The Universe's Mixer

Amelia had always considered herself a clever woman- more clever even than most men she had encountered. Her skills of deduction were admired by many; even her beloved husband occasionally, albeit grudgingly, had admitted to admiring her intelligence. Yet for all her reasoning, this was one puzzle where the solution continued to elude her. ( A puzzle... )

Jennifer had been sent out on a call without Charlie. It wasn't the first such call, but she wasn't so sure that she should be working this one alone. After all, it was a very brutal murder, and with all the deaths of the Asylum staff going on, she thought that her partner should be kept in the loop. If they both saw things at the same time, everything worked like magic. They talked, they commiserated. They figured things out. She didn't want to break that cycle in the midst of some of the worst crimes in the City's history.

However, when she got there, she discovered that she didn't have a single thing to worry about. The M.O. was completely different. Not even just different, but startlingly put together. She was handed a file when she arrived on scene that described other deaths that looked exactly like this one.

There were small cuts all over the body. The paleness of the flesh and lack of livor mortis indicated that this person had bled out. She didn't need the medical examiner to tell her that, but he did anyway. The wallet, keys, money, credit cards, photos, jewelry, all of it was there, but spread around the corpse. The most disturbing part of it was the face. Jennifer was pretty sure that's what they called a Glasgow Smile. Ear to ear. Teeth showing through the gaping wound left by something extremely sharp.

Whoever had done this had taken this person unawares. They had also taken their time.

"It's obviously not the same killers who are wrapped up in the Arkham stuff." She mused, normally she would be talking to Charlie. "Two sets of killers running free in the City. Great. Fucking great."

Jennifer knelt by the body. "No motive here."

It wasn’t just John’s disapproval Sherlock had to contend with. If it had merely been disapproval, Sherlock wouldn’t have sent John out on a lengthy number of complicated errands claiming they were essential to solving the mystery of The City; go to the police department, go to City Hall, check out the hospital and see if he had a job waiting for him.

They were all crap errands, really. Sherlock didn’t yet care about the result. He needed time to go the library again. None of the Aurthur Conan Doyle stories were available but it hadn’t taken him long to stumble over the library’s massive collection of DVDs. While John shied away from the recent BBC miniseries Sherlock went right to it. And paled.

He also collected-- alright, the technical term may have been lifted-- a number of other DVD collections; Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the new series of Doctor Who. He would have taken more but Sherlock hadn’t met many others yet.

So when Sherlock finally returned to the flat he was hunkered down on the arm chair, watching the television with a listless expression. A high school aged Buffy was on the screen talking in her characteristically quippy dialogue to her little friends. Sherlock wanted to claw his eyeballs out with his fingers and pressed the fast forward button on the remote. The stack of DVDs was right next to him. Sherlock was on top. He’d meant to watch his own first but hadn’t brought himself to do so; Sherlock and John’s doppelgangers stared at him from the cover.

Was this the big secret? ( The City watched too much telly? )

It had not been a good few weeks for the Doctor. It was exceptionally rare that something managed to get one over on him; it happened, but infrequently enough that the occurrence was a surprise every time. He was worried - about Pond and Rory trapped on a strange planet (just imagine the trouble Pond could get herself into), about Lyra and Fred and Sherlock Holmes, trapped as he was in this strange place, about the designs behind the abductions. Things like this didn’t just happen. They took effort and knowledge and planning.

So? He’d paced about like a madman. The Doctor didn’t sit still easily, and exploring the City made him feel productive. Perhaps he could find where his crafty Urban Overlord had hidden the TARDIS. Perhaps he’d meet someone with some answers - or at least someone interesting.

He’d give the City one bit of credit: it had provided him with a suitable wardrobe. Tweed, ties, proper comfortable shoes for running about, and even a whole shelf of headgear. Now he could choose among fedoras, bowlers, a Stetson, three different takes on the fez, and what could only have been a Phillip Treacy original. It was in zebra print and had little ears on the sides.

The Doctor chose a broad-brimmed tartan fedora. ( It felt jaunty. It felt dashing and heroic, like Indiana Jones mixed with the Scottish Highlands. )

Her day started with a ringing alarm clock. Buffy picked up the old fashioned clock and stared listlessly for over twenty minutes before deciding to turn it off. Even then, she did not immediately rise from her bed.

She showered. Dressed. Weapons were serviced and cleaned and then put away. The house was tidied. There were exactly two dishes to be done in the sink.

And then she had the rest of the day. There were no trips to the Magic Box. No Big Bads to investigate. Patrols were normally saved for sundown. That meant there were several hours left to fill. So Buffy took heavy steps and spent much of that time breaking the imagined bones of a high end, professional grade punching bag.

At least the asylum had mixed things up. ( (What a terrible thought.) )

Sherlock had a gun pointed at a coat packed with explosives about to do something very clever when he heard a soft click! Just a noise. Not a bang. Not a scream. Nothing. Just a small noise and then he was in The City.

No pool. Just a City. American, he thought at first. So he started to walk a straight line. Point A to Point B, attempting to deduce his location. But the steets refused to make sense. Twice he passed his own street address of 221B Baker Street. He didn’t go in, of course. That would be mad.

The scale of it all was what impressed him. And the moving streets. What would it take to pull something like that off? So Sherlock continued investigating. He caught glimpses of brochures from The City; bus routes with maps that didn’t connect, a newspaper, an advertisement for The City Hospital.

Sherlock wasn’t mad. He looked down at the impossible bus route map which already failed to match up with the street corner he was already on, mumbling to himself, “When you’ve eliminated the impossible...”

Not mad and not dead.

“...Then no matter how improbable, it must be the truth.”

Sherlock knew what this place wasn’t. But he hadn’t quite settled on what it was.

( There was someone else. )