The Universe's Mixer

Enigma’s news about the Joker and Scarecrow’s plan had pretty much wiped everything else out of Dinah’s mind. Her first instinct was to call Dean, but he’d already texted her the night before and told her that he was coming home today, so she would wait. She wasn’t going to rush him home from whatever it was he felt that he still needed to be doing now that his hunt was done.

She’d dropped off the gas mask with Hank to see if he could reverse engineer enough for the team and now she needed the time to think and draw up plans before she talked to anyone else. The hardest part was that she didn’t know how much of the new team she should involve, if any of them.

As soon as that thought popped into her head, she shoved it aside. She couldn’t make that decision for anyone. She had to give them the choice. She had to make it clear what sort of enemy Joker could be and make it clear that she would make do if they decided to stay away from him. She believed in the people that she’d recruited recently and she couldn’t start doubting their abilities and being overprotective now, no matter how much she might want to.

She also wanted Dean involved with this. She would feel better with him watching her back and she believed that he had a point-they needed to be there for each other with things like this. They needed to start working as a team instead of compartmentalizing when it came to danger. They wouldn’t always have to work together on crimefighting or hunting but with something this big, it didn’t feel right to leave him out.

The apartment had already been stripped of Christmas decorations. She’d taken those down on Christmas Eve because truthfully, she’d been overcompensating with the holiday cheer. The first Christmas without Jake was always going to be rough and she’d simply hoped that she could drown that out by celebrating her first Christmas living with Dean. So she’d decorated and shopped and tried to make plans and it hadn’t been fair to expect him to somehow make her forget that her adoptive son wasn’t here for this.

She didn’t know what time he planned to be home and she wasn’t going to wait all day-she’d call him eventually and tell him what was going on if it got too late, but for now she sat at the kitchen table scribbling plans in a notebook as she tried to work out the best use of the team’s resources to stop this plan before it became a problem for the people of the City.

( Come up to meet you, tell you I'm sorry... )

Maggie had never actually applied for a job in her life. She'd started off like most Fictionals had: posting for free on public sites until she felt confident enough with her own material and online presence to send an email with a few links out to paying blog sites. It was too casual to be called an application. And even After the End Times, which was the biggest site she'd worked for to date, had hired her solely on Buffy's recommendation. She hadn't even had to send in samples, since Buffy had been head of the Fictionals and they'd known each other for what felt like ages by then.

The actual process of applying for traditional media had been something new. And exciting at first, until she got bored with the process. She'd nearly thrown the damn thing away twice before finishing and sending it in. She didn't know how her Newsie friends had done it, since they had actual applications, with references and credentials and licenses to provide. And it was so dull.

But apparently both it and her mostly unverifiable job history were enough for the editors at the City Voice, who informed her of an opening in the Arts and Entertainment section, which she accepted. She showed up at their offices, still antsy about leaving her dogs at home alone.

Logan had kept to himself over the holidays. Christmas had always been pretty miserable growing up and he couldn't fall back on his typical activity for New Years' Eve since he could no longer consume alcohol. He supposed that he could have gotten a buzz by feeding on one of the many partygoers of the night, but he'd chosen to just keep a low profile.

Things with Veronica were weird, to say the least. Not that he could blame her, but he wasn't all that confident that she would just suddenly be okay with his new state of existence. She was trying, he would give her that. He just didn't get the feeling that she trusted him any more than she'd ever had.

Logan decided to venture back out onto the streets after the new year. He wasn't sure what he was looking for, but he'd know when he found it. He'd sated himself with Tru Blood but that never did quite satisfy. He was always a little on edge, always craving live blood.

The City lights twinkled merrily as he roamed through the streets, covering ground quickly as he went. Or perhaps the City was just being cooperative and moving quickly under his feet. Sometimes it was hard to tell.