Yo, me again. As of writing this, its been like a week since I published chapter 1. Probably won't work on this as constantly as I have been for the past couple days, but still occasionally sit down and write a few thousand words every couple weeks, and hopefully have a chapter done every month or so, maybe more, maybe less. I considered adding Jinx to the characters list on the description, especially since she'll be in it quite a bit, especially for the next couple chapters, but I don't feel like she'll be as important to the main plotline.

This chapter will be more focused on starting to explain the current state of the city, so there won't be as many answers to the one or two major questions you may have; it'll probably just give you more questions than answers.

If you have any thoughts on this, feel free to review and let me know, the last thing i want is to let anybody down.

Anyways, hope you enjoy chapter 2

Jinx kept her eyes trained on the door. She had no reason to think they were going to finally check the building she was hiding out in, in fact this time they didn't even seem to be checking buildings, but that didn't mean she was about to risk letting her guard down the one time they surprised her. She still didn't even really know who or what 'they' were, just that she had heard them passing by several times over the past 3 weeks she had been hiding out there, and that, if the noises she had heard were any indication, they weren't friendly.

As the noises finally started to grow distant and die down, she allowed her eyes to drift away from the door and her gaze fell on her surroundings. It wasn't the most glamorous hiding spot; she had found herself hiding out in a store. It wasn't a particularly large store, but it wasn't too small as to be uncomfortable either. There was enough good food left on the shelves to keep her fed, and enough water or other drinks to keep her hydrated. She only left every couple of days to look around and try and get her bearings as to what exactly was going on, and she only went out during the day, and when she had gone long enough without hearing any of those awful sounds. During her little excursions she hadn't run into any of the things responsible for the noises, but she had seen a couple of civilians running or hiding, though she chose to leave them be, and refused to stray too far from her hiding spot.

She still couldn't believe that she had stayed there for three weeks. Heck, she was shocked she had even stayed for one week, nevermind three. She didn't know how to feel about the fact that she had gone so soft as to feel the need to stay put in case he came back.

The pink haired ex-criminal thought back to that night three weeks ago; she had been spending time with Kid Flash in the park when it had started. An explosion had come from Titans tower. She hadn't been particularly concerned, it happened all the time; not even Kid Flash had seemed very bothered by it, the whole city was used to the teen superheroes base of operations getting attacked every once in a while, they would be fine, defeat whatever caused it, then it would be like it never happened. What caught her off guard was when more explosions started to go off from all around the city. Before she could even remember that she was a good guy now and wasn't supposed to get mildly excited by such an attack, Kid Flash had already sprung into action, zipping around the city to try and save lives and deduce the cause of the explosions. If he had looked up, he would have noticed what she and everyone else had noticed by that point; there were what looked to be some kinds of ships in the sky, and one very big ship hovering around the center of the city. She didn't know if they were aliens, robots or just some other villain; with this city's luck it could've been any of the above. She couldn't help but ponder whether her presence in the city contributed to its seemingly perpetual bad luck.

These ships were firing on the city, and they had just shot out some other kind of projectiles when she had been caught off guard by an explosion from close behind her. She hadn't been hurt, but she had been close enough that it managed to give her quite a fright, and reminded her that to get distracted in a situation like this was practically asking to get blown up. That was when Kid Flash had come back, grabbed her, and took her to this stupid store on the other side of the city. He had told her to hide in there for the moment, and that he would be right back after helping as many civilians as he could, and then ran off before she could remind him that she did not need to hide, and was perfectly capable of defending herself. In truth, while she was more than capable of looking after herself, she didn't hate Kid Flash's protectiveness as much as she claimed; she actually kind of appreciated his concern. Her first instinct was to walk away from her 'hiding spot' , but the thought of Kid Flash coming back to not find her there and worrying that something had happened to her put an uneasy feeling in her stomach. So begrudgingly she walked into the store and decided to wait for him to come back.

The constant sounds of explosions and distant screams had started to die down much later into the night. The morning after she had assumed that whatever it was that had attacked had been dealt with, and had almost left the store when she heard something different coming from just outside the walls of the not too big not too small shop. Several sets of footsteps, one sounding fast and frantic, the others sounding calmer and, to Jinx's dismay, nothing like human footsteps; they were more metallic, and the rhythm of the steps was just ever so slightly off. Then she heard what she assumed was the firing of a weapon, though not any weapon she was familiar with, accompanied by a scream. She remembered feeling somewhat relieved when she heard a slight groan just afterwards, since it meant that whoever just got attacked wasn't dead. Although when she peeked outside shortly after, there was nobody lying there, which meant they either vanished into thin air, or got grabbed by whatever had attacked them.

From then on, she would periodically hear those strange footsteps, usually coinciding with other sounds such as weapons firing, doors being broken down and on one occasion what she assumed was some sort of big truck slowly driving past.

The sound of her stomach growling brought Jinx back to the present moment. She took a look around at the remaining food on the shelves; there was some long expired sandwiches, nope, some beans that were still good, I'd rather eat the expired sandwich, and an empty cereal box. Out of all of her options, she found the empty cereal box the most appealing.

Going out to look for food was her best option, and she knew it. With this, she once again found herself contemplating the idea of moving on from this hiding spot. It wasn't like she even liked this place; she couldn't stand it, but for some reason the idea of not coming back to wait here made her feel sick. Deep down, she knew that Kid Flash wouldn't come back for her; by the second day she had reasoned he had most likely been captured, or worse. She didn't like to think about 'or worse'. But even despite this, she had found herself rejecting the idea of leaving this spot behind time and time again over the course of the last three weeks, and part of her knew why. She felt like she was giving up on him by leaving. This line of thought was combated by the more rational part of her mind. 'Staying here will only get you captured or killed, you hate it here, he won't come back here, and if the reason for that is because he's hurt, then you can't help him from here'. She glared at the door. She knew it was time to make her choice.

She hadn't looked back after walking out of the store for what she knew was the last time; she wouldn't risk looking back, or else she might change her mind. In the hours since leaving she had eventually found food; some chocolate from a vending machine and some pizza she raided from some crappy, small pizza store that was almost completely out of business, which didn't make much sense to her. It was actually pretty good, for an almost expired frozen pizza that she took from their store room and heated up.

A few hours had passed, at least she guessed so; she didn't keep a watch on her, and her phone had been dead before the city was attacked.

For the most part, the city seemed the same, at least the parts she had seen so far. A couple of buildings seemed in pretty bad shape from the initial attack, with floors collapsed, shattered windows, giant holes in walls, but the majority were mostly untouched. The general state of the city was just….messy. Bins tipped over, trash covering the floors, broken glass, and so on. It certainly didn't help that she hadn't run into anyone yet; it made her uneasy, seeing the city so abandoned. Of course, people were most likely all around, but hiding like she had been doing, though this brought her little comfort.

Jinx had chosen to walk in this specific direction for a reason. On a few of her previous excursions from the store she had spotted some teenagers, maybe one or two years younger than her, skulking around in this general direction. The part that intrigued her was that on the separate occasions she had spotted them, it was different teenagers. If she was right, it hopefully meant that there was a large group hiding out somewhere in this direction, and if there was a large group, that meant food. Jinx found herself smiling at the thought.

The former HIVE member was now on a street corner, somewhere closer to the more central areas of the city, on the other side of the road she could see the arcade, and she remembered that the video store was close by, and she knew that a high school wasn't far either. It was pretty late when the attack had happened, so it was unlikely that those kids were in school at the time, but it was possible that they all flocked there to hide. It made sense after all, there was food, water, space to move around, and plenty of hiding spots.

She was about to turn the other way and head for the school when she spotted them. More teenagers, around the same age as the ones she had spotted before, were on the other end of the street, barely visible from around the street corner. Jinx almost tripped over herself trying to hide before she was spotted. 'Why go through the effort of looking for a group that might not be there when she could just follow these idiots?' Jinx smirked as she thought to herself.

Waiting until they had started to leave, Jinx began to trail the teens from a distance, counting a total of three of them. She was too far away to hear what they were saying, but she never once allowed herself to lose sight of them. She stalked them for a few blocks, until they began to slow down and came to a stop under a bridge. Jinx hid behind a car that had been abandoned mid journey as the teens looked around to make sure nobody was following them. Amateurs. She smiled to herself as she observed the three kids walked into a sewer tunnel entrance that was protruding out in the space under the bridge.

As she approached the tunnel entrance, she remembered that she couldn't just steal from them like that. She was still trying to do the whole 'good person thing', and something about stealing resources from a bunch of schoolkids, close to her age or not, didn't quite sit right with her. 'Maybe I'll only take any surplus they have.' she reasoned to herself.

But as she thought this, the earth itself seemed to rise and close up the entrance to the tunnel. Jinx merely stood there, frozen mid step, awestruck at she had just witnessed.

Ok, maybe I won't be stealing anything from them after all.

She wasn't about to try and contest whatever it was that made the ground itself move, and seeing no other way in, Jinx merely frowned as she reluctantly turned around and began to walk away. Finding this group had been the only objective she'd had for time being, and with that idea now being a bust she would need to come up with a new plan for her next move in this ghost town.

She studied her surroundings, indifferently searching for any ideas.

There were some interesting buildings she could try raiding, some abandoned cars, Titans Tower was over in the distance, there was a cool looking-wait. She paused and did a double take. The big hole in Titans Tower seems to have been patched, and some of the lights were on. Well isn't that something, they prioritised their building repairs over whatever it is that's happening in the city. She guessed it was probably Cyborg's idea, she knew that he loved that Tower almost as much as he loved his car, though she wouldn't have guessed that fixing it would be more important to him than protecting the city from a crisis.

Before she could continue her surveying of the nearby area, her attention was pulled to a drone flying nearby. For the most part it looked like a regular drone, although it seemed slightly larger than an average drone, and it had an orb attached to its underside at the front, which had a large orange circle moving around within it that stood out from the rest of the black sphere, causing it to resemble an eyeball.

The drone was flying in a perfectly straight line, high above the streets; the orb swivelling rhythmically like it was searching for something. Any worry Jinx could've had about being seen by the flying machine was extinguished by the distance between the drone and herself, and the fact that it wasn't currently headed towards her.

Unfortunately, by looking to the skies she had left herself vulnerable to looking at the things she had been trying her best to ignore the entire time she had been outside. The ships. There weren't as many as there were three weeks ago, and they weren't firing on the city like they were on that day, but this didn't make them any less intimidating. Jinx assumed that most of them had been landed and were somewhere in the city still. There was only a couple of normal ships in the sky still, and one much larger ship that she could only assume was the capital ship. Their general shape resembled an elongated leaf, with cannons attached to both the tops and undersides of the crafts, and the vessels were covered in cyan coloured tubes that Jinx couldn't discern the purpose of. Aside from the night she had first seen them firing on the city, she had noticed them the first couple times she had ventured out from the store she was hiding in; they had been unnerving enough to make her want to try and ignore them every time she had went out since. As far as she could tell though, they hadn't really done anything since that first night other than just hover there, not that that made her any more comfortable with their presence in the city's airspace.

Once she had pulled her eyes from the ships, she noticed that the drone was now nowhere to be seen, and she realised that she had no idea how long she had been staring for. It was more than past time to get moving; she didn't know what time it was, but it was still pretty bright so it couldn't be too late in the day, but even still she didn't want to waste too much time just looking at the city instead of getting things done. So she just picked a direction, and starting walking.

While she walked, Jinx found herself thinking about anyone else that could still be hiding in the city who she could try to find. Maybe some of the Hive Five were around, she was sure that working with them during a situation like this wouldn't break her 'good streak'. Or maybe she could try and make her way out of the city, though this idea upset her for one reason or another. Before she knew it, she was speed walking. Or maybe Kid Flash was still here in the city, and was alright and had just been so busy helping people that he hadn't been able to get back to her. She was running now. She tried to force back the lump in her throat as she strengthened her resolve to stay in the city and get through this.

She wasn't about to get emotional; she hated getting emotional, especially when she was so out in the open like this.

Jinx was approaching a corner when she suddenly stopped, so suddenly that she stumbled slightly. She had been so lost in her train of thought that she had almost failed to hear it. Those footsteps. Her eyes widened. She had heard them enough times while hiding inside that store to recognise them anywhere. The sound was coming from around the corner she had been running toward and it was getting closer. Jinx wasn't afraid of a fight, she enjoyed it in fact, but she was also smart enough to not pick a fight that she didn't know if she could win.

She ran to a nearby taxi that had been abandoned in the street; its doors had been left open so getting in wasn't hard. She got in the back seat and closed the door without fully shutting it, so that she wasn't locked inside, and waited. If she was lucky, which she usually wasn't, they would pass her without noticing. Of course, she still hadn't actually seen what 'they' even were.

The footsteps grew closer. They sounded metallic, but not in the usual sense; they sounded almost like chimes. The unnerving rhythm of the steps was just ever so slightly off in a way she couldn't really describe, but it was just off.

They finally came around the corner. She wasn't sure what she had been expecting, but they certainly didn't disappoint. The first thing she noticed was how tall they were. Not freakishly tall by any means, she had met a fair few people in her life who were the same height, but they were still very noticeably taller than an average human, their heads were strikingly similar to skulls, but missing the jaw, and their necks connected higher on the head than they should. Their bodies looked metallic, like a robot, but something about the metallic texture seemed organic; like it was alive, and seemed almost insect-like. They had forearms that were longer than they should have been, and their feet weren't the same shape as human feet, they were much thicker, and rounder. For the most part they were a dark purple colour, with certain parts, such as their faces, being bone white. There were small, green, glowing nodes scattered on their bodies, with two larger ones on their foreheads, and they each had a pair of small green dots that glowed within their eye sockets, presumably acting as their eyes. On the centre of each of their backs was a small object, almost like a miniature backpack, that seemed ingrown into the rest of their bodies, with four red slits on them facing outwards. Jinx couldn't tell if they were robots, aliens or people in very convincing disguises.

There was three of them, with one of them standing out by the merit of being slightly shorter, and their arm bulging at the elbow, with that arm extended into what looked like a cannon in the place of where their arm should be.

Jinx ducked below the car window, hoping to stay out of sight.

She listened as sound of their footsteps made its way down the street, feeling her muscles begin to tense as it drew near.

Just as they had passed the taxi Jinx was hiding in the footsteps stopped.

Her mouth was dry. They know. They had to know where she was. Why else would they stop right next to her. Icy fear clawed in her chest. She tried to get her breathing under control, tried to suppress any potential noise, and started holding her breath entirely.

Then she heard a buzzing noise.

It progressively grew louder.

She couldn't place what, but it sounded strangely familiar.

The anxiety of not knowing what was happening was greater than any fear she might have had of those things.

She couldn't stop herself from lifting her head just high enough to peer out of the car window. There, she saw a familiar machine descending from the sky to land in front of one of the robot-bug-alien-people-things. It was the drone from before.

As if on cue, the creature crouched down and removed a device from on top of the drone, before standing up straight and seemingly plugging it into another device that was attached to its arm. The creature was pressing buttons on both devices for a moment, before unplugging and then reattaching the device to the drone.

Then the creature turned to face the other two and spoke. Its voice was low, and sounded like a distorted growl.

"Low priority targets have been spotted nearby,"

Well that doesn't sound great

"The commander is already approaching this area, so this information is being forwarded, we are to join with his patrol at the first convenience"

Jinx ducked down again as they turned. So those drones are their snitches.

Before she could think of what to do, the creatures had already started walking away, and had made it out of sight within half a minute.

Cautiously, Jinx got out from the taxi, and took a moment to consider the opportunity that had been presented to her.

They wouldn't have gone to far yet, if she tailed them from a safe distance, she could learn a thing or two more about what was happening. On one hand, she didn't know how many of those things would be there, and what else there could be, so it was risky. On the other hand, she didn't exactly have any other plans.

Her mind was made up.

She swiftly but quietly made her way back to the top end of the street, and peeked around the corner. Once she spotted them she merely waited till they had made some distance, then caught up to them a bit, and repeated this for a couple of blocks.

She stopped once she heard more footsteps, and the sound of a large vehicle.

Once the ones she had been following had passed, she ran up to the street corner and peered around it to see what was happening.

There was eight of them that she could see, including the ones she had followed, and they were walking in a convoy for what appeared to be a large tank. The tank was made of the same organic looking metal material that the creatures were made of, though the tank had blue nodes instead of the green of the creatures' , and the tanks nodes were much larger than that of the creatures'.

The tank had been slowly moving but was now coming to a stop.

Jinx could see the creatures speaking to each other, but was too far away to understand what they were actually saying. One of them pointed at a parked car, and another one began marching towards it, when suddenly a man in a grey hoodie and jeans, and a woman in a wool jacket and running shorts emerged from under the car and attempted to run, while the creatures started after them.

It didn't seem like all that long ago she would've been comfortable just turning away and letting it happen. Unfortunately for her, that wasn't who she was anymore. She had to do something.

She had just stepped out from the corner, and was about to intervene when a large figure came from above, and slammed into the ground between the creatures and the two people. It almost looked like-

"Cyborg!" Jinx exclaimed.

She felt sweet relief course through her veins, finally she had found someone she knew, and a Teen Titan no less.

She saw the cybernetic teen turn to the two people and put a hand on each of their shoulders, and even from as far as she was standing, she could see the hope in their eyes.

Then she watched in horror as Cyborg threw the two civilians to the small crowd of creatures .

"Boo yah"

(sorry this chapter took so long when there's so little in it, had a mild mental health crisis midway through writing it lmao, it'll be a while before the next chapter, since i have my final high school exams in like a month and i havent studied nearly enough) Hope you enjoyed!