"I just might have to kill you, Cameron." He smiled and took another drag from his cigarette.
Brief pause.
"First of all, I already told you to stop dicking around," came the reply, "and second, don't call me that... Garfield..."
"Sure thing, Cameron... would you prefer Prisoner 234026?"
Cameron stood up. "Pistol or not, I'll deck you right here, right now."
"Lay off, old man." A cough. "...You really need to get away from that kid of yours more often..."
"Got that right."
Down below, people busily bustled about like ants. The two middle-aged men stood at the very edge of the building top staring down at them, fully aware that a single slip would mean a certain death. But they were used to that idea: in their line of work, a slip always meant failure.
There would be no slips this time, however. There were two pairs of eyes to catch errors before they hit. There were two sets of muscle to keep the situation in hand. There were two minds planning the series of events. But one breed.
Cameron grunted. "Alright, let's do this."
Letting out a thick puff of smoke, Garfield flicked the cigarette over the edge and turned face his companion: Cameron was already fastening his costume. Garfield smiled and reached for his helmet; he had had his metallic bodysuit on for nearly half an hour.
They were dressed in less than a minute.
Garfield looked over the edge one more time before walking towards the stair entrance on the rooftop. "Time to start the barbecue."
—
Five stories of flaming happiness.
The tires squealed as the T-Car and the R-Cycle pulled in; Cyborg and Raven slipped out of the front seats and I jumped out of the right back door. We gazed a little bit uncomfortably at the raging fire before us as Starfire and Beast Boy in falcon form drifted in from the midday sky. All six of us stood several meters from the police line and eyed the building in all of its burning glory.
"And they need us because...?" Raven asked dryly.
"I'll go check it out," Robin answered. He quickly jogged over to a group of policemen talking heatedly in a semicircle; the obvious leader of the group was a husky, brown-haired man with a somewhat bushy mustache. Robin approached him from the front and started talking with him. He had a serious look in his eyes and seemed to speak brusquely, with no unnecessary words or sounds, almost looking like he was lecturing Robin. I was wondering exactly what kind of relationship the Titans had with the local law enforcement when a voice intruded on my thoughts.
"So, are you guys gonna rescue them?"
I quickly turned to see a smiling fifteen-year-old.
"The firefighters already went up the first two floors to start helping out in the third and fourth floor," Job said, looking up at the building side, "but there are still people in the top three floors."
I didn't even answer; I was too busy wondering how he had managed to get next to me so quickly.
"What'd he say, Robin?"
I turned from the still-smiling boy without ever responding and rejoined the Titans as Robin began his explanation of the situation to the group. "The firefighters are taking care of the middle floors, but they asked for help with the top levels. The fire is causing major damage to the structural integrity of the office building and they think our abilities would be best suited for the job."
Subtly, I noticed a look of determination arise on the faces of the other Titans. Cyborg, Starfire, Raven, and even Beast Boy seemed strangely serious as they looked off at the burning offices. Their reactions puzzled me: why was this any different from the fights they had any other day of the week? It suddenly occurred to me why the Titans actually wanted to go in and rescue people: there was another side to their "job" I had overlooked. I never realized that there was more to their job than combating criminals and foiling evil plans: what if they actually worked to protect the people? Would anyone who was capable of doing what they were... ever work for just that? No obsession with justice, no desire for revenge, no need for recognition and self-improvement... just to help?
I found myself completely lost in thought when I caught a phrase from Robin. "...And then we'll all meet back here. Everybody get that?"
I had just missed the entire rundown of the situation. Never one to rock the boat, I nodded along with the Titans and watched them for clues as to what we where going to do exactly.
Fortunately, I was lifted in the right direction and before I knew it, I was hovering several meters off the ground and flying towards the flames of the sixth floor.
I looked up and saw Starfire smiling warmly as she carried me by the underarms. "Come friend Mika, there are many men and women in need of our assistance."
Ahead, Beast Boy and Raven quickly flew to the top floor. Their abilities to fly seemingly made them the best candidates for transporting the citizens in the highest level most efficiently. As we neared the windows of the sixth story, I spotted Robin and Cyborg charging over police cars and past roadblocks into the doors of the office building.
"I recommend that you close your eyes and mouth, Mika," Starfire suddenly advised.
Only guessing how she was planning to get in, I obeyed without question. She flung me to her left side and lowered her own head.
CRASH!
She led in with her right shoulder and shattered the giant glass window with her back.
When she let me go, I stared at her in wonder. "How did that not tear your backside apart?"
Starfire waved it off—an odd gesture from an alien indeed—and simply replied, "Tamaranian skin is far less permeable than that of humans." She laughed. "It was actually somewhat physically humoring…"
She was Tamaranian.
She was Tamaranian and sharp glass tickled her.
Oh, God…
The walls of the room we had burst into were decorated with family photos and diplomas; the air of the personal office was only slightly warm. Wondering if the fire had even reached this level, I dashed to the only door of the small compartment and threw it open; a blast of heat hit me square in the face forcing me to look away. Starfire floated forward and I saw a long hallway extended before us, with rows of identical doors. Smoke blurred the view past fifteen meters or so, but the intensity of the heat seemed to grow by the second.
My wandering eyes met Starfire's as I surveyed the area.
We had a long way to go…
"Help me!"
—
The green falcon barreled into a cloud of gray smoke where a window used to be and morphed as he passed the threshold. Beast Boy ran into an open lounge area where a growing group of businessmen and women sat in front of two couches on the floor with handkerchiefs over their mouths.
"Raven," he yelled out, "is anyone else over there?"
A black bird of energy burst from a nearby ornate door and smoke spilled out onto the ceiling. The door became encased in black and strained against its hinges. Tearing from the wall, it flew back into the room, and emerged moments later with a coughing man and woman. Raven floated closely behind it, right arm extended and left hand holding her cloak closely to her face.
"Plenty," came her muffled response. The door gently floated to the floor with its two passengers still resting onboard. "We have to get these people out of here faster."
Keeping his head safely under the smoke above, Beast Boy turned towards the fire that completely consumed the faraway wall. "Well, we can't get anywhere near the stairs, the fire's practically growing from there."
Raven stretched out both hands and the door on the floor began glowing. "Looks like were going to have to do this the hard way..."
She motioned a nearby woman to join the other two evacuees aboard the door. Glancing one last time at her companions, the woman crawled to the door and lay down.
"Hold on to the edges tightly," Raven said to all three of her passengers, "this isn't the best way to travel, but it's the only thing we have." She floated towards the gaping hole in the wall and brought the door to a standstill in front of her, floating seven stories off the ground.
Beast Boy walked up behind her with two women in professional attire following him. "Now don't worry, you're in the safest hands possible," he told them, trying to reassure them, "mine."
Neither replied.
Both were too busy staring past him and Raven to the distant street concrete.
The very hard and solid concrete.
"Right," Beast Boy replied to his own comment. "Nobody ever falls for that..."
He jumped out the window past Raven. She flinched slightly and the three straphangers below struggled to keep their hold on the shaken door. Raven glared at Beast Boy as he soared past and floated out the hole and out of the way. He managed a half-smile as his hands morphed into broad wings and his face elongated.
The enormous winged reptile hovered back to the entrance and extended the closed claws of his feet to the standing women on the deck. They tentatively reached out and grabbed hold of the legs. Beast Boy flapped his wings and glided down as two women tightly held on with wrapped arms.
The decent was graceful and his landing conveniently located in a clearing near an ambulance. The women dropped to the floor as he slowly glided to a stop over the clearing and he flapped away to the black door that had reached the ground.
His gorilla feet met the ground and he reached for the door, carefully balancing it so as to not disturb the people on board. With the balance of a jar on an African woman's head, he took them to the ambulance, placed them within the reach of the paramedics, and momentarily transformed back into normal elf form.
"Are they gonna be all right?" he asked, eyeing the oxygen masks that were immediately place over the victims mouths.
"Tough to say," one of the paramedics answered, "they both swallowed a whole lotta amount of smoke and they may have been damaged in the blast."
Beast Boy's right eye twitched slightly.
"But don't worry," the other medic replied, "the City Hospital has plenty of experience with these sort of patients; they'll have no problem with these two and whoever else is stuck up there."
Beast Boy nodded and looked at the burning building. There were still plenty of people left, and the job wasn't about to get any easier.
—
The number three flew past on the burning wall; they had made great time for having sprinted up three flights of stairs under random burning.
"Cyborg," Robin said, as they continued dashing up long staircases to hotter and hotter temperatures, "remember that the police reported the explosions as originating in the stairs, we don't know how stable any of this could be—"
Robin was cut off by two sudden realizations: that Cyborg was no longer next to him and there was no more floor in front of him. A huge section of the staircase that should have led into the fourth floor offices was completely gone, blown off by the explosion of the bomb. Squatting on the only foot that wasn't floating aimlessly in the air, Robin thrust himself across the gap and barely cleared the flames on the other side as he landed on his knees.
Heaving his chest, he turned to his left and saw the smug smile on Cyborg's face.
"And you were planning on telling me... when I hit the second story?"
"No," Cyborg answered, "I just wanted to see if it was possible for anyone to not notice a ridiculously large hole in the middle of a staircase."
Robin stood up and continued walking up the stairs.
"Damn... I was gonna catch you if you fell anyway..." Cyborg grumbled as he followed him up the stairs.
The climb to the next floor was quick and silent. They avoided the outside edge of the stairs where the flames burned most intensely and stuck to the wall. The fifth floor entrance was no better than the previous one: the floor looked perilously weak, the door looked to be nothing but a wall of flames, and the heat forced Cyborg and Robin to squint and look away.
With Robin leading the charge, they ran into the room and almost into a stream of high-powered water.
"Whoa!"
The fireman had to lean completely to the right to stop the stream from blasting them in the face.
"Captain Michaels," Robin said, addressing the fireman as he closed the nozzle with a quick jerk.
"Ah, Robin and the Pussycats have arrived," he replied jokingly, in spite of the raging inferno around him. "I guess our business here is done." With that he turned on the hose and continued to dowse the flames. "The victims have already been evacuated here, go on up stairs to take care of the people who couldn't get out. See if you can't find a way to get them down here; I assume Commissioner Hall already told you the only available ladder we had only reached this far."
"And be careful," he added, "the bombs went off on the staircases of the odd numbered floors, but somehow fires were started in the other floors, too. It's dangerous as hell out there."
"Don't worry, sir," Cyborg answered as he turned and bolted back to staircase, "Dangerous is my middle name." He leaped through the flames of the doorway and started running back up the stairs; Robin soon joined him.
"Cyborg?" he asked.
"... ... Yeah?"
Silence.
"That might have been the lamest superhero line I've ever heard—"
"Shut up, Robin."
—
The door to the fifth floor flew from its hinges as Cyborg rode it to the floor and rolled past; Robin flew in behind him on a grappling line: the missing portion of the stairs in front of the door had done little stop them. The flames growing around them, however, posed a problem.
Cyborg motioned Robin to the right passage of a long line of cubicles. "You go that way," he cried out, "and I'll take the middle path. We'll have to come back for the left cubicles, right now they're are completely blocked by the fire."
"Right. Look for any trapped victims and survivors. We'll meet at the end of the row."
Robin ran from the flames behind him and scavenged the row in front of him: there were two people he could plainly see through the smoke.
"Are you okay?"
The man coughed and looked up as Robin neared him in a crouching run. He nodded and ducked his head without saying anything.
"Follow me, sir, and keep your head down."
Robin sped off the second victim, who was only a couple of meters away, checking the cubicles in between for survivors. He arrived with the man, asked the standard question, and gave the same instructions, but his mind was busy thinking of a way to get both of them out: the stairway was way too unstable to hold them even for a short while.
He looked around furiously, fighting the growing wildfire.
In the next row, Cyborg raced from cubicle to cubicle, looking under desks for anybody that could be rescued.
"Really don't think they had bomb shelter in mind when they built these desks," he muttered to himself. He suddenly stopped and coughed abruptly before resuming his search. His lungs were cybernetically enhanced to maximize nitrogen and oxygen usage and they were far superior to any human lungs, but even they had a limit.
As Cyborg neared the end of the row, he heard a shout from ahead. Behind the clearing smoke, he saw a spectacled man in a business suit crouched underneath a desk, shouting for help.
He raced forward and neared the man. Robin appeared from around the corner with four people behind him. He looked at Cyborg and his eyes widened.
"Cyborg, WAIT!"
Too late.
As Cyborg looked up and heard his warning, his foot went through the black floor.
For a moment, it looked like the ground had swallowed Cyborg's leg and left everything else intact.
Then his entire body fell through.
And chunk of the floor went with him.
Dust and smoke filled the air as the heat from the floor below escaped through the newly created ventilation system.
Robin held back the people behind him and helped up the man who was under the desk. As the smoke slowly cleared from the hole, he peered over and saw Cyborg on top of a large pile of drywall.
"Thanks for smothering the fire there, Mr. Dangerous."
Robin ducked into the hole and saw Captain Michaels laughing under the weight of his firemen's uniform. If weren't for the dust burning his eyes, he would have smiled.
"Hey, Robin." He turned towards Cyborg as he spoke. "I like how you warned me... as I went through the fifth floor."
Robin smiled.
The people came close behind him and prepared to go through the jump through the hole.
"Just rewards, Cyborg. Just rewards."
—
Starfire let the two old men down near the crowd and said something to them. They smiled and replied. From where I was, it sounded like she let out a yelp before she bear-hugged both of them and was pulled off by several embarrassed policemen. Certainly a first in my book...
She flew back up to the ledge in front of me and I herded over two people who were covered in jackets.
"Burned," I mouthed to her. She nodded in understanding and gently grabbed them before floating carefully down towards the ambulance.
"Can't we go any faster?" came a yell behind me. The voice belonged to some man that hadn't stopped yelling since Starfire and I had gathered a growing group near the hallway where Starfire had "opened" another exit. "I really can't die. I need to get off now!"
"Sir," I replied, trying to curb the curtness in my voice, "we are going as fast as possible. We're taking the most severely hurt and elderly people out first."
From behind a line of people, he yelled, "Do you know who I am? I demand that you get me out, now!"
All of a sudden, I felt the people move behind me and out the corner of my eye, I saw him try to move past the people in front of him.
At that point, I'm not sure whether his foot caught on any of the hundreds of pieces of rubble in that corner of the building... or if someone did what everyone else wanted to do and stuck out their foot.
But he tripped.
Straight into my right shoulder.
And over the edge.
I want to say that I reacted instantly...
...But I didn't. For a quarter of a second, I considered just letting him plunge over the edge and enjoying the hearty round of applause that would surely follow.
Then I remembered that there were undoubtedly dozens of cameras recording on the ground floor and only one would have to catch it before a parade of scandal would plague the Titans and certainly terminate my comfortable position in the Tower.
So I grabbed his hands... and went with him.
The weight of the man pulled me forward and forced me onto my stomach. I felt the floor grind against my shirt as I gained forward momentum. Desperate for any anchor, I reached out with my feet and hooked my foot on some part of the wall.
And so I hung, six stories off the floor. Held only by the strength of my legs and weighed down by a man who wouldn't have suffered from two or three years of dieting.
I looked down and saw the rescue ladder several feet below and to my left. There was no way they could help me. At the very bottom I saw Starfire barely arriving to the floor with the burn victims; she hadn't even seen me yet.
The people behind me began panicking.
The man I was holding onto was shouting obscenities and cries of mercy to the world.
And the strain on my legs grew stronger every second.
But I couldn't let go. That's what being a Titan was about, wasn't it? Doing heroic deeds in the face of impossible of adversity or something like that? They helped people expecting certain failure... and still came out victorious?
No. I wasn't going to let this man go for anything. If the Titans could do it day in and day out, then I certainly could, too. If I hadn't been in so much danger, I would have smiled.
At that point, I was too caught up in my own delusions of grandeur to realize I had completely lost my grip on the wall.
So I fell.
I saw the man's face twist into a mask of horror in front of me.
I saw my scarf fly back.
I saw Starfire shouting something into a communicator in her palm.
And I saw a ring of blue fire in my mind.
Doverie Nikto.
The window of the fifth floor passed my head and I continued to plunge.
Suddenly, I heard glass shatter behind me and something tightened around me feet.
I came to full stop and slammed into the wall chest first.
"Tvoyu mat!"
I barely held onto the man's hands as I winced from the pain in my front side. Suddenly, I felt a sharp sting around my ankles as I jerked up and began sliding up the wall like some sort of snake.
I felt my legs go into the wall and then, I was in the building again. My legs were wrapped in the tight hold of a cable and Robin walked up to me with a slight grin on his face as he retracted the device in his hands. He didn't stop reeling and I didn't stop sliding until the man I held onto firmly came over the windowsill.
"Glad you could drop in." I stared in complete disbelief, partly because I was still high on the rush of hanging so high above the city and partly because I didn't get the joke.
"God, I'm turning to Beast Boy..." he muttered aloud.
I pulled apart the hold of the cable, stood up, and turned around. "Is that fast enough for you, sir?" He didn't even let out the breath he had been holding since the fall. "I'm glad I could help." I walked away from him... and almost into a hole in the ground. I found myself staring through the floor at Cyborg.
"Glad you could drop in." I made a mental note of asking somebody later what that meant and moved away from the hole.
"I got it down here, Robin," he called out from the pit. "You go up and help out Star and Mika."
A small crowd of seven or eight people gathered near the hole in the floor as Robin nodded in confirmation and backed away.
"We've already swept this floor," he replied, "I think anybody that can be found already was." He turned my direction and waved a hand. "Let's go."
I followed him towards the place where the entry to the stairs should have been; instead, there was just a cauldron of smoke and fire. I had to look away from the heat and rub my eyes to keep from tearing up.
"There's no floor immediately outside the door," he said, "we'll have to jump over to get up." He held a grappling gun. "You need a lift?"
"I'll be okei."
He shrugged and ran straight into the fire. Taking a deep breath, I ran in after him. I leaped into the smoke and peered out from under my arms covering my face. I saw the burnt edge of the floor and landed in a roll.
I stood back up and saw Robin swing up onto a ledge a floor above me. I skipped atop of the railing to my side and jumped for the railing across from it. I kicked off and reached for the next railing on the opposite side. Feeling the metal get hotter in my hands, I quickly pulled my self up and flipped next to Robin.
We ran in through the burning threshold and moved from the smoke that covered the entrance. On the far end covered in smoke but safe for the fire, Starfire reached grabbed two people by the hand and flew away.
I ran past the long row of offices, quickly checking for any remaining victims in the rooms; it looked like all of the people left were crowding around the makeshift emergency exit.
"Have all of the rooms been checked?" I asked the person in the very back of the crowd, a small, bald man who was thankfully calm under the circumstances.
"Yes, ma'am." Ma'am? "Some of us got together and went back to look for anyone that needed help." He pointed at the crowd in front of him. "These are all the people we could find."
"You did a great job." Robin stepped up behind me. "The Titan's appreciate your help."
In spite of the heavy smoke, the man smiled.
"Robin," came Starfire's voice from outside the hole in the wall. She appeared with a gust of wind and leaned on the wall while she continued. "I am near completion of the evacuating of this floor; I should finish in several minutes." She took a quick breath and stood straight up. "Although, unbridled joy is somewhat hard to maintain when one's eyes are blinding by sheets of smoke."
"Thanks, Star. Mika and I will help you take care of the last few so we can get out before this place burns to the ground."
Starfire picked up two full-grown men by their hands and hoisted them up in the air. "Thank you Robin, your confidence is reassuring, but I believe Raven and Beast Boy have a large crowd that has not grown smaller since we began the operation."
"Right. We'll get right on it," he yelled out the hole and backed away. He started talking again as he turned around. "Looks like we'll be going upstairs again, Mika. Sure you don't need a—"
He stopped after seeing me standing on the desk a couple meters away. I had an oblong trophy in both of my hands. And I was jamming straight into the ceiling. Needless to say, he guessed what was coming next.
I ducked under the desk as the explosion blew a nice chunk right out of the ceiling. The smoke near the ceiling immediately poured into the opening and for a moment, the air was almost breathable.
"You realize you could have brought down the entire seventh floor on our heads, right?" Robin asked as he brushed off some rubble from his shoulder. "Our heads and the heads of the people still trapped inside here."
I looked away. "I knew it wasn't going to be a big explosion... and we needed a safe way up," I replied uncomfortably. "There was no danger of an accident."
"No danger... like in the training session?" His question stung me. I looked away and realized that I must not have seemed like the most reliable fighter. I had no idea how to answer.
So I didn't.
Robin jumped up to the hole and I pull myself up onto the floor after jumping from the desk after him.
The entire right half of the room was ablaze.
We headed towards the only bearable location and found a crowd of twenty to thirty people crouching near the exit. Beast Boy flew in suddenly and extended his claws to the nearest man and woman. His enormous dinosaur figure saw us through the smoke, gave us a nod of recognition, and glided down to the earth below past Raven, who was lowering a small group in a black orb.
"Alright! Everybody from you," Robin said, pointing to a man in the middle of the huddle, "to you: come with us. Everybody else: stay down and wait patiently. You're almost out."
The crowd followed us as we ran in a crouch back to the hole I had made into the floor; I passed through and stepped back as Robin did the same. Realizing we still needed a way out, I reached into my side satchel for only one or two metal spheres; barely enough to make a couple cracks in the ground. Nothing that could ever cause a—
"Allow me."
Robin held his hand out towards me and with the other, threw down a disk away from the hole in the ceiling; the disk dug into the floor and stayed there.
RUMBLE.
The floor shook slightly.
RUMBLE.
It shook again.
RUMBLE.
And again.
Then it stayed perfectly still.
"Sonic vibrations." The area around the disk slowly crumbled down until a large gap was in its place. "Does the job without the damage, and warns the people below."
I didn't even stop to consider whether he was angry with me or trying to teach me a lesson; the environment was less than friendly at the moment and I refused to be distracted.
And I had no decent comebacks.
A pair of clothed legs appeared from the hole above us. Jumping back into action, I ran to a steel desk to move it towards the legs. After heaving against it for several seconds, it slowly began moving towards the hole in the ceiling until it finally arrived.
As Robin slipped down into the hole in the floor, I leaped up to the desk and started helping people down onto it. One by one, they slipped from the ceiling onto the desk, and down through the floor, where Robin showed them to the hole where Cyborg waited.
Person after person slipped down through the hole. All of them wore similar suits; all of them wore the same expression of helplessness on their coughing faces. All of them followed our directions explicitly. All of them trusted us with their lives.
"Last one."
All of them exited safely.
"Watch your head." The last woman from the sixth floor dropped down to Robin. I heard some quick shuffling then saw him leap through the hole onto the fifth story with me.
"We're through down here. Raven and Beast Boy should be almost done." He flipped open his communicator and pressed a button on the side. "Raven, what's your status?"
Static.
"Raven?"
Static.
"Raven?"
A click. "What?"
"What's going on—"
—
"—up there?"
"We're just finishing up with the last couple of people." Raven moved her chin from the small emblem on her cloak that acted as a communicator and looked back at the group of people suspended four stories off the ground. "Whatever happened to patience as a virtue...?" she muttered to herself.
She lowered her hands in time with the black orb and released the container as it touched the ground. "Only so many things I can do with two hands..." She turned and faced the few that remained.
The communicator spoke up again. "We're coming up to help."
"Only ten people left." Beast Boy said from behind her into his communicator, panting. "How exactly are you planning to help?"
Raven turned back to the group and talked over her shoulder. "Forget it, Beast Boy: with some people, the path of least resistance is sometimes the wisest."
He stared at her with his mouth open.
She sighed. "Just don't say anything to him."
"But why would—"
His question was cut off by the collapse of the roof.
—
BOOM.
Above us, the walls rocked violently and I lurched forward to steady myself on a nearby pile of debris.
Robin appeared in front of me. "Damn it." He took off towards the hole in the roof and I followed closely behind.
I emerged behind him and saw an enormous pile of rock where half of the room should have been. Smoke poured out of every crevice and the flames completely consumed the mass.
"Beast Boy! Raven!" He yelled into the communicator in his hand. "Where are you?"
"Dude, right behind you."
I turned and saw Beast Boy and Raven calmly standing with a gathering of businessmen and women.
Robin sheepishly responded with a mumbled acknowledgement. "Good..." He coughed and continued talking. "Well, how many people are left up here?"
"We've got about ten," Beast Boy yelled over the fire.
"I can carry eight of them..." Raven added wearily.
"...And I can carry the last two," Beast Boy finished.
The smoke billowed above our heads and out the window and the angry grumble of the fire filled the silence in the conversation.
"Okay," Robin shouted. "I guess we're done here."
He turned and jumped down the hole in the floor. Raven and Beast Boy moved their attention to the small crowd in front of them and got ready to take down the last people. I slowly back away and followed after Robin. Apparently this family had it's own share of friction.
"...they all got evacuated safely, but the fifth floor's completely burned. There's no way you could even get onto it. The firefighters pulled out from the inside and got their hands on a hose for the top floors."
Robin spoke as I caught up to him. "Thanks, Cyborg. Guess we'll just have to do things the old-fashioned way." He closed the communicator and ran towards the exit to the stairs.
"I don't this'll bother you too much will it, Mika?"
I struggled to keep up with his speed. God, he was fast. "Why would it?"
He jumped through the door and ran right over the edge. I followed without a second's hesitation.
The fire formed a ring around the winding staircase as we dropped over; most the stairs were charred and emitted unbearable heat.
The roar of the fire dulled all the sounds in the staircase as we plummeted towards the bottom headfirst.
Except one.
"HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELLP!"
The voice flew by and I scrambled in the air to get a hold on something to look back up.
A twisted, black pole appeared to my rescue. I grabbed it and flew onto the hot stairs of the fourth floor. Looking back, I saw Robin's grappling hook flying up towards me.
A thundering sound came from above.
Suddenly, an entire set of flaming stairs tore through the air in front of me. The line was hit mid-air. I looked down and saw Robin land and avoid the crash of the falling debris.
"I can get her!" I shouted down.
I couldn't hear Robin's response or even tell if he had heard me.
"HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELLLP MEEEEEEEEEE!"
No time for minor things like sanity.
I leaped for the floor above me and pulled myself onto the scalding metal stair.
"Oh, thank you! Thank you!" The woman stood before me in absolute tears; her voice was hoarse, probably from yelling. Her cleaning uniform was covered in ash and she looked like she had been dragged through Hell. I put my arm around her and pulled her towards the edge of the platform.
"Missus, we have to get out of here, right now. I need you to hold tightly onto me." She reached out and bear hugged me from the side. Well, at least she was obedient...
I eyed the stairs I had climbed up from and dropped down carefully. The floor met me with a hollow thud and I fought to regain the balance of myself and the woman next to me.
Only three more floors to go.
The stairs to the third floor thankfully had remained intact and I ran down them as I half-carried the woman on my side. A hole covered the entrance to the third floor and I delicately dropped through to the second. The fire had spread all the way down to the bottom, and I made the last desperate jump to the first floor.
I connected with the ground and collapse with the woman. She stood up and I used her for support as I got up and ran beside her. We burst through the emergency exit doors and, surprisingly, into fresh air.
I walked over to the nearby ambulance and handed the woman over.
"Thank you, we'll take care of her from here." The paramedics ushered her into the backseat of the ambulance and started their standard procedure of tests.
I stood, inhaling the cleanest air I had tasted in what seemed like hours. The sun above me was about halfway down, and I guessed it was actually beginning to get late into the evening.
"You guys did a pretty good job."
I turned and saw Job walking up to me. He got next to me and, surprisingly, walked right past.
"Oh, and um uh—" He walked backwards as he neared the ambulance. "Thanks for saving my mom."
I watched him until he got into the ambulance. Helping just to help...
"Nice job there, rookie." I turned and saw the Titans walk up behind me. Cyborg spoke again. "Another run-of-the-mill life-changing experience, eh?"
"Yes, I guess it was..." I looked back up to the building. The seventh floor had completely collapsed, but the fires on the other two floors had more than subsided. "I guess it was."
"Nice going, everybody," Robin announced as he looked at the building as well. "Things could have been a lot worse than they were. But we managed to—"
WRRROOOOOOOOOOOOOOO...
A firetruck sped away in the distance.
Robin stopped his speech and turned in the direction of the siren. Numerous policemen ran past us towards their cars parked a little ways off.
"Commissioner Hall," Robin shouted to a man who ran past. The man paused slightly, then turned back to us. "What's going on?"
"Another fire's been reported ten blocks south of here." He continued running and yelled over his shoulder. "You'd do best to get there first!"
Robin spun around towards the rest of the team. "Titans."
Beast Boy and Starfire had already taken off.
Cyborg, Raven, and I ran towards the T-Car and Robin sprinted off to his motorcycle hidden in some nearby bushes.
The smell of burned rubber filled the air in less than ten seconds.
We weaved through the traffic without braking or even slowing down. Cyborg piloted the vehicle like sports car as we raced around people who saw us for less than a moment.
Faint smoke trailed in the air only a couple of city blocks away and grew darker every moment.
We sped through and intersection and narrowly missed hitting a cement truck.
"Um... Getting there in one piece would be nice?"
"Oh, I'm sorry, Raven," Cyborg answered, "I didn't mean to upset you." A huge line of dead traffic extended in front of us. "Would this make you fell all better-wetter?"
The car suddenly swerved into oncoming traffic.
From behind I could see Raven maintaining a chokehold on the seat below her. I wasn't doing much better than her. I held onto the seat beat around me like it was my last glimmering hope of salvation.
"Tell me if anything gets scawy, ok?"
"I swear, Cyborg, if we get out of this alive I'll make what's still human of you suffer."
The shine of the sun on a windshield speed past us.
"Eh... I can live with that..."
The car spun around a corner and stopped in front of an apartment building. I jumped out and felt the stillness of the ground below me. Somehow, I thought walking home would be the best choice after this...
We joined Starfire and Beast Boy as the stood in front of the building. Robin ran up behind us and started yelling out instructions. "Alright, I found out there's only two floors on this one. They still don't have a clue as to whether this arson case is related to the offices we just saved, but this building's been abandoned for weeks. No one should... even... be... here..."
Eventually he saw the same thing the other five of us had been looking at. Or rather, the things. Two human figures stood atop the building.
Neither looked to be in distress.
Both looked serious.
One wore a metallic silver suit with matching wings. Dark red capsules covered the area where his eyes would have been and a mask completed his outfit. A compact handgun laid at his thigh with his fingers resting delicately over it. A utility belt with gray capsules covered his waist.
His partner stood beside in a strange costume: small antenna sprouted from his crazed insect-looking mask. Fangs grew from his mouth, claws adorned the tips of his fingers, and his torso was covered in a soft, fuzzy material. A whip lay coiled at his side.
The second one took a step forward.
"Welcome, Titans," he bellowed, "to the main event. The last building was just a warm up."
We kept staring.
"This time," he said as his partner and he jumped from the building top, "we play for keeps."
"Get ready Titans," added his partner. "Get ready for Killer Moth and Firefly."
