Here is the next chapter of Jukebox and we finally hear a bit from Starfire and also get a hint what the Jukebox might be... yes, the title means something.

Some of the story line borrows heavily from the New Teen Titans as well as the Titans comics story line with plenty of creative license. I will comment and explain more after the end of the chapter and explain some other things like I always do (there's some science! Yay!).

Thank you for the positive response to this story and feel free to PM me to prod me along about updates! And REVIEW! Please!

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Disclaimer: All of the DC Universe: Not mine – not now, not ever.

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Jukebox concept: so mine

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Additional Characters and details of the DC Universe mentioned in this chapter:

Blackfire – Komand'r (Tamaranean) – Empress and Sole Ruler of Tamaran and Older Sister of Starfire

Doria'n – (Tamaranean) – A General in Komand'r's Armies and her lover

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Jukebox

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Chapter 4

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Standing at the bar, talking to Grace Choi, was an strange combination of familiar and foreign to Nightwing. The members of the Outsiders weren't close, they certainly weren't the Titans or even the Justice League, but there was a mutual respect between the two. Grace and Dick also knew enough about each other to feel somewhat vulnerable, to know that there would be honesty. Grace knew Nightwing with and without the mask and she had also seen him with and without Starfire.

The bar crowd had thinned out enough for Grace to have some time to really talk. Like much of the warmer parts of the Earth, an afternoon rest, similar to a siesta, was popular throughout a surprising amount of the galaxy. For the first time in his life, Dick Grayson craved such a nap. Could he be... depressed? Yeah, something like that.

"So you do admit there were problems between you and Kory before you left for Gotham?" Grace asked.

"Well, sure...," Nightwing dropped his head in defeat, "No, the problems were all me. My obsessions, my neuroses, my overcommitments. Reconfiguring the teams, trying to get the best out of everyone. She was always there, always supportive, but half the time I saw right past Kory."

"Wow, insight."

"Please don't be snarky," Dick said with a heavy sigh.

"Sorry, you are serious about this, aren't you? So tell me about your Bat-sing it for a bit. How was life in Daddy's shoes?"

Dick told Grace about putting on his mentor's cowl, his flirtations with Babs, the distance he put between himself and Kory. He told Grace in more general terms about the information Batman had shown him about Aliens. He skipped over the Metahuman part – he really didn't need to piss off the nearly 7 foot half-Amazon that was so kindly listening to his tale of woe.

"Gotta make the rounds, be back in a bit, but I take it it gets worse," Grace said as she made a motion to a reptilian looking creature that was unlike anything Dick had seen before. He didn't take too good of a look however; it seemed as though it might be easy to provoke.

"Oh, it gets worse, I assure you, it gets worse," Dick said, sounding again defeated, but quickly straightening his stance once he realized it. This was not the placed to telegraph weakness. He was only human, he had no powers, he was far away from home. Vulnerability was not in his best interest. He wanted to make it to Tamaran at the very least so he could apologize to Starfire.

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Starfire, or rather Princess Koriand'r of Tamaran as she is know on her home world, let out a heavy sigh. As Vega, Tamaran's sun began to set in the West, her work was finally over for the day. She had dismissed her advisers and handmaidens, not that she relied on either. And as for the guard, well, they reported daily as per protocol but she tended to dismiss them. They'd reappear of course, but eventually rid herself of them, even if it meant a random starbolt sent in there direction. Her person didn't need protecting; she'd proven that numerous times. Her heart, well her heart was another story, and there was no one who could protect that, and there was only one person who she wanted to care for it, and his actions had forced her back to the place of her birth.

At least there were no State Dinners that night, she thought with a great deal of relief, so she would be spared the endless hours being pursued by suitors that she had no interest in, forced to have a smile plastered on her face that served only so people would not question her happiness to be home. The food was enjoyable and certainly plentiful although she certainly missed mustard, but who'd have thought that in just a handful of years she would have grown disgusted by the table manners of her people?

Being on Tamaran was a series of trade-offs. There were many reasons to relish her down time, her freedom, an evening away from being leading, from being royalty and the ever-present court.

Of course being left alone with her thoughts, well, that wasn't much better.

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Starfire took flight as she often did at this hour. She couldn't help but remember him and remember their little and not so little rituals, all the memories and how special each and every one was. Many of the happiest predated their romantic relationship, such as watching the sunset as they would from the roof of Titans Tower. The endless hours they would have for discussions nearly every evening, occasionally punctuated by a brush of a hand or a blush. There was a spark, there was potential, there was even love, but neither took that next step. It was such a simple time. It was when they were young and learning about life, thinking about things for the very first time, having revelations, sharing them, discussing them as close friends, no as best friends do.

Shouldn't that have gotten better when they became romantically involved? It actually did for quite awhile, but then layer after layer, it started to peel away, eroding so slowly that for a time, it wasn't even noticeable at all.

But soon it was noticeable, at least to her, but she forgave him so easily. They were soul mates after all, she was sure of it. On her world, they were, there was no question of that. But for humans, Earthlings, or is it just Americans – or just the male of the species for that matter? - such obvious things as the perfect and eternal match could be overlooked.

So they grew apart and worse, and it certainly didn't seem to bother Nightwing at all. Yes, it really started after he was Nightwing. A hero in his own right. He doffed the Robin costume of a boy, a teen to don the Nightwing costume to become a man. Ironically, when he stepped out of the Batman's shadow, he became more like him.

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Starfire loved her planet and took in the beauty of it all, at least what had not been decimated by her sister Blackfire, the Empress Komand'r, during the parts of her reign when she was not lost in her madness, reveling in her unrivaled power, laying ruin arbitrarily to her people and her planet.

Starfire's arrival on Tamaran had been no less then providential. She had no idea that her sister was even ill, much less had fallen through the depths of madness and even into despair. Blackfire was beginning to suffer the many physical effects of the final stages of the infestation of the sqa'tir'i worm larvae from the swamp moons of Drenthax IV. Her advisers did what they could to protect her secret and get her appropriate medical attention, but rumors began as the commoners began to whisper about the seizures witnessed and the endless screaming that could even be heard through the thick palace walls all through the night.

So Koriand'r was there when her planet needed her most, when they needed a leader, when they needed a familiar face, a beloved member of the Royal Family and a heroine to her people to guide them through a difficult time. And for Starfire, if there was ever a time she needed to feel worthwhile, to feel useful, it was then.

So Starfire took over leadership in a relatively simple ceremony by Tamaranean standards and Blackfire went off-planet to begin the many weeks of medical and psychological treatment.

Koriand'r remained skeptical that Empress Komand'r's illness, for lack of a better term, was completely caused by the sqa'tir'i worm larvae. There was no doubt that the worm had infested Komand'r's brain and remained there for most likely years and that it now was removed. If it was responsible for the Empress's actions, was she able to be fully cured and rehabilitated? Was the disease, the infestation of the worm, at the root of all the atrocities that Komand'r had spearheaded if not done by her own hand?

And it was also the inconsistent nature of Blackfire's rule, of her cruelty, then kindness that wore heavily on her people. The worm would lay dormant at times and Blackfire would show remorse and weakness. It was at those times that her fiance the great General Doria'n would push her back on course so that she would rule again with an iron fist. And he was so desperate to see her return to her vicious state that he would provoke her. In what turned out by its very nature to be his final act of provocation, he got her to take a life again after a time of weakness – and he did it by getting Blackfire to take his own.

But as much as Starfire was assured that the larvae was at the root of Blackfire's cruelty, as her little sister, she had a different opinion. Some of the acts had been so heinous that it was beyond what she could imagine her sister doing. X'Hal's own Priests and Healers, every medical, psychiatric and psychological expert as well as entomologist in the sector had been consulted. The opinions were unanimous that this was the cause of her instability and that there was a cure. Komand'r just needed time to rehabilitate and heal.

Although Koriand'r had the love of her people, they remained faithful to her sister. Could her people not see all that Blackfire had done? How could they forgive her? Then again, when you strip a people of their self worth and means for supporting themselves, they are easier to lead. So they embraced Kory, but they awaited their Empress's return from Okaara, where she had gone to heal her mind, body and spirit as well as to regain and sharpen her military and leadership acumen.

Starfire's time on Tamaran had been very productive once she helped them see that they could do for themselves again. She showed them that their newly acquired submissive behavior was not their nature, nor should it be, and they started to rebuild the infrastructure of Tamaran and their lives. Starfire still wanted to toy with Democracy or better yet a representative Republic that worked so well in the United States, not that it was all that unique to the US or Earth. She wasn't sure exactly how much time she had as the leader of Tamaran and her sister was recovering more every day. Perhaps her sister would go along with modifying the governing system upon her return, or even have a role for Starfire.

Or maybe, as Beast Boy would say, winged simians might exit out of her posterior.

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Near the palace, the sands and clay deserts were beautiful this time of day with the shadows and layers of orange, gold, red and rust. To her, it was the most lovely time there. The steppes and cliffs in the distance helped to demarcate what was the main civilized area, where there was the palace and the city, the marketplace and the schools. Although there were wide open spaces within the vast area, this was where the majority of the Tamaraneans lived and worked.

But over those areas of elevations, the areas to the South, was where her beloved lush riverside, the waterfalls, the fertile deltas, and the jungles once were. They were mostly destroyed, still dwindling away, now having faded to nearly nothing. If the land was in any way intact, it would have been the time of day that she would listen to the gree'linhk bugs hum their songs to attract mates or the rumfarang'lin,the birdlike lizard would sing their sad songs as they took their evening flight back to the nesting grounds on the cliff face.

But just as Saddam Hussein had done to the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in Iraq in the mid-1990's to allow military access to Iran during the Iran-Iraq war, Blackfire had decided that this rivers should be dammed or diverted so that the armies should be given the land for factories and to strip the resources to build more ships and star cruisers to reinforce their forces, as well as train their forces there.

On Earth that area destroyed, the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers were known "the cradle of Earth's human civilization", these jungle lands were important to Tamaraneans, but at an earlier place in their historic time line. On Earth there is the "Out of Africa Theory", that hypothesizes that Archaic Homo sapiens evolved into anatomically modern humans whilst still in Africa and then left to populate the rest of the world, it was from these lush lands where the protofelines evolved into the hominid biped modern Tamaraneans as they are today and left to populate all of Tamaran. It was not like the Amazon of Earth in that there was so many mysteries, so many species, so much diversity – it seemed so bleak was it truly all lost, Starfire wondered, or could ever recover. The Tigris-Euphrates Marsh was showing early signs of recover just over 15 years later. Would that even happen here?

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A metal knee joint hit Dick Grayson on the left gastrocs, or gastrocnemius muscles of his calf, and along with the metal hand clamped on his right shoulder, it gave a whole new meaning to one of his favorite phrases from his youth, "You're going down!". One minute he was standing at the bar awaiting Grace's return to discuss how he had nearly if not actually destroyed his relationship with Kory and the next minute well...

The result was a corkscrew spin to the floor, sprawling haplessly onto his back. Dick might be the most acrobatic hero in the Justice League, the Titans, the Outsiders, and all their affiliates, but there was no avoiding that fall.

He kipped, fluidly gaining his footing, ignoring the jeers of the patrons, fist at the ready, "Cyborg, what the he-"

He held his tongue and his fist as soon as he realized he had a sonic cannon within four inches of his nose.

"I have half a mind to strand your ass here," Cyborg said, not moving the cannon from the ready.

"What?"

"Here I am, taking your sorry, spiky-haired, not-appreciating-that-you-have-the-bestgirl-friend-in-the-universe self all the way out here and the first chance you get you're hitting on the bartender? At least you had the decency to turn down the Thanagarian earlier but I guess a man can just take so much temptation. The apple doesn't fall so far from the tree, does it baby-Bats?"

Dick gave him a shocked look. He dared not open his mouth. It wasn't like the sonic cannon had gone anywhere.

"Yes, Dick, I was walking by to find the little half-robots room and observed the interchange. Lucky for you that the T-ship wasn't ready to fly at the moment, 'cause if it had, I wouldn't have stayed, and I would definitely deserted your pathetic butt!"

Nightwing prided himself on only sweating during certain activities: working out, fighting of course, and well, in the bedroom. But at this point his palms and brows were sweaty. Actually, there were drops of sweat coming off his brow. Cyborg was serious. Dead serious. God help him if Kory was half as angry.

He had messed up, real bad. Not at the moment, his current activity was innocent at least. Thank God. But honestly, what was the chance she'd forgive him for everything from before anyway? Maybe it would be a preferable fate to get it over with and just be shot point blank by Cyborg's sonic cannon.

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Grace finished her sweep of the pentagon-shaped bar and re-stationed herself in front of Nightwing and his self-appointed personal disciplinarian, Cyborg.

"Why hello there handsome, what can I serve you?" she said in a purring voice quite unlike her nature sultry alto.

"Look lady, whatever your serving, I don't need," Cyborg replied, not taking his eyes off Nightwing.

It was at that moment that Nightwing filed away a memo in his mental Rolodex: Cyborg as intimidator: possible uses: Hostage situations? Territory disputes? Bouncer at the next Titan Network party? If he lived through this, he'd revisit the idea.

Grace spoke in her regular voice, "Man, Cyborg, I am insulted. It's like you come across tattooed Metahuman female former coworkers in deep space everyday. Or perhaps I didn't make a lasting impression."

Finally Cyborg tore his eyes away from Nightwing. Not that Nightwing moved a muscle.

"Grace? Grace Choi? What are you doing here?" Cyborg said, retracting his cannon and shaking her hand.

"I think it's obvious. I'm tending bar. Oh, and I'm letting Nightwing tell me how much he fu-, sorry, I'm listening to his difficulties he has recently had with his love life."

Nightwing and Cyborg replied simultaneously,

"No, I fucked up."

"He fucked up."

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After another couple of hours, with breaks for Grace to serve the other customers, Dick had poured his heart out. Even Vic felt bad. Mentally exhausted and physically as well, the two Titans made the decision to stay the night at the way station. Not that it wouldn't have been necessary anyway, the repairs were taking a great deal more time than anticipated and low and behold, it was costing more too.

Grace came off her shift and the three enjoyed some food and some more conversation. No matter where the conversation started, it always returned to one thing: Dick and Kory.

Dick lamented, "How can I tell her what she means to me? How can I help her remember the good times? If we could only revisit those moments, go back in time. Nothing has to change, there were plenty of perfect moments, if only we could relive a night or two."

"Oh, that's easy." Grace said smugly.

"Easy? How could that be easy? What, like, literally?" Cyborg countered.

"Of course," Grace replied, if possible, even more smug.

"Have you heard of physics or how time works?" Cyborg asked, a bit annoyed at her attitude.

Dick was no more gracious, "I'll humor you Grace. What the hell do you mean?"

"The Jukebox."

"The Jukebox?" Dick asked.

"The Jukebox can take you back to those special moments, hours, or sometimes even days. Not just to remember them, not just to see them, but to relive them."

"What? How is that possible?" Dick asked. He had seen a lot, but this? It had to be impossible.

"I don't understand the technology, Dick, but it works." Grace replied.

"Grace, it's an Urban Myth. The Jukebox doesn't exist," Cyborg scoffed.

Grace cocked a brow, "Oh really. Well, let me be the one to inform you that as you are aware, some Urban Myths are real. And the Jukebox is one such alleged 'Urban Myth'. I've seen it, I've used it, and I can take you to it."

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To Be Continued...

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Thank you for reading and please review!

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Let's see what was included here that people might no know:

Dick Grayson has lead the Teen Titans as Robin and Nightwing, and the Outsiders as Nightwing and the JLA as Batman

I made up the thing about the sqa'tir'i worm larvae, although Drenthax IV was of course mentioned in the Teen Titans cartoon. However, depending on where the infestation would have been in the brain and with the vagueness of my description, it would not be that inconsistent with other such infestations. What a pleasant thought, worms in the brain.

Dorian was Blackfire's lover in the comics and did provoke her into killing him during a time that she had 'gone soft'. Not surprisingly, it was a turning point for her.

In the comics, Tamaran was lush jungleland. Blackfire did lay waste to some of it at one point in the comics. In the cartoon looks like the desert, so I compromised.

In 1994, Saddam Hussein, then leader of Iraq did order the essential destruction of the Tigris-Euphrates Rivers areas. In 2009, there was some evidence of the return of the salt-marshes unique to the area. However, multiple species of flora and fauna indigenous only to that area are thought to be extinct.

There have been a number of "Out of Africa" theories of the Evolution of Man, changing (or should I say evolving) even since I sat in my freshman physical anthropology classes. The current accepted theory is that archaic Homo sapiens developed into anatomically modern humans (H. sapiens sapiens) and left Africa in that evolved state and out competed H. erectus and H. Neanderthalensis. An offshoot to this theory that some experts believe that some assimilation occurred: up to 4% of the current human population have Neanderthal DNA.

Protofeline – Based on the DC lore that Tamaraneans are evolved from cats, I am using the word protofeline or "first cat". (Proto = first + feline = cat).