"What happened?" Cyborg asked. As Starfire gained height I could spot the T-car swerving around in the intersection at the end of the street to do a one-eighty and head back to the tower.
"Dude, you're gonna make me carsick!" Beast Boy whined in the background. I wasn't the only one who'd spotted the T-car. Two cruisers backed out from the barricade to shoot off in pursuit. I swore under my breath. This had deteriorated faster than I could ever have suspected. But not faster than Bruce expected, said a mean little voice in the back of my mind. Pushing that unpleasant thought to the back of my head for another time, I squeezed Starfire's hand to alert her to the problem the others were facing. The T-car could easily outpace the police, but traffic was no on their side. A red light two blocks ahead of them had traffic at a standstill.
"We can't let the police pull them over," I shouted so Starfire could hear me over the roar of the air rushing by us as we zoomed in closer. She dived, swooping straight into the path of the leading cop car. I was strangely torn. Batman and I often engaged the police in order to get away, but in Jump I had worked hard to establish a working relationship with the local law enforcement. Fleeing was already straining that relationship, but as I reached into my belt to pull out a birdarang I knew that there would be no turning back from this moment. It couldn't be helped though. The Titans couldn't afford to be taken into custody. The Mayor had been trying to get access to the Tower's secrets since the day we officially opened our doors. Without us to stop them he would send in more cops to raid the tower, and though it would take them a while they would eventually find a way past our security codes.
Squeezing my eyes shut I fired my birdarang at the lead car's front tire. It exploded, jerking the car to the right. I winced as it mounted the curb and narrowly missed hitting a telephone pole.
The traffic light turned green, and the T-car wove in and out of traffic. The second cop car was stopped by a pile-up behind the first, but the officer in the passenger seat hopped out and pointed his pistol at us.
"Starfire, higher!" I shouted as he opened fire. Pedestrians screamed and fell to the ground.
"Do I engage?" asked Starfire. Suddenly she grimaced and we lost about a foot of altitude.
"Starfire!" She'd been hit.
"It is nothing. It is only the scratch. Please, do the hanging on." I tucked in my legs, making myself as aerodynamic as possible as she picked up speed and carried us back out over the harbor toward the tower.
"Where are you hit?" I twisted around, trying to see her. She pinched her lips together and refused to answer. It was her Tamaranean pride again. She would not show weakness during a fight, even if that meant battling to the death. I think she was biologically incapable of it pulling back. I flashed back to the Citadel when she had battled her demented sister, Blackfire. Star had spent hours under torture and pumped full of green energy until her cells were practically bursting with it, yet the moment her sister had engaged her, she'd gone feral.
"Star!" I squeezed her hands to get her attention. She grunted.
"It is my leg. It will heal within the hour." I doubted that. She always downplayed her injuries.
The tower loomed in front of us. She dropped me above the roof. I rolled to slow my momentum. Starfire gasped and crashed onto one knee. I ran to her side and saw a trail of blood sliding down her left leg from a wound on her thigh, just above her boot.
"Dang it, Star," I muttered under my breath, applying pressure to the wound with one hand while I reached for my communicator with the other.
"Raven, we need you on the roof. Starfire's been shot."
She didn't waste time responding. Instead she appeared next to me, her eyes and hands glowing with healing power. Starfire protested, squirming and denying that the damage was as bad as it looked.
"What happened?" asked Raven in a dangerously low voice I'd learned to be nervous around. Fortunately, I knew that her anger wasn't directed at me this time. Starfire gave a little yelp as Raven's magic accelerated the healing process. The trade-off to Raven's healing abilities was that in order to experience the benefits of accelerated healing you also had to feel all the pain of it at once. Sometimes it was almost worth waiting for nature to do it's work than suffer through a speedy recovery.
Quickly, I explained what had happened. Raven stopped what she was doing and looked up at me. For a moment, I felt like something else was looking out from those eyes.
"They'll be on the island within the hour. Star, we should get you inside." Without waiting for a response from either of them I slid an arm beneath Starfire and the other behind her back and lifted her into my arms. To my surprise she didn't fight me or tap into her flight, meaning I had to bear her full weight through the door and down the narrow staircase. Raven followed us, still scowling.
"What were you thinking?" she asked. Once before I'd heard her voice take on that strange, multi-layered tone. It was creepy, like she was being possessed. We'd never spoken about it. Every time I brought it up she either brushed me off or straight up vanished. Eventually I just gave up, assuming that if it was important she would tell me. "You should never have gone after the press." Slowly, I turned, Starfire still cradled against my chest. As much as I hate to admit it, I was grateful for the buffer between us.
"No. It is my fault," said Starfire in a small voice. "It is my secret that Robin has worked so hard to protect. I should allow the police to do the arresting of me. Perhaps if I tell them what occurred they would cease targeting the Titans. I could-"
"No, Star. This is not up for debate. I know you feel guilty about what happened, I know you think those people were kidnapped because the Psions were searching for you, but there's more at stake here than just you. Everyone who was taken had abilities that were beyond normal humans. If the truth came out about why they were taken then their lives will never be the same again. They'll become targets. They've already been through enough as it is. We have to protect them. Besides," i added, unable to hide my bitterness, "you've already decided that you're not going to be around for much longer. Once everyone realizes you've gone back to your planet they'll leave the Titans alone. No one really cares about whether or not I slept with Cat Grant." Her eyes widened momentarily, filling with a strange emotion I couldn't decipher.
"Then perhaps I should do the leaving now before I bring any more misfortune to you." Instinctively, I tightened my grip around her.
"Besides, don't you have a date with Speedy to get ready for?" Raven asked. She was back to her normal voice, though it sounded a little dryer than usual. From the sounds of it, she thought the date with Speedy was just about as stupid as I did. Starfire's shoulders slumped and something unspoken passed between the two girls. Whatever the message was, it made Starfire blush and hunch her shoulders.
"I think you're going to have to call and cancel the date," I said seriously. "The Tower is about to come under siege."
I carried Starfire to the couch in the common room where I gingerly set her down. Already her wound was little more than a patch of shiny scar tissue on her thigh, but after a couple more hours her Tamaranean biology would erase all traces of the injury. We got there just as Cyborg and Beast Boy were bounding up from the garage. A second round of explanations had to be given. When he realized that everything tied into my poorly-thought-out plan to visit Cat Grant, Cyborg threw up his hands in frustration.
"You've gone and turned the whole city against us!"
"Don't worry, it'll be all right," I lied. The Tower had been designed to stand up against superhuman attacks. We had our own generator, our own water treatment capabilities, and I had learned every contingency plan imaginable from Bruce on how to stock up supplies in case you needed to hole up in your own proverbial Batcave. We had enough food stored in the basement to feed an army, and there were plenty of batteries and supplies to last us for at least a couple of weeks. Worst case, we would escape using the T-ship or T-car.
"Please, allow me to do the turning in of myself. It will spare you this trouble," Starfire pleaded. I glared at her.
"No. End of discussion."
"Hey guys," Beast Boy interrupted, looking at the wall-sized computer monitor. "I think they're here."
There were two helicopters heading straight for us. Behind them were three boats leaving the Jump City marina. The enemy was indeed at the gate.