"What in the…" Robin was struck speechless by the sight below him. Something in glowing blue and silver, very high-tech, metal armor, afire with green flames, had materialized out of nowhere, frightening the boy and girl out of their wits. Heads in the near and far vicinity soon turned at the commotion, and pandemonium instantly took over as students and teachers ran for their lives. (After a few months of one attack, explosion, and bizarre occurrence after another, they'd learned to recognize a ghost when they saw one, even if Robin hadn't, yet).
"Good idea," said Tucker, jumping up and preparing to follow suit. However, Sam hadn't moved an inch before Skulker suddenly grabbed her by the shoulder. "Sam!"
"Hey! Let me go!" she yelled, shaking herself free and backing up.
"You're coming with me, human!" her captor said, aiming his left wrist at her as it turned into some kind of blaster.
"Please," said the Goth in her typical sarcastic tone. "Like you can use any of that ghost stuff on me." Apparently, she was wrong. After one shot, she found herself encircled a few times, tightly, with a green rope, and Skulker holding a glowing sword to her throat. "That's new."
"Hah! At last! Success! The master will be very pleased when he sees that I finally, actually…" The ghost hunter was cut off in mid-disbelief by an explosion and cloud of smoke that shook his grip on the girl. Sam and Tucker were just as surprised when they saw a tall and slender teenage boy in a mask, cape, and tights somersault out of the tree above them, throwing a disfigured, sharp, red boomerang in mid-leap that cut the rope.
"You okay?" said Robin, as he helped Tucker help Sam to her feet.
"I guess," she started, "But… LOOK OUT!"
Without turning his back to look, Robin managed to shield the three of them with his cape just in time to prevent them being blasted to smithereens by an energy blast.
"Run for it! Now!" he ordered as he unsheathed his bow staff and turned to face his opponent.
"Who are you?" Tucker insisted.
"Never mind! Just get out of here! Hurry!" Robin answered, at the same time reflecting two blasts with his staff and leaping aside before throwing another disk bomb. It knocked the well-protected ghost back off his feet but didn't leave any damage.
"This is serious!" said Sam. "Come on! We gotta find Danny!"
Danny was having a very strange experience back behind the school. He knew Plasmius' vultures operated as his hit-men, so he expected them to be after him. But they didn't seem to want to hurt him as much as confuse him, dodging his energy blasts, hiding by turning invisible and intangible and reappearing behind his back, and getting his attention while the others temporarily vanished… he felt like a cat trying to catch a string someone was dangling just out of his reach.
"Sorry, guys! Game over!" And with a surge of adrenaline, he put on a burst of speed quick enough to finally land a blow. One of his opponent's partners finally went on the offensive, plowing him into the ground with a head-butt too rapidly for him to turn intangible.
"What is your deal?" he said as his three attackers circled in the air above him. "You trying to bore me to death?"
"Danny!" Danny turned to see Tucker rushing his way, Sam close behind him.
The vulture closest to Danny suddenly halted and said, "Oh, no! Complications! Abort mission! Repeat: retreat, retreat!" The birds flew off at top speed, turning invisible when they reached the height of the roof.
He didn't look hurt, so Sam wasted no time. "Danny! You've gotta come quick! You won't believe what just happened!"
"What?" Danny replied as rose into the air. He followed his friends back to the front lawn and, as Sam predicted, could not believe what he saw. A boy about his own height and age, in the weirdest, flashiest costume he'd ever seen, battling his old enemy, Skulker, with a bow staff and the agility and martial arts skills of a circus star. "Guys, am I seeing things, or what?"
It was quite a show to see; Robin jumped, dodged, kicked, and aimed his staff and projectiles as expertly as he always did, the ever increasingly excruciating pain of his old wounds completely forgotten. He only knew one way to fight: with every fiber, every muscle, every nerve focused on the attack and defense, the imminent task the only thought recognized by his brain. At one point he somehow lost hold of his staff; he turned a back flip, produced two bird-a-rangs while still in mid-air, and had formed a sword with them before hitting the ground. Unfortunately, nothing appeared able to penetrate Skulker's armor, and the sword applied less impact force than the staff. While bracing for a second strike, he got hit by a blast in his left side, leaving a stinging burn.
The three members of his audience gasped. "Danny, do something!" Sam yelled.
"Like what?" Danny said. "You really want to interrupt them?" No fight he had ever been in had been this hardcore.
"You fool!" Skulker laughed. "I don't know who you are, but you should have minded your own business! No average human can defeat the greatest hunter in the entire Ghost Zone!"
"I may be human, but I'm anything but average!" Robin furiously exclaimed, removing his hand from hiswound as he jumped up for a flying kick. In less than the time he could have blinked, with just a flash of white, Skulker vanished. Robin, quite unprepared for this, hit the ground hard.
Robin righted himself and turned around at the sound of loud laughter to find his opponent standing exactly where he had been an instant ago.
"How can you… What are you…" He suddenly had a creepy feeling of déjà vu that rather staggered him.
"You didn't figure it out until now? I am a ghost! To you humans, I'm invincible!"
"This is getting serious." Danny's voice trailed off as he vanished.
Robin and Skulker were circling each other, on guard. Now he was really stunned. "A ghost?" he muttered to himself. The hunter landed a lightning-fast punch that almost knocked him out cold. Pushing himself over the limit, he twirled back up, but Skulker turned intangible again just before he made contact. He reappeared and sent Robin flying again, the scene looking more and more familiar to him. He tried to ignore the dizziness as he stood up, panting.
"Ha, ha, ha. You can't even touch me," said Skulker.
"But I can," came a voice, apparently with no source. The next thing Robin knew, he was kneeling on the grass, clutching his fresh, bleeding burn, trying to stay conscious, as a boy in a black jumpsuit with snow-white hair and glowing green eyes appeared behind Skulker, firing a green blast of energy, like Starfire's starbolts, from his hand.
"No! Not you!" the ghost hunter yelped in blatant shock and terror. "Now everything's ruined again!" He raised his wrist and fired what looked like bright blue wires that encircled the flying boy and pinned him down. "Until next time, Ghost Boy. Oh, and 'Greetings' from a certain person we both know."
He rose and turned invisible at the same time. The energy field disintegrated, so Danny assumed he had left for good for now. He rushed with Tucker and Sam to the injured vigilante.
"Are you all right?" Danny asked as he and Tucker helped him to his feet.
"I've been worse," Robin replied, trying to sound as normal as possible. He was in no mood for this; he'd just lost a battle, gone to pieces, once again, simply over thoughts about Slade. He waited until his dizziness passed and stepped away from the boys.
"Who are you?" asked Danny.
"I haven't told anyone that for a long time. For the past few years, everyone has known me only as Robin."
"Robin," said Sam, "Thanks for saving me back there."
"You're welcome," he answered in a monotone as he picked up and separated his bird-a-rang-sword.
"So… you from around here?" Tucker asked.
"Just passing through." Robin didn't break his monotone as he walked over to his dropped bow staff.
"Where are you from?" said Danny.
"No where," said Robin, collapsing and pocketing his staff.
"Where you heading?" asked Sam.
"No idea." He started to walk away.
"What? Are you running away from home or something?" Danny said.
"You could say that," answered Robin, holding back a wince. Just when he'd felt the best he had all week, he was starting to ache all over like he'd only escaped death by a hair all over again. Maybe he had. "I don't have any more time, but I'm glad I could help," he added, still walking away.
He crossed the street and turned right, then left around the corner, in the direction of the park. "That was definitely 11 on a weird scale of 1 to 10," said Sam.
"Hey," Tucker began, "It's over, everybody's pretty much okay, and they'll probably cancel school again while the cops come over, search the place, and accuse the administration of insurance fraud again. Weird stuff happens to us, Sam. Weird is pretty much normal."
All this time Danny was looking after Robin with an inquisitive expression on his face. "So you guys really think this was just a coincidence?" he said.
"You have a specific theory?" inquired Sam.
"No," said Danny. "But I've got a bad feeling about this."
Just above their heads, the invisible Skulker hovered, holding a video camera. Miles away, in the most advanced surveillance room imaginable on the fifth floor of a stone castle in Wisconsin, the images of the mysterious brave vigilante, who had been in exactly the wrong place at the wrong time for a certain someone's plan, were replaying over and over as the viewer tried to study this anomaly of a boy. "Hmm. It appears we have a new friend in town," sounded a chilling menacing voice to no one in particular. "For your sake, Robin, whoever you are, you'd better not stay long."
Back in Amity Park, after his third and longest bout of lightheadedness, Robin finally decided that he was too hurt to risk riding for the rest of the day. He left his motorcycle parked, but took his packs of supplies while he went back to the park he'd run through earlier to find a place to spend the day and, later, the night. He settled down in a small nook he found between some bushes and a tree to bandage his burn and cuts as best as he cared to, ate a little and drank a lot of water, and tried to do the one thing that he always, with no exception, failed dismally at: relaxing. His thoughts were so full of what he'd seen today and of the shame at the feelings of fear that a ghost wrought in him, that for once, he didn't feel the eyes that were on him, through a concealed camera that with all his searching and observation, he would never find.
"Quite an ordeal you went through, today, Robin. Quite an ordeal." The viewer returned with the push of a button to a scene showing a boy dressed in black appearing and pummeling the ghost he seen yet earlier tried to kidnap a young girl. "This just may be the greatest discovery you've ever made. Let us hope you're foolish enough to wait around, for once."
Completely pre-occupied and unaware, Robin, too, was reliving his strange encounter in his head. "I never found out who that kid who helped me was, or where that ghost came from, or why he was after her…" It was his policy to help and leave, to make sure no one got hurt, not to form bonds with everyone he crossed paths with. But something in his gut told him that this was different. "I've got a really bad feeling about this."