RP Black Opal

[Alice Shaw]

Witch watched as Wildcat went down, her head hitting the ground hard. She could see that her best friend still had some life in her from the way her head moved as the man made of shadows stepped over her. Witch’s hands quivered as she tried to draw on the energy of the world around her to freeze the man in front of her. But her hands were shaking too much, and Wildcat was reaching for her, a hand weakly outstretched, and Wildcat needed her, she needed her, and–

An ice-cold hand wrapped around her throat and lifted her off her feet. She grabbed it to keep herself from hanging uncomfortably from his grip, once again trying to channel her magic. But nothing happened, and an unsettling cold started to set into her bones. She shook as she tried to draw the sigils on his arms. Her eyelids grew heavy. She slammed one of her hands into his arm and weakly dispelled magic into him, but it did nothing. She had to channel something bigger. She had to channel something bigger.

She breathed in deeply as the cold started to drown her out, and she summoned everything she had to do one explosive channel. One last push. She grit her teeth and slammed her hand down on the man’s arm–

And when she opened her eyes again, it was daylight.

Alice looked around the street, blinking against the bright light. She pushed up off the ground, looking at the buildings. Everything was slightly off. Places looked dirtier, there were buildings she could have sworn were other businesses labeled as new storefronts. Maybe the area had just changed in the last week or so. It had been a while since she and Sam had come to downtown Columbus, after all. Things changed faster in the city than they did in little Lockbourne.

It was colder than it should have been for early fall. It should have still been warm enough that she didn’t need her thermals on under her armored dress and leggings. And yet, Alice was finding herself almost frozen to the bone. She pulled her phone out as she stepped off the main road and into an alley. She caught a few eyes looking her way, but none of the enthusiastic clapping she was used to following them.

She went to dial Sam’s number out of habit, only to find her phone was disconnected. That was strange. Stranger than even the sense of displacement she’d been feeling. Something was going on. Something bad.

Well if she couldn’t call Sam, she was going to have to find the car.

Half an hour later revealed the bug was gone. There was no sign of the little green vehicle. She had wandered around downtown for the entire time, garnering looks and stares wherever she went. You’d think the people of the city would be used to seeing herself and Wildcat around, but they were looking at her with some weird kind of pity. What had happened?

After a few more blocks, Alice nearly collapsed against a wall. Whatever was happening, she needed help and she needed it fast. This would work best if she could get in touch with her mother or the Walshes. But for that, she was going to need to find a phone. The nearest open business was a garage right across the street. She hurried across the street, tugging her mask in place as she got closer. She was dressed in costume, which meant she couldn’t take off her mask. Maybe someone inside would still help her, or at least explain why downtown seemed so abandoned on a Friday in August.

She pushed open the door and heard the bell ring over her head. “Hello? Is anyone here? I need to use your phone, if possible.”​

 

[Wendigo]

Mondays were slow at Good Carma. Most of the garages Todd had worked at over the years actually closed Mondays for catch-up work, which was why he usually wanted the shift. The less he had to deal with the public, the better. It wasn’t so much that he was afraid of being recognized; he had plenty of borrowed faces if that ever became a concern. But the sharp blue eyes that glanced up from the inventory paperwork on the desk as the bell shattered the silence weren’t quite right for his alter ego.

He planned to keep it that way, even when the disoriented young vigilante stumbled in.

That wasn’t a huge surprise, of course. He’d given all the kids he’d encountered his phone number and local place of work – his employers at those places of work would get in touch with him, if they could. Usually they were good people.

The problem was, he didn’t recognize the girl in green and black, with her butterfly mask and dark hair. The icy eyes skimmed her, checked for injuries with practiced precision while the rest of his face stayed calm. Her scent reached him with the breeze from the door – baked goods and sweet grass and coffee, like a tea shop, with an undertone of the makeup she had to be using underneath that mask.

Something else in her scent gave him pause, however. A soft burn, a light scent of pepper – and a much, much heavier scent of cinnamon and apples. That familiar smell put his hair on end and set every sense to alert, tightened his jaw just a smidge. Not enough, however, to dampen the cheerfulness in his voice as he set the clipboard aside.

“You look like you need more than a phone, kid,” he said. He reached into the nearest drawer for a key, and stepped out from behind the desk. “Sit down for a sec, catch your breath. If it helps, you’re safe here.”

As long as you’re not here for the reasons I suspect, he didn’t add, as he started toward the door to lock up.

 

[Alice Shaw]

Witch looked up at the man standing behind the desk and watched him as he came out from behind the desk. He was tall, taller than she was, and built like her. Willowy and long limbed, and just like her, he had sharp cheekbones and black hair. She could tell by his facial features and his skin tone that he was also native, though not as purely as she was. He was maybe a quarter, half at best.

His long curls and his curly beard were the same pitch black-brown as hers, though his eyes were bright blue. A fair brighter and paler blue than any she had seen before. She nodded her head and carefully moved through the store front. As she got closer to the second stool behind the desk, she got shakier. She almost collapsed on the seat.

Something was very wrong with her. What had that man done to her? Why was she so weak and dizzy? She could feel some kind of pressure behind her eyes, pressure that was blinding her. She moved her hands up to her eyes and sucked in a deep breath. Then she looked back up at the man who she immediately identified as kin.

“You’re right, I’m not okay. I don’t exactly know what happened over the last twelve hours. My partner wouldn’t normally have left me, so I’m really worried about her.” She whispered the words as she watched him lock the door. “And everyone has been looking at me weirdly since I woke up. Everything feels wrong, or off. I don’t know what to do.”​

 

[Wendigo]

It wasn’t hard to feel the weakness on the girl. Her words would’ve been quiet and harsh to anyone else, but his ears picked them up just fine. He was made for that, for listening, for feeling the weakness. Seeing it in her body language. He wanted to fully believe her – he wanted to think Opal would never send him a half-dead teenager with a confused look in her eyes as an attempt to bring him out, lure him in.

But these days, there was no knowing what Opal would do to bring him in. He couldn’t be too careful.

His shoulders relaxed once the door was shut, and he grabbed one of the lobby chairs as he passed. He turned it toward her as he came around the desk, and took a seat, lower down. It’d make him seem less threatening, although she didn’t seem threatened by him in the first place.

He knew why. Looking at her, her build, her black eyes and dark braid, he could tell she was Native. Only part of him belonged to the Ojibwe in Minnesota, but that part had become a significant weight in his life over the last decade. It took everything not to rub the antler stubs under the long hair he let fall over his forehead. Instead, he folded his arms, and sat back with a sigh.

“Well, people are probably looking weird because most supers don’t patrol in broad daylight.” His eyes fell across her costume again – something about it was familiar, but his nose told him he’d never met her, even if he’d met someone so close to her. He exhaled a little sigh. “But let’s go back. Just breathe for a second, and then why don’t we start at the beginning? That’s probably the best way to find out where your partner went. What happened?”

 

[Alice Shaw]

Alice tried to take in a deep breath. It hitched in her throat as the memory of the night before hit her square in the chest again. What if she was dead? What if Sam was dead and Alice was all alone now? What could she do? What would she do without her Wildcat? Her best friend, her sunlight, her summer breeze? Sam had been the light of her life for the last few years, had been her stone and her sword and her shield.

Could she even fight without her?

“Right. Okay. Every single night we go on patrol, and we did last night. We were fighting a man made of shadows. When he touched my partner, she went down. I think she hit her head hard, but she– she didn’t look dead. I don’t think she’s dead. I think I would know if she were. The man, he reached for me, and I couldn’t stop him in time. I couldn’t get any of my power to work, I think because I was scared. I’ve never seen someone take Wildcat out before, so it was a little unnerving.”

She pushed the loose strands of her hair back from her face, letting them fall back along her long braid. She managed to get all the words out despite the constant knot in her throat. Her head was spinning, and everything felt like it was swimming around her. Maybe she needed to lie down. Or water. Or maybe both. She felt so terrible. Like the time she had managed to teleport across town, and overexerted herself getting back. It felt like that.

She didn’t know what that meant. Maybe she had done something last night that overexerted her powers. But what could she have done? She knew she was in Columbus still. All of the landmarks were the same, so she wasn’t in a different city. Had she made the shadow man disappear? Had she killed him? That wasn’t what she wanted, and it didn’t explain where Sam had gone.

She looked back down at her lap for a moment before looking back up at the mixed Native man, her eyes searching his, deep green staring deep into blue. He was from Columbus, so he should know who Wildcat was, and from that extrapolate that she was Witch. Hopefully.​

 

[Wendigo]

“Wildcat?”

Todd’s whole body tightened. The cold blue eyes cut straight into her, a little too sharp for a moment. A little too much, subtly. He glanced over the mask again. The coarse black hair and dark eyes. The costume design, the black and the green. The obvious Native features. And the nagging suspicion he’d had earlier, the odd familiarity, was becoming clear.

But there was no way. No way. The girl was way too young. Seventeen, or something. He could tell even through the mask, just by her attitude and her posture and the clarity in her eyes despite the confusion she had to be feeling. She had to be lying.

Except she wasn’t.

His nose would tell him, if she was lying. Even if she smelled like her, everything she’d said was either true, or something she really, truly, and sincerely had been convinced was true. His nose was never wrong.

After a few seconds, his strange intensity would fade away, and he leaned forward on the desk.

“Miss, this is going to be a strange question. But what’s today’s date?”

 

[Alice Shaw]

Alice quirked an eyebrow up. Her shaking was starting to subside, replaced instead by weakness. It coursed through her body, filling every muscle with an oozing slowness. For a moment, the man– whose name tag said “Todd”– stared at her with a weird intensity as he said her partner’s name. She met his eyes with a quizzical look. He clearly knew who she was, but he seemed… upset by it.

“Yeah, that is a weird question. It’s September the twentieth.” She chuckled a bit as she answered Todd’s question, a shiver rippling through her. It felt like she had rapidly come down with a fever, judging by the cold sweat that broke out across her body. She rubbed her arms with her gloved hands, despite the warmer air in the shop.

“What year?” She paused and looked at him. There was an intensity to the words that made her a bit uncomfortable. She didn’t like the feeling this left in her chest. Like she was doomed, like something dreadful had happened. She looked him right in the eyes and tried to decipher the look on his face. But it was guarded, and she couldn’t make it out.

That made her even more nervous. She didn’t like this. She wanted to go home and find Sam and make sure her soulfriend was safe.

With a small, nervous smile, she said, “Twenty-ten. It’s twenty-ten.”​