The Shadows (OPEN)

[cage]

"You're hungry, stupid." Leslie's thoughts told her. Her stomach rumbled sharply in agreement as the young girl glared down at the cracked pavement. The sun peeked into her alleyway home and lightly grazed at her skin. She was pale as a ghost but by some miracle, she never burned in the sun.

"You should probably get up and find something to eat, Leslie." her thoughts offered some friendly advice, but she was just so exhausted. She hadn't really slept or moved in quite a few hours. Leslie's eyes burned into the pipe on the ground a few feet away from her.

"I KNOW! OK? I KNOW! I'm starving." she told the pipe ecstatically which immediately took the energy right out of her. She felt a bit better today than she had last night. Leslie hated the dark, so the sun rising brought with it just a bit of hope for her. She hadn't had too bad of an episode with her secret in a quite a while so she hoped maybe she could feel safe to walk among the people on the streets again and beg for food. Licking her lips she stared at the opening of the alley and watched the people shuffle about on the sidewalks pointlessly. Sighing, she went back to her conversation with the pipe, staring at it sternly.

"You'll be alright, just get up and look for food, ok Leslie?" the pipe told her. She sighed again and hung her hands upside down on the ground at her sides, her neck craning back, her eyes watching the clouds float by.

"Eh don't bother." the unused dumpster near her told the pipe. "She's too stupid to realize the shadows are looking for her anyway."

"WHAT?!"Leslie snapped to attention and looked wildly around the alley. "I thought you said I was safe here!" She shot at the dumpster standing up on her weak knees that shook in protest. Leslie payed no mind of them as she was busy looking around desperately to make sure the shadows hadn't found her already.

"We didn't want to worry you." the pipe started quietly.

"Speak for yourself!" The dumpster rudely interjected. "You were safe here. I never said that would last forever." There was a long moment of silence as fear began to settle into the pit of Leslie's stomach, her heart pounding and her breath catching in her throat. "You should probably run." the dumpster finally advised. Her eyes wide, Leslie snapped to look at it.

"UP THERE, LESLIE! THE WINDOW!" The pipe spotted the shadow peeking at Leslie from the window of the very much abandoned building across from her. More shadows began to appear in the alley, their precence filled with laughter as Leslie shreiked, her back glued to the brick building behind her in terror. A few shuffling people stopped at the end of the alley to peer in curiously at where the scream had come from. "Run Leslie!" the pipe commanded.

Leslie's feet flew desperately for her as she barreled out of the alley away from the shadows that were closing in. She ran straight into an older gentleman and knocked him over on accident before she veered to the left and took off down the street. With a glance over her shoulder, she realized the shadows were hot in pursuit sailing right over the curious people who had stopped to watch this girl running in panic. Leslie spotted a police officer ahead and ran for him. He had to save her, didn't he?! The man had just turned around before she ran right into his arms as he had opened them in confusion to catch her. Her small hands gripped at his clothing as she wailed at him in tears. "The shadows! PLEASE! Help me!" she pleaded sinking down on to the ground at his legs, gripping them firmly and staring back at the approaching shadows. Other people were closing in as well, curious at the spectacle.

Leslie's eyes however were not on them, they scanned the shadows wildly. The confused policeman backed away from her slowly and left her sitting on the hot pavement in the middle of the street. As the shadows neared, as well as the people Leslie screamed at them. "Stay away from me! Leave me alone! I don't want to play!" In various directions around her, sparkles just danced up from the pavement and created large sharp shining sickles that branched toward the coming shadows and people. The sickles successfully destroyed a few of the shadows...and also successfully stabbed a few people straight through the legs. One large sickle narrowly missed a little boy and had it hit him, itt would have stabbed right into his side. People began screaming in panic and the police officer with wide eyes pulled out his gun and aimed it straight at Leslie. The sickles in the street shattered and disappeared immediately as she noticed this. Her mouth fell open in fear.

"No please! Help me!" she screamed. For the third time in her life, Leslie's guardian came to save her. The sparkles appeared again and formed a large sillhouete behind her that vaguely looked like a bird spreading its wings out. The feathered tips of the wings shimmered down cascading over Leslie, forming a shining cage over her frail body. The young girl shrank into her guardian's embrace and peered out all of the people shaking, her lower lip quivering. The shadows had stopped their pursuit for now.

[EMMA THE ROO]

Luke strolled along the sidewalk, casually tossing an apple in his right hand, the hemp bag containing the remaining dozen swinging in his left hand. His rewards for a not so hard day’s work. After joining the Titans almost 8 months ago now, Luke had found he didn’t have the time nor patience to continue to work for his local bar. He’d quit so he could have more time available for being a hero and all that jazz. His team were counting on him to be there to lead them when things hit the fans. He couldn’t exactly do that if he was busy moping up some drunk’s puke. So Lucas ‘retired’ from his life of mopping, instead taking on the guise of street performer.

Having powers that allow you to mimic sounds can be quite the perk. Most days you can find Luke standing on a street corner, his beanie at his feet, his lips recreating the wonders of the natural world. The young Titan does find he has to limit how far he goes in his performances. So far simple animal noises have been sufficient to keep a small wage coming in. If he were to go further and show off his talents for blowing stuff up the farm boy was certain he’d attract far too much attention from the very people he was fighting to dethrone. To become stuck between the desires of the Reavers and United was not a good place for a Titan whom was enemy of both.

It was with the small fortune he had collected this morning that Luke had been able to buy this sack of apples. Growing up as he had, the man had become used to the constant supply of fresh food his farm had supplied. But here in NYC fresh food is far less common. This sack of apples was going to be just the perk his stomach needed. City food was making it feel sad.

As Luke rounded the curb, taking a bite out of the red orb in his hand, savoring the crunch, he was distracted from his food by the cries of the crowd before him. Instantly in serious mode, Lucas strode his way towards the ruckus. The other bonus of having a job that had you constantly patrolling the streets, you generally happened to be around when situations got bad enough for the Titans to get involved.

Flipping his slightly too long fringe to the left and out of his eyes, Luke pushed his way through the crowd, his brow lowering as he saw what looked like wings stretching up above people’s heads. Wings were new.

Finally breaking through the fleshy barrier, the Titan looked around and was surprised by what he found. There was a little girl. And she had been eaten by a glass bird thing. Now this definitely was unusual, but on another note, why were there multiple people hopping around with injured legs? Why was the cop pointing a gun at the kid? Had she been the one to hurt all these people? She looked far to scared to have done something like that.

Luke couldn’t help it. She was just a little kid. And here was some cop waving a gun at her despite the fact she was obviously terrified. That just didn’t sit right with the man.

“Hey, what do you think you’re doing?” He called walking up to the cop, roughly shoving the gun down to point at the floor, before swinging the apple sack up to collide strongly with the ape’s chest.

“Here, use that half a brain cell that’s hiding in your head somewhere and hold my apples.”

Yeah that one was probably going to come back and bite him in the ass. Tact obviously wasn’t Luke’s strong point. Oh well, too late now. Time to deal with the more pressing issue of the soon to be digested girl.

Passing the bitten apple from his right to his left hand, Luke strode confidently up to the glass thing, kneeling down to crouch before the child.

“You ok in there love?” He asked simply. Sure the girl might have caused the injuries to the folk hobbling off down the street. Sure the cop might be lining his gun up with Luke’s back to get back at him for his insults. But that didn’t really matter. Here was a little girl, visibly terrified to the core, looking like she’d been living on the brink for far longer than anyone should, and she obviously needed help. Putting on his ‘man of the law’ hat would do good to this situation, what this kid needed was someone to not run screaming from her and her shiny bird. Luke could do that. He wasn’t one for screaming anyway.

[arie]

Sephara Kyle quietly closed the door to the apartment behind her, locking it before strolling down the hallway. It had been one of her mother’s good days but Sephara knew she didn’t have too many of those left. She sighed and reached behind her into her back pocket, pulling out cash. She knew there was a supermarket somewhere around here. Glancing around and squinting a bit from the sun, she remembered that the supermarket was two damn blocks away.

She walked quickly until the supermarket came into view and stopped, staring opened mouth. It wasn’t the crowd that had made the Titan stop instead it was the people hopping around, holding their legs and other various body parts. Raising an eyebrow, Sephara walked forward and began to push her way through the crowd. An elbow to the ribs and a kick to the shin later, she was standing in front of a cage which seemed to have a girl in it and Lucas was crouching in front of it.

“I swear I didn’t mean to” The little one seemed frightened.

Squatting down in front of the cage next to Lucas, she offered the girl-who was starting to remind her of Laura- a smile and shook her head.“No need to apologize, little one”she said.“You didn’t mean to… It was an accident, right?”

[cage]

Leslie was trapped inside the bird cage now, and she would remain there until calm. She was terrified which was the very reason the guardian had appeared to her and she shivered inside the shimmering glass sculpture, visable through the cicles that formed the feathers. People were getting closer and closer to inspect the cage, some seemed absolutely terrified of her right back.

"Now you've done it. They're gonna be just as mean as the shadows." her thoughts reminded her of the gun pointed toward her through the cage openings. Leslie looked through all of the bars, her lips quivering in a panic. "Shut up." she whimpered as she thumped down onto the pavement inside the cage and cradled herself. There was a lot of yelling, and talking and murmurs of fear echoing from the streets around the glass bird, and the sounds were a bit muffled for her.

“You ok in there love?”

A man had knelt down in front of the cage to peer in at her and she jumped pressing herself against the back of the cage. Her eyes fell to the apple for just a moment as her stomach twinged one more reminder to her. It took her a moment to decide whether or not this person was trying to help or not, but she fell forward onto her knees and crawled toward the front of the cage to peer out at the man. Her hands gripped the large glass feathers and her face lined up with his on the other side of the cage staring at him, her eyes wide her bottom lip quivering. She looked worn out and like the world hadn't bothered to show her an inch of compassion. A woman came to join him. Leslie shook her head and nodded in that order at her questions with a childish pouty look. Behind them the police officer was getting to his feet, and the gun was rising right along with him, pointed straight at this man, the first person to talk to her nicely since she had been thrown onto the streets.

As her eyes widened, the cage around her fell to a shimmering cloud of sparkles engulfing the two of them and then disappearing. "DON'T!" More sickles emerged from the ground in a shimmering dust and in a growing tidal wave, rolled over the police officer who barely emerged with several spots on his body pierced and bleeding. Leslie slumped a bit, her eyes closing slightly and her skin paling as the sickles also disappeared in a cyclone of shimmering gold. She was going to be alright, she wasn't injured, aside from the fact that she was dehydrated and starving, but one more move like that, and she would be taking one very long nap.

Leslie was very new to these strange happenings of hers. It was as if she had been blessed with the powers of light to combat the darkness, even though for some reason these things only worked best in broad daylight. She did not understand this gift of hers, the only thing she did understand was that adults did not like for it to happen. Leslie was just so accident prone.

"I swear, I didn't mean to." she began desperately in between shaky breaths. "I tried to warn them, I tried!" Tears welled up in her eyes as she tried hard to explain herself, she didn't want to be punished. She didn't mean to hurt any of these people, she was trying to save them from the shadows. Her eyes pierced into him demanding confirmation on whether or not he believed her, or if she had to run and hide from him too. The crowd in the area seemed to be getting restless, some dispersing, some angry and it was all just too frightening. Leslie stood and ran from all of the eyes that felt just as bad as the shadows.

-FIN-