April. Baby's first villainous motivation p.3

"Stop being creepy," said Dick.

But when Victor looked at him, Dick had a smile on his face. Vic went back to looking at Gar and Terra across the yard. "But they're so sweet," he said.

Gar and Terra had met outside the school gates and were in the process of walking into school, very slowly, like they didn't want to arrive to their destination. They were talking incessantly, wearing wide smiles. At one point in the walk, Gar dared to grab her hand.

"Aww," Vic said at that point. "Look at them. Reminds me of me in middle school."

"Now you're just bragging," laughed Dick.

Next to them on their table by the bleachers, Raven looked up from her phone exactly once, out of masochistic curiosity, then looked back down. Thankfully she'd established it was normal for her to not take part in this type of commentary. She couldn't imagine what it would be like to feel what she was feeling and have to make small talk praising the new couple on top of it.

"Raven's in a cult?" Jen repeated when Terra told her as much. She didn't look pleased. "That was already a rumor way back in freshman year. You're gonna have to do better than that."

"But what I'm telling you," Terra argued, "is that it's true."

"Then get proof," said Jen. "Otherwise it'll look like we're reaching."

"Gar said the name was Azarath, but I couldn't find anything online," said Terra.

"Get pictures of the inside."

"She's never let me in her house."

"Get her to let you," Jenny replied in a sing-song voice.

As much as Terra was disappointed her intel was rejected, she couldn't resent Jen for it. Terra wanted to sink Raven most of all; if Jen said it wasn't perfect, Terra would seek perfect.

"Anyway," said Jenny, "clear your schedule for tonight. We're getting Dick's school records."

"That's tonight?"

"I've been talking to people who knew Dick in middle school," Jen said, smiling. "You were right, he was out of control back then. I've got a ton of conversations to screenshot—well, to make Seymour screenshot. But the school records will lend all of this some much needed credibility. We can't get it wrong with the leader."

Terra didn't smile back. She was deep in thought. "We should get Dick's school records. But… a lot of the really good stuff won't be in there. Like, what he told me about shoplifting and breaking and entering won't be in there."

"Well we can't break into a police station for records."

"No, but I could clone his phone," said Terra. And at Jen's unsettled expression, she elaborated. "I'm thinking there'll be conversations between him and Rex that could be damning. That was probably three phones ago for him, but I know for a fact he transfers his data to every new phone, so there might be stuff there."

Jen slowly smiled. "Have I ever told you how glad I am you're on our side?"

Terra tried not to feel the warmth of validation, and failed.

That day, Jen and the boys -because the popular girls had opted out of this part of the operation- hid in a bathroom after the end of school. Terra went to Club, let Jenny know when the Five left the school, pretended to leave with them, and went around the building to re-enter from the back door and meet Hive in the hallway.

Jen sent Mikron up the vent, for obvious reasons. He got the keys from the lounge, opened the door to Blood's office for everyone, and they went through the records and took pictures of everything related to Dick.

Terra stayed out as lookout, and thought to herself that Dick would have gotten all of this done in broad daylight, in the span of minutes and with half the people involved, but whatever.

First period the next day found the Project club in Blood's office.

The principal was pacing a little faster than usual. "These prank authors have really made tracks in the last week, don't you think?" he questioned, eyeing the six of them. "And with prom around the corner… It's hard for me to believe they won't try to strike then."

"Sir, we're trying to work it out-" Dick tried.

Blood waved them off. "Whatever you're going to do, children, do it fast."

"Okay, that was the first time he was upfront about wanting us to do anything," Gar recounted once they were outside. "He must be really stressed out."

"Does this mean we're gonna have to go to prom?" asked Raven.

Her grumbling tone was what did it for Dick. "That's what you're worried about?" he snapped. "We've been made fools for over a month. How can you not want to do everything we can to set this right?" He felt bad about snapping when Raven said nothing in return, turned away and crossed her arms, but it was too late now.

"We may not need to be fully at prom," said Vic. "It may be better if we're keeping watch from a distance." He secretly shared Raven's reluctance. He would've loved to skip prom -he couldn't wait for his old classmates to graduate-, but seeing how Dick got, he felt the need to be diplomatic.

"I would've never thought this would still be going on at prom season," Dick muttered. "How did we let it get this far?"

"Thinking about the past helps no one," Kori told him. "You are being too hard."

Gar, holding hands with Terra, looked at Dick and felt bad he was having a terrible time thanks to Hive. But he looked at Terra, she caught his eye, and they shared a small smile—their own little cocoon away from the world was that easy to access.

The truth was, Gar couldn't actually feel the distress his friends all seemed to be going through. He was the happiest he'd ever been; he couldn't concentrate on bad things when he got to be next to Terra, he couldn't dwell on the bad when he felt like he was constantly walking on clouds. He went through the motions with missions, but he couldn't care much about anything; for the first time in God knows how long, he felt as carefree as a child.

Terra didn't press Gar for more information on Raven's cult-home, let alone ask him to get her inside—she'd preemptively decided there was no way Raven was ever opening her doors to her, with or without Gar by her side. She'd also given up on the idea of cloning Raven's phone like she had Dick's, since that girl never let her belongings out of sight. This decision was only reinforced when she found out Raven had had her phone for less than a year: the chances that there was anything damning in there were slim to none.

No, every normal tactic had to be thrown out where that soulless, frigid girl was concerned. Do better, Jen had said. And Terra would. She'd just have to get creative with it.

She remembered Gar saying Raven had lived in a lot of different towns, so she asked him about that. Gar, sweet Gar, never wondered why Terra kept asking about Raven, and Terra never had to use the excuse she had at the ready: that she wanted to make friends with her. But when she asked him if she knew why Raven had moved around so much, his face froze, and he took a moment to answer, and then he told her no, he didn't. So she knew he did, and that secret was even bigger than the Azarath thing.

Wounded ego aside –Terra was his girlfriend now after all, he should be able to tell her anything-, this was both an advance and a wench in her plans. She knew there was something there—but she wouldn't get it asking Gar.

So she changed tactics. She resorted to a basic internet search on Raven Roch. She was able to link her to different schools in some of the towns Gar had mentioned. From there it was a long and arduous road of creating fake profiles and contacting people. She messages dozens of people, and just a handful responded, but that was when she hit jackpot: not many of them actually offered stories about Raven, but the few who did had a lot to say.

Terra had to laugh when she learned the truth: so monkish old Raven had been a bully. While she gathered all the valuable screenshots, she was struck by another idea. She created another fake profile, this time posing as a teacher, and messaged teachers from Raven's old schools. She pretended she was about to have Raven in her class, and she was concerned about her behavior, as she knew she had a bad temper and outbursts as a child. The few teachers who answered were forthcoming and thorough.

Hitherto Terra had been emailing Jenny all her findings. For this, she delivered the flash drive herself.

"The dirt on Raven," she said when she did so. "There's stuff on Kori and Vic too."

Jen looked up. "Kori and Vic? How come?"

"I know you know what you're doing for them, but I got you pictures," Terra said, looking behind her shoulder even though school was long over and no one came by the dumpsters anyway. "I got childhood pictures of Kori to go with the embarrassing accounts Jade gave you." In their first sleepover together, Kori had shown Terra an old album. Terra had woken up early the next morning and take pictures of it with her phone.

"And for Vic?" Jen asked.

"His dad is very talkative," said Terra. "Turns out Vic was featured in a video for STAR Labs where they showed off what his prosthetics can do. It's a shitty in-site video player, that's why I guess no one ever found it. But I got a couple of cool screenshots. You know, to show his special abilities and reinforce that he cheated at football."

Jen shook her head in awe. "And you did this extra credit why?"

"You got screenshots for Dick, right?" Terra questioned. "What were you gonna do for the others? Text only? A picture's worth a thousand words."

Then Jen's face changed. The side-grin vanished into a sober expression that put Terra on edge.

"What?" Terra demanded.

"I think… we're ready."

Terra suppressed the dread that made her feel. "For part two? That's where the rumors come in, right?"

"Yeah. …Plus a little extra."

Terra was ready for Jen to leave it there, as she always did. But Jen must no longer have harbored doubts about Terra's commitment to the coup, because after she finished with her usual vagueness, she pocketed the flash drive, looked long and hard at Terra, and then told her exactly what the 'extra' entailed.

On Monday, Jen launched Stage 2 of the big plan.

For Dick, the bomb dropped as he was getting his books for first period, when he heard a group of girls whispering behind him. He looked around to find them staring at him. When he looked at them, they busted into giggles. "What?" he demanded.

One of them approached him. "Is it true you're doing those pranks yourselves?"

It took a moment for Dick to understand what he was hearing. "What?"

Another girl piped up. "We heard you're doing the pranks yourself, to have something to go and solve. To keep up appearances that you do something."

"Who told you that?" Dick asked, but they were already walking off.

After that, he rushed directly to the clubroom on a break between periods. Everyone was already there. "Guys. Something strange is going on."

"Someone asked you if we were behind the pranks?" asked Vic.

"Yes," Dick breathed, sitting down. "Have all of you gotten that?"

"I did not get told it," said Kori.

"Me neither," murmured Terra.

"I did," said Raven, angrily. "A kid outside shouted at me that we were a farce."

"I got one of the girls who applied to join us at the start of the year," said Gar. "She said she was glad she didn't get in because we got so corrupted."

Dick looked at all of them in turn. His voice was subdued when he asked, "You all got this today? And it's the first time you heard anything about it?" He got nods from the three.

"Actually, I…" Vic raised his hand. "I got worse than directly asked about it." He pulled out his phone. "I found out through the hashtag. …Also we have a hashtag now."

Terra made herself small in the corner. That was the cherry on top of Jenny's plan: the cyberbullying. She'd been wondering when they would discover it.

Gar pulled on Vic's phone to see. "Sham Titans?" he exploded. "Okay, that cute nickname has Jenny written all over!"

"Guys. This isn't natural," said Dick, almost to himself, moving away from the group.

"You think this is all the same plan?" asked Vic. "The pranks and these rumors? It's gotta be, right? Like the idea was always to pin this on us. Dick, what are you doing?"

As Vic talked, Dick had gotten out a folder and tape out of his bag, and moved to the furthest wall of the room.

"A conspiracy board," said Dick. "I finally printed all the pictures from my phone."

Dick built his board in stolen moments between classes and fake bathroom breaks. His friends had to force him to go to lunch.

The finished board was divided in three parts. One side was pictures of the pranks taken, with notes of time and locations they took place on. The middle portion were their suspects, along with where they had been at the time of each prank. The other end was the new rumors flying about the Club. Those screenshots were freshly printed.

Dick finished setting it up in the afternoon, and stood in front of it waiting for a Eureka moment to arrive. But the suspects and locations didn't intersect enough to yield any logical conclusion.

That was how his friends left him that afternoon, so that night, when Dick group-called everyone, they all thought he must have had a breakthrough, or at least come up with a plan.

So Vic confidently answered with, "You got a lead?"

And Dick answered, "No. We have a new problem."

"What's going on?" asked Raven.

"Kitty Moth was just at my house," said Dick, sounding disgusted.

"Kitty?" asked Terra, her heart speeding up.

"Kitty!?" yelped Kori, and Terra had to pull her phone away from her ear.

"What did she want?" asked Gar, also cradling his assaulted ear.

Dick sighed heavily on the other end. "She says she planted a stink bomb somewhere in school for prom night. And she's gonna set it off… unless I take her to prom."

"A stink bomb?" echoed Raven. "Are we back in middle school?"

"What'd you mean she's making you take her to prom?" asked Gar.

"What'd you mean planted?" asked Victor.

There was complete dead silence on Kori's end that was putting all of them on edge.

"I'm sending you a picture," said Dick. They got it in the next few seconds. It was a stink bomb backed against a wall. There was no light source other than the flash from the camera. "She said all she had to do was give a sign and it would explode if I didn't…" he coughed, "behave to her liking. Her words."

That's incredibly disturbing, thought Raven. "Look, and this is just a suggestion, but… could we not just let it go off? Given the fact that it is just a stink bomb?"

"Yeah, I'm with Raven," said Gar. "At most they'll have to air things out for a few days."

"We're supposed to protect the school," said Dick, slowly, like he was repeating a script. "No matter how stupid it seems."

"It does seem pretty stupid," said Victor.

Dick's voice gained a frantic quality. "Look, we're already under the microscope for all the pranks stuff. If we do nothing about the bomb, and if it comes out that we knew about it beforehand—the rumors we can prove false, but this would be true-"

"Okay, okay, fine," acquiesced Raven.

Raven had spoken for the whole group: they were more or less resigned to the fact they'd have to humor Kitty, if only for Dick's sake. He would get the worse part of the deal anyhow.

"So how do we play this?" asked Gar. "You're gonna go on this date, and hope she'll tell you where the bomb is?"

"I was thinking something with a little more teamwork," said Dick. "I play the part, and you guys search the school for this thing. And it's not a date."

"Soo we are gonna have to do prom," droned Raven.

"Yes, Rae. Sorry. We are," said Dick. "Get some sleep. We'll figure this out tomorrow."

"Kitty's the only person who dares to pursue Dick," Gar explained Terra the next day in the clubroom, speaking freely because neither Dick nor Kori had arrived yet.

"That's because everyone can see he and Kori have a thing," said Raven, not at Terra but at her lunch. "No one else is dumb enough to get in between them."

"This could get ugly," said Vic. "I love Kori, but sometimes I feel like she'd have no qualms against committing murder."

Gar and Raven nodded in agreement.

Terra looked at them bafflement. "But, hold on. How long has this been going on—Dick and Kori dancing around getting together?"

"Uh, since freshman year?" said Gar. "The very start of it. I'd say it started right when they met."

Terra turned to him with wide eyes. "When are they planning to seal the deal?"

"Oh, we stopped trying to figure that out ages ago," said Vic cheerfully. "Maybe never, who knows."

I'll have ruined their lives before they get to be together, thought Terra. Then she banished that thought. It wasn't good to think about the plan when she was with the group.

When Kori arrived, everyone held their breath. She seemed cheerful to the point of it seeming forced. "Terra," she said, "do you know, Kitty was part of the club at the beginning of the year."

"…What? Really?" reacted Terra.

"For almost one entire day," Kori went on. "She tricked me to get into. I will not be fooled by her again." She cut her food up mechanically and seemed to always forget to take some into her mouth.

The other four exchanged worried looks.

Terra met Jenny on the side of the school building.

"What the hell is this about Kitty forcing Dick to take her to prom?" Terra asked as greeting. "Was this part of the plan?"

"Kind of. In that this is her payment," said Jen, crossing her arms. "Look, I'm as annoyed with this as you are. But she started saying she wouldn't go through with the plan if we didn't give her this. You know we need her."

"What about Fang?"

Jenny cracked a smile. "Fang? You're so sweet."

Terra reddened as she scowled, and next demanded, "A stink bomb? Really?"

"She asked me what I'd do in her place, and I told her." Jen shrugged. "I didn't think she'd take me up on it. But it got them moving, didn't it?"

Terra ignored the question. "And where do I figure in all of this?"

"You? Well of course, you have to keep them from finding the bomb."

Terra crossed her arms. "So where is it?"

"I haven't decided yet."

Terra glowered at the pink-haired girl. "You don't trust me with it." It wasn't hard to crack that code.

"Terra!" Jen said in mock offense. "Let's just say the fewer who know the better. But just make sure they don't go through the whole school too fast, 'kay?"

The day before, Terra had thought she was finally included in the inner circle of this plan; but then again, sometimes she thought that circle contained Jen and no one else.

She spent History class trying to push off the feelings of queasiness that popped up whenever she was reminded that Hive's Big Plan was coming up fast, and she didn't know how much longer she had left.

As Mr. Immotu flew through dates and names that went right above her head, she had the desperate thought: Why did this have to come to anything? Why couldn't it stay like this, with Terra a friend to the Club and a foe at the same time? She liked this balancing rope. She was both in the group as a friend, and smarting out all of them. Why couldn't it always be like that?

Kori had maintained a state of solid, hardened anger all throughout the day. Like a volcano about to erupt. The air around her actually felt hotter. In clubroom, her friends chose seats a safe distance away from her.

Vic was studying the picture of the stink bomb. "Given the look of this corner, paint job, general dirt, and patterns of light, this could be…" he set it down, "any damn closet in the whole school."

"Gee, thanks, Victor," said Dick. "But here's another thought. Kitty's exact words were that she just has to give a sign to set off the bomb. That means she has accomplices, and they'll be on site, ready to set it off manually."

"So if we were to find someone at school not in the dance…" started Raven.

"That's where the bomb is," Dick finished.

"Unless it can be set off remotely," said Gar. Dick looked at him. Gar shrugged. "Technology's come a long way, dude."

"Okay." Dick threw the photo at Gar and Vic. "Why don't you two take this picture, walk around, and see if you can identify what closet this is? Or at least narrow it down to a floor."

"Aye, captain!" said Gar, eager to get out of Dick's glare, and he and Victor walked off.

Dick turned to Terra and Raven. "You guys find out if a kind of stink bomb exists that can be set off remotely." The two didn't look pleased with their being teamed up, which was exactly why he'd done it: it was time they learned to play well together.

Then he turned to Kori.

As Terra and Raven walked down the hallway to their mission, they heard Dick say, "And… you, Kori. You wanted to talk."

Raven and Terra shared a look of knowing alarm—the first display of complicity that had transpired between them yet. They both looked away immediately.

As soon as Raven returned from the most awkward group project of her life, Kori's eyes hooked her from across the clubroom. The redhead nodded towards the hallway and exited silently. Raven reported her and Terra's findings to Dick -stink bombs that could be set remotely weren't a thing in the market, but she'd hesitate to say that would stop someone like Kitty from having something custom-made- and then left to meet Kori when she could do so discreetly.

She was pulled by the arm as soon as she closed the door. Raven was always taken aback by her friend's strength: in a fraction of a second she found herself feet from the club door, facing Kori. She felt like her feet had left the ground at some point.

"Raven, I need your help," said her best friend. "Dick has declined rejecting Kitty's extortion."

Raven cut to the chase. "Kori, Dick will never like Kitty, under any circumstance-"

"I'm not leaving anything up to chance," Kori stated, and it was a testament to how laser-focused she was that she'd slipped a both a contraction and an idiom without noticing.

"And what do you suggest-?"

"I will go to the prom too." Kori's face softened for the first time today, to give her friend a pleading look. "Will you help me?"

Raven had known she'd be going along with Kori even before she pulled that face. "Let me get my stuff," she conceded, and Kori's profuse thanks followed her into the clubroom. Raven braced herself: if she knew Kori at all, she had a pretty good idea of where they were going.

Terra watched Raven dip into the clubroom to pick up her bag, say goodbye to the group, and slip back out. It hadn't escaped her she and Kori had held a secret, likely Kitty-related meeting in the hallway.

She didn't understand why those two were friends. Sure, Raven had seniority over her. Maybe if she'd been allowed to be friends with the Club longer, Kori would've eventually preferred her to Raven. Terra could see no reason she wouldn't. If she'd had the time, she might've replaced Raven completely for the whole group. But she'd never get to find out.

Gar came back to sit with her after a private talk with Dick. "He said no," he told Terra.

"'Course he did," Terra smiled. "It doesn't matter."

Vic looked up to see Gar melt when Terra gave him a pull on the cheek. "Said no to what?" he asked.

"I asked Dick for just, a moment to pop into the prom and have a little dance with my girlfriend." (Gar pulled the word 'girlfriend' as often as he could these days.) "For a few minutes! Just a song!"

"Of course he said no," retorted Vic. "Why'd you ask him that?"

Gar ignored the question to ask him, "When are we s'possed to meet?"

"Five thirty," Vic supplied, and went back to downloading the school map to his phone.

Gar turned towards Terra with a smile. "Gives us time to hang out now."

She smiled back and told him to lead the way. Though she pretended not to, Gar knew she had to be disappointed about the dance too: she'd been pensive when he told her they couldn't have prom time, and looked vaguely sad even now. He took her hand as they left school, and resolved to take her mind off it to the best of his ability.

*smiling devil emoji*

Steeeveee: Thank youuu and thank you for reading!

~The Lighthouse