Disclaimer: I don't own the Teen Titans in any way, shape or form. Any similarities to anyone's work are purely a co-incidence.
Sorry about the delay, but I've been reworked this chapter several times, before I got something that worked. This one's more Robin - centric, but I don't quite think I got his POV quite right. I don't know if Tim's dad ever asked if he wanted to be Batman, so I improvised.
The Forgotten
Part 3 - observer effect
This takes place before an Infinite Crisis, occurring during a seemingly more innocent time, just after Beast Boys and Girls…
My name is Tim Drake and for now I'm Robin, the boy wonder. Actually, I'm the third boy wonder. The original (Dick Grayson) grew up and calls himself Nightwing, getting out of Batman's shadow. The second (Jason Todd) was brutally murdered by the Joker.
Like many of my friends, I started off as a normal kid. Granted, I'm a very intelligent one, but normal none the less. I became involved with Batman after Jason Todd died. I noticed in the news that Batman was becoming darker, and more brutal, due to his failure at preventing Jason's death. At the rate he was going, I thought that he could cross the line, and become no better than the people he puts away.
At first, I went to Dick, trying to get him to become Robin again, and act as Batman's conscience. I said Dick, not Nightwing. You see, I actually deduced the secret identities of Batman and many of his allies. I figured out Dick's when I saw him perform a quadruple summersault as Robin. Only four people on earth can pull one off, and Robin was the same age as Dick. Using his identity, I deduced from that, that Bruce Wayne, his adopted guardian, must be Batman, due to his wealth and his…experience with the darker side of life - his parent's murder by a thug.
Dick naturally refused, so I was forced to become Robin to save Batman from the Scarecrow. Bruce was…reluctant, but, after seeing how I deduced his secret he couldn't just let me go. After a period of intense mental and physical training, he let me put on the costume.
Things were different for me, though. All the Bat-family have usually lost at least one relative to violence, before becoming crime-fighters. Both of my parents were alive before I became Robin. During my initiation, my mother was murdered, and my dad was hurt, badly. After I became Robin, he started dating, which I'm cool with. I never told him that I was Robin. I mean, how could I tell him that every night I was beating up criminals with a masked vigilante? I felt bad lying to him, but people needed my help, and that took priority
I also made connections away from Gotham, forming the now-defunct team Young Justice. When we broke up, a few of us joined the new Teen Titans.
My dad (and step-mom) eventually found out and he…freaked. He threatened to expose what little he knew about Batman's secrets, unless I quit. So I did, for a while, until the Gotham gang war erupted. When the war spilled into my high school, I realised that I couldn't just ignore it anymore. I became Robin again, my dad didn't like it but at least he understands.
This is me. I'm not an acrobat, like Dick, or a brawler, like Jason. I'm just a computer nerd who knows martial arts, does push-ups and has a fancy belt with gadgets. I'm not going to be Robin forever, I know that. But, I won't become Batman, either. When I'm done with the cape, I'll find a new way to help. How I can find that way without a suit when my best friend is a Kryptonian/ human hybrid clone (I don't know the exact term, okay) and can fly is beyond me.
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The first thing Tim Drake felt was pain. By now, he'd thought he'd have gotten used to it, and he had in a way. It took him a few seconds longer than usual to register where he was, possibly due to the beating he took.
This is…my room in Titan's Tower.
He got up painfully and looked around. He was back inside the tower, getting up his bed. On his door was a playing card with the Robin 'R' on. He hobbled over to the door carefully - a muscle had torn in his ankle during the fight, when he was suspended upside-down.
On closer examination, the card appeared to be made of a flexible metal. On the other side, his gloved fingers could just make out an inscription. Turning the card over, he read:
'Thank you for your time. I can't remember when I last had so much fun (and I really can't).
This message is meant to remind you that the beating wasn't personal, but I would like to request that you keep this affair private.
Otherwise, things may become very personal.
Best wishes'
Robin turned on his communicator, hoping someone would answer.
"Is everyone alright?" A few seconds later, Beast Boy answered
"Yeah, we're fine, but Vic's stuck on the roof."
"He's stuck?"
"Yeah, his power's so low he can't get down. Everyone assemble down in the meeting room in an hour."
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Later, after being treated by Raven, the team assembled in the meeting room in the Tower's lower levels. A list of known Titans adversaries appeared on the main monitor. Everyone held a card identical to Tim's, except theirs had different symbols (a hollow 'S' for Connor, a 'WWG' for Cassie, a cog for Victor, a star for Starfire, a Raven, and a pair of fangs).
On his way to the meeting room, Tim saw that the Tower's kitchen had been repaired. There wasn't as much as a speck of dust in the floor. Even the newly made hole in the wall had been repaired. It was almost as if nothing had happened, not taking the bruises on his team-mates into account.
Tim noticed that Cyborg's left arm had been repaired, but he doubted that Victor could have repaired it so fast, especially as he had apparently woken up on the Tower roof, far from anywhere he could be repaired. That, and Gar probably didn't know the first thing about electronics.
Why would he repair Cyborg? Before, he tried to gut him.
Another mystery to solve….
"So…" Connor began, tapping his fingers, "anyone got any leads on this guy?"
"We know that he ran out of ideas when he chose a symbol for me." Gar joked, waving his card.
Victor shrugged. "I've looked in the files and he doesn't appear anywhere."
"Yeah, I think any of us would know if we hacked off a lunatic like him lately." Gar said, checking a file.
"We would know that," Raven said, her fingers entwined, "no-one we've faced could do that to my soul-self."
"Or repair my arm that quickly." Cyborg chimed in.
"Exactly…" Gar trailed off before looking straight towards Raven. "Um, do WHAT exactly to your soul-self."
Raven explained "It's hard to explain, but…when my soul-self enters someone, I take some of the pains they carry inside. When it touched him…something else entered my soul-self, something…" She searched for the right words. "Something…dark and cold, something ancient, was there. My soul-self couldn't handle it."
"Why did you laugh and--" Robin asked.
"…what were you trying to say?" Gar cut in
She shrugged. "I don't really know. One moment, I was completely rational, the next I was…"
"…Happy as a clown?" Bart offered.
"…that is…an adequate way of putting it." She paused before continuing. "When my soul self entered, I saw inside his mind, I saw some of his memories."
"What kind? Was there anything we can use?" Cassie enquired
Raven shook her head. "They're jumbled, they make no sense. I know he was in pain for such a long time…and he connects us to that pain, but he isn't angry towards us. A word popped into his mind over and over again…Philadelphia."
"Philadelphia?" Gar asked, scratching behind his head in a manner reminiscent of a dog.
"Bart." Connor didn't bother glancing in Bart's direction, anticipating that he knew something no-one else did.
Bart cleared his throat. "I'll look it up. Apart from the town in Pennsylvania, I know the conspiracy theory."
"There's a conspiracy theory?" Connor asked, scratching his head.
Bart paused, picking up his train of thought, before answering. "The conspiracy theory is that around October 28th, 1943, the U.S. Navy conducted a secret experiment involving invisibility on a battleship, which went wrong and resulted in the entire ship becoming briefly invisible and being teleported all the way from Philadelphia to Virginia and back. I mean, the story's full of holes and the science makes no sense--"
"Forget I asked." Connor cut in.
"What about the JLA and JSA files?" Cassie said, staring at the monitor.
"I already checked. No one matches his description or demonstrated abilities." Bart answered. He practically memorised the entire JLA & JSA files months ago. Double-checking it would only take about 2 seconds of his time.
"So…" Kory spoke carefully and slowly, "we have thousands of files available…and all we have is a paranoid theory? I can't, no, I refuse to accept that."
"Well," Cyborg said, removing a floppy disk from the mechanical side of his face, "we do have this."
"What's that, Tactical data?" Robin asked.
"Nope, just something that may help to even the odds." He twirled the disk between his fingers.
"Speaking of 'evening the odds'," Cassie said, "Maybe now's a good time to call for re-enforcements."
"I'm not saying that this guy's too tough," she hastily followed up, cutting off Connor, "I'm just saying that maybe JLA, JSA or other Titans members might have had experience that was never put in a file, which can help us end this quickly."
"We can't do that, Cass." Tim said, his eyes staring at his card. "If we do, he'll make things 'personal' for us."
"…And that means…?" Connor asked.
"Come on, Connor! He knows who we are. He might just go after our loved ones." Bart answered, grimly
Connor opened his mouth, probably to say something about Kory or Raven being exceptions, but thought better of it.
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Thursday, 10:00pm, on a Gotham city rooftop far from San Francisco, was the boy wonder. He was observing four masked thugs in an alley, who were about to rough up a shopkeeper for protection money. Each thug wore a different colour mask, possibly indicating some kind of rank. They hadn't noticed him, thankfully, as, unlike most of the Titans; he had to worry about bullets.
The usual arrangement was that the younger Titans (Robin, Wonder Girl, Kid Flash and Superboy) only stayed at Titans Tower during weekends and certain holidays, except in emergencies. Their recent beating didn't count.
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Over the past few days, their mystery guest had been committing random criminal acts in San Francisco, all of which involved theft. The strange thing was that none of these things he stole had any actual value. On Sunday, he stole several steel girders from a construction site. The day after, he took six large satellite dishes from several random stores.
Everyone checked, and these items were all completely ordinary, there was absolutely no conceivable reason why he would take them. He also made sure no-one ever got hurt in his crimes, by scaring civilians away before stealing, or stealing at night. When he encountered the police, he never retaliated to their gunshots; instead he ignored them (bullet-proof, go figure) or occasionally knocking them out by exhaling what one officer described as 'a blue cloud that smelled like burritos'.
It made no sense that a person capable of threatening their loved ones would try to avoid innocent casualties.
The others had no idea what it felt like for a detective to admit a crime had no motive. Luckily, Robin wasn't in that position…yet.
The only good news was that, for their trouble, the boys down at the San Fran branch of S.T.A.R. Labs had managed to isolate a unique energy signature from the scans on Cyborg's disk and the cards. So unique that they couldn't identify it, but they at least created something to track it. More bad news was that Cyborg reported that the damn machine had blown up the second it was turned on; the S.T.A.R. personnel couldn't explain it. A theory was that this energy was so abundant, that the sensor had overloaded, but that didn't make sense either.
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On the ground, the thugs were getting impatient.
"Look, pallie," a grey masked thug threatened, "give us the $300 grand!" He brandished a large knife in the poor mans' face
"Yeah…" a green masked thug said, waving a large lead pipe.
"…or else…" a blue masked thug continued, pulling out a switchblade
"…we'll make sure your shop stays closed." A red masked thug finished, pulling back the hammer on a colt.45 magnum.
The shopkeeper trembled in fear. "I…I'm sorry. I…I…could only g…get a hold of $1000. I…I'm sorry."
Red mask pointed his gun at the shopkeeper's forehead.
"Saying 'sorry' doesn't get you into your next life."
"B…but I d…don't believe in re-incarnation."
Blue mask moved his switchblade closer, grinning. "Too bad, neither do we."
Robin made his move.
Two batarangs knocked Red mask and Blue mask's weapons out of their hands. Before the thugs could register what had happened, a smoke grenade exploded at their feet, causing them to cough and sputter.
"The little creep set us up!" Grey mask roared.
Red mask fired his gun. Instead of hearing the sound they expected, they heard the sound of a bullet hitting brick. The bullet must have missed.
Blue mask cursed. "Idiot, can't even hit a scared little--"
"I don't see you with a gun!" Red mask retorted.
A shadow suddenly moved through the smoke. It punched Red mask in the gut, before punching him in the face, knocking him out. The shadow then sent a foot into Blue mask's face. He went down like a ton of bricks.
Green mask and Grey mask managed to escape from the smoke. They made their way to the other end of the alley, coughing and spluttering.
"W…what the hell was that?" Green mask spluttered.
"Don't know, but you can say hello to it." Grey mask then flung Green mask back into the smoke, before running away. A dark object flew out of the smoke, hitting the back of Grey mask's head, knocking him to the ground. He didn't get up
Green mask swung his lead pipe into the smoke. He was swinging wildly, acting purely on adrenalin. His fear was causing his hands to shake.
"Where are you!" He yelled at nowhere in particular.
A voice in the smoke answered him. "I'm right behind you."
The thug swung round, his pipe hitting nothing except the wall. Then a staff swung into his arm, causing him to drop his pipe. The thug swung around again, screaming in pain. He got a fist in his face for his trouble.
"I told you I was behind you." Robin quipped, slapping a pair of bat-cuffs onto the unconscious goon.
He went to check on the shopkeeper. He had fainted when Blue mask put a switchblade in his face, although suddenly being hoisted 10 feet above the ground by a cable didn't help. He was still out cold.
All of this had taken place within about 38 seconds.
Damn, I've slowed down. That shouldn't even have taken 20
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Compared to the usual things that happened in Gotham, especially now, this was a slow night.
After dropping off the shopkeeper, Tim set off home. So far, Batman hadn't called, so he had to assume nothing serious had occurred. Then again, if anything had happened, chances are something would have exploded.
Tim thought about how long it had taken him to beat up those thugs. When he fought them his mind wasn't on the job, but it was on something else that those thugs made him think about.
Black mask
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Black mask
A notorious Gotham gang lord with a disfigured face, who'd taken something precious from both Tim…and Batman.
The life of a girl… named Stephanie Brown.
Soon after Tim became Robin, he met Stephanie. She had also become a crime-fighter, calling herself the Spoiler. This was, apparently, an act of defiance towards her father, who she had discovered was a criminal called the Clue-master (hence her codename), but she continued because she loved it. When they met, there was… chemistry between them. They would flirt occasionally, and their relationship had…highs and lows, but nothing major ever came from it. Eventually, she found out his identity
Then Tim had to quit being Robin. She managed to convince Batman to let her become the new Robin, but he fired her after she disobeyed orders. Her attempts to prove herself to Batman helped to escalate a developing Gang war in Gotham. Black mask captured and tortured her, but she escaped. In the end, she got to a hospital, but her injuries resulted in her death. Batman was at her side…while Tim was living a normal life.
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Was her death my fault? Tim wondered, pausing on a secluded rooftop, checking to see if he was being watched.
If I hadn't quit…if I hadn't listened to my dad…maybe she…she--
"Damn!" He punched his hand in frustration. It wasn't always down to him. No matter how hard he trained, no matter how hard he tried, things like this could happen. He simply couldn't be everywhere at once.
It was times like this that he envied Connor and Bart. Their powers made things much easier for them. Then again, he noted, their powers meant that they didn't work as hard as he did; they took their gifts for granted. They couldn't be everywhere at once either.
Speaking of time, his dad would be worried about him. It still felt weird, his dad knowing about his…extra-curricular activities. His dad understood why; after all, he couldn't just UN-learn several martial arts, detective skills, computer skills and forensics skills. Robin wasn't just a costume; Robin was an idea, an idea that was as much a part of him as his father was.
Figures, he thought bitterly to himself, I wanted my dad to know about what I do. Now that he does, I'm still not satisfied.
What did I want him to do? Give me a pat on the back and say 'Good work, son. You can go clean up the streets after doing your homework.'
I hated lying to him, but seeing him worry about me is almost as bad. I know he's afraid for me, and I wish he didn't have to be.
Some people think I'm Batman's kid, and boy, are they wrong.
That bought up something else his father asked him once, "Do you want to be Batman?"
No. I don't want to be Batman. I won't become Batman.
Somehow, Tim thought that his father doubted that. After all, what kid in Gotham doesn't want to be Batman?
I don't…
With that, Tim set off home again, his issues still unresolved.
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Elsewhere, in a place most would consider unnatural, there exists a construct. Unnatural, in the sense that most of the universe doesn't know it exists. The construct wasn't constructed by human hands, but by the twisted mind of something which was once human. The walls are made of random material, mostly stone and steel, with something unidentifiable mixed in. It shouldn't exist, but it does.
The construct bears a vague resemblance to a castle of some kind, only much bigger. Inside, its design and decoration are baffling, having no definite order or pattern to it. Yet its sole living occupant and his army of steel servants navigate with ease. So vast is it that it would have taken about 50 years of constant work, without rest, to produce it, yet it took under 2 years to build, by its sole inhabitant, who never sleeps.
The place itself is random, with weather patterns changing every few seconds. It mostly alternates between freezing cold, intense storms with discharges of an unknown energy, and 'calm' - no storms or cold, simply unnatural quiet. There is no sun; instead the luminescence comes from the ground itself. It is a strange place, and not one for holiday goers. The very laws of physics are something to be toyed with here.
Its sole living inhabitant watches a group of robots arrange a group of rag-tag assembled items into a strange configuration. The six large satellite dishes pointed towards each other, while several identical robots added extra components to them.
A separate group of robots were throwing girders into a large pit of molten metal.
Soon, he thought, tapping his fingers onto the side of his expressionless faceplate, soon I'll have a new home… one with a beach.
"COG!" He yelled, addressing a crowd of robots.
A medium height, slightly hunched, robot made its way to him on its caterpillar tracks.
"You bellowed, sir?" Cog replied in a cultured English voice.
Aftermath leaned closer.
"What stage is the process at now?"
"Shouldn't YOU be monitoring it?"
Aftermath put a hand to his head. The damn thing was getting to big for its treads
"What was the first thing I taught you?"
"Forks go in the left hand, knives and spoons in the right."
"That was the first thing?"
The robot nodded.
"I meant the one where you do exactly as I say."
The robot made a gesture, as if recalling something. "Oh, law 7 is what you meant."
The madman groaned in annoyance. Don't tell me I created another A.I. with a personality defect. If so, it was the 8th time that it had happened.
Why do so many of my creations have crappy personalities? That's mad science for you.
"What is the stage?"
"It's at stage 4 right now."
"Excellent, only 2 stages left."
"Yes, that is what I implied."
Aftermath sighed. "Be careful what you say. I made your brain using a toaster, and I can make you into a better toaster."
The robot retreated and went back to work.
The madman played with a metal globe. The globe flashed an image of San Francisco from the air.
"Look out, San Fran. It's almost time for the kids to visit again, and this time, they're going to spend their money wisely."
