Disclaimer: I don't own Teen Titans. If I did… well, I'd still be on this site. I just wouldn't write a disclaimer.
Author's Notes: Sorry for the long wait. Originally, I had a big revelation planned for this chapter, but now, my faithful readers, you'll just have to wait 'til the next one. Enjoy.
Ch. 5: Finding CyborgThe grim-featured Robin, apprentice of the infamous Batman and leader of the fabled Teen Titans, paced about the ravaged warehouse, tailed shortly by what some referred to as his double, the equally famous Speedy. The Boy Wonder's masked eyes scanned the floor, darting quickly about the concrete floor, which was now littered with shards glass, scraps metal, and splinters wood. The expertly trained eyes passed over each meaningless piece of debris, looking, always searching.
"So, what are we still doing here?" Speedy asked, breaking the barrier of silence that his counterpart had erected. Although Robin's eyes were obscured behind the solid white lenses of his thin mask, Speedy could feel the fury of the stern glare; the Boy Wonder had some inexplicable method of conveying such actions. "Hey, sorry," Speedy grinned, rubbing the back of his red head. "I just want to know so I can do something besides watching you meander around."
Robin's nostrils began to flare, but quickly contracted. He heaved a tremendous sigh, calming himself. 'Just like Raven says', he thought. 'Find your center and relax'. A quick learner, the commander of the Titans had little trouble with the task, and his breath steadied. "We're here," he explained, never facing Speedy, "because we need to find out where the heck Cyborg's going. His communicator is off, his tracker deactivated, and Raven is incapacitated, so we can't have her find him."
"Oh, I see," Speedy chuckled, kicking a crumbled piece of cement with his yellow boot. "World's second greatest detective at work. Well, I'll stay out of your way."
"Will you quit messing around!" Robin snapped, halting himself in mid-sentence to once more alleviate his aggravation. "Mas and Menos had to take Raven to the Tower and give her medical attention. Star had to bring the crooks to jail. Beast Boy's performing a sweep of the city to see if he can spot Cy from the sky. Trust me, if I could have anyone else here in your place, I would. But that's not the case, so I suggest you at least attempt to make yourself useful and search for clues."
Speedy harrumphed, crossed his arms, and stuck his nose high into the air in a very exaggerated fashion. He allowed a smile to brighten his face when he noticed how much his joking antics were getting on Robin's nerves. "So what exactly are we looking for?" he asked through his usual cocky smirk.
Robin stooped down, scooping up a small amount of charred concrete, running it through his gloved fingers, his eye-mask thinning as he carefully examined it. "Anything," he finally replied after brief pause, immediately returning to his work after the breath had escaped his lips. For several more minutes, silence reined, clasping shut the mouths of the two teen heroes. "Why didn't the rest of the Titans East come?" Robin inquired, surprisingly shattering the wall he himself had put up."
"You know," Speedy said as he recovered from his shock, "business, business, business. They were checking out a potential newbie. Those two lovable chums of mine decided Double-M would have a bit of a communication problem and that I… well, let's just say my charming personality wouldn't suit the mission."
"It's a girl, huh?" Robin stated with a sly smirk.
"Yeah," the archer growled through his grinding pearly whites.
"Can't blame them," the Boy Wonder said, eying a four-inch deep crater. "We all remember what happened with Donna."
"Hey, how was I supposed to know she really was an Amazon? Anyway, she should've been glad I was complimenting her. Way she reacted, it's no wonder she doesn't have a boyfriend."
"She does," remarked the second half of the Dynamic Duo, accompanied by the slightest hint of a laugh. "Did I mention he's dying to meet you?"
"Oh," gasped Speedy, the color fleeing his boyish face.
"Don't worry, he's a twig. I'm not saying you should mess with him, though; Donna's very protective."
"I'm never getting near her again. Not that I have to worry, considering the restrai…"
"Right," Robin suddenly burst out, springing to his feet. "I know exactly what happened to Cyborg."
The eyes on Speedy's thin mask bulged like a surfaced fish's. "Hold on," he stuttered incredulously, "you look at the floor for ten minutes…"
"Eight and a half."
"…ten minutes, and you tell me that you know where Cyborg is based on that?"
"Yeah. Want me to walk you though it?" the Boy Wonder asked evenly.
"Please do," replied the Crimson Archer mockingly.
Ignoring his companion's insufferable sarcasm, Robin extended a finger, indicating the foot-shaped crater he had been inspecting mere seconds before. "Something happened over here. Someone landed here with a tremendous amount of force."
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Green let out a guttural war cry as he plummeted toward the form of Cyborg, who lay sprawled across the floor, momentarily dazed. The Titanium Titan drew a deep breath, storing it in his artificial lungs as he flung himself to the right, rolling away as the doppelganger's foot sank deeply into the earth where his head had been, easily crushing the concrete, leaving a fine pattern of cracks.
Cyborg sprung to his feet, charging toward the still crouching form of the olive copycat, his single remaining blue fist drawn far behind his back. Once he was in close enough quarters, the Titan allowed his arm to lash out, supported by the entire weight of his metallic frame.
The blow sent his adversary reeling; the half-man's robotic neck hissed as it snapped back, the gears within audibly popping as they strained. Green's mechanical body followed, drifting rapidly toward a towering stack of massive metal crates, so tall it kissed the ceiling of the building. The whole of his limp figure clanged against the bottom box at once, causing a small tremor to agitate those piled atop it. As the dazed android tumbled to the floor, the topmost crates imitated him, plummeting down the five story drop and burying the unmoving half-robot beneath.
For a brief moment, time was silent, save for the pandemonium erupting elsewhere within the warehouse. The sand clogged within the waist of the hourglass, the pendulum halted in mid-swing, the wheels and gears groaned as they strained to roll forward. The dust steadily dissipated, the jumbled aluminum cases settling in their new, awkward alignment. There was a brief noise of ridged metal scraping metal. Again, the eerie, foreboding quiet invaded Cyborg's mind. His wavering human eye rested anxiously on the undisturbed pile. Agonizing seconds ticked by like hours.
Suddenly, as predicted, a mechanical green fist burst through one of the giant containers, tearing through the thick steel as easily as it would a scrap of paper. The jointed fingers grasped to the jagged hole, jerking a gaping tear along the side. Green calmly emerged from the opened crate, wiping the small specks of gravel from his chromium finish. Though his fleshy chest had somehow survived with little more than a frosting of dirt, his prosthetic portions had not left unscarred; his domed head was heavily scuffed, a deep dent dominated a good portion of the "skull", and one of the lenses of his binocular eyes was split in half by a hair-thin crack.
The beast remained casually idle for a moment, boring into the teen hero with his telescopic optical sensors. He seemed collected, unaffected by Cyborg's vicious assault. This abruptly changed as the human portion of the robot's face was tinged a dark red shade, his nostril flared, and the brilliant olive light that emanated from his armor intensified, becoming drastically more brilliant. His single green fist clenched shut, dull metal fingers digging into his metal palm; a small tremor passed through the entire limb, growing into a full earthquake, aggressively whipping the arm up and down.
"You!" the villain's voice snaked out, dripping with the venom of blind rage and fatal malice. "Nobody does that to me! You hear me, kid? Nobody!"
The criminal hissed as he flung himself forward fist-first, painting a bull's-eye between the do-gooder's natural and synthetic eyes. The said eyes were surprisingly steady, staring down the fist for the entirety of its approach. Cyborg gracefully shifted his tremendous bionic feet, shifting his stance slightly to the right. Though his adversary's fist shaved the metal plate on the left side of his head, producing a tiny shower of sparks, Cy avoided the majority of the blow, though the crate that stood behind him did not share his good fortune. The green machine's balled hand plowed directly through the container, leaving him momentarily vulnerable.
Cyborg did not waste the opportunity.
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Speedy slowly nodded, scratching the back of his fuzzy orange scalp. "Okay," he coughed, a hint of dubiousness seasoning his voice, "I guess I can buy that."
The Boy Wonder ignored the archer, about-facing and storming in the opposite direction, the soles of his oversized black boots crunching the sprinkles of glass. The grim-faced detective stopped abruptly, causing Speedy, who had been close at his heels the entire way, to crash into his back. The archer muttered brusquely, massaging his swollen nose and clenching his shining teeth, which nearly resembled fangs. He drew in a deep breath, probably to yammer on with his complaints, but the air remained caught in his throat, and his mouth remained agape.
The walls to the Jump City warehouses were constructed of three feet of solid concrete and supported by a closely crisscrossing skeleton of titanium framework. It was meant to withstand the violently whipping winds of the hurricanes that sometimes raged through the area, as well as the frequent attacks by so-called super-villains and giant, rampaging monsters. Yet somehow, an exit had appeared in the wall, granting easy access to the cool evening wind, to the oil-stained asphalt of the eroded, unused roadways, which was now littered with gargantuan blocks of cement debris scattered by the formation of the hole.
"The fight escalated here," Robin noted aloud, his adept mind already formulating an intricate scenario. He used all of the skills that had been imparted unto him, snatching up every tiny piece of forensic evidence he discovered and giving it a place in the puzzle. It took him all of five seconds of speculation for him to know what had happened; there was no doubt in is brilliant, calculating mind, no question of his own abilities. It was not pride, nor conceit; he had been taught to always follow his initial instinct, that second guesses were wrong guesses. He had learned, through experience, that this fact was the honest truth.
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Green skidded across the damp asphalt, gritting his teeth as the high-frequency screech of his scraping metal limbs vibrated his artificial eardrums. Cement meteorites peppered the area around him, some of the smaller segments landing dangerously close to his polished skull. A soft, annoyed growl escaped his iron lungs as he slid his calcium jaw into place, attempting to ignore the throbbing, almost thought numbing pain. His bionic eyes readjusted themselves, sweeping the area, seeking his enemy.
The search did not take long to yield results; Green once more felt his jaw slip as a pulsing blue fist flew across the fleshy portion of his face. This time, his feet remained strongly rooted to the ground, his metallic neck moaning only slightly as it struggled to remain aligned with the rest of his cybernetic body. He reversed his backward momentum, throwing himself back forward, his own single remaining fist leading the way, and repaid his predecessor's favor in full.
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"So what next?" Speedy asked with a mocked anticipation.
Robin shuddered for a moment, imagining the archer's thin neck between his hands. He sighed as he ran his gloved fingers through his spiked black hair; he had to remain on task. The white lenses on his tiny mask thinned, resting on a certain spot of the blacktop.
"What do you see?" Speedy asked, dropping any pretense of playfulness, becoming the hero he was expected to be.
"The street here," the Boy Wonder muttered, though whether it was to his companion or himself was a mystery. "It was melted by a concentrated force of extreme heat."
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Cyborg cursed his luck as the form of his enemy became little more than a bright olive speck of light in the distance just over the water, soaring away on the rocket boosters concealed in his "boots". Cyborg mentally reminded himself to outfit his own feet with a set when this ordeal was over, though not even he knew how long it would be until then. He jogged over to the T-Car, following the soft glow it emitted, all the while marveling at how fast the crook was moving.
He glanced at the tracking device, furiously jamming down the "zoom out" button several times until a map of the entire city filled the little screen. Already, the flashing dot was zipping through the city at an alarming rate, sharply changing directions frequently. If Mas y Menos were to see this, they would undoubtedly begin voicing their envy in a rapid Spanish rant.
Seconds later, the car's roaring engine was fading into the night air, and was eventually completely silenced by the explosive brawl within the heavily damaged warehouse.
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"He was headed back into the city," Robin stated, his voice unstressed, as is squinted eyes traced the tire marks left on one of the few dry patches of cement. "See? The crosses of the T's are pointed in the direction of that route."
"He put T's on the wheels?" the archer asked skeptically.
"He's Cyborg," was the casual reply as Robin removed his communicator from his still essentially empty utility belt, depressing the send button. "Beast Boy, any luck?"
"As much luck as Doctor Light," the whining reply came, fighting a slight buzzing static for dominance. "Maybe he knows Mister Miracle or something, 'cause he's just disappeared!"
"That's because he doesn't want to be found," the young hero speculated aloud, his mind slowly coming to a realization. "Beast Boy, he's in the sewers. See if you can find him! Speedy, you're with me."
"Where're we going?"
"Where Cy didn't want us to go…"
Author's Notes: Well, sorry again for another huge wait, but you can't rush art, you know? I rewrote the entire ending, just so you know. This was originally the final chapter. Okay, enough of that. Thanks again to all of my reviewers, including my new one, j. I'm glad you understand my objective in writing this. You're a cool guy, I can tell. Well, review if you want to. I'll update eventually regardless, but it would be nice to get some feedback.
Next Time: The real surprise! What does Professor Chang want with the young man who was known as Vic Stone? Stay tuned!