A/N: Sorry about the huge delay, Real Life has got me all caught up and I haven't had much time for this, and if I have any readers left…Thank you for your reviews. I got pretty good feedback on the notation I used in chapter seven, so I will continue using it henceforth. And here you were all thinking (and celebrating) that I was dead. Well, joke's on you.
Disclaimer: As an impending birthday present to myself, I am giving me the Teen Titans… wait, I can't do that, you say, massive lawsuit, you saw? I take it back, I take it all back!
The ApartmentRobin crouched down next to the badly splintered table; he was on the left side of it and leaned over to each side to see the damage of both sides. He studied it for a moment, then picked up a shell casing, one of the hundreds littering the floor.
"5.56, the standard caliber for half the armies on the planet, and the standard for just about every assault-rifle wielding thug or mercenary in business." Robin dropped the casing and hit the floor with a small clang, rolling into another few shells and coming to a rest.
"And the table, took quite a beating, looks like most of the shots hit it, man, they sure don't make 'em like this anymore…" Robin felt the battered surface of the table, dozens of lead bullets imbedded within it.
He felt something that seemed out of place and moved over, slightly, to see what he had found. He saw a very broken and very thick piece of glass in the middle of the table, between the wood, which he could only assume was bulletproof.
"They really don't make 'em like this…" He said with a little humor in his voice.
"Make what like 'them' anymore, Robin." Starfire asked, hovering a few inches above the ground before she touched down and walked forward.
"Oh, Star, nothing," Robin said slightly startled by being woken from his transfixion on the table "this table was just prepared for a firefight…bulletproof glass." He added, seeing her confusion and pointing to the shattered, splintered table.
"We didn't find anything, Robin." Cyborg said as he and Raven reentered the room.
"I didn't eith—" Beast Boy had just stepped in when he stopped, he was staring at his feet "I've got something." He bent over, reaching down, and lifted his right foot slightly. He plucked a small, paper card off his shoe and handed it to Robin. "Uh, must have missed it." He laughed.
"Gunz4hire. Mercenaries and bounty hunters. 'You flag 'em we tag 'em.' (464) 383—" Robin read the card for the entire team to hear. He looked up, a small amount of annoyance could be heard in is voice.
"What the hell kind of Mercenaries put out business cards?"
Jump City Outskirts
Ariel looked to his right and spat a fair about of blood, saliva, and sweet onto the floor, then turned his head back to his 'interrogator'. "So who are you guys? What kind of Mercenaries bring 30 guys with them to get two extraordinary thieves?"
"I'm the Merc, the only real one anyway," the man brought his fist down hard, across Ariel's face "those assholes are just space-filling meat, just put them in sharp uniforms, give them all the same guns" he gave him a left hook in the jaw, Ariel saw a tooth go flying from his mouth "and they look well trained and organized." He brought his open palm fast up against Ariel's forehead, knocking his head back violently. "It's good for business." He added, laying both hands on Ariel's shoulders and bringing his knee into his victim's stomach.
Ariel let out a wheezing gasp of pain, as he was unable to breath for almost a full minuet. He was barely able to keep his head up and it drooped down, his chin close to his chest.
"Now, you gotta tell me, where would the girl go?" The interrogator asked, his had dropping to his side, an old pair of grungy looking pliers in it.
Somewhere in Jump City"50."
"I'm out."
"See it, and raise you 100."
"I'm out."
"Me too."
"I'll see it."
"I'm in."
"Too rich for my blood."
"I call."
"Ha! Read 'em and weep boys." Said a middle-aged, slightly overweight man with a Brooklyn accent, as he fanned out a hand of four aces and a jack.
The other players folded up their cards and threw them in the middle of the table as the winner began to rake in the large pile of poker chips.
Just as he got the chips back to his own pile the door he was sitting with his back to exploded off it's hinges and smashed into his back, sending him flying along with the overturned table.
A figure burst into the room, covered in shadow.
The other three men were stunned. But only for a moment. Beer cans and poker chips, wooden splinters and playing cards flew around the room in a veritable hailstorm. Only aided by the many large fans in the room for the summer heat.
They rose to their feet. Black Thorn burst forth from the shadow into the sole circle of light and the flash of her red armor was the last thing the men remembered seeing. Three seconds later, they were all falling down, save one.
One low mid-level thug at a low-level poker game, in wrong place, at the wrong time. About half way through the interrogation, he made a funny, funny joke involving himself, Black Thorn, a case of tequila, and her sister, in his mind he later filed this as 'the worst mistake of my life'.
Black Thorn walked up the small set of steps from the basement used as a poker room into the back alley.
'Mercenaries hired by a shipping company on the outskirts of town, but the shipping company is just a front. So who owns it?'
The night air was swelteringly hot, and the humidity was compounding it, giving her the feeling of almost being suffocated.
"Fuckin' heat." She muttered as she pulled an overcoat on. It was noticeable, but less conspicuous than red body-armor. She would have just jumped from one roof to the next, but the streets in this part of town were too wide, so she darted out from the alley, into the bright street, dodging and spinning, bobbing and weaving through the heavy, Friday-night traffic, finally doing a flip over a speeding BMW that nearly ran her down. She caught the license plate; she'd get to him later.
Black Thorn shed the coat and threw it away; it stuck the alley wall and crumpled into a pile on the pavement. Sweat beaded down her forehead before she wiped it away with the back of her right, gloved hand.
The suit and armor were all of the lightest possible materials, all intended to 'breath' and disperse heat, or retain it in cold, but the humidity conquered that, and its technological prowess was no match for the simple water in the air.
'I'll take any odds that the owner of shipping company is just another holding company.' She thought as she took out her cell phone and ducked around a corner, into an even darker part of the alley.
She dialed a number and held the phone to her ear. It was ringing, but no one was picking up the other line.
"Come on. Pick up, come on…" She was tapping her foot nervous and impatiently.
"Hello?" A voice came over the line drowsily.
"Boost, thank god, I thought you weren't home—hey wait a minuet, you sound groggy. Were you asleep? On a Friday night, at 11?"
"For your information, there is a very important Science Fiction convention tomorrow and I need to be up early to get in line for the costume contest,"
"Ok, don't really want to know." She leaned back against the cool, dirty brick alley wall. "I need a check on a the owner of a company by the name of Overland Shipping and Freight. As deep as you can go."
"Sure thing, Thorn. I'm already at my computer terminal. Call you back as soon as I've gone in as far as I can go."
"Thanks. I'm gone." She lowered the phone and hit a button, ending the call.
Jump City OutskirtsRobin came to a halt in the gravel parking lot of a large warehouse complex; turning off the R-Cycle he removed his helmet and got off the bike.
The T-Car pulled up behind him a moment later and the rest of the Titans climbed out.
"Titans, this place is massive. Raven, Starfire, Beast Boy, I want you all to fly around the perimeter, check for anything out of the ordinary, and look for a better place to enter then the front door."
The Titans gave their acknowledgement and went off to fly around the gargantuan complex.
"Yo, Robin. What are we supposed to be doing while they check the place out?" Cyborg asked just as the other Titans were about to leave.
"We, Cyborg, are going to come up with a plan. An attack plan." Robin responded, turning to his cybernetic companion.
Cyborg was about to say something when the front entrance, a large metal garage door desigened to let semi-trucks in and out slid nosily open. Standing at the frame, were two very shocked looking men in what looked to be army-surplus urban fatigues. For a moment, the Titans looked at the men, and the men looked back at them. Concomitantly, Robin shouted
"Titans go!" and the men went for the sub-machineguns slung around their shoulders.
Just as the men got their weapons to waist level a shower of starbolts and energy-clad objects threw them off their feet, sending them flying into the side of a parked truck and leaving them unconscious.
"Ok," Robin said, after walking forward to examine the two men "we don't need to check for an entrance any more." He motioned for the other Titans to regroup and move into the massive building.
"Know I know these guys don't seem to be the sharpest tools in the shed, but let's not underestimate them. Got it?" Robin said just after all the Titans were inside and heading across the large staging area.
"Don't worry, Robin," Beast Boy offered, resting his hand on the wall next to him "we got it cover—" he faltered as his hand pressed into the wall slightly, due to the large, red button, labeled "Alarm" that he had rested on.
Red lights began to flash, and a loud siren started to blare. The other lights went off, leaving the flashing red bulbs as their only source of light.
"Beast Boy" Robin said, bathed in darkness. Beast Boy instantly looked over, a meek expression on his face. The red lights flashed again, revealing Robin's smoldering anger, and stark glare at Beast Boy.
Several doors on the scaffolding that encircled the room burst open and in the blinking lights the Titans saw more then a dozen men filing into the room and taking up tactical positions.
The sound of at least 20 weapons being charged snapped the teen superheroes out of their undefended stances, watching the men rush in. They quickly took to a standard formation and steeled themselves for a fight. The red lights continued to flash every few seconds, but the siren was no long on, obviously silenced from somewhere else.
The Titans all looked down at themselves, small red dots were visible on each of them, a lot of them, even in the flashing light, when the laser's owners were in view for only a brief moment.
Robin looked down, then back up, at his team
"This isn't good."
A/N: Ok, it took me forever to write this chapter, it really did, I am sorry if there were any of you who were actively reading this series, now that school is out and I got laid off of my job I will have a little more time to write. I think I will be going on a little hiatusfrom this story as it took me so lon to get out a new chapter and I havea few otherideas I want to pursue. Anyway, give some reviews if you can, I know it's shameless…but they make me happy…
