Disclaimer: I don't own Teen Titans, all rights to the owners.
CHANGELING
It's not as good as Crow's, but Nathan's cooking isn't bad. All the meals he makes are basic, but it's edible and something I didn't have to make myself, so I won't complain.
"Make sure to come back before six thirty if you want dinner." Nathan says as I eat. "Please call ahead if you're not going to return by then, so I know not to make anything for you."
"No get stab again." Kima adds, giving me an exaggeratedly firm glare that ends up looking angry. She still doesn't have perfect control of her facial expressions. "Don't want tell others that you die when they gone."
"I can't promise that, it's part of the job."
"Then no die."
"That's the plan." I say while trying not to roll my eyes. She makes it sound like I was planning on dying.
"Make sure to take your communicator with you." Nathan reminds. "If not to call us, then the League if you need help."
"I will, I know." I say in exasperation. "This isn't my first time going out alone."
"No have Titans to call this time." Kima warns insistently. "Caution. Help not come as fast."
"I know Kima." I say. Seriously, it's like having overbearing parents. I've handled myself just fine for multiple years! They don't need to tell me to be careful. heck, I'm technically their boss!
I mean, Robyn is their boss, but they work for the Titans so that means I'm sorta in charge of them too, right? Either way I should be the one cautioning them, not the other way around, but nooo, they're older than me so they get to pretend to be in charge.
"I know you know. Being sure." Kima says. A few of her tentacles gently touch my arm. "Have concern. Want you safe."
"Yes Mom." I think, and do roll my eyes this time. "I'll be fine."
Why are they even here anyways? They could eat breakfast at their apartment. They did eat breakfast at their apartment before the others left. Do they think I can't cook? Is that it? I'm capable of feeding myself! I'm not incompetant! They surely didn't come for the company.
"Well." I say, after I finish my food. "I'm going."
"Be safe." Kima and Nathan chorus.
As usual, I check on Crow and kiss his forehead before leaving. No response.
I don't have any specific goal today beyond information gathering. I need some sort of lead to work with before I start getting specific, with that in mind it leads me to someone I'd really rather not talk to. Not because she's done anything wrong, but because I'm very, very jealous of her.
Ava. I'm talking about Ava. The ooze, slime, whatever term you want to use. If I'm looking for leads about Chang's creatures I should ask one of those people who actually got taken. I don't know if she can point me towards some hiding place, in fact I doubt it, but information on Chang's operation will be universally useful and I should be able to make something of it.
I stride into Pizza Place with more purpose than usual. For once I'm not ordering food.
"You're here early." The girl leaning on the front counter says. She looks very bored, probably because nobody gets pizza for breakfast. "The usual?"
"I'm here on business today." I say. "I need to speak to Ava, or Even, if she's not here."
"Ah, the wife?" The girl stands up and stretches. "Okay. Just a minute."
She takes about two minutes, which is probably more than she actually needs just to alert her boss, but I don't say anything. No need to antagonize the workers when trying to get information out of their boss.
Well, their boss' wife, but close enough. I don't want anything that might cause her not to want to talk to me.
I won't pretend I've ever been diplomatic, but I've watched Robyn deal with the public on occasion and remember some warnings she's given me about watching what I say, and I'm applying those lessons here.
I'm surprised to see both Evan and Ava follow the girl out of the back. I was expecting just Evan, to be honest, and that I'd have to convince him to let me talk to Ava. I didn't think it would be difficult exactly, but this certainly speeds things up.
"No Pizza today?" Evan says instead of a greeting. He's smiling, but it's a polite smile. I'm not saying he's annoyed or angry, he's probably neutral, but he's not as happy as he's pretending to be. "Are we losing our touch?"
"Hardly." I say. "I'm looking into Chang stuff."
"I thought as much." Evan nods. "Come on then, let's go somewhere where there's less ears."
I didn't figure this would need to be very secret, but if he wants privacy I won't argue. I let him lead me out of the restaurant and towards the park, and as we're walking I can't help but notice some things. Namely that I think both Evan and Ava are passively studying people and projecting an image. I don't know if it's intentional or just habitual, but both of them quickly study anyone who comes close and their eyes tend to focus on their hands and then their pockets. They pay particular attention to men. Evan is walking in a way that's inobtrusive. He avoids any sort of eye contact, doesn't hold his head particularly high, and keeps a neutral expression. This is in contrast to Ava, who acts like I would if I wanted attention. She holds her head high, smiles a lot, doesn't avoid eye contact, and doesn't walk so much as strut in a way that makes her 'hair' swing behind her and swings her hips.
It's interesting. Evan's actions could be unintentional, but Ava's almost surely had to be practiced at some point, especially considering her body is constructed. Was she a model at some point?
Evan leads us into the park and to a picnic table. It's not the most private space ever, it's not like we can't be seen, but no one else is going to approach our table to hear us, so I suppose it doesn't matter. Ava and Emmet sit on one side, and I sit on the other, across from Ava specifically.
Rather than Evan starting the conversation he looks to Ava, and she speaks. "So, Chang huh? What 'cha looking for? I presume ya didn't want to deal with the police, cuz I already spoke with them."
"You'd be right." I say. "Though that's more out of not wanting the hassle of needing to wait for clearance."
"Can't blame ya. Police have always been annoyin'." Ava says. "There something specific you wanna know, or are you just here for the general story?"
"General at first. I don't know too much." I say. "I might have more specific questions later."
"Gotcha." Ava says. "Shall I start from how I got taken?"
"Yes." I say. For a moment, I wish I brought a notepad. Then I realize I wouldn't be able to focus on writing and listening at the same time, so that would be pointless.
"Well, it wasn't a quick thing exactly. Hindsight's twenty-twenty. Didn't realize they were gathering information on me 'till too late." Ava says. She glances at Evan. "Started at the kitchen when we were getting food-"
"Kitchen? As in…?"
"Soup kitchen." Evan says. His expression is carefully neutral. "We didn't exactly have money to spare back then."
"I see." I have some suspicions about them. Remember that body language things I mentioned just a minute or two ago? The way they were eyeing people, especially the hands and pockets? I suspect these two may have been thieves of some sort in the past. Not that I'm going to make a problem out of it. Sometimes low-paying jobs aren't enough, especially considering I know Ava used to need medication, and the US is pretty infamous for an awful healthcare system.
Not that the doctors are incompetant or anything, that's not what I mean. I mean some people can't afford their literally life-saving medication without going into permanent debt, and sometimes even that isn't enough to pay for what they need. America's crappy healthcare system literally kills people with easily-treatable conditions, much less people with rare conditions like what Ava used to have.
Then again, even if that weren't the case, I can't be too hard on people who were operating in survival mode. Even good people can be pushed to measures they'd rather not take in bad situations.
Should I technically look into it and take appropriate action? Yes. Am I going to? Hell no. "Rough time?"
"Oh yeah." Ava sighs. "Jobs at fast food places just don't cut it with the need to pay for my condition. Problem is that neither o' us had more than high-school diplomas, an' that don't lend itself well to getting a good job."
"Getting distracted dear." Evan murmurs.
"Can't a girl reminisce?" Ava says with a smile, and puts an arm Evan. I can also see her 'hair' curl around him affectionately. In a way, it reminds me of Kima and Nathan. That's also two people I know with prehensile hair that isn't actually hair. "We certainly had more free time together, hmm?"
"I wouldn't exactly call it free." Evan says, but he too lets a small smile cross his face.
It's hard not to be jealous, especially when they're being affectionate right in front of me, but then again they couldn't know that Crow is still out of commission. Robyn hasn't made that public, and while Evan watched Crow after the fight, he has no way of knowing Crow didn't yet wake up.
"Ah, but we could talk more than at work now." Ava says. She looks to me. "Only reason I'm 'ere is because I don't- can't- have my own job yet, so I figured I should at least learn how his works. Caught us at a good time. I wouldn't be here if you'd come at a busier time."
I unintentionally chose a very good time, huh? Also… "You can't have a job?"
"I'm a meta-human who's been missing for years in a top-secret illegal lab where my body was altered, o'course I'm not gonna be allowed to work until I've been thoroughly checked." She explains. "I'm lucky I'm even allowed to be at Evan's work, an' that's only 'cause I'm married and others vouched that I wasn't dangerous to the touch."
Yeah, I suppose that would be a problem.
"Dear." Evan says. "Off-topic."
"Right, right." Ava hums. "So, anyhow, the soup kitchen was pretty normal from what I could tell. Most o' the workers were volunteers, but the owner frequently dropped in around meal times to talk with customers. Seemed like a nice lady on the surface, and had a real talent for getting people who wouldn't normally talk to open up."
Judging by the way Evan is pursing his lips and the false cheer in Ava's voice that is so obvious even someone half-deaf could detect it, I think I know where this is going.
"In hindsight, she was looking for targets." Ava says, dropping the happy pretense. "She took an interest in my illness and wanted to learn everything about it. She acted sympathetic towards me o'course, an' even donated a few dollars here an' there if we couldn't make a payment for my medical cream, all to gain my confidence."
Ava pauses, and after a second Evan softly prompts, "And then…"
"And then one day she says she found someone that might be able to help me. She could give me a number, but they got a lot o' calls and texts and probably wouldn't answer, but if I wanted to talk to 'em she could organize a meeting." Ava says. "So, naturally I'm hopeful. Not even thinkin' it's a trap. After all, she's been talking to me for months at this point, almost a year. Me and Evan have been going to the kitchen for a long time, even volunteered to help once or twice when they were short-staffed. So when she gives me a time and a place, evening, a park near the docks this person supposedly likes to visit, I don't give it a second thought. Evan's doin' overtime that night, so I go alone."
"And then, she doesn't come back." Evan says softly, when Ava pauses again.
"Total setup." Ava says. "I meet this old lady, Chang herself, and have a nice talk. I explain everything I know about my condition, thinking I'm about to get help, when really I'm just confirmin' that I'm worth taking. I get grabbed from behind, a gag shoved in my mouth, and then pushed into a submarine that comes up at the nearby docks."
"The owner of the kitchen said she didn't know what happened." Evan says. "She says she saw Ava off that night, and that her contact gave her a call later about Ava, so Ava definitely made it too her. She gives me the number of her supposed contact, a fake number now that I know it was Chang, and when I call I talk with a lady who says that yeah she met Ava, she can even recite all of the details about Ava's condition and exactly where they met, and says that she saw her off around nine. I call the police, and both the owner and her fake contact both pretend to help as much as they can."
"It's easy to deceive when more than half the people who saw Ava around that time were in on the kidnapping." I say.
"Exactly." Evan nods. He suddenly looks very, very tired. "Naturally, the investigation goes nowhere, and I hear nothing of Ava for five years."
"Five years I spent getting x-rayed and scanned by all sorts o' things, blood drawn, skin samples taken, all sorts o' tests I imagine, and then eventually I strapped to a chair, knocked out, and operated on. Chang's more than happy to talk about what she did afterward. Don't even think the lady was gloating, just likes to talk science to anyone, even captives." Ava says. "After a long time studying shapeshifters of varying sorts and how they work and their blood an' everything about them, they ramped up the effect of my metagene twentyfold and messed with it. Part of my illness was that I'm technically a metahuman. I had shifting potential, but my metagene is so weak that all it does is make my skin loose rather than full on change parts of my body."
"You were potentially a shapeshifter?" I repeat in surprise.
"My gene was too weak to be one in actuality, but yes." Ava says. "Just boosting my metagene probably would have made me like Clayface, but flesh and blood. Couldn't turn myself into something inanimate, but I could have totally changed my appearance. Chang wanted to try and alter my gene rather than just boosting it though, so she made it so that my body slowly turned to sludge and my brain became my whole body."
"What?"
"I don't got a brain, see?" She points to her head. "Instead, my brain is my body. All the neutral pathways and cells and whatnot you have, I actually have many times over all through my body. If I was cut in half, maybe I could even control both halves, or they might become two of me. That's why losing part of my body doesn't cripple me mentally. Oh, and they're flexible. If I were to turn into a puddle right now, it wouldn't mess up my mind as my brain cells scramble to reshape themselves in my new, very flat form."
"That's crazy." I say. "And honestly kind of cool."
"I know, right?" Ava grins. "Chang's a bitch, an' I'd prefer to be human, but that don't mean this body doesn't have some cool perks."
That's very optimistic of her, especially considering I just said having her body transformed against her will was "cool". I meant her slime body and not how it came about of course, but that was really insensitive of me.
"Sadly, I doubt this is reversible." Ava says. "This body is actually pretty simple, hence why I actually survived being turned into something so different than a human. It would be a lot harder to get all my cells to nicely conform to the complex functions of human cells again, not to mention the hassle of getting my brain cells back into the actual structure of a brain."
Evan silently puts an arm around her waist, and once more Ava leans into him. I kinda feel like I'm intruding on something private.
"At least we aren't picking pockets any more." Evan murmurs with dry humor. He's speaking quietly enough that any normal person in my position wouldn't hear, but I've got good hearing. That confirms my suspicions at least.
"Yeah, I know." Ava murmurs back, smiling a bit. "Not complainin' 'bout that."
"How'd you go about that?" I ask, surprising the both of them. "No judgement here, I've done some less than legal things myself, I'm just curious."
Both of them seem surprised, but Ava relaxes quickly… though her body is constructed so maybe that's a facade. Evan does too, after a moment. "It was a simple scheme." He says, glancing at Ava. "We usually stuck near the airport to catch rich travellers. Ava would distract them with her charming good looks, and while she held their attention I would snag whatever was in their pocket."
"Simple scheme, but the execution was somthin' else." Ava says. "Have to adapt quickly, and make big changes for married and unmarried people."
I raise an eyebrow. "Why so?"
"Well, so, the scheme revolved around me holding someone's attention, right?" Ava explains. "I'd pretend I'd just gotten here too and was lost, and would ask 'em for help while showing them a map."
"But they couldn't even give you directions if they were travellers." I say.
"Yeah, but it didn't matter. Wasn't the point." Ava says. "I'd make sure to wear something with a real low neckline and slide up next to 'em, an' even if they knew nothin' they'd still try to help out such a lost, stupid, nice-lookin' girl because men are easy."
Well, that's true enough. A little bit of female attention can do a lot if directed at the right person.
"And while I distracted 'em, Evan would 'accidentally' bump into 'em and take whatever was in their pockets, and because they were busy trying to impress me they wouldn't think to check until after I was gone." Ava says. "O'course, Evan had to be more careful with his approach if the person wasn't alone. A wife was both good and bad. Made the target more distracted by a disapproving wife as I hung off 'em, but that's also another pair of eyes that might notice what Evan was doin'."
"Clever." I say. "Was the haul good?"
"Honestly? Not really." Evan shrugs. "We didn't like to use debit or credit cards, too much chance of being traced and causing problems, and our targets tended to keep very little cash on hand. Sometimes we'd be lucky and get a few hundred, but other times they had literally zero cash on hand. Must have paid for everything on debit or credit."
"I made sure to rotate my outfits." Ava adds as an afterthought. "Changed my hairstyle regularly too. For safety."
Anything to make yourself less recognizable I suppose. I don't know how much of an effect that would actually have, but better than nothing. "Interesting…"
"Unless there's something else, we should get back to work." Evan says softly, after a few seconds pass in silence.
"Would you mind giving me the information on the soup kitchen?" I ask, pulling out my communicator (which thankfully has a notepad function).
"Sure!" Ava says.
And that's how I get my first bit of useful information. I get a location, the name of the (now former) owner, as well as the location of the park where Ava was kidnapped. I guess I know what I'm doing today.
KID FLASH
Spaceships are so fucking boring.
There's nothing to do! All I can do is sit around, waiting for the looong warp travel to bring us to Tamaran. There's no games, no books, nothing. I can just sit and talk. I can't even run around or do anything physical, because the ship is pretty small. It's not much bigger than the garage the Titans were living in, and we're going to be stuck in here for days. Warp travel is fast in terms of Earthly space travel, but slow in terms of technology available in the wider galaxy. Boom Tubes are instant, teleportation is instant, and warp travel is not.
Then again, relatively speaking, Boom Tubes and Teleportation are rare and restricted to powerful individuals, so warp travel isn't that slow, but to a hero whose power is speed like me, this feels like a snail's pace. I can get almost anywhere in the world in less than an hour, I'm not used to having to wait more than that, much less multiple days, just to get somewhere.
Robyn and Starfire handle this the best. From what I'm aware, Starfire was military, so tedious waiting is nothing new to him. Robyn is used to stakeouts, so while a few days is longer than she's used to, it's nothing major. Cyborg has video games and games built into her system, which is just unfair.
Mumbo is faring rather poorly as well, though not as poorly as me. She spends most of her time, strangely, in meditation.
"Usually I meditate for an hour a day to keep myself sane." Mumbo explains when I ask. "My magic comes from a strange place. Meditating longer… it doesn't do much, but it's something to do. I suppose a performer has to brush up on their auxiliary skills every once in a while, but I didn't figure I'd do in a way that was so boring."
"What do you mean keep yourself sane?" I ask. She said it so casually, but that's not a casual thing at all!
"My magic makes me crazy!" Mumbo says. "I mean that literally by the way. My magic comes from my hat, and the hat tries to influence me. It used to belong to an old stage magician, and he imprinted his mind into it when he was near death. So the hat tries to make me think more like him. The problem was that he was both obsessed with performance and probably suffering from an undiagnosed mental illness. He was a loon, though a very creative and talented one. I meditate to remain myself, at least, mostly myself. Taking on a bit of his mindset is actually quite useful."
That's still nuts. She's constantly dealing with an old, crazy magician trying to influence her mind? No wonder she's so weird.
"Of course, it helps that his influence goes away when I take off the hat." Mumbo says. "Meditation with the hat on is just an exercise in mental control."
"You're crazy." I say, and shake my head.
"I know, that's my selling point!" Mumbo says with a grin. "Who else can advertise themselves as a crazy magician and actually mean it?"
"I'm not sure that's a good thing."
"Probably not, but I have to leverage what I got! Marketing is everything!"
Says the former supervillain, but sure, whatever you say Mumbo.
"After all, good marketing is what allowed me this opportunity." Mumbo says, and gestures to the whole spaceship. "I performed for kids and acted cheerful all the time. If I didn't portray myself as being fun and lighthearted, even with me defecting from Rose, do you really think I'd be allowed to help the Titans like this?"
That's a good point. Mumbo already had a reputation as being "the nice one" in terms of supervillains. Her crimes were mostly petty, rarely resulted in any sort of bodily harm except for superheroes who tried to fight her, and she entertained kids on the street both before crimes and during her off time. I can't imagine those weren't a factor in her being given some leeway. "So you intentionally manipulated your public image?"
"Well, it was also sincere. I do take joy in being an entertainer, and I'm not fond of hurting people. Public image was just an additional incentive."
While that conversation is well and fun, it's also the only interesting thing to talk about. Robyn and Starfire are boring and just talk about politics (bleh), and Cyborg barely talks at all.
Even if it's going to be dangerous, it's a relief when we arrive in Tamaranian space. At least there's going to be something to do.
Mostly a Changeling chapter as she starts looking into Chang stuff. I also found a use for Ava and Evan, so yay.
Alyce and Indi: I have no idea how far you've gotten, but if you're reading this, congratulations on catching up! I'm glad you like the initial concept so much.
Origami Stars: Soon… soon…
Azarath Cat: Thank you! Ruban is just a gold mine for cute stuff, awake or not. The new aliens will be interesting I hope, though I'm having trouble holding in mind everything I want to write with them.
