Part 2: Terra Nova
When we last left Tara Markov, she was jumping through the air in reference to a famous show most TT watchers have never heard of and don't care about because it's old. And since it would be rather counterproductive for her to crash and burn in the bottom of the gorge, you probably know the end result.
"Hahhhhhhhhhh!" Tara whooped as she crashed down on the other side of the gorge, her car bouncing a few times. "Whoohoo!"
"Ow. Ow. My axels. My precious axels. And my shocks. Don't forget my shocks." KITT complained.
"Wait a minute Kitt, didn't you just point out you don't experience life the same way humans do? So why would you be hurt?"
"If you really must know…"
And then, suddenly, the cop cars crashed down behind Tara, who looked in shock at her rearview mirror.
"WHAT? NO! THAT NEVER WORKS FOR YOU!" Tara said in stunned surprise.
"NICE TRY YANKEE, BUT WE INVENTED THAT MANEVEUR!" The head car said on his intercom, and Tara found herself right back where she started.
"This is because I punched your original character, isn't it?"
Perhaps.
"Damn it, I'm out of Titans to ask."
"If I may make a suggestion Lady Terra, you could ask me what I would do."
"…Why didn't you offer me a possible solution in the first place!"
"You never asked."
Tara stared at the car, and then she, still driving along while being chased by the cops in the back roads of Arkansas, turned the wheel and lightly sideswiped a tree.
"Nooooo! My paint! My lovely blue paint!" KITT wailed.
"Oh be quiet Threepio. Now if we're done being clever, Kitt, what would YOU do?"
"I would activate the Anti-Hillbilly Chase Device."
"…We have an ANTI-HILLBILLY CHASE DEVICE?"
"Father Cyborg is nothing if not thorough. His motto is, be prepared."
"I thought that was the Boy Scout's motto."
"The little creeps stole it from him! A lawsuit is being filed as we speak!" KITT retorted.
"…right." Tara said. "Ok Kitt, activate the Anti-Hillbilly Chase Device!"
"Okay then!" KITT replied, as the trunk popped up and a small package was launched behind the Solstice, hitting the ground swiftly.
And erupted into an inflated sign as the cop cars approached. An inflated sigh with a big arrow pointing to the right and three words.
FREE PORK RINDS
All the cop cars screeched to a halt.
"…It's a trick!" Cop 1 said.
"We can't take that chance!" Cop 2 yelled back.
And all the cop cars turned and drove off in the direction of the arrow…even though that meant they were driving right into the woods.
"Wow, sure are a lot of trees on this here road!"
" 'Course! Whoever wants t' hand out pork rinds has t' make it a challenge!"
And with that the cops were gone.
"Huh. And here I thought everyone in the South was illiterate." Tara said, and drove on. This time, she was going to make sure she actually put distance between herself and trouble, even if she had to keep driving all day.
Topeka, Kansas.
In the end, she only had to drive until mid-afternoon.
"WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU'RE OUT OF GAS?" Tara yelled at her car, as she found herself stuck in front of a green light in a busy intersection in the middle of the fairly large city. "I thought you ran on solar power or cold fusion or something!"
"No, you're thinking of Father Cyborg's Jive-Talking Moped."
Titans Tower.
"Yo honkey, change the channel! They got the new 50 Cent video on MTV2!" A moped parked in front of the TV said.
"I really…REALLY wish this thing didn't have unlimited power supplies." Noel said through clenched teeth.
"While I have extraordinarily good mileage, Lady Terra, I run on gasoline like any other car. And my supplies are utterly exhausted." KITT said.
There was a storm of horns honking behind Tara now, as she groaned and leaned on the steering wheel. She was really missing her powers right now.
"Don't worry, I've already called the police for assistance." KITT said.
"Tell that to them!" Tara retorted, jerking a thumb behind her.
Cars began driving around Tara's prone vehicle, most of the occupants having some choice words for her as they drove past. Tara sighed deeply again.
She heard the burps of a siren as a police car showed up. Finally. She could explain her situation (and leave out the fact of her talking car this time) and they could get her a tow truck and maybe spare her enough gas to get to a station.
Several minutes later.
"WHAT DO YOU MEAN I'M UNDER ARREST?" Tara semi-exploded.
"You got a warrant on you from Rust County, and I'm afraid that a warrant is quite valid everywhere, Ma'am." The most recent police officer to speak to Tara said.
"No way! I was being railroaded! They were using some law that surely is unconstitutional but the sticks haven't gotten the message yet! Kinda like they haven't gotten the fact they lost the Civil War and should quit complaining about it." Tara groused. "How the heck did you get that so fast! Most of those counties looked like they would be lucky to have more then one working phone, let alone a fax machine!"
"Ma'am, I've been to Tire Springs County. They take the crime of 'driving-while-Yankee' quite seriously there. And when there's a will there's a way." The officer said. "Please don't make a fuss. It's better for everyone that way, as I really don't want to hurt you."
"Hurt me?" Tara growled. After doing the tango with monsters, superhumans, demons, and demi-gods, she had a feeling it would take more then the average police officer to hurt her, even if she didn't have her powers…wait.
If there had been a wall nearby she would have repeatedly slammed her head against it. Why hadn't she done this before?
"Officer, we can get this straightened out right now. I am a member of the Teen Titans, based out of Florida…"
"I thought they were based in California."
"DON'T LOOK AT ME, THE AUTHOR WAS THE ONE WHO DIDN'T CHECK PROPERLY!"
They didn't confirm it until Season 5, does it really matter what state it's in?
"You made Titans East make no sense."
BE QUIET. YOU'RE INTERRUPTING THE STORY ENOUGH.
"Right. Anyway, I'm currently on vacation. But to prove it, I will show you the exclusive communicator that members of my organization are given." Tara said, as she reached into a pocket…
And came up empty. Arching an eyebrow, she checked another pocket. Nothing.
"Uh…just a sec…" Tara said as she began patting herself down. The police officer watched, apparently not all that amused.
In retrospect, Tara thought, she was probably lucky the cop didn't think she was going for a gun when she turned and began searching her car, but he didn't. Probably underestimating her due to her frail build. She got that a lot, but now wasn't the time to get mad at it, she had to find her communicator, hell, she probably hadn't realized she could use it before now because of a subconscious reasoning that the rednecks she'd encountered wouldn't have been impressed in the slightest, but surely that wasn't the case here in a relatively big city in the Midwest where was it where was the damn communicator…
"Where did I see it last…!" Tara snapped to herself.
And then…
A time when things seemed simpler.
"Hey Terra, bet you can't throw your communicator into the garbage can here!" Beast Boy challenged.
"You are ON!" Terra retorted, and unclipped the piece of electronics and hurled it through the air.
It fell, nearly perfectly, into the can.
"BOOYAH!"
"DOH!"
"Well, time to get it back…" Terra said as she started walking towards the can.
The alarm went off.
"Titans, assemble! The city is under attack!" Robin yelled as he ran past the pair.
"Let's go Terra!" Beast Boy said.
And she had.
And in all the chaos that had followed…she'd forgotten all about it.
"…Oh." Tara said, back in the present when she really needed the communicator. "Right."
She seemed to have a bad habit of doing stupid things like that. Like when she and Beast Boy tried to do a magic show and her 'turn something on fire into an animal by smothering said fire with a pot' set off the fire alarms and the sprinklers. Though she had protested that the fire alarms were far too sensitive to be set off by so little smoke: she'd stuck to that opinion even when Robin had informed her most buildings had smoke detectors that sensitive (and she still thought it was stupid that a few wisps would set off a drenching torrent of water: talk about overcompensating).
"Come now Lady Terra." KITT said very quietly so the officer wouldn't overhear him. "Most police officers are reasonable. Surely you can find some measure of proof of your claims."
Some time later.
"I'm telling you, I'm a superhero!" Tara yelled in the holding cell of the police station she'd been taken to. Unfortunately, it was the kind that was placed right next to the desks of a lot of officers, and doubly unfortunately they were the kind of officers who dealt with the dark side of their job by being smartasses.
"Oh really!" The closest one said. "What's your name? Stick Girl? No-Tits?"
The male officers around him found that uproariously funny. Tara sighed: workplace equality was really a long, slow process.
And she also realized she wasn't going to get anywhere just claiming who she was. That had gotten her in this holding cell and her car impounded. She needed more solid proof, and yelling and screaming just made it easier for her to be dismissed as a nut.
"Okay, okay, yes, I don't look like the average giant muscled huge tit stereotype you might be used to, but I am a superhero. I'm part of a famous team. Let me out, I'd like my phone call according to my rights. Give me a vid phone, I saw you have at least one, I'll prove it." Tara protested.
Surprisingly, the police officers did let her out, though Tara had a suspicion it was more to give themselves further amusement then any of them actually taking her at her word. Well screw them, she might not have her communicator but she knew her Tower's exclusive phone line. She'd get Robin or Cyborg on, they'd explain everything, they were good talkers. Hell, even Noel the Prick would do: for all his assholery he also was a good talker…and prone to yelling at people he considered stupid…maybe it would be better if she didn't get Noel, she didn't need him to get her tossed back into the cell because he thought the police were stupid for not recognizing her on sight…
In the end, she got none of the above, as the police officers clustered around her as she dialed the very long number. The phone rang, several long rings…
"Y'ello?" A sleepy-eyed Gauntlet answered, having gotten up at the crack of 4 PM.
"Rob?" Tara said in surprise.
"…OH YEAH RIGHT! That guy's not a superhero! He doesn't even have a costume!" One of the officers said.
"Huh?" Rob said. "Who is this?"
"Oh enough wasting our time you quack!" Another officer said, and hung up on Rob.
"HEY!" Tara yelled. "You can't do that!"
"Hey, not our fault you called the wrong place." Officer 3 said. "Back in the cell."
"Who was that Rob?" Robin asked as Gauntlet stared at the now blank computer screen.
"…I think it was a random costume critiquer. Watch out Tim, we may be getting a bunch of junk mail soon." Gauntlet said, as he yawned and headed into the kitchen.
"No! That was the right place!" Tara yelled as she was escorted back towards the holding cells. "That was Robert Candide! Gauntlet! Check the city of Ubertron, he's in the official files!"
"Ma'am, we're not the FBI, we don't have files on every city and every weirdo who tries to defraud us."
"I wasn't defrauding anything! He's a HERO, like me! He was right next to me when I got my Congressional Medal of Honor! Didn't you see that? I was live on TV! The president had a special order signed so my teammates and I could get it despite not being in the military! IT WAS ON IN PRIME TIME!"
"I think that was American Idol night."
"DOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHH!" Tara cursed. "Fine, news just isn't on TV! Go plug it into the net, you'll get a whole bunch of results featuring me!"
"You know how much money and time we'd waste if we spent half an hour processing every prisoner with a story!? GET BACK IN YOUR CELL." Another officer, this one not as nice as the others, snapped at the blonde.
Tara's eyes grew angrily cold.
"Fine. I'll prove it the old fashioned way. Get me a rock." Tara said.
"Why?"
"I'm a geokinetic."
"A what?"
"I can move rocks with my mind! Because I'm a superhero! Just give me a rock, any rock!"
"Here ya go." One of the officers said as he handed her a smooth pebble.
"…Why did you have a rock in your pocket?" Tara said in some surprise.
"I believe that's none of your business."
Tara stared, then shrugged and put a rock on a nearby desk, stepping several feet back from it.
"All right…I'm not asking to move a mountain here…just come to me…come on…" Tara said, as she focused, trying to find the familiar sensation within her when she used her powers.
The police officers watched, amused.
Tara concentrated even harder, feeling the stress beneath her eyes and in her hands, but she had to prove who she was and get out of this craziness…
And suddenly, the rock began to move, ever so slowly.
The cops' eyes were drawn to the motion, as Tara kept concentrating, it was working, all she needed was a tiny spark…just a spark…
"Hey, the brace shifted." A cop said, and leaned beneath the desk and adjusted something.
A pile of books that held up one corner of the desk. The pebble abruptly stopped moving.
The police officers erupted into laughter as they realized Terra hadn't moved the rock at all: it had moved because it was on a very slight grade. Tara gritted her teeth at the sound and kept concentrating, trying to reach out and seize the rock, but her brain couldn't even move the tiny speck a millimeter. Her powers were well and truly dead.
For the first time, Tara really grasped the ramifications that they might never come back. And it extended beyond being laughed at by police officers and trouble with more backwoods law enforcement. Without her powers, she couldn't rejoin the Titans. She wasn't Robin, trained for years in combat and other skills: she needed her abilities. And…
…where else would she go?
Even if the Titans took her hand and tried to guide her, what other place did she belong? Her past was a cipher to her. And if she stayed with the Titans, she'd be a liability, a weak link in the chain.
She'd have no identity again…and this time would be worse, because she'd know exactly what she had lost.
Had she come to this realization in a more private moment, she might have broken down weeping, but in her current circumstance, the horror of the realization emerged as anger instead.
"GODDAMN CHEAP GOVERNMENT DESKS!" Tara yelled, and kicked the side of said source of her curse.
She probably could have reacted better, for while the cops did laugh again at that, her violent action triggered their trained instincts when dealing with suspects, and Tara, with one lone comment of 'Enough of this shit' was promptly seized and taken (not as gently as she would have liked, at that) back to her holding cell, where she was once again locked up.
"No! You have to believe me! Really, please!" Tara asked, but the officer who had escorted her just walked away, although several hung around the cage either because they worked next to it or because they wanted to pester her some more. "Just look me up on the Internet! I'm not some crazy girl who's just making up a story! Come on, do I look like some street trash?"
"But you couldn't get our rocks off." One of the officers said. More semi-chauvinistic laughter.
"My powers are worn out!"
"Hey Blondie, wanna talk to MY pet rock?" Another suggested. Tara's eyes narrowed as they laughed again: she was getting VERY sick of being the butt of the joke.
"And you should be VERY glad they're worn out at the moment." Tara said, and stalked away from the front of the cage to sit on the hard bench. The cops continued to chuckle and snort, which Tara crossly tried to ignore.
"Right, powers. She probably thinks by geokilnantic or whatever she claimed to be that that means the whole Earth revolves around her." One officer said.
"Hey, if she's so strong, it probably can. Of course, we've seen how strong she is." Officer 2 said. "Doesn't she know we don't get metahumans around here? Metahumans go to Metropolis, or LA, or anywhere. Hell the closest hotspot in this area is Dakota City and that's way off. This is just the average small town with the average stupid stories."
The officers agreed, apparently having decided Tara was a nut. She growled to herself.
"Ungrateful bastards. I nearly killed myself to save them, me and all my team, and this is the thanks we get. No wonder Savior's so damn bitter, if this is all we ever encounter."
"I know mannnnn…" Said the hobo in the drunk tank next to Tara, who clearly belonged in said tank due to how he looked, smelled, and talked. "I fight off the Mushroom Men of Venus, and they think I'm drunk'r something."
"SHUT IT BATSON!" A nearby officer said as he rapped on the bars of the drunk tank.
"At least Stick Girl's in proper company." Officer 1 near the cage said. "So what, we wait until the accusing authorities come and file a complaint, or pick her up, or whatever?"
"Less paperwork for us."
"Wait…should we really just turn her over to a group based on their personal claims?"
"They're still officers under the law. How inaccurate could they be?"
"Shoot 'em up, shoot 'em up, shoot 'em up!" Redneck Cop 1 said as he and his fellows drove down the roads out of their county, heading for Topeka.
"No wait Cletus, not so fast, first we have to try her before a jury of her good ol' boys!"
"Oh right! H'yuck yuck!"
"…I don't think even the reddest of rednecks still says 'H'yuck yuck' Molinari."
"Well still, what's she going to do here? Fight for truth, justice, and the American way? That's what WE'RE for, since no fancy pants metahumans bother showing up here. And we're doing fine without them!"
"And what if some DID show up?" Tara called.
"Oh we have some protocol, but we've never used it! Never had to, never will!" Another cop said.
"Hey, does anyone hear that? Like in the movies, that whistle from when things fall?" Another officer said.
"Oh please, like fiction ever gets it right…"
The roof exploded like someone had dropped a bomb on it, and that wasn't very far from the truth as the round form crashed through, sending a tremendous cacophony of noise blasting through the station.
Tara was on her feet in surprise before she even realized what she was doing. She actually reacted better then most of the cops, who were shocked into inaction.
Ironically, that was one of the lesser surprises.
At least in comparison to what happened next, as a wall exploded from the punch of a massive stone form, even as another exploded in a blast of fire.
For a moment, Tara thought her friends had somehow tracked her down and had decided to make a point in freeing her. She only had that thought for about a second though, as the figures responsible for the destruction of the walls walked in.
One she didn't recognize: he was a massive figure cut literally out of stone, a bluish-purple stone with darker rock 'sideburns' and a small line of a goatee. He wore red pants and a black tank top. Normally, she'd have nothing to fear from him…but as mentioned, her powers were completely gone.
But she recognized the other one, she'd seen him briefly in the files the Titans had on villains, and her guts clenched. He looked human, clad in a red shirt and light brown cargo pants without a belt, with a head of spiky red and orange hair and an unpleasant look of contented nastiness on his face.
Francis Stone.
Better known as the pryokinetic villain Hotstreak.
No metahumans ever showed in Topeka?
Apparently there was a first time for everything.
"Hey there piggies! I'M IN THE MOOD FOR PORK RINDS!" Hotstreak declared, and thrust out his hands as fire exploded and flew from them, exploding throughout the station as the cops finally stopped standing around like statues and acted.
By panicking.
Then again, if she were them, Tara probably would have done the same.
"Metahumans?" One of the cops said in amazement.
"Looks like it! Standard protocol when metahumans attack!" Another officer said. "…What is that again?"
"FLEE LIKE COWARDS AND CALL THE JUSTICE LEAGUE!" Another cop yelled, and the police promptly did just that as they fled from Hotstreak's assault.
"Owwwwwwwwwwww…" The 'bomb' said as he stood up: he was clearly not human. In fact, he looked more like an armadillo, though he wore purple shorts with a black stripe on them to distinguish he wasn't exactly an animal either. "Onyx, you said that wouldn't hurt, but it hurt, it-YIPE!" The armadillo man yelped as he was forced to duck away from Hotstreak's latest tossed fireball. "WATCH IT FRANCIS!"
"Oh shut up Carmen." Hotstreak said, thoroughly enjoying himself as he sent the cops running.
Not all of them were running though, but they were getting nowhere. Hotstreak sent fire lancing at any police who tried to shoot him, and the big stone man, the armedillo-man had called him Onyx, simply ignored the gunshots as he smacked any cops who shot at him aside with his big stone hand.
As another wall shifted, and abruptly melted as another police officer stopped, having been running past the wall when it had abruptly liquefied.
And one last form emerged. She was a black girl, wearing a faded lime green shirt and dark green pants, with her purplish-black hair done up behind her in two elongated clusters.
"Heya pig." She said.
The cop swung his nightstick at her.
It went right through her, her form shifting around the weapon like she was made of vapor. And as it turned out, she was, as her legs abruptly transformed into a purplish-pink trail of gas, as she flew up and blasted a powerful stream of gas that bowled the cop over with a painful looking landing.
"Down in the dirt where you belong." The girl said nastily.
"Whaa-ha-ha! I forgot how much fun it is to roast piggies when we don't have that killjoy Static around!" Hotstreak said, as he continued to throw fireballs and fire blasts around like it was going out of style.
"Yeah, good thing this place is right by the bank! We can take care of any problems we may have first thing! But Puff, you said throwing me wasn't going to hurt!" Armadillo-man yelled.
"Shut up you idiot! You have a damn bulletproof hide, act like it!" Puff snapped back. "There ain't no heroes in this here city, and hence there's nothing to stop us from stealing a few mill to get back on our feet!"
"Somebody do something!" One police officer yelled.
"Get the SWAT team!"
"The SWAT team ran away!"
"Man, they really need to start paying us more!"
"LET ME OUT! LET ME OUT!" Tara yelled, as she banged at the bars of the holding cell.
"Wait, now I remember my magic word!" The hobo in the next cell said. "SHAPAM!"
And suddenly there was a golden flash of lightning that grabbed the attention of all the villainous metahumans that had picked that day and time to come visit Topeka, take in some of its sights, and a lot of its money.
"Oh thank god, I won't be needed here…" Tara said as she rubbed her eyes, blinded by the light. "…Wait…isn't the codeword Shazam?"
"Danger? CAPTAIN HERO IS HERE!" Said the hobo, now transformed into a muscular figure wearing blue and yellow. "Beware villains!"
And to punctuate his words, Captain Hero punched the side of the drunk cage, which pretty much tore the whole holding structure out of the wall as Tara yelped and covered her head as bits of stone plastered her.
"Holy shit there is a hero! RUN AWAY!" Armadillo-man yelped, as he did just that out one of the holes in the wall.
"Quick, stop the villains!" Tara ordered. "Oh I hope the fact he got the word wrong doesn't cause any problems…"
"Activating Hero Shield!" Captain Hero declared.
…And then he grabbed Tara and held him up in front of her, interposing her between himself and the villains.
"…This…is why metahumans…should not be allowed…to drink." Tara growled.
"Look out! He's going to throw a blonde at us!" Hotstreak yelled.
"Geezus, if he's gonna treat random bystanders like that, who knows what he'll do to us! META-MEN RETREAT!" Puff ordered, and the three villains followed Armadillo-man out the hole in the wall.
"Ha ha! And once again, Captain Hero saves the day!" Captain Hero said as he dropped Tara.
"No wait, they just ran away, they're still…!" Tara protested.
"A job well done! CAPTAIN HERO AWAY!" Captain Hero declared, and flew up, crashing through the roof, and Tara yelped and curled up as some debris crashed down on her.
There was a rough silence in the smashed police station, broken only by the distant noise of many honking horns.
And then Hotstreak poked his head back through the hole.
"Hello?…Anyone there?…What the hell…?" Hotstreak said, as the rest of the villains, called the Meta-Men, returned, looking as confused as the pyrokinetic. "He just flew off!"
"Does this mean we should rob the bank again?" Armadillo-man said quietly.
"…Hell yeah." Puff, who was apparently the leader, said with some nasty satisfaction (she seemed to have an overall nasty tone to everything she did, it seemed, something that was mirrored in Hotstreak). "Let's go Meta-Men! Hotstreak! Onyx! Carmen-dillo! Before this day is done we'll carve our names on this pathetic city!" Puff declared, and once again the villains left. Their first objective, smash the police station (and the police) was complete. Now for the other objective: loot the bank and actually get away because there were no superheroes to stop them. 'Captain Hero' aside, and it was probably best he was gone.
And…
Tara coughed on the dust as she pushed the rubble off herself and stood up, feeling the ache in her shoulders as she looked after where the Meta-Men had run off.
"Damn it…" She said, as she rubbed dust from her eyes. Much to her surprise, she found herself faced with a dilemma, one she'd never thought she'd ever have: the desire to stop this. The dilemma, of course, was that without her powers, she was even less qualified then the police were, even if she was more experienced in the matter.
She should just use the chaos to run.
…Like she always did…
No, this wasn't a matter of lack of control. She had no power, and besides she had been held against her will anyway. She should let the police handle it, or someone else…
…Yet if she ran off, innocents might die.
Just like they would have died during the Last Wish. And to stop that…she'd blown out her powers in the first place.
Hadn't that been a big enough sacrifice? Did she have to offer her life up on the alter as well? The world had shown very well how much it respected what she'd give up…
And yet, that wasn't what being a Titan was about. For all the fun and games…if you dug, what you would ultimately find was responsibility.
And responsibility was an extraordinarily irritating burden.
"All right. Fine." Tara said to herself. "On the one hand, I have a moral imperative to stop crime. On the other hand, I'd die if I try and fight them in my current state. There must be a middle ground…of course! I'll just call for help again!"
Tara threaded her way through the wrecked station, trying to find a phone.
"Come on, I can at least do that, where's a phone, a phone…a phone!" Tara said as she found one. It worked, so she carefully plugged in the same number.
Unfortunately, life seemed determined to kick her in the teeth.
"Hello, you have reached the Teen Titans Crisis Hotline. We are currently saving the world, or having pizza. Leave us a message, and you will be rescued in the order in which we received your call." Robin's recorded voice said.
"DAMN IT!" Tara yelled as she slammed the phone down. "Maybe I should have vetoed that when it was presented as a phone option. Of all the…wait, they're too far away to help anyway…but the Justice League isn't! They have teleportation tech! And I have a number for them too! What was it…" Tara said, as she typed out the also very long number.
She got it right, at least.
"Hello, you have reached the Justice League Crisis Helpline. We are currently saving the world, or fighting among ourselves again. Leave us a message, and you will be rescued in the order in which we received your call."
Tara stared at the phone.
"…THEY ARE ADULTS! THEY SHOULD NOT HAVE THAT! WHO THOUGHT IT WAS A GOOD IDEA TO HAVE SOMETHING LIKE THAT!"
"I'm Batman."
"Flash, I do not sound like that." Batman said without amusement.
"No, I think he got the tone perfectly." The Green Lantern known as Guy Gardner snarkily commented.
"Hmmm, I wonder if it would lose its ring if the expression was changed to 'One punch again, one punch again.' " Batman mused out loud. Guy paled.
"…So, how about them Lakers?" Guy said in a frantic attempt to change topics.
"It's not the same since Bryant and O'Neal's clash of egos ultimately drove O'Neal to Miami." Batman commented. Flash stared, amazed that Batman did anything except brood.
Guy took it another way.
"YOU SON OF A BITCH! LISTEN UP! Kobe is a HACK! A HACK!"
WHAM!!!!!!!!!
"One punch. Again." Batman said.
There is a certain dread coldness that comes over one when they realize they are alone. All the more terrible when the person knows what it was like to have others by one's side, in many aspects…and to find when it is truly needed, it is unavailable.
And so Tara Markov found that chill creeping through her being, as she realized that there was no help to come. She couldn't contact her team. She couldn't contact anyone else. According to the police, there was no local metahuman talent, and that 'Captain Hero' by now seemed almost like a surreal dream, unsure if it really happened. And the police were so used to their normal crime that they chose to cut and run rather then stand and fight.
Well…didn't they have a right? Banks were insured against loss, weren't they? There wasn't a bank in the Western world that didn't have some kind of arrangement in case of robbery, what with superhumans being around since the Second World War and banks being a primary target for several decades? Why risk their lives against a threat against which they were so outclassed? Let them rob the bank, get them when they tried to spend the money or have it cleaned…
…But…
"I don't get it." Terra said as she said, bored, in a chair. There were definitely aspects of her training she could do without, like Noel's ass-puckering nitpicking excuse of it, insisting on perfection the first time and nothing less. But she didn't much care for the talking aspects of it either, where a Titan sat her down and tried to explain to her the more 'vague' aspects of the life. She had a feeling that was a Noel idea as well. "A bank robbery's a bank robbery, isn't it?"
"It is Terra, but in the sense that tapping you on the shoulder and punching you in the face are both touching you. Does that make them the same?" Robin said. "There are differences Terra, and the difference is, a truly professional bank robbery will rarely involve our kind: it will simply be too quick to respond to unless by some chance you're already right on top of the situation. Professionals go in and get out ASAP, and they're a dying breed. There are easier illegal ways to make money, and more money at that. No, bank robberies are more often then not committed by amateurs. And one of the primary signs, especially of superhuman attacks, is that the robbery isn't really about the money. Oh, that's what it may look like on the surface, and I'm sure the criminals believe that too…but in a way, it's more of a revelation of power. The criminals don't just want money, they want status, and in their own underdeveloped minds, they equate status with chaos. And that's what makes them so dangerous, Terra. They don't care what they have to do, or what happens along the way, while getting the money. That in essence is what we're really trying to stop. Because being empowered and criminally-minded tends to breed a dangerous lack of empathy, Terra. And if they don't give a damn who gets hurt in their robbery, then it's up to use to do so, for the sake of those who cannot defend themselves against such things."
"And what if they decide to? What if they decide that's what they wanted?"
"…Terra, you're still a bit green. So all I can say is, that's a question you have to answer yourself. It's one of the few things we can't simulate in some form. In the end, in such a situation, when your morality is faced with your mortality…if it ever comes to it, you'll know what to do. In the end, only you."
And here she was. Only her.
Faced with a choice.