"So?" Beast Boy asked, a grin on his features.
"I met him. He seems...strange. I wonder if there is something wrong with him."
"Of course there is!" Beast Boy shouted. "The kid's living a delusion! He's totally Schizophrenic! He's 9th level crazy banana-pants bonkers!"
"Where's your degree in Psychology?" Cyborg asked.
Raven chimed in. "I couldn't read his mind when I saw him. He's too...random?"
"Random? More like utterly out of control! He must have gotten brain damage or something!"
"Like you?" Raven quipped.
Beast Boy didn't skip a beat. "I don't doubt I have brain damage from all the fights I've been in, but there's no way you can compare us."
"I will agree and say that Black is very strange. I am concerned for him though." Starfire added.
"He told me he was homeless," said Raven.
"I saw him take money from a drug dealer he took out." Cyborg scratched his chin. "So he's not panhandling."
"What do we do? Mention him to the police?" Starfire asked.
"Let's just…keep an eye out for him. Maybe he's a friendly neighborhood weirdo, or maybe he's a problem."
—-
It continued like that for the weeks following. Each Titan would take turns performing patrol at night, while the usual super villains would crop up randomly in between. Nearly every night, for maybe only a few minutes, they would cross paths with the young man known as Black. Each time, they would try to weasel more information out of him, but more often than not, he left them with more questions.
"Cyborg! Thank god! I need help!" A young man came running up to him. He looked rather roughed up and had a black eye.
"What's up, man?"
"I know we were wrong. My friends and I tried to shoplift from the Quick Mart, but then my buddy tried to actually mug a customer. It was so wrong and I know that but the dude went ape shit and just started beating the hell out of us! I'm the only one that got away! Please Cyborg, my brother's back there and I think he's gonna get killed."
"Alright alright, I got you man, take me there."
The young man ran back the way he came, Cyborg hot on his trail. The Quick Mart was just around the corner. The windows were plastered with posters and neon signs, so much so, the inside couldn't be seen.
"Wait here," Cyborg demanded, and headed for the door.
Whatever supervillain he was expecting to see, he didn't see them. Instead, Black sat on the counter, nonchalantly eating a pint of ice cream.
There were four unconscious young men on the ground, and the cashier was crying behind the counter.
"Aww man," Cyborg groaned, looking at the carnage.
"Hey! Borgy-Boy! Want some Chunky Monkey?" Black held out his spoon.
"Man, what did you do?"
"Can you believe these Ding Dongs tried to mug me? I only have so much money to spend on food, and they're trying to take it!"
Cyborg gave him a hard look. "What about all that money you've taken from the people you bust?"
"Hey!" Black pointed his spoon at him. "Most of that money went into the offering plate on Sunday!"
Cyborg stared back in shock. "You go to church?"
"Sure! Free coffee, free music, free air conditioning and heat, it's a swell deal! I don't really know what they're talkin' 'bout, but that Jesus guy sounds like a real neat fella!"
Cyborg shook his head. Black had a talent for derailing situations quickly. "What did I tell you about beating people up?"
Black whined. "But mooooommmmm! They started it!"
"I called the police," the cashier finally sobbed out. "They'll be here at any moment."
"Whoops! Looks like I gotta vámonos!"
"Did you pay for the ice cream?" Cyborg asked sternly.
"YeEEEeeeeEEEs!" Black sassed right back.
"Good, then you're ready to wait for the police with me."
Black's attitude changed slightly then. He paled and his lips became taught. "Nah, I'm good."
"What if I tell you you have to?"
Then Black's face fell, a much darker, hateful gaze on his face. "I don't have to do anything I don't want to. Not anymore."
"Anymore?" Cyborg took a step toward him.
Black launched from the counter, springboarded off Cyborg's shoulders and landed at the exit. "Bye Borgy-Boy! Love you!" And he was gone.
"Damnit!" Cyborg shouted to the ceiling.
—-
"Okay, I think he's a problem," Cyborg announced without preamble.
Starfire, Beast Boy, and Raven all looked at him startled.
"Who?"
"Black! Who else!? He beat up a bunch of shoplifters at the Quick Mart and then dipped when I told him to stay for the police. Why would he run if he had nothing to hide?"
Raven raised a brow. "So you want us to capture him? Take him down? Yeah, we all know what he's doing is illegal, but he's doing us a huge favor. We don't have time to worry about the little guys."
"What if we were to just observe him more? Mayhaps this is a temporary thing?"
"Temporary insanity? I'd love to hear that argument." Beast Boy chuckled.
"Fine, another week or two of observation. Then we have to decide what we're going to do about him."
—
During Raven's patrol, she got to have her own fun with a jewelry store break in. She passed by the roof just as the burglar's broke through the window.
Thinking that was all the action she was going to see on her patrol, she began to return home, only to be distracted by someone singing.
Well, it was more like caterwauling.
"I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT!"
It was a crime to be singing so poorly and so loudly so late at night. A crime to Raven, at least. All this required was a stern talking too.
Raven followed the sour notes down a backstreet and into the warehouse district.
"Why am I not surprised?" Raven drawled.
Black was still singing at the top of his lungs, and sort of dancing down the alley. In both hands, he held cans of spray paint, and he was spraying the walls.
Raven landed behind him.
"I'M TRAPPED IN THIS BODY–CAN'T—GET OUT!"
"Vandalizing private property? Some hero you are."
"AH!" Black startled, whipped around and sprayed Raven in the face with red paint.
Luckily she clenched her eyes shut so she wasn't blinded.
"Oh! Mrs. Magpie! I'm sorry, you startled me!"
Raven tried to wipe the paint from her face. "So I noticed."
Black took out a rag from his pocket and started rubbing her face before she batted him away.
He slunk back, defeated. "And to answer your question, I wasn't trying to vandalize this wall. Someone else already did that. I was just trying to make it…less Hitler-y."
Raven looked at the wall. On half were some interesting black and red swirls, still wet, and the other half had about a dozen swastikas punctuated with profanity.
"I see. You were covering it up."
"Yeppers! Are you proud of me, Rae Rae?"
The last thing she wanted to do was indulge this lunatic. "You know, if you talked to the owner, he'd probably give you some paint to cover the whole wall in an even coat."
He scoffed. "There's no art in that!"
"Oh, so now you're an artist?"
"Am I not allowed to have a hobby?"
She huffed. "Fair."
"I'll take it more seriously. I'll practice and make it really good! A series of pretty alleyways by me!"
Raven was out of shits to give. "Fine. Go ahead. Wow me with your murals."
Black grinned gleefully and jumped. "You won't regret it!"
"See that I won't."
"Oh," he licked his thumb. "You have a little paint—"
She summoned a force field to stop him from getting any closer. "Don't even think about it."
—-
Usually, Black had a tendency to seek out the Titans, or let his presence be known. So when Beast Boy found the young man digging through a dumpster, he quickly changed into a mouse to watch from afar.
"In the deepest ocean, the bottom of the sea, your eyes, they turn me," Black sang a tune Beast Boy swear he heard before, but couldn't place it.
Beast Boy scurried across the ground, coming closer.
Black was bent over at the waist, his torso inside the dumpster, and his singing echoed with a metallic ring. "I get eaten by the worms and weird fishes. Picked over by the worms…and weird fishes."
Where had he heard that before? The radio? He was usually pretty hip with modern music.
"Ah ha!" Black cried triumphantly as he emerged. He had a prize in his hand.
Beast Boy eagerly waited to see what Black had found and was so excited about.
Another watch.
The young man cinched it on his wrist, so quickly, it looked like he'd done it a hundred times before. "You don't have a battery, but that's okay. I still love you."
A dead watch. What was so exciting about a dead watch?
Black then rubbed his stomach. "Hmm…me hungy!" And he turned and left the alley.
Beast Boy waited until he rounded the corner to turn into a sparrow and followed him.
Black skipped down the street, his tattered trench coat fluttering behind him.
Coming down the street was a dog walker, a man with a husky. Black saw them and ran to them. "Ohhh! A puppy! What's his name? Can I pet?!"
The man looked startled, but ultimately said, "uh sure. His name is Plinko."
"Hi puppy! Hi Plinko! Who's a good boy?! Who would rip someone's face off to protect his owner!? My name is Black. What's your name?"
The man looked even more startled and started to tug his dog away. "Sorry, I have to go."
"Okie dokie then! Bye bye Plinko! Bye bye Plinko's dad!" Black waved enthusiastically. Then he continued his merry way down the street.
Beast Boy watched in fascination, and prepared to intervene if Black showed any kind of threat towards the man. Thankfully, he didn't, just behaved oddly enough to frighten the man off.
Black broke into a sprint, running at a wall. When he reached it, he used a fire escape to climb up the side of a building, then leapt onto a short roof. From there, he cartwheeled and flipped to the other edge and jumped over to the next roof.
He was fast. Beast Boy had to morph into an Eagle to keep up with him. He was used to seeing kids parkour, and the hobby had become more popular over the years the more stunts of Robin's had been captured on camera. But Beast Boy had never seen someone move like this. It was almost inhuman. Black flung himself across distances anyone else with self preservation would have avoided. He flipped and twisted as he went, ignoring laws of physics.
Then, they were at the Quick Mart, and he strolled in like he hadn't been performing gymnastics across the rooftops.
Beast Boy quickly shifted into a fly and flew in before the door shut. This was kind of fun. He didn't get to do stealth missions often.
"Hi Laura!" Black chirped.
"Oh. Hi Black." The cashier looked nervous and swallowed thickly.
"Got anything fresh? How old is the pizza? Is it all dried out like jerky?"
"I just put a new pie in," she said with a sigh.
"Then I want a slice! Not one with pepperoni's though." He shivered.
She gave him a solemn nod and cut him a slice of cheese pizza.
"Hey chicky-poo, why are you nervous?" He asked as he grabbed a drink from the fridge. Just a water.
"We're not going to have any problems today, are we?" She asked sternly, but looked pale and nauseous.
"Problems? Me?! You know I'm here to solve problems, right?!"
The cashier didn't answer.
Black placed his hands on his hips. "Is this about those shoplifters earlier this week? Did Borgy-Boy or the Popo give you a hard time?"
She took a shaky breath. "They were fine. I just…what you did to those boys."
He scoffed. "What's a couple broken fingers and fractured skulls among friends?"
"Um…I can't imagine those guys think you're friends…"
"Well, then they're doodoo heads. How much for the water and the pizza? Ohh and this candy bar?"
"7.83."
"Oh. No candy bar then." He pouted.
"5.70."
Black dug around in his pockets and took out some bills and coins. "Is that enough?"
"This is a button."
"Oh. How much is that worth?"
The cashier sighed and helped him count out the money on the counter. Beast Boy prepared to intervene if he didn't have enough, but thankfully, he did.
"And, you had a little extra, so you get a nickel back." She handed him a coin.
He grinned. "I think I like them! Most people don't, but that's okay. Not everyone has to agree!"
"What?"
"Nickleback! They do the song from Shrek!"
"Honey, that's Smash Mouth."
Black sighed. "I can't count change and I can't remember Nickleback's discography. Is there anything I can do right?"
Break bones, apparently, thought Beast Boy.
"Well, you do the crime fighting thing pretty well. Maybe once you get your memory back, you'll be able to do other things."
Black's face soured. "No no, I'm going to learn new things, not remember old ones." He took on a far off look. "I don't want to remember the old things."
"Oh…kay…" Laura said, leaning away from the counter.
Black brightened considerably. "Thanks for the pizza! See you around Laura!" Then he looked to the wall, right at Beast Boy. "See you around, Jolly Green!"
Beast Boy shifted back into a human, falling off the wall and startling Laura. "Duuuude! How did you know?!"
"Come on, how often do you see a green fly?"
"Often?! How–!?"
Black tsked. "You gotta be better than that, Beastie Boy! Ch-check, check it out! Wh-what what's it all about!?" He started rapping Beastie Boy lyrics and he nonchalantly strolled out the door.
Beast Boy stood still, staring open mouthed.
"I had no idea you were there," said Laura. "That kid is something else."
"Yeah, but what?"
—
Cyborg arrived from the lobby, the huge box with him full. He dumped out the contents, letters, on the table and started to sort.
"What's all that?" Asked Raven.
"Mail. It's been sitting out there for a while and I just can't put it off anymore."
"Tired of all the condolence cards?"
"Very."
"Anything for me?" Beast Boy asked, peering over the table.
"You can help me sort, and then you'll know." Cyborg threw a bunch of flyers away. "Man, I bet some of these are a month old. Hope none of it was time sensitive."
"Oooo what's this?" Beast Boy picked up a thicker envelope with handwritten addresses on it. "It's addressed to all of us."
"Who's it from?"
"Says, 'Jim Baker.' Never heard of 'im."
"Probably fan mail. Maybe we saved him and never got his name. God forbid another condolence card."
"It's thick. It feels like there's something in it. Maybe money?"
"If it's money, we have to send it back," Cyborg said sternly. "We can't take it."
"Well then…maybe not money…" Beast Boy grinned, preparing to pocket the money anyway. He tore open the envelope, but instead of money, there was just an SD card and a note.
'Teen Titans,
This was left in my possession, but I think it's meant for you.'
"H-hey Cy?" Beast Boy passed the envelope over to Cyborg. He scrutinized the note and then put the SD card into his arm to scan it for viruses.
"Looks clean, but whatever is on it is slightly corrupted. The card doesn't look like it was taken very good care of."
"May we see it?" Asked Starfire.
"I can try to pull the file off." He took the card over to the main computer and popped it in. "Oh, looks like multiple video files. Let's see if they'll load."
"Do you think someone has sent us a movie to watch? Shall I make the popped corn?"
"Something like that," Raven answered, setting her book aside. "Don't bother with the popcorn though."
When the video started up, the picture was pixelated and grainy, the sound cut in and out.
"Get—to work? —so old."
A face was in frame, black and white, and hard to make out. "It has to work. It's the last chance I have."
"That is Robin's voice!" Starfire shouted, standing to her feet.
"Really?" Beast Boy asked. "I can't really tell."
"If you get caught, they'll kill you." The other person said.
"Then I won't get caught." The camera shifted, showing more of the room, though it was grainy. The camera shook hard a few times and the picture became clearer. There was a young man, about Robin's age, wearing a hospital gown.
"Why are you messing with that thing?" He asked.
"Secret," said Robin's voice.
"Whatever dude, just don't include me in this."
The camera turned, and they could see the nose down of the person Starfire thought was Robin.
"That is Robin's chin!" Starfire screamed.
"Yeah, it is," said Raven.
"This is…not what I was prepared for. There's twenty of us here," Robin whispered. "Is that too much information? Crap."
And the video ended.
"Play the next one!" Star demanded.
Cyborg obeyed and played the next file. "I'll set these up to play back to back."
The next video played, and it was immediately apparent that something was wrong. The camera was under a bed. They still couldn't see Robin's face. But his hand was on the ground.
"There's a red light." He stated. "So, that's good." He breathed, a long, low exhale. Somewhere in an adjacent room, someone screamed. Robin took another shaking breath, then, to everyone's surprise, he started to softly sing. "When I'm at the pearly gates, this'll be on my videotape, my videotape. Mephistopheles is just beneath…and he's reaching up to grab me."
Starfire sat at the edge of her seat, holding a pillow to her chest. She had never heard Robin sing before. To everyone else, it was fine, but to her, his voice was perfect. Soft, gentle, and so so sad.
"This is one for the good days and I have it all here in red, blue, green. Red, blue, green."
Robin's song stopped suddenly as the scream came again, worse than before. He shifted closer to the camera, and continued his song as low as he could. "This is my way of saying goodbye. 'Cause I can't do it face to face. So I'm talking to you after it's too late."
Starfire gasped.
"No matter what happens now. You shouldn't be afraid, because I know today has been the most perfect day I've ever seen."
And the video ended.
A red exclamation mark displayed on the screen, determining that the video was corrupted.
"NO!" Starfire shrieked. "Cyborg, you must recover those videos! It is the only clue we have to Robin! Please!"
"Star, I'm going to try, but there's no guarantees."
"If you do not recover those videos, I shall never forgive you!"
"Dude, he said he's going to try!" Beast Boy yelled back. "We just…have to be patient."
Starfire fled the room, her cries loud enough to rattle the walls.
"I'll get to work," Cyborg stated as he retrieved the disc and left.
Raven and Beast Boy left shortly after, both lost in their thoughts.
A playlist of all the songs mentioned in this fic is available on Youtube: playlist?list=PLCFvfHQFx6TJuBsNZ1cOscCbXbsjaIGjP