Teen Titans
Adaptation
By Cyberwraith9
Technis: Hypothesis
Robin kicked open the lobby door and staggered through, leaving his Redbird draped on its side over the curb. His arms trembled with the weight of his sagging cape, which he held before him, its corners grasped in his fists. The muscles of his face knotted together at the sight of the Titans huddled at the security door on the lobby's far side.
"Where is he?" Tek demanded, storming at him the moment she saw him through the glass. Panic tore the words into a shrill, stuttering parody of her voice. "Where's Vic?"
Beast Boy was half a step behind her, looming with confusion that bordered on fury. "What the hell happened?" he snapped. "And what the hell are you doing here? When did Vic even leave the—"
They both stumbled aside as Robin shouldered through them. His heavy cape-bag swayed in his grasp, its edges threatened by a silvery substance held inside it. He marched through to Sector Prime, ignoring the halfhearted protests tumbling after him.
Confusion spread between the disregarded Titans. With little choice, they trailed behind Robin, falling into step on his march down the grand central hall of the Compound. He didn't lead for long, and elbowed the control panel of Sickbay's door, bidding it open.
Robin heaved his cape-bag onto the nearest biobed inside. His whole body shook with the relief of the weight. But he kept his hands clutched around his cape's corners, controlling the spread of the bag across the bed's padded surface. A small mob pressed into his back, craning over his shoulders to see.
Rising into the air, Raven peered at the silvery compound swirling inside the cape. "What are we looking at?" she asked.
"Would you please tell us wh—" Bushido began.
"Where is he?" Tek yelled in Robin's ear. "Where's Vic? What happened? What did you mean, he's…"
As they slid around the bed, gathering around his cape-bag, Robin exhaled shakily. His sigh stirred the reflective surface of the compound. "This was as much of him as I could bring back," he said. "This is Victor."
The mass quivered beneath the Titans' stare. They drew closer still, until their noses hooked over the edge of Robin's cape. Five sets of wide eyes stared back at them from the masses' silver, rippling surface.
"What?" Beast Boy uttered, pulling back with confusion.
Robin's voice barely rose above a whisper, crawling from his throat in hoarse deadpan as he said, "There was a fight on top of the train. Someone…that scientist we fought underground with the Streetbeat…he was trying to get hold of a hazardous compound. The canister broke, and the compound covered Victor, and then…"
"No…" Tek whimpered, and groped for the vial tucked into her belt. The vial rattled as she pried its cover loose, all the while staring into the cape-bag. "No. That's just stupid."
Tentatively, Bushido lifted his hand to her shoulder. "Allie," he murmured.
She jerked at Bushido's touch, spraying pills from her vial as it dropped from her hand. "No! You're lying," she snapped at Robin, and whirled upon the Teen Wonder. Tears cut gleaming scars into her vitriolic face. "People don't just…just…melt! Stop lying!"
In a strained voice, Starfire said, "I see no organic remains. And this substance is cold." She kept her eyes buried in the substance, unable to lift them to the masked face of its keeper. Her shoulders trembled until she wrapped herself in her arms.
The ceiling chimed, and then chirped at them in Sarah's chipper voice. "Doctor Katherine Brown has arrived in the lobby, and is requesting an immediate meeting with Robin. Your collective biometrics indicate that this may be a bad time for a meeting. Would you like me to ask the Doctor to reschedule?"
"Send her to sickbay," Robin said.
"Do it," Raven told the ceiling as she stared into the shimmering mass, probing it with her mind's eye. No matter how she strained her ethereal senses, she could not find even an echo of life inside Robin's cape. Whatever the Teen Wonder carried appeared, at least to Raven, to have never been alive at all. "It doesn't look like anything. It's just goo," she said, confused.
"Is this a joke? This is a joke," Beast Boy said, glancing back at the open door. "Any minute, Vic's gonna jump out and yell—"
"I was there!" Robin snarled, jolting the rest of the Titans back a step with the force of his voice. "He begged me to help him! This stuff killed him from the inside out, and he begged me, and…and I…" His voice dwindled, and his chin dipped. Taking a deep breath, he said, "He's gone."
Silence entombed the Titans. Only Tek's snuffling tears pierced the pall. With silent glances and wordless questions, they dispelled the last of their disbelief. A hollow, empty feeling pressed all around them, pushing them together around the table, where they bowed their heads over the last remains of Cyborg.
Doctor Brown tore through their pall in a breathless, clacking, high-heeled run. She collapsed onto the open frame of Sickbay's door, her fluttering lab coat drifting down over the wilted lines of her skirt suit. "Where is he?" she gasped.
The rest of the Titans parted, revealing Robin and his bunched cape. Robin tugged at the cape's corners, and said hoarsely, "He's here."
The scientist administrator launched herself from the door, shoving her way through alien powerhouses and pregnant demons and reformed assassins to see the cape-bag's contents for herself. "Do you have a defibrillator?" she asked.
A noise burst from Beast Boy, something halfway between a sob and a laugh. "I don't think that's gonna do much, Doc," he said.
"Quickly!" she snapped. "I don't know how much time we have!"
Brown's voice cleared the stupor from the room. Waddling hurriedly, Raven opened a panel at the head of the biobed and produced two defibrillator paddles wired into the wall. They charged with a whine as Brown snatched them from Raven's hands.
Without a word of warning, Brown thrust the paddles into the silver mass and triggered their charge.
The mass reacted at once with a violent shudder. Its reflective surface darkened as a myriad of shapes pushed out of its edges. An epileptic, geometric fit pushed against the inside of Robin's cape with every shape imaginable. Noise, shrill and inhuman, screeched from its depths. Then, as quickly as it had jumped, the mass became still and glistening once more.
The Titans jumped back from Robin and his quivering cape-bag, shocked by the paddles' effect. Even Robin appeared shaken, though he kept the bag aloft. "What was that?" he asked Brown.
She ignored him. Her foot pounded the tile with impatience as the paddles charged again. When their whine peaked, she plunged the paddles back into the bag and shocked the mass again. Its reaction was the same jumbled, shrill fit as before, but briefer.
Pitching the paddles against the wall, Brown said, "We need to stimulate him with electricity. As much as we can. Now!"
"What are you talking about? What are you doing to it—him—whatever?" Tek cried.
"There's no time! Please!" Brown insisted, her voice cracking with desperation.
"Get back," Robin ordered, and shifted the cape- bag's corners into one hand. His other hand drew a disc from his belt, one with a yellow rim encircling his sigil. When he thumbed the stylized R, the disc crackled in his grasp. The noise chased everyone in the room back as he dropped the disc into his cape and averted his eyes.
Lightning jumped from the inside of Robin's cape in thin prongs, thickening the air with blinding static. Through the flash, Robin watched the substance in his grasp roil, its surface blackening in electric throes. Edges shapes leapt from the mass's shapelessness, this time remaining, expanding. In seconds, the mass outgrew its bag, pulling the corners out of Robin's fist. He reeled back and drew a birdarang on reflex as he watched the crackling phenomenon through the slits of his mask.
The mass poured across the biobed, filling its length with a flickering nightmare of shapes. As it grew, its harsh edges softened. Its shapes poured together, and separated, and reconnected into flailing limbs. Its tarnished surface became smooth and brown. The sphere growing at the top of the mass caved inward, forming a broad, open mouth that howled. Two white growths emerged above the mouth, bugging into eyes.
As the electro-disc emptied, the shape collapsed onto the biobed. Lingering details arose on its surface—sculpted musculature, pores, clinging coarse hair, damp skin, dark nipples, cuticles. The shape's howl ended in a gasp that knocked the empty disc from its stomach. Its legs splayed over the sides of the table, revealing that it was no it, but a he.
Doctor Brown swept the sheet from a neighboring bed and draped it over the creature, startling him with her errant touch. He shuddered and gasped as her fingers tested the soft new flesh over his bones. His flickering gaze fell upon her smile, and widened. "It's going to be all right," she murmured to him. "Just breathe. You're all right."
The Titans stared at the heaving creature on the biobed, the metallic remains now shaped like a man. Beast Boy stepped to the foot of the bed, his mouth hanging open. Lifting a hand, the shapeshifter obscured half his view of the stranger's face with the back of his glove. In a whisper, he said, "Vic?"
Hearing his name calmed the man's convulsions. His nostrils hissed with sharp breath as he found Beast Boy with two whole, human eyes. "Gar? Where…? I'm in the Compound? What happened on the train? I can't access my systems. I think my diagnostics are—"
He blinked, and waved a hand in front of his face. The sight of his brown, crinkled palm made him jump and claw backwards until his head struck the wall. Grunting, he clutched his head. Then his fingers worked across the smooth skin of his scalp. He jerked back the edge of his sheet to peek underneath, and then yanked it up to his chin with a cry. The other end of the sheet slid up his legs, revealing two healthy, hairy feet.
Tek's tears curled around her trembling lips. Tentatively, she touched Victor's foot. The sensation made them both start. "I don't believe it," she murmured.
Doctor Brown eased him back onto the bed, gently taking the sheet from his hands. Her eyes threatened to spill over at the sight of his astonishment. Smoothing his brow, she murmured, "Welcome back, Victor."
The S.T.A.R. Labs' Auto-Station had become a hive of hazmat suits, expensive cleanup equipment, and bitter resentment.
Dozens of emergency personnel swarmed the lone auto-train parked in the cavernous depot. Each person wore a clunky metallic suit designed to repel harmful radiation and chemicals at the cost of comfort and maneuverability. They scoured across and atop and through and under the train's cars, lugging hoses, and foam decontaminate dispensers, and detection wands connected to bulky packs.
The detection wands in particular were a nightmare to carry. Weighing nearly twenty kilos apiece, the piece of analytical equipment would be unpleasant enough. When combined with the environmental seal of the suits, it turned each sweep of the auto-trains cars into an agonizingly slow march inside of a personalized sauna.
"Look, all I'm saying is, it would keep situations like this from happening." Anthony said through the external speaker of his suit. He lurched alongside the auto-train's center car, which had sustained the most damage in the metahuman incident. The tip of his detection wand bobbed underneath the edge of the car, looking for anything that might not belong. "They should have to toe the same line as everybody else."
His partner Steven lurched after him, checking Anthony's work with an identical detection wand. "It would never work. Nobody would submit to something like that voluntarily. It's unconstitutional."
"Show me the part of the Constitution that protects some nut job's right to tear holes in a train," Anthony scoffed. "The Second Amendment doesn't cover people with laser breath."
"Maybe," conceded Steven, "but the law doesn't require people to report other abilities. People don't have to fill out a form because they're smart, or because they're a gifted athlete." His detection wand beeped at him, informing him of a particularly interesting clump of dirt stuck to the underside of the car. He adjusted the sensitivity on his wand and continued on.
The reflective visor of Anthony's hazmat suit twisted back, staring at Steven. "Athletic ability? No one ever killed another person by being good at baseball."
Steven's smirk filtered through his suit's speaker. "Well, you haven't. But then, I've seen you at the plate. The only thing you murder is the team's batting average."
"The good ones do just as much damage as the bad ones," Anthony insisted. "The only fair thing to do is make them register their super powers. Just like any other citizen has to register any other dangerous weapon."
"But that means you're treating the people themselves as weapons," Steven pointed out. "That's a dangerous distinction to make. It could even be construed as a form of segregation."
Anthony's retort was squelched by the sudden alarm of his detection wand. He and Steven stopped, aiming the long probes beneath the edge of the train car's wheels. "Stick's picking something up. It's…metallic?"
Swatting the side of his wand's display, Steven shook his head, and said, "No, it's not. I'm reading it as organic. And now I'm not," he added ruefully.
"These things are useless. Billions of dollars' worth of operating budget, and we get the finest equipment Nineteen Ninety-Four has to offer," Anthony grumbled. Both technicians stooped low to arch their detection wands further behind the train wheels. The wands' displays fluctuated with indecision, refusing to identify the mystery tucked into the crook of the wheel.
The wands jerked without warning, staggering Anthony and Steven into each other as a strong force dragged them toward the wheels. They grunted and pulled, each throwing his weight back against the pull of the wand without success.
Anthony drew breath to shout for assistance, or to question which idiot thought to leave some component of the train active and capable of snaring his useless equipment. His lungs froze when he saw a silver tendril snaking up the shaft of his detection wand. Its reflective surface crackled and popped as it climbed. Hearing Steven gasp, Anthony glanced over and saw a similar tendril on the other wand.
"We've got a Three-Oh-Three here!" Steven shouted, clawing at the shoulder straps of his pack.
Anthony cleared his pack's straps and backed away as the tendril engulfed the wand and worked its way up the connector cable. "Animate substance, intent unknown!" he bellowed through his suit.
Both technicians scrambled backwards as the silver tendrils swallowed their packs. More tendrils surged up from underneath the train, pouring across the detection equipment. The wand displays darkened, and the packs were subsumed beneath a skin of crackling, reflective silver.
Geometric seizures wrought the strange material. Above the troop of heavy footfalls rushing toward them, Anthony and Steven heard a shrill, electronic whine emerge from the jittering silver. The whine deepened as the substance spread and rose, becoming a misshapen sphere.
Bulges emerged from the sphere, which caved into a curved shape that crouched upon two coiled pseudopodia. Thin wires sprouted from its uppermost bulge, which pushed forth a pair of white, wide orbs, and collapsed in the middle to form a scream.
Tendrils became arms that clawed at the ground. Trembling legs condensed out of the pseudopodia. The silver sheen faded into raw, pink skin that rippled with the undertones of a skeleton. Its scream ended in heaving gasps as it collapsed onto the floor.
"Jesus Christ," Steven breathed. He crouched low, staying several lengths back from what had just absorbed his outdated detection equipment. "We don't have anything on the books for this one."
Anthony crouched next to him. "Can you understand me?" he asked, speaking loudly and slowly to the creature.
The creature's gasps gave way to muted chuckles. It stared at its two human hands, which bore lines of age and calluses from work. It clutched at the wiry white hair on its balding head, and patted down the wrinkles around its smile. "Yes," it said to itself.
As it stood, the creature's skin began to change again. It expanded out from the creature's body, brightening and coarsening into white fabric. By the time it stood, the creature wore a spotless lab coat, with a tailored suit underneath hiding its emaciated frame. Growths emerged from its crooked nose, stretching into spectacles that hid its glinting eyes.
It turned to the bewildered technicians, brushing its manifested clothes smooth. In a bored, smug tone, it said, "My name is Doctor Walter Smith. Please direct me to the nearest phone. I have accolades to collect, and Nobel Prizes to win, and little time for stupid questions."
The reborn Doctor Smith raised an eyebrow at his frozen audience. Both hazmat technicians stared at him, unable to twitch for sheer astonishment. A glance around the auto-train's depot revealed an entire crowd of similar suits in a similar state.
Under other circumstances, Smith might have appreciated the reverence. Instead, it creased his brows into a single, irritated line. He approached one of the two suits that had first encountered him, and said, "Your alarm is unnecessary and, frankly, annoying. Kindly assist me, or direct me to someone who will. Several fundamental scientific principles have been violated in the last few hours, and if I am to fully ascertain—"
As he drew closer to the suits, he stopped. The reflection in the suits' visors stared back at him with slumping features. In a panic, he reached up to push the errant features back into place. Pale, pinkish skin sloughed off his cheeks, spattering onto his wilting shoes. Fat droplets of fabric drizzled from the back of his coat into a milky puddle on the floor.
Smith stared into his hands. The tone of his skin swirled with silver lesions as his shape began to sag. "No," he said, shaking his head, spraying flecks of his skin in the process. "Losing cohesion. I need more power."
He ignored the suits' protests and turned to the train. Each lurching step he took left a puddle of swirling silver in his wake. The effort took its toll on his dribbling body, until at last he collapsed against the side of the train. He sank to the wheels, leaving a trail of himself along the side of the car.
Shaking, he pushed his sagging hand into the wheels. It splattered down the side of the wheel. One last breath escaped his mouth before it poured off of his chin and onto his knees. He scowled, focusing what remained of his eyes on the crook of the wheels.
The sum of his intellect focused into a tight, narrow tendril that slithered out of his empty wrist. The tendril stretched into the train, probing its undercarriage with waning strength. While his spirit remained strong, Smith's body rapidly betrayed him, degenerating back into its silvery beginnings.
At last, his tendril sensed its prize, and tapped against a warm conduit on the train's undercarriage. The last of his strength surged up the length of his tendril, plunging its tip through the casing of the conduit. His body hummed with a sudden current, his molten skin tightening at once.
New features arose out of his sagging face, forming a frown as they solidified. He looked down at his diminished body, which suckled at the train's impressive power source. His solidity renewed, he recognized the problem, if not its source.
"This will not do," he muttered. "Something is missing. The transformation is incomplete. Flawed. I need…"
The murmurings of S.T.A.R. Labs' technicians behind him distracted him. Scowling, he glanced over his misshapen shoulder at the row of hazmat suits watching him in awe.
His tendril expanded across the surface of the train, using its own power as he subsumed the metal. Matter flowed back up his arm, revitalizing the shriveled parts of him. He stood, whole once again, and pressed his other hand to the train. His skin silvered again as it consumed more, and more.
He would deal with these annoyances. Then he would seek the answers he needed from the one inferior intellect that might have hoarded them.
"Stone…"
"So what's the deal, Doc?" Beast Boy asked, squinting through one eye. His finger inched toward Victor's nose.
The revivified Titan looked up with a scowl, his eyes crossing on the tip of Beast Boy's gloved finger. "I'm fine, Gar," he said, and shoved Beast Boy's hand out of his face.
"Don't touch him, Garfield!" Doctor Brown said without looking away from Sickbay's computer interface. The wall display mesmerized Brown with a magnified image of blood cells. Red platelets drifted across the display before Brown adjusted the view again, zooming closer, driving Sickbay's analytical capabilities into one of the cells.
Sitting cross-legged on the next biobed over, Tek watched Victor eat. She sighed and rested her chin in her hands. "He isn't in danger, is he? He looks so…healthy."
Beast Boy's finger hovered above Victor's scowling brow. "Yeah. He's all squishy now."
The muscles lurking beneath Victor's sheets made Tek grin. "No, he's not," she murmured.
Victor swallowed hard. He fingered the IV tube feeding saline into his arm, marveling at the pucker of flesh around the cold, metal needle, and the tiny flash of pain he felt when he fiddled with the rig. It wasn't an error message, or a diagnostic. He felt the pain.
"So what am I?" he asked, entranced by his own arm. "I mean, what did that goop do to my implants?"
Brown considered the display a moment more, and then nodded to herself. "Absolutely fantastic," she said. "Victor, your organic and cybernetic components have been entirely supplanted by mechanical replacements. You are now one hundred percent artificial."
Blinking confusion met Brown's words. Victor stared at her, and then at the hematological display behind her, unable to connect her statement with what he saw. Beast Boy simply scratched his head, and asked, "Uh, Doc? You know what 'artificial' means, right? 'Cause it's not just a flavoring."
Her eyebrow arched. "I'm familiar with the definition of 'artificial,' Garfield. I'm also familiar with the concept of 'total organic attomechanical supplantation,' which is what we're looking at here."
She tapped the wall monitor. Its image broadened, zooming deeper into the example platelet until at last only a blurry conglomeration of black and white spheres drifted in the monitor. Squint as they might, the Titans could not make the blurred objects take any meaningful shape.
"Are you familiar with the extraterrestrial incident that happened a little over a year ago? It was in Arizona, or New Mexico…one of the southwestern states," she said, waving off the elusive details that escaped her.
The Titans looked amongst one another, and then shared a shrug. "We kind of have our own alien troubles around here, Doctor Brown," Tek said. "Why?" Then her face fell into disarray, and she squeaked, "Wait, is that it? Is Vic infected by aliens now?"
Exasperated, Victor sighed, and said, "Allie, calm down. I'm not—"
"That is somewhat the case," Doctor Brown said, interrupting him. Her pointed look shocked him into silence. Tapping the monitor again, she explained, "What you are looking at here is the subatomic structure of Victor's body. What you would normally see are protons and electrons forming atoms, which in turn would form molecules, and so on and so forth."
Beast Boy sniffed, and said, "Well, obviously. But that's not what we're looking at…is it?" he added, confused. "I mean, since you brought it up…"
"What you have instead of subatomic particles," Doctor Brown told Victor, "is a complex array of machines that are somehow able to mimic those particles. Trillions of machines are replicating in your body to arrange themselves into the perfect facsimile of a normal, healthy seventeen-year-old human male. In essence, you are now a colony of seemingly incognizant machines that have decided to shape themselves to look, think, and act like…you."
Victor watched his hands clench and unclench. Their fingernails pressed into their palms, shooting sensation up his arms to tickle the tactile centers of what he thought was his mind. He looked real. He felt real.
"I'm made of nanites?" he asked at last.
Brown shook her head. "These machines are infinitesimal compared with nanites. The difference in scale is mind-boggling. This goes well beyond our understanding of technology. These machines, whatever they are, appear to have been harvested from that hostile alien probe, which the Justice League neutralized, and our government was kind enough to contain."
"Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop," Beast Boy said, waving his hands. "Vic's made of alien micro-machines? That's stupid. And impossible."
She looked at him askance. "Really? Garfield, you violate the laws of thermodynamics every time you turn into a field mouse. She," Brown said, and pointed to a startled Tek, "could fuel an entire scientific career if anyone ever bothered to investigate how, why, and to where her armor disappears when not in use. I'd wager the word 'impossible' is bandied about with some irony within these walls."
"…that's two points for science, Gar," Tek said, breaking their bewildered speechlessness.
"This probe," Brown continued, testily eyeing Tek and Beast Boy, "utilized exactly this kind of mimetic technology to absorb, subsume, and assimilate raw matter into its replicating process. I can't imagine how Silas acquired a sample of the alien probe. And frankly, I'm baffled at how he even began to repurpose these machines. But somehow—"
"—somehow he took these monster space mini-bugs, and reprogrammed them to eat Cyborg and spit out a de-cyborged Cyborg?" Beast Boy said. "Gross! Dude, you're robo-vomit. That's going to be your code name from now on. We're gonna be all, 'oh, no, there's a TroubAlert, what do we do?' And then you're gonna be all, 'no, don't worry, Robo-Vomit has the answer!'" he exclaimed.
"Gar, shut up! He is not!" Tek cried. She reached out to take Victor's arm, but hesitated an inch above his skin. "That's not true, is it? You said the little robots were mimicking normal human parts, so it's like he's just as good as a real human now. I mean," she babbled, blushing, "not that he wasn't as good before, or that he wasn't real…I don't—"
"Enough!" Brown snapped, and stamped her foot until the babbling fonts on either side of Victor stopped talking. "There are now—officially!—too many teenagers participating in this consultation. One of you has to be here, and he's the one in the bed. I'll allow one more of you to stay, provided that he or she can remain perfectly quiet. Now who will it be?"
Beast Boy opened his mouth to protest. It didn't matter how annoying Doctor Brown found them, they were all Titans, and Titans stuck together through anything.
But he lost his train of thought as a blue-white light painted the walls, dazzling him. As he battled the spots in his eyes, he felt a pair of cold, massive hands close around him from behind. He managed a squeak of surprise before Tek armor-hurled him out of Sickbay, taking just enough consideration to let the doors open before she let him fly.
"Thanks, Gar!" Tek chirp tinnily before slapping the door panel. The doors curtained together, swallowing the sound of Beast Boy's face fault into the tile. Brushing her clanky hands together, she turned back to the stunned Victor and Brown. Her armor shuffled itself into her back with a blue flash, and she dropped to the floor. "Sorry. You were saying?" she asked Brown.
Victor shivered as Brown took his hand. The sensation of skin on skin made him gasp. Her fingers massaged the muscle of his arm, and gently worked his elbow and wrist. She tested the limb, her face knitted in scrutiny.
After a long moment of examination, she clasped his hand in hers. Her eyes crinkled and brimmed, and the analytical coldness melted out of her features. A hesitant half-smile cocked her lips as she squeezed his hand and said, "Victor, I don't fully understand what's happened here, and I'm unwilling to make any definite prognoses without further study. But based on what I've seen so far…it appears that your father found a way to make you whole again. He reprogrammed alien technology to absorb and restructure your mass into a perfect copy of your fully human self, neurochemistry and all."
Tek leaned at the foot of Victor's bed. Her tears curled around the edges of her beaming smile. "It's a miracle. It's, like…I don't even know what it's like," she said with a laugh, and sniffed. "Vic?"
He stared at his hands, an unreadable expression heavy in his symmetrical features. His fingers curled into fists, and then slowly released, making the tendons in his wrists jump up against his skin.
Finally, he looked up. "Okay," he said. "Thanks for checking me out, Doc. Is there anything else I should know?"
Doctor Brown shared a startled glance with Tek. "Erm…not at the moment. Though I want to run you through a battery of tests to determine the long-term—"
"Vic, did you hear what she said?" Tek interrupted Brown with a squeak. "You're not metal anymore!"
"Yeah, I heard her, kid," Victor said. He swung his bare feet toward the floor. A soft groan whistled out his nose as the muscles in his back retroactively complained about the biobed's padding. "We've gotta do a lot more testing. If something's gonna go haywire down the line, we should know ahead of time. In the meantime, can I get out of here?"
"…what?" Tek said, watching Victor gather the thin biobed sheet around his waist. "Get out of…? What are you talking about?"
In a subdued, controlled voice, Brown said, "I would very much rather you stay in Sickbay. And I insist that you avoid strain of any kind until we know for certain that there's no danger."
"Yes to the second one, and a big fat 'no' to the first one," Victor said, and hopped up with another grunt. "Today's been a mess, and there's still a lot of post-game work to take care of. If we don't lock down the Tower ASAP, who knows what else could hole up in there."
Brown tried to ease him back onto the bed. Even without his bulky cybernetics, Victor's smooth head topped hers by several inches. "I'm sure the others would be more than happy to pitch in," she said testily.
He brightened at the thought. "How's everybody doing? I got so wrapped up in that Alert that I never got the chance for this morning's post-game. Is everybody okay? We should—"
Pouring her entire weight into her hands, Brown managed to force Victor back onto the bed. "I'm sure everyone is fine," she snapped. "And they can manage themselves for five minutes while you deal with this life-altering transformation."
Victor's expression soured. He clutched the sheets to his waist, and said, "No offense, Doc, but do you have any idea how much can happen around here in five minutes?"
Beast Boy pulled his face out of the floor and wiped the drool from his chin, grumbling into the back of his hand. "Lousy, twiggy little robo-hulking, dude-hogging so-and-so…"
As he pushed up his sleeves to fight his way back to his best friend's sickbed, a tantalizing scent stopped him cold. His blood simmered in his veins as his gaze followed the scent across the floor.
Starfire emerged from the hall. She walked—no, she glided, approaching Sickbay's doors with a tray of food balanced in her delicate hands. Her body flowed with each step, ebbing and surging like a golden sea of sensuality held at bay by thin, enticing lilac bindings. Waves of radiant hair rushed behind her, bouncing at the slightest movement of her head, of her perfect countenance and full, budding lips, of her fathomless green eyes that sparkled when they fell upon Beast Boy.
His heart raced from one side of his chest to the other as he drew himself upright. A long-buried hunger awakened in him, longing to taste the golden waves of the sea that captured and captivated his eyes. Dizzy with the hunger, Beast Boy tried to recall ever seeing such a refulgent beauty. But every face of every woman he had ever known became Starfire in his mind's eye. She was the only woman, the woman, a goddess descended as a gift to all of mankind.
The world shrank around Beast Boy, until all that remained was Starfire and the wretched distance that separated him from her. He floated toward her on jellied legs, his senses fixated upon every last intoxicating detail of her presence. "Hey, Kory," he murmured, pushing the words out of his mouth, which felt as though it were tumbling a million miles away.
Starfire started, her distant thoughts broken by Beast Boy's voice. The tray bounced in her grasp as she bumped back into the wall, suddenly noticing the shapeshifter approaching her. "Oh! H-hello, Gar," she said, tightening her voice.
His gaze pinned Starfire to the wall. Drifting toward her, he wondered how he could have gone so long without noticing her, or how she made him feel. Every moment of his life before this one felt like a waste now, and every moment after would be an opportunity, one he intended to seize. "What's up?" he said breathily, his fangs emerging from a lascivious smile.
"I was…I-I am bringing Victor a meal," she said. Tension strained across her body, making her tremble in his presence. Her pupils blossomed as he drew near. A sharp breath whistled through her teeth and swelled her chest as he rested a hand on the wall next to her, leaning close. Pearls of sweat emerged from her creased brow as she swallowed, and struggled to say, "I thought he might b-be hungry."
Beast Boy's gaze dropped, and then slowly climbed back to her pooling eyes, paying little attention to the tray of sandwiches trembling atop her hands. "It looks good," he purred. "Real good."
"It is…it is truly incredible, what has happened to Vic," Starfire said. She tried turning away from Beast Boy, and found she could not. His sculpted elfin features held her hostage. She felt the tension melt from her legs, trickling throughout her as tingling warmth that made her shiver.
"Getting your life back after so long…can't imagine what I'd do," he said. His other hand slapped the wall, boxing her in. His face hovered before hers, their noses brushing at the tips. "What would you do to feel alive, Kory?" he whispered.
The tray of food clattered to the floor, spilling sandwiches and tater tots across their boots. Starfire grasped Beast Boy by the jaw line, her fingers weaving through his shaggy green hair as she filled her mouth with his. Thundering heat seeped into her as she pressed herself to him, drinking in every sensation his body had to offer as she poured herself into his touch.
Beast Boy staggered back with the force of her kiss. His hands raced ahead of his confusion, cupping the curve of her hips, combing through her hair, and brushing up her sides. Her tongue danced with his. Her breath rolled across his face, flaring from her nose and escaping her lips in soft gasps. His mind reeled, unable to think, letting his body reply instead to her overwhelming passions.
Some distant, smothered part of Beast Boy's mind felt a cold puff of air across the nape of his neck. He paid the chill absolutely no thought, until the lights of Sector Prime began to flicker and buzz. The chill sharpened and spread, so much so that when Beast Boy at last pried his lips from Starfire's, his gasp emerged as steam. With Starfire still clutched to him, he turned his head toward the chill.
Raven stood behind him, her eyes wide with shock. A black portal closed behind her on the wall. She held a bundle of gray sweat clothes rested on the shelf of her stomach. Her lips had been pressed into a whitish line, but slackened into a sneer at Beast Boy's glance.
"Please don't let me interrupt," she said, and hugged the bundle of sweats tighter to her chest.
The sight of Raven sent a cold shock through Beast Boy that robbed him of Starfire's heat. He jerked out of Starfire's embrace, tripping over his own shoes, with Starfire's scent still reeling in his nose. "Raven!" he cried. "No, that wasn't…I mean, we weren't…"
Raven twisted her head to one side with a sniff. "I was just bringing our recently-dead friend some clothes. By all means, continue your tonsil hockey." She waddled toward Sickbay, leaving Beast Boy in her lurch.
Thrust from Beast Boy's arms, Starfire staggered back. Her senses returned to her in a rush, pouring through her arrested desire to create a heated swirl of vertigo. She fought to keep her legs underneath her as the world tilted from side to side. "I…I am not…"
"Raven, it wasn't like that," Beast Boy insisted, scrambling after Raven. He clutched his temples in confusion, and added, "I mean, it was, but I wasn't…I don't really remember."
"Really? Let me help," Raven snapped without looking back. "You had your tongue buried in Koriand'r's mouth. The end. Now leave me alone."
"It wasn't my—"
"I promise you, Beast Boy, I don't care," Raven told him. She tried to escape him, but her waddle couldn't outpace his long legs. "Why don't you just—"
The thump of flesh and bone on tile made Raven stop. She turned, already annoyed that Beast Boy would throw himself on the ground in a cute ploy for her attention. Then she saw Beast Boy confused and upright. She looked past him, and gasped.
Starfire lay sprawled across the floor. Her whole body trembled. Paleness tarnished the golden color of her skin as she stirred and moaned.
"Koriand'r!" Raven cried. She shoved Beast Boy aside and careened through the air, and landed in a stumble at Starfire's side.
The Tamaranian felt hot to the touch. A thin sheen of sweat clung to her golden skin, making Raven's hand clammy as she brushed Starfire's hair back. Starfire's face unclenched at Raven's touch. She looked up at Raven with a pleading look, and whispered, "Please…keep Gar back…"
Raven threw out her hand, pushing her soul-self through the air. It manifested in front of Beast Boy as a rectangular wall, which he struck chin-first at a dead run.
"Stay back, Garfield," Raven commanded, letting the wall dissipate. She ignored his pained grunt and turned back to Starfire. Smoothing back Starfire's damp hair, she opened her ethereal senses as wide as she dared, searching her friend for some sign of ailment. "Don't worry, Koriand'r. You're going to be all right."
Craning his neck and rubbing his jaw, Beast Boy strained to catch a glimpse of Starfire around Raven's pregnant shape. "What is it? I didn't—"
"Go get help," Raven snapped over her shoulder. "Now!" she shouted, bursting distant light fixtures with the force of her urgency.
As Beast Boy bolted toward Sickbay, Raven turned back to Starfire. Raven eased Starfire's hands onto her stomach, intertwining their fingers. With a deep breath to steel her nerves, the sorceress lowered her psychic walls, ready to magically siphon whatever was ailing her friend.
Readied for pain, Raven shook as a wash of ravenous heat poured into her through Starfire's touch. The sensation overcame her, consuming Raven's whole body with a throbbing fire.
She wrenched away from Starfire with a cry and fell back onto the floor, staring at Starfire's tensed face. The echo of Starfire's need rang in Raven's ears, as compelling as any feeling she had ever had for herself. "…Koriand'r?" she breathed. "What's happening to you?"
He staggered into the street, leaving silver footprints on the sidewalk. Glimmering motes rained from the hem of his lab coat, spattering across the curb behind him. Sweat poured down his face to become a metallic sheen that dribbled into his panting mouth.
Focus. He had to focus his thoughts. The only true miracle in existence, the only thing worth respecting, was cognizance. Each human was a spark of self-awareness wrapped in a treacherous, deteriorating shell of meat. But he had transcended such limitations. He had become cognizance itself, a being shaped by his own thoughts.
Yet he was incomplete. Something in his transcendence had gone awry. His mind struggled, and as a result his new body degenerated with each step he took. And so he had to keep his focus on a single goal.
An oncoming car screeched behind him, braking hard while he trudged in the middle of the lane. The sedan's wheel wells shrieked as it surged to a stop, its bumper mere inches from the back of his knees. The noise sapped his concentration, and with it the strength in his misshapen legs. As he turned to face the distraction, his balance gave out, forcing him to brace himself on the hood of the car.
A row of belligerent cars braked behind the stopped sedan, all of them honking in indignation. The downtown traffic coming from the other direction slowed to watch the spectacle of a single man bringing traffic to a dead stop.
The driver of the sedan rolled down his window and craned his head out of the car. "Hey! Are you nuts, walking in the street like that? You could have died!"
He sagged against the hood. His hands suffered for his lapse in concentration, losing more of themselves to the hot surface of the car. Fleshy matter drizzled between his fingers, turning silver as it trickled down the curve of the hood. Through his blurry vision, he saw the irate driver gape in shock at him, and realized that the rest of his features must have deteriorated as well.
Rearing back, he willed his hand into a sharpened pick, and then plunged the appendage through the hood. Its metal puckered noisily as his arm punched into the interior of the engine. His arm softened at once into a tendril, which he used to seek the battery of the car.
The motorist abandoned the car with a cry and stumbled toward the street. He ignored the insignificant pest, focusing instead on the flow of electricity he sapped from the battery. His thoughts sharpened, and his shape hardened, as the battery's charge drained into him.
Once more himself, Smith drew a ponderous, ultimately unnecessary breath. The air did nothing for his new body, but the familiar act helped him collect his thoughts.
Until he became whole, his new body would be a problem. He would need more electricity to keep himself powered, and more matter to replace the rapid loss of his material. At the rate he needed both, he would never make it to his destination intact.
As he drew his arm out of the hood, he looked over the top of the sedan and saw the long line of honking, stymied cars, each with its own battery and mass to spare. He looked past them, and saw the traffic lights of the intersection glowing with electrical connectivity, their alloys just begging to be broken down into available material.
Resolute, he pushed himself off of the hood and circled the sedan, flexing his hands in anticipation. Excess matter and power would compensate for the bleed rate of both, ensuring that he would reach his goal. He would reach the Stone boy and complete himself.
The honking grew louder, with angered shouts joining in. The protests of the afternoon's rush hour made Smith smile. These plebeians were mere distractions to be ignored. And should any of them insist upon being hindrances to his goal…
Well. People were miracles of cognizance wrapped in meat. And meat was just a form of matter. And he needed matter, regardless of its source.
Victor scratched at his chest through his sweatshirt, which stretched across his build, barely covering his navel, its sleeves squeezing his forearms above the wrist. The poor fit didn't surprise him, considering the borrowed nature of his clothes and the fact that he still stood wider and taller than anyone else on the team. The pants Raven had given him were worse. Their legs gave up halfway down his calves, leaving his ankles open to the breeze of the Compound's air conditioners.
As his fingernails dug through the soft gray fabric, he let his mind wander through the rest of his body. The simple sensation of clothes on his skin perplexed him. He had forgotten the subtle, confining feeling of being covered everywhere.
He felt his chest thumping under his fingertips. Pressing down, he followed the rapid beating of his heart, enthralled by the simple rhythm. A day ago, he could have accessed his hemotrolium pump, speeding it up or slowing it down as the stress of a situation required.
"Dude, are you okay?" Beast Boy asked, breaking Victor's spell.
Victor pulled his hand from his chest and looked down, spying Beast Boy's odd expression. Glancing self-consciously, he saw the rest of the Titans gathered outside of sickbay watching him with mixtures of concern and curiosity. He'd almost forgotten why his heart was racing. He dropped his hand and felt heat spread across his cheeks as he said, "It's…nothing."
"Man," Beast Boy swore, leaning back against the wall with his hands laced behind his head. "What the hell is up with karma? Are we just not allowed to have a good day?"
Folding his arms, Bushido said sagely, "The universe is an indifferent, impartial arbiter, Gar. It does not play favorites."
"Maybe it should go 'not play favorites' with someone else for a change," she shapeshifter grumbled.
Seated cross-legged on the floor, Raven cracked a single eye to glare at the grumbler. "Koriand'r was doing fine until you kissed her. Do you think maybe there's a correlation there?"
"For the millionth time," Beast Boy groaned, and rubbed his face, "I barely even remember it. Something came over me, like a…like mind control, or something. Hey! Could that be it? Maybe something's messing with our heads! That could be what's making Kory sick!"
Tek patted her fingertips across her head, frowning. "My head feels okay. I mean, it's still messed up, but no more than usual. Did you really kiss Kory, Gar? I didn't think you—"
"I don't!" he exploded, making Tek flinch. "At least, I didn't think I did. Not that she isn't cute as a puppy's buttons and all, but I'm not…" He growled in frustration, clutching his hair. "This doesn't make any sense. And it's making my head hurt."
"It's called 'thinking,'" Raven told him, closing her eyelid to resume her silent meditation. "It's what you weren't doing when you accosted Koriand'r."
Victor felt his pulse rising at the anger crisscrossing between the pair. The mild excitement made his head swim, forcing him to lean back against the wall. Shaking himself lucid, he snapped, "Everybody just calm down. Doctor Brown took care of Kory for six months. If anyone can figure out what's wrong with her—"
He let the thought finish itself as Sickbay's doors opened. The Titans leapt into a circle around the door, barely affording Doctor Brown enough room to exit. She pressed them back with an upraised hand, and collected her thoughts with a sigh.
"Koriand'r is going to be fine," she said. "She's resting now. I've put her on a saline drip and given her a mild sedative to help her relax."
Grateful relief held their questions at bay for nearly half a second. Then they bombarded Brown with inquiry. They clamored all at once with such volume that Brown held up her hand again until she could hear herself think. She massaged the bridge of her nose, and said, "One at a time, at a reasonable volume, please."
"What happened to her?" Tek blurted. "Did she get hurt this morning?"
"Was it something I brought back?" Victor asked with sinking fear. "Could whatever changed me be attacking Kory?"
"Did something happen with her mouth…area…?" Beast Boy asked, rubbing the back of his neck.
"No, and no," Brown told Tek and Victor. With a glance askance at Beast Boy, she added, "and a third, somewhat confused, 'no.' Koriand'r isn't suffering from any sort of malady, per se. She…"
Brown's hesitance made Victor frown. "Doc, whatever it is, we can handle it. I guarantee, it can't be the weirdest thing we've heard today," he said with a note of chagrin, and looked down at his own hands. Sobering, he added, "Kory's our friend. If something's wrong, we have to know. We'll do whatever it takes to help her. Please."
"Koriand'r is in heat," Brown told them.
The Titans met the news with glassy stares and quizzical frowns. Bushido merely tapped his chin at the news. Raven stood by, silently considering Sickbay's doors, her gaze hard and piercing. Victor glanced to either side, and then dug his pinky into the recesses of his new ear. It came out waxy, but otherwise fine. "Did you just say...?"
"Heat? Not…not like 'temperature' heat, right? Like, she's not running a fever, she's…" Tek trailed off, turning beet red. She tried to turtle her head down between her shoulders.
"Her hormone production is characteristic of an estrus phase," Doctor Brown said. Sighing, she added, "This is well beyond my field of expertise…as is so much of what you bring to my attention. But from my experience with Koriand'r's physiology, I can say with modest certainty that Tamaranians do not menstruate like humans do."
Raven and Tek shared glances of confusion, while Victor and Beast Boy squirmed at the word "menstruate." Bushido, however, lifted his eyebrow in interest. "Fascinating, especially in that we never considered the possibility, given the available contrast," he noted with a wry glance to the pair at his side. They offered him irritated glares in return. "But why wouldn't she…?"
Heaving another sigh, Brown said, "If I had to offer a hypothesis at the moment, I would posit that Tamaranians evolved from some form of feline. Hence, and estrous cycle instead of a menstruation cycle. Her body reabsorbs its uterine lining during each—"
"Nyah-ah! Okay! That's more than plenty enough too-much-information." Beast Boy shouted, waving his hands. "If I wanted to know more about that kind of stuff, I wouldn't have slept through The Vagina Monologues."
Raven's hand upbraided the back of Beast Boy's head. Then she asked Brown, "You're sure she's okay? Would something like that make her lose consciousness? Or could it have been something else?" she asked, and shot Beast Boy a venomous look.
"She's physically fine," Brown explained. "Her fainting seemed to have been caused by an undue amount of stress, probably brought on by the sudden biochemical and emotional changes in her body compounded with the fact that you kids continually insist on throwing yourselves in front of danger."
Tek fidgeted, still beet-red. She could not bring herself to lift her eyes above Brown's shoes, let alone meet the doctor's gaze. "Is there…something we can do for her?"
"Probably, but nothing I can recommend in good conscience to minors," Brown said with an arched eyebrow. "Let her rest, keep her calm and stress-free, and she should be her old self again in no time."
"Thanks, Doc," Victor said.
She jabbed his broad chest with a scathing finger, and said, "Do not think for even one second that this little crisis of Koriand'r's has made me forget about you. You will not set one foot outside of this Compound. You would still be in there if not for your Y-chromosome," she snapped, and pointed at Sickbay.
He raised his hands. "I—"
"No. You stay. You lie down. You do absolutely nothing to strain yourself in any way, mentally or physically. I will be back tomorrow with three trucks filled to the very brim with analytical equipment," Brown told him. "We are going to test and test and test and test you until I am one hundred percent certain I know just what the hell has happened, and that you are going to be all right."
"But—"
Her look snapped his jaw shut. Sweeping her blistering gaze across the rest of the Titans, she said, "Not one foot outside of this building. If his littlest toe so much as crosses that threshold, I will hold the rest of you personally responsible. And powers or no powers, I will make you all regret it."
Tek jumped forward and trapped Victor's arm in a hug. "Don't worry, Doctor Brown. Vic's going to take it easy until you say otherwise." As Victor tried to protest again, she added, "And he can't argue, because I can beat him up super-easy now. Isn't that right?" she asked him sweetly.
Doctor Brown imparted one final look of warning upon them, and then clipped out of the security door. The thick hatch swung shut behind her, hissing as it locked.
Tugging on Victor's arm, Tek said, "You heard her, big guy. C'mon, let's go put that new digestive tract of yours to the test. You need to keep up your strength, and I think there're a few leftover burgers in the fridge that could help with that."
Victor frowned in thought, ignoring her insistent tugs. He glanced back across Sector Prime, and then down at his own hand. Clenching his fist, he looked up suddenly, and said, "Wait a minute. Where in the hell…?"
Without warning, he broke out of Tek's grasp and marched down the length of Sector Prime. His bare footfalls echoed across the hall. Stunned, Tek watched him go, and then ran after him, crying for him to slow down.
Raven rolled her eyes at the wayward pair. When she turned back to Sickbay's doors, she saw two unwelcome sights drifting toward its doors. A wall of soul-self flew from her hand to bar their way. "Absolutely not," she told Bushido and Beast Boy.
Bushido turned, his face stricken with mild disappointment. "We have the opportunity to learn firsthand about extraterrestrial physiology. As a developing member of the intergalactic community, isn't it important that we, as earthlings, learn about our differences and similarities with other sentient species?"
"I just want to make sure she's okay," Beast Boy pleaded. "I mean, she fainted right after I… I just want her to know that I'm sorry, and that I never meant to—"
"No," Raven said flatly, and folded her arms. Her soul-wall dissipated as she fixed each of them with a look. "I don't care how curious you are," she told Bushido, and then swung her cold eyes upon Beast Boy to add, "or how horny 'you' are. Sickbay just became women-only until I tell you otherwise."
Beast Boy's ears drooped. He slunk back, shrinking from Raven's glare. Bushido merely nodded in acquiescence. "I'll respect your wishes, galactically shortsighted though they might be."
Rolling her eyes again, Raven stalked into Sickbay. She pointedly ignored the hurt green gaze following her into the chamber, and slapped the doors closed.
Shucked from her boots and bracers, Starfire lay atop one of the biobeds. Her vital signs pulsed softly in the panel above her bed, which pipped to the tempo of her heartbeat. The pipping quickened as Starfire twisted her head away from the closing doors, curtaining her face behind her hair.
"Please go away," Starfire whispered as Raven waddled to her bedside.
Raven tapped the biobed's display. She didn't fully understand its readings, but the numbers remained a healthy, steadfast green, which meant the computer considered Starfire's vitals acceptable. "I don't plan on staying long," Raven grunted.
"I do not wish to be seen," croaked Starfire, still averting her features from Raven.
Puckering her face, Raven glanced at the back of Starfire's head. "With a uniform like that, I didn't think exhibition was a problem of yours," she said. The sorceress scrolled through a series of displays on the readout, and continued, "Look, I'm the last person to talk about team spirit. But this reticent act you've been putting on since you came back is starting to infringe on my trademark demeanor."
Starfire refused to reply. She curled onto her side, drawing her knees up toward her chest to distance herself from Raven.
She rested her hand atop Starfire's pillow, waiting for any sign of change from Starfire. Somberly, she said, "I don't care what Doctor Brown said. You're not well, and you need to let us help you. You could at least stop hating us long enough for us to…"
A wet, soft gasp shook Starfire's shoulders, and made Raven pull her hand back in surprise. Raven staggered at a sudden, torrential despair that roiled up from Starfire's spirit. The despair festered in the air between them, smelling stale to Raven's ethereal senses, as though Starfire's very feelings had been bottled and aged for a short eternity. Wisps of other emotions broke through the thick cloud hovering around them, none so strong as a sense of humiliation that seeped through Raven's psychic walls.
"Koriand'r?" Raven whispered. "Are you…embarrassed?"
Starfire rolled over on the bed, facing Raven at last. Tears cut her cheeks as she hugged her chest. "I am ashamed," she said, her voice shaking.
"About this?"
"About everything!" Starfire snapped. Furious, she scoured her face with the back of her arm, drying her scowl. "I tried to be strong. I felt my Quickening approach, and I knew there was nothing I could—"
Raven held up a hand. "Whoa. Slow down a minute. Quickening? Is that what Doctor Brown told us about?"
Reddening, Starfire nodded. "The women of my planet Quicken once each year. There is some matter of ritual and tradition, though not to the degree to which earthlings might ascribe such a…occurrence."
With a rueful look, Raven asked, "They don't all go through it at the same time, do they?"
"No. It can differ between individuals. It is typically seen as the last hurdle to physical maturation." Starfire's eyes dropped as she considered her body stretched across the biobed. "With training and focus, a warrior can overcome the biological imperatives of the Quickening. But the first time is…difficult. New, and unfamiliar. Not many are capable of overcoming the needs of their first Quickening. But I thought that I…"
Raven watched Starfire trail off into silence. "You thought that by bottling up like that, you could keep this 'Quickening' from overwhelming you. That's why you've been so withdrawn the past few months, hasn't it?"
In a small voice, Starfire said, "That is…part of it." Her eyes welled again, forcing her to blink hard. "After my failure with Robin, I wanted…I needed to be strong again. And for a time, I felt as though I could outlast this physical inconvenience. But seeing him again…"
A soft snort flared Raven's nose. She rested a hand on her belly, and said, "If there's one thing I've learned the hard way, it's that hormones always win in the end. Especially if you think you have them under wraps."
Starfire's cheeks dimpled for the first time since her return. The sight of her friend's smile warmed Raven far more than she ever thought such a simple gesture could.
But the smile vanished too quickly, replaced with worry that filled Raven's otherworldly senses. "I failed. I am now as weak as I ever was," she muttered, and massaged the bridge of her nose. "Bedridden and helpless again. I have shamed myself in front of my dearest friends."
"Get over yourself," Raven said, snapping Starfire's eyes wide open. "Everyone under this roof has lost face. Beast Boy is a veritable fountain of embarrassment for himself and everyone around him. Victor just flashed all of us not half an hour ago. I once caught Ryuko crying during a cable showing of 'You've Got Mail.' Allison can't go twelve minutes without blushing about something stupid. And you know those pants Victor is wearing? Those are mine…and the waist is too big on him."
"…you are right, of course," Starfire said with a sigh. "I just cannot help but feel—"
"You're the strongest, bravest girl I've ever known. Oftentimes to annoying extents. And I've never thought otherwise for a second," Raven said flatly. "You ask anyone outside. I would bet every pair of maternity pants in my closet that they'd all say the same thing."
Starfire's smile returned, halved. "If you are so certain, why not wager something to which you ascribe real value?"
Raven's eyebrow bounced. "I said they were embarrassing. I didn't say they weren't comfortable."
Starfire lay back, closing her eyes. Sweat began to bead on her golden forehead. ""I am so, so sorry, Raven. I have been a terrible friend," she said.
Lumbering to the small sink at the counter, Raven wetted a paper towel from the wall dispenser. She wrung it out, saying, "I think you'll be okay. Everyone will understand. Some of the boys might crack a few jokes, but that's only because they're idiots."
"No," Starfire said, as Raven returned to her side. "I have been a terrible friend to you. I kissed Gar. I have come between you both, and feel awful as a result. My stomachs have not stopped churning since."
"Anyone who kisses Beast Boy is going to feel awful," Raven said, and dabbed at Starfire's forehead. Then she froze. Her hand clenched, wringing droplets into Starfire's eyes with the inadvertent motion. "What do you mean, 'between' us?"
Starfire blinked. "I—"
"No. Just 'no,' Koriand'r. If you want him, you can have him," Raven said. She mopped up the stray droplets on Starfire's face.
"I do not believe there was any real physical attraction," Starfire explained. "The Quickening induces a release of pheromones in Tamaranian females. I did not think humans could detect such a change, but it seems at least one of them can. And after the way you acted after the kiss, I feared the worst. Especially considering how close you both have become," Starfire said, and flinched at Raven's swiping towel.
"I didn't act any…" Raven paused, and recalled her reaction to Starfire's kiss with Beast Boy. It hadn't seemed unusual to her then, and still didn't.
But as she considered the moment, forcing herself to replay the events objectively, Raven saw an inkling of what Starfire saw. She continued on, recalling each moment with Beast Boy up to that very moment. A realization struck her with such force as to make her shudder. She buried the thought deep, leaving it for a much later date, and turned back to Starfire.
"What about you, anyway?" Raven asked. "I know you wanted to look strong, but you have to know that none of us ever thought you were weak. Not even for a second. And especially not for…this. Why work so hard on fighting something you don't have to fight? It seems like a waste of energy."
Starfire's expression darkened. She turned away again, her muscles tensing as she hugged herself again.
Raven tossed the paper towel in the medical waste box on the wall nearby. "I could go get him if you want," she said.
"No!" Starfire cried, grasping the edges of her bed as she flung herself upright. She saw Raven motionless at the wall, and calmed. "No," she said. "Please keep him out of here. I do not wish to see him."
"Why the hell aren't you down there?"
Victor's shout filled the Bay, rebounding across the walls and the skeletal vehicles parked inside. The reverberant question made Robin look up from his bike, which he had parked in the shadow of the unrepaired Icarus. He watched Victor stalk into the Bay, and then returned his attention to the gas pump hooked into the bike.
Tek scrambled through the closing hatch. She chased after Victor, and said, "Um, Vic? Remember what Doctor Brown said? This kind of seems like the opposite of all that relaxing and not-stressing that she told you to—"
"You two-faced, tousle-headed, shrimpy son of a bitch! Get your ass down to that sickbay!" Victor bellowed.
"I see you're feeling better. I helped myself to some gasoline. Didn't think you'd mind," Robin said. He hauled the nozzle out of his bike and capped its tank. The cap retracted back into the bike's armor, where a panel slid to hide it from exposure.
Stomping to the other side of the bike, Victor snapped, "No, I don't mind. What I do mind is you bugging out without so much as a goodbye while Kory's in her sickbed! What the hell is wrong with you?"
Robin met the outburst with a calm, empty flash of his mask. "Is she going to be all right?" he asked.
"Yeah, but she—" Victor began.
"Is there anything I can do to help?" Robin butted in coolly.
His face wrenching with frustration, Victor said, "It would do her a world of good if she saw another friendly—"
"So, 'no.' Then it's time for me to go," Robin said. He leaned down and ducked his cropped hair into his helmet. Clasping its strap under his chin, he gave the pair a nod, and then swung his leg over the bike.
Victor planted his bare foot on the Redbird's armored fender as its engine roared to life. Reaching down, he twisted Robin's hand, forcing the throttle back and squeezing the brake. "You're not driving away from me, dude," Victor snapped.
"I think what Vic means is that he'd really like for you to stay," Tek said quickly.
Lifting the visor of his helmet, Robin leveled his mask at Victor's scowl. "You need to get your foot off my bike. Right. Now."
"What Tim means is, you don't need to sound so aggressive," Tek stammered to Victor with a waning smile. "I mean, we're all friends here."
"You get your ass back downstairs, and you stay put until I say you can go," Victor said.
"We need your help, because things have been so crazy, and we're a little short-staffed at the moment," squeaked Tek. "Everybody's gotta pitch in, right?"
Robin crossed his arms. "I'm not on your team. I'm not on anyone's team."
"But he sure is happy to help out! Remember how he saved your life, sort of, just a few hours ago?" Tek said.
Victor ignored her, leaning down across the Redbird's handlebars. "I had you pegged as an obsessive asshole, man. But I didn't think you were totally self-centered, too. Don't you even care about your friends anymore? Why did you even come back?"
"I think—" Tek began.
"You want some help? Fine." Robin whipped his cape aside and dug into his utility belt. He drew out a crumpled metal shard, which he tossed to Victor. "Here's some advice: step back from your team for a second and take a long look in the mirror, Vic. You've got bigger issues than a sick Tamaranian and a staffing shortage."
As Victor bobbled the metal shard, Robin slammed his helmet visor back down, and gunned the Redbird's engine. The roar startled Victor off of the bike. Twisting the throttle, Robin peeled a black track on the floor as he shot forward. He spun down the Bay's exit ramp, disappearing from sight around the tight turn. The distant sound of the automated ramp at the end of the tunnel swallowed the Redbird's peal.
Tek and Victor stared at the empty Bay ramp, the latter lost in furious thought, and the former too nervous to speak. Finally, Tek ventured, "I think what he meant was—"
"Skip it, kid. I know exactly what he meant," Victor said. Then he spun on his heel and marched out of the Bay.
Tek caught up to him in the corridor leading back to Sector Prime. "Vic, wait! He wasn't exactly wrong, you know. He was a jerk about it, yeah, but…" she called after him.
"Don't go there, Allie," Victor said to the corridor ahead of him.
She ran around him, and backpedaled in front of him with her arms outstretched. "Would you please stop for a minute? You've been go-go-go all day now!"
"Who's on monitor duty right now? I should check in and…" He stared at his left arm for a moment, and then shook his head clear with a growl.
Tek braked suddenly, forcing him to a stop. He just avoided plowing through her sour expression by the tips of his toes. Tek glared, and said, "I turned the TroubAlert system off."
"You what?" Victor exclaimed.
He pushed past her, stalking down the corridor at a furious pace. Jogging after him, Tek snapped, "Vic, we have enough to deal with right now without looking for more trouble!"
"We have a responsibility to this city," Victor said.
"Stop it!"
Tek's shrill command froze Victor at the edge of Sector Prime. He turned, and felt a jolt of surprise at the anger glimmering in Tek's glare. The metal shard bit his palm as his fists clenched.
Throwing up her hands, Tek exclaimed, "What in hell is wrong with you, Vic? Look at yourself! Look what happened to you today? And you're worried about Kory? You're worried about the city?"
"Kory's my friend! And the city needs us," he insisted.
"Let us worry about Kory! Let us worry about the city!" Tek shouted, twisting her whole body with the force of her voice. Her face flushed red as she stamped her foot with each sentence. "Stop acting like you're okay! You're made of tiny robots! You're all fleshy and gorgeous and humany, and you don't even care! What's wrong with you?"
"Nothing's wrong with me!" Victor shouted back, and pounded the wall with his fist. "Something happened. Fine. I'll figure it out later! I'm still part of this team, and I'm gonna do my job, whether you like it or not!"
"Augh!" Grasping her hair, Tek spun and marched away, growling through her teeth. Snatches of actual language emerged through her gnashing rant. Victor clearly heard his name, along with several unflattering adjectives that made him cringe.
Groaning, Victor made his way up to Ops. The balcony was empty and dark, its holographic map absent. The console screens sat blank until he plopped down into the center seat.
As he reached for the keyboard, he saw red on his fingers. He paused, opening his hand. The shard Robin had given him sat in his palm, smeared in blood. The shard peeled out of his stinging hand, revealing a pair of shallow, oozing cuts underneath. He flexed his hand, hissing at the sting. The blood trickled across the lines in his hand, trailing back to his wrist to tickle the skin on his arm.
He lowered his palm, stricken by the sight of it, and looked to the shard instead. It took Victor a moment to recognize the metallic fragment as part of the canister that had held his father's project. A shred of whitish sticker clung to the fragment, containing a sliver of the canister's label.
A single whole word had survived the label's tearing. The rest of its information had survived only in fragments beginning or ending at the shred's edge. Victor wiped the label with his thumb, and read the unfamiliar word aloud. "Technis…"
"What's that? A new trance band?"
Beast Boy's voice turned Victor in his seat. He found the shapeshifter leaned against the wall, his shoulder resting underneath the Titans' sigil inscribed into the metal paneling. A curious look lifted Beast Boy's eyebrows as he laced his hands behind his head.
"It's…nothing," Victor decided. He tossed the shard onto the console and swiveled around. "What are you doing up here? You're not on duty."
"I'm just hiding. I don't want to name any names, but a certain pregnant hurricane is gunning for me, and not in any good ways. I figure if I keep my head down, maybe she'll forget why she was mad at me." Groaning, Beast Boy added, "Not like I can figure out what I did, anyway. But it must have been big. She hasn't been this mad since I accidentally used her book as a napkin."
"Girls, huh?" Victor said, and sank back into his seat. "Allie is mad at me for just doing what I do. She thinks this whole thing today should have me freaking out like she is."
"Heh." Beast Boy swiped his nose, chuckling along with Victor. He sighed, and said, "Uh, Vic? Why aren't you?"
"Hmm?"
"Why aren't you freaking out?" Beast Boy asked. "I mean, sure, miracles happen to us all the time, blah, blah, blah. But, uh, this is huge. This is huger than huge, it's ginormous. And you're not even acting like you got a new haircut or anything."
Victor rolled his eyes, swiveling away. "Oh, hell. Not you too, Salad Head. I do not need this right now."
Beast Boy pushed off the wall. "Yeah, you kind of do. You got your body back, dude. Dance a jig. Go poop for the first time in three years. This is a big deal. It's gonna change everything for you."
"This doesn't change anything!" Victor growled. He mashed the console keyboard with his palm, leaving a bloody handprint as the screen flashed online. "I'm not going anywhere. Just leave it alone."
Frowning, Beast Boy said, "Yeah. Okay, Vic."
The moment turned to uncomfortable silence as neither could think of anything to say. Seeing his friend fidget, Victor said, "So did you seriously kiss Kory? That seems so…wow."
Rifling his green hair, Beast Boy said, "Yeah. I barely remember anything. She came around, and then there were legs, and boobs, and hair, and a really sweet perfume, and the next thing I know, Raven's there to catch our tongues mixing it up. I feel so stupid, but I don't even know how it happened."
Victor blew a long breath through his nose. "That's rough, dude. Why do you suppose Raven's so pissed at you?"
"Search me. Maybe if I just apologize, she'll lay off."
Turning back to the console, Victor shook his head. "A blind apology? Risky."
Beast Boy chuckled. "Dude, now that you've got your pivot wrench back, let the Doctor of Love clue you in to a little secret. It doesn't matter what an apology is for, as long as you make it sound super-sincere. Girls just care about you giving in, they don't care why."
Victor snorted. "Yeah, fake sincerity is always the way to—"
The instant he touched the keyboard, reactivating the Alert system, a terrible klaxon filled Ops. Both teens jolted as the holographic map flashed into existence over their heads. The map blurred and zoomed, expanding to fill the air with a diagram of a single city block.
A large, beacon flashed in the street map above Beast Boy, painting his wide eyes red with its urgency. "Dude, what the hell is that?" he exclaimed.
Victor hammered the console keyboard. Details flashed past his screen. As he read, frustrated by the sluggishness of his new eyes, he said, "I don't know, but look where it is."
Beast Boy followed Victor's pointing finger. Further up the holographic street from the red beacon sat a representation of Titans Compound. The beacon flashed less than three blocks away from the Compound's lobby entrance. As the two Titans watched, the beacon crawled closer.
"Right on our doorstep. Of course it is," Beast Boy grumbled.
To Be Continued