Dream and Death had a good relationship. He often took away souls he had taken a liking to and placed them in his Dreaming, while the gothic young lady turned a blind eye.
After all, Dream never said he would resurrect them, or keep them from entering the cycle of reincarnation. He was merely borrowing them to work in the Dream Dimension. After a few tens of thousands of years, perhaps one day he would return those souls to Death.
Besides a great many fictional characters from books, the Dreaming also contained numerous deceased writers and celebrities, all fished out of Death's black-and-white world.
Their journey through reincarnation had been put on pause, and they lived on in the Dreaming's stories in the special form of fictional bodies.
The previous Dream had been fairly restrained. He had only invited famous writers such as Shakespeare, Conan Doyle, and Edgar Allan Poe over to create stories.
But after Daniel became Dream, his origins as an Earth human led him to start messing around. He introduced technological concepts into the Dreaming, brought in celebrities like Jobs, and began modernizing the place.
Still, the phone signal here was indeed quite good. Gabriel's half-dead air came through the receiver loud and clear.
"I'm Deathstroke. I want to discuss a deal with you." Su Ming held the phone as he looked at the rift in the sky, estimating the corresponding area in his mind.
A soft sound came from Gabriel's end, something that sounded like self-mockery and sobbing at once. He said, "Three rates: thirty, one hundred, two hundred. You called from Bobo's phone, so you must be his friend. If it's two people and an ape playing together, I'll only charge three hundred."
???
Standing very close to Deathstroke and tilting her head to listen