2357/The Shadow Visitor

The Shadow Visitor
Date of Scene:	07 September 2017
Location:	Unknown
Synopsis:	A spooky intruder appears at the Titan's Tower, and none of the senior Titans are present. Stardust and The Urban Wolf investigate, and Stardust almost get trapped on the wrong side of a mysterious portal.
Cast of Characters:	Stardust, Amarok

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Stardust has posed:
The last of the day's sun creeps across the floor of the monitor room, and things are strangely quiet. There are no arguments, no mysterious explosions, nobody even playing video games on the giant screen. All is peaceful, nothing moves... but for a shadow, indistinct in shape, flittering across the room.

The shadow crosses the floor, passing over the large sofa in front of the big screen as if it wasn't there. It stops at the main monitor, as if someone was standing close to it. There it stays for a few moments before drifting along the walls, first one way, then the other, finally losing itself in the shade of the setting sun.

  About a minute after the shadow's arrival, another figure appears, flying up through the elevator side-shaft. She lands on the ground and drops immediately into a crouch, peering around in search of something. This figure is more substantial human. Female. Blonde. Not Cassie though, this is a newbie to the Tower, someone unfamiliar still to some of the Titans, unless they've been reading their reports. Colette, also known as Stardust. From how she's dressed, it would appear she's flown up from the gym two floors below.

Colette stalks into the room, moving cautiously and darting from cover to cover as she comes in. She stops crouched low behind the sofa, slowly raising her head over the top to look around. After a few moments, she stands slowly, and walks to a panel on the wall, head turning from side to side. Still keeping her eyes peeled, she presses a button and talks into the wall communicator. "Uh. Is anyone in the tower right now? There's... I saw... there... I mean... there may be an intruder."

Amarok has posed:
There's a moment of silence following Colette's hesitant alert, and then the crackling of life through the speaker as an electronically distorted gravel calls through with, "Engage covert lockdown, I'm on my way up." This is confirmed by the sound of the elevator departing from the floor, heading down towards ground level.

Stardust has posed:
Colette stares at the panel for a few moments. "Engage covert lockdown?" she repeats. Her eyes flicker across the various buttons, screens and controls dotted about the room. "Is there a button for that? Uh. I'm new. " She sighs a little, stepping back, and looking around the room again as she waits.

The silence in the room is broken only by the faint rumbling of the elevator. Colette pads softly and slowly away from the wall, searching out... whatever it might be, listening hard as well as looking in every corner. There's a faint swishing sound, and her head turns suddenly to the noise. She dashes forwards, but when she arrives there's nothing there but a piece of paper, falling slowly to the floor. Standing very still, she turns her head this way and that, trying to see what might have disturbed it.

Amarok has posed:
As Colette seeks out the potential intruder, the elevator dings, alerting the room to a new arrival. As it opens, the first thing to pop through the door....is a large handgun, sweeping about the room in a paranoid scan before coming to rest on Colette. The one holding it is a humanoid dressed like if Batman just finished a tour of duty in the marine corp, save that his mask is full faced, with glowing blue LED lights for eyes, and a smeared handprint of half dried blood on the front of his visor. If Colette has done her homework, she'll recognize him....probably, as The Urban Wolf, though little other information beyond the alias is available. He stares at her for a moment in silence and then lowers the gun, "It's under the desk, left hand side. Not as secure as full lockdown, but it'll engage the main locks for every exit without making it obvious at a glance." He steps in, checking his corners, "You're the new kid, right? Sorry for the rude introduction, cant be to careful. Now, report."

Stardust has posed:
Colette watches the elevator's arrival, alerted by the ping. She watches the gun appear muzzle-first, and watches the figure following it out of the elevator. Concluding it isn't the ...whatever it is... she has been following, she looks a little closer. "Uh. Wolf, right?" She says. "I like the...." she waves her hands around over her face. "You know. Lights. Looks cool. You look like Deadpool at an EDM rave. What's under the desk?" Even as she's asking, she moves to the desk and fumbles around underneath. "Oh, the lockdown thing, right. Found i... ew. Found someone's gum. Really? Ah..."

Locks click into place, and a red light starts blinking on a panel in one corner. "That's it?" she asks. "Uh. Okay. So there's someone... or something. I think. I was in the gym, trying some stuff out there, when..." she turns suddenly, catching sight of something out of the corner of her eye, and holds up a hand for silence. Nothing moves, and after a few quiet moments, she resumes. "Anyway I think it might be kind of invisible or something. But you can see it sometimes, out of the corner of your eye. Do you have infra-red or something? And yeah. New. Col... Stardust. Colette. And please don't call me 'kid', I get enough of that from... uh... someone else."

Amarok has posed:
The Wolf shrugs a bit as his identity is confirmed, even as he scours the room, "So I'm told...." At the suggestion of using infrared, The Wolf's free hand shoots up to the side of his visor and presses a small crease a few times, a barely audible click signalling an effect, "Infrared on." He looks around a bit more and then looks to Colette again, one hand coming up and seeming, to those not versed in sign language, to be spasming out. If Colette does understand sign language, she'll be able to read it as asking if she understands it.

Stardust has posed:
"Is there something wrong with your hand?" It may not be the answer Dan was looking for, but it answers his question just the same: Colette does not understand sign language.

With infra-red mode switched on, Dan's goggles show the obvious heat sources. Primarily Colette, some heat from the equipment around the room, and a burning glare coming through the window. A look at the floor is a little more revealing. The faint outline of recent footprints can be made out, entering the room and moving in an odd pattern before ending up at Colette. However there is another much fainter set of prints. The pattern is broken and hard to make out, but someone else seems to have been moving around here very recently.

"I wondered if it might be a prank," Colette says. "You know, one of the magic using types playing games maybe? But I thought... safety first, right?" It could be nothing, but through infra-red vision, it does look kind of like there might be a patch of air just next to Colette that's slightly warmer than it should be.

Amarok has posed:
The Wolf follows the trail, his honed eyes easily following the slight discrepancy till they fall upon Colette and her apparent shadow, "....Maybe..." He says, seemingly in response to her statement. And then in a flash his arm is back up and a bullet, the rubber of a riot suppressing weapon but nigh-impossible to tell as such as it's fired, flies from the gun with a thunderous pop, aimed for the center mass of Colette's second shadow.

Stardust has posed:
"Maybe it's a pr..." the end of Colette's word is cut off by the report from the gun. The rubber round smacks noisily off something invisible, which instantly starts moving. In motion, the shape becomes almost visible even in normal lighting, a patch of /something/ that distorts the air around it. It rushes past Colette, bumping into her and making her stagger slightly as it passes. As it crosses the patch of sunlight on the floor, a shadow can be seen showing its passing, and the shadow reveals a bipedal but probably not human form. It moves clumsily, knocking over small items in its wake, but as soon as it is out of the sunlight, the movement stops and it vanishes again.

"See!" Colette points after it, feeling vindicated and smiling. "A thing! What do you think it is?" She walks in the direction it moved, turning her head from side to side almost like a bird, trying to catch some glimpse of it out of the corner of her eyes. "What do you think it is?" she asks.

Amarok has posed:
The Wolf's head cants about as the shadow vanishes, much like the animal who's visage he's subsumed, slowly calming to a slightly less hostile stance as he searches, "...Something to do with Raven maybe? She did mention...Lockdown." He turns and stalks to the terminal, pressing the big red button and initiating full tower lockdown, shutting down the elevators, dropping large steel curtains across all the doors and windows, and generally making both entry and exit of the tower nigh-impossible without either ripping a hole in the side, or teleporting. He turns his head to Colette, "Stay here, keep an eye on the monitors, and see if you can raise anyone else on comms. I'm going hunting..." He says almost predatorially as he moves towards the stairwell.

Stardust has posed:
"Could be Raven, but more likely Vorpal." Colette considers the options. "Or maybe it's a Predator, like out of the movie. " She holds out her arms and calls out "Hey! Predator dude! Come at me, I'm right here!" but there's no response.

Colette doesn't seem inclined to follow Dan's instructions, following the man towards the stairwell instead. "You think it got out?" she asks. "If it's escaped, it'll probably be heading back down towards the gym. That's where the hole is. I did mention the hole, right? Oh come to think of it, I don't think I did. A hole appeared in the wall of the gym. That's why I thought it might be Vorpal. " For someone who's supposedly stalking a mysterious invisible intruder, she's remarkably relaxed about the whole thing, chattering away quite happily. "Kind of a round, swirly hole thing. I was just walking over to it when I saw that... shape. Shadow. Thing, whatever it is, come out. Followed it down here. I think it's looking for something. We should go and check the gym." She halts, looks back over her shoulder. "Actually, is there a way we can do that from here? Like with all the monitoring stuff?"

Amarok has posed:
The Wolf stops and points at the moniters, "You monitor, the clearly labeled switches control what cameras are shown on the main view screen. Keep me appraised, so I dont walk into shadow sword to the throat." It would seem the military issued wolf man isn't feeling chatty, preferring to deal with shadow creature before it turns the world into Doom 3. Truely a fate worse than death.

Stardust has posed:
"So what, we're gonna split up, like in horror movies?" Colette asks. "That's never a good plan. You have seen movies, right?" Though she doesn't stop chatting, she does move towards the monitor and start trying to find the right controls. "So the question is, is the the plucky guy who goes off on his own who gets it, or the girl who stays behind in the place they thought it was safe? Hmm." She turns to look over her shoulder at him. "Put like that, I'm not sure you should go off on your..."

ZWORP!

"...own. Look out!" Colette points to the wall by Dan, where the source of the zworp noise is apparent: a dark hole has opened up in the wall behind him, edges crackling with a faint electric discharge and a smell of ozone filling the air. Through the hole the faint traces of a large room beyond can be made out, but darkened and distorted.

Amarok has posed:
The Wolf does a dodge roll away and takes cover behind a couch, his already proven impotent gun preceeding his head as he peeks out from around his cover, suspiciously eyeing duh blag 'ole through the infrared spectrum. A moment later, he barks back over to Colette, "Get on the comms! We're gonna need an occultist for this, which it should be clear I'm not." Judging from his tone, he may also have just answered Colette's question about watching movies.

Stardust has posed:
Colette leans over and flicks the wall comm's switch again, and speaks into it. "Hey there friends! We have some weird stuff going on in the monitor room, and it's got nothing to do with Starfire's taste in pizzas. Is there an occultist in the building?" Message sent, Colette dives for cover too, joining the Wolf behind his couch. She raises her head above the back of the couch, peering with curiosity at the hole.

Through his infra-red goggles, Dan can make out very little of the space beyond the hole. It's a room, quite spacious, similar in size to the monitor room. There appear to be traces of heat on the far wall, but there's nothing visibly moving within.

"Think there's more of them coming?" Colette asks, grinning slightly. She seems more excited than anything else by the whole experience, acting almost as if she /does/ think it's a movie. It's not hard to imagine her with popcorn. "Or maybe that's its escape route. Maybe we should block the way or something, rather than hiding behind here? We don't want it to get away without like questioning it or something, right?"

Amarok has posed:
The Wolf growls slightly, once more imitating his apparent animal of choice....or it may be an error with his visor, who can say? "I wouldn't doubt more coming. But if it's escaping, I say we let it. At least until someone qualified is around. I'm rather doubting we can subdue, considering my bullet bounced off with no apparent effect. I suggest we wait, and see if anything happens, or until backup arrives."

Stardust has posed:
Colette nods her head slowly in agreement. "I guess that makes sense," she concedes. "We don't really know what we're dealing with." She falls silent, watching alertly, her eyes mostly on the portal, but roaming around the room from time to time.

"Though," she adds eventually, "your bullet did hit something. So it's at least physical. Maybe if see it again, we should just jump it and pin it down? We should question it. "

Silence reigns. There's no sign of movement. Colette seems to be getting impatient, drumming her fingers along the back of the couch as she waits. "Where's everyone else?" she wonders aloud. "Some kind of magicky-super-sense thing could be useful about now." She shifts her weight from one side to the other.

For a while longer, nothing happens. Colette starts to speak again. "Do you think it already snuck through and escaped?" she asks. "I mean you'd expect the hole thing to vanish i..." she's interrupted by a whirl of movement, as the distortion reappears, coming out from the left and moving rapidly towards the hole. "There it is!" Colette yells out, vaulting over the couch and running towards the hole, trying to head the shape off.

Amarok has posed:
Throughout the waiting game, The Wolf remains completely silent, even as Colette muses and ponders, his gaze fixed on the portal and it's general surroundings. As the shadow creature appears to reveal itself and Colette charges it, The Wolf remains slips along the side of the couches moving up at a low angle and letting Colette take point as he stayes back and observes the reaction from a good vantage to leap in if and when appropriate.

Stardust has posed:
The shadow-thing has timed its run well. Though Colette and Dan close in on it, it beats them both to the hole, and heads straight through. Colette makes a grab for the area of distortion at the last moment, but her arms grab air. She stumbles slightly, her feet skidding as she attempts to regain balance, and her hands fly out to the walls to stop herself. She misses the wall, her hands flail at the edges of the hole, and she stumbles through.

From his side of the portal, Dan sees Colette almost but not quite vanish. The solid shape of her infra-red signature is no longer clear, but he can make out her form, faintly, in the gloom beyond the hole. She seems to stumble, then get stand up again, and turn back towards the hole. Very faintly, a sound can be heard coming back through... her voice, saying something? But it's barely a whisper and can't be made out.

Amarok has posed:
As Colette disappears through the portal, that shall henceforth be known as "The Goa'uld's Butthole(tm)" The Wolf rises up and rushes to the portal, not hesitating in reaching out to try and jerk Colette back through regardless of the risk involved.

Stardust has posed:
The sensation along Dan's arm as he reaches in through the hole is peculiar. The moment he touches it, there's a flash of extreme cold, but that seems to quickly fade to a tingling over the surface of his skin, like hundreds of tiny electric shocks. Then there is the familiar feel of human skin as he grabs her arm and pulls. Her arms moves with his pull for a moment, then stops still as she pulls back. She seems to be rather strong.

Again the sound of a faint whisper comes through the portal, and the infra-red signature shows some movement of her other hand, perhaps gesturing. Is she pointing? Or making a 'get back' motion? Or beckoning him through? It's all too vague and shadowy to be clear.

  As he tugs at the Colette-shape through the portal, Dan notices more movement in the room beyond. Another heat shape detaches itself from the faint patterns on the fall wall, and starts moving through the foggy space, towards the portal. It's soon followed by a second blurry shape, and the pair close in...

Amarok has posed:
As The Wolf meets resistance, his tug becomes more insistent, clearly not willing to take no for an answer. If the feeling of the portal bothers him, or if he can even feel it through the full body suit, he certainly doesn't show it, apparently entirely focused on dragging Colette back across the veil.

Stardust has posed:
The movement of Colette's other arm gets more frantic, and the muffled whispering of her voice intensifies. Colette however is not moving. Her own hand comes down on Dan's wrist, holding it firmly. Behind her, the two figures get closer. They don't appear to be rushing, but every step brings them closer to the portal, and to the pair of them. Colette does not appear to have noticed them...

When the two approaching figures are no more than a few feet away, the blurry shapes shift... arms reaching out? It's hard to be sure through the murky portal, but surely that's it. A warm blur extends forwards, reaching out behind Colette, reaching towards her shoulder...

Suddenly the resistance to Dan's tugging vanishes, and Colette steps forwards and through the portal. The whispering of her voice snaps instantly into audibility, mid sentence. "... me? What are you doing? We should..."

ZWANG!

  Almost the moment Colette returns, the portal snaps shut again. Colette spins, staring at the wall, then reaches her hand out and raps the hard surface where the hole had been. "It's gone," she comments unnecessarily, before turning back to Dan. "Well, that was weird. We should have tracked it down and grabbed it."

Amarok has posed:
As Colette comes back through the portal, The Wolf staggers back slightly to help her decelerate, "...Back from the field, full report. What happened over there?" Despite the pure freakitude, The Wolf seems, at least from his tone of voice, to be completely unfazed, either used to this sort of weird, or simply so pragmatic that taking things in stride is not a learned behavior, but a natural reflex.

Stardust has posed:
Colette appears equally unfazed. There may be a lack of perspective on the whole situation. Someone more prone to being fazed could be useful at a time like this, but at least the Wolf's pragmatism voted against diving straight through. "Couldn't you hear me?" she asks. "If you'd come through, you could have seen for yourself. Nothing happened there. It was empty. It was..." she glance around. "This room. Only you weren't in it..." She turns back to the wall. "I mean it looked identical, anyway." She raps at the wall again, then shrugs her shoulders and heads to the couch, jumping into it. "Oh well. Weirdness happens. I guess we should write a report about it or something?"

Amarok has posed:
The Wolf growls a bit and clicks his visor a few times, before slightly shaking his head, clearly adjusting his eyes to normal visual function, "....No, I couldn't. It was like you were talking through water, or mud, or something....And you weren't alone...." He turns and walks over to the moniter station, pressing the button to unlock the tower and then hitting some keys on the keyboard, a form appearing on the monitor, "Here, fill this out. I've gotta go finish my own work....And wash off all the blood. Sorry about the smell by the way." He heads for the elevator, stopping to look at Colette as he hits the button and the doors start closing, "Welcome to the Titans....kid." The mask blocks any show of expression, but it's obvious he's smirking so hard his face could tear off to one side with the slightest bit more pressure.