Teen Titans: Children of a Dynamic God
ch. 2
There's a reason why Robin was the leader of the Titans. Part of it is character. Part of it is raw talent. At the moment that the head rolled out of the box, the part of him that beat out all the other parts, including the panic, horror and shock that was currently overwhelming his teammates was simple training.
Specifically, training with Batman, the world's greatest martial artist and detective. How many times had Robin had to scramble awake in the middle of the night to fend off an attack from his mentor? How many stinging darts embedded themselves into his flesh as he ate his breakfast, did his homework, and watched TV? Even when they were on patrol the Boy Wonder wasn't safe from Batman's rigorous system of training.
The first year he spent in the mansion, Robin must have thought a dozen times that he was close to going insane. Never a moment's rest, never a moment when Robin could let his guard down. But he wouldn't back down. He had asked Bruce to train him and he was determined not to give up.
Not long after his thirtieth anxiety attack or so, the Boy Wonder stopped feeling panic, fear, and started to feel instead a sense of floating euphoria. Time seemed to slow every time a black-gloved hand gripped his throat as he slept, every time he was pushed down the stairs or turned a corner only to be sprayed in the eyes with lemon juice. The fear left him. He started responding instead of reacting.
Darts tipped with Tabasco sauce bounced off a spoon dripping with Rice Krispies in between bites. The smallest change in air pressure would send Robin exploding out of bed behind a barrage of fast-flying fists before he was even fully awake. He became adept at rolling down a flight of stairs while simultaneously flinging whatever might be in his pockets back up towards the top.
During that first year, he was unsettled by the actions of this man who had adopted him and shown him so much kindness. Then he was puzzled, then angered, then terrified. Then finally... apathetic. And then he began slowly to understand, and once Batman noticed that the two of them started to become so in sync that it was scary.
Robin would be forever grateful for that year of confusion and terror. What it had instilled in him had saved his live more times than he cared to remember. What Batman had done was to brutalize out of the Boy Wonder that moment of shock, of hesitation and indecision, however brief it might be that might mean the difference between life and death.
And so, as Starfire screamed, as Cyborg turned an even paler shade, as Beast Boy fainted dead away in a pool of his own vomit, and even as Robin was falling backwards over the couch (he would scold himself later for even that moment of surprise), the Boy Wonder's brain was already dissecting the scene. By the time he broke his fall and landed on his back behind the couch, less than a second later, he had already noted that there was no way a head in a box could have sat in their living room for two months and not given off some very incriminating fumes. As he let the momentum of his fall roll him onto his back and shoulder, he digested the fact that the glassy eyes that had looked up at him from the floor for that split second should have shriveled into raisins by now. The roll continued, bringing the Boy Wonder back on his feet. Before he could even bring his head up to confirm his theory, he remembered that there wasn't a speck of blood or bodily fluid. But there were dried splotches all over the neck and chin. A dark, viscous fluid that reminded him of...
Robin sprang to his feet, Starfire still screaming, Cyborg still catatonic. One glance at the head confirmed his suspicion.
"Starfire, Cyborg, calm down," Robin shouted, not able to even hear himself over Starfire's screams. "It's mechanical."
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"Ummm," Beast Boy muttered sheepishly, "You're... not still mad at me, are you Star?"
All five members of the team were assembled in one of the many science labs in the tower. Robin and Cyborg typed away at their keyboards as diagnostics, x-rays and all kinds of other data streamed across the many huge screens hanging from the ceiling. Raven stood a few feet behind them, determined to keep up with their technical jargon as best as she could, or at least look like she was. On a table in the middle of the room, dozens of wires taped to it, sat the head.
Starfire and Beast Boy stood next to each other, studying it. Taking her attention away from the mysterious object she glared at him.
"You mean, for throwing up and costing me my ill-gotten swag?" Starfire smiled at him, gritting her teeth and popping her knuckles. "For ruining my only chance to buy tickets to the concert of the Clay Aiken, Earth idol?"
"Ummm... yeah?" Beast Boy seemed to get smaller.
"Of... course... NOT!" Starfire hissed out through clenched teeth. Beast Boy whimpered and turned into a possum. He skittered over to the opposite side of the table.
"Wow," Cyborg whispered, looking over a screen full of indiscernible numbers.
"Yeah?" Robin asked, looking up from his own screen. "What kind of wow?"
"'Go check the postmark and see if this thing was mailed from the future' kind of wow." Cyborg looked at his screen in awe. "I think, maybe... I can almost wrap my mind around the kind of tech we're looking at here."
"Okay, useful as that information was," Raven said, rolling her eyes, "can you make a guess as to what it is?"
"Dude, it's the head of a robot chick!" Beast Boy exclaimed, fixing Raven with an incredulous look. "What else could it be?"
Cyborg spoke before Raven could open her mouth to snap back. "Believe it or not, I think BB's correct. If I'm reading this info right, we're looking at an artificial brain, for all intents and purposes."
"But why would someone send it to us?" Raven asked, trying not to sound too obvious.
"Why does half the crazy stuff that happens in our life happen?" Cyborg sighed. "No note, no instruction manual. Nothing to indicate where it came from or why."
"She's beautiful..." Starfire said softly, again gazing at the disembodied head on the table.
And it was. It appeared to be the head of a girl no older than sixteen or seventeen. The skin was darkly tanned with a light dusting of freckles along the bridge of the nose. Long, straight, unearthly silver hair pooled on either side of it, with matching eyebrows and lashes. The unblinking eyes had irises of a most striking and unnatural ruby red. Beautiful was an understatement. Had Michelangelo crafted it it might have been no more stunning.
"Dude," Beast Boy whistled, "I gotta admit, she is uber-hot."
"It's not a 'she' moron," Raven sneered, "you may as well be talking about your gamestation... Nevermind, I forgot you're in love with that too."
"Okay," Robin interrupted, "this is getting us nowhere. We can't have every Tom, Dick and supervillain thinking they can just send us random robot heads in the mail and get away with it."
"Well, I can take it apart," Cyborg mused, rubbing his chin, "there's bound to be some recognizable compon..."
"No!" Starfire shouted. "What are you saying?"
"Star," Robin spoke in his most placating voice, feeling a little embarrassed, "I know this is a strange situation, but this thing, it's not a real person. It's not alive."
"How do you know that!" Starfire cried out. "Did Cyborg not say that her machine brain is too complex for even him to understand? What if he hurts her!"
Robin opened his mouth to speak, then stopped. He turned around and looked at Cyborg, who frowned and crossed his arms.
"Well, ummm..." Robin scratched his head. "Help me out here guys..."
The four titans exchanged puzzled glances. Starfire chewed her lip, her brow twisted and agonized.
"What is wrong with all of you?" Starfire cried pleadingly.
Robin took a step back, looking like he had been slapped across the face. "Star, I..."
"We must fix her!" Starfire exclaimed. "Immediately!"
"Jesus," Raven sighed and rolled her eyes, turning away in disgust.
"She's right," Beast Boy said. "Dude, she's totally right."
The young changeling looked to Cyborg. "Well? Back me up dude!"
Cyborg smirked and shrugged at Robin. "Umm… well, she is right you know.
Robin rubbed the back of his neck and sighed. When he raised his head, he was smiling. "Of course she is. Thanks Star. I guess we were all still a little... freaked out."
Starfire, tears in her eyes, smiled as wide as she could and engulfed a blushing Robin in her biggest hug.
"God," Raven muttered, "are we just going to keep on letting her believe life's a Saturday morning cartoon?"
The other Titans ignored Raven and congregated in front of the table.
"Well," Robin said, "how tough is it going to be to switch her on Cy?"
"Gimme five minutes to wire her... I mean it,.. I mean, her... up to a battery." Cyborg chuckled. "Then another twenty to hook her into one of the laptops so we don't have to worry about flooding the mainframe with viruses."
"Cool." Robin said. "Well, let's get to it."
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Cyborg had the head laying on its side as he soldered another wire into the neck stump. He was so absorbed in his work that it took him a moment to realize there was a pleasant humming coming from opposite the head. He looked up to see a smiling Starfire wiping the face gently with a cloth.
"Star?" Cyborg said. "What are you doing?"
"Oh, I am just trying to clean off all of the oil!" Starfire beamed. "I do not want her to be embarrassed by her dirty face when we turn her on!"
Cyborg blinked and looked as if he was struggling to find something to say. He gave up, smirked and chuckled.
"I think she'll appreciate that Star." He said before going back to his work. Starfire giggled and carefully cleaned a splotch of oil from the flowing silver hair.
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"You know this is a trap." Raven said. "The second we hook up the battery it's going to suck all the power out of the tower or form a body out of all our machines or just explode or something..."
"Dude, Raven... Why are you always so paranoid?" Beast Boy asked.
"Paranoid?" Raven yelled. "Just this month we've had a giant cosmic jellyfish suck all the energy out of our tower, two monsters form bodies out of electronics and attack us, and every other day something blows up in our faces! And it's only the twelfth! TELL ME HOW I'M BEING PARANOID!"
Beast Boy shrank back and didn't say anything. He, she and Robin were in the kitchen, getting together a tray of refreshments to take back to the lab.
"Raven's got a point, Beast Boy." Robin said as he sliced apart an apple. "But I think it's a little too early to be expecting disaster. Besides, we're taking precautions."
"We always take precautions... precautions mean nothing in our line of business." Raven muttered.
"Yeah? Well maybe so, but that never stops us now does it?" Robin snapped.
Raven and Beast Boy jumped back a bit, surprised at the Boy Wonder's tone. He went on slicing apples for a few more seconds, the room cold with silence.
"I don't like that we... that I was so ready to break that thing down into pieces." Robin continued slicing. "I don't like that out of all of us, only Starfire was the one who had the damn horse sense to calm down and look at it rationally."
"Starfire? Calm?" Raven sneered. "Rational?"
"More rational than anyone else was being in there," Robin said. "You said it yourself Raven, we face unbelievable situations almost every day. And why? Because it's our job to protect people."
Robin turned around and faced them both. "And when we switch the power on in a few minutes, if that thing up there, whatever it is, opens its eyes and starts talking to us... Well, I'm probably going to have more than a little trouble falling asleep tonight thinking about how we almost failed to protect it."
Raven crossed her arms and snorted. "That's too simplistic. Even if it starts reciting Shakespeare and asking us about our day that doesn't mean it's not just a machine. We're not obligated to protect machines Robin, especially when there's a huge chance we're about to do something stupid and spring a trap on ourselves!"
Robin sighed, shook his head and picked up the tray. "Raven, just about everything you've said makes sense. But you know what? We're going to go downstairs and turn that thing on anyway, because we're the Teen Titans and we don't have any choice. If it sucks up the computers and forms a body out of them then we'll deal with it."
Robin pushed past her and disappeared down the hallway. Beast Boy looked back and forth between them and quickly trotted off after Robin. Raven stood alone in the kitchen, her fists clenched. Directly in front of her was a stack of dishes. Very subtly, they started rattling.
Raven took a long, slow breath. She unclenched her fists. The rattling stopped. A few moments later she stepped into the hallway.
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Starfire's leg bounced up and down as she sat. She rocked back and forth in her seat and chewed her lip "Ohhhh, what is taking so long? Are we not ready yet?"
Standing next to her, Raven groaned. Robin was busy typing away on the laptop computer sitting next to the head while Cyborg ran lines between the two.
"Star," Robin sighed, "we're going as fast as we can."
"I don't believe this," Cyborg said, "I think I just found a USB port."
"Well, that should make things easier," Robin deadpanned.
"I'll say," Cyborg said. He sat the head upright, stood and wiped his brow, smirked at the rest of the team. "I guess we're ready to go."
Starfire squealed with delight and pulled Beast Boy into a hug. He blushed and timidly hugged her back. Raven snorted in disgust and plopped down in the seat next to the excited girl.
"This thing isn't just going to wake up and ask to be your friend Star." Raven sneered. "More likely we're about to have a fight on our hands."
Starfire's face fell. Before she could respond Robin spoke up.
"Raven, that's enough. We've already had this conversation." The Boy Wonder said. Raven glared at him.
Cyborg cleared his throat. "Okay, now if everyone's paying attention. I've wired a battery to this thing, through this laptop. If anything weird happens it'll shut the battery right off. So… we ready y'all?"
"Yes, yes, yes!" Starfire bounced up and down in her seat. Cyborg looked to Robin, who simply nodded.
"Alright," Cyborg sighed, "let there be life!" He switched on the battery.
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Ooooooh, so it wasn't a skeery cut off head after all! I tricked you! Kya ha! I tricked you with the magic of the written word! Well, hope you enjoyed this chapter. I decided to cut a little loose with this one, hence the first part. That was fun to write. If you enjoyed it let me know and I won't restrain myself so much in the next chapters.
Coming up next: Will the head suck up all the equipment and form a massive body of horrifyingly destructive power, or will it become Star's friend? Or will something unexpected happen? You will just have to waaaaaiiiittttttt… -Rex