"Don't - call - me - 'Sissy'!" - Raven
CHAPTER TWENTY
BACK IN THE SADDLE AGAIN
At first, Bard wasn't exactly sure where he was. The cowboy blinked several times behinds silver spectacles as he peered into a bright and hot white spotlight that shone down on him. Finally, his eyes a bit clearer, he could see that he was standing on a big, black concert stage and that thousands upon thousands of joyous fans were in front of him with happy faces and anticipating eyes. He looked down at himself and saw that he was dressed in a black, western suit, along with his ever present cowboy boots and black cowboy hat planted firmly on his head.
He glanced behind him and saw that the Teen Titans were with him. Robin held an electric guitar and Cyborg held a bass. Beyond them, his sister Raven was seated in front of a glossy piano, Starfire held a tambourine and Beast Boy was almost hidden behind a huge drum set. Bard hadn't known that the Titans could play instruments, and he didn't care how they came to learn.
His dream had come true!
He looked down and saw that his wooden, acoustic guitar was strapped around his neck and that it hung in front of him. With his right hand, he ran his thumb over the strings of the instrument, and the sound it emitted was beautiful….just plain beautiful. He looked back at the Titans and then at the crowd before him. Everyone was waiting breathlessly on him. He tried to lift his left hand to grip the neck of the guitar and have his fingers form the first chord on the fret board.
But it wouldn't move. It simply hung there limply by his side. Again he tried to raise it, and again it refused to move.
The crowd was starting to catch on to the fact that something was wrong. There was an angry buzz, then, thousands of boos reverberated in Bard ears and mind. He looked back at the Teen Titans, but they couldn't help. They just stood there, locking eyes with him that were filled with disappointment.
So much disappointment….
Bard came awake suddenly, breathing and perspiring heavily. He automatically reached for his silver glasses at his side with his right hand and slipped them on. Then, after taking a couple of long, deep breaths to calm himself down, he wormed himself up into a sitting position and looked over at the glowing red numbers of his alarm clock that quickly and dispassionately informed him it was four thirty a.m. He looked down at his crippled left arm. It was unfeeling, unmoving and, for all likes and purposes, totally dead. Bard looked hard at his fingers.
Bend!
But they would not. He sat there for a long while, playing the new 'bend' game he had created in the dark solitude of his room. But his fingers won every single round of the contest. Finally giving up, a strange thought entered his mind.
'All right, why aren't you gloating?'
'Why state the obvious, son? You know that your arm is useless….and why.'
Needless to say, that didn't make him feel any better.
At exactly five o clock on the dot, he heard heavy stomps running down the hallway outside. After the briefest of knocks, Cyborg came into the room.
"Get up, Bard! Slade's on the screen in the main room!" He announced.
"……"
"Still wallowing in self-pity, huh?" Cyborg observed shrewdly, slowing himself down. "Look, you lost your arm, and I lost damn near all of my body. I had to get over it, and so do you."
"…….."
"Fine, it's your decision." A pause. "Do you think that Jesus would be proud of you right about now?"
Bard winced at that. That cut deeper than any knife ever could.
"When you're ready to grow up a little, we'll be waitin' for ya." Cyborg turned and left.
Bard stared up at the ceiling with thoughtful blue eyes. W.W.J.D. What would Jesus do? It was so cliché that it almost made him want to laugh…but it did get right to the point, didn't it? Bard sighed.
God, he needed a cigarette.
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All five Teen Titans were gathered in the main room. Their Titan Apprentice, Bard, was absent and Beast Boy looked to be almost asleep on his feet. Just as Cyborg had said to Bard earlier, Slade's masked face was on the huge computer screen.
"Good morning, Titans." Slade greeted them.
"Well, it was," Robin said bluntly. "What do you want?"
"Robin, Robin, Robin. Always impatient, and always thinking the worst of me. I simply 'called' to inquire about Bard's health."
"Why would you care?"
"Didn't you know?" Slade asked in mock surprise. "Jonny and I used to be very good friends…surely you knew this, correct? But that is in the past. How is our friend Bard now?"
"…….." Silence. No one spoke.
"He hasn't gone and died on you, has he?" The villain's voice actually seemed a trifle worried.
"……"
"I'm still alive and kickin'!" Bard announced boldly, appearing out of nowhere. He had somehow been able to put on his customary outfit, along with his dark trench coat, with one good hand. This snazzy entrance was probably the only good thing that would come from his injury. "It takes more than a knife to do this cowboy in!"
Starfire's smile was almost incandescent and Cyborg's grin was one of satisfaction.
"Good, good." Slade approved. "I still have work for you to do."
Bard's eyes narrowed.
"I don't work for you." He bit off 'anymore' from the end of that line at the last second.
"You used to, but that is beside the point. Just because I am not your employer does not mean that you cannot help me." He paused. "Since you are all here anyway, let me introduce you to my new associate."
The scene switched from Slade's face to a laboratory somewhere. A dozen or so masked and white coated scientists hovered around a table in a room filled with all kinds of technology and gadgetry. And on a table in the center of the room was-
"Tim!" Bard gasped. "What are you doing to him?"
Bard's old friend was saying something heatedly to one of the scientists, but there was no sound.
"Nothing he didn't ask for, I assure you. Tim…he is an interesting man. Big, strong and intelligent, the latter not being a common trait in his kind. He wants revenge on you, Bard, and I decided to give him the opportunity. Ironically, he was almost your apprentice, correct? You taught him all you know, and now he'll use that knowledge against you. He knows you better than anyone, am I right?"
"What are you gonna do to him?" Bard demanded, ignoring that.
"I am simply bestowing him with a gift. One that you will find out about soon enough. Now, just to keep you on your toes, Titans, I've sent Kitten and Jinx, along with some friends, to steal a few worthless objects from the museum. Don't you think you should get down there?"
The screen turned to black. With clenched teeth, the Boy Wonder smashed down at the computer terminal with the flat of his fist.
"I hate that man!" He declared viciously.
"Emmm, calm down, dude." Beast Boy rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. "Didn't he say we have to go to the museum or somethin'?"
BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!
"That confirms it, man" Cyborg said, pointing a metal finger at the alarm. "We gotta go."
Robin nodded and took off at a sprint for the elevator. He dug his heels in.
"Are you sure you want to come with us?" He asked Bard, realizing suddenly that the cowboy looked strange without his guitar hanging from his back. "Your arm-"
"Isn't crippled." 'Yet', he bit off. "I not gonna stop fightin' 'til the credits roll and the sad song plays."
"What?"
"…..Never mind. Personal thing."
"Oh….right." A beat. "Titans, Go!"
Bard was the last in line. When the others were gone, he looked up at the ceiling.
"I am so gonna get my ass whipped." He muttered under his breath. Then he ran off after his friends.
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Bard sat in the back seat of the T-Car, and it felt really weird. Obviously, he couldn't drive his big Harley with one hand, so he had hitched a ride with Cyborg and Raven. The former was driving and the latter sat stoically in the passenger seat.
"So, Cy." Bard said hesitantly.
"Yo?" Cyborg threw back over his shoulder.
"You mind if I smoke a cigarette on the way there?"
"Hey, man! What you do to your own lungs is your own business, but I don't want no tar on mine from second hand smoke!"
Bard blinked.
"You have lungs?" He wasn't exactly sure how Cyborg's anatomy worked.
"Sure I have lungs!" Cyborg told him. "I do have to breathe, ya know! Course, they're mechanical…"
"Then how in the world could second hand smoke hurt'em?"
Cyborg's good eye blinked as he thought about that..
"Pssh! All right, fine." Cyborg conceded. "As long as it's okay with Raven." He added.
"Raven?" The cowboy appealed to her pleadingly.
"……"
"Yes!" Bard said exuberantly. "Thanks!" He quickly fumbled through his pockets, found a cigarette and popped into his mouth.
"Yeah, well, don't make a habit of this." Cyborg said after Bard had lit up the cancer stick. "And crack the window! I don't want my baby smelling like smoke or havin' ashes on her seats, hear?"
"Loud and clear!" Bard grinned, happily taking another puff.
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"Now this is what I call a fashion statement!" Jinx exclaimed, putting on a heavily jeweled golden crown that, as the display said, had reputedly belonged to Richard the Third.
"It's useless." Kitten told her accomplice as she watched Slade's robots plunder and destroy the rest of the museum. She had changed greatly under the villain's tutelage. "Slade said the only thing he needs is-"
"I already got it." Jinx interrupted her, checking out her reflection in a glass display case.
"Then why are we still here?"
"Because I want to have some fun first." Jinx said girlishly. "You can have some fun, too. Your boyfriend and the rest of the Titans should be here soon and-"
"Correction, we're already here!" Robin yelled at them. Bard and the rest of the Teen Titans were behind him.
"Took you long enough," Jinx replied blandly, nonchalantly tossing off her crown. "I was starting to get bored."
"What are you doing here?" Robin demanded of her.
"You'll have to talk to Slade about that." Jinx shrugged. "I just do what he tells me to do." She snapped her fingers and pointed. All the robots in the huge exhibition room, almost as one man, drew their laser blasters and pointed them at the Titans. They could hear the footfalls of the robots in the other wings of the museum converging in on them.
"Titans, scatter!" Robin barked.
ZAP! ZAP! ZAP!
Bard ran forward and leapt into a circular desk even as the other Titans spread out. Normally, Bard figured, this would be a reception desk or a customer service desk. But right now, it would serve as cover. He peeked his head over the red lacquered desk, but laser fire forced him right back down. In the split second of sight, he saw that Raven had planted a black, obsidian shield over herself, Robin was somersaulting towards Jinx and Starfire was flinging fiery green star bolts at the robots around her. He hadn't seen Beast Boy or Cyborg.
Taking a deep breath, he drew the laser pistol he had stolen from Kitten all those nights ago and leapt up onto the desk. The movement felt incredibly cumbersome and slow. Normally, he would have planted his left palm on the desk to help catapult him up, but since it was useless, he had to use the hand his gun was in.
"Beast Boy!" He called to his friend when he saw him kicking away robots in the form of a kangaroo, even as he took down a few robots with his pistol. "Horse!"
Beast Boy understood immediately. He transformed into a huge, emerald horse, reared, whinnied and turned to run towards the desk. Holstering his weapon as the laser fire around him grew more intense, he reached out and grabbed a handful of the dark green mane and flung himself onto the changeling's back. Bard's hat, since he didn't have a free hand to keep it in place, blew right off his head. Several robots were tumbled mercilessly under the green stallion's huge hoofs as Bard gripped the sides of the animal firmly with his legs and redrew his laser pistol.
ZAP! ZAP! ZAP!
"Yeeeeeeeee-hah!" If he could have, Bard would have twirled his hat in the air above him.
When they reached a wall, Bard dismounted. Beast Boy was almost talking before he even returned to his regular self.
"Yee-hah, dude?" He asked. "That is so cliché!"
"Sorry," Bard muttered, a little embarrassed. "I couldn't help myself…"
"Well-"
BOOM!
A shot from Kitten's huge laser rifle hit the floor between the two friends, and the resulting explosion flung them in opposite directions.
"Wahhhhh!" Bard hardly heard Beast Boy's surprised wail just before he hit the tiled floor and slid to a stop. He looked up from his sprawled condition and saw his cowboy hat laying before the circular desk, about twenty yards in front of the strategic position where Kitten and Jinx were laying about them with huge laser blasts and pink hex bolts.
Bard pushed himself up with his good hand and ran for his hat, but suddenly, a blacked clothed robot stood in his way. Before the cowboy could even gasp in surprise, the robot hit him solidly in the jaw with a standing, spinning back roundhouse kick. Bard spun from the blow, minimizing the impact, and lifted his own leg to deliver the exact same kick right into the back of the robot's head. The robot hit the tiled floor hard face first. Bard rubbed his injured cheek gingerly.
Across the room, Cyborg had kicked the legs out from under a robot and, while he was still sideways and in midair, he blasted him with a blue beam from his sonic cannon. The robot went flying across the room from the force and fell into three or four of his 'buddies'.
Meanwhile, humming the wind song, Bard leapt incredibly high into the air towards his hat. Just before he reached it, a pink hex bolt hit the cowboy's black headwear. Bard's eyes widened as it melted into black ooze. He whirled on Jinx.
"You destroyed my cowboy hat." He said in shock. "You destroyed…my cowboy hat!"
Angrily, he thrust his good hand at the pink haired witch.
Ohhhhhhhhhh, white lightnin'!
A sizzling lightning bolt erupted from his outstretched hand at Jinx, but she ducked just in the nick of time. Before Bard could follow up his attack, Kitten had leveled the huge laser rifle that appeared to be twice her weight at him.
"Ah, sh-"
ZAAAAAAP!
"Told you you'd have fun." Jinx commented to Kitten. The blonde's answering grin was sadistically pleasurable.
Bard knew immediately that the blast that hit him wasn't your run of the mill laser. How? Finding himself ten feet in the air and flipping backwards wildly in the air as the front of his trench coat smoked was a pretty telltale factor. Looking back on it, he was eternally grateful that his trench coat was inlaid with body armor. Right now, though, he didn't feel like thanking anyone. The hard, tiled floor was coming up closer and closer. He closed his eyes and tensed himself for the huge impact and….
It never came.
He opened his eyes and found that his sister Raven was levitating before him and caught him on a glowing hand of shadow. He sweat dropped nervously as he adjusted his glasses.
"Thanks, sis." He mumbled.
"They're gettin' away!" Cyborg shouted.
Bard, back on the solid floor, looked up. Jinx and Kitten were running for a hallway. Robin was closest to them. With a growl, the caped crusader leapt after them, but, in mid stride, Jinx flung a hex bolt over her head as she entered the hallway. The roof above them collapsed, sealing their escape route.
"Arrgh!" Robin lashed out in frustration, kicking the shattered remnants of a vase across the floor.
Without the added help from Jinx and Kitten, the robots were no match for the Teen Titans. When they were all down…
"Is anyone damaged?" Starfire asked as the Titans gathered around their leader. Everyone shook their heads.
"Robin, you are hurt!" The Tamaranian exclaimed, pointing to a shallow cut on the only part of the Boy Wonder's exposed right arm between his glove and his green short sleeve.
"It's just a nick." Robin shrugged, then his eyes narrowed. "What did Slade want here?" He wondered out loud.
"He said he just wanted to keep us on our toes." Bard reminded him.
"No," Robin shook his head in disagreement. "Slade doesn't do anything just because. He wanted something here. The only question is…what?" He whipped out his communicator and Commissioner Walker's face appeared on the screen.
"We had a little run in with Jinx and Kitten down here in the museum." Robin told him.
"I know," Walker replied wryly. "We got the alarm signal. We're on our way now."
"I have to ask a favor of you. As soon as you find out, could you tell me if anything was stolen?"
"Why not look for yourself?" The Commissioner asked bluntly.
"Er, well…" Robin looked around at the totally wrecked museum around him. It was in shambles. "The museum had sustained some…slight damage."
"Hah, slight!" Walker said. "Whenever your Titans have been somewhere, the damage is always more than slight! Do you have any idea how much that stuff in there is worth?! It's probably a total war zone in there, isn't it?"
"I don't know if I'd say 'war zone' exactly…"
"Well, I'll see it with my own two eyes soon enough." The Commissioner sighed. "All right, yeah, I'll let you know if anything's been stolen."
"Thanks, Commissioner."
"Yeah, yeah. Go back to Titans Tower and…do whatever the hell it is you do."
Not long after the Teen Titans had left, Commissioner Walker, dressed in a plain, gray suit, walked into the museum to survey the damage.
"The Mayor is gonna tear me a new asshole for this." He muttered. Then he turned to his men. "All right, get this crap cleaned up! And I want everything accounted for, got it?"
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Once again in the back seat of the T-Car with Cyborg and Raven up front, Bard lit up another cigarette.
"Yo, man. You smokin' another one of those things?" Cyborg threw back over his shoulder at the cowboy. "You just smoked one like half an hour ago!"
"After what just happened, I reckoned I deserved it." Bard answered.
"You did fight pretty good, despite that arm of yours." Cyborg commented.
"Beast Boy helped me."
"Oh, and he's modest, too!" He nudged Raven mockingly. "Isn't your bro sweet?"
"……."
"All right, fine!" Bard said. "I whipped ass! How do you like that?"
Cyborg laughed.
"You're not gonna get on me for cussin'?" Bard exhaled smoke. "Beast Boy said-"
"Yeah, yeah, Robin's rules." Cyborg cut to the chase. "We're teenagers! We're not supposed to follow the rules. I wouldn't do it in front of Wonder Boy, though."
Bard nodded and then looked at his half sister.
"Hey, do me a favor and remind me to kill Jinx."
"What for?" Cyborg asked as they stopped at a traffic light.
"She destroyed my cowboy hat!"
"So?" Cyborg shrugged. "Just get a new one. Sissy over here has like fourteen capes."
"Don't - call - me - 'Sissy'!"
Cyborg cringed, even as Bard was shaking his head.
"I don't mind getting a new one." He told them. "But…an old friend gave me that hat."
"That Tim guy?" Cyborg guessed.
"No…someone else."
A beat.
"Bard," Raven said.
"Um-hmm?"
"Kill Jinx,"
Bard stared at his sister's stoic face for a long moment. Finally, he burst out laughing.
"Did I miss something?" Cyborg asked, confused.
But Bard couldn't answer. He was still laughing.