Jump City Jump

by P0ST

One City, six Titans, and their wildcard. Act One: Deuce-to-Seven. ...The Third Birth...

4. It Hurled One Night

"Doc says it's nothing for me to be worried about."

Beast Boy said, shuffling things off his bed in a heap as the bright blue light of the web cam fixated on him from across the claustrophobic Bunker room

"Doc Hunnicutt, that is. Not a wyrd name at all, if you ask me. I still don't get the McHale's Navy reference—or just whatever the heck Courtney was talking about. Meh."

He cleared the bed of all debris and began absent mindedly straightening the sheets.

"Anyways—He says that it's a normal birthmark. But, like, since I'm always bouncing back and forth from animals—like from duck to tiger to snake to albatross—the genetic Lego Blocks inside me command my birthmark to look like the Mona Lisa one second and then the Last Supper the next."

Beast Boy pauses in the middle of making his bed to glance over his shoulder and smirk at the webcam.

"Well, heh, at least I'm not finding myself having to use the bathroom differently after each shape-shift. Eh? Eh?"

Silence. A blank chat room.

"What? Not even a titter? I-" Beast Boy glanced at the viewer count: zero. "Oh. Oh...Okay then."

The cold hum of the Bunker blanketed the air with a deep tonal absurdity. The green elf was suddenly very coldly aware of hao alone he was.

"Anyways..."

He bravely rambled on to the concrete bulkheads above him as he resumed making his bed. The words dripped out of him like upside down rain amidst the shuffling of his petite body about the cluttered interior.

"I guess it's just typical of me. Heh. Two awesome chicks take notice of a riddle on my rump and suddenly it weighs a million flippin' tons. I wonder if that happens to anyone else? You'll be walking on the street, minding your own business, and suddenly this gorgeous babe who's strutting up the sidewalk smiles at you and says you've got a handsome face. SO what? Do you go running to see if you've got chin cancer or whatcrap? Heck no! Pffft...this is so a job for Superman, or Oprah..."

He fluffed the pillow, groaned to himself, and turned about in a slump aimed at the webcam.

"Nnnnngh..." He rubbed his temple with two gnarled digits. "Come to think of it, I'm wrong from the get-go. I should say that 'one and a half' awesome chicks noticed my butt-Picasso the other day." He smirked in thought. "Courtney and Raven were around while I was exercising and...well...teeheehee...sweat does roll downhill. Heheheh-ahem, erm, so it seems."

He leaned back, arms folded as he balanced on the edge of the lower bunk bed.

"Courtney's totally an awesome person, of course. A real girl-next-door kind of chick. I bet she gets that a lot—But what's awesome is that she doesn't seem to be the kind of person to take it the wrong way when she's called a 'girl next door', to her face even. Courtney's supportive, friendly, and she really feels for others, yanno?" He beat a fist against his chest. "She feels for people right here. Not like Starfire, of course—But not everyone is a Tangerinian—or whatever Starfire's people are called. Heh, I'm glad that Stargirl is on our team. Really glad. So, of course, I dun mind if she..." He wagged a pair of green eyebrows with an off-hand smirk. "...notices my other good side. Heh."

A twisting turn of the next few milliseconds, and Beast Boy's face collapsed from warm and inviting to cold and bitter.

"But Raven...Oh Lord SPARE me!" He rolled his eyes, quickly turning about and furiously straightening a bookcase sandwiched between the lower and upper bunkbeds behind him. "She's cold, mean, snappish, unfeeling, stubborn, opinionated, and—on top of all that—her voice sounds like an impish love child between Gwen Stefani and that creepy dwarf woman in Poltergeist." He chuckled, rolled his eyes, and gluttered: "It's a shame really. Cuz she's not half bad to look at. I only wish the main entree didn't come with a side order of cold shoulders; hold the mayo."

He paused in his ministrations to the room, jerking suddenly towards some unseen corner of the galaxy. He then frowned fiercely at the webcam.

"Do you wanna know what Raven said to me the other day? As we were just setting up to ambush gangs from the Underworld?"

The laptop stared quietly up at Beast Boy, waiting. Patient.

The green elf cackled: "Well, lemme set it up for you!" He made a camera frame with his opposite fingers and squatted before the cam. "I was posing in the alleyway, stretching my muscles, getting ready to charge in on the unsuspecting baddies—And Starfire and Stargirl were already chattering on and on about what I thought was an open conversation! So I stick in and say: 'Hey, babes, what should I charge in as first? A stallion or a bull'?"

The camera waited...waited...

Beast Boy howled "The freakin' warlockette hovers over and says 'There are no rodeos here'! Like, dude, what in the McNugget is that supposed to mean? I was just trying to live in the moment and she makes me look like a stupid little kid! And so, trying to keep things light-hearted—yanno-to stay in good spirits, I say back to her: 'Hey, if you're unhappy with the show, at least keep your head down so the other cowpokes can watch'. And youknowwhatshesays? 'Why don't you make like a good clown and hide in a barrel until it's all over'." He pulled at his fuzzy hair. "It was supposed to be my joke! And yanno what's even worse? The other girls laughed at what she said instead of my line! Okay...I admit it. I wasn't exactly Jay Leno on a good night—But the fact of the matter is that I started joking first—But then Raven, in all of her cold hearted holier-than-thou-ness, takes a joke that she absolutely hates, making no bones about admitting that she hates it, and yet the girl twists it around so that I'm made to look lame by the same joke I started—but she stole—and thus steals my thunder while striking me with lightning and coming out on top and gosh dang it all-"

He slammed a fist down on the keyboard. Thap!

Blip.

The light on the web cam died.

The live stream ended.

"... ... ..."

Beast Boy got up, paced, paced, folded his arms, sighed, sighed, lingered, sighed again, paced yet again, paused, groaned, sagged his shoulders, rolled his green eyes, sauntered back towards the side of the bed, took a deep breath, reached a gentle hand forward, and lightly tapped the edge of the keyboard once more.

The web cam's light went back on.

Blipppp-

"RAVEN IS MY NEMESIS!" Beast Boy cackled into the feed. He ran a shaking hand through fuzzy green threads, groaning. "It's true! It's so true! Superman has Lex Luthor. Batman has the Joker. Captain Marvel has Black Adam. And I? I have an underweight, overbewb'd, blue-hair'd Stevie Nicks ice princess with a gummy bear stuck between her eyes!"

He winced, his eyes clenching, as if swimming briefly through a migraine. He came through the other side with a much needed exhale.

"Whew, dude, did that feel good to get off my chest. This was a good idea after all-" He stopped in mid sentence, glancing at the Viewer Count of the live stream's chat. ('Zero...') "Phweee..." A beat. He leaned back. "Anyways, so, like, yeah—Having her look at my butt is like being a sick toddler and having your mom stick a cold themometer up your—Er..." He squinted his green eyes. "Did I mark this web site as 'PG' or 'PG-13'? Whatever. So yeah...Funny hao neither Robin nor Cyborg have noticed my butt art. But, I guess that's fine. They're working their own rear ends off, clamoring all over the City, trying to figure out just hao we all royally screwed up last night."

He started straightening more things—this time on the floor between his bed and the web cam.

"I dunno if they're having any success. But they sure as heck have been doing a lot more than I've been. Heh—Festering about, worrying over age old birthmarks, exercising for fights I may never get into with crime cuz this whole 'team' thing could come crashing down on us at any second. Did I tell you that when Cyborg went to the Jump City Police Department in order to propose a partnership in scouring the Northern District for drug runners—Commissionder Kneehouse turned him down? I mean—What the heck?.! Aren't we all in this together? I mean—sure—I know that the JCPD isn't officially endorsing Cyborg's team, but don't we have a common goal here? I'm no conspiracy theorist, but, I'm getting the strange feeling that the dudes in City Hall want us like they want Chinese SARs. And—heh—who can blame them, after all that's happened? But, still, it's not like we meant to drop a huge flippin' space-lizard mothership into their Bay! Heck, if it weren't for the things we did that one night three months ago, those galactic gators would have turned this whole City to toast! And on top of that—just what the heck am I doing here-?"

He suddenly shoved all of the random bric-a-brac that he was straightening back into a miserable pile on the floor.

"-I'm not this cleanly! I used to live in hotels where the fungus grew more than my paychecks from acting gigs!" He groaned, kicking another pile of stuff slightly so that it toppled over. He leaned back, rubbing his chin with a finger while gazing somewhere beyond the web cam. "I...I'm beginning to get scared..." He muttered in a low, elfish voice—as if summoned from the deepest crevices of the ancient, forgotten earth. "I'm thinking that nothing is worth cleaning up. Not in this room, not in this Bunker, not in this City..." He glanced at the web cam once more. "Just...J-Just hao long do we have left until we're all kicked out for good? We're holed down here like a bunch of Ramones fans, but we can't find any amps to plug our uncle's guitars into. You can't make music if you ain't got the drooling fans to clamor over you. What are we hiding for? If we're all so desperate to make this City wanna have us, cheer for us—then why are we camped underground? Why are we afraid to see the Sun, for crying out loud?"

A sigh.

The elf hugged himself and squinted off towards the edges of the sealed doorframe beside him. "I hope Cyborg's company finishes that Tower of his soon. This City needs somebody to look up to. But, if you ask me, it's gonna take more than a fancy skyscraper. It's gonna take a miracle...a dang miracle...and until then, all I've got to talk about is my butt. Wooo...Go team. The Super Basement Kids."

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

Cyborg made the bend around the block, angling towards the long straightway that ran almost entirely under the highway overpass, highlighting the slummy border running between the Western and Central District of Jump City. A broken comet of street lights zipped across the windshield of the company SUV he was driving. His red eye strobed in the reflection of city store fronts. His human eyes was listless, tyred, unflinching.

Victor Stone had gone beyond a point of comprehension, and his stone-still lips mutely spoke the exhausting tale of an exhausted man having limped past his every exhausted end. The invisible mosaics of sound waves and audio frequencies danced before his hazy vision, strung between Madeline's murmuring words, until a hypnotic dullness lulled him to a deathly state, so that seemly nothing could stir him...

...that is, until he finally came upon the entrance to Phaser Labs. And then he stirred, stirred mightily.

"Aw Hell..." Cyborg's teeth showed as he sneered into the echoing confines of his lonely vehicle. "...you've gotta be kiddin' me."

As he drove up, the source of his frustrated befuddlement grew more and more detailed. About a dozen and a half Jump City citizens had braved the gray slime of night to position themselves around the concrete gates of Phaser Labs, and a good chunk of them were waving picket signs as they fervently chanted exclamations that neatly matched the slogans splayed across the posterboards: 'Go Away Teen Tragics'. 'Jump City. Not Justice City'. 'We Want Adults, not Youthilantes'. 'Stone Does Not Run this Town.' 'Teen Tragics Must Go'.

"Teen Tragics my Tragic Ass..." Cyborg grumbled to himself, using all the strength in his legs to keep from gunning the accelerator. Something deeply defeated inside his metal chest sighed, hard, and he cruised icily towards the front gate of the place as two security guards gently but forcibly ushered the protestors back to allow the SUV room. At the sight of the obscured superhero's uneventful entrance, the demonstrators appeared slightly taken back, but with each fermenting second that passed, the crowd drew thicker, braver, and their cries murmured louder—forming an echoing roar that rivaled the ever-throbbing rumble of the highway overpass that stretched overhead.

Cyborg rolled up to a guard post. Victor lowered the SUV's window down as the guard leaned in from the station and nodded. Cyborg planted a finger into his chest. Whurrr—Click! An ID card slid out, which he held before the guard's view. As Cyborg waited for the man to scan his identification, the half-android's eye settled on a distant, invisible thought, curious as to hao things could come to this, that he'd actually have to be carded for someone to recognize him—titanium features and all, and none of them too superheroic—before he could roll into his own HQ's garage. Superman was a tall, well-muscled caucasian with blue eyes and sporting a greasy hair curl—and yet even starving children in Ethiopia could recognize the icon in a single, transitive blink.

"Don't look so glum, Mr. Stone, sir..." The guard tipped his hat and smirked, for what it was worth. "They're just a bunch of crazies..." He motioned towards the brazened demonstrators. "Punks, really, no more than twenty of them."

"It won't be so 'crazy' the day they become twenty thousand..." Cyborg grumbled, slipping the ID card back, and driving forward through the opening-and-closing gate before the guard could so much as blink at that.

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

In a deep, concrete-laden alcove, the asphalt outside Phaser Labs dipped into a basement-level garage. It was here that Cyborg parked his company vehicle. Stepping out, setting on the alarm and sighing, he trudged his titanium way towards the far door that led into the labyrinthal halls of the place and—in turn—the Bunker.

And rest.

"And just what kind of a word is 'Youthilantes' anyway...?" Cyborg murmured to himself, expected no answer, got none, and sighed with a bitter contentment as he shuffled onward towards the nearest door-

"I imagine your day has been as productive as mine."

"Snkkkt—Mnngh!" Cyborg froze in place, twitching all over. His right hand briefly clak-clak-clakkked into a sonic cannon, then retracted into a limp fist. "Nnskkt...God...Dammit!" He sighed, spun around, and stared boredly into the shadows. "I suppose that's a remote possiblity.

"..." Robin emerged from behind a concrete pillar. "I spent all day roaming the City, tracing the path that Kobayashi's caravan took—both before and after our ambush over twenty-four hours ago."

"Yeah, and?"

"It wasn't easy. My findings found what we suspected—that someone had tagged the caravan with a Gordanian radiation signature to throw us off. But finding who did it has been turning into a tricky prospect. Ultimately, I had to resort to interrogating a few contacts I had made in my months prior to forming the team."

Cyborg winced. "You didn't...interrogate too hard, didja, dawg?"

"No worse than I ever had."

"Oh, that's reassuring. Hnnngh...Any success?"

"I've got very little concrete evidence to defend us," Robin said, but he stood resolute. "Still, if I trust my sources, then I think whoever set us up to attack the caravan isn't anyone we've suspected before. The answer doesn't lie in either the Dead Men or the Neon Hand. Someone else is assisting the Underworld."

"Ding Dong Daddy?" Cyborg asked. "Your 'friend' and his Central District lackeys?"

Robin shook his head. "The man's cryptic. But D-Cube's not our culprit."

Cyborg sighed, long and hard. "Then who is?"

"You let me find that out for you. While you're working to save our public face, I'll be investigating some bigger game."

"Bigger game? Man, like who?"

"Powers Inc. Wayne Enterprises. Lexcorp. Petracorp. The Westhaven Banking Consortium-"

"Man, no—Robin, listen..." Cyborg trudged a few steps towards the caped crusader, shrugging wildly. "Ain't we stuck deep enough as it is in all this? Must we start taking pot-shots at the big leagues? Even if someone in those circles was harebrained enough to get sticky-footed with the Underworld, it'd take an army to bring them down! Man, we could kill this team before it ever gets started!"

Robin's eyemask narrowed. "And this concerns you?"

"..." Cyborg took a deep breath. He glanced off, rubbing the human half of his skull. "Dawg, I may be made of metal, but it doesn't mean you can go pokin' into my wounds."

"Sorry." Robin said. "But if there's anything I've learned about today, it's that we haven't gotten deep enough to truly root out the Underworld. They're still the ugly carpet that's resting under our feet. And as long as we dance on the surface, they can pull the rug out and trip us onto our backs."

"As if that hasn't happened already..."

"You mustn't give up home, Cyborg." Robin said calmly. He gestured a hand out from the icy cocoon of his shouldered cape. "If anything, by following the radiation trail so closely, I have a legitimate case to make about an outside party having infected the Kobayashi entourage."

"Yeah...?"

"We can bring the evidence I have found to Commissioner Kneehouse, Cyborg. Though I may not have the culprit identified—the fact that the convoy we ambushed had been tampered with by jerryrigged Gordanian technology should definitely be enough to make us blameless for what happened last night."

"Oh, yeah, Robin, about that-"

"I know that the Commissioner has been a tough person to deal with as of late—but trust me—we can convince her-"

"Robin-"

"Perhaps it will even convince Kensuke Kobayashi that it was through deliberate outside misdirection that we were led to attack his-"

"Robin!" Cyborg exclaimed, a half chuckle. "I just spent all day chilling out with Madeline—yanno—Maddie? Kobayashi's daughter?" He smiled. "She talked some sense into her dad. He's dropping any and all charges, dawg. We're off the hook."

"..." Robin stared. "... Oh ..." He blinked under that mask. "Well, in that case..." He icily strolled towards the faraway door. "I suppose I should get some sleep."

"Naw, naw, man, wait." Cyborg stepped after him and placed a gentle hand on the Boy Wonder's shoulder. "Wait, Robin."

"...I'm waiting." The caped superhero made a great effort to not tyredly reel from the contact.

Cyborg gently smirked. "You did good today. I'm proud of you. I only hope you didn't tear too much ass while you were tearing ass to get information for me."

Robin shrugged. "I possibly...may have helped a few disgruntled young street rats rethink their life." A beat. "And convinced a drunk or two to lay off the bottle."

"Sounds like a full, rich day."

"I know it may not seem like my investigation produced any fruit..." Robin murmured. "But I've been on this sort of a pursuit before. Cryptic clues provided by someone of the streets may not hold any weight in court, but they usually lead down burning avenues of opportunity, at least from where I come from."

"What kind of 'cryptic clues' are we talking about here?" Cyborg folded his arms.

Robin twirled to face him, slouching slightly from the weight of the day. "Ding Dong Daddy is insistent that there's another party at work here. Someone who doesn't represent either the Dead Men or the Neon Hand wants to make us look bad."

"And he or she orchestrated the replacement of the smuggled Gordanian tech with Kobayashi's entourage?"

"Whoever has that much power—To not have surfaced for all this time, even with the JCPD hovering constantly over this City—He or she must be skilled at the art of both persuasion and misdirection. Whatever the case, it's gotten D-Cube spooked."

"After what you did to the poor bastard—heh-I'm surprised he'd be scared of anything else."

"I mean it, Cyborg." Robin's eyemask glinted in the cold garage light overhead. "D-Cube is seeing shadows, a maelstrom of ghosts pulling at his organization from all sides in this City. He wants out. He's trying to play the waiting game—For something to happen. Exactly what, I don't know, but I doubt we have the playbook at our team's disposal."

Cyborg gave Robin a sideways glance. "I really really think you should get some sleep, dawg. Maybe you can try to explain to me your findings again in the morning. There's something about the night that drags out the 'creepy gargoyle' in you Gotham folks, man."

"I don't believe in sleep." Robin nodded. "Only dopamine."

"Tell your hair that." Cyborg pointed with a smirk. "It'd be a shame in fifteen years to have people calling you the 'Trump Wonder'."

"Yeah..." Robin turned to leave, to retire...

But Cyborg reeled him back in a little with: "It'd interest you to know, though, that Madeline found something very wild today in the audio sample that Raven and Stargirl took of the gangs' meeting."

Robin looked back, head leaning to the side. "I thought you said that Madeline talked Kobayashi out of suing our butts off."

"She did more than that, dawg! She used them sexy ears of her and scouted out an acoustical variation during a good long chunk of the recording! A frequency analysis showed the distortion up in spades—You would never have guessed it; there was one extra person in the room during the time of the meeting."

"One...extra person...?"

"I can't exactly explain it. Neither can she. But it's as if someone teleported into the room, hung out in the shadows, and skedaddled away in a blink before the meeting could finish."

"..." Robin stared. "...Well isn't that interesting..." It came out in a droll murmur.

"Yeah, I know, right?"

"..." Robin walked off. "Well, good night."

"Don't let the bed birdarangs bite."

"Try harder to be original."

"Heh, well, alright."

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

Schwissh!

Robin strolled into his room. He pivoted about, he pressed a console on the wall.

Schwissh! The automatic door sealed him inside his personal compartment within the Bunker. But he wasn't finished. His thumb fished around, pressing more buttons, more indentations on the wall pad. Schlock! Chtung! Sckkkkt! What sounded like half-a-dozen locks sealed into place, encapsulating the bird boy into a guilded cage.

He was as alone as he could afford to be there.

He swiveled about, exhaling the day out through worn-out nostrils. A cold, conrete, spartan room stared back at him. There was hardly a single possession to be found littering the place. It was all meant to be.

Robin first and foremost stripped of his utility belt as he shuffled across the small space towards a locker hugging the opposite end of the compartment. A pair of fingers found a locking mechanism on the locker door, struck a rapid ten digit combination, and unsealed the thing. Clank! Robin opened the locker, revealing an exploding armory of birdarangs, throwing discs, contract bo-staffs, grappling hooks, chemical compounds, miniature computers, GPS systems, and a hundred other various tools—all forming an intestinal bric-a-brac of overexuberant Utility. As Robin hung the yellow tool belt within—alongside five other identical tool belts already hanging inside the locker—he paused in stringing the thing up, his thumb brushing up against the seventh pouch from the center.

"..." Robin's eyemask narrowed.

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

(Three Months Ago.)

The entire place was careening, barreling, plummeting out of control. Robin had to leap with every other step to avoid plummeting into a great metallic obscurity as what was once a wall had become a floor, and all the while-

Blue. A big blue, rippling. Straight out the windows of the hellishly plunging craft. Screaming towards them.

"Victor, what did you do?" Stargirl's voice could be heard shrieking.

Robin decided to answer for him. "What needed to be done!" He jumped, reached out, grabbed one hand onto the edge of a giant alien throne—and reached to his utility belt with the other glove. He found a grappling hook, and, in swift order, that grappling hook found the new ceiling. Pow—Clank! He reached a hand down towards anyone—everyone-"Grab ahold!"

A meaty green reptile suddenly slammed into the Boy Wonder's side, snarling, hoarsely exhaling an enraged expletive in some extraterrestrial tongue.

Robin grunted, twirling—dangling above the maelstrom. In the fitful fling, he stared down past his aching legs, and saw a pair of black shades. Glinting. And wearing those shades, gasping, shivering, on the lopsided floor...

Someone looking back up with horror...

And yet, with hope.

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

"... ... ... ..."

Robin took a deep breath, hung the utility belt, and started taking his boots off. One after another.

"Just because a blind girl and an dishonorable crime baron see you in visions... Doesn't make you any more alive."

He slipped the boots—and finally his cape—into the metal compartment.

"...for that matter, nor does it make me."

And he shut the locker with a-

Clang.

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

"Raven may be a distant chika with a snowglobe for a heart..." Beast Boy was lying on his back, reclined before the web cam. He turned the Titan Communicator over in his grasp, musing aloud to the utterly empty live stream. "But at least she's bearable. There were times back with the Doom Patrol when I swear I wanted to kick Negative Man where the bandages couldn't protect him. Ermmm—It wasn't so bad until I started getting older...and more of a smart aleck. Heh."

He smirked toothily and rolled the communicator down his forearm, bounced it against his elbow, and caught it back in his palm, repeating the casual juggle as he went on. Roll. Bounce. Catch. Roll. Bounce. Catch.

"Even still, Raven's only around—like-ten minutes at a time. I swear, she's always got some place to go, every day, even in the sunlight. I just don't get it—someone who's that much of a joy-draining shut in actually likes to go on walks all the time! Where she goes on her daily strolls is up to anyone's guess. We've all joked about it—with even Cyborg himself suggesting she goes to the cemetery to refill on black blood. Heh. Nnnngh—I guess it's not so nice talking about someone behind their back. But the way she comes across—I don't think she'd even care. It's not like she'd ever give us the time of day. You try to say something nice to her, and she has some stereotypical slur of sarcasm to put you back into your uncomfortable little place. You know, come to think of it, I don't think I've ever seen her sit down to eat anything. That just further adds to my theory that she floats out over the rooftops of the City at night to feed on infants and pregnant mothers. Maybe if I poked my head out the door to check on her, I'd see her ripping her torso loose and sprouting wings. HAH! That's a pinoy joke-Ehhhh whatever."

He rolled, bounced, and caught the communicator one last time with a snap, suddenly smirking, and sat straight up in his bunkbed. "That reminds me of something the other day-" WHAP! "Ow! Dang it!" He rubbed his fuzzy head, sighed, and continued as he nao faced the web cam. "We were trying to save people from a burning building. It was in all the newspapers—A twelve story apartment went up in a puff of smoke and at least three dozen people in the top two floors were needing to be whisked away. Guess some kid learned the hard way that you shouldn't mirowave your science homework."

Beast Boy shrugged, then went on.

"Anywho, we came roaring in—all superheroically and dramatically and stuffily—and pretty much saved the day. Heh—Funny hao with all the crud that's happened as of late, people forget about some of the simple stuff...as if keeping people from burning alive counts as 'simple stuff'. Whatever the case, I managed to get a family of four away from the fire. They got a grand view of town from the back of a giant, gliding pterodactyl. I should have charged them after their little kid gave a technicolor yawn all over my right wing as 'thank you'. Bnrnngh... Well. On my second trip back, I saw Starfire in full flight, carrying an elderly couple away with those mighty arms of her. Heh...total babe, Starfire, but so complex and interesting. She totally belongs on the cover of Maxim, but should be interviewed in Time—if yanno what I mean. But beyond all that..."

Beast Boy smirked and gestured with his hands before the laptop.

"Koriand'r has this...well...this miniskirt, ya see...And, dangitall if that thing has a mind of its own at times. I mean...erm...I'm her teammate. Not just that, but I'm her valued friend—at least I like to think I am. So, like...I would—yanno-I would never ever be so nasty and pathetic to have...eheheh..." He rubbed the back of his head and blushed under his green cheeks. "...sneakadozenpeaksorso. Ahem." He straightened up again. "But—"(BONK! 'Ow...dang it! Rrghh')"-even if I was so lame to have given into such a carnal...uh...carnal-a-gasm, I've gotten over it. Cuz, well, you can't afford to be distracted in the battlefield, or the herofield, or the save-people-from-the-burning-building field. So, I don't think much of it—That is to say, I don't really take much notice anymore of Starfire...and...the...er...flappage of her skirt. Just what is that thang made of anyways? The Fabric Softener Mines of Orion Prime? Feh—I've never asked her."

He rolled his finger in a circle as if he was telling himself to hurry up.

"And...and...yeah, so, we're saving people from the burning building—SHE is saving people from the flames. And, like, she flies through this one breeze—a backdraft or whatever it's called—and the gust of hot air just erupts like a Hawaiian zit and WHOOSH-"

He brought both hands surging upwards towards the Bunker room's ceiling. He blinked.

"-Hello France! Hundred Years War, much? My my, the Versailles sure is pink and lacy this time of year-"

He smiled innocently.

"I'm joshin', of course. Eheheheheh—Seriously, though. I swear, Cyborg was gonna have a metal vein pop in his head. I don't think he counted on our team providing a flash...-beyond one of Robin's C02 birdarangs. But that wasn't the thick of it—Heh-I was coming down for another landing at about this time. And, like, there're these two high school dudes just standing there...hands hanging by their sides...staring straight up into the event horizon of the miniskirt's supernova. I mean—For real! Dudes! I get it! Lucky break—But the snapshot is over; Hello? Burning building beneath your pimply feet! An end to your life? Burning death? No more Tony Hawk reenactments or Battletoads prank calls? Hell—for all I know, they were the ones who sparked the arson to begin with. I suppose a miniskirt in the afternoon sky is worth bending backwards a little—so one couldn't help but imagine dirty schemes, wut—with the way they were just staring—for nearly half a minute—burning a hole straight through Starfire's...straight through Starfire's... ...ahem... ...burning a hole straight through Starfire."

He crossed his arms behind his back and leaned back, smirking.

"Well, we saved the day. And, naturally, it never hit the news nearly as hard as our Fifth Street blunder has. But I don't care what the mainstream media says. I don't care if they string us up by our entrails and force us to listen to Yanni. I've done my service as a superhero, and I have the likes of Starfire to thank for it. Both for her friendship, and for her friendly looks. After all, life is only complete-ONLY ever complete, with two things and two things alone."

Beast Boy winked towards the webcam. He said:

"Short skirts and explosions."

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

Nearly half an hour towards midnight...

Courtney walked the length of the Bunker towards the compartment where the washroom was housed. She was aching and sweating from a long day of standing in the laboratory of Phaser Labs upstairs, Cosmic Rod gripped hotly in gloved hand. The last eight to twelve hours had been an exercise in patience as Dr. Ray asked her to test her energy projectiles on every natural and artificial metal known to nerd-kind. She was too dutiful to quit early, too polite to confess out loud her inner desire to do just so. And nao, she was too exhausted to bother hating herself over spending a steamroller of a day avoiding the act of hating herself.

"Just...two more pages...of calculus..." Courtney bracedly murmured, clad unceremoniously in a t-shirt and shorts, towel slumped over a twitching forearm. She all but limped past the quiet doorway to Robin's room, the even quieter space to Raven's, and the gentle hum of Cyborg's laboratory. For some reason, she wore her sneakers and long socks, even for heading to the shower—it gave her footsteps an unnecessary, anticlimactic spring to her limp. When walking past Beast Boy's quarters—she briefly paused, curiously lured by the sound of a solitary elf's maniacal cackling, a cutely muffled voice from beyond the door. "... ... ..." She shrugged it off with a confused smirk, tossed a lock of blonde hair over her shoulder, and sauntered on towards her destination.

She reached the washroom door and was about to slap a tyred, withered hand over the adjacent console when she heard a disturbing sound from beyond the frame—something akin to a choking death rattle, blood curdling, and submerged in an inky bubble of pain and panic.

Courtney blinked. Her blue eyes narrowed as she craned her head towards the door. "Hello?" She uttered.

Silence.

"Hello? Is...Erm...Is this thing in use-?"

She heard it clearer this time, harder, neck-jerking. A wretching noise, high-pitched, like a dying kitten.

Courtney gasped. "St-Starfire!" She knocked on the door, panting. "Starfire, are you okay? What's the matter?"

"Ngrkkkglllkkksptkkt..."

Courtney dropped the towel, gasping. It sounded like she was positively dying in there...

"Starfire—Brace yourself! I'm coming in!" She exclaimed, planting her palm flat against the console. A buzzing sound. The automatic doors to the bathroom refused to open. Courtney tried again, again. More buzzing, buzzing—More nothing.

"Nkkkktpssllkkkt...hrnnnggg..."

"Hold on, K-Kory!" Courtney glanced around in desperation, then sprinted a single pace down towards an intercom. She pressed a black button on the wall speaker. "Cyborg. Victor, come in, please!"

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

Ch-Chtunnnng!

A thick cable plugged snugly into Cyborg's shoulder. The blue matter underneath his glossy metal 'skin' lit up brighter, strobing briefly, then dimming down to obscurity. His red eye flickered. The young man took a deep, sharp inhale—as if coming down the crest of a roller coaster—then relaxed like he always did in the end.

He pulled some slack on the cable, then tugged it for good measure. "Hrmmm..." Cyborg glanced down at his wrist and opened a panel. Within a black bar, several blips of digital text flickered, including a green power indicator that highlighted a flashing: '14.12%'. A few blinks later, and that '14.12%' climbed to a '14.31%'.

Cyborg shut the panel. The young man smirked slightly, tyredly, then turned about and paced across the metal length of his Bunker Laboratory, past a Frankensteinian metal slab, and towards an elaborate computer station, flanked with several dozen bits of tools and circuitry...

...then Courtney's voice crackled urgently over the speakers positioned at the top of the room.

"Victor, come in please!"

He blinked. He shuffled over to the intercom and flicked his hand to a black button. "Cyborg here. Courtney, what's the matter, girl?"

"Are you plugged into the system tonight?"

"I am nao."

"Good! Quick—It's an emergency! Unlock the bathroom doors!"

"Courtney, if you really can't wait, there's at least two toilets in Phaser Labs upstairs-"

"No, Victor, I really mean it! I think Starfire's DYING or something!"

"Whoah dayum! Unlocked it is!" His red eye strobed. A flicker to the cable he was attached to, some sparks, and-

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

Outside in the Bunker.

Whurrr-Schnkk!

-the bathroom door unlocked.

Courtney swiftly palmed the panel beside the frame.

Schwissh! The door opened, revealing a certain redhead, clad in wrinkled pajamas, collapsed before the toilet like a beached mermaid in a permanent slump.

"Unnnnnghhhh...K'norfkaaaaa..." She teared, sputtering. "It h-hurtssss..."

"K-Kory!" Courtney flew down by her side. "What on Earth is the matter?"

"What is on your Earth is—URP-precisely the matter..." Starfire's amber face flashed green, greener, and she hovered a quivering chin just above the toilet lid. "Ohhhhh...I h-have met my nemesis tonight and it is most certainly cruel..."

Courtney glanced bravely into the toilet bowl, winced immediately, and squinted through one eye at the wilting Tamaranian. "Your nemesis is chicken and rice?"

"Nnnnghhh-URRP!" Starfire made to heave-

"OkayI'msorryI'msorryI'msorry..." Courtney squeezed the alien girl's shoulders with both hands. "No more talk of your nemesis. I didn't mean it! Honest!"

"Nnnngh...I-I feel so foolish..." Starfire moaned. "...this is the third time this week alone that I have...nnnkkstt...attempted in good faith to share of your daily consumption—ohhhhh—only for it to—urppp—consume me from the inside out. Ohhhh-owwww..." She clutched her tummy and shut her eyes tight, green moisture forming on her lashes.

"Ohhhhh you poor thing..." Courtney cooed, shifting their weight so Starfire could lean against her. "It's gotta be hard figuring out what you can or can't eat on our planet."

"Nnngh...X'hal help me. It is the most challenging thing I have—Nkkklllt—endeavored to do on this spheroid."

"Didn't—like-Doc Hunnicutt draft you a list of 'okay foods' for your anatomy?"

"URP—I am most...nnght..." Starfire fought to speak between wretches. "...grateful for the learned man's intuitiveness and compassion, but even he cannot anticipate every bit of my Tamaranian d-d-digestive—URP—system. Ultimately, it comes down to the 'pot of the luck'."

"Well, scratch your last 'nemesis' off the list!" Courtney rubbed the small of Starfire's back. "Maybe tomorrow you and I could try and fix you up something that's like what you've got at home?"

"A m-most noble and generous—Nkkktllppp—offer, friend Stargirl...but hardly probable."

"But I would like to try..." Courtney smiled.

From outside in the hallway, Victor's voice drifted in. "What's going on in there? Is everything all right?"

"It's okay, Vic!" Courtney called back through the doorframe. "I've got a handle on it!"

"It is most certainly not okay..." Koriand'r grumbled, eyes rolling in waves of nausea. "I am helpless to find a c-comfortable and unassuming niche to fill in, and the b-best that I can accomplish is yet another night of digestive afflictions." She swallowed something solid down her throat and glanced thinly at the Star Spangled Kid. "Is it s-such a crime that I j-join you and my other f-friends in the simplest and most innocent of daily consumptions?"

"Not if it reduces you to this, Kory!" Courtney looked sad. "Stop worrying so much about fitting in with the rest of us and concern yourself with getting two feet on the ground!"

"Nnngh—Please, cease and decist from—URP—speaking of balance..." Koriand'r's emerald eyes rolled.

"Er...S-Sorry...eheheh..." Courtney sweatdropped.

"Just what are y'all doing in there?" Cyborg's voice drifted closer.

"Hey!" Courtney spun with a frown. "Two girls! In a bathroom! Get a clue!" She shifted, kicked the wall console with her good foot-WHAP-and closed off the sound of his voice. "Boys."

"I am...Nkkksti...unaware of his transgression for b-being male."

"Not for long, you won't." Courtney cradled Starfire from behind. "There, there. This has been a tough time for all of us. If you have to let it out, then let it out. Heck, with the way things have been, I almost feel like joining you."

"URP!" Starfire briefly lurched, shuddered, swallowed, and murmured: "I sincerely do believe that you h-have made a deliberate exagerration..."

Courtney chuckled lightly. "Well, yeah. But I don't want you to feel bad for...erm...feeling bad. We have all the time in the world for you to recover. Don't let Cyborg or this team have any affect on you."

"Unnngh...X'hal, this team..." Starfire shuddered. "Sometimes I venture to think that my faith is just as indecisive as my...my...urpp...stomachs."

"Yeah well-" Courtney blinked hard. "Wait, did you just say stomachs?"

"All nine of them..." Starfire winced. "Nnnngh...though that is h-hardly a permanent number...in the history of my people..."

"Oh Kory..." Courtney exhaled. "Is there anything I can do to make you feel better?"

"Of th-that...SNkkti...I-I am most doubtful. But, nevertheless..." The Tamaranian looked over her shoulder with a weak smile. "Would y-you do me a most sp-splendid favor?"

"Yes? What's that?"

"Would you gingerly grasp ahold of my hair for the next forseeable length in time?"

"Huh? You want me to—OH. Ohhhhh..." Courtney bit her lip, smiled heroically, and held Starfire's red fountain of follicles up in two brave handfuls. "Hao's this?"

"Much thanks, dearest friend." Koriand'r smiled angelically, turned her head in a diving swoop, and made a grand organic confession to the bowl. "Hrkkkkkklllspppttt!"

Courtney winced, winced, but did her duty...

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

"Cyborg's a great leader and all, but sometimes it's dang near impossible to hail him down and have a word or two." Beast Boy said. "Not like he's a taxi cab, or anything, but—yanno what I mean."

The green elf was reclined on his bed, thumbing through his enigmatic possession: the red leather book. His fingers absentmindedly flittered through the antique pages, looking for everything, looking for nothing, finding a great gray blur of indecipherableness inbetween.

"It ain't enough that Cyborg is part human, part robot, part badass, and part nerd..." The changeling's underbiting teeth showed through his murmuring lips as he dictated off-sidedly towards the live stream. "...but he's also part Victor—public representative, part Mr. Stone—Industrial tycoon, part Vic—science and technology instructor at Stonetech." He shuffled through the pages, sat up a bit, and squinted towards the webcam across his quarters. "With all of those responsibilities, isn't it kind of super crazy amazing that he actually finds time to run around in the streets of Jump City as a mechanical butt-kicker with the likes of us?"

The blue light of the webcam stared back at Beast Boy, unblinking. The laptop's bright splash of the website lingered, the viewer count ever a lingering: zero.

"Yeah, well, it's all way too less Cyborg the robot hero and way too much Cyborg the financial bore, if you ask me." Beast Boy laid himself back again and thumbed, thumbed, thumbed through the mysterious red book. "I mean, heck, I know the metal dude's got stuff to do. Stuff for the team, even. But why can't he—like—leave some of that for the older and more boring people he's got in the higher offices of his company? Like that 'Hardy' chairperson lady...or wait, was it 'Sherlock'?" The elf shrugged. "All I know is that, three months ago, I came to this City, and found myself standing side by side with a pretty wicked robot—a robot with a sense of humor, a robot with a great taste in music, a robot who wasn't afraid to toss lizard alien psychos around with one hand and count off Warp Trek trivia with the other. I'm sure, in all of that complicated mess that is our team leader, that same robot can still be found. But—dang it all—it's so fluffin' hard to see him through the whole mess! Everything he's doing for the team is great, but even a machine has its limits—I can't help but wonder if he's getting sick of it too. But, what can I do? What can anyone do? Is there a book written that gives advice on hao you approach a walking tank with hormones and ask it to take a chill pill?"

He smirked briefly over towards the web cam.

"Oh, heh-heh, that reminds me."

He raised the red bound tome in his grasp.

"I bet y'all are wondering exactly what this is..."

He squinted once more at the laptop. Viewer count: Zero.

"Hrmmm...Yeah, y'all..." He sighed. A beat. He shrugged it off, cleared his throat, and continued in a renewed smirk of enthusiasm. "This is something I picked up during my world-wide trek over the last three months. Well, it'd be unfair to say I picked it up. More exactly, it was tossed into my lap, kinda sorta. You see, I was in Antartica—that's right, Ant-fricking-artica—and I was going all Solid Snake on this crazy place full of ebil henchmen and-"

He suddenly winced, slapped a fail!palm over his skull, and exhaled long and hard.

"Eesh...Yeah. Almost dug my own grave there. Ahem." He sat up a bit and stared at the webcam with bored eyeslits. "Cyborg, in all his infinite stiffness that pretends to be 'wisdom', has requested I not talk in any great detail about what I've been up to over the last three months. Those of you, of course, who were lucky enough to be watching my super-awesome-live-stream several weeks ago—before I made this 'contract' with the biggest walking refrigerator in Jump City—might know more about my adventures and kick-buttery. Eheheh...I said 'buttery'. Ahem. But, for the rest of you, just believe me when I tell you that the kind of things I got involved with over the last few months have been...well...complicated, to say the least, but really nifty and hell-yes-able all the same. But, yanno, that's the way things are. You turn an awesome page in your life, you move onto the next chapter, and you gotta pay a heavy price to publish your older works...if that makes any sense. ANYWAYS-"

He slapped a green hand hard across the cover to the red binding.

"SOMEBODY who may or may not be HUMAN gave me this SOMETHING which may or may not be a BOOK which I may or may not have said THANK YOU for which may or may not have been a great lapse in my CHARACTER because I usually don't accept things that don't have a DVD MENU in them. On top of that, the said person who gave me this may or may not have been named ZOEY and may or may not have been ASSOCIATED with someone who may or may not have been named RAZZAR and as a matter of fact none of this matters because I certainly MADE UP at least one of their names on the spot and it may or may not be 'ZOEY'."

He exhaled long and hard, thumbed through the pages, swiveled his legs out on the side of the bunk bed, and held the thing out closer to the webcame.

"But enough of that stuff." He sat up straight. "Do you see the-"(BONK!)"-OW! Dang it—Ahem. Do you see the nifty runes and stuff? Pretty crazy, huh? I think this was Tolkien's bathroom reading material or something. The pages are made out of really old paper—but they don't tear easily...erm...not that I tried. So sue me, it was late one night and I was in a bad mood and the freezer was all out of waffles and the late night airing of Dr. Who on BBC was replaced with a Soccer game. Anyyyyywhoooooo, the thing is—like—two hundred pages long. There are nearly one hundred characters to s page. I know; large font. I wonder if it's some sort of alien poetry—erm, not that it's in any way associated with aliens or wutnot—But the runes don't look like anything I've seen before. And, believe you me, I've gotten pretty hardcore about looking up stuff about this. Nothing in the library matches, nothing on Google matches—I've even taken Courtney's suggestion and tried this boring-as-hell website: 'Wackypedia' or something, sounds like an illegal web page if you ask me."

He went on:

"Anyways, nothing shows up that even resembles the letters and things in this book—just a bunch of loose ends, and I don't mean the awesome kind of loose ends you see on swimsuit'd chicks suntanning face-down at the beach. Still, though, it is kinda like this thing I read about during my search: The Voynich Manuscript. At some point in the early twentieth century, some dude found an old, old book full of wyrd-A letters and pictures. Scientists carbon dated it and found that it was at least five hundred years old. The level of detail in the manuscript is crazy as heck, but none of the letters or words or sentences have any match in the whole world's library of languages, and none of the geeky college professors out there with a lick of sense can make heads or tails about it. Call me a sap, but I find that kind of stuff exciting. I mean—to have a book, one book in a trillion, and to have it not make any sense, and yet so detailed and complicated that it's gotta make sense to somebody, yanno? It's as if the book is waiting for someone or something to stumble upon it, read it, and somehao make sense of the crazy cryptic-a-con. Things like that make me giddy inside. I almost believe that there are such things as wizards and sorceresses...Pfft, what am I saying, of course there are wizards and sorceresses—the Doom Patrol fought one of them every laundry day. But, you know what I mean."

Garfield thumbed, thumbed, thumbed through the pages, paused, sighed, then slumped back to his side on the bed as he laid the book down beside him.

"Hrnnnngh...I guess...er...I guess the real reason I dig this book, is that it reminds me of an adventure I've been on, an adventure that I'm not even allowed to talk about right nao, and I'm not allowed to talk about it on behalf of a team leader—who's really awesome—but is so wrapped up in all of the crazy legal ugliness of trying to be a hero in a City that needs us, that I'm beginning to wonder if he or I or anybody will ever have time to be a hero in a City that needs us to begin with!"

His bored eyes drifted sluggishly across the room, strung up in a dry niche between sad and comfortable.

"Months ago, when I met all of these snazzy people, I was excited. Before I met them, before I kicked ebil lizard tail, I was floundering on my own, limping around and trying to find acting gigs ever since things with Warp Trek fell out from under me, and here I had a chance to be part of a mega-bodacious superhero team for the first time since I, for whatever stupid reason, decided it was best to ditch the Doom Patrol. I felt like my second wind had come to me, that I was gonna be a different kind of butt-kicker than I had been before, that I could be more of...well...more of an adult. That I could speak for myself, say things for myself, and lend a hand to a team of heroes—not because I owed them—but because I wanted to, and they happened to need the things I could do for them."

He gestured to the air between his sideways body and the webcam.

"And then, yanno, when we split up, and I was out on my own—riding the wave of awesomeness that comes with saving an entire City full of people—I felt good. Really, I did. I felt super-crazy-good. And then when things went wyrd—and I do mean really wyrd—as I bounced around the world, doing stuff that...well...let's just say I was doing really nifty stuff—I felt good as well. Heck, I felt awesome. It was like I was my own Batman...or Green Arrow...or Green Batman. Whatever. I could take care of myself. I just didn't know the direction I was supposed to be taking with things. So, I came back here—back to Jump City—thinking the others might be here again. And, sure enough, they were. And...and..."

He hugged himself, a sudden, warm breath. He grinned.

"...And they were all there. And, dude, it felt like frickin' destiny. You know that goofy, grinning, butterfly-in-the-stomach giddiness you get when you sit down to a Disney movie you used to watch as a kid and realize in all sappiness that it still makes you feel as happy and childish as it did back when you used to shove cereal up your nose? Well, it felt like that. And that is something worth fighting for, besides saving the lives of citizens and innocent people, of course."

A deep breath, Beast Boy turned onto his back and picked at the bottom of the top bunk above him. He murmured:

"Well, that was three weeks ago. Three weeks, I've been riding this wave of giddiness. Three weeks, I've been occasionally beating up bad guys, every nao and then saving families from crumbling buildings. Three weeks, and—to be honest—not a whole heck of a lot of things have happened. Cyborg has us sitting down here, educating ourselves on superhero etiquette, doing random training sessions, zapping metal chunks with cosmic rods while a muppet bearded guy in a labcoat goes on and on about numbers and all that—And the biggest and most remarkable thing that happens—the only thing that happens—is we screw up and attack a rich dude's innocent shipment of Newsroom junk."

Silence. The webcam's glow lingered on. Beast Boy looked over boredly at the laptop, the viewer count, the pointlessness of having a viewer count.

He murmured: "When is a giddy idea just that? A giddy idea?" He propped his head up on an elbow. A sickly smile. "Hao long do you ride a feeling until you realize you've used up all the gas for nothing and should pull over the side of the road—or worse—double back and return home?" He rubbed his temples. "Nnnngh...There were days, back with the Doom Patrol, when I was a much more boyish Beast Boy, that I would turn into a hawk and just fly. I'd take off from the rooftop of Dr. Caulder's castle, pick a cardinal direction, and just soar, not looking back. I'd start in the wee hours of the morning, get a good headwind, and leap into the bright crest of the starting day. Hours and hours would go by, during which the German Black Forest would stretch out below me, seemingly endless. But, everytime, without fail, the sun would rise up until it was directly overhead, and it'd become noon, and it'd become hot, and—as always—my tyredness with the whole trip would become bigger than the giddy impulse I had first felt that very morning before the sun came up, and instead of going on further to see when the forest ended, I'd just double back and return back to the castle. Sometimes I got yelled at. Sometimes nobody cared. In the end, it didn't matter—I always felt like I could never get away from myself, get away from the fact that...heh...I could only live in the moment, without believing in the moment's tomorrow."

He bit his lip, gulped something painful down, and squinted towards the camera. He spoke in a low voice—neither breaking, nor crumbling, just subterranean, like the concrete walls around him: settling.

"That's what our team is. Really, I think—no—I know. That's what our team is: a moment without a tomorrow. And, god help us all, something's gotta change, something's gotta upset the rulebook, something's gotta slip in a wildcard or slap the joker or scream 'go fish'...or else this bird isn't gonna clear the forest. Not in a long shot."

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

Starfire was still, her green thin eyes still sickly wafting wispily above the fermented waves of consciousness. But she was relaxed, she was tranquil, and she was most certainly not emptying her nine stomachs' worth of sorrow into a linoleum deposit box.

The Tamaranian girl was lying back in a comfortable bed inside a relatively barren room of the Bunker. She was not alone—a certain Courtney Whitmore was in the process of drawing a lavender sheet and a pink comforter over the recovering redhead.

"There you go...still dizzy?"

"To a certain degree, yes..." Starfire swallowed an imaginary lump down her throat and hoarsely uttered. "...but I am feeling much better. Infinite gratitude, friend Courtney..."

"My pleasure." The blonde smiled.

"I am most remorseful over having interrupted you. I am certain you had something important or leisurely planned for yourself during this time of fallen sunlight."

Courtney shrugged. "I had only planned on showering." She sat down on the edge of the bed and looked down at Starfire. "At this point...heh...that plan hasn't changed at all. So...uhm...don't sweat it, 'Kay?"

"I concur..." Starfire nodded sickly, tyredly blinked her eyes, and nestled herself comfortably within the folds of the bed she had been laid down in. "Mmmmm...I really, really must find an alternative form of sustenance soon, or else I will be a weighted disadvantage to the team with my constant indigestion."

"Yanno, not to scare you or anything..." Courtney pushed a golden lock over her ear and fidgeted. "But...I-I'm kinda sorta amazed you've done as well as you have since you've returned to this planet."

"Truly?"

"Yeah. I mean—If I was to settle myself down in an alien world, I'd imagine that I would open myself to all sorts of foreign diseases and bizarre germs and crud that I would want to have nothing to do with. It seems positively frightening. But here you are, in one piece—eheh—more or less."

"The Tamaranian immune system is a thing of Vegan legend." Koriand'r managed a smile. She closed her eyes, exhaled long and hard, and winced ever so slightly. "I only wish the same imperviousness applied when it comes to our palette."

"I think it's the warrior in you." Courtney smiled. "You can fight off all kinds of things that can kill you, but gotta rought it through the things that can't."

"I am sure that there is a sensible logic to that statement but I am currently at a loss to grasp it."

"Hehehehe—That makes the two of us." Courtney shrugged. "Still, the offer stands. I'd like to work with you and Doc Hunnicutt and find something you can eat without going all Linda Blair on us."

"If I understand your obscure but poignant metaphor, then I hope that my Linda-Blair-ing has not been a great deterrent to your positive perception of me."

"Hao's that, Kory?"

"Not to brag, but I am usually a great deal stronger than this invalidic specimen you see before you."

Courtney shrugged. "Can't a girl get sick once and a while?" She smirked. "I swear, my jewel of a stepbrother insists I get sick once a month."

"I have spent nearly three solid weeks on this planet and that is the twentieth consecutive time that someone has brashly made a joke about a female's-"

"I know. I know. Hold you breath. That's hao our planet deals with it." Courtney sighed. "Anyways—Star, don't feel bad. You'll feel great in the morning. I just know it."

"Your enthusiasm would normally be infectious, but I am afraid that I am currently incapable of sharing your ardent levity."

"Why's that, you think?"

Starfire bit her lip and clutched the sheets to her. "It is different—nao, on this planet—then it was when I first...erm...descended upon this City."

Courtney blinked. "You mean...instead of blowing stuff up in the street and shouting in some alien gibberish, you're depositing all of your troubles into the toilet?"

"I used to be fearless in the face of things such as what is assailing our team presently." Koriand'r murmured. "It is not enough that we failed in the act of being superheroes the other night-"

"Heh, speak for yourself, Star."

"-but I feel as if our leader has already lost hope." Koriand'r squinted up at Courtney. "Am I alone in assuming that Cyborg is angry with us?"

The blonde did a double-take. "H-Huh? Read that by me again?"

"For an entire planetary revolution, Victor has refused sleep. He spent the entirety of the day away from us—barely even talking to Robin. I know that the man is busy and very much vexed with the multiplicitous complications of leading a team of metaphysically endowed youngsters, but does it not seem that he is more adamant about being away from us than with us during this time of great shame and confusion?"

"I swear, Koriand'r, the way you speak makes you sound positively like a poet." She leaned down and whispered. "But couldja try and be a bit more concise? My head broke at 'multiplicitous'."

"I believe that Cyborg is angry at us." Koriand'r went straight to the point. "And he is isolating himself from us so that we can linger in the shame of how we failed the other night."

"Oh, Star..." Courtney ran a hand through her own hair and sighed. "That's...well...that's just different."

"Hao so?"

"Victor is a guy."

"I fail to see what that has to do with this situation."

"Believe me, it has everything to do with the situation." Courtney smirked slyly. "Guys don't handle making mistakes so well. When they feel guilty or inadequate, they go off on their own. It's a very...uh...obscure equivalent to an ostrich sticking his head in the ground, you know?"

Koriand'r blinked. "I am afraid that it is nao my cranium that has broken for lack of comprehension."

"Sorry-sorry!" Courtney winced, rubbed her chin, and thought aloud: "Uhmmmm." She brightened and pointed. "When...uh...an alien empire loses at a war, and then decides to ditch its...er...galactic allies, not talking to them except when it comes to trading...uh...galactic spice...That's understandable, isn't it?"

"I would imagine so." Koriand'r nodded with a murmur. "There is much pride to be had in a cosmic empire's integrity. It is only natural for a nation to withdraw in on itself, even at the behest of its closest aides, after an embarrassing defeat." A beat. Koriand'r blinked at Courtney. "Surely you do not mean to infer that a single Terran male possesses an ego that is naturally attributable to a cosmic nationality...?"

"The truth is stranger than fiction." Courtney shrugged with a smirk. "I don't think Cyborg knows hao much he could be making us feel bad by distancing himself."

"It seems a poor error of judgment on the part of a leader."

"He's our leader, yeah." Courtney nodded. "But he's still a guy."

"That seems hardly excusable."

"The best we can do, Star, is be patient—And give him our support."

The alien girl momentarily frowned. "Because we are his teammates? Or because we are female?"

"You know what?" Courtney squirmed on the edge of the bed and patted Starfire's wrist. "Forget I ever tossed sex into the analogy to begin with."

"You are onto something, though." Koriand'r turned slightly under the covers, exhaling long and hard. "Cyborg has most certainly turned his distraught emotions inward. Does he not know that—by isolating us—he only harms himself?-And this team?"

"I'm sure he knows, Kory."

"But that is most senseless!" The Tamaranian exclaimed, coughed from the ordeal, and further wheezed: "Only someone who desires more pain and failure would be so adamant about focusing on the brief yet all-too-real agony of one night's debacle."

"You seem pretty down in the dumps about it all yourself." Courtney said. "N-Not that I'm trying to accuse you of pulling a Cyborg or nothing..."

"You are not all too inaccurate in your assumption..." Koriand'r's eyes darted briefly to the side. She bit her lip and hesitantly admitted: "I too, like Cyborg, have found myself adrift over the past few hours, lost in this City. It is not that much unlike Raven and her mysterious treks—though I have persued my lone flights for the sake of introspection."

"Have you...uhm..." Courtney shifted about confusedly. "...been at all successful with your...erm...'flights of introspection'?" A hopeful, braced smile.

"I...I b-believe the only accomplishment that I have made was that of a transgression."

"Eh?" Courtney blinked.

"...do you promise to keep a secret, friend Courtney?" Koriand'r looked vulnerably up at the blonde. "I have the utmost confidence in you to do so, if you are so willing."

Stargirl took a breath. She smiled warmly. "Of course, Kory..." She said gently. "You can tell me anything. I want to be here for you."

"I..." Koriand'r squirmed, glanced aside once more, sighed, and finally uttered: "I intervened...on behalf of a troubled citizen, earlier today, when the sun was still up."

"And what's so wrong about that?" Courtney shrugged. "We're superheroes. We're here for the City's protection." A blink. "Erm...what kind of intervening?" She squinted suspiciously.

"It is first and foremost a matter of trust that I have built with Cyborg..." Koriand'r woefully murmured on. "...and I believe that I have maligned that manner of trust."

"Just tell me, Kory. I can handle it if you're willing to dish it out."

"There was this human couple—and they were in the throes of a terrible argument, when the male decided to force himself upon the female, against her consent."

"Oh jeez..." Courtney bit her knuckle, hissed, and grimaced. "That sounds horrible! Wh-What happened?"

"I...intervened of course." Koriand'r said. Her amber brow furrowed momentarily. "He was shamelessly bent on harming her, in the penumbra of absolute sunlight, within earshot of the local populace. Her well-being was the least of his concerns, and he was attempting to fulfill his desires with her as a means of alleviating his frustrations in other departments of his ill-begotten life-"

"Yeah, well, rape is rape, Star. Don't bother explaining—What did you do to 'intervene'?"

"I flew down and stood in their presence. I attempted to intimidate the man from harming the woman. Admittedly, I even attempted to persuade him verbally of his wrong-doing. But he paid no heed to both my virtuous platitudes nor my obvious metaphysicality. He attempted once more to hurt the girl, and I was forced to...throw him."

Courtney blinked. "...throw him hao far?"

"Only across the length of a courtyard."

"Only? Like—hao big of a courtyard, Starfire?"

"Please! Allow me to relate the crux of the issue!" Koriand'r sat up suddenly, wincing in a brief dizziness, but continuing: "After I had dispensed with exhibiting my greater strength—it was only natural for him to express great fear and distress. It is our job to instill fear in the hearts of the depraved and criminal, is it not?"

"Er...kinda...I guess-"

"Well, I need not guess." Koriand'r's jaw was firm. "I feel the taint in the heartbeat of those who would wish to harm the good citizens of this City. It is very much liken unto hao I can feel your heartbeat nao, Courtney, within this very room—And it is a mighty, righteous heartbeat. You would want nothing more than to purify the lives of the desperate, to show them a greater and more rewarding light than they are afforded by the seedy rooftops of this vexed world."

"Uh...Wow. Sure, I, uh...Okay."

"This is no different than what I want." Koriand'r said, then sighed in a sorrowful slump as she lied back down into the bedsheets. "...and yet, I had failed."

Courtney raised a curious eyebrow. "In what way, Kory? You beat up a rapist. That's a victory in my book any day."

"He was not the only one to be horrified of me..." Kory sputtered, sadly, her green eyes limply tracing the concrete ceiling of that Bunker room, hidden. "But the woman I had saved—who just seconds ago was screaming for salvation from the cretin I had violently discharged—She, too, fled from me in horror. And then there were others-"

"Others?"

"Spectators, friend Courtney." Kory looked up at the blonde with a pained expression. "They were witnesses both to the act of cruelty of one human to another. And they were also witnesses to my action. The whole circle of molestation, intervention, and horror was nothing more than a spectacle of awe and wonderment to them—Something they had every opportunity to observe, but no declarative responsibility to partake in."

"That...well..." Courtney scratched behind her ear, eyes averting from Starfire's. "That's...uhm...tough, Starfire. But, you know, this is a tough world. And in spite of it all, we gotta try our best to-"

"We are heroes, friend Courtney." Koriand'r breathed, drowning out the hum of the Bunker around them, drawing the universe inward with a single, heated breath of earnest. "We are not mere monstrosities with the ability to destroy mountains. We are not gods placed upon this planet to control the waves of chaos by mere whim. We are meant to bring joy and comfort to a large amount of people whose rights as precious souls are truncated by the malicious ambitions of the few. Nao tell me, Courtney, hao are we to accomplish this when our most blessed aspirations and gifts are interpreted as the malicious vices we so desperately wish to diminish?"

Courtney bit her lip. She stood up from the edge of the bed and paced in front of Starfire, hugging herself. "It's...It's..." She sighed, pushed a lock back over her ear again and turned about. "It's a tough balancing act, Starfire. The way I've always seen it, I've got this off-switch inside me that I have to keep a finger on at all times. This switch controls my powers—And, like, I tell myself where to draw the line. And it's different in every situation. But, when I get it right—and it always takes practice to get it right—it's worth the trials and tribulations, cuz then I find that perfect spot where I can be a superhero and not freak people out, yanno? And as for becoming a 'spectacle'...heh...that's something you never quite shake off-"

"But Courtney..." Koriand'r breathed, looking wounded and helpless from where she curled under the covers. "...it is not the same for me as it is for you, dear friend."

"Why's that, Kory?"

"Do you realize—truly realize—hao strong I am?" Koriand'r remarked. Her eyes briefly shimmered in a distant fire, slowly dimming with each ensuing sentence: "I have had this discussion with Cyborg, though in another fashion. I do not possess the 'off-switch' that you speak of. I have flown, naked, across the cold vacuum of Space. I have sailed my body between the gravity wells of black holes, scattering and recollecting my molecules, like an earth fowl dives into a lake to come back up with a captured fish. I have hurdled myself through Apokolipton battleship hulls, alien mountainsides, and the coronas of stars. There is no way that I can keep my hands from crushing pure steel unless I concentrate...and concentrate hard."

Silence. Courtney had nothing.

Koriand'r sighed. "I have disobeyed Cyborg. I let an emotional whim—and my reliance on the sound of heartbeats hold sway over my better judgment. Where I could have left well-enough alone, I instead threw in an earth-shattering hand, and brought horror onto the afflicted."

"But, Star..." Courtney exclaimed and sat back down at the amber girl's bedside. "That guy was gonna rape her! You couldn't have just done nothing!"

"Could I?" Koriand'r narrowed her eyes. "The history of your planet includes many accounts when a group of people—with the best of intentions—attempts to intervene upon another group, only to hurt them horribly in the end. Hao many religiously and ethically motivated crusades have only ended in the utter decimation of a noble culture?"

"Star—Kory-" Courtney vehemently shook her head. "Don't...Don't try to analyze this situation like some alien tourist with an encyclopedia in her hand!" She blinked, then leaned over with a smile. "You've always done your best when you relied on your heart. Just what does your heart tell you about what you did earlier today?"

Koriand'r glanced off. A gulp. "I...did what I did...with the best of intentions..."

"Starfire..."

"..." Koriand'r sniffed. Her eyes were moist. "I...I care for the people of this planet. I truly do. I do not want them to suffer..." She bit her lip—shaking a bit—and looked up at Courtney, a single tear rolling down her amber cheek. "I did not want her to suffer. And yet...even in spite of my greatest efforts...she did. Where is the gloriousness in that?"

"Oh Star..." Courtney reached down with both hands and grasped Kory's wrist from beneath the covers. She sighed, stroked her palm, and said: "Doing the right thing doesn't always win you a wreath of roses."

"But in attempting to tactfully use my strength, I only inflicted pain!"

"And you think pain is useless?" Courtney cocked her head to the side. "Sure, you may have hurt that jerk—and royally freaked out the woman. Heh. But don't you think they might benefit from it in the long term? Looks to me like you dropped the bomb on a really pathetic relationship that was better off ending anyways."

"When we rationalize the 'necessary' distribution of pain..." Starfire's face tightened. "...does that not make us dictators?"

"..." Courtney glanced briefly aside, stirred, then bravely throated: "No."

"No?"

"Cuz you're more than that, Star. We're more than that." Courtney stroked her hand and looked down at her. "We're accountable. We think, worry, and stress over everything we do—both the successes and the failures—the bright ideas and the stupid ones—And when we're accountable, we're not dictators. Heck, we're not necessarily gods, for that matter." She smiled. "More importantly, when we care about every little thing we do or say—off-switches or none—it makes us heroes. True heroes clean up after themselves, both physically and mentally."

Koriand'r absorbed that, but once again lost herself in an exhale of thought. She uttered somberly: "I fear that I only have the strength to shatter—and not to reconstruct."

"I don't think you're nearly as helpless to control your strength as you think, Kory." Courtney smirked. "After all—you just discovered tonight—you're vulnerable to chicken and rice, right?"

"..." Koriand'r sickly smiled. "Most affirmative." She shut her eyes and rested deeply into her pillow. "Perhaps I should construct myself a crude necklace of the said material as a constant reminder to myself of my frailty."

"I'd hate to see what you'd wear for a girdle."

"I beg of your pardon?"

"Oh, nothing."

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

Notes, notes, notes—financial figures, projected profits and losses of Stone Industries, intiated and failed projects at StoneTech, written reports from Ms. Drew, Stock Market figures and financial advisor summaries, drafts of contracts with Phaser Labs, letters from Dr. Ray, elaborate plans for expanding facilities within the Bunker, contractual agreements over the construction of the Tower, legal details over zoning the Island in Jump City Bay, new editorials from the Jump City Sentinel, public reactions to the appearances and the catastrophes of the 'Teen Tragics', a byline by Blake Glover, then a police report from Fifth Street and a few photographs of the front of St. Faustina Cathedral...

All of these, Cyborg perused, Cyborg scanned, Cyborg read, and Cyborg obsessed over—quietly—in his head, at over a million bits per second. And still—as he was lying there on his titanium bed/slab, wired to the very computer of the Bunker, having a direct connection to his central hub of information—he could not go over the myriad of details quickly enough. He twitched and stirred in his digital 'slumber' like a robot possessed, a quivering cancerous appendix to some cybernetic coil of silicone intestines.

Finally, his brow furrowed, his shoulders tensed, his red eye flickered like a brake light, and he opened his human eye with a gasp...a pause...then a groan.

The nearby monitors flanking his computer station danced in a brief, snowy static as he sat up, rubbed his head, and grumbled through an inevitable wave of migraine-level agony. Then, as the bits and non-bits and numbers flowed out of him, he inhaled, exhaled, and relaxed...for what 'relaxing' was worth.

He glanced at a digital clock on the wall—a morbid allotment of crimson numbers bled forth an announcement: three and a half hours past midnight. It hardly soothed the insomniac's soul. Cyborg glanced at the computer monitors that he left on before collapsing metallically into his 'rudimentary slumber'. He could see that there were still fourteen teraquads of data left to review before he felt succinctly prepared to face the rising sun, and the hustle and bustle of the city it summoned forth.

"Nnngh..."

The half-android glanced tirelessly down at his wrist. He opened a compartment and dryly blinked at the liquid crystal display: 65.24% charge.

"Not the kind of charge I need." He murmured to himself. A sick, self-satisfying grin, and he unhooked himself from the cable, swung his legs out from the slab, and stepped up to stumble out into the halls of the Bunker. Alone.

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

Schwissh! Cyborg sauntered out of his room and down the hallway, titanium feet echoingly as quietly as he could vainly afford them to. He drifted past the quiet rooms of his fellow team members—silently pleased with the lack of commotion coming from each chamber—aside from Beast Boy's, of course. The quasi-robot made his way towards the kitchen 'corner' of the Bunker, careening somewhat under the cold electric lights. He opened the extra-large fridge, his metal skin foggying from the icy vapor, and he dug his metal hand around inside for a half of a sub that he left inside either two days or two centuries ago.

"Better still be in here..." He mumbled to himself. "Or, I swear, I'm kickin' the lil grass stain's butt at sunup this morning. Pfft—that whole Vegan thang's an act, I swear. He's after my salami. I know it."

A clattering of containers and jars—a rattling of a pot full of leftover chicken and rice—and viola, Cyborg found it, hidden next to a carton of eggs and a sinfully old jug of milk.

"Hah...Well, alright." Victor Stone grinned to himself. "Guess somebody besides me lives to see another day after all."

He reached in, grabbed the plastic-wrapped corpse of a sandwich, and pulled it out. He shut the wide door to the refrigerator, revealing a pale face with an eyemask right behind it.

"... ... ... ...!" Cyborg froze in place, staring with a glinting red eye down at the curious specimen.

A young, lithe teenager in a white shirt, black sweatpants, and a dark eyemask—practically glued to his face—stood besides the refrigerator, swaying limply on his bare feet. He teetered back and forth—and every moment it looked as though he was going to collapse on his hind quarters, his back would arch, his head would cock to the side, and his hands would curl upwards like a kitten playing with a ball of yarn—or more appropriately, Jackie Chan in the throes of drunken boxing.

"Uhhh..." Cyborg squinted his human eye. "Robin?" A blink. "Are you Robin?"

"Nnngh...Mmmf..." The eyemask'd thing stumbled forward, threading the eye of the needle that was the space between Cyborg and the refrigerator. His feet shuffled faster, slower, faster, slower, then side-stepped until he was parallel to the kitchen counter. "...don't know... ... ...nngh... ... trailing the Ventriloquist as we speak...mmnng..."

"... ... ... ..." Cyborg glanced about over his shoulders, shifting nervously on his metal feet. "Uh... ...R-Robin?"

"Fhht..." the stumbling Boy Wonder twirled slowly, backed up against a wall, and caterpillar'd off it, raising limp fists towards invisible shadows. "...fast as I can.. ... ... ...no need for Batmobile... ... ... ...Two-Face has the chocolate... ... ...threatens to fire a forty-four caliber...into the vanilla..."

"Robin, this ain't Gotham." Cyborg said, helplessly smirking. "Or Willy Wonka's." He stepped after the un-caped crusader, holding the submarine sandwich in one hand and reaching out towards him with the other. "Robin-"

"Fuu...Black Mask... ... ...from helicopter... ...using the searchlights... ...to mark the dead..."

"Robin! Yo! Earth to Little Nimoy-" Cyborg shook his shoulder.

"...!.!.!" Robin suddenly jerked, wrestled Cyborg's arm up to the elbow, and rear-kicked the stumbling automaton in the chest.

"WHOAH-"

CRKKK! With a billow of sparks, Robin detached Cyborg's left arm from the joint. He then cartwheeled onto the dining table, kicked a chair down, and twirled the twitching, detached limb like a bo-staff. THW-THW-TWHPP! He struck a pose and snarled. "Nnngh—Show me the numbers! Mad Hatter!"

"R-Robin!" A one-armed Cyborg hopped up, hugging the sub to his chest like it was a football. "Yo, wake up, dawg! It's me! You're brave, metal-headed, and seriously piss-scared team leader!"

"... ... ..." Robin's eyemask rounded slowly. "Cy...Borg...?"

"Snap out of it, yo! The worse I could do to you is dip your hands into warm water!"

"... ... ..." The eyemask scanned the concrete horizon. "... ... ...I'm in the Bunker."

"Yes, man. You're in the bunker. Can I have my hand back, please?"

"Your...hand?"

"I kinda need it to change my underwear with."

"..." Robin glanced at the twitching arm in his grasp. He seethed suddenly, his shoulders bunching up-then relaxed with a groaning sigh. He hopped down from the table, shuffled over and handed the robotic limb back. "But you don't wear underwear."

"So you are awake." Cyborg balanced the wrapped-sandwich in his arm pit and wrangled his right hand about to snap his left back into place. CLKKK-BZZT! "Whew." He uttered, whole. "What's up with that, dawg? Do you always go all Solid Snake in your sleep?"

"I..." Robin ran a hand through his unkempt hair, shuddering in his whites and blacks. "...I have a habit of sleepwalking."

"SleepWALKING? Man, you could have been quoting the Gettysburg address upside down at the rate you were goin'!" Cyborg paced around to the counter and dutifully put the abused sandwich away. "That's a real problem, man! I mean—hao does someone like you afford to deal with something like that?"

"... ... ...!" Robin suddenly brought his hands up to his face in a jerk, then exhaled with relief to feel the taut edges of his eyemask still in place. "So long as this is here...I can survive. I'm sorry to have troubled you."

"Whatever. While you're up, might as well have a bite to eat. Maybe that'll throw your nocturnal psychosis off kilter."

"Thank you, Cyborg, but I would much rather forget that this ever happened." Robin leaned back against the kitchen table he had briefly perched on and rubbed his temples achingly. "I would also very much appreciate it if you didn't make the others aware of it."

"Well, like you said..." Cyborg chuckled helplessly. "No harm done. I mean, it's not like you interrogated any of us in your sleep. And your mask is still on, so—nobody got to see that you're actually one of the Baldwin brothers under that thang."

Robin frowned. "I am not one of the-"

"Does it matter, dawg?" Cyborg unwrapped the sandwich, took a bite, made a face at the taste, but took a second bite anyway. After a fateful gulp, he nodded with his half-metal head towards the Boy Wonder. "This has gotta be the second time I've seen you not in costume. It still freaks me out."

"Glad I could provide some entertainment..." Robin groggily murmured.

"Heh. As if. But syriously, man, do you ever wear shorts?"

"No." Robin's voice tersely throated. "I never wear shorts."

"Well, if you ask me, I would guess that you've been thinking too hard. All that crud that's happened with Kobayashi—you should let it rest, at least for a day. Like I said, Maddie talked her old man out of developing an aneurysm over the other night."

"Cyborg, you asked me to investigate the Underworld's involvement in framing us. That's what I did all of yesterday."

"Man, nobody asked you to go neck-deep and write a fifty page report on the whole thing!" Cyborg scarfed the rest of the sandwich down, swallowed mightily, and gestured towards the young man. "I know hao much this team means to you—But you're going about it just a little too hardcore, don'tcha think?"

"I want to find out where the Underworld is...What D-Cube was going on about when he..." Robin hesitated. He sighed, folding his arms across his chest. "...When he filled my head with ideas of an outside party."

"All that conspiratorial way of thinking may work in Gotham. But not here, man. Don't forget..." Cyborg thumbed a metal hand towards himself. "This is my team, dawg. If anyone's gotta lose sleep and sanity over the things that's been happening, it's me. You've been doing a great job and all, but stop being Batman's apprentice for just a day! I'm begging you! Weeks ago, when you came to me and practically humbled yourself so that the two of us could bang our collective heads together, you said that you didn't want to hurt people anymore. Well, you're gonna hurt yourself, man—if you take too much of the weight of the team on your shoulders."

"I'm only doing what I'm good at."

"And I know that! Hell, man, there's nothing softcore about you at all! It just doesn't compute! I've been in those badass circles myself. The thing is, though, Robin, is that I've prepared for it. I didn't make this team thinking that it'd be a cutesy little tea party in a treehouse! Hell no! I'm the self-appointed leader. I just spent the last four or so hours merging my skull with the computer's database. You say you don't believe in sleep—I am the night! Heh, at least in this Town. Drop me dead in the center of Gotham City, and I'm just a vending machine. Don't you see that, man?"

"I'm perfectly clear with you on this, Victor."

"Are you, Robin?" He pointed. "Just nao, you were chattin' up a whole bunch of Gotham City moonspeak in your sleep! 'Two-Face' this. 'Black Mask' that."

"... ... ... ... ...was I?"

"Dayum straight, man! I'm telling you—No-I am ordering you...As team leader!" Victor marched over and placed a metal hand on Robin's shoulder—the left hand, as a sign of connection, forgiveness. "Relax."

"..." Robin glanced at the metal wrist, then followed the arm up to Cyborg's torso, then face. "Does your intercom play the sound of the beach, by chance?"

"Heh, for you, Robin—I'll get a recording of Veronica Vreeland's lingerie closet. Whatever gets you some masked shuteye is fine with me, so long as you're bright and birdlike for me in the next few days...when I go to the firing squad to chat it up with Kobayashi-san."

Cyborg walked back to the counter while Robin stood there, watching him. The Boy Wonder asked: "When is that scheduled for, anyways?"

"Nnngh...Tomorrow evening." Victor said, disposing of the sandwich wrap and cleaning the counter. "Nancy sent me an e-mail overnight. Guess she still thinks I wait till mornings to read the stuff she sends me. I don't know if the woman's patronizing me or if she has some deeply fermented hope that I'll some day wake up one hundred percent human once more."

"She sounds like your greatest asset..." Robin remarked, head craned towards the half-android. "You're right to have a great deal of confidence in her."

"More like dependence." Cyborg mused, strolling towards the refrigerator once more to grab a jug of orange soda. "My company would be gobbled up by Powers and Petracorp if it wasn't for her. She's the rock upon which I moonwalk."

"Maybe she could be more than a rock..." Robin remarked calmly. "Maybe she could be a plateau."

Cyborg planted the jug on the kitchen counter, closed the fridge, and glanced liquidly Robin's way. "Unless that's some smart joke about my chairperson's shirt size, then I'm afraid you've lost me."

"She's more than capable of running Stone Industries, Vic." Robin said. "Maybe you should consider giving her complete reins."

"Heh..." Cyborg chuckled and poured himself a glass of amber quaff. "And leave me with what? Just the team? The newspapers would label me as the 'Billionaire Boy With his Toys'."

"It's been known to work." Robin nodded.

Cyborg paused in mid-glass. He turned and squinted at Robin. "You're serious, aren't you?"

"... ... ..."

"Pfft—Shucks, who am I talking to?" Cyborg poured the rest, capped the soda bottle loudly, and twirled about to lean his back against the counter. "Can't do it, Robin." He folded his arms. "This team is not only mine—it belongs to Stone Industries. It's like two conjoined twins sharing the same heart. You split 'em up, one of them dies...then the other one croaks shortly thereafter. I've made too big of an investment to erect two towers and then expect one to survive without the counterbalance of the other."

"If you distance us from Stone Industries..." Robin spoke. "...then your company won't suffer half as much backlash the next time we make an even bigger mistake than attacking Kobayashi."

"Man, don't go infecting everything with your pessimism-"

"AND...Drew won't have to suffer for any countermeasures that our arch enemies might wish to inflict upon the business that your father built."

"Man, we don't have no arch enemies!"

"We've been superheroes in Jump City for three weeks, Cyborg." Robin solemnly remarked. "Believe me. It takes time."

Cyborg gave the Boy Wonder a sideways glance. After a few seconds, he sighed, strolled over to the fridge, and put the bottle away into icy keeping. "Maybe if this was your team, Robin, you could afford to have us take a much more aloof stance. I'm sure that's the way things work along the Gotham River—but it's not in keeping with my vision here, man. We want to work for the people. We don't want to be gods, or lords, or titans. We just wanna show that we're here to help people—and that we're one of them, and that they have nothing to be afraid of—but have everything to relate to. I mean—look at Superman! He's the strongest person on this planet—heck—maybe even the Galaxy! And yet he attends charity auctions, public gatherings, meetings with the United Nations! He doesn't worry about distancing himself from the local population! He's there to SUPPORT it! Truth, Justice, and the American way—someone doesn't do all that stuff by claiming to be an Antartican!"

"Superman can also move planets with his bare fists..." Robin stated. "He can bore a hole through the earth's core, and fly through an entire star and survive." The Boy Wonder unfolded his arms and stepped a few paces towards Cyborg. "People have known Superman for a long time, and have long learned to love and praise the Kryptonian for his endless heroics—but deep down, underneath their happy skin, they have to admit to themselevs—someone like that scares them."

Cyborg raised an eyebrow. He cautiously reached for his drink. "Is that the Batman speaking inside of you? That we've gotta be afraid of superheroes to respect them?"

"You can fear what you don't understand, I agree with that." Robin nodded. "But at the same time, you can respect a being whom you can't understand—and yet understands you. I can't lecture to you about your team, Cyborg. It's not my place. But someday, a very dark day, when something ten times as worse as the Kobayashi incident happens—whether we like it or not—we can't afford to not be untouchable. I don't want to see your business suffer—and, for that matter, I don't want to see you take the first shattering blow that could happen."

"I toldja, man..." Cyborg sipped some soda, swallowed, exhaled, and finished: "It's my place. I'm in charge of this team."

"Then think of what's best for the team." Robin said earnestly. "You've taken on so many responsibilities, so many tasks, so many jobs—You're trying to play director, producer, and financier to a blockbuster movie that nobody's even written a scrypt for yet. The fact of the matter is—if you go under, the team goes under too. It's one thing to depend on its leader, but we've got to be able to stay afloat in case worse comes to worse and we lose our cornerstone."

"That's why I rely so much on you, man..." Cyborg said, smiling, in a quiet, sincere voice. "If I go under, I know you've got the tenacity to pick up the slack."

"Nobody can pick up after you, Cyborg." Robin said. "I may be good, but I'm not you. If something takes you out—at the rate at which you've been carrying this team—then nothing will be left to salvage, no matter hao much I give into it. Don't tell me it's not true, because the rest of the team misses you already. Today, we were all scattered everywhere, while you were away. As endearing as that may be—There's something not quite right about that."

Cyborg took another sip, glanced off into the corner of the Bunker, and murmured: "I'll work on it."

"I'm glad to hear it."

Cyborg briefly glared. "And you better work on your sleepwalking." He smiled. "I find you prancing around doing the one-man-show of Robin vs the Arkham Asylum—and the next thing I know you're lecturing me on overworking myself?"

"An old habit I picked up from my mentor..." Robin muttered and walked away.

Cyborg called after him. "Oh, I'd pay to see that!"

"And you'd be burning a hole in your tin can!"

Cyborg smirked, shook his head, and took a lasting sip. An exhale. "Frickin' basketcase..."

"I heard that."

"Go to bed and count bouncing Banes, ya pipsqueak!"

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

"Robin's another story altogether..."

Beast Boy yawned, teetered, but kept his lethargic place on the edge of the bunkbed. The bright blue light of the webcam remained an ever-present landmark in between the elf's geen eyes. He aimed for the second star to the right, and chattered straight on til morning.

"He's more savage than Starfire, about as compassionate as Stargirl, got more gizmos than Cyborg, and nearly quieter than Raven. You take all of that, throw it into a jar, shake it up real nice, add a dash of Lance Armstrong, a heaping helping of Michael Phelps, and a pinch of Luke Skywalker—and you have one heckuva recipe of badassery and heroic endurance, or at least the most undeniable proof of mankind's long awaited evolution from the Hanson brothers."

The green elf absent mindedly reached for his red-bound book and began flipping through it once more.

"Don't get me wrong. I'm not all ga-ga over the guy. He rarely talks to me, much less takes notice of my existence. That's okay, though. Not everybody was a Warp Trek fan. But still, it makes me glad that Cyborg is running things—or at least trying to—and not Robin. Cuz, as much as the bird boy tries to shake it off, he's still a long-range extension of the arm of Batman. I've only been in Gotham City once and...brrrr...let's just say I'm mucho glad that we don't got a bat-family member running the show here. I'd be kicked out of the Bunker for picking my nose. Things are fine just the way they are. Cyborg is Aragorn, Raven is Gandalf, Starfire is Boromir—and Robin? Pfft...Robin is soooo Legolas. I had kinda wished I would be Legolas, but I can't pull off the accent. Plus, I always liked Jack Sparrow the best. Hmmm...I wonder who would be Gimli? Bah—Probably Commissioner Kneehouse. HAH!"

Beast Boy briefly smirked as he thumbed through more of the ancient pages and murmured to himself—or to the live feed—or to nothing.

"Still, sometimes it's hard to tell." He glanced aside at the cam. "Who's in charge, that is." He glanced once more at the pages, pages, runes, runes, runes. "Cyborg and Robin are the two most gung-ho of the team. They both do so much between them, that it's hard for the rest of us to stick a finger in. Starfire's floating about on her own, a bunch of pent-up power that's being wasted for nothing. Raven—I'm sure—could transport entire buildings with her mind if she wanted to, but nobody's asking for her help. And me? I'm sitting here, conducting an empty chat room for hours on end, wondering when my princess will come and sweep me away to a land of surf boards, explosions, and Xbox tournaments...or maybe I'm just staring at this boring book for forever and a day. Either way, there're no princesses in bikinis giggling into my pointy ears-"

Beast Boy froze in mid speech. His green irises shrunk. His ears deflated as he zeroed in on one particular rune in the center of the page.

It looked like a savage number '4'...but it had a nasty hash marck slashed across it.

"... ... ... ... ...huh... ..." Beast Boy blinked. "Well, aren't you cute?" A beat. "But you know what else is cute...?"

Silence.

The elf silently turned about, twisting his back, looking...looking...looking...down. At his rear. He brought a hand back, awkwardly twisting, and raised the edge of his t-shirt a bit. And he saw...

"No way..."

He sat up straight—BONK!-("OW, DANG IT—Nnngh")-hissed, and flippedflippedflipped through the pages. Blinking every other blurred paper, he saw and saw...

...the very same rune, repeating, in random places, forming a very obscure but very real pattern.

"No...Freakin'...Way..." He glanced once more at his rump. At the book. His rump. Book. Rump. Book. "Ho ho ho ho hooooooo noooooo..." His face was twisted between a grin and a grimace, a gasp and a cheer, a praise and a pratfall. "Hoo ho hooooo noooo waaaaaaaaay..."

He thumbed through, saw the same damn rune a couple dozen more times, and looked at his tailbone for the umpteenth time in as many seconds, confronted with the same confirmation.

"What in the heck did Zoey and Razzar give me? This is too bizarre. Too dang bizarre. Holy Mushroom on a Witch's Teat—This ain't right!" Flip!Flip!Flip! Scan!Scan!Scan! Gazing, gaping, twitching. "Wait a sec." He glanced at his butt, at the book, at his butt—book—butt. He took a deep breath, like a deep sea diver about to bob for pearls.

Schoop!

The green elf ducked into a green mongoose, curled on top of the bed, and morphed straight back up into an elf once more.

"Whew!" He took a breath. "Nao, what's behind Door Number One...?" He rolled his shirt up once more, glanced at his posterior... ... ...and blinked.

The birthmark had indeed changed. It nao resembled a percent sign, but with half of a 'W' bleeding through it.

"Hojeez...Dun tell me..." He picked the red leather tome up and eagerly flipped through it, his entire body re-energized with a manic enthusiasm that shattered the thickness of the underground night. "Is it...? Is it...? Is it...? Mother of mud-ducks!" He hissed through his teeth, craning his neck away from the book as if the open pages were about to fire a bazooka at him.

For there, indeed, in undeniable clarity, was a matching rune to his body art. It appeared in three places, as did the rune that he spotted earlier. Something was emerging, and it made the green elf's ears twitch in insanity.

"I can't believe this. What in the Hell...?" He panted, panted, dropped the book, metamorphed into a snake, slithered around for half a second, and shot straight back up-(BONK!)-as a wincing elf. "Owwwieee...pain is food for the collegic soul!" He sneered, almost foaming at the mouth, grabbing the book, looking back at his rear. "Heck, I can't see..." His head flashed around. "Where'd I put my mirror? Nnnngh—The Bathroom! Dang it! I can't let others see this, not yet! I'm playing Myst with my ass; they'll think I'm insane! Why not? Who wouldn't be insane to find that their tail-end was the yellow pages for the Necronomicon? Where...Where-" He finally looked at the webcam once more, the laptop, the webcam. "PERFECT!"

He pounced off the bed and James Brown'd across the tiny room on his knees. Shuffling up to the webcam, he glanced and saw his staticky image on the laptop, positioned himself around, and mooned the webcam. At just the right angle, he could see the birthmark with perfect clarity: half the letter 'q' with three orbiting dots. He thumbed through the ancient book, found the symbol occurring faster than he had planned to, and squirmed in crazy excitement.

"Oh jeez...Oh jeez...Hao about-?" He enlarged into a hippo, nearly knocked over a lamp and a coat-wrack, then shrunk back into a wincing elf. "Why the heck do I keep a coat-wrack? Ah well—WHO CARES?" He mooned the webcam again, saw a jigsaw piece with two eyes, thumbed through the book, found it. "Okai... 'Mongoose butt, something, something, Hippo butt, mongoose butt, something something..." He metamorphed, returned, read. "'Hippo butt, something, squirrel butt, something something, snake butt...'—SNkkkkthahahahaha...Ohhhhh man..." He grinned wide, thumbed through pages, metamorphed, presented his rear to the cam, thumbed through some more, and cacked. "Razzar! Razzar, you magnificent bastard, I'm reading your book!"

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

Early morning. The Bunker was silent...mostly silent. The lights were dim, the doors were all shut, and the air was still.

Then a door opened with a schwissh. A lone, petite figure slid out, glancing about the shadowed interiors, pensively.

"..."

Raven drew the blue hood over her bluer head. She snuck out of her room, shut it behind her with a wave of black telekinesis, and levitated down the length of the underground headquarters.

Halfway to her destination, she paused—hovering—and squinted with a mild glare towards the door to Beast Boy's room.

"... ... ..."

She shrugged it off, marched on through the automatic exit, and was gone.

Alone.

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

"And this one..." Beast Boy mooned the webcam unabashedly. "...is monkey butt! And monkey butt looks like...eh...eh...Penelope Cruz's nose under water with a shark fin. Eh...I gotta give it a better name, but...for right nao..." He somersautled until he was right-side up, picked the book up once more, and thumbed through it. "...Wow! The dang thing appears twelve times on this one page! Must be an important character, whatever it is. So, like, that's nearly thirty animals—and there are at least eight more runes to figure out. I don't know who in the heck wrote all this stuff, or what it has to do with me, but who better to translate it, am I right? Am I right—aw, nobody cares. Hmmm...I wonder what matches this rune."

The green elf shrugged, put the book down, and planted himself on all fours.

"Only one way to find out."

He glanced all around him at the furnishings of the room.

He winced. "Hope...This doesn't make a hole."

The changeling metamorphed—WHUDD!-a huge, hulking stegosaurus lurched and wheezed, scrunched up into every tight corner of the claustrophobic quarters, his backplates and spikes collapsing in on one another. After a momentary, googly-eyed lapse in reason, he shrunk back to elf form, every object in the room collapsing with a clatter around his imploded figure.

"Whew!" He exhaled, clamored through a pile of dislodged junk, and stuck his tush up against the webcam. "This one had better be worth it." He pulled his pants down slightly. "What message speaks the drums-"

A name on the chatroom flashed:

EmeraldHope90: kinda looks like a backwards 'z' with the rings of saturn

"AACKIES!" Beast Boy slumped upside down, squirmed on the floor, tried to get up, tripped on his pantwaist, then crabwalked up against the bunkbed before sliding the article of clothes so high up his person he became a green Steve Urkel. "Hoo...H-Hoo...H-Holy...H-Hao l-long have you... ... ..Uhm... ... H-Huhm..." He glanced, sweating, at the viewer count:

'One'.

"... ... ...eh heh heh heh..." Beast Boy sweatdropped, sat up straight, and gulped hard. "So...uhm...Yeah. I know what this might look like. But, I assure you, this is Beast Boy's Bodacious Tubular Live Stream—or whatever the heck I called it. If you want 'Elves Gone Wild', you've clicked onto the wrong site."

EmeraldHope90: tee hee lol I dun know wut ur talking about but it's okai by me

"...uh huh." Beast Boy's eyes narrowed. "Ya know, to be honest, I kinda sorta...lost track of what I was doing. I really should have stopped the broadcast hours ago..."

EmearldHope90: y? i found it all very interesting. especially the stuff about a Moment Without a Tomorrow

"You were there for that?" Beast Boy made a face. "But...But the website said the viewer count was zero!"

EmeraldHope90: lol yeah about dat um the page u got here is great and all but the bandwith allowance is really bad so like me and my friends we had to piggyback off a mirror site to get here

"...yeah...well...I'm no Bill Gates...or Spock, for that matter..."

EmeraldHope90: lol have u tried refreshing the site?

"...?" Beast Boy nervously thumbed the mouse attached to his laptop, scrolled the cursor over to the 'refresh' button...and clicked it.

A bit of a flicker and flash. The site reloaded. The chat fixed itself. And-

Viewer Count: Twelve.

"AYE-CHI-WAWA!" Beast Boy hissed through his teeth and grabbed his fuzzy head. "Hocrap Hocrap Hocrap...I...I... ... ... ... ...CRAP!"

EmeraldHope90: lol its okaaaaay

LouisBonfire69: ha ha he sees us finally

RobotCrabapple: let us see more skin

LouisBonfire69: yeah dun stop on our account lol

RobotCrabapple: you were onto something with the duck butt

LouiseBonfire69: rowwr lol

SephirothofThebes: talk more about Starfire's skirt

CenaSuxAntonio: cane Cyborg!.!.1.1

Beast Boy winced. "Hooo boyo... ... ...If I had known you guys would be...erm...actually listening to me, I don't know if I ever would have..."

EmeraldHope90: oh noes!.!.!

RobotCrabapple: dun close the chat!

EmeraldHope90: we wanna see what the book says!

RobotCrapapple: plzzzz

LouisBonfire69: At least let us see what a vampire bat butt rune looks like, jesus

SephirothofThebes: yeah!

CenaSuxAntonio: cane Cyborg!.!.1.1.1

LouisBonfire69: goddammit someone kick him lulz

"..." Beast Boy took a deep breath, he glanced more at the viewer count.

'Fourteen'.

"..." He smiled. He picked up the book, held it to the webcam, and smiled brilliant. "So...which of y'all wants to bet this thing's filled to the BRIM with Triceratops Butt?

RobotCrabapple: Hoooray!

EmeraldHope90: hee hee hee yaaay =^_^=

CenaSuxAntonio: shoot on the cast of Web Trek already!

-T-T-T-T-T-T-

Raven stood on the edge of the rooftop to Phaser Labs.

Her blue strands flittered in the twilight breeze, sliding in and out from under her hood.

A sorrowful breath, and she shrugged it off as her arms twirled gracefully...

...and lifted her up, levitating her west/southwest...

Over the lone rooftops of the City.

Towards the lone, distant glow of Jump City Western Hospital.

Before the faintest hint of dawn rose over the horizon, swallowing her up in golden oblivion.