Black Stars – Chapter 3: "Explanations"
At the tower, the Titans were all gathered in the living room after a hard battle with Plasmus. As Beast boy picked the sludge out of his hair and Starfire was still worrying about her planet, Robin was examining the device he had found lying next to the sleeping prisoner. It seemed like some sort of mind-controlling device – not that Plasmus wasn't a threat already – that made the villain go berserk and thus become even more dangerous. Robin, being himself, obsessed over this while Starfire sat next to Raven on the couch. She knew that because her emotions were so scrambled, she was near useless in the battle.
The Teen Titans were minding their own business. However, none of them paid any attention to the faint streak of orange against the night sky.
Even later at night, Starfire was tucked into her purple bed and was snuggling with her pet, Silkie, gently. She had managed to quit her tossing and turning among the pink covers and finally settle herself into a deep slumber. As her chest slowly rose and fell beneath the flannel and Silkie squirmed a bit in her arms, the orange streak from before drew closer and closer it was traveling slowly, but its power kept moving it forward until…
CRASH
The light faded as it collided with Starfire's bedroom window, cracking open a huge hole in the glass and shredding the curtains when it hit the floor.
Starfire quickly awoke from her slumber at the sound, then she gasped at the bleeding, battered, trembling small figure on the floor. It wasn't a bird, or a cat, or a rock. It was a Tamaranian boy.
It was, in fact, the Tamaranian boy who was whipped by the Gordanians and later on received the help of his cellmates to escape. The same small boy who Starfire had not seen since she left Tamaran, and the same small boy she had never hoped to see—
"Ryand'r!" she gasped. It was enough. She sailed over to the injured boy on the floor, where blood dripped from his backside and stained the carpets on the floor. He moaned as she threw her arms around him in a giant embrace of reunion.
"Ryand'r! I thought I would never see you again, brother! Where have you been?" she asked him as she pulled her strong arms away.
"I was… in the Gordanian p-prisons—" he stammered, and then stifled a cough. Silkie wiggled on over to him and licked his small face, and he laughed with his sweet young voice. Starfire had gotten up and was in the doorway when she spoke to her younger brother again.
"I shall get you 'the food' and bandages, yes?" she asked.
He nodded, and she nodded back and raced out the door. Raven was the only other Titan who wasn't in deep sleep, so she came to see what the ruckus was in Starfire's room. However, she was not prepared for the sniveling little toddler lying on the floor and holding Silkie tight.
"Are you one of Starfire's people?" she asked. He nodded again, when Starfire came bursting through the doorway and pushed Raven aside. She handed the small child a gourd of zorka berry juice and a handful of zorka berries, his favorite food.
When he had finished eating, which didn't take him that much time, he remained on the floor and put his cupped hand to his ear intently. Starfire turned and noticed him listening for sound, as focused on the slightest movement as she had ever seen anyone. He was attentive, but still had terrified wide eyes and was shuddering a bit. She approached him carefully.
"Ryand'r? What is wrong?"
She took his small hand in hers reassuringly, though he was still trembling with fear.
"Someone is coming," he said.
As he trembled and was frightened of the sounds made by other Titans heading towards Starfire's room, the source of the noise. As Cyborg's metal boots made a klang and the warping sound of Raven's gentle hovering approached, Starfire felt something warm where her hand held Ryand'r's. It grew hotter and hotter until it finally burned her hand, and she drew it back. But now her lap was searing with pain and her skirt was burnt through. The skin was red and torn, blistered.
"Ryand'r... when did you recieve these painful abilities?" Starfire asked her brother, still petrified at the four tall Titans in the door, their powers at the ready.
"I was captured by the Psions before they came--" Ryand'r stammered. "The ones who destroyed Tamaran."
Cyborg was in the doorway, his shadow closing in on the tiny child in Starfire's arms. His cannon was ready to fire and Ryand'r was on the verge of tears as the hulking robot-man approached the two on the ground. Robin and Beast Boy followed him, staring at the helpless alien on the rug. Cyborg was the first to ask what was going on.
"Star, who is this kid?" he asked.
"Is he your... son?" Raven asked, turning her head to Robin as she spoke.
Robin, at hearing this, gritted his teeth and a vein on his forehead began to throb with jealousy at the cowering youth on Starfire's bedroom floor. The youth that she was holding so close, so lovingly...
Who was this kid?