Every Time, Everywhere: The Reboot

[Dizzy H. "Muffin" Muffin]

Every Time, Everywhere #0001: Introduction

You are Jenny Everywhere: dimension-hopper, plainclothes-superheroine, Le Tigre fan, and coolkid. Not the "insufferable prick" variety of coolkid which acts like some kind of SUPERIOR LIFEFORM while showing no emotion whatosever: you're the kind who's totally chill with everyone you meet, and you have a ready smile. You sometimes go by the sobriquet "The Shifter," but almost nobody actually calls you this. Your claim to uniqueness is that, in addition to the ability to Shift between alternate realities at will, you exist in every reality in which it is possible to do so (sometimes because you just Shifted there), and thus technically you are not in fact unique. Your favorite food is toast.

In appearance: you're a twentysomething young woman with short black hair, and you look like you're at least partially Native American or possibly Asian; you're used to having slightly darker skin than those around you. You're wearing a black winter coat lined with fake fur, cargo pants, sneakers, an awesome-looking scarf,? and a pair of aviator's goggles you inherited from your mother which look like they were designed in 1937. (You're not an orphan, it's just a long-term loan; she's made disappearing into a habit, and she hasn't taken you with her since you turned seventeen and started asserting your independence. You suppose your ability to Shift, if not your prevalence, has something to do with weird comic-book genetics.) There is a flower-hairclip in your hair, and a leather satchel slung over your shoulder.

You have just Shifted to the top of a building in the middle of a bustling metropolis. You stretch your arms as you walk over to the edge, looking over the cityscape. It looks approximately like New York or Boston or somewhere along those lines, but you don't recognize any particular landmarks; this is par for the course when you Shift between dimensions and specify that you want to go to a city. The rooftop is undecorated, and looks like an ordinary office building. It is a chilly early-winter day, at approximately lunchtime. Off in the distance, in the direction you're facing, a skyscraper is lit up with the text "December 11, 2014", and below that, "12:10" with a blinking colon. As you watch, the time changes to "12:11". Good, you synchronized the time right, too.

Oh right, the copyleft notice: The character of Jenny Everywhere is available for use by anyone, with only one condition. This paragraph must be included in any publication involving Jenny Everywhere, that others might use this property as they wish. All rights reversed. That's it. That's basically 50% of your entire concept, right there.

What will you do first?

Well ... that's up to you, now.


So, here we go again! Unlike the original, this isn't going to be user-driven, I'm just writing it myself. It's also going to follow a different course than it did before, so even in the first several pages, there'll be surprises.

[Dizzy H. "Muffin" Muffin]

Every Time, Everywhere #0002: Reintroduction

You adjust your scarf and walk to the edge of the rooftop. You're about fifty floors directly above a street that leads straight east (you think) towards the harbor; you don't see any recognizable landmarks. No Empire State Building, no One World Trade Center, no Stark Tower, none of those boring things in Boston ... There's a couple of superhero-ish buildings you don't recognize, though. You dip into the knowledge of all other Jenny Everywheres in all other realities (or at least, all Jenny Everywheres who can telepathically access each others' knowledge and memories) to see if any of them recognize the skyline, and come up with nothing. This reinforces the notion that this city is merely like New York or Boston.

Which means, in turn, that there isn't much you can do from up here. You consider coolest way of getting to the ground floor, which is obviously just jumping off the edge and landing on your feet unharmed through sheer pulchritude alone (this is the kind of laws of physics you follow). Your thoughts are interrupted, however, by the sound of the door to the stairwell opening behind you. You turn.

A granite-faced man is approaching, dressed in a black suit which is probably not the best thing to wear in this cold December weather, but damned if he doesn't look snappy. "Hi," you say.

"'Lo," he says. "Thought the boys picked up some kind o' dimensional disturbance."

"They were right," you say, grinning. "The name's Jenny Everywhere."

"Slinus Segall," he says, extending a hand. "They call me Dragging Dirk. Codenames come with the territory in this town."

"Nice to meet you," you say. He's got a firm and steady handshake to match his firm and steady gaze. "Sometimes they call me The Shifter."

He nods. "Welcome to Brighton City," he says says conversationally. "Plenty o' capes around here, even the ones that don't actually wear capes," he adds, gesturing to you. "Just so y'know, you landed on the building o' the Mercenary Consortium."

"Oh?" you say. "What's your deal?"

"We pick whatever side has the better money, o' course," says Slinus. "People come to us with a problem, we pick the right person or group for the job. Otherwise, you don't try to kill us, even if we're workin' for your mortal enemy, and we won't go outta our way to kill you."

"All right," you say drily. "I'm not a killer, and I don't think I've been in this universe before, so the odds of running into a mortal enemy are kind of mediocre."

Slinus lets out a chuckle. "Well, I'm sure if you screw around until somethin' interestin' happens, a super-kid like you is gonna have no trouble findin' new ones," he says playfully. "I mean, that is what you dimension' hoppin' super-kids do, yeah?"

"Pretty much," you say, grinning. Notwithstanding his gruff demeanor, you're starting to warm up to him; he's clearly a people-person. On the other hand, you can just as easily imagine him dragging a dirk through someone. (So, basically, the right person for the job of investigating the sudden appearance of a stranger on their rooftop.) "I think I'll start by ... making enemies out of someone who ... hates people eating lunch at restaurants?"

Slinus lets out a low, guttural laugh. "You'll wanna head to Fin Dining," he says. "Step out the front door, 'n' head straight to the harbor, it's over by th' boardwalk. Can't say I'm a fan of the puns, but the food's top notch."

"All righty then," you say. "Anything else before I head down?"

Slinus shrugs. "Dunno what to tell you in particular. Not much I'm at liberty to say, at any rate." He shrugs. "There's plenty o' folks in this town who you can call 'super', both good 'n' bad."

"And neutral, like you guys?" you ask.

"Mmm, not so many," he says. "We kinda have the market cornered. Pretty much everyone else falls under 'bad'."

"I guess that's it, then," you say, smiling. "See you on the bottom."

"Yeah, right," he says. He turns toward the door to the stairs and dials up a number on a smartphone; you faintly hear a woman's voice. "Yo, Hal, tell 'em to keep their shirts on, it's just some dimension-hopping super-kid who showed up. Jenny Everywhere, the Shifter. Yeah. Yeah, I just told her how to get to Fin Dining ..."

While he's looking away, you put your goggles down over your eyes. He starts to turn back towards you at that moment, and you take the opportunity to do a backflip off the edge of the roof.

[Dizzy H. "Muffin" Muffin]

Every Time, Everywhere #0003: Going Down the Street

There are plenty of ways a super-kid could avoid eye-injuries when moving at terminal velocity. Obviously you could just ignore the issue, for instance. However, you feel that wearing flight-goggles just looks cool, which is the whole reason you did a backflip off a fifty-story building in the first place.

You twist in midair so that you're facing the building, then do a forward (downward?) somersault and plant your feet on the wall. After that, it's just a matter of moving your legs really fast, picking a spot on the sidewalk below that isn't occupied by anyone or anything, and then jumping off in time to land in that pose with your right hand and right knee on the ground, your left leg stretched out to the side, and your left hand raised behind you, which literally every hero ever has done. Not many of them are usually wearing a satchel while doing it, but you've gotten the hang of making sure that it lands on your back instead of the sidewalk, which totally makes a difference and prevents anything inside from getting damaged.

This ostentatious display hasn't gotten anyone's attention. A few passers-by glance at you, then up at the top of the building, with no more curiosity than if you'd stepped out the door wearing an interesting dress. The drivers in the street in front of you aren't even honking any more than they already were. You're getting a surly look from a guy in a suit loitering by the front door of the Mercenary Consortium building ? which frankly looks fairly uninviting, now that you get a good look at the entrance ? but that's probably just because he's a member of the Mercenary Consortium.

Okay. The prevailing view seems to be that you aren't a threat, nothing's exploding, and you didn't even damage the sidewalk, so it's not worth getting worked up over. For most of them, you're probably not even the most interesting-looking person to jump out of the sky like that in front of them. Natch. When you meet other heroes, you're pretty much used to being surrounded by people wearing louder outfits than you.

You saunter over towards the harbor; there are obviously more interesting ways of getting there, but that's just exhausting. The technology looks identical to that of most other Earths you've visited; you see an ad in a Mac store for the same kind of iPhone you have in your pocket. You stop by a newspaper rack to get a copy of the Brighton Sun, because if there's one thing guaranteed to provide a free source of foreshadowing, it's the news. You pick a quarter off the ground and see George Washington staring off to the side, just like in the last however-many universes where you happened to get a good look at a quarter.

Eventually, you reach the beach. There appears to be a large boardwalk at the edge of the water (New Jersey-style, not the kind that goes over a bog). At the immediate boundary where the buildings meet the boardwalk in front of you, there is a 50s-style diner with a large billboard on top that says "Fin Dining."

You enter; the inside is approximately as 50s as the outside, apart from the clientele in their entirely-modern clothing. You come in at just the right moment to hear someone on the radio announce that it's a college radio station, before it segues into Elvis singing some song that probably doesn't exist in your home reality. It's moderately busy, but there's an empty stool at the counter, so you sit down there.

A young woman on the other side of the counter approaches and hands you a menu. "Hey there," she says. "Can I get you a drink to start with?"

You order a soda and look over the menu, which is basically full of names like "Cod Dang It!" and "A Case Of Crabs" and "Rum-Bull" that alternately make you want to track down the restaurant owner and shake their hand, and roll up the newspaper and whack them with it. You shrug, and decide to just order a Flounder Aimlessly, which features the description "Sauteed and breaded flounder with parmesan crumbs. We kind of just threw ingredients together to see what worked, then refined it into the form it is in today."

[Dizzy H. "Muffin" Muffin]

Every Time, Everywhere #0004: And Now, The News

You sip your soda and peer at the front page of the newspaper. It's all boring stuff about politics, a nasty fire, and some rowdy kids at Brighton University. You find this suspicious. Sure enough, once you open the newspaper, page 2 and 3 are full of superhero-antics. It seems that the capes and cowls have been flying through this world's airspace long enough that they're too pedestrian for the front page, unless something happens that actually affects people. Let's see ...

Some military dudes in Germany are drawing fire for creating a "Mechazaud Gear" (which seems to be some kind of bipedal tank which uses magic) which was a perfect recreation of the "gear" unit originally piloted by Adolph Hitler, "Mechanische Zauber D, Codenamen Zahnrad (lit. Mechanical Magic D, codenamed Gear)." The article mentions that Germany deliberately chose a non-descriptive codename after the failure of the Y-Ger?t radar system, makes a passing reference to a lone allied soldier defeating that Gear on foot, and describes how much more advanced Mechazaud Gears have become since then, before smoothly transitioning back into the tastelessness of the recreation of something which was literally used by Hitler. OK, so in this timeline, Hitler was the final boss of World War 2. Big whoop-de-doo.

Abstract Hero proposed to Golden Girl after they prevented Thor Station, a satellite-mounted laser beam pointed down, from crashing into the earth after it was taken over by Doctor Devilish. Which is apparently his actual real name, Richard Emmanuel Devilish Sr., PHD. Anyway, Doctor Devilish wanted to use it to conquer the world, but an explosion occurred due to poor maintenance in the systems Doctor Devilish added to it, and it started to fall out of orbit. Golden Girl, Abstract Hero, and Abstract Hero's evil twin Abstract Villain (who was along for the ride because if Earth was destroyed, he would die, too) successfully blew it up it, so that all that happened was a meteor shower. And then Abstract Hero proposed to Golden Girl. Kiiiiind of much too narrowly focused for your tastes, and slightly too large a scale for your capabilities anyway, even setting aside the fact that it's over and done with now.

Video game publisher Capcom of America has just lost a lawsuit against Kenneth T. Mello, alias The Blue Bomber, over his use of the nickname of Capcom's character Mega Man. The main reason Capcom lost was because they did not, in fact, have a copyright on the name "Blue Bomber"; it was just a nickname given to Mega Man by the English-speaking world for no apparent reason. Mello's "Blue Bomber" costume didn't even remotely resemble Mega Man in any way. It mentions the fact that Capcom had no problem with the Canadian football team the Winnipeg Blue Bombers just in time for you to completely lose interest in the story.

Superhumanly-precise-gunman and Groucho-impersonator Henry Julius Kenz, alias Marx Man or alternatively Marks Man (you mentally applaud the gutsiness of that pun) has just escaped being kidnapped by psychic serial killer Prayer's Mania, who has this "game" which is vaguely a ripoff of the Saw movies, which the article mentions Prayer's Mania has apparently not actually watched before. Yeah, okay, if this kind of drivel is going to be what all of them are like, you might as well toss the paper and go out and find your own foreshadowing. And/or lower your standards. Yeah, the article says he's fine and would have kicked PM's ass if not for the read-your-mind-to-see-how-you'll-try-to-attack-him thing (which you don't think you'll have a problem with), and now it's just mentioning some disappearances and deaths which have been attributed to Prayer's Mania, like Gabe Rosenblum, Scotty K. Luby, Jenny Nowhere ?

You do a classic spittake, right back into your soda glass. Looks like you have an enemy here after all!

[Dizzy H. "Muffin" Muffin]

Every Time, Everywhere #0005: Going Nowhere Fast

A woman named Jenny Everywhere exists, has existed, or will exist in every universe in which it is possible for a woman named Jenny Everywhere to exist. In your personal experience, the vast majority of cases happened because you happened to enter said universe; you hardly ever meet another Jenny Everywhere who was already there. Broadly speaking, each Jenny Everywhere is more-or-less identical in looks, personality, and abilities; you are therefore comfortable referring to your alternates in the first person singular.

Conversely, a woman named Jenny Nowhere exists, has existed, or will exist in every universe in which it is possible for a woman named Jenny Nowhere to exist. The similarities between them begin and end with the name and "she doesn't like Jenny Everywhere very much"; in practical terms, a given Jenny Nowhere could be anyone or anything. They aren't even consistent about how dangerous they are; the last one you ran into was a cashier at a convenience store who was passive-aggressive at you when you bought a snack, for God's sake. The one before that was a literal goddess, and the one before that was a small-time supervillain. (One of your alternates once got stuck in this weird Japanese pocket-dimension where she ran into a woman who called herself Jenny Nowhere when you introduced yourself, but who was revealed to be a local reality-warping asshole who usually went by the name Yukari Yakumo; you're inclined to say this counts, though.) You're pretty sure that if you ever discovered an explanation, a grand unifying reason as to why there are so many Jenny Nowheres in existence, the next Jenny Nowhere you ran into wouldn't fit the explanation.

You read over the news article. Nope, it doesn't say anything useful or intelligible about Jenny Nowhere, it just drops her name in there. You've got to find out more, fast.

Oh right, duh. You pull out your smartphone and head to Wikipedia (via a WLAN called "Fin Dining Fishing Net").

A chubby young woman with red hair in a ponytail smirks back at you from the web page. "Jenny Nowhere" is the handle of Jennifer Norway, a grey hat hacker (it links to an article titled "Computer hacker (superpower)" which basically tells you everything you need to know about IT security in this universe). It says she's helped save the world a few times, and she usually only performs "ethical hacking," but she has something of a superiority complex when she hacks on her own initiative; she has justified not-quite-so-ethical hacking by saying, "if they don't want me breaking in, their security should be less shitty." She has identified her philosophy as "probably Objectivist, mostly moral relativist" and has mostly just shown herself to be entirely coasting on semi-enlightened self-interest. (Hot damn you can see why you and she wouldn't get along.) She disappeared a week ago, on December 4th at 12:11 AM, and her disappearance was attributed to Prayer's Mania.

You wiki-walk a bit. The article on Prayer's Mania is very short, has no photo, and has a big message announcing a general uncertainty as to whether he is notable enough to exist outside "List of supervillains in Brighton N through P." He's currently being chased by the Legion of Lethal Heroes, a group of well-meaning individuals whose powers are more-or-less inherently deadly. You decide to save looking them up until you've found out more about Prayer's Mania.

Unfortunately, the news articles are somewhat sparse, too, and Google Image Search has three images repeated endlessly: two blurry photos of a man in a skull mask, one of them at night with him surrounded by green glowy shit, and one bathroom-mirror-selfie on a bloodstained flip-top phone, held aloft by green glowy shi. His head tilted and he's doing a sideways peace-sign with his hands. The selfie lets you see the skull-mask more clearly; its't this stylized thing with vertical lines for teeth like The Punisher, except shaped more like something out of Darksiders or possibly Scream.

The waitress appears with your Flounder Aimlessly at that point. "Here you go."

"Ah, thanks," you say, putting your phone away. Then you stop suddenly. "Oh god ..."

"What is it?" she asks.

"'Fishing net' in your wifi thing, I just realized the pun."

[Dizzy H. "Muffin" Muffin]

Every Time, Everywhere #0006: Fin Dining

It turns out that Flounder Aimlessly is the best seafood you have ever eaten.

That's not an exaggeration. It's not, y'know, in the "blissful euphoric brain-dead orgasm" sense, it's more like it's just so awesome. You quickly check to see if there's a Wikipedia article titled "Cooking (superpower)" (there is), and then quickly get back to focusing on the yums.

Your experience is marred, however, by another diner who is apparently also getting their experience marred. There's a three-foot-tall guy sitting in one corner, yelling into his phone. He's got an evil handlebar moustache, an oversized chin, a suit that looks identical to Slinus Segall's getup with the addition of a bowler hat, and a voice that sounds like a cross between Snidely Whiplash and Spongebob Squarepants. And what appears to be a Napoleon complex. Obviously this is another hero and it's vitally important that you help him out with whatever quest he's on.

"I said I'm at Fin Dining, HAL!" he says, saying the name with as much venom as a teenager might end a sentence with "MOM!" "Basically I'm saying this can wait. Unless, yaknow, in the past twelve hours since Golden Girl brought my dad in, he's broken out and is ramaging through West Brighton in a freaking Mechazaud? Buuuuut I don't think so."

You sneak a look at your phone and look up Richard Devilish, Sr. on Wikipedia. Sure enough, by way of a brief marriage with one Mariam Devilish, there is in fact a Richard Devilish Jr. who is a member of the Mercenary Consortium. He doesn't have his own article, though, and the details sort of fizzle out at that point.

A quick glance confirms that you're not the only one giving him furtive looks, but you seem to be the only "super" person around as far as you can tell. You consider getting up to have a few choice words with him regarding the rudeness of throwing a tantrum on the phone in the middle of a restaurant; you just need to wait until this overcomes the rudeness of interrupting someone who's on the phone. Which shouldn't take too much longer, you think. In the meantime: delicious flounder.

[Dizzy H. "Muffin" Muffin]

Every Time, Everywhere #0007: Hal

> Be Hal.

You are now Hal, the mysterious woman on the other end of Slinus Segall and Richard Devilish Jr.'s phones.

You're a member of the Mercenary Consortium, which is a sort of ... specialist agency. Someone wants a job done, it's the Consortium's job to find someone who'll do it and do it well. And the fact that this "someone" is asking for help from an agency called the Mercenary Consortium goes a long way towards explaining what kind of job it is. You personally are part of the business end of the Consortium ? which is to say, the end that bullets come out of.

Looks? You don't got time for looks. "Unkempt" is practically the uniform here, setting aside weirdos like Segall who try to look good. Good suits and dresses would only get rumpled and bloodied. (You get a kick out of telling people, "Don't worry, it's not my own blood," because it's the least reassuring thing you could possibly say.) Ironing your clothes and wearing makeup would probably be a dress code violation. You guess you're this Caucasian woman with red hair, dressed in a men's business suit, and you're an inch or two shorter than Slinus Segall.

You were lucky enough to get hired during one of those fifteen-minute periods when the Consortium doesn't care if you're a man or a woman, instead of the vaguely misogynistic bullshit they have going on most of the rest of the time, and you've even gotten to be the leader of your own team ? you can't fire anyone, but the rest of the team has to do what you tell them. Theoretically, at least. The team is called the Million Cents, for reasons which probably seemed like a good idea at the time, but it invariably leads to "ten thousand dollars" jokes whenever you drop the name. You respect the other three members of your team as coworkers, but damned if they don't get all up in your grill ninety percent of the time. Your name is Hallianna Bernstein, also known as Silent Singer, and you are having a bad day today.

A few days ago, someone came to the Consortium with a particular job. You don't know anything about them, just that they're designated as "Client #2014/12/08-1211" by the Consortium. You also didn't know about the job until twenty minutes ago, when they passive-aggressively foisted it upon the Million Cents after a supposed slip-up Segall made because he let someone go he shouldn't have. Your response, which fell on deaf ears, was: get real, there wasn't any way he could've known about this, we aren't supposed to know about any jobs that don't concern us.

Well, now it concerns you, and now Richard Devilish, Jr. is making things a lot harder for everyone, including presumably everyone in Fin Dining, by bellyaching about interruptions to his lunch instead of listening to a word you're saying. To be fair, Fin Dining is a damn fine di? uh, a damn good restaurant, but nothing warrants this bull hockey.

"Devilish, I'm serious," you say. "According to Segall ?"

"You know what else is according to Segall? The food's GOOD here!" he says.

"We have been arguing for ten solid minutes, and it became a gigantic waste of time thirty seconds in," you say.

He replies, "What a coincidence, I feel the same way!"

A familiar feeling stirs. That feeling is overwhelming, soul-blackening rage. It's the sort of rage that'll make a woman feel totally justified in sporting an unnecessarily elaborate assortment of fancy blades, guns, explosives, and special moves, as well as ordering the fourth member of the Million Cents to bounce this clown like a basketball.

He continues, "Now listen here, Hal, I ? hey!" There's a brief sound of a scuffle, and his voice becomes a lot quieter. "Gimme my phone back!"

"Hey there," says the voice of the girl Segall ran into on the rooftop.

You furrow your brow. Well, this was unexpected. "Who is this?" you ask, strictly for the record.

"Name's Jenny Everywhere, I ran into Slinus when I dropped into the city," she says smoothly. You can hear Richard Devilish, Jr. screaming and flailing with impotent fury in the background.

"Ah, yes," you say, as if you didn't recognize her voice from the recording Segall made; nothing fancy, he just turned his phone's recorder on and kept it in his pocket. He didn't get a chance to get her face, but ... "I'd say I'm kind of in the middle of trying to talk to Richard Devilish, Jr. here, but, well ... it sounds like you've gotten the gist of the situation very loudly."

"Yeah, really," Jenny says sympathetically. "I mean, there's never a good time to get into a screaming argument with your boss, but you think he'd've run out of steam after about, what, five minutes?" Richard Devilish, Jr. has gone quiet.

"Totally," you say drily.

"Yeah, so," she says, "It obviously has to be something important, so I'll just hand you back over to him, how's that sound?"

You grit your teeth. "Perfect," you say.

"All righty then, buh-bye!"

And then she fucking hangs up on you.

You mutter some choice expletives in English and German, then dial Richard Devilish, Jr. back up.

You hear everyone in the restaurant laughing as he picks up and says, "Uh, yeah?" in a small, plaintive voice.

"Well," you say, "I've got some good news, Dick ..."

[Dizzy H. "Muffin" Muffin]

Every Time, Everywhere #0008: All Things That Go Boom

You are now back to being Jenny Everywhere. Wow, that was quick. What was even up with that perspective change, anyway?

"It comes to $12.11," says the waitress, grinning. Everyone in the restaurant is still pleased with the way you handled Richard Devilish, Jr.

You put down a $20 bill. "Keep the change," you say. "I noticed Tricky Dicky there didn't leave a tip."

"Aw, thanks!" she says. "Have you run into him before?"

"Nah, he just mentioned a couple of stuff I saw in the news, including his dad," you say. "Anyway, I'll have to stop by here again!"

"All right, see you later!" says the waitress.

You head out and make your way up the boardwalk. It's the early afternoon on a Wednesday in the middle of December, so the crowds are relatively thin. There's a sort of amusement park up ahead, with various rides and stalls, all of which seem to be closed except the restaurants and arcades which have their own buildings. A Ferris wheel looms overhead.

So it's just a little bit easier to tell when you're being followed. And someone that short wouldn't stand out in a crowd, but in a relative lack of one? He sticks out like a sore thumb pointed down. You meander a bit along the boardwalk, making your way to a region with a deserted row of closed amusement stalls, just to make sure that 1. it's not just a coincidence that he's on the same path as you, and 2. there's no one else to get caught in any crossfire.

"Man, y'know, there's pretty much no one here," you announce. "I bet someone could get into a nice big scuffle without hitting any bystanders, eh, Rich?"

Something metal clinks on the ground by your feet. You flashstep diagonally upwards, air-dash over to the second-nearest rooftop, and then roll into a duck-and-cover position just before the stun grenade goes off.

Richard Devilish, Jr. comes into view at the junction behind where you were standing. "Nice ta meetcha," he says, strapping what appear to be some sort of rollerskates onto his feet. "Over at the Em Cee, they call me Crazy Demolitions. I'm the expert of all things that go boom, haha!"

"Hi," you say. "You doing this for love, or is it also for money?"

"Well, y'know, business comes first," he says, finishing with the skates. "Otherwise it'd be something more ... shrapnel-y than a flashbang. The price on yer head says 'alive,' which is weird, considerin'." He gives you a sidelong look. "Don't suppose you'd have any idea why someone three days ago would have it in for a gutsy girl who only showed up in this universe an hour ago?"

You shrug. "Not much," you say. "I'm almost curious enough to come quietly, and take my chances with whoever-it-is." Yeah, no, it's obviously Jenny Nowhere somehow, but this would probably take too long to explain, and you don't want to count on Richard Devilish, Jr. understanding it.

He shakes his head. "Nah, after that stunt you pulled at Fin Dining? Hal 'n' me are gonna wanna do this the fun way." He pulls out a flashbang in one hand and what appears to be some sort of grappling hook with the other. "Yer gonna come noisily! ... Wait, that came out wrong. Uhh, you know what I mean!"

You decide not to dignify the accidental double-entendre with a reaction. Instead, you give him an easy smile and a shrug. "Your funeral," you say. "Metaphorically, of course."

> STRIFE!