It was impossible to find Robin in the chaos. Although that could be a good thing – looking at Robin made it hard to harness the sensation of soaring joy needed to fly. There was a time when that wouldn't have mattered, when the adrenalin of battle would have been enough and joy and fury twisted around each other in her heart and veins, but Starfire knew better than to rely on that any more... she'd been dampering such feelings for so long, she wasn't sure that she even could. Her family would have called her weak, hobbling herself to work better with her allies. But she had experienced firsthand the value of friendship and trust too often to listen to that rubbish. Weakening herself a little to gain the strength provided by a team was a good investment; so good that she wasn't sure if she could even work alone any more.
The fire had taken hold on the docks, and through the smoke Starfire could just make out a long jetty and part of a building collapse into the ocean. Had Robin been there? Didn't matter. Even if Robin couldn't look after himself, backing him up was Raven's job. Her job was to protect any civilians caught in the crossfire.
Barely paying attention to the flames around her, she dove into the building. "Hello?" she called. "Does anybody need any help? I am a friend." Silence. The place might be empty. Or everyone might be dead.
There... over the roar and crackle of flames... groaning, muttering. Near the water. She followed the sound, and found a young... somebody... buried under the rubble. Unconscious, murmuring in a language that she couldn't understand. She moved a large chunk of wall off them. "Hello? Are you okay?"
If the person was human, she had been misinformed about the amount of variation in their appearance. But if they were human, they were a young male. Green. Finned. Black markings, maybe tattoos? She propped one eye open to check for consciousness, and it was entirely red, with no obvious iris or pupil.
Well, he'd clearly crawled out of the water, and the fire didn't seem to be doing him any good... she carried him back out to the ocean and lowered his body into it, keeping his head propped above the waves. He kept muttering in that unfamiliar language, but he was grabbing at her arms, sounding urgent even without full consciousness. She could solve that. Starfire bent her head and kissed him firmly on the lips, and the unfamiliar syllables began to resolve into words in her head.
"No... you can't... I'll kill you... if you hurt them I'll kill you..."
"Hey! Little fish man! Wake up!" she said urgently in his language.
He jerked awake. "What... who are you?"
"Starfire. Who are you, friend?"
"La'gaan." His glance took in her face, the minor burns on his own skin, and the collapsing, burning dock behind them all in an instant, and immediately dismissed them all as unimportant details. "Did you see where he took my Team?"
"No... do you need help rescuing them?"
"I would be grateful for any help you can provide." He reached under the water into a small pouch on his anchor and pulled out an earpiece, which he handed to her. "Their communication dropped out, but mine's still active. We'll start with the most likely location. Put this in and I'll brief you on the way."
She did, just as La'gaan dived under the waves. "But where are we going?" she asked, keeping pace above him.
The earpiece crackled to life, emitting La'gaan's voice (which seemed unaffected by the water). "Oil platform about a mile out. There's a zeta platform there. Can you keep up?"
Starfire glanced down at the humanoid shape moving beneath her, then out at the sun slowly setting ahead of them. She could feel true joy rising beneath her ribs, twisting through her body with no effort on her part. "That will not be a problem."
