Umm hi, this is my first Fanfic and I haven't quite found my way round the site yet so hope it's okay... there will be more chapters... this part is from a few years ago and I hope you enjoy it, and comment and review, I'd love to hear what you think :D
Disclaimer: I do not own the Teen Titans or Batman... although it would be cool if I did :)
It was the coldest winter on record for Gotham City so much snow had fallen that it was at least three feet deep on every sidewalk. Snow ploughs ploughed the streets at ten minutely intervals to stop the build-up becoming too much to handle. Nobody bothered to venture out in their cars anymore and the streets were becoming increasingly unsafe. The police no longer ruled Gotham, the criminal did. Even for The Batman attempts to bring back control were futile there was just too many of them he had to find another way…
With his cowl hanging round his neck, Batman sat at his computer looking at the monitor; the Bat-wave was on constantly and was becoming an annoyance. The elevator buzzed and Batman's old butler, Alfred, stepped out of it holding a tray with two cups of hot chocolate.
"Alfred there are too many of them, the minute I put some away more just show up to take their place" Batman said without turning round "They must be up to something bigger or even they wouldn't bother to get up in the morning... thanks Alfred" taking the hot chocolate " I need help."
"Which reminds me to remind you that you are expected at Harvard at noon for your daughter's graduation ceremony" Alfred said coolly "personally I am surprised she stayed after what happened, but then again determination runs in the family" Alfred continued with raised eyebrows directed at Batman who studied the monitor one last time
"There's nothing more I can do here let's go" he got up and walked casually to the elevator the doors opened just before stepping in he turned round and added "well are you coming?"
"Certainly sir, let's just hope Gotham can handle things while we're gone"
Robin was smiling. He never smiled. Looking around his room made him happy; he was going to see his sister for the first time in months and he was going to fool around with his friends doing it. Everything was perfect, the cameras were in place, the sensors were perfectly aligned, connected and he had the receiver. He even remembered to put new batteries in. The only thing that worried him was the information he was giving out about himself and his family. He quickly dismissed the thought; he could trust his friends, couldn't he? He stopped smiling. He had butterflies, what if it didn't work? What if he lost four of his friends that day? What if he was late? Well it was too late to change it now. The thought comforted him a little bit but they also unnerved him. He could change nothing now the first domino had toppled, a chain reaction was in place and there was no stopping it. He felt like the Ozone layer… now he was beginning to think like his sister. He was determined to leave on high spirits. His friends would understand, he would understand if it was one of them and his friends trusted him, he was their leader; he had nothing to worry about.
The helicopter was slowly making its way through the blizzard. After a while the snow became thinner and then fizzled out to heavy rain, spitting and finally sunshine as the helicopter landed at Harvard University. By the time Bruce Wayne sat at his seat the ceremony was ten minutes away from starting. He picked up his program and scammed the list of graduates looking for the name that stood out. He found it on the second page of the extensive list. She had a line dedicated to her; it had an extensive list of qualifications on it.
"She takes after her parents" Alfred said smiling at Bruce lovingly, " what does the asterix mean?"
"It means that she is the graduate that has been chosen to speak at the ceremony" Bruce replied so causally that it received a raised eyebrow from his butler "she was practising on me a last week, it's very good" he added hastily. The arena was almost full with proud parents, Bruce looked around the entrances for Annistasia's other invited guest, but he was nowhere to be seen.
"Five minutes sir, there is still time, young Master Richard does like to cut it a bit close" Alfred reminded Bruce.
"Yeah, but this is even closer than usual, I know he now lives on the other side of the country but he can at least show up to his own sister's graduation..."
The seating area was full of students of all different ages, Annistasia was the youngest and the one with the most qualifications to her name, the rest of the people in her classes were at least five years older than her (all apart from her best friend, Sofia, who was sixteen), and yet she had been asked to make the graduation speech. A million things were going through her mind, nerves were taking over, and there were just so many people in the stadium.
"Nervous?" Annistasia jumped at the voice of her friend
"A bit!" the friends exchanged warm smiles which settled some of Annistasia's nerves.
"Hey Tia, wouldn't it be cool if the guy's athletics team could've got this reception?" she laughed Tia also smiled and they grasped hands "Tia, you're going to be perfect like always, I'll be here with my fingers crossed all the way through if you want me to." She looked at her friend's face and asked "come on Tia what's wrong, you can tell me, I'm your best friend"
"My father's here, I just want to make him proud" Tia confided in her friend
"You're the smartest fourteen year old in the country, heck you smarter than most of the world's population, if you father is not proud of you then I will have serious words with him, who is he?" Sofia replied stressing the last part of her sentence sarcastically.
"Urr well, he's umm… Bruce Wayne" Tia lifted her head a little.
Sofia stared at her friend, open mouthed not quite believing what she was being told
"Wait a minute, we've known each other for four years, right, and only now, only NOW do you mention that your dad is a multi-billionaire, NOW!" her friend had a look of astonishment mixed with warmth, this looked like a pig that was stuck pushed up against a piece of glass, it made Tia forget all her nerves and truly laugh.
"You'd better get backstage the ceremony's about to begin"
The world is made up of three types of people; the good, the bad and the greedy. The greedy would do anything for what they desire, even kidnap a defenceless fourteen year old daughter of a multi-billionaire...
"All the students at Harvard University have done outstandingly well, but this year's top graduate and winner of the International Senior Michelin Award for her breakthrough teleportation invention, Annistasia Wayne" stadium burst into applause. No one came out onto the stage. The announcer disappeared behind the curtain. There was a sudden flash of light. A plume of smoke completely covered the stage. The audience were frozen with shock. The smoke cleared and a figure could just be made out, if he wasn't wearing a bright pink pig suit then he would have been virtually impossible to see in the chaos of a stage.
"Oink oink, Wayne, oink if you ever want to oink see your daughter again we want oink seven million dollars cash oink we will contact you later with oink the details of the drop-off circumstances oink, if you fail to comply then we will not hesitate to oink dispose of you precious Tia oink." Smoke filled the stage again and he was gone. Bruce immediately got up off his seat and ran down the stairs, taking them two at a time; he jumped onto the stage and into the smoke. As the last of the wisps of the smoke screen had cleared Bruce Wayne could be seen, distraught and making a call on his mobile...
"What's oink that" a pig-man grabbed Tia by the throat he was indicating to her Batwave.
"Just my PDA reminding me about the graduation speech, I'm very forgetful!" she lied, normally she would never have convinced anyone with her lying but the pig like creatures were very stupid, and they bought it which caused Tia to believe that there was someone else pulling the strings. "I'll just turn it off" Tia surreptitiously wired the Batwave up to an invisible headset her father had given her for her birthday...
"Master Bruce, are you ok? In the circumstances?" Alfred inquired out of breath from running down the stairs. People where shouting… screaming; sirens were howling and Bruce Wayne was silent. To him everything was going in slow motion; there was no sound just an empty world that had sucked all the air out of his lungs.
"It's all my fault" he said in a whisper, then turned to Alfred "who would want to kidnap Tia, no one even knew she was my daughter, so to speak."
"No one but them, Master Wayne"
"I know Alfred, I should never have let her come here, I should have made her stay in…"
"It is not your fault Miss Wayne was very committed to coming here after she was accepted and anyway as you said no one but they knew who she was and who you are so they would have probably found her anyway, you tried your best."
"Thank-you Alfred, we need to get In touch with a couple of banks, we need to play it their way for now, and where is Richard?, we need his help."
"Dude you have been in there for ages, other people need to use the bathroom you know" he was banging on a door "Grrr, I give up" he stopped and turned away, just then the door slowly opened, "thank-you final… urrr Robin?" the room was empty and the window was opened, he walked hurriedly away from the door and to another nearby. He burst into the room and looked around angry. All he saw was a short note scribbled on a Wal-Mart coupon on the bed. He read it a couple of times just to make sure he was reading it correctly;
Guys
Sorry I had to go but It's sort of family business
See ya later
R
P.S. please don't let Beast Boy into the fridge the cake is for someone special.
'Should've known something like this would happen, what do we do if some big shot super villain attacks, typical Robin being all mysterious' the thought ran through his mind all the way till the houses living room on the top floor he opened the door and proclaimed
"Guess what guys Robin's left"
"And…" came a voice from the corner of the room
"Rae, Robin just got up and left, without telling us where he went, you don't find that a little strange."
"No, if he wanted us to know where he was going he would tell us" she got up, her long black cloak collected around her feet as she hovered, her face was pale and emotionless, her eyes stared at the man with the intent of not backing down.
"Have you forgotten the Red X episode?, Robin went completely psycho and all the time we didn't know where he was and he pretended to be a criminal to get in with Slade, or the time when Slade tried to make him his apprentice by implanting US with nanobots to kill us anytime he liked unless Robin did everything he said… we shouldn't just let Robin off on his own, it nearly always almost gets us killed!" he was out of breath. He looked wound the room as he slowly breathed. Everything was as it should be, the sofa was in the same place, and whole, the TV was still there and the remote nowhere to be seen, he could imagine the fun Beast Boy and himself would have looking for it, it was a tradition. They might complain about at the time; but they secretly loved it. The kitchen looked alright, so did the computers. There didn't seem to be anything dangerous of unidentified around. Raven had been watching him as closely as he had surveyed the room. He eyes were narrow and her face was almost smiling. He had calmed down when Raven said
"Aww Cyborg, you sound like Starfire being all concerned about him like that. I haven't forgotten about his past but, to be perfectly honest Slade is gone and we watched Robin burn his Red X costume so I don't think we have anything to be worried about, I also don't think we should get involved in Robin's personal life." Then she hovered over the sofa and soundlessly sat down. There was an awkward silence. The two looked at each other, as if in a staring contest, then Raven silently went back to her reading and Cyborg went to make waffles. The silence was only broken when they heard the door open.
"My nose is burning." The voice of a girl, who was so happy it radiated out of her, came from behind the two quarrelling teens, in the direction of the door.
"Star what happened, are you OK, why is your nose burning?" Cyborg said rushing over to the girl
"Isn't that the earth expression for when you are being talked about, 'my nose is burning'?" the girl asked inquisitively,
"Urrr, normally it's my ears are burning, "
The girl looked disappointed at the answer and simply answered
"Oh" her mood had suddenly fallen and she flew with her head hung to the sofa and sat down next to Raven. Her head suddenly jolted up as though she had remembered something,
"May I enquire about what you were conversing about before I entered the room?"
"Star, Robin's gone…" Cyborg started…
"GONE! Gone where? Is he OK? When will he be returning? Who is he with?" Star looked visibly shocked, shaken and scared.
"Star, calm down, to be perfectly honest we don't know" Cyborg tried to reassure her but failed.
"Calm down? How can I calm down? Robin is out alone and we don't know where he is, why aren't we searching for him? Have you forgotten the Red X or the Slade, what happens if Robin is captured or worse…"her voice trailed off and Cyborg looked sufficiently smug at Raven
"See Rae we should be looking for him"
"Really?" she said sarcastically "Cyborg you can if you want but don't blame me if Robin is upset with us afterwards an anyway by now he could be on the other side of the galaxy."
"Actually he's on course for Boston, and he's late" the three teenagers suddenly looked around the room confused
"Robin?..." Starfire questioned
"Yes Starfire" Robin's image suddenly appeared on the monitor they use as a TV
"Robin…O Robin we have been so full of the worry, please don't go off again without the notification" Starfire pleaded clasping her hands together.
"We? As far as I can see it was only you and Cyborg that were worrying about me" Robin said slyly
"Wait how long have you been watching us?" Cyborg demanded
"Since you picked up the letter, state of the art notification system running on pressure sensors, my sister invented it" he replied happily.
"Dude, that is so not cool!"
"Yes it is Cy. Yes. It. Is!" he finished with a smug smile.
"So… when will you be back?" Raven asked slowly
"Yes Robin. When will you be returning? and why could you not take us with you to the Boston?" Starfire demanded annoyed.
"Star, you're an orange alien, with bright green eyes orange hair and a purple costume that looks like you have come out of the 60's, Cyborg is half man half machine who has a gun instead of an arm, Raven is a pale girl with a gemstone, on her Ajna Chakra, blue leotard and matching cloak, and Beast Boy is green, and well… green." Robin stated
"Yes and you're a teenage boy in tights, a red shirt that looks like a waste coat, a black cape and a mask, it's not like you can just blend in with a crowd wherever it is you're going" Cyborg replied with the same annoyed tone as Starfire.
"I'm going to a my sister's graduation, and, I'm going as my 'secret identity', no one will suspect a thing" the Titans looked dumbstruck at the monitor
"You…you…you have a secret identity and you didn't tell us!" Cyborg whined
"Urmm… don't you guys have secret identities?" Robin inquired as if he knew what the answer was going to be
"Only Beast Boy, which we know of" Cyborg replied
"WHAT! Only beast boy, I thought we all had secret identities and that you guys just like being all heroed up and so didn't change." Robin harboured a distressed and puzzled look "wait…so I've lived with you guys for what now, a year and you never once thought to mention that you didn't have lives outside the Teen Titans?" At that Cyborg was furious,
"Why is it always our fault? You know you could have told us that you had a 'secret identity'" Cyborg fumed wafting air quotes at the monitor "you're supposed to be our leader, but half the time we can't even trust you to tell us who you are, where you're going or what you're doing!"
Robin looked down for a minuet contemplating, he looked slightly upset, the thought that he was the only one with a secret identity never came to his mind, every superhero he knew had one, then again he didn't know many superheroes. He slowly raised his head and looked directly at his friends
"Do you guys really want to know who I am" he started slowly
"Oh yes pleases Robin. It would be so nice to know your identity of the most secret!" Starfire said excitedly
"Then there is a jet that I was sent in the hanger, fly to these co-ordinates, I'll be waiting" he cut off. The monitor went black and the three Titans were left staring at each other. They stood up together and turned to the door as if they were sharing brainwaves the three parted with Cyborg saying
"I'll get BB"
Thanks for reading... please review :)