-Chapter Four: The Playful Thief and the Rebel Engineer-

Key had no idea what had happened. She had been sitting in front of the open safe, her gloved hand inches from snatching the jeweled crown, her tongue licking her lips in anticipation, her mind already daydreaming of how much gold she could sell the jewels for on the black market, when her hand closed on nothing.

She blinked.

She was not in Mr. Highland's secret underground room where he hid his safe. She was in a strange room, all locked gray drawers on all except to her left, where there was a giant steel door with an impressive lock system. Her mind took it all in, and she realized she was in a bank. A bank's vault. She smiled and checked to make sure her green top hat was still in place, not paying any attention to the boy sitting next to her.

Matt had no idea where he was, though he actually did have an idea what had happened, being familiar with instantaneous molecular teleportation. Not that his knowledge helped his confusion any. For one thing, he had been nowhere near the teleportation room. For another, this room was completely unrecognizable, and looked about 300 years out of date.

It resembled a security outfit room, like those used for storing weapons. He'd certainly broken into enough of those to recognize the lines of locked boxes. Nothing besides weapons were worth locking up. The room was undoubtedly booby trapped. Who knew what terrible devices would be activated if he so much as breathed wrong.

Or not, as proven by the girl next to him casually getting to her feet, pulling a few pieces of wire from her hair beneath, of all things, a green top hat, walking up the nearest vault, unlocking it, and sliding it open before he could get his protest past his lips.

She frowned in annoyance, pulling out giant stacks of printed green paper. "Pah, cash. That stuff's worthless since the crash. Where's the gold? She emptied the box casually on the ground, then moved on the next, which was also stuffed with the green paper she'd called 'cash'.

Strangely, even to Matt, the first words out of his mouth were not about her actions.

"You're HUMAN?" he exclaimed in shock, looking her up and down. A girl maybe a little older than him, with curly, dark red hair, dark brown skin, and dressed in a comfortable black outfit with a bright green top hat. No paws or claws, scales or tails, even her ears were rounded. Well, maybe his reaction wasn't such a surprise. In his whole life, the only other human he'd ever seen was his dad who'd been killed when Matt was five.

She turned around and her eyes gave him a quick once over, before dismissing his appearance as nothing noteworthy. The cute and innocent type, being rather short, with yellow blond hair, round green eyes, and dressed in what looked like a schoolboy's uniform. "You are too, unless my eyes are trickin' me," she said casually, moving on to the next box.

"Well, yeah. But I was the only human on my planet. Do you know where we are?" asked the boy.

"We're in a bank vault, of course. Filled with moo-lah. At least, it's supposed to be." She scowled and dumped more green paper on the ground. Handfuls and handfuls of the stuff. She glanced his way again. "I'm Key, by the way. A thief, and quite a good one. In case there's some deep reason as to why we ended up trapped in a vault together. We could be here awhile, you know."

"I'm Matt, an engineer with the Rebel Alliance, and why would you think we might not be able to get out?" answered the boy, getting up and walking over to the vault door. He examined it carefully, taking special interest in the keypad beside the door.

The thief showed not the slightest interest in the boy being an engineer, just as he seemed perfectly fine with her profession. She simply answered his question as she continued emptying boxes of cash on the ground.

"Betcha double or nothing it's on a timer. The keypad only works during certain hours. Type in the code, and you still have to wait for the right hours before it opens. And I bet even that only works if someone outside approves the blasted thing."

"What if we…" began Matt thoughtfully, pulling a small tool from a secret pocket in the lining of his pants. He fiddled with the back of the keypad, punched what looked to be random numbers into the machine, then simply yanked the whole thing off the wall. There was an audible click sound as the door unlocked.

Key laughed. "Sweet!" she exclaimed, then grabbed Matt's arm and pulled him alongside her and she shoved open the huge door. "There's nothing but garbage in here anyway. Come on!"

Unfortunately, and quite to the surprise of the two kids from other worlds, complete with other time zones, it was apparently mid-day and the bank was packed. Around 20 tellers and 8 managers of various sorts turned as the vault swung open and stared in shock at the two teenagers, some sort of street-girl in black jeans, a black T-shirt, and a green top-hat, and an innocent-looking boy in some sort of uniform, consisting of a crisp white button-down shirt and brown slacks.

One of the tellers had the presence of mind to pound the emergency alarm.

The blaring noise instantly started, guards sprung out of hiding and charged, and customers and clients screamed and ran for the door, heedless of a recorded voice telling them to please stay in the building and line up along the walls to make way for security personnel.

Key laughed in delight, dodging and zipping past all of them with practiced ease. The skilled thief was like a little sparrow jumping around a bunch of fat pigeons. If she'd been carrying a prize from the vault, she would've waved it in their faces.

Contrary to his appearance, Matt was far from helpless. To everyone's surprise, including Key's, the young engineer fiddled in his hair before pulling out what looked like half a pencil. Until he pointed it at a guard, pressed a button which caused it to grow to the size and approximate shape of a small handgun, and fired, revealing it to be a laser-cannon as powerful as the ones the police used to combat supervillains. The guard went flying.

Yikes, it doesn't look like their armor is that well made. Better turn it down a few notches, thought Matt, spinning a tiny piece on the end of his weapon, his eyes automatically scanning the room for cameras. There was no end to them, to the point it wasn't even worth taking them out. It certainly wasn't worth the time to disable them or destroy the feed, as would usually be his top priority.

He frowned. These guards could not be the best this facility had to offer. Undoubtedly a stronger force was on the way. Why else would they need an alarm? They were alerting someone.

"Let's get out of here!" he shouted to Key, holding his mini laser-cannon ready, aiming and firing at whoever came too close.

"Ah, already? I just met you, and I already know you're a downer at parties."

"There's probably someone stronger coming. And you said they didn't have anything good anyway, remember?"

"Hmm. You got a point. Let's go."

She zipped around the guards charging them, heading towards the door. Matt made sure she got there, then to everyone's shock as he was surrounded, knelt and casually leaped over the heads of the guards who had almost been on top of him. It was quite a sight to see a child about the height of an average 12 year old leap up and over the heads of the four guards, each well over six feet tall.

At the door they crashed into someone. A tall girl with bright red hair, strange glowing green eyes, a strange purple outfit, and apparently hovering about a foot off the ground. She rubbed her head for a second before noticing them.

"My most earnest apologies for the head-butting with you!" she shouted, already flying past them and into the bank. Her hands glowed fiercely, crackling with powerful energy.

Matt and Key took off, both recognizing from the strong fighter's look on the girl's face that she must be the bank's 'backup'. That, plus the sound of approaching sirens, stirred them into running as fast as they could down the street and into the nearest alley, thankfully attaching up to a long network of alleys and backstreets.

They ran until Matt collapsed, falling face-first to the ground. Key dropped next to him, winded but not nearly as exhausted as the boy. They were in another dark alley, behind a large warehouse of sorts. In all honesty, it was kind of spooky. Dark and gloomy, though they hadn't been running for more than 10 minutes.

"We gotta hide, just in case. That chick could fly, remember? She must be on our tail by now," said Key, once she'd caught her breath. She helped Matt up, and tried the door into the warehouse. It opened easily. They ducked inside, Key shutting the door behind them once they were in.

It was pitch black inside. All the windows had been boarded up with large squares of plywood, not letting even a trace of sunlight in. Matt pulled another strange object from a secret pocket and suddenly he had a long glowing string wrapped around his right hand. It glowed brightly enough for them to see each other and about five feet in each direction.

"Children, you are very lost," said a deep, and extremely smooth voice that seemed to echo around them. "Far from your homes, in a world you cannot possibly be accepted in."

The thief and engineer subconsciously stepped closer together and moved so they covered each other's backs.

A man in a strange orange and black outfit, his face hidden by a mask divided by the same colors, stepped out from the darkness into their small patch of light.

"There is no need to fear me, young ones. I can help you, if you but let me."

"Who are you?" demanded Key. The expression on Matt's face obviously mirrored the suspicion in the girl's words.

"I am called Slade."

Author's Note: Sorry, guys. I really meant to have Starfire talk to them a bit more, but it just wasn't working out. Except for the top-hat, the two of them look fairly normal, so it wouldn't make sense for Starfire to stick around and talk to them when a bank right behind them has the alarms blaring. I figured she would automatically assume the burglars were still in the bank and charge past them. Anyway, next chapter will probably skip what's happening with Matt and Key and move back to my other OCs and the Teen Titans. The situation will be explained to these poor visitors from other worlds, none of whom are familiar with teleportation, and the Teen Titans will have to collect information on them in order to help them. At some point, I plan on having the Titans train my OCs to better use their abilities/talents, as right now (with the possible exception of Artemis) they're all pretty helpless. You'll see what I mean.