The Universe's Mixer

He felt ... kind of uncomfortable. He felt like he had fallen asleep in his van, and was just waking up after a night of sleeping in a vehicle that was meant for driving, and not meant for sleeping in. Cracking open an eye, Oz surveyed his van and frowned as he struggled up to a sitting position.

A quick check in the rear view mirror showed him -- himself. Dressed in what he considered his “Mexico” clothes, and not the asylum uniform that he had gone to sleep in. Or that he had thought he had gone to sleep in.

"Weird." Oz told the van. "Really weird." He turned around in his seat and checked behind him, his guitar was there, the clothes he had had with him on his Mexico adventure. Which begged the question -- was he back in Mexico? Had he had some sort of dream?

A glance out the window of the van showed an unfamiliar cityscape that was very not Mexico looking.

He didn’t feel .. panic. Not quite. But he did feel the wolf, just sort of nosing around the edges of his consciousness. The wolf was not a supper happy camper at the moment, and hey, Oz didn’t blame him, Oz himself was feeling a bit out of sorts himself. And deep, deep, deep down, he was almost glad to feel the wolf was back. He didn’t like the beast, but at least it meant whatever medicine he had been on was out of his system.

Spying the keys in the ignition of the van, he turned the vehicle on. Time to go exploring and see if he could find some answers.

There had been a couple bouts of alarms going off. It made Jennifer very uneasy. The alarms triggered something deep in her psyche. Something that told her she should be doing something more with her life. Something that made her feel protective. But of what? She didn't really have much authority here. She was a patient. She had to follow the rules. She was good at following the rules, too. Rules were there to make sure that nobody got hurt, and that nobody hurt anybody else. When somebody did hurt somebody else, Jennifer always found herself glad to see the authority of the orderlies take them away.

But those alarms.

Alarms meant bad things were happening. Alarms meant that somebody should do something, and do it quick so that nobody got seriously injured, or killed. That the somebody that should do something should be somebody with the know how to do it, lest they be the ones to be harmed or killed. Ordinary citizens should never be the ones to jump in because they never knew what they were doing. Ever.

The first one hadn't rattled her so badly. Just sort of jumpstarted her brain. But then... then there had been more.

The other thing was that people were disappearing. People were walking right out the front door with papers in hand, sometimes. Other times, they just wouldn't be where she usually saw them. Even if she'd never talked to them, their faces had been something she could rely on day to day. She didn't like that they were leaving and she was left alone here. Alone. That wasn't entirely true, was it. She wasn't alone. There were lots of people around. It was just the missing ones that bothered her.

And of course, the alarms.

Jennifer sat on the couch, her feet curled under her, and chewed on her nails.

A slightly plump, kind-faced nurse entered Dinah's room shortly after she woke up.

"Good morning, dear," the nurse practically sang. "Today's a big day for you. We just have some paperwork to fill out and then you can be on your way."

Dinah blinked in surprise, not daring to trust what she'd heard.

"What do you mean, 'on my way'?"

"Why, dear, haven't the doctors told you? They've determined that you are, more or less, sane and perfectly capable of caring for yourself outside of these walls."

Dinah stared in surprise, still unsure of how to take this news. Just like that, and she was free again? It seemed too easy.

Maybe Harry had been right after all. Maybe...

Two hours and countless signatures later, Dinah was on her way. Her head was clearer than ever. As the cab pulled away from Arkham and into a jungle of skyscrapers, the memories of her time at Arkham began to fade, as though it were all just one long nightmare. Dinah realized this and fought to hold onto the people she'd met there, fought to make sense of the experience.

Harry and Oz... all the patients who had looked sane but beaten down by captivity, who didn't belong there. She needed to return and get them out too. But first, she needed to come up with a plan.

A familiar building came into view. Dinah blinked in surprise and leaned forward to get the cab driver's attention.

"Stop the car! Here, you can let me out right here."

She fumbled in her bags for money to pay the driver, but he waved her off.

"It's already been paid for. Good luck with your new beginning, miss."

( New beginnings and now hiring... )

Buffy walked calmly down the hallway. The alarms were loud enough that the sound in her ears had temporarily dulled, while lights flashed on and off like camera flashes. The Slayer couldn't remember who she was looking for-- someone who had helped her. Someone British. The only thing she could remember, having woken up early from the medication she'd been given, was Sherlock Holmes stories. At least fragments of them. They didn't help her deduce anything about the current situation except that she was leaving. Now.

"SLAYER."

Orderlies rounded the corner equipped with tranquilizer guns and fired. Buffy had less than a second to duck and did so, as unfriendly looking darts embedded themselves into the wall. Buffy blinked, still hazy. Her head was swimming like she'd woken up from a lengthy slumber. She didn't waste any time charging, leaping in midair and in a cinematic kick. All three medical staff went down like dominos, unconscious. Though Buffy didn't have much experience with firearms, she'd used a tranquilizer gun pretty effectively against a werewolf before. Crouching down she picked up one of the guns and kept walking.

She walked past doors but it wasn't until she passed one with someone locked in a room that she stopped.

"Come on slayer strength. Don't go all wiggy on me now."

Buffy ripped the door off its hinges.

"Alright, who all is for leaving this crazy train?"

It was so fast that Jesse didn't even know what the fuck was happening to him as it happened. It was as if a giant angry wind had come along and whisked him away, though it was decidedly a lot more physical than wind, and quite a bit more painful than just a simple whisking.

He was sitting, talking with Didi, trying to figure out what it was that would make the scarf come off. The scarf that she had made so that he could be human for a while when he felt like it. The scarf he had created some kind of password for that kept it on him until he uttered the words to make it come off. The scarf that had allowed him to be so thoroughly drugged that he would have never figured out there was a password to the scarf by himself.

But Didi had helped him to think of it. The words turned out to be so simple that when he'd finally come up with them, he'd been a little bit ashamed of himself. The words off of his father's lighter, Fuck Communism. It should have really been the first thing he'd thought of. What other words would make sense? What else could there be that he didn't use in daily conversations but was close enough to his heart to be something he'd remember easily?

The lighter had dropped to the ground, and he'd bent to pick it up.

Then, chaos.

Four very large, very intimidating orderlies appeared around him. Jesse might have known how to fight a man like Jody pretty goddamned easily, but there were four of these guys. It didn't help matters that he was fairly sure they were all actually overgrown gorillas wearing white uniforms. The drugs were seeping quickly out of his system, but not quite fast enough for his liking. The thought of fighting back with extra abilities didn't occur to him right away. No, he'd just tried to kick and squirm free, which hadn't really amounted to much of anything at all. In fact, Jesse was pretty sure that with four pairs of hands on him, he hadn't moved an inch.

A pair on each arm, and each leg. They were literally carrying him bodily.

At first he was sure that he was going to be taken back to his room. They were going to try to get the scarf back on him and reissue those medications, only twice as strong. They weren't going to let him go back down to general population anymore, and they were going to find a way to make sure Didi couldn't visit him where they put him. He was able to glance back quickly, only once. She didn't seem very put out by what was happening to him. She sat there.

"Hey, darlin, you might wanna..." but he didn't get to finish his thought. They didn't turn toward the corridor with the elevators, they just kept going straight. Confused, Jesse relaxed in a way, more unsure than ever. His unwillingness to invade the thoughts of those around him proving to be a roadblock in his ability to figure out what was happening.

Past the nurses desk, then first gate into the intake area. Past all the doors where doctors kept their offices and out-patient services were rendered. Past the second gate and the front door guard's area. Right through the entry lobby to the front doors. And they didn't just stop. They burst through those doors and tossed Jesse in one clean motion as far as they could. Which happened to be quite a ways given that they were giants and there were four to do the lifting.

Jesse was reminded of falling from the plane as he sailed through the air, making his way to the only logical conclusion to this folly, the ground. He just barely managed to keep a hold on both scarf and lighter as he made impact and rolled. When he stopped, he was staring at the sky.

"Woulda been nice, had you let me put on real pants. Assholes." Of course, only now was his mind clear enough, his thoughts lucid enough, to realize he could have stopped the entire thing from happening. Deciding to embrace a gross display of power, instead of taking the waiting taxi, Jesse sent himself home. His condo in the Manchester. He also decided to dress himself and arrange for a pack of cigarettes. He figured why not, he didn't do it usually, these sorts of things, and he was really very pissed off.

With the lighter that had simultaneously broken the hold of the scarf and gotten him thrown on his ass, he lit up the first smoke of freedom. He had no idea how long he'd been in Arkham, but looking around his place, it looked just the same as when he'd left it. No changes at all.

Well. Except one.

There was a porn video that he had distinctly not had before sitting on the coffee table. Jesse picked it up and lifted his brows. "Casa Erotica? What the fuckin hell kinda name for a porn is that?" Wasn't something he normally went for, porn. He felt like he could have the real experiences easy enough, he didn't need to rely on watching other people do it. But for the hell of it, Jesse put it in the player and sat on the couch. It was in his place, it might as well get watched. He turned the television using the remote and sat back.