Episode 2 - "Ah, This Kind of Trouble Already?!"

NEKOMI

Robin awoke, feeling better rested than he had in a long time. Which was a bit strange, given how he had not slept upon a futon mattress in an even longer time. On the other hand, he had slept upon – and in – far, far worse in his time, and these mattresses were well-stuffed for their type and quite comfortable. And he certainly could make no complaints about the hospitality of his hosts.

After the disappointment of the Sakurahana (they would have words about that one, oh yes, he could hear the man laughing all the way back in Gotham), he had returned to the Tariki Hongan temple, with his proverbial tail between his proverbial legs, and had somewhat begrudgingly accepted Keiichi and Belldandy's offer of sleeping space for himself and his team. And felt bad about doing so begrudgingly, especially when the two of them took even that with good grace and aplomb.

And so they made camp in the main chamber of the temple proper. He had been a bit leery of that, but Belldandy had assured him that the temple's spirit said it was okay. He had been really leery about that – his usual experience with 'spirits' was not a good one – but figured that if she said it was okay, then it probably was.

Something about the goddess just invited trust. Ordinarily, he would distrust even that, perhaps especially that. But Raven spoke for them

He intended his acceptance to be for just one or two nights, even though the offer had been fairly... hazy on just how long they would be allowed to stay at the temple. 'For the duration' was the sense he got out of the whole thing, though he had no intention of imposing his team on these people for however long this investigation was going to take. For one thing, it could not be all that hard to find a non-capsule hotel in this town. He could even splurge on a nice hotel, for once; he still had that expense account, after all, it would not hurt to tweak a certain nose after the Sakurahana incident.

But there was something else about the arrangement which did not sit right with him. Oh, he knew, intellectually, that the residents of the Tariki Hongan temple were already caught up in whatever nonsense they were facing this time. Starfire had been right on the nose about that. He also knew that the residents of the this temple – from the goddesses on down to Morisato – were able to hold their own in a fight, for a while, at least, and could probably win against a reasonable force of the Sladebots, and not the ridiculous swarm they had faced yesterday. But given all of that, every single crime fighting instinct he possessed screamed against the thought of involving civilians in a case, especially a case as weird as this one.

Which was just a little bit silly, given the nature of the 'civilians'!

So he intended to spend a bit of time searching through the city for an open hotel, by preference an expensive one... but he would not spend too much time hunting. For one thing, they had a set of coordinates to check out. For another thing, these people were already targets of whomever had sent the Sladebots, and if they got hit again as badly as yesterday, it would take all of them fight off that sort of attack.

But the real reason, he admitted to himself as he sat up and stretched, was that after that dinner last night he really, really did not want to stay anywhere else. Oh, my goddess, but Belldandy could cook! Somehow, and he was not even going to begin to speculate on how, she had not only figured out that Beast Boy was vegetarian and prepared a few dishes just for him, but had managed to conjure up a reasonable approximation of Tamarranian food for Starfire! As for what the rest of them had eaten... the only thing that could possible have spoiled it was the relative gravity of their dinner conversation. Threatening, killer robots ordinarily did not make for the best table talk, but her cooking had made even that palatable.

Between the exceptional quality of the food, and the even better quality of the company, it ranked, quite frankly, as the best dinner he had ever had. And from a few comments that Keiichi had dropped, Robin had quickly realized that he and the goddesses ate like that all the time. Not that the goddess actually ate that much: Skuld had down two buckets of ice cream and then seemed good to go, while Urd had drained sake bottles like it was going out of style... but Belldandy had only picked at a little bit of food and had instead listened to them all very, very intently. Especially when he and Starfire talked about the fight on top of the tower, and their missing time. She had watched them both very closely, and had asked a great many questions about what they did remember, as if she were trying to draw something out of them.

However, when the conversation had turned from the battle and the investigation to general talk, much of it quite silly, she had stood up, made apologies, and went on to bed, claiming great exhaustion. Keiichi had walked her out, and had returned a few minutes later, tip-toeing very quietly. He had looked, not troubled, really, but certainly more thoughtful than he had been, and had given Starfire and himself a few sideways looks during the rest of the evening.

It was Starfire who asked the question, that led to them learning, amongst other things, that the goddess did not need to eat, but would sometimes do so for pleasure, or for form's sake when amongst company. They also learned – and Urd and Skuld were a lot freer with information than he would have been – that the goddess normally drew their energy from something called Yggdrasil, but that while they were on Earth, they required alternate sources of energy. Skuld's was ice cream, Urd's was sake, and Belldandy's was sleep. Which was one of those little tidbits that Robin was not sure he would share with his best friend – well, okay, he would share something like that with Starfire, but probably not with, say, Cyborg – and almost certainly not with some strange group he had only just met.

But again it was Starfire who managed to say just the right thing, thanking them sincerely for their confidence and trust, and he turned to gaze at her fondly, where she lay on her own mattress a few feet to his right. She looked so peaceful, there, almost a far cry from the determined fighter he knew. Her eyes were closed, her hair splayed out across her pillow, and she was breathing deeply under the covers, and her faintly orange skin fairly glowed in the morning light.. He drew up his knees to his chest, wrapped his arms around them, and smiled softly as he just sat there and watched her. She was incredibly beautiful, he thought once again, and a moment's peace was rare enough for them that he was glad for the chance to see her like that.

All of sudden, a certain thought entered his mind. Not a new thought, in fact, it was akin to a certain, very common thought that he experienced when thinking of and looking at Starfire. And they had talked frankly enough that he knew the same sort of thought often came to her when she thought of and looked at him. But this thought... this thought had a strange, almost hungry urgency to it. He found himself wanting to sneak over there, crawl under her covers, and do-

Well, nothing they had not done a few times before, really. But so far they had each been awake and thinking when they did. Nor had they been in a large, Buddhist temple, with the rest of their team asleep around them! He shook himself, and then his mind was clear and the strange, starving urgency faded away.

But not before he had already rolled most of the way out of bed. And did not even realize that he had.

He sat there for a few long moments, suddenly out of breath. He knew that what happened probably meant something bad, and that it was something he needed to remember, and to look into... but as he caught his breath the memory slipped away like sand, and even the memory of needing to remember faded away.

Robin caught himself, sitting half on his mattress and half on the floor, staring at Starfire, and not entirely certain when and how he had awakened. But he chalked that up to the general oddness of the past few days, and gave it no more thought. He stood up, then, walked very quietly over to Starfire, and gently kissed her on the forehead. She stirred, mumbled something in Tamarranian, then rolled over and snuggled up under the covers.

He grinned, grabbed his travel bag, noted that Beast Boy and Cyborg were both still out cold, and then set off in search of a bathroom.

After five desperate minutes of searching, he realized that there were no bathrooms in the temple. So. To the main house.