AN: I'M BACK AGAIN BITCHES!

Outta This World: Observer's Cut

Arc Three: Teen Tyrants

Chapter Twenty-two: Dance with Destiny (Part III)

The Jump City Pier. Blitzkrieg, Raven, Starfire, and Robin.

Blitz's mouth opened and closed like a fish trying to gasp for air as he stared at Raven, who was still blushing as she stood under the lamplight.

Starfire blinked at the display, and then leaned over to Robin. "Is Blitzkrieg alright?" She whispered to him.

"Give him a second." Robin whispered back, a small smirk on his face.

The electrokinetic shook himself out of his stupor and began to stutter out several compliments. "O-oh, uh, W-wow! Y-you look great, Raven!"

"Y-you think so?" Raven inquired, her face flushing as the streetlamps began to flicker on and off.

'This may not have been a good idea.' Robin thought as a bead of sweat rolled down his forehead when one of the bulbs of the lampposts shattered while Raven and Blitzkrieg continued to stammer at each other.

The stammering soon stopped as a limousine that was painted a garish pink pulled up to the pier, and out of it stepped a rather serious looking blonde woman dressed in an equally pink dress with puffy shoulder cuffs and pink rimmed sunglasses that were...comically large.

Once her eyes landed on Blitzkrieg, however, a smile that threatened to split her face formed almost immediately.

"Oh, BLITZY-BOO!" She shouted for all of the world to hear.

"Oh good god no." Sean thought as his shoulders slumped while Raven's right eye began to twitch.

"Hello Kitten…" Blitzkrieg groaned out through grit teeth as the blonde approached the gathered group of heroes.

"Oh, Blitzkrieg! My date! Don't you look HANDSOME!" Kitten cried as she draped herself over the other teen. Then, she held up what looked like a detonator. "Compliment me on my dress."

"Nice…dress." The electro-kinetic 'complimented' through grit teeth.

"Thank you." Kitten smiled and withdrew the remote, linking arms with Blitzkrieg and practically dragging him up the pier and towards the cruise ship. Raven followed slightly behind them, with Starfire and Robin trailing after her, nervous expressions on their faces as some of the lamps began to glow black…

A small amount of time later…

While Blitz had been dragged to the dance floor by his 'date', Robin, Starfire, and Raven had all settled down at two of the circular tables that littered the other areas of the deck of the cruise ship. Robin and Starfire sat together—right next to each other in fact—while Raven sat alone, giving Kitten a glare so poisonous that it would have raised the hairs of most people on end, even if they hadn't seen it.

"This is perhaps the strangest she has ever acted around Blitz." Starfire observed aloud as Raven's fingernails slowly carved scars on the table that she sat at. "She almost appears…jealous."

"Mmn." Robin grunted; his eyes focused on the 'happy couple' that was doing a rather poor mockery of a waltz.

"Friend Robin?"

The Boy Wonder jolted; his train of thought derailed with Starfire's interruption. "Something up, Starfire?"

"I was wondering if you had noticed Raven's…odd behavior." The alien princess asked, slightly perturbed by Robin's silence.

"Well, yeah, and I do think that it is kind of weird, but…" Robin trailed off again as his eyes once again turned back to Blitzkrieg and Kitten. The latter one was fussing and complaining about her ex-boyfriend, while the former looked on with some form of exasperation and…amusement?

"And yet she seems…fake? Like she's acting." The Boy Wonder thought as he continued to analyze the behavior displayed by the pink-dressed villainess.

Robin shook his head as he turned his gaze to the rest of the party. Kitten didn't seem to notice that the other Titans were there, and if she did, she didn't seem to care. Perhaps if they blended in with the crowd, the could—

"Wait, Robin…" Starfire spoke again, cutting off his train of thought. "Is that…"

Starfire never got to tell him who—or what—she saw. Someone else beat her to the punch.

"Robin, my friend!"

Robin flinched again as a rather loud voice cut Starfire off, catching her attention as well.

The man who approached them was tall and lanky, with blue eyes and tree-bark colored hair that had odd, salt-colored sideburns. He was well dressed, wearing a suit and tie that were both a blue color. On one of the pockets of the man's suit was a pin that read FANTASTIC NUMBER FOUR!

Robin grimaced as he stared at the man, who sat in the chair across from him. "Adrian Finch. I wasn't aware that you had any children."

The man's lopsided grin failed to fall from his face. "As a matter of fact, I do. She's right over there, with the young man in the sunglasses. They're by the punch bowl."

To Robin's great surprise, there was a pair that matched the other man's description exactly where he said they were, one African American, the other a white brunette. Both seemed to be shooting looks at Blitzkrieg and Raven, with the brunette steely grey eyes holding something akin to familiarity whenever she shot a look at Blitzkrieg.

"But that's not what I want to talk about." Adrian Finch spoke once more, catching Robin's attention once again. "No, this involves your mentor…and a little project that he and his friends have me working on."

Starfire sent Robin a look. The Tamaranian Princess didn't have to say a word to convey that she was trying to warn him…and Robin knew why.

"Starfire…" He began. "Go make sure that Raven doesn't do anything…"

"I am on it." She said, standing from her chair and walking towards the mage in question. Robin turned back towards Finch, keeping a stoic look on his face.

"What do you want?" He almost growled out.

Adrian gave a small titter in response to Robin's question. "Ah, you are so much like your mentor. Well, what I want to talk about…" He leaned towards Robin and whispered to him in an almost conspiratorial manner. "Is the Omni-Mind And Community project."

Robin's eyes narrowed at Finch. The title sounded familiar, but…

"Oh, you don't know what it is?" Finch asked, then let out a short laugh. "I should have figured. Luthor announced it during his short-lived presidency—before he went completely insane and tried to fight Superman again in a big mech-suit—and it was still just sitting around with the rest of his uncompleted projects…until recently."

Robin remembered it now. "OMAC…but I thought those were those robots for the military!"

"So he told the public." Finch replied, a smirk forming on his face. "In reality, OMAC was meant to be something far…different."

"You know, you're much better at this than my ex." Kitten said as they waltzed—or did a poor imitation thereof—on the dance floor, surrounded by several others.

"Am I now?" He said, attempting to keep the small smile off of his face. The girl reminded him much of his sister back home, strangely enough, and he was kind of starting to like her in the 'odd friend' sort of way.

"Oh, yes. VERY MUCH." Kitten replied, a dopey grin on her face.

"She's playing us." Intelligence whispered from within Sean's mind.

'I figured, but I want to know what she's up to.' Sean thought back. 'So we'll just keep playing along for now.'

Meanwhile, Raven's hand had formed into a fist as she watched the couple dance along. Starfire almost absentmindedly wondered how the ship hadn't been thrown into chaos before turning back to the ones who had caught her attention…before Finch had come to speak to Robin.

Shiga Raki stood near one of the doors that led to the innards of the cruise ship, a woman with platinum blonde hair leaning on the wall next to the door. Both individuals were dressed for the dance, and both had twin cups of punch in their hands.

Had Starfire paid more attention to the door, she would have spotted six glowing red eyes within.

"So if OMAC is not a military project…then what is it?" Robin asked, his curiosity now piqued.

Adrian's smirk seemed to grow. "A 'civilian' project, undertaken by Wayne Industries and KORD Incorporated…meant to work in tandem with B.E. against our…common enemy."

Robin blinked behind his mask, steepling his hands and rest. He knew that Adrian was lying, but he could not tell the degree of the lie. "You didn't come to tell me how they work."

"No." Adrian said, the man's smirk still on his face. "Your boss is trying to compile a record of weaknesses—both physical and psychological—of this city's metahumans. ALL of them. We'd like you to send us a few files."

Robin glared at the man from behind his mask, prepared to give a response…and then his communicator started vibrating.

"One second." He said to the other man, flipping open the circular object.

We got him.

Robin smirked.

And then chaos erupted on the ship.

Later.

"NOBODY DUMPS KITTEN!" Kitten screeched as she struggled against the police officers who were stoically dragging her into the back of a police van, where her boyfriend Fang—the man with a spider for a head—was also sitting, with all of his limbs cuffed with power restraints to prevent escape.

The Titans—who were now fully gathered—watched on with bemusement as the police van carrying their latest villains drove out of the parking lot and away from the pier.

"So no second dates?" Mikumo asked with a small smirk on his face. Blitzkrieg rolled his eyes in response.

"She's not bad-looking, but her fashion sense and her attitude could use some work." He commented back. "So no."

("Victory!" Raven thought as she smirked.)

All sense of victory diminished as Cyborg jolted, bringing up one of his many fore-arm panels, a startled look on his face. "We're gonna have to wait on any celebrations."

"What? Why?" Terra asked as Beast Boy turned to his friend and spoke. "We won, didn't we?"

"I'm not so certain. The Tower was just breached."

Prison Escort to Jump's Metahuman Correctional Facility.

Guard TK147—otherwise known as Vincent O'brion—sighed as he sat across from the two restrained criminals. The boy…man…spider…thing...sat silently as his counterpart fidgeted and squirmed, seeming to test her restraints.

Then, the spider spoke. "Can I have a smoke?"

Seeing no reason to refuse the mutant, TK147 retrieved his pack of cigarettes and his lighter, lighting the one he gave to the strange metahuman. For another moment, there was silence as the mutant puffed on the cigarette, smoke blowing out of his mandibles. Then, he spoke again.

"Dim-Mak."

TK147 blinked in confusion. "What?"

"That's the Cantonese term for it." The man-spider continued. "In English it's just called the 'death touch'. The technique used to kill a man with a single blow."

"Are…you asking me if it is possible to use such a technique?"

"I might be."

TK147 gave the question some thought. Then he nodded. "Of course it is. But it's a matter of chance. No way for us mere mortals to wield such a power properly."

Kitten—the girl in pink—chuckled as she applied some lipstick. "That's what they all say."

"That's what—" The guard stopped as he came to a realization. Where had the lipstick come from?

"Amateurs."

TK147 was dead before he hit the floor.

Inside of a truck.

The inside of the trailer was dark, but not so dark that the Ravager couldn't see her two comrades. Luminous leaned against one of the walls, while Death Hand himself stood in the center of the trailer, his hands in the pockets of his red coat. Then, the blue-white-haired man withdrew a small radio from within the pockets of his coat and spoke.

"Are we getting close?"

"We're already there." A voice spoke from the other side.

"Good. They've held up their end of the bargain. Now it's time that we held ours."

Inside of a police car.

Officers Doyle and Douglass were expecting a simple task—escort the two metahumans…well, one metahuman and one crazy teenage girl…to the correctional facility and then go back on patrol.

Life had a way of defying expectations. This time, the defiance came in the form of a large, red semi-truck driving in front of the prison transport.

"H-hey!" Officer Douglass shouted. "What gives! I thought this road was supposed to be cleared for us."

They found out what gave seconds later, when the trailer's door was knocked off of its hinges, revealing three costumed figures, two male, one female.

The first male—the murderous vigilante known as Luminous—fired an orb shaped blast at the other escorting police car, even as the metahuman in the red trench coat leapt from the inside of the trailer and onto the prison transport, shattering the window with a punch and causing the van to crash by taking hold of the steering wheel.

The female—a young woman dressed in the garb of Slade, otherwise known as Deathstroke—took aim with a rocket launcher…and fired.

Seconds after the last car had been turned into a flaming wreck, the truck stopped. Cire stepped out of the driver's side and walked towards the now gathered group of supervillains as Death Hand rose from the wreckage of the prison vehicle.

"Do you think they're still alive?" Ravager questioned.

"Our allies are not so easy to kill." Death hand reminded her as he walked towards the back of the van. Seconds later, the entire thing was reduced to dust, leaving only two figures in the pile.

"PHAH!" Kitten exclaimed as she spat out a mouthful of the grey material. "Yah know, you could have just opened the door!"

"Oh I know." Death Hand replied, an uncharacteristically cheerful tone in his voice. "But it brings me great joy to be your Gadfly."

Kitten pouted in response, puffing her lip out. "Jerk!"

"He did save us from prison time, dear." Fang reminded her.

"He's still a jerk!"

"I never said he wasn't."

"Before you two break out into another lover's quarrel…" Rose Wilson spoke as she walked up towards the other three, an envelope in her hand. "Here's your payment for the job. Saeld has already freed your father, and he awaits you at a safehouse on the outskirts of the city."

Kitten took the envelope, then turned to Death Hand. "What happens after we go there?"

"Then? You await our signal. The end to our plans begin soon."

And faith shall be rewarded.

AN: Next time—Rise: Prelude to Desolation.