Disclaimer: The Teen Titans most definitely aren't mine… trust me, you'd know if they were!
Gunsmoke and Black Roses—Chapter Five.
Sub-Zero sat on the roof of Titan's Tower, cross-legged and with his head propped up on his hands. It was a quiet night, and the only sounds to be heard were the young warrior's heavy sighs…
It had been a little over two months now since he'd been to Norblitz. And… although he'd never admit it, especially to his darling, Jinx… he kind of missed the place. But he did not regret his decision to leave it for Jump City. He may have loved Norblitz, but… he loved a certain pink-haired sorceress much, much more.
Right now, Zero was deep in thought… but it was interrupted by the door that led back inside the tower. He heard it close behind him. The knight looked back and saw Smoke walking onto the roof, brand new Sniper Rifle in hand.
"Oh… Zero! Didn't know you were out here!" he said.
"Hi Smoke…." Sub-Zero responded with a nod. "What are you doing out this late?"
The gunman grinned enthusiastically. "Oh, I'm just breakin' this baby in." he chuckled, stroking the gun's barrel with gusto.
Then, he pointed down off the edge of the roof. "Y'see that target I set up down there?"
Zero squinted his crimson eyes… and after a moment, he thought he could make out a tiny, black spot in the middle of an empty, sand field. "Uhh…. That?"
"Yep… that's it. I'm gonna blow that sucker away!" Smoke declared proudly, levering a bullet into the rifle chamber.
"Really?" Zero looked down again and added. "Um…. I don't mean to discourage you, but…. You DO realize we're on top of a 10 story skyscraper?"
"Don't matter! This sweet thing can hit anything." The gunner assured him firmly.
"Well then… mind if I watch?" Zero asked in mild amusement.
"Course not! You just sit right there, and ol' Smoke's gonna show ya a thing or two about aiming…"
Smoke stomped confidently over to the very edge of the rooftop, and checked to make sure the rifle was loaded. Afterwards, he gave the weapon one, last looking-over. He held it up; squinted one eye closed, and looked through the large scope. The gunner took a deep breath, and held it, so as not to let his aim waver. He focused hard… found the tiny, distant target…. Lined up the exact center of the crosshair with the target… concentrated… and…
… KAAAOOOOOOOPPPPOOOOOOAAAWWWSSHH!
Zero yelped, flinched, and covered his ears as a powerful, incredibly loud gunshot pierced the night… the rifle delivered the bullet so effectively, that it left a thick trail of billowing, white smoke into space. The gunshot echoed out into the night air, and a second later it was joined by a new sound… the muffled, distant sound of splintering wood.
The knight looked down and stared in shock… the little dot that was the wooden target… wasn't there anymore. In it's place was a bunch of little chunks and pieces along the ground…
"YEE-HAW! Yeah Baby! I told you, didn't I?" Smoke asked with a pleased laugh. He was proud of both his marksmanship and his craftsmanship, for building such a magnificent firearm.
"…Oh…Uh…" Zero, still shaking a little from the loud, sudden gunshot. "Yeah! Splendid! I knew you could do it…" he said finally, regaining his composure.
"Yeah, well…" Smoke suddenly lost a good bit of his enthusiasm. "… Listen, Zero… anything wrong? When I came up here, you… didn't look so good."
Sub-Zero looked around for a moment and took a deep breath.
"Well…" he started. "If I tell you… will you promise not to tell anyone? Especially not Jinx!"
Smoke did a quick military salute and clicked his boots together. "You can count on me! I'll tell nobody, not a soul!"
Zero nodded. "You see… it's like this. Robin's probably told you already that I'm not from here, and….
Meanwhile, down in Jinx's Room…
Jinx awoke with a startled cry. Her room was pretty high up in the Tower; most of the others were down below… and she had heard Smoke's gunshot loud and clear.
She got up, wearing a purple nightgown and black slippers, and walked up to the roof to investigate the noise. She was nervous… why would anyone be shooting? What were they shooting at?
She walked up to the door leading to the roof… and saw that it was cracked open. Somebody was up there… so, she pressed her ear against the crack and listened. Soon, she could make out a pair of familiar voices… Sub-Zero and Smoke.
"… Ah, I gotcha…. You're just getting' a li'l homesick, eh?" she heard Smoke say.
"Yeah… I guess you could say that…" Zero responded.
Jinx gasped. She had noticed Zero behaving oddly lately… was this why? Did he regret coming to live with them? The thought broke her heart…
"Hm… Maybe you oughta go back for a visit?"
"No!" he responded quickly.
Smoke looked startled by the outburst. "Geeze! Just a suggestion…"
"I… I'm sorry…" Zero whispered. "It's just that… I don't want to leave Jinx by herself… I may love my homeland… but not nearly as much as I love her…."
Jinx blushed and sighed softly in relief. 'He does love me… I knew it.' She felt guilty and foolish for ever having doubted him.
"Yeah, well… I'm glad this rifle turned out so well!"
Jinx huffed angrily. 'That damn, trigger-happy moron! He was testing out a gun this time of night? What was he thinking?' He had gotten her all alarmed over nothing…
"Well, I better get some shuteye… don't get too bent out of shape, y'hear man?"
"I won't… Good night, Smoke."
"Right… G'night Zero…"
Jinx, realizing she was about to be caught, gasped and ran back to her room before Smoke found her. She closed her door softly behind her, and lay back down in bed.
"…Zero… why didn't you just tell me?" she wondered to herself. If he was homesick… she was just going to have to do something about it. Sub-Zero had saved her life, and made her feel like no one else ever had… the last thing she wanted was for him to be unhappy.
Meanwhile, Sub-Zero was still sitting on the roof… he sighed softly and looked up at the pure, white moon up in the inky black sky.
"So… En persedel skall uppsagd saktnedd, Je avant de aanwinst le forskjillig voorwerp…" He whispered sadly in his native language. And then, he sat quietly another few minutes before getting up, and going back to his room.
(A/N: En persedel skall uppsagd saktnedd, Je avant de aanwinst le forskjillig voorwerp 'To gain one thing, I must lose another…')
The Next Morning…
Blackfire groaned softly as her eyelids fluttered open. At first, she was surrounded by a spinning blur of colors… and then, things began to come into focus. She was… in a… hospital room? That's what it seemed like…
She looked down and saw she was lying in bed and she had presumably been unconscious for a while.
Then, she remembered everything that had happened. Fleeing to Earth again… hiding in an old, rundown warehouse… she had gotten horribly sick… and then, a boy found her… and her sister, and her friends…
She went over everything that the boy… wasn't his name, Smoke?… everything the boy had said to her.
"He doesn't know anything about me!" she hissed angrily. But, deep inside… she knew everything he had said to be true…
'They thought you were a freak, is that it?' Smoke's words echoed in her mind. 'Believe it or not… I've been called a freak, too.'
She wanted to be angry. She really did. But… she couldn't… and she didn't know why not.
Her first priority right now should have been to find Starfire and kill her… but she couldn't get the young, brown-haired gunman out of her head long enough to focus on that…
"Heheheh… mornin' Sleeping Beauty…" somebody chuckled from the other side of the room.
Blackfire looked over to see Smoke himself standing there, guns, saw, and all.
"You…"
"Uh-huh… you were expecting somebody else?"
Enraged by his sarcasm, she flew out of bed with glowing eyes, intent on taking him out… but he calmly stepped to one side, and she hurtled right by… she hit the wall dead on and slid off comically. Smoke chuckled to himself and stepped over to her.
"You really shouldn't do that…" he said softly. "You'll hurt yourself again."
She looked up with blazingly angry eyes again and tried to lay him out with a punch… but he caught her fist and held it there effortlessly, despite her strength. She stared in disbelief… a Tamaranean shouldn't have been able to stop that punch, much less a little Earthling!
"… (Sigh)… Why do want to fight?" Smoke said sadly.
"… You don't?" she asked, confused and suprised.
"Hell no! Look, I just came down here to check on you, and you happened to wake up while I was down here… about time, too. You've been out for a long time."
Blackfire lowered her fist and looked around. "…Where am I?" she asked after a moment.
"The infirmary."
"…Infirmary?"
"You know, in Titan's Tower."
Blackfire stared at him dully. "So how long?" she asked glumly after a minute.
Smoke sat down on a bed and stared at her, cocking his head to one side. "How long 'till what?" he asked.
"Until they ship me back to Centauri-Space Prison…?" she finished.
Smoke stared at her incredulously for a moment and then burst out laughing. Blackfire screamed angrily at him.
"What the Hell is so funny? Do you realize I'm going to be executed when they get me back there?" she demanded. "Why do you think I escaped? Then again… you'll probably be glad to see me go… you'd be more than happy to have me killed. Maybe, if you're nice to the Centauri officers, they'll even let you shoot me yourself!" She spat.
Smoke held up his hands defensively and cringed. "Calm down, calm down… fact is, you aren't going back to prison… You're going to be staying with us."
Her eyes quit glowing, and she stared wide-eyed with mouth agape.
"…Y-you're serious?" she stammered.
"Sure. We weren't gonna put you in prison with you sick and all… so we brought you back here, and Cy fixed you up with some medicine. He tells me it had some sort of vaccine in it, too. You won't need to worry about getting sick like that again."
She blinked a couple times, and then fell back down on the bed. She stared down for a seconds… then, she looked up and tried to speak, but she had a hard time getting the words out.
"…Why… do you…. Trust me?" she said slowly.
Smoke just shrugged. "Well, for one thing, I'm sure if you'd just try to reconcile with your sister, you'd find you wouldn't even want to hurt her anymore. Star's a forgiving person, after all."
"Forgive…? Forgive? SHE should be the one asking ME for forgiveness!" Blackfire snarled.
"Well then, go ask her for it." Smoke said nonchalantly. "I think she'd be happy to oblige."
Blackfire narrowed her eyes and shook her head. "… What the Hell makes you think they'll be so glad to forgive me?"
"Why wouldn't they?" he countered.
She had no answer ready for that. She just stared some more, and opened her mouth as if about to say something, but then she shut it again.
"Just go talk to them… trust me." Smoke urged with a nod.
Blackfire took a deep breath, and closed her eyes.
"… Maybe….later. I need…. To think…" she mumbled.
"Well then, I'll leave you alone. Just feel free to come out." He said. He began walking out the door and stopped. "Oh, yeah…. One last thing: I didn't mean anything by that 'Sleeping Beauty' crack earlier… although you are beautiful."
Blackfire's face went extremely red, and she looked at him with an expression that could have either been rage or embarrassment.
Before she could reply, he walked out of the infirmary and closed the door shut behind him.
"Oh yeah…" he muttered to himself with a pleased grin. "…She digs me."
And with that, he walked back off to other parts of the Tower, whistling as he went.
That is the end of that chapter. Next chapter: Blackfire reconciles with the Titans…sort've... and Sub-Zero and Smoke find a mysterious statue underground… a statue that looks like… a girl?
Anyway, lots and lots of reviews would be nice... you can never have to many reviews.
P.S. Doc. MeGot… what's your E-Mail address? I didn't know, so I couldn't E-Mail you…
The Mad Phantom…
