The Clocktower, New Gotham, Monday afternoon

[blondecanary]

Dinah had gotten Priestly's message early in the morning; and spent half of it crying. Going to class? Not happening. She'd sent the photo to Barbara with the message, What is this? Then gone to the Clocktower

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[thatsamilkshake]

Francine would have forgiven Dinah for breaking the news in text, if she had. At least it would given Francine an excuse for this unsettled, lurchy feeling in her tummy while she made a call that she'd been planning to make anyway, to talk about Thanksgiving plans.

"Dinah? Is something wrong?"

[blondecanary]

"Priestly's disappeared." Dinah cleared her throat so it was more than a croak. "And so has Jak." She closed her eyes. "Have you heard about this, lately? People just-- going away?"

[thatsamilkshake]

"What? What do you mean disappeared?" Which was a no, or sort of a no, since she'd heard about people getting stranded every which where by Portalocity, but that wasn't the kind of thing that would make Dinah sound like this.

[blondecanary]

"Ummmm. Okay." Dinah closed her eyes to concentrate, and managed to talk, voice rough with crying. "I got back from Homecoming, and people were missing here. One of the criminals we fight. People in Jump Club. Priestly called because his mom had vanished and no one remembered her." She gulped. "I visited Momoko, and coffee shops, they were going missing, no one missed them, and then we visited an informant, and his house-- it evaporated behind us. And no one remembered him." She let out a shaky breath. "Priestly called, Friday? Thursday? I don't know. Japan was missing." Don't cry don't cry don't cry. "And he left me a m-message, and now my phone won't connect..."

[thatsamilkshake]

"Japan was missing? How does Japan go missing?" That was supposed to be Breathe, hon... but somehow that wasn't how it came out. Especially since the first mental image Francine had was of something whooshing up and ripping her and half the diner away, that last summer in Fandom.

It didn't get any easier to be the calm one when Francine re-processed the first thing Dinah had said in light of that gush of words. "And now you can't reach Priestly? What did he say in the message?"

[blondecanary]

"He said, he knew I could find somebody to fix this, and-- sent me a photo of this big wall of-- I don't know, stuff just missing. And that he loved me." Dinah was crying again. Alfred put down another cup of tea, and squeezed her shoulder consolingly. "And now his phone doesn't go anywhere, and people here don't remember him."

[thatsamilkshake]

"Oh, God, that's awful. And... and it doesn't even make any sense. I could understand magic or something in Momoko's world, but Priestly's from someplace normal, like we-- " Um, Gotham. "Like Katchoo and me."

Yeah, why don't we let that one just sink in for a second in silence, while Francine actually thought seriously about people just going away.

[blondecanary]

"Yeah. And I don't... I sent the photo, but now I don't know what to do. And I'm wondering what's next, and..." I don't want it to be you, either. Dinah swallowed. "Has this been happening in your world at all? It isn't happening in Jaime's. But. I worry."

[thatsamilkshake]

Right. Photo in her inbox. Which Francine didn't have to be a tiny bit psychic to guess wasn't going to be of gnomes and bunnies, but "Holy caret percent dollarsign percent percent ampersand asterisk tilde!"

That was like ... like what had come after her in Fandom and ripped her away to Silent Hill if you fed it a nuclear power plant then dumped it into a moving tornado.

What was the question, again? "I haven't seen anything like that! But..."

[blondecanary]

That was something, anyway, right? "But?"

[thatsamilkshake]

But Twitter never heard of @FemurIsNotTheOnlyBone, and while Francine could have just mistyped it...

"There's a few people here I haven't heard from in a while. I sent out e-mails to see if it was worth trying to do Thanksgiving on campus, and nobody's answered--"

She was probably just freaked out and paranoid and everything was fine.

But. "Hang on, okay, let me check something?"

[blondecanary]

"Okay," Dinah said, taking a couple more sips of tea, wishing she could sleep, wake up, and find this was all a dream.

[thismaskiwear]

Katchoo wasn't on Twitter; she didn't need to call that kind of attention to herself.

She could take the phone for a minute, though, and offer a quiet, gruff, "Hey, kid."

[blondecanary]

"Hey," Dinah said, finding a smile somewhere at the familiar cigarette-rough voice. "Francine told you everything?" Of course she had. But it gave Dinah something to say.

[thismaskiwear]

Katchoo grunted a soft affirmative; it really went without saying.

"Frikkin' Fandom." That -- wasn't the exasperatedly affectionate way she usually said it, not this time. Exasperated, yes. Not so loving. She knew how to make people "disappear," but the universe didn't need to know how to do that way more literally, dammit. "Y'need to scream it out at someone, I'm here."

[blondecanary]

Dinah gulped, then said, "I might. I think I'm still a little in shock. And I've got to tell a couple more people what happened. But after that, I'm going out looking for trouble, and if I don't find it...." Well. That would be what Katchoo's number was for.