November. Undercover as the part of yourself you just can't accept p.1

"How'd you break your foot?"

Gar jumped at Jenny's voice, and turned to see her glowering at him. She'd recently dyed her hair pink, and it made her whole appearance a little more dramatic.

"Huh?" he went. "Oh, a mission. Totally a mission."

Jen crossed her arms. "Duh, but what mission?"

"Can't tell ya," replied Gar. "'S classified."

Gar missed the searing gaze Jenny held on him as he crutched away. She then turned to Mikron and Baran came up behind her. "Classified? Did he just say classified to me?" she demanded at them. "Now they're too important to even talk about what they're up to? Who do they think they are?"

On the clubroom table were the results of the five having emptied their pockets of all the money they could gather.

Gar looked incredulously at the amount. "Okay. What the hell? You're all rich and it's useless!"

"I'm not rich," protested Raven. "My house is big because it's full of people."

"It is near the end of the month," said Kori. "This is what I have left of my stipend my parents send me."

"I said I don't mind you guys using my computer," offered Vic.

"It's your computer," said Dick. "There has to be a Club computer."

Gar turned to Dick. "Dick, what's your excuse? Bruce is loaded. How come you never have money?"

Dick said, "When I was twelve I told Bruce I never ever wanted an allowance. Every time I've had money, I got it working at something."

"Aaand now you actually understand how the world works, can't you say you know better and ask for an allowance?" Gar prompted.

"And go back on what I said?"

"What you said when you were twelve? Yes."

"If we all got jobs, we could afford a computer," said Dick, mainly to redirect the discussion.

Kori gasped. "We are a Club! Why don't we do a fundraiser? Oh, oh! Let us make a raffle!"

Dick chuckled at her enthusiasm. "That may be a good idea, Kori."

"Go door by door selling raffle numbers?" asked Raven. "I'd rather get a job."

"We could do both," posed Vic.

"Put it to a vote," said Dick. "Who's up for a raffle?"

Kori and Gar held up their hands.

"Job?" asked Dick, and Raven, Vic and Dick raised their hands.

Even though he'd patiently voted, Vic then said, "I actually meant do both as in those of us who want to get a job do that, and the rest of us do fundraisers."

"Oh. Okay, let's do that," said Dick, because he'd realized too late that by winning with the 'get a job' option he'd kept Kori from doing the fundraising she wanted.

They had to leave things on that note—there was a knock on the door, and they had to regroup.

Moments later, Dick looked at the two potential clients at the other side of the table. "Let me get this straight. Your mission is you want one of us to join your robotics team."

The pale boy hadn't stopped frowning since he entered the clubroom; it seemed to be his resting facial expression. It made his thick blonde eyebrows knit together. "We need you to provide one member of your team to briefly pretend to be part of our team, so we can compete in the Championship in East High next week."

"Yeah, that doesn't seem like it goes under this Club's description," said Dick.

"Didn't you keep watch over the cheerleader's routines a while ago? This is also for an inter-school competition," the boy returned, in the same quick, forceful, no-nonsense tone with which he'd presented his case.

Dick's eyebrow twitched above the glasses. "Yes. But that's not really what we do either."

"What do you do?" the boy retorted.

Dick leaned back on his seat. That was a good question. One he wished he'd prepared for. Sometimes he had no idea what they did anymore.

"Dude, we saved the school from being blown up last year," said Gar.

"Yeah, and we brought down a sham charity," added Victor. "That's our line of business."

Dick smiled, glad the others had filled in for him. The perks of having a team.

The president of the robotics team exchanged a glance with his co-member, a short girl with sandy-brown skin and a fluffy high ponytail. "We worked for years for this moment," she said. "And now, because of this flu outbreak, our team member has to stay home quarantined."

"He's home sick?" asked Raven.

"His parents are anti-vaxxers," replied the boy. "He has to miss school every time there's an outbreak of anything."

"He's gonna get vaccinated soon as he turns eighteen, too," the girl piped up. "Like, this isn't even on him. It's his mom who made that call."

"We need at least three people on our team in order to compete," said the boy. "And Thandi and I both seniors, this is our last chance to win. You wouldn't even have to do anything! We'll carry the competition."

"And you get a week of half-days off school," added Thandi in a sing-song voice.

"Please help us?" pleaded the boy, and he still managed to make it sound like a business proposal.

Dick got up and signaled his friends to gather in a circle. "What do we think?"

"On the one hand we've been taking dumb cases all year," said Vic.

"But they seem to care about this a lot," said Kori.

"Plus it's not like there's anything better knocking on our door," said Raven.

"So we're thinking yes," surmised Dick. He looked up at Vic. "And can you do it?"

"Oh, I'm the candidate?" he returned, though he didn't sound the least surprised.

"Well, you shouldn't have reprogrammed our phones if you didn't want us to know you were good at this type of stuff," shrugged Dick, looking apologetic.

Vic rolled his eyes. "Yeah, I know. And yeah, 'course I can do it." He couldn't keep back an arrogant chuckle. "A high school robotics competition? Come on."

The five returned to their clients. "We're helping you," Dick told them, and reached up to clasp Vic's shoulder. "Vic here will replace your guy."

The girl jumped up. "Thank you!"

The boy actually held out his hand to Victor. "Welcome to the team."

The robotics team didn't just leave his thanks with Vic; before they left, they also sent him a pdf of the competition handbook, which turned out to be a two hundred pages volume.

"Guess I'll go study," grumbled Vic.

"You want us to help you go through it?" offered Raven.

"Nah, I'll just read it quickly on my own," said Vic. "I don't wanna give this whole thing any more time than I have to."

East High was Murakami's sister school, originally. One upon a time, Murakami High only admitted male students, and East High only taught girls. After turning co-ed and several board changes, however, East High had shot up and left its former sister behind: it was currently a nationally-ranked school with quality education and famed college prep. It almost seemed like the former West High had rebranded as Murakami to save itself from the comparison.

Victor was already in a bad mood before going in. A new school meant a new crowd of people who didn't know about him, and thus would stare at him, and that was exactly what the yellow, white and black uniform-clad students did, as Vic trailed behind Jerry and Thandi. He suppressed the urge to pull the hood of his jacket over his head. He told himself he was past that stage. It was cute when Raven did it—with him, it made him feel like a coward.

The huge gym where they would be holding the robotics competition was bustling with students from all over the state. As Jerry was registering the three of them for Murakami High, a girl from the East High team approached them. "Hey, Jerry. Hey, Thandi." The girl had rich brown skin, and hair arranged in two neat coily puffs, with yellow ribbons to go with her uniform. She seemed civil enough until she saw Vic, and her smile waned. "Who's this? Where's Caleb?"

"He's quarantined in his house because of the flu outbreak," provided Thandi. "Vic here is his replacement."

Vic put his hand out. "Nice to meet you."

The girl studied Vic up and down, and her expression settled into definite skepticism as she, nonetheless, shook his hand. "Replacement. Right. I didn't see him pass the school qualifier with you."

Jerry said, "Bee, come on. No one enforces that rule."

Bee said, "No one needs to. It's assumed that the rule will be followed." She didn't stop looking at Vic as she said this. Vic found all of this needlessly confrontational –why did nerds get so wound up about these competitions?- but at the same time, he automatically respected people who could look him in the eye without gawking at his prosthetics or looking away in embarrassment altogether.

"Yeah, well, not everyone has a twelve-people team with replacements at the ready," said Jerry.

Bee looked back at her own team; indeed there were eleven other industrious-looking East High teens registering a distance away. She smiled at Jerry and Thandi, seemingly relenting. "Good luck out there."

When she'd walked away, Jerry turned to Vic. "That was Bee. She's the leader of the East High team."

Vic watched her join her group. "They look… prepared."

"Don't let them psych you up!" sang Thandi.

An announcement came through the speakers, "All teams who have already registered, please move your prototypes to the court for inspections."

(Vic had been introduced to their robot on the bus. It was a three-foot tall hunk of metal they had named Tutankhamun. The story was that earlier in the year they could only manage to make it walk sideways for the longest time, and as Jerry slowly lost his mind, Thandi was delighted it looked like a moving Egyptian hieroglyph.)

"Okay, Vic," Jerry as the announcement ended, "today is just closed qualifying matches. Get a feel of the competition and take it easy."

"Then we'll tour the school!" added Thandi.

When Vic looked up, he met Bee's eyes, watching him across the gym with attention and distrust and not wavering when she was discovered. "Easy. Sure," he muttered.

However, when Vic returned to Murakami for lunch period, he was in much higher spirits than his friends had expected. He found Dick and Kori first and told them about his day.

"It was really cool! I forgot how much I loved competing!" he told them, doing that thing where he was too excited to use his indoors voice as they went down the cafeteria line. "Oh, Jerry and Thandi thought I was going just to stand by and look pretty. I was making suggestions, and answering questions, and building strategies…! It was cool. It was really cool."

"I am ever so satisfied you are happy, friend!" exclaimed Kori.

Victor restarted his story for Raven and Gar when he saw them, and then kept elaborating to the whole group as they took their lunch outside to the field.

"Their school has a full-blown athletic complex. There's three basketball courts, and a weight and cardio room, and- oh, hey! Garth!" Vic carried his tray on one arm and waved at someone. "Garth also goes to East. Come here, man!"

The boy he was waving over approached them.

At the back of the group, Raven and Kori faltered on their way.

The boy who came waving back seemed to have stepped out of a magazine, or a screen, or really any medium that showed a prettier, idealized world. With broad shoulders and slim hips, he was the definition of a swimmer's body. Then he topped it off with a handsome, defined face, dark soulful eyes and slick black hair that came down to his shoulders.

In a rare display of synchrony, Raven and Kori turned to each other, and found the same expression of wide-eyed 'Are you seeing this too?' disbelief in each other's face. On realizing what they'd just done, they were threatened by an incoming giggle and had to face away from each other. Instead, Kori found Raven's hand and squeezed it. Aside from instantly in love, Kori was delighted to find herself in a perfect moment of wordless bonding with her normally elusive best friend, and basked in feeling, for once, beautifully and uncomplicatedly normal.

"…ar, Dick, and that's Raven and Kori," they heard Vic say when the world came back. "Guys, Garth's the star of the swim team back at East High. The one thing that school doesn't have is an Olympic pool, so he comes to ours."

They had lunch in the yard, where Garth felt compelled to explain his meal of just potato wedges and carrot sticks, sans that day's main meal of fish nuggets. "I refuse to eat fish. I just think it's wrong to eat our fellow marine creatures."

At his right, Kori said, "Yes." Kori, for whom English was a struggle under normal circumstances, was now down to her most basic phrases.

"That's cool," said Raven, at the other side of him.

Gar frowned at this. "Oh, is that the first time you've heard of something like that, Raven?"

Raven managed to pry her eyes off Garth and gave Gar a supremely vacant look. "What?"

Gar fumed. "Never mind."

"East has a dozen lunch menu options," Vic told. "Garth wouldn't be stuck only eating the sides there!"

"Yeah, that's cool of them," smiled Garth.

"So you're vegetarian? Or vegan?" asked Dick.

"Neither," said Garth. "I'm like the opposite of a pescetarian."

Gar stopped his own veggie burger on its way to his mouth when he worked that out on his head. "Wait. You mean you do eat red meat?"

Garth nodded. "Yes, I everything but fish."

"…What?"

Gar looked at his friends in askance. How could something like that come out of his mouth and no one was calling him out? …Did people get a pass for being that hot and tall?

But Vic was more interested in saying, "Ooh, tell them about all the weights room, they don't believe me!"

"We believed you," said Dick, raising an eyebrow at his friend.

"Yeah, the sports facilities are great," said Garth. "They want you to take a sports or an afternoon extracurricular, so."

"There's so many extra-curriculars," Vic took over, since he thought Garth was underselling it. "They teach like five foreign languages. They have engineering, woodworking… No wonder they held the robotics competition over there."

Gar looked at Dick, wondering why he didn't care more that Kori was clearly ogling Garth, and he found Dick was watching Victor, and wondering instead at Victor's apparent infatuation with the new school. Feeling alone in his concerns, Gar resorted to just enjoying his lunch in silence.

Halfway through the week, Vic found Dick and Kori in the hallway and shoved his phone before their faces. "Watch this."

The video was of him, Thandi, and the Tutankhamun prototype on in a bowling alley. Presumably, Jerry was filming.

Dick looked at Vic in amusement. "You went bowling with the robotics team?"

"And the robot! Watch!" The video zoomed in on the robot as it picked the bowling ball, advanced, raised its arm and threw the ball. It knocked down six pins; Vic and Thandi celebrated it like a strike, and the video shook like Jerry was jumping up and down too.

Kori clapped. "Amazing!"

Vic was glowing. "We were trying to make it bend its elbow like that, and we did it, and we wanted to test it, so I said, why don't we go to the bowling alley?" He grinned. "We made the robot go bowling!"

Gar and Raven had come in time to hear the end of the story. Vic replayed the video for them.

"You went bowling with the robotics team?" Gar asked quietly.

"And the robot!" said Vic.

Gar scratched the back of his neck. "Is that why you weren't texting me back yesterday?"

"We were busy manning the robot," said Vic, but his voice softened when he recognized Gar looked snubbed, and he moved to ruffle Gar's hair. "With the robot we made four people to make teams."

"Who won?" asked Raven.

"Thandi and the robot!" grinned Vic.

Dick smiled proudly, but sounded a bit apprehensive when he spoke. "Whoa, Vic. I'm glad you came to our club first, 'cause you could have easily ended up as the star of the robotics team."

Vic frowned. "Why would you think that?" he asked in a quiet, tight voice, and all his previous joy seemed to be gone.

Dick looked at his friend in askance. "Because… you're good at it, and you're clearly having fun-"

"No I'm not! This is boring and lame!"

Vic took his phone back from Kori's hands and stalked away down the hallway.

Dick looked at his friends, who shrugged at him, as confused as he was.

Then the bell rang, and everyone went off to their respective classes. Dick was alone on the hallway when Principal Blood appeared next to him like a shadow.

Dick would have jumped out of his skin if it wasn't for his mettle. Because of his mettle, he only started and choked on air.

"Mr. Grayson," Blood droned. "Mr. Stone has joined the robotics team."

"Yes, sir," Dick coughed out.

"An obvious infiltration," tutted the principal. "One of your Club's… projects, I must conclude?"

"Uh…" Dick hadn't prepared for this. "It's not technically against any rules."

"No, it is merely unethical," Blood said, waving a hand theatrically. Then he glowered down at Dick. "But will this questionable measure be a win scored for our school? Or will it be an embarrassment?"

"No, Vic is really good," said Dick, like this was a normal conversation. "I-I wouldn't worry at all."

"Good."

Blood disappeared as seamlessly as he'd appeared, and Dick found he was alone in the hallway. He rushed to his next class, and told himself it was just because he didn't want to be late.

Dick had decided that, while Vic was doing the mission, the rest of them were fundraising for a computer. He cited the four of them at Raven's house that afternoon.

On his way there, he spotted Gar walking almost a street ahead of him.

He rose his arm and opened his mouth to call out to him, like a normal person—and then he thought better of it and lowered his arm. And he ducked behind a tree.

Dick had long wondered how the hell Gar managed to climb Raven's window. This was his chance to find out.

He skulked silently behind Gar the rest of the way. Sometimes, he would drift to the bushes, for fear of being discovered. It wouldn't have been necessary anyway: Gar always moved through the world like he was the only creature that existed, unless an animal or person came directly before him. Dick thought he might need to have a talk with his team about staying aware of your surroundings—but only after he solved this mystery.

Once in front of Raven's house, Dick waited behind a tree to observe what Gar did next. But he was so focused on Gar not discovering him that he forgot minding how he looked to everyone else. He only realized he'd been acting suspicious when he was accosted by an elderly couple.

"Young man," the woman suddenly next to him intoned. "Are you on drugs?"

"What?" Dick reacted, and when he turned to her, the woman hid behind her husband, who'd been behind her holding her arm, like he'd been willing her not to talk to the suspicious teen. "Oh." Dick straightened his back and went into well-mannered-boy mode at the same time. "I'm sorry, ma'am, I didn't mean to scare you. I was just trying to play a prank on my friend-"

As he said this, Dick turned to Gar, and saw he'd missed it—Gar had climbed into Raven's room, and only his shoes remained near the bushes at the bottom.

"Dammit!" he exclaimed, an outburst which didn't help his case with the neighbors.

When Dick finally made it into Raven's room –he had to call Raven on the phone to show he had a reason to be in the neighborhood, and the neighbors only relented when she physically came out to get him-, Gar received him with, "We decided on a bachelor auction. We're auctioning you off."

"Very funny," he responded.

"Actually we kind of decided on a clothes drive," said Raven.

"Thought you didn't want to go door to door," Dick told her.

"Turns out every fundraiser involves more contact with people than I'm comfortable with," she replied. "Who knew, right? But knocking doors is better than a big event."

"I contacted a charity," Kori interjected. "They said we can go right now and talk about what they need."

"Plus Kori likes the idea of experiencing going door to door," Gar completed.

"Fine by me," smiled Dick. "Where's the charity?"

Vic shook his head the next day as his friends told him about their clothes drive.

"I love that this drive is happening during the only time you don't have a car because I'm off doing a mission," he commented.

"We'll survive," Raven.

Kori asked Vic, "So we will not see you until Friday?"

"Yep," said Vic. "Today's the obstacle course, tomorrow's the big finale all day, so I guess I'll see you the day after tomorrow."

"See you then," returned Dick, smiling because he and the others had already agreed to go to East to support him for the finale.

Vic turned back on his way out of the school. "Oh, by the way guys, none of you ever tell my dad this happened."

"You unethically joining a Club for a week?" asked Dick. "Yeah, don't worry. Everything we do here is a secret from all our adults."

"I know, I'm just checking," said Vic. "I just don't want him to know I was in a robotics competition."

"Why?" asked Kori, cocking her head.

"It would make him happy!" Vic returned. "He's always had this idea that I'll follow in his footsteps. Just because sports are out of the question doesn't mean I have to be a scientist."

"Aw, you're so good at the science stuff, though," said Gar blithely.

"SO?" Vic snapped, making Gar cower. He walked away and cheerfully waved. "Don't get any cool missions without me!"

I did a ridiculous amount of research for what a robotics competition is like and I'm still not sure I got it right! If I got something wrong, pretend it's this AU's version of a robotics championship ^^

Yep, this is the chapter that mirrors both Deception (Bee and Vic meeting) and Wavelength (Aqualad showing up). Both Garth and Bee keep developing next chapter (I LOVE what I managed to do with Bee and Vic for this fic, you don't even know!), and ALSO there's ANOTHER new character coming in! ^^ Thanks for reading!