Chapter Thirty-Five: Didn't Mean a Thing
After her period of silence, Em rejoined her friends, loud and cheerful as ever. They didn't press her about it, though she did still lapse into silence occasionally and had a tendency to stare out the nearest window for a while.
Nothing much happened for a while, save for a tricky situation with Mumbo Jumbo, but it didn't take long to sort out. Em was finally setting her mind back into its normal rhythm, when a most unfortunate confrontation occurred.
Em was sitting in her room, staring out the windows as the sun began to set, when who should fly past her window but Red X. He was headed for the roof. Em stared out the window for a fraction of a second before jumping to her feet and slamming her door open.
She flew past the other Titans' rooms at such a speed that it was impossible for them not to notice. Robin and Raven poked their heads out of their doors and looked at each other. Raven shrugged and retreated back into her room. Robin decided to check up on Em later.
Em opened the door to the roof and saw Red X standing there, watching her.
"Hey there Em," he said.
She stared at him coldly. "Great, I can finally beat you fair and square," she snapped venomously.
"What, didn't that kiss mean anything?" Red X asked with mock tearfulness.
"Why don't you come over here and try it again?" Em replied angrily.
"I see. So you saw past the ploy. Too bad, really. If you weren't so clever, I could have made good use of you," he said carelessly.
"Huh, I guess I was wrong. You're much worse than a petty thief. You're a petty thief with an ego," Em hissed, switching to her fire element. "Now I'll ask you again: are you going to come quietly?"
"Does anyone?" he inquired mockingly.
That was the last straw. Em eyes and hands blazed with flames. She didn't even waste the energy moving closer, she just pegged him in the stomach with a barrage of fire balls from the door. He dodged them deftly and threw some x blades at her, which she caught between her fingers and melted. He gulped.
She flew at him with a speed her fire element had never reached before, fueled by her anger. She swung a fist at him. He side-stepped and threw a kick toward her back which she blocked. The hand-to-hand continued, and it was obvious that they were evenly matched. Em's elbow finally made contact with his lower abdomen. He flew ten feet and hit the roof hard, sliding to a stop right next to the edge.
Em flew over to him and put one foot on his chest, looking down at him. He became quite still, breathing deeply. She felt his muscles tense to throw her off and lifted her foot from him a few inches, then smashed it back down with enough force to knock over a bus. He gagged as his back was smashed against the roof. The concrete beneath him cracked.
"No broken bones I hope?" Em asked innocently, smirking much more evilly than was natural for her fire element. His eyes narrowed and he grabbed her ankle, but she just laughed.
"Didn't you learn before that it's not nice to touch a lady's legs without her permission?" she said lightly, doing a back-flip and bringing him crashing to the ground behind her. "Darn, I repeated a performance. I'll never forgive myself," Em said with mock shame, grabbing X by the front of his shirt and lifting him off the ground.
She brought him to her eye level, his feet dangling a few inches from the roof. At that moment, the door swung open and Robin appeared. "Hey Em, I heard a crash and- !" he gasped at the sight of Red X being suspended in Em's death grip.
Em looked over. "Oh, hello Robin!" she said cheerfully. "Look what the cat dragged in!"
She grabbed the front of Red X's mask and pulled it off, revealing the blond hair and eye mask. She tossed him on the roof in front of Robin and landed, placing the mask in Robin's hands as she walked past. "He's all yours," she said carelessly as she walked down the stairs.