Each had his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart;
and his friends could only read the title.
-Jacob's Room, by Virginia Woolf
"Old Wounds"
There were several disadvantages to being the child of a police officer. Every day, their jobs made them witness to every worse case scenario a parent can imagine. They saw first hand what could happen to a woman who lived alone, to a girl who went to party, or even how simply walking home could turn ugly, fast.
These reasons made it difficult to be a young woman who just wanted to scout some prospective colleges cross-country, so she wasn't very surprised when her cell started playing the theme song to Cops as she got off the elevator to her hotel room (she had chosen it for the entertainment value, since her father despised the show). It was, however, annoying having to cradle her phone between her ear and shoulder while juggling her purse and bag of groceries trying to get to her room key.
"I'm just getting back into my room now, Daddy. I went shopping for some snacks… Because I get hungry at night and I don't want to pay eight bucks for a bag of peanuts. No, it's not late; you're forgetting the time difference." As she fumbled trying to slide the card key in, she considered it lucky she was at a hotel that didn't use old-school keys. Trying to turn a lock with her hands full and convince her father to not fly across the country dragging half the police force with him didn't sound too appealing.
"And while we're at it, what are you doing up at four A.M. anyway?" she demanded, taking on the role her mother vacated after the divorce. "I swear, that man's a bad influence on you….The man you page with that spotlight on your roof, stop playing dumb." She sighed heavily, exasperated. Fortunately, she managed to shoulder the door open and make it to her room. Too lazy to drop what she's carrying and turn on the lights, she decided to navigate through the dark and place her groceries, purse, and backpack onto the table near the bed.
"I mean it, you're getting too old to be intravenously fed coffee- it's not healthy." Why was the room so cold? She traced to culprit to the flapping curtains; someone had left the window open. "If you don't I'll call Ms. Montoya and she'll make you, she doesn't care you outrank her. You know I would, Dad. Yes, I'm meeting with Becky for breakfast and then she'll show me around campus." Shutting the window and locking it, she stood in the dark trying to finish the conversation. "I know Daddy. You know I do. I know…yes, I promise to call tomorrow night…fine, after I'm done at the school. Promise me you'll get some sleep…because you're no use to anyone sleep deprived. Okay, I love you too Daddy, 'night."
Feeling like she had just finished a marathon, she shut her phone and tossed it on the bed. An old nervous tick compelled her to tuck her long red hair behind her ears before walking to the mirror hanging over the dresser. Feeling the need for light, she flicked on the nearby lamp.
A normal woman would have screamed at seeing a dark figure suddenly standing behind them in the mirror. Barbara Gordon however, is not a normal woman, and seemed to find the intruder that had appeared from nowhere as a simple annoyance. "Didn't anyone ever teach you it's rude to sneak into a girl's room without her permission?"
Arms crossed, Robin glared at her poker-faced. "You didn't tell me you were in town," he said evenly, still making it sound like an accusation.
"I'm sorry, I wasn't under the impression I had to tell you anything." Brushing past the boy wrapped in a black cape, she grabbed her groceries and started stocking her fridge, feeling his eyes follow her from behind his mask's opaque lenses. "How'd you even know I was in town, anyway? Wait- don't tell me! The butler…in the library…with the cordless phone."
His hands produced something from beneath his cape that caught her eyes; it was the first time since he'd arrived that she'd actually looked directly at him. He was holding a flat metal blade aerodynamically cut into the shape of a nocturnal animal with pointy ears. "I found this tied to a burglar who had been interrupted in the middle of robbing a jewelry store."
Barbara looked at the oddly-shaped throwing star thoughtfully. "Hmm…it looks like some bat-themed costumed adventurer went and did you a favor. You should really find this brave, selfless hero and thank him."
"Or her," Robin added candidly.
"That's quite progressive of you, Richard."
"Don't call me that," Robin said between clenched teeth.
"Sorry, Dick." She said, hiding her satisfied smirk.
"What are you even doing here?"
"You weren't listening in? I'm here scouting colleges."
He held up the batarang. "This would disagree."
"A little midnight constitution," she said dismissively. "Gotta keep in shape."
"Join a gym."
Fuming, Barbara confronted the Titan and prodded his chest. "Y'know, maybe we should be talking about what you're doing here."
"You're operating in my city," Robin scowled.
"Didn't see your name on it."
"Check the harbor, look for a big 'T'. Can't miss it."
"Do you want to know what I think is really sad, Dick? You don't return one call from me for years but all I have to do is leave one batarang lying around and you come running!"
Robin contritely took a step back, suddenly not wanting to meet her eyes. "I wasn't trying to avoid you Barbara…"
"Well you certainly did a good job without even trying."
"I'm sorry Babs…but I had to get away from Gotham…away from him."
"Look me in the eye and tell me part of the reason you left wasn't because of us."
"Some of it was because of that," he admitted ruefully. "We'd already agreed we couldn't be…what we tried to be and I just…"
"We were partners, Dick! We fought and bled together! Just because it didn't work out between us didn't mean we still couldn't…"
"We needed distance," he asserted sternly. "There couldn't be any closure when we tried avoiding each other during the day but ended up worked together every night."
"You say all of that now even though you're involved with someone from your team?"
Surprised, he blurts, "what?"
"You're a lot more public than you were in Gotham, Robin. There's a lot of talk about what's going on between you and that Starfire girl."
"I always thought you never paid attention to the tabloids."
"Normally I don't, but I happen to know from experience that you have a thing for redheads," she clipped.
The silence between them was long and awkward. Barbara turned her back to him and crossed her arms, hugging herself. "So…is it serious?"
"Are you asking as a friend," Robin said carefully. "…or as my ex?"
"Can't it be both?"
"No."
She sighed, suddenly feeling very tired. "My flight leaves the morning after tomorrow. I'll keep the cape in the bag, if it's that important to you." She turned around to face him. "But don't think that gets you off the hook, Richard Gra-"
And finds that she was talking to an open window and fluttering curtains.
"Son of a…" she stuck her head outside and screamed into the howling night. "You know, you two are more alike than either of you are willing admit!"
"The Deadly Replay"
They came to him torn and distorted at first; full of static and snow like bad television reception. He remembered school, the stadium, illuminated and displayed by the floodlights towering into the starless black of the night sky.
The rush that was a narcotic sense of speed, power- the invincibility so many young men have before life teaches them different- knowing the small army of defensive linemen rushing at his back could do absolutely nothing to stop him as he crossed into the end zone. The wild tenor of hundreds cheering shook his ribs like the rumbling of thunder after he slammed the ball to the ground and raised his arms high as though he were bathing in it…
"Touchdown!" the voice from the loudspeakers exulted. "Another spectacular run from number twenty-six: a whopping sixty yards!"
He remembered the electric blue '69 Plymouth he spent two years restoring from a pile of scrap. It wasn't easy to forget the hours Marcy and he spent fooling around in the back seat.
He remembered STAR Labs; his parents had been working on a very hushed project for years, and his father was set on showing him there were better things in life than cars or sports and it was about time he settled down and focused on his studies and got his arms into a lab coat.
Elinore, his mother, just smiled with that sagely wisdom all mothers seemed to have when it came to their children. She had no mind to tell him what to do with his life, and was just ecstatic to show her son the groundbreaking new device she had built with her husband: the Dimensional Transmitter.
"This is what science is all about, Corky," she said, ignoring his groan at the childhood nickname. "Bringing imagination to life and turning science fiction into real science."
Much as he didn't want to admit it to his father, Vic was just as excited as the test began. The Dimensional Transmitter was supposed to be a window to glimpse through and study alternate realms of existence.
"Uh…ma'am? I'm detecting a microwave burst at singularity's ergosphere."
It ended up being a doorway.
"Proximity alarm! Unknown matter emerging from the event horizon!"
"We're losing containment!"
He couldn't remember the thing that crawled out- or what exactly had happened to him. All he had to go on were the nightmares. A gelatinous mass of protoplasm- a thousand eyes and mouths and faces boiling, squirming melting, popping into and out of existence all at once. The tentacle-like organelles lashed out at anyone close by, trapping them within it like insects struggling in sap.
To say they melted is a comforting understatement.
He remembered when he regained consciousness in the hospital, he remembered thinking how loud the room was as he heard the drip of his IV and could clearly make out the conversation the nurses were having down the hall. And he remembered the confusion when he first opened his eye to a soulless digital severity. He wasn't seeing the room- he was being told by a computer what it looked look. It was like instead of being shown a painting, he was fed data and statistics. Seeing the chemical analyses of dyes instead of colors, to have each individual brushstroke clinically cataloged instead of just seeing the whole picture.
If the doctors hadn't unwrapped his human eye from the gauze, he probably would have gone insane.
He remembered the horror of seeing what his father had done to him. His body had been mutilated and substituted with a skeleton of metal strangled by an untraceable tangle of wires. He could watch the clockwork parts click and turn at just a thought to flex the claw-like prosthesis that was his arm and tried to wrap his brain around the fact that he couldn't feel it.
To this day, he still remembered what he spat and raved at his father when he visited.
"Why couldn't you just let me die?!"
He remembered the rehab, months and months of pain from his damaged nerve endings as he tried to relearn…everything. Walking, eating, hearing without overwhelming himself or handling a glass of water without breaking it with a hand he couldn't even feel.
He remembered when he finally came home to the apartment he shared with Marcy, trying to restore some semblance of normalcy back into his life. But he didn't need a cybernetic eye to see she was avoiding him, that she winced whenever he tried to touch her- and who could blame her? How can someone be intimate with a body of cold metal? How can you hold a rigid, unfeeling hand that could crush the bones of your fingers into a fine powder of calcium?
And he remembered how unsurprised he was when she left him; the engagement ring hit the hardwood floor like a bomb.
A bomb?
Oh right, now I remember.
Cold War relic or no, he hadn't expected one of the bank robbers to have a Rocket Propelled Grenade. Sure, it was a tad low tech, but that didn't seem to stop it from blowing him clear through a wall.
The flickering static cleared when his emergency subroutines kicked in and informed him he had been idle for 17.361 seconds. Apparently 'idle' was what his systems decided to categorize being dazed after being shot by a freaking rocket launcher. Cyborg wondered when the ringing in his ears would stop, and then remembered his ears couldn't ring because they weren't organic anymore- so he mentally shut off the priority warning alarm blaring inside his head.
Computer, he ordered with a thought, damage assessment.
ARMOR INTEGRETY AT 76.4 PERCENT [cause:TARGET-04 W/ RPG-7V2 (see:GRAU 6G3) TYPE OG-7V ANTI-PERSONNEL WARHEAD]
NEURAL CONNECTIONS L-81 THROUGH 313 UNEXPECTEDLY SEVERED. FAILURE TO ESTABLISH WIRELESS LINK-UP.
One great thing about being a cyborg: when you find that your left arm is gone and you have no idea where it is, it's more of an annoyance than a life-threatening concern.
Well that sucks.
Shrugging the rubble off of his shoulders like it was a layer of snow, Cyborg rose from his knees and flexed the fingers of his right hand experimentally. Everything seemed in working order.
Thermal sensors were fragged, but biometrics and motion sensors calmly notified him he was not alone.
WARNING: TARGET 02 [168.311 DEGREES/distance: 12.792m] AND TARGET 03 [143.123 DEGREES/distance: 12.312m] APPROACHING. DEFENSIVE ACTION RECOMMENDED.
Gee, ya think?
Cyborg may be three-hundred eighty-five pounds of neural circuits, synthetic organs, and depleted promethium armor, but he can move silently and keep a low profile when he needed to. Setting his servos to 'STEATH MODE: ULTRA-QUIET', the metal man's feet navigated the rubble without upsetting a single pebble and knelt near the hole he had made when he 'entered'. Robin would have been impressed.
"Holy crap, man," one of the robbers whistled as they approached. Adjusting his ears with thoughtless instinct, Cyborg could easily hear the pair's approach. He could even tell from his breathing the man in the lead smoked about a pack a day.
"Adrian's rocket did all this?"
"Yeah, did you see that? Blew that half-metal freak through the damn wall."
Their combat boots crunched noisily as they walked into the building, guns raised cautiously in a search pattern. His systems immediately identified and evaluated their weapons.
TARGET 01 ARMAMENT: HECKLER AND KOCH MP5KA4 (magazine:30 RNDS, cal:9x19mm PARA, effective range:25-100M, w:2.54KG, l: 368mm) THREAT LEVEL: 2
TARGET 02 ARMAMENT: ISREALI MILITARY INDUSTRIES GALIL A.R.M. (magazine: 50RND BOX, cal: 5.56x45mm NATO, effective range: 300-500M, w:4.35KG, l: 742mm) THREAT LEVEL: 3
The one carrying the sub-machine gun cautiously approached the pile of rocks as if he expected them to come to life and pounce on him. "You think he's dead?"
"Not yet," Cyborg said behind them.
The startled robber immediately wheeled around and fired his gun at Cyborg in a terrified panic that was fairly understandable for anyone facing one-armed, six foot six armored man that looked decidedly pissed off.
At nine-hundred rounds a minute, the SMG clicked empty in two seconds. He almost felt sorry for the guy. "Yeah, I could have told ya that wouldn't work."
Making sure to do as little permanent damage as possible, Cyborg backhanded the gobsmacked gunman and sent him flying into a comfy cushion of rocks.
The second guy opened up with his heavy assault rifle and flooded the room with light and thunder. He might as well have been shooting tennis balls with how nonchalantly Cyborg strode up to him.
He stood scant feet from the gunman and patiently waited for the Galil to run dry. Depleted promethium made tank armor look like cheap sheet metal, and Vic made sure his magnetic dampeners prevented the bullets from ricocheting and hurting someone.
Finally, as the rifle's firing pin struck feebly for a non-existent bullet, Cyborg asked him, "Are we done now?"
He caught the rifle's stock in his unyielding hand when the robber tried to bash him with it. Yanking it away from him like a chastising parent, Cyborg clenched his fist and crushed the gun as if it were a can of soda and dropped it at its owner's feet.
"Now are you done?"
The robber nodded vigorously.
"Good," Cyborg smiled, then punched the man in the face. It wasn't even that hard; a love tap, really.
Oh well, it'll take an hour or two for him to wake up.
A little worse for wear and still minus an arm, Cyborg climbed out of the hole in wall back onto the deserted street. All the civilians had run for their lives when the shooting started.
A guy in black military fatigues he probably bought at a surplus store was standing in the middle of the road. He had loaded his RPG with a fresh rocket and was already taking aim.
TARGET 03 ARMAMENT: RPG-7V2 (40mm SELF-DETONATING OG-7V ANTI-PERSONNEL WARHEAD, effective range: 1000yrd, w: 7KG, l: 950mm) THREAT LEVEL: 5
"Came back for seconds, huh freak? Well eat this!"
Cyborg had been evacuating civilians from the block when the first shot caught him unawares. This time, face to face, he calculated the speed and trajectory of the rocket in the span of a few milliseconds.
As he watched the warhead spend the last of its fuel struggling to escape his grip, Vic had to laugh to himself.
It was almost like catching a football.
Setting the inert but still dangerous rocket-grenade on one of the city trash cans, Cyborg settled his sights on the shooter, who was still gaping at him dumbly.
"My turn."
He set his sonic cannon to fire at a low-intensity; about the force of a kick from an angry mountain goat. It was still enough to send him flying into the side of a car, denting the door.
"Payback, sucker," Cyborg gloated. Then a thought occurred to him. "Wait a minute…weren't there more of you guys?"
Someone whimpered. Cannon raised, he wheeled around and faced a man wearing a ski mask using a woman as a shield. He was holding a pistol to her head.
"Oh, there you are."
"Back off, Robocop," ski-mask robber said. He pressed the muzzle of the gun a little harder into the woman's cheek. "Or we have some collateral damage."
TARGET 04 ARMAMENT: BERETTA 92FS (magaz-
Oh, shut the hell up!
Cyborg slowly lowered his arm and reconfigures the sonic cannon back into the shape of a hand. "What do you think is gonna happen here, man? Just drop the gun and let her go."
"How about you shut the hell up and back off! I'm not playing here!"
WIRELESS CONNECTION ESTABLISHED. INPUT COMMAND:
Vic looked into the woman's eyes- blue and wide like a helpless animal caught in a trap. Maybe it was her face, or maybe the way she wore her hair, but she looked so much like Marcy.
"Alright man, whatever you say," he agreed, taking a few steps back with a placating gesture. He just needed to stall for time.
The gunman nodded, reassured with his own power. "That's right, I'm calling the shots here! Now, you're going to stay right where you are and me and the hostage-lady drive away in one of these cars, got it?"
"You're not taking her anywhere." It wasn't a threat or some tough guy defiance. He could have told the guy in the exact same tone that he couldn't leave on account of bad weather.
Mr. Bank Robber didn't seem to appreciate the news, though. "Who's gonna stop me freak, you?"
"Yeah. With one hand ."
At first the robber looked furious, then cocked his head as if he were confused. Two seconds the later he collapsed to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut.
"Told ya."
Suddenly free of her captor's grip, the woman scrambled away from the unconscious man and started sobbing with relief. She squealed though, when she noticed the disembodied robotic arm walking on its fingers like a metal spider.
"Sorry about that," Cyborg told her. "Had to give ol' lefty time to sneak up on the guy." He tried to ignore the disturbed look she was giving him when he picked up his arm and re-inserted it into his shoulder. There was a sharp pain when the circuits linked with the nerves that made him wince.
Looking down warily at her would-be-kidnapper, she asked, "What…what did you do to him?"
Busy checking his arm for damage while the diagnostic ran, Cyborg absently opened the tip of his ring finger to show her the small needle hiding there. "Drugged him with a fast-acting neurotoxin that temporally disrupts voluntary nerve impulses. The only thing he's going to be able to do for the next hour is breathe and blink."
The woman perked her head to the distant sounds of police sirens. Cyborg was already filtering their radio chatter to keep his head quiet.
Police cars poured into the street from every direction, lights spinning and sirens wailing. Two huge black SWAT vans screeched to a stop and deposited over two dozen men in body armor wielding assault rifles.
"Police, nobody move!"
Cyborg pointed at the hole he had climbed through. "Two more suspects in there, guys. Oh, and you might want to call a bomb-disposal unit; there's an undetonated RPG in that garbage can."
The SWAT teams, faces hidden beneath balaclavas, actually paused and exchanged puzzled glances before shrugging. They were used to the Titans by now.
"You heard the man, step it up!"
Cyborg managed to pull one aside while the rest were busy patting down and arresting the disabled gunman. "Sorry man, but could you get this civilian out of here? One of the perps tried to take her as a hostage."
The officer looked at the woman and nodded. "No problem sir. Come this way, miss. We'll take your statement and get you home."
The woman nodded and allowed the policeman to lead her to the perimeter, but suddenly she stopped, said something, and ran back to Cyborg. Before he realized what was happening, she had wrapped her arms around him.
"Thank you," she whispered. Cyborg couldn't even respond when she pulled away, gave him a grateful look, and hurried back to the waiting officer.
She actually touched him. He couldn't remember the last time anyone outside of the Titans could actually tolerate looking at him, nevermind hugging him.
"Cyborg!"
The rest of the team had made it past the perimeter and were rushing towards him with concerned looks on their faces.
"Dude," Beast Boy gaped, "What happened?"
"It looks like a war zone around here, Cy," Robin said.
"Are you injured, friend?" Star asked, crowding him.
Raven was quiet, and hung back behind the group looking stoic.
"I'm fine guys, just ran into some escaping bank robbers by sheer dumb luck."
"No friend, this luck was not foolish at all," Starfire insisted. "It is fortunate no one was harmed!"
Raven spoke up quietly. "Are you sure you're alright, Cyborg?"
Cyborg looked at them, then lifted his battered left arm and flexed his fingers, marveling how fluidly they responded to his thoughts.
I still can't feel anything…
"Yeah," he said distantly. "Nothing that can't be fixed."
Progeny: Part I
Instead of waking, it would be more accurate to say Rosalyn Worth stopped sleeping.
Still wandering in a haze of half-sleep and fading dreams, eight year old Rose obeyed an unexplainable compulsion to leave her bed and look for something.
Most of the time Rose had dreams like everyone else had, but sometimes Rose had strange dreams. After she had these dreams, Rose would feel…weird. She would go through her day like normal, but she couldn't help feel like she had done it before, like when she watched reruns of her favorite shows. Her mom had a funny word for it that Rose didn't remember.
There was one dream Rose had that still scared her. All she remembered from it was that something bad happened to her best friend Jessica, and all day Rose watched her friend waiting and dreading. Later, when she got home from school, Jessica called her crying because her dog had been hit by a car.
Her mother told her to keep these dreams a secret, and so she did.
The apartment was dark when Rose left her room. She was always scared when she went to the bathroom or got a glass of water at night, and suddenly she didn't understand why she was standing in the hallway in her nightgown, alone and in the dark.
She froze when she saw something at the end of the hall. It looked like a shadow without a person, like when Peter Pan's got away. It didn't make a noise when it walked towards her, Rose still didn't move a muscle.
When it looked down at her Rose realized it was a man, the biggest man she had ever seen. The size of him seemed to surround and crush her; she looked up at him feeling as powerless as she did when the monsters cornered her in her bad dreams.
"Momma?" she cried out weakly.
The man leaned towards her, and Rose saw he had only one eye. "I'm afraid not, my dear."
I was appalled to find after checking my account that I had not updated Five Stories in over two years. At this point, any anger from being so long neglected has most likely faded into a puzzled "What ever happened to that guy, anyway?" I can name numerous reasons for why I, for all intents and purposes, abandoned you guys: college, writer's block, money problems, personal issues, family concerns. For a long time my writing has been an uninspired chore, and if there is one sin worse that writing nothing it is writing something for the satisfaction of others over oneself. If it weren't for the periodic reviews and story alert notifications, I might not have been driven to write this at all, so I have you to thank at least.
As some may have noticed, there are in fact only three stories in this chapter. The other three are pretty much complete. I just felt they would be far too long to read in one sitting. In my long absence I have ideas for several more chapters ready, many of which have been written in some capacity or another and simply haven't been finished. Expect the next chapter (completing these) to be posted within a few days. Should my muse hold up for the holiday, more will be arriving soon.
Returned from the grave,
-Shinobicyrus
P.S. Thanks for reading!
