Soulfrenzy

Chapter 7 – Fallout

Robin stared at the monitor, his digital window into the interrogation room, unflinchingly.

This can't be it, he thought. This is not what we were against.

A young, tan man with six-inch long white hair sat bound to a metal chair, alone in the cold metal box that was his cell. His head was sullenly downcast. He had barely moved since waking – and that was twenty minutes ago. Robin had been almost angry when they found him. He had been all they could find beneath that bus; toned and muscular, yes, but not a flaming blue demon.

It doesn't matter what he looks like, he concluded, turning away from the monitor. He was standing with Raven and Cyborg in the tower's sick bay; Starfire was lying, comatose, in a bed behind him. The room was dimly lit; only Cyborg's armor plating and the monitors attached to Starfire gave off any real light. He did this to us. He did this to her.

He walked to her bedside, laying a hand on the cusp of her cot. Many moments of silence passed; neither the Titans nor their guest seemed content to speak.

Cyborg finally broke the silence. "Her vital signs read normal, man." He rubbed his torso; it had taken over an hour for Robin to get him rebooted so that he could repair the rest himself. "She'll wake up. I promise."

He forced Starfire out of his mental picture. He couldn't be compromised right now; he only had time for the case.

"I'm not as worried about that as I am about him." Robin pointed to the monitor. "He's what did this to Starfire? To Beast Boy? To you? It doesn't make any sense."

"Whatever the creature was, it was paranormal," Raven said. "And such things rarely make sense."

"Do you know anything about it?"

Raven paused, and not for the first time since she had come to his rescue, she looked uncomfortable. She had not been as acutely focused since the battle.

"No..." she said finally. "I have never seen, or read, of anything like it. I'll see if I can find anything in my -"

"No," he said decisively. "No, I need you here. We wait for Beast Boy, and then I interrogate him. This is too important; we all have to be here. Especially if Starfire is in danger again."

Cyborg reached out to him, placing a hand on his shoulder. "We'll take care of her, man. I promise."

"I know that." Robin turned away, letting the hand gently slip away. "But this is the closest we've ever come to... losing." He swallowed the d-word. It had come to mind first, but not in his team. Not on his watch. "If I go down doing this, then you're going to have to get out of here. Call the other Titans."

More seconds of silence, staring at that monitor. The young man shifted slightly under the camera's gaze, but if he was aware of their observation, he did not acknowledge it.

"I should go in there with you," Cyborg decided. Robin shot him a glance out of the corner of his eye.

"No. Interrogation is delicate. And we're not sure if he can be triggered by panic or anger. We're not even sure if he is the guy we're looking for. Just let me handle it."

There was a sudden hiss as the sick bay door slid open. Visibly stiff, but miraculously whole, Beast Boy hobbled into the darkness.

"Dude... I had to morph into a sponge to get those scars to heal!" he said. The words were light enough, but he had a humorless look in his eyes. Responding to everyone's quizzical looks, he added, "Usually an octopus does the trick."

"You can do that?" Cyborg's expression, on any other day, would have been humorous. "How do you know how to do that?"

His healing was, given the deep, numerous furrows that had covered his body only hours ago, indeed remarkable. And he was right – sponges had the ability to regenerate themselves from even a tiny cluster of cells. Beast Boy's use of that obscure form had been uncharacteristically ingenious.

"I know a lot about animals, dude," Beast Boy replied to his bionic friend. "I'm not stupid."

He looked at Raven, but her quips were notably absent. Nobody seemed in-character today.

"But hey, it helps with the whole super-hero gig! A little jellyfish here, maybe a lizard there, and I'm good as-"

Robin abruptly turned back toward the monitor and their prisoner. Beast Boy paused at the sudden movement.

"Oh... sorry dude."

Robin felt tempted to reach up to his face, to touch the marks that the blue flames had carved into it. They were mild marks, not exactly disfiguring, but he had every belief that they were permanent – for non-alien, non-sponged people, anyway. But then, there was no time for self-pity.

"It doesn't matter, Beast Boy. You're here now; we're as ready as we'll ever be."

"For what?"

Robin gave him a sidelong look.

"The interrogation."