Hey hey hey! Hello again all you faithful readers! :D This is the fiction I promised I was working on after "Saving Grace." It's in Robin's POV and in my mind, it takes place INSTEAD of Tokyo. I actually spend a lot of time with the Tamaranian in this, so you'll be able to learn it! (Not in the first two chapters though)
I've had many people say they don't like Star being portrayed as a wimp. To you that agree, yous gonna like this fiction.
I stared at Starfire. If you knew me well, you would know that that wasn't an uncommon experience. Can you blame me? She was beautiful; tan skin, red rose hair, and glowing green eyes that could bore a hole into your head. Literally. Not every guy could say his best friend could shoot lasers out of her eyes. She had many other wonderful traits as well, such as super strength and utilizing concentrated sunlight from her hands. Did I mention she could fly? I NEVER figured out how she did that. But then again, I didn't think about it much. She wasn't from around here, or anywhere remotely close. The planet Tamaran was in the Vegan system...her home planet. Yeah.
We were in a street fight. Cyborg had been teaching the art of intimidation to her. While just screaming something in Tamaranian did the job just fine, Cy wanted to see if the effect still worked if the threats were intelligible. For all we knew, she could be yelling, "I love bunnies and unicorns," and we would never know.
In this situation, she had a thug by the collar and was about to deliver the finishing blow when she yelled, "I AM GOING TO SUBSTRATE YOUR ENZYME!"
The thug's terror subsided into confusion before his lights went out.
"That was not the correct protocol for a 'threat', was it friend Cyborg?" she asked after the clean up.
"No…not exactly."
"Oh, I feel like I will never get the earthen slang!" She was right to a point; when she was sick she'd say she was 'under a cloud'. When tired, she became 'a shrub'. Fortunately, most of the town knew she was 'visiting' and they expected her to be odd. The restaurants knew that she liked to drink mustard with her marshmallow fluff and oyster sandwiches. The video store was used to her coming in and renting 'The Wonderful World of Fungus', since it was her favorite film. The guys downtown flirted with her relentlessly and she was always confused about what they were saying. In fact, when I told her they were hitting on her, she claimed that they were being very nice and not violent.
"Look Starfire, you've been on Earth for three years, don't you think you should, like, know this stuff by now?" Cy said as he drove us home.
"I have learned much since I first came! As in the VCR only plays the tapes that you put in it, and you will break it if you put something else in. Or that food has gone bad when it becomes fuzzy, it is not evolving! Please friends, you must be patient with me. On Tamaran, you would be more confused than I am here."
"We aren't mad or anything Star," I tried to convince her. "We're simply trying to understand why it's hard for you."
"In my language, there are no euphemisms. You say exactly what you mean. And a lot of your words we do not have words for."
"Like 'nice'?"
"Yes, precisely."
She had definitely changed since she had been here. Before things were settled, she was very quiet and on guard, she didn't trust me, not even when I let her stay at my apartment. She didn't smile much either. Late at night, I would hear her scream in fear of something, but she would never talk about it. As time passed, she seemed to open up more about things that bothered her. She started to ask me questions about earth, to try to understand. She wanted to call our world her home. Eventually she did. Only, I didn't realize how little of a home she'd had in the past.
I was her 'go to' guy. Whenever she had a question, I was the one to answer it, no matter how extremely awkward it might be. I didn't mind of course, I considered her my best friend, and I would have done anything to make her happy. Since she had been on earth for a while, it was not hard to make her happy. She found joy in the simplest things, such as birds chirping outside the window or flowers blooming by the side of the road. She was easily frightened, not fear stricken, but that cute sort of 'hold me, I'm scared,' sort of fright. She hated thunderstorms. Apparently, they didn't have rain on Tamaran, and the thunder and lightning reminded her of explosions. When we watched a scary movie, she would grip my arm or hide her face in my shoulder. Just your typical girl.
Gone away was the furiousness and anger that fueled her when she'd first arrived. Now she was a walking light bulb, encouraging and uplifting everyone on the team. I almost only saw her serious when we got in fights. Raven got irritated by how sickening sweet she was. In general, she was an all around, polite, good-natured alien. She was even good for ballads and poems. Once she recited 'The Poem of Absolute Friendship' to me. All six thousand verses. Yay.
When we arrived back at the tower, Star was quick to disappear. I couldn't stand seeing her like this, so I went to find her. She was in her usual place, the roof. She liked to look at the sky, claiming it made her feel closer to home. I opened the door to the roof where she sat on the edge with her feet dangling off the side. I approached her from behind.
"Hey Star, are you okay?"
"Am I stupid, Robin?" she asked bluntly.
"No…I don't think so. You've never gone to school before and yet somehow you managed to come up with 'substrate your enzyme'. That's pretty smart to me."
"But I cannot adapt to earth! I do not even speak correctly!"
"You speak more correctly then any of us do. It's a lost art form, really."
"Sometimes I feel like I do not belong here."
We had had this conversation before, but it seemed like she never really clung to what I said. Maybe she didn't believe it, or maybe I was proven wrong. "Star, you belong here just like the rest of us."
"But Blackfire adapted so much faster than me! She knew everything!"
"Well, Blackfire had the wrong motives for being here. And aren't you glad that you were having trouble blending in? She couldn't take your place. You're too unique, too special."
"But that does not ease my mind. I have lived here with everyone and I have not changed since I got here. I am still a strange little alien." A sad tear rolled down her cheek.
"We consider you a part of our family. Even the town accepts you! That's huge!"
"But we live in California, they accept everyone."
"True."
"Sometimes…I think about going back to Tamaran…but I'm afraid."
"You're a part of our community, if you left…there would be a lot of people who would miss you."
"Would you miss me?" She looked at me intensely.
"More than you could imagine." I smiled and rested a hand on her shoulder.
She blushed. Another thing that I had not seen from her at the beginning. We sat in silence for a long while, just reveling in each other's company. I looked to her from behind my mask. Her face still looked sad. Summoning all the subtlety I had, I rest my hand on top of hers, and squeezed. She wiggled her fingers will a tiny smile.
Suddenly, a ship vaporized in front of us. A scanner lowered from the ship and used a beam to examine the area. We were frozen in place. "Hassa dress bo fass don loss," a voice said from inside.
"The Gordanians!" Star shouted as she jumped off the roof.
"Wait!" I shouted as I jumped after her. I was caught, however, by a metallic tentacle wrapping around my chest.
Starfire halted her flight. "Robin!"
I knew how much she hated these creatures. She had a running grudge against them. "Get out of here! Don't let them catch you!"
"I will not let them take you instead!" she yelled back, her eyes beginning to glow. But before she could get to me, an even bigger tentacle wrapped around her. How anticlimactic.
"STARFIRE!" I shouted.
She squirmed relentlessly, kicking her legs and thrashing about. But the tentacle would not move. "LET ME GO! TORSE JZORK HUM!" Uh oh, she was using her Tamaranian again.
The ship started to pull us inside and she was panicking. "I don't want to go back there Robin! Help me!"
"Star, please! It's alright! I'm here!"
"No no no…they're going to…I cannot…oh Robin!"
The ship doors shut heavily behind us.
The inside was illuminated by an eerie red light. Star's hair looked like fire as it fell into her face. She was unresponsive and I wondered if she had been knocked out. Giant lizard like men surrounded us and the tentacles loosened. Immediately, they took my utility belt off and carried it away. So much for my idea of escape. But I wasn't going to give up so easily. I shot my fist out only to hit what felt like a rock. One of them grabbed my arm, but I wrenched it free. There really was no sense in me fighting back, they surrounded me, and soon they had beaten the motivation out of me. Starfire was silent and still.
I was cuffed. They walked me down the dimly lit hallway of the ship. Starfire was close behind me. Double thick, arm length cuffs adorned her writs. Much like when we'd first met. They had put a pair of sunglasses on her, I was unsure why, and a Tamaranian headpiece much like the one she wore previously. After making many turns, our grizzly capturers stopped us at a stall with a hose hanging from the ceiling.
One of the guards removed my cuffs. "Pssa fress rets fruss," he spoke in his snake like tongue.
"He wishes you to remove your clothes," Star translated, her voice quiet.
I did as told, not wanting to argue with the reptilian. I deposited my gloves, cape, tunic, boots and tights in a heap on the floor. They were gathered and carried away. Soon, I was left only in the shorts I wear under my uniform and my mask.
"Wess deas rets fruss," he spoke.
"All your clothes..." Starfire said, looking away.
Again, I did as commanded. Reluctantly, I peeled off my mask. My identity was still safe, since the Gordanians wouldn't recognize me. Well, I hoped. He pointed to the stall and I figured he wanted me to stand under it. A few steps and I was under the faucet. What would come out? Water? Acid? I wasn't sure, but I hoped it didn't hurt.
It did.
Some hot black liquid came out fast. It smelled like smoke and irritated my eyes. I just winced as the foul liquid covered my skin and crawled into my cuts. Finally, he turned it off and beckoned me to step out. I was greeted with a cloud of neon green powder. I figured it was some sort of Alien delousing powder. They handed me a small towel to dry off and then re-cuffed me.
Star soon followed suit, stripping bare. I kept my gaze at her tiny feet. They raised their weapons as she moved. Keeping their eyes on her carefully. One guard shoved her, and I reacted, but was held back. She stood complacent under the stream as I studied the area around the cell, trying my best to avoid the Tamaranian beauty. She came up to stand beside me and the guards handed her a uniform.
They had a small discussion about me as they re-cuffed her.
"Seess has goss resst thross ness?"
"Wef gress bus gret doss."
"Fugers gets...lobs streckers."
"GURB!" Star spat out, finally looking lively. "Boo von hur wekle," she spoke in Tamaranian.
The guards all seemed to laugh at what she had said and then shoved a matching uniform into my hands. I had a small inkling that she had just saved my life. But I pushed it out of my mind as a sharp blade pressed into my back.
"Fossss..." he hissed. Walk? Sure, let's guess that's what he said. I went forward, the blade being my guide.
I finally had an idea what Starfire felt like on Earth. Maybe not exactly, because I had her with me to translate. But I was honestly scared. Who wouldn't be? Trapped on an alien war ship, not knowing what was going to happen, being led down into the bowels of the ship...most likely for my doom. I held my breath in anxiety. I wasn't the only one afraid, I could feel Starfire's eyes boring holes into the back of my head.
We passed cells of other monsters, most of them were bigger than me...by a lot. I wondered...was I the only human on board?
Eventually, we reached a door where a guard punched in a complex code. The bulky door opened. It looked to be made out of an extremely dense metal, not to mention how deep it was.
"Truss drev frucss hess nessba rrreesahja," the guard spoke. Star turned and looked in fury, but said nothing. The guard slowly backed away from her. He coughed. "weress."
"Get dressed," she commanded as she began putting on her uniform.
I scrambled with the thing, unused to the metallic sheets. It was almost exactly like the uniform she was wearing when she came to earth. Then again, she had just escaped the Gordanians...I figured the outfit was traditional Tamaranian prison clothing. I just hoped it fit, since I was smaller than a Tamaranian.
Luckily it did.
"I am sorry," she finally spoke as she approached me. I was fumbling with the torque as she took it out of my hands and adjusted it.
"What for?"
"To keep you safe...I told them you were my pet."
I smiled reassuringly. "I don't care, if it keeps me safe. Thanks."
She smiled back.
"Why did you try to save me? You knew they were going to capture you."
"You are my dearest friend. I know the Gordanians. You do not. I did not wish you to have the same experience I already have had."
"Well, thank you for that."
Another of the staff came into the room with a rolled up bundle and a chain. He dropped the bundle on the floor and came to me. "Squass het rekess ness dres Troq gropess."
Starfire growled.
They came up on both sides of her and walked her back to the wall of the cell. A large contraption sat waiting. She took a seat on a white chair sticking out. Her cuffs separated and were magnetized to the sides of it. Like a giant jaw, the top and bottom came together and sealed her inside, only letting her face and torso move freely. While they did this, they hooked a chain to the back of my torque and connected it to the wall. Showed how much they really weren't afraid of me.
The bundle they had brought was a bed. To my joy, it was large, because I was small compared to most of the prisoners. Thank the Lord for interplanetary prison regulations!
"Star?" I asked.
"Please Robin, go to sleep. I am fine. This is how I sleep. It has been a long day, we will do the talking in the morning." It was so odd to hear her take a commanding tone with me. But then again, this was her turf, and I was the alien.
And so I laid down, ready to spend my first sleepless night as a prisoner.