Hello, welcome to an update for Superior Purpose. Been a while, so after my little blurb we can jump in to get right to the story.
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On to the story.
The Titan Tower had been quiet for a while. Arguments, laughter, and conversation had filled its halls and rooms even just so soon after the formation of the team but now it was eerily silent.
Doors hissed and thudded as they opened and closed. Footsteps clicked up and down the halls as the Titans moved about. The training room could often be heard even into the main levels of the tower as various members of the team worked to improve themselves.
Still the silence was always present. The television yammered on and on about one inane thing or other, but no one seemed to hear it. No one truly watched it either.
Naruto was unsure how to best handle the situation. He had lost comrades before. Many comrades. He had dealt with wounded and dead brothers and sisters in arms for years.
The Titans hadn't. Even those that were more hardened and experienced had rarely dealt with the actual loss of a comrade right before their eyes. Currently tension was high.
None of the Titans knew how to console one another. Perhaps they hadn't been together long enough to properly understand how they all dealt with their emotions. Naruto, like most of the others, had chosen to give the members of the team space.
So he watched them.
His teammates tried hard to go on with their normal daily lives as best as they could. Some managed better than others. Starfire hadn't known their teammates for any longer than Naruto, and despite being a very empathetic and loving person by nature, she simply didn't have the close bond some of the others did. Similarly both Cyborg and Raven hadn't been close to the victim of the attack yet either.
The three of them had largely returned to their normal routine. Quieter and a bit more grim than before but back to normal nevertheless. Beastboy was in an odd position as he had dealt with immense loss in his life. Naruto easily identified that concealed beneath the younger boy's friendly and cheerful demeanor. It was harsh to admit but like Naruto, his experience with loss made him more than able to deal with the situation they found themselves in. Others were not so lucky.
Kid Flash, Robin, and Batgirl had all known their friend for some time. They had worked together and invited him into the team because of that. Kid Flash especially had been close to the other boy. He'd disappeared from the tower for nearly a week after the event.
Thankfully unlike most of them, Kid Flash had a mentor that was very involved with his life and able to help him with his troubles.
That left Batgirl and Robin. The most deeply affected, even if it didn't seem to be the case upon first looks.
Batgirl, as it turned out had been the actual target of the assassin. Jaime had saved her life, because his symbiote or suit or whatever the alien tool he used to fight crime had given him warning of a rifle's fire just in time. Kid Flash would have been able to move the girl out of the way of the bullet if he had known. He didn't have the sensory abilities of the suit though.
Naruto could still picture the horrified look on Barbara's face as Jaime placed himself in front of her and attempted to shell himself in his armor. His helmet barely snapped up in time to save his life. However it hadn't fully covered him and the bullet fragmented on impact.
In the time since the attack, the team had been able to figure out it was Deathstroke the Terminator that had taken the shot. Though they still hadn't found the man themselves and they didn't have the first clue as to why he had targeted Barabara.
Jaime was out of the hospital. He wasn't okay though. His family had brought him home with the help of a hospice company. The boy was still in a coma and unlikely to wake up. Kid Flash visited almost every day.
Here at the tower, Naruto imagined it was just as quiet as the room where Jaime was left to possibly sleep for the rest of his natural life. He didn't know what to do about it though. He couldn't force the team to get over something like that. He didn't think someone should truly get over it either.
He recalled every friend he had lost, if not every comrade. The war with the Citadel took too many lives for him to remember every soldier that had died under his command, but he did remember the friends that had been slain.
Was Jaime a friend? Maybe not yet, but he would have been. Naruto knew that they would have been good friends. Especially someone willing to take a blow for their comrades like that. He had the Superior's respect forever for that single act.
Unfortunately, unable to do anything about the situation left Naruto in a sort of limbo. Watching. Waiting. Listening. The team was eventually going to crack somewhere, he had his money on it being Robin.
Batgril may have been there. She may have been splattered by her friend's blood as he took a shot meant for her. She may be scarred permanently with that feeling of guilt.
She had been there though. She had gotten him to the hospital. She had organized the attempt to capture Deathstroke. She had stayed with him even as his family arrived at the hospital and the Doctor delivered the horrible news of Jaime's coma.
Robin hadn't been there. He'd been caught up in his own thing. He hadn't made time for his team. He hadn't been there when someone took a shot at his girlfriend. That someone being an enemy he had faced more than once before only made it worse.
The team leader hadn't been there when the team had been attacked and lost a member. Naruto wasn't even sure if Robin had been to see their fallen comrade since his initial visit.
The tension over the team was nothing compared to the tension beginning to form between the two team leaders. Something Naruto grimaced about as he saw Barbara crossing her arms and staring at Dick until the boy sighed and followed her out of the main rec room of the tower.
He was tired of watching all of this. Most of them were, but he could at least save himself and another from having to sit around here and wait this feeling out.
"Kori." He called out to his fellow alien who perked up slightly from where she was silently sitting beside Raven. The dark one almost seemed like she wanted to thank him for getting the other girl's attention. Starfire had been silently following the other girl around for days now.
"Yes?" Starfire asked.
"We had planned to go and see the nature trails on the mountain. At least before everything happened." Naruto said as he stood up from his seat and set aside the third grade world history textbook that he had been pretending to read.
"It would have been very enjoyable." Starfire's smile was small and brittle.
"It would still be a good time if we went together, right?" He asked suddenly, feeling a little less confident.
That trepidation died as Starfire's smile became more pronounced and bright. She nodded and glided across the room to snatch his hand before they both headed for the elevator. They were intent on having a good time together after weeks spent in communal misery with the rest of their team.
At least their time together would likely be better than whatever Barbara had planned for her and Dick.
Barbara kept her arms tightly crossed around her chest as she led Dick toward a more private portion of the tower usually only used for training or meditation for those members of the team that practiced such a thing. It was actually most of them.
"Wally went to see the Reyes family again. He'll be back tonight." She said suddenly. She wasn't sure why, maybe just to try and start some kind of conversation without immediately diving into what they actually needed to discuss.
Dick only nodded.
That had been the problem she needed to discuss. The fact that they didn't seem to discuss anything anymore. At all.
Barbara paused a moment to wipe at her face. She knew there was nothing there. Even after her hand came away clean and she glanced at it, there was nothing there. She could still feel the sticky blood from her friend though.
"What did you need to talk about?" Dick asked.
"Somewhere to be?" Barbara asked a bit harsher than she had meant.
Dick sighed. She knew he had been avoiding her because he felt guilty about not being there when the team needed him. She didn't want him to blame himself for that, but she needed him now. She couldn't keep being the one to make the effort.
"It's been weeks since Jaime got…" Barbara swallowed thickly before setting her jaw to continue.
"I need you to scale back the search for Deathstroke."
She knew he would react badly before she said it but it had to be said. She wasn't the only one that had recognized Robin was even more absent from interacting with members of the team. His one track dedication to finding the man who had harmed his team was becoming an obsession.
"How can you say that?" Robin bit out gruffly.
"Because I have to. We are supposed to be a team, Robin." She tried to point out.
He wasn't listening though.
"We are a team. One thats down a member because…that fucking psycho is out their still Barb. It has to be my number one priority. You can manage the things with the others. Superior and Starfire can't do much to help an investigation here, they barely understand what it means to shake someone's hand on earth. Cyborg and Beastboy aren't exactly the detective types, don't get me started on Raven, and Kid…he is where he needs to be." Dick explained his position.
It was Barbara's turn to sigh. She could see what he was saying. It pissed her off, because she felt like that was just leaving the team to stagnate but she saw what he was saying still. The problem was he was still missing her point.
"I need you to keep the team running while I focus on the investigation. If he hadn't been trying to get to you then maybe our roles could be flipped, but you know that it's best like this." He continued. It wasn't the right thing to say though.
"How the hell you can be one of the smartest people I know and still be a complete idiot is shocking, Dick Grayson. Sure, continue your investigation. When you finally turn up a lead, I'm sure we'll all rest easier that Deathstroke died from old age while you were busy chasing him." Barbara ground out angrily.
"Don't lash out at me because you're angry about how things happened. I know you feel guilty, but it's not your fault that Jaime-" Robin began only to stop when his head snapped to the side from her slapping him.
"Don't imply you get how I feel. Don't act like you know what I think about what happened. You haven't talked to me about it at all, so it's not like you get to…" Barbara forced a breath of air out and tried to recompose herself.
Dick simply ribbed his cheek before sighing and turning to leave. Not before saying one last thing as if he wanted to piss her off even more.
"Its okay to feel angry and upset right now, Barb. We have to focus on our job though. We will bring Deathstroke and whoever is behind him in. I can promise that." He then slipped through the door and closed it behind him.
He was wise to do so. If he had stayed Barbara was unsure if she could have stopped herself from dragging him into an impromptu sparring session. The idiot boy didn't understand what she was trying to tell him at all. Sure she needed his help with the team, but when she had said they were meant to be a team, she had meant the two of them.
She just needed someone to listen. She wasn't even sure why but for weeks now she'd just swallowed down everything that had happened and pushed on. It didn't help that Dick had pretty much dropped everything on her and bailed on his own little quest for revenge. That was all it was in the end. He wasn't after justice, he was angry that it happened when he wasn't there and intent on bringing down Deathstroke.
Perhaps even more frustrating was the fact that Dick was dancing around the idea that she needed to be kept back and 'safe'. She didn't need that. That was the point of being a hero. They wore targets on their backs and dove into danger willingly.
Collecting herself Barbara left to go and try to do something productive. Anything to take her mind off of the stewing issues that they were facing.
Wally had said goodbye to the Reyes family for the day and could have raced back to the tower, but he wanted some time alone first and decided to stop his run short and just wander along the natural trails outside of Jump City proper. There was a nearby nature preserve that was pretty popular with tourists and locals alike. It had a camping area too.
He wasn't normally one to be all that interested in taking in nature or that sort of thing. Right now the peace and quiet was a nice change of pace though.
Jaime wasn't exactly Wally's best friend but he was closer to the boy than any of the other Titans were. He felt kind of responsible because of that.
Well that and the fact that if he had known what was happening he could have gotten them all out of danger without anyone getting hurt. It was useless thinking about that though. He couldn't change the past…yet.
Barry had mentioned that they might be able to pull some really crazy stuff with the speed force but as bad as things were, messing with reality like that and altering time could make things end up a lot worse.
Groaning, he flopped down on a large log that had been rolled off of the path by park rangers or something. It was kind of like a natural bench now. Perfect for him to plop down and consider how messed up things were really.
He didn't sit for long before he realized that this part of the national park was a bit different. As in it had seen better days.
"Oh, oh man this is where Starfire and Superior landed!" He said as he bolted right back to his feet.
That explained why the large tree had to be removed from the path. A deep trench had been cut through the ground and some craters surrounded it. The ships were all gone of course but there was plenty of obvious evidence from the crash.
"Man, they are lucky to be alive." He murmured as he set out to better check out the depression in the ground.
It must have been a wild ride. He kind of wished he could have experienced it. Like the most thrilling roller coaster ride. Just with a sort of crappy ending.
He followed along the path of destruction for a ways before stopping at the main crater. The main part of the ship that they had escaped from had probably crashed here. The smaller craters were probably from all of the bits that broke off and the escape pods.
It was surprising that the government or maybe the Justice League were able to find and retrieve all the pieces. It covered a huge area.
Wally really would have liked a piece of the alien ship…well not counting the parts used in the construction of Titan tower.
Embracing the prospect of a distraction from the depressing things he had been mostly thinking about lately, Wally began to poke around for a little souvenir. It was a lot of ground to cover even with his powers though.
He wasn't the only one looking for alien tech in the woods today though. He luckily managed to notice that fact before he walked out in front of the band of rough looking thugs shuffling through the underbrush.
"It's been three days since we found any leftovers of that alien crap. Does your boss actually think we will find anything out here still?" One of the scavengers asked.
Wally noticed that the ones actually doing all the work all looked especially rougher around the edges. In fact he was pretty confident that they were all junkies of some kind or other. The guys that looked to be overseeing them were definitely different though, and definitely armed with guns and knives.
"You want your shit, you find that alien shit for us. Don't whine and bitch. Just do your job." The leader of the crew replied before pulling out a bottle of water and taking a drag.
The scavengers seemed to collectively scowl at him as he did so but they did as they were told and continued to search. They turned over every rock and stone and even dug at the. ground in a couple places.
"Heh, like the boss said, you want something done fast and efficient just promise a junkie you'll give him a free ride." One of the other men laughed.
"Yeah. worked great at first but you shitheads may have picked the woods clean. Everything those fucking capes and Uncle Sam missed has probably already been found." The apparent leader said before slipping an obvious burner phone out of his pocket and stepping away from the group to make a call.
"Never wanted super hearing more than right now…except for when…" Kid Flash mumbled before his mind slipped back to the shooting.
He needed to keep his head on straight and in the present.
As he recollected himself the crew boss was returning to the center of the group with the other two armed thugs. He nodded at his fellow criminals before clearing his throat.
"Talked to the boss. He agrees you all probably picked this heap clean for us. So come over here and get paid. Last day bonus, courtesy of Cinderblock." He called out getting the junkies to quickly stop their searches and head over toward him.
Way blinked in surprise at that. What the hell was Cinderblock doing in Jump City, and why did he have people scavenging alien tech for him? That screamed of a bigger operation.
He gasped as the thugs opened up on the junkies as they fell in for their payment. It was over in an instant a dozen people slaughtered right in front of him. That wouldn't go unanswered.
Wally burst free from his hiding place so fast that the leaves tore free from the branches and kicked up into a cyclone behind him.
The first of the thugs was flipped over through the air from the force of Wally's punch. After two flips through air he planted onto the dirt with a thud and groaned deeply as consciousness left him.
The second didn't even have time to react to seeing his fellow criminal ragdolled. Wally yanked his legs out from under him forcing his head to bounce off of the dirt hard enough to put him to sleep as well as probably breaking his jaw.
That left the apparent leader of the crew that did the dumbest possible thing to try and get away. He simply ran. It was like he was hardly moving to Wally. Still it made it easy for the teenage hero plant both of his hands into the man's back and send him face first into the ground.
Maybe he didn't put all that much power behind the blow to make sure he didn't accidentally kill the man, or maybe the guy was just sturdier than he looked. Either way as the man bounced on the ground he tucked himself into a roll and brought the gun in his hands up to snap a round off toward Wally.
It never came close to hitting hi, but it did force the Titan back before he looped around to strike at the thug from the side at speeds he couldn't keep up with. Wally very nearly crashed into the bulky form of his fellow Titan as Naruto dropped down onto the criminal and brutally cracked him across the back of the head.
Veering to the left, Wally stumbled to a stop and turned to face Naruto. Starfire floated down to the earth beside him with her eyes sadly taking in the scene of the murdered junkies.
"What are you guys doing here?" Wally asked.
"We were enjoying the trails, then we heard gunfire and Kori carried me here to see what was happening. We weren't far away and saw you take down the first two." Naruto quickly explained as he began taking the guns from each of the men and tying them up with some of the wire Cyborg had given him for capturing criminals.
"Huh, why would you two- Naruto is that lipstick?" Wally asked as his mind processed the pair of smears on Naruto's lips and cheek.
"Huh?" He asked before wiping at the smudges.
Starfire hurried over and began cleaning it off with her finger. Her own lips looked a bit smudged.
"It is my fault. Friend Barbara showed me a brand that she said looked good on me. I was showing Naruto when we were interrupted." Starfire explained. The actual heat and annoyance in her tone was actually the first time Wally had heard the girl sound legitimately annoyed.
"Well, uh good thing you guys happened to be nearby." Wally said. He had it under control but help was appreciated.
"Sadly, we weren't here in time to stop that." Naruto sighed as he looked at the dead victims.
"Yeah. These guys just shot them up like it was nothing. They are going away for a long time for this, but they were also doing something with pieces of that ship you two came to earth on. We have a case on our hands I think."
"We should call Batgirl." Starfire said.
"Yeah and Robin too." Wally said but frowned as the two aliens shared a look.
"What?"
"Batgirl is in charge of things right now, at least as far as we can tell. Call him if you want though." Naruto said as he began calling the local authorities and Starfire called Barbara.
Wally narrowed his eyes before pulling out his communicator and calling Robin. It took longer than usual for the other boy to answer but when he did he seemed grumpy and too busy to talk.
"What do you need Wally?"
"Uh, listen Rob I was up here in the national park and witnessed some of Cinderblock's guys kill people. They were collecting alien tech leftovers from when-" He began to explain.
"Have you told Batgirl?" The other boy asked.
"Starfire is right now." Kid Flash said a bit put off by the interruption.
"She will handle it. I have my hands full." Robin replied before the communicator clicked off.
Wally stared at it For a moment before gritting his teeth. He had a dozen dead people on his hands and criminals trying to do something with alien tech and Robin was too busy for that? What the actual hell was going on?
"Barbara and the police are on their way. She is bringing the rest of the team and our gear." Naruto called out to Wally.
"Good. At least one of our leaders is leading." He ran a hand through his hair in frustration.
The team began working with the police on the case surrounding Cinderblock's thugs. While Robin left that to Batgirl to organize and control, he continued his investigation of Slade. It was rare that the mercenary would remain under the radar for so long. However the Justice League was looking for him as well.
One didn't attempt to kill a hero, even one that wasn't a part of the League, without feeling the heat.
Robin wanted to get his hands on the Terminator first though. He may have missed the event that crippled Jaime, but the least he could do was bring the man that had attacked him to justice. Not to mention figuring out why someone had Deathstroke trying to kill Barbara.
That was something of a personal factor for Dick.
The only issue was there were practically no leads. It was like Slade had vanished to thin air and hadn't needed to come out of hiding for a job since he shot Jaime.
Whoever had hired him had to have paid quite a lot if that was the case. So that kind of narrowed the possible employers down a bit. Not near enough though.
Robin had tried to attack the problem from different angles, hoping for a bit of a different perspective giving him a breakthrough. Figuring out why someone would target Barbara had been a good attempt.
It didn't pan out to much in the long run though. Except annoying Barb. He had kind of stalked her for a couple of days to see if she interacted with someone acting differently than they normally would.
Barbara had lambasted him that he should have just asked her if she thought someone was taking a shot at her. She also pointed out that since she actually interacted with the people he was checking out she was in a better position to notice if they were behaving differently.
He had admitted to that point. He still hadn't backed off on his attempts at investigating though. Lately even spending time at the position that they had identified as the spot Deathstroke had fired his rifle from.
It was odd that Barbara hadn't called or messaged him with some kind of update on how things with the Cinderblock situation was going. He appreciated her taking control of things but he couldn't help but worry at the same time.
He pushed thoughts about his girlfriend and the rest of his teammates out of his mind. His focus was on Slade and he intended for him to remain there. There had to be something that they had missed.
The door to the rooftop that Slade had used opened as it had the last dozen times that Robin had come up here. This time however he was surprised to find someone waiting on him.
He moved to grab a weapon from his belt before feeling himself freeze in place against his will.
"I'm not here to fight. I shouldn't be here at all but we both have someone that fucked with people we care about." His captor said as they closed the door to make sure things remained private for their conversation.
Getting Cinderblock's base of operations from his thugs hadn't taken long. Still Barbara worried that the criminal would be in the wind by the time they hit the warehouse he was operating out of.
He most definitely wasn't. The only issue was that, this Cinderblock was not the one they were expecting. Rather than the concrete like giant an asian man with a mohawk stood at the head of the group of thugs with a shiny set of silvery teeth glinting between thin lips.
"Woah, Cinderblock lost some weight since I saw him on the news last time." Beastboy joked.
"My name isn't Cinderblock…I am-" The obvious gangster began to say before he spasmed as he was hit with the stun darts from Naruto.
The rest of the Titans turned to look at Superior as he shrugged. He wasn't interested in some monologue. Barbara could appreciate that.
"Titans, round up the rest." Batgirl ordered and the team dove into action.
The thugs armed with guns attempted to open up on the team but Raven easily countered it with her powers as she created a shield of dark energy between them and the incoming bullets. Kod Flash followed up by racing through their enemies and liberating the guns from each of them and piling them in front of Beastboy, who happily smashed them into useless metal hunks with the weight of a whale.
While they handled the firearms with relative ease, the rest of the team engaged the thugs themselves. Cyborg sent them scurrying for cover as he opened fire with his cannon, set to stun them of course. As they tried avoid the blasts of blue energy, Naruto and Batgirl swept in and began quickly either disabling or knocking them unconscious and Starfire swept along above making sure no one could hide or escape.
It took only moments before the warehouse full of criminals was defeated. The Titans gathered up their defeated enemies and began taking stock of the warehouse's contents.
Tarped crates covered most of the space, each one containing some broken piece of wreckage. Along one wall several rudimentary cleaning areas had been created where nothing short of garden hoses and scrub brushes were used to scrub the earth and debris off of the alien wreckage.
"So this stuff is pretty much scrap at this point." Barbara pointed out as she looked over the busted pieces of equipment in each crate.
"What was the point anyway?" Naruto asked.
"Who knows, there are all sorts of buyers around the world for this sort of thing, even if it's just hunks of broken metal."
"Police are on their way to take in these guys. If that guy wasn't Cinderblock, was he ever even here?" Cyborg chimed in.
"We'll be finding out soon." Batgirl said as she grabbed the man that she had mentally dubbed Mohawk. He wouldn't be going with the police immediately like the rest.
Robin stared down the girl across from him. Jinx looked as dangerous as usual, especially since she had the drop on him, but she also looked like she was sick. Perhaps something was wrong with her.
Maybe he could use that to his advantage to get free. For now he planned to at least hear her out, even if he expected it to be more of a maddened rant than anything actually useful.
"So are you calm enough to listen to me? Cause the way you're all tensed up makes me think you aren't. It kind of makes me think you are trying to think of a way to try and jump me." Jinx taunted as she tightened the cables binding Robin up with her magic.
"Ugh, just say what you have to say." He grunted through gritted teeth.
"Hmm, not very cooperative for a potential partner but I suppose you will have to do either way." She said as the taunting grin slipped from her face to be replaced by a scowl.
Robin said nothing and simply stared back at the villainess that led his team's primary rivals. If she was going to offer something up he hoped she got to it soon. The cables she used were really digging into his skin.
"Still can't find a trace of Deathstroke can you?" She asked, causing him to simply narrow his eyes even more to glare harder.
"Ah, that's a nope. See you really need a lead on him, and I might just have something for you. No purchase necessary. Just make sure to actually find that asshole." Jinx continued on.
"Why would you help me?" He demanded.
"I couldn't care less about helping you. You are going to be helping me. We can make it a little race or something. You do the leg work of following down the lead I am going to give you, then when you find him, we see who gets to him first. You or me. Winner gets to decide what happens to him."
Robin scoffed. "He would kill you even if you beat me there."
"Maybe, or maybe my team and I will bleed him dry and you can clean up the mess. Wouldn't that be nice. Maybe you even want me to find him first? We heard what he did to your boy in blue. Must make you pretty steamed." Jinx continued to taunt knowing that she was really driving under the boy wonder's skin.
"Shut up…actually why do you have a problem with him anyway?" Robin asked as he grew curious.
Jinx's grin fell away once again. He had pressed in on a sore spot, or perhaps something else. Either way the little game of her taunting him was over. She was clearly annoyed now and the rest of the meeting wouldn't be long he imagined.
"It doesn't matter. Your team is already after Cinderblock's little group of idiots. They were supposed to be making a drop off of whatever they could scrounge up with that alien tech at an old mall on the north side of Jump City. Not sure when but maybe the guys your people are heading over to knock around will know."
"Why would Slade have anything to do with that? Not exactly his M.O." Robin pointed out.
"Unless someone pays him for security. Take the tip or don't just hurry up and find the fucker." Jinx said before stalking to the roofway door and opening it up.
"The cables will release you in twenty minutes. Your team will probably be done at Cinderblock's warehouse by then. Might be time to make a few calls if I were you." Jinx said as she slipped out the door and disappeared.
Robin could only grit his teeth further and wait, he couldn't quite reach his utility belt so foreign himself would be out of the question.
And that is it for this chapter. Shorter, yes but I am trying to write shorter chapters that are posted more frequently.
We will see how that goes.
We got some widening issues with Robin and Batgirl as well as with the rest of the team. I promise I am not about to make Robin into a complete piece of trash. However there are some serious growing pains right now.
Naruto and Starfire are making progress toward being something more. Sadly every time they step into that direction they are interrupted. We will see them confront their relationship next chapter.
Anyway
Till Next Time.