Dick did the only thing he could think of as the aliens raised their weapons towards him. He flung himself forward, diving off of the second story railing down into the shuttle bay.
Shots hit the railing right where he had been as he fell, the metal twisting and warping as it melted.
Kori shrieked, ducking back into the corridor they had entered from, the plasma splattering her arms.
Dick hit the ground hands-first, tucking and absorbing the impact in a fluid roll—his shoulder screaming where Koriand'r had landed that blow on him earlier in the city streets—and sprung back up onto his feet. His staff hit the ground a few feet away with a clang.
The explosives bounced away across the floor, rolling right towards the aliens. Little lights blinking on the timers he had just set.
Sixty seconds.
Victor's mismatched eyes zeroed in on the bank of command stations beneath the wide, curving window that formed the front of the spaceship. Stars glowed brightly in the dark expanse of the sky beyond the glass, the city glittering in a sprawling expanse of life beneath them.
He marched quickly forward, choosing one of the computers—seemingly at random—and knelt down in front of it, completely ignoring the screen covered in alien markings and the extensive array of flashing lights and buttons and dials. With a squeal of wrenching metal, he tore the front access panel away to reveal the electronics inside.
He leaned forward, peering into the cavity. The edge of the ripped sweatshirt he was still wearing snagged on the metal frame.
He let out an annoyed huff of breath, looking down at the remains of the garment hanging off of his bulky shoulders. The skin of his cheek darkened slightly with self-consciousness, knowing the others were looking, but he forced himself to ignore them and quickly tugged the sweatshirt off, finally revealing the full scope of the prosthetics across his torso.
His entire chest and abdomen had been recreated out of metal—from the base of his neck to the waistband of his jeans—panels of silver and black forming his torso, molded in the shape of muscles, cut out sections of complex blue circuitry arrayed across his pectorals.
He leaned in again, disappearing partially within the housing of the computer station, and pulled out a bundle of multicolored wires. One of his metal fingers popped open, splitting in half lengthwise, and rotated out, forming into a small tool like a pair of pliers. He clamped it onto one of the wires, piercing through into the conductive material inside, and a stream of information immediately presented itself to his senses.
The red light of his cybernetic eye brightened, his human eye drifting slightly out of focus.
Dick darted after the explosives, letting the momentum from the fall and the roll carry him forward.
The aliens fired at him again and he dodged to the side to avoid the blasts.
Burning light flared above him as Koriand'r shot back, and a ball of fiery brilliance struck the three aliens closest to him. They went down screaming as the heat engulfed them.
A pair of blades was already in Dick's hands, the winged shapes a familiar, reassuring weight, and he threw, hitting two more of the horde. They dropped their weapons as the blades sunk into the unprotected scaled flesh of their hands.
Fifty seconds.
Kori jumped off of the partially melted balcony, her body dropping through the air gracefully in a controlled movement. She landed by Dick's side, her arm already pulled back to swing, and hit another alien hard enough to send him careening back into the one behind him, both of them going down, his plasma gun flying out of his hands.
She summoned another blast of heat, and sent it after the aliens she had just dropped. They raised their arms in a futile attempt to shield themselves, their skin burning.
Dick managed to reach the first dropped explosive. He scooped it up and sent it sailing through a gap between the huge bodies closing in on him and Kori. It embedded into the interior wall of the second open shuttle craft.
A clawed hand struck him from the side.
He rolled with the blow, the specially molded body-armor of his suit dissipating most of the force and protecting him from being ripped open, but pain erupted through his body, his ribs aching. He hit the ground in a roll and flipped back to his feet immediately, sucking in burning breaths through clenched teeth.
Thirty seconds.
Gar watched Vic stare off into space, the metal panels of his body glinting under the lights, tiny blue circuits blinking on his chest, then eyed Raven, standing across the room from him, shadows still churning dangerously around her and her arms wrapped tightly around her chest. He then twisted in a circle, finally taking in the room they had locked themselves in.
More oversized control stations stood along the sides of the room, arrayed in a sort of semi-circle following the contour of the window, huge screens that looked like giant computer monitors set above them, flashing with bright lights and more undecipherable symbols. And in the center of the room sat an enormous, throne-like chair on an elevated platform, big enough to seat the massive alien that had charged them outside the doors to the bridge.
Gar blinked at the captain's chair, a smile slowly spreading across his face.
Dick was at a huge disadvantage. He was faster than his opponents, much more agile, but they were much stronger than him, and his staff was unreachable somewhere on the floor behind him. And he was so much smaller.
So he changed the rules.
The towering Gordanian swung again, growling as it lunged for him, red eyes burning in its broad, scaled face.
Dick sprung up into the air and landed on the long, muscled arm outstretched towards him. He scrambled up it and the alien shouted in complete shock, toppling forward, Dick's sudden weight throwing him off balance.
The alien went sprawling, and Dick launched off of the massive armored shoulders like a springboard, jumping lithely to the one closing in on him from the other side.
Kori let out a cry as a massive fist slammed into her chest, her movements not fast enough to dodge the blow. She went flying backwards across the metal floor, a flash of red hair and silvered armor in his periphery.
Twenty seconds.
"What is this?" Gar shot Raven an amused look as darkness seethed around her, his eyes twinkling with laughter. "A Star Trek knock-off?"
He hopped up onto the platform in the center of the room, grinning like a fiend. "Captain on the bridge!" he shouted with a mock salute, and jumped up to perch on the chair, his feet dangling a good two feet off the ground.
He looked down at his chest, frowning, and pinched the tight black material of his suit between two fingers. "Good thing none of us are wearing red."
Raven groaned, rolling her eyes, but the shadows rippling around her drew back, calming, sheathing themselves beneath her skin once more.
"You know what?" she snapped, doing her best to conceal the slight tremor in her voice. "Change back, I like you better when you can't talk."
He stuck out his tongue at her.
Dick yanked another charge from his belt as the Gordanians went after Koriand'r, but this time gave the center a sharp twist in the opposite direction—arming the device to explode on impact—and threw it as hard as he could.
He lept off of the shoulders he had landed on before the alien beneath him could react, tucking his body in and flipping backwards through the air, landing in a somersault that rolled him back up to his feet. The movements as easy and familiar to him as walking.
The control array of the left-most shuttle craft exploded with a boom as the device struck.
He fell back, stumbling as the explosion rocked through the shuttle bay, hands going wide for balance as bits of metal shrapnel sprayed across the ground.
The aliens shouted in alarm, frantically looking behind them as black smoke billowed out of the ruined interior of the shuttle craft.
Dick's eyes snagged on the small black and red shape of the second explosive he had dropped, the little yellow light blinking innocently, sitting where it had come to rest on the floor ten feet off to his side.
The light switched to red.
Ten seconds.
Dick raced towards it.
He leapt the last few feet and snatched the disk up off the floor, heartbeat thundering in his ears as one hand closed on the live explosive. He rolled and came back up in a smooth motion, free hand yanking another charge out from his belt and arming it.
He sent both discs flying.
They sliced through the air in two perfect arcs and vanished inside the open doors of the last two shuttles.
All four charges went off near-simultaneously.
The combined explosion made the ship shudder around them, the shock wave in the enclosed space knocking every single occupant off their feet.
The alarm finally went quiet, the sudden silence ringing through the room.
Then the entire ship shuddered.
A muffled boom reverberated through the room around them, the metal walls vibrating.
Raven and Gar looked at each other, the sharp sting of nerves zinging between them.
"I hope you're not dead!" Victor shouted through his comms link to Dick, his voice muffled from within the innards of the computer.
There was no reply. But he wasn't really listening, his attention completely focused on trying to decipher the unfamiliar computer systems.
"Damn it! This isn't—shit!" He growled in frustration and pushed back to his feet, moving to the next station in the line. He ripped that one open as well, flinging the panel halfway across the room, and started the process again.
"Disable the weapons systems, Vic," he snapped in a mocking voice. "You can do it, no problem! I'm just gonna run around and blow stuff up, because I'm Robin and I can do whatever I want!" He yanked another handful of wires out of the machine, grumbling to himself, then something that resembled a metal circuit board, his fingers running over its surface.
Gar let out a surprised snort of laughter.
"Yo! Beastie-boy!" Vic shouted. "Quit playing around and get your ass over to the door. Boy-genius needs to get back in somehow, and I want a warning when those aliens come back!"
"It's Beast Boy," Gar muttered, but he jumped down off of the central platform and jogged over towards the main doors.
Raven followed him, carefully skirting around the technology to avoid any more unintentional damage.
The force of the explosion threw Dick backwards, his ears popping from the violent change in pressure, and he tumbled helplessly across the ground, covering his head with both arms as bits of debris pelted him.
He opened his eyes as he came to a stop, his head ringing shrilly, the room spinning around him.
His staff was lying only a few feet in front of him, and he lurched back up to his feet, stumbling towards it, trying to get across the floor in a straight line.
Kori struggled up beside him as he scooped it off of the ground, the glow in her hair and eyes noticeably dimmed, a streak of orange blood dripping from a cut near her hairline.
A large group of the aliens regained their feet, rough voices muted by the ringing in his ears.
The two of them stepped closer together as the aliens converged slowly on them, eyes flicking back and forth over the group.
The aliens pointed their weapons at Koriand'r.
"Surrender," growled the one right in front of them, his red eyes fixed on Kori, showing a mouthful of sharp, pointed teeth.
The rough language was unintelligible to Dick, and he stood silently, staff at the ready, his head throbbing with each beat of his heart.
The alien jerked his head at him, still talking to Kori, taking another step forward. "And we will not kill your little friend."
She snarled back, heat shimmering around her hands as she retreated a step, her eyes flashing.
The alien smiled slowly. He barked out a command and all of them fired at once.
Gar and Raven hadn't even made it halfway across the room before a pair of angry, blazing red eyes locked onto them from the other side of the glass.
Gar froze in his tracks like a deer in headlights, staring at the doorway.
Faint traces of smoke still filled the corridor, giving the air a hazy quality, and the huge, ten-foot-tall monstrosity bared his teeth as he stomped forward, a group of slightly smaller alien fighters flanking him. They all looked distinctly worse for wear. Deep scratches like giant claw marks marred the panels of their metal armor, the scaled hide peeking out along their arms singed and blistered with burns.
The big one started shouting at the others around him, gesturing furiously at the doors.
Gar and Raven flinched back, darkness swirling around Raven as she prepared to raise another shield.
They fanned out, taking up positions facing the doors, their leader behind them, and all fired at once.
Blasts of plasma splattered one after the other across the doors, covering them in a wash of molten, fiery crimson, the metal struts glowing faintly with heat. The glass-like material of the doors held beneath the attack, obviously made of a much more resilient material than they appeared to be.
"Think they'll hold?" Gar whispered to her. His golden eyes fixed on the doors, his face serious.
"No." Raven said back, just as quietly. She shook her head, her stomach churning as she clenched her fists. "They'll get through eventually."
Koriand'r stepped forward, moving in front of Dick, throwing her hands up in front of her with a scream of desperation and fury.
The air shimmered and flexed, her eyes alight with neon-green fire, and her hair flared with an explosion of color and light, every individual strand glowing like the filament of a lightbulb as she wrenched all of the heat from that little bubble of space around her.
Dick's ears popped again as the pressure inverted, the air suddenly frigid.
The shots of plasma solidified in mid-air, the superheated globs of metal instantly cooling.
The deformed projectiles hit her skin with muted thunks, then dropped to splatter and crack against the floor, the metallic compound soft and brittle in its solid state.
The aliens gaped at her in shock.
She screamed again, and all of the heat she had absorbed blasted back out of her with the force of one of the explosions that had just rocked through the ship. Striking their attackers dead on.
The energy knocked them away from her in a tangle of screaming, flailing bodies, their armor glowing with heat, the very air around them erupting into flames.
Dick stumbled back, away from the intense burst of heat, and the sudden motion drew his eyes up, to a square grate set up high in the metal wall to his left.
"Star, up there!" he said quickly, pointing to the vent.
Kori gasped for breath, her whole body trembling with the effort of holding that much energy inside of her.
Dick twisted the two halves of his bo-staff, disconnecting them, and sheathed one at his hip. The other one he held up in front of him, aiming it at the grate and pressing a button in the center. A wire shot out of the middle of the stick, a metal claw-like grappling hook at the end.
It shot through the air, hitting the grate and passing through. When he released the trigger, the wire retracted, pulling taut, and the claw hooked into the slats in the metal. He yanked on the weapon with both hands, putting his body weight behind it, and the metal grate pulled free of the wall.
The claw and wire retracted with the press of another button and he ran forward, still slightly off-balance, staring up at the small ductway that had been revealed.
He aimed the grappling hook again, preparing to shoot it into the ducting to haul himself up, but Kori stopped him.
She reached out, grabbing onto Dick's wrist, and gritted her teeth, glowing eyes fixed on the vent up above them near the ceiling.
"Woah—" His gloved hand automatically closed around hers as she kicked off of the ground, his stomach lurching as they shot up into the air.
He quickly sheathed the other half of his staff and reached into one of the pockets at his waist with his free hand. He tossed another smoke bomb down below onto the scattered pile of groaning bodies, a cloud of gray quickly rushing to engulf the room.
Kori hovered just above the cavity in the metal wall, and Dick swung his body inside. The ventilation shaft was scaled up like everything else on the ship, and was plenty big enough for them to squeeze inside, but the aliens wouldn't be able to follow them.
Kori followed him a moment later, tucking herself in the small space behind him. She shuddered, closing her eyes briefly, her body reacting to the cramped, confined space.
When she opened them again, they were filled with a fierce determination, and she nodded at Dick, following him into the darkness.
Raven stood nervously behind one of the command stations, half crouched down, wide eyes fixed on the door as the aliens outside of the bridge continued to bombard it—trying to melt their way through.
Fear started to ratchet through her, her fingertips tingling, her heart racing inside of her chest. She tried to force it down, to remain calm, but her control was slipping. Shadows leaked out around her, darkening the floor as they twisted and stretched.
Gar watched her warily as her breathing started to speed up, his hazel eyes flicking to the dancing shadows around her and back up. He could hear her heart pounding from where he stood beside her, peering out from behind the other side of the counter-like structure, and could smell the sweat that was beading up on her skin. Fear was practically rolling off of her, her body quivering with it.
And that fear was somehow leeching out into the air, seeping out of her like a poison, and spilling over into him. His skin prickled with it, so much stronger than what he was feeling on his own, the hair on the back of his neck standing on end, his heartbeat picking up tempo.
His mouth opened before he had fully thought through what he was doing.
"Sooo…" he drawled casually, eyeing her, "…does this count as a first date?"
It took a moment for his words to register.
Raven spun to face him, her face a mask of shock. The shadows darkening around her stilled, her attention completely redirected, her fear momentarily forgotten.
"What?" she asked incredulously.
"You know, two people, doing an activity together." Gar gestured innocently between the two of them and grinned at his success, one eyebrow arching. "A date."
"This is not a date!" she hissed.
Victor's head popped up over the edge of the command station he was working at behind them, his eyes flashing to the two of them. He jerked back out of sight before Raven could see him.
"Oh shit, yeah I probably should have asked first, huh?"
Raven gaped at him.
Gar leaned in towards her, golden eyes twinkling, that insufferably innocent, saccharine smile spreading across his face. Elongated canines flashed against his green skin. "Hey Rae, wanna go out sometime?"
"You—I—No," she growled, struggling to find words adequate, and to her supreme horror, she felt her cheeks flush.
She turned back to face the door as he chuckled, muttering something under her breath, then suddenly stiffened.
She spun back around, her violet eyes practically glowing with indignation. "What did you call me?"
"What, Rae?" His eyes danced with silent laughter. "Well, everyone else was getting cool team nicknames, and I figured you wouldn't want to be left out."
"What are you, five? My name is Raven, not Rae, or whatever other stupid—"
"Yeah, I know," Gar rolled his eyes playfully. "But come on, cool team nicknames! And I like Rae, it sounds…" he scrunched his face as if in serious thought, then grinned. "Fun!"
He beamed at her.
A flicker of something warm danced on her skin, radiating out of him like light.
"So, about that date…"
She stared at him with a mixture of horror and shock, the feeling coming off of him making her entire body feel strange. She snapped her mouth closed, forcefully blocking whatever the emotion was out. "You're an idiot," she said darkly.
"Oh, come on, I'm hilarious."
Her eyebrows shot down, her eyes narrowing, energy prickling at her fingertips as she glared at him. "Don't make me send you to another dimension."
Gar laughed, a low ringing sound that sent another rush of light zinging along her skin. Then he blinked, the grin disappearing, looking at her with sudden apprehension. "Wait—can you do that?"
"Try me."
A soft sound of metal scraping against metal, and then a clatter of something small clinking as it fell.
Coming from above them.
Raven jumped, flinging herself backwards, the shadows stretching around her. Garfield tensed, looking up, lethal claws already forming at his fingertips.
"It's Dick," Victor called from behind them.
"Jeez." Garfield let out a heavy breath, his claws shooting back into his gloves, his posture relaxing. "Thanks for the warning!" he shot back at Vic.
"I'm kinda busy here!" Vic snapped. "In case you didn't notice!"
The grate set into the metal high above them released, swinging down to smack into the wall with a clang. Dick's head popped out, his black hair artfully disheveled, his mask and face smudged with soot and grime.
He scooted froward, his upper body emerging from the duct. He gripped the bottom edge of the metal opening with his gloved hands, and in a feat of flexibility the others were not expecting, ducked his head and rolled forward, flipping himself to land, cat-like, feet first on the floor.
"There's always a ventilation shaft," he said with a smirk.
Kori pulled herself out of the vent after him, reaching up once her torso was clear so she could free her long legs, then lowered herself gracefully down to the floor as if her body was weightless.
Dick looked around quickly as he and Kori jogged over to the others, taking stock of the room and the aliens trying to force their way in through the doors. The metal frames were beginning to warp, the clear glass-like panels turning opaque as they melted, the plasma eating through them like molten acid.
He put the two halves of his staff quickly back together, readying the weapon.
"How's it going, Vic?"
"I can't—ow—god damn it!" Victor jerked back violently, snatching his hand away from the internals of the machine like it had shocked him. "I'm trying!" he snarled in frustration, "but their stupid technology doesn't make any sense!"
He moved again, ripping open a third station, his movements sharper, more frantic.
"Well, keep—"
The muted voices coming through the doors changed, the pitch sharpening, and all of them spun to face the doorway.
The spot where the metal frames of the two doors met in the middle glowed cherry-red, the material around it bubbling and dripping like melted wax, a hole a handspan wide forming on each side.
"Get ready," Dick said firmly.
Gar shifted immediately, back into tiger form, and he, Kori and Raven spaced themselves out around Dick, Victor working furiously behind them as the doors finally gave way.
Both sides flew inwards, blasted out of their frames as the aliens slammed into them.
The leader—the captain—stepped forward, eyes fixed on the five of them in fury, twenty armed warriors following behind him.