The Universe's Mixer

(Yes, I know it's late, but hey, random and late is better than never is good, right?)

Jo surveyed her truck, which was currently sitting in the middle of a junk yard, with a whole bunch of other strange objects sticking randomly out of piles that looked like they had no order whatsoever. She eyed it critically. It would need a new windshield, as well as a few new doors. Either way, it was clear that she would need a new truck of some kind unless she had money to save it. She doubted that, unless she could hustle it out of some people, and that would take time. So stealing a new car would have to do for now, as much as she hated to admit it to herself. Hands on her jean clad hips, Jo just shook her head, blond hair flying nearly everywhere as she did so.

"What am I gonna do with you?" she asked her truck, not expecting a response. It was a rhetorical question after all. "Better yet, how did you get here?" Last time she had seen it was when the Hospital staff had showed it to her, and it didn't look it could be moved. All the tires were gone, hubcaps gone. Doors like they were smashed in, which meant that Jo had exited the truck headfirst probably by flying out the dashboard. At least it explained the hole, but it didn't explain the reason why her head was still intact. Maybe it was the City and it's amazing medical skills. She nearly snorted, but stopped herself. The City it seemed had its own agenda, and she was perhaps better off not knowing.

Turning to the rest of the scrap metal, alien to Jo and probably all other humans, she arched an eyebrow. "Now where the hell did I hide my gun?"

Jack was happy. He was monkey-free. So very happy about that he could have kissed young Hannibal for taking that thing off his hands.

He was still sans gorgeous first mate, and he still wanted to see Inara again.

So, the day after Hannibal's departure, Jack left the Pearl, compass in hand, focused on the lovely girl he'd met. The needle pointed, and Jack followed.

Which is why when he did not find Inara right away, when he found, instead, a largeish building in his way and stood there bewildered, he had no problem turning to the person next to him and saying, with utmost sincereity, "Tha's not supposed t'happen."

Baseball was one of those things that normal people did, right?

Dexter had this intense need to feel normal. Even if it was just for one afternoon. Just a few hours. Away from life. Away from the police station. Away from knowing that he was some special cog in the universe of Death. Away from George, though she was his best friend. He could be himself around her, but around her, he wasn't a human being. He was Dexter. The killer. And she knew. And he knew about her. It was really really hard to feel normal when you were chatting with a reaper, no matter how cute she might be.

He'd wandered around thinking normal to himself, and what the City had provided him with was a baseball game.

He supposed he was enjoying it. As much as one could enjoy things when they were sitting outside under a hot Spring sun, watching a game that went slower than a dead snail and had no physical contact or confrontation to break up the monotony while eating six days expired hot dogs in stale buns. The hot dogs were the only things keeping him there. He'd already gotten up to get three. Now he was up to get more. And soda. He should have been drinking water, he knew. But if he was going to digest the disgusting food, he needed something sweet.

Thank whoever he'd been born and raised in Miami.

When he reached the counter, there was a little polite smile to the guy standing in the line next to his.

Wes checked his watch and sighed. It still wasn't working correctly. By his calculations (granted, based on what things looked like when he woke up, which might not be accurate considering his hotel was in black and white TV-land), it should be mid-afternoon. But his watch was saying 12:31 pm.

Only one thing to do then.

********

After walking out of the closest-thing-to-Panera-the-City-could-come-up-with, he walked over to the park and sat on the bench. The backpack he dropped on the ground besides him clunked hollowly, as if it was bigger inside than it looked and contained far more items in the interior than seemed possible. Of course, those things were true. Small magics made life easier. Large magics, however.....they usually tended to screw things up.

That was one of the things his new Slayer would have to learn. If she would ever show up.

So things had settled down and it was time for Catwoman to go prowling. She had the perfect target too; a priceless magenta pink diamond bracelet had just arrived in The City. There had been a small blurb in the paper about it, and its rarity, and after the description of the bracelet, she had decided that she wanted it all for herself.

She skillfully went over the fence and slid past the alarm system. The owners of the mansion and of the coveted bracelet were out of down, and their security system has been easy to figure out. After picking the lock to the back door, she clicked on her night-vision goggles and avoiding all of the trips to the alarms, she headed up the stairs. And she was feeling greedy too, for she knew that there would be other jewelry to check out in the safe.

She had studied this job for a time, and she knew the security system and blueprints of the house well. Catwoman didn’t do a job without knowing all of the ins and outs of a home such as this.

She knew exactly where the study was, and she knew that the safe was stashed being a really hideous painting of toilets. (This she knew by staking the house out. Fortunately, the people were idiots and their study was in plain site.) Who on earth would buy a picture of toilets and put it up on their wall. These people didn’t deserve to have such a gorgeous work of art as the bracelet if they had such horrible taste in other art.

She skillfully and easily got into the safe and was riffling through the rest of the jewelry when she thought she heard a noise.

Bill had been cooped up in his apartment writing comics. The work was steady and he was surprised to discover how well The City paid, desperate for new strips. Bill produced two for The City, which was more work than he initially realized. The first was a super heroine comic who very closely resembled Promethea who usually fought robots or nazis, and flirted with a handsome FBI agent between action sequences. The second was a continuation of Rex Morgan, MD. Bill was careful to keep with the style of ever sentence ending in either an exclamation mark, ellipses or question. He also introduced new characters based on the friendly City Hospital medical staff.

The City was otherwise quiet. Bill kept a police scanner handy on his desk in case he heard of anything needing his intervention. Promethea had not made an appearance since her change but that didn't stop both mild mannered comic artist and science heroine from feeling cooped up. So it wasn't a mistake at nearly midnight when working on the latest Sofia: Science Heroine! strip that Bill imagined himself in a happier place and transformed.

Flying from her apartment, Promethea spied on The City below. Landing softly in The City Commons, she decided to take a walk. From each step, beautiful flowers blossomed from the trees and ground, figments from the realm of imagination which slowly faded, creating a trail of botanical wonder in her wake.

Her mind was like no other. There was a chorus of voices, both avatars of the past, present and future wound together into a song that made up Promethea's existence as a living story. Her thoughts had the intangibility of a goddess with the tangibility of a song, making it pretty to hear but nearly impossible to discern.

It was good to be out. Promethea stretched out her arms, reaching for the sky. Pleased.

It was early on in her relationship with Hannibal that he told her about the open-air market near her apartment. That the City had such a thing was a boundless source of joy for River; that it was so close was something that caused her to lapse into Mandarin expressions of happiness that English just did not cover.

Today, she moved about the market holding a green canvas bag that said "SAVE THE EARTH" with a recycling symbol on the side. River didn't much think recycling was going to save the world, but she didn't figure that anything that would would fit under her arm and hold fruit quite so nicely, either.

River was moving through the fruit stands, now, and the bag was already half-full. There were three apples, three oranges, and a small bunch of grapes. River stuck her tongue out, stretching, concentrating, tiny hand grasping for a pomegranite as she ran over in her mind what she knew about the fruit.

Very red inside. No flesh, not really. The red was what made it delicious, though. The red had been used in the past to dye fabric. She wanted to crack the pomegranite open and get at its insides. She wanted the red.

Her hand closed over the fruit and she tossed it up in the air, catching it with the open bag on her hip.

"613 seeds," she said.

Karen giggled to herself as she thought of something that Jack had said. Which Jack it had been, she couldn't say for sure. They had blurred together in her mind temporarily. It didn't help that her Jack, Jackie Jack, had dressed up as a pirate once. Or that time he'd worn the eye patch due to the glitter incident on his show. Or that Jack the Pirate Jack now looked so pretty he could have been a slightly manly gay boy.

The fact that she was drunk and dosed up to the gills on something pink and something orange that she'd gotten off of a guy outside of her building didn't help matters much either.

She hadn't had proper dietary supplements for a long time, since that guy in the white coat had refused to give her anything. What had his name been again? Volleyball? Something like that. He surely wasn't any Pharmacist. Which was a shame. Karen vaguely remembered him being somewhat attractive. She could have used a nice cute doctor. For a lot of things.

Maybe she should try to find him and give him another shot at giving her the things she needed.

The thought faded, however, as she drained her martini glass with a final long sip. All the alcohol gone. And she'd already left the bar. That was a damned shame. Karen tossed the glass aside, and smiled as it hit concrete with a lovely tinkling shattering noise.

She turned to continue on her way.... to wherever she'd been going. But she immediately bumped into somebody.

"Watch where you're going, you!" She said, tone irritated, while she fixed the hair that had come loose during impact.

There were many things that Hannibal could do. Many types of science that he could wrap his head around. What he knew well was done with ease, the things he didn't, he could pick up simply. He had very little need for outside help.

Of course, there were some sciences that hadn't been around in 1951. Things that he still hadn't had anything to do with in these new modern times. And unfortunately for him, he didn't have the time to sit down and learn. He needed information now.

A girl had come in. She'd been in a car wreck. Badly injured. She was so badly disfigured, that they'd had to find alternative ways to determine that she was, in fact, female. As unfortunate that all was, she wasn't the problem. It's what she had with her that was causing the issue. And it was his issue, because it had been handed off to him. Like he'd know what to do with it, other than look at it. He didn't even know what sorts of tests should be run, because he didn't know what he was looking for.

It frustrated him to have this road block. But people were demanding answers, and nobody was willing to be patient. Hannibal figured that it was dead anyway, so what was another week or so of waiting while he got the books he needed and studied them? They wanted the answers now. Whatever they could get right away. So he knew that he was going to have to call in somebody else. Some kind of help.

After some inquiry through various hospital channels, he discovered a name and a number. He sat in his lab and picked up the phone. It rang four times before it was answered.

"Yes. May I speak to Temperance Brennan, please?"

It wasn't a spectacular party that he was going to be attending. Just some thing. Nothing special at all. He hadn't even bothered to wear a tux. Just a suit. Not even one of his best ones. Just a nice one. He really didn't care. There were other things on his mind. Like the witch, and if she'd managed to do anything to help Clark. Getting the city back in order, getting back into doing things that he should have been doing all along. Being alive again instead of in the half dead state of loss like some high school kid.

He was late, of course, so he had to park his car around the corner and walk past a very dark alley to get to the hotel where the party was going to be held. Something that didn't even concern him these days. Hadn't for a long time. Not since the dark alley he'd been in when he was a child. He knew there was danger in there, and knew that they were just ripe with criminals. And cliches.

So it was really no surprise to Bruce when he hears screaming coming from the back of the alley. He didn't even roll his eyes in response, because he'd kind of expected something like that to happen.

Bruce pivoted on his heel and went into the darkness, ready to encounter thugs robbing a poor woman. He was almost to the end when he encountered the sight. What was really going on. And that was nothing like what he'd been expecting.

There were two of them, alright. And a lady, too. But they certainly weren't robbing her. They weren't doing anything expected to her. Not even trying to rape her. Which would have been disturbing in it's own right, but Bruce would have been able to deal with that.

What he could not deal with was the fact that the two men appeared to be eating the poor woman. Alive. One gnawing on her shoulder, the other chewing on her lower leg. There was blood everywhere. The suspects themselves didn't look particularly normal either. Not that chewing on a human being was normal. But their skin was mottled. Cold looking. What corpses should look like, he thought.

For the first time in what seemed like forever, Bruce had no idea what to do.

It was one of those days.

Every day was starting to feel like one of those days to Jack. Nothing exciting happened in the City anymore. Batman was not gone, but he was all kinds of broody about his super butt boy being a statue. Jack had thought that leaving the statue out would have created some kind of ruckus. It had caused nothing. Absolutely nothing. No newspaper stories. No cops everywhere. Nobody had even come by the asylum to demand he account for his horrible deeds.

Life was just not worth doing anything but staring at the television when there was no real opposition. Nothing to fight for. Nobody to annoy. He was going to have to find somebody to replace Barbara, as well. As she was gone. He knew she was gone. He'd stalked her like nobody had ever stalked another living being before in the history of stalking. Or life. And she had vanished. No more going to work. No more clocktower. No more anything.

So a replacement was in order.

But who?

Who could fill the hole that the redhead had made when she'd fallen out of his life? Who could he destroy as thoroughly as he had done to her? Sure, it gave him fresh clay to work with, but he'd put so much into her, given such a large portion of life to her. She was a work of art. He could trigger her so very easily. The give and take had become easy.

He also had to replace his minions and partners in crime. All of them had vanished too. The fuckers. Left him with an empty asylum and henchmen who were so bored they were getting fat.

Finding new cohorts would be easier than replacing Babsy, he finally decided. So that's what he would do. Jack put on his best black pants, best white shirt, and best suspenders. Plus a fedora, complete with feather. Had to. Couldn't help it. Then he sauntered right out of the asylum and into the streets of the City, looking for somebody to be evil with.

OOC: Set after this.

The leprechaun known as Mad Sweeney was well and truly drunk. There was no argument. None from any in the part he patroned other than from the bartender who wasn't about to give the towering red-head anything further to drink, regardless of how belligerent he became. Sweeney did something a touch unexpected he assumed, instead of picking a fight with the man who had provided the intoxicating beverage thus far, he took to song. "Here's a Health to the Company... and One to my Lass..."

He stumbled a bit toward the door, not taking more than a moment's care that he had knocked into a few fellow patrons and toppled a chair over in the process. "Let us drink and be merry all out of one glass..." Sweeney's words slurred together making an already unpleasant singing voice even worse.

At that, his songs started to jumble together. "Let us drink and be merry, cuz there's whiskey in the jar... Oh Danny boy!!" Voice loud an obnoxious, the leprechaun stumbled into the street and took an immediate right. In his drunkenness, his feet more of shuffled along rather than actually stepped in any which direction. It was a hobble, a stumble... perhaps a swagger. It was anything but graceful.

"Oh Danny boy! I love you... oof." There was something on the ground. Something that in his towering height, Sweeney completely missed. It was a blockage of some sort, something not quite alive.

At least not anymore. "What's this?"

He bent over, tumbling to the sidewalk in the process and gripping the concrete with one hand (in case he fell off the earth) he used the other to feel just what it was he had tripped over. Human form... Female human form. Eyes squinting and fighting to focus, he stared blankly at the body that had tripped him. Was it dead? Probably since it hadn't made any sort of noise over a gangly beast of a man tripping over her. The hand pawed around just a bit, looking for a vein the neck.

Dead. There was no pulse.

"Oh gross, man. Nasty." Sweeney backed away, not at all entranced about happening upon a corpse.

Wilson sighed and pushed his way out the front door of the hospital. He was ready for a hot bath, a hotter dinner and a cold glass of white wine. Only he lacked the dinner and wine. The bathtub.....well, he hoped that was still in his apartment when he got back. hell, he hoped his apartment was still his apartment when he got back. He didn't take things for granted here, not since he learned about the way the City worked.

Crazy messed-up world, huh? The psychos in Times Square with the posters and dreadlocks had no idea. Or maybe they did.

He picked up some beef curry and vegetable samosas at an Indian take-out place, then sprung for a nice bottle of Pinot Grigio at the liquor store. Everything was together in a nice, nondescript brown paper bag that thankfully didn't leak through or lose a handle as he walked. The night was looking up.

Until he turned down a street that was supposed to be where his apartment was, and walked into a fight.

His first instinct was to turn around and wait around the corner until it was done, but it was too late. The dueling duo had spotted him, and apparently resolved their conflict by telepathically deciding to take their aggression out on him instead.

Wilson lifted his hands palm out and said, "If you need money, I have a few bucks in my wallet. If you need food, take my dinner. It's not worth fighting about."

The taller of the two smiled nastily, flashing fang in the process, and said, "Oh, we want dinner but not yours. Just you."

Fangs? Wilson found himself wondering as a sense of unreality took over. That's new. He looked over his shoulder at the street corner, trying to gauge the distance and if he could make it. Too late. They were coming closer, and he wasn't sure he could run fast enough.