The Universe's Mixer

Giant escaped Zoo wolf.

He couldn't help but smile.

He'd heard thoughts from people in the City, too. What was going on was on a great many minds, all over the place. Thoughts were easy to catch, even without trying. He knew it wasn't just any wolf. That made it all the more attractive.

Wolfkiller.

The word used to ring in his head, centuries ago. Magnus's taunt, then Nicki's unexpected present-- the wolf-fur cloak and boots. He smiled.

The City was not always a good place for a creature like Lestat. He had not hunted anything to kill it in quite a long time.

This was perfect. And Lestat loved the idea of ridding the City of the wolf, just as he had rid the Auvergne of wolves all those years ago.

He wished he still had the cloak and the boots.

He sat silent on a rooftop, crouched, watching the wolf walk down a mostly empty street. Two others appeared behind it.

"Not as advertised," he said in a growl under his breath.

The late afternoon was balmy, even pleasant, but to Dick, who had been running, leaping, fighting and lifting the entire day, it was unbearably hot and sticky. The sun glared down on him as it started to sink, and he was actually missing his suit, which though dark, actually breathed well and used small, weightless chemical packs to regulate temperature. Dick hauled his single remaining crutch up off the ground and hooked it on the end of the fire escape, looking down as a clowder of cats streaked through the alley below, hissing to themselves as they bounded and twisted. "Always wanted to use 'clowder,' in a sentence," Dick commented to himself, tearing a piece of his shirt into a long stripe so he could bind the wound on his arm. This would probably only stop the bleeding at best; the bite was deep and ugly, courtesy of what he could have sworn was a raccoon.

His leg wasn't holding up all that well, and he was lucky that the dog he'd first come across that morning had decided to bite the crutch on his other side instead of his leg. He'd been helping people get to higher, safer ground all day, moving over the roofs as only he or one of his trained kind could; he'd managed to avoid getting bit right up until about ten minutes ago, and he was still cursing the mistake. He took in his breath in a long hiss as he tried to get the bleeding to stop, and looked around into the windows of the building behind him. He might have to break into one and find something to clean the wound with, or this was going to get ugly fast. "Wonder what a bunch of raccoons are called."

What was it with things in this City wanting to bite him? Logan wondered to himself absently as he walked through campus on his way back to the dorms. He'd just spent the entire day in the hospital after a bite from a rabid dog of some sort this morning. He was cranky, his head ached, and he was starting to get extremely itchy.

He resisted the urge to scratch and instead focused on just how much this City sucked sometimes.

Demons were one thing. Demons he could almost deal with, given that his boss was a demon and a pretty okay guy. Vampires? He still wasn't crazy about the fact that one had bitten him and he didn't even remember.

But now rabid dogs, and the crappiest healthcare he'd ever received in a hospital? That was just not right. He'd never had to wait so long for anything in his life. The Echolls name generally opened doors, but here it didn't seem to mean a hell of a lot.

Well, that was an understatement, really.

All the same, Logan was not in the best of moods as he walked back to his dorm.

The telephone was ringing. If the cell had caller ID, the number would come up as belonging to one Wanda Maximoff, cranky teenaged mutant. There was a tense edge to her voice as she began talking - to person or to voicemail didn't really matter. Wanda did not wait to see if Dean's drawl belonged to a living person or to a recording.

"It's Wanda. Pick up. Fff--- Look, I know I rolled my eyes about that Scooby Doo crap, but I swear to God a were-something just tried to bust in my window. This apartment building sucks."

Hank wasn't happy with how things had gone. He'd transformed, painfully, and nearly wrecked his lab before he got ahold of himself. The table on its side had shown him nothing but a giant white mass, and between that and screams of "BEAR!" as he made his way out of the hospital as carefully and timidly as possible made him almost certain he was a polar bear.

But how on earth had he become a polar bear??

Thankfully he still had his wits about him after the initial panic subsided so he'd gotten out and immediately made for the only individual he thought might have an inkling of what was happening.

He was worried briefly that he couldn't properly remember the way back to the blue box, but as he left the hospital he found his way back with relatively little issue. Luckily it was right where he'd left it last. Right in the park, where it was hidden and safe to approach.

Still, before he did the giant bear stood up to his full height, some fourteen feet, looking around and then landing heavily. He just didn't think it would do for somebody to panic seeing a giant bear attack a blue box. That would attract attention, and the Doctor probably didn't want attention. People snooping around a space ship. Hank didn't like people snooping around his lab (unless they were pretty redheads) and he didn't even live there, technically.

Making his way over Hank sniffed out the door (which was easier then getting used to these eyes enough to find the door visually) and then lifted his paw, gently as possible hitting the wooden door with the back of it so he didn't risk injuring the wood. It was still a mighty set of thuds, however, and Hank winced, then sat back on his haunches in a very human-like manner. He filled up the doorway, head hung low and almost to his belly, waiting to see if the Doctor answered and feeling a great amount of shame for coming to a man he didn't know so well with such need. But even if Hannibal might know something of what was happening, he was probably back in the hospital, and Hank couldn't stand all the panic even his careful wandering had caused. No wonder that wolf had been so upset.

After Amy Pond left the hospital room that Hannibal had met her in, he took himself into his office to study the bites she'd left on his skin. They weren't deep. Enough to bleed. There was a little bit of pain, but it wasn't bad. He'd felt worse.

Quickly, he took bacterial samples and mounted them on slides. He picked up a scalpel and removed the edges of one of the punctures to study. He did everything he could think of, scientifically, medically, to have the ability to look at these things in comparison to what he might become. To see if he could see the changes before they happened. He would need somebody else to take samples later. Henry, more than likely. Hannibal would be unable to work any apparatus as an animal.

He expected to become a wolf, as Amy had been. He expected it to all happen fairly quickly, as the time between her bite and her transformation wasn't very long. The latter held true. The former, well.

As the night approached, Hannibal began to feel the symptoms that Amy had experienced. He felt the burning, the itching. It amazed him, but his sense of smell increased more. He could smell spots on his office carpet where Simon had stood, though it had been some time. He could smell River on his jacket. He couldn't have imagined being more gifted in that particular area, but he was now. His body hurt as he felt the bones change. Hannibal rode the tide of metamorphosis with the same eerie quiet that he always had. Not even his pulse rate changed.

But when it was all over, and Hannibal found himself looking at the world from a different angle, he was surprised what he discovered in the mirror he'd set down for this purpose. Instead of a great wolf, he was staring back at a cat. A jaguar. Black and sleek, though he could still see his spots. A cat, coming from a canine? It really made no sense. But he couldn't say that he was unhappy with it.

Hannibal easily found his way out of the hospital and into the City proper. He was going to find Lestat, this was something that the vampire needed to see.

The City Park.

They probably weren't related. A giant wolf goes missing from the zoo and a man is spotted running naked through the park. If it'd been Sunnydale, they would have definitely been related. Except it would have been some magic curse. This? Because there were so many kinds of vampires, she had to assume the same was true of werewolves. Magic wasn't completely out of the question, however.

Either way, she was packing a tranquilizer gun. The stake would go hidden in her sleeve. The sword, which was her favorite slaying weapon for The City, would have to stay at home. Beheading was for killing and Buffy had a pretty strict no-kill werewolf policy.

It didn't occur to Buffy until she was already an hour into patrol that she could have asked Willow to help her research.

Huh. She'd been Scooby Gang-less for a long time.

Patrolling wasn't terribly exciting. There was a lot of uneventful walking involved. Eventually the five-foot-two blonde started to get bored. She thought about getting a day job as a security guard but decided against the polyester uniforms. At least she wasn't so bored that she talking to herself out loud. But right now would have been an excellent time for a stray, hungry vampire to come charging her way.

"Heerree wolfy, wolfy, wolfy. I'm small, practically defenseless, and look awfully tasty..."

Amy had a forty minute wait in the ER before one of the clinic doctors was able to see her. During that time she called the Doctor, who she was pretty sure did not mend broken arms.

"Do you ever answer your messages?" she started with an annoyed lecture, trying to balance a gossip magazine in her lap, turning pages with her good arm, while holding the injured arm in the air. She felt a bit sheepish. "I broke my arm and I'm not sure if socialized medicine has caught on here or not. If you don't mind bringing money or some psychic paper with health insurance on it? Maybe? Yeah? You know, if you're not too busy ignoring my messages?"

She hung up.

After waiting she was led into a small examination room. Then there was another fifteen minute wait for the nurse. Another twenty minute wait for the doctor after that. Because she was bit by a strange animal, there were shots. The needles were quite large, but Amy did her best to look away and ignore them. Then more waiting. Then x-rays. Waiting. Then the cast.

As the day progressed, Amy started to feel irritated. And itchy. Sitting down or concentrating became harder. Everything smelled. Even the blood from her shirt -- very thick, metallic and tangy.

"Can dog bites cause migraines? Would rabies cause a migraine? Could I have someone not wearing perfume putting the cast on, thanks? You're giving me a headache," Amy snapped at the nurse. The nurse decided it was as good excuse as any to leave her in someone else's care and left. Amy sighed. She opened up the door from the examine room and peeked down the hall.

The zoo had been a problem. Inside of the zoo, he'd not been able to do much of anything. The cage they had given him had been large, but very open. Not a whole lot to hide behind. Still, they'd fed him and kept him clean. Given him toys and companions. Not that the companions had wanted to have much to do with him. He was too big. They thought he would hurt them.

When the cage door had been left open, there was no way he could possibly let that pass by without at least trying to get out. It had worked, to his amazement. He slipped out of the cage and straight out of the zoo without anybody seeing him. His heart had been hammering against his chest, he'd been panting. He'd been so sure that somebody would not only spot him, but try to take him down with something a little rougher than tranquilizers.

He'd run to the shadows, first, and then followed his nose to trees. Trees, and grass, flowers, nature. It had turned out to be the park. Not exactly what he'd been hoping for. He'd wanted to make it all the way out of the city and into the forest, where he knew he'd be safe. But once in the park, he couldn't seem to find his way out of it. Scared, lost, angry, he'd shifted.

The form he had as a man was dark like his fur. The hair a rich black, the eyes pools of deep brown. He hadn't had any clothes, of course. He'd not worn clothes in a good long time. Since before the zoo. And certainly not in the zoo. He'd never even transformed there. Didn't want to risk somebody seeing what he was. Making a bigger spectacle of him. He hardly remembered clothes at all.

There had been some running around in the park, trying to find things to eat. Stealing from picnics and rooting through the trash can. He'd been gone from human civilization for far too long, words stuck in his mind and he couldn't make his throat form them. He grunted at the people he saw and ran away. He'd found a small cave in the heart of the park and made his home there, lining it with grass and a stolen picnic blanket. He became a wolf again to sleep, it was safer for everybody.

This morning he was just coming out, stretching and enjoying the warmth of the sun on his dark fur. Yesterday, he had seen the people on the television talking about him. They had not put the nude human and the wolf together yet. Which made him smile. Almost puppy like, he grinned at the world, his tongue lolling out. He needed to seek out food.

The interruptions happened on everything. Televisions. Radios. At the movies. Even the little phones people carried around sprang to life with the two faces of Candy and Frank of KWIT. They were both very smiley. Both of them had perfect hair and perfect tans and perfect clothes. They both looked up into the camera at the perfect moment.

"Well, Frank, it seems like our zookeepers are a little baffled!"

"It sure does, Candy. Seems that there's been absolutely no sighting of the freak wolf that they warned us about. They said that something that big would be clearly seen if it walked down the street. They assured us that it would be back in captivity within the hour! So much for that."

"What does this mean for the people of the City?" Her smile was obnoxiously wide.

"It means that the citizens should probably be continuing to watch out for it. But since there have been no reports of it to this news station, the paper, or the police, we're starting to wonder if the creature escaped the zoo at all. Perhaps it's still roaming around within the walls of the park and the keepers just aren't aware of it. But remember, if you do see it, climb onto something very tall - the thing is six feet at the shoulder - or into something very small. Don't try to be a hero and fight it. Call the police and tell them your location. It is a wild animal, no matter how friendly it's keepers claim it to be. You don't know what it might do."

"Such a big animal, you'd think they'd have more safeguards." Candy flipped her hair.

"You'd actually think that they might stop trying to keep the big ones at all. Remember Godzilla?" Frank shook his head.

The two smiled back up into the camera, as if they hadn't realized it was still there.

"On the lighter side of things," Candy exclaimed. "A naked man has been seen running through the City Park. If you sit in one place long enough, you can see him race from tree to tree like a wood nymph. So far nobody has found out the man's name and the naturist seems to be harming none."

"I'd like to run nude through the park. They'd just call me crazy if I did." Frank muttered. As the words left his mouth, the devices of the City returned to normal function. Frank and Candy fading to black.

ZOO ESCAPEE! KEEPERS NOT ENTIRELY WORRIED.

A Great Russian Africanized Dire Tundra Wolf has escaped The City Zoo today. But given the creature's incredible size, the zookeepers aren't very concerned about how long it will stay loose. This particular wolf was granted the world record in height and weight, standing six foot tall at the shoulder and weighing just a little over thousand pounds. Those that we spoke with are very confident that the wolf will be noticed quite soon, and sheer panic will increase the number of police calls to capture it.

Why such a stance taken? Why not seek the beast out to stop whatever rampage that it might go on before it even gets a chance? 'Well,' say the keepers 'it's not as if it can sneak up on anybody, is it? We figure that somebody's going to run into it, and run. If they're smart, they'll hide in something smaller than it. That should be a pretty obvious route.'

A pretty obvious route to take, indeed. Remember in your scramble to escape, find a small space to fit yourself into, and if you can't remember to do that? As far as we know, the wolf cannot climb. Up seems like a reasonable route to take to save yourselves from being snackfood.

'Besides,' says one zoo management official 'he hasn't hurt anybody before. He's been in that zoo a really long time, and we've never had a problem with him before. It wasn't his fault he got out. Somebody left the cage door open.'

And where did this creature get such a long name? According to scientists, it has features resembling many breeds of wolf, yet none of them in entirety. It stopped at six classifications because the paperwork was getting a bit tedious.