The Universe's Mixer

Dinah had just pulled her bike into the garage when she received the call from Jack Heart. Her first instinct was to wonder exactly why the mayor would be calling her. As Jack started to explain, she felt a little weak from the shock but she also resisted the urge to laugh out of sheer relief.

Fred was alive. She was in rough shape and Dinah couldn’t visit her until the morning, but she was alive. Jack had warned that there was some memory loss, but Dinah could only hope that that would come back in time.

Whatever the case, her friend was alive. Dinah thanked the mayor, trying not to wonder out loud as to why he was the first to know about this. For now, she was grateful for the fact that Fred had survived the fire at her place.

She let herself into the shop and made sure that everything was still in order there. She hadn’t been to her flower shop for awhile and she missed it. Truthfully, she was really hoping that she would be able to catch some downtime once she had made sure that the City was safe. It seemed like lately Dinah and everyone else she cared about had been running themselves ragged as they rushed to put out one fire after another.

Dinah caught sight of something in the window of the building as she went to start checking things out. She jumped before she realized that whatever it was out there was person-shaped but wasn’t moving. The Canary wasn’t sure what that meant, but she couldn’t just hide in here. She wasn’t the sort to hide and hope that the bad things just went away.

What she found out front wasn’t what she expected at all. The statue was eerily lifelike and her first thought was that this was just the latest in the long line of Joker’s sick pranks. It was only once she inspected it closer that she started to wonder if it was a statue indeed. Or rather, it was most definitely a statue, but there were certain things about the pose and the expression on the statue’s face that she didn’t think any sculptor would have chosen to sculpt.

She also found the petrified flower-shaped bomb stuck in the sidewalk. She frowned and looked from the flower to the bronzed Joker.

Finally, she sighed and made her way upstairs. It seemed that she had another mystery to unravel, but for now she was exhausted and just wanted to share the news about Fred with Dean and curl up to the man that she hadn’t gotten much alone time with lately.

( Never a dull moment. )

Charlie kept talking about how Ted was seeing somebody. He didn't know much about her, just that her name was Jo and she ran a bar. It didn't sound like Ted was being evasive about answering questions, just that Charlie wasn't pressing for information too hard.

Jen, however, was curious.

Since Charlie was hers, and Ted was important to him, Jennifer wanted whomever Ted was dating to be on the up and up. Or at the very least, a good person. From what she knew of Ted, he needed good people in his life. He deserved good people in his life. Yes, he'd messed up and yes, he'd gone to prison. But so had Charlie. Where Charlie had been falsely accused, Ted had actually deserved his time. But that didn't mean he hadn't changed.

Jennifer decided to take it upon herself to look in on this Jo. Get to know her a bit. Find out if there was anything that she wasn't telling Ted. It was easy enough, since the woman worked in a bar. She could go and sit in a bar for hours and not get hounded about it. If there had been a convenience store involved, she would have had to spread it out over many, many days.

The bar itself was weird. She'd had some idea that it would be from the name, Purgatory. But when she got inside, it was all kinds of fucked up. She had to stand in the entrance for a minute just to get her bearings. Half of it looked like a place that she'd be comfortable in. The other half looked like a goth kid threw up all over it. There were very few people in the bar at this hour, nobody in the goth half. Jen wondered if that half got busier when the sun went down.

Eventually she eased herself in and went to the normal-looking half of the bar and sidled up.

Unlike Dean, Sam had no pressing need to look for Fred. He knew what had happened to his former girl Friday, for lack of a better word. He didn't care all that much though he was certainly pretending he cared. He was also pretending to help in the search, which meant that he'd done a few things on his laptop to try to triangulate the position that Angel Investigations had been in before the fire.

Or at least, he'd been doing those searches on his laptop until the damn thing broke on him. Sure, he could use his phone but that didn't mean that he wanted to give up the laptop entirely.

Dean had mentioned the technogirl, Annie or Amy or Ally. Something with an A like that. He'd also briefly mentioned the shop that whatsherface worked at, Fixit. Sam thought that it couldn't hurt to stop in and see what Ashley could do for him.

So, laptop in hand, he let himself into the shop once he'd found it.