I have a lot of this story written already, so here's an update!
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"And then she shoved past me, and ran into a department store, and she was gone," Starfire said, shrugging. "I looked inside, but I could not see her. There were too many people."
"Interesting, Star," Robin commented, tapping his fingers against the tabletop in the kitchenette in the Tower. Terra was lounging nearby, gnawing on the end of a pretzel stick. The other Titans had gone their own ways on returning from their clash with Gizmo, and Starfire didn't know where they were. "That's interesting. What made you follow this girl, again?"
"I…I thought I recognized her," she admitted slowly.
"Recognized her?"
"Well, not her specifically," she clarified quickly. "I recognized her mechanical limbs."
"Yeah, they were like Gizmo's," Terra interjected, slurring her words slightly through her mouthful of pretzel. Starfire shook her head quickly, her hair falling into her eyes for a moment, until she pushed it out of the way.
"No, they were not," the Tamaranean said breathlessly. "They were Irken. That was an Irken PAK on her back."
"Irken," Robin repeated blankly.
"What's an Irk-en?" Terra asked, sounding out the word carefully.
"They are a race of creatures," Starfire said, eyes wide. "We compare them to telluchians on my planet, but I suppose you could say that they resemble insects on this one, with big eyes and antennae and green skin. They are trying to conquer the universe; their Empire is already extensive."
"And this…do you think this girl was an…Irken?" Robin asked, leaning forward. Starfire shrugged.
"I do not see how she could not have been," she said. "The Irken race jealously guards everything of theirs, including their technology. As far as I know, she has to have been Irken."
"But why would one of these things be on Earth?"
"The only times Irkens move off their conquered territories," Starfire said, apparently struggling to remember, "is if they're part of a diplomatic envoy to an ally planet, or scouting it out for conquering." A look of stunned realization crossed her face. "She could be an Invader!" she gasped.
"And that's not good, right?" Robin asked. She nodded quickly.
"Well, what can we do about it?" Terra asked, setting her pretzel rod aside.
"Track her down?" Starfire suggested. "I would not know. Our people repelled an attempted Irken invasion millennia ago, long before I was born. The exact methods are a little unclear now."
"Tracking her down to question her couldn't hurt," Robin mused, tracing a pattern in the design on the tabletop with an idle finger. "Even if she's not one of these…Irkens…"
Starfire nodded enthusiastically. "We could do so now!"
"The sooner we start, the better chance we have of finding her, actually," Robin said, pushing his chair back from the table and standing up. He leveled a gaze at the two teens. "Will you girls round up the others? We should get out there before this mystery being gets a chance to get too far from where you saw her last."
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Of course, finding one non-descript and possibly alien girl in a city of several thousand equally non-descript people was a lot harder to say than to do. They started at the department store Starfire had reported her disappearing into and worked their way out from there. Beast Boy had volunteered to canvass the big park in the center of the city on the off chance that she had hidden herself in plain view, but he had a slightly ulterior motive. He didn't really expect this girl they were looking for to be there, but he did expect a lot of other cute chicks to, and well, who could blame him if he got a little sidetracked, yes?
There was a particular spot along the main path winding its way through the park that often attracted crowds because of the street performers who gathered there. The cobbled lane was wide and flat, and the copses of trees were a distance to either side of it—it offered a lot of space without the park-goers having to venture off the path if they didn't want to. Beast Boy trekked up to the top of a small rise and looked down on the people below. There was that guy with the weird accent who did the card tricks in his usual spot. Beast Boy had seen him there often recently—the man drew a regular crowd with his demonstrations of sleight-of-hand now that the word of him had spread around. He had competition today, though; there was girl with a boom box and a little pleather-and-satin getup across the way. While he made the female portion of the park-walkers ooh and aah over his subtle flirting and impressive magic, she was entrancing the males with her swaying, coquettish dancing.
Beast Boy watched them both, scanning the crowds regularly for any sign of anyone who fit the description that both Starfire and Raven had seen. He didn't see anyone with a metal teardrop on their backs, though, and that was really what he was looking for. There were a lot of girls with braided brown hair—heck, even the dancer had her deep brown hair held in a braid, though it was coiled up in a bun at the back of her head, with two long, thin sticks stuck through it for a more authentic Japanese look. The outfit she was wearing looked Japanese, he realized, and the song playing definitely sounded so. The lyrics were pretty cool too.
Slowly, the number of people trickled away so that there were only the two performers left in the park. The man stuck his hands in the pockets of his trenchcoat and, as Beast Boy watched, approached the girl. She had been folding up the odd silvery cloth she had been standing on but looked up now—up and up. He was much taller than she. Beast Boy got to his feet, taking a few steps down the embankment. The man didn't look happy.
"What y' doin', cherie?" he asked brusquely, crossing his arms and looking down at her, his eyes shadowed behind sunglasses like they always were. "Y' tryin' t' drive Remy insane, dancin' like dat?" The dancer held her hands up, the cloth flowing from one, falling out of the folds she had tried to put it in.
"I'm sorry, man," she said quickly, ducking her head submissively. "I didn't mean to…uh…distract you or whatever it was I was doing. I was just trying to make a couple of bucks."
"Y' be comin' back tomorrow?" he asked, sounding like he was trying to be threatening. Beast Boy thought he sounded a little hopeful. She shook her head.
"No way," she said vehemently, before a grin spread over her face. "Gambit." The man's jaw dropped, and he looked shocked.
"Mythos," he said slowly, moving his sunglasses down the bridge of his nose to get a better look at her. "De boss been lookin' for you."
"Your boss is a manipulative, megalomaniac psychopath with no chance whatsoever of achieving his goals," she said matter-of-factly, before ducking and, in one smooth motion, picking up the boom box and (after slipping the CD discretely into her hand) throwing it at the man. He reacted quickly enough to catch it before it hit him, but she took his moment of distraction to stuff the cloth into the pack at her feet and run. She bolted in the direction of Beast Boy, plunging past him and over the grassy knoll and into the trees beyond. The man with the accent pursued her to the top of the hill, but stopped there. He'd lost her in the trees, and he knew it.
"Merde alors," he muttered, turning to glance at Beast Boy for a moment, before stalking nonchalantly back down the hill. Beast Boy remained at the top of the hill for a moment, before making his own way down. Now that all the people had gone, he figured he'd better start searching some of the other parts of the park for the girl he was supposed to be looking for. He wound his way out of the open space and into an arm of the thick stand of trees the girl had disappeared into, looking around and winking at a pair of chicks strolling towards him. They giggled, and kept going. Suddenly, another person appeared on the path, but this one didn't come into view around the bend ahead like the others. She broke onto it from the woods on his right. It was the dancer.
She sat down in the thin strip of grass bordering the path, and opened up her pack. She extracted that strange, silvery cloth, and began packing it back in, arranging it carefully within. It looked to Beast Boy like she was wrapping it around something, but he couldn't see what.
"Hey, are you all right?" he asked as he approached. The girl looked up wildly, eyes wide open. The pack spilled from her hands, thudding heavily into the grass as she hopped to her feet. She relaxed an instant later, though that wary look never left her eyes.
"I'm fine," she said slowly, eyeing him. "Why?"
"Well, I saw that guy hassling you in the park…" Beast Boy trailed off, uncertain if he sounded stupid or not.
"Oh," she said simply. "Uh…thanks. I'm fine, though, no worries about that." Beast Boy nodded, looking away.
"Just figured I'd ask," he said with a little chuckle. He bent down, grabbing the strap of her pack and not seeing the panicked light that came into her eyes as he did so. He lifted it, grunting slightly at the unexpectedly heavy weight of it. He put one hand underneath so it didn't fall, and felt, albeit through several layers of cloth, an expanse of smoothness.
Like metal.
Rounded metal. Almost as if it were in the shape of a teardrop. His eyes locked with hers for a moment, but she looked away quickly, snatching the pack back from him and getting hastily to her feet.
"Er, thanks," she said quickly, backing a step away. A shout from behind him startled them both.
"Hey BB! Any luck?!" Beast Boy turned to see Cyborg waving at him, followed by Raven. He turned back to the girl, but she had already bolted. He pointed.
"Her!" he yelled, before giving chase. He heard Cyborg's steps hitting the cobbles loudly as he broke into a run, quickly catching up to the shorter-legged Beast Boy.
"Her?"
"Her!"
Raven flew over them both, eyes glowing white in the shadow under her hood. Beast Boy could see her lips moving and faintly heard her ritual 'Azarath Metrion Zinthos!' A wave of dark telekinetic energy swept from her outstretched arms, shaped vaguely like a hand held wide, and closed on the girl, lifting her, struggling, into the air. She kicked, but it was useless against something that wasn't there. Raven lifted one hand, drawing the girl closer, and waited for Beast Boy and Cyborg to catch up.
"Cyborg?" she asked, her voice toneless as usual. The big Titan nodded, activating his communicator.
"Robin," he called into it. "Starfire. Terra. We found the girl. Meet us back at the tower. Over." He waited for all three affirmative replies before turning it off again.
"Totally sweet catch, Raven!" Beast Boy said with a grin. Raven inclined her head to acknowledge the compliment, but didn't reply, or even look his way. Beast Boy hadn't expected her to, though—her concentration was still on the girl, who had stopped her kicking and was now glaring murderously down at them.
"Come on," Cyborg said, striding over to the fallen pack and stereo and stopping to pick them up. "Let's get back to the Tower."
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So thank you to my reviewer! I updated, Sam! .
Review, please!