"Why'd it have to be the sewer?" Cyborg complained as he walked behind Jinx down the tunnel.
"Find a better place to get yourself surrounded," she condescendingly suggested.
"What is that supposed to mean?" he said with some annoyance.
"It means you should pick a spot where the sewer isn't the only option instead of complaining about it," she hissed with increasing aggravation.
"'Pick'?!?! How was I supposed to know there was only a sewer exit from there?" It only took a fraction of a section for his mind to get to the next step. "Wait. How did you know about the sewer exit? Or the basement floor? Or the trapdoor?"
She sighed, as she made a right turn at a junction. "Gizmo and I used to sneak in there. No idea who put it there, but the false wall made me think no one was supposed to know about it."
Cyborg paused, thinking. The plain sliding door built into the wall behind a filing cabinet did have a secret passage feel to it. "But...why would you want to sneak into a run-down warehouse?"
She stopped walking for half a second, before turning to face him. "It wasn't always run-down, genius. It was owned by an electronics company back when this was a busy industrial district."
"Huh, so that's where Gizmo got his tech," Cyborg said as his gaze drifted off absentmindedly.
Jinx stood there for two awkward seconds, with a frown. "Yeah," she finally stated bluntly, before turning around and continuing down the tunnel. "Come on," she commanded without looking back.
"Yo, what makes you think you're in charge?" Cyborg asked indignantly as he sprinted to catch up, trying not to think about whatever he heard sloshing under his feet.
"You are following me," she answered pointedly.
It took only a split second for him to object. "So? That doesn't mean you're the boss!"
"You really think arguing about this is a good use of your time?"
"Why not? I am following you, remember? What else am I gonna do?"
"Maybe you could figure out what the hell is going on up there!" Jinx growled. "And maybe I'll figure out why I didn't just let that thing turn you into pumpkin fertilizer!"
Cyborg didn't know why she was being so hostile, since he was the one who'd been running from hordes of the zombie-like trick-or-treaters and smacked around by a pumpkin thingy. Maybe she was just nervous, like he was.
"OK," he sighed. Figuring that getting more information would be the best step, to say nothing of being a healthy distraction, he asked: "So how'd you get here? I thought Kid Flash was going to a big party or twenty."
"He is," she said with a slight hiss. "I wanted to stay at one of the parties here, so he went globe trotting. Said to call if I need anything, but I think we both know about the communicator outage."
Cyborg eyed her lithe form with both eyes, just in case he'd been totally oblivious to an alternate attire. But she had the same black-and-purple bat-like...thing that she always wore. "Wasn't a costume party, huh?"
She shook her head, a movement emphasized by the pink protrusions on either side of her head, as she sidestepped to the left edge of the tunnel. "The one holiday it really fits, and you're expecting me to change it for a party?"
As they went on, the tunnel widened ahead, turning into kind of a trench with walkways on each side. It also deepened, enough that there was an easily visible level of sewage collected down there, as opposed to the trickles and splatters that decorated their progress so far. He was still trying to convince himself that he couldn't actually smell any of it, an effort that met with limited success against this new concentration.
"Not really," Cyborg finally responded to Jinx's probably rhetorical question. "Umm...not to change the subject or anything, but...where we goin'?"
"Eventually, out of the sewers."
"Eventually? Aren't there like a ton of storm grates and manholes we've passed by already?"
"Yeah. How many of them are wide enough for you to climb through unnoticed?"
"Oh," Cyborg replied sheepishly once he realized the answer was zero.
"There's an open horizontal outlet down this way, we can get out without needing to open anything and we can see if there's anything out there first. We'll have to take a detour through a treatment plant, but that means the water will be clean where we get out."
"Cool. I'll be thrilled to get away from this smell. So what was I...oh yeah! What happened at the party?"
"A bunch of people had their cellphones lose signal at the same time. Then there was an explosion, it was an outdoor party so we saw and heard it clearly. Everyone else ran off, I went to see what the heck had happened a couple blocks away. Starfire was fighting it out with a giant pumpkin monster, looked like a war zone all around."
"Wait, Starfire? Wait, giant pumpkin? Umm...what happened to Starfire, and how giant we talkin'?"
"Well...being slammed into the pavement a couple times wasn't good for her complexion, but the pumpkin didn't get up again after we impaled it on what used to be the corner of a building. Starfire sent me to go get help when another one showed up. And about the size of a compact car, with the vines about three stories long."
Cyborg stopped. "You left her alone?!?!" he yelled in a mix of disbelief and anger.
Jinx likewise stopped, and turned around and stormed up to Cyborg with a ferocious scowl. "HELL YES! Some of us aren't built like tanks, and we tend to bruise and break when flung into buildings. She didn't want me to die for her, which was fine by me!"
He could only manage a blank stare, shocked by her story almost as much as by the sheer ferocity it came with. She stared back for a couple seconds, a silent dare for him to respond, before she turned on her heel and marched off with a growl. By the time he guessed there might be something else going on with her, she was a good distance away and he was still standing there.
"Yo!" he called out as he set his feet in motion against the thankfully dry walkway, "Wait up!"
She didn't stop, nor did she turn to look behind her. She did, however, slow down slightly after a couple seconds.
When Cyborg finally caught up with her, he wasn't any closer to figuring out what her problem was. Maybe she was really nervous. Maybe she was always antisocial like this. Maybe she just didn't care about Starfire. But none of those possibilities seemed enough to justify her response.
Her fuming was almost palpable, and he found himself wondering if he'd be safer with the giant pumpkin. He couldn't decide, but he was certain that he was growing increasingly nervous with the only appreciable sounds being his own footsteps. He tried to come up with something to say, anything to say, to end the silence while not causing a repeat of her outburst.
"So...um....Where'd you say you and Starfire took the big pumpkin down?" He was aware of how meek that sounded, but maybe it would be an advantage here.
She sighed, listlessly. "Several blocks south of where we'll come out of the sewer system," she said with a hint of dour resignation.
"Think we could make it back there?"
"Depends on if the area's still swarming with brainwashed kids. Why?"
"Maybe there's a clue there, to find out where these things are coming from. I bet it's Mad Mod."
She turned her head towards him, an eyebrow creased. "Mad Mod?" she skeptically repeated.
"Well he is tacky, and he's done holiday things and brainwashing stuff before. But that pumpkin didn't have a British flag painted on it or anything, either, so maybe it's not him."
"Plus, it's a pumpkin."
"Yeah? It's Halloween, too," Cyborg responded with some confusion.
"You don't get it," she said with exasperation. "The use of pumpkins for jack-o-lanterns originated in North America; the British fanboy would've gone with turnips or something else that was part of the original tradition in Britain."
Cyborg raised an eyebrow at this factoid. "Are you and Raven in the same book club or something?" He realized it was probably a stupid thing to say after he had finished saying it.
She stopped walking and snapped her head towards him, leading him to stop as well. "What?" Definitely a stupid move on his part, but on the other hand she didn't look nearly as angry as she did moments ago.
Fortunately he had an answer to this one. "Just seems like an odd thing to know, but also like something Raven would know, you know?" He hoped the dismissive tone of voice with the book club comment had only been his imagination.
"Is there a problem with that?" Didn't sound like it was his imagination.
"What? I like Raven, remember?"
"You...." she snarled with a sudden burst of fury. Then just as abruptly as the venomous glare was in place, it was retracted; It was too quick for Cyborg to identify whatever facial expression marked the transition. "Whatever," she dismissed the whole exchange with, before she walked on.
Cyborg groaned in annoyance, as he sped up to match pace with her side-by-side. "OK, look. Whatever's going on, we're gonna have to work together if we want to get through it." He paused very briefly, expecting to hear a snort or other sign of derision out of Jinx, but again the only sound he heard was his own footfalls. "So as long as we're stuck together, can we at least try to be civil to each other?" He'd have to figure out how she could walk so silently in those shoes later.
"That's a really good question," she responded snidely, "seeing as you've done nothing but gripe about everything I've done this whole time."
Cyborg really, really wished she was wrong. "OK, OK...Guess I'm just a little nervous...OK a lot nervous. What with being cut off from the other Titans, zombie townspeople, psycho pumpkins...this kinda stuff is only supposed to happen in Halloween movies. So...what'd it take to start over on our little piece of the nightmare?"
"Well you could start by not making snide remarks every time I know something you don't," she said without missing a beat.
He took a deep breath. On one hand, she was still going on like everything was his fault. On the other, she didn't say anything about the sewer or Starfire, just the book club remark that was pretty dumb. "Fine," he said with some reluctance.
She sighed with some reluctance of her own. "Yeah, OK. So what was your plan, before locking yourself in a warehouse?"
"And what is that supposed to mean?"
"Oh please, like all the creepy people half-yelling your name wasn't your cue to improvise?"
His organic eye widened slightly in surprise. "You heard that?"
"Yeah, pretty hard to miss. How did you think I found you?"
"Huh, guess that makes sense. Well anyway, my plan was to get to the T-Car and then drive back to the Tower. But I kinda got side-tracked when all the kids gathered to see me. Guess the T-Car is out of the question now, huh?"
"Yeah. Probably just as well; you weren't going to get far unless you were planning on plowing over a lot of kids. Any particular reason for heading to the Tower?"
"Well, I was able to get some signal to the Tower, by remotely connecting through the T-Car, but I couldn't reach any of the others or my own communicator through the Tower. The noise on the comm array didn't show any direction that was stronger, so the source has gotta be close by. Plus, Raven was at the Tower monitoring everyone's patrols, she'll know more about what's going on."
Jinx suddenly stopped and looked at Cyborg, a look of worry on her face. "Wait, Raven's at the Tower?"
"Yeah...." He didn't like where his mind was going.
"Shouldn't the Tower have a stronger connection to her than to the T-Car?"
Cyborg was pretty sure his heart was trying to skip a beat. That it had no choice in the matter only made it a tangible discord, like a pain in his mind. Just another natural part of being unnatural. "Aww man....Yeah, she should've responded. The signal would've been routed through to the console in the command center, the wireless interference couldn't have messed with the wired connection like that. Something must've happened to her. We gotta get there ASAP...or maybe we should check on Starfire first...damn, this keeps going from bad to worse!" He sighed, despondently. "Hate to say it, but I got no idea what we should be doing."
"We'll head south to Starfire's last known position, then head west until we reach the coast, and get to the Tower from there."
Cyborg gave up on complaints about following her. "You really think Starfire's still there?"
"It's a short enough detour to make it worth checking, even more so if you can actually find some clues. And I don't know about you, but I don't want to go after something that can take down Raven without all the help I can get."
Cyborg shuddered. "I hear that. Ain't a lot of things that can tangle with her and expect to win."
"I know. I'm one of them."