Dorothy had never before set foot inside the local diner at the corner of her block, let alone sat a booth waiting for a server. Kipling waved his skeleton hand until he got the attention of the waitress.

"There's no smoking in here, sir," the waitress chided.

Kipling hacked in surprise. "What! You can't be serious? Reality itself is sloughing off into oblivion and you lot concern yourselves more with depriving a man his possible final rites, as it were? Is that why you haven't any ashtrays in this establishment?"

"I don't know how things are in your neck of the woods, Britain or whatever, but there hasn't been smoking in any restaurant in America since, like, the '50s." The waitress looked away from Kipling for the first time as he smothered his cigarette in a napkin. Noticing Dorothy for the first time, a perplexed look crossed the young woman's face before her eyes went wide with the realization that what she saw was real. It was common for people to need to take a moment staring at Dorothy to suss out what they were looking at, that her face was her face and not a trick of the light or a mask.

Dorothy wished she could say something to get the expression of shock off the waitress's face, but there was never anything to say to improve any person's initial reactions to her. Her only option was to wait patiently for the moment to pass, and hope a person's opinion of her could improve.

"Uh," the waitress addressed Dorothy.

"Two beers," Kipling demanded the waitress's attention back on to himself. "The sampler for the table, a roast beef sandwich, a side order of your bourbon sauce, aaaaaaaaaaand… a second side order of your bourbon sauce."

The waitress paused in the middle of writing down the order on her pad. "Two beers? Is sh-, are they," she pointed the butt end of her pen at Dorothy. "Old enough to drink?"

"I-," Dorothy began.

"Dorothy here," Kipling slanted his eyes at the waitress. "Is a top tier superhero. She's turned down repeated requests from the Young Titans begging her to sign onto their team, as well as been relied upon for several occasions by the Justice League in a consultant capacity. She was an instrumental key player in one of the recent apocalypses. So, quit your driveling and bring this savior a much-deserved beer, as well as whatever else she orders."

The waitress looked back at Dorothy, squinted apprehensively, before raising her pen back to her pad. "I think I kind of remember you from tv. You usually dress up like Sherlock Holmes or something? What will you have?"

Dorothy sighed. "A, uh, salad? And a Lipton tea."

As the waitress walked back to the kitchen, Dorothy caught Kipling unfolding the charred napkin with his doused cigarette, sniffing its remains deeply.

"Blast it. No smoking over lunch? Now I remember why I hate the States…"

"Mr. Kipling? None of that stuff you said about me was true."

Kipling glanced up. "Except the part about you taking part in the apocalypse."

"Right… Um, also, why didn't she notice your hand?"

"Hmm?" Kipling looked over his exposed white bones and tapped the naked fingers against the table issuing a resounding clack. "I'm surprised you can see the reality, even if you were there when it happened. Most people can't see because of this on my wrist. It's a Watch."

"I can see that. But is that even the correct time?" As Dorothy looked at the clock she perceived the minute hand race forward three minutes, shifted back one, then forward two.

Kipling chuckled. "No, not a watch; a Watch. It's not a mechanical device, but a magical one. It's intended to draw the eye and be 'watched,' instead of these attention-grabbing bones the Watch is mounted on. It's so proficient at drawing attention to itself, normals never gander at my missing skin and sinews. Only downside is, the bloody contraption just tells you the time you think it is when you look at it. It doesn't know any better than the person looking if its own bloody hands are accurate or not."

Dorothy nodded along. "And your arm? Do you mind if I ask how you're moving it without any nerves or ligaments?"

Kipling shrugged. "The Necromantic arts are more than adequate at controlling entire human bodies at any stage of decomposition, or even several, depending on the validity of the power employed to do so. Used to be, most wars were fought employing whole units of skeletons to supplement the living in slaughtering each other by the truckload. Though I don't usually bother much with Necromancy myself, so my skills are a bit unrefined. Not to mention how many of the old ways are now forgotten or restricted. But, it wasn't too much of a hassle for a practitioner of my expertise to sneak into a museum and use one of my cheaper, and less costly spells to siphon a bit of undead curse off a sleeping mummy and transfer a smidgen of that sufficient necromantic power into my busted arm."

"Beers," the waitress returned, clinking perspiring brown bottles down in front of each customer.

"Thanks, luv," Kipling said, raising the beer up with his cursed hand, of which the waitress still failed to perceive of its true grisly nature. "Cheers," he continued, tipping the bottle forward for a customary toast with Dorothy's.

—

It wasn't until Kipling was kicked out of the diner, arguing with the staff over what a reasonable drink limit was, that Dorothy discovered she'd been expected to pay for the meal.

Meeting back up outside, she caught Kipling muttering to himself while he waved about a lit sparkler. A couple walked by on the sidewalk, giving the disheveled magician a wide berth, eyeing him, then Dorothy, suspiciously.

"Are you trying to leave me, Mr. Kipling?"

Kipling turned his head, noticing her approach. "I'm in a hurry. You understand. And now I'm back to me old self after recovering my strength in that retched establishment. Probably spent too much time here dallying about as is," he brought out a Sharpie that Dorothy recognized and assumed stolen from Doom Manor, which he then stuck to his nostril to inhale deeply from. "Every cult, principality, fallen, felled, and foul thing are converging, and there's no stopping this downhill rolling shitball into growing into a full shit storm when it hits the fan. But, with any hope, I can snatch the bad guy's prize away from them before they sink their talons or otherwise into a potentially innocent augur of doom, and save them from the abyss and eternal tortures."

"Mr. Kipling, you have to tell me what's going on," Dorothy felt her skin prick with anticipation. "You didn't explain much over lunch other than how your Knight Templars were attacked at their base of operations and scattered to the wind."

"Everywhere's been attacked, girl! No magic-user or occultist is safe, or, all of us are even more vulnerable than usual. Don't you watch the news?"

"N-no…?"

"And none of your friends do either? The entire world's gabbing about it."

"Uh," Dorothy said. "I haven't heard any news of any kind for some time now. Just tell me what the hell happened."

Kipling rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. "That bloody runt of a skeevy 'wizard,' Felix Faust, went and sold his soul to some locked away blasphemous demiurge for enough juice to go and fucking assassinate Doctor Fate. Fate, the superhero of all magic users, is dead, no longer acting as a lightning rod to the forces of Order and Chaos in the Multiverse. So, if you don't mind, please stand back and stop bothering me before a young boy unwittingly becomes the new scapegoat for the sins trespassed by all us balmy enough to tread into arcane realities."

"No," Dorothy found herself saying, her fists clenching. "You're not leaving without me. Why did you bother coming to me for help just to now ditch me?"

"I didn't come here for your help," Kipling gesticulated wildly while flinging aside the inert sparkler. "I came to gather the Doom Patrol, employ them to do the one thing they sometimes are good for; walking face first into the weird and unexplainable until the whole situation grows so nonsensical it all breaks and everything works out somehow. I certainly didn't come here expecting to find the team had downsized to only its most worthless member."

A swirling mass of darkness filled with chattering teeth sublimated above Dorothy's head, the veins in her face and neck bulging from her exertion.

Kipling gasped, stepped backward without looking, causing him to trip off the curb and fall into the street. He threw his hands in front of his face as if to ward off the dark figment. "Please! Don't hurt me. Put that thing away. Put it away!"

Dorothy took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She risked a peek at the aberration she'd summoned while metering out a steady exhale. Thankfully, the thing of Darkness and champing mouths listened to her wishes and disappeared with a noiseless pop like a soap bubble. "I'm coming with you."

Kipling panted heavily on the ground. He put his right hand to his heart to feel his pulse before standing back up to straighten his jacket. Again he took a strong whiff of Sharpie pen. "No, you're not, and that's that. Bloody Christ…" He lit a new sparkler and began tracing new a door into the air. "I thought I was done for there. Could feel my heart about to stop from shock…"

"But, I can help you if there's any danger where you're going. It could be nice having me around, watching your back, ready to use my power when you're in a pickle."

"Out of the question," Kipling said with divided attention.

"Take me with you, or I'll, um, charge you for lunch and demand you give back my Sharpie and rubbing alcohol right now," Dorothy folded her arms across her chest.

An ephemeral portal flickered into being as Kipling's spell activated. The magician took a step inside, his foot teleporting someplace outside of Ohio.

"Well?" He peered back at Dorothy. "Let's get the bleeding fuck on with it then."

Dorothy's smile spread across her large teeth, the girl forgetting to hide her mouth as she had trained herself to when the expression came upon her.

As she followed Kipling into the portal, she glanced at the diner and noticed several cracks spiderwebbing there way across the large center window where the swirling darkness from her imagination had lashed out while existing. Apparently, her figments still weren't reliable enough to follow her every wish even this once.