Aki- Hello, here is the next chapter. Some discoveries get made in this one...

Also, my comic book plee from last chapter still stands

Chapter 6: The Secret Room

"Where are you going?" Halle almost shrieked as her brother took several steps forward.

"I'm going down," replied Alex, pointing his thumb over his shoulder, into the bleak secret passage.

"You—," Halle stuttered, "You can't go down there? You don't know where it goes?"

"Um, that's sorta of the point. I mean, how many times when we were kids and actually liked each other did we try to find secret passage ways. And you can't tell me this isn't cool…So are you going to stand there jabbering or are you going to come with?"

Halle stared at her brother in a shocked stance, then looked a little defeated. "Alright, but let me get a flashlight at least."

Alex shrugged in compliance as Halle rushed off to her room, but rolled his eyes like facing the darkness had been half of the adventure. A minute later, Halle returned with a flashlight, pink, of course, because not even her flashlight could be uncool.

"Shall we?" said Alex, sounding irritated as if she had delayed him for an hour rather then sixty seconds.

"Lead the way," Halle retorted with equal vindictiveness. She still remembered their argument the opening wall had disrupted.

Silently, Alex took a few steps into the hallway, Halle followed. It was not nearly wide enough for two people to walk comfortably side-by-side. Halle clicked on her flashlight even though the passage was still lighted from the hallway. But before either of them had gone more then ten steps, the cabinet door closed shut behind them with a muffled bang.

"Oh shit."

"Glad I brought a flashlight now, aren't you, noob?"

"Come on, let's go," said Alex loudly, ignoring Halle's last comment, his voice echoing slightly within the walls. They began their descent. Halle's flashlight illuminated a few feet in front of them, but nothing more. Alex ran into a wall once, Halle found it very amusing. From that moment on, Alex kept a hand on the wall, making sure he followed the passage when it curved. The passage was an oval-like spiral and the deeper they went, the chillier it became.

"We have to be under the house by now," Alex whispered. His voice sounded loud in the silent, resounding passageway.

"Do you think we will get to the end so—," Halle cut off. Not far from where they were now, just visible from the light from the flashlight, was a doorway with no door, just a blackened rectangle that indicated their trek was coming to an end.

"Ready?" asked Alex in abated breath.

Halle nodded wordlessly before realized Alex couldn't see her. "Yes," she managed to squeak out.

Neither moved an inch.

"I mean, what's the worse that could be down there?" Although Alex sounded as if he was trying to encourage his sister, he was more trying to convince himself to move.

"Yeah, it's only a secret passage that has leads us way underground…We didn't even bring any garlic."

"Not helping."

"Sorry."

Silence.

"Let's just go on three," suggested Alex.

"One…"

"Two…"

"Three…You didn't go!"

"Neither did you!"

"This is enough. I didn't walk all the way down here with less than pleasurable company for nothing!" said Halle, and she pushed her brother forward. He stumbled the last few feet and through the door opening. Halle followed. She aimed her flashlight at the far wall. It landed on a closed door that looked like it came straight out of a Star Wars space ship. She moved it slowly to the right to see high tech equipment of some sort.

"I wonder who we can turn the lights on," she wondered and then all hell broke loose.

…

Kaden replaced the picture into its appropriate folder. He didn't need it, he could always look up someone was well-known as a member of the Grayson family on Google. Hell, he could probably find himself on Google. Kaden returned the file to the box and tried to fix everything the way it had been. He wished he could stay longer, but it would be pushing his luck, he had been in here a good ten minutes already, if not more.

He snuck out of his parents' room, closed the door cautiously, and snuck into his own room. He dumped out his school bag and made it appear as if he was doing homework and with no time to spare. Barely three minutes after he had stopped his deviations his mother burst through the door of the apartment very, very pissed off. The banging door had awoken her husband, who sat up on the couch.

"That idiot," she said harshly as the folder in her hands exploded in an aurora of black energy, sending papers and bits of papers across the room.

"He didn't take it well?" asked Gar, being extra cautious in choosing his words.

"No, he didn't take it well. He didn't take it at all. That stubborn…" Raven growled a few choice words under her breath. Kaden was watching silently, sitting on the floor, peering around his partly open door.

Raven walked into the connecting kitchen, Gar still sat on the couch. Kaden saw him flinch slightly as he heard a crashing sound, there went the dishes. Kaden still held to the belief that they should have switched to plastic a long time ago.

Raven returned a few moments later looking, well, not pleased, but composed. There was still some sourness detectable in the lines by her down turned mouth on her otherwise indifferent face.

"I was sure he would…," Gar trailed off. "Well, you remember what he was like. Obsessive and all that..."

"He doesn't want to accept the past," said Raven simply, kicking off her shoes.

"I'm sorry you had a bad day, Rae," said Gar as he began to pick up the papers that had been sprawled across the room.

Kneeling down to help, she said, "I'm used to them by now." Gar smirked at her sarcastic, subtle joke.

"And Kaden, you don't have to hide behind the door."

Kaden chuckled uneasily as he pushed open his door to reveal himself to his parents where he was sitting cross-legged on his bedroom floor.

"I'll help," he said quietly, scrambling out his room on his knees, collecting some of the papers that had reached to his doorway. He spared only half a glance down at the words on the first paper he picked up, trying to let no emotion leak onto his face. He attempted another covert look when he leaned over the paper to grab another just out of his reach. Yes, that paper definitely said something about 'the strike.' He didn't know what, but he did know what his mother had been trying to warn whoever this 'stubborn idiot' she had been ranting about a few moments prior about. But his thoughts instantly switched to that paper out of his reach wasn't a paper at all, but a photograph that had been face down on the rug. He wasn't sure of he had seen this exact picture before, but he had seen some similar to it. It was a photo of the Teen Titans. Kaden instantly identified his mom and dad. The whole grouped seemed to be at on open air restaurant of some sort. His father was wearing a goofy grin, giving his once friend, a large, African American half-robot, named Cyborg, bunny ears. His mother was sitting farthest back from the picture, a barely distinguishable smile on her mouth.

But Kaden's eyes lingered the most on the remaining two titans. Robin, the famous sidekick of Batman and leader of the Teen Titans, sat with his arm casually around the shoulders of his female friend, an orange-skinned, red-haired, green-eyed girl called Starfire. He titled his head to the side, thinking, a vague connection forming in his mind. His lips finally formed a silent 'o' in comprehension.

"Kaden?"

The boy looked up at his mother, who couldn't keep the suspicion out of her look.

"It's a picture of you guys," he explained. "When you were in the Teen Titans." He passed the picture as well as the other paper to his mother, who, along with his father, was still squatting on the floor, although the papers were all collected in a pile by her feet. Raven took the photo and held it carefully on one hand. Her gaze softened, a sadness Kaden could sense leaking through her tough exterior. Gar took her free hand in his and squeezed it gently. His eyes were doleful and distant, his pointed ears were drooped in a silent mourning that was quite opposite from his typical joking demeanor.

An outsider could have sensed the sorrow in the room at that moment, but for Kaden, who knew his parents well and had inherited his mother's empathic abilities, it stabbed him through the heart. Never so clearly had he understood that his parent's existences had years worth of life and friends and pain before he was part of the world. It was something he couldn't touch, not like the past in his memories or the future of tomorrow, or the possibility of saying the right words at this present moment to save his parents from their misery of remembrances and regrets.

After an outstanding long time forced into just seconds, Raven put the picture onto her stack, tapped them together, and replaced them into the folder. "Kaden, you can go back to your homework," she said in a businesslike tone that revealed nothing of the anguish Kaden had felt emanating from her a moment earlier. She stood, the folder held tightly against her chest. "Gar, can you start dinner? I'll be in a few minutes to help."

He nodded soundlessly, stood, and went to the kitchen. Raven exited to their bedroom. Kaden remained, kneeling on the living room carpet, silent, motionless, for about half a minute, contemplating the world his parents had been a part of long before he had ever lived. Yes, his parents had told him about it, the Teen Titans, but in not much more that a history book, factual way, but the story of the Teen Titans went so much deeper.

He took a deep breath, calming himself, trying to rid himself of the tension that had filled him from the inside out even though it wasn't even his. He returned to his room and closed the door behind him. At least he learned one thing, even if the tragedy of the Titans was still a mystery to him. He was going to look up better picture on the internet to be sure, but Dick and Korinna Grayson and Robin and Starfire…well, they were the same people.

…

A high-pitched alarm was going off. Lights were flashing on and off at a dizzying pace. The door descended swiftly from the ceiling, sealing the teenagers into the small room.

Halle held her palms against her ears, eye squinted shut, keeling in on herself against the noise.

"How do we make it stop?" she screamed over the alarm to her brother. He, likewise, was covering his ears. He picked up his the flashlight his sister had dropped onto the floor in the madness. It a few seconds search, the light's beam landed the on a computer. Not any kind he had seen before, one with a large flat screen against the wall and a small, standardized one right above the keyboard. He rushed over. He began typing, furiously, onto the keyboard. Halle watched her brother, seeming completely at ease and working at a lightening speed. In a few moments the alarm stopped sounding, the lights stopped flashing, and dim overhead lights filled the room.

Halle walked over to her brother.

"How—how did you do that?"

"It's 'cause I'm a genius."

"I always thought you just played video games on your computer all day. I didn't think you could do anything useful."

Alex crossed his arms and leaned on one leg. "Anything useful?"

"You know what I meant…," said Halle, rolling her eyes.

Alex shrugged and turned back to the computer.

"What are you doing now?" she asked.

Alex sighed exasperatedly. "If this is any sort of advanced security system, which, look around, I don't think this technology has even been invented yet, than even if someone who happens to be a complete genius, like me, for example, is able to override the system and shut down security, it will make a recording of the break in and send a warning of such to another source. I got to get rid of that."

"Oh." In a minute or too, Halle grew board of watching her brother working on the computer muttering technological terms to himself, half of which Halle was sure he made up. She decided to explore the rest of the room. Not that it was too much to explore, but she had been so distracted by the blaring alarms earlier, she hadn't even glanced elsewhere in the room. Her eyes were instantly drawn to the most colorful objects in the room, in a glass case standing right next to the door the twins had entered through.

She approached it, unsure, or maybe unbelieving, of what she was looking at. "Alex," she called over her shoulder. "You should see this."

"What? I'm busy here."

"You really should see this…"

Alex growled. "Fine. What is it?" he said, coming over to his sister.

Halle pointed up into the glass case. "It's the Robin costume. Y'know, like Batman and Robin…"

"I know who Robin is, this is Gotham…" Alex replied sharply. "But what I don't know is why the Robin outfit is in a secret room in our house."

"But what about this other uniform?" asked Halle, pointing to a blue and purple ensemble made for a girl. "It's kinda cute."

"It's kind of skimpy, if you want my opinion."

"Does it belong to another superhero?" Halle speculated. The two shared a look, a suspicion they weren't ready to say out loud.

"I need to go back to the computer. Still got to open that door," said Alex, pointing to their blocked passageway. Halle nodded in understanding. She continued to explore. She walked slowly around the edge of the room. About halfway around, she found a wooden cabinet, pushing far against the wall, in the shadows between a row of files cabinets and the entrance to another door.

The door of the cabinet was opened a crack. She opened it the rest of the way tentatively. The shelves inside were filled with a variety of objects, dust covered, that must have held some importance to someone, but very little to an outsider like Halle. However, on the top shelf, lay a book, clear of dust, unlike the rest of the contents of the cabinet. She lifted it carefully from the shelf. The cover looked liked something that a first grader would make.

Halle balanced the book on the edge of a lower shelf and opened to the first page. It sported a photograph and a clipping from a newspaper called The Jump Times. The headline read, "Teen Heroes Save City…Again!" The front page article had a color picture of five teenagers, dressed in colorful outfits, looking happy, sitting at a picnic table in a park. The tallest was a board-shouldered African American boy with more than half of his body covered in metal. There was a small green boy with a wide grin and another girl with purple hair and a blue cape sitting on one side of the table. On the opposite side was a boy with spiky black hair, eyes covered with a mask, in the very same Robin uniform that was in the glass case. A girl, wearing the outfit that was displayed next to Robin's in glass case, sat next to that dark-haired boy. She had a pleasant smile, wide, green eyes, and looked like an almost replica of Halle.

"Holy—"

Halle jumped not realizing that Alex had come up behind her.

"Those—those," he stuttered pointing at the picture. "Those are our parents."

"Really young versions, but yeah," agreed Halle in a very 'I-can-hardly-believe-this,' breathy tone.

"Our parents were super-heroes…"

Aki- Ah, I keep pulling cliff hangers on you guys. Although this one isn't that bad. Thanks to my readers and double thanks to my reviewers.

Remember, feedback is love.