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Chapter Seven: Teaser Number Two

1

November 24th

Gotham City, 2:03 AM

Starfire stood as close to the place where the jet would land as she safely could.

Robin stood with her, nearly touching her.

Such a large amount of such potent happiness filled her that she had trouble keeping both of her feet on the ground. The instant she moved her attention to other things, she would find that one foot or another had lifted into the air.

"Is this not a time of great joy?" She queried.

Batman looked over at them. He stared at her for what she decided was the longest second of her life, then looked back at the sky.

"Not really," Robin murmured in her ear.

The thought of those luscious lips so close to her ear brought her straight back to the ground. Some joys exceeded even the sky.

"Why not? Does seeing Friend Raven again not gladden your heart?"

"Oh, I'll be happy to see her again. . . But her needing to be here isn't a good thing."

"I take your meaning. You speak of the people who have caused conflagrations in warehouses."

"Yeah. The cultists. They're going to come to Gotham today, and it's not going to be pretty."

The thought of such people attacking Robin's home sent her straight back to the ground. She could imagine what he must be feeling. Surely his breath now caught in his throat the way her own did when she thought of other races assailing Tamaran.

Minutes slid by like hours, like days.

Like centuries.

And then, the humming. The humming sounded really, Starfire reflected, less like "hmmmm" and more like "grimmmmm."

In the sky, a dark jet appeared from the west. With agonizing slowness, the jet maneuvered itself into a landing position, and then landed.

It handled, from what she understood, rather like a helicopter.

And then the hatch lifted up. Somebody kicked out a staircase. A cloaked figure rushed down the steps, moving so quickly as to almost be tumbling headlong.

Starfire rushed forward. "Friend Raven!"

The cloaked figure straightened, clearly startled.

Starfire's arms closed around the figure's shoulders. The figure had the appropriate stature, and felt light and brittle as a bundle of twigs in her arms.

"Starfire!" Raven choked.

"It is wonderful to have you here!"

". . . You're glad to see me?"

"Oh, but of course, Friend Raven! You are my friend!"

Friend Raven rewarded her with a tiny smile. "Speaking of friends, look who I brought you."

From somewhere within that cloak, Raven produced a certain adorable off-white body. When the off-white little body caught sight (or perhaps scent; she had never determined his primary sense) of her, he released an overjoyed squeal.

Starfire released the same overjoyed little squeal, snatching Silkie and spinning around with him in her arms.

"My lovely little grothnos! My chahimkar-eyed little glorhart! How lovely and joyous it is to have you with me!"

Those wide, chahimkar eyes were round and trembling. Silkie squealed and squeaked in his private language.

Starfire pretended to understand every word, squealing and cooing back at him.

(Hr)

They all sat at the conference table in the Batcave. Robin had never seen it before, but Batman had pressed a button on his utility belt, and part of the rock flooring revolved to reveal a conference table.

Of course, because this was a gathering in the Batcave, and contained two of Robin's friends, Batman apparently felt the need to test Raven. Testing consisted of a stare down.

Batman stared at Starfire first. She didn't last five minutes in the stare down of the year. After a few seconds of Batman's long, intense glare, Starfire crumbled and looked to Robin.

Raven, on the other hand, did much better. He couldn't help but feel pride. He had trained Raven. Sure, she came complete with powers. But she hadn't come complete with martial arts skills, or the ability to fall. And she certainly hadn't come complete with detective skills, as useful as the Titans had found her empathy.

Raven stood up under Batman's glare. She didn't crumble the way Starfire had. Instead, she locked eyes with him, her chin upraised.

"What really brings you to Gotham?" Batman asked.

"My job. By this afternoon, you're going to have a group of Basque-speaking terrorists on the loose in Gotham. They've cut their teeth in Jump City, under the Titans' and the Mayor's collective nose."

"The Teen Titans is a group of teenaged meta-humans, led by a sidekick. I am Batman."

Is that sort of like, I AM HE-MAN?

Robin wasn't sure how he felt about such obvious arrogance. On the one hand, Batman had earned that arrogance through eleven years of being himself— that was to say, practically perfect.

On the other hand, it didn't exactly endear him to Raven.

But did how Raven felt about Batman matter, so long as she cracked her case?

And Batman really wasn't so bad, anyway.

"Tell me more about your terrorists."

Raven sighed. "I don't really know much about them. They aren't really Basque. But they refuse to speak English in public. I'm not sure why. I also don't know why they blow things up."

"What do you know of their religion?"

"Nothing. They don't evangelize, they don't advertise where they hold their religious services."

"So the only thing we actually know about them is that they speak Basque and play with explosives."

"En short, yes. But doesn't their ability to stay off the radar worry you?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because your explanation is too complicated."

"Please explain."

"You say they have committed crimes, but have been skilled enough to keep those crimes hidden. There is a different explanation."

Raven quirked an eyebrow. "That explanation being?"

"That there are no crimes but the one in which you caught them."

Robin shook his head. "If you thought that, then why did you volunteer the Bat-Jet to bring her here?"

But Batman remained silent.

"Perhaps he has another theory," Starfire offered.

Batman smirked. Though he said nothing, Robin could read Batman's change in attitude towards Starfire.

Robin sat back and smirked also.

"I'm guessing she's right."

Hearing Raven's dry tone made him realize how much he'd missed it.

"Please, Mr. Batman, will you not share your theory with us?"

"Instead of being skilled, what if they were just cunning?" Batman took a sip of water from a glass that Robin knew for a fact hadn't been there moments ago.

Hmm. Alfred was getting faster in his old age, instead of slower. Food for thought.

Food for as much thought as the way Batman was toying with him. And Robin didn't need to see the look on Batman's face to know that Batman knew something he didn't.

But why would he play coy? What lesson could the Titans learn from Batman toying with them?

He pondered asking his mentor to get to the point, but stopped short before doing so. What had gotten into him? He should have known better than to even think about speaking so disrespectfully to Batman in front of others.

Batman tapped a few keys on the conference table. Several pictures appeared on the Cray's vast monitor. The pictures looked rather like the code that formed the Titans' monitoring programs in Jump City.

But he didn't recognize the numbers scrolling across the screen. "Is that. . . Jump City?"

"I don't know. Is it?" Batman pressed another key on the table, and images of a slum district replaced the numbers.

"I have never seen that place before. That is not Jump City. It cannot be."

Batman looked sharply at Starfire. The scowl said more than enough. Starfire looked at the screen and swallowed.

"This is a part of Jump City known as Hell's Kitchen. The place is almost as bad as any of Gotham's slums."

Raven didn't even remove her eyes from the screen to phrase her question. "Why are you showing us this?"

"Because you've never seen it before. Hell's Kitchen was the one place in Jump City that the Titans' monitors never touched."

And in his mind, all the pieces of a certain bomb-shaped jigsaw puzzle fell into place. "It's there that the terrorists started, isn't it?"

Batman tapped a few more keys on the table. The images changed, the nesting of the pictures vanished. The view of one camera replaced the other six. It showed twelve people, three with bags slung on their shoulders, entering a ghetto apartment building.

Batman moved the tape forward ten minutes. The twelve returned, three of them without bags. Forward another three minutes.

The apartment building exploded.

Robin felt his jaw drop. "When was this? How could we have not known about this?"

"That was the afternoon of October the 27th. Why you didn't know about this is understandable, of course. The police were too busy ensuring that middle class infants and children survived the undead escapades to care about some apartment building in Hell's Kitchen."

"How could this have not registered on the police scanner? How could. . ."

2

November 24th

Bludhaven, 9:30 AM

The alarm clock went off. Why he still insisted on setting an alarm, he didn't know. But he did. He'd positioned it across the room, so that he would have to either sleep through it (unlikely, because it had woken him up), get up and turn it off (equally unlikely, because he didn't feel like it), or just lie in bed and ignore it (the least likely of all, because he had absolutely no ability to ignore annoying things).

Groaning, he forced himself to roll out of bed, stand up, and turn off the alarm.

From the other room, Cyborg shouted, "Thank you! Watching local news!"

"Yeah?" Beast Boy called back, forcing interest. "Learning anything?"

"Only that Summer Gleeson is the hottest thing since the sun!"

"Oh. Okay."

He changed his underwear and clothing and wandered into the living room.

The state of the union? Cyborg was indeed watching local news. He hadn't been completely right about Summer Gleeson, though. Summer Gleeson was hot, but she wasn't the hottest thing since the sun. Maybe since global warming, but not since the actual sun.

(Hr)

Cyborg stared at the image on the television screen. It showed Tim Drake. On the bottom of the screen were the words, HAVE YOU SEEN THIS BOY?

When Tim had gone missing?

He held up his robotic arm, tapped the screen at certain points. Within moments, Robin's face appeared on the screen.

"Kind of busy," Robin said.

"What's this about?"

(Hr)

And that's it, folks. I solemnly swear that there will be an update of this fic this Saturday. I swear. I vow. I promise. I pledge.

However, there's something I need to mention.

Reviews consisting of: "I liek ur fic update soon" piss me off. Reviews consisting of "no robin/raven cuz it isn't cannon" piss me off.

1. I AM ON AN UPDATE SCHEDULE. MY UPDATE TIMES AND DAYS ARE SET IN STONE. And no, I'm not meeting it exactly, but I do try. This week, I had power outages and phone outages because of storms. I live in a very rural area. If my phone lines fall, it can take days, even weeks, for the phone-line-fixing-man to arrive near my house. Seeing as my connection is dial-up, no phones means no updates.

2. I write exclusively Robin/Raven. I am well aware that Robin and Starfire got engaged in the comics (Raven, by the way, blew up the wedding, which effectively ended the relationship). Yes, I know Robin/Starfire is canon. Did you read that? CANON. Not "cannon." A "cannon" is a war machine. It has balls, and employs gunpowder. Do not under any circumstances speak to me of what is canon and what is not if you can't even spell the freaking word.

3. A lot of people have noticed that I have a very depressing Beast Boy. My interpretation of Beast Boy is the way it is because I dislike comic relief. If a character is nothing but comic relief, then he is worse than useless to me. I write a dark Beast Boy, because a bright one wouldn't be as funny. My sense of humor is extremely macabre. Canon Beast Boy wouldn't be able to be funny in any of my fiction. And not only that, but I don't like canon Beast Boy. I like my Beast Boy served with a side of angst and stuffed full of crazy.

And as a direct response to the following review (which is actually for Adonis in the Fur, but I'll post it here anyway):

SO what Happens next?

Read the frigging fic.

The Beast comes?

What Beast? Where did you get the impression that there was a Beast? Did you even read the fic?

Will BB amd Rae be paired?

I seriously don't think you read the fic. The summary indicates that Beast Boy is a little psycho. There is a section in the fic where somebody mentions that three of the Titans die. Either Beast Boy or Raven is the murderer. This means NO PAIRING BB/RAVEN. One of them is a murderer. Murderers don't get paired, got it?

Also, please learn to spell. "Amd" is not a word..

I hope they do!

See above.

BEAST BOY AND RAVEN 4 EVER!

...I have no words. Then again, I'm a BB/Terra fan who writes exclusively Robin/Raven. Not because it's canon, but because it seems a better fit. I am not EVER going to write a BB/R fic. Ever. I don't even like Beast Boy.