Disclaimer
Teen Titans is a registered trademark of DC Comics and Cartoon Network Inc. All trademarked characters, locations, themes and ideas are used without permission in a work of fan-created fiction. The following has been done without profit for purely entertainment purposes. All original concepts, characters, themes and ideas within are the copyrighted property of the author, and are not to be reproduced without his prior consent. Additional information used in creating Teen Titans: Adaptation is courtesy of Titans Tower Online.
From here, the city looked like the night sky, gathered into towers and trains of stars. Motes of light acted out the life of the city. They moved. They shone. They lit and vanished. From here, the city looked like a living constellation. He reached out, his hands almost brushing the edge of the starry city. It gave him a heady feeling.
The salty air filled him with a deep sigh. He let his hands fall, and continued to watch the city, no longer entranced. Such a lively night in the city merely meant that he had yet to achieve that which he had set out to do two months ago.
"Hey, Baby Face." The sound of Jinx's voice turned his head back to the roof hatch. She stood half-emerged with her elbows resting on the gritty, pockmarked surface. A smirk lifted her thin lips. "All done with the 'dramatic night vigil' thing, or do you need another minute? I gotta talk to you."
"Tactless as ever," he said, and returned her smirk in kind.
Jinx flipped up and out of the hatch with a sprightly hand-stand, and rolled back to her feet to stand next to him. Her arm looped around his waist in a comfortable embrace. Her other hand traced the line running down the middle of his chest. The armor squeaked under her fingertip, its red and blue hues made black and blacker in the night.
"I like it," Jinx decided of his new armor. "It's got a real 'duality' thing going for it. But why get rid of your old costume? Red X was kinda badass."
He removed her hand from his chest with a firm grasp. "Red X is a powerful symbol. But it isn't mine. To cull true power from a symbol, you must be its master, not merely its vessel."
She rolled her eyes and shook her hand free of his. "Ugh. Again with the symbol talk. You've been harping on this for weeks. Most people can change their clothes without making grand speeches, you know."
He hid his own roll of the eyes as he bent down. A helmet sat by his feet, overlooking the roof's edge and the starry city beyond with its empty white eyes. He picked the helmet up and held it next to the city, examining both in juxtaposition. Like his armor, the helmet's colors were split down the middle of its smooth face. "It's attitudes like that one that'll keep you robbing banks well into your thirties, Pinkie. You and the others don't understand the true power of symbols," he told her.
Her eyes remained firmly rolled. She spun away from him, across the rooftop with her arms outstretched. The air swirled off her fingertips and lifted her long hair. "And is that why we moved in here? To steal another symbol?" she asked snidely.
"No," he said, and drew the helmet over his head. It locked into his armor with synchronized snaps. His voice, now reverberant, rang through the featureless faceplate. "We aren't stealing this symbol. We're re-forging it. This relic will embody everything it stood against when we're through."
"New clothes and a new house. Yep, that's going to have this teeny burg wetting itself in no time. Maybe if we put up some new wallpaper, they'll hand the city over to us," Jinx teased through her ceaseless spinning.
"You can't argue with the power of symbols, Jinx. Just look at what it's done for the city." He waved his gauntlet at the stars across the bay. "A month ago, it was a chaotic mess of panic and helplessness."
"Good times," she sighed.
His empty eyes narrowed. "And yet, after their return, the Teen Titans have managed to expunge that panic from the city's memory. They aren't even officially back, and yet look how their city has rallied behind them. Four insipid teenagers banded together have changed the entire city simply by 'being.'"
Jinx stopped spinning. Her eyes were slower to stop, and so she staggered. "Careful, there. It sounds like they've got one more admirer right here."
Smiling with his voice, he said, "You should know better. All I'm saying is, if the Titans can benefit so richly from a symbol, why can't we do the same?"
She collapsed against him, wrapping her arms around his neck. Her smile pressed against the bottom of his mask with a playful peck. "I love it when you monologue," she swooned.
"Really?"
"No. But I know you do, and that's good enough," she said.
She shrieked with delight as he swept her into his arms. "Is that why you came up here? To make fun of me?"
Jinx clung to his neck. She teased his armor with her finger again, and said, "Not really. I came up to help Mik bitch by proxy. He's still downstairs in the guts of your 'symbol.' Last I saw, he was waist-deep in what's left of the plumbing, and he said to tell you that he's going to need ungodly amounts of time and material to fix this place. Oh, and that I should blast the 'x' right off your face for making him live here in the first place."
"Charming. But you can tell him that I don't care. And that I'm not Red X anymore."
"So who are you today, Baby Face?" she asked him patronizingly and playfully.
He swung around, allowing both of them that breathtaking view that had engrossed him before her arrival. A scowl burned in his faceless mask of two tones as it watched the city bustle from afar.
"Call me 'Ravager,'" he said.
From where he stood, atop the derelict Titans Tower, the city looked like the night sky, like a living constellation. He reached out to grasp it, and came closer than ever.
Teen Titans
Adaptation
By Cyberwraith9
Terrorize: Brave New World
"And you should see the size of the place," Beast Boy said. "Everybody's got a room like an aircraft hangar. I wanted a bunk bed, but I couldn't find one big enough for me, and Vic was too busy to build me one. He's been too busy for much of anything lately, actually. It's cool, though. I've been hanging out with Tek. And Raven. Mostly Tek."
The click of the lab's door made Beast Boy look up and see Doctor Brown enter with her ever-present clipboard. She balked when she saw Beast Boy, and half-backed out the door. "I'm sorry, Garfield. I didn't realize she had company. I'll come back."
Beast Boy stood from his chair at Starfire's bedside. "No, it's okay, Doc. We were just…I mean, 'I' was just talking to her. C'mon in."
Doctor Brown eyed the young shapeshifter skeptically. He was significantly less young than he had been when she'd first met him, especially so in the last few weeks. Though chronologically fifteen, Beast Boy could have easily passed for much older. Lean muscle filled out his new uniform, a white and purple body suit similar to its previous incarnation in design. His features, still elfin, had elongated from cherubic childishness into an otherworldly beauty that made even the levelheaded Brown look twice.
She closed the door behind her and approached Starfire's bed. The comatose Tamaranian lay prostrate beneath an enormous sun lamp, which bathed her sickly golden skin in what the scientists at S.T.A.R. Labs hoped would help her heal. Her hospital gown rose and fell with shallow breath enhanced by the oxygen tube crossing her nose. Sensor pads rested all over her body, feeding information to the bevy of machines at her bedside.
"I see you're visiting again this week," Brown said into her clipboard as she transcribed numbers from Starfire's readouts.
Beast Boy shrugged and sat. "It was Vic's turn, but like I was telling Kory, he's been crazy-busy getting everything set up for today's grand to-do. Besides, I like coming here," he said, and brushed Starfire's hand with his.
"Mmm, that's right. Today is your 'grand opening,' so to speak," Brown said. "I'm almost sorry I have to miss it. I have tickets to see Brother Blood speaking at the Convention Center downtown."
A shiver ran up Beast Boy's spine and out his mouth as a groan. "Bleargh. You actually follow that creep? I thought you were a scientist. Don't you believe that the universe was created by an exploding thimble, or something?"
Brown quirked her brow. "My personal beliefs have little to do with it. Brother Blood is supposed to be quite an eloquent speaker. Besides, I'm curious to see the 'creep' who almost single-handedly rebuilt Jump City. This is the first time he's appearing in public."
"Single-handedly. Feh. All he did was donate money. Truckloads of money, maybe," he admitted. "But anybody who hides behind a mask like that is bad news."
Her daily check finished, Brown straightened from the bedside readouts and tucked away her clipboard. "What an odd sentiment coming from a super hero," she noted.
"Ha, ha."
As she looked up, she caught sight of something new on the table opposite Starfire's bed. Amidst the cards and notes, next to the potted flowers basking in her therapy light, sat a small framed picture. Brown leaned down to examine the photo. It was a group picture of the five founding Titans taken outside the old Tower. Judging by their smiles and relative youth, she guessed it had been taken a long time ago.
She tapped the frame, and said, "This is new."
Beast Boy glanced back from Starfire. "Oh. That's way back from the day we all moved in. Vic found it in an old lockbox or something. It's the only picture we have left since the Tower kerploded, so we figured Kory should have it."
Brown's attention lingered on the photographed Starfire. When she looked up, she saw a very different Starfire being tended to by a vastly different Beast Boy. Her heart ached to see him clasp her clammy hand. "Maybe you should take a picture of your new home and bring it with you next time. I know Koriand'r would…will want to see it when she wakes up."
He grinned. "That's a great idea," he said.
"Is the new place nice? I haven't seen it, aside from all the construction traffic it caused," said Brown. "Hopefully it's worth all that time I spent parked on the freeway."
"Nice? Totally," Beast Boy said. He ruffled his hair in thought, and added, "Well, it will be. There's still some kinks to work out."
"Good morning, and welcome to Titans Compound. My name is Sarah. How may I service you?"
Cyborg grinned and scratched his head. He glanced at Raven, and asked, "Okay, so there's still some kinks to work out. But what do you think?"
Raven considered her words carefully. She let her gaze wander through the lobby, a cavernous room of windows and skylights that washed the white floors and walls into blinding cheeriness. Far behind her, two sets of glass double doors led to a busy sidewalk and street outside.
In front of Raven, a large mahogany desk embossed with the Titan "T" played host to the object of Cyborg's question. Sarah was a slim, perky blonde, dressed for success in a sharp blue blazer. She wore a smile that hurt Raven's face just to look at. The young lady waited eagerly behind the desk for either Raven or Cyborg to answer the question.
Slowly, and with a painfully straight face, Raven said, "I think it's interesting that, given the opportunity to design a person from the ground up, you make a petite blonde white girl whose sole passion is 'servicing' you."
Annoyance creased half of Cyborg's face. He waved his hand, signaling the Compound mainframe wirelessly. Sarah flickered and de-resolved into prickly air. Her winning smile seemed to linger a second longer than the rest of her. "Very funny," Cyborg groused. "But the SARAH Sim isn't some cheap fantasy. I designed her to be a fully interactive aide for when people come knocking on our door. Friendly people, anyway. She just has a few glitches I need to work out in her speech subroutines."
"Better double-check her 'technique' while you're at it," Raven suggested.
Cyborg grunted, and groused, "I didn't realize Beast Boy left you in charge of jokes while he was away."
Now Raven's was the annoyed expression. "I don't see why we need a receptionist. Or a lobby, for that matter. Couldn't we have used this space for another vehicle, or more giant cannons? You love giant cannons," she insisted.
He sighed, and leaned against the desk. The old wood squeaked in protest at the weight of his smooth, silvery new cybernetics. "Raven, how many times are we going to have this conversation? The last nail went in two days ago. This is where we live now," he said.
A glance out the double doors made Raven cringe and retreat deeper into her cloak. "I liked where we lived before. There was room to breathe. It was peaceful, and private—"
"—and remote," Cyborg said pointedly. "Raven, we've been gone for months now. The city may be up and running again, but people are still scared. They need to know that somebody's gonna be there the next time some lunatic with laser breath starts something. We need to be there. Moving into the city's a big step toward that."
"And this 'Grand Opening' nonsense this afternoon is another step?" she asked testily.
Alloy cringed and cheek flushed with embarrassment. "Yeah, well, a little PR to get the Titans rolling again can't hurt. It's just a little press conference."
Raven could hear volumes left unsaid in his voice. She arched her eyebrow, and prompted, "And…?"
Cyborg coughed. "And maybe there'll be a small street carnival. With performers. And vendors. And booths with Titan-themed games and prizes." He chilled beneath Raven's glare, and retorted, "Come on, Raven, it's a fun way for people to come on down and get to know us. You can meet everybody and let them know we're here to help. It's the least we can do after the city gave us this land for the new Compound."
"I can't," Raven growled. "I'm going to be too busy bankrupting myself at the 'Dunk the Cyborg' booth."
A long-suffering sigh emptied his iron lungs. "What's it going to take for you to show up, smile at the press conference, and glad-hand people for five minutes afterward?" he asked.
She didn't hesitate. "Bookstore. You drive me there now, and you pay for everything I want. I have a collection to rebuild, and the CUTTER should almost be able to haul it home."
Cyborg winced at the thought of replacing Raven's extensive library. They might need to sacrifice certain frivolous luxuries to afford the hit to their budget. Like eating. But if it meant an end to Raven's complaining, it was worth it. "I don't want to hear another word about the new neighborhood or the press conference," he said, and stuck out his hand.
"Deal." They shook.
An electronic chime heralded the door's opening. Cyborg looked back to the end of the long lobby, where a grizzled man in a long coat and a fedora pushed through the door. The man's footsteps clicked smartly against the tile as he marched toward the pair and swept off his hat. As he reached them, however, the air next to him buzzed and resolved into a Sarah with a ready smile.
"Good morning, Lieutenant Smith. Would you like needing any servicing today?" Sarah asked, and fuzzed.
Smith eyeballed the blonde hologram. "Sweet lord, son, what kind of house are you running here?" he asked Cyborg.
"Good morning, Lieutenant," Cyborg said, and deactivated Sarah with a humiliated thought. "Is there a problem?"
Smith's face puckered. "Not yet. I just thought I would check in with you kids before you turned my street into Coney Island. Maybe suggest that you keep your noses clean."
"Are you expecting trouble? Do you want us to cancel the event?" Raven asked, veiling the hope in her voice.
He snorted and shook his head. With a wave, he drew them back toward the door. The Titan pair fell into step behind him. "Not hardly. As much of a headache as it is for me, this little shindig of yours might be just what the doctor ordered. Folks around here could use something to lift their spirits. If they have to live next to this circus of yours, you might as well give 'em a show, right?"
"Then what's the problem?" Cyborg asked, crossing his arms in irritation of Smith's tone. "The crews will be here in an hour to start setting up. If there's something wrong…"
They walked outside to stand before Titans Compound. The massive structure sat in the middle of Jump City's booming business district, rising four stories into the air. It lay on the ground in the shape of an enormous "T." The southern tip, where they stood now, was composed almost entirely of glass and frame to create the cheery lobby that Raven so disliked. The rest of it stood as white stone and tinted windows, still possessed of a pristine sheen yet untouched by the elements. Even the sidewalk they stood upon looked brand new.
Smith gestured across the busy street and killed Cyborg's good mood. "I just saw 'that' on my way in. Thought you should know," he said.
A wrought-iron bench across the street played host to the meditations of a young Asian boy in a keikogi. Through foot traffic and passing cars, the sight of the teenaged assassin made Cyborg's teeth grind, and put an ache in his ocular implant.
"Bushido," Cyborg growled. He pushed imaginary sleeves up his arms and marched toward the curb.
Smith stopped Cyborg with an arm. Though more than a head taller and considerably broader than Smith, Cyborg stopped at the gruff sound of the old man's voice. "Easy, kid. I just wanted to point him out. If he's not starting trouble, then you're not starting trouble. And that's not a suggestion," he said sharply.
Cyborg fumed and sputtered, but he remained at the curb. If looks could kill, he would have obliterated Bushido and the whole bench with his remaining eye. "I can't believe a piece of crap like him is just walking around and doing whatever he wants. Why isn't he in prison?" he spat.
They all knew the answer, but Smith said it anyway. "The little punk has friends in high places. Very high places. Places that you can't even see from my pay grade. Not that we could have held him for anything besides questioning. There's no evidence linking him to any of the crimes you say he's committed."
Pointing at his face, Cyborg said, "He stabbed me in the freaking eye! I'd have video proof if our house hadn't blown up!"
"Then it's your word against his. His and the Japanese Embassy's," Smith said. He slapped Cyborg on the arm in an understanding gesture. "I've been there, kid. You know for a fact that the piece of scum's guilty, but you just can't muster the evidence. Suck it up and make sure you file a report right away next time he puts a knife through your face instead of waiting eight months."
As the old cop tipped and donned his hat to leave, Cyborg shouted after him, "Can't you cite him for loitering? Or disturbing the peace?"
Raven rubbed her ringing ear. "What peace?" she muttered.
Furious, Cyborg glared across the street again. His collective fury—or his carrying voice—awoke Bushido from his meditations. The assassin opened his eyes, and waved and smiled at Cyborg.
Cyborg's fists strained. "Did you know that little bastard came here to the construction site at least once a week? He actually asked if we needed help! Talking about how 'we Titans' have to stick together."
"No, you've only told me about it twenty times," Raven said, rolling her eyes. "Look, he's a contract killer. Without a paycheck, he has no reason to kill us." At Cyborg's scathing glare, she added, "I'm just saying. I don't want him here any more than you do, but you heard the Lieutenant. As long as he isn't making trouble…"
Harrumphing, Cyborg set his crosshairs back on Bushido. "Yeah, well, contract or no contract, I'm evicting his ass from that bench. I don't want him here when the press and crews start setting things up."
It was Raven's arm that stopped him this time. "No, you're not. You're taking me to the bookstore so Bushido doesn't have you arrested for aggravated assault. Or worse, take you apart with that magic sword of his."
Cyborg grumbled and puffed, but he backed down. Lifting his arm, he said, "Fine. But the hell if I'm leaving him there without a babysitter. Cyborg to Ops."
The smooth alloy of his arm flashed with a projected video display. Tek's face appeared on-screen, framed by the readout displays of their new command center. "Thank you for calling Ops. How may I help you make this a Titan-riffic day?"
"What the hell was that?"
Her sober face split with a grin. "Beast Boy paid me five bucks to say that the next time you called in case he wasn't on monitor duty. What's up, Cy?"
"Raven and I are taking off. I need you to handle things here."
Tek's grin died a quick and anguished death. "Alone? B-But all those reporters and performers and booths are coming. What am I supposed to say when they show up? I can't do the press conference by myself!"
"Tek. Tek! Breathe, okay? We're gonna be back with plenty of time to spare for the shindig. We're just taking the CUTTER out for an errand. I wanted to give you the heads-up that Bushido's back. The bastard's camped out across the street again."
"…what should I do?"
Scowling at Bushido from behind his arm, Cyborg said, "Stick to the monitors, keep an eye on him, and nuke him with the Compound's security measures if he so much as sneezes at you."
Raven grabbed his arm and pulled, ending his conversation with Tek. She tugged him back through the lobby doors, saying, "Come on. Tek can handle Bushido. You can glare at him all you want at the press conference. It looks like he's going to have a front-row seat."
Through the closing doors and across the street, Bushido smiled serenely at Cyborg. Whatever his plan, Cyborg vowed he would not let Bushido bring harm their way a second time.
Cyborg had spent weeks in collaboration with the finest minds of S.T.A.R. Labs in designing his new body. The sleek new alloy, devoid of its predecessor's circuitry pattern, housed systems that far surpassed anything yet conceived in the field of cybernetics. He had taken the hard lessons of the past and made them into backup batteries, backup processors, thicker armor, bigger muscles, and a host of new defensive countermeasures. He was five hundred pounds of bigger, tougher, stronger cyborg now.
"Collected Works of Byron. Mm. Fake leather binding, but I suppose it'll do."
As Raven added yet another tome to the growing pile in Cyborg's arms, he couldn't help but feel annoyed that his design work was now being put to use as a shopping valet. He followed Raven through the shelves of A Nook for a Book, having to crane his neck to one side just to see around the stack of books she wanted him to buy.
He grunted and rebalanced the wobbling stack in his hands. "You know, you could at least help carry these. You could carry all of these with your mind, even," he grunted.
"I know." Raven pulled the thickest book from the shelf and placed it atop his teetering stack. She never even glanced at its title.
Biting back a grumble, Cyborg looked around his stack at the rest of the store. He felt a small measure of comfort in all of the faces he saw. It lifted his spirits to see many of those faces smiling back at him. The city had healed to an amazing degree, to where people could leave their homes and go back to their lives. Now if he could only keep it that way.
Another book hit his stack. Cyborg had to fight to keep everything balanced. "Are you building a library or a book fort?" he snapped, and seriously contemplated letting the stack topple onto Raven the next time she tossed a book on top.
"There's no sense in complaining. Besides, we're almost through with 'B,'" she tossed over her shoulder.
While Raven hunted for another volume, a pair of younger teenagers worked up the courage to approach her and Cyborg. The scruffy-haired boy toed the ground and turned beet red while his dark-haired girl friend stammered a greeting to the Titans. Both kids appeared to be on the cusp of high-schoolerdom.
"Excuse us," the girl said, her voice thick with nerves. "I know you must get this all the time, but…could we get a picture?" She held out her cell phone.
"With you," the boy said. "Both of you," he added lamely, staring at Raven, whose face puckered at the attention.
Cyborg grinned and set his stack of books down on a nearby chair, which sagged and creaked. "We'll do you one better," he said cheerfully, and corralled Raven with an arm before she could fade into the shadows. The ire sparking in her eyes was suitable comeuppance for the snippy mood she'd put him through all throughout the Compound's construction.
Taking the cell phone from the girl, he turned and tapped a nearby patron, a tall man wearing a hooded sweatshirt. "Would you mind? Thanks."
After handing Hoodie the phone, Cyborg scooped the girl up and placed her on his shoulder. She tittered with delight and held onto his hand at her waist. "Go ahead, don't be shy. She won't bite," he told the boy, who edged next to Raven with a worsening blush. A sly elbow from Cyborg made Raven perch her hand on the boy's shoulder and paste something akin to a smile on her face.
The telltale click of the phone after endless seconds of waiting was all the excuse Raven needed to eject herself from the scene. Cyborg, in the meantime, took the phone back. Ignoring the girl's puzzled look, he sent the picture as a message with a few deft strokes of his thumb. Then he handed the phone back to her.
A small slot opened at Cyborg's waist. It buzzed for a second, and then spat out a glossy eight-by-ten of the picture. Amidst the delighted gasps of the pair, and in spite of Raven's rolling eyes, Cyborg pulled the picture out of his waist. He clicked his index finger into a pen, and asked, "So who do we make this out to?"
"Wendy," the girl giggled.
"M-Marvin," stammered the boy.
"To Wendy and Marvin," Cyborg drawled as he signed. "From your super friends. Cyborg." He disengaged his finger-pen from his hand with a twist, and handed it with the picture to the begrudged Raven. She scrawled her name over her painful photographed smile, and then shoved the picture at Marvin and the disgusting pen at Cyborg.
As the giggling pair skipped away with their picture, Cyborg reattached his finger and used it to point at Raven. "See? Was that so bad?"
Their hooded photographer interrupted her retort, pulling back his hood and saying, "Actually, if you're doing autographs, I wouldn't mind one. I'm a big fan."
Raven rounded on Hoodie, drawing in a breath with which to channel her Cyborg-related frustrations into this poor, hapless bystander whose only crime was a poor sense of timing. "Listen, you…"
She trailed off. As the young man's head pulled free of its hood, he revealed a crop of unkempt hair colored blazing red. His pale face split in a smile that made his eyes twinkle. "Remember me? I'm Nobody," he said playfully.
Memory crashed through Raven like a tidal wave. She remembered the odd encounter in this same bookstore, months ago, before Slade's Attack. She remembered the tall, lanky, pale boy with the amicable smile and eyes the color of old jade. But most of all, she remembered the overwhelming sense of peace that his touch brought her, a peace she could feel at the extreme edge of her empathy even now.
That memory lifted her hands and made a specter of her voice. "Dominic," she murmured breathlessly.
His grin widened. "Hi," he said. "Wow. I didn't really think that you'd remember."
Raven still thought of him every time she meditated, wishing she could feel that sense of peace she felt at his touch. She'd written no fewer than eight pages about him in her journal. She had searched his name and number through every database to which the Titans had access.
"Yeah, well…I'm good with names," Raven muttered. Embarrassment weighed her gaze down onto her boots. "It's not like I thought of you, or anything," she added lamely.
Dominic's smile faltered. "Oh. Well, sure. That's cool. It's, uh, it's not like I've been coming here hoping that I'd run into you again. Th-That would be lame."
Cyborg stared at the pale pair in dawning realization. If he hadn't seen it for himself, he wouldn't have ever believed it. He still didn't, not entirely. Picking up Raven's tower of books, he said, "Hi, I'm Cyborg, and I was just leaving to, um, pay for these. Raven, I'll meet you by the CUTTER. When you're ready. No hurry. Nice to meet you." He tripped and staggered around the corner, out of sight and, more importantly, out of the way.
Neither Raven nor Dominic said anything. Their eyes were otherwise engaged in looking at one another without appearing to look at one another. Raven felt glad for her hood, which hid her dark blush in shadow. She also wished she was wearing something nicer than her uniform, and that she had gotten the haircut she knew she desperately needed. Suddenly she couldn't remember if she'd brushed her teeth that morning. She felt an intense need for lip gloss, breath spray, and deodorant that could keep up with the panic currently trying to sweat through her cloak.
"So," she said.
"Yeah," he said.
Silence ate them both. Raven screamed inward, demanding something of her mind. Its only reply was to babble at her with eight different voices, none of which had anything helpful to say.
Finally, Dominic broke the stupor. "So, I hear you guys have moved. Into the city. The Titans, I mean. You've got that new…"
"Oh. Oh! Right," Raven said, grateful to have something to say at all. "The new Compound. Yes, we're…"
"Yeah. So, um, that's good. It looks…big."
She could feel his calm edging against her serenity, like a cool oasis in the heated sandstorm of emotion all around them. Her hand flexed and clenched, aching to reach out and touch his.
"Yes. Big," she said.
Dominic's smile slowly dissolved in the awkward silence. He scratched his head, and said, "I'm sorry. I must be keeping you. I saw your, uh, tank parked on the street outside. You must have places you need to be. Super hero, right? I, uh, I hope I see you around again—"
"Press conference!" Raven blurted. Both she and Dominic paused at her outburst, equally surprised. "We're having a press conference later today. It's about how we're back and…that we're back. There's going to be a big event afterward, with booths and food. It's going to be…fun. You should come. I-If you want, I mean."
His face brightened. "Yeah!" Then it fell just as quickly. "I mean, no. I can't. I have to go to that thing at the Convention Center. The Brother Blood thing. My mother is making me go. I can't get out of it. Otherwise…"
"Oh." Now Raven's expression fell. "No, I understand."
"But…but afterward, I'm free. If that event thing is still going on," he said, hopeful, "maybe I could stop by. Maybe you'd still be there?"
Her heart soared. "Yes! I mean, maybe," Raven said.
"Great! I mean, great. Oh, here," he said, and pulled a pen from his pocket. "I should give you my number this time, just in case something changes, o-or if you want to get together somewhere else. Do you have a piece of paper, or…?"
She held out her trembling hand.
The bones drained from Raven's legs as Dominic gently took her hand and tickled ten numbers onto her palm with his pen. As soon as he touched her, everything in the bookstore stopped. Silence rushed into her through his skin, erasing the empathic white noise of the city, and the looming hatred of her father. Her own doubts and fears were washed away in a tranquil tide. Raven closed her eyes and held her breath, feeling for the second time the peace she had always sought.
If she could, Raven would have held Dominic's hand forever. She braced herself when she felt him finish his writing. When he pulled away, her empathy rang again with the thoughts and feelings of everyone and everything around her. Except his.
She opened her eyes to his smile. "So…I hope I catch you later," he said, taking a step back with his hands in his hoodie pocket. "It's the big 'T' downtown, right?"
A likewise smile infected her face. "You can't miss it," she told him.
He back out of sight around a bookshelf, his smile almost blinding. Raven watched the corner of the bookshelf for a long minute after he vanished. She hardly noticed the other patrons in the store as they edged around her through the aisle. It wasn't until someone bumped into her that she returned to the physical world.
Raven blinked hard and shook her head clear. The whole encounter felt surreal, just as it had last time. She almost wondered if it had actually happened. Her heart pounded in her chest while she stared into her palm and read his phone number again and again. Her extremities tingled with excitement.
She wondered if this was how real people felt.
Tek hesitated at the door. Truth be told, it had been "hesitation" ten minutes ago when she'd first wandered from Ops down to the lobby. Now she was just being wishy-washy. Cowardly, even. And honestly, what did she have to fear? She had travelled with him for almost a month, and hadn't once felt afraid of him.
She stared at Bushido through her own reflection. He had resumed his meditation on the corner bench. Compared to his serenity, her reflection appeared wracked, biting its lip and staring back at her with quivering eyes.
Cyborg would be furious. He would forbid it, no matter how badly she needed to know.
So she would have to make extra certain that Cyborg never found out.
Tek pushed past her reflection out onto the sidewalk and almost brained herself on a large section of the stage being constructed on their doorstop. Two teamsters carrying the flat, black paneling grunted at her as she sidestepped them only to wind up walking onto the half-finished stage, where more teamsters worked with ratchets to put the modular stage together. She hopped off the end, apologizing profusely to the teamster over whom she jumped, and stepped to the curb.
Up and down the street, foot traffic streamed between the small, colorful tents being erected on the sidewalk. Plywood booths, roving snack stands, and a host of other temporary amusements were taking shape on their block, all beneath an enormous banner stretched across the street that read "TEEN TITANS GO!" Trucks with supplies and news vans were the only cars allowed onto the road, but they were plentiful enough to make Tek wait to cross the street.
After quick-stepping around a van determined to smear her on the road, she made it to the opposite sidewalk. She took a minute to slow down her racing heart, and then realized it was a lost cause, and approached the bench anyway. "Hello, Ryuko," she said softly.
Bushido's chin rose smoothly off his chest. His eyes turned and found hers at once. He smiled. "Hello, Tek," he said. His legs uncrossed and pushed him to one side of the bench.
Tek sat at the opposite edge of the bench. She perched as far from him as she could, with her legs tensed and her hands curled at her knees. Bushido's eyes burned into her. She let her own gaze fall to the sidewalk. Second thoughts churned in her stomach.
He mimicked her posture. "It's good to see you again, Tek. But shouldn't you be inside keeping watch? Everyone else is gone, after all."
"I've got the Alert System tied to my communicator," she answered. Then she cringed, and snapped, "I mean, that's none of your business!"
He smirked. "I see. So then what is my business, Tek?"
She swallowed. "Why don't you tell me?" she asked shakily. Then, with growing strength, she said, "Why did you lie to me? Why did you trick me like that, and go along with me?"
Bushido's smirk became nostalgic. "The real question you want to ask is, 'why did I help you?'" She fueled his smile with her silence. "When I met you in the Tower, I had already resolved myself to join the Teen Titans. My destiny lies here with them. So, from my perspective, I was already a member. I still am, official rulings notwithstanding. Any further perceived falsehoods on your behalf are just that: perceived."
Tek took his explanation and distilled it into its purest form with two words: "Bull crap."
"As you say," he said lightly.
"I just…I don't get it, Ry," she said, exasperated. "Cyborg told me all about those terrible things you did. You're a murderer!"
With a raised finger, he said, "'Alleged' murderer."
"You kill people! For money!" Tek shouted. Her voice drew startled stares from the work crews and news crews setting up all around them. Bushido mollified the communal curiosity with a smile and a friendly wave while Tek continued, softer, "Do you…I mean, are you trying to make up for all that? Is that what all of this is about?"
Bushido pondered the question for a second. "My official position, on the recommendation of my exorbitant legal council, is one of total innocence. But if you're asking, hypothetically, if I were guilty of these murders you speak of, would I feel remorse?" At her nod, he said, "Then, no."
She frowned, and felt her stomach flip. "No," she echoed in disbelief. "You don't feel bad about the people you killed at all. You don't feel bad about attacking the Titans, and holding a sword to Raven's throat. Not even a little?"
"Not in the slightest. Assassination was a trade I chose. I possess an aptitude for the work, and for the most part, I enjoy it. Or would, in your hypothetical scenario, such as it is. But now I am moving on to a new chapter in my life. Now I shall be a Titan."
Her flipped stomach flopped. To think that she had slept next to him, trained with him, laughed and ate with him… Her voice planed into a monotone. "Cyborg will never let you on the team," she told him.
His unflappable smile prickled her skin. "Never, in my experience, is a much shorter interval of time than you might think," he told her. When she had nothing to say to this, he asked, "So, how have you been? I have not spoken to you in some time. Are you well?"
The question caught Tek off-guard. "Fine," she said reflexively. Then, "I think. I feel better than I did. I'm seeing a therapist now. Three, actually." She blushed.
"Are you still…?" He mimed tossing something into his mouth, and tossed his head back as if swallowing.
Her blush worsened. She felt a small vial pressing against her hip inside her belt. "I'm…That's none of your business," she said.
Bushido nodded deeply. "Well, you appear much better than last I saw you. I'm glad."
Tek's cheeks burst into full flame. "Thanks," she said, brushing back her close-cropped hair. Then she straightened sharply and cleared her throat. "I mean, whatever. It's not like I care what a—"
Her communicator interrupted her posturing with shrill, incessant beeps. Tek tore the device off her belt and flipped its screen to reveal a flashing Titan insignia. She leapt to her feet and gasped, "Oh, boy… I have to…I mean, I…"
She looked down at Bushido with a mixture of confusion and apprehension written in her features. Bushido just smiled, and nodded again. "Please, don't let me keep you. And feel free if you need help. I'll be right here."
She gave him one last odd look. Then she bolted across the street, weaving between honking cars and irritated work crews, and bounding across the half-finished stage. She slammed through the Compound's lobby doors and past the visitor desk. A flickering Sarah tried to service her along the way, but she ignored it and rushed down a brief corridor behind the desk to the heavy security door.
"Computer: clearance code zero-zero-seven," she huffed at the heavy steel door in mid-sprint. "Recognize and open!"
The security door buzzed as it swung back just before she would have careened into it. She rushed through, banging her shoulder on the slow door, and bounced into the Compound's Sector Prime.
Sector Prime itself was empty for now. Railings and walkways bordered its upper levels, with doors leading to more rooms. The stem of the Compound's "T," with the exception of their visitor lobby, was a tremendous hall that stretched four stories high and a city block long. Skylights high above turned the tile floor into a glimmering sea of light upon which Tek ran, passing doorways to the Compound's more functional compartments. The mainframe, sickbay, crime lab, evidence room, all stemmed off of Sector Prime.
Unfortunately for Tek, none of those doors led to Ops. Their current Ops setup was all the way at the other end of Sector Prime, three levels overhead. She huffed and puffed and flashed blue with the blossoming of her armor. As soon as it wrapped around her, the armor's stride carried her through the immense hall in six steps. She planted her feet at the end—carefully so as to not break the tile and thus earn Cyborg's wrath—and jumped to Ops.
Ops had been built as a balcony overlooking Sector Prime. It possessed none of the homey features of its predecessor, no kitchen or couches. This Ops was purely for work. A workstation had been built for each Titan at the railing, affording them their own monitors as well as a bird's-eye view of the floor below. A display screen table loomed in the center of the balcony, currently projecting a map of the city into the air. And against the wall at the back of the balcony, a central monitor stretched across a large command station, where Tek was supposed to be on duty.
As Tek cleared the railing, her armor shrank back into its dimensional pocket, leaving her skin suit boots to touch down. She jumped again, over the back of the chair and into the command station, landing with an "oof" and fingers poised over the keyboard.
A flurry of keystrokes ended the monitor's blinking. She called up the alert and plugged it into the map behind her. When she turned to see, she groaned "oh, boy," again, turning two syllables into five.
"Cyborg isn't going to like this at all," she said.
To Be Continued