The Universe's Mixer

Being undead had it's moments.

The reaper's feelings on the current undead predicament was decidedly mixed. On one hand, there was a part of George that couldn't help but think that zombies were really cool. But this feeling of childhood glee at being involved in a real life George Romero flick was undercut by guilt. Not too much guilt. Just maybe a little. George's low income apartment complex was one of the first areas hit by the new zombie plague. Being undead herself she blended in well. No one bothered her. Literally. Gone were the noisy neighbors upstairs that threw parties at three in the morning once the bars closed, gone were the neighbors to the right of her that insisted on having loud sex competitions for who could scream the loudest.

Her zombie infested apartment was peaceful and George unrealistically hoped it would stay that way without spilling out into The City and causing larger problems. Perhaps it was better to take a look at the rest of The City. George no longer needed to lock the door to her apartment, not particularly worried that A, one of her newly undead neighbors would try to steal her crappy stereo or that B, someone would be dumb enough to walk into a zombie infested apartment complex to steal her crappy stereo.

In the hall George came across one of her neighbors.

"Hi Thomas."

"Mmmrrrrrrrrr..."

"Yeah? That's cool."

"Mnnnrrrrrr..."

"Well, just stay here and don't eat people, okay?"

"Nnnerrrrrr.."

George didn't know if her neighbor was actually named Thomas but not having anything else to actually call him, Thomas seemed pretty cool. Yesterday Thomas had a detached arm he happily chewed on which George felt necessary to confiscate from him. She was fairly certain that no one else would ever have the privilege of seeing a zombie pout before, but the reaper had. It wasn't until she met who the arm belonged to and saw the victim was not dead, just undead like the rest of her fellow tenants, that she was okay if a bit of limb swapping so long that it was each other's. She hoped it was a sign that they could be a peaceful zombie commune, until she spotted that once a zombie they seemed uninterested in chewing on each other.

George, Queen of the Zombies, took the stairs and encountered other walking corpse-like neighbors who were equally uninterested in her before stepping out onto the street. So far it was mostly quiet. Quiet was a good sign, wasn't it?

It had been weeks of missed opportunities and schedule conflicts. The Ghostbusters were supposed to meet with this George girl who seemed to be a focal point for the victims of the killing spree. Unfortunately, every time they planned to meet, some other case came up. Vampire dregs, zombies, various harmless cryptids, and more often than not, they arrived at the scene to find someone had done their work for them with little more than stakes and shotguns. The vigilantes of the city didn't have red tape to navigate. They were off the books, and didn't have to fill out twelve forms every time they set foot in a haunted house.

Finally, an opening appeared in the schedule, and they arranged to meet George.

"Yeah, I know, Liz. So far, it's probably not as exciting as your last job," Dr. Venkman encouraged the glum-looking young woman in the passenger seat of the Ecto-1. "But it can't be the end of the world every week. That only happens every ... well, *once*, I guess. So, come on. Buck up, sunshine. We'll get to bust some ghosts pretty soon." He gave her shoulder a vigorous, paternal rub. "Hey, you wanna run the siren?"

The reaper had been reluctant to visit her favorite breakfast hangout. Der Waffle House was fully recovered from the truck that managed to destroy at least one wall and kill, miraculously, only one innocent bystander. George had it firm in her mind that she needed to keep her day job as a Grim Reaper a secret, and that she wasn't simply inventing an antisocial defense mechanism.

She ordered oatmeal with raisins and drank water. The waitress looked at George dubiously, having calculated that her fifteen percent wasn't worth the time and effort she gave some of her other customers. The reaper looked at the empty seat in front of her. She'd been here over two years now and still missed the company of her undead coworkers. She frowned sourly thinking she should have invited Dexter.

George poked at her food with a spoon.

One second he was talking to George and trying to comfort her about his own death, and the next he's in his own apartment, staring at the ceiling of his bedroom, as alive as he'd ever remembered being.

He could actually feel his own heart beating hard enough that it might have broken out of his chest at any moment.

Through the strangeness of it all, he couldn't help but feel concern for how George might be taking this. She had been worried that he was going to move on, and his sudden disappearance must have looked like just that.

Dexter fumbled on his bedside table without looking at it, finding his phone and dialing George.

He listened to it ring.

OOC: Did you die in the MM plot? Feel free to join in.

This was out of her league. Not only had her work load doubled during the reign of the mass murderer but none of the souls were moving on. She was pretty sure they were just being stubborn, but dirty looks weren't working. Ignoring them wasn't enough either; dead people were near impossible to ditch. Something about being able to walk through walls.

Eventually the reaper hunkered down in her apartment, sitting on a love-seat she'd salvaged dumpster diving, and hoped someone would just catch the serial killer already. She was half tempted to ask the recently deceased so she could pass on the information to Dexter, but if she did that she realized it would only encourage them to stay that much longer.

After the first week George finally posted a sign on her wall that read: YOU ARE DEAD. GET OVER IT.

After his altercation with the red-haired woman, the Hulk bounded off to explore the city. Covering several blocks in a single, thunderous leap, he was able to reach the edge of the city in a few minutes. He looked ahead from the rooftop where he stood. There was a dark, dangerous-looking street just below him, but on the other side of this was nothing but a flat, dark grey wall. There wasn't even any graffiti to break up the monotony of the edifice. Looking up, he was quite confused to see no top. His pulse quickened. Was he trapped?

He threw his green bulk at the wall and stuck for a split second, suspended high above the street. He scratched at the flat face, trying desperately to dig his fingers and toes in before gravity claimed him, but the wall laughed a bone-chilling squeal as his nails scraped fruitlessly against it, and he plummeted to the street below. The Hulk picked himself up and grunted in frustration.

THWAMM!

His fist rang against the strange material.

THWAMM! THWAMM!

The more weight he threw at it, the less effect it seemed to have. Again and again, with more and more urgency he slammed the sheer incline, and still it did not yield. He turned around, panic now evident in his eyes, and ran in the opposite direction of the wall. Crossing the city in high bounds once more, he reached the other side in just under a minute, leaving cracked pavement and wailing car alarms in his wake.

There was another wall here.

Now he was Angry. He bellowed at the sky and began hammering once more on the grey face.

Fred had babbled the whole way to Der Waffle House; well, it wasn't so much babble but extremely disjointed yet highly informative perhaps one-sided information. How could she not want to spill her guts to one of the coolest people ever? Of course, she was still getting used to this new face; he was just so young, but she'd forgive him for it.

"Okay. Now it says waffles, but it's got pretty good pancakes. Though you have to sorta fight them about it because they say they didn' make pancakes until I found them on the menu once. And well, I gotta feelin' if they're from another place, cause you know they've got places as much as people, but if it's from another place, then maybe the City added the pancakes on there for me. I mean, really, pancakes and waffles? Who could pass up that?" Fred paused long enough to get a breath, that or she was chasing a thought that had suddenly come up. "I've been talkin' too much, haven't I?"

The brain blushed a little as she recognized her..."problem."

"I'm a babbler. I would go to babbler's anon, but what would we do to fix the problem? Sit there and not talk, or maybe we'd just write it, but then our hands would hurt. Maybe that would be how we got over it or somethin'." Fred shrugged at the Doctor before opening the door. "They've got eggs and hash, but I don' like hash that much. Not really my thing. Think it's the corned beef."

Now all they had to do was find a seat and get to the ordering/eating portion of their outing. Fred was excited to be eating with someone who could have a conversation with her and was new. She adored Wes, but she couldn't hog his time and all that.

Face down in his pillow, when Malcolm Reynolds shifted his legs to the side he expected them to drape over the edge of his bunk. But they only found the comfort and support of more mattress. That would go on record as the first thing he noticed was wrong. Next was the pillow. It was big and soft and not his. Pushing himself up with his forearms, Mal inhaled sharply as his sleepy mind raced to sort things out.

The room he was in was softly illuminated by the sun pouring in through the windows. Big bed, windows -- this wasn't a prison by any definition he knew. Looking around, this place looked like someone's personal quarters more than a cell. Glancing down, he found that he was still dressed in his own attire. Patting down his side, there was a moment of anger mixed with dread as he found his gun missing. But as he moved to get up, he saw his holster as well as his jacket slung over a nearby chair. Mal didn't waste any time replacing that particular belonging to his person.

"Zhe shi shen me?" Leaving the bedroom, weapon in hand, back pressed to the wall -- Mal crept up to the next corner and peeked around it carefully before stepping out into what looked like some empty parlor. Gun still drawn, he was starting to believe his earlier notion that this was just someone's apartment. But it was so sterile, so empty, it was if it had no resident to speak of. Mal would go on to check the adjoining rooms, which turned out to be nothing more than a bathroom and an obscenely large closet only to turn up empty handed. Ending up back in the living room/parlor, he saddled up next to the window, looking out onto an unfamiliar cityscape. Where was this place? Where were the others? Where was Serenity?

The clap of a door opening and closing from the other side of the wall drew his attention to what would turn out to be the front door to the apartment. Firearm still in hand, he approached the door with caution. The door creaked open after Mal twisted the knob and he stood still -- listening.

He'd left the meeting with Willow and the ghost with an odd feeling resting on his shoulders. What he'd been told, that secret that the wolf girl had bent down to whisper into his ear hadn't been something he'd expected to hear, and he wasn't sure how to take it.

Dexter wasn't sure that George would understand any more than he did, but he felt like she needed to know.

Returning to his apartment was logical because that's where he'd left her. She wasn't there, of course. Or wasn't there and responding to him. Maybe she already knew and she was pissed off about it. But he felt like she was gone. He felt like he couldn't feel her there and had before.

"George?" He did call her name while roaming the rooms just to be sure. Got no answer just like he'd expected.

The only thing to do, and probably the best thing to do considering the fact that he couldn't see her, was just to sit and wait. To stare at the flour and hope that she made some kind of mark showing him that she was there. Soon.

The more Jack walked around The City, the more he was equally intrigued and alarmed.  It did appear to be a living, moving and evolving place, so unlike anyplace Jack had ever encountered and that was saying a lot.  Several thoughts were running through his head like was anyone else from Torchwood here and if so, how had they come to be here; where was he going to stay as the night seemed to be approaching; and as such it was tea time.  Or more importantly, a good reason to stop and have a snack.

He looked around and came up on a non descript place on the corner.  Well it was on the corner at the time, and he went it and sat at the bar.  It was over half full, boisterous but not too loud.

"Jack and coke," he said with his trademark smile.

Research and investigation were what he did so he did what one did in a bar with a nice drink; he observed the others around him.  One way or the other, he would gain more and more information about this place, this City, and then he would find a way out and back to reality as he knew it.

Being a ghost sucked. It helped that Dexter knew she was there or the situation would have been terribly lonely. The lack of tactile feedback was difficult and her skills manipulating physical objects around her were minute.

She needed to get out and do something or risk the boredom driving her mad. This place had Superman! Maybe she would find someone who could see or at the very least someone she could fuck with. At the very least it was something to do.

Maybe she could try jumping into someone and possessing them. It worked in the movies. Then again she remembered the time someone sat on her, just before she became a reaper, and that had just been unpleasant.

George wondered where The City's streets would take her.

The only place that Dexter could think to look for George was Der Wafflehouse. But he didn't go inside to wait for her. She'd either go in or come out sooner or later. He didn't want anybody in there to see him like he was and he didn't think they'd appreciate the topic of conversation, either.

Everything Willow had said to him resonated in his mind.

He wasn't sure how he was going to ask this of his friend. It wasn't something that he would have even thought asking her except that he knew she'd be okay. It wouldn't kill her, since she was already dead.

The book was heavy in his hand, despite the fact that it wasn't very big. It certainly didn't weight a hundred pounds in reality, though his arm claimed differently.

Dexter sat down on the curb outside the eatery and sighed, determined to not move until she arrived.