The Universe's Mixer

When the courier delivered the no-doubt expensive watch, Clarice had no doubt where it had come from.

She sat in the kitchen of her still plain apartment, staring at it as it shone on the table in a patch of sunlight. It was beautifully understated, not in the least bit gaudy, and would go well with her coloration. It was also from him. She stared at it for a good half hour before finally putting it on, as it would be rude to ignore a gift and she knew how he felt about the rude.

Of course, the first thing she did once she was fully dressed was find the City police department and march herself inside. "I'd like to speak to whoever's in charge of hiring," she said at the reception desk. "My name is Clarice Starling. I'm new in the City and I'm a former FBI trainee. I'd like to do some good here and I can provide a resumé for all the good it'll do me."

That done, she sat down to wait, watching everyone. The watch, half-hidden under the sleeve of her jacket, gleamed.

She was used to her and Charlie missing one another in their day. Sometimes he got up way before she was even willing to entertain the idea, and sometimes she got called on their day off to go look into something at work. They were partners, and they had the same cases, but occasionally they had different aspects to look into.

Of course, it had been a few days this time, and she was missing him a lot. She felt like she'd not seen him in much longer than just a couple of days. Something in her heart ached as if it had been months since she'd last laid eyes on her boyfriend. Or longer. Jennifer couldn't escape it. She attempted to go through her normal routine, but the sensation lingered. The fact that she wasn't finding Charlie didn't help.

Jennifer sat at the island counter in the kitchen, wondering at the emptiness. Ted wasn't here, none of the strays that they'd picked up were here. The horse was here, which was a bit of a comfort, but the horse had been aloof with her. Stopping to acknowledge her briefly as it moved from one room to the other, and giving a bit of a huffy snort, but nothing else. Not even trying to persuade her to give an apple.

Her phone had been M.I.A. for a few days, too. She'd been walking to the station to see if anything needed to be done, sometimes waiting for Charlie to show up - which he hadn't. She'd been roaming around looking. All of it had been fruitless. Well, now she was going to stay put. She was going to stay in this house until Charlie came back. If the City was keeping them apart on purpose, she would find a way to punish it. Somehow. If the City had taken him from her, she would find a way to take something from it.

She figured that if she was going to stay inside, she could at least try to find her phone. Jennifer began the search out by the pool, then in the living room, where she discovered Jake and Lucy-Belle; then back into the kitchen, all producing nothing. Finally, Jennifer headed to Charlie's room. If the phone wasn't here, perhaps it was back in her own semi-abandoned apartment. But she'd look everywhere in the room first. Even between the mattresses. It would be a disaster after she was done with it, she knew. The kitchen and living room had not Hurricane Government, why should the bedroom?

Work was insane. It seemed like there wasn't any down time. And what downtime she did have was apparently on the wrong time table to have it with Charlie. There were many calls between them, trying to arrange time together that wasn't at work or while they were sound asleep. It wasn't like she didn't get to see him. He was her partner. But it would have been nice if they could have gone out to a movie or had a dinner that wasn't rushed.

She'd snuck away from the station to have some time to breathe, and got all the way to the park, which was nice. Walking in the cool grass with her shoes off, Jennifer began to relax. The smell of some of the food carts drew her, and she found the most disgusting example of a hot dog she could uncover - a thing with cream cheese and onions on it - and bought it. She also retrieved an enormous slushy ice drink that tasted like red. Not a fruit that was red, but red. She'd been tempted toward blue, but didn't feel like she was in a blue mood. Or a green one.

Parking herself in the shade of a lovely large tree, Jennifer leaned back and just enjoyed the sun and the people playing. It was nice to know that even with all the crap she saw on a day to day basis, that there could be people having fun. She wanted to be having fun like that.

For the first time, Jennifer was giving consideration to resigning from the force. She knew that she wouldn't really do it. It was in her blood to be a cop. An agent. Government. People needed to be helped, and criminals needed to be stopped. That didn't mean she couldn't fantasize about a life with no badge.

Ted managed to get himself untangled from everything that was going on in the mayor's office. He helped them find a suitable candidate to take the position of deputy mayor so that there would be somebody in the hot seat - that wasn't him - until a full mayor could be elected. After that, he stopped being so helpful. He just directed everybody toward the new deputy mayor. Though, once in a while, he did answer the deputy's questions. It was only fair.

It was easy enough to get Charlie to agree to the dinner for the four of them. Ted said that he'd have stuff brought in, so that nobody had to cook anything, and everybody could just relax and have a good time. It felt weird to throw a get together for four people that was essentially catered, but he figured that if he was going to be the custodian of all Charlie's money, some of it should at least be used.

The dinner wasn't anything formal. Ted just had on a pair of slacks and a polo shirt. He fully intended this to be a completely relaxing evening that got him back in touch with his friends, and his girlfriend. And perhaps ended in the pool.

He stood with the horse in the living room, waiting for Jo and Jen to arrive. The table in the dining room was set - he'd had to buy a table - with nice plates and glassware. The food was being readied in the kitchen. Ted thought that Charlie was still upstairs getting ready.

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.

Charlie sat at his desk and stared at the files before him. He hadn't told his partner about his meeting with a comic book hero, not yet. It wasn't that he was hiding the information, but it felt odd to come right out and say it. Actually, for the detective, that wasn't overly odd; he just didn't know how to say it without hurting her feelings.

They'd had other cases to look into, and he'd heard from some department somewhere about his partner's data usage. He wasn't aware such things were monitored. He leaned back in his chair and rocked a little. Charlie didn't think Jennifer was keeping something from him; she'd just not mentioned it yet. Then again, they weren't the types to demand to know every little thing about the other's doings. He continued to rock in his chair for a moment before getting out of it.

Moving from chair to fridge then back, he settled down with an apple and a bottle of water. This required some thought, some consideration..some peanut butter. Probably.

Upon his arrival in the City, Sam had found keys to an apartment and a car. He assumed that they had belonged to the previous Sam, but truthfully he didn’t think too much on it either way. He didn’t much care whether or not he had a home but it made things easier to not have to find a new motel every night he supposed. It was just one less thing to worry about.

Dean’s phone call hadn’t garnered much reaction on his end. Though he did toss a few pillows on the bed in his second bedroom. It might be difficult to hide things with his brother around, but he would manage.

Sam had given the address and now he was going over the clues. He’d set up a corkboard in which he’d pinned all of the the things that they knew already. He frowned at it, studying each piece of information and trying to figure out how things fit together, trying to find a pattern that would explain what it was they were hunting.

( A role reversal of sorts? )

The City very rarely rested or gave Dinah a rest. She didn't mind the pace most of the time. In fact, keeping busy was usually a good thing for her. She just would have preferred to have stopped at least one of the supervillains currently running around the City before things got even more hectic.

Currently, she wasn't having much luck with that, and she still wasn't sure what to do about Enigma.

She was keeping her ear to the ground on all fronts, but the Joker had been nervewrackingly quiet and Crane hadn't done much outside of the asylum. Unfortunately, proving his wrongdoings inside the asylum would be much more difficult. And while Dinah would love to just kick his ass and leave him on the doorstep of the police, she needed some sort of proof to go along with the gift-wrapped suspect.

What she needed was to strategize with a member of said police force. And maybe even get a little bit of a girls' night out in the mix. They could always talk business and then skip to the 'girl talk' as it were.

Dinah picked up the phone to dial her favorite CBI agent, hoping that Jen would be up for grabbing a drink and talking things over.

Charlie stood in front of a store, staring into the destroyed glass. His head tilted slightly as if he weren't sure what he was looking at. Actually, he wasn't. Why had homicide been called in? Was he just homicide here? Was he more generalist here?

The jewelry store had been robbed, or at least broken into. He had been called in with his partner to investigate, and he wasn't convinced that this was the best way to spend their time. Of course, they could do the job, and possibly do it well. Yet, they had other cases to solve. He glanced around to see where his partner had gotten off to. He had told her about the strange young woman in the park, and he had placed the question to the agent on whether or not picking flowers was murder or not. Was it the same as picking fruit? He was possibly still waiting on an answer.

"I should call Annie. Annie could talk to the jewelry, see what it saw." It was an idea. He also needed to talk to Annie about the watch. There had been a report of a missing watch that had caught his eye. He needed to see the watch again. He also needed to check on the young woman who'd not had much experience with ice cream.

"We need to watch the security tapes." He finally spoke to a nearby uniformed cop. "Ask if anyone saw anything." Jennifer would probably have more answers.

Charlie wanted a book. Charlie wanted a new/old book. Charlie wanted to take his partner with benefits to get the new/old book. Charlie wanted to see a friend's place of work where he would take his partner with benefits to get the new/old book. Charlie was a very busy man.

The detective had heard Honour say that she worked in a bookstore, or had one. He'd done a little digging around and found a few places that might fit. So, under the ruse - a very poorly built one that would fall should his partner ask the right questions - that he wanted to buy a book and he needed her help, he headed out to find where Honour worked exactly. He wanted to make sure she was working for the right person, doing above the board things. He didn't think she'd mean to do something illegal, but innocents did fall into really bad situations when they were too trusting.

"Bookmark Books. First one on the list. Think we'll be lucky and I'll find the book in there?" He smiled at Jennifer. "Then we can get something to take to the park. There's this really shady spot that I'd like to show you. Poems, fruit, and park. Think that could be nice."

It was fortunate and a moment of relief when Ted discovered himself back in the City. He had had enough of the place he'd been put, and was ready to return to the oddness and moving streets. That he could handle. Apocalypse, he wasn't too gung ho for.

It was unfortunate that he returned without Jo by his side. No way of knowing if she was alright either, other than calling her number, leaving a message and sending a quick text right after. Which he did. Ted knew that in some places where call service didn't work, the short burst of a text would get through. If she wasn't in the City, maybe she could still get it. Of course, if she was back as well, hopefully she'd take it as worry and not him being some crazy stalker.

The only thing he could think to do immediately was to return to Charlie and the horse and the house. He'd learned that he had many things to tell his friend, and he wanted to see if Charlie had gone to the other place, too.

Ted found the door unlocked - as usual - and immediately headed up the stairs.

"Yes. Yes, I have your information." She said to the person on the other end of the phone. "Yes, I will look into it, I promise. We're all looking into every one of these calls. We're doing what we can. Yes. I understand... I do.... I unders... please stop yelling. Crying isn't really better... I'm sure that there's somebody more equipped to handle your current sta... yes, like a psychiatrist."

When she was finally able to put the phone down, Jennifer got up from her chair behind her desk and leaned out into the hallway.

"STOP FUCKING FORWARDING THOSE CALLS TO ME." She yelled - loudly - down to the reception desk. The anger was present in her voice. She'd told them before that if they actually wanted somebody to start looking into these cases, they couldn't keep sending her the calls. She couldn't do both at once. It was impossible.

There was also the issue that she was worried her partner was one of the ones missing. She hadn't seen him in a day or so. Hadn't heard from him. There was too much going on for him to be gone, though. She needed him to be here. She needed his help, and his way of comforting without actually having to say anything. His brain, she needed that, too. The way he thought, he might see some kind of pattern here that she wasn't.

Jennifer stalked back to her desk and sat down, leaning back a moment, enjoying the peace of the phone not ringing. If she didn't need it for things, she would unplug it right now before another call could come through.

First the graffiti, and now the letter to the editor. Dinah had searched after seeing the vandalism on the Clock tower and the Wayne building, but she hadn't found any further sign of him. If the Joker was somehow alive, he hadn't left his usual trail of bodies. He hadn't even pulled off any practical jokes besides the messages on those two buildings.

But the letter to the editor was enough that Dinah couldn't just keep telling herself that he couldn't be back.

She had to talk to those involved with the Justice League-assuming the League was still functional. And she also needed to warn Jen. She thought that they'd done a pretty good job of keeping Jen's connection to the League secret, but the Joker had a knack for ferreting out things like that. Jen might know the score about the Joker to some extent, but she didn't deserve to be in the line of fire without her knowledge.

Which was why Dinah had gotten ahold of Jen on the comm to set up meeting. Once she learned that the agent was at the police station after hours, she dropped by. Even if it was an 'official' meeting in a way, she chose to stay in plainclothes. There was maybe a bit of awkwardness at the prospect of meeting with the woman that Dean had been sleeping with just before she and Dean had gotten together, but she had wanted to talk to Jen eventually anyway. Not like this, but then again when did things ever go as planned?

Once inside the building, she tapped on the door to Jen's office.

Jennifer had a stack of papers on her desk, files. She was going through them to assemble the best set of information she could. There were a lot of duplicated things here, and a lot of leads that had gone nowhere. She wanted the information that actually had something to do with the case to be easily accessible.

This wasn't just for her and Charlie, either. They'd found a third pair of eyes that would be good on this case. A pair of eyes that apparently knew what to look for on bodies and were used to solving cases that didn't have apparent leads. Jennifer had read what she could about this Dr Brennan without prying into personal things. She had looked up what kind of doctor she was and her case history. It was all very impressive.

She wasn't going to deny Brennan a chance to look at the broken leads, as it might give her ideas of what to look for, but Jennifer wanted them in a different file. This was the biggest thing to happen to the case since they'd found the giant man right before the City had gone still. A real chance at being able to discover little clues that she and Charlie might have missed because neither of them were trained in the way that this doctor was. They didn't know what to look for.

The file was filled with every picture of every scene that she had been able to dig up. Some of them were truly gruesome, but she thought that Brennan could handle it.

She looked at her watch. Where was Charlie, anyway? She had made sure to note the meeting on as many places as she could think of, even sticking reminder notes into his pockets. This was important to her. Not that it wasn't important to him, too. But she'd been so concerned over these murders for so long, she just didn't want any little chance to slip by unused.

Fresh from her escape through the broken window, Beauty all but fled the scene of the bar fight and headed straight for where she last saw the Police station. Jennifer Government, Jennifer Government, she repeated to herself, and as she ran into the upcoming intersection, she stopped long enough to note the cross streets, then added them to her litany of things to be repeated and remembered.

Heart still racing, throat still clogged with fear, she sped onward toward her goal. If she was reading the signs correctly and remembering her way around the City, she had but a few more turns to make. People were staring at this woman running breakneck through the streets -- but she didn't care. She'd left her savior in the middle of a mess, and her savior had asked for her help. Beauty wouldn't stop until she'd gotten Jennifer the help she'd asked for.

At the next corner, she turned -- and there it was, the City Department. She didn't slow as she raced for the steps, for the door.

Charlie wasn't sure what to make of Ted and the current state of smittenness with a ghostbusting young woman, even if "smittenness" wasn't really a word. He wasn't one to run from his problems, not in the most obvious ways anyway, yet he wasn't ready to face the many questions this whole situation could raise. He wasn't even sure if there was a situation to question or face.

He wanted his friend to be happy and find a peace within, but the detective also wanted his friend to do things legally and safely. Yet...

"There are always yets." He smiled at the woman behind the counter. The woman gave him a smile back only because she had no idea what he was talking about and had found that smiling was better than questioning, especially this man. "The fruit tarts look good. I'll have one of each, please."

As soon as he had walked in, she had boxed up one of the apple strudels. Charlie did like this particular shop, even if he attempted to try many shops and many fruity foods.

Dean looked at his phone. His side was doing much better these days, and he was able to actually do more things than he had before. He was strongly considering something, especially if a certain someone kept checking on him. He knew he'd given into his considerations under more pain, or at least the idea of pain, but he'd been a pretty good boy, mostly.

He looked at himself in the mirror. The stitches could come out soon. He'd even go by a doctor eventually to let them look it over, maybe. He'd had worse without the help of a quack after all, or so he told himself. No matter how hard he tried, his mind kept going back to the phone and a question. Should he?

Finally, he gave in.

Free for a drink? It wasn't the same invite to the same restaurant, but it was a text that had started that particular adventure. If you are, meet me at O'Hare's. Usually at 45th and Vine.

Rufio had come to a bit of a rut. The days were all starting to bleed together and leave him with little to nothing new or exciting to do, and he didn't see Megan or Red enough to fill in the hole the rest of the time fell into.

He'd taken to messing around on the streets, but found that as he looked older more people seemed to be intolerant of his presence. Maybe growing up meant you really couldn't be different looking. After trading foul words with an old man he'd been called a deli-something and told to "get a job", and that had made him think.

Megan had a job. Annie, the girl who'd given him Buzzer, had a job. Maybe Red had a job, he didn't know. But they didn't seem to be bad things, and they kept people busy.

So the rapidly-turning-not youth had set about the city on his skateboard, exploring and looking at what people did here. There was no end of really boring looking jobs, from working in stores to garbage men, guys who drove trucks and carried heavy things around all day.

There were the weird looking jobs he heard about, like the people who had super powers and weren't well liked by the City (though the Mayor seemed to like the one girl, Rufio hadn't missed noticing his arch enemy's picture in the paper). But Rufio didn't really think he should be in that, either. Not when he still couldn't fly or find Toot Toot.

There were doctors (boring) and repairmen (it was more fun to break stuff than fix it) and one guy who would stand by the fountain all day and fish out the garbage and leaves that fell in it. There were the guys who pushed hot dog and ice cream carts around, but Rufio would rather eat those things than sell them.

After a while, licking an ice cream cone and walking down the street, Rufio thought the only job that seemed like fun was already taken by the girl who walked other people's dogs around. They'd been great fun, but then he found out he'd have to pick up thier poop and the position lost most of its appeal.

Frustrated the spikey haired youth considered giving up when he heard sirens. He blinked, ready to run, but the cop car passed by him swiftly, heading to a small restaurant. Rufio dropped his cone and scrambled up onto a dumpster, jumping up onto a fire escape just to be sure they wouldn't come after him anyway, then crouched down to watch the officers as they ran in. The uniformed cops soon emerged, each holding two different men who were beaten up and trying to lunge at each other. Rufio let out a low whistle as the police threw them against the car and cuffed them, and a crowd filtered out of the restaurant to watch.

Then it struck Rufio. Maybe he could be a cop. He liked to fight, after all, and driving around looked like fun. Sure, most of the cops here were stupid and useless, but Rufio could be the first good one, maybe. It would definitely be fun to beat up bad guys all day.

He wondered how somebody became a cop, and pondered the matter as he continued to watch the two officers and their suspects.

There was calm in the bar. But not the kind of calm that says everybody is having a good time, and everyone is going to leave happy. It was the kind of peace that only comes before a big storm. Where every moment that goes by without words or laughter just makes everyone more tense. The only sounds that could be heard were the scraping of chairs across the floor and drinks being put down. The music in the background was loud, but it seemed to be faded out. As if it were a soundtrack being played over the top instead of coming from the jukebox.

People had been ill at ease lately. The City not moving, then suddenly starting again. The citizens were confused, they were ready to break.

All it took was one guy lightly bumping into another as he tried to get by, a drink spilling a small drop onto a shoe. Then the shouting match started. Soon, almost everyone in the bar was on their feet, taking sides, even if they had no personal quarrel. The noise became great, then. People turning to the person closest to them to start their own fight over more little slights that wouldn't have gotten more than a harsh look on any other day.

Nobody could have said later who did it. Who threw the first punch. But it happened.

Then, chaos.

( notes )

Oliver had followed the headlines surrounding the appearance of the genius loci of The City. Thomas. He'd never heard of such a being before, but if the City was sentient, why shouldn't it be able to manifest a human personification for itself? Like a space ship's holographic AI, or enchanted castles in science fiction and fantasy. It explained some things, and stirred up plenty of additional questions--but the whys and wherefores of The City weren't really the foremost question on his mind.

The question that was front and center for him was how to keep the League united, so that they could work together to protect the people of the city. How not to cripple themselves by putting themselves at odds with the local law enforcement. How to pull in people that would strengthen the group as a whole. How to cover for each others' weaknesses. It was a lot like overseeing the HR department of Queen Indistries.

Whenever Ollie found himself puzzling over a particular challenge, whether it was League or business related, he always found that he thought more clearly when he put in a little target practice. It was like meditation for him. Helped him focus, and stay on target--in more ways than one. So come noonish, he called it a half-day and clocked out early to hit the range.

Or at least that's what he intended to do, barring any unforeseen circumstances.