To be honest, I never expected to continue this story. It just sort of…died. But I managed to finish up this chapter, so I'm putting it up. I will try to write more. Just have to see if it catches me again.
Red Shifting – Chapter 5
Hope and Failure
Robin stared at the computer screen, watching various multicolored values as they shifted back and forth. Occasionally he switched to a graph, watching the bars and colors change and shift along the screen. Then he'd make another note on the pad before him, set his pencil down, lean his chin on his hand and sigh.
None of this made any sense.
He shoved his chair back, letting the silent wheels carry him across the lab floor to the center of the room, using a sock-covered foot to spin the chair around slowly, eyes drifting past the curtain covered black tube where Prism lay sleeping to the slightly glowing corner where the two other beds were stored.
Starfire and Raven were both sleeping, the alien girl hooked up to every monitor that had been dragged into the room earlier, and the Goth simply sleeping, her broken arm in a cast and a third of her body covered in bandages. Robin couldn't figure out how she'd managed to walk back to the tower in that condition. He would have passed out after the arm had broken, he was almost sure.
The chair slowed to a stop and he felt the back of the chair tip, shifting his legs forward to keep from tumbling over before drawing them up slowly to let himself tip backwards, balanced lightly with his eyes on the ceiling and his hands behind his head.
"Yo robin!"
The Boy Wonder gave a start at the deep voice that suddenly echoed through his communicator, and the shift caused the chair to topple backwards. He rolled when the back hit, thanking whatever deity was watching him that the chair was cushioned. The communicator was in his hand as he stood, frowning.
"Cyborg, be quiet! Raven and Starfire are both asleep," he practically threw himself from the room, sliding into the hallway and letting out a relieved sigh once the doors swished shut behind him. An angry and injured Raven was not something he wanted to wake up.
"Jeez. Sorry, I didn't know." Robin stared at the communicator for a moment as Cyborg continued to talk.
"Look…don't worry about it. Where are you?"
"I'm just chillin' downstairs. BB and Terra are outside. You wanna tell me what's goin' on?"
"Yeah. I'll be down in a minute." He tucked the communicator back into his belt and slipped back into the lab, peering over at his two charges…both seemed to be asleep. Good.
He headed downstairs.
Cyborg had been a star athlete before he had been…modified. And Robin was always startled by his friends size, every time he saw him. When he entered the rec room, the giant teen had settled on the couch, watching the news.
"Sorry I called you back on such short notice. How was the race?" Robin decided small talk was the best route.
"I lost to some punk in a souped-up mustang," Cyborg shrugged. "Doesn't matter. What's goin' on?"
"Alright, well…it's like this." Robin took a breath and started in, explaining the attack, Starfire's power issues, everything.
"Now Raven's unconscious with a broken arm, Starfire is sedated, and the glowing girl, Prism, she's in a sensory deprivation tank till I figure out what to do with her."
"We have a sensory deprivation tank?" Cyborg sat up a bit, eyes wide. "Since when?"
"Since about," Robin glanced at the clock on the wall, "half an hour ago. I…uh…cobbled one together from stuff around the building. On a related topic, I owe you a new cooling vat and one of those bathtub things you keep wires in."
"Right," Cyborg just shook his head. "So, what do you want me to do?"
"I'm gonna analyze the girl, Prism. See what I can find out about her power, how they work, stuff like that. I need you to make some kind of dampening unit. Something so Starfire can wake up without blowing holes in the ceiling.
"A dampening unit," the larger Titan frowned. "For an alien girl with powers we don't understand suffering from an injury we can't identify?"
"Yup," Robin nodded.
"Well, I can do it," the half-metal teen nodded. "But it'll take me at least an hour."
"Fine then, get on it. I'll be upstairs." Robin twisted around, heading back towards the steps. "Oh, and if you see BB and Terra, tell them to try and be quiet. If Raven wakes up and hears them roughhousing…" He just trailed off and shook his head.
"She's still goin' all spazy about those two, huh? No worries, I'll tell them." Cyborg waved and the two teens disappeared into different sections of the tower.
Terra spun backwards through the air, dodging one of the tennis balls beast-boy had thrown at her and landing with a grunt on the ground. "So what the hell is wrong with Raven, anyway?"
"No clue," BB scooped up another tennis ball and hurled it at the blonde girl, sending her ducking and rolling out of the way. "She's been weird for weeks; gettin' angry for no reason, storming out of the room when I come in. Stupid crap like that."
"Well, I think she's jealous," Terra backflipped away as BB threw another tennis-ball, catching it on her shoe and kicking it straight at him. He ducked behind the basket with a yelp, peering out a few seconds later.
"She is not! I mean…" He frowned and stood up. "I don't know why she said those things earlier, but it can't mean that. It's Raven we're talking about. She doesn't like anybody."
"Yes she does. She likes you, BB." Terra walked over to him and crossed her arms. "Trust me, it's obvious to everyone but you. But it doesn't matter cause she was too damn slow." She hooked her arm through his and grinned up at him.
BB flushed, reaching up to scratch at his head. "Yeah, I guess. But she can get really angry and if you're right…"
"Hey you two, keep it down out here," suddenly Cyborg's voice echoed out from the door of the tower. "And if you're gonna make out or anything, go do it on the far side of the Island." And then he was gone.
"Uhm..." BB blinked a few times. "That was weird."
"No, he's right. If Raven sees us, she might shatter another window or somethin' and I don't wanna have to pick any more glass out of my skin." She began tugging on him, dragging him away from the basket of tennis balls.
"Hey, where're we goin'?" BB shifted, half-walking and half-sliding after her.
"The far side of the island, silly," Terra just grinned at him.
"Yeah, but…" the green boy twisted around, pointing back at the basket. "You said you wanted to practice."
"I changed my mind. Now shhh."
The room was almost completely dark, except for a occasional flashing dial and the faint green glow from Robin's goggles. He wasn't a fan of infrared, but it was definitely necessary in a situation like this. He'd darkened practically everything that gave off light in his lab, and then had wheeled the stasis container Prism was in and began doing tests.
Anything he could think of from spectrological to radiological, and even ran a bunch of meteorological tests on the air around her. He covered the tube up again and sighed, collapsing back into the chair.
"Robin?"
The voice came from the shadows near the doorway, and Raven stepped out of them a moment later, limping and with her arm in the sling that had been left near her bed.
"You are supposed to be asleep," he said without turning around, staring up at the black curtain. "In fact, I'm fairly certain the drugs should be keeping you under for at least another two hours."
"Medicine never lasts as long for me, you know that." Raven came up next to him, her dark eyes on the tube. "Have you found anything out?"
"Apparently she's got a seventy percent chance of rain."
"…What?"
"Never mind," Robin sighed and spun in a circle in his chair. "Nothing. I have not found a damn thing. The light she gives off his just light. Same as a light-bulb or the sun. She's not emitting radiation. She's not even much hotter than a normal person. I don't even know why she has her powers."
"Except you know she's expecting rain."
"Except that. Oh, and I know that if she starts raining I quit. I'm going to go back to Gotham and be a rich young playboy."
Raven didn't say anything, walking past him and up to the tube. "Well, Starfire gets her power from the sun, right?"
"Yeah, we think so. Kind of a Superman thing only…not."
"Okay, so if she gets her power from the sun, and this girl fires lasers that are basically sunlight…" She trailed off, watching Robin expectantly.
Robin didn't say anything for a few minutes, considering. "Then...then when the laser hit her, it was like she got overloaded! It's like running too much current through a circuit, only instead of shorting out she just started releasing the energy. Like a safetly valve."
"Which is all well and good," Raven said after a moment. "But how do you fix that?"
"Well," Robin sat up straight, shifting in his seat. "If it were a circuit, I'd replace it. But I mean…I have no idea how to burn the energy out of her. Maybe if she just released all of it. But…there's no telling what that would do."
"You mean it could kill her." Raven twisted around to look at him.
"…Maybe."
Some time later, Robin and Raven were waiting in the now-lit medical bay, with Starfire back in her position in the bed, still asleep. They had been in the lab, trying to find some way for Starfire to release all of her energy safely, when Cyborg had contacted them indicating he had finished the power dampener.
"Now, I am not promising this is gonna work," Cyborg called out as he walked into the room, pushing a cart in front of him with a cloth-covered device sitting on the top. "But I based it on some weird power restrictor Batman made years ago when Supergirl started going insane and couldn't shut off her laser vision and-"
"And since they all get their power from the sun, you think it might work." Robin couldn't help but grin as he finished the taller teen's sentence. "Good thinking."
"Yeah…don't ever finish my sentences again." Cyborg stopped the cart next to the bed and pulled away the cloth, revealing a helmet that looked similar to the Tamaran crown, except covered in little blinking lights and the occasional bit of exposed circuitry.
"Put it on her," Robin told Raven as he headed over to Starfire's IV. "And then I'll turn off the sedative."
Raven nodded, reaching out to pick up the crown and set it gently onto Starfire. It looped two thirds of the way around her face, hooking on with loops around her ears, similar to a Halloween mask. As soon as it was in place the lights began to blink more rapidly.
"Uhm…is it supposed to do that?" Robin asked, his hand pausing over the IV control. "I mean, she's still asleep."
"I think so," Cyborg was leafing through a pile of papers. "I mean…yeah. It…it should be doing that."
"I'm so reassured," Raven mumbled as she floated away from the table and sat down on the edge of the table Cyborg had wheeled in.
"Good," Cyborg completely ignored her sarcasm and grinned at Robin. "Wake her up."
With a nod, Robin turned off the IV and reached out to draw the needle from Starfire's arm. And then they all fell silent, watching the alien girl.
Finally, Starfire made a little moan and shifted on her bed, a hand coming up to rub at her forehead and stopped when it hit the metal of the crown. She felt around the edges of it and then opened her eyes. Her pale, green eyes, that flicked around the room slowly, not releasing the lasers that had torn a chunk out of the wall earlier. "Robin?"
"I'm here, Star." Robin was next to her in a flash, his gloved hand slipping into hers. "How do you feel?"
"Strange. I believe you would call it…woozy?" She sat up slowly, leaning against Robin. "But I do not seem to be destroying things. Is that why you have placed this metal headwear on me?"
"Yes. It is dampening your powers, we think." Robin smiled, glancing over at the others, who had remained quiet. "Cyborg made it."
Starfire had been focused entirely on Robin's face, but now her gaze drifted to the others. "Cyborg, thank you! This means so much to me…Raven, why are you injured?"
Raven glanced down at her arm, as though she had forgotten it was in a cast. "I…" she frowned. She actually appeared to be embarrassed. "I captured the girl who attacked you. We hoped we could be able to figure out what had happened, but…she put up a fight."
"You did that for me?" Starfire sounded stunned. "And you are injured…I am so sorry to be such trouble…" With a shift, and barely a second for the rest of them to keep track, she was suddenly crying.
Robin reached out to give her a hug, glancing over at the others and shrugging. "It's alright Starfire, really. We had to help you. No one is blaming you for any of this."
"Yeah Star, of course we all helped you," Cyborg cut in. "You're our friend. We couldn't just leave you…injured." He grinned, but when she didn't look up the grin faded. "Star?"
"I…I do not think it is working, Robin." Starfire said softly, and then shoved the Titan leader away. She rolled over, her hands trying to cover her face. Under her eyes a green light appeared, flaring outward between her fingers and sending Cyborg and Raven scattering.
"Starfire!" Robin hauled himself to his feet and started to run towards her when Raven caught him around the waist and pulled him backwards.
"Stay away!" Starfire floated up off the bed, her hands pressed tightly against her eyes. Occasionally a green energy beam would flare out, and one of them crashed into the interior wall of the building. With a flicker, every light in the building went off.
In the darkness the tower rumbled and shook, and then the three titans found themselves bathed in sunlight flowing in through a large hole in the wall. And Starfire was gone.
"…Well, that could have gone better." Raven said quietly, releasing her grip on Robin. The boy wonder ran over to the hole, staring up into the sky, but he couldn't see a trace of Starfire.
A few minutes later a rather battered looking Beast-boy and Terra limped into the room to find Robin sitting on the floor near a giant hole in the wall, with Raven and Cyborg talking quietly nearby.
"Uhm…were we keeping a glowing girl prisoner here?" Terra asked, putting up a hand in the air as if she were in a classroom. "Cause, if we were…she got away. Like…painfully got away."
"I never want to see a tanning bed again," Beast Boy quipped, collapsing onto his back on the floor.
"Starfire's gone." Raven said, her purple eyes focused on the two titans, her hands balled into fists. "So please just shut up and let us think."
To Be Continued…