With Brother Blood on the loose once more, a new enemy in the form of The Ravager about and God only knows who else attacking the Jump City, the commissioner of the JPD has decided enough is enough. So, he calls Robin to the HQ and practically demands that the Boy Wonder does something about the rising number of criminals, or else…
: T : T : T : T :
"Or else what?"
The old man sat across the desk front of the caped hero looked directly at the mask covering Robin's eyes. "Or I'll be forced to take the protection of this city completely back into the Police's hands."
Robin's eye-mask narrowed. "What? Make the Omega Wing guards deal with people like Cinderblock? 'Cause they have a great track record with him."
The commissioner sighed, his icy blue eyes dropping down to a card folder underneath his hands. "Not the Omega Wing, no. They're already under review because of the whole H.I.V.E. incident." His scarred and wrinkled face looked back up at Robin, his gruff voice sincere, "I don't want the same thing to happen to the Titans." He turned to the window looking out over the city. It was midday out there; most people were just starting to eat their lunches. The mood was quite calm, despite the breakout the previous day. "Now get the hell out of my office."
Robin was just about to turn and stride out of the office, but his eyes were caught by the folder that the commissioner had been looking at. "Project Alpha Guard".
"I'm sure I just told you to get out."
With a swish of Robin's cloak, he was gone.
In his chair, the old man sagged a little. "They're too young for this job… Much too young..." He paused, then chuckled and added. "Hell, even I'm too young for it some days."
: T : T : T : T :
Cyborg bounced a basketball on the ground, the metal of his hand making the ball echo strangely. Beast Boy stood in front of him, ready to strike, he was wearing a red basketball kit, about two sizes too big for him. Cyborg bounced the ball between his legs a few times, and the changeling in front of him shuffled back. "Come on, little man! What ya got?" And with that he charged forward.
B.B. leapt for the ball, and Cyborg pirouetted, strangely mobile for such a large guy. The he ran towards me. My eyes widened as he thundered his way across the court. Then surprisingly, he threw the ball at me.
I wasn't ready.
THUD!
It caught me in the face, my legs swung up and I was sent, comically, to the ground. Beast Boy laughed but then immediately stopped as Cyborg caught the ball again and threw it.
SWISH!
It fell through the ring, and bounced away. Cyborg did his victory dance, basically consisting of old disco moves.
"Hehehe! Even with two guys against me I am unstoppable!"
I stood up and wandered over to where Cyborg was gloating. "You're really going for the black stereotype, huh?"
Cyborg just laughed and quipped, "Dawg, I knew white men can't jump, but I thought you could catch!" I sighed.
Beast Boy jogged over. "Dudes, can we play something else? Basketball with Cy is just unfair."
Cyborg grinned, "What if we got Raven to play?"
"She won't."
"Starfire?"
"Well, when she first got here, Robin taught her cultural things and the like, let's see if he taught her anything really important."
: T : T : T : T :
Cyborg, Beast Boy and I were sweating.
"Was that an effective example of 'the slam of the dunk'?"
Through gasps of air, I managed "Fairly effective, yeah."
Starfire pouted, "Only fairly? It seems I am in dire need of more practice." And with that she trotted off to fetch the ball.
B.B. was doubled over, wheezing for air, so I turned to Cyborg. "What happened to white people can't jump?"
"White men can't jump, noobie. 1. She's a girl, not a man. And 2. She's not really white, more orange."
I collapsed backwards, and I sat there for a few minutes with my hands on my knees, regaining my breath, while Starfire practiced basketball.
Eventually, I stood up. Next to me Beast Boy was just recovering as well. "Want another go?" I said, nodding towards Starfire.
"No. More. Basketball." He said, still short of breath. Then, he added. "Ever."
: T : T : T : T :
Robin practically flew on his ride back to the Tower. If the Titans' future was in jeopardy then it was time to act.
SCRRRRCH!
With a skid, he came to a stop inside the Titan Garage, a few metres away from the blue and white T-car. He made his way to the elevator and pushed the button that would take him to the Main Room. The doors closed and he could feel the pull down on his stomach as the lift went up.
After a few seconds, it stopped and the lift doors opened. Without glancing about he strode directly to the main computer, sat down in a swivel chair and began typing.
He quickly stopped and pressed a button to activate the intercom.
"Titans, come to the Main Room. Now." He said into a microphone, the message was then relayed all around the Tower.
Raven, who was already in the room stood up from the corner, where she had been reading and sat down on the semi-circular sofas in the middle of the room. Soon enough, the rest of us were assembled there too.
Robin turned around on the chair.
Beast Boy took one look, groaned and whispered, "Aww man… He's gonna make us do work!"
I winced.
Robin began talking. "Firstly, I'd like to say that yesterday was an atrocious performance by all of us." Everybody lowered their head in shame, apart from Raven. "I take full responsibility for that failure. I am the team leader, and it is my responsibility to ensure you are prepared for such battles and to make sure that that doesn't happen again. From now on, there will be increased mandatory training sessions. You will still be able to do it in your own time, but some will be group sessions. This will start today. Get to work." He turned back to the computer console. Just as we were about to leave, he spoke again. "Cyborg, I need your help with something."
Cyborg walked over as most of us left the room, Raven went back to her corner to read. "What do you need, dawg?"
"Just something confused me. When we were chasing the Ravager, we didn't get any alert to the prison break. I thought there might be a glitch."
"A glitch? I wouldn't think so… maybe B.B. accidentally downloaded another virus." Robin got up, letting Cyborg sit down in the chair, so he had better access to the computer.
"I have other things I can be doing, if I know you've got this…"
"Sure thing, better than working out anyway. Heh heh heh!"
Robin walked towards the lift. He practically glared at Raven, still reading, but she didn't so much as look up. He turned his attention back to the lift as he walked into it.
As the doors began to close, it almost felt like someone was watching him. He looked towards both Raven and Cyborg but both were absorbed in their own things. The doors closed.
But Raven hadn't turned a page in her book for some time.
: T : T : T : T :
Three hovering gun platforms flew around me, humming, they were basically semi-automatic lasers with some sort of floating mechanism attached to them. My training consisted of not getting hit by the shots, but because of the increased training hours I wasn't allowed to just destroy them. The object of the game was to last as long as possible without getting hit.
BL-BL-BLAM!
I flew around the gym dodging and diving.
I tried to take note of the 'arena' of sorts that I was in. The cavernous gym had all of the weights and equipment at the sides. Right in the middle, at the top, was a shield generator. From this was emitted a transparent blue force-shield, to protect the people watching and to stop any equipment getting damaged. It created a dome-like fighting space.
The hovering blasters chased me as I vainly tried to escape. The shots fired connected with the shields and dissipated. With a mixture of a barrel roll and a somersault I managed to turn about to face my pursuers and stopped.
They took advantage of my sudden decrease in speed, and unleashed their full speed shots. BL-BL-BLAM!
PHVISH! I opened a void in front of the firestorm, capturing all the shots before they could connect with their target: me.
The hovering guns moved sideways to shoot around the black hole. I closed it before creating voids on my wrists, deciding that the increased maneuverability was a better tactic.
The guns opened fire again, and I started moving again, catching the odd shot in my voids. Eventually, however, the three guns managed to back me into a corner, the floor beneath me and the force-shield at my back. One of the guns was above me, and the other two were slightly to my left and right respectively.
I crossed my voids and created a larger void with the two on my wrists. This managed to block the fusillade, however, it also meant I couldn't see what was happening with the guns. So, I didn't see one of them skirt over the top of my shield and…
BLAM!
"ACK!"
The shot caught me in the knee, knocking me over and the electric shock of it breaking my concentration. The void protecting me vanished.
"Oh dear…"
BL-BL-BLAM!
: T : T : T : T :
Robin drove into the city on his R-cycle, driving right into the worst part of the city. Here, every other house was boarded up. Cars were left around without wheels, engines and windows, just dumped on the sides of roads.
Any grass in gardens was either dead or dying. The streets were cracked and suspicious characters were standing around staring incredulously as the Boy Wonder drove past.
Robin ignored all of these, however, and pulled in-between a burned out car and an almost intact one.
As he got off and walked into a gloomy nearby alley, a greasy teenager eyed the bike. He slid forwards and reached out to the handle.
Without looking back, Robin held up a small keypad and pushed a button.
ZZZZZT!
"Yiow!"
Robin smirked. He held out a grappling cord, fired it upwards and was pulled up to the rooftops.
: T : T : T : T :
Beast Boy stood in the blue lit arena, a single bead of sweat on his brow as he prepared himself for the training session. Starfire's voice came through the shield, "Are you prepared, Beast Boy?"
He winced, but gave the thumbs up anyway.
Three humming engines came to life. Beast Boy grit his teeth and crouched low.
From the three "corners" the gun platforms came, ready to blast the living daylights out of the green changeling.
BL-BL-BLAM!
He leapt to his left. The guns followed, continuing to unleash their blasts, barely a foot from his feet. He morphed into a cheetah as he landed and raced to the other side of the dome. He came to a skidding stop and morphed back into an elf.
As they came for him again, he morphed once more, a humming bird this time and flew right between them. The shots stopped immediately as soon as the platforms were in danger of firing at each other.
He buzzed about more as the humming bird, constantly diving between them, so for a second two of them would not be able to shoot at him. This also gave him something of a break because it took the guns a couple of seconds to recalibrate to shoot at him.
Beast Boy morphed into an elf, as he dodged between the platforms for the fifth time. "Dudes, this is too easy!"
He went for another fly through the three platforms. Unfortunately for him, the computer system had adjusted to his tactic. While two went forward, one kept well back, ready to blast the over-confident elf as he flew between the other two.
Beast Boy realized what they were doing a split-second too late.
BLAM!
The electric shocked him out of his bird-form and he dropped to the floor. He looked up to see the three platforms descending on him. "Dudes! Turn them off!" He screamed.
BL-BL-BLAM!
: T : T : T : T :
Cyborg sat at the Titans' supercomputer, reading a seemingly endless data stream. Zeroes and ones tumbled by as the computer told him all of the outbound interactions to the Titans communicators. There was nothing out of the ordinary, until the day before when it just hadn't told them about the prison break. The computer didn't give a reason, it just hadn't.
The half-robot had an idea. He checked the previous outbound communication. That was the car-jacking. Nothing out of the ordinary. He typed a few buttons on the keyboard.
Raven's communicator buzzed behind him. She looked up at Cyborg, with one eyebrow raised.
He turned to face her, "Just testing the system, nothing to worry about." He said, and she returned back to her book. "You have your communicator on vibrate?"
A curl of black telekinesis appeared in front of his face and flicked his forehead, hard.
He turned back to the computer, snickering.
: T : T : T : T :
Robin stood on the rooftop, a little way from his bike. He was on the look out… for a certain type of person.
He waited a few more minutes before he saw a couple of people wander into an alleyway across the street. Exactly the sort of person he wanted, in exactly the sort of place he expected to find them.
He took a running jump and landed without a noise in the mouth of the alleyway. He quickly leapt up to a fire escape metal ladder and watched. It was a gloomy place, exactly the sort of place where you would expect to find dodgy deals going on.
And sure enough…
"… and crack. Pretty much anything you want… For a price." Said a thin straggly man chuckled, he had a high pitched nasal whine of a voice. He was pale skinned and had shoulder length greasy, black hair and wore black clothes, as if that made him blend into the darkness around him. Robin smiled. This was exactly what he was looking for. "So, what'll it be."
The man facing the thin guy, was taller and seemed better kept, more healthy. Until you looked at his face. It was gaunt, he had bags under his eyes, which were bloodshot and looked like he hadn't shaved in a week. "Jus' gi' me the ushul, ferret." He said, barely bothering to open his mouth as he spoke.
"Sure thing." 'Ferret' replied. He reached into his coat, to an inside pocket and came out with a paper bag. He passed this to the unkempt man who shoved a handful of notes into his hand. "This should do nicely." He chuckled again.
Just as the two men were about to walk away, Robin leapt over the side of the fire-exit and collided foot first with the skull of the drug addict.
THUD!
"Ferret" stared at Robin in shock.
: T : T : T : T :
Starfire hovered a couple of metres above the ground. I spoke to her through the shield. "Are you read-"
"Nooby, I'm doing it!" Beast Boy cut in.
"But … oh fine." B.B. whooped. "Just 'cause I beat you…"
"By like a millisecond."
"Every little counts!"
"Not that little!"
"I am ready, friends! May we commence?" In response the three hovering guns hummed to life and lifted from the floor. Starfire's eyes became solid green and narrowed.
She shot between two of them before they could even begin firing. They swiftly zipped around and were about to open fire when Starfire semi-charged a couple of starbolts. She fired them in two different directions and flew in a third.
The hovering guns became confused, some of their sensors told them Starfire had gone in three different directions, and some were saying only one.
However, as soon as the starbolts hit the floor, the machines recovered and refocused on Starfire. She did the same thing twice more, before they managed to differentiate between the difference of heat between her and her starbolts.
She still had one trick up her sleeve, however. For the first time the machines opened fire on her, she used her starbolts as a shield catching the shots, and more importantly racking up the valuable seconds.
They did eventually get her, but only after she had ducked, dodged and blocked the shots.
And completely obliterated my and B.B.'s times.
: T : T : T : T :
Robin leapt at "Ferret" gripping him by his loose-fitting jacket and, keeping hold of him, practically threw him into the wall.
He spoke through gritted teeth. "I expect that you're the sort of person who knows what's happening."
"N-n-not really."
Robin pulled him back and thrust him again into the wall. "Then I guess I've wasted my time. I'll just drop you and your friend off at the police station and be on my way then." He started to drag the struggling drug dealer away.
"W-wait! Maybe I can help you," then added, half-heartedly, "for a price."
"Funny."
"Okay, okay! For free! What do you want to know?"
"Tell me what you know about the H.I.V.E."
The scrawny drug dealer gulped. He told Robin what he knew, but that wasn't much. He had found out that they were starting a new class project, but no other real details. But that was enough for Robin. He dragged the dealer out of the alleyway into the street.
"You and me are going to the police station."
"But I thought that if I helped you…"
"If you hadn't helped me I would have beaten the living crap out of you, then gone to the police station." He narrowed his eyes at Ferret. "Consider yourself lucky that I haven't."
: T : T : T : T :
Cyborg tore open the supercomputers covering. He had found no glitch in the programming, but there had to be something. Even if it was a hardware problem. There was nothing wrong with this particular section of the computer.
While he tried to find the problem manually he had the computer run its own checks.
The only trouble was that the computer was integrated with pretty much the entire tower. If something was wrong with almost anything then it might cause a problem in the mainframe.
He kept searching, double checking all of the circuit boards and wires. Just as he was going to get up and manually search the entire tower…
PING!
Cyborg looked up.
On the screen the computer proudly declared it had found alien hardware, attached to the system.
"Oh no they didn't… They did not hack my computer!"
He went running down the stairs outside the main room. He went down three flights before he turned off. Then he ran into a maze of corridors, turning left and right before he came to a skidding stop. He was in a room filled with machines with blinking lights. The archive room.
There was nothing here, but old reports of enemies defeated. Nobody ever came here, it was just a dusty old room.
He pressed a few buttons on his arm, which changed shape, scanning for the hardware. He quickly found the right machine, pulled off the covering and there sat a bright yellow piece of device with an H in a hexagon.
"Damn you, Gizmo." He muttered.
: T : T : T : T :
Gizmo scuttled along a corridor in H.I.V.E.'s new secret base. "Headmaster Blood, take a seat." He heard in his earpiece. He scampered quickly into a deserted classroom and pushed a button on his wrist, the image of the headmaster's office appeared on a projected screen above his wrist.
He had planted the camera there months ago and still no-one had noticed. He sat in a chair and watched the scene unfold.
: Brother Blood sat down across the table from a shoulder-length haired agent. He wore glasses and had sleeveless yellow armour. Brother Blood wore his robe over his cybernetic enhancements, only his half metal skull visible.
"What is it that you want, Murphy?" said Blood.
Agent Murphy replied, "Just to make sure that you and the board are in harmony over matters."
Brother Blood frowned. "What?"
"The board wish to be more involved with the choices you make, involving the academy."
"They wish to interfere you mean?"
Murphy half laughed. "No. Just to be in knowledge of occurrences in the school. If you recall, they barely knew about the previous class project, and knew next to nothing about the Titans' involvement with us."
"I-"
"They are sure that wasn't deliberate on your part. However, they do wish to be informed of anything out of the ordinary. As such, they are placing me here to act as your deputy."
"Deputy?" Brother Blood was visibly angered. "Wasn't it you who taught the children while I was away?"
"Yes, it was, with a few others. And I know it is not an easy job by yourself. So, I offered my services."
"Offered your services."
"Indeed."
Brother Blood snarled. "Very well. I see I have no choice in the matter."
"I'm afraid so." Murphy stood up to leave. "Headmaster, I hope that you can continue to provide an excellent standard of teaching. With my assistance, of course."
"Of course."
Murphy left the room. Blood sat with his fingers steepled for several minutes.:
Gizmo shut off the video feed, his equipment would alert him if anything else happened in the heads office.
This was certainly an interesting development…
: T : T : T : T :
Robin stood alone in the training arena. The rest of us had left hours ago. He tossed his belt to one side and set the timer for the shield and hovering guns' activation to 10 seconds. He walked into the middle of the gym. The three guns in a triangle on the floor around him.
The blue shield shot down from the roof and the guns rose to head height, humming like bees. Just as they began firing, Robin dropped to the floor and rolled underneath one of them.
He leapt to his feet on the other side and used the gun as a hand-hold to launch himself over the three guns, so just as they managed to lock onto him he was on the opposite side.
As they turned around he leapt backwards, somersaulting, as the shots hit the floor around him.
The three guns changed tactic and position. They moved so that one was at about hip level, one head level and one a few feet above that. The intention being that one of them would have him in range no matter how he leapt about. They didn't stop firing.
Robin ran at them, strafing slightly, to avoid their shots. He leapt onto the first one, at head height, Before performing a half cartwheel in midair and planting his hand on the one at hip height.
He bent his elbow and pushed, effectively jumping into the air. He caught his foot around the one highest in the air pulled himself up with his knee, launching him into the air again. He landed a few feet away. The guns turned again to face him.
The Boy Wonder grinned.
Robin was in a class of his own.