The Universe's Mixer

The weather in the City was pretty much always perfect. There were days with rain, but they were still mostly warm. But there were still seasons. In fall the leaves fell (the trees were never bare, though), in winter there might be some snowflakes (never anything like the one great storm where the City had gotten carried away), and summers were warm and sunny and nobody had school.

Still, this year, the City felt like celebrating spring. Not any particular holiday. Just spring in general. There were new people around, there were couples in love, and it wanted to have a great big party for everyone.

Overnight, it set up the great festival. Streets all around the park were closed off so that people could walk around without issue. The park itself was expanded to over twice the normal size. A great clearing was made in the center, stretching from one side to the other. There needed to be lots of room.

Through this clearing the City placed tents, stands, and tables. These were filled with food and wares of all types. There were representatives for all the popular shops, as well as some that nobody had ever seen there before. There were stands for balloons for the kids, too, free of charge. And flowers absolutely everywhere. Woven into the stands themselves, laying on tables, set up in vases, growing in every patch that the City was sure nobody would accidentally step on them. Colorful ribbons, some as large as crepe streamers, also decorated everything. The City wanted as much color as it could possibly get.

At one end of the clearing the City placed a small carnival. Rides, games, everything it could think of. Even a petting zoo, though some of the animals within weren't typical farm animals that usually went in petting zoos. At the other it placed a few stages for performances. Concerts, plays, musicians. The stages were all contained within their own invisible sound barriers, as to not disturb one another, but the noise from all could be heard on the main promenade.

It put signs up all over, put notices in mailboxes, ads on the radio, commercials on television, and even made Candy and Frank talk about it on the morning news.

The celebration would go from sunrise to midnight. At sunset, the City would have a bonfire, complete with a pig roast and s'mores. At that time, it would move the park closer to the water, creating a beach between for the bonfire to settle on.

When the world started to shift strangely, her first thought was Logan -- and then Jono -- but it rapidly settled instead on the only friend she had who could actually be harmed badly: Selina.

Laura lurched down the TARDIS hallways toward the room Selina used, but even as the shaking began to even out, she knew that Selina wasn't there. All the same, Laura took a second or two to break into the room and look through Selina's things to try to figure out where her friend might've gone.

Out. That was the only guess Laura could make. And so Laura started for the TARDIS door --

-- but the TARDIS melted away from around her and was instead replaced with a long stretch of darkened city street. Laura advanced without hesitation, though her claws sniked as she walked. Sniffing at the air, she narrowed her eyes and looked deep into the darkness, trying to find her friend.

It was a shot - literally - in the dark, but until she was certain that Selina was unharmed, Laura intended on looking wherever she could.

The City was cold and quiet at 2 AM. Laura Kinney was wandering alone through town, an uncharacteristic habit she had picked up as of late. Now that she had the ability to go where ever she chose whenever she wanted to, Laura found it increasingly difficult to stay in one place for long. Especially if Billy was busy plotting or attending ELE meetings.

The cold didn't bother Laura much, and neither did the complete lack of streetlight (there was something to be said about her mutant DNA). Night time was her favorite time to go out, as most of the strange inhabitants of this strange City were off the streets, giving her the opportunity to roam without unnecessary interaction.

Laura could not define what happened as she turned the corner. The dark figure in the corner meant she was no longer alone, but the tell-tale signs of a human presence were entirely missing. She had never encountered anyone or thing like whatever was in that street with her in her sixteen years, a fact which made her only slightly nervous.

She had been created as a weapon; built to adapt herself to any situation. Stepping carefully forward, Laura called out to the dark shape. "What are you?" It was straight to the chase with this one.

( I'm a super villain )

( She didn't even have a name yet! )

( Have you ever tasted a chili dog before in your life? )

( With our bleach stick we will wash the stains. )

(For Laura)



Snow sucked.

Well, not all the time. Sometimes, it could make the roads a lot of fun, slick enough to whip donuts in parking lots. And occasionally in the middle of intersections. That was always exciting. Harley was a good driver, even in snow. It wasn’t like Gotham didn’t get some snow now and then. Freezing rain too, which was both more irritating and more challenging. But snow? Snow was easy peasy lemon squeezy.

Except when it kept falling and falling and falling until there was no way that Harley could manage to keep the stolen Caddy going through the drifts. Even with the weight of the car and the fantastic, powerful eight cylinder engine, it just wasn’t quite enough to plow through. The rear-wheel drive didn’t help once she’d gotten stuck either. Great for playing, not so great for getting out of the snow bank.

Harley had spent a bit of time venting her frustration on the dash of the car which now sported a few fist-shaped indentations. Then she’d given in to the inevitable fact that she was going to have walk. But it had only taken five minutes of wading through the snow to come to the conclusion that she’d made a mistake. The car was stuck, but it was warm, and wherever the hell she was, there was nothing here. Nothing. She turned around to go back to the stuck Cadilac, but somehow got turned around or something, because after ten minutes, she was still trudging through the ever-falling snow.

( Which was when she decided that snow sucked. )

The actual meaning of life is in one of 10,000 books you're locked in a room with. You have time enough to check every single one, but you can't. You can only open 10 books total.

Note: All the books have normal titles. None gives a clue as to if it holds the secret

Billy sat in the basement of his rented house, staring forlornly into the lens of his webcam. He noticed a sharp decrease in the number of hits on his blog. It depressed him. He straightened his posture and adjusted his goggles with gloved hands. Billy practiced what was supposed to be an evil smile which only looked mildly mischievous at best. So he stopped.

With a heavy sigh he spoke, "Apparently no one at the hospital recognized me, Doctor Horrible, member of the ELE. They let me walk right out the front door. No word from The League yet, B-T-W. Apparently Bad Horse and the others have been unsuccessful in their attempts to rescue me from this pocket dimension. Obviously this is all some sort of mistake. Not on my part. At least, I don't think. I'm pretty sure the Transporter Beam isn't capable of ... transporting anything. At least not without complications. It's obvious to me in recent light of the Undead Epidemic that The City must be stopped. So, look out for something big! Something evil. Uh, this is normally the part where I respond to reader e-mail but since no one seems to have heard of me here I don't actually have any."

Horrible cleared his throat.

"That's it for now. Those of you interested in joining The City's brand new and improved Evil League of Evil or the Henchman's Union, send me an e-mail with your resume. Maybe a video tape. Just a warning though, yes killing people is impressive but if you're going to do that you have to make it classy. I can't let just any idiot with a gun into The League. I mean, who do you take us for? The cops? There have to be standards. Okay, peace out.... in pieces!"

Horrible tried his best evil laugh (thought it sounded a little half-hearted) before reaching forward and turning the camera off. One post to YouTube later and Horrible stared at his in-box. Twenty minutes passed and still there was not a single e-mail. Billy sighed dejectedly before deciding to slip into his mild-mannered civilian attire and head to the grocery store in a white, unmarked van that doubled as his dastardly get-away car.

His grocery list read as follows: mayo, milk, butter, bread, eggs, english muffins, frozen dinners, and noz-ola cola. About halfway to Winco he realized that The City had him completely lost. Billy slammed on his breaks and pulled over. Getting out of the van he waved his fist in the air, "Alright City, laugh now but pretty soon I will take you over and put in a comprehensive light rail system! An evil light rail system! Run on renewable energy! So go on and laugh, you jerk! Laugh it up now while you can!"