A New World

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This story is a work of fiction. The characters portrayed here are copyrighted, and are the property of DC Comics and Warner Bros. Animation. The characters are being used here without the knowledge or express consent of either DC or Warner Bros. This story is intended primarily as a writing exercise for the author, and secondarily as free entertainment to whomever reads it. No money changes hands in relation to this story. Therefore I will assume that the corporate entities above-named don't really give a rip, and will allow me to spin my yarns in peace.

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Chapter Four: Storm

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"Starfire?"

The alien girl didn't respond right away, being so engrossed in the state of the sky that she barely noted Robin's presence on the Tower roof; but after several moments she turned her head very slightly, giving him a one-quarter profile, and said, "Yes?"

"Are you … okay?"

"Yes, Robin."

"… Really? 'cause you seem … sort of distracted. And, um …" He gestured at her outfit, which included a great deal more armor than she had been wearing on a day-to-day basis.

"I am very much the okay."

She seemed disinclined to elaborate further, turning her full attention back to the lowering clouds massing over the ocean. Robin came and stood beside her, trying to determine the focus of her concentration.

In general, the weather around Jump City was pretty predictable. Temperatures tended to be mild, compared with the rest of the country. Most mornings introduced themselves with a thick coat of fog, which usually burned off an hour or so after full sunrise. April through October was pretty dry, but from late fall until late winter an afternoon or evening shower wasn't uncommon. This being the first week of September, though …

Her next statement came suddenly. "The reporting service of meteorological phenomena stated that a 'freak storm' is going to attack Jump City."

"… Attack?"

"That was the terminology of use. I have been attempting to discover the nature of these 'freaks' so that we may defeat them when they attack, but so far they have been the very good at hiding."

He blinked in confusion. "I beg your pardon?"

Frowning, she turned her gaze his way. "You may have it. For what do you require the pardoning?"

"… Uh … sorry. Figure of speech. I meant … see, a freak … well, a freak is …"

"These would be the 'freaks of nature', yes? Friend Cyborg made a reference to one such freak of nature three days ago. He was obviously the very disturbed by the thought of dealing with it."

"Um …"

"The 'freaks of nature' must be very much the hideous, yes? Tamaran has several such creatures that I strongly believe would be described in the same way. There is one type of large parasite …"

"Um, no."

"… No?"

He chewed his lip for a moment, having recalled that conversation: Victor Stone had been referring to a reporter from that obnoxious rag, The Inside Scoop. The man had been nauseatingly persistent. "Starfire, I get the impression that your native tongue doesn't go in much for synonyms and homonyms. Am I right?"

"… Homonyms …" She digested that word. "Ah. I see. A word that sounds like another word, but … has … a different spelling and meaning?" She shook her head. "No, the languages of Tamaran do not use alphabets in the same sense that English does. We have …" Her brow furrowed as she tried to form the concepts into words for Robin, but finally she shrugged. "We have the ket. Long ago there were … many different forms of writing. Ket were developed some eight thousand revolutions ago."

"Revolutions? You mean years?"

"Well … yes … but …" She considered her answer. "A Tamaranian year is longer than an Earth year. Um … maybe by a few … months? Yes. One Tamaranian year would be approximately fifteen and a half months."

"Oh. Okay. Good to know." He gestured and said, "You were explaining about ket?"

"Ah. Yes. They are not letters in the way that you think of letters, but … neither are they … the pictographs? Yes. That is the word: pictographs. Similar to hieroglyphics?" She thought that one over a few seconds, too, and nodded absently. "Ket do not contain markings which are un-voiced or that do the mimicking of another ket. Each ket is specific to a particular sound, one for each of the four hundred thirty-seven separate sounds that the Tamaranean voice can do the making of."

Robin's brows rose. "Your keyboards must be huge."

"It is not so. Each ket is built of two or three or four of the forty-one basic … um, the word is lata. Roughly equivalent to 'figure' or 'mark'. This construction gives each ket a unique sound." She shook her head. "So homonyms are not being the possible. But is this not also the case with some languages on Earth? I know that Español is built in that fashion. Each letter has but one sound."

"… You speak Spanish, too?"

"Si. Dos de los contratistas eran de México. Aprendi de ellos. Es un lenguaje elegante y útil."

"Ah … right." He gave her a lopsided grin. "That'll come in handy if we ever want to take a vacation to Cancun."

The frown came back. "Vacation? This is … a cessation of the regular activities … substituted by some variety of the recreation … yes?"

"Yes! Exactly."

"Very well." She crossed her arms. "What does any of what you have said have to do with the approaching storm of freaks?"

"Uh, sorry, got sidetracked. What I mean to say is that … well, in English, words do a lot of double or triple duty." At her obvious puzzlement, he elaborated, "A word can have more than one meaning. Actually, most words have more than one. The common words, anyway."

"Oh."

"The language … um … relies on context. Pretty heavily. Like, okay, the word 'set' has more than two hundred meanings. I think that's more than any other word, but …"

"How is it even possible to communicate when …" Her eyes widened. "Wait … I just did that! Oh! Oh! And I did it again!" She floated up a few centimeters, a thousand-kilowatt smile growing on her face.

"You did?"

"By using the word 'even' in that context! But 'even' can also mean 'equal' or 'flat' or 'similar' or …"

"Yeah! There you go! You get it."

"And the word 'just' can mean 'only' or it can mean 'fair'. My goodness!" She grabbed him in a rib-warping hug and flew up another several meters. "That is what you mean by 'context'! The word must be compared with the rest of the words that surround it!"

"…urrghhklgh…"

"Oh, please forgive me!" She held him at arm's length, which allowed some air back into his poor, mistreated lungs, and set them both down on the roof.

Drawing a couple more deep breaths, and surreptitiously rubbing his side, he waved off her apology. "That's okay. No harm done." Much. He gestured again at her outfit. "You're dressed for a major battle."

"This is to aid in the fight against the … storm of …" Her brows drew together again. "I think that your explanation of context has the very great deal to do with the storm of freaks. This is true, yes?"

"Yes. It does."

"So then there must be another meaning of 'freak'."

"True. A 'freak storm' is a storm that is unusual in some way. In this case, probably because we don't even normally have any rain this time of year, much less a thunderhead, so that thing …" He indicated the gigantic wall of clouds approaching the city. "… definitely qualifies as freakish."

As if to underscore his point, several livid streaks raced across the roiling slate-gray storm front, bringing a slight gasp from the alien girl. She stared in alarm at the display of lightning. "What in the name of X'hal is that? It resembles a discharge of electricity!"

"Yep. Lightning." He cocked an eye over at her. "What, they don't have lightning on Tamaran either?"

She bit her upper lip for a moment. "Um … well, yes, although it does not have a 'common' name. Sometimes, during a truly … gigantic dust storm, there will be this kind of discharge. But it is rare, and never visible." She used an arm to indicate the sky. "Your air is so much more the free of dust, so that one may see for many … zegs? … um … miles or kilometers. A zeg is … about three kilometers, perhaps?"

"A measure of distance, right. But you're saying you've never seen lightning before?"

A brief shake of her head confirmed his assertion. "As I said, the discharge is never visible." Her eyes widened in actual fear. "Is this storm of freaks also the storm of dust? Is that why …?"

"Oh, no. No, no, no. That's a rain storm."

"Rain." She turned to face him fully. "You used that word a bit ago. It is …" Her frown came back. "Surely that is not right. Water which falls from the sky?"

"Yeah, that's right."

"How is this possible?"

"Water vapor is what drives Earth's weather. The sun heats up the surface of the ocean and some of the water evaporates. When enough has entered the air, it forms clouds."

"Clouds? Like the clouds of the set of the sun?"

"Exactly."

"… Clouds are made of … water vapor?"

"Yep."

"But … they look so … solid."

"Yeah, sometimes. Optical illusion."

"… Truly, this is a very odd planet you have."

"I'm sure I would feel the same about yours. Or probably any non-Earth planet, to be honest." He pointed back at the clouds. "Anyway, when the atmosphere gets to the saturation point, the water vapor collects into droplets, and they fall out of the cloud. That's rain."

"So … when that … storm … arrives, it will drop water on us?"

"Probably. If you look closely, you can see what looks like a gray curtain under the clouds. The lightning makes it easier to see sometimes. That curtain is rain."

"… Should we not go to the inside of the Tower to avoid the getting of wet?"

"Definitely. Some people like to play out in the rain, but that was never me."

"Play? Is it not dangerous, then, with the lightning?"

"Oh, yeah, lightning can be very dangerous. Not to be trifled with. Actually one of the reasons I came up here to find you was to let you know that being up high in a thunderstorm isn't a good idea."

"Then how …"

"Not all rain has lightning with it. It depends on what kind of cloud the rain is falling from. Really, a lightning storm is a lot less common than a plain, old, garden-variety soaking rain. That's the kind that people – some people – like to play in." Distant thunder began to roll in then, pulling their attention back to the storm. Robin turned and headed toward the roof access door. "What's coming at us now, though, is the kind you don't want to mess with."

Starfire followed the human back into the stairwell and floated down after him. They wound up in the common room. Cyborg stood in front of the large bank of windows, hands clasped behind his back, staring out at the coming storm. He glanced over to see who had come in, and nodded. "Hey, Star, Rob."

"Greetings Friend Cyborg! Have you, too, noticed the storm of freaks that is coming toward us?"

After taking a couple of seconds to process her question, he agreed. "Yeah. Kinda worried about the Tower's power system. I'm pretty sure I got everything grounded the way it ought to be, but it's nowhere near validated yet." He waved in the general direction of the hallway. "Got the computers isolated just in case."

Robin nodded. "Good idea."

"Weather-chick said there'd be …" He used two fingers to make tic-marks in the air. "… possible severe lightning and possible damaging hail along with a possible rainfall of up to twelve centimeters."

Scratching the back of his neck absently, Robin said, "That much rain, huh? That'll cause flooding in the low parts of the city."

"Yeah, and since better than half the city is 'low-lying', it's gonna be a busy night for Emergency Services and the power company."

Starfire got Robin's attention. He noticed the high level of worry on her features and said, "Something wrong?"

"You said … flooding? This is when there is a great deal of water going where it is not supposed to be?"

"Correct."

"Are we in danger of the flooding here?"

"Oh, no. The base of the Tower's gotta be, what? Fifteen, maybe twenty meters above sea level?"

Cyborg corrected him. "More like twelve. But that's plenty. This island's basically a rock. The rain'll just run down to the sea." He considered the shoreline for a moment. "Might lose a little beach, though. Never can tell."

"But," insisted Starfire, "there will be many people who will require our aid because of the flooding, yes?"

"Count on it."

"But the storm of freaks has not done the flooding yet, though, correct?"

"That's right. And you know it may not happen at all. The forecast is just a … a guess, really."

"… Oh." She offered him a small smile. "Tamaran does not have such things as the forecasting of weather. Our weather very, very rarely changes. But that is surely not the case for the Earth."

"Surely not. There are some places, because of geography, where trying to forecast the weather is an exercise in futility. I've heard that, in parts of Texas, if you don't like the weather, just wait fifteen minutes and it'll change."

She giggled. The light, tinkling sound produced a deeply visceral response in the Boy Wonder, which led to his glancing away and working a finger around his collar.

"Hey, y'all, it's just about here."

They turned to look at the windows, and both of them drew a deep breath. Starfire floated over and placed a hand on the glass, whispering, "By X'hal."

The Tower's soundproofing was excellent, but even so they could feel the sharp vibrations transmitted through stone and metal with each of the titanic lightning strikes. The storm had evidently been farther away originally than they'd thought … either that, or it had picked up a LOT of speed in the last few minutes. The wall cloud rushed at them, they had a bare few seconds to appreciate the seeming solidity of the front, and then the deluge hit.

The Tower, massive though it was, swayed and shook under the violent onslaught. Starfire stared in rapt wonder as bolt after bolt hit their island home, conducted safely to ground through the many conduits Victor Stone had installed. This close, the sight and the sound were simultaneous, but the alien girl didn't so much as flinch. Instead she floated closer until her breath showed on the glass, mesmerized by the titanic display.

The storm raged over them for nearly half an hour before the tail end passed, and she barely blinked the entire time. What finally pulled her out of her near-trance was the blaring of the crime-alarm.

Robin raced over and tapped a few keys, then frowned. "Seriously? Looters? Already?"

"… Looters? That would be … a kind of thief?"

"Yeah. Some people will take advantage of any crisis."

A green parrot flew into the room, landed, and morphed into Beast Boy, closely followed by their resident empath. Robin outlined the situation briefly and then came out with a phrase that the rest of them would come to hear frequently: "Titans, go!"

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A/N:

I'm sort of getting into this version of Starfire. She's a cool lady.

Concolor