Visiting Shadows | Rena

[Athena 'Shift' Logan]

Being back in nature made the lingering tension Shift had been carrying for most of the last day and a half leak out of her; the set of her shoulders lessened, the lean of her body relaxed, the motions smoother and lighter. The dark greens and browns, and the occasional splash of color from flowers or plants, or an over-eager spat of leaves turning colors too early, covered the sky and the floor where the Titan was. Shift had wandered deep into the Jump City forests; on the outskirts of the city it was barely a sliver of green on the horizon from the Titans' Tower, but Athena had found she missed green. (The superhero leader wouldn't have admitted as much to her team; she found it embarrassing to miss something that normally she only complained about.) So there she was, the trees so old around her as to covered up the blue, cloudy sky above - only muted daylight filtered through the leaftop canopy. Shift breathed in deeply, letting out her breath with satisfaction.

She appreciated her team - and the other heroes teams in the city - worrying about her. Very few heroes or villains lost their powers; usually they came back quickly enough, sometimes even stronger than they had before, but there were horror stories in the super-powered community about powers just up and vanishing. Sometimes it was the holder becoming unworthy; others, they burnt out and overworked themselves and never found that strength again. Athena wasn't worried; eventually, they would track down the laser-toting tech-head villain that had shot her with the power-zapping laser and get them to fix it...somehow. At that moment, Athena was just happy to get away from her worried friends for a while; she had her communicator clipped to her belt loop, but it was mostly for show - what good could she do, like she was? She wouldn't be able to get anywhere in time to help during a fight; all she could offer was moral support. Thankfully, her team was usually able to handle itself - and if it wasn't, well, maybe it was her imagination, but Irazehl had seemed eager when she'd given him command of the Titans while she was depowered. (She just hoped the Tower would be in one piece when she got back.)

Pausing in her walk to see where she was - it had been longer than she liked since she'd gotten to spend any amount of time in the forest, on its' floor, and it looked a lot smaller from the air - Shift noticed a brown rock wall looming through a rare break in the trees. Curious, she moved forward and stepped into the clearing, realizing as she did so that that cliff, particularly, was familiar. Athena sucked in a breath, surprised at the strange coincidence - remembering a bottle of wine and an old frenemy, and another communicator that she'd left behind. Squinting at the rock face and determining that without being able to shift into a goat she wasn't going to get up it, the heroine bent down to scoop up some rocks. Hefting one in her left hand, she threw it in a wobbly arc toward the sometimes-occupied cave. When there was no immediate answer, Athena continued throwing the other rocks she had, hoping that she had merely stumbled upon Rena's hideout and not an angry bears' home.

tag: Shei
words: 561
comment: yay, multiple-level thread title puns~

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"OI!"

Oi? oi... Oi! Oiiiii.

Not a word you would hear unironically within this section of the world. Most settled with a simple 'ow', or the confrontational 'Hey!'. The ruder sorts would align with 'Fuck you!'.

But no, Oi. A vaguely english, vaguely northern word, used rarely if ever. Still the point was clear, and a head peaked out over the edge of the cliff. Purple hair fell down, shadowing the features of the young girl, with a black eye mask on. Rubbing her head where a pebble.

"What was that for?" she asked, her voice oddly familiar but still a stranger's. She stared down at the leader on hiatus Athena, little recognition crossing her features for quite obvious reasons. After all, dark red fur wasn't sprouting from the woman's features at the moment, were they?

The familiarity, and strangenss of this purple haired,masked femme could be a bit perplexing at first. Not exactly because spandexed and masked teens were a rarity, but because Athena would be among the few in the city that could ID whom the girl was dressed up as. A long dead heroine, though black haired, that gave her life in the line of defense against evil. The beloved Tinker of the Teen Titans that had been part of the same team with Griffin, Erika, and Shift herself.

At least, that was the story given. Shift would know the truth that Tinker had not died upon that day, merely the idea of that heroine. Let the people of the city hold the mask up as a beacon of hope, that even these super powereds were willing to give their life in service of the common folk. It wasn't the oddest for a new person to take the mantle of a fallen Hero, so that must be it.

"Well? Just gonna gawk at me all day?" she asked looking down upon the normie that sat at the base of the incline. "or maybe you'll apologize?" she asked, laying on a thick amount of innocence. Of course, it'd take more than that to hurt her.

[Athena 'Shift' Logan]

'Oi' wasn't something that Shift heard a lot; almost never, in fact. Usually from tourists, angry at the rampaging superheroes attempting to save their lost butts from bad guys running amok. She squinted up as Tinker poked her head over the edge of the cliff; purple hair was about even on the weirdness scale, Shift figured, concerning the person she'd apparently hit with her rocks. Oops.
"Uuh, my bad." She called, wishing fiercely for her shifting powers. What she wouldn't give for the sharp clarity of an eagle's gaze, or a dog's sense of smell; that civilian - hero? loner? villain? - looked weirdly familiar. Maybe they had run into each other before, somewhere. The Titans did save a lot of people; that would explain why the purple-haired girl looked like someone Shift thought she should recognize. It didn't explain why the girl had a mask on; was she a super, or just dressed up for fun? And what was with the purple hair? She almost looked like...

"Why the hell are you dressed like Tinker?" Athena blurted. Rena might not take kindly to someone taking her old hero name - she'd given it up, though, however messy the fallout from that had been for both her and the Titans, and since nobody had picked it up yet, it was by all rights fair game. Something about it still sat wrong, though, she thought. Maybe it was finding the purple-haired girl in the forest, and not in the city where most supers liked to spend their free time. Was she homeless? Shift thrust the thought from her head; one problem at a time. "You should know the girl you took that title from has friends that might not appreciate Tinker being revived." There; she wasn't outright saying 'oh by the way, Tinker didn't die; we just never told anyone that Tinker and Blacklist are the same person, haha, funny world, huh?'. There also wasn't an obvious, clever way Athena could figured out how to add 'and you should know Blacklist might stab you because you're camped outside her house dressed in her old costume, just a heads' up'.

"I didn't mean to hit you with that rock, but you've got bigger problems if you think anyone in Jump City forgot that name." Shift added, dropping the excess rocks she'd been holding in her hand. Either Rena wasn't home, or she'd come out of that cave and whine at the two of them, possibly with some knife waving if she'd woken up on the wrong side of the bed. And maybe few people had forgotten the name of the Titan Tinker, but that costume was...Shift squinted against the angle and the shadows. She couldn't see all of it, but it looked close to perfect. Kind of creepily so; it was making the hairs on the back of her neck start to rise. Deja vu?, Athena wondered.

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She speaks as if she knew Tinker from before. Questions for later, really, the girl thought. What a strange girl, really. Even angry that she had apparently taken the name Tinker. The purple haired girl rubbed her head where a rock had bounce off of her, unfortunately helmetless, head. The eyes, as rather traditional of these types of masks, showed quite a range of emotion. Moreso than a black fabric with see-throughable white fabric over the eyes, should.

"Oh... Do... Do I have enemies?" she asked, almost looking dejected from the realm. Keeping her name, she had expected, that enemies might exist. Still... It didn't mean the girl had hoped she'd have something of a clean slate here.

It didn't matter how Athena answered that one, as the answer had already been gathered. Yes, enemies existed, yes her hopes had been dashed on that. And no, she certainly didn't have a clean slate, as, unknown to her, the super villain Blacklist that just about everyone knew by name, had been one in the same with the costume she wore now.

"I see... That's... disheartenin'" she answered after a few seconds.

"Didja need help?" she asked after another several seconds pause. Why else would someone come out here? She had chosen the spot specifically so it'd be hard to simply stumble across.

[Athena 'Shift' Logan]

Oh, no. Now she was concerned about whether she might have enemies. Athena winced. This was [so not the conversation she'd wanted to have today. So the power-nulled Titan shrugged her good shoulder and lifted one hand, in a 'what can you do?' motion. "Weeeell... Uh, you? Probably not. I mean, I dunno, do you tend to piss people off? But Tinker has - had - some, uh, interesting issues go down before she, y'know. Died." Shift explained. "So some of the Titans might not like you resurrecting her name...and costume." Athena squinted again; like before, it did very little to help her see Tinker better. "And...did you make that costume yourself? It's pretty good."

Oh, wait - now wasn't the time to be distracted, she was being asked something by the mysterious stranger. "Huh? Oh! No, I - I just walk out here sometimes. I thought a freind might be out here, actually..." Athena blushed; harder to notice on her dark skin than Tinkers' fair, but still there. "That's how I hit you with that rock; I thought she might be up there somewhere." It seemed both Blacklist and Tinker had had the same idea, as far as secluded places to rest; although Athena didn't know that the girl frowning worriedly into the distance was from another world much like hers, and wouldn't know for some time yet.

"You haven't seen anyone around here, have you? Short, long black hair, weird black eyes? Maybe wearing bandages?" Shift asked, returning a question with a question. Maybe Rena had spotted the interloper and split so she wouldn't have to deal with some naive copycat. That would be just like her., Athena thought, irked. Leave all the work to the rest of us!

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Tinker was about to say something else entirely, but stopped short, as she tried to wrap her head around exactly what the previously green girl implied. "you were looking for a friend.... and you threw rocks at them?"

It certainly was a confusing notion to the purplehaired girl. If she knew the story, the girl that took the name Tinker would have been surprised it wasn't a grenade thrown instead of a rock. Still, she touched where the rock hit her, feeling the sweatdrop on her cheek. Did she have a tendency to piss people off? Well, kind of, but the one's she angered she was quite okay with pissing them off. Tinker chose not to answer that. "Friend helped me make it." And by help, Tinker had watched tv on the couch while the good doctor had stitched the special materials together. "It's made out of high density polymerized titanium." She pulled at the fabric of her arm. A bit starch, and didn't stretch very well, but had enough give to move comfortably in.

"Weird black hair, and long black eyes?" Tinker apparently misheard, and looked as confused as someone had actually asked that. "Hold on." Tinker pushed herself to a sitting position, leaving Athena's sight for a moment. The depowered titan, would hear a low hum fill the air, before the girl calling herself Tinker would reappear, stepping over the ledge, and lowering down, without the help of any sort of grappling hook, or wings. When she touched down, it was gentle with a slight charge in the air, frizzy hair beware.

"I don't think your weird haired friend's been up there for awhile. It's kinda messy." she said.

A frown flecked at the corners of her mouth, and Tinker looked closely up at Athena's face. "You... seem familiar, what'd you say your name is?" she asked. It wasn't a dangerous tone the girl used, but... a wary one.

[Athena 'Shift' Logan]

"I wasn't - I mean - I wasn't trying to hit her with them!" Shift protested, putting her hands out, spreading them in the classic 'I'm totally innocent' hand gesture. "I just wanted to get her attention if she was up there." She eyed Tinker. "I didn't think anyone else was going to be up there." The Titan added, defensively. Athena let her hands drop to her sides as Tinker explained about her costume, and the help she'd had in making it; Shift just nodded as she explained - she wasn't very good with her hands, making things, so she just took Tinker's word for it when she made it sound easy.

"Uh, no, long black hai- alllright." Athena interrupted herself as Tinker disappeared for a moment. A deep hum filled the air, then Tinker was back, and - flying? No, floating was more accurate. She'd been around enough people capable of all kinds of flight to notice the difference; Tinker's little trick didn't seem to be an innate power, if that hum - and the sudden new frizziness in Shift's hair - was a good indication. The green-sapped Titan patted her hair with an air of helplessness as she watched Tinker land gently on the ground in front of her. Unable to smooth her hair into it's proper shape, she let it go, instead choosing to deal with the girl in front of her, and the news that had seemed obvious - Rena was nowhere to be found, at least not near the Caves.

"Messy? I wonder if she's okay..." Rena could certainly take care of herself, but there was always someone bigger and badder out there. Shift tilted her head up to study to the edge of the cliff she could see, as if that would give her some kind of clue she hadn't already garnered herself. Blacklist would turn up eventually, she told herself. She always did, more or less in one piece. Distracted from her worrying, Athena turned to Tinker and debated lying, but no fake name popped into her head; she didn't have a secret ID, or any false names; she was green, most of the time anyway, and that narrowed down the anonymity factor pretty sharply. "I'm Athena, Athena Logan. I'm not surprised you recognize me," Okay, maybe she was a little prideful, so what? "I'm usually alot greener, though. I'm Shift, the leader of the Titans." Her chest swelled a bit in pride as she talked about the Titans, missing entirely the strange look on Tinker's face as she was examined.

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"I'm sure they'll be fine." With a handwave, Tinker dismissed the idea of Athena's idea of worry over her friend. The girl seemed nice enough, and it's not like her friend could get in very much trouble. Too many comics, and nerdshirts up there for your typical troublemaker. Tinker, of course, ignoring, or in a bit of denial about the fact that she once had a lot of nerdshirts herself, before donning the domino mask that sat firmly over both eyes.

"I mean, not like there's a body up there. How freaky would that be?" Tinker looked back up, gesturing back towards the overhang. "Like, dried out, forgotten, and dead," Tinker drew a line across her own throat, sticking her tongue out in a hopefully comical sense. "then a good friend comes looking, then like, a super hero has to tell her their friend is dead. Then maybe bring you up to, like, ID the body and such. That'd be so weird, like golly, y'know?" It was such a snapto response of an odd little 'what-if' scenario. "Er, sorry," Tinker said, seeming to come to realization that her little story might have been a tad... Innapropriate considering the missing friend. She knew the feeling of... lost friends.

Tinker's reaction was slow. Her eyes were first to give reaction, beyond standing in a stupor for several seconds, processing the words that, Athena as she now knew, Athena Logan. Leader of the Titans. Her mouth agaped a little bit, trying to get her body to react. Normally it would be little effort to gather, but seeing Athena was a bit much to process right now. "What did you say...?" Tinker knew what she heard, and the joke was in terrible taste.

Tinker's playful smile had faded, delving from shock. And as her feature's hardened, it became apparent that the playful act was... an act. A crackling energy came just before the bright purple arc from her hands, as energy swirled around the two. The charges from Athena's own body, became a strong opposite of that on the wall. A sort of primal force, that would likely cause her to stick to the wall, in a not so nice journey. "You have until the count of three to explain. One." She began. The small playful floater, looked ready to kill.

[Athena 'Shift' Logan]

Tinker's casual dismissal of Rena being in trouble did set Athena's mind at ease...at least until the gesturing super heroine opened her mouth again and started detailing a creepy corpse. Her face scrunched in a mix of confused horror and disgust as Tinker pantomimed while she spoke, ending with the classic stuck out tongue. Both of her eyebrows rose at the purple haired teleporter wrapped up her little skit. "Golly...?" Shift repeated to herself, blinking a few times rapidly. Where did this new girl come from?
Athena might have guessed a sheltered upbringing somewhere to the North; she would never have guessed 'alternate opposite universe'.

"It's, uh...no problem." She waved aside Tinker's suddenly realized apology with her hand, a parallel from her earlier movements. "I've dealt with a pretty...bad amount of dead people, actually, now that I think about it..." Athena said, trailing off. She and the other Titans had even found Blacklist's body pinned to the Titans' Tower once; that was about as close to a dead body as any superhero ever wanted to get, but death was unavoidable in their line of work.

"Uh - oh, yeah, I know, hard to believe, right? But it's true - I just look a little different, without the fur..." Athena laughed, but it came out a little forced as halfway through the laugh she realized that Tinker wasn't thrilled, or even nervous. No, she looked mad, if Shift was reading the sudden shuttering of her face right. Did she not like the Titans? What was her issue? Athena stepped back once, then again - but her body stopped in mid-air, against her will, and the Titan felt herself being jerked hard in the other direction.

A small shriek ripped through the air as the usually green superheroine slammed into the wall - face first. Stars burst behind her eyes as Athena screwed her eyes up - the thick smell of blood filled her nose. Luckily - as lucky as someone whose been tossed around like a rag doll can get, at least - the same momentum that had rammed her against the wall made her body bounce away from it, turning herself around in a dizzy panic, before the same power slammed her against it, knocking her breath out of her again as her back hit the cliff face.

"Wh - what the hell is your problem!?" She gasped at Tinker, trying to ignore the blood dripping from the cuts and scrapes on her face as she struggled fruitlessly against the purple energy Tinker held so easily. Was her lip busted? It felt like it, she thought as she tried to think something, anything, concrete to latch on to through her body's panic. Her instinctive attempts to shift shape and get away from the wall and attack were equally fruitless; her powers still weren't working.

"I'm a Teen Titan, Shift, I've been the leader of the Titans since we reformed. What'd you have against us?" Shift snarled, glaring through the loose curls of hair that hung loose against her face.

words: 503 | tagged: Shei

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"Yer ma problem!" Tinker's tone was quite threatening, despite the near comical element of a northern accent slipping through. A lot of venom hissed out between her gritted teeth. One could easily tell, even through her domino mask, her eyes were held in an icy glare, and 'stepped up' into the air, to raise her own eye level above Athena's eye level, to effectively stare down at her. The crackling of energy illuminated them within the shade in its purple, flickering cast, two fingers drawn pointing the threatening electricity at Shift's forehead. Needless to say, the sudden hositlity was matched by her aura.

"I toljya never to show yer face t' me again!" The air grew dense, and the air crackled, as Tinker gathered the energy to smite down her mistaken foe, though well before the lightning would strike, the surge powered down. "Wait... Teen Titans? Like, not Teen Tyrants?" Tinker slowly lowered to the ground, the energy from her hands dispelling, taking a step back, looking Shift up and down in an obvious fashion. She didn't linger on the savory curves of the young adult, but she didn't skip over it either.

There was something certainly wrong here, aside from the rather sudden outburst, and anger over essentially nothing that should have caused it. "And ye said Shift..." Touching her chin, as Tinker thought things through, it seemed to dawn on her something was amiss. Or potentially something gone right. "ohh... oopsie."

A wave of her hand, and Athena was released, as Tinker halted her influence over the charges of the particles that linked the fearless leader, and the rock. Tinker was tapping her forehead, putting a few things. "So like... hero right?" As she began to regain her wits, a more neutral accent began to return, making her easier to understand, than the slurring, quickspoken lack of punctuation, northern accent. "Big oopsies, most definitely. Golly, I'm sorry." she said, apparently thinking it was a good enough apology.

"Why arentcha red? I thought you'd be red?" Tinker was a talkative one, a bit like her own alternate self, talking a lot, not often letting a complete thought go through another. It kept her in charge of a conversation, and let her reveal what she wanted to in tense situations, rather than be tricked into saying something by accident.