A Line in the Sand: Courage
Alexander A. Allan.
Robin raised an eyebrow. Even his name was normal. The leader of the Teen Titans looked over at the hospital bed and couldn't help but catalogue the features as he had done to so many people in the past.
Brown hair.
Average face.
Nearly malnourished physique.
No muscles to speak of.
And this was the kid.
That's what the papers had dubbed him, anyway. The Kid. They had to call him something, he supposed, even if it was something so vague and unassuming.
Just like him.
Vague and unassuming. He was a carbon copy of an "average joe" student. Average grades, Average looks, Average friends…if he had any.
Then there was his home life.
His father was a convicted felon and his mom was a drunk. Social workers had been trying to get him out of that house for four years. All of them had been by to see him in the hospital and left flowers.
The mother hadn't.
Evidently, she sobered herself up for the monthly Social meetings and boozed out for the rest. So, for the most part, he lived on the streets. Some of the shop owners he had contacted had admitted to seeing him dig half-eaten food out of the dumpsters behind their shops. He couldn't go home for fear of a beating, so the dumpster was the best he could do.
Underneath his gloves, Robin's knuckles had turned white.
He hadn't joined a gang, like so many poor teens had. He hadn't started steeling. If anything, he paid what school fees he needed to with money earned from turning in recyclables picked out from those same dumpsters he ate out of.
And against all odds, he had lived to the age of thirteen.
Robin sighed and looked once more over the sheet of injuries, as if willing them away.
There was massive internal bleeding. His left lung had been punctured by a steel claw. Eight breaks in his legs alone. Another four in his arms. They had had to put pins in his spinal column and stitch back together some of his lower back. Muscle tendons and fibers were torn and ripped nearly beyond repair. Three concussions and a skull fracture.
It was lucky he was in a coma or he'd probably be addicted to pain killers by now.
Still…
He'd been standing on those legs.
Those arms had been holding a baseball bat.
His eyes…brown, but wild, had been wide, staring at the descending forces of the robotic horde. Three dozen robots laid at his feet, his own blood sprayed over portions of their orange and black paint job.
Orange and Black.
"Kid was unbelievable," A voice said from behind him.
"Officer Navor," Robin nodded, recognizing the voice behind one of the police force's elite. Navor was C.O. Combat Ops. One of the few people brave enough to don a storm trooper-esque uniform and stem the tide of civilian casualties.
Two hundred C.O. s couldn't have been expected to handle the invasion of Slade bots. It had taken Jinx and Kid Flash to turn the tide as the Titans took to fighting block by block clean outs of each neighborhood.
The fact that several notorious gangs had banded together to blockade the poverty districts hadn't gone unnoticed by many C.O s, who were now seeking to recruit some of the violent teens.
"I was there, ya' know?" Navor asked. "Kid lives in my area. When…it happened, I was on the first response unit."
Robin flinched. The first response units were the ones that had suffered the most casualties. They paid with blood for a foothold in Hell; a fight every much as hard as Normandy. Navor…didn't deserve that. He had a wife and kids.
"We went down, guns blazing, as the saying goes."
Navor's voice was hollow…distant.
"Three of us went down on the first barrage. Hendricks. His daughter's sixth birthday was next week."
"Gunshots?" Robin asked in a dry voice.
"And lasers." He supplied. "Kid took a shot in the gut…after the unit went down. We had pushed a couple of cars together, made a barricade, but we were losing."
And then…Robin knew what came next, but he wanted to hear it.
"Kid came in swinging. A bat. A damn baseball bat. We had guns, armor, and tech. Then, in comes a kid with a baseball bat and starts beating those bots all to Hell. We were all bleeding and a couple of civvies were tying us down to stop us from getting worse, but..."
"It was your job. You did it," Robin nodded sympathetically.
It was the Titan's job too. Protect the innocent.
And a kid with a bat had stepped up to the plate.
A line in the sand had been drawn that day…and Alexander A. Allan had crossed it.