Teen Titans
Adaptation
By Cyberwraith9
Tests
The crisp mountain air scoured his lungs with a deep breath. Snow chased the wisps of steam escaping his mouth. The white flakes spun around him before settling onto the rough, pale burlap of his clothes, where they were gathering into a cold coat. Wind chased the coat from his body in a spray of white and ruffled the short crop of dark hair hanging in his eyes. The wind carried the snow high into the air, where it danced across the sprawling mountain range, sparkling in the dawn.
He pushed the world from his thoughts. Sitting atop folded legs, he concentrated inward, away from the cold, thin air, and the ache throughout his body. As his eyes closed, he slipped into a dreamless peace. Nothingness churned around him, cushioning his descent. He felt nothing. He was nothing.
Deeper he went, into himself. It used to be harder. Months ago it had taken longer, with more effort, to find stillness inside of him. That wasn't the challenge anymore. The challenge came when he delved too deep, and found what lay beneath the stillness.
"Urchin! Get out here, you filthy pig!" The voice of his master pierced his stillness with shrill Mandarin. His body returned to him in a chill. He surfaced from his peace and blinked his glacial blue eyes open.
At the root of the outcropping upon which he sat, his master jumped and hammered her walking stick against the rock. The bowler hat she wore bounced on her iron gray hair, which she had pulled into her customary braids. The hem of her simple dress fluttered in the cold wind, which never seemed to bother her. Or perhaps it explained her sterling disposition.
"Get up, urchin!" the True Master spat. "You have sweeping to do. The yard is filthy. There is snow everywhere! Why do you sit there, sleeping, when my yard is not swept?"
He stood without his hands, rising in one smooth motion that turned him to face the Master. His first day, when he had used his hand to stand up, the Master had jabbed her stick into his hand, pinning it under all her weight. He had learned quickly how to stand properly.
"Yes, Master. I was meditating. I will do my chores now," he replied in flawless Mandarin.
As his bare feet padded across the rock to join her on the path, the Master scathed him with a contemptuous look. "Meditation. Feh! Mediation is wasted on an urchin like you. You seek enlightenment? I will enlighten you. You are white garbage, flown across the ocean to litter the True Master's house."
He followed the switchback path down the ridge. Along the way, he listened attentively to the Master's furious rant regarding his parentage and shortcomings. He listened well, for he had learned that each one of the Master's words were gifts, and if his ears did not care to receive such gifts, they would receive rocks and slaps of her stick instead.
The temple came into sight after a few minutes of walking and listening. It was a small hut of stone nestled between ridges in the mountain range. A yard made of large tiles sat before the temple, with a smattering of stubborn trees surrounding it.
Traces of leaves and snow lay on the tiles, to which the Master harrumphed and jabbed her stick. While he retrieved the broom from the temple, the Master waited at the edge of the yard, glowering silently. He lowered his head from her glare.
The instant he touched the bristles to the stone tile, he caught a flash of movement at the edge of his vision. His hand snatched the Master's stick from the air mere inches before its tip struck his forehead.
The True Master's expression softened for a split second. "Acceptable. For worthless filth. Now give me back the stick you stole, and sweep. You have other chores to finish."
He circled the yard and returned the Master's walking stick with a short bow. Then he began to sweep the yard clean. The broom was old, forcing him to go over each spot three or four times before it cleared the detritus. Weeks ago, he had offered to make the Master a new broom. She had made him sweep with his feet as punishment for his wastefulness.
The Master paused halfway to the temple. She looked back, straightening her bowler hat. "Urchin," she snapped. He stopped at once, and listened. "You will be tested tonight. Sunset."
His innards clenched. In all the time he had trained with her, the True Master had never spoken of a test. Each day had been training without end, sometimes lasting into the night, sometimes even through to the next day. His limits had been pushed, broken, and expanded. If that had been nothing noteworthy to the Master, what kind of test would she put him through?
He made his face into a mask. "Yes, Master."
She sniffed loudly and turned. "Feh. Silence your garbage tongue. You speak like a Bangkok prostitute." She disappeared into the temple, leaving him to stare at the tile in lost thought. "I don't hear sweeping," she bellowed from inside.
Beast Boy sat up with a languid stretch. His yawn unhinged his jaw and bathed his bed in morning breath. He blinked, scratched, and greeted the day with a grumble. Then he froze.
The sheets of his king-sized bed had been shredded into confetti strips. He saw his bare legs shifting through the mess. Sharp talons poked through from the ends of his feet where his toes should have been. Startled, he tried to scramble back, and felt his fingertips plunge into the mattress. He tore his hand free to examine the curved claws capping his fingertips.
He stared at his fingers. They wriggled, making the scraps of sheet impaled on his claws flutter. His hands felt perfectly normal, and moved when he told them to, yet he was sure he wasn't supposed to have claws. Not in this form.
He jumped out of bed, trailing a tangle of sheet strips. The last of his sleepiness fled in a rush of confusion. He stared at his hands, trying to morph his fingers into what they should be, but they refused.
That's when the city slammed into his ears. Beast Boy gasped as a jumbled clamor filled his head from either side. His eyes watered at the complexity of the noise. He staggered to the bay window opposite his bed, wondering how the world outside could be so loud without breaking itself.
Cars rumbled past the Compound, their tires crunching and squealing, their engines exploding with each pump of each piston. Pedestrians passed on the sidewalk with a staccato flood of footsteps. Birds for miles and miles around sang songs that blended together into a high-pitched screech. Construction blared from three different directions with jackhammers, cranes, picks, shovels, and people, people, people! People, with their walking, their thumping hearts, their rushing blood, their unbearable voices all rising up together!
Beast Boy clapped his ears and staggered back from the window. Tears squeezed out of his clutched eyes. He fell onto his knees and screamed with the din.
When his voice finally gave out, he staggered across the room and threw himself into a uniform, uncapping his ears only when he needed to. His talons bunched painfully in the toes of his boots. His claws sliced through their shoestrings, so he left them untied. Stumbling, he swept the shredded bedding together and stuffed it in his unused laundry bag.
Beast Boy lurched out of the door with the bag in tow. When his door hissed shut behind him, the clamor dimmed only a little. He could hear it in the back of his head, like a constant soundtrack of nonsense. But more prevalent now were the sounds of the Compound: rattling air conditioning, the hum of the power core, and four sets of footsteps, one of which turned the corner to enter the Habitation Wing.
Beast Boy squeaked and shrank behind his laundry bag as Raven walked into the hallway. Each of her footsteps against the soft carpet sounded as clearly as if his ear was pressed to the floor. He gritted his teeth and smiled as hard as he could.
Raven regarded him quizzically. "Garfield," she greeted him with a nod. Her gaze dipped to his bulging laundry bag.
He sucked in a breath to speak. The air nearly flattened him with the sheer number of scents it carried. Standing just four feet away from her, Beast Boy could smell everything about Raven: her lavender body wash, her shampoo, the sweat in her boots, her lotion, deodorant, and even the salty saline in her curious eyes. There were other scents about her, distinct fragrances he couldn't identify because he had never noticed them before.
Trying not to breathe, Beast Boy said, "Morning!"
"It was, an hour and a half ago," said Raven. "What's with the bag? Did you finally notice the smell of your own clothes?"
The smell of the compound seeped around her, overloading his nose. Dizzy, he replied, "Bedding."
Raven frowned. "Your bedding?"
Don't tell her the truth, you fool, his mind screamed. Don't let her see your hands! If you keep this quiet, you can get this under control before anyone notices!
"S'ruined," he muttered, and dug his claws into the sides of the bag before she saw them.
Sweat beaded on his brow beneath her scrutiny. She stepped closer, chasing Beast Boy back against his door with her overwhelming scent. Her steady heartbeat thudded in his ears, making his heartbeat sound furious by comparison. "Are you okay?" she asked.
Lie to her! Don't let her know you're a freak! Just come up with something clever.
"I wet the bed."
…oh, you are just all kinds of stupid. You're on your own.
Raven's gaze lingered, studying his nervous face. Then she stepped back and settled her cloak over her body. "I'm going to leave before this gets more socially awkward. Let's pretend we didn't say anything after the standard pleasantries."
He stumbled past Raven with a nod. Raven walked slowly down the hall, listening for him with her earthly and ethereal ears. When his footsteps and nervousness faded away, she unfurled the stale air clutched in her throat. She didn't have time to wonder about the panic she had sensed in Beast Boy. The panic building inside of her consumed her attention.
She slipped into her room and shut the door. Pressing her ear to the metal, stretching her empathic senses, she made doubly sure that no one was within earshot. Cyborg had promised that their rooms were soundproofed, but one could never be too careful.
Raven drew her communicator and thumbed it into cellular mode. There was only one number in its memory, which she selected and called as she brought the communicator to her ear. Her heartbeat raced faster with each ring.
Her whole body jolted at the sound of the voice on the other end. "Hi," she said. "Sorry, I… I'm fine, thank you. Um, how are you? Sorry I missed your call last night. I was fighting an alien intelligence that had infested and animated about three miles' worth of municipal pipe into a warship. Yes, really. I don't know, it didn't come up. Cyborg called it the 'Sewer Saucer,' but… Well, I suppose it is a little funny."
The timpani in her chest slowed down. She paced her room, which was shadowed with thick drapes and decorated with tapestries. Already, her bookshelves were overflowing. Stacks of books sat on the floor and at the foot of her bed. She tiptoed around them to plop down atop her comforter.
"No reason, really," she answered. "I just wanted to call and say that I had a really nice time. No, not the sewer alien. Coffee. With you." A tiny smile split her lips. "It was fun. Actually, I was hoping you were free to do it again today. This afterno—"
She listened. Her smile slackened. "No, I understand. Work is impor—"
She listened again. "Dinner? Tonight? I don't… No, vegetarian sounds fine, but… No. I mean, yes. I'd love to. I mean, I would like… That sounds nice. Seven o'clock. No, I know the place. I'll meet you there. See you then. Goodbye."
Raven hung up and closed her communicator. She lay on her bed, staring up at the ceiling, with her feet on her pillows and her head next to a stack of unread Petrarch. The conversation replayed in her head, and when it reached the part where she agreed to have dinner with Dominic, her in-chest timpani began a beat that rattled her to her core.
"…what just happened?" she asked herself.
One floor below, Cyborg sat at the counter of the kitchen unit in the Commons. The kitchen possessed eight stove tops, two ovens, three refrigerators, its own deep fryer, and an overhead pantry stocked with enough food to feed a platoon, or in a pinch, five teenagers. And in spite of all that, he crunched down a lunch of toaster pastries and cold cereal.
The Commons had been designed in the spirit of the old Tower's Ops, but without the functionality of a command center. A television screen dominated the far wall, surrounded by couches and chairs. A pool table, foosball table, ping pong table, and air hockey table were lined up across the floor. The kitchen was cordoned behind an island counter, where Cyborg ate. One long wall of the Commons was floor-to ceiling windows with a door leading to a cement patio. Outside laid the grounds, with a hedge row separating them from the sidewalk.
Cyborg ate hurriedly next to a packet of papers. He tried not to spill milk on the city's seal as he flipped through the pages, reading at super-computer speed. Every fourth page or so he would pause and sign a line on the page with his finger-pen. A wobbly line crossed his cheek from when he had forgotten to retract the pen for a bite of pastry.
"Hey, Vic?" Tek's voice preceded her from outside the hallway door. She walked in, dressed in tight shorts and a sleeveless shirt with a faded Superman shield on the front. "Oh, there you are. C'mon, let's go," she said.
"Mmm?" Cyborg looked up from his cereal, spoon stuck in his mouth. He swallowed, and groaned. "Aw, no. I forgot."
Tek dropped her shoulders with a pained sigh. "Seriously? You said you'd work out with me after I got back from hypnotherapy. Listening to Professor Hayden drone on, and on, and on… I need to blow off some serious steam, and you promised to blow with me. I mean…." She blushed, and said, "You know what I mean. So let's go."
Cyborg sighed. "I know. I suck. But there's too much that needs to get done. In return for not suing us for property damage, the city wants us to sign off on these reports, which are about a thousand pages long each. Then I have to do a system check on all the little bugs still cropping up in the new systems. The Detention Center countermeasures need to be checked out before we have to put someone in there. The lawnmower robot I built yesterday almost ate someone's Pomeranian, so I need to debug its recognition software and send a gift basket of Milk-Bones. The—"
"So what I'm hearing is, you're busy," Tek said dejectedly.
"Hey, I'm not exactly having a ball here," he said. "I haven't gotten to the gym in over a week.
Annoyed, Tek drifted back out the door. "That's fine. It's not like you need to exercise, right? I'll just go by myself," she said over her shoulder.
Grumbling, Cyborg turned back to his lunch. His cereal had become soggy, and the pastries, cold. He pushed them aside to put his full attention into the city report. If he read fast enough, he might still have time to spot-check the grounds' sensor network, which had driven the Alert system insane by interpreting squirrels as potential threats.
"Hey, dude," Beast Boy said, popping his head in the Commons door. "Been looking for you."
"You found me," Cyborg said more snappishly than he meant.
The shapeshifter wandered in. A haggard expression hung in his face. "Yeah, I…hey, Pop Tarts!" He sniffed the air, and then shook his head. "Oh, wait. Those are the off-brand knockoffs."
Cyborg continued signing and flipping the report. "Budget's a budget, dude. If you want a supersonic jet, you gotta be willing to eat Pöp Tortes."
"Pshh, long as they're vegan. You gonna…?"
"Huh? Yeah, whatever."
Beast Boy reached across Cyborg's vision to collect the pastries. As his hand crossed the report, Cyborg scowled in annoyance. But then he noticed the woolen mitten covering Beast Boy's hand. "Uh, Gar? What's with the winter gear?"
"Huh?" Beast Boy turned his hand over. "Oh. Right. Well, y'know, I was thinking of going outside later, and it might be cold out. Be prepared."
"It's seventy degrees outside," said Cyborg.
"It'll snap back super-quick. I've got a, uh, nose for this kind of thing." Beast Boy sandwiched the pastries together and bit through both. He chewed twice before reeling back. Coughing, he spat the mouthful into his mitten. "Oh, dude!" he cried.
Cyborg glanced up as Beast Boy threw the pastries away. The revulsion on Beast Boy's face surprised him. He had never known the shapeshifter to turn down any food that had never possessed a face. "They aren't that bad," he said.
After gagging and retching, Beast Boy found his voice again. "Ugh. So, listen, Vic, I was wondering…you wanna do something today? The city's not imploding. We could do some gameage, or watch a DVD?"
An impatient sigh ruffled Cyborg's report. "I can't, Gar. I've got way too much to do today."
Beast Boy tussled his hair with his mittens, making the green mess stand on end with static. "Dude, please? I really just need someone to chill with around here today. I've been…feeling really crappy, and…"
Cyborg growled and stabbed the packet with his pen-finger. "Gar, I can't, okay?" he snapped. "There's too much to do. I don't have time to goof around."
He couldn't bring himself to look up from the packet as Beast Boy backed away. Even so, the wince on Beast Boy's face was palpable. The shapeshifter rubbed his ears and backed away. "Sorry. I'm…yeah, I'll just, uh, leave you to it," he murmured, and slinked out of the Commons.
The empty room echoed Cyborg's stern voice back at him. He closed his eye and groaned. Beast Boy didn't deserve the brunt of his frustration. Cyborg turned on his stool, ready to apologize. But Beast Boy was long gone. "Damn it," he muttered.
He clicked his pen back out of his finger and scratched his name in another space on the report when the refrigerator door became impossibly dark. Raven emerged from the darkness in a puff of cold and a swirl of cloak. She stopped herself against the counter opposite Cyborg while her portal dissipated.
"Victor, I need your help," she said breathlessly.
"Of course you do," Cyborg said, rolling his eye.
"I need you to do a full medical workup on me," she said. "Start with a cerebral scan for biochemical abnormalities. There could be some kind of toxin in me designed to impair judgment, or make me susceptible to suggestion. We should also scan for traces of residual neuro-electro energy consistent with mind control effects."
"…what?"
"And blood workups," she continued, pacing the kitchen floor. "Someone could have implanted me with nanites, like before, only these would—"
"Raven," Cyborg shot, stopping her in her tracks. "Is there a reason you think you're being mind controlled? Or is this just ordinary paranoia?"
She glanced around to ensure that they were alone. Then, with ample hesitation, she said, "I have a date."
Cyborg finished signing the page he was on. Then, calmly, he retracted his pen and tapped his arm, bringing up a complex display in hologram. Glowing diagnostics flashed in silence while Raven stared at him expectantly.
"Did you hear me?" she demanded.
He continued reading the holographic display. "I don't know yet. I'm checking my aural subroutines for whatever error that made it sound like you said—"
"I have a date. Tonight."
"See, there it goes again. And I'm not due for a full diagnostic until—"
Raven slammed her palms against the counter, rattling his abandoned cereal. Her face puckered. "This isn't funny, Cyborg. I'm serious. Something is wrong with me." The lights above her flickered out with a pop as their bulbs burst. Cabinet doors rattled behind her, threatening to fly off their hinges. Cyborg's cereal rippled as if caught in an earthquake.
The diagnostic hologram above his arm faded, and Cyborg lifted his hands. "Okay, okay, easy! Calm down before you renovate the kitchen." He waited while she stilled herself and the possessed surroundings. Never before had he seen Raven fight so hard to keep calm. Once the tremors ceased, he said, "Okay. Now, let's try this again without any Exorcist stuff. You have a…date? And you want a brain scan?"
Her ashen hands curled into fists against the countertop. Her voice grew strained. "Something has affected my judgment. Dominic asked me to dinner."
Cyborg waited for her to say more. All he heard was her restrained hyperventilation. "Is that all?" he asked.
"I said yes."
He relaxed with a grin. "I guessed that," he said. "So what's wrong?"
Her subsiding fluster withered further, until she withdrew into her cloak, cocooning herself in the blue fabric. "What's wrong is me. I don't know why I said yes. I should have said no. I never should have called him."
Cyborg's smile broadened. "Why?" he asked, trying to keep his voice steady.
Raven's gaze drifted downward. "Because I don't do things like that. This. I don't talk to people. I have a healthy, mutual disregard for people. Something must be wrong with me, or I wouldn't have agreed to something this stupid," she said, speaking more to herself than to Cyborg.
"Something is really wrong with you," Cyborg agreed in an undertone. He stood and tucked the thick report under his arm. With his free hand, he patted Raven on the shoulder, and said, "Go out to dinner."
She reeled back as if struck. "What?"
"This is your chance to do something with someone that doesn't involve daring heroics and explosions. Let me tell you, people like us don't get a lot of that. Go out to dinner," he said as he dumped his cereal down the garbage disposal.
"But—!"
"You want something to be wrong because then you won't have to deal with the fact that somebody likes you. He likes you. You like him. It isn't mind control, it's hormones. So wear something nice, put your freak-out in a lock box, and Go. Out. To. Dinner," he said over his shoulder as he walked out of the Commons.
Raven blinked at the empty doorway. She called after him, "You're going to be sorry when I come back after dessert to enslave you all at the behest of my dark new master."
"Have fun," she heard him call back.
She collapsed onto the counter atop her elbows. Staring at the countertop, she considered Cyborg's advice. She didn't feel any external presence controlling her. But then, would she?
The only thing coloring her thoughts was the small kernel of excitement she felt when she thought of Dominic. The idea that such excitement came from her alone frightened her more than any mind control ever could.
He flowed across the yard with gymnastic grace born from endless repetition. Spring. Flip. Kick. Spring. Flip. Kick. He performed the routine as he had for the past hour, beginning again as soon as his feet touched down on the cold tile. Switching feet, he tumbled and kicked until he reached the end of the yard, where he turned and started again.
Each time, he felt some tiny imperfection in his form. His kick extended too far. His spring was too slow. He didn't tuck enough on his flip. His mistakes were nigh-imperceptible. Before training with the True Master, he might never have noticed them. Now he could hardly walk without thinking about how he moved.
"Enough!" The Master appeared at the edge of the yard, rapping the tile with her stick. For as long as he had been at the temple, he had always heard the Master before seeing her. She shook her stick and said, "You are making me sick with your clumsy tumbling. Oxen move with more grace."
She strode out into the yard as he landed. He bowed deeply, rising when she drew near. He had only made the mistake of remaining bowed in her presence once. Her foot had taught him quickly to spare no one—ally, enemy, or master—even a second to act against him.
The Master circled him, appraising him through a disapproving expression. She ended in front of him with a shake of her head. "Shameful. Absolutely shameful," she said, her Mandarin steeped with disgust.
He bowed again, and said, "I am sorry, Master."
"The failure is not yours, urchin. When you came to my doorstep, a worthless product of filth and laziness, I was sure that I could do something. Such a Master as I should be able to bring shape to even a fat, white, ugly piece of clay such as you. But I can see that I have failed. You are as worthless now as you were then. As you have always been."
"Yes, Master."
Her wizen face crinkled. "It disgusts me to hear you speak. You stumble through my language as you do my teachings, like a drunken ape. Speak no more!"
She tossed her stick aside. The simple gesture buried the tip of the stick in a tree well away from the edge of the yard. It quivered and stilled, knocking snow loose from the branches above it.
The Master slid her feet into a stance with the comfort and ease that came after a lifetime of doing so. Her hands spread with her stance. "Fight," she said.
He was struck dumb as the Master glared expectantly at him. She stood statuesque until he lifted his hands in response. With measured steps, they began to circle one another, their balances poised, their eyes unmoving.
The Master jumped without any consideration for gravity. She hung in the air, punching and kicking, and then settled back to the ground almost as an afterthought. Her blows were just slow enough for him to block, and rattled him down to his bones.
"Why do you waste your Master's time, urchin?" she asked caustically between blows. "You came here alone, without a history, or a family, or even a name to call your own. You offered nothing as tribute."
"I offered my life, Master," he replied. "I do not have anything else."
His blows did nothing to harry her. She brushed them aside with ease. "Feh. Your life. What use does a Master have for trinkets? And what need do you have for a Master? You are an urchin, loved by none, wanted by none. I could smell it about you from the moment you set foot on my mountain. Why are you here?"
He poured himself into his attack, moving faster. The Master rose to his efforts without concern. "I came to learn," he said.
"Your people do not learn for the sake of learning. You hunt and peck for knowledge to suck it dry of use. You study so that you may empty the land and ocean. You learn this art, my art, so you may kill your neighbor and take what is his. Should I teach you only to have you kill me, urchin?" she asked.
"I wish only to study with the True Master," he said.
"To what end, urchin?" she demanded, punctuating her question with a punch. "Why travel to the ends of the earth? What do you seek?"
"Nothing, Master."
"What do you want?"
"Nothing."
"Then why are you alive?"
He halted his fist halfway to her face. The Master had folded her hands, dropping her defense entirely. She gazed up at him with a sly expression that made his arm drop. "What are you, that wants nothing and seeks nothing? Can you answer that, urchin?"
Impact hammered his chest. The world spun around him. He sailed back off of a blow he never saw coming. He landed in the snow outside of the yard, skidding to a stop against the tree in which the Master had thrown her stick.
The Master hobbled back toward the temple, calling, "Come inside and eat something. And bring me my stick. You are a heartless, diseased goat for making an old woman like me fight out in the cold without my walking stick."
He sat up, gingerly testing the enormous bruise his chest had become. His head bumped the stick planted in the trunk behind him. "Yes, Master," he called.
Beast Boy grunted and tossed his controller at the screen, which mocked him with the words 'Game Over.' The plastic controller bounced off the screen and clattered onto the Mainframe console. He glared at the screen, crossing his arms over his chest, and kicked the console's base. All around him, the Western seaboard's second most powerful computer worked to reboot his game back to the start screen.
His mittens slid around the controller. It was impossible to do anything with the hot, itchy, uncomfortable fabric wrapping his fingers, but he refused to look at his hands until they changed back. He wriggled his mitts over as many buttons as he could, and perched his over-plushed thumbs atop the analog sticks.
The Mainframe hummed all around him, its every sound clear as a bell in his ears. He could hear every cooling fan, the liquid nitrogen rushing through tubes, the spark inside every capacitor. The room smelled like an antiseptic garage, like a thousand plastics blended together. But it was the most insulated room in the Compound, and it protected him somewhat from the overwhelming smells and sounds outside.
The doors swished open. Raven passed through the sterilizer field, her hair expanding with static volume for a second. It settled as she swept inside. She kept her cloak closed as she approached Beast Boy's chair from behind. "There you are. What are you doing in here?" she asked briskly.
Her combination of scents stormed his nose. The hundred different sounds of her body—joints creaking, tendons stretching, breath rasping, heart thumping—swamped his ears. It overwhelmed him. He shut his eyes and clutched his controller, trying to distract himself from the sensory mess. "Just gaming," he said in a tight voice.
She glanced past him at the video game reloading on the screen. "Good to know all our processing power is being put to good use. Get up. I need your help," she told him. "We're going shopping."
Just the thought of going outside made Beast Boy's stomach roll. He hunched over and grunted, "I'm really not up for—"
"Tough. As hard as it is to believe, you have experience with something I don't, and I need your advice." Raven tilted her head to one side, and added, "That actually sounds even crazier out loud. But come on. I'll buy you a…veggie burger, or something. Let's go."
Her voice rose above the cacophony of her body. Beast Boy clenched his jaw so hard his teeth creaked. Keeping his back to Raven, he said, "No, Raven. I…can't go out today."
Raven stepped forward. As her voice softened, so too did the undercurrent in her scent. "Garfield, I'm serious. I really need your help. I'm sorry if you aren't feeling well, but it won't take long. I hope. And…I was…" Her voice and scent warmed with embarrassment. He could feel the heat of her body pushing against the hairs on his neck in the stale, sterile air. "You're the only one here who's ever actually been out on a—"
The noise, the smell, and the heat of her body pushed his senses over the edge. He clutched his head and snapped, "No! Go away!"
She pulled back as though burned. Slowly, she stepped back toward the door, triggering it with her presence. She plunged annoyance into every overactive sense Beast Boy had. "Fine," she said flatly. "I should have known better than to interrupt your important video game."
As the door swished shut, she caught its edge, keeping it open a moment more. "You know," she said, "it's amazing, isn't it? You traipse through my mind, pester me nonstop, and even lean on me when you're feeling down. But the one time I actually need you, you can't be bothered to even get up from your chair. Such a true friend you are, Beast Boy."
She let the door close and walked off. She never saw the game controller explode into plastic shards between his shredding mittens.
Raven tromped along the circumference of Sector Prime. Her eyes skimmed the carpeting, weighty with self-recrimination. Beast Boy obviously hadn't been feeling well. She shouldn't have pushed the issue, and she certainly shouldn't have taken her own insecurities out on him.
The petty part of Raven reminded her that everything she had said had been absolutely true. If Beast Boy couldn't be bothered to help, then he was welcome to stew in the aftermath of her tongue lashing. It made them even in her colored eyes.
But that still left the problem of what to do about tonight. Raven had torn her closet apart only to discover that she knew nothing about dressing like an attractive girl. She didn't even own the clothes for it. She needed the opinion of someone who knew how to be normal, which was in short supply around the Compound.
Her wanderings carried her around the upper level and to the Ops balcony at the far side. There, she found Bushido on monitor duty, seated at the central console and diligently watching the Alert map. Raven stood at the edge of Ops, watching him work in silence. He did not look up from his duties until he heard her soft sigh.
"Good afternoon, Raven," Bushido said cheerfully. Upon glimpsing her, he turned to look fully, curiosity steeping his angular face. "You appear distressed. Is something wrong?"
Raven steeled herself with a silent curse for her lack of options. "Bushido…" she began.
It was then that Raven noticed the echoing clank of metal on metal. She glanced over the edge of Ops' railing, down to the sprawling floor of Sector Prime. The extensive holo-projectors had created a small gym of weight machines and treadmills on the floor. Two figures, one blonde, one brunette, pumped the proverbial iron, creating the racket.
Raven glanced back at the expectant Bushido as she strode to the railing. "You're a jerk, and we all hate you," she told him.
As Raven stepped off the balcony edge, Bushido shrugged, and returned to his console. "Ah. No problems, then. Very good," he said to no one.
Raven floated three stories down to the floor. Her toes touched at the edge of the gym before they vanished beneath her settling cloak. She strode between two treadmills, and said, "Tek?"
Tek sat behind the grips of an incline press. Her ropy muscle strained against the machine, while the light touch of her blonde trainer encouraged another rep. Sweat dribbled from her chin as she let the grips settle back upon seeing Raven.
"Come on, two more!" the bubbly Sarah simulant training her exclaimed. She wore—or rather, featured—a spandex workout two piece that exemplified her impossible holographic curves. Raven made a mental note to give Cyborg a hard time about it later.
At Ravens' stare, Tek glanced at the Sarah helping her. Her expression soured. "Oh. Her. Yeah, I know it's lame, but Vic bailed on me, and I needed a spotter. I tried to get the computer to make her fat, but her boobs just got bigger." She unconsciously crossed her arms over her chest. Looking closer, she saw the sorceress's strained features, and rose from the machine. "Is everything okay? Something's not okay. What's wrong?"
Raven bit her lip.
"That one. Definitely," Tek said. "I mean, if you like it."
Raven turned in a circle, feeling foolish for trying to see her own backside. After an hour of searching through racks upon racks of clothes, she didn't trust mirrors anymore. Mirrors made everything look too big or small or saggy or lumpy. She was tempted to leave her body and see how the pleated blue skirt looked on her. Tek would probably have a psychotic meltdown if she saw Raven crumple lifelessly to the floor. The girl looked flustered just being in the private fitting room with Raven.
Tek watched Raven swish the short skirt to and fro uncertainly. Her face plunged into distress. "You hate it, don't you? I'm sorry. I really suck at this," said Tek, slumping back into her chair.
Her anxiety pressed upon Raven's, adding to the sorceress's empathic woes. Raven blew an impatient breath and said, "I don't hate it. I'm just…not sure. I'm not used to the idea of my underwear being exposed to open air. Plus, it makes my hips look…wide," she added in a mutter.
Tek rose from her seat to join Raven in front of the trio of mirrors that vexed her so. Together, they examined the skirt and tank top troubling Raven. Raven crossed her arms to cover the exposed gray skin she normally kept under her vestments.
"Your hips look totally great in that," Tek said. Looking down at her own jeans and T-shirt, she added, "I would kill for your figure. Uh, not literally, I mean. And it's not like I think you're hot. I mean, I do, but in a…abstract way?"
"Um, thanks," Raven uttered.
Burning with blush, Tek backed away and flopped in her chair. "Sorry. I'm sorry. I really do suck at this." Burying her face in her hands, she said, "I wish Kory were here. She knew how to do this stuff better than anybody."
Raven wandered from the mirror, her arms still crossed. She studied the walls, which were plastered with advertisements for clothes of every kind, and featured women whose stunning beauty had to be the product of airbrushing and torturous diets. "To be honest, so do I," she admitted. "But I appreciate you doing this with me. I figure between the both of us, we can produce something akin to a real outfit."
When Tek said nothing, Raven looked down and sighed. "I don't like the skirt. It's short, and it's breezy, and it's swishy. Which probably means it's perfect. You swear it looks good?"
Tek looked up from her hands. An almost-smile poked through her blush. "Super-swear," she said.
Nodding dejectedly, Raven returned to the mirrors. She uncrossed her arms and swiveled, examining the black tank top that hugged her chest and neglected her midriff. "This won't work. I want him to have dinner with me, not my cleavage. Why was this even in the pile?"
Tek flew from her seat to the other chair, which was buried beneath a mountain of clothes on hangars. "Sorry," she stammered. "I just figured since you…I mean, I wish I could wear a top like that."
"Stop saying things like that," Raven snapped.
"Sorry," winced Tek.
"And stop apologizing. Why do you keep acting like I'm going to bite your head off?"
Cowering behind the pile of clothes, Tek mewled, "Well, you're really scowly right now. And also, the last time we really talked, you called me a threat to myself and everybody else."
Raven's gaze sank to her feet. "Oh. Right," she said.
Both girls studied the carpet with mutual, uneasy silence. Tek busied her hands in the clothes pile, wishing for anything to break the spell between them. Her mouth granted her wish when it blurted, "Why this guy?"
Raven looked up with a start. "What?"
Realizing she had spoken, Tek clapped her hand over her mouth. But the damage had been done. Beneath Raven's piercing curiosity, she released her lips, and stammered, "It's just that, with all of us, you act like you don't care. You're just yourself. Which is fine! But…with this guy, you're putting all this effort into looking nice, and you're nervous. What makes this guy different?"
Tek's stammering observation punched Raven in the stomach. She looked to the mirror, examining the funhouse version of herself she saw reflected. "I don't know. I hate it."
"You hate…him?" Tek asked, her voice wavering.
"No. I don't hate him, and that's the problem. I've spent my entire life alone, learning to deal with feelings and…urges. Now some stranger's come along and shattered that. He makes me feel like someone else entirely, and that scares me. Like I'm losing myself."
Softly, Tek said, "Maybe you're just changing. Is that so bad?"
Raven pondered the question, lost in the eyes of the cute almost-girl in the mirror. "…no. But it's terrifying," she decided.
They lapsed back into silence for a moment longer. Tek again plumbed Raven's selections to ease the tension. She drew out a collared shirt, and said, "How about this? It's black, and it has sleeves. You like that, right? And the V-neck is a nice compromise. He won't drown in cleavage, and you won't look like you're at a meeting."
Raven took the shirt and held it to her chest. The black and blue of the outfit comforted her, and complimented her complexion. "It's perfect. Thank you," she said.
"Hey, try long enough, and you're bound to get something right," Tek said with a shrug.
Raven ended Tek's self-depreciating chuckle with a look of genuine gratitude. "Thank you," she repeated softly.
Tek blushed with a sheepish smile. "You're welcome," she said. As Raven peeled off her tank top, Tek asked, "Do you mind if we stop somewhere on the way back to the Compound? I wanna stop by Major Cluck's Chicken Bunker for a bucket of Barbecued Blitzwings."
A look of disgust appeared as Raven pulled the stretchy top over her face and off her head. "What could you possibly want with three pounds of chicken gristle?" she asked.
"They're not for me. They're for Vic. And a couple for me," she added furtively. "He's been so busy lately, I think he keeps forgetting to eat, which is majorly serious for him."
As Raven wriggled into her vestments, she gave Tek a confused look. "Wait. I thought Victor blew you off today. Weren't you mad at him?"
Tek shrugged. "Sure, I guess. But I was pretty snarky, so I feel a little bad. Plus, even if I didn't, I'd still wanna do something nice for him. Right?"
"I don't know. When I'm upset with someone, I usually don't do nice things for them. I just empathically rewire their brain so they can't feel happiness anymore." Raven finished pinning her cloak in place, and then noticed Tek's horrified look. Embarrassed, Raven said, "That was a joke. But really, why do something nice for him when he does something that annoys you?"
With another shrug, Tek said, "I dunno. I guess I understand how busy he is. My therapist says that a good way of feeling better about myself is to do nice things for other people. Besides, if you needed somebody to take care of you, wouldn't it be nice if you didn't have to ask?"
Raven replied with a blank stare. She shook her hair into her hood, and said, "Let's go, Doctor Phil. We've got clothes to pay for and greasy chicken byproducts to pick up."
Snatching Raven's chosen outfit from the chair, Tek followed her out of the fitting room. "Cluck-cluck," she said with a snappy salute.
Sunset blanketed the mountains in blazing color. The crisp air grew cold, chasing his breath with steam. He stood in the yard, bare feet numb in the light dusting of snow that had blown over the tile and ruffled his gi.
He wrapped his knuckles to the wrist with heavy twine, locking his fists in place. His mind wandered far from the ache in his hands. The Master's question clung to him refusing to let go. Why had he come? What did he want?
He suspected that the Master already knew. But did he? For two months, he had subjected his broken, atrophied body to the Master's bitter work. He had honed himself back into the living weapon he had once been. But he could not fool himself into believing that he had trekked across the world for his rehabilitation. Something else in him spurred him to these great distances, something he wasn't sure he wanted to see.
The Master's face appeared from the heavy drapes of the temple door. "Urchin! Cease your frittering and get in here!" she commanded, and withdrew with a huff of drapes.
Trepidation churned in his stomach with each step he took toward the temple. If the test involved fighting the Master, then the afternoon's sparring session had proven already that he would fail. Somehow, though, he doubted she had any interest in his physical prowess. She barely tolerated him at all, and they both knew she was on a completely different level. But that left him with no clue about her test.
His uncertainty blossomed fully when he parted the curtains of the door. The small, simple temple had been swept bare. The single room's windows were curtained with the same heavy fabric as the door. One candle flickered on the stone floor next to a bowl of burning incense.
The Master stood before the bowl and candle. She rapped her stick on the floor, and said, "Kneel."
Slowly, he came before her, and lowered himself onto his knees. The Master watched with an unreadable expression. Once he was in place, she walked to the door, her stick clicking on the stone.
Half-rising, he asked, "Master, what am I—?"
"Be quiet," she uttered in flat Mandarin. "Kneel and breathe." She left, closing the curtains behind her.
He turned back to the candle and bowl with a hollow feeling. After an entire day of buildup, he felt almost cheated. Not that he would ever voice such a feeling to the Master. Ever.
The incense made the small room fragrantly warm. He breathed in the warmth, letting it seep into his bones, which had felt like ice from the moment he'd arrived. The incense spiced his blood, pulsing through his body with pleasant heat. His head became light, and bobbed on his shoulders.
He sat that way for some time. The candle burned into a nub, and then finally extinguished, plunging the room into endless pitch. Not even starlight pierced the heavy canvas over the windows. He had been told to kneel and breathe, without mention of light, and so continued to enjoy the heady warmth.
A scream leapt from the darkness. It echoed, inhuman, unrelenting, like a thousand regrets woven into a single sound. He stood at once, fists creaking with tension, eyes uselessly plumbing the endless void around him. The weightless warmth he had enjoyed made his body sway unsteadily. In the stillness that followed, his heartbeat filled his ears.
He spun, and gasped. Cyborg loomed before him, glowing in the darkness. Sparks jetted sporadically from gaping wounds that had been torn in his armor. The blue circuitry pattern throughout his body sputtered. Thick hemotrolium poured from the empty socket where his eye would have been. Choked with bile, Cyborg asked, "Why so guilty?"
He backed away and struck something. Turning, he fell onto his hands and scrambled from the ghostly visage of Raven. Black ether shrouded her body, which smoldered with raw burns. Oozing blisters broke from her skin as she stepped toward him, grasping at him with skeletal hands. "You can't mourn what you can't love," she croaked, belching smoke with the words.
As he crawled away from the grave pair, he collided with a set of misshapen knees. He looked up into a crooked face of elfin features battered into an unrecognizable mask. Blood dribbled from his broken smile. Jagged bone jutted from his skin, shredding his flesh as he moved. "We know you hate us, dude," Beast Boy said.
Soft sobs drew his eyes from the twisted Beast Boy. He flinched at the golden light roiling from Starfire, who emerged from the darkness draped in lilac sheets that rippled in an unfelt wind. Tears stained her cheeks. Her hair twisted around a face of pure sorrow. She cupped a glowing green blossom forged from a starbolt, and held it out to him.
"Please," she whispered.
Starfire screamed red. Scarlet light erupted from her mouth and eyes. She arched back, shrieking, and vanished in an explosion of the light that consumed the room. Cyborg, Raven, and Beast Boy withered and crumbled to ash under the bloody aura.
He clutched his eyes shut until the hateful light dimmed. When he looked again, he beheld the starbolt blossom, which sat wilting on the ground. He reached for it. A black boot smothered the blossom out with a stomp that chased his hand back.
Red Robin loomed over him. His arms were crossed over the scarlet silhouette stretched on his chest. He sneered down, scowling through glowing eyes, and said, "Now there's nothing left."
Hatred burnished his throat with a roar. He rose from the ground and plunged his fist into Red Robin's smirk. The blow knocked Red Robin to the floor without any resistance. He leapt upon the costumed monster, tearing him with bare hands. He screamed and sobbed until his voice died. Great chunks of black flesh tore free from Red Robin in his grasp. Blood pooled beneath them, deepening with each blow.
He hunched over his eviscerated foe, breathing hard of the coppery air. His strength was spent. With blood on his hands, he wiped his eyes, and saw.
Lying within the torn flesh and tattered suit of the Red Robin, he saw a twelve year old boy. The boy cried softly, glaring up at him with icy blue eyes. "Now there's nothing left," he murmured.
He watched the little boy sink into the gory mess. The black blood swallowed him into the endless void. The hungry void didn't stop there. It swallowed the gore, swallowed his body, in a single surge. Nothing remained.
A flickering candle parted the void as the True Master entered the temple. He found himself again, sprawled on the floor. No trace of the blood remained, but he could still feel it on his hands.
Silent, stone-faced, the Master shook her head.
One hour before the moment of truth, Raven stood before her room's dresser mirror and sighed at the almost-girl staring back at her. She had no jewelry, and no pierced ears, and only the bare essentials in cosmetics that Tek had talked her into buying at the shop. Blush and foundation for her complexion weren't exactly commonplace, but her eyelashes were laced in black, and her lips pursed with an admittedly fetching shade of blue that matched her skirt.
She resigned herself to the face in the mirror. It didn't look bad, and she doubted it could look much better, so she refused to worry about it any longer. Besides, the V-neck and pleated skirt below the face didn't feel nearly as alien as she thought they would. If she didn't know better, she would have mistaken herself for a normal sixteen year old.
Raven felt satisfaction enough that she decided to thank Tek again. Their resident amnesiac was partly to blame for her transformation, and so might as well benefit from Raven's good mood. Raven opened her third eye, felt around for the first instance of doubt and worry she could find in the Compound, and opened a portal.
She stepped through into the Commons, emerging once more from a refrigerator door. Sunset blazed in the windows, lighting the walls on fire with a wash of warm colors. The television across the room buzzed in muted silence with the intro screen of a video game. Raven had to crane her neck to see the room's sole occupant, who lay draped on the couch in misery.
"Oh. Garfield," Raven said, surprised. The misery she had felt had been his. It rolled off of him in a haze that permeated the room and fogged her third eye. "I was just looking for Tek."
Beast Boy unburied his head from his arm. Heavy bags hung under his bloodshot eyes. He looked older and wearier than ever, and lay his head back down upon seeing Raven. "Haven't seen her. Maybe try Ops. I think she's on-duty tonight."
"Thanks." Raven lingered a moment longer. She had seen Beast Boy this still only once, down in the depths of depression before marching off to face Terra in battle. Sympathy gnawed at her stomach, prompting her to say, "Garfield?"
He didn't look up, and grunted a fair approximation of the word, "What?"
The words tumbled reluctantly from her painted lips. "I'm sorry. About what I said earlier. I was apprehensive about…something that gave me no right to say those things to you. I didn't mean them."
"Yeah. You did," he said into the couch cushion.
Her sympathy curdled into guilt. "I suppose I did. But that didn't make it right. Or true."
"S'cool. Don't worry about it."
She nodded and turned, grateful for any excuse to leave. The heavy depression pressed upon her psyche with each moment she remained. "Right. Well, goodnight."
Her strappy sandals clicked smartly to the door. A quick search to find Tek, and she would be free to fret and worry until she was supposed to meet Dominic.
But the miserable, ethereal fog in the room pushed against her, making it hard to move. She stopped at the door, resting a hand on the door frame as she turned back. "What's wrong, Garfield?" she asked.
His reply came by way of the couch cushion again. "Nothing."
Nothing. Well, that was that. Even if something was bothering him, which it obviously was, he didn't want to talk about it. And no one in their right mind wanted to talk with her about their problems anyway. So why were her cute, strappy sandals clicking back toward Beast Boy? It made no sense.
She sat next to his feet on the couch, taking the extra few seconds to arrange her skirt. "What's wrong, Garfield?" she asked again with the exact same tone.
Beast Boy looked up at the proximity of her voice. He pushed himself off of his chest. Raven immediately noticed the sharp claws jutting from the ragged mittens on his hands. He noticed her notice, and hid his hands behind his back. "Yeah…" he drawled, cringing at her stare.
Raven looked deeper. She sensed in him a blaring, superficial layer of emotion, despondent, but typical in its intensity. But when she braced herself and looked deeper still, as she had in the jungle of an alien world, she did not find the faceless horror that had awakened in him. It simply wasn't there.
Reluctantly, Beast Boy brought his hands out from behind his back. "I woke up like this. I didn't wet the bed, I shredded it. And I can't morph them back. Wincing at something she couldn't sense, he added, "And my ears and nose have been going completely bonkers."
"Bonkers?"
He sniffed the word as it left her mouth. "For breakfast, you had herbal tea and an English muffin with margarine. You've brushed at least twice, and you also had…" He sniffed again, and frowned. "Barbecue?"
Raven covered her mouth in surprise and embarrassment. "I was only in the restaurant. I didn't have any," she lied.
Beast Boy's head sank into his hands. "I can smell everything. Hear everything. Right now, there are about a million cars outside, driving around the city with tiny bombs going off under their hoods, crunching the street with their tires. There are a million gallons of water gushing underground in pipes. There are people freaking everywhere, and it's like I can hear every damn thing they're doing!" He shouted at the end, stamping his feet so hard that claws emerged from their ends with a ripping sound.
Raven watched his face contort at the flood of smells and sounds she couldn't perceive. As quietly as she could, she asked, "What happened to your beast?"
He didn't answer immediately. When he did, his voice was strained. "The other day, when I was fighting Control Freak, I turned into something. Something else. It wasn't any kind of animal I know. I can't even really remember what it was."
The admission struck hard in Raven. She remembered a time, just a few months ago, when he had become a literal dragon to deal with an impossible situation. He had turned into a monster in the jungle when faced with it again. Now he was changing—transforming— for comparatively smaller threats like Control Freak.
She stared out into the sunset reflecting off the city, and the thousands upon thousands of people out in it, each feeling something different every second of every day. Their combined emotional wail washed over Raven's guarded mind, like an ocean trying to wear down a single stone.
She tried to imagine what it would be like for someone without her defenses. "It's overwhelming, isn't it. All of those people at once," she said.
Raven glanced back at Beast Boy. She pulled his hands out of his hair with gentle insistence. He mittens tore as she shucked his claws of the wool fabric. Ignoring his confusion, she placed his hands on his knees. "Here. Like this."
Beast Boy watched with bewilderment while Raven took his legs and folded them on the couch. "What the hell are you doing?" he asked.
"Be quiet," she told him.
Her cool touch straightened his back and lifted his chin. It took concentrated effort on his part not to shy from her hands, which smelled sharply of oil and perfume in his overactive nose. "No, really. You're touching me. On purpose. Are you on drugs right now? Are you chasing the dragon? Just say no, Raven."
"Be quiet," she said again, and sat next to him, with her legs curled and hands poised like his. "You're going to learn how to meditate."
"…wow, you really are on drugs," said Beast Boy.
"Clear your mind. Clear your thoughts of all distraction," Raven instructed. She closed her eyes and steadied the rise and fall of her chest with practiced ease. "Focus inward."
Beast Boy scrunched his face in a pained imitation of hers. "How am I supposed to focus inward when I can hear and smell everything my body and your body is doing? Do you have any idea how loud we are? It's really—"
"Acknowledge the distraction. Move beyond it. Sequester yourself from the noise and the smell. It cannot reach you."
"Sequester?"
"Get away from."
"Right."
Beast Boy forced his breathing in time with Raven's. Even as he knew for certain that this meditation gobblty-gook wouldn't work, his face began to relax incrementally. Minutes passed as they breathed together. He listened to their tandem breathing, concentrating on that one sound above the rush of the city and the smell of the Compound. He could still hear and smell everything, but focusing on that one piece made it seem diminished. Manageable.
When he felt confident in the relative peace between his ears, he asked, "So what about chanting? You know, 'Havabath, Metrodome, Zintoast?' I'm a fair tenor."
Raven cracked an eye and a smirk, neither of which Beast Boy saw. "Mantras are a little advanced for your first time. Just keep breathing. Do you feel any better?"
He took a deep breath and released it slowly. The bags under his eyes were already less severe. "Yeah. Yeah, a little." He felt Raven stir, and opened his eyes. She was climbing off the couch. "Raven, wait. Do you…Do you think we could do this just…just a little longer?"
Raven glanced at her watch., and then to the window. They had sat in peace for almost half an hour. The sunset had already descended behind the skyline to paint a halo around the skyscrapers around them.
"I…" She looked at Beast Boy. Just these few minutes with her had transformed him from a wreck into a glimmer of his old self. And loathe, loathe, loathe though she was to admit it, seeing his serene expression made Raven feel good. With minimal reluctance, Raven re-folded her legs beneath her and closed her eyes. "Okay," she said.
He smiled and closed his eyes. "Cool. So now what?"
"Just concentrate on your breathing. When you've got that down, I can show you a few techniques to keep your concentration through distraction, so you don't have to meditate all the time to deal with the noise and smell."
"Sounds good."
As altruistic as Raven felt, she hadn't completely forgotten herself. "Don't get too eager. You have to have actual concentration in the first place for them to work," she said with just a trace of impishness creeping in her voice.
Grunting to the rhythm of his ratchet, Cyborg tightened an undercarriage armor plate into place. Grease and sweat slicked his face. He checked and re-checked the bolt, and then set his tools aside. His finger lit with an acetylene jet of blue flame, which he lifted toward the seam.
Something kicked his leg. Cyborg extinguished his torch and tried to look past at his feet, and hit his head on the underside of the CUTTER in the process. All he was were stars and legs wrapped in taut blue and white fabric.
"Hey, Vic. You got a minute?" Tek's voice descended to find him beneath the tank.
A faint echo of his annoyance followed him as he rolled himself out from under the CUTTER. The Bay came into view from behind the CUTTER's undercarriage. His favorite section of the Compound by far, the entire upper half of the east wing was a cavernous chamber of stainless steel that housed their tank and jet. The walls were lined with tools, cabinets, boxes, and spare parts.
And at the moment, the Bay also housed Tek, who carried against her hip a monstrous bucket of barbecued chicken wings. She held the bucket out to Cyborg after he stood, and said, "Here. They're Buffalo Supreme, whatever that means."
Cyborg wiped his face with a rag, clearing the grime from his skeptical features. "What's this for?"
Tek smiled uncertainly, and said, "Bribery. To get you to stop working for a few minutes."
He tried to smile back. "Look, I appreciate what you're trying to do, but I'm busy. I have to finish the CUTTER's rebuild, and then figure out what screwed up the Mainframe so bad. I tried to load an update into our software, and it just keeps telling me 'Game Over,' which is pretty damn annoying. So, thanks, but…"
"Vic, you're eating the wings right now. As we speak."
Cyborg glanced down and saw the bucket of wings in the crook of his arm. One wing sat poised in his fingers halfway to his mouth, which had barbecue sauce all over it. "Huh. Well, damn," he said with a shrug, and finished the wing in one bite.
Tek giggled and snagged her own wing. She sat with Cyborg on the bumper of the CUTTER, which tilted slightly at his exhausted weight. "You know, we all think you're doing an awesome job," she said.
"Here comes the 'but,'" Cyborg said around a mouthful.
"—'but,' you're doing too awesome. So awesome that you don't have time for anything else. You don't eat or sleep or hang out with us."
He jabbed his points at her with an empty chicken bone. "Hey, Robin did all this leader stuff on his own. So can I."
She grimaced. "But Robin went all Lethal Enforcer on us. And he had you to do all the technical stuff for the Tower."
Cyborg sighed and set the bucket down. "Yeah, I get that. But there's a lot to keeping this whole thing going that I never even thought about. Paperwork. Scheduling. Coordination. Paperwork. Paperwork…"
"Okay," Tek said with a laugh. "So let us help. Raven loves to read, so I bet she could zoom through a lot of that paperwork, paperwork, paperwork. Between Gar and me, we can figure out coordination with the city's emergency services. And Bushido can help by not making you want to kill him." She rested her hand on his knee, and said, "Let us help, okay?"
Cyborg beamed with a Buffalo grin. "How am I supposed to say 'no' after you blindside me with chicken wings?" Somberly, he wrapped her in a one-arm hug. "Thanks for looking out for me, kid."
She returned the hug twofold. "Finish your dinner. Then you can teach me some of the finer points of tank repair."
"Surprised it's not rattling around in that front-loaded head of yours," he joked, and resumed devouring the wings.
"Hey, don't hog the ranch sauce!"
Leaning against the hallway wall, Raven traced a shapeless path with her finger in the drywall patterns as she listened to the voice in her ear. "No," she said into her cellular-moded communicator. "It's nothing world-ending, but… No, I promise, I'm not… No, not at all."
Raven turned, looking back through the Commons doorway. At the far end, Beast Boy stretched on the couch, flicking the television remote. Raven's stomach twisted as she said, "I was really looking forward to tonight. Honest. Something just…came up."
She watched Beast Boy smile as she listened to Dominic. "Yes," she said, surprising herself, "It is pretty important."
She listened again. "Thanks for understanding. Tomorrow night, I swear. If you're free, I mean? Great. It's on me. No argument. Great. Goodbye."
Clicking her communicator shut, Raven strode back into the Commons and sat opposite Beast Boy on the couch. He had already adjusted the TV and the Gamestation into alignment. A new game's start screen waited for her, much to her chagrin.
She balked when Beast Boy handed her a controller. "All set?" he asked her.
The controller dangled from her thumb and forefinger at arm's length. "What kind of game is this, again?" she asked with dread.
"Smash Battlefield Zero," Beast Boy explained, already tapping his controller to launch the game. "It's the hottest first-person fighting racer on the market. You drive around a warzone in cars and punch people in other cars. It's awesome!"
Trying to mimic his grip on his controller with hers, Raven added, "And why am I playing this, again?"
He shrugged. "You showed me how you meditate. I thought I'd return the favor to say 'thanks.'"
"Right." Raven squinted at the screen and risked pressing a button. The machine didn't blow up, which she took to be a good sign. On-screen, a small timer counted down to the beginning of their race-battle, or whatever it was her digital car was participating in.
Beast Boy glanced over as the race countdown neared zero. He trained his ears on the buzzing of the disk in his Gamestation to drown out the rest of the oppressive city noise, just as Raven recommended. The scent of her perfume became his nose's focus, which led his eyes to the snappy outfit she wore. Delving deeper into her scent, he could still smell the store in her clothes, which were obviously new.
"Hey, I didn't notice," he said. "Why are you so dressed up? You look like a spooky Abercrombie ad."
Raven swiveled her icy stare toward him. The sarcasm in her words crushed her tone flat as she said, "Can't you tell? I'm in love with you, and this is just my way of trying to make you see the way I feel."
"Wow. That sucks for you. Especially now that you're losing!" The race started on-screen with Beast Boy's car launching from the line in a jet of fire. Raven's car remained woefully motionless.
She rolled her palm across the controller's buttons. "This is stupid. I only have two thumbs, but this thing has three joysticks," she complained.
Her digital car launched a missile that caught Beast Boy's car before the first turn of the race. Beast Boy wailed as his game counterpart burst into pixilated conflagration. He could only watch as Raven's car trundled clumsily by, spurred by her erratic button-mashing.
Raven couldn't stave off her smile. "I can't tell if that was more stupid or less stupid, but it's definitely fun now," she said.
He folded his gi and laid it on the step of the temple. Smoothing the wrinkled fabric, he watched it soak in the colors of the sunrise.
His chest filled with a deep breath, expanding the nylon mountaineering shirt he now wore. The comfortable clothes felt strange after so long in the rough burlap of his gi. The very idea of leaving the mountain felt strange.
Turning, he crossed the yard, which he had swept one last time before dawn. He had considered leaving a new broom for the Master's next student. Unable to sleep at all after his failure in the temple, he had considered many things. Now he had only one thought, and it filled him with heavy emptiness.
He had not gone ten steps from the yard when the Master's shrill voice stopped him. "Urchin!" she howled from the step of the temple. "Ungrateful pig! Get back into your clothes and prepare for practice!"
Once, her screech would have cowed him. Today it made him smile. He turned and bowed deeply to the True Master. "I thank you for your wisdom and tutelage, Master. But I must go. Please accept my most sincere gratitude," he said in humble Mandarin.
"American pig, butchering my tongue with nonsense. Get to your training," the Master demanded.
He rose and turned, and walked from the yard. The mountain path would take most of the day to reach through switchbacks and daredevil climbs. It had taken him over a week simply to climb the mountain.
Then he heard a soft word spoken in English that made him stop. "Student."
He turned. The Master stood at the edge of the yard, calm and somber. Her wrinkled face had been pulled into genuine sympathy. "Yes, Master?" he responded in English.
"You would be a fool to give up now. You have come so far, and shown remarkable progress," the Master said. "Why would you abandon that?"
She sounded genuinely surprised, which surprised him in turn. "I must do what I feel is right, Master. Regardless of your impeccable wisdom," he said.
"Feh. This is because of your failure last night." The Master hobbled toward him. "I will tell you a secret, Student. Everyone fails that test because there is no test. The herbs reveal to us what lies beneath our pride. Our fear. No one reacts well to seeing that for the first time. Not even True Masters. The real test comes from continuing after learning what lies inside of you."
He blinked. The memory of what he had seen in the temple had haunted him all night. Now, with the Master's words, it destroyed the last of him. That had been no hallucination, but what was truly inside of him.
That was the answer he had sought. That was the need that had driven him across the globe.
Now he wished he had never found it.
He bowed again. "Then I am certain of my choice, Master."
The Master laid her hand upon his cheek. Her raspy touch cupped his face, easing his sorrowed look. "What did you see, Student?" she asked gently. "What defeated you so?"
He could not look her in the eye. "Nothing worthwhile, Master. I must go."
He stood from his bow and left, walking down the slope of the ridge toward the path that would lead him off the mountain. From there, he could go anywhere in the world. From there, he had no idea where to go.
The True Master watched him descend into the sunrise. He soon disappeared into the trees, which shone with the colors of the sky. A look of sadness furrowed her brow. "Run if you must, Student," she murmured to herself. "You will never escape what you saw. True champions never do."
To Be Continued