A/N: I'm sorry I haven't updated in forever. I'm bad to you guys, I know. But I have a laptop and I'll be on a plane tomorrow for three hours with nothing but said laptop, so consider that your reward for waiting.
Disclaimer: Me Tarzan. You Jane. Teen Titans no mine.
TT2
Thursday September 24, 2019
"Wake up, Titans! Wake up!" Taku's voice rang throughout the Tower over the intercom. He rubbed his eyes tiredly as he waited for the Titans to come up to the living room, and it took at least five minutes before the first arrived. It was Sara, and she was rubbing her eyes and yawning profusely. She came to stand in front of Taku and stretched, lifting her baggy blue flannel button-up over her belly button. Her legs were clad in baggy flannel pants matching her shirt, and her feet were in blue fuzzy slippers. She was clutching the hand of a torn-up teddy bear.
"What's up?" she asked hazily, falling back onto the couch and, using her hands as a pillow, began to nap. "Why did ya have to wake me from a perfectly good dream? I was dreaming that I was-oh, wait-nevermind," she finished, somewhat confused.
"I'll explain, don't worry," he reassured her as someone entered the room. It was Kimi, dressed in a black tank-top and a pair of grey sweats. She was carrying a small blue stuffed animal. "Tired, Kim?" he asked.
"AH!" she yelled, her eyes half-lidded and her voice scratchy. "Whadya do that for?" she asked dumbly, standing next to Sara and hugging her stuffed animal close to her. "I was asleep. It's frickin eleven at night."
Taku ignored her whining as two more people entered the room, Kyle and Danny. Kyle was in sweat pants with his boxers showing, with his chest bare (to which Kimi stated was inappropriate). Danny was in green boxers and a white wifebeater, but you could clearly see the bullet wound on his shoulder. Danny went directly to Kimi and she sandwiched her animal between them while resting her head on his shoulder. "I'm so tired," she mumbled.
Kyle took a seat next to Sara, who did nothing at first but then awkwardly leaned against him. In case you've been wondering, nothing had much changed between them since that afternoon. They had shared their witty banter, but things went back to the way they had been.
But maybe a trip to Tamaran could change all that.
Or make it worse. Who knows.
"Where's Clara?" Sara asked after about five minutes. "I know my sister loves to sleep, but she definitely should've woken up by now."
"I'll program a loud alarm on her communicator," Taku started, taking out his communicator and using it to hack onto Clara's and set a loud alarm. He pressed ok and almost instantly Clara's face appeared on his screen.
"What was that for?" she snapped. She didn't seem tired at all. Suspicious. "It's eleven at night, Taku, what are you doing up?"
"I could ask you the same thing! Where are you?" It was meant as a rhetorical question, but she sputtered for a few minutes, believing she had been found out. "I told you all to be up in the living room ASAP. Get your little butt down here or I'm coming to get it."
Her eyes bugged slightly, but Taku didn't notice. "Don't worry, I'll be right up!" was her enthusiastic response. Clara closed her communicator and put it back into her pocket, re-tightening her grip around Jake's waist. "Jake, I need to get back to the Tower, NOW!" she ordered.
"Your wish is my command," he murmured in reply, before revving it up. He popped a wheelie before they were on their way back to Titans' Tower. Clara bit her lip nervously. She knew she was about to be found out. There was no way she could pull this off.
Taku tapped his foot impatiently in the living room. Richard, Raven, Victor, and Jenna should all be here soon. And if Clara didn't haul her ass out of bed soon... Taku sighed and kept impatiently tapping his foot, watching Danny and Kimi talk silently.
"Jake, drive faster!" Clara insisted. "I really have to get home or they're going to find out I wasn't home at all!"
"I thought you told me they knew you went out tonight!" he retorted.
"Ok, sorry, I lied, but you can't blame me. Kyle suspended my privilege to leave the Tower alone," she told him. They drove for a few more moments (that felt like an eternity to Clara) before he was skidding to a stop in front of Titans Tower. Clara pulled off her helmet and laid it on his lap, giving him a sweet and short kiss good bye. With one last glance back she opened up a portal and let it bring her to her room.
"Oh, that's it, I'm going to go get her," Taku started, on his way out of the room. "Your sister," he directed towards Sara with a roll of his eyes.
Clara tripped over her stool in her haste to the closet and swore loudly. She tore off her risque top and pulled over it a baggy black band tee-shirt. Obsessive compulsive, she had to throw it in her hamper, and when she missed she had to pick it up (she could not stand an unclean closet...go figure). Clara then ripped off her jeans.
"Clara!" Taku called. He was right outside her door. "I'm coming in!"
SHIT!
Clara pulled on a pair of dark blue shorts and grabbed a black sweatshirt, pulling it over her head while mussing up her hair. She remembered she still had make-up on and quickly chanted a mantra to make it clean itself off. She skid to a halt in front of the door just as it slid open. "Hello?" she asked dazedly.
"C'mon, we're all in the living room waiting for you. What took you so long?" Another rhetorical question, and he turned on his heel and began a brisk stride back towards the living room.
Behind him, Clara smirked devilishly.
TT2
Richard, Raven, Kori, and Jenna all arrived at the tower within five minutes after they all gathered at the tower. They all entered the living room, looking tired and yet alert. "Dad!" Kimi started. "What are you doing here?"
"Escaping the clutches of your supposed mother, that's what I'm doing," he responded, coming around the couch flanked by his friends to face the Titans all sitting on the couch. "Kimi, I know I should've told you immediately, but your mother came home late this afternoon. But don't get excited, because it wasn't really your mother."
Kimi had looked ecstatic, but then her face fell, and lastly turned into an expression of confusion. "Wait...explain, please?" she asked of him.
"Kori came to the house today, and after we exchanged our hellos, she told me that she had defeated Blackfire and made her way home, which I found slightly suspicious since I had seen her passed out the day before. Then, for the whole few hours she was home she was acting so weirdly that taking her to see you was out of the question, because I knew something was up. I mentioned going to see you and she blanked out. She forgot who you were. So, I went to Raven and with the surveillance tapes, she deduced that Blackfire was pretending to be Kori, for some unfathomable reason. And everything fit. The fact that she forgot about you...because Blackfire doesn't know who you are," Richard explained as the Titans listened intently
"So...This Blackfire character, my mom's sister, kidnapped my mother, made her prisoner on her home planet, sent her into some sort of coma, turned into my mother, came back to Earth, and tried to woo you as the woman you love?" Kimi stated simply.
"Basically," Richard replied. "And now we need a plan."
Richard pushed the large blue button on the control panel in front of the window. A table popped up in the middle of the floor and they all took seats around it, except Richard, who stood with his palms against the tabletop. "Do you actually have a plan?"
"Yes, I do," he retorted to Raven's remark. "Look, I'm going to need Kimi, Kyle, and Sara to come with Victor, and I up to Tamaran. The reason for Kimi is obvious, but I'll need Sara to do any healing or magic that may be necessary and Kyle has a great fighting ability that may be necessary in hand to hand combat with any of Blackfire's followers that we come up against," he looked to Clara, Taku, and Danny. "Nothing personal." They all just shrugged. "I need Jenna, Raven, Clara, Taku, and Danny to stay here and keep watch over the Tower and our mission, and of course to take care of any crimes that come up." He looked at Raven. "I just don't want little Skylar getting hurt."
"I understand," she responded, nodding.
"So, our plan is basically just to take the T-ship up to Tamaran and use Sara to help us locate Kori, then go and break her out. We don't know who or what or how many we're up against, so we'll need back-up. We'll also need you four monitoring the mission down here while we're up there," Richard told them. "Ok?"
"Ok," Raven, Clara, Taku, and Danny all agreed.
"So, when does this whole thing begin?" Sara asked.
"Tonight. Right here, right now," he responded. "Taku's got the ship ready, so we're ready. That's ok with you three, right?" He looked to Sara, Kyle, and Kimi, to see them all nodding. "Good. Now, it will take a good few hours to get to Tamaran, so you'll be able to stock up on sleep," he told Kimi, Sara, and Kyle. "We don't know what we're going to be up against. We know-"
But the alarm rang. Richard pulled up the screen that gave them the appropriate information. "Arson downtown. In process, if you hurry you'll catch the criminal," Richard read off.
"Clara, let's bring up a portal," Sara began. "It'll get us there and back quicker."
The two girls waved their hands and chanted their mantras, dressing their teammates almost instantly. In another few moments they had used their group effort to open a rather large portal. Quickly, they ushered everyone in before it snapped shut behind them, leaving the adults staring in wonder.
They all fell jumbled out of a portal in front of a flaming three-story Victorian in the posh downtown district. Two figures all in black were running down the road, having just dropped cans of gasoline. "You guys go after them!" Danny ordered quickly, sweat already forming on their faces from the impending heat. "I'll find whoever's still stuck in the house!"
"Danny you can't!" Kimi protested indignantly, taking his wrist to stop him from running towards the burning building, although the others had already turned in the direction of the perpetrators.
"Don't worry, Kim," he began quickly. "I'm impervious to fire. It can't hurt me, remember?" And in the most affection he had ever shown her in public, he cupped her cheek gently and looked at her through the emotion swimming in his eyes. Their gaze was locked for merely a moment before he turned and ran into the burning building. Kimi watched after him wordlessly, her throat constricting.
"Kimi, c'mon!" Someone had shouted. "He'll be fine, let's go!"
And slowly she turned towards her teammates, flying in the direction in which they had already taken off.
Danny looked all around him. All he could see was fire. "HELLO?" he screamed, and heard whimpers coming from upstairs. He took the stairs two at a time, one collapsing beneath him, as he merely pushed through the fire, some of it absorbing into his body. The rest that he didn't absorb merely began to fester again.
"Where are you?" he called through cupped hands. The whimpers had stopped, a bad sign.
"Help!" He heard a call of, and he assumed it was an older person. He followed the sounds now dying out into a burning bedroom where a young woman was huddled, half-unconscious. "Help..."she trailed off, helplessly, as her limbs moved eerily slow.
"Come here," he started, scooping the woman into her arms. She was light for her age, maybe about 120 pounds.
"My...Mah..." she trailed off and she passed out fully. Danny moved as swiftly as he could from the room and took the stairs down, just in front of the front door. Two wooden beams had fallen in front of it, and he concentrated to put out the fire before using strong air currents to move them both.
Danny ducked out of the doorframe and appeared, sweaty and dirty, to the crowd that had gathered. Alarms were coming faintly, but they sounded so far away. A man rushed forward, taking the woman in his arms. "Lena! Lena!" he called, tears welling in his eyes.
She awakened, but she was weak.
"Where are my children?" the woman asked, and the man's eyes bugged nearly out of his skull.
"My...my children! They're still in there!"
That was all it took for Danny to be running back into the house, taking the stairs again two at a time, but his foot got stuck in the broken step and he took a few moments to hastily jerk it out. "Hello?" he called as he began checking each room on this floor. It would help if he knew their names. "Hello!"
Whimpering came from a room nearby. The door was ablaze and wouldn't budge open, but the whimpering was far away, so he could tell if he bust the door down they would not be hurt. "Don't come near the door!" he ordered.
"Ok," came the timid reply of two different children. Danny backed up and took a deep breath, before running full speed at the door. All it gave him was a sore shoulder. He took another deep breath and ran again towards the door. It fell off one hinge and busted open.
Danny scanned the room and saw two children huddled against each other in the corner, both near the age of five or six. Danny bent to his knees and looked at both of the children at eye-level. "It's ok," he told them, opening up his arms. "Come with me, it'll all be ok."
They scurried into his arms, and he held onto them for dear life. "Where's mommy?" one of them cried, her tears soaking into Danny's uniform.
"Your mommy's ok. She's outside with your daddy," Danny told them gently. "Just, don't let go." Danny walked down the hallway and had to put out a rather large fire that had formed in front of the staircase. The children buried their heads in his shoulder and never once looked up.
He heard a horrible cracking and looked up to see a beam falling off of the ceiling and he was able to jump from the staircase and land safely seven stairs down, without getting hurt. "Are you two ok?" he asked them.
They whimpered a shy "yes" in response.
Danny then had no problem running from the burning building, just before another beam fell in front of the door, blocking any exit. The firemen, the ambulance, and the police had all arrived by now, and the paramedics were taking care of the woman while the police were talking to the man. No one seemed to take notice of the young man carrying the two children out of the burning building, until someone exclaimed something Danny could barely make out. Before he knew what was happening, people were swirling around him, taking the children out of his arms.
The woman had finally woken up somehow, and was running up to him, despite protests of the paramedics, and threw herself at Danny. "Oh thank you so much!" she blubbered. "Thank you, thank you, thank you! You saved me. You saved my children. Oh how can I repay you?"
"No need ma'am," he replied, pushing her away lightly. "'It's my job."
But just as he had pushed one away, someone else threw their arms around him. A more familiar someone. "Oh Danny," She breathed into his ear.
"Way to go, Danny!" And various calls were shouted around him, as all his teammates gathered around for a group hug. "Way to be a hero!" Kyle yelled, rustling his hair. "You're amazing, aren't you?"
Danny simply laughed. "It's all part of the job."
They all were soon tumbling back into the living room via portal, where the adults were all situated on the couch, watching the news, which displayed Danny's heroic exit from the burning building, the two kids cowering in his arms.
"You did good," Richard commented gruffly. "I'm impressed."
Danny smiled proudly. "Why thank you."
Kimi took his wrist. "We'll be right back. Y'all can just talk amongst yourselves." Kimi eagerly pulled Danny towards the door and he dumbly followed, wondering where she was going with this. The millisecond the door shut, Kimi threw herself into Danny's arms and kissed him hard. "Danny, that was amazing," she breathed, still holding him tight, her lips a few inches from his. "Just thought you should know."
He bated a small grin and kissed her again. "Well, you're amazing twenty four-seven. Just thought you should know."
They were silent for a moment, and Danny could sense she was bubbling to say something. His arms loosened around her and his gaze softened upon her features. "I love you," she whispered softly, with a little awkwardness. They had only used this particular phrase once or twice since her birthday. The love between them was something they knew was powerful and yet undiscovered. They didn't want to ruin it by tossing the phrase around like a rag doll.
He buried his face in her hair. He didn't need to reply. She already knew how he felt.
"Come on, we should get back in there," she told him, pulling away and taking his wrist, leading him back into the living room. Everyone was assembled as they had left them, yet waiting for their arrival. When they had settled on the couch, at an appropriate distance since Kimi's father was in the room, Richard began to speak.
"Ok, so we'll need to take off as soon as possible. The Titans coming on the trip will need to pack a few days of clothes, at the most. We're not quite sure how long it will take, so we might as well be prepared. With that being said, I'll need us all to meet in the launch area at one thirty A.M. Got it?"
Everyone showed their approval in some way, and Richard clapped his hands together. "Good. Great. Now let's get going."
TT2