15343/This Is What Counts As Normal

This Is What Counts As Normal
Date of Scene:	09 July 2023
Location:	Main Room - Titan's Tower
Synopsis:	The Main Room at Titans Tower, a horde of Titans, the usual nonsense.
Cast of Characters:	Donna Troy, Jinx, Mark Grayson, Rachel Roth, Jon Kent, Wally West, Terry O'Neil

---

Donna Troy has posed:
    It's a beautifully warm day, and brilliant sununshine streams through the great windows of Titans Tower, flooding the main room with light. It reflects from the glassware in the kitchen, shows the faint marks of every stain on the floors the Titan's Roomba army has failed to entirely eradicate, chases shadows out of the corners of the great room, and even manages to overcome the anti-glare coatings of the giant monitor.

    There are those on the team who may consider this an imposition, and plot the sun's demise.

    There are also those who couldn't be happier with this. People born to sunny climes who love the sunshine. Oddly sometimes these two categories of members do not necessarily find it hard to get on with each other. Perhaps having such a mundane thing to disagree on helps avoid more serious disagreements.

    One of the latter members of the team is Troia, who thinks that any place with less sunlight than the idyllic, divinely-tempered paradise that is Themyscira. It might thus seem that she would want to be out of the tower, but the tower contains excellent training facilities, and if there's one thing Donna likes more than sunlight, it's training. And after a good session training in the gym, what better than a trip up to the main room for refreshments.

    Donna is not making this journey up in the elevator. Rather she is ascending the empty elevator shaft next to it, intended for flyers. This is far from unusual, but what is perhaps rather less common is that the voices rising up from the empty shaft indicate that Donna is not alone in her ascent, and even more unusually that the other person thus ascending is Caitlin, who cannot fly.

    The explanation for Caitlin's unusual mode of ascent may be somewhat explained by the complaint arising from the depths of the shaft: "Donna, we /could/ have just waited for the elevator."

    Also by Donna's response: "We did. We waited a whole minute. Someone's probably got the door propped open while they load things into it in the lobby. But hey if you prefer, I can drop you and you can take the stairs once you hit the bottom."

Jinx has posed:
Not because Jinx is unlucky. She normally is - but she's not right now. She's just regular luck like most joe shmoe's. No, she's just -bad- at making eggs. The pan she used was too thin and the heat too high and now a lot of it has stuck to the pan. But she's determined to finish the cheesy eggs and toast.

So that's Jinx - in the kitchen. Stove fan on, toast in the toaster. She's dressed casually and has an ease to her manner today. Not the usual paranoia she has. Life has been forcing changes on her rapidly.

Adapting was never her strong suit. She preferred to make the world change to the beat of her drum instead. As is the way with evil sorcerers. But that's not an option and in some ways that feels liberating. In other ways, it's horrifying for her.

Mark Grayson has posed:
Donna and Caitlin were not the only ones that had used the flier's entrance. The difference being is that Mark is alreaady in the common area itself. He's wearing a polo shirt and jeans, hands tucked into his pockets as he is working on reacquainting himself with the place. However, one hand leaves his pocket to reach up and press the bud in his ear.

"I don't know what happened. I mean, one moment, the Flaxans were setting up something, the next, rocks fell and crushed everything. The Flaxans escaped, but I can't say why all their tech was destroyed. Maybe it had some type of self-destruct on it?" he offers helplessly as he looks up towards the cieling.

That's his story and he's sticking to it.

Rachel Roth has posed:
    Raven doesn't take elevators. Flyer or not, they're for people who can't /teleport./ Of course, that does lend itself to a certain amount of... Well, unsettling behavior. After all, Donna's arrival is announced. It's /polite./ You can hear her coming up the shaft when she talks with Cait. A ninety degree bend and Donna's own attitude preclude her swooping out of the shaft- outside of an emergency- with so much speed that her arrival is startling.

    Raven, however, begins to exist in the kitchen as if she'd always been there. With no ceremony or indeed any sound at all, Raven strolls up to the cabinet from an angle that would be impossible had she not materialized from nothingness in the kitchen itself, plucking some glassware from it to make coffee.

    Oh, the complex glassware and highly expensive, proprietary blends of coffee she holds. Setting the chemex down, she hefts the bag of unground beans for a time. She stares at it. Her eyes narrow.

    "Someone has taken some of my coffee." she explains to the air, with the same tone as a judge would state before a suspect is to be executed.

Donna Troy has posed:
    Donna makes her arrival closely followed by Caitlin, who looks mildly furious in rather comic fashion, at being dangled from Donna's lasso. Donna is grinning wide, incapable of keeping a straight face. "I was merely being helpful and saving us both a bit of time, Cait," she tells her old friend as she loosens her lasso with a flick of the wrist, and pulls it back up into a coil.

    "I may choose to be helpful by eating all the cookies I baked this morning without you Donna," Caitlin responds, her arms remaining sternly crossed."

    "Ooh there are cookies?" Donna replies, making her way to the kitchen area to search out cookies. She glances at the pan Jinx is attempting to destroy on her way past, does a double-take and moves to Jinx's side to examine the eggs critically. "I think we can safely say you've defeated those eggs, Jinx. They certainly won't be causing anyone any further trouble. Cait, have you seen what Jinx is doing to your pans? You should forbid her cookies and give her share to me. Where are the cookies?"

    Despite her claims to be searching for cookies she heads over to the fridge and acquires a couple of snacky-shakes, one of which she tosses to Caitlin, the other she opens and takes a healthy swig of before sitting on the edge of the counter next to Rae's station at the coffee machine.

    "It was me, Rae. I took some of your coffee," she confesses. "I would have brought you some, but it was morning. You'd just gone to bed. Nobody needs to die. I've ordered some more, anyway."

    "Invincible, right?" she asks their visitor. The two have met a couple of times in passing since Mark was first brought to the tower and given his guest pass, but haven't really had time to get to know each other, so she's probably saying that for the benefit of anyone who might not have met him yet. "Nice to see you back at the tower. Social call, or looking for some extra hands to help out with something?"

Jinx has posed:
Jinx feels a shiver run down her spine and she turns to look at Raven as she just.. appears. It's not the first time she's seen her do it but it's still a weird thing. She's not used to it yet. "I don't know what a Flaxan is." She's scraping at the pan to get as much of the cheesy eggs off and on to toast as possible.

"But they sound like a medicine, cleaning product, or bodily noise. You can tell them I said that next time you see them." She points a spatula toward Mark. "...person whose name I can't remember."

Jinx whips around and raises an eyebrow at Raven, "It was ME.. I did IT!" ... she didn't actually do it. It's just fun to reinforce the supervillain stereotypes from time to time. "Mwaahaahaaa and now it will run out before it's convenient for you!" She makes a claw with her hand and raises it up all menacingly like.

The imagery doesn't quite work considering the steaming cheesy eggs on toast next to her. She sets down the spatula and turns off the stove. Cleaning up the mess can come later. Knife and fork are gathered and she scoops up her bounty to consumption.

Of course Donna also cops up to stealing the coffee which takes even more wind out of her supervillainy sails. "I need the cookies because my attempt at eggs has been quite a failure. Well, 70% failure. 30% stuck to the pan WHICH I WILL CLEAN.. a little later." She gives Caitlin eyes and then joins Mark nearer the couches with her food and starts to eat, cross legged, on the couch. Slowly, one foot slides out from underneath and dangles over the edge.

Mark Grayson has posed:
Taking out the small bud in his ear and shoving it in his pocket, Marc blinks as Rachel suddenly appears. There's a shake of his head, he's still trying to get used to the idea of being around other heroes. His dad was never much of a team player. And since he was put in charge of Teen Team, that was the first taste of him working with others. Not that he's seen any of them much lately.

When Donna acknowledges him, Mark brightens up. "A bit of both?" he suggests, as there is discussion of coffee and cookies. He may actually be innocent in this one. "The coffee maker isn't currently sentient and attacking everyone, so I didn't take the coffee." is said in a deadpan response, before he returns his attention to why he was at the Tower. "Caitlin helped me deal with a Flaxan incursion..." then pauses and backtracks. "Flaxans are little green aliens. Nasty buggers that seem to be able to teleport here at will. Anyway, I was hoping Caitlin would know it was that was helping out earlier. Cecil is breathing down my neck to find out why all the technology was destroyed and I don't want the guy getting in trouble for getting involved."

Rachel Roth has posed:
    There is a moment that may prove to be one that Jinx regrets. As she admits to stealing Raven's coffee, there is a turn of the gothic woman's head, her hoody revealing the wide, unblinking eyes of a borderline madwoman. Her expression is shifting towards the negative side of neutral. This is, clearly, an affront. One that deserves violent reprisal. It seems incredibly imminent.

    Donna defuses this of course, by admitting that it was her. This is believable, and it causes Raven to slooooowly look back at her slightly-lighter-than-should-be bag of beans. She takes a small scoop of them and puts them into the grinder, in silence. When she has finished grinding, she finally puts words back into the air.

    "This is unforgivable." she states, tugging on Donna's heartstrings. It is obvious why she has commmitted no violence at this stage- Jinx is a liar, this time to her benefit, and Donna is the true culprit. Regardless, she is going to milk this for all that she can, this crime that has been committed. "Inexcusable. How do you intend to make it right?"

Donna Troy has posed:
    "In my experience it's generally a good thing when strange alien technology gets accidentally destroyed before anyone can lay their hands on it," Donna states to Mark, with an obvious grin. "Particularly Cyborg. Have you met him yet? Generally if there's strange, dangerous and unpredictable alien technology lying around we have to grab it and keep it away from him before he gets it into his head to integrate it into his own chassis."

    She tilts her head to the side thoughtfully. "It's fine if we get our hands on it, of course. You know, that way you can keep track of it and make sure no mad scientists try to us it to create an ultimate weapon. Or alternatively a universal garbage disposal device that goes wrong and turns out to be an ultimate weapon. Or turns out to teleport all of Earth's trash to the surface of some other planet, who's inhabitants then choose to invade us to make it stop. If Cait was with you we'll have some bodycam footage. We can give you that to pass on to Cecil to show rocks falling, if that'll help."

    Caitlin gives a nod of agreement, but her attention is distracted by the pan Jinx was using and her own struggles not to say anything about the outrage, or hurl Jinx into the ocean. "Please don't use a metal scourer on it when you're cleaning it," she tells Jinx. Whether this is because it has a coating that would be damaged by using a metal scourer or because she wants Jinx to pay for her evil with hard scrubbing is anyone's guess.

    "I already made it right Rae," Donna tells the sorceress with a smile. "I ordered more coffee for you. I told you that already. No I'm not going to make it up for you by kicking Gar, Vorpal and Kian off the team."

Jinx has posed:
Jinx waves a dismissive hand at Caitlin, "Yeah yeah use a metal scourer got it." Just to rile up the non-swearer a little more. Then, mouthfuls of cheesy eggs on toast. It's delicious. She then glances at Mark. "Well. So long as they're -green- i'm sure it's fine."

The eggs are quickly devoured and she puts the plate and implements on the coffee table. Her eyes shut and she relaxes. There's a level of chaos, always, in this place. She doesn't mind it but what she has come to appreciate is that no one is going to suddenly throw a bag over her head and drag her away to practice torture resistence.

Jon Kent has posed:
Duh-duh-duh-duh-DUH. DUH DUH DUH! <<insert the rest of John William's Superman theme here>>

Superboy comes drifting in through the open flyers elevator. He is immediately recognizable, wearing his own version of his father's otherworldly uniform. But that is the start and end of any sort of pomp from the young half-Kryptonian. He has a modest, humble smile on his face, and his glittering blue eyes radiate warmth and kindness.

"Hey, guys!" he says cordially. "Sorry I haven't been around in a minute."

Touching down on the floor, he pads quietly into the room looking at everyone in turn.

"Big crowd tonight!" the young man announces excitedly.

Mark Grayson has posed:
"Yeah, Cecil... he's with some government agency. One of those alphabet acronym things I don't understand, was hoping that I'd have all their stuff all wrapped up in a pretty bow to hand over." Mark frowns mightily at that as he takes a seat near Jinx. "I'm not exactly ready to be a government sock puppet. Accidents happen. He doesn't need to know that they didn't have self-destruct devices on them. Not that the fact that whenever that blonde kid turned off the machine that they all started aging really really rapidly wasn't creepy enough."

Then he realizes his faux pas in all this and he clears his throat. "I know most of the folks here know me. Sorry for not introducing myself sooner. But my name's Mark, but in the field I go by....

INVINCIBLE."

Except he doesn't quite say it /that/ loud. In fact, he sounds a little less confident than he should be about it.

Wally West has posed:
Each Titan with access to the motion senders are made distinctly aware that there's a fast moving object approaching the Tower.

<<3000 meters....10->> Wally slides into the room, past Donna, past Raven, past Jinx, past Mark, past Jon. He's adorned in his red suit with the silver accents, blue lightning crackling around his parson as he hood on the back of his heel, an excited smile on his face. "Huh, some newer faces today?"

His mask covered his face, keeping his vibrant red hair hidden underneath the cowl. Though he suddenly is on the move again, his elbow on Donna. "We putting them through paces or is it pizza time?"

Rachel Roth has posed:
    Raven has busied herself heating the water she needs to make exactly two cups of coffee. Sign enough, for those paying attention, that she has already forgiven Troia's harmless theft of her specialty coffee. As the water begins to boil- much faster, strangely, than it should be, Raven starts to get the filter and grinds ready for the pour-over.

    "You wound me. I don't want you to kick them off of the team." she pauses, starting to fill the chemex with coffee. "I merely want you to exile them to the moon." Another short pause, but before Donna can rebut, Raven continues. "I just think that Themyscira has a number of large and powerful Trebuchets that are going unused and that we could make good use of them here." By sending Gar and Vorpal to the Moon, of course."If you're going to deny me that, you have yet more work to do to make this theft right."

    The conversation from the others reaches her, and she turns from her coffee for a moment, looking over towards Mark. "Welcome to Titans tower, Invincible. I am not sure if you have had proper introductions, but Troia will begin them momentarily, I am sure." Then she looks up, as if something has just caught her attention. "Ah, the Flash is-" Then, there's a Wally. "Here." she announces, before turning back to making the coffee.

Donna Troy has posed:
    "That's the spirit Mark," Donna says with a grin. "Don't want to cast aspersions on Cecil, never met him. But alphabet agencies , you never quite know who you're dealing with and what the agenda is. A big part of the reason the Titans exists in the first place is that so we didn't have to answer to anyone but ourselves. Of course we deal with all the agencies, and we have to work within the law, but we deal with them on our terms. Don't forget where we are if you feel the need to lose those alphabet shackles and spread your wings."

    "We have no trebuchets with orbital capability, and you know what happens if we exile them to the moon," Donna points out to Raven. "Terry just teleports them back. You don't think I've tried?"

    Donna downs the rest of her Snacky Shake and hops up from the counter to wash out the bottle and leave it to dry. Snacky Shake bottles get reused -- the Titans are pretty good about avoiding packaging wastage. She goes back to hunting for cookies, and is nosing through cupboards when Jon and Wally put in their appearance. She greets him with a wide smile and a wave. "Hey Jon, hey Wally!" There is such a thing as a secret identity jar here, but neither have been secretive about their first names at least. There are plenty of Jons and Wallys in the world. "Just the usual chaos and confusion that is the Titans Tower. Invincible, Superboy. Superboy, Invincible. The Flash, Invincible and Superboy. Invincible and Superboy, The Flash. Anyone want a drink or snack while I'm here? Or Pizza. Flash has just volunteered to pick some up for us if people are hungry." Donna gives Wally an impish grin.

Jinx has posed:
Jinx raises an eyebrow as Mark introduces himself, "Invincible? that's a terrible name. You're just inviting all the big bads to come figure out how to make you vincible. And believe me, there's always a way to make someone vincible." She wiggles fingers at him and then glances over her shoulder toward Caitlin, "Cookies though..."

"Oh hey Flash. Didn't see you come in." She smirks a touch. It's the small pleasures in life that make it all worthwhile. She gives Jon a wave, "Hi Superboy. You weren't around much so we replaced you with an Unvincible.." she motions to Mark.

Her attention goes back to Mark for a moment, "We've met before. It was brief. I just didn't catch your name. I'm Jinx. Not actually a secret identity codename. Actually my name." Unless you dig in to her adoption papers but then her name is just Jane Doe and what kind of a cruel monster names an unnamed child Jane Doe. English orphanages that's who.

Jon Kent has posed:
Donna gets a particularly warm smile from Superboy. "Hey, Donna." He greets everyone else in turns. "Flash, great to see you again. Raven. Jinx. Invincible, nice to meet you." Jon would *never* make fun of someone's name. He's just not built that way.

"Yeah, I don't blame you for replacing me with a better model," Superboy says with a playful gleam in his eyes. "I'm sorry I've been so busy. Our House has been dealing with some very serious Kryptonian business that has been keeping me really occupied. Plus I just finished my first year of college." He exhales a sharp sigh that accidentally just *barely* touches on his freeze breath, lowering the temperature in the room by maybe 5 or 10 degrees.

The young half-Kryptonian clamps his hand over his mouth in embarrassment. "By Rao, you guys, I'm so sorry." Is there just a small laugh in there too? I mean, no real harm done either way.

Terry O'Neil has posed:
~Our house
In the middle of our street
Our house
In the middle of our-
OUR HOUSE
In the middle of our-~


And that's the sound of Vorpal rounding the corner. He's not listening to music on his airpods, he's creating the music with his illusion magic. At this point, he's close to becoming a one-cat music video. He stops when he enters the main room and notices there are people here. Quite a few of them.

"/Oh/!"

The special effects, the floating notes, the music all fall away into nothingness and the Cheshire tries to act non-chalant.

"Hey everybody. What's up-" He stops and notices there is a Jon where there hasn't been one for quite a bit, and adds"Up, and away?"

Mark Grayson has posed:
"Yeah, I get that alot." Mark says to Jinx with a hint of mirth. "A lot." he reiterates. When the Flash arrives, Mark isn't able to keep up with the speedster's arrival - yet another one of those things that he's going to need to work on. But he does take Donna's words to heart. "Thanks for the offer." comes the sincere response. "My father lost his powers a year before I got mine, so he's been training me on what I should know. But I feel like I owe a favor to help."

But he could be feeling a little rebellious by this point. When Jon starts talking about politics and mentions Kryptonians, he perks up a little. He feels the slight change in the air, but doesn't seem too bothered by it. "I'm half-alien, on my dad's side." As if that wasn't already obvious.

Vorpal gets a wave when he arrives, however. "I didn't know you all had a shindig planned for tonight. I can come by another time if it's a bother."

Rachel Roth has posed:
    "You haven't tried hard enough." Raven replies, pouring Donna's mug now. With both cups of coffee prepared, Raven sets the glassware into the sink, where they go about washing themselves. "And you do not have oribtal trbuchets /yet./ I have several ideas for enchantments that could be used to do the deed." That said, she figures that it is an incredible argument in favor. They can, so they should.

    She looks to Mark, then, her hood hiding half of her features. "They will continue to try and prove your name wrong. If that's the intent, it is ingenius." This gives Mark an out. A small mercy from Raven, this implication. Whether he runs with it or not, is his choice.

    Regardless of this, her attention is taken up by Terry, who wanders into the room singing. Though he stops quick enough, there is a pointed glance from Raven. Terry knows well that she is moments from calling up another globe of silence, like the one from before. "I have warned you about the singing." she states, as if she hasn't warned him about basically everything he does.

    There's an entire chapter in their bylaws regarding Terry, written by Raven. It is the most ignored section of the Titans' bylaws.

Donna Troy has posed:
    "You're fine," Donna assures Mark. "This isn't planned, this is just life at Titans Tower. Yes, it's always this chaotic, but you'll get used to it!" She's already tapping an order for pizzas into her T-Com. The Giorgio's special Titans regular order, which is basically two of everything, extra large. Anything that doesn't get eaten immediately will be gone from the fridge the next time any of the horde of speedsters finds it. Or if Caitlin or Gar get peckish. The Titans have some big appetites on the roster.

    "Kandor is... a lot," Donna agrees with Jon, giving him a sympathetic nod. It may not be Titans business, but there are a couple of Titans who've been quite involved in those particular Kryptonian shenanigans. While Donna is as keen as anyone to see the prisoners of Kandor freed, she has been very much on the side of the more cautious approach to doing it.

    Donna takes the coffee from Raven with a smile, but the smile quirks up into a smirk at the sound of Vorpal's arrival. "You summoned him," she says. "It's feline perversity. You were thinking too hard about getting rid of him, so immediately he appears, bringing his usual brand of Madness." Was that a music joke from Donna?

    "Even with magic, Trebuchets are not ideal for orbital insertion," she continues. "However if you know some enchantments that would help with rocketry, Io would like to talk to you."

    This sounds bad. Amazon space ships? Is this what the world is coming to?

Jon Kent has posed:
Jon draws in a deep breath and lets it out, this time without accidentally lowering the room temp, as he nods to Donna. "It's an intensely complex situation with so many pitfalls and wrong turns." He shakes his head as his expression gets a touch sheepish. "Wiser minds than mine are on it, and a clear path through still feels so far away."

He grins at Vorpal's wordplay. "Hey, Vorpal. Gooood? to see you again?" the young half-Kryptonian says cautiously. The Cat's propensity for utter chaos is well known. "But don't worry, if they launch you to the moon I'll fly you back."

"Anyway, no pizza for me. I just finished a shift watching monitors in the Hall of Justice," Jon says wistfully. His tone and expression hint at just how boring that duty is. "And I'm heading home. I just wanted to stop in because I've been away so long. But that's going to change. Please accept my apology."

He moves towards the open flyers elevator. Then, as if it were the simplest thing ever, he simply floats in the air and gently enters the open elevator shaft. His rises up out into the night sky, then rockets off for Smallville.

Terry O'Neil has posed:
Vorpal blinks as the dire threat from the sorceress figuratively pins him to the wall. It doesn't literally pin him to the wall- Raven hasn't done that in quite a while. Not since the incident with the nuclear reactor. And that other incident with the catholic school bus and the train full of circus clowns.

All, or some, of the above might be complete fabrication, too.

"Oh come /on/, Rae. I must do *something*, and you've prohibited me from singing, dancing, chewing gum, interfering in international politics, building model ships, seeking the dark hosts and joining their hellish crusades, and breathing. /Something/ has got to give here. I tried not breathing last week and I ended up passing out and hitting my head on Gar."

No sooner has he had a chance to say hi to Jon, than the teen of steel has to head off, but the Cheshire cat raises an eyebrow. "Did he just turn down pizza?" he narrows his eyes. "That's... suspicious." He glances at Donna. "... you sure he's not... a doppel?"

And then something slowly bubbles up to the fore of his mind, having gotten buried in all the words before.

"... wait. Sending /whom/ to the moon?"

Donna Troy has posed:
    "Believe it or not Terry, it is perfectly possible for someone to not want pizza," Donna replies to Terry as she waves farewell to Jon. "Don't worry about the moon thing, he's just joking."

    Donna pauses a beat. "You'd have run out of air before he found you anyway."

    There are always Rabbit Holes, right? Though opening a portal between a world with an atmosphere and one without brings its own dangers. He could open a Rabbit Hole back home, but would he be able to fight against the air pressure differential to actually go through the Rabbit Hole?

    "Nobody's sending you to the Moon, Vorp." Donna says with a smile over the rim of her coffee cup. "I mean honestly we do respect you on Themyscira, but if you think the first Themysciran lunar expedition doesn't have every Amazon fighting for the honor of taking the ride, you don't know much about Amazons."

    Donna has made no secret of her desire to get Amazons into space, and Diana seems at least as keen, but it's a fair bet that this is at least ninety percent joking around. It's not like the Titans haven't been there by T-Jet a few times anyway.

    Donna gives Raven a playful grin. "Nothing more about the trebuchet please Rae. State secret."

Terry O'Neil has posed:
Trebuchet. Lunar expedition. Suffocation.

"Oh, why, will you look at the time?" the Cheshire says, staring at his bare wrist. "I forgot I told Diana I had to do a thing at the library. Very important. Secret Amazon stuff. Top Amazon stuff. Amazon prime stuff." He takes a few steps back, glancing at Raven every so often, "I'll probably be out all night. Most likely. Yep. All night..."

A Rabbit Hole opens behind him. It doesn't look like the library. The library doesn't look like Wonderland. "See ya tomorrow!"

There are few places that are safe enough to hide when Raven wants to send you to the moon.

Scratch that, there are no safe places. But there are places you hope are too annoying for her to want to bother with.

Most of the time, your hope is ill-founded.