"I hope you're not waiting for a thank you kiss, chrome dome." - Beast Boy

October 15th

Morning

One Week Later

Slade has three new soldiers.

It was only a matter of time, I guess.

If he's anything like me - and I reluctantly accepted long ago that he is - he's finally realized just how valuable having trusted teammates is.

There is a difference between us, though.

He sees his teammates as soldiers.

My teammates are friends.

It's amazing how quickly a Jump City street can become a battlefield; amazing, and a little scary. What started in one of the innumerable skyscrapers of the Tech District had spilled outside into a video game-esque brawl.

Cyborg grabbed a pair of black and orange Sladebots and smashed their heads together in a sparking shower of spare parts. "Where does Slade find the time to make these things?" He asked over the ambiance of the fight. A Sladebot kicked him in back of the head and he stumbled forward into another's punch. Cyborg shook himself, uprooted a parking meter and used it to bat both of the robots away. They arced across the street and crashed through a hot dog cart. "The dude really needs a hobby!" Cyborg finished his interrupted thought.

"Hah! Slade in a pottery class!" Beast Boy cackled. He punched a Sladebot in the face to little effect, changed into a gorilla and and did so again with grossly different results. Several Sladebots jumped on his broad, hairy back, but Beast Boy twirled and hurled them in all directions.

"Quite amusing!" Starfire smiled. She tossed a glowing green starbolt into a crowd of Sladebots. It burned through several of them until it met one Sladebot who blocked with crossed, metal-gauntleted arms. The force sent him sliding back on his heels, but then he thrust forward and the ball of energy streaked back at its source. Starfire spun, kicked it with her purple booted foot like a soccerball and sent it flying back. The Sladebot tried to block again, but the starbolt burned through his guard and left a smoking hole in his middle.

"He'd just make dozens of sculptures of Robin in his apprentice costume." Raven droned. She gestured gracefully from her levitating position. Black telekinesis picked up a metal mailbox. The mailbox floated quickly and blocked a Sladebot punch aimed at Aquagirl's blind side. Its fist clanged against the metal and then the mailbox slammed into its side.

"That's not funny." Robin frowned even as he blocked and deflected the attacks of two Sladebots at once. He pulled his collapsible staff from his utility belt and extended it to its maximum distance. The two ends pushed the Sladebots back and ultimately crushed them against the two building faces on either side of the street. Robin turned to defend himself from another Sladebot lunging at his back, but Indigo elastically extended her fist and punched him away. Somewhat beyond the blue android, Aquagirl knocked away several Sladebots with a blast of water and Encore took potshots with his laser pistol.

Aquagirl, Encore and Indigo. Even in the midst of the fight, I can't help but be proud of them. They've come a long way in such a short amount of time.

I wonder: Did Batman feel this way about me?

Does he feel the same way about Red-Robin?

Indigo picked up the parking meter Cyborg had discarded and her alchemic powers went to work. The meter transmutated into a rocket launcher. Indigo shouldered the weapon and fired at a close-knit crowd of Sladebots. A sudden blue dome of transparent force appeared and absorbed the rocket blast, leaving the Sladebots unharmed. Indigo squinted up at the nearly bald girl hovering above the street on a disc of blue force. The girl's hands were clasped and she looked down into her lap, seemingly unaware of the fight going on beneath her. Indigo reloaded her rocket launcher and aimed up at her.

"No!" A dark-haired girl threw herself into Indigo's side. The rocket launcher clattered to the street and the two girls rolled and grappled with each other. They rose to their feet, still locked together. Indigo shoved with her stretchy arms and slammed her opponent into a buildingside. The girl's back and head bounced painfully off the hard surface and the scars on her face and exposed skin glowed blue. She pried Indigo's hands off her and retaliated with a superpowered uppercut.

Indigo spiraled through the air and over Encore's head. The cowboy pointed and sang a quick tune and Indigo was caught by a curtain of wind. She slid down it to the street beside him.

"Thank you." She told him.

"Don't mention i-ack!"

Artemis slammed both fists into the ground and a cracking tremor zigzagged at them. The street buckled up between Indigo and Encore and they were flung in opposite directions. The archer might have advanced on them, but Aquagirl was there to cover them with water blasts. Artemis ran and flipped and acrobatically dodged.

All three of Slade's new apprentices are girls. Maybe there's something significant in that.

Maybe not.

They've been trained to fight together as a group and they do it well. Somehow I know Slade isn't proud of them. He only feels pride in himself.

Artemis leaped behind a car parked on the curb. At first it seemed she would use it as cover, but then she lifted it over head and chucked it at Aquagirl. Encore dove into her side and the two of them rolled beneath the car just before it smashed into the road. They rolled to a stop and Artemis watched the two of them lying on top each other from behind her pointed eyemask. She notched her single tethered arrow into her bow, pulled back and aimed at Encore and Aquagirl. Cyborg charged at her from behind.

"Lostgirl, now!" Artemis shouted without looking. A blue transparent wall appeared behind Artemis and Cyborg crashed headlong into it.

Encore, still on top of Aquagirl, looked up and saw he was in Artemis' sights. Artemis grit her teeth and made a clicking sound of frustration. She aimed to the side and let her arrow fly.

"Eek!" Starfire caught the arrow by its shaft with its head inches from her nose.

Artemis hit the retraction mechanism on her bow and launched herself on the makeshift zipline at Starfire. Starfire powered up a starbolt and braced herself for the impact. They came together in an explosion that engulfed them both. They burst out of the resulting smoke cloud, dodging and exchanging superpowered blows.

Artemis is their leader. There's no doubt about that. She's the strongest and boldest of them. She's the one that holds the group together; the one that gives the orders.

'Undergrounders, go!' doesn't have the same ring to it.

Paingirl kicked down a telephone pole at its base, caught it and swung it again and again at Robin as if it were a giant baseball bat. He leaped and ducked and cartwheeled around her wide swipes. The swings became slower and slower until finally the blue faded from her scars. The telephone pole, now too heavy to hold, slipped from her grasp and thudded against the ground.

Robin ran along the pole, his cape flapping, and kicked hard with his steel-enlaced boot. Paingirl made no attempt to dodge and took the full brunt of the blow on her chin. Her head was whipped back and Robin followed up with a spinning staff strike. Paingirl was flung back and crashed into the side of a car. Her scars glowed blue again. She lifted the car over her head and slammed it down at Robin as if it was a giant fly swatter. Robin nimbly jumped back to safety, but the shockwave shoved him into an airborne spin.

Then there's Paingirl and there's no better name for her. We've run into energy absorptionists before. Overload can absorb electrical energy. Plasmus can absorb radiation from toxic sludge. Dr. Light absorbs his namesake.

But Paingirl absorbs kinetic energy. There's something intimidating - and frustrating - about fighting an opponent that grows stronger the more you beat on them.

Encore was fighting off several sladebots with a whip of electricity when he suddenly found himself trapped in a transparent blue ball of solid force. He pushed against its curved walls, but his prison remained firm. Aquagirl saw her teammate trapped and aimed a thick jet of water up at wear Lostgirl sat on her floating blue disc. A sharply angled force field appeared before her, cutting the stream of water in half and diverting it harmlessly to either side.

Back in his hamster ball of doom, Encore began humming the now familiar tune to bring his powers to bear. The song cut off into a surprised yelp when one of the sladebots kicked the round force field around him and sent it rolling down the street. The ball clanked into a lamppost, bounced off and pinballed between several parked cars. The crazy ride was finally stopped by a giant black hand. The blue sphere cracked under the squeezing hand and fell away into nothingness.

Now free, Encore blinked dizzily as multicolored Ravens mambo'd along the brim of his hat. "...t-thanks..." He slurred.

Beast Boy cleared a space around him with a kangaroo tail whip, changed into a green-feathered hawk and flapped into the air. He circled around where Lostgirl floated. He changed back to his elven form and perched ferally with crossed-wrists on a nearby roof edge.

"Lostgirl!" He called. "What are you doing?"

Lostgirl ignored him and kept her head down, fidgeting with the silver cross necklace in her hands.

"It's me, Beast Boy! You know, the green dude you saved last week?"

Lostgirl turned her head and peeked at him out of the corner of her eye.

"That's right!" Beast Boy nodded encouragingly. "You remember!"

The blue nimbus Lostgirl sat on floated closer to him.

"Thanks for saving my butt," Beast Boy said. He tried and failed to meet her eyes "What are you doing with Slade? Why were you at the Gemini Building?"

The blonde-scalped girl said nothing, but she leaned towards the sound of his voice. She hesitantly began to raise her chin.

And the third of them is Lostgirl. She's the hardest of them to analyze. Even in the middle of a fight, she looks detached from everything; as if she isn't even paying attention. Yet those force fields of hers always show up exactly where they're most needed.

Beast Boy says he saw her at the Gemini Building during the break-in by Slade's robots and that she saved him and Holly on the day of the metahuman tournament. What's her connection to Gemini? Why did she save Beast Boy? I don't know what it all means yet.

But I will.

On the street below, Paingirl hefted a car and heaved it up at Beast Boy. Her aim was slightly low and the automobile crashed into the building just below his perch. The shockwave knocked him off balance and he and the car fell back towards the hard street below. Cyborg stomped along the sidewalk and punched the car away with a heavy metal fist. Beast Boy found himself on a spiraling waterslide courtesy of Aquagirl to slow his descent and Cyborg caught him in a cradle.

"I hope you're not waiting for a thank you kiss, chrome dome." Beast Boy quipped.

"Maybe next time, grass stain." Cyborg unceremoniously dropped him on his rear.

Artemis caught Starfire by the ankle and spun her around and around and around. She let to and the momentum meteor'd Starfire into eighth, ninth and tenth floor of an office building. Pounds of shattered glass rained down to the street.

"Starfire!" Robin shouted. He shot his grappling hook and ziplined up towards the hole Starfire's impact had made. He swivled as he was jerked through the air and flung a trio of red and yellow birdarangs down at Artemis. Artemis raised her arrow, twirled it in her fingers until it was a blurring, circular shield and deflected all three. Then she notched it into her bow and let it fly. The arrow sailed over Robin and sheared his zipcord in half just before he reached the hole in the building.

Robin fell, slipping and tumbling through empty space. He took several more birdarangs from his utility belt and interlocked them together into two thin-bladed short swords. He stabbed both into the building face, slowing his descent in a shower of glass and mortar. He came to a jerky stop around the third floor, relatively unharmed.

And also a sitting target.

Artemis tore the door off a parked car and frisbee'd it up at him. Robin dropped down to avoid it and stabbed his swords into the building to stop himself again. He dodged the second door and four tires in rapid succession, mountain climbing like a handicapped spider across the building face. He felt the rush of wind as the trunk of the car sheared by him at super speed and nearly missed his lunge. He hung precariously from the hilt of one sword while the other slipped from his hand. He watched it fall, clink off the builiding face into a lazy spin and clatter against the hard ground below.

Artemis hefted the gas tank from what was left of the dismantled car and launched it up at him. She shot her bow and her roped arrow chased after it even faster. The arrow head sprayed sparks across the makeshift bomb. The whites of Robin's eye mask shrank to pinpricks.

A pair of elongated blue arms tentacle'd up, grabbed the gas tank and tossed it back down at Artemis. The dark-skinned archer turned away to protect her face, but the explosion flung her away like a rag doll.

Robin watched breathlessly as he hung from the building.

Yeah.

Really proud.