Shadow had the strangest sensation of wind whipping past her. "Am I dreaming?" She opened her eyes, but only managed a squint. The wind was really strong, she saw what looked like water down beneath her, and something else...one thing was for sure, this was no dream. "Alright, focus. Don't panic...don't panic..." She managed to open her eyes wider and saw what looked like a red and black blur, it was a person and he seemed to be struggling with something on his belt. "Wait that's the scrawny kid in the mask from earlier. Crap..." He pulled something out and looked around wildly, panic could be seen on his face, his eyes spotted her and they widened.
"Hang on kid." Shadow concentrated, it seemed harder than it should but eventually the black energy formed back around her and she shot off towards the boy. She grabbed him but there was to much momentum and the water was coming up way to fast. Shadow quickly formed the black energy around them as they crashed into the waves. "I hate the water!"
The energy cocoon provided a little oxygen. Shadow still held the kid, "For such a small kid he's very muscular." She faintly noted. It took her a minute to get orientated and head back for the top. It was a minute more than what they had, the oxygen was gone, Shadow panicked. They finally broke the surface both gasping for air. Shadow was still shooting up when she managed to stop her self.
"Man it's getting harder and harder to-oh no...oh no that's why!" Shadow watched as the sun started to creep it's way up the horizon. The higher it got the more she could feel her energy draining, they were slowly sinking back to the water. She frantically looked around as the kid still coughed up water. She spotted land a way off. Summoning all the energy she could she raced of towards it.
The sun was half way up and she was barely holding on, her head felt light and her mouth was dry everything in her screamed that they weren't going to make it, but they had to. The sun broke the horizon with it's horrible brilliance making all the energy that was left in and around her to evaporate like mist. She dropped the boy and crashed into the rocks on the side of the land. "Made it." She felt herself fading away, her vision was slowly disappearing, but she thought she saw the kid roll, and then gently get up and look in her direction when she passed out.
"Okay, Robin definitely not aster." He looked over just in time to see the Shadow's eyes fall closed. "Oh, not good!" He said as he ran towards her. He was bruised and sore and could feel the burns he received earlier hurt even more from the fall.
He skidded to her side and checked her heart. "Still beating, that's always good." Her breathing seemed shallow though, and her face was drawn in exhaustion. He removed his cape and balled it under her head, than finding a decent sized rock propped her feet on it to keep them elevated. All things he learned while training with Batman.
He tried getting the holo-gram built into his glove to come on so he could connect to the others, but for some odd reason it wasn't responding. He sighed. "Way to add double dis to an already disaster situation." He hoped that the others were okay. "Not much we can do now..." He looked down at the Shadow trying to puzzle everything together. "So your not as bad as we originally thought. I wonder where you came from?"
He looked around, in the far distance he thought he could see building on another landmass. They were surrounded by trees and bushes and grass. Behind them there was a small hill not to far off. Robin wasn't sure what to do. He didn't know how the Shadow was going to react when she woke up.
Looking down at her he noticed her wrist blades. He lifted one up and lightly touched it. It came out with a sudden snit! Sound and at the same time the Shadow gasped awake.
Instinctively Robin jumped back and waited while the Shadow coughed up a some water. She laid her head heavily back on the cape, her eyes closed as she drew in deep breaths. Robin just watched and waited in silence wondering how long it would take her to notice him and thinking how easily he could attack and take her down.
A puzzled expression crossed her face as she-still with her eyes closed- reached to feel what her head was on. She sat up while bringing it in front of her to get a better look at, seeing the black and yellow she glanced up and finally realized that the Boy Wonder was watching her.
She got into an attack position but instantly fell to one knee. "Hey, take it easy." Robin said walking over to try and help her, he held out his hand, but she only glared at him threw the strands of black wavy hair that had fallen across her face. "I'm here to help, and besides you saved my life." He tried again still with his hand ready to help her up.
She glanced at him then to the hand and then at him once more before reluctantly taking it. When she stood up she finally said something. "Your strong for such a young kid." Robin noted that the accent sounded Russian before replying "I work out, and I'm not that young."
"Well you look it." She looked away and handed him back his cape grumbling a thanks.
"No, problem." Robin replied as he took and attached it to his back. He wasn't really sure what to do from this point. "So...do you think you could fly us back to land or something?"
"No." She said shortly sitting down looking out at the sea. "Even if I could I do have the faint memory of getting attacked by your Freaky Five, knocked unconscious, and carried away. So why should I take you any where, seems to me we're on opposite sides."
"Good point, but you also attacked us when we just wanted to talk to you. So your to blame too. And I faintly remember getting these burns and bruises from you so I'd say we're even." Robin said. He didn't sit but chose to squat instead.
She only grunted in acknowledgment and didn't say anything else. So Robin spoke up again. "Why did you save me?"
She gave him a sidelong glance before responding. "You would have died."
"Ya, but you didn't have to. Besides you said that we were on 'opposite sides' so why save me?"
She threw a rock before saying "I'm not a bad guy, just because we're on opposite sides and I don't like you, doesn't mean I'm just going to let you fall to your death."
Robin wasn't quite sure how to respond to that but still replied. "Well we don't appear to be on opposite sides now. And thank you."
"Your welcome, and no we don't."
Awkward pause. "Clearly she's not the social type." "So," He thought he might as well as ask it. "What were you doing at the Brain's lab?"
She was staring down at the rocks but straight ahead, than turned to look at him dead the eyes and with a serious face asked. "What?" He noticed that er eyes squinted a little.
"You know the Brain's lab, where you came from that gateway?" He asked again starting to get a little confused and suspicious.
She hadn't moved her gaze then said. "I have no idea what a brain's lab is but I'm assuming you are talking about the portal that started this whole mess." She gently waved her hands around indicating to the situation they were in.
"Um, ya." Robin wasn't quite sure what to think. "So you have no idea who the Brain is?"
She shook her head no, than turned to look back at the horizon. Robin thought for a second, than decided to play on a hunch.
"Did you see Superman and Batman on the news last night?" He stared straight ahead like she was doing. He heard her snicker before asking, "Those are some pretty strange names but no. Why, was last night Halloween? Because I thought that was in Octuber. Or is it October?" The last sentence she sort of muttered to herself. But Robin's hunch had been correct, he decided to take it further
"Do you know who I am, or who the Justice League is?" He asked, he knew the answer, but had to make for sure. This time he watched her for an answer.
The Shadow turned to him eyebrow raised, and said. "No, and the Justice League are you just making this stuff up? Because if this is some sort of child game then I'm not in the mood to play."
Robin took a deep breath in. OK, so either she's lived in a cave her whole life, had amnesia, or...is from somewhere else... He knew that Batman and the other Leagues had talked about different dimensions, but most of those topics were about various versions of Justice League members. String theory, that's what it was called. Robin thought, he knew that the topic of a dimension where the Justice League didn't exist, but all of those topics were mostly small talk, few actually took it seriously because most thought it would take several more decades before that kind of technology would exist. Looks like it's here now.
"I'm not where I'm supposed to be. Am I?" The Shadow said, she was still looking at him while Robin had been deep in thought.
"No, I don't think you are. Because everyone knows about the Justice League here...on this...Earth, I guess. You are from Earth right?" He asked, half-joking.
"The planet with all the water, plants, buildings, and obnoxious people?" She asked with mild sarcasm.
Robin smiled and nodded. "Than yes, last time I checked I was from Earth." She had a small smile too, but it was gone in a flash.
Robin was about to say something when she interrupted. "Where I'm from we have this superhero group known as the Avengers, then you have the X-men which is who I'm with, and the Fantastic Four, and this weird government type organization known as S.H.I.E.L.D. Don't ask me what it stands for because I have no idea."
"Huh, so you have super heroes too. This is just to weird, and I know weird." Robin said trying to puzzle this out. "So that gateway was actually some sort of teleportation devise, but wouldn't that mean..."
"So...then how did you get here?"
"It's kind of a long story." She said, it was in a tone that sounded like she didn't really want to talk about it, but if training alongside Batman taught him anything it was-if possible-get all the facts, and so Robin was determined to get all the facts. That meant he needed the whole story.
"Well It's not like we're going anywhere," He gently pressed.
"I. Don't." She turned to glare at him for a moment. "Want...to...talk...about...it."
Geez, OK. Let's try a different approach then. Robin thought before saying. "We'll in order for me to help you get back to wherever it is you were, you're going to have to talk about it."
He offered a smile, but her glare just came back. "One of the reasons I don't want to talk about it is because it's complicated and there are lot's of things that will need to be explained, and I don't know if you would understand them."
Robin frowned a little at the condensation in her voice. "Hey, I may be young, but I'm smart. Smart enough and strong enough to help take you down with my team. So if you want my help than I need to hear what happened and how you wound up hear. Because if you don't tell me," Hear he lowered his voice a little. "Than there are other ways to find out what happened, and trust me, you don't want to find out what those ways are."
The Shadow stared at her feet before asking. "The green skinned girl?"
Robin nodded and said "Miss Martian? Yes. She's tele-"
"Telekinetic? Ya, I kind of got that." The Shadow replied still staring at her feet. "Why is her name Miss Martian?"
"Well, she's from Mars." Robin answered.
"Oh, and that's some sort of country?"
Robin froze for a second than turned, eyebrow raised.
"What?" The Shadow asked, noticing his expression out of the corner of her eye.
"Your education isn't very good. Is it?"
Robin could tell she was realizing she said something stupid. She turned and replied. "I grew up in Russia. If that tells you anything."
"Assuming your Russia is anything like our Russia than ya, it does." He gave a small smile, and saw the corner of the Shadow's mouth twitch up a little.
She sighed and said, "Alright, I'll tell you what you need to know but," She stared a him straight in the eyes (or mask really) "only what you need to know."
"That's all I'm asking for." Robin replied as he got into a more comfortable position.
"I was in this team, and we were on a mission." The Shadow started looking back at the horizon, and the sun that was now climbing ever higher. "The Brotherhood of Mutants had teamed up with some agents of A.I.M. They were building some sort of teleportation device. We got some readings and managed to steal a few blue prints and Beast-who's this really smart guy but looks like a blue gorilla- said that 'If they get the calculations wrong than the whole thing could blow up.'
"So needless to say we went out there to stop them. I was just supposed to be on perimeter duty along with a few other mutants, but there were to many villains on the other side and we had to go in. The controls were somehow turned on and the thing started to power up. There...there was a mutant in front of it and...she wasn't going to move in time, and so I pushed her out of the way."
She paused for a moment than said. "They said it wasn't going to work. That it was just one big bomb. Guess they were wrong."
"What's a mutant?" His expression hadn't wavered since she started, and he was all seriousness at the moment.
"A mutant is some one with an activated X gene. According to Professor Xavier,who discovered this gene, everyone has them. But only a few people have theirs "activated" so those lucky people get these weird powers. Professor Xavier has this huge house called a mansion. He finds mutants and tries to recruit them and he trains them."
"And the Brotherhood of Mutants and A.I.M.?"
"The Brotherhood of Mutants are not much, more of just an annoyance. However A.I.M. has been a big problem, they get way into technology."
"And so together the made a cross-dimensional gateway? Interesting."
"Ya, I'm pretty sure the Brotherhood was mostly for protection, they seemed to expect us to come..."
"Well," Robin said as he stood up to stretch. "How about we see if we can go into town. For some reason communications are down and I need some way to contact my team."
Once again he held out his hand to help her up. She looked at it than to him once more before finally taking it. "And by the way," He said puling her up. "my name's Robin."
She looked at him warily before saying. "Shadow. So that way?" She was looking at the city in the distance.
"Seems like the closest city available, I should be able to get some sort of wireless connection and hack into some frequency's that will let me into the bioship's communications."
She just gave him a black stare before turning to the direction that they were going to head, and said "Right, and while you do all that, I might get some fries."
With that they headed off.
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Sooooo...what do you think? Ill' try to update reguarily but it's hard. :( I hope you enjoy the Shadow and Robin interaction, but no they do not end up a couple and no there is no slash. 3
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