7
It was probably inevitable that Cyborg would become the unwilling irregular liaison from the Titans to the Church of Starfire. Out of them all, he had the least baggage to deal with regarding religion, along with being the most well-informed on Christian social dynamics and organizational structures. So every month or so, when there was a call from the Church about whether exposing one's midriff publicly was a suitable gesture of holiness when undertaken by an eighty year old, or a supper gathering where the Church wanted the exact color id of the purple in Starfire's uniform for the tablecloths, it was not Starfire but Cyborg who handled it. He was able to talk to them without their interpreting every word he said as holy scripture, which the Titans started to realize was pretty useful after the third time the Church declared a food officially unholy because Starfire happened to mention disliking it. So, with an appropriate level of distance, dwindling publicity fixated on the spectacle, and no major catastrophes so far, the months went by normally, and the Titans were, with more than a bit of relief, able to focus on crimefighting. There was a little more offhand idle banter about theology, but four of the five had learned to hush up about such things when Robin was around, and that worked out well enough.
Then one day, the catastrophe that Robin had seemed to have been waiting for finally happened.
Cyborg listened carefully, asking Mrs. Hyeung to repeat what she'd said just in case he'd heard wrong. Nope. And the dramatic explosions and screams and other, less obvious sounds in the background certainly gave the necessary level of distress to the situation. Dang, Robin was not going to like this at all. Especially with Raven and Starfire off in Australia exorcising that poltergeist kangaroo.
"Robin, I hate to tell ya this, but apparently one of the congregation over at Star's church has gone totally bonkers," he informed his noble leader after squeaking gingerly into the gym.
Robin slammed down both the weights he'd been pumping with dual clangs, making Cyborg wince. No one should mistreat metal so callously. "I knew it! I knew it was only a matter of time! I told everyone to hide their virgins and goats, but no, they just..."
He winced and caught Robin by the back of his sweaty shirt as the boy was making his way out at top speed. "Dude. Relax. It's just a wacko without any powers or anything. Someone's second cousin who just went off his meds, apparently. No guns, no one even bruised so far. You've been working out for hours, you're exhausted. Lemme handle this one before you strain something important, like your lovemakin' muscles. Eh? Eh?" He grinned and elbowed the boy in the side, trying to force down Robin's mission mode state of mind with slightly perverse jolliness.
On understanding that it wasn't an Emergency emergency, but rather just a regular old emergency, Robin slowed down. He kept walking, but Cyborg was strong enough that the feet just kept moving in place. The shoes made cute squeaky sounds on the floor. "Actually Starfire has said she doesn't want to give herself up until the snarflox night of gooflogug," Robin said quite blankly.
"Huh. When's that?"
"I have no idea."
Cyborg considered how much luckier he was than Robin, to have plenty of cute non-alien babes interested in his artificial yet still oh so sculpted physique.
"Anyway, you're the liaison, it's your call and I trust you to make a fair one." A year ago maybe, definitely two years ago, Robin wouldn't have been able to say something like that. He'd come a long way. They all had. "Bu at least take Beast Boy with you. It's asking for trouble to go without any backup. And he can get you there faster than the car if you're willing to let a green pterodactyl play taxi."
As much as he loved his baby, Cyborg had to admit that was a fine idea. And superhero-quality gas was getting pricey these days. So he roused his green pal from a raspberry cookie dough-infused slumber and they zoomed off to the churchly trouble spot, while Cyborg did his best not to look down too much. It didn't help that Beast Boy squawked and pretended to almost drop him sometimes, just to mess with him. Little green jerk.
It wasn't hard to find the church from a bird's eye view. In fact, it was wayyyyy easier than Cyborg would have liked, because the chaos was spilling onto the streets and mucking up traffic for miles around. It was difficult to tell exactly what was going on, though. There were a few small fires, but nothing dangerous or arson-worthy. Folks were spread out all over the place in thick clusters. The ones who weren't near fires were mostly standing around with the inquisitiveness of people that figured trouble was in the area and would make a good show so long as they saw it coming, and more people were coming by on the edges just to see what the others were looking at. The firemen and police were already on the premises, but they'd had to park quite a ways back because of traffic and were having trouble making their way through the crowd.
"Beast Boy, go help those firemen get to the fires! I don't care if you have to go rhino, some of these buildings are wood, we don't want that spreading!"
"REEOOAAAWK!"
He was gonna assume that was a 'Sure thing, my very handsome and intelligent friend.' "But first, drop me off at..." He hesitated, bringing his electronic eye into the action to scan things with a bit more depth. Just on the off chance, he tried scanning for...
Bingo.
"Drop me off at the flailing guy with the tinfoil hat behind that building!" God bless crazy people for having their habits just like everyone else.
Although undubitably crazy and apparently destructive to the environment given the way he was running around kicking over trash bins and breaking windows, the wild-haired man wasn't without his manners. In fact, as soon as Cyborg landed, the man looked up at him with a grinning expression of welcome that Cyborg wasn't used to seeing from people he was expecting to have to disarm and hold down.
"BROTHER CYBORG! I'm so glad you're here!"
"Whoa, man, I think you're a little confused," Cyborg said, hastily holding out a hand to stop the approaching guy from doing... whatever it was he was gonna do with those outstretched arms. "For one thing, I happen to know we ain't brothers." Wrong skin tone for even the slang usage of the term.
"Oh, no no no, I meant Brothers in Christ," the man corrected. "I'm Edgar. We met when you first came to the Church, remember? Remember that big argument we had over whether fishnets were socially appropriate? And Starfire thought we were talking about fishing?"
"I do now," he replied with a grimace. "Look, are you the cause of all... this?" he asked with an indicative finger circling around. To drive the point home, a chicken with its tail on fire flew by, following by an angry cleaver-waving Korean man right on its heels.
"It's all for their own good, Cyborg! They wouldn't listen to my plan for baptizing the whole community to save their souls from eternal hellfire, so I had to stuff the paprika in that shih-tzu!"
Okay, he saw what kind of day this was going to be. Cyborg sighed and rubbed at his forehead, letting all the stress out. And then took a look around for anyone that looked like Mad Mod, just in case. No Mad Mod lookalikes. No British accents in the air. That was good, he could handle one lone whackjob without a magic zappy cane. "How were you gonna baptize the whole community, man? There's almost as many people in Jump and its suburbs as there are in New York."
Edgar blinked mildly. "I was going to redirect one of the rivers, so that the-"
"Right," Cyborg interrupted firmly, getting the gist. "It's not right to force your beliefs on other people, man. Come on, I'll talk you home and we can go get your meds. I think that'd be for the best, don't you?"
At about this point, Beast Boy landed behind him with an ungainly dinosaurian thump-flap before turning back to his usual impish self and hopping up on Cyborg's shoulder for a better look at the culprit. "Firemen all at the fires! This guy didn't do all this, did he?"
"Apparently."
"Wow, how?"
"I don't think that's really important right now, Beast Boy! Focus!"
"Fine, Robin."
Ow. That had been uncalled for. "So, Edgar, are you ready to go?" Cyborg held out a hand.
"Why would you want to stop the work of the Lord?" Edgar asked plaintively. "If I don't save people from themselves, who will?"
"Dude, you're not saving anyone, you're just causing trouble!" Beast Boy snapped. "If you ask me, you're the one who needs saving from himself!"
Edgar thrust out his well-shaved chin. "The Lord stands by those who treat their body as a temple and are well-groomed! Facial hair is as graffiti unto His sight, Second Thessalonians 6:14!"
"Hey, I can't help it if... Cy, is that really in the Bible?" Beast Boy asked plaintively. "
"Of course not!" He paused. "I'm like, ninety-nine percent sure, anyway."
"So it might be? I could use a straight answer here dude! Do you know how long it would take to shave my whole face?"
"You're not even Christian, what do you care?"
"Well, I might be some day, who knows? I don't wanna piss your God off just in case He's real!"
"Oh, and the garlic hot sauce water balloon last Monday wouldn't have pissed Him off, I'm sure..." Wait. Hold on. Getting distracted again. Had to be mature, had to be Robinly now. "So, Edgar-"
"Both of you are clearly not the good clean souls I thought you were," Edgar said with a pout that only served to make Cyborg even more suspicious of him. "Cyborg, why don't you have a cross nailed onto your metally bits?"
"Well, setting aside the fact that my parts are delicate, precision instruments and that calling them metally bits is kinda insulting to their craftsmanship, I'd have to say it's because I'm a superhero who happens to be Christian, and not a Christian superhero, you get it?"
"You're just an unbeliever in a true believer's clothing! Except you don't even HAVE clothing, so you're also a perverse NUDIST! J'ACCUSE!"
Beast Boy and Cyborg looked at each other, blinking in shared confusion.
Then Edgar kicked the weirdness up a notch, reaching behind him to heft up what appeared to be a mallet-shaped stack of Bibles wired, stapled and taped together. They all looked like the extra-scholarly study editions of Bibles, too, so the whole thing altogether was pretty big and heavy. Edgar's arms quivered just holding it.
"Hold still, O lost sheep! I will thump the sin out of you with the power of the Word of God!"
"HEY! THAT IS NOT HOW BIBLES ARE S'POSED TO BE USED!" Cyborg yelled in outrage as he zigged and Beast Boy squirreled and zagged, both of them avoiding the thump just in time. The next swing went for his legs, and he jumped over it and skeedaddled backwards, trying to calculate a power setting on his laser that would be right for knocking the nutcase out without doing any serious damage. Beast Boy went beaver and tried to gnaw through the Bible-mallet, but despite many valiant attempts, Edgar was swinging it too fast and too often, the weight of the thing having built up quite a bit of momentum despite Edgar's negligible upper body strength.
"In the name of the Christ, ye shalt wear abstinence rings and Jesus t-shirts, especially that one where he's like a ninja and a cyborg and a pirate all at once!" Swing, WHOOSHmiss. A page of Genesis fluttered out of one Bible and drifted to the ground, looking lonely. "The Lord shall purify thee with little dangly crosses, not to be confused with crucifixes, which are creepy and heathen and promote zombie uprisings just like Catholics!" Swing, WHOOSHmiss. A lot of the little ribbon placeholders were dangling out now. "You're lukewarm, Titans! Hast the blessing of thine angel's presence made thine hearts lax towards proper deference towards the Lord?" SwingWHOOSHTHONK. Charging ram Beast Boy flew back into Cyborg, who caught his buddy and set him down gently. Beast Boy snorted in equine annoyance and pounded hooves at the ground for another go. "Once you give yourself up to the Lord NOTHING is the same, FOREVER! How can you call yourself saved if your faith isn't TRANSFORMATIVE?"
Beast Boy went to humanoid again mid-charge, mouth moving as his brain worked out the 'transformative' part and quickly got offended. "Okay, now I'm pissed," he growled, almost more animalistic in sound than in his actual animal forms. "Dude, do you know who you're talking to?" he snarled, ducking another blow much more easily as his regular lithe little self. "How's this for transformative?"
The changeling's next maneuver was impressive, even by Cyborg's count of impressive tactical maneuvers. Beast Boy went hummingbird to gain immediate vertical height, hawk to dive down, and then octopus a fraction of a second before colliding with Edgar's face, wrapping the poor crazed guy's face in tentacley, suction cup-equipped slimy green justice. Edgar let out a muffled shriek, dropping the mallet and groping at the tentacles ineffectually.
"Very nice," Cyborg commented, calmly picking Edgar up and hoisting him over his shoulder. "D'ya mind stayin' like that till we get him somewhere safe? I've had about enough guilt trippin' for today." Beast Boy waved one tentacle end in a thumbs up approximation. "Awesome. You're the best, BB."
As ridiculous as the whole thing was, the walk through people to get Edgar tended to and to talk to the police was slowed enough that Cyborg had time for a little contemplation. How were some things so obvious and common sense that even an alien, a half-demon, and a guy with animal brains half the time could all understand, but regular old folks couldn't? Maybe it was just the lack of the meds. Edgar definitely needed those meds. But today's antics had just been an exaggeration of what a lot of people already felt, Cyborg knew. They kept trying to bring love to people's hearts like Edgar wanted to, flooding a city to baptize the lost. How could they not see that that wasn't how it worked? How couldn't they see that it didn't count unless the water dunk was voluntary? If you used your faith as a weapon, people hated it as a thing that hurt them. You had to wait for them to come to you, and share when they were ready. Which was why he'd pointedly not asked Robin why he hated religion so much. Robin would share in his own time. Or maybe not, but that wasn't Cyborg's problem. Every day they fought against wicked people and wicked things, but that didn't mean they could fix everything. So many hotheaded clashes with Beast Boy and Robin, and especially that little Max-7 incident, had taught Cyborg that being in control wasn't the most important thing. Sometimes you just had to let things go.
Like people.
So when he delivered Edgar to the police and learned that the poor guy was going to a mental institution, he sighed and didn't make a big fuss over it. But he did make a point of getting the name of the institution, so he could visit sometime.
Because no matter how spiritually vindicated or morally justified you figured you were, everyone got lonely sometimes.