her arms, reaching for the sky. Pleased.

Dr. Tam. Good Dr. Tam. Hard-working, never-eating, sometimes-forgetting-to-sleep Dr. Tam. He hadn't seen his sister in a while. He'd only briefly caught a glimpse of John, and that guy down the hall was a little creepy. Simon had thrown himself into his work, and he had to wonder if this was all he was meant for. He was even a little shocked that he'd some how accepted, for the moment, that River was becoming an adult and that she might be able to stop someone from turning into a complete monster - Simon had his doubts, but work was dulling them. He was also a little amused at his occasional wish to be out on some hair brained adventure that was going to end up getting at least one person shot and others incarcerated - escape capers were also good for the heart.

Dr. Simon Tam needed a vacation or a life or both. Nurse Ratchett had stopped giving him the evil eye and had gone so far as to say the doctor should take a break and have a little soup. The realization that the woman had only glared at him a little while she said it rather than giving him the evil eye that would probably cause sterility in lesser men made Simon actually sit down in the caf and contemplate his existence over a cooling cup of broth.

I should find River, maybe Inara. Think I saw Zoe at that crazy party. Maybe I should look for George - we never got that coffee... Thinking of George led him directly down a path he was doing rather well at avoiding, Kaylee. It wasn't that Kaylee wasn't in his thoughts when River, Inara, or Zoe were there but that George was a semi-possibility like Kaylee, well, not exactly like Kaylee. He couldn't see George covered in grease happy to be working on some capacitor or fuel in-take.

Good Dr. Tam sat and stared into his soup, thinking and possibly for the moment relaxing.

So things had settled down and it was time for Catwoman to go prowling. She had the perfect target too; a priceless magenta pink diamond bracelet had just arrived in The City. There had been a small blurb in the paper about it, and its rarity, and after the description of the bracelet, she had decided that she wanted it all for herself.

She skillfully went over the fence and slid past the alarm system. The owners of the mansion and of the coveted bracelet were out of down, and their security system has been easy to figure out. After picking the lock to the back door, she clicked on her night-vision goggles and avoiding all of the trips to the alarms, she headed up the stairs. And she was feeling greedy too, for she knew that there would be other jewelry to check out in the safe.

She had studied this job for a time, and she knew the security system and blueprints of the house well. Catwoman didn’t do a job without knowing all of the ins and outs of a home such as this.

She knew exactly where the study was, and she knew that the safe was stashed being a really hideous painting of toilets. (This she knew by staking the house out. Fortunately, the people were idiots and their study was in plain site.) Who on earth would buy a picture of toilets and put it up on their wall. These people didn’t deserve to have such a gorgeous work of art as the bracelet if they had such horrible taste in other art.

She skillfully and easily got into the safe and was riffling through the rest of the jewelry when she thought she heard a noise.