Chapter 3: Paranoid

A/N: Now the fun really starts.

In Tokyo, the teenaged superheroes enjoyed their time free from duty, but back in Jump City, destruction reigned.

White, grotesque monsters had invaded the city perimeter scant hours before, and the Titans East found themselves helpless to stop them.

Hastily gathered eyewitness accounts gathered told of mysterious invaders-giants with red eyes and hulking limbs—that had come out of the mountainside itself, materializing into white abominations that absorbed grass and dirt into their skin to camouflage themselves against the hills they traveled down. Some described them as fairy tale beasts: creatures with the power to emulate and weaponize nature itself, summoned by an unknown master to pursue an unknown agenda at any cost.

A brief altercation with the investigating Titans East at the city limits only agitated the beasts. Naturally, the teen heroes responded by increasing hostilities, but the monsters resisted the Titans' attacks with little effort, and soon passed by them with the ease of waves over rocks.

A technological problem compounded suspicions regarding the group's emergence: an unexplained electro-magnetic surge knocked out the city's power and satellite signals minutes after they met the city's substitute custodians, leaving the city a field of black. The timing could not have been coincidental: even the Titans communicators were fried.

Back at the scene of the invaders' first appearance, Bumblebee fought the urge to tear her hair out in frustration. Mas y Menos had just reported new sightings of the monsters in other parts of Jump. According to the twins, the monsters-several dozen total-had cropped up in all different directions, and each group seemed to be moving toward the same place: Titan Isle.

"We've identified their trajectory," Bumblebee barked to her teammates. "They're heading for the Tower, and nothing we've thrown at them has done anything except make 'em mad." She looked in turn at each of her teammates' grimy, defeated faces. "We focus on evacuation. Aqualad, take the docks; Speedy, you're downtown; Mas y Menos, get to the industrial district."

Speedy and the twins nodded and took off on foot. Aqualad hesitated. "How about you?"

"The Wayne building. If there's any way to get a signal for help, It's there."

"But how? Our communicators are broken."

Bumblebee's fingers sparked and the charge swam to the gold and steel stingers held tightly in her fists. "I'm thinking they just need a little power."

She zoomed high into the air and headed for the Wayne Enterprises skyscraper at city center. "Should'a told those guys to come straight home," she seethed. "What are they doing, now?"

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"Robin, I trust you implicitly," Starfire began. "You are my best friend and there is no one in the universe I hold closer to my heart . Regardless, I feel I must impart to you the enormity of this information: you must never abuse this knowledge."

He nodded, stepped closer to her and gathered her quivering hands in his. "I promise."

She took a deep breath. "Complete emotional control is the key to the value of a Tamaranian warrior. You already know that our flight is derived from joy, but there is more." Another deep breath. "Our great strength stems from self-confidence, and lack thereof leaves us as powerless as our Earthen counterparts."

"I see. And your starbolts?"

"They are fueled by fury that burns as a fire in my heart. Conviction that my fury is justified allows that fire to spread to the surface."

"Anything else?"

"When I feel invincible, I am."

He looked at her quizzically.

"Nearly," she added. "Like my strength, the more strongly I feel the emotion, the stronger the effect it has."

"That would explain a lot," he mumbled to himself.

"Yes?"

"Yeah, um, I noticed a long time ago that major blows affect you arbitrarily. Sometimes you get hit with the kind of force that would kill me and you're fine-other times a lesser hit knocks you to the ground-dazes you. I guess you didn't feel so invincible those times?"

"Sometimes. Mostly I am the victim of surprise-such as when Terra attacked us and toppled me over a cliff with a boulder meant for you."

"But you weren't unaware," he argued. "You had time to push me out of the way."

"You are correct," she admitted. She tucked a few strands of hair behind her ear and kept her head forward. "But when I saw you were in danger, I did not feel so invincible."

"I see."

"It is also difficult to summon a false emotion-especially multiple ones at once that conflict with one another; I must feel joy to fly but fury to fire my starbolts. It can be tiresome at times. Other times, I must summon joy amongst inexplicable sorrow-such as facing Trigon while mourning the loss of Raven, or staying strong when Slade forced you to fight against us."

"Wow. It sounds stressful to say the least. No wonder you're happy all of the time. If you brooded like me you'd never leave the ground."

She shook her head. "My control is unimpressive. On Tameran, we have a league of warriors who train from birth to have complete control over their emotions. To them, anger, joy, confidence-they are not reactions to external stimuli, but tools to use in battle, summoned at will."

"It sounds like you admire them."

"I do. To not be chained by emotions is something many people-even on Earth-could appreciate."

"'Many' people," he repeated. "But not you?"

"You do the seeing through of me once again. It is a valuable trait to a warrior, but as a leader it can be dangerous."

"You speak as though you have personal experience.

"Blackfire consistently boasted about her capabilities as a fighter."

"I remember."

"I attribute the skill she demonstrated in our youth partially to her emotional control, but you have seen first-hand how her lack of compassion for others affects her judgment."

"Yes, I have," he said seriously.

She blushed, suddenly self-conscious. "I apologize again. I did not mean to engage you in such an intense conversation on our first date."

"'S' okay," he shrugged. "We have a lot to talk about. It was bound to come up sooner or later."

"Thank you for your understanding." She grasped his hand and they moved closer until their foreheads touched.

He angled his head toward her, seconds away from kissing her.

"Riiiiiiiiiiing."

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With a groan, Robin pulled away from Starfire and answered his ringing communicator.

Bumblebee appeared amid a background of steel, concrete and gray sky, and her face broke out in a huge grin as soon as she saw him.

"Robin!" she shouted, "It's—" Static interfered with her call, causing the video feed to come through as pixilated chaos and cutting off some of the words. "—bee!"

He couldn't tell if she sounded frantic or simply her normal, excited self. "Robin here," he responded. "What's the trouble?"

"No-trouble! Just-check-in-!"

"Did you catch that?" He asked Starfire, concerned.

"Not quite. Perhaps there is 'no trouble' and she is doing the 'checking in?'" She suggested.

Robin's lips tightened. "Maybe," he responded, then retracted his fingers from Starfire's grasp to hold his communicator in both hands. "Everything's fine here; we took down Sykotek and as of now plan on leaving tomorrow morning. What's your status?"

"Status is-good! -criminal activity-under control-!"

"Glad to hear it," Robin said, relieved. The connection hissed loudly, obscuring any response Bumblebee may have offered.

He tried again. "So we'll just see you tomorrow, then?"

"-!" The line crackled, then died.

"Bumblebee?" he attempted to re-dial her, but his screen gave him an error message without even ringing.

"I am sure they are fine," Starfire tried to reassure him. "They can handle themselves most adequately."

He dialed Speedy's T-comm anyway. The screen flashed: "Initializing. Initializing. Connection Error."

"I don't know," Robin disagreed, his instinctual paranoia prickling. "What if Slade came back, or the Brain's army is free already?"

He tried Aqualad next. "Initializing. Initializing. Connection Error."

"No one has personally seen Slade since we defeated Trigon, Robin, and we made sure that the Brain and his army are well-guarded. I am certain all is the okay."

Mas. "Connection Error."

"But the robot-Slade that Beast Boy-"

Menos. "Connection Error."

She smiled and squeezed his hand, and he found it hard to swallow over the lump that formed at the sight of Starfire gazing at him with those gorgeous green eyes of hers, moving steadily closer to him until he could smell the perfume on her skin. "When did she start wearing perfume?" he wondered.

"Trust your teammates," she implored. "They are more than competent enough to handle whatever situation might arise. Besides, we are many many miles away; if they needed aid, I am certain they would reach out to someone close by, such as Kid Flash."

"Kid Flash?" he gulped.

"Yes. You mentioned he and Jinx would be extracting her belongings from the hideout formally belonging to the Hive Five this week, did you not?"

He blinked. "Yeah, yeah I did." He backed up, and the distance cleared his senses as fully as if he had taken an antidote to Poison Ivy's serum. "I'll check in with him."

"Initializing. Initializing. Initializing."

"Come on," he silently urged. "What's taking him so long?"

"Call unanswered. Leave a message?"

Robin slammed his communicator shut. "Something's wrong," he said. "I can't get a hold of Titans East and now Kid Flash isn't answering?" He shook his head. "We need to go home, Starfire. We shouldn't have stayed this long, anyway." He saw her cringe as she registered the implications of his last words, watched her shoulders wilt as self-consciousness overtook her earlier confidence, but he didn't have time to take care of her sensitivities this second. His friends could be in danger.

He opened his communicator to call Herald. The trumpeter could transport them all back to Jump in a few scant minutes. They'd come back for the T-Ship later, and-"Caller Unavailable."

"Caller Unavailable?" he blurted out. "What does that even mean?"

"Cyborg hypothesized our communicators might not work in some of the dimensions to which Herald travels-he has not had enough time to test which ones," Starfire answered timidly.

"We're leaving," he told her firmly. "Now." He wrapped his arms around her waist in preparation of flight. "We need to get back to the hotel-" "She looks so scared all of a sudden." "-Wake the others and fly back to Jump." "Later. I'll comfort her later." Her muscles tensed and she hugged him tight to her. She usually did just before a launch, but this time she hesitated, holding him to her longer than necessary. He felt his hands tangle in her hair, seemingly moving of their own accord, and he breathed in the lilac-scented shampoo she used as his nose nestled in her neck

"Robin, I..." she trailed off and laid a hand against his sternum, as if to push him away.

He brought his head up. "Star-" Over her shoulder he spotted the screen on his communicator flashing. "Incoming call," the words read."Kid Flash."

He drew the right side of his body away from her to take the call, but kept his free arm tightly wound around her waist. "KF," Robin answered, relieved. "Are you-what happened?"

The speedster-from the waist up as could be seen on the screen-appeared in a state of distress, his clothes torn, his hair mussed, his mask fixed crookedly to his red and white splotched face. In the background, Robin could clearly see upturned tables, broken lamps and chairs tossed on their sides, as if a tornado had whirled through the tiny apartment his friend inhabited in Central City, Missouri.

"What?" Kid Flash asked, confused. "Nothing happened."

"But your uniform, your place."

A tuft of bubblegum pink hair appeared in the bottom left-hand corner, drawing the hero's attention downward before he snapped back to attention.

"Hmm? Oh, yeah, remodeling, actually." He tilted the communicator upward and the tuft vanished, but Robin could still see his free hand bat away something outside the screen.

Robin scrubbed a hand down his face. "Is Jinx there?"

Kid Flash flushed from ear to Adam's apple, though he immediately began shaking his head in denial.

The witch in question stood up and moved in full view of the camera, dressed in her usual attire of striped stockings and black dress with full sleeves, and wearing her ever-present wicked smile. "Hi Robin," she purred. Her eyes traveled to somewhere behind Robin's shoulder, then settled on the spot where Starfire's hand now clutched at his tunic. She grinned suggestively at Kid Flash. "Looks like we're not the only ones who have been 'remodeling.'"

Kid Flash's embarrassment melted away, replaced by a look of mischief, his arms folded over his ribs and a wide smile creeping across his lips.

Robin pulled the rest of the way from Starfire, and her hand fell away from his chest.

"Something you forgot to tell me, boss?"

"Not one thing," he said, sharper than he'd meant to. "I need a favor."

KF straightened his posture and mock-saluted him. "Anything for you, boss."

"Status report on Jump."

The speedster slumped and his hand flopped to the side. "Anything but that."

"I just received a possible distress call from Bumblebee that was interrupted by variables unknown. I attempted to contact the other members of Titans East, but something's wrong with their communicators."

Ask Herald. He'd be way faster."

"Dimensionally unavailable. What's the big deal? You're going there anyway to pick up Jinx's stuff, aren't you?"

Kid Flash puffed up. "Been there and back; they don't call me the 'Fastest Boy Alive' for nothing."

"Though that's not always for the best," Jinx teased, and draped herself on his shoulder like a cat.

"Jinx," Kid Flash whined and rolled his eyes.

"Focus," Robin admonished them. "I still need you there. It's too far for Raven to teleport and it would take Starfire and Beast Boy too long to fly."

"Don't you have a jet?"

"If we left now we'd arrive in ten hours; that's too long."

"It's like 1900 miles away and we just came back from there last night," KF protested. "That'd take me close to three hours with Jinx, and before you suggest it-" he added upon seeing Robin ready to interrupt. "I'm not leaving her behind."

"Then you'd better get started."

Kid Flash groaned, but stopped when Jinx straightened and regarded him seriously.

"Honey, distress signal, remember? I know you're tired and...excited, but your team needs you. Come on, if we leave now we'd make it by ten o'clock Cali time. We'd still have the rest of the day to chill out with Titans East and relax in their big ole Tower."

He nodded, mollified, and faced the communicator. "If you don't hear from us in three hours, you'll know everything is fine."

"I'd rather hear from you either way," Robin said uneasily.

Kid Flash waggled his finger as though speaking to a naughty child. "Nuh uh. I'm on vacation; I'm not giving you one more minute of my time than is necessary. Besides, it's...what time there?"

"Eleven," Robin grunted.

Kid Flash whistled. "Exactly. I'm not waking you up at two in the morning to let you know everything's okay. You need your beauty sleep, boss; I know how grouchy you get otherwise."

"Fine. But be careful."

"Will do, Bird Boy," Jinx said. She swept the communicator up from Kid Flash's hand and winked as she thumbed the 'End Call' button. "Don't worry, I'll take good care of him. Ta ta for now." She twirled her fingers in a goodbye wave and the screen blanked.

Robin sighed.

"Do you feel better?" Starfire asked. Her tone approached nonchalance, but her concerned eyes gave away her worry.

"Somewhat," he admitted. "Still, we'd better get back. We have an early morning."

"Of course," she said.

He scanned through his communicator's contact list, hopeful to come across the name of someone he'd forgotten would be near Jump."Didn't Jericho say he had family in California he wanted to visit before he returned to the mountains?"

She chanced a shy smile at him. "Perhaps when we return to Jump and you have seen for yourself that all is well, we may resume our date in another setting."

"No, he said his...father lived in California, but indicated they weren't close so..."

"Huh? Yeah, sounds good."

Starfire reached out and covered Robin's screen with her fingers.

"Robin?"

"What, Star?"

"Did you not say you wished to leave?"

He clipped his T-comm back into his belt. "Yeah, sorry, Starfire. I got a little-"

"Obsessed?" she offered, cocking her head with an expression of innocence a bit too convenient to be completely ingenuous.

"Distracted," he amended.

"Mmm," she hummed, and narrowed her eyes.

"Something wrong?"

"Nothing you can think of," she said under breath, and floated with her arms outstretched so she could fly him by his hands, rather than holding him to her torso to torso. "Ready?"

"Yeah," he answered, and grasped her wrists tightly.

They took off into the starry night sky without another word between them, dinner and romance forgotten in light of the potential crises.

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The flight back to the hotel did not grant Starfire the pleasure she usually sustained from flying with Robin, and if his silence and fierce concentration told her anything, he felt the same.

When she released his hands upon his feet touching the sidewalk in front of the hotel, he broke away from her immediately and nearly sprinted to the door. He impatiently waited for the automatic doors to part for him and darted through them when they did.

Starfire sped after him, her sandals slapping loudly against the concrete as she clambered into the lobby, brightly lit despite the late hour. The clerk smiled at her but she paid him no heed past a hasty wave on her way to the elevator, where Robin stood tapping his right foot and waiting for the elevator to reach their floor.

It dinged once Starfire reached him, and he slipped inside with a quiet "Good timing."

"Perhaps I should have taken the stairs," she thought to herself. "No," she chided herself. "It is not about me, or us; a problem has arisen in the Titans Network, and his leadership skills are needed." While she secretly wished he could switch effortlessly from date-Robin to leader-Robin and back again, she had learned long ago that Robin could not compartmentalize like she could; he would likely remain in the 'leadership mode' until they reached home.

Still, it hurt to be brushed away so quickly.

Mere hours ago they had shared in laughter and companionship; she had confided in him her people's greatest secret and they had nearly kissed. Then Bumblebee called and the caring, attentive Robin vanished. Still, he had comforted her in her fear until Kid Flash began the teasing, and he distanced himself from her once more. "Why is it that in the presence of other people he changes his mind about us?"

When the elevator reached the penthouse floor, Robin rushed out and through the living room without a single word. Starfire trailed after him, slowly. She paused when she heard the door to his bedroom rasp close, then padded over to the room opposite his where Raven would doubtlessly be asleep by now.

She glanced at Robin's door. "Good night," she whispered, and opened her bedroom door.

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Robin strode over to the window, thankful he didn't have to share a room with Cyborg and Beast Boy next door. He retrieved a thin, cloth-sleeved package from the space between the wall below the window and the personal heating and cooling unit in front of it, and brought it over to his bed.

He withdrew a small tablet from the sleeve, about the size of both of his hands held together, and turned it on. As soon as the device buzzed to life he selected the web browser app and typed in the web address for the Jump City Gazette, ready to check out the headlines and attempt to isolate the cause of Bumblebee's distress signal.

"The website is currently unavailable."

"What?"

"This may be due to the amount of web users logged in or a temporary maintenance check."

He checked to make sure his tablet had connected successfully to the hotel's wi-fi and refreshed the screen, but the message remained.

"Please try again later," it advised.

"If it's 11:18 p.m. here, it's..." He did the mental math. "9:18 in Jump, a few hours after the latest news postings-no way they'd schedule maintenance for now." He opted to use a basic search engine instead and experimented with a series of keywords intended to draw out any articles written by other news organizations in the past twenty-four hours about Jump-related disasters, criminals, or the Teen Titans.

Twenty minutes of searching yielded nothing more than a snippet about Red X evading capture by the Titans East after a sighting in the city's tech district. "Must be after a Xenothium fix," Robin figured. The article's time stamp put the report around the same time Cyborg made the phone call to Bumblebee. She'd logged off in a hurry, citing an alert-"It must have been Red X." After that, no problems reported.

He briefly contemplated going to bed; he hadn't lied to Starfire when he'd said they would need to rise early, but he couldn't clamp down on the paranoid part of him that told him something was wrong back home, and that he had only to look in the right place to find out what.

"How about social media? If something's happened, someone would have posted about it."

He tried Reddit first and searched through the same keywords as before, but the most interesting article seemed to revolve around Reddit writers' attempts to discern the identity of the Titan's leader. Fan favorites included a Brazilian gymnast heart throb and an American motorcyclist dare devil.

He tried Tumblr next and cycled through a series of tags. "Nothing," though he might have laughed about what he did find if he had been in a better mood. He found that Tumblr bloggers used the site to post pictures of the team members and speculate about their relationships. One photo taken at the Pizza Parlour captured Raven glaring at Beast Boy, who teasingly reached for a piece of untouched pizza on the sorceress's plate. "Can you feel the sexual tension?" The caption read.

"Good thing Raven doesn't know how to use a computer," Robin thought. "She'd flip if she saw this."

Twitter users commented on everything else, ranging from the Titan Tower's state of disarray (courtesy of Sykotech), to Titans East's second visit as Jump's substitute custodians, to commentary on Jinx's recent probationary induction into the Titans.

Yawning blearily, Robin selected the Youtube app and cycled through the usual search terms. Nothing jumped out at him, but he scrolled through the results anyway. The thumbnail of one video caught his attention: Starfire's vibrant red hair. He skimmed through the video's description and clenched his jaw at the summary: "First RobStar kiss caught on camera!"

"No," Robin whispered, and clicked on the video.

The screen filled with a shaky-cam's point of view of himself rooting through inky sludge to search for Starfire's body. Japanese chatter accompanied the footage, but Robin had no idea what the female speaker thought of the scene before her. The figures in the distance swam in and out of view as the camerawoman jogged closer, and the camera steadied just in time to catch Robin and Starfire leaning in to lock lips.

"So much for maintaining an air of professionalism," he grumbled quietly. "The kiss happened less than a day ago, and it's already on Youtube? I can't believe I didn't think about that—in this day and age, everything's recorded. I should just count myself lucky it hasn't already made it to the other realms of social media."

The video's time stamp marked its posting as only a few hours before. "No wonder. Give it until morning, I guess."

He groaned. As if Cyborg and Beast Boy didn't have enough to tease him about. At least he could count on Raven to be civil. But what would Starfire-

"Starfire!"

He hadn't even told her goodnight-just left her on the sidewalk after they'd touched down outside the hotel and scrambled for the elevator, intent on researching the situation in Jump.

"Not that there even was one." He scrubbed a hand down his face. "So I ruined our night for no reason."

He checked his watch. "One o'clock. She'll be asleep by now—I'll have to wait until morning to make it up to her."

He yawned but didn't have any interest in sleeping, yet. "What can I do until then?"

A/N:

1.) I don't know if Bumblebee produces the electrical charges mentioned, but for the sake of this story, she does. Also, I made her stingers gold because it conducts electricity incredibly well, and steel because gold is soft and wouldn't be suitable for combat, so to compromise I decided to give her steel rods coated in gold.

2.) We know a Wayne Enterprises building exists in Jump because "The Apprentice, Part 1" in season 1 includes a fight between Robin and the Titans that takes place on a building with a gigantic "Wayne" sign on it.

3.) In case Raven seems a bit out of character, it's because she's bothered enough by an uncharacteristically depressed Beast Boy to be motivated to alleviate some of his sadness. She'll go back to being impatient and awkward soon enough. :)

4.) The explanation Starfire presented to Robin is my own, including the detail about Tameran's elite warriors. Comic!Starfire's powers are not influenced by emotion, and cartoon!Starfire never mentioned anything about invulnerability, but it makes sense considering she only takes damage if the writers need her to, so I included it.

5.) Teen Titans trivia: Wally West (Kid Flash I) aided his Uncle Barry (Flash II) in Central City, Missouri until he became the Flash himself, at which time he moved to Keystone City, Kansas.

6.) And in case anyone's curious, I researched time zones, the distance between Missouri and California, and the expected flight time from Japan to California (though I shaved off some time because I figured the T-Ship would be faster than a commercial flight).Next: Robin has to deal with his less than gentlemanly departure and the Titans return to Jump City.