A/N - I am a horrible author-person... I'm REALLY sorry I didn't update this until now! I could give you a lot of excuses for why my hiatus lasted roughly 382 days longer than I thought it would (writer's block, school, TSA, writer's block, other fanfics, another fandom, TSA...) but I guess the important thing is that while I can't promise that all those people who read it months ago will still like it, I'll finish it anyway. Special thanks to The Midnight Huntress, lildip14, Maiden of Hyrule, and NIGHTINGALE for making me aware that 'Azar! People are still reading this!?'
So without further ado:
Robin automatically looked up when he first heard the cackling. For a moment – just a moment – he thought of the Joker. But it was not the Joker's laugh that he heard - for one thing, it was too musical and definitely feminine. For another, he was currently sitting outside the Cafeteria eating lunch at one of a dozen picnic tables. Still, he was at Bayview High School for the sole purpose of investigating, so he decided to investigate the strange and unceasing laughter. Robin slid to the end of his table and waited until the two teachers who were assigned to chaperoning this lunch period looked deeply engrossed in their conversation before he ducked behind a low hedge. From behind the shrubbery, he military crawled to the portables, where he ran in a low crouch until he cleared the first portable.
It was there that he found her.
She had long golden curls and was standing with her face to the wall. Despite the laughter, she was knocking her head against the rough wooden paneling of the structure, and when Robin got a glimpse of her face, he saw that it was twisted into one of despair.
"Are you alright?"
The girl jumped and stared at Robin in shock. After considering him for a moment, she timidly shook her head no, laughing all the while.
"Why can't you stop laughing?" Robin asked, unconsciously going into interrogation mode despite actually being concerned.
The girl hesitated for a second before opening her mouth to answer, but not a word came out of her mouth; a particularly extreme bout of giggles had burst from her throat, and she bent double as the sound turned into wheezing. For a moment, Robin thought she was going to asphyxiate before his very eyes, but after a long moment she straightened. There were tears in her eyes, and Robin got the distinct impression that she had been laughing for a long time, and it hurt.
The girl motioned for Robin to come closer, and they knelt in front of a bare patch of dirt under the rain gutter. The girl placed one hand on the wall to support herself. With the other, she broke off the brittle stem of a long-dead weed and drew a shaky figure in the dirt.
Robin frowned, twisting slightly to see it better. It was, for the most part, a typical stick figure - except it looked like it had wings…
"Is that a… pixie? A fairy?" Robin certainly hadn't been expecting that.
The girl must have interpreted his surprise as skepticism, for when he looked up again, her face was red and she wouldn't meet his gaze.
Robin measured his next words carefully, realizing that if he phrased this wrong, she might think he was mocking her. "I have a friend who knows a lot about magic, and the occult, and things like that," He said, slowly. "If you want, I could ask her if she could help."
It was the girl's turn to look surprised. She stared at him a moment, trying to discern whether he was serious or not. Finding no trace of mocking in his demeanor, she nodded emphatically. Then she paused, as if something were occurring to her. Pointing to herself, she wrote a single word in the dirt: Ella.
Robin smiled. "I'm Ryan."
Ella seemed to be calming down slightly, the chest-wracking fits of laughter reducing to uncontrollable giggles. Faintly, Robin heard the school bell ring and he stood up, brushing sand off his jeans.
"It was nice meeting you, Ella. See you here Monday?" Ella nodded, and Robin smiled before taking off at a jog. He really didn't want to be late for Mrs. Stickler's class…
)o(
Sitting through Mad Mod's class was torture; 'Mr. Modd' kept insulting American English and the students intelligence, all while maintaining that the he was better simply because he was older.
Even more tortuous was the fact that neither Starfire nor Beast Boy could do anything about it. He was, technically, not doing illegal at the moment, and besides, they were undercover. They couldn't expose themselves and attack a teacher for merciless picking apart of grammar and excessive correction of comma placement.
"Because you sprogs can't seem to grasp the concept of the simple sentence, we're going to spend the next ninety minutes relearning the entire lesson!"
A collective groan rose from English III, period 2. Only three kids refrained from moaning; Beast Boy, who was asleep; Starfire, who was trying to wake up Beast Boy before Mad Mod noticed; and that nerdy girl in the back whom everyone knew was desperately brainstorming a way to convince the guidance counselors to reschedule her into an Honors class.
"Rule Number One; a sentence is not a sentence until it has at least one independent clause. Rule Number Two; a clause is not a clause until it has a subject and a verb. Rule Number Three; if there is more than one independent clause, then it's not Simple. Why are you not taking this down?"
There was a sudden scrambling for note paper and pencils, and the sound of less-prepared students attempting to mooch pencils, paper, and erasers from their peers was enough to cover Beast Boy's sudden exclamation of 'But I hate English muffins!'
"Sniveling ankle biters, the lot of them…" He muttered to himself – though half the class heard anyway. Most of them had no idea what 'sniveling' meant, but they figured that anyone who came up with a term as weird as 'ankle biters' must have a few screws loose and thus inferred that they were being insulted by a loony.
"As I was saying, Rule Number Four; always use a comma after prepositional phrases but never before a conjunction unless you have a subject and a verb. And speaking of commas, Rule Number Six is that the Oxford Comma is never optional."
At this, the nerdy girl in the back looked up in surprise. "But sir," she started, "the Oxford Comma has to do with listing things, not sentence structures - and what happened to Rule Number Five?"
Mad Mod froze, and turned slowly to glare at the girl who dared interrupt when teacher was talking.
"I. Hate. The number. Five," he ground out. "And respect your elders! I'm older, so therefore I'm better, smarter, and right."
The offender looked close to tears after being yelled at by a teacher, even though the indignance on her face shone clear. If she was indignant, however, than Starfire was righteously furious. Thankfully, at that moment the fire alarm began blaring from the corner, and Mr. Modd belatedly recalled that there was a fire drill scheduled for today.
"Everyone out," he growled, bringing his palm to his face in exaggeration. "Orderly, now duckies – off with the lot of you!" He continued, shooing them out of his classroom and slamming the door shut after the last person had left. He did not bother to walk his class to the parking lot.
)o(
Cyborg looked suspiciously over the heads of the cafeteria crowd. For a second he could have sworn he'd seen a short little bald kid who resembled Gizmo. He didn't have time to reflect on that, however, as another student joined the back of the lunch-line.
"Hiya!" Said the girl, who was dressed in a similar uniform to his own.
"Uh, hello…" Cyborg said awkwardly, not sure if he'd actually met this girl before or if she thought that he was someone else. He'd met a lot of kids this past week, something he hadn't done in a while. It was a little weird to see more than five people on a regular basis.
"My name's Riley - Riley Schultz. I'm new here. What's your name?"
Oh, good, so they didn't know each other yet. "Vaughn Pearson," Cyborg said, giving the girl the fake alias he'd chosen for this mission. "Nice t'meet ya," he smiled.
)o(
Starfire and Beast Boy followed Mad Mod's car all the way to the edge of the docks, where he parked. He was old and slow compared to the bustling sailors and dockhands, making him easy to follow.
Together they watched as he slowly made his way to an empty warehouse; predictable.
Thirty seconds after Mad Mod had entered the warehouse, a small green swallow and a green-eyed Tameranian girl were tucked into the eaves of the warehouse, peering through the grimy windows at the scene below.
A few seconds later the lights came to life, revealing just what Mad Mod was up to; an army of robots decked out in Union flags.
Beast Boy rolled his eyes at the unoriginality of it all – or at least he would have, if he wasn't currently a sparrow – and Starfire used her communicator to take several pictures of Mad Mod and his British iron-clads.
)o(
On Friday afternoon the students of Morvan's Academy were finally allowed to go home. Delaney watched them go from her bedroom window, a massive wave of blue, green, and purple cloaks. Within five minutes the last late-stragglers had boarded the three color-coded buses, and within another thirty seconds the vehicles had departed.
When Delany was a little girl, her grandmother told her stories about faeries from this very window. As they stared over the square and the city beyond, her Abuela would whisper in hushed tones stories of kelpies and morgen, brownies and hobgoblins. The fae had not been kind to her grandmother. Abuela told her of the terrible tricks they'd played on her - but first she'd made her wear a necklace of rowan and place an iron cross underneath her pillow, just in case the wee folk attempted any tricks on Delaney. The fae had always enjoyed playing tricks on mortals, particularly those with the Sight. Abuela had been no exception. In fact, she had tried to tell other people, but the pranks had simply become more malevolent until she finally gave up.
The square was empty now. Almost. A single woman, beautiful even from this height, was pushing a cart full of flowers and plants in a wide circle around the cathedral.
The only reason Abuela had told her granddaughter was in case her children had the Sight. Delaney came to hate the fae, at first because of making her grandmother helpless, and then because she couldn't see them or tell when they were playing tricks on hapless mortals. She would not become her grandmother.
)o(
A/N - So... anyone know where Cyborg's name came from? I think I mentioned it earlier, but I'm not using the official names because they're on a mission and thus always at risk of exposure. I tried to make all the names similar, but not too much so. I realize the faerie thing seems kinda out of left field, and is not really part of either TT or CB, but in that sequel/prequel series, the Chronicles of the Red King, there are these creatures which could very easily fit in with the Unseelie Court, so maybe it's not completely AU yet... and in any event, it's the only way I can think of to continue the plot (and I've had more than a year to think) so yeah...
NIGHTINGALE: iGracias mi primo! :)
Sporks - I hope you've gotten back into your account! Lol, I'm glad you like her (and him) Thanks, my original-intended hiatus was indeed fun, and I promise to refrain from eating plants and earwax.
Angelic Toaster - Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you, not only for the compliment, but for also noticing that the plot was dragging (because at that point, there wasn't really a plot yet...)
The Odd One95 - I'm so sorry! I failed you as an atuhor-person! ;_;
Also:
Good news - I have the next chapter mostly outlined, somewhat written, and I have a general idea now what I'm doing with this story. I've also had a year with a most excellent English teacher who taught me much in the way of grammar. Comma splices be gone!
Bad news - I start school tomorrow. Nghhhhh...