November. Instant friendship, just add adrenaline-fueled teamwork p.2

They met Clara outside school and handed over the tests.

"Thank you so much," she gushed. "You saved my dad."

"Don't mention it," Dick smiled. "Seriously. Don't tell your friends about any of this."

"Gotcha," she replied, winking.

As she walked away, Dick glanced at Victor. "Uh, good job back there, man. If you hadn't distracted those guys, they might've caught me."

The other three smiled, picturing a ceasefire between the two belligerent boys.

But Victor scowled at him. "Good job? Who'd you think you are, my coach? Who made you leader anyway?"

Dick frowned. "I'm just saying."

"If you hadn't kept us from taking the papers out the window, we could've gotten those papers with less risk."

"It was the right thing to do," Dick argued. "And if you don't like me making decisions, don't look to me to make them."

"You're the only one who looks to you for decisions!"

"Okay, what's your problem with me?" Dick snapped. "Is it because I'm younger than you, or is your head really that big from being good at throwing a ball around once upon a time?"

They thought Victor's head would explode. "You!" he boomed. "You think you're so smart because you made a fake club! You think you're pulling a fast one over everyone!"

"A club you're taking advantage of! Don't stay if you're gonna criticize it!"

"Fine! Then I quit!" shouted Victor, and he stalked away.

"Good, let him go," he heard Dick say, and it made Victor walk faster.

It was just as well. Now he was free of those losers.

He crossed the school, taking a route he knew well. He started to smile as soon as he caught sight of the football field. Sure enough, his friends were still at practice. The familiar sounds and cries greeted him as he neared the field.

Victor leaned on the netting fence as his friends gradually noticed him.

"Hey! It's Vic! Hey, man!"

Jerry, Zach and Seth came to the fence.

Zach asked, "Wanna throw the ball around? Practice's almost over."

"Actually, I had something more permanent in mind," said Victor, smiling. "I'm gonna ask coach to let me back in the team."

For something he'd been gearing up to say for a while and that gave him a great deal of excitement, his announcement didn't cause the reaction he expected.

His friends' smiles fell, and they looked at each other doubtfully.

"I thought you couldn't play anymore," said Jerry.

Victor sputtered, "I mean, a few months ago, yeah, when I was still getting used to the… implants, but…" he looked at his friends' faces. "I'm over that. I've got everything under control …Why're you looking at me like that? I'm fine!"

Zach spoke up. "Vic, dude, we all remember when you smashed a desk trying to-"

"That was four months ago!" Victor cut him off.

"But they're not just implants, are they?" asked Seth, who'd never been one to mince words. "You said your legs can sense earthquakes, right? You said your fake eye could see in the dark."

"That has nothing to do with football," said Victor.

"That can qualify as an unfair advantage by the rulebook," Seth persisted, as the other two avoided Vic's eyes. "That can make other schools say we're cheating."

Victor's face darkened. "So I can't control my body or I have an unfair advantage!? Which one is it, man!?"

"Vic, don't get upset," Jerry tried, but Seth muttered, "It's really both."

Coach Harris had made his way over. "What's going on here?"

"Nothing," answered Victor. "Forget about it."

He let go of the fence and stalked off. The fact that his friends didn't try to call him back –that they seemed relieved this was done and over with- hurt more than the entire confrontation.

Victor walked back home in the dusk, feeling like he'd lost something important.

He saw it now. Deep down, he'd been waiting for the day he could waltz back into his old life. Now he was laying that hope to rest.

He had more metal in his body than skin, he still couldn't look in a mirror without wincing, and now he was all alone. Vic got a flash of himself eating alone the next day in lunch, like the freak he was. How had he fallen so far?

He should have died in that accident. It wasn't the first time he'd thought it. He should have gone out in a blaze of glory. 'Star player tragically killed in a car accident' was a better headline than 'Star player comes back as a cyborg freak no one wants around anymore, left to beg for the scraps of his old life'. Then at least he'd be remembered as a whole person—then at least all of this would be over.

He was self-aware enough to know this was his shallowness talking. If he felt he'd fallen in life, that was just his idea that he somehow deserved to be popular, so now he was being robbed of something. But no one was safe from tragedy turning their life upside down: he knew that now.

The new obvious, glaring truth was that he fit in more with that group of weirdoes from the Club.

With Gar, who was preternaturally obnoxious; Kori, so sweet and so awkward; and Raven who… well, Vic didn't have any set opinions about Raven yet. Sometimes he forgot she was even there. And then there was Dick.

Vic's face curdled at the pavement. That little shit. Victor remembered him as a gymnastics prodigy in elementary school. That kid could be doing anything with his life, and yet there he was, letting his gifts shrivel. He didn't even know how good he had it: he still had the choice to waste them.

The announcement came in the middle of third period. The speakers came to life and Principal Blood's voice said, "My students. As your principal it is my sad duty to announce that the SAT exams taken last Monday… have been lost. If they do not appear, the SATs will be scheduled to be retaken."

Kori froze in her seat. Surely she'd understood it wrong. Surely he wasn't saying what she thought he was saying. She turned in her seat to look at Dick, just to be sure, and she saw the same shocked expression in him. Then he shook his head slightly at her, and Kori got the message. She turned around and pretended everything was normal.

This classroom was mostly freshmen, so no one despaired. But they heard the shouts and cries from other classes. That finally convinced Kori a catastrophe had happened.

After being let out of class, she asked Dick, "What happened? Do you think she had not returned the tests to her father? That they do not know yet? Or…"

"Or we've been tricked somehow," finished Dick.

Next period was lunch, and it became the first time the five of them had lunch together.

"You guys heard that announcement?" asked Gar, sitting with Kori and Dick.

"Indeed we did," said Kori.

Gar was startled when Raven set her tray and sat beside him. "What the hell happened?" she asked.

"We've been played is what happened," said Victor, coming up behind her. "Clara tricked us."

"But why?" asked Kori.

"Okay, here's what we know," started Dick. "The tests were stolen. We had them in our hands. We gave them to Clara, and she didn't return them. …Who were those guys we stole them from?"

"That's what we should've found out before we took the tests back," said Vic. "We should've checked her story. Maybe her dad isn't even an officiator! Damn it, how were we so dumb?"

"It's useless to dwell on what we didn't do," said Raven. "For now, we need to find out who that girl's father is, and who lived in that house."

"Good idea," said Dick.

Gar said, "Guys. Clara is sitting at the popular girls' table now."

The five looked. Their first client was sitting beside Jade and Angel. Kitty, banished to the other side of the table, did not look happy.

"What are you thinking?" prompted Dick.

"Maybe she did this as a favor to for them," said Gar. "I mean, she's just a sophomore, right? What does she care about the SATs? But Jade is a senior."

"This was her last chance to take the exam," said Victor.

"You think she blew them?" Raven posed. "And asked Clara to get a hold of them so she'd have another go?"

"We need to confront her," Vic stated.

"No," said Dick. "No one's confronting her until we know more."

"Here we go again," Victor bristled. "Man, listen for once in your life!"

"Are you gonna fight every suggestion I make?" Dick challenged.

"Are you gonna keep giving orders like you're the boss of us!?"

And the other three leaned back to get distance from their loud argument.

When the end of lunch was near and they hadn't arrived to a conclusion, Dick said, "Let's go to class. We'll reconvene at the club this afternoon."

And so came the first time everyone was early to the clubroom.

"Okay, so far we think Clara worked this with Jade and Angel," said Dick as form of greeting.

"Should we not tell a school authority of all this?" asked Kori.

"That's the last thing we should do," said Dick. "We're the ones who stole the tests. This could turn ugly for us pretty quickly."

Raven raised her hand. "I'm team finding out as much as we can before we do anything else."

"We should get a computer in here," said Gar, looking around the clubroom.

Vic stood up. "Let's go to my house. It's close by."

A block away from Vic's house, Raven asked them to stop.

"Let me call home quick," she said.

"Do you wanna just use my phone?" offered Dick.

"No, I'm calling a landline," Raven replied, never slowing down on her way down the street.

It took a while for Vic to realize she was walking towards a payphone. Before today, he'd had no idea there was a public payphone down his own block, and he'd lived in that house all his life. Funny the things you didn't notice when you didn't need them.

"Guess she wasn't lying about not having a cell phone, huh?" Gar commented.

"Yeah, and it seems her parents don't have one, either," replied Vic.

Dick tried to picture Raven's parents. He imagined formal, upright people. They were probably strict, if they didn't let her have a phone and wanted her to call when she was a little late.

Once Raven returned, they went on to Victor's house.

Vic's house was a medium-sized detached house ten streets away from the school. From the outside it looked stylish and modern. Inside, it was sheer chaos. The house was an open-floor plan. There was the living room, a dining area and a kitchen along the furthest wall, and there was mess as far as the eye could see.

Old food containers and trash on the counters, chairs and a couch covered with clothes, books on the floor in front of teeming bookcases. They followed Vic without a word as he led them through a clean path to their left. It led to his bedroom, which was a perfect contrast. When he opened a window, they saw a perfectly clean and tidy bedroom.

"Here's the computer," he said, cracking the laptop open over an ample desk. "Knock yourselves out. I'll go get us some food."

When he came back with snacks, Dick was sitting to his laptop. "We found Clara's dad in LinkedIn and he's a dentist," he told Victor.

"Okay, so that's fuel to the theory of her plotting with Jade," said Vic, giving out bags of chips. "Now how do we find out who that was in the house where the tests were?"

"We could look through a phone book," said Raven.

Gar looked at her in askance. "We don't need a phone, Raven, we need an address."

"Seriously?" she returned. "You've never opened at a phone book?"

"I don't even know if we have one," said Vic, standing up. "Let me check."

He came back a while later with an old one he'd found at the bottom of the living room's bookcase. "I don't know what good it'll do, though," he said as he handed it to Raven. "I mean, are you gonna look through every name in town?"

"I just want to see it," she said simply.

Vic shrugged and let her be. "The LinkedIn profile didn't give out his address?"

"It didn't," said Dick.

Kori asked, "Have you searched the address where we went?"

Dick tried it. The first page of results yielded no results; the following ones didn't either.

Then Raven said, "Guys, the house we went to is owned by a guy named Crock." She had her finger on a line in the phone book.

"As in Jade Nguyen-Crock!?" reacted Gar.

Victor covered his face with his hands. "You're telling me… that the guy we thought was selling the tests to some kid… was Jade's dad?"

"Wait, that makes sense!" Dick jumped to his feet, needing space to accommodate the realization he was having. "That's why those two were tense going into the house, but then they turned around and had a whole conversation by the car. They felt the tests were safe as soon as they were out of the house. Jade's dad was trying to get them away from her."

"I found him on Jade's Instagram," Gar announced, showing them the picture on his phone. "The guy we saw was definitely her dad."

"Search him on LinkedIn," instructed Kori.

"His name is Lawrence Crock," supplied Raven.

Everyone waited in anticipation as Dick searched for him. "Found him," he said. And then, "And he's an STA officiator."

Victor leaned back, floored. "So Jade was probably inside the house, and we were her living alibi that she wasn't stealing the tests."

"Holy shit, she's an evil genius," said Gar.

The five seemed to exhale a collective breath.

Then Dick clapped his hands. "Okay, we know what happened, now how do we get those tests back?"

"Oh, this keeps going?" went Vic. "I was kinda done with all of this."

Dick glared at him. "We have to see this through."

"We don't really have to do anything," Vic returned. "What I'm thinking is, we already got played. The damage is done. We should cut out losses and let it go."

"How can you not want to fix this?" Dick asked him.

"Please do not fight again!" called Kori.

Dick minded her, and he and Vic both took a step back. Dick tried to make his tone civil. "We can't let Jade get away with this. We'd be letting kids who studied hard have to retake their SATs, all because we're too lazy to-"

"It's not our problem!" Vic cut him off. "Why're you making your own life hard?"

"We have a chance to do the right thing here. I just think we should take it."

"You wanna go around solving people's problems now? Who do you think we are, the Team Titans?"

Dick paused. Victor was telling him, You're acting like a child playing at superheroes, so Dick was supposed to look admonished. But when Vic said it like that, Dick realized something else.

"No. The Titans would never bother with this type of thing," he said quietly. "That's why it's up to people like us. Look, there's a million things in the world that we can't change. But we have the chance to fix this one thing right now," he shrugged, "and I just really think we should take it."

Dick's mouth had kind of kept going without his consent. He didn't know where his words had come from. The four other kids looked at Dick as if they didn't know how to react, which was appropriate, because Dick didn't know what to make of his outburst either. He half expected them to burst out laughing.

Raven was the first to say, "I'm in."

Everyone's gaze turned to her. Her expression was serious, and as unreadable as ever. She wasn't kidding.

"I agree," said Kori, beaming. "I want to mend this as well."

"Screw it, I'm down," said Gar. "What's the worst that could happen?"

Victor looked at them. He'd never been one to go out of his way to resist peer pressure. "Fine. I guess I need to make sure you all don't get yourselves expelled." He turned to Dick. "How're you gonna do this, wonder boy?"

"I have a plan," he replied. "Follow me."

They got to what they now knew to be Jade's house to see Jade herself sitting on her porch, open books around her.

She smiled when she saw them arrive. "Oh look, it's the Project Club."

"Studying for the new exam date, Jade?" asked Victor.

"The tests going missing were a stroke of luck for a bunch of people," she said sweetly, and stood. "Guess you figured everything out. Good for you. Bit late, though."

Kori went forward. "We are not leaving until you give back the exams you arranged to steal."

"You think I'd be so dumb as to keep them in the house?" Jade returned. Though watching Kori warily, she seemed emboldened by the fact that Dick was safely holding her back. "I gave them to Kitty. Good luck going past her house's security. She has her dad wrapped around her finger," she said, her tone getting a note of resentment towards the end. She threw her hair back. "Look, children, eat it. You got tricked. Get over it. Go home."

Dick said, "What if we were to tell your dad, the SAT officiator, that you stole the tests?"

"Go ahead," Jade retorted. "Dad already thinks I did it. He just has no proof against me, and neither do you."

"Yeah, until now," said Gar, taking out his phone. "Until you confessed to everything and we recorded it."

Jade blanched. "We live in a two-party consent state," she spluttered.

"What?" asked Dick.

"It means you'll get in trouble for recording me without my knowledge!"

"Yeah, after you get in trouble for stealing SAT tests," said Dick, rolling his eyes. "Keep up."

"Come on, Jade. It's over," said Vic. "Return the tests by tomorrow or we give this recording to Blood. Simple."

She only glared at them, like she refused to give them the satisfaction of hearing her agree. Dick shrugged and turned to walk away, the others following after.

They were almost out of her front lawn, when Jade suddenly jumped on Gar's back with no warning. Gar yelped and tried to shake her off. Dick lunged forward to get Gar's phone, and at the same time Kori lunged and picked Jade clean off his back. She held Jade down on the ground by the shoulders, and instructed something potently threatening in another language. Meanwhile, Dick quickly uploaded Gar's recording to the Cloud. Just in case.

They managed to walk off in peace after that. Kori looked positively upbeat after finally getting to trash Jade around. That worried Dick just a little bit.

The next day at school, the five were unable to think about anything else until the speakers came to life during first period, and Blood announced that the tests had been found and results were going to be announced in time. Only then did the five truly breathe, in each of their classrooms. Vic's Algebra class clapped.

"Yeah, not the way I imagined Jade Nguyen-Crock jumping my bones," Gar said over lunch. "But hey, I'll take it!"

"Do you think people will someday know that we allowed the exams to be saved?" Kori asked the others.

"Probably not," said Vic.

"I think Jade's gonna make sure this whole thing gets buried," said Dick.

"If we tried to tell someone it was us…" started Raven.

"They'd just think we were crazy," finished Gar.

Dick smiled. "Good. Who here wants to be famous, right?"

They talked about their success with all the more gusto because Jade and Angel kept glaring daggers at them from their table. Clara was nowhere to be seen. Only Kitty looked cheerful.

"Look, I'll admit it," started Victor. "It was a good deed, and I'm not sorry we did it. Even though we didn't have to." He pointed a fork at Dick as he said this.

Dick smiled back as all response.

"…So was this a one-time thing?" Raven asked.

Gar wondered whether she was asking more than was apparent. Not just about the Club, but about them as friends. Today they had come together for lunch naturally –even Victor had forsaken his football friends!-, and Gar almost dared to hope this kept up. He didn't want it to be a one-time thing, either.

"Well…" Dick trailed off. "I mean if people keep thinking the P stands for Patrol… and they keep coming to us for help… who are we to deny them?"

"The Club could really be what we told Clara it was," said Kori, smiling.

"Still think it's not our job," muttered Vic.

Dick looked straight at Victor. "Are you doing something better with your time?"

Vic looked back at him. "Honestly, I'm not."

"I know I'm not!" declared Gar. "I'm all in." He made a show of raising his juice carton for a toast. "Here's to our first mission!" No one bumped their drink against his, so Gar bumped his against Dick's himself. "And to many more like it," he declared, and then he drank.

Dick couldn't help but smile back at him; Gar's excitement was contagious.

Thanks for reading!

Next chapter's up on Thursday, and we get some insight into Raven! And also the first BBxRae! (I'm so excited)