AUTHOR'S NOTE: Hello, my lovely readers! At the suggestion of user Kevlar Spirit, I'm going to try naming my chapters. So without further ado, I am proud to introduce you to...
Chapter Eleven: Blue Hair Dye and the Girl Who Turned to Stone
Trigger couldn't sleep that night. He hadn't expected to, after his run-in with the Freaky Five had left all manner of questions buzzing around his head. Another one of what? How did they know Slade? What was the history that his master had implied? He had pressed the issue but Slade had turned to him with an eye narrowed with anger, his powerful shoulders rigid and his hands clenching into fists, and Trigger had deemed it wise to shut up.
He lay at the top of the climbing wall, shifting restlessly from side to back to other side. They seemed a bizarre and unlikely collection of people: three aliens and a cyborg—it was only the youth in the mask and the short cape that didn't seem to have any sort of powers, though given the wiry strength of his limbs, Trigger suspected that he was a formidable fighter when it came to hand-to-hand combat, and there likely had to be something else given that the other four seemed to look to him for leadership.
The five had tried to stop Trigger, which by extension was trying to stop Slade. Were they vigilantes, or had he been right in his jab to Robin that he was a wannabe superhero? Had they all donned fancy costumes and taken the law into their own hands? He rolled onto his side again, staring angrily at the wall. He hated not having all the answers; frankly, it drove him crazy! He had to find out more.
Sitting up, he rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands and began to climb down the wall, feeling his way through the pitch darkness. He didn't know where Slade went at night. The corner of his mouth twitched as he wondered if Slade slept in a coffin or cemetery or somewhere similarly gloomy. Or maybe he didn't sleep at all and was some form of insomniac. The more Trigger thought about it, the weirder Slade became in his mind; in the four months that he had been apprenticed to the man in the mask, he had never seen him eat, sleep, drink...the list went on. Was he even human, or was he an even more advanced AI than his robots and the Cyborg?
"I have got to get some air," he muttered, making his way toward the staircase more by memory than by sight. His head throbbed like it always did when there was a puzzle he just couldn't figure out, but when he eased the door open and saw a sliver of the star-freckled sky he felt better. He closed it softly behind him and shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans, tipping his head back and gazing up at the thumbnail-sliver of moon, thin as a hair. It was strange...he never realized just how little he had looked at the sky while he was imprisoned in the orphanage.
He put a hand on the metal drainpipe and a foot on the wall of the warehouse, climbing easily up the wall and pulling himself up onto the roof. The breeze ruffled through his hair and blew it back off his forehead, sending chills prickling along his scalp. He looked up at the stars through half-closed eyes, his mind blank and churning at the same time. The air helped clear his head and he wondered if there was a computer anywhere in the warehouse. Surely there was...he just had to find it.
"Let's see..." Trigger slid the chair further under the desk and propped his chin in his palm, blinking against the harsh white-blue light of the screen. "They would call themselves the Freaky Five if they really were from a carnival, but that's not exactly an intimidating group title..." He tapped the keys and they clicked loudly in the darkness, making the fine hairs on the back of his neck stand up off his skin. He was acutely aware of how bright the screen was, and how he would be perfectly illuminated in front of it, as well as how just about anyone would be at an advantage if they approached him from behind; his eyes might not be able to readjust to the dark in time if they decided to jump him.
You're being stupid, he told himself harshly. Who would try to jump you? You're not doing anything wrong.
But didn't you see how twitchy Slade got when you pressed for more information? Whispered another almost fearful voice in the back of his mind. If he saw you sneaking around in the middle of the night, who knows what he would do to you?
He wouldn't do anything, so shut up. I'm his apprentice, Trigger argued back. He wouldn't hurt me unless I tried to stab him in the back. Ooo, that looks promising... He opened an encrypted file that was simply labeled "T.T." A document pulled itself up on the glowing screen and he began to read. "Teen Titans," he read. "Sounds better than the Five Freaks, that's for sure..." He scrolled down. "Profiles on all of them? Have a bit of a fascination, huh Slade?" Trigger's turquoise eyes flicked back and forth over the neat lines of type. "Robin. One of the Titans' founding members...leader of the current team, no special powers other than extreme versatility in many forms of martial arts..." There was a noise from behind him, a sort of bang and a scuffle, and Trigger closed the document and shut down the screen in a flash, ducking back into the shadows, but not before seeing one more thing: a picture of a young girl with large cobalt-blue eyes, long blond hair, and a crimson X printed over her face. There was a single word next to the photo: REMOVED.
Removed? From what? Trigger's mind began buzzing again as he slunk silently away from the computer, heading back toward the door, but changing his mind about halfway and creeping back toward the climbing wall. Probably for the best if he didn't wander around any more tonight, but a burning fire of curiosity was roaring to life inside him. Who was the girl? What was she removed from? Had she been a Titan? Why wasn't she now? Was she removed from the team? Why? Did Slade have ties to her? Why did he have profiles on a document on a computer? From the four months Trigger had been his apprentice, he had learned that Slade had an incredible memory—why did he feel the need to write descriptions down?
"I'm not sleeping tonight," Trigger groaned, lying down on his back and staring up at the ceiling that it was too dark to see.
The next morning found him walking the streets, not dressed in the black and ash-gray suit that he wore on missions, but still with his Swiss Army knife in the pocket of his jeans and the earpiece turned on, though he doubted that Slade was going to speak much today. Usually whenever his mysterious master had an assignment for him, he would hear about it within the first hour of climbing down from the wall...it had been four hours by the time Trigger set out, assuming that he had the day to himself. That had happened on occasion, and admittedly it was nice to have a break.
He stopped, the gleaming glass window of a hair salon catching his eye. No, that was wrong—it was the group of people inside that snagged his attention, abruptly and with a pain that he didn't recognize. Three women and two men stood in a little clump, almost shoulder to shoulder despite the wide open room, heads thrown back and shoulders shaking with laughter at some shared joke. Trigger stared, feeling a strange hollow in the pit of his stomach. They looked so happy. Why? What blissful joy did they have? He tilted his head to the side, brow furrowing as he tried to figure it out. There was no malice in their eyes, setting them apart from the guards at the orphanage. When those creeps laughed, it was always at someone else's expense...but not here. Slade never laughed, so there were no answers coming from that front either.
One of the women, her black hair cut at an attractive jaw length, dug an elbow into one of the men's sides and said something to him with a playful and flirtatious wrinkle of her button nose and the five of them doubled over with laughter again, the man lightly shoving her shoulder and struggling to get words out through the gales of mirth that rocked his slim frame. The pit in Trigger's stomach deepened.
He walked in the door, but the people didn't register him over the happiness they shared. It was like there was an invisible wall between them. They were only ten feet away, but it might as well as been ten thousand miles, so different were the worlds that they lived in. Trigger looked around and picked up a small container of electric blue hair dye off the shelf to his left, studied it for a moment, then stuck it into the pocket of his jacket and walked out. The laughing people didn't notice, and he was glad; he didn't think he would be able to bear it if any of those sparkling eyes and brilliant, luminous grins had been turned toward him.
"And just what do you think you're doing?" Slade's normally calm voice was heavy with exasperation and Trigger could practically hear him rolling his eye.
Trigger glanced up at him. "Call it a mad desire for a splash of individuality. I think blue's my color, don't you?" He turned back to survey his reflection, critically eyeing the thick streak of cobalt blue in his light brown hair.
The eyes of master and apprentice locked in the mirror as Slade stared at him. Trigger stared back. The silence stretched on to an almost uncomfortable degree before Slade turned around and walked away, and Trigger lowered his head to hide his grin, biting his lower lip as he fought back a laugh. He raised a hand absently and touched the jagged Y-shaped scar on his cheek, smile fading slowly. Slade may have given him a mask and a nifty suit, but Trigger was going to make his appearance his own.
"Trigger."
Trigger hooked his arms over the new pull-up bar and looked at Slade, feet dangling a good foot or so off the ground. "Sir?"
"There's going to be an explosion at the bank in one hour's time," Slade said, arms folded behind his back, feet shoulder-width apart. Everything about his posture and tone radiated dominance.
"Am I going to cause the explosion?" Trigger asked.
"With that ridiculous hair of yours, you'd be too easily identifiable," Slade scoffed. "No. You'll be nearby, watching the thief. The Titans are going to intervene, and you are going to study their tactics."
"You have this planned out quite well," Trigger observed.
Slade's eye narrowed. "Do you expect me to be careless?"
"No sir, I didn't mean it that way," Trigger started, but Slade cut him off.
"Of course you didn't," he said coldly. "Being careless is your job." He turned his back on his apprentice and strode away into the shadows.
Trigger stared after him, touching the jagged Y-shaped scar on his cheek. Slade never had let him forget how close to disaster that first mission had come...He didn't mean it that way, reassured a little voice in the back of his mind. Slade just doesn't want you to get caught or seen again.
Trigger crouched on a roof, the sun beating down on the back of his neck and burning hot against his scalp as he waited, his eyes fixed unblinkingly on the bank. "Any minute now," he murmured, exceedingly grateful that the black mask was easy to breathe in; if he had managed to hang onto the skull mask from the junkyard, he would have suffocated by now.
An explosion blew the entire front of the bank off and into the street with a terrific noise and a glorious burst of smoke and flame. Pedestrians ran screaming in every direction, panicked as ants when a foot crashed into their mound. Trigger shifted his position and squinted, then gaped in disbelief as the burglar emerged from the crushed stone and scattered rubble. A nine-foot concrete monstrosity with tiny red eyes stood outlined against the flames that licked at the edges of the hole, toothless mouth open in a thunderous roar. Fists the size of Trigger's entire ribcage hung at the thing's sides and its torso could have held four men with ease.
"A two and a half-inch wide streak of blue in my hair is too noticeable but that isn't? What the hell, Slade?" Trigger was tempted to jump from the roof and go closer, but before he could even straighten up, a familiar voice rang out.
"What're you gonna do with all that money, Cinderblock?" It was Robin.
"Use it on jail bond," answered the Cyborg.
"Impossible," said the swamp-demon, his green hair flashing in the sunlight. "This thing is a crime against humanity!"
"Polite group, aren't you," Trigger muttered.
"You know who else is a crime against humanity?" A new voice rang out, and Trigger swore as a skinny man with mint-green skin and a suit emerged from the fire, dwarfed next to Cinderblock's bulk. "That lovely little blonde who turned to stone!"
That struck a nerve, especially for the green kid. "Leave Terra out of this," he snarled, an animalistic growl in his voice as he took a step forward. Despite his small size, his rage was so formidable that even Cinderblock looked uncertain. "You never met Terra!"
"What do you see, apprentice?" Slade's voice was quiet in his ear.
"The Titans are here," Trigger responded. "Cinderblock and the walking piece of toothpaste seem to be a pretty odd couple—I assume you told them both to hit the bank today."
"What else?"
"Who is Terra?"
"What?"
"They seem to be using her name as some psychological weapon," Trigger observed, watching the green kid's tense shoulders and shaking fists. "The Titans are furious—they're letting themselves get egged on. But if Cinderblock's friend never met Terra, how does he know about her? Why did she turn to stone?"
"Enough," Slade snarled, his voice barely more than a whisper. Trigger paused, confused—Slade sounded like he was about to snap just like the shapeshifter down there, who had just turned into a tyrannosaur and lunged at the little green man. He snatched his top hat off his balding head and jumped inside it, disappearing with a loud popping noise and reappearing thirty feet away.
"Magician," Trigger noted. "Impressive one at that...Slade, you wanted me here for something more than observation and studying their tactics, didn't you?"
There was silence on the line, the earpiece buzzing quietly.
"Observation it is, then." Trigger settled down to watch, cataloging everything he saw and storing it away, especially that little tidbit about Terra. It would be useful for when he had to fight the Titans for real the next time, an event that he suspected would be coming around very, very soon.