Author's note: Thanks for the nice comments. As always, I'm a total praise whore.
Jinx grinned as she danced her way back to the table then sat down and looked around at the other 8 teen heroines. "Gods, what a fun night!" Jinx thought to herself. "We *have* to do this again." It was such a good time to all be out together! Why didn't we ever do this before?
First they'd gotten ready, hottest outfits for everyone and cloaking rings for Jinx, Argent, Starfire and Raven. Starfire went blond. Raven went brunette, Jinx and Argent went redhead. They'd left the Tower in T-Car2, Cyborg's second, upgraded T-Car. Argent had pressed a button on the key chain and the sleek platinum exterior folded, turned, twisted and transformed into a white limousine with big "VIC'S LIMO SERVICE" signs on both sides. All nine of them, Jinx. Argent, Raven, Starfire, Bat Girl, Mary Marvel, Wonder Girl, Bumblebee and Arrowette piled into the "limo".
Girls' night out! Woohoo!!
Oh, there were a couple pairings that didn't quite work, Jinx and Bee, for one, Wonder Girl and Mary Marvel for another, but they just didn't sit next to each other and those few exceptions were gaps easily papered over by the laughs of the group. All nine wore the same slightly surprised smiles. It was just so much fun to be all out together. Why hadn't they done this before?
They made a huge splash at that first club, nine beautiful young women in a partying mood suddenly showing up. And not a single attached guy! Not one! Nine possibilities for an enterprising lad! They spent some time with a few different guys on the dance floor and they flirted with some others at the bar, but mostly it was the nine of them together. Average guys didn't do much to impress girls used to the bodies and intensity of Robin, Kid Flash, Cyborg, Aqualad, Captain Marvel Jr. etc. One after one the would be suitors were shot down. But it didn't dampen the girls' night. Not in the least. Everyone laughed and socialized at full speed. They all told their best, funniest stories. Bat Girl had some great ones about what a ridiculous obsessive Batman is. And Jinx and Bee told about some of the crazier things at the Academy. Great fun.
But even after witnessing every other guy being shot down, a few guys still tried to insinuate themselves among them.
"Hey! I heard you girls laughing. What's so funny?" asked one swarthy attempted interloper with an open collared shirt and pinky rings.
"Oh, it's kind of private," said Wonder Girl, at the edge of the table. They weren't about to repeat Bat Girl's story about Batman to Guido junior.
"Aw, come on, baby. I can keep a secret."
A hush fell and soft chuckles went around the table in reaction to the condescending tone the guy had used with Wonder Girl, of all people.
She stood up, a full six feet tall in her short black dress and looked him in the eye. "It was about a man we know who's many times smarter, stronger and tougher than you," she said. The incognito Titan girls all snickered. This guy had one chance. Walk away. Men could not intimidate amazonians. But, Guido jr. gave a cocky nod and grin.
"I might be a lot tougher than you think, honey."
"Uh, if you were three times as tough as I think you are, it wouldn't matter. Besides which, this is private. Now, be a polite man and not a rude little boy and go away."
The consensus among the group was that the guy tried to reach for her shoulders. Maybe he was going to try and kiss incognito Wonder Girl. No one could be certain because Wonder Girl grabbed both his hands, cracking several bones in the process, and casually half bowled, half threw him across the dance floor from where he slid through the swinging door into the kitchen causing a great crash of pots and pans that could be heard throughout the club. By the time other partiers could look back to where Guido junior's trajectory had begun, Wonder Girl was back in the booth and a short accountant with glasses named Myron was standing where Guido's conqueror would have to have been.
Thus began Myron Lifschitz's reputation as one badass C.P.A.
Like the Titans boys, liquor played a part in the evening for the Titans girls. And the range of effects was even greater. There were no Titan boys who hadn't had at least a little alcohol in their lives. Jinx, Argent and Bee were acquainted with adult beverages. But Wonder Girl, Bat Girl, Arrowette and Mary Marvel had never touched a drop. Jinx raised an eyebrow to Argent upon hearing these admissions. Oh, this should be fun.
At first, the effects simply seemed to be to loosen everyone up. Except Bat Girl. Or maybe that was simply what came out when Bat Girl loosened up, that unhealthy fixation with and anger toward Robin. "Boy wonder, huh? Brilliant detective, huh? How many stakeouts did I share with him and he was clueless, totally clueless! I could just kill him! Four hours once, an inch from him on a ledge. Four hours staring at his back on a ledge. Four hours of wanting him to realize that I . . . . and nothing! The cutest boy, but nothing. Let me tell you about the famous boy wonder . . "
"Unrequited lust congeals into nasty stuff after a while, doesn't it?" Argent mumbled in Jinx's ear as Bat Girl's rambling litany of grievances toward Dick Grayson wound into its fifth minute.
"And he's best friends with Kid Flash now?"
Jinx and Starfire nodded.
"Ha! That's funny because he used to dis Kid Flash like crazy. Cocky, dimwit exhibitionist, he used to call him. Suit like a fairy, he used to say! God, the stuff he used to say about his suit! He hated Kid Flash. Never even met him. I asked him, what, did he run you over in the Justice League satellite or something? He said he'd never met Kid Flash. But he sure hated him just the same. He used to say that he was three times as tough as Kid Flash. I remember that because he was so precise about it. I'm three times as tough as that pretty boy. Three times. I remember trying to get his attention after the one time I went up to the Justice League satellite with Batman. Kid Flash wasn't there, but I told Robin he was and sighed at what a great butt he has and Robin was furious."
"Well, in fairness, Wally didn't like Dick before he met him, either. But they were just going off of images, off of the image the press made for each of them. Believe me. I know how tough it can be to get past that. I still get people who run away at the sight of me or start to call the cops. It's been more than two frickin' years on this side and they still don't quite accept it."
"How do you like being on this side?" asked Bat Girl between sips of champagne.
"Well, it's where I should be, not-not just because of Wally. I never really wanted to hurt people. I wanted respect. I-I kind of wanted revenge on the world for messing with me but I could see it kind of being like The Count of Monte Cristo eventually. You make everything about revenge and eventually all there is is the desire for revenge. There's no you any more."
"Wow . . that's . . "
"Deep," offered Wonder Girl to finish tipsy Bat Girl's thought.
"Yeah," agreed Bat Girl. "And, how about the daily grind of this?"
"Well, it's different. In some ways there's more freedom. In others, less. Always being on call is kind of a bitch, but then we don't feel hunted and that was the way things felt a lot of times with the HIVE 5. But the whole secret identity thing's a lot more trouble than I realized it was."
"Oh, come on," laughed Argent. "How much effort do you make?"
"I make . . an effort," Jinx protested.
"Girlfriend, you go out to clubs with Wally with your pink hair up in horns and your cat eyes showing sometimes."
Jinx shrugged. "Okay. I don't exactly obsess about it. But sometimes I'm in line at a store and some dipshit does something and I would just totally like to hex him but I stay cool. I pay a price. Not like Wally did, Gods! But I pay a price."
"What'd Wally have to do?" asked Mary Marvel.
"All kinds of shit. He lost all his friends. He ended up being considered a joke by the other kids at school because of how he had to act to . He used to let himself be picked on so that no one would realize he was Kid Flash."
"Like . . ?" asked Bat Girl.
"Well, one time, he said he let some big fat jerk drop kick him halfway down the hallway at school. And he said he used to intentionally trip and act like a total klutz in p.e. class so that kids would laugh at him. Oh, and another time, he was finishing 8th grade and these high school juniors about to be seniors came by the junior high on Wally's last day there and dragged him to the back of a truck in the parking lot and paddled his ass like 25 times in front of the whole school."
This elicited giggles from the girls as they imagined Wally being hazed.
"Really?" demanded Mary Marvel. "Why not just sprint away?"
"Duh. He couldn't escape in any way that Wally West couldn't normally escape or it'd show that he's Kid Flash. And so they had him."
"Poor Wally," sympathized Argent.
"Frankly, I'm amazed we ever get away with it," said Arrowette to chuckles before sipping from her flute glass of champagne. "No. Really. The whole secret identity thing. I'm amazed we get away with it. If people were really smart they'd catch us all more often. How do they not?" There were nods of assent around the table.
"How did they not realize who Wally is, anyway?" grinned Bat Girl. "I mean, okay, Wally intentionally trips a few times in gym class. But, then, at the end of the class, don't they go to the showers? Once they see him undressed, how do all the other boys not guess?"
"That body," laughed Arrowette. "He peels his clothes off and they don't think anything of some nerdy kid having that body?!"
"Those buns?!" laughed Wonder Girl.
"Not just that,"smirked Jinx and as she continued another song started to boom forth from the club's sound system.
At some point in the night at that first club they turned up the volume of the music was so loud that the conversation at their table kept getting broken up. At one end of the banquet booth semicircle, Starfire and Raven couldn't hear what Jinx was saying to Argent, Wonder Girl and Arrowette at the other end.
"I do not like this isolation from the others, friend Raven. I wish I could hear what they were talking about."
"Well . . . ," Raven offered hesitantly, "I can read lips."
Starfire clapped her hands together. Just six feet away, Jinx's excited conversation was completely inaudible over the din. As she watched, Jinx grabbed Mary Marvel's Red Bull can. Jinx grinned and said a few things, the other girls beside her got wide eyed looks and laughed, listening intently as Jinx grabbed a water glass and kept talking.
"Oh! What is she saying, friend Raven?" demanded Starfire with a glance at surprisingly blushing Raven.
"Um . . she . . um says Wally um . . starts out with a can of Red Bull all the time."
"Hmmph. Really? I thought friend Kid Flash was very susceptible to the jitters from even the caffeine. Haha, do you remember that time that friend Beast Boy tricked him into drinking the espresso and the Kid Flash was bouncing around like the super ball? Why would he risk drinking the Red Bull? Are you sure?"
"Yeah, uh, I'm sure. Argent says she saw it once, too, his, uh, his can of Red Bull."
Now, Jinx was holding her hands 8 inches apart in front of her and laughing, all the other girls laughing with her. Then she spread her hands further apart, 9 inches . . . 10 inches . . . finally almost a foot apart. She threw her head back in gleeful laughter followed quickly by Argent and the others.
"Oh! What was that, friend Raven?" asked Starfire, noticing that Raven was distinctly blushing. "Please tell me!"
" . . . . . She . . um . . she was talking about how big the one she got was, the, uh . . . . the fish!"
"Is the size of the fish, so important, friend Raven?"
"Um, well, you tell the guy that it doesn't matter, that it's the motion of the ocean, not the size of the, uh, fish that counts, but it's much better with a, uh . . bigger fish, um, when you catch a bigger um fish, I mean."
"Will not Aqualad be upset with her for catching that fish?"
"Um, yeah. He wanted to get to know that one."
Partly out of annoyance at the sound system in the first club and partly because they'd intended to anyway, the Titans girls left the first club and piled into their white stretch limo with the "Vic's Limo Service" signs and drove along to the second club. Jinx and Argent sat squeezed in one corner of the limo seats looking around assessing everyone's status. Bee, at the wheel, was fine. Wonder Girl, despite having had as many glasses of champagne as anyone else, seemed completely unaffected by it. Arrowette seemed a little pleasantly tipsy. Mary Marvel also seemed just a bit tipsy. Raven was starting to slur. And to speak in malaprops. As they were leaving the first club she was explaining to Arrowette how she based her magic off her standard incantation "Azareth Zetrion Minthos! I mean . . . hahaha!" Starfire was hard to judge. She might have been made outrageously perky by alcohol minimizing her inhibitions . . . or that might just be Starfire. Jinx looked at Argent. Argent raised an eyebrow to Jinx and shrugged. It was hard to tell.
Bat Girl was blitzed. She was the one they were most worried about. And, what's more, she wasn't a happy drunk. And her unhappiness had a single, continuing focus.
Robin.
To protect her, they watched over her one by one and slowed down her drinking, taking her glass away from her when she'd half emptied it and talking to her about anything but a certain dark haired, diminutive crime fighter. And some more guys tried to hit on the Titan girls, one trying to attach himself to her. Tall and blond and easygoing and interested in her at a glance, he was everything the Boy Wonder she professed to hate was not. And she rejected him immediately.
"Wimp," she muttered under her breath as he walked away.
But it wasn't an isolated sentiment. To the Titans Girls, all the guys hitting on them at the second club seemed like wimps compared to the boys they knew. And the frequency of the propositions and pickup lines had only increased at the second club. It was to the point of, along with the volume of the music, making the place uncomfortable. Oh, they were still having a good enough time but they decided to move along.
"The next place," announced a standing Argent to the others at the table, "will be different. We won't have to worry about the guys hitting on us all the time," she said with a smile. "The dynamic will be . . a little different."
"Cheesy," Jinx had pronounced it with a laugh as they entered the club. And Argent had glanced at her nervously. She was worried for a moment that Jinx was giving the place a thumbs down. Jump City's premier ladies club? Jinx chuckled at the title. But she wasn't rejecting it. She was laughing and enjoying the cheesiness. The music was loud but not quite as loud as at the two clubs. The crowd was also older. The Titan girls seemed to be winding their way past quite a few middle aged and even older women as they were led to a semi-circular booth off to one side of the room.
And no sooner had they sat down and ordered some more drinks than a dancer came by. They laughingly played along. Wonder Girl held out a dollar bill and tucked it under his thin waistband as the guy gyrated there. They laughed and laughed. He was just a big muscle bound doofus, but nothing compared to a Cyborg or a Mammoth and he seemed so ridiculously full of himself. His dancing was so ridiculous, too, exaggerated hip movements with every step. The Titan girls exploded in laughter.
Another dancer came by and then another and they played along, offering tips and giving the exhibitionist jokes a slap to send them on their ways. Then, there was a lull in the music. No matter. The Titans girls were barely paying any attention to the official entertainment of the evening. They laughed some more amongst themselves and were telling stories when the music came booming forth again and the other women in the crowd of 200 clapped and cheered at a new batch of dancers.
Jinx was telling some of the others about the night the Titans had all gone to see Zatanna's show.
"-and she turned Garth into a frog."
"Why a frog?" laughed Mary Marvel.
"Don't you get it? Amphibian. And, of course, there's the whole prince turned into a frog fairy tale angle."
"Only it wasn't a kiss from a princess that eventually turned him back, it was from Roy!" crowed Argent.
Jinx was laughing with Argent, when she felt a tap on her shoulder from the other side, from Arrowette. And, suddenly she realized that the overall din of cheering, shouting and laughing from the 200 women in the room wasn't being augmented by any of the nine Titans girls.
A wide eyed Arrowette pointed to the aisle in front of them.
Jinx turned to look where the others were looking.
She dropped her empty glass onto the leather booth between her and Argent then her jaw dropped nearly as far.
Then, a smile slowly curled her lips as she muttered "Oh . . . my . . . gods."