They say that you never get second chances.
They say that you can't just knock on the door and receive the world on a silver platter.
But when you're crazy enough to actually want to save the world—a psychosis in and of itself—then you find yourself at liberty to do many a thing.
Even if that thing is as self-destructive as it is self-rectifying.
These days are the hardest for me to meditate. It's not just a matter of the weight of responsibility I now share. It's not even a difficulty in coping with the sudden, heart-attacking epidemic of fame and notoriety I seem to have acquired.
I can't keep myself sane enough because—for the first time in years—I feel like I can sleep without having my head suddenly, inexplicably ripped off. I am still getting used to this perplexing peace. This terrible tranquility.
I have seven people to thank for that. Well… ….make that eight. Though the latter benefactor is as much a paranoid pilgrim as I. I am not a true hero, but these wild cards whose deck I have slid into more than define the meaning of the term. They are a royal flush of righteousness, and may fate bless them with more might than I myself can muster.
But that's not how a true adept of Balance thinks. This universe is a fabric of life and death: an arena within which I am forced to pick up the slack for everyone and bridge the gap between their inevitable shortcomings. That is my role. My sacrifice. My hit taken for the team. Although—admittedly—it's hard for a rookie such as myself to find exactly what those 'shortcomings' are when it comes to these… …experts…
My Master would have been proud of them. Such courage and fortitude. Such endurance.. …
All of this flutters and flails through my brain with a force of zero-g, almost akin to the way my brain boils as I presently plummet fifteen stories in a earthbound comet of blackness and sail through the Museum skylight below.
Swoooo-oooooooooo-ooooooooosh—SHATTTTTTTER!.!.!.!
The shards of glass explode downward from the ceiling. They glitter and glint from the cosmic starlight above as I twirl from the impact, trail incorporeal smoke from every corner of my falling limbs, and angle my lithe body at the last second to land in a full-figured squat on the black-and-white tile of the Museum floor.
Th-Thwump!
Tnk!-Tnk!-Tnk!-Tnk! The sea of glass lands all around me. Like a frozen water fountain. And there I am, a smoking crater in the center of the dark-lit exhibit. I throb and ooze all over with tendrils of obsidian fume. Flexing…. …meditating.. … …regaining my bearings.
And as soon as my spatial sense of smoke filters throughout the echoing chamber, I know within a heartbeat that I am not alone.
"Wh-What the Hell?" A thug twirls with a semi-automatic machine gun.
"Holy crap! Did you see that?" A second. He's trying to laser-cut his way into a glass display of rocks with a third. "No way!"
"The Titans? Here already?"
I sense a heavy-set body. A man sporting two uzzis. He marches up and snarls: "Wait, that ain't Robin! What gives?"
"It's one of the n-noobies! Don't you read the papers?"
"Huh? Noobies?"
I inhale. 'Noobie'. I guess I should get used to that. I look up. I glare. Two bare black eyes of bulbous freakishness brimming with smoke. Bangs of black abandon dangle over my brow and fray outward behind my neck as I reach a hand back to an obsidian sheathe. Something tells me, they are about to get used to it a heck of a lot harder.
CHIIIIING! I've pulled it out. My longtime friend and busom buddy. A mahogany blade made magically serrated by the sheer, ebony fabric that holds this chaotic world together.
Myrkblade.
"H-He's got a sword!"
"What are you waiting for? Waste him already!"
Guns are aimed at me. Barrels. Muzzles. Nearly two dozen of them--
I grit my teeth and slide up into a half-crouch. At this time and place, a little yellow communicator squabbles an authoritarian voice from where it rests nestled in a shoulder pocket.
"Snkkkt—Noir! Are you there?"
Robin. He speaks. He lives. He resonates through me with his electronic voice.
I can't answer.
And he knows that: "We're almost there. KEEP. THEM. OCCUPIED."
I exhale. Fumes and murk….
Yeah, I can do that….
RAT-A-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT!
RAT-A-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT!
BLAM! BL-BL-BLAM!
A wave of lead thunders at me.
I clench my teeth, rocket up to my feet in a smoking streak, and twirl my thundercloud of a blade in a menacing cyclone ahead of me—SL-SL-SL-SL-SL-SLICE!.!.! Bullets sever in half. Sparks fly. The lead pellets turn to dust before me just as the heaviest of the shrapnel flood fountains my way—
"Dammit! PINCUSHION 'EM ALREADY!"
"We're trying—Holy shit, he's fast—" THUNK! The hapless guard's shout is cut short as soon as his jaw is knocked off its frame. I'm suddenly right in front of him in a smoking plume as he spits blood and unwittingly offers his back as a springboard to vault over, leap over a wave of bulletfire—SWOOOSH!—and go plummeting in a gravity-induced downswing of my entire sword's length.
CRK-CRK-CRAAAK! I sever the barrels off three guns at once. The guards gasp—then lose their breaths as I'm suddenly sliding on the ground between them and twirling on my back with my leg and sword stretched out—THWP-THWP-THWP-THWP!—the impromptu 'breakdance' knocks the feet out from all three men. Their severed guns go falling down heavily, and a chamber or two chaotically explode amidst the fray.
P-POW!
"Dah! Jesus!" The grittiest thug shields himself with a meaty forearm as metal bits and floor tire chunks fly into his face. He squints his eyes, stares across the hazy interior, and blinks desperately to see—
FW-FW-FW-FW-FWOOOOSH! A human-shaped cloud of black is wisping its way around the glass displays of exotic rocks and minerals. It slides across a glinting speck of moonlight from another skylight, twirls an ebony sword, and rockets straight his way—FWOOOOSH!
"Not tonight, freak!" The thug spits and flings his meaty fist straight out at me(!)
My black eyes bulge inhumanely. I wince like a pinpricked Elmer Fudd and tilt back into a hapless, last-second limbo as I spot with my metahuman eyes his fist sailing a hair's breadth over my nose in perpetual slow motion. SWOOOOSH! I gasp. I blink. I sweatdrop… …
I falter.
WHUMP! His other set of knuckles suddenly swings in and connects with my belly. The air is forced out of my lungs, and all the murking essence that was once trailing from me like a dark comet goes sailing helplessly back into my thin, dark-suited frame. My black hair fountains forward and into my line of vision as I weakly feel the muscled miscreant grabbing me by the shoulders, grunting loudly, and swinging me full-force into a glass display of meteorite fragments across the chessboard interior.
CRASSSSH!.!.! I flail through a fresh new sea of glass and collapse across the tile. I wince, cough, and fumble around blindly to feel my loose and fallen blade.
I hate…. …and I do mean hate broken glass… …
"Serves you right, punk-ass fart monster!" The heavy-set thug warbles.
I cough. I wheeze. Whatever, handsome. Chiiii-iiiing. I hear Myrkblade before I even realized I've picked up the tool of Balance in my hand. I try to stand up, but my knees are wobbling.
"Snkkkt—Noir, report!" Robin's mistakable voice once against assaults my aching ears. "Were you successful in detaining the thugs?"
I clench my teeth, my black eyes spotting beyond the glass sea a momentary glimpse of half-a-dozen groaning crooks lying dormant on the floor. The other half of the museum burglars struggling to make sense of the last few seconds of Hell, much less regain control of their bladders.
I'd say I 'detained the Hell out of them'. But in all honesty… …
I tap my shoulder communicator with a left finger. Twice. It is a simple code that the Titans need to 'hear' so as to recognize a simple response from their recent, silent inductee.
'No.'
"Snkkkt—Hang tight. Cyborg and Raven are arriving in the T-Car, and soon the rest of us will be there in time to stop whatever those crooks think they're—"
"Snkkkt—Dude! Robby, you there?"
"Snkkt—What is it, Beast Boy?"
Wincing, I turn my head from the squabbling to watch the recovering thugs stumble to their feet and re-cocking their semi-automatics.
"Let's shoot the kid while he's not moving for once!" a whiny thug hisses with his finger on a trigger.
The meaty one who decked me earlier plants a hand on the thug's shoulder and loudly interjects: "NO. We've got more important things than beating the shit out of no good neer-do-bunks."
I clench my fists….
"But we can't just let—"
WRIII! WRIII! WRIII! WRIII!
Red flashing lights. Strobing. A high-pitch squeal that only a mother could love.. …then drown in her bathtub and blame it on post-partum depression.
"Crud—The alarm!" a bruised thug bled.
"See what I mean? We gotta get these rocks to the boss!" The meaty one hisses and rams his entire fist into the glass display they were cutting into earlier. CRASSSSH! He grabs a fistful of a ruby-quartz material that makes my black eyes twitch at the faintest, long-distance glimmer. "Let's blow!"
I make to blur after them in an inhuman streak---
"Keep Freakboy at bay!"
"On it!" RAT-A-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT!
I silently gasp, leap, twirl, and dive to the side behind a metal display of African minerals. CL-CL-CL-CLANKKK!I cower for cover, panting and holding my head down. The bullets shower all around me. Sparks. Shrapnel. The works…
And barely in the corner of my thunder-stricken ears I can hear my communicator further squabbling: "Beast Boy, make it fast! Noir's being overwhelmed and we haven't much time—"
"Cyborg and Raven ain't gonna be the first ones there, dude."
"WHAT? But I thought we went over this plan thoroughly and I decided that—"
"I couldn't stop him, man! He took off on a motorcycle and will be blazing there any second!"
"Who took off on a motorcycle?"
"Who do you think?"
I exhale. With hope, with vigor, with urine—I peer around the corner of the metal display and watch as the thugs rup up the door—"Woohoo! Home free!"—and it is there and then that the door. ….. …disagrees with them.
WHAM!
