Five battle ready KomBATS stood on the helo pad that graced the top of the
agency's headquarters. Patiently, they waited for their ride over to
District 75-23. They would require helicopter transport, despite the fact
that their suits had built in jetpacks. Why the helicopter? Because the
Madam Director over there had insisted on it-she hadn't wanted them
expending any more energy than absolutely necessary.
Stacey Kinnekinnic, (who, despite the name, was a guy) popped a fresh blast cartridge into his left shoulder cannon. He was the leader of the KomBAT unit, and was quite frankly none too happy about having his authority superceded on this matter by some know-it-all Madam Director in another district who, with all the resources at her disposal, couldn't manage to handle a couple of puffed up juveniles. Shoot, he thought, why not bribe the kids into surrender with some acne cream or Snoop Dogg CD's. With kids these days, it might even work.
"Watcha thinkin' Cap? Asked Crystal Sharpe, the second member of the unit. She was the youngest member of the KomBATS at twenty-two, as well as the tallest-she stood above even six-foot two Stacey. Her voice had a distinctive southern twang to it, one that was mostly blocked by the full head helmets that were a part of the KomBAT armor.
"Nothin', Stacey answered reflexively. He turned to Mikey Ross, KomBAT number three. "Mikey, you've got your sensors on. You pickin' up the helo?"
"As a matter of fact, yes," Mikey reported. He quickly tapped a few more buttons on the keypad built into the forearm section of his battle armor. "ETA is like, five minutes."
"Bout time," grumbled the fourth team member. Maria-Pilar was originally Puerto-Rican, and had spent time as a magazine and beauty model up until a few years prior. Her secondary, secret job had been as an undercover agent, and one that one fateful night, she had the misfortune of being captured by the Mob, the very people she had been trying to infiltrate. She'd been found three days later crudely tied to a chair with her body soaked with her own blood and her left arm lying at her feet. She never told anybody what had happened to her, and all anyone knew was that she'd been roughed up and had her left arm removed. Maria-Pilar now wore a biomechanical replacement arm. Needless to say, her career as a model was finished.
She was now with the KomBATS, and was one of their most valuable members, especially with her eidetic memory. After her horrific encounter, she'd developed the ability of total recall. Anything she saw, heard, or otherwise absorbed through her senses was committed to memory, never to be forgotten. Maria Pilar shifted her weight so that she was no longer leaning against the wall. "Five of us, five of the titans," she said. "One on one, I like that."
The final member of the group was Hans Kirst. He was only five foot ten inches, but he more than made up for it with pure muscle. Every inch of him was roughened, conditioned muscle. He could bench-press 500 pounds without breaking a sweat and had broken nearly every single weight-lifting world record at some time or another, though no one would ever know it. Kirst didn't talk much, but he was a reliable fighter. Efficient, and cool under fire.
The thwop thwop thwop of the helicopters could be heard now as they approached , their silhouettes just barely visible against the backdrop of the early morning sun. They neared closer as the five KomBATS patiently waited for the two helicopters to touch the ground.
Stacey surveyed the KomBATS. "Lets go," he said.
***
It was seven o'clock in the morning now, and Robin was preparing coffee. Decaf. His teammates were all asleep, seeing as they hadn't had a good rest all night.
His thoughts wandered to Nightwing as he sipped his hastily prepared beverage. His former assistant mentor had not radioed in for quite a while, which was quite unfortunate, because Robin had a hunch. A good hunch, and he would need Nightwing's resources, namely his connection with the Bat himself, in order to play it out.
The Boy Wonder glanced tenderly back at Starfire. His gaze remained for a few seconds to long as he lost himself in his thoughts. She looked so beautiful, so vulnerable right now. And he couldn't help but think it was partly his fault.
She stirred, as if she could sense his gaze. She had been lying on the couch and now propped herself up sleepily on one elbow. "Hey," she managed lazily before drifting off again.
"Hey," Robin responded softly.
He heard the soft sound of something hitting the ground behind him an instant before he heard Nightwing's voice.
"You got it bad, man."
"Robin's eyes widened comically. "Nightwing, what happened. How come you didn't report back in?"
"You never said to."
Robin was about to object, but then he realized that Nightwing was right. "We were worried," he said finally.
"Awww, I'm touched," joked Nightwing. He nodded his head over in Starfire's direction. "What's with you and Sleeping Beauty over there?"
"What are you talking about?"
"Have you asked her out yet?' Nightwing asked, responding to Robin's question with one of his own.
"Why would I do that?"
"Because she's hot, because you like her. Because she likes you."
"You're crazy man," Robin insisted, gulping down too much of the hot coffee, which launched him into a slight coughing fit.
Nightwing clapped him on the shoulder. "Ah Tim," he said. "You are the crazy one here." He gave a lazy shrug. "But hey you're only fourteen, you probably don't recognize the signs of having a crush."
"Fifteen, and if you don't mind," Robin started, having just regained his composure , "We have problems that are way too big to be entertaining wild romantic notions, OK. "
Nightwing actually looked sorry for once. He was speechless for a moment and then nodded. "You look like you have a plan," he said, changing the subject, "what is it?"
"A hunch, really." Robin set the coffee down. "It's this nagging feeling I've had for a while now." He turned towards the stairway. "I was going to go to he computer room, I think you should come along so you can see what you think of this."
"What is 'this'?"
"You'll see."
With that, Robin turned and strode up the stairs with his teammate in tow. It took them precisely thirty seconds to reach the computer room. A quick retinal scan was all it took for Robin to gain them entry.
Nightwing's gaze was immediately directed to the large computer monitor that lay against the far wall, or rather, what was on it.
"A map," Robin began explaining, "of the bank that I supposedly robbed and the surrounding blocks."
"So?"
Robin typed furiously on the keyboard and then the overhead image disappeared to be replaced by the footage of Robin entering the bank.
"I've seen this before," said Nightwing.
"So have I,' said Robin. "But what I missed was the way that my impersonator entered."
Nightwing squinted at the screen. He had no idea what Robin was talking about.
"Notice how all the other customers come in from the right side?"
"Yeah."
"Do you know why that is?"
"No."
"The bank is at the end of the street. To its left, the street in torn up from unfinished construction work that was stopped a couple weeks ago and was set to resume again. Across the street is a fast food restaurant. I won't bother showing you the layouts of that place, so you'll have to trust me when I say that I've been there, and one of their hidden surveillance cams has a clear view of the area to the left of the bank."
"What," you think it might have caught something on tape?"
"If I'm lucky, it'll catch my impersonator changing into me."
'It's a long shot."
"It's the only one we have," Robin countered. "This, by the way, is where you come in."
"Me?"
"Yeah. I need you to get a copy of that fast food restaurant's surveillance tapes.
"Break in and steal them, you mean," Nightwing reworded.
Robin shrugged. "Hey, we've broken sop many laws in the past twelve hours that breaking and entering and theft can't do much more damage."
"They've been awful quiet," Nightwing observed softly.
"The Coast guard and every other government agency that's been hounding us down? Yeah. They're probably preparing for another strike." Robin ran a hand through his hair. "They can beat us you know."
"I know."
"They could kick our butts to Timbuktu and back. When it comes down to it, a couple of kids with powers are just a nuisance. And when the higher levels of the chain of command get tired of it, they're going to stop playing around, roll up their sleeves, and send some formidable opponents up against us."
There was a long pause, and then Robin, in one rare flash of psychic talent said, "Perhaps they already have."
*** 3 hours later.
Ah can't understand how it stays standin'," whispered Crystal Sharpe as the Tower came into view. "Seems so off balance."
Stacey nodded. It must have been a very proficient architect indeed who managed to construct a functional T-shaped tower in the middle of an island.
"Shall I set down now?" asked the pilot?"
Stacey looked down. They were right above the island. He doubted there would be a more opportune time to land. "Do it."
'The high-tech chopper did something comparable to a nosedive, plummeting down to an abrupt stop scant yards above the ground. An ordinary person would have hurled their lunch. The KomBATS, of course, were not ordinary people.
"What's the plan now?" Maria-Pilar asked.
Stacey's mouth went into a grim line. "We attack. Don't hold back, go at it with full power."
"But they're just kids."
Stacey shrugged. "I don't like it much either, but according to our briefings, the Titans have attacked, even killed some of our people. This ends now, no matter what."
With a powerful blast from his shoulder cannon, he turned the front door into so much scrap metal. Rushing inside, he instinctively swept the area with his Pyron 2000, a secondary gun with bullets the size of watermelon seeds that left holes the size of watermelons. It was a dependable weapon, but it had no trigger-safe spring joint. The slightest touch against the trigger would send the deadly, Teflon-laced projectiles screaming into the air. Usually, he took extra care not to depress the trigger in the slightest. Today, he didn't. With a ratatatatata tat sound, he sprayed the room with lead. Pictures were shattered. A fish tank exploded, the television acquired about a hundred and fifty new holes where there shouldn't have been any. The walls were getting ripped apart.
Behind him, Mikey and Hans, rushed sideways to cover the adjoining rooms, taking the lead from Stacey and similarly tearing the place up. Maria-Pilar and Crystal activated their jetpacks, sending them upward at a little over seventy miles an hour. They crashed through the ceiling like it was Styrofoam, flying up the floor of the above room.
***
Beast Boy came out of the shower, shivering slightly at the cool air. He picked up his Ninja turtles towel and then took a small peek in the fogged over mirror before reaching for his clothes.
Usually, and much to the annoyance of his teammates, he sang like there was no tomorrow when he was in the shower. Today, he'd been strangely silent.
He still couldn't get what Raven had said out of his mind. 'Don't, because you only make things worse.' The words themselves had hurt, but that wasn't it. It was the way she had said it too. So coldly, almost with disgust in her voice.
Did she really detest him? The thought send a cold feeling crawling across his skin. "Probably does," he said to himself miserably as he put his clothes on. "She probably sees you as just an annoying green little wannabe comedian." He had used to entertain the notion that Raven could possibly be interested in him. God, he sure liked her-had ever since they'd first met. It was a fanciful notion, but he'd kept it nonetheless, hoping that it might actually happen.
Yeah right
It was right then that the floor broke. Literally broke. Out of nowhere, two figures popped up through it, sending shards and splinters flying all over the place.
Any and all thought of his unrequited went flying out the window. Beast Boy yelled his guts out.
Stacey Kinnekinnic, (who, despite the name, was a guy) popped a fresh blast cartridge into his left shoulder cannon. He was the leader of the KomBAT unit, and was quite frankly none too happy about having his authority superceded on this matter by some know-it-all Madam Director in another district who, with all the resources at her disposal, couldn't manage to handle a couple of puffed up juveniles. Shoot, he thought, why not bribe the kids into surrender with some acne cream or Snoop Dogg CD's. With kids these days, it might even work.
"Watcha thinkin' Cap? Asked Crystal Sharpe, the second member of the unit. She was the youngest member of the KomBATS at twenty-two, as well as the tallest-she stood above even six-foot two Stacey. Her voice had a distinctive southern twang to it, one that was mostly blocked by the full head helmets that were a part of the KomBAT armor.
"Nothin', Stacey answered reflexively. He turned to Mikey Ross, KomBAT number three. "Mikey, you've got your sensors on. You pickin' up the helo?"
"As a matter of fact, yes," Mikey reported. He quickly tapped a few more buttons on the keypad built into the forearm section of his battle armor. "ETA is like, five minutes."
"Bout time," grumbled the fourth team member. Maria-Pilar was originally Puerto-Rican, and had spent time as a magazine and beauty model up until a few years prior. Her secondary, secret job had been as an undercover agent, and one that one fateful night, she had the misfortune of being captured by the Mob, the very people she had been trying to infiltrate. She'd been found three days later crudely tied to a chair with her body soaked with her own blood and her left arm lying at her feet. She never told anybody what had happened to her, and all anyone knew was that she'd been roughed up and had her left arm removed. Maria-Pilar now wore a biomechanical replacement arm. Needless to say, her career as a model was finished.
She was now with the KomBATS, and was one of their most valuable members, especially with her eidetic memory. After her horrific encounter, she'd developed the ability of total recall. Anything she saw, heard, or otherwise absorbed through her senses was committed to memory, never to be forgotten. Maria Pilar shifted her weight so that she was no longer leaning against the wall. "Five of us, five of the titans," she said. "One on one, I like that."
The final member of the group was Hans Kirst. He was only five foot ten inches, but he more than made up for it with pure muscle. Every inch of him was roughened, conditioned muscle. He could bench-press 500 pounds without breaking a sweat and had broken nearly every single weight-lifting world record at some time or another, though no one would ever know it. Kirst didn't talk much, but he was a reliable fighter. Efficient, and cool under fire.
The thwop thwop thwop of the helicopters could be heard now as they approached , their silhouettes just barely visible against the backdrop of the early morning sun. They neared closer as the five KomBATS patiently waited for the two helicopters to touch the ground.
Stacey surveyed the KomBATS. "Lets go," he said.
***
It was seven o'clock in the morning now, and Robin was preparing coffee. Decaf. His teammates were all asleep, seeing as they hadn't had a good rest all night.
His thoughts wandered to Nightwing as he sipped his hastily prepared beverage. His former assistant mentor had not radioed in for quite a while, which was quite unfortunate, because Robin had a hunch. A good hunch, and he would need Nightwing's resources, namely his connection with the Bat himself, in order to play it out.
The Boy Wonder glanced tenderly back at Starfire. His gaze remained for a few seconds to long as he lost himself in his thoughts. She looked so beautiful, so vulnerable right now. And he couldn't help but think it was partly his fault.
She stirred, as if she could sense his gaze. She had been lying on the couch and now propped herself up sleepily on one elbow. "Hey," she managed lazily before drifting off again.
"Hey," Robin responded softly.
He heard the soft sound of something hitting the ground behind him an instant before he heard Nightwing's voice.
"You got it bad, man."
"Robin's eyes widened comically. "Nightwing, what happened. How come you didn't report back in?"
"You never said to."
Robin was about to object, but then he realized that Nightwing was right. "We were worried," he said finally.
"Awww, I'm touched," joked Nightwing. He nodded his head over in Starfire's direction. "What's with you and Sleeping Beauty over there?"
"What are you talking about?"
"Have you asked her out yet?' Nightwing asked, responding to Robin's question with one of his own.
"Why would I do that?"
"Because she's hot, because you like her. Because she likes you."
"You're crazy man," Robin insisted, gulping down too much of the hot coffee, which launched him into a slight coughing fit.
Nightwing clapped him on the shoulder. "Ah Tim," he said. "You are the crazy one here." He gave a lazy shrug. "But hey you're only fourteen, you probably don't recognize the signs of having a crush."
"Fifteen, and if you don't mind," Robin started, having just regained his composure , "We have problems that are way too big to be entertaining wild romantic notions, OK. "
Nightwing actually looked sorry for once. He was speechless for a moment and then nodded. "You look like you have a plan," he said, changing the subject, "what is it?"
"A hunch, really." Robin set the coffee down. "It's this nagging feeling I've had for a while now." He turned towards the stairway. "I was going to go to he computer room, I think you should come along so you can see what you think of this."
"What is 'this'?"
"You'll see."
With that, Robin turned and strode up the stairs with his teammate in tow. It took them precisely thirty seconds to reach the computer room. A quick retinal scan was all it took for Robin to gain them entry.
Nightwing's gaze was immediately directed to the large computer monitor that lay against the far wall, or rather, what was on it.
"A map," Robin began explaining, "of the bank that I supposedly robbed and the surrounding blocks."
"So?"
Robin typed furiously on the keyboard and then the overhead image disappeared to be replaced by the footage of Robin entering the bank.
"I've seen this before," said Nightwing.
"So have I,' said Robin. "But what I missed was the way that my impersonator entered."
Nightwing squinted at the screen. He had no idea what Robin was talking about.
"Notice how all the other customers come in from the right side?"
"Yeah."
"Do you know why that is?"
"No."
"The bank is at the end of the street. To its left, the street in torn up from unfinished construction work that was stopped a couple weeks ago and was set to resume again. Across the street is a fast food restaurant. I won't bother showing you the layouts of that place, so you'll have to trust me when I say that I've been there, and one of their hidden surveillance cams has a clear view of the area to the left of the bank."
"What," you think it might have caught something on tape?"
"If I'm lucky, it'll catch my impersonator changing into me."
'It's a long shot."
"It's the only one we have," Robin countered. "This, by the way, is where you come in."
"Me?"
"Yeah. I need you to get a copy of that fast food restaurant's surveillance tapes.
"Break in and steal them, you mean," Nightwing reworded.
Robin shrugged. "Hey, we've broken sop many laws in the past twelve hours that breaking and entering and theft can't do much more damage."
"They've been awful quiet," Nightwing observed softly.
"The Coast guard and every other government agency that's been hounding us down? Yeah. They're probably preparing for another strike." Robin ran a hand through his hair. "They can beat us you know."
"I know."
"They could kick our butts to Timbuktu and back. When it comes down to it, a couple of kids with powers are just a nuisance. And when the higher levels of the chain of command get tired of it, they're going to stop playing around, roll up their sleeves, and send some formidable opponents up against us."
There was a long pause, and then Robin, in one rare flash of psychic talent said, "Perhaps they already have."
*** 3 hours later.
Ah can't understand how it stays standin'," whispered Crystal Sharpe as the Tower came into view. "Seems so off balance."
Stacey nodded. It must have been a very proficient architect indeed who managed to construct a functional T-shaped tower in the middle of an island.
"Shall I set down now?" asked the pilot?"
Stacey looked down. They were right above the island. He doubted there would be a more opportune time to land. "Do it."
'The high-tech chopper did something comparable to a nosedive, plummeting down to an abrupt stop scant yards above the ground. An ordinary person would have hurled their lunch. The KomBATS, of course, were not ordinary people.
"What's the plan now?" Maria-Pilar asked.
Stacey's mouth went into a grim line. "We attack. Don't hold back, go at it with full power."
"But they're just kids."
Stacey shrugged. "I don't like it much either, but according to our briefings, the Titans have attacked, even killed some of our people. This ends now, no matter what."
With a powerful blast from his shoulder cannon, he turned the front door into so much scrap metal. Rushing inside, he instinctively swept the area with his Pyron 2000, a secondary gun with bullets the size of watermelon seeds that left holes the size of watermelons. It was a dependable weapon, but it had no trigger-safe spring joint. The slightest touch against the trigger would send the deadly, Teflon-laced projectiles screaming into the air. Usually, he took extra care not to depress the trigger in the slightest. Today, he didn't. With a ratatatatata tat sound, he sprayed the room with lead. Pictures were shattered. A fish tank exploded, the television acquired about a hundred and fifty new holes where there shouldn't have been any. The walls were getting ripped apart.
Behind him, Mikey and Hans, rushed sideways to cover the adjoining rooms, taking the lead from Stacey and similarly tearing the place up. Maria-Pilar and Crystal activated their jetpacks, sending them upward at a little over seventy miles an hour. They crashed through the ceiling like it was Styrofoam, flying up the floor of the above room.
***
Beast Boy came out of the shower, shivering slightly at the cool air. He picked up his Ninja turtles towel and then took a small peek in the fogged over mirror before reaching for his clothes.
Usually, and much to the annoyance of his teammates, he sang like there was no tomorrow when he was in the shower. Today, he'd been strangely silent.
He still couldn't get what Raven had said out of his mind. 'Don't, because you only make things worse.' The words themselves had hurt, but that wasn't it. It was the way she had said it too. So coldly, almost with disgust in her voice.
Did she really detest him? The thought send a cold feeling crawling across his skin. "Probably does," he said to himself miserably as he put his clothes on. "She probably sees you as just an annoying green little wannabe comedian." He had used to entertain the notion that Raven could possibly be interested in him. God, he sure liked her-had ever since they'd first met. It was a fanciful notion, but he'd kept it nonetheless, hoping that it might actually happen.
Yeah right
It was right then that the floor broke. Literally broke. Out of nowhere, two figures popped up through it, sending shards and splinters flying all over the place.
Any and all thought of his unrequited went flying out the window. Beast Boy yelled his guts out.