The Universe's Mixer

Jo was beginning to wonder if it was humanly possible to prevent someone from leveling a building. A gigantic hulking green thing had managed to do it to her last job.

Not that Jo was running, but to be quite honest, that one incident had convinced her to give up bar tending for the time being. Sure, she got great tips because she was good at her job, but seriously, she only needed one green thing destroying her lifestyle before she knew she had to switch gears. Now came the bigger problem: who in the world would hire her? Blond, skinny, and really not that bulky looking, even if she could wield a mean shot gun. That narrowed down her choices by a lot. She really had no patience for being a waitress, which would have been her other option. The only problem was that if she took a job in one of those places, they'd probably have a short skirt to go with it, and by God she was done with guys looking at her like that. Ellen wasn't there anymore to frighten them off.

Not a lot of her stuff had made it out of the wreckage. What little she had managed to save came from going around the back and pulling out her bag, so at the very least she had some Hunter charms and various other pieces of protect with her. But that wasn't going to get her far either. Stealing a truck, she had managed to stay out the way for a while. But the money was running out, and without a job, she wasn't getting anywhere. Hunting was thankless work.

Sitting on a park bench with her truck parked nearby, Jo wondered if this was a sign that the City wanted her out.

Jack Napier made Spike think.

And yes, the vampire was totally aware that that was really, really wrong. But he was built for something, wasn't he? This body was like this for a goddamn reason--literally a God damned reason. Spike wasn't a nice guy. And all the peace he'd found since getting his soul back, all of the grip he'd gotten on remembering every single face of every single victim, started to evaporate.

There were things he could do, here. Things he could do without that soul. Things the sodding Joker was making him think about. That was the Joker's job, wasn't it? Being the villain?

Spike smiled slightly to himself as he walked. No. No. That was his job.

...with the occasional moonlighting as a knight in shining armor or a babysitter for Dawn Summers, or a protector because she...

She.

Was it all still about the Slayer?
Was he keeping the bloody soul for her, in the hope that he'd be...

What? Be good enough?

Spike scowled, pushing the glass door in front of him open. This place was pretty posh. Gargoyles outside made it feel a bit like home. He scanned the directory on the wall in the lobby and hopped into an elevator, going up.

When he got out of the lift, he rounded a corner, stopped in front of Jesse Custer's door, lowered his head, and knocked.

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.

Jeannie was still not all that certain that this was the best course of action. No matter what Spike had said, she could not shake her apprehensions about taking him to see someone who liked to call themselves a “slayer.” In her experience, those sorts of people were never to be trusted. Which was why instead of blinking Spike to this person by himself, she had chosen to join him. So that she could keep him safe. She refused to believe that her new master would tell her to help him only to see him harmed. That made no sense. No, this was the best way. Definitely.

From the well-lit street corner where she had met him… or was that re-met him? He did seem to think they had met before. Or at least he had met her twin sister. So that meant that they had some further connection perhaps. Which made it doubly important for her to keep him out of trouble.

From the well-lit street corner where she and Spike had been recently standing, they blinked into existence in a very dark place. It took Jeannie a moment to recognize it as an alleyway. A very dim and dirty alleyway. It smelled. Was this the sort of place that a slayer person was to be found? It was most unpleasant. A half second later, she squeaked and jumped closer to Spike, grabbing on to his arm as something greasy and furry scrabbled across her pink slipper.

“Oh!” she fumed, stamping her foot to make sure it was clear of the rat. “That is… this is… oh!”

Stepping slightly away from Spike, without releasing his arm, she commented, “I cannot see a thing, can you? This is not at all acceptable.”

With a quick nod and blink, a set of streetlights appeared, three on either side of the alleyway, completely filling the formerly darkened space with bright, warm light. Pleased with her accomplishment, she beamed at Spike, looking for his approval. “That is much better, is it not?”

The purplish bottle bobbed on the surface of the water, the crystal stopper in the top glinting in the sunlight. Caught in the wake of a small trawler, the bobbing became tossing as the bottle rose and fell in the violent ripples created by the passing of the boat. It was bouncing enough that the stopper should have fallen out from the movement alone. Should have. But it did not. It stayed in place as though stuck with glue. And from inside, there were tiny squeaks and shrieks of irritation.

Which was understandable, as each toss and buck of the bottle threw it about, the occupant inside was jostled as well. There was only so much to hold onto inside the container, and though most of it was padded, there were a couple of hard objects to bang a head into. As she found out on a particularly dramatic drop. The string of curses that fell from her lips would have been enough to make anyone blush, even if they did not understand the language in which they were uttered. If they did, they would probably cover their ears and look at her in horror. People should not say such things about Hajji, Chief of all Genies, without expecting to have some sort of retribution enacted.

Jeannie was angry enough that she did not care. Well, she did not care in that moment. But as soon as her own voice reached her ears, her hands were clapped over her mouth as though to stop it from running away with her. That had been very unwise, and she was immediately sorry for what she had said. Looking upwards, towards the top of the bottle, she whispered an apology that she hoped would pacify. As if her situation was not bad enough, she certainly did not need Hajji to add punishment on top of it.

( On top of abandonment. )

Just because he had a soul, that didn't mean the need for blood stopped. It didn't mean Spike wasn't hungry. And though he seriously considered offing his neighbor, Spike instead went out, grabbed pints of blood from the butcher shop (oh, he thought, how the mighty have fallen), and came home.

It was quiet here, right now. And he wanted it to be quiet. Spike wanted to think. He'd downed a pint of the blood and stashed the rest in the fridge, where there was a leftover flowering onion (mmm)and a case of beer.

He sat in the window--the window he'd once hopped right out of under Buffy and Wes's noses--and looked out on the City. He hated how much he was changing, but he wondered if it were not for the good. The things he'd been doing in Sunnydale... had he not already been headed this way? He'd helped. Helped. Saved Dawn, he knew, from what Willow said before she got all terrifying.

But... Jesse said this was not the way it was supposed to be. Jesse who was... sort of like God. Spike didn't believe in God, but he thought Jesse was a good guy, and hell, if there had to be a God, why not him? At least with Jesse, he stood a chance at getting out of that fire and damnation and torment, right?

Things moved and shifted outside his window, and he did not expect there to be a knock at the front door.

But there was.

Spike looked at the door, half-hoping he'd gone insane again. Because if Dru was on the other side of it, or Darla, or ANY version of Angel, he was breaking a leg off the wooden chair in the corner and ending it all. He'd only been sitting at that window five sodding minutes.

Whatever. If he was going crazy, he was going all the way. "Yeah, come in, s'open," he said, standing and waiting to see what the hell else this place had in store for him.

This was probably the strangest thing that had ever happened to Jack McFarland in the history of... ever. One minute, New York City and the next... wherever the hell he was. He had left his mansion (his, he earned it fair and square by spending some of Beverly's inheritance), left Karen and Rosario, only to do a little hottie hunting when the worst of all things happened.

Lesbians. Kissing.

As in all over each other. Hands on boobies and tongues and...

Jack immediately stopped his moment of remembrance to choke back a retch. Gross... lesbians. He hated them, despised them. If God had wanted women to have sex, he would have given them penises.

He had taken a wrong turn away from the disgusting duo, down and alley and suddenly... no mansion. No Karen, no Rosario and no way home. What in gay hell had just happened to him? At least he was able to get what he needed: an apartment, clothes, food, decor that didn't belong in the dumpster behind K-mart. While the idea of maybe not seeing Karen again was depressing, that wasn't going to keep Jack down for long. There was a certain freedom to being all alone in an apartment again. Not nearly as fabulous as the mansion (tshaw, like it could ever be), but it was his.

Which of course meant that the stereo was on as loud as it would go and Cher was on constant repeat.

"No matter how hard I try... You keep pushing me aside and I cant break through... Theres no talking to you"

He danced, he sang, he did a somersault on his couch landing perfectly on his feet in the center of the living room and above all else - he had a turkey baster for a microphone. Jack didn't know a turkey baster was, but it looked like it was used for inseminating lesbians. Again, gross... but it was a great microphone and he needed on.

"Its so sad that you're leaving, It takes time to believe it. But after all said and done, you're gonna be the lonely one, ohhh.. DO YOU BELIEVE IN LIFE AFTER LOVE.."

There were a lot of things on his plate. A lot of things to do. People needed help. Things needed sorting. There was still the issue of evil out there. But Jesse felt more compelled toward a promise he had kept before all of this.

He'd definitely come to terms already with the shifting of the city. It didn't matter. It was the way of this world, where ever this world was. Long ago he'd given up trying to justify any of it to himself or anybody else.

It was easier to find the soul-filled vampire than he'd thought it would be. Spike was like a beacon with his voices following him. His insanity glowed brightly for Jesse.

The bar was dark. He found Spike immediately and sat down next to him.

"Hope you remember me." He said before he ordered a beer.