Cyborg does not get enough love, so I wrote this up. And I fully intend to finish this story.

Did you know? You don't actually have to put disclaimers in your story, at all.

just another mission

The mere presence of a known superhero can have a profound impact on a situation all by itself. 'Situation' usually spelled shituation. As a general rule, amateur perps have little to no cool when they know they've done something naughty, and they do stupid things simply because they know the police is after them. Involve someone like Green Lantern and even career criminals – especially experienced career criminals – start considering their peaceful surrender to the law.

Cyborg couldn't claim to the same status as a core member of the League, but six-foot scary black guys in polished neotitanium and shiny circuit-displays did garner attention. The message got through even better when people started recognizing him as the one cyborg enough of a VIP to actually be known as 'Cyborg'. Add to this the small-town factor and all Cyborg had to do now was sit down somewhere visible and wait. He chose a charming little café in the center of the town, a table outside where his remaining face could catch the breeze and his tin-body could be warmed by the rays of the midday sun. He didn't sit down at any of the small tables: the chairs wouldn't support his weight.

The place was Weskerssville, a medium-small town halfway across the Californian countryside from Jump City. And while Cyborg wouldn't have been here if 'trouble' hadn't brought him, there wasn't much else to do for the superhero. Investigating clues was the locals' job; the good officers who had been so kind to remind him of this repeatedly. He was just muscle, there to be called upon if needed. He wasn't even the primary muscle: they had everything under control.

And so, he contented himself to attract attention.

While doing this, Cyborg busied himself with a digitalization of Greg Iles' Turning Angel that projected in his artificial eye. A waitress brought him his ordered coffee and informed him that his large ham and three dishes of fries would be ready soon, coming in from his left side where he couldn't see her face behind the image of page 258. He took a cautious sip of the hot substance as he ignored the stares and whispers from the other tables.

If he wanted to, he could hear exactly what people where saying in a radius of over a hundred meters, but he'd heard it all before. Maybe there'd be a teenage fan or two around, maybe some metaphobes. Mostly, nowadays, people reacted with varying degrees of fascination and caution.

Cyborg idly wondered if they noticed the way he held his cup; applying no pressure or relying on friction, but almost cupping it in three fast-locked fingers? What part of his almost Two-Face-like countenance did they focus on: the smooth, inflexible dead armor and red sensor-orb on the left side, or the brown on his right?

Not that he cared much anymore. He had grown more than content with being half-machine; for what he had lost, it gave him so much in exchange; benefits that certain other types would kill for, and oftentimes, did. And anyone claiming him to be "inferior" in some way was going to get laughed at raucously if he wasn't a Kryptonian.

He engrossed himself in the slow unveiling of the murder-mystery as he scrolled down the pages only he could see, and wished that all murders could be solved with a thought being processed through one's hybrid-brain. He himself had five bodies in a morgue, all with tri-claw cuts through most of their chest cavities, rather pronounced canines in their mouths and little to no blood inside, which was notable because there hadn't been much blood on the crime scenes either.

Naturally, the local authorities had done the prudent thing upon discovering a bloodsucker infection and called for the specialists… instead of the Justice League. Or the Titans.

That's what happens when mundanes take up stakes and silver bullets and makes a living from high-risk pest control; the undead threat suddenly doesn't seem so serious if average sociopathic war-junkie ex-special forces "normal guys" can deal with it.

Cheshire, who did fall under the the syndicated crimefighters' jurisdiction due to her being a metahuman, was anywhere but in this town if one were to judge from her patterns so far. Cyborg was really just there to make things official: In case things didn't work out, the superhero-community had their backs covered and could say they had not been ignoring the incidents in Weskersville. The dead undead had all been less than one year past their infection, possible less than a week, so the exterminators should be more than enough.

Cyborg "turned" page 281 and ordered his third coffee while the waitress took his proffered XL-plate, now empty from the mountain of a lunch he had ordered. He looked around with his human eye and noted how deserted the place suddenly seemed. Okay, it wasn't fair to the proprietor to scare all the costumers away, so he downed his coffee in one gulp when it was brought to him (it didn't burn him) and left a good tip for not staring too obviously.

He took good time walking through the biggest streets of the inner city where everyone could see him, especially admiring the green summer-shroud covering Elm Street in its full length. Jump City wasn't as bad as certain other cities, but it was still mostly concrete everywhere, largely limiting nature to the few parks, and Titans Island was mostly shrubs and hedge plants where it wasn't a bare rock.

He continued this until night fell; walking, taking in the few sights, window-shopping, occasionally stopping by if he found another café, a very sturdy bench, or the library to scan a few more comics and novellas (you can never have too much data when Moore's Law keeps expanding your memory). He reported in to Robin once, played some online video games with BB (thanks to having installed the Gamestation operations system and most of their games into himself). He mailed three more moves in their week-old game of chess to Raven over the course of the day, saving his knight but still not figuring out how Raven could compete with him without a program that could figure out all the possible next four moves. He talked with Star about culture on Earth and Tamaran, music and interstellar politics (in five different languages to keep up their multilingual skills), and reminded her to change the bandages around her leg from their last altercation with a deathray. And over the course of the day he signed 42 autographs.

When the stars started peering through the receding daylight, Cyborg had finished Turning Angel and was perusing his considerable library for another distraction, ambling through the main street for the sixth time. The teenager stopped in the middle of the town square before a simple statue of Kiloton Man (the only successful crimefighter to come out of this town for the last 30 years), turned, rested in the chassis of his exoskeleton and observed the sunset.

Life was easy when you had a platinum card built into your hand, your body couldn't get tired or ache and entertainment ready within your own cyber-brain at all times.

The town square grew darker as the minutes passed by, the sun sank below the horizon and the moon grew brighter and brighter in contrast to the night sky. And Cyborg stood absolutely still in the middle of it with his hands hanging at his sides, completely submerged in his own consciousness and relying on automated systems to detect incomings. Here I am. If anybody needs me, I'll be standing right here all night. I don't need a bed to sleep, I don't even need to lie down. And why would I need to sleep in the first place?

Everyone stayed indoors tonight, except for one superpowered 18-year-old and several of the more daring vampire hunters in town. No one else was going out tonight, and no one was driving through Weskerssville when they could take a 10-mile detour. Even bloodsuckers were probably staying inside for the night too, if they weren't complete retards.

Luckily, as history has proven so many times, it's hard to underestimate humans' stupidity, no matter how much or how little they're actually human. A factor as reliable as gravity.

The first thing Cyborg did when he spotted the man slowly going towards him, like he was unsure, was give him a full security scan. Exactly fifty-seven different instruments were involved in this process, giving the half-robot detailed information about the texture and material of his clothes, the content of his pockets, a sharp 3-dimensional picture of his skeletal frame, and more. He didn't need all of this, however. It was enough when he realized he hadn't heard that man coming down the street; not his footsteps, his breath, or his heartbeat.

The day that had looked to be so nice and peaceful was over thanks to Cyborg's own efforts. He swore under his breath and resigned himself.

"What's up, man? You don't look too good," he called at the bloodsucker, who stiffened in turn. It was a lanky guy perhaps only five years older than Victor Stone, with messy, brown hair, dressed casually in jeans and a clean shirt over a very bloodstained singlet underneath (his own blood, if the still fresh marks on his jugular artery were any indication), and he was barefooted. It couldn't have been very long since he was turned, and he was probably confused, in a sensory overload from his newly enhanced senses, and thirsty.

The fledgling centered himself. "I think I need to talk to you."

"No problem. I'm here to help," Cyborg assured the walking dead man, trying to convey harmlessness with his body language without being too obvious, showing the vamp his open and empty hands (capable of crushing the other one's head with minimal effort). The vamp didn't seem to know where to start, though, so he tried prodding him, very carefully... "Did somebody jump ya? You look a little shook up?."

The stranger blinked. "Oh shit." His eyes took on an alarmed look. "Uhh, no. I don't know anything about that."

A pause, as he considered his sky-screaming lie and Cyborg tried not to look anything but harmless instead of rolling his eyes.. "Oh shit." He impulsively touched his neck gingerly where Cyborg could see the two little marks. He was going to bolt for it in five if Cyborg didn't do something.

"Look, take it easy, take a couple deep breaths." It wouldn't really do anything for the living dead dude in a physiological way, but maybe the placebo effect would calm him down. "You're safe now. I'm Cyborg, a Teen Titan. I'm here to serve and protect and all that. So take it easy."

"Okay, okay, I'm breathing, I'm breathing... I'm calm, I'm cool."

"Good, do you have a name?"

"Lee, I... I live here – of course I live here – I saw the vampires! It was in – no wait." He seemed to gather his scattered wits. "Mr. Cyborg. It's not the vampires, it's somebody else."

Being Mister'ered by someone older than himself was not a completely unusual occurrence for the super-sized teen, but it still felt strange. "I know. Kimono, extremely long, black hair, big, shiny claws, Cheshire-mask: Cheshire. She's the reason I'm here. Have you seen her?"

"No. No thank god no, I just wanted to say that the vampire - he's not trying to hurt anybody, I mean he didn't bite me when I told him I didn't want any part of that, but it's this freak with the claws; I think they got some kind of beef."

That sounded a little strange. 'The vampire'? Everything indicated there was more than one, but the man was confused, and there was a more important question: "What friend?"

That one put the vamp 's on alert. "I... I'm not telling you!"

"Don't worry. I'm not going to harm your or your friend, even if he is a vampire. Look, let's take this from the beginning again: You've seen some vampires, you've talked to them."

He nodded.

"And they told you about Cheshire?"

Another nod.

"That's all that's relevant to me. If she is still here, and if she's going after this friend of yours, then I need to know how to find these vamps, or Cheshire will kill them. I can stop her, but only if you help me. Bloodsuckers are out of my jurisdiction, and I don't like killing people anyway. If you help me catch a dangerous criminal, I'll get Chessie out of their hair and we'll be out of each others' hair. How does that sound?"

"Heh, figuratively," Lee quipped, alluding to Cyborg's shaved scalp. He was obviously the kind of guy who couldn't help being a smartass even if he had just been made cold. He turned serious again soon enough. "Isn't that illegal, this sort of deal, I mean?"

"What, you being a chicken because it's verboten for me to collaborate with a bloodsucker?" Cyborg grinned at the confused Lee, seeing that his strategy working: subtly indicating that he knew Lee was a vampire too, turning around who was breaking the law and who was chickening out because of it, and using semi-obscure vocabulary.

"No, it's-"

"So are you gonna help me or let Chessie with the claws put some holes in your friend? We might not have all night, you know."

"Look, stop!" Lee gestured wildly. " Í need to tell you something first. I need to tell you tell you what exactly happened"

That would be pretty good too. "Well, go ahead. I'm listening."

"Okay, listen, Os' got by my house last Tuesday, and he told me he had become a vampire. I didn't believe him, but then he showed me his teeth and the things he could do and I was just floored, it was unreal. And he asked me if I wanted to be one too, because he wanted to make me one if I wanted, but I said no and it was cool."

Lee's point was clear enough. "Okay, so your friend isn't a bad guy. I heard it the first time, I'm glad to hear, and I'll be sure to report to the authorities, but it doesn't really change anything. What happened then?"

"Well, nothing. He went home, or, I think he went by some others of our friends and asked them too." Well, that explained the outbreak. The road to vampire apocalypse was apparently paved with good intentions... "But then, umm, two day's ago..."

"Friday," Cyborg informed him while he started transmitting everything he had recorded of their conversation so far back to the tower in Jump, at the same searching the police database for any missing locals whose names could be shortened to 'Os'.

"Yeah, Friday, at night, he and Jessica – um, his girlfriend – they came back and told me that Dave and Edd and Irene had been – been... fuck... god... Fuck! They're dead..." He walked past Cyborg to collapse at the foot of Kiloton's likeness. "Cheshire or whatever killed them... and now she's coming after them... and me."

More names to look up, to re-categorize from 'missing' to 'NNH': Non-human, Non-citizen Hazard until they could be confirmed exterminated. He focused back on Lee, whose breath had shortened and he was scratching his hair. If he could, it looked like he was going to cry, but his tear ducts were still mutating. In a week he'd be able to shed blood from his eyes, but right now his loss had thrown him into fits of the lachrymal equivalent of dry heaving. "When did that happen?"

"I don't know. Tonight."

Cyborg blinked. "Wait, those two came over to you, tonight? Or did your friends-"

"Tonight," Lee interrupted him, aggressively. Cyborg thought he saw a little red gleam in his eyes and played back the auto-rec. Sure enough; little red light; he probably had better night-vision than Cyborg.

Things had developed faster than he'd thought, which meant he had even less time now. "What's their full names, where do they live, where did it happen and where are they now?"

Cyborg had to repeat his questions again but only got the most necessary of info, such as phone numbers and a basic description, besides names and addresses. Oswald Jansen, as Cyborg had found out Lee's friend was named, hadn't given Lee the full report of the situation. When his short interrogation was over and done, he had cleared out exactly how dead a wider circle of Lee's friends were.

"Os' said he was going to give her payback for killing the others, and Jess' asked if I wanted to help them and then she threw a fit when I didn't want to be one of them," Lee continued when the superhero asked about the night's meeting. "Os' was cool, he didn't want to involve me anyway, I think it was Jessica's idea." He had been pacing for a while now, obviously feeling awkward just standing around in the middle of the town square, talking to a metallic superhero. Sometimes Cyborg just forgot that not everybody could just stand completely still without ever getting tired.

"Was that all? They just left after that?" He asked.

"Yeah, I don't know anything else-"

"It doesn't look like it's all,"

Vamp boy stiffened.

Cyborg pointed to his neck. "I can see the bite marks, man. Was it this Jessica girl?"

The somewhat older young man took a few, slow steps backwards.

"You don't have to be afraid of me. As I said, I'm not interested in you. They don't pay me to bother with vampires."

Lee took on a unsettled look of disbelief. "You're kidding me."

"No joke. They really don't think they need us crimefighters for you guys."

"Huh. I guess it's true. There's like a hundred of those hunters out here." 83, to be exact. Robin had done the research from the Tower. "I can smell them, you know. How freaky is that? They're all here to kill me. Fuck me. I'm so dead."

He was essentially right, and Cyborg found it hard not to sympathize with the poor man. "No you're not. You just went through a spider's web of trained professionals and nobody noticed you. I'm sorry your friends died, but you can't let that kill you now. You still have your whole life ahead of you."

Lee wasn't agreeing. He could tell from the way he was scowling and barring his new, Colgate-white fangs when he opened his mouth to protest, so Cyborg kept talking: "Okay, so maybe your life is ruined now, and you'll never get it back. Things are gonna change." Specifically, he was gonna be hunted like an animal, have to say goodbye to his former life and everything he'd worked for until now, including family and friends. And of course he would have to live in a basement for most of the day, stay away from silverware and never eat food anymore. At least he'd still have his skin. "Well, life threw you a big, fat lemon. What are you gonna do with it? Choke on it and die? Do you want to die?"

"Of course not, you..!" He trailed off, not about to say something dumb. Cyborg took no offense.

"Life goes on. And now you really have just about all the time in the world to get your life back on track. Why do you think your friend decided to become a vamp in the first place?"

"Okay, you have all the good ideas. What am I going to do now?"

"Listen good. You still have a few good hours before the sun gets up again, so if there's anybody at all you want to say goodbye to, now is the time. After that: getaway. Don't worry about where you go, as long as it's not via any roads from here." Lee was listening attentively as. "When the horizon starts to get really bright and your skin starts tingling, dig a big hole and bury yourself. That's it, the rest you will have to figure out for yourself. The good new is that you have all the time in the world, so don't rush anything. Except getting out of here. Go go GO!"

Lee started to turn around at Cyborg's sudden outburst, but stopped before he took off running. "Um, I... Thank you, man. Thanks a lot." Adjusting internal brachial setup.

"Don't mention it." Preparing charge-up. Complete brachial adjustment ready.

"Catch Cheshire soon. Goodbye." Charging. Brachial adjustment complete.

And then he was off, with all the speed of a fledgling vampire. Target locked. 17,7m dist – 13,x m/s – koo(x32,677 y2,51) -

Lee's chest liquefied within a tenth of a second and sprayed itself out of him behind him and in front of him. He was dead from the chock before he knew it.

Cyborg looked at the vague hour-glass outline of bloody mess that had been Lee's heart, among other things, still somewhat electrified from the electron-projection he laced his sonic weaponry with. At least Lee had died with hope. That was the least Cyborg could do for him.

On the roof of a white painted mid-rise upwind, a figure was packing his equipment down, seeing that he wasn't going to fire expensive silver rounds for now. As long as he, or his buddies, got the body, they'd be fine with letting the superhero take the kill.

That was how Cyborg still thought of it, no matter how many living dead he dispatched: It was necessary, but it was killing. He didn't know if he wanted to keep feeling bad about this, or if callousness wasn't to be preferred when it was his legal duty to exterminate any NNH's he encountered. If the hunters had been the spider-web Lee thought he had so easily traversed without getting caught, Cyborg was the spider waiting in the middle for the meal to serve itself on a platter.

Two headlights flared up at the end of the plaza like the eyes of a vengeful ghost, coming closer until they slowed down next to Cyborg: a big, white car with the same transparent-blue panels as its owner, and the door already open to the driver's seat. He was sitting himself in before the car came to a stop and was off again.

"This is T.T. Cyborg, authorized crimefighter register-number 106-5-2," Cyborg told his direct line to the joint-force's center of operations, consisting of the local police, town administration and hunter-bosses. He tersely recited his report of the meeting with Lee.

When he was done, he pushed a button on the wide selection in his baby's interface, and a siren started blaring with red and blue light alternating over the car's circuit panels. A female voice informed him that squads of police officers and hunters were being sent to all the residences of the previously unreported vampires, Lee's two late friends, Dave Farmer and Irene Watson. Eddie Soring had already been reported as a vamp by his own girlfriend.

The empty streets made the trip to Lee's apartment a breeze, and with not having to bother with red lights or most traffic laws, Cyborg made it to the tenement complex in 3 minutes and 29,2 seconds. If Cheshire was involved with vampires, then this investigation was within his jurisdiction, and his S.C.A.N.N.E.R.S system could outperform a full team of investigative technicians, and do it in seconds. And if any metaphobic officers had a problem, then they'd have to deal with it through the system, since they couldn't well stop him with their own feeble manpower, and the system would be in Cyborg's favor.

This time, Cheshire would not get away.