The wolf continued through the streets at a fast pace with her nose down to the ground sniffing out the strange smell, she closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, she could smell Robin, Beast Boy, Raven, Starfire and the strange metallic smell of Cyborg. She bounded up onto the nearby roof and sniffed the air, there was none of that strange scent that they had dragged through the vortex with them. A growl escaped the canine's lips as she leapt from the rooftop to the next one and headed to downtown following the scent of liquor and violence.
Aya stretched up as she spine lengthened and fingers and human skin re-emerged as the change took place, she turned and pushed open the door to the bar, the volume level satisfyingly dropped to a worried hum. Aya turned and cocked her him and grinned wolfishly at the occupants of the bar.
"Now, who's gonna tell me what I wanna know?" the girl grinned at them crunching her knuckles with some satisfaction.
Robin rocked on the back two legs of his chair impatiently.
"I don't like this sitting around not doing anything, especially when we're meant to be getting back to our time and dealing with criminals." Robin growled.
"You just don't know how to relax man." Beast Boy grinned up at Robin lopsidedly.
"I know how to catch criminals, it's what I do. It's what we're meant to be doing." Robin retorted.
"You're as bad as Aya, she's never stopping whenever there's any crimes to be solves or baddies to catch which is you know, like, all the time." Lucky laughed slapping Robin on the back.
"Relax. Think of this as a well needed vacation, time has literally stopped for you, when we find out what sent you here and get it back and get you back then you can go back to the very second you left. You won't miss catching anyone, promise." Lucky added with a smile.
"You sound just like Kid Flash, always telling me to relax and calm down and let the police do their job." Robin smiled wryly.
"I guess it's inherited then." Bolt said thoughtfully.
"But it wouldn't be so bad if I were at least able to help out or go on patrol or something." Robin groaned leaning back in his chair further.
"What and risk you altering the time stream by getting an injury you don't remember or worse getting killed or god knows what. And what would people say seeing you running around from another time?" Bolt pointed out, he knew however much he teased Aya that her protocols had reason behind them.
"Robin's right, this is boring. You can't tell us anything about the future, we can't go do or touch anything which will tell us anything about the future, which includes, oh, you know, everything." Cyborg said mimicking Lucky.
"Ugh. No, with any luck you'll be back home within 24 hours and then you can go back to doing whatever it was you did in the olden days." Bolt said rolling his eyes.
Robin was impressed, it only took three hours to make Bolt give in, Kid Flash wouldn't have lasted one.
"GOD! Fine! I'll take you out somewhere, on patrol or something. Just… you're gonna need some kind of disguise. Let me go have a look." Bolt groaned before zipping off.
"Yay!" Beast Boy cheered finally, to Raven's delight, dropping his newly invented game of 'animal charades'.
"But Beast Boy, what was it you were miming?" Starfire asked urgently.
"It was cat on a hot tin roof. Just like the last five times." Raven grumbled darkly.
"Hey, this time I mimed as an ermine." Beast Boy pouted, Raven narrowed her eyes.
"I think you misunderstand the main principles of this game Beast Boy." Raven deadpanned with an eye roll.
"Hey, I think these oughta work, I think Cyborg finished work on them a few years back, I'll download some profiles of some of our old Titan tryouts onto there. That should make you blend in." Bolt said quickly as he returned with a handful of rings in his hands.
"Hey, aren't those the rings that you had when you went undercover in the HIVE academy?" Raven asked craning her neck.
"Looks like it." Cyborg nodded.
"Here." Bolt said returning back and handing out pairs of rings.
"Hey, I thought Aya said to keep them here." Lucky said looking surprised.
"Yeah, well, Aya's not the leader here. Plus if we're trying to track down someone who might know of or be responsible for this then they're gonna be the ones who'll be able to recognise them, not us." Bolt bristled slightly as he turned to his sister.
"Ooh, looks who's being all manly and leader-like." Lucky grinned teasing him Bolt frowned and ignored her.
"Well, where should we go then?" Ice asked folding his arms.
"Start from the Tamaranian quarter and work our way uptown, maybe have a look over the building where the machine was stolen in the first place, if it's still there." Bolt said thoughtfully.
"Sounds like a plan." Robin nodded as he activated his rings and turned into an oddly dressed boy of his own age, his hair seemed to be mostly the same cover but his uniform was a mixture of unusual blue and black stripes that reminded him more of a catsuit than anything. He turned to see Beast Boy as a rather bemused looking tanned blonde in what appeared to be a modified wetsuit, he guessed the original owner of that form had water powers of some kind. Raven was… barely recognisable her hair was also blonde and her outfit looked more like something the average mall crawling teenage girl would wear rather than an impressive sorceress. Robin suppressed a laugh.
"Come on." Bolt said heading to the door, pleased to be doing something the Titans followed. Starfire sniffed the air happily as they entered the poorest quarter of the residential district, she could smell Tamaranian food and lots of it. In the street they were walking up happy Tamaranian children played in the snow gleefully zipping around above the surface of it.
"This is wonderful!" Starfire smiled happily as she looked along the streets and waved at the children.
"Remember you don't look Tamaranian Star." Robin said below his breath to Starfire, with a look of surprise Starfire looked at her dark coca coloured skin.
"It's strange looking like someone else." Starfire nodded not yet used to her new appearance.
"This is the Tamaranian quarter of town, it's got a pretty low local crime rate, the Tamaranians seem pretty happy to just get by peacefully, if only the rest of the city felt the same way towards them." Ice said with a tinge of sadness as he pointed to some surprisingly hateful graffiti.
"Why would someone say such a thing?" Starfire asked wide eyed as her fingered brushed the spray paint.
"Xenophobia, ever since Earth and Tamaran have got closer in extra-terrestrial relations there's been a larger amount of immigration both ways and people suck whenever it comes to a new group of people they've never seen before. Thankfully not everyone's like that, but we make sure nothing real bad happens here, another reason we're not so popular here." Bolt sighed. Up at the top of the street his eyes fell on two shady looking boys with gas tanks by their feet.
"Don't even think it!" Bolt shouted running towards them, the boys looked up and glared at Bolt.
"What's wrong with you man, you're a native, you're happy with these freaks invading us? It's a goddamn invasion man!" One of the boys spat at Bolt. The other boy made a reach for his gas tank with a rag and a lighter in the other hand.
"You want some third degree burns of your own you racist? Because I assure you the only people getting anything burnt here today is gonna be you." Lucky glowered as her fists caught fire.
"Screw you girl!" One snapped back waving a knife in her face.
"Oh that's how you're going to play it?" Lucky breathed as her eyes went dark and her skin smouldered, Raven blinked in surprise as a ghost of red skin and a pointed tail appeared on Lucky's body.
"Or would you like to see where boys like you go? Since you're so fond of fire." Lucky said in a voice that echoed unnaturally as if two people were speaking at once but slightly out of sync. Lucky reached out and brushed the boy's head with a finger, the boy bent double and screamed clutching his head. And in a second, as if nothing had ever happened, the spell broke. The boy paled and ran away looking terrified, the other shouted after him before shooting a wary look at Lucky and running after his friend.
"I thought I told you to stop doing that." Bolt grumbled clenching his fists and looking at his sister.
"Oh come on, it was only a flash vision of hell. Plus, it worked didn't it?" Lucky shrugged and walked on. Bolt sighed and followed her down the road with the other Titans following behind feeling a little disturbed at such outright hatred.
"Well this is the building where the machine was originally stolen from right?" Bolt said looking up at the dominating Central Science building, the Titans nodded.
"They're closed though, I doubt we're going to find anyone here who can answer our questions." Raven noted dryly.
"Well, it is three am on a Sunday morning." Cyborg shrugged.
"Hey!" Aya shouted leaning out of an upstairs window in the Central Science building and waving at them, Bolt frowned at this and ran towards the building.
"Aya! What are you doing in there?" Bolt hissed up at her angrily.
"No use whispering now, you lot have been shouting down there loud enough to wake the dead." Aya grinned said as she leant her elbows on the windowsill and grinned down at them.
"I thought we talked about you breaking and entering." Bolt growled at her.
"We did." Aya smiled at him. "Anyway, I didn't break in. They left a ground floor window wide open." Aya explained.
"Oh really?" Bolt said flatly, the disbelief evident in his voice.
"Well, when I say ground floor, I mean third floor." Aya admitted with a sheepish grin.
"And by wide open you mean…?" Bolt said crossing his arms.
"Shut. But not locked. Well. Poorly locked at least. Well, for me anyway." She replied looking embarrassed.
"Yes, how clearly careless of them." Bolt muttered rolling his eyes.
"Did you find anything in there?" Lucky called up to her.
"Yep. Lots." Aya nodded.
"Oh fine, we'll come up and have a look." Bolt huffed irritably.
"Cool the front door's open." Aya replied.
"I don't even want to ask." Bolt said holding his hands up and walking around to the front of the building.
"Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies." Aya called out after them before ducking back into the window and shutting it behind her carefully.
"Well?" Bolt asked walking into the darkened room where Aya sat busily sifting through hard copies of old files in a previously locked drawer.
"Well it seems the time machine that got stolen was a bit of a dud, according to this report here it could only punch a hole through time one way you had to go back to the same place at a later point in time and shoot again to punch the hole back open and create a proper hole through time, and there's not a whole lot of point in being able to time travel if you have to wait until that moment in time to be able to get there." Aya said holding up the sheet of paper for the Titans to see.
"So someone had to have been there to re-open the hole for the Titans to accidentally stumble through?" Bolt asked looking up from the sheet.
"Yeah, but the odd thing was there were no footprints and zero scent trail, it's as if a ghost or something opened that portal." Aya sighed leaning back on the swivelly office chair with her tail lashing behind her pensively.
"Or you know, someone who can fly." Ice pointed out sarcastically.
"So, we're either looking at someone on the meta-human database or a Tamaranian." Aya reasoned.
"Either way that's a start, and it'll make it easier to try and find who we're looking for. Come on, let's go, I don't wanna be found in here." Bolt said shifting from foot to foot.
"Wait, don't you wanna go check the old inventions vault? There could be clues!" Aya said jumping up from her chair and grabbing Bolt around the wrist.
"You know anything we find whilst breaking and entering is inadmissible in court." Bolt pointed out.
"So? We can just go and deliver our own brand of justice, anyway if we take this to court we risk making their future selves meet them and you know that could cause a paradox, that's why we're here in the first place." Aya insisted.
"Oh fine, go on then. You'll be the death of me with your borderline criminal behaviour." Bolt groaned rubbing his eyes.
"Aww, I know you love it." She laughed before running off out of the room, Bolt reddened and followed her.
"Will you two either get it together or get over it?" Lucky snorted shoving past her brother.
"You two disagree on your methods of finding evidence then?" Cyborg asked walking alongside Bolt.
"We're unpopular enough here as it is without breaking the law, unless we keep our noses completely clean the police department won't work with us at all and then we'll be pretty much useless in this town. But Aya just won't give up when she's on a case, short of severely hurting someone she'll do anything to solve a case." Bolt sighed wearily following the over excited Aya as she bounded down the stairs to the Central Science invention vaults.
"Well, sometimes the police aren't exactly a help, even to us." Robin admitted.
"Hey, come on, it's open. Well… now anyway." Aya grinned at Bolt.
"Fingerprints?" Bolt asked hopefully.
"Checked but they all scanned back to the people who work here." Aya replied as she heaved the heavy vault door open.
"Here, let me help." Raven said reaching out and pulling the door open with her powers, Aya's eyes widened and she jumped back from the blackness of Raven's powers.
"There. Open." Raven said with a small smile.
"I had it." Aya said flatly and walked in, Raven lowered her hand and frowned.
"You're welcome." She muttered following after with the others.
"Where is the device meant to be?" Starfire asked looking at the rows and rows of stored and carefully labelled devices as they walked further into the storage room.
"Well, this row according to the reference and… it's… not here." Bolt said trailing off as they came to a suspicious gap in the shelves with disturbed dust.
"So we know whoever did this stole the device." Lucky noted thoughtfully.
"Well, there wasn't any footprints into here so it's probably the same floating person that left no trail at the site of the portal. Smell anything Aya?" Ice asked.
"Just all of you, and dust." Aya said tonelessly.
"Hm. Well that's a dead end then, what now?" Bolt mused out loud.
"Whatever you want, I'm out. I've got damage control to do as well as a million other things." Aya said turning into a wolf and padding out between the legs of the Titans and heading back towards the door at a decent pace.
"Aya…" Bolt called out after her but got no response.
"God, she's been acting weird all evening." He grumbled rubbing the back of his head frustratedly.
"Yeah, even for her. I wonder what's up." Lucky agreed.