Author's Note: Hey, here's more, right on schedule according to New Year's Eve With Jimmy B.
If you're in the neighborhood, check my bio page for upcoming attractions/updates.... This chappy's sort of just a little filler between the lines, I thought you mind find it interesting. Also, another special thanks to RaeBBfolife for reading and reviewing both of my TT fics! :) Now, here you go!

Disclaimer: I don't own the Teen Titan's, Titans Tower, or Jump City, but the rest is mine, ALL MINE!!!! HAHAHAHA!!!

Back to the Past
Chapter Six: The Reaction

The fact that there was light coming from within the busted-up, old, "T" shaped tower did not remain unnoticed by the citizens of Jump for very long. The rumors and stories that ensued on the topic were so numerous, that any newcomer to the city would have though the inhabitants to be obsessed with it. People all over the city were fascinated by it, although most had no idea why the strangely shaped building had been erected in the first place.

With this sudden interest, oddly enough, came another phenomenon. Down at the city's public library, it had been noted that several books had disappeared from the dust encrusted shelves there. Interestingly, they all happened to be on the same topic: a group named the Teen Titans. Once doing an inventory check, the librarian had noticed this, however, but quickly dismissed it figuring who else was going to want books again on what she guessed was just another old and forgotten, B rated bunch of musicians? Her eldest son couldn't even remember a single song by them, let alone the group's name.

At night, planning pranks on the dilapidated tower had become quite common. Children were known to dare each other to ring the ancient visitor buzzer that flickered with age alongside the rusted iron handle of the old industrial looking door. Of course, none were brave enough to succeed. Occasionally, older teens, who were not quite as wary of the ghosts that were said to have haunted the place, would drive by and egg the windows, but it never seemed to get much of a rise out of whoever was in there.

But, of all the things that came about at the same time, the most amusing were the rumors and the sightings. And, without a doubt, the newspapers were in heaven. In an article of the Jump Gazette, on the authority of one "good source" it had been said that "there absolutely were ghosts haunting the old structure" and that the source had in fact seen them "with his own two eyes". However, it was omitted from the scoop that those eyes were most likely red and blood shot, as their owner had just stumbled out of a local bar shortly before claiming to have seen these paranormals. There were more sober sources as well, who claimed that they had seen things, too. A little girl told a reporter that she swore she saw a half-human, half-robotic man in Middle Park, but unfortunately did not have her camera-phone with her at the time. An elderly woman insisted to Walter Skee of the City Times that for the past several nights she had seen a green cheetah dashing through the snow along the beach, right from her very own trailer-home porch. Oddly enough, though, the day the newspaper containing the report was sold, the cheetah was no where to be seen once the sun set, and the photos which had been promised to go to the paper's next edition, for a considerable sum, could not be taken.

There were many other similar stories, the best of them, though, was the one concerning Loose Screw Pete, which made the front page of the Jump Listener . Loose Screw Pete was the only soul willing to work the night shift at the Good Grocer supermarket at the corner of 65th and Wilhelm. Named and famous for his lazy eye, Pete had been working the night shift just as he did every night for the past 21 years that June. He had been standing at check-out number one's cash register, as usual, waiting for customers, when who should come to his line, but "this purty dame with straight, violet hair, cut kinda at a slant and wearing little else than this dark blue cape and a black leo-tard, and ma crazy eye dang near popped right outta ma head! And I says to myself, Pete, you know who that is! And so she was laying her stuff out on the line, I 'member clearly, jus' four things, one copy of each of the city's three newspapers an' box o' tofu, an' I yell out 'Well I'll be darned! It's Raven of the Teen Titans, disappeared darn near 19 years ago, come to ma line!'

"At first, she didn't say nothin', so I start scannin' her things through, an' all of sudden, she says in this deep, melancholy tone, 'It's been closer to 20.' By this time I finished baggin' it, so I look up at her, real startled like, damn near forgot what I was doin', and she's says, 'How much?'. Pointed to the screen, an' she gave me the money, exact change, an' a whisper of a 'Thanks.' An' she was gone."

However uneventful the account was, inevitably, it sold thousands of papers. The newspapers had their fun. The public got their daily chunk of city gossip. And that's just how things were those days.