Teen Titans
Adaptation
By Cyberwraith9
Lost Little Girl: Outside the Law
"You sent John?" Superman exclaimed.
The Man of Steel followed Batman through the corridors of the Watchtower, heedless of the chill emanating from the caped shoulder he followed. Purple-suited technicians hugged the wall to avoid both heroes storming through the tight station interior. Unfazed by the booming voice behind him, Batman continued his brisk march.
Superman clutched his scowl, trying to make sense of Batman's logic. "John was a marine. He doesn't have the best track record with telling teenagers what to do," he said.
"I'm aware of who John is," Batman said without turning back.
"We could have sent someone down just to talk to them. Diana or J'onn could have explained the situation. I would have gone myself if I had known—"
"Is there a point to this?" Batman clipped.
Superman's jaw tightened, grinding his teeth together. "You were the one that brought this case to us. You're the one who pointed out that a potential hero-killing weapon is running around with a bunch of kids. Now they're running from us in a jet we can't track, and even if we do find them, they won't listen to us after that mess in Jump City. Batman!"
Superman reached forward, forcing Batman to stop and turn around with a hand to the Dark Knight's shoulder. Batman stiffened at the contact, rounding back with a glare visible even through his heavy cowl. The corridor around them quickly emptied of unlucky passersby, leaving their confrontation a private one.
Gotham glares and growls did little to Superman. He knew the man behind the mask, and was more concerned for his seeming lapses in judgment than for his persona's bluster. "Bruce, what's going on here? You're acting like none of this matters. You had to know that the Titans might have responded better to diplomacy than orders."
Batman waited until Superman's hand slipped from his shoulder. "They've lived with the weapon for over a year. There was going to be resistance one way or another. The bottom line is, we need her up here," he told Superman.
"And in the meantime, she's loose down there. That doesn't concern you?" Superman insisted.
"It's being taken care of," Batman told him. He resumed his path down the corridor, his cape sweeping behind him. "I left instructions with J'onn. He can expect a call when the acquisition is done."
Superman refused to chase after him again. "A call? From who?"
"Outside help," Batman said, his gaze and gait ardently forward.
"And where will you be?" Superman asked. The demand drained out of his voice in bitter defeat, making him sound tired.
As Batman rounded the corner, he cast a sidelong glance at Superman. Something lurked behind the Dark Knight's empty eyes, a canniness normally reserved for his enemies. Blessed with incomparable vision, even Superman could not see what Batman held back behind his glare.
Disappearing from view, Batman said, "I'll be attacking the problem from the other end."
Tek stared at the horizon, unsure of what she was looking for in the space between the sky and the sea. Warm waves rolled up the beach, climbing toward the tips of her skin-suited soles. White sand clung to the underside of her legs, and stuck in her hair where she had laid her head. Overhead, the sun smiled on another perfect day. But try though it might, it couldn't smile on Tek, who wrapped herself in a cloak of misery too dark for sunshine to pierce.
She hugged her knees and shivered. Even three days on the deserted island hadn't warmed the chill in the pit of her stomach. Three days hadn't dried the tears in her eyes, or eased questions pounding her mind like sleet. Three days in paradise had only left her exhausted, dehydrated, wracked, and slightly sunburned.
And disconcerted. Tek looked around the empty island, which was little more than a glorified sandbar in the Pacific. She remembered the last time the Titans had come here on a beach getaway, and how amazed and scared she had felt by the sheer openness around her. Her entire life had been spent in the city. Seeing from horizon to horizon made her feel exposed, as though she teetered on the tip of the world, ready to fall off with just a push. She felt better in the city, surrounded by cars, and clutter, and buildings, and friends.
But I don't really feel that way, she thought. That's just how someone else wanted me to feel. The thought had rebounded in her head in one form or another since leaving the Compound. Were her thoughts and feelings really her own, or someone else's design? She couldn't trust her gap-riddled memory. Could she even trust herself?
She knew everything about every hero she could think of: names, powers, weaknesses, locations, bases, talents… It had led her into the arms of the Titans. It had proven invaluable in recruiting auxiliary Titans. Was that, too, someone else's design? Gathering lambs for the slaughter? And when that slaughter came, would she be the knife?
That's why the Titans accepted you. To watch you. To protect themselves. The old adage of close friends and closer enemies poisoned her thoughts. Robin hadn't trusted her, and so had recruited her. Was that so different from what the Justice League wanted?
Passing thought of the Teen Wonder made Tek look out to the small sandbar a hundred yards off the edge of the beach. A dot of gold and red sat still on the waves, staring out at the ocean as Tek did. Tek felt a pang as she watched the dot.
Starfire had hardly moved since their landing. Their entire flight, Starfire had sat in the cockpit, her eyes piercing the forward viewport with terrible, glowing fury. Her hands had left deep divots in the bottom of her metal seat. She refused to see or speak with anyone. Tek couldn't remember seeing Starfire eat or sleep since their landing.
A gurgling beneath the blue swath of Tek's skin suit accused her of the same.
"Good morning." Bushido's cheery voice turned her head. He stood behind her, barefoot, his keikogi rustling in a warm breeze. The smile on his face outshone the sun. Two MREs sat balanced on his palms, which he swept down toward her with a flourish. "Your breakfast choices today are the cheese omelet or the french toast. Be warned: I've seen both, and I cannot tell the difference once they are out of their packaging."
Tek stared at the MREs. She knew she needed to eat, but she couldn't muster even a fraction of her appetite. "I'm not hungry."
He sat next to her, folding his legs beneath him. "Nor am I after days of Victor's off-brand discount rations. How a man with a supersonic jet can be so stingy is beyond me. Nevertheless, you will eat." He opened a package and placed it in her hands, wrapping her fingers around the container with gentle firmness.
Sighing, she opened her meal with her teeth while he did the same. Preservatives and nutrients in the shape of food stared back at her from the package. She lost the staring contest with her breakfast, and set it aside.
Leaning over, she felt a small bottle rattling in her belt. She drew the bottle and consumed two of its pills. Bushido's eyebrow arched at her grimace. "Maybe I don't need to eat," she muttered, letting the pills' bitterness into her voice. "Weapons need ammo, not french toast."
His eyebrow settled over a stern look. "I can count your ribs from ten paces. You need to eat," Bushido said around a mouthful of faux egg. "Moping requires calories."
She goggled his cheeky expression. "Moping? Is that what you think I'm doing?"
"Yes. And quite well, too. Though you were much better at it yesterday," Bushido said. He nodded to a spot down the beach. "When the sunset hit you just so, you were quite the tragic figure. The use of warm colors—"
Wrapped french toast struck him squarely in the face, blinding him a moment to the apoplectic rage flooding Tek's face. "I'm trying to figure out who I am, you insensitive prick! You think this is a joke?"
Bushido calmly retrieved her breakfast and opened it. Tearing one slice in half, he chewed thoughtfully on the toast, examining her as she huffed. "I think it is unnecessary. You already know who you are."
Tek's fury dulled into disgust. She drew her knees to her chin, unwilling to even look at Bushido a second longer. "Fine. Whatever, Mister Enlightened. I guess it doesn't matter who I was, either, huh?" she snapped snidely.
"Completely immaterial," he agreed, chewing through her sarcasm with cheer.
Her eyes crinkled around a fresh welling of tears. The panoramic blue of the ocean and sky blurred together hotly. "Why didn't anyone come looking for me? Why did my family let someone do this to me?" she said, and choked. "Did…didn't they love me? Is that why nobody looked? Or…or did I hurt them?"
Bushido shook his head. "You did not," he told her.
She didn't listen, or didn't hear him. "What if they were trying to neutralize me, like the Justice League wants to do? Like, they knew how dangerous I was. But I wouldn't let them. Like, I went berserk, and tore them all apart. A-A-And those suit guys who showed up were actually the good guys trying to make sure I didn't kill anyone else!"
"That is—"
"What if I'm not even a person?" Tek cried into her knees, her eyes and voice made thick by the chilling thought. "What if this skinny little body is just a disguise for that big ugly robot thing that comes out of me? And, like, I just think I'm a person. Only I'm a bio-borg, or a replicant, or some other kind of screwed-up bullshit that—"
Two fingers jabbed her ribs. Tek squirmed, and cried out, her chin launching from her knees with a start. Bushido pulled his fingers from her chest and picked up the last of the toast. "Finished? Excellent," he said, and popped the remainder of the toast into his mouth. Spraying crumbs, he said, "Dwelling on the past is useless enough. But dwelling on a past you do not know? Sheer lunacy."
Tek rubbed the pained stain on her skin suit. "You would say that," she groused, and wiped her eyes.
"The past matters," he insisted. "But it is merely part of what shapes our future. If we spend our present dwelling on our past, it becomes our future, and nothing changes. Learn from the past to inform your present, not dictate it." As he swallowed, he offered her the condensed bar of hash browns from her meal.
She took the bar, forcing a weak smile through her misery for his benefit. "Where do you come up with this stuff?" she asked.
"Fortune cookies, mostly," he said with a straight face. "Chinese food tastes substantially better in America than it does in China."
Unwrapping the bar, she nudged his shoulder with hers. Her smile grew a little less forced. "And where did you learn to be such an obnoxious friend?"
His straight face broke. "From you." Bushido stood, gathering the loose packaging into his empty breakfast box. "Sit here. Count the waves. Convince Starfire to come back to shore. Do anything except worry, Tek, because it will do you no good."
The hash browns vanished from her hand faster than Tek could taste it. She felt the last of the food slither down her throat, easing the churn of her innards. "You really aren't worried? You don't think I should have gone with Green Lantern?"
He shook his head. "No, and no. We will solve this triviality on our own, without the brutish and clumsy intervention of so-called heroes. You'll see. This will be cleared up in a matter of days, and then we can all go home."
Her smile lost all traces of falsehood. "Thanks, Ry," she said.
"Not at all," he said with a deep nod. "In fact, I think I shall go see how Victor is doing. If you'll excuse me?"
Bushido left her in the sand, fully aware that her worry would consume her smile just moments after he left. He walked further inland to the center of the tiny island, where three deep divots pressed into the sand. Drawing his communicator from his teal sash, he thumbed its side, and heard it beep in reply.
The air above him split open, lowering a portion of the crystal blue sky to the sand with the pneumatic whine of servos. A ramp yawned out from nowhere, leading up into the dim interior of the Icarus. Bushido climbed the ramp, thumbing his communicator again halfway up. The ramp lifted back into the broken sky, making it whole again as it swallowed Bushido.
Emergency lights sputtered illumination through the Icarus' narrow main cabin. Nearly every joule of power in the jet went toward maintaining its cloak. Shadows swam over Bushido, painting him and the three other frowns in the cabin in deep furrows.
Bushido nodded to the one frown aimed at him, and asked, "Anything yet?"
Beast Boy shook his head. Behind him, lurking on opposite benches, Cyborg and Raven sat in a strange, close-eyed contest of wills. The latter floated several inches above her bench in cross-legged meditation. The former's fist penetrated a revealed computer terminal with his data jack. Neither had moved in hours.
Sighing, Bushido sat down next to Beast Boy, adjusting his sheath to fit behind the bench. "We cannot remain here much longer. We should consider a new course of action," he said.
"Dude, I'm with you," Beast Boy said. "But it's not like we're bursting with options here. Besides, staying here keeps us safe. We know the area, we're alone, and…"
The shapeshifter clamped his mouth shut, refusing to finish the thought. They all had danced around voicing the same notion from the moment they had taken flight. Unwilling to remain silent any longer, Bushido spoke it for him. "…and it isolates Tek, should the League be correct about her," he said.
Beast Boy folded his arms, scowling inward. "No. It's not true," he said. But he bit his lip, sucking it behind his fangs. "Except…what they said makes some sense…"
Bushido nodded, and leaned back with a sigh. His head thumped the row of lockers mounted above them. "Tek loves us. We are her friends. If she were to attack us, I know it would never be by choice. And it would destroy her to hurt us. I will not let that come to pass."
Beast Boy forced himself to snort. "So, what? You'd ninja-stab her to keep her from hurting us because you know it would hurt her more?" he asked jokingly.
"Yes."
The finality in Bushido's voice killed Beast Boy's smile. "Oh. You, uh…you're a scary friend, Ry-Guy."
A quiver shook Bushido's throat, seeping into his words. His strong voice fell to a paltry whisper as he said, "It is a last resort. Not until I am sure there is no other way." At Beast Boy's continued stare, Bushido shrugged, and added, "I would do the same for any of you."
This time, Beast Boy's smile reached his eyes. He patted Bushido on the shoulder, and said, "That's sweet…in a really, really, really disturbing way. Oh, and please don't."
Raven's eyes opened with a fleeting flash that lit the cabin. She sagged down onto the bench. Only Beast Boy's quick hands kept her upright while she gasped for breath. Sweat swamped her pallid skin, wilting the crisp cloak around her. She gulped great handfuls of air and sank into Beast Boy's arms, staring back at his expectant look with tired twilight.
"Nothing," she rasped. "I've picked it apart. There's no supernatural reason for her amnesia, and no magical trigger or tracking spell that keeps tabs on her. Whatever she is and wherever she's from, it's one hundred percent scientific. How long was I out?"
"Nine hours." Beast Boy dug a bottle of water and a nutrient bar from the storage lockers one-handed. Keeping Raven steady, he handed her the bar, and then popped the water bottle open with his thumb. "So that's good. It means one less thing to worry about, and it narrows the field a little."
Raven glared at him, grateful and annoyed as he raised the bottle to her lips. She softened her throat with water, and said, "Maybe. But I could discover a lot more if I could scan her mind completely. I'm not a terribly gifted telepath, and Tek's mind is not a particularly nice place to be. The further I got into her mind, the harder it got to push deeper. Like wading through a pool of cold peanut butter."
"Then you did find something in her mind?" Bushido asked.
"There's something about her memories," Raven said. She leaned forward, and glowered as Beast Boy's arm stayed fast around her shoulders. "Some of them are painfully ordered, like files. Most of those have to do with us, or other heroes, and basic things like motor control and speech. The rest of her brain is a mess, worse than most people's. It's a wonder she's as stable as she is."
Beast Boy puckered with worry. "You mean she is gonna go bonkers after all?"
"I mean, wait and see what Cyborg learned," Raven said, and sucked the water bottle dry.
As if summoned from cyberspace by her cue, Cyborg leaned forward, opening his eye. His ocular implant lit, burning red as he extracted his data jack from the wall. "Not really worth the wait. Cyborg didn't learn much," he said dejectedly.
"You could hear what we were saying?" Beast Boy said, aghast. "Uh...those robot jokes earlier were made out of love. And your armor makes you look tough, not puffy."
"Skip it. We've got bigger issues," Cyborg told them. He ran a hand across his remaining scalp, and sighed. "Whoever this Brain guy is, nobody can find him. He doesn't leave a trace fresher than six months, either real or electronic. Every lead I could tap from law enforcement databases is a cold one. Even the League computers are dry on intel."
Raven fought the amazement from her voice. "You hacked the League's Tower?"
A shadow of smugness flitted across Cyborg's lips. "Mister Terrific is good, but he can't think like a computer. I would have cracked it sooner, but I've been limiting our satellite access to a few minutes at a time, and bouncing the signal off of every comm. satellite I can find. With it hadn't been such a waste."
Cyborg sagged forward in his seat. His head swam with a violent migraine from a pinched stomach and a pitched battle with the League's firewall. He had been pushing himself since the moment they'd launched and, though his systems were fully charged, his biological parts ached with fatigue.
Green gorilla arms eased him back upright. Once braced, Beast Boy shrank back into his regular shape. "Ry, get him something, will you?"
He's just gotten Cyborg propped when he saw Raven start to tilt again. While Bushido tended to Cyborg, Beast Boy slid under Raven's listing frame, giving her a shoulder to lean on without a choice.
Her eye stung him from beneath stray waves of her hair. "Thanks," she grumped just loud enough for him to hear. "Nice of you to help someone you think is a bitch."
"Heh." Beast Boy squirmed, chagrinned. "You remember that, huh?" he asked, and coughed.
Raven's glare softened as it fell incrementally into her bulbous lap. Her arms wrapped around her stomach. "I guess I don't blame you," she mumbled.
"Hey, c'mon, I don't…I mean, not most of the time," Beast Boy admitted uneasily. Brightening, he added, "And hey, would a bitch spend hours going all hocus-pocus in a friend's brain just to prove she isn't a killing machine? That counts for a lot."
Raven's face crinkled. "That sounded less creepy in your head, didn't it?"
He nodded sheepishly. "It sounded a lot better up there, yeah. Lots of stuff does. But the important thing is that I'm trying." He chuckled for the both of them, lapsing into awkward silence as Raven continued to stare at her belly from her perch on his shoulder. Hesitantly, he laid his hand atop her arm, and said, "I don't really think you're a bitch, you know."
She felt warmth trickle from his touch, soothing some small part of the pit in her stomach. She wasn't sure why. Beast Boy's opinion didn't matter more than anyone else's, she reminded herself. "Don't worry. I call you worse all the time," she told him.
Cyborg crushed the last of a bottle of water down his throat. His body processed it with lightning speed, making him feel better at once. "How is she?" he asked.
"Scared. Solitary. Existential," Bushido said. "She's worried about what will happen to her, and what she might do to us. Valid concerns, both. She's maintained control so far, but…"
Cyborg punched the bench with a growl. "This isn't working. We're not doing enough! We can't just sit around, we need action—"
He jolted from his seat at a muffled scream that pierced the hull. The scream struck any fatigue from him like a shot to the stomach. He rushed to the hatch ahead of the others, dropping its ramp with a slap of the emergency release. The ramp pounded the sand, and then shook with Cyborg's clamoring steps.
Tek floundered in a nightmare of sand. The beach itself surged up, grappling her with thick, gritty tendrils. She screamed, thrashing against the inexorable grasps coiling up her body. Slivers of blue light flashed from beneath the roiling sand, only to vanish when the sand pressed harder into her.
"My suit! It can't…" Tek screamed again as two tendrils took her shoulders, drawing her deeper into the rising sand pile. "Help me!"
Cyborg's arm had mechamorphed into a cannon when green flashes struck the living sand. Dazzled, he squinted through the spots in his eyes toward the source of the flash.
Starfire landed in the shallow tide, crouched from her leap that had carried her from the sandbar. The water boiled beneath her burning hands, which she unleashed upon the living sand with a roar.
The sand around Tek cried out as starbolts burned away large chunks of it. It struggled to maintain its grip on Tek while its mass dwindled into acrid smoke. "Yeow!" the sand yelped. "I could use a hand here!"
Sonic compression burgeoned in Cyborg's grasp, ready to blow the particulate creature away from Tek. As he aimed, he felt a sharp impact on his chest, and looked down. A black, curved, flat bird protruded from his stomach, its wingtip burrowed into his armor. The bird trilled once, and then exploded.
Blue foam burst from the flat bird's sacrifice. The rubbery material crawled over Cyborg, wrapping around his torso. It expanded impossibly fast, swallowing his arms and legs. Cyborg snarled and struggled against the thickening foam, which bent and cushioned his incredible strength into useless gestures. In two seconds, he hung in the center of a misshapen ball of blue foam, with only his head protruding from the top.
Raven summoned a wave of soul-self from her hands on instinct, chanting her retaliation. As the first word left her lips, a boomerang made of ivory metal knocked into the back of her hood, stealing the words from her lips with one sharp crack.
Beast Boy bristled beside her, halfway into the skin of a jungle cat, when a blur of black and gold hammered him from above, driving him explosively down into the beach.
Bushido drew his sword, only to have it meet another blade that hadn't been there a moment ago, wielded by a shapely figure wearing a red and gold sunrise.
As her teammates fell in the space of her snarl, Starfire pounded through the surf, kicking a spray behind her, hurling bolt after bolt into the beach that bound Tek. Her eyes blazed, turning the sand green, and then molten beneath furious beams. But with her focus on Tek, she never saw the long shadow skimming the surf until it swallowed her. Cyborg tried to shout a warning, but was too slow. He could only watch as the largest woman he had ever seen dropped from the sky and drove her fist into the back of Starfire's head.
The large woman watched Starfire stumble forward into the surf. Easily topping Starfire by two heads, the woman wore a red, sleeveless harness over her muscled build. A shock of ginger hair jetted back from her smug, sculpted expression as she nodded upward. "Sorry about the wait. Had to park the Pequod."
Overhead, a squat, alien aircraft hovered on whisper-quiet thrusters. It was a full category smaller than the lumbering Icarus, but nevertheless carried a deadly quality in its gunmetal hull. Just looking at it, Cyborg could see it had been built for speed, stealth, and with enough teeth to give his jet a run for its money.
Movement under the Icarus drew Cyborg's limited eye. He saw the shadows beneath the great jet stir. Parts of the shadow stepped out into the light, carrying with it a dark figure in a domino mask. A blue chevron cut the figure's chest, running down the length of his arms. Cyborg recognized the ascended sidekick, and growled his name. "Nightwing."
"Nice work, Outsiders," Nightwing said to his team, who stood watch over the ambushed Titans. He holstered a second birdarang, no longer needed for Cyborg, and brushed the dark hair from his eyes. "Metamorpho, you okay over there?"
Tek's struggling had drawn numb with shock at her friends' sudden fall. The sand around her hardened, becoming twisted body shackles of sandstone, as though a modern art sculpture had snared her. The base of the sculpture bulged and shifted, growing a broad face of uncanny mirth. His eyes of sand shifted, finding Nightwing among the others.
"We're okay over here, kid," Metamorpho told Nightwing. His gaze rolled up, trickling grains, and he added, "We're not here to hurt you, darlin'. Just take it easy up there."
Beast Boy emerged from the crater in the sand. He flopped to the edge, pushed by the meteor that had crushed him. The lithe young meteor climbed out after him, straining the taut, lightning-striped lines of her uniform. She had wiry hair and full lips, which she pursed pensively at the green boy at her feet. "I hope I didn't hit him too hard," she said.
A thin, smirking man whistled from where he leaned against the Icarus' landing strut, formerly hidden from view. He twirled a boomerang, the very same that had knocked Raven unconscious. "Wouldn't worry about these kiddies, Thunder. Ask GL, they like it rough," he told her in a voice thick with mirth and Aussie.
Kneeling over Beast Boy, Thunder pried his eyelid open, worriedly checking his pupils. "Not everybody likes doling out head injuries as much as you, Boomerang," she snarked.
The thin Aussie scowled, and snapped his boomerang back into its holster on his arm. "Captain Boomerang, thank you," he said.
The enormous redhead staggered onto the beach, dripping and annoyed. Her thick arms bulged with the effort of holding a struggling Starfire. Though groggy, the Tamaranian thrashed with everything she had, even tossing her hair into her captor's face. Sputtering, the redhead snarled, "Knock it off, Sherbet, or you'll wind up like the goth and the green kid!"
"Grace!" Nightwing snapped, watching the struggle in the surf, "Don't hurt her. We're not here to fight."
Bushido thought otherwise, but kept his mouth shut and his eyes on his sword, which murmured metallically against the blade of the woman before him. Her sunrise uniform curved around the contours of an athletic body capped by short, charcoal hair. A half-cowl wrapped around her eyes and ears, protecting both, but leaving her sneering disgust for him unmasked. "Katana," he said with a nod. "I heard you were good."
She replied in an even tone. "And I heard you were an assassin. Don't move. I'd hate to sully my blade with a soul like yours, but I will."
"My soul is spoken for. But thank you," he said politely.
Nightwing approached Cyborg, unworried by the Titan's impotent struggling against his vivid blue prison. Cyborg snarled and spat at him, "My own impact foam? Birdie, you just earned yourself a double helping of my foot up your ass."
"I'm sorry about this, Cyborg," Nightwing said. He drew from his belt a thin device that ended with a rubber aerial. "I know this is dirty pool, but I can't risk you running again. We have to take your friend in to the League. You had your chance to play ball. Now we have to do things our way."
Raising the antennaed device to his mouth, he said crisply, "Pequod: disable their jet."
The deadly, hovering aircraft flashed with white fangs. Blinding blasts lanced from its nose to hammer the Icarus. At first, the massive jet's armor held, glowing white-hot under the onslaught. But after too many hits, its fuselage buckled with a screech. Precision blasts holed the Icarus' wings, engines, and hull.
Cyborg closed his eye, unable to bear the screech of his jet's hull rending beneath the laser assault. A furious tear trickled down his cheek, trailing onto the lip of his foam prison. When he could look again, he focused his rage and helplessness into a burning glare, which he leveled at an apologetic Nightwing. "How did you find us?" he asked through his teeth.
Nightwing replaced the autopilot control on his belt. "Your satellite uplink shuffle was good. Almost flawless. It took my contact two whole days to backtrack you here, and another eight hours just to sneak in to make sure your spaceship didn't detect us."
"Word to the wise," Captain Boomerang called. "Next time, consider running, not hiding. Moving targets are harder to hit."
"Wh-What are you gonna do to me?" Tek mewled. She trembled, chafing against the rough stone bonds that wrapped her limbs and suffocated her back, choking her suit's aperture.
"You, we'll take up to the League. They need to see you about something," Nightwing said. "At the least, you owe Blue Beetle an apology for his Bug, although…maybe he'd be willing to call it even," he remarked, and glanced up at the smoking, holed Icarus. "As for the rest of you, you can hang out here. Cool off for a couple of hours."
Cyborg strained his strength to its limit, trying to break the bonds of the foam to no avail. "Cool off? You're kidnapping—!"
"Wake up, Toaster Face," Captain Boomerang shot. "The minute you shot at the League, you became the bad guy. The fact that the League is keeping it under wraps just means they're being nice. Keep mouthin' off, and we won't—"
"Boomerang, shut up!" Nightwing snapped. He massaged the bridge of his mask, sighing. "Tek will be fine. You have my word. In the meantime, you'll stay here. We'll have the League send down a Javelin to take you home in a few hours."
"Or they could just ask for a ride."
The voice froze Nightwing's blood. He spun from Cyborg to gape at a figure in the surf, a figure that had appeared from nowhere. As Nightwing staggered in shock, he stepped out of Cyborg's way, offering the trapped Titan full view of the last person he had ever expected to find on the island.
Starfire's furious struggles died upon hearing the voice. She fell limp in Grace's grasp, her body overcome by a torrent of feelings and thoughts she couldn't begin to sort. Her eyes cooled and welled with tears. Her lips parted for a breathless gasp. "X'Hal…"
A strong shape strode from the surf, trailing scalloped wings of pure night. His body bore the color of foul blood, with trimmings of dull gold. Glistening onyx capped his fists and feet, wrapped around his collar, and masked his hollow white eyes. As his wings pushed back over his shoulders, he revealed a gleaming badge on his left breast, a stylized "R" that broke from its circle at both ends.
Nightwing's eyes narrowed upon the teen's silent arrival. Aside from the water running down his cape, the teen might have appeared out of thin air. Even his dark hair was dry, short and spiked. "Tim…" Nightwing said.
"Hello, Dick," said Robin. He stopped several paces short of the Outsiders and their captives, ignoring the shocked gapes from both.
"I like the new look," Nightwing said, his mind racing. He searched his young successor for any hint of intent, but Robin's face was as much a mask as the angled domino over his eyes. "Where'd you come from?"
"I was in the area," Robin said in leveled tones. "I thought I could help."
Grace hefted the limp weight in her arms and scoffed. "Awful nice of you, Mini-Wing, but I think we got things here."
Nightwing's hands curled into fists at his sides. "He doesn't mean us," he said.
Robin's eyes narrowed a fraction of an inch. "No. I don't."
Tension pulled between the six Outsiders on the beach. Their focus drew upon Robin. The dark Teen Wonder bristled at their readied blades, narrow glares, and cocked boomerang, but he gave them no other sign of concern. He did not fear them, which made the Outsiders all the warier.
Nightwing watched Robin carefully. He knew he could take Robin down himself if the standoff came to blows. But Robin knew that, too. Searching every detail of the beach with his masked, stony eyes, Nightwing said calmly, "Stand down, Tim. No one has to get hurt here."
Flipping his silvery boomerang, the brash young Captain chimed, "Flit away, little bird. Wouldn't want to see you get stomped 'cause you tried to rush us, would we?"
Robin's gloved hands rested on his utility belt. Each Outsider tensed, ready to abandon their covered Titan should Robin draw a weapon. But he stood stock-still, draped in his scalloped cape. A maddening calm had settled into his features.
His thumb drifted, grazing the buckle of his belt. The buckle flashed once with a soft glow.
Fifty yards off the shore, the tossing surf frothed harder. Waves parted way for a metal hump to rise from the water, tossing as pray from its hard gray sheen. The hump rose and grew until it bobbed above the surface like an island of metal. The instant it crested over the waves, its top flipped open, revealing a hatch that led to parts unknown inside the small island.
Confusion choked Nightwing for half a second. It melted into surprise, trickling down the back of his throat to seize his heart as five shapes darted from the hatch: red, black, red, red, and blue blurred forth, soaring into and above and across the water straight for shore.
Superboy soared high, his red shield gleaming on his black shirt. A pair of yellow boots sat soles-up in his grasp, from which hung a red archer marked with an "S" badge and possessed of a drawn bow. Speedy's upside-down face split with a sense of joyous righteousness as he shook the beach with his cry. "Titans East, GO!"
In a delirium of shock, Cyborg's brain could only force one thought into his mouth: "Titans WHAT?" he cried.
Upside-down in Superboy's grasp, Speedy drew and nocked an arrow with one smooth motion. The bowstring twanged, launching the arrow a second before Superboy dropped him. As he flipped and fell, he drew his bowstring back with another arrow. The bowstring sang again before his feet sank into the wet sand.
His first arrowhead burst and ballooned into a boxing glove, which struck Katana in the chest. She staggered at the blow, unable to bring her sword to bear against the second arrow.
Speedy's second shot split like the first arrowhead had, this time dismantling into a weighted bolo. The cord snared Katana's arm and chest, binding them together as the impact yanked her off her feet. Bushido stepped aside, politely allowing her to fall before pressing his blade's tip to her throat.
Grace snarled at the archer landing several feet away. Hoisting Starfire underarm, she marched forward, flexing her free hand. She laughed as Speedy threatened her with a third arrow. "No bondage on the first date, Junior," she snapped.
A hand grasped the back of her crop top, hoisting her off the beach. She dropped Starfire in surprise and looked up. Superboy hovered over her, grinning, easily hefting her one-handed. "You're kind of a big girl," he said.
Then, without preamble, he swung her around and tossed her high over the ocean. Grace dwindled toward the horizon, trailing a string of curses over the open water. She disappeared into a distant splash that silenced her.
Thunder braced herself against the charge. When the hatch had spat the new Titans forth, she had felt one set of eyes single her out immediately. A mixture of regality and uncertainty swam in the flying girl's blue scowl, framed by hair that made the sun seem dim. Her red armor bore a golden double-crest that froze Thunder's heart for one instant. "Wonder Woman?" she breathed.
Wonder Girl sped toward Thunder, grim and straight like the edge of a hanging axe. "Not yet," she uttered. She loosed the lasso tied at her waist, letting it trail behind her as she bore down on the Outsider.
The startled Thunder stepped back, thinking on her feet. But her feet failed her, stumbling over something soft and furry. She bounced onto her backside and looked down, spying a dog-sized rodent covered in shaggy grass with a long, segmented tail stringing behind it. "A…possum?" she muttered aloud.
Thunder screamed as the possum swelled and became a green gorilla, whose dripping fangs exploded with a roar. Her density increased on reflex, sinking her into the sand as the gorilla pounded his chest. She weighed five hundred pounds by the time his paws clasped her ankle, and her weight kept increasing. As strong as he was, the gorilla could hardly drag her through the sand at her maximum density.
Wonder Girl was much, much stronger. She landed nimbly next to the gorilla and tore Thunder's leg from his grasp. With the barest of grunts, she swung the super-dense Outsider up and over her head, and pounded the beach with her human hammer. Sand sprayed in a geyser around Thunder, who laid facedown and unconscious beneath the rain of grit.
Shrinking back into his human shape, Beast Boy gaped at the slight, stunning blonde as she replaced her lasso on her belt. "…whoa," he breathed.
Captain Boomerang sprinted across the beach with three of his namesake cocked between his fingers. His vision flashed with red, and he felt a hot breeze as he charged the stoic Robin. When he flung his hand out, he found it emptied of boomerangs. He reached for more, and found each of his holsters empty. Every weapon he had was gone from his jacket and belt.
As he patted his empty holsters, he heard a snicker from behind. A begoggled brunette boy stood behind him. The lean lines of the boy's suit glistened with a wide red lightning bolt struck down a field of white. A pile of boomerangs sat at his feet. "Yeah," the lightning boy said. "Now I guess you're just 'Captain Nothing.'"
The Captain drew breath to retort. The air in his lungs froze when he saw shadows grow and stretch beneath his feet, heedless of the sun. Darkness swallowed his boots and began pulling him down. The very beach ate him with inexorable purpose, miring him in cold and bleakness. His feeble struggles and panicked cries did nothing to stop the shadow. Black sand ate him up to his neck, trapping him at eye level with the startled lightning boy's shoes.
Moving like liquid, the shadow poured upward out of the sand. Its blackness softened into navy blue fabric, beneath which a tired Raven sighed. She rubbed a lump under her hood and glared down at the stricken and planted Captain.
The lightning boy shivered at the edge of her glare. "Wow. You're creepy," he stammered.
Her glare flickered fully upon him. "And you're not funny. 'Captain Nothing?'"
Nightwing veered to one side, filling his hands with birdarangs as he zigzagged for Metamorpho's living sculpture-trap. "Rex, keep her secure!" he shouted. The birdarangs flew from his fingertips, streaking at the stoic Robin stalking up the beach.
The surf behind Robin surged forward and around him, and then crested impossibly into a wall of water. Nightwing's birdarangs disappeared into the frothing wall.
Crashing back to the sand, the curtain of water revealed a dark-eyed warrior sculpted from blue and green scales. Black hair streamed behind his scowl like a banner of war. His otherworldly beauty twisted with determination at the sight of Nightwing. He charged.
The scaled warrior's punch whistled over Nightwing's ducking head. Nightwing lunged forward, driving his knuckles hard under the boy's ribs. The force of the punch rattled back up Nightwing's arms and slid the boy back almost half a foot, and nothing more. Throbbing pain swallowed Nightwing's hand as he pulled it back.
"Aqualad," Nightwing grunted, clutching his fist. "Atlantean strength. Great."
An iron grip born from the crushing depths of the ocean closed around Nightwing's wrists. Aqualad shrugged, nearly apologetic, and said, "Sorry about this." He spun, swinging Nightwing high and hard into the air. As the Outsider tumbled overhead, Aqualad gestured to the surf around his feet. A waterspout jetted before him, striking Nightwing further out to sea.
Backed into a proverbial corner and surrounded by Titans, Metamorpho melted back into his pile, drawing Tek deeper into himself. His face emerged once more, scowling at the encroaching teens with a gritty brow. "Ease back, kids! I don't want to get rough!"
Robin reached the ball trapping Cyborg. He knelt and examined the foam, testing it with the tip of his glove. Without glancing back, he said, "Impulse. Speedy."
The lightning-branded boy —Impulse—vanished in a blur, pulling at Raven's cloak with his vortex. He surrounded Metamorpho in a one-man barricade of super speed, streaking into his own after-image until he became a red ring around the living tendrils of sand.
Blinded by the wind-whipped grit, Metamorpho coiled tighter around Tek, and cried, "Hey!"
Impulse raised a hand to the living pile. His arm blurred further, quivering as though it were in a thousand places at once. He thrust his unstable arm into the base of Metamorpho, stirring the Outsider with force and speed that shook the sand to its molecular core.
Tek and Metamorpho screamed, she in fear and he in pain. The destabilizing touch that Impulse thrust into her prison shook Tek free. Her flailing arms fell into the flying grasps of Superboy and Wonder Girl, who lifted her out of the sand and into the safety of the sky.
Running forward, Speedy nocked a blue arrow. He tensed his bowstring, and shouted, "Clear, speed freak!"
The blur surrounding Metamorpho spun away as Speedy's arrow struck the heart of the sandy tendrils. Blue gel burst from the arrow, sinking deeper into the spun sand. Metamorpho's misshapen face cried out as the blue crept through his body. His cry elongated into a low, slowing pitch, which dwindled into nothing as his body froze blue.
Tek hung in her heroes' hands, watching her captor solidify into a statue. Her knotted innards loosened enough for her to breathe as she was returned to the ground, where the other Titans...all of them…gathered near Metamorpho's frozen, haunting, silent scream.
"Dude." Beast Boy stared in awed horror, his face mimicking Metamorpho's. Behind him, Raven helped balance Tek as Superboy and Wonder Girl set her down. "What…What did you do to him?"
Shouldering his bow, Speedy slicked back his fiery hair, and said, "Molecular coagulant. I figure we have at least a half hour before he can pull his molecules out of that gunk."
Beast Boy's poke made the blue statue jiggle. He smirked. "Heh. Like Jello." Then he turned back to face the newcomers with a smile, and said, "Oh, right. Almost forgot. Thanks, guys. And also…WHAT THE HELL?" he exploded, flinging his hands overhead.
Superboy eased his outburst with upturned palms. "Dude, simmer down. I'm sure you guys have lost of questions…"
"No," Bushido said, shaking his head. "I'm fairly certain that 'What the hell?' covers most everything." He trudged through the sand, dragging behind him one of Katana's legs. She slid lifelessly, her head lolling behind him as he tugged. A trio of feathered darts stood grouped in her chest. At the gaggle of concerned glares, Bushido glanced back, and said, "What? They're knockout darts."
Robin stood and pulled a small aerosol can from his utility belt. He sprayed the foam prison around Cyborg with a fine, acrid mist. "There's no time for questions right now. We need to go if we're going to stay ahead of the League," he said.
The acrid spray made Cyborg's foam bubble and pop. Hissing sapphire smoke, the foam dissolved away, dripping off of Cyborg's armor. He fell forward onto his feet and braced himself with one hand. Then, slowly, he collected himself to loom over Robin, hanging a quiet fury over the Teen Wonder's head.
Cyborg felt a furious shout fill his throat. It ballooned behind his tongue, growing so large that it choked itself, emerging as a strained growl. "Who do you think you are, coming here and barking orders at us?"
Raven stepped forward with Tek on her arm. "Victor…"
"You disappear for months," Cyborg snarled down in Robin's implacable face. "You don't call, you don't show up, or even let us know that you're alive. And now, suddenly, you show up out of the blue telling us what we have to do, with a brand new team of wannabes calling themselves Titans?"
Speedy shared a worried glance with Aqualad, and leaned on his bow. "Weren't we Titans already?" he asked. Aqualad motioned for him to keep his voice down.
Terrible rage trembled in Cyborg's fist, which lifted, sorely tempted to put something, anything, resembling a reaction on Robin's blank mask. "Who the hell do you think you are?"
Robin tilted his chin to meet Cyborg's glare. Absolute zero radiated from the white depths of his eyes as he said in a chilling calm, "I think where I've been and what you think of me doesn't matter. I think I and these 'wannabes' are your only ticket off the island right now. I think I know a lot more about what's happening, and why the League want Tek, than you do. So I think you'll shut up, and you'll get in line, or I'll leave you here to rust. Does that cover it?"
Cyborg's fist tensed backward, ready to separate Robin's head from his shoulders, when Tek leapt forward and caught his arm. "Vic, no!" she sobbed.
Wonder Girl stalked up and slipped between Cyborg and Robin, separating the two leaders with arms akimbo and a furrowed brow. "What Robin meant to say," she explained, casting a venomous glare back at her translatee, "is that we all need to work together starting right now if we're going to beat this. We're here to help. Please believe that."
"What 'this?'" Cyborg demanded in a snarl. Tek's desperate hug was the only thing keeping him from circumnavigating Wonder Girl to throttle stoic Robin. "What the hell is Titans East? And what do you know about this mess with the League?"
Robin turned, sweeping his cape behind him. He pulled a rubber-aerialed control from his utility belt and thumbed its side. "Come with us and find out," he said.
The metal island from which the new Titans had sprang surrounded itself with a gush of boiling white sea. Its surface surged upward, following the hatch out of the water. From the froth emerged the sides and belly of a dripping white alien aircraft. It was a colossal, continuous wing that rivaled the Icarus in size, as broad as it was long.
The risen jet's angular canopy glared at the gathered teens. As it floated forward on hissing thrusters, its belly opened with a mouth ramp that lowered to the sand, landing with a muted thump. Robin strode up the ramp without another word.
The rest of Robin's new Titans started to follow. Superboy trailed furthest behind, his concerned gaze drawn back to the other Titans gathered beneath their broken jet. "So…coming?" he asked awkwardly.
Cyborg glared hard past Superboy's question, past Impulse and Wonder Girl, past the two—former?—honorary Titans. He scorched the back of Robin's head with his eyes, his fury rivaled only by his unanswered questions. He felt Tek shuddering under his arm with muted sobs, and saw her bury her face in the crook of his armor. Beside him, Raven, Bushido, and Beast Boy watched him expectantly.
Gathering Tek by the waist, Cyborg began to follow. "Not like we have a choice," he grunted.
Shrugging with apology, Superboy smiled. Then he snapped his fingers. "Oh, right," he said.
His eyes flashed red as he turned up to the hovering Pequod. Heat leapt through his gaze, pushing into the underbelly of the Outsider's empty jet. Its gunmetal hull glowed and softened, and then erupted under Superboy's vision. Fire plumed and thunder clapped as the Pequod belched smoke from its viewports. It wobbled and fell into the sea, lifting a column of superheated steam in its wake.
Cyborg led his real Titans behind Robin's fresh batch of pretenders. He kept his team close with a purposeful look, and spoke in a low tone. The crackling death throes of the Pequod undercut his voice. "Everyone keep your eyes and ears peeled. I don't trust these guys further than I could throw them."
With a hand hung near his blade's hilt, Bushido followed, his foxy eyes stalking Robin's team. "They will not have a chance to betray us," he promised Cyborg.
Raven drew up her hood, hiding her scowl. "I don't think they plan to," Raven murmured. "The rest of them seem genuine. Robin…is holding something back. Which is nothing new, except…"
Tek pulled her teary eyes from Cyborg's chest. Trembling, she asked, "Except what?"
"…he's different now," was all Raven could say.
Beast Boy lagged last, scratching his head. "Guys, it's Robin. It's gonna be okay, right? What do you think, Kory? …Kory?" He looked around in sudden realization. "Kory?"
Starfire knelt in the sand half a battlefield away, where Grace had first dropped her. The surf climbed over her legs and waist, burying her in increments of wet sand. Her hair pooled behind her, sodden and limp, like the rest of her. A galaxy of distance separated her eyes from the beach. As Beast Boy jogged up to her, blocking her view of the risen aircraft, her gaze glazed, focusing inward.
She shook numbly in Beast Boy's grasp. No madder how hard he jarred her, he got no response. "Kory? Kory!" Kneeling down, he looked into her haunted vacancy, and cringed. "Oh, hell. I think we broke Starfire…"
The laboratory languished in its abandonment, rife with the scars of haste. Broken glass, once beakers and tubes and windows, littered the plastic floor. The glass underfoot crunched hollowly against stripped walls. Sockets and pale absences marked where machines had stood, their purpose now unfathomable. The ceiling hung low enough to touch on flat feet.
Batman hunched in the darkened lab, looking up at its one remaining fixture. His reflection stretched across the cracked surface of an immense, clear cylinder. The reflected Batman's thin lips were distorted by the curve of the glass until they pulled back in a mocking smile. His real lips curled down until the funhouse smile vanished.
Touching his belt, Batman activated the wafer microphone concealed against his throat in his cowl. "Case file Oh-Two-Nine-Eight-Three, October Third, Oh-Nine-Twenty-Eight Zulu. The laboratory in Toulouse is as abandoned as Oracle claimed. Whoever was here evacuated quickly but completely."
He turned in a slow circle. Glass grinded beneath his boots. "The lab setup appears to have been similar to those in Madrid and Montpellier. There appears to be wiring suitable for heavy industrial equipment, suggesting extensive power needs. We might be able to track future labs based on localized drains in municipal power, but I doubt it. If this 'Brain' character is as smart as he's rumored to be, he'll have alternatives to tapping mundane sources.
"There are some…questions raised by these labs. Each one is hidden in urban areas. Hiding in plain sight. And each of them has nearly identical configurations, suggesting that the same lab was moved around for security reasons.
"But a lab of this size couldn't have produced the kind of power armor we're dealing with. Not solely. The quantum leaps in metallurgy alone would take at least five times the equipment a space of this size could hold."
His frown pierced his cowl to sweep the chaos carefully constructed around him. "Given this, I can only conclude that—"
"—someone is setting you up, Rich Boy."
Batman whirled to face the lab's only entrance. A batarang hung cocked in his fingers, ready to home in on the source of the bemused words. He lowered the weapon at the sight of a stout, smiling woman with close-cropped hair. She filled the doorway with a tailored skirt suit. Four men flanked her in black business wear stretched over impressive musculature, their faces sculpted to resemble the living concept of generic, and masked with sunglasses too heavy for this darkness.
Amanda Waller, the director of CADMUS, gave Batman an insufferable smirk. "You aren't the only one who can surprise people, you know," she told him.
To Be Continued
I loathe doing this. Nevertheless, it's for the best.
You may have noticed that this story hasn't been updating as regularly as it used to. Those of you who read my other works might also have noticed that I haven't updated any of my other works. I cannot apologize profusely enough for this.
Recently, I have suffered a…personal, emotional derailment. There's no other way to describe it. For no reason I can discern, I have completely lost control of my focus and interest in everything I do. Frankly, it terrifies me. But worse, it's caused a near-total meltdown in all of my writing. This is unacceptable.
The past few chapters of Teen Titans: Adaptation has not been as good as they should have been, including this one. For this, too, I apologize. I need to return this story to the quality it deserves. And unfortunately, to do that, I'm going to have to get my head straightened out.
I'm putting this, and all of my stories, on indefinite hiatus. Effectively, you won't be able to tell the difference from the last few months, seeing as how I never freaking updated anyway. I just wanted you all to know why, and to not expect any updates for the foreseeable future.
Thank you to everyone who reads this story. Your support has kept me going longer than a silly story where Robin gets superpowers ever should have. I'm not abandoning Adaptation, or Our Power Together. But I'm not writing like I should, and I need to fix that.
Cheers to all.
Cyberwraith9