Author's note: Thanks again for the kind words.
Meanwhile, a half mile from the tanning salon, in the warehouse district, five figures were huddled in a control booth in a corner of an industrial warehouse once used as a hideout by Slade. Sooooo easily converted, Gizmo had told the others. All the wiring and utilities already in place, stuff nobody but a psycho would have set up. On the screen in front of them was the image of Jinx, standing in the middle of the dimly lit 12 by 12 caged area ringed on all sides by level 4 containment fields of energy. Her arms were crossed and she had a cross expression, too.
"How long do you guys think you can hold me in here? You thought the special handcuffs would hold me, too, didn't you?" she said glancing to some cracked bits of metal on the floor.
"Hey, you were the one who wanted a level 4 containment area" said Gizmo and then he broke into snickers. See-More pressed the button to turn off the sound from the booth into the caged area and slapped the back of Gizmo's head. "Idiot. What'd I tell you about antagonizing her? What's the whole point of this?"
"I know. I know. Get her back with us"
"And how do you think you help that if you act like a little jerk and she thinks about ketchup and mustard being all nice to her?"
"Hehe, well, if she gives me a quickie like she probably gave quickie a quickie, I'd be really nice to her, too! Hehehe!"
See-More slapped him again. Kid Wykkyd shook his head sternly at the little mechanical wizard. He pointed into the containment cell.
"Alright! Alright!" Gizmo whined and retreated to the back of the group.
Billy Numerous advanced to the controls and pressed the button to have Jinx hear him. "Jinx" he began in his slight drawl. "It's already too late to do anything but join us. Listen to this" he said opening up three different newspapers. "The Jump City Times. Quote. Police today are looking for clues as to the whereabouts of the infamous HIVE group led by Jinx after their daring daylight robbery of Jump City Bank. And they've got a picture of you-"
"It's not me"
"But everybody thinks it is and that's good enough"
"Kid Flash doesn't"
"Well, the-the Jump City Tabloid thinks it was. After the usual puhliminaries they say quote, get this, Jump City Police Captain Doyle says they have positively identified all the HIVE members in the bank camera footage including Jinx, See-More, Mammoth, Gizmo, Kid Wykkyd and 37 Billy Numerai . . hey wait? Numerai? That's not how you pluralize me! It's Numerouses! Where's the editor on these things? I-"
See-More pressed the button to turn off the sound then slapped Billy. "You can't even keep your focus when there's only one of you!"
"She must be hungry" grunted Mammoth. "I'm hungry"
"You're always hungry" sighed See-More. "The pizzas are on the way." he added and then turned to Gizmo tapping away at a keyboard on the other side of the booth. "Do you have all that video ready?"
"Yeah yeah yeah, almost there"
See-More went to the controls again. "Jinx. We're gonna show you what all the news programs said about this. You take a look and you see if you'd have any doubts about whether you were involved. They're going to hunt you down the same as us, Jinx. You may as well come back to our side. Their side won't have you"
Jinx didn't say anything. What would the point be? They wouldn't believe it. Wait till he finds out what they did! He'll kill 'em. Especially Gizmo, little brat, shooting me with that tranq dart outside the apartment.
"Watch this, Jinx. First Fox News." said See-More and the screen on the other side of the bars and the nearly transparent energy field came to life showing the video from a bank camera as the news reader recounted how much had been stolen and who the hive members were. See-More stopped the footage with the image of an apparent Jinx filling the screen. "Pretty close likeness, huh?"
Jinx wanted to laugh at the idea but the girl on the screen really did look just like her, at least from that odd bank camera angle and with the degree of clarity to the picture. Jinx looked at her own bare forearm. The fake's skin color was even right. So were her hair and her eyes. Jinx gritted her teeth and kept silent.
"Or, how 'bout this from CNN, Jinx?" said See-More and the screen showed the report that Kid Flash had seen plus the latest report which showed the apparent Jinx throwing a pink energy hex.
"How'd you like that hex, Jinxy?" the voice of Gizmo asked her. "That was my idea. A little bit of a light show and then the vault door I'd already put charges onto off camera gives way. Presto! Real hex!"
See-More went on to show her the evening news reports from all three Jump City tv stations. All showed pretty much the same footage and every airhead anchor ditz announced matter of factly that it had been Jinx leading the group.
"You're part of the group Jinx. Everybody says so and the police say so too"
"I'll bet Kid Flash doesn't say so"
"Again with him. Nobody's seen him, Jinx. Who knows where he is? He might be home crying into his mountain dew or maybe he's gone with Flash on some justice league thing or something. He hasn't been out looking for you" said See-More and he turned off the sound from the booth. Gizmo snickered at this lie as did Billy Numerous.
"Heck the Jump City weather report shoulda been temps in the 70's with gusts o' red and yellow"chuckled Billy. "He's going nuts out there"
Jinx was silent. See-More's voice came back on. "See Jinx. We want you back and there's no way the goody two shoes people will believe you, is there? What choice do you have?"
"You're forgetting at least one other option" said Jinx. "Why do I have to go with you losers if the goodies won't have me?"
"Come on, you don't want to be alone, Jinx! We're all better off together. And we never wanted you out. You left us for him. Well, that's not gonna work out now but we'll still take you back even though you had a flirtation with their side. You think anybody on that side will have anything to do with you after even a suspicion that you might have actually been with us?"
"You don't know him"
"Come on, Jinx. Snap out of it. He's just a cocky pretty boy, maybe prettier than the others but that's all"
"Ha! You don't know him at all. He's more of a book type than you, See-More!"
See-More made a funny expression at this claim then looked to the others. What next? What should I say? How do I get her off this crush for that guy? But they didn't know. None of them had ever had a serious girlfriend for very long. The thought See-More had put into trying to woo her before she left for him was the most any of them had ever done.
"Tell her we'll play foosball any time she wants" suggested Billy Numerous and then half whispering to See-More "and we'll secretly let her win" he added with a wise nod of the head. See-More buried his face in his hands.
"What's he got that I don't got . . except yellow?" asked Billy looking at his reflection in the glass of a door to a darkened room. He turned and looked at his backside over his shoulder. "Damn pretty boy".
Jinx paced anxiously back and forth in the cage. The irony! The frigging irony! I go through all the anguish to reconsider my whole life to do a 180 on the whole frigging thing, I find a boy who's the real thing and then this shit happens! Aaaarrrggghhh! She pulled at her pink hair. When she calmed down, she turned to one side of the cage and tried one last time, firing her strongest hex at it.
"Break, fricking level four bitch!" she shouted as she focused all her power on the cage, the air thick with the crackle and hiss of the pink energy she projected and its collision with the force field beyond. The bars bent and cracked, bu the bars weren't really the cage. The faintly shimmering yellowish force field was the real cage and it barely fluttered taking her absolute best shot. She sighed and closed her eyes facing upward. The very idea of being a damsel in distress inspired near homicidal anger in her but what choice was there? Please get me out of this, Wally!
Kid Flash zoomed back to police headquarters nearly smiling as he scorched a mach 10 pace through the city streets, vehicles on the highway looking as though they were in park compared to the pace of the sleek teen. He was practically coasting when he zoomed up the six flights of police headquarter stairs in a quarter second to the hero call desk where he hoped to see Winston.
But Winston wasn't there. The door was closed. The red and yellow clad speedster glanced to both sides contemplating a quick, molecules vibrating walk through the wall into Winston's office. But before he could, a voice called out from behind him.
"You again! What're you doing here?"
Damn. It was Doyle. Kid Flash turned around and saw her peering out of an open doorway three doors down.
"I've got some new evidence in the HIVE case and I want to see the video from the bank again"
She stared at him as she started toward him from that office.
"I want to see the video from the bank again, please"
"So, the magic word should get you whatever you want, huh?"
"I didn't say that, but look at this" he said, removing his glove and taking out the dried gray solution that'd been used at the tanning salon. He explained what he'd found out there. Doyle was unimpressed.
"On top of that, I know that Jinx is lefthanded. And I think the fake Jinx in the video does something that shows she's righthanded. Just let me watch the video to confirm it . . please"
Captain Doyle smiled at him, not a friendly smile, more the smile of a predator. "You sure are interested in this girl's case. How do you know she's lefthanded?"
"I went out with her, alright? I went out with her. And I clearly remember her asking a waiter for a check making a writing or signing motion in the air with her left hand. And I think the fake Jinx in the video writes with her right hand"
"So, we should take the word of the most hopelessly compromised witness there is about this girl? What'd I say about the dangers of trusting a boy with a tidal wave of hormones washing over him? And you want us to trust you and let her off the hook?" she finished with a chuckle.
"It's true! If we found her right now we'd be able to confirm that she's lefthanded. I just want the Jump City police to see that she's not part of this"
"Why would anyone bother to fake that?"
"Because they think she's on the fence and they don't want her to leave the villain side of things. They want the police to act just like they're acting. They want her to stay with them. They probably have crushes on her"
"Like you"
Kid Flash groaned.
"How about the slips of paper at the bank? Did you fingerprint them? You could see if somebody with a record and who looks like Jinx was there then see if you can link her to the robbery"
"We don't need you to tell us how to do our jobs. We might not be wearing suits that broadcast that we're superheroes but we do our jobs pretty well"
He mulled his options. "You're right. I apologize"said Kid Flash. He shook hands with Doyle. Then he went downstairs and found Colavito and Strickland and presented his evidence and theories to them.
Kid Flash sprinted out of police headquarters then down to the financial district and up the stairs of the 86 story Jump City Tower, tallest building in the city. He vibrated right through the locked door onto the roof and pressed the face of his ring three times. He pressed it three times again and then a third and a fourth time. Three tones at a time was the Flash to Flash call. Maybe Flash is back from that Justice League case. But he waited thirty seconds for a response and there was nothing. Damn. That would've been the best, to bust in on those jerks with Flash.
Okay. Another option. Even if I'm not good enough for them. He sighed and sprinted down the stairwell, out into the street and down to water's edge then right past some guys languidly fishing onto the water. He sprinted across the water of the bay to the island of Titans Tower. He pressed the buzzer at the locked doorand waited, reminding himself to be civil if it should be Robin who answers. No response. He pressed the button again. He waited thirty seconds and then a recorded version of Robin's voice informed him that no one could answer at the moment and to please wait or try again later.
Wait! I can't wait! They could be hurting her right now for all I know. He could not help considering the implications of this thought and flinched at the possibilities, the HIVE trying to break her or brainwash her. Just the idea of their hurting beautiful Jinx! Those jerks bringing her pain! Her! Oh my god! Kid Flash's eyes narrowed. His nostrils flared, his chest heaved with deep breaths and he found himself grinding the gloved fist of his right hand into the gloved palm of his left. If they've harmed one pink hair on her head . . He left the murderous intent unspoken as no words would match his fury.
Faster than if shot from a gun, the incensed super teen burst from the spot where he stood, sprinting across the water of the bay to the waterside streets and then through the center of the city to the edge of the warehouse district just outside the Tropiskin Tanning Salon.
"CalmdownCalmdownCalmdown" he told himself, remembering Flash's injunction to "let emotion fuel you but not direct you". Think. Think. Think. Plenty of other tanning salons in the city and probably some without alarm systems, too. Why use this one to fake your Jinx's skin if not because it's convenient? What else would point to them being in the area? Hmm. Five guys, one the size of Mammoth, in a possibly makeshift hideout. Pizza. Kid Flash burst from the spot and quickly crisscrossed the city streets in the area locating every pizza place in delivery range. Have you had any unusually large orders on an ongoing basis? At the fifth one, a Domino's on a busy corner, the guy behind the counter got his boss for Kid Flash and the boss told him of crazy orders from an address in the warehouse district that he'd thought was an empty steel mill or something. They'd delivered 17 pizzas there each day the last week. Kid Flash thanked them and worked his way out through the crowd. A table of teenage girls looked him up and down, giggling and smirking all the while.
"Are you taken?" said one girl about his age with a suggestive tilt of her head when he was stopped beside their table by a slow moving crowd. He nodded. "That's what this is all about" he said, and then the crowd parted and he burst from the store leaving only a red and yellow trail of blur behind himself.
He super sped to a small hill overlooking the address to which the Domino's had been delivering and then to another hill on the other side of it. It was a gigantic building worked into the side of a hill. More than 300 feet long and at least a hundred fifty wide. Whatever sign naming the company that'd built it had been torn off enough years back that the area that'd been under the sign was no almost as aged as the rest of the building.
Hmm. There's something interesting, he noted looking at a corner of the building. An old residential style electric meter. He zoomed to the corner of the building and glanced around carefully. The disk inside the glass casing was spinning away at a crazy rate. So, it's closed down but whatever's inside is drawing massive electric current from the City's grid. Yeah, sure. Happens all the time.
He zipped back to a spot on the hill for just a few more moments of strategy. The teleporter guy didn't seem to have any special ability beyond that. Just gotta catch him at the right spot. Mammoth is mammoth but a thousand of my punches should beat one of his. Billy Numerous? He sighed. An idea occurred to him about how to fight him. See-More? Probably the leader now. He's level headed but aside from a bit of a laser ability, how can he hurt me? Gizmo? He's trouble. What was he working on at HIVE headquarters when I interrupted him? He thought he really had something to use on me. What was it? Damn. All he could recall was a jumble of mechanical parts and circuits on the table in front of him.
Kid Flash took a deep breath and ran straight for the wall of the giant facility. One super speed step from it he started his molecules vibrating and he passed right through the thick masonry wall into the half darkened interior of the building. There was some kind of conveyor belt system running down the middle of the building and giant metal containers, like vats or 4 foot high giant mixing bowls or something lying around in random positions through the rest of it. At the far corner he could see an area curtained off and not far from there a sort of control room with big glass windows looking out onto the building interior. Kid Flash noted all these details in a thousandth of a second as he sprinted from the wall he'd passed through to the interior of the building.
Almost immediately upon his getting inside the building, an alarm sounded. He could see them all near the control room starting to react to it. See-More looked to Gizmo.
"The vibration alarm!" said Gizmo. "Quickie broke in!"
See-More stared anxiously out toward the rest of the building, preparing a laser eye blast for him. He saw a faint red and yellow blur and then, just as that was registering in his head, Kid Flash suddenly materialized right in front of him. See-More fired a laser blast but only one because he was suddenly struck by a horde of red gloved fists as though Kid Flash was a multi-armed hindu god or something. SmackSmackSmackSmackSmackSmackSmackSmack. See-More was out.
Gizmo jumped back toward the control room while this was taking place. Kid Flash lunged for him but hit some kind of invisible wall between them, absorbing some bruises in the process and sliding down to all fours on the cement floor. "Hehe! Guess again, pretty boy!"
Kid Flash made an instantaneous calculation to go for one of the others. Mammoth was advancing toward him as was Kid Wykkyd and Billy Numerous was starting to divide himself. Kid Flash could still see which one had been the first one. He made a ball of some sawdust on the floor and grease from the old conveyor belt and threw a 200 mile per hour pitch at the first Billy, hitting him right in the chest.
"Oooo! That really hurts. You think that'll knock me out?"
"No I don't" said Kid Flash. "I think this will"
He sprinted for the original Billy. He knocked the second Billy out with a running punch and bowled over Billy5. He kept advancing, punching out Billy7 and Billy8, just too fast for them. Now, Billy seemed to see Kid Flash's goal and retreated while frantically creating more Billy's as he went.
"We're not afraid of you!"
"Then why are you running?"
"Just trying to gather the Billy cavalry" shouted Billy. But the cavalry were dropping like flies as a furious Kid Flash punched out one after another with hooks, uppercuts and straight punches all delivered too fast for the Billy's 14 through 25 to cope with. Now the retreating Billy's were in an even darker area by the side wall of the giant facility and on the floor around them they found dozens of thin metal rods, reinforcing bars a half inch thick and 30 inches long. The Billy's all picked up one.
"En garde!" shouted Billy as his clones rushed aggressively toward the onrushing Kid Flash. But Kid Flash picked up a metal bar, too, and defended himself with perfect fencing form, one arm behind him, rapier out front. For a few moments, Kid Flash fenced against a semicircle of Billy's like Errol Flynn in The Adventures of Robin Hood fighting a bunch of the sheriff's men. But Kid Flash had an advantage over Robin Hood. He could whip his sword through the air ten times as fast as anyone else. Fighting 20 Billy's was almost fair. The resulting sound of the fight was a din of nearly simultaneous impacts as Kid Flash knocked the swords from all their hands one after another and continued to advance toward the original Billy. The Billy's tried to take advantage of his aggressiveness and surround him as he advanced. One Billy got a punch in against his ribs while he was knocking out two others and another got his hands around Kid Flash's waist and tried to wrestle him down so that all the others could jump on him but Kid Flash got free of his grip and leaped forward. The Billy in front of him had a spatter mark on his chest from grease and sawdust. He was just starting to open his mouth to say something as Kid Flash wound up and smacked him with a roundhouse right, then another, then 10 more. The original Billy went down.
"Are you guys going to keep fighting for his mistake?" shouted Kid Flash pointing to the fallen Billy. The suddenly ambivalent Billy's glanced at each other. They shrugged. Hmmm. Now that you put it that way. It was his mistake not mine . . mine .. mine . . mine . . mine . . etc. A couple raised their hands in the air and backed up. "Not my fight" said one, expressing the sentiment of many.
Kid Flash turned to go back toward the other HIVE members and just as he did took a punch from Kid Wykkyd. It wasn't a particularly strong punch but after Kid Flash regained his balance and wanted to smack him, he saw the teleporter vanish into thin air. He sprinted toward the control booth and leaped fist first at Mammoth landed a tremendous blow right on his jaw. The gargantuan simpleton barely flinched. "Yikes" thought Kid Flash. He set about trying to punch Mammoth into submission with as many blows as it took. Mammoth was trying to punch him out at the same time but his blows were easy for Kid Flash to dodge. The blow he didn't dodge came, again, from Kid Wykkyd who teleported to a spot directly behind Kid Flash and stunned him with a punch to the back of the head. While Kid Flash was momentarily stationary, a frantic Mammoth, panicked by his inability to hit the super fast teen and swinging blindly, walloped Kid Flash with a backhand punch sending him flying into the air landing on the fly in one of the four foot high steel mixing vats that dotted the floor of the place. Kid Wykkyd pointed to a nearby sheet of plywood and demonstrated for Mammoth, bringing the open palm of his right hand down on his cupped left hand.
"I get it" grunted Mammoth and he slammed the plywood down over the top of the steel mixing vat. He picked up the two and started shaking them like he was preparing an industrial sized mixed drink. Something was bouncing around inside, reverberating with the shaking. He shook and shook and shook and started laughing thinking of the punishment he was giving the super fast teen, bouncing him off the steel sides and plywood top. Kid Wykkyd smiled slightly too.
"Wow. He won't be such a pretty boy after ya pour him out of there, will he?" asked the voice over Kid Wykkyd's shoulder. Kid Wykkyd turned with a faint smile of agreement and was immediately struck by a dozen punches, the fisted red gloves almost seeming to hit him at the same time. He melted to the floor. Mammoth's eyes went wide at the sight of Kid Flash a few feet away over his shoulder. He peeked inside the steel vat, still expecting to see the red and yellow clad teen. Kid Flash raised an eyebrow and gave a slight shake of his head. With renewed fury from his disappointment, Mammoth threw the vat and plywood at Kid Flash who easily dodged them. Kid Flash circled around and jumped on Mammoth's back giving him a few score punches to the back of the head before Mammoth started to reach back there. He jumped off and zipped around to the front of the giant and smacked him another 40 times on the jaw while Mammoth was still reaching behind his head. Mammoth let out a half shout, half roar of anger at his inability to get hold of Kid Flash and swung both hands forward as quickly as he could. This was Kid Flash's cue to switch again and jump on his back. He was there before Mammoth had even swung his hands forward and he landed another 40 punches to the giant's head. Now Mammoth wobbled. Kid Flash jumped off and zipped to the far end of the facility, never stopping but circling back at top speed straight for Mammoth who barely saw teh red and yellow blur approaching him againwhen the super speed teen leaped and swung and landed his best punch, aided by the momentum of his super speed, right on Mammoth's jaw. The giant's eyes rolled back into his head and he fell over onto the hard floor with a crash.
Kid Flash intentionally walked right over him, enjoying the minor triumph of beating the giant despite having only a fraction of his mass. He approached the control booth at normal walking speed. Not because he was cocky but because he wasn't sure how to attack Gizmo, anyway. He didn't want to run into another invisible force field wall and knock himself out. He reached down and grabbed two handfuls of sawdust from beside some machinery to use, if necessary, to test for the presence of force fields.
"It's just you and me little guy" he said, advancing. "I took out the others and I'll take you out, too. Let Jinx go now and I won't hurt you"
"I'm not some clown like them, Quickie. I've been thinking of this little confrontation since you trashed our headquarters, most of which I built. I owe you pretty boy" he said and Kid Flash could see a faint movement of his arm. He's going for a control! Kid Flash vibrated his molecules a split second before a half dozen tranquilizer darts all passed through the spot where his center of gravity had been, from six different tranq guns rolling on tracks at the corner made by the two story high walls and the sheet metal ceiling. Kid Flash ran back away from the control booth and just a split second after the darts had passed through his position, a couple hundred pounds of oddly colored cement or something like it dropped down on that spot in one ball. The pseudo cement instantly hardened and started to change color. Kid Flash also heard another mechanical action taking place. He could see something spraying out from nozzles at the control booth, mist settling down on the floor around it. Just in case I get close, huh?
Another fusillade of tranq darts all amazingly precise passed through his center of gravity from six different directions pinging away on the hard floor and another 300 pound dollop of pseudo cement squished down on the spot where Kid Flash had stood. It'd scarcely landed when he noticed more of that same mist as had been spread in front of the control booth expanding forth from nozzles near the middle of the building. And he got a whiff of it this time. Cyanocryolate! Super glue!
And another round of tranq darts went flying at him. Because he was remaining solid enough to smell the mist, he decided to try and dodge them. He leaped into the air at super speed, resetting the clock in his own frame of reference to something much slower so that the small black darts seemed to be going very slow. Their pattern was, again, that they all shot right for his center of gravity, just below his navel from different points at the ceiling. His leap carried him over two of the trajectories and he got out of the way of two others with a twist of his hips. The other two barely missed his waist and his ear respectively. Kid Flash thought of the scene in the Matrix of Keanu Reeves dodging bullets.
Too risky. This is ridiculous, he decided. If I try to overcome his gauntlet of challenges it'll be too many things at once. Closed spaces aren't the thing for me. I think I'll just get out of this space, he decided. To his left, was a section of floor running the length of the building covered by steel plates six feet across. Kid Flash could see some space below the plate through a gap between plates. Just as the mist was reaching his position along with a fresh barrage of tranq darts, he vibrated his molecules and dropped into the narrow space below the plate. Just as he hoped, the conveyor belt above had been run by motors below and there was space in the dark there beside the old motors, not much but enough for the slender teen to squeeze by, which he did, at 200 miles an hour, zooming to the end of the building by the control booth.
Gizmo's eyes went wide at the disappearance of Kid Flash.
"Uh-"
A red gloved fist seemed to reach out from the floor beneath him to punch him before he could add the second syllable and then, as he looked up woozily from the floor, the whole red and yellow clad speedster was bent over him brandishing a fist.
"Gimme a reason, you lawn gnome gone bad! Gimme a reason!"
Gizmo flinched and winced and cringed for a few seconds expecting to get hit. He finally relaxed. Kid Flash thought it over and smacked him, knocking him out. Too many things to worry about with this little jerk. What's he got, a dozen pockets in that outfit? Any money he's got a last ditch weapon or a booby trap in half of 'em. No thanks. Sandman for you, you little bastard.
It took a few minutes but Kid Flash was able to figure out how to turn on some lighs and turn off the tranq guns at the ceiling and stop the super glue mists from spraying. He found a control for the instant drying concrete spewer also on the ceiling and used it to spew a walkable path over the super glue floor from the booth to the curtained area at one corner of the building. Next, he saw a lever labeled "L4 Power". He yanked that back to the 'off' position and heard the dying of the deep hum of the level 4 force fields turning off. He ran to the control booth door and threw it open with a shout.
"JINX!"
"Wally!" he heard her shout back from somewhere inside the curtained area. He sped across the concrete path he'd made over the super glue to the thick plastic curtain and pushed it open to get inside. There, in a 12 by 12 cage raised a foot off the surrounding floor with force field generating motors around it, was Jinx. She was wearing her usual goth outfit and her eyes were glowing hot pink, anxious to bash her way out of there. A hex of pink energy flowed forth from her fingertips and the bars off the cage on one side cracked and split and withered to dust in just a few seconds. She walked forward and pushed the remaining metal outward with her dainty hand then stepped down He zipped to her side and took her in his arms. They kissed so long that they transmitted most of what they would have said to each other anyway through the emotional exchange. Most of what remained got across in their joyful, relieved stares at each other that followed. Perhaps the last necessary communication was made when he took her dainty hand, the one that had pushed aside steel it had pulverized, between his two red gloves and kissed it, staring into her eyes over it.
It didn't seem odd to them that they walked out the serpentine hallway path to the main entrance door without saying a word. They occasionally glanced at each other and let out an unavoidable sigh. At the door, she pressed two fingers to the skin over his ribs where a hole had been torn in his uniform. Her expression was the question. He shrugged a response of its insignificance then pushed the door open and they stepped outside into the dusk.
They were immediately hit by police searchlight.
"Titans! Go!" Kid Flash heard shouted and threw the blinding glare saw the feet of all five Teen Titans running at them. What the hell? He waved his arms. "Hold on! Hold on! She's on our side" he shouted. He was surprised that this frantic message worked so perfectly and that no one threw a punch or birdarang.
"You're lucky it was one of us with you" said Raven to Jinx.
"I try and always carry a hero with me wherever I go" quippedJinx. "They come in awful handy"
"Not just a hero" Cyborg told her. "He's a titan"
"What! What happened to 'don't call us, we'll call you'" Kid Flash demanded of Robin standing toe to toe with the boy wonder.
"We called you" said Beast Boy. "At least we tried to. Do you have a little sister who acts obnoxious on the phone?"
Kid Flash sighed. "Not just on the phone"
"We called you last night after the vote that morning" said Cyborg, "But she wouldn't put you on the line and obviously didn't pass along the message. You're in" he grinned.
Kid Flash's gaze swung back and forth looking at each of the Titans in turn. "I . . I'm . . in? I'm in? Really?"
"Yes. We now have orange hair in our group" chirped Starfire.
Kid Flash looked to Jinx and she hugged him about the shoulders. "Congratulations" she whispered. "I know how much you wanted this"
"But she's not" said Robin bursting the mood. "She's wanted for armed robbery of the Jump City Bank"
"She didn't do that" explained Kid Flash. "The HIVE got a lookalike who dyed her hair pink and wore pink contacts and got an instant tan spray of Jinx's color instead of coppertone"
"They faked the hexes, too" added Jinx. "When they had me in the cage Gizmo explained how. Some kind of hologram thing she had under her sleeve"
"They broke into Tropiskin Tanning Salon to-"
"Tropiskin?" muttered Raven.
Kid Flash shrugged. "At the corner of Monroe and Bolivar, not far from here. They set off the alarms on the way out but the police didn't take it seriously because nothing'd been stolen. But I got a sample of the gray stuff they used instead of the usual tan mix and brought it to police headquarters there. You'll also notice on the bank's video that the girl pretends like she's filling out a withdrawal slip writing with her right hand but Jinx is lefthanded"
Robin turned to Cyborg.
"I've seen her writing, Rob. She's a lefty"
"Why did they do all that?" asked Robin.
"Because they wanted to try and force her to go back to being a villain, to being with them. They hoped that people would jump to conclusions on the basis of the bank's video and that Jinx would be wanted forever more by the police,that she'd be forced to be a villain and hopefully go back to being one of them." explained Kid Flash. "Daylight robbery with no effort to stop the filming isn't really their M.O. They just did it to try and get Jinx back."
Captain Brennan came forth from the surrounding cordon of police cars now.
"You'll vouch for her being lefthanded, too?" he asked Cyborg.
"He already told you that?" asked an annoyed Cyborg.
"Well, we weren't sure he wasn't just trying to help her out no matter what the truth was"
"He's a Titan!" declared Cyborg and he shook his head in disgust.
Brennan backed off and took a call over his walkie talkie. After a little back and forth with the other side of the line. He approached the group of heroes again.
"Uh, officers Colavito and Strickland just arrested a girl named Cindy Marcuse. It seems Miss Marcuse's fingerprints were on a withdrawal slip showing that she was in the bank at the time of the robbery and she was found in her apartment with half her skin still, um, like that" he said pointing to Jinx.
"She's uh, she's free to go" said Brennan which inspired an immediate kiss between Kid Flash and Jinx. They rubbed noses after that, finally interrupted by Robin.
"What about the HIVE?" he asked.
"They're all in there" he said "I knocked all of 'em out and Gizmo's defense system was spraying tranq darts all over the place. Check on him first. The others should be way way out"
Robinran past them into the warehouse and he could be heard shouting "Oh jeez!"
"Oh", said Kid Flash to the others. "There's super glue all over the floors. Watch out"
An hour later, with the HIVE all rounded up and loaded into their special level 4 paddywagon and Robin resigned to the loss of his shoes, Kid Flash approached the about to depart Titans.
"What do I do next?"
"Come to the Tower at 11 am tomorrow. We'll start the process"
He nodded and waved goodbye for now with one arm around Jinx.