Shift watched Athira vanish through the roof of the training room, wondering for the second time in as many days how everything had gone this wrong.
It was hard to focus. He'd shifted Athira's Colour when he'd pinned her, completely by accident. Half a second of skin contact was all it'd taken, and even now, the copied Colour rampaged through his body, knocking the breath out of him.
"Thira!" Zoe called again, like somehow, Athira would hear her through the walls. "Thira, come back!"
"Zo, she's gone," said Shift, pushing himself onto his feet with a grunt of effort.
Zoe tore her eyes off the ceiling. Her glow was fading, but hope made it linger as she turned and bolted for the door.
"Shift!"
Shift turned his head, finding Raph looking at him. He had Talia on her feet, her arm slung over his shoulder. Talia was conscious, and aside from several small grazes across her face and her injured pride, she was relatively unharmed. She'd need a new Keeper suit, but it'd done its job.
Raph pointed at the door after Zoe. "Stay with her!"
Shift swore and sucked in a breath, forcing himself to lock down the shifted Colour and run after Zoe.
He'd shifted hundreds of Colours over the years. Stronger Colours could influence his mood while shifted, but nothing came close to Athira's. It was a wild, unrestrained force that could easily erase everything he was. It simmered uncomfortably hot beneath his skin, and whatever Talia wanted to argue, it wasn't Purple.
He didn't know what it was.
Shift chased the sound of footsteps down the stairwell to the ground floor, and following the open doors, ended up out front of the base.
He found Zoe in the middle of the sidewalk outside the base, her eyes on the skies, hands cupped to her mouth as she yelled Athira's name, over and over and over.
"Thira!"
Shift reached her, putting a gentle but firm hand on her shoulder. "Zo!"
Zoe gave him half a glance before her attention was back in the air, desperately searching for the figure Shift suspected was long gone. "She was here, Shift! She was here, and she just —"
"She panicked," said Shift. "Maybe once she calms down, she'll come back, but right now, she's gone."
Zoe stumbled a step back, clutching the sides of her head. "It's happening all over again." Her glow was gone, her green eyes shining with tears, still pinned to the skyline. "Why didn't any of you tell me she was here? I would have literally run home from Elite HQ if I had to. I would have done anything to make sure I got here before she left."
Shift gave her a small smile. "We know, Zo. But it wasn't that simple."
Zoe's hands slid down and pressed against her eyes. Her voice was quiet as she said, "She's my sister, Shift. It is that simple."
Across the street, their presence had drawn attention. Shift was becoming increasingly aware of the number of bystanders that were doing the thing where they shuffled closer, one step at a time, their phones clutched tight to their chests until they built up the courage to approach and ask for a picture.
Shift gave the closest group a small wave. As they erupted into excited squeals, he held out his palm towards them, hoping that they'd respect his request for space. By some small miracle, they kept their distance, but he knew it wouldn't be long before someone else moved in.
He turned his attention back to Zoe, placing his hands on her arms and gently pulling her in for a hug.
"I know, Zo." Shift rested his chin on the top of her head. "I promise, as soon as we're inside, I'll explain. And later, if you want to try looking for her, I'll come with you. Okay?"
Zoe nodded her head against him, and after a moment, allowed him to lead her inside with an arm around her shoulders.
Shift gave the small crowd of bystanders another, quick wave before he shut the front door of Indigo base behind him.
Inside, Zoe pulled the small, gold locket she always wore out from beneath the collar of her Keeper suit. In his years of knowing her, Shift had never seen her take it off, even when it'd meant taping it against her skin during training. Now, as Zoe ran the heart-shaped locket back and forth along its thin chain, her gaze lingering on the door, he knew why.
"Did Athira give that to you?" asked Shift.
"Yeah, when we were twelve," said Zoe, a slight frown creasing her forehead. "She put a photo of our family inside, and said that no matter what happened, we'd always have a piece of each other with us." Zoe's fingers closed around the locket, her hand trembling. "For seven years, that's all I've had of her, Shift. And today, she was here, and I just—I told myself that if I ever found her again, I wouldn't let her go. That I'd hug her and tell her how much I missed her and I didn't. I didn't do any of that. I shot her and just froze."
"In your defence," said Shift, "I don't think any of your reunion scenarios involved stumbling into the training room to find her attacking your teammate. I think you're owed an explanation before you start beating yourself up about how you reacted, and on that note!" He pointed a finger at the stairs. "Common room? Ice cream seems necessary right now."
Zoe zipped the locket back and forth a few more times before she finally released it. She tore her eyes away from the door, and with a small, reluctant sigh, turned towards Shift.
"Only if I get some of your honeycomb flavour," she said, attempting a smile.
"Just this once, I'll share." He nudged her with an elbow. "But only because I took one of your OmNom bars earlier."
Her eyes narrowed. "I knew you were taking them."
"It was for a good cause!"
They got two steps towards the stairs when Kione appeared, coming up the basement stairs with a scowl.
As always, Indigo's Orange Keeper had his hair in its dreadlock braids, and his piercing, ice-blue gaze stood out against his dark skin. Kione was six years Shift's senior and didn't leave his Tech lab much unless someone dragged him out for dinner or a mission, but that didn't make him any less capable — especially while grumpy.
As such, Shift gave way to Kione as he passed. "Where are you going?"
"Med bay," grumbled Kione, adjusting his glasses. "Raph wants Talia checked over, and Athira's little outburst busted a bunch of our Tech, including my elevator." He stopped outside the med bay door and glanced back at them. "Brace yourselves."
The door opened, and the full force of Talia and Raph's discussion erupted.
"How can you still be taking her side?" screeched Talia. "She almost killed me, Raph!"
Shift followed Kione into the med bay, Zoe close behind. Talia sat on the end of an examination table in a close-fitting undershirt and her Keeper suit pulled down to her waist. Her muscular body was speckled with red welts that would probably become bruises, but given the beating she'd taken, the Keeper suit had protected her well.
"You started the fight," said Raph, exasperated. He ran two fingers down her arm, likely checking for any serious damage. "She warned you what would happen without her amulet, yet you kept baiting her. When she tried to walk away, you brought up Zoe, knowing exactly how she'd react, and then you attacked her."
Talia snatched her arm away from Raph as Kione approached. She glared at them both, but Kione, not deterred in the least, moved her arm aside and pressed a handheld device that checked for internal damage against her side.
Talia grumbled as she allowed Kione to continue. "The Owl's been sighted in Sirah for months, Raph. There's no way she didn't know about Zoe. I just called her out on it."
"Didn't know what about Zoe?" said Zoe, stopping in the middle of the room.
Raph huffed, a hand on his head as he turned away from Talia. His eyes flicked to Zoe's locket for a brief second, still out on top of her suit. "I think Athira thought you were dead, Zo."
"How did that not come up in conversation?" said Zoe. "Why wouldn't you tell her as soon as you figured that out?"
Shift moved beside her, gently tapping the bottom of his fist against her shoulder. "Remember how I said it wasn't that simple?"
Talia snorted. "It's perfectly simple. Your 'sister' is the Owl, and Raph should have handed her over to the Elites the second we found her at Starpoint."
"Thank you, Talia," muttered Raph, running a hand over his face. "Very helpful."
Zoe frowned. "The Owl? Isn't that —"
"A villain," said Talia. "Who — ouch!" She jerked away from Kione as the device in his hands flickered with Orange. "Did you just zap me?"
"A necessary test, I assure you." Kione gave her a deadpan smile, his ice-blue, cat-like pupils fixed on her. "And while I'm doing the rest of the tests, how about you give them a chance to catch Zoe up without interjecting? Otherwise, I might accidentally zap you again."
Raph took a few steps closer to Zoe. "While you were at Elite HQ, we got a tip that Reader would be at Starpoint tower. We found him in the basement with the Owl and attempted to arrest him, but during the fight, the tower started collapsing. Shift was saved by the Owl, who turned out to be Athira, but Reader had taken her amulet and her Colour was out of control."
Raph took a breath. The room was quiet except for the occasional beep of Kione's device. Zoe hooked her fingertips over the thin chain of her locket, her other hand wrapped around her waist as she hung onto Raph's every word.
Talia rolled her eyes but otherwise stayed silent.
"She was barely conscious," Raph continued. "Kept trying to tell me to leave her, apologised that she hadn't been able to save you, but she passed out before I had the chance to tell her. When she woke up, I didn't get much of a chance to talk to her before Talia goaded her into a fight, thinking Athira was a Purple influencing us."
Zoe's hand tightened on the chain. "That doesn't explain why you didn't tell me she was here, Raph."
Raph shrugged. "Talia has a point. Sister or not, the Owl is listed as a villain. I wanted to make sure she hadn't gone too far off the deep end before I got your hopes up."
Shift kept his mouth shut.
Raph had helped him get Athira into the base last night. Sure, she was tiny, but it'd been like trying to hold onto an overly microwaved plate. She'd burned. Once she was safely tucked into a fire blanket with extinguishers and additional binders at the ready, there'd been a moment where Raph had knelt beside her bed and ran a hand over her forehead.
If you're still in there, Thira — please don't break Zoe's heart again.
It'd been so quiet that Shift had almost missed it, so when Raph stood up and turned around, he'd pretended he hadn't heard. Raph had asked him not to tell Zoe until he'd done more research, and that when she woke up, to request Athira talk to him before she left.
"She needs us, Raph," said Zoe, reaching out to place her hands on Raph's shoulders. "Both of us. Didn't you see her runes? Remember what she told us about them? About the monster, the memories?"
Kione stepped away from Talia, his fingers dancing across the device as Talia pulled her Keeper suit back up.
"Really?" said Talia. "We tell you she's the Owl, and your reaction is wanting to help her?" Talia tugged on the cuff of her sleeve. "Apparently, she got to you with her Purple nonsense, too."
Raph tilted his head back and gave a frustrated sigh as Zoe opened her mouth to reply, but Shift beat them both.
"She's not a Purple," said Shift. When Talia started to argue about it, he wiggled his fingers. "I shifted her Colour. If this is Purple, I will wholeheartedly accept the next offer of marriage I receive from a fan and retire as a Keeper. That's how certain I am."
Even Talia seemed to reconsider at that.
"Can you get a read on her Colour?" asked Raph.
Shift tilted his head to the side, allowing his consciousness to drift inward to the place where his Green sat beside Athira's accidentally shifted Colour.
Colour was a combination of pigment and hue, and when used, an imprint of the origin mindscape rode with it. Shift could often get a sense of a person when he shifted their Colour, but Athira's was difficult to get a read on. It felt like there was barely anything of her inside it.
"Motivated," he said at last, chewing on the corner of his lip. "Like there's one thing holding it all together. Strong." He frowned, pressing a little further into the shifted Colour, searching for something solid. "It's... everything and nothing. Like standing on the edge of an underwater cliff that drops into an abyss, aware that the ocean is empty but still surrounded by an unfathomable amount of water and knowing that eventually, it'll probably drown you."
Kione's voice sounded distant. "...Did Shift just say unfathomable?"
"Sounds unhinged to me," said Talia.
A glowing hand waved in front of Shift's face, snapping him out of it.
"Thols to Shift," said Zoe, her hand still gleaming as she booped him on the nose. "You still with us?"
Shift blinked, quickly following it with a grin. "Still here, never fear." He glanced at Raph. "You said she calls her Colour Black, right?" Raph nodded, and Shift turned his hand over, looking for any sign of it as he tried — and failed — to use it. "I'd believe it. It's Colour — otherwise I wouldn't be able to shift it — but it feels different." He wrinkled his nose. "Kinda hurts, too."
Talia pushed off the table, shaking her head. "Even if she isn't a Purple, she still tried to kill me." She flicked her gaze to Raph. "Provoked or not, anyone willing to use lethal force is someone that needs to be in jail."
Raph didn't have an answer for that.
Zoe moved towards Talia and reached up towards her grazed face. "Let me see."
"Why?" said Talia. "So you can tell me I'm overreacting to a villain in our base too?"
"No," said Zoe, standing on the tips of her toes to make up for the height difference. She grabbed a salve off the bench and wiped a little into each of the cuts across Talia's face. "I think you did what you thought was right, which is protecting our team from a Purple. Athira isn't a Purple, but she's not exactly the easiest person to get along with, either." Zoe took a step back, a faint glow around her. "You two are way too similar to not butt heads at least once."
"Butt heads?" said Talia. "That's what you're calling what you walked in on?"
Zoe pursed her lips as she tossed the salve back on the bench, her glow gone. "I've seen her Black do a lot worse, Tal. I think if she really wanted you dead, we wouldn't be having this conversation."
"Whatever," said Talia, grabbing her board and limping her way out of the room. "I'm going out for a while. If that psycho comes back in the meantime and 'butts heads' with you all, don't say I didn't warn you."
Zoe chased after her a few steps, sticking her head out of the med bay door as she called out, "I'm still braiding your hair in the morning, Tal!"
Talia didn't reply, her footsteps fading down the hallway.
"Well, that was exciting," said Kione. Though his eyes hadn't left his device, Shift knew Kione hadn't missed a thing. "Are we adding the Owl to our personal team project list?"
Zoe leaned back, hanging off the door frame. "I'm gonna go on patrol and look for her." She managed a small smile. "I know it's probably a waste of time, but I can't just sit around and do nothing." She grabbed Shift by the wrist and started dragging him into the hallway. "And you promised to help."
Shift managed to give Raph and Kione a wave of farewell before Zoe pulled him away to the prep room.
Once dressed in their full Keeper suits and equipped with the various Tech that came in handy — like their headsets and binders — they went down into the garage. Talia's board was missing from its usual spot in the corner, confirming she'd left the base.
Shift and Zoe headed to where Indigo kept their Chromacycles. They were essentially what anyone outside of Sirah would call a motorbike, only the Elites had redesigned them to run off epicores — short for 'external pigment core' — like everything else in Sirah's region. It made them quieter, safer, and a whole lot more eco-friendly.
Plus, Shift thought, they looked a whole lot cooler.
Zoe retrieved her epicore from its recharge station. "Y'know, the first time Thira tried to fill up one of these, it exploded."
Shift raised an eyebrow. "You have to put a lot of pigment into an epicore to blow it up, Zo. Sure it wasn't just faulty?"
Zoe skipped over towards her Chromacycle and placed the epicore in its slot. "She broke a Colourformer at her Hue Rite when she was thirteen, too."
"And I'm suddenly even more intrigued by this Black." Shift glanced at his hand. Usually when he shifted a Colour, it didn't take him long to figure out how to use it, but Athira's Black felt like he'd been dumped in the ocean with no sign of land. "I hope you realise I'm completely useless right now. I still have her Colour shifted and no idea how to use it."
Zoe tucked her locket back into her Keeper suit, then threw her leg over her cycle and started it. Her grin was concerning. "I'll do the fighting, copycat. You keep a lookout."
They spent the afternoon patrolling the streets. They found no sign of Athira, and the only trouble that found them was a small riot that refused to disperse until they'd received autographs. It wasn't exactly behaviour Shift wanted to encourage, but it'd distracted Zoe from their search long enough for a hint of her glow to appear.
Despite the hours passing, the shifted Black remained in Shift's body. It'd never taken his Green more than two hours to regenerate and scrub any remainder of a shifted Colour from his system, even when he was trying to hold onto it. If his Green couldn't erase the Black, he'd have to use the Colour to get rid of it — he just had no idea how.
It was evening by the time that Zoe was finally ready to admit defeat.
They returned to base. Shift hadn't made any progress on figuring out the Black. Zoe's glow remained, just barely bright enough to stretch into the evening shadows. She'd spent as much time as she could listening to an audio reading of the Owl's file.
"I still can't believe Raph and I didn't figure it out from the cloak," said Zoe for the fifth time, yet again buried in another Owl file projected from her wristlet after parking her Chromacycle. "It was right in front of us the whole time!"
Shift took his epicore out of his own Chromacycle and put it back on charge. "To be fair, the Owl's only been sighted consistently for a few months, and she was never high on the priority list. You probably only saw a photo of her once."
"I guess that's a good thing," said Zoe. "She really hasn't done anything serious, thank the spirits." Zoe scrolled through some pictures. "Occasionally subdued Keepers or Elites, but mostly she's just been fighting with other Underground villains and sometimes leaving them out for arrest. Broke into a prison once but escaped before they could unmask her. The only reason she's on our radar at all is because her Colour's so strong, and she's been asking about that Rathe guy."
Shift couldn't help the smile tugging at his mouth. "Is that right?"
Zoe huffed and swiped the screen away. "I know, I know. I've been telling you the same thing for the last few hours, I'm sorry." She grabbed the air in front of her, light squeezing out from between her fists. "I'm just... just really mad that after seven years, the two days the Elites decided to drag me to HQ is when Athira shows up. I was waiting in a lobby for an hour before they got me back to base, Shift. An hour! I could have been here, and —"
Shift squinted as he stepped in front of her, placing his hands on top of hers to get her to let go of the Yellow. He could have sworn that the room seemed to... wobble, for lack of a better word, but he shook it off as a trick of the light. "What'd they even call you in for?"
"I don't even know," said Zoe, unclenching her fists and letting them drop to her sides as they walked inside. "Some Colourless guy was asking me questions, about stuff like the sunflowers I grow, or if I dyed my hair. Then they had me doing weirdly specific drills with my lasers, trying to break a box, or figure out which one was 'wrong'."
Zoe went through the door first.
Shift didn't make it through.
Everything was spinning. His vision was covered with dark spots. He grabbed for the wall, trying to break his fall and only half-succeeding. He slid down the wall of a world that was peeling away, revealing another beneath. Every time he blinked, he saw more of a desolate, foggy cliff that led into the abyss below.
He felt his mind slipping away. The shifted Black burned like fire as Zoe grabbed him by the shoulder, trying to hold him up. He knew she was talking, could see her lips moving, but the syllables rang empty in his ears as the scent of ash and smoke filled his nose.
Zoe was speaking into her wristlet, her green eyes locked on his, but Shift could no longer resist the darkness and let it pull him under.
*+*+*+*