Red Flags
Chapter 1
"He's got the flu,"
Beast Boy groaned loudly into his pillow as Cyborg explained the situation to Robin.
"It's not serious but I don't think he should get out of bed for a while." This comment led to another, louder, groan from the changeling.
"But I can't be in bed!" He whimpered, the sentence leading to a good 10 seconds of coughing, "I've got to fight!" he croaked.
"Sorry, beast boy, but there's no way I'm going to let you out while you're like this." Robin said sympathetically. He passed him a box of tissues from one of the med bay counters.
Beast boy sighed and blew his nose. "This is so not fair!" He whined. Robin nodded in understanding.
"Well until you get better we'll just have to fight with one member down." He continued.
"let's hope we have a quiet two weeks." Cyborg added, skimming his eyes over a holographic document built into his forearm.
"You mean- cough - I'm gonna have this for - wheeze - two weeks!" Beast boy exclaimed. His statement was choppy from how sore his throat was.
"Yeah." Cyborg made a face, "sorry BB. I'll try not to kick as much bad guy butt as I usually do." He shrugged.
Beast boy sighed, "dude." He whined, "this is gonna suck." He sneezed into his elbow and grabbed a fresh tissue. "Ugh! I'm already so done with this!"
Robin smirked sympathetically and patted Beast boy on the shoulder, "hang in there BB." He said before beginning to head out the room.
"Hey Cyborg?" Robin added before he had gotten completely out of the room, "is there anyway we can stop everyone else catching what BB has?" He asked, "it's one thing for BB to be out for the count but if none of us can fight then it would be a disaster!"
Cyborg hummed in thought, "well I'd be fine against the cold itself since I'm like 90% metal but you guys are 100% organic and receptive to the virus." He thought out loud, "it's too late to try and create some kinda super vaccine as well." Cyborg hummed for a second time. "I guess the only chance we've got is to try and disinfect everything BB's been in contact with over the last couple days or so." He finally came to a solution.
"So that's what?" Robin replied, "the kitchen, the common room, the training hall, some hallways and his bedroom?" He asked listing off where he had seen Beast boy go over the past few days.
Cyborg shrugged, "sure." Then he sighed, "guess I'm stuck cleaning BB's room. You cool with that B?" He turned to face the changeling; finding him curled up under the covers; a tissue box wrapped under one of his arms.
"Ah… sure… Cy… yeah… yeah! The uh… the… the French toast!" He mumbled sleepily, obviously only barely awake at this point.
Cyborg turned back to a chuckling Robin and shrugged. That seemed like consent enough for him.
…
A sharp clang startled Cyborg out of his disgust.
He dropped the slightly moldy Apple core he'd been inspecting and went to see what the noise had been. The clang rang out for a second time and it only took Cyborg a few seconds to realise it had been coming from under Beast boy's bed.
After scrubbing the kitchen and the common room spotless he had finally resigned himself to the task of cleaning Beast Boy's room. There was no point in running from it anymore.
The place was animalistic.
There was no other way to describe it. Loose pieces of clothing and personal objects lay littered about the place in a kind of chaos that Cyborg could almost be impressed by.
Almost but not quiet. Disgust still held top as the most prominent emotion right now.
So far he had discovered a few things about the boy that he had never known before:
1) His carpet was a kind of teal colour.
2) The guy had a dresser for keeping clothes in. (not surprisingly it was totally unused for anything but holding empty plates and half eaten pieces of fruit).
And finally:
3) His best friend was probably a hoarder.
To help quicken the efficiency of his cleaning Cyborg had set about a little, vacuum cleaner bot to scrub the dirt off the floor. While he, himself, tossed everything gross and beginning to house something living into a trash bag.
Turns out the little vacuum bot had been the one making the clanging noise. Cyborg reached under the bed and pulled it out to see what was wrong.
On closer inspection nothing seemed to be malfunctioning. It wasn't making the sound on its own so it had to be hitting something, Cyborg concluded.
Cautiously he leaned over get a better look at what was under Beast Boy's mattress.
In all honesty, Cyborg had expected something alive to the under there; growling and writhing like some kind of weird mold monster thing.
Hey! With the amount of bacteria swelling within the room it was a plausible thing for it to gain some kind of sentience at this point.
What he hadn't expected was some kind of big, metal trunk. Made of a simple metal and coated with a grey, protective casing. It was flat enough to reside under the changeling's bed without much hassle but was still wide enough so that it could obviously house quite a few things should it need to.
Cyborg's curiosity peaked and without a second thought he reached under and pulled it out.
It was heavier than it looked and took quite a bit of effort in getting it out into the open. But once there… that's when things got interesting.
The trunk was obviously well looked after. No signs of harsh rusting covered any part of the surface and only seemed to be slightly present around the folded metal edges of the lid. The lid, itself, was covered in a thin layer of dust like it had only been left under there for around a month instead of being completely forgotten about.
Either it was a recent addition to the room or it hasn't been that long since BB looked inside it.
Cyborg frowned seeing a heavy lock. It was sealing the lid to the main body and preventing him from getting inside. Whatever this was, Beast Boy didn't want anyone to see the contents... That gave him an idea.
…
"Lady's; gentlemen; My fellow Titan's." Cyborg introduced.
Each of the Titan's sat facing him on the common room couch. The only exception seemed to be Beast Boy, who was still within the locked confines of the med bay. He would be quarantined until it was made sure of that he no longer had the flu.
Raven raised an eyebrow under her hood as Cyborg began to speak.
"You all know me!" He continued, "I'm Cyborg. Also known as Victor Stone. 'Couple years ago I had an accident which led my old man to convert most of my body t' circuitry. You guys know that because I told y'all about it. Everyone here also knows Starfire, the Tamaranean Princess."
"Please! Cyborg what is this about?" Starfire butted in.
"I'm just getting to that," he said, "We all know Robin, he was Batman's Sidekick for years." Robin cringed into the couch. "And finally Raven, half demon and the daughter of Trigon. A big ol' freakshow we managed to get defeat together. "
"Get on with it." Raven sighed. He'd pulled them all away from their relaxation time, and her away from her meditation. If she didn't finish her session she would be cranky for the rest of the day. Even more so if it was interrupted for a stupid reason which, knowing Cyborg as she did, it probably was.
"Alright, Alright I get it." Cyborg chuckled, "I got you all here today to ask you this…" he paused for dramatic effect. "Besides him being in the doom patrol for a couple years. What do we know about beast boy? What was he doing before the Doom Patrol?"
"Well we…" Robin started automatically before realizing he had no real answer. And it wasn't just him who was stuck; the question made each one of the Titan's pause.
It was true that they all knew a lot about each other.
They had to in order to assess potential threats and to make sure each of them was doing okay during battle. Raven and her 'destiny' had seen to the reason why such a rule was a good idea.
But knowledge about Beast boy was few and far between.
Now that he was thinking about it, Robin realised that every time Beast boy's past had been on track for conversation the other always seemed to do something that caused them to focus on something else entirely.
Anything else in fact. Even making a fool of himself. Did he really not want to talk about it that much?
Sure, they knew about his involvement with the doom patrol but anything past that was a blank space. Even his role in the doom patrol had been a secret wrenched out of him by circumstance.
"I mean… didn't he grow up with the doom patrol?" Robin asked, now unsure about his answer.
"If that's the case then why would he leave the team? If he grew up with them then wouldn't they be his family, why leave that?" Cyborg shrugged.
"I'm sorry Cyborg, but I do not understand, where is this going?" Starfire said softly.
Cyborg grinned, "Check it!" He said heaving the metal trunk up onto the coffee table.
"I found this under BB's bed." He grinned.
Robin leaned forward. "And this means...?" He probed.
"I wanna open it!" Cyborg stated.
"But, would that not be an invasion of our friend's privacy?" Starfire pointed out. She didn't feel totally comfortable doing this.
"Yeah, Cyborg. What if it's nothing?" Robin tried to reason.
"If it's nothing why would he hide it? Besides we can just take a quick look and then pretend we didn't see anything. It might even help us look out for him. You know how stubborn BB can be about tellin' us he's hurt."
Robin sighed. He remembered the last time Beast Boy had gotten seriously injured during a battle. He'd continued to fight and even lasted through a victory pizza afterwards before finally letting everyone know he 'might' have broken his arm.
It took Raven less than a minute to fix it, but it was still the fact that he had waited until the agony had become too much for him to tell them what was wrong. And that bothered Robin. How could Beast Boy not trust them that much?
Of course, this had happened just a few weeks after the 'Beast' incident. BB had every right to be cautious with his trust. Robin had acted out of order and let his emotions control him in the panic. He wasn't proud of it but he hoped that Beast Boy had at least seen him make an attempt at being more understanding.
"And uh... what if it's… something more uh…" Robin coughed awkwardly, "private?".
"Private?" Cyborg echoed.
"Well... I mean, beast boy's 17 now, right? And, uh… what do 17 year olds hide in their bedroom?" Robin fumbled over his words a little.
Cyborg blinked. "You mean porn?" He said in a flat tone.
"What?! No!" Robin went bright red. "I mean… uh… do you think it might be?" he whispered.
"In a case this big?" Cyborg asked skeptically, "there's no way."
"Excuse me friends but I have not heard of this 'Porn'; what is it?" Starfire asked innocently. Robin choked on his own spit.
"Nothing you need to worry about Starfire." Raven said calmly. "So you want to Snoop around in Beast Boy's things?" She continued, "how, exactly, are you going to break that lock?"
It was a fair point.
The lock on the trunk was heavy duty and looked expensive. Beast boy had certainly spared no expense in making sure it was 'Snoop' proof. Cyborg voiced this thought out loud.
"Well, 'Snoop' proof to all except you Raven." He smirked.
She raised an eyebrow and shook her head, "No."
"Oh come on Raven, please! You gotta break the lock! If you don't then we'll never know anything about beast boy!"
"There could be nothing in that case." She pointed out in irritation.
"But there's always a chance," Cyborg tried, "look, we all know that BB isn't gonna tell us anything about himself willingly. If there's anything we can find out about him from in here then we should find out; he could be a lot safer because of it."
Raven though for a second before sighing, "fine." She said raising her palm. Cyborg grinned widely, "but you owe me!"
A dark energy surrounded the lock as Raven focused, "azarath metrion zinthos!" The lock burst open suddenly - leaving it hanging from where it had been holding the lid in place.
"Sweet!" Cyborg exclaimed ripping the lock from its place and pushing the lid open.
The second he looked inside… Cyborg lost his smile.
To be continued…