March. Friendly fire p.2

The girl who knocked on the clubroom door first thing in the morning looked pissed off. "You open?" she asked, and was waved right in. "I had my phone stolen yesterday," she declared as she plopped down on the designated chair.

"Yeah, we've had a bunch of muggings," said Dick, settling down in front of the club's freshly bought laptop. "Tell us where it happened and give a description of the perpetrator."

"Why should I?" retorted the girl. "Everyone's been telling you about the places and the muggers and you still haven't solved it."

"You think because we got the reports we can magically stop it?" Dick responded. "The places keep changing, and the muggers keep changing. It's a case with no clues."

He'd replied so quickly it really made him feel like he was a weary worker in a thankless post. Wasn't he too young to feel so bureaucratic? The girl was now glaring at him. Dick couldn't help but wonder why she'd come in if she had such little faith in them.

"Dude, you wanna file a report or not?" Gar said, and though Dick waved him down, he agreed with the sentiment.

The girl finally crossed her arms and told them, "It was on the north of town, on Colombus Boulevard, near the ice cream factory? The guy was this tall hipster with at least one dreadlock."

Dick stopped typing.

"At least one dreadlock?" asked Vic.

The girl said, "He wore a knitted hat, but one dreadlock slipped out. So, he had at least one dreadlock, can't account for the rest." She went on, "He was blonde. I think he had brown eyes. Bit of a stubble. Tall guy. Ugly, though."

"Okay," said Dick, furrowing his eyebrows.

The girl explained, "I've been describing him with cute-sounding attributes, but I don't want you to think he was actually cute or anything."

"Yeah, that might throw the search," Raven said sardonically.

"Well, it might," the girl retorted. "Also, my parents are crazy, so I have the Life360 app downloaded. So I brought you my dad's phone." She produced a cell phone. "It's tracking mine."

The entire club brightened as Dick took the phone. "Well that changes everything."

"You can simply give it to us?" Kori made sure.

"He knows I took it. I told them I might as well make use of their controlling tendencies. You probably have a day and a half before his patience runs out, though."

"We'll return it tomorrow," Dick assured her.

After she left, Dick added the data they'd just received to a map he'd been crafting on the computer.

Kori looked over his shoulder. "What is that, Dick?"

"I've been compiling the reports of muggings we've gotten," Dick said. "To see if there's any pattern. But as you can see-"

Vic interrupted him, "Why are you using Prezi? What are you, eighty!?"

Dick glared at him. "It was either this or art-and-crafting on that wall."

"I would've gone with the wall," said Vic. "This is just embarrassing."

"But as you can see," Dick went on. "All of these places are far away from each other, and the same description of a mugger never appears twice. Clearly this is a huge organized thing."

Gar said, "You could have used an app that made a map for you."

Dick frowned. "I tried, none of them were free. Can we move on from-?"

A power outage was Dick's next interruption. Kori yelped as the lights blinked out and came on again.

"Why did it turn off…" Dick grumbled as the laptop restarted.

"Probably 'cause it wasn't a proper blackout," said Vic, and moved to unplug the charger. "I'm unplugging this in case that happens again."

Dick tapped his finger on the table impatiently as he pulled up the website again and searched for his file. "What? I lost the information!"

"You never saved it?" asked Gar.

"'Course I did! It still got deleted somehow."

"Let me see," said Vic.

Dick got up to let him sit down, rubbing his eyes as he said, "That's it, next time I'm art and crafting on the wall."

"There's no file anywhere," Vic informed him. "That's what you get for using Prezi. It's just tacky, man."

"At least we all got to see it…" Kori interjected helpfully, before Dick truly lost it on Victor.

"Look, forget the map," said Dick. "We have the phone tracking the other phone, let's just wait still school lets out and then follow that."


Thankfully, the tracking didn't move locations during the school day. However, when they got to the parking lot, Vic's car wouldn't start.

It took several tries and some pushing, and listening to Vic's semi-panicked declarations that he didn't know what could be wrong, to get it to go. When they eventually moved, they followed the tracker's signal to a nice residential street in the south of town.

"Ugly dreadlock guy probably doesn't live here, right?" Gar posed, looking at the elegant villas as they passed.

Dick said, "I feel like we're either at the house of a ring-leader, or a final buyer who got doesn't know he got sold a stolen phone."

"I'm leaning towards ring-leader," said Victor. "If we can still track the phone, that means it hasn't been rebooted. So it probably hasn't been sold."

Vic parked in the middle of the signal's approximate location, and they settled down to wait for something or someone to move. Both Kori and Victor took schoolwork out, so Raven alerted Vic when someone got inside the car in front of them and started it.

"Heads up," she said, and Victor handed his history revision to Dick on the passenger seat and prepared to start his car at a moment's notice.

Dick watched the tracker app as the car drove off. Eventually he announced, "Not moving."

They relaxed again.

It was still winter only technically, as the day was hot like spring was reaching back in time. In the afternoon sun, with Kori's choice of soft pop music as background, the Five were nearly falling asleep at the stakeout.

Raven was in the middle of a wakeful dream when Dick announced, "We're moving!"

Vic started the car before he knew who he was following.

"Who was it?" asked Kori.

"That car that just left," said Dick. "Black collection car. The guy came out of that house over there."

All his description proved superfluous, as the car proved ridiculously easy to follow.

It was a vintage hot rod, roofless and painted bright red, and to top it all off, it started blasting music when it drove off, so they could've also followed it blind.

The driver wasn't any less distinct. In the roofless driver's seat sat a fat man in a black leather jacket; the Five could see his slicked-back hair gleam with grease when they stopped directly behind him at traffic lights.

They followed the car across half the city. As they got to an area Victor recognized, he told them offhandedly they were about to pass in front of East High, but to their collective surprise, the hot rod entered the school instead.

Wordlessly, Vic stopped his car outside the school to let Dick and Raven get out and follow the man on foot. He waited till all three were out of sight before he parked inside the school parking lot.

When V, G and K joined their friends, the driver had parked his car in the school's front yard, and was standing next to it before a big group of East High students.

"Okay kids, you know the rules! We work hard, and if none of you hit a pedestrian, then you all get popsicles!" And he opened his trunk, where three boxes sat. He opened one and held out one of the treats, waving it at a girl near him. "I bet you want one! Don't you, kitty cat?"

The girl smiled, looking vaguely uncomfortable.

From the wall around the corner, Raven made a face. "Ew. Who is this guy?"

"What is happening?" asked Kori.

"I think this is Driver's Ed, Kori," answered Dick.

"Is your Driver's Ed normally-"

"No," Raven cut Kori off, "None of this is normal."

Gar asked, "Can we tell if the phone's in the car or he has it on him?"

"Nope," said Vic, who'd taken possession of the phone from Dick. "The tracking's not that fine. All we know is the phone's within the block of the school."

The man was saying, "Alright, who wants to put the treats away so they don't melt on us?" Some hands went up. The man surveyed the crowd. "Hmm. You, you, and… you!" The selected kids each got a box, and the man gave one of them a key. "And remember, cats! If you take a popsicle out of the box, I'll know! I got them counted! Don't clown!"

Dick turned back to his team. "Raven and Gar, stay here and watch this guy. Vic, Kori, we're tailing the boxes."

The three of them followed the kids at a safe distance inside the school and through the halls, watched them enter the cafeteria, and waited until they had left it; when they were gone, the three went inside.

Dick went straight to the back room. It was of course locked.

He turned to Victor and made an apologetic face. "We need to get to those boxes," he said as he took out his lock-picks.

Vic was giving him a disapproving sigh when Kori held a hand up, bringing their attention to the sound of people coming near. They scrambled to hide: Kori and Dick jumped behind the counter; Victor located an empty delivery box and fit himself inside, just managing to close the lids when the door opened.

"He's not here yet," said a boy's voice.

"We're just gonna wait here and talk to him?" a second guy asked.

"You got a better idea?" asked a girl. It was a voice Vic thought he recognized.

"Yeah, take a picture of him in the act, and threaten him with it," said the second guy's voice.

"Why would we start with threats?" retorted the girl. "I wanna know what's in here for him. Maybe he's stealing some damn food, and that's all."

Vic was sure he recognized that voice now. He jumped out of the box, exclaiming, "Bee!"

The three East students started back. The two boys screamed; Bee didn't.

"Victor?" Bee's face relaxed in a beautiful smile. She went to help him out of the box. "What are you doing here?" She started at Dick and Kori when they popped out from behind the counter, and then looked around, like she was waiting for Raven and Gar to come out from somewhere else. "Uh, what are you all doing here?"

Vic was grinning in barely contained excitement. "Okay, remember I told you what my Club did? This is that! It's a mission. We're gonna take care of your school." He puffed out his chest. "And you get to see a mission in real time. No need to thank us."

Bee didn't react like he thought she would. She slowly lost her smile as Victor spoke. She looked back at the two boys –it was Garth and someone else, a redhead wearing a sleeveless hoodie- then back at Vic, and raised her chin. "We don't want your help."

"What?" Vic gaped. "Why not?"

"Because we're gonna deal with it. East High's own Project club." Bee crossed her arms, stared up defiantly. "I started one."

"You… copied the idea of the club you heard from me… and now you wanna expel us from investigating?" Vic confirmed, his smile fading, as did his excitement over seeing Bee again.

"I think it's only appropriate." Her face got potent with self-righteousness the way he remembered. "This is our turf after all."

Vic held up his arms. "You know what? Fine. Whatever. I'm not gonna deal with this. Bye." He began to walk out of the cafeteria.

"Vic, come back here," Dick called, as he approached Bee. "It's Bee, right? Look, I'm not here to undermine you. You made your own Project club, I think that's great. We can help each other out. You know your school, we've been doing this longer… We can both do this without anyone stepping on anyone's toes." He clapped his hands and smiled diplomatically. "Also, you can't stop us from doing what we came to do. So."

Bee eyed him up and down. "I'll take a collaboration as long as we're clear who's boss."

Me, thought Dick. "Whatever. I don't care," he said.

He and Bee shook hands. Both were crossing their fingers in their respective heads.

Bee gestured behind herself. "You know Garth, and this is Roy."

"I'm Dick, this is Kori. Raven and Gar are outside." He couldn't resist asking, pettily, "Is this your whole team?"

Bee took full offense. "I'll take quality over quantity any day. So what actually brings you here?"

Dick told her, "We have a classmate with a stolen phone. We tracked it to, apparently, your driving instructor. The big greasy guy outside right now."

"You mean Ding Dong Daddy?" asked Roy.

"What's a Ding Dong Daddy?" asked Vic.

"He's our Driver's Ed teacher." Garth smiled. "Everybody loves Ding Dong Daddy."

Bee made a face. "Eh. He's kind of a creep."

Raven's voice came on in the three Murakami kids' phones. "Raven to Dick."

Dick said, "Go."

"The instructor guy drove off more than two blocks' distance," Raven said. "If the signal didn't move, the phone has to be in one of those boxes."

Dick looked at Vic, who had been checking the signal the entire time.

"The signal didn't move at all," Vic said into his own phone.

"Stay out there keeping an eye on him for now," Dick commanded.

"We'll let you know if hot rod guy moves," Gar's voice said.

"His name is Ding Dong Daddy," Kori said.

"…Excuse me?" returned Raven.

Dick said, "We're in the cafeteria. And, uh, we got company. Bee and Garth and this other guy are… here too."

When he ended the call up, Roy said, "This other guy? Really, Dick?"

Dick ignored him and looked at Bee expectantly. "So?"

"So?" frowned Bee.

"What brings you here?" Dick specified. "What's your mission?"

Bee hesitated before saying, "We have this classmate Brett. His friends came to us because he's been acting weird and avoiding them, and they're worried he's caught up on something shady. They say he's coming here to the cafeteria at off hours, so we were hoping to catch him and have a talk."

"Something shady," echoed Vic, "Like helping a driving instructor move stolen goods?"

"Slow down," warned Bee. "You could be totally wrong."

Dick backed off for now. "Well, we need to get into that fridge to see if there's stolen merch in the boxes Ding Dong Daddy brought, so please, give me some room."

Bee saw the lock-picks and went up in arms. "You seriously think I'll let you bust my school's locks!" she exclaimed. "Garth, take them to get a key from the teacher's lounge. Tell Miss Gemini it's for me, and she'll give it to you," she added before Dick could protest. "I'm very trusted around here."

"I bet you are," said Dick. But he and Kori followed Garth out. Roy took one look at Vic and Bee glaring at each other and announced he was going with them too.


In the cafeteria, you could cut the tension between Victor and Bee with a knife. Bee was focused on not losing focus in her bid for authority. Vic was seething that the two of them never seemed to get a nice peaceful moment.

"You made your phone into a walkie-talkie," Bee coolly observed.

"I made a few twinges to all our phones." Vic glanced at her. "I'll send you the code when I get home."

She looked away. "I can code it myself."

"I know you can, I'm offering to give it to you to be nice."

"Well you don't need to!"

"It's more than making it into a walkie-talkie. I also-"

His own phone cut them said, "Heads up, Ding Dong Daddy's taking a break. I think he's going into the school."

"Yep, definitely going into the school," confirmed Gar a moment later. "Do we keep tailing him?"

Dick responded, "Yes. Keep following him."

The teacher's lounge team was back in the hallway. Whoever Bee thought she knew in there wasn't as forthcoming as she'd thought. They had denied Garth and Roy the key. Dick was half frustrated, half excited to tell Bee she wasn't as trusted as she thought.

On the way back to the cafeteria, Garth stopped the group before they turned a corner. "There's Brett," he said to Roy.

Dick looked over. A boy with scruffy light brown hair was walking fast towards the cafeteria. He took his phone, "Vic and Bee, watch out. Brett is going to the cafeteria."

Bee and Vic hid behind the counter. Right as Vic muted his phone, Brett came in. He crossed the room, went up to the back door, and held out a key; but he held back, fidgeted, and finally stood back, clasping his elbows.

Then Ding Dong Daddy himself walked in. "Okay, I'm here. What'd you wanna discuss so bad?"

His attitude was completely different to the jovial face he'd shown outside.

The boy mumbled something, looked down, shook his head; Ding Dong Daddy leaned in close, gestured wildly his hands, and talked in a coaxing tone. Bee and Vic couldn't make out the words.

Bee made her phone peek out from the top of the counter and started filming anyway.

"He's convincing him," whispered Bee. "He's exhorting him, right?"

"Looks like it," agreed Vic.

Bee retrieved her phone to check the video's audio pickups, and there were no peaks while Ding Dong Daddy and Brett talked. "Ugh. It's not picking up anything." She looked around, and Vic could practically see her scientist's mind working. "If we had like, a toy car to take the phone in!"

Vic stopped. "That's it."

"What?"

He hesitated, looking at her. "Are you squeamish by any chance?"

Bee looked insulted. "Me?" she hissed. "Of course n-"

Vic cut her off, "Great. Keep filming." And he detached his arm.

Bee's eyes were like plates as Vic placed her phone on a receptacle he opened in his detached forearm, and more so when the arm crossed the cafeteria floor, walking via the fingers pushing forward. She forgot their feud in favor of excitement. "How are you doing that?"

"Remote control's still in my head even if the arm's detached," he told her simply. "Don't be weird about it."


Dick, Kori, Garth and Roy kept eyes on the cafeteria door, where Brett had never come back out.

"What's that guy doing there?" Dick asked out loud.

"He's with the instructor,"said Raven, suddenly behind them.

Roy, who was immediately before her, jumped at her sudden appearance. "Aw, crap!"

"Hey, guys," smiled Garth.

Gar grimaced at him. "Oh, yay. You."


Vic and Bee kept waiting for Ding Dong Daddy to leave the cafeteria. It looked like he'd convinced Brett, and the boy took out the key and went into the back kitchen. To their dismay, Ding Dong Daddy stayed back, hands on his pockets, waiting for Brett.

Vic pulled out his phone to tell his friends what was happening.

Out in the hallway, the Murakami kids heard Vic tell them, "Brett's gone into the back room."

"Got it," Dick returned.

"Ding Dong Daddy's still outside and—hey!"

"Roy, Garth, you hear me?" Bee's voice replaced Vic's on the phone.

Roy pulled on Dick's phone to respond. "Yeah, boss."

"If you guys can get to Brett before us, tell him he doesn't have to do this," said Bee. "Tell him his friends are worried. Tell him he can stand up to Ding Dong Daddy, we'll protect him."

"What? No," said Dick. "We should be tailing this guy, see what he does next, gather some evidence."

"We're not incriminating him," Bee said, "We're helping him. That's the mission."

"It's not incrimination when you really did it," Raven said into her phone.

"That boy has the property that is our classmate's," Kori pointed out.

"So we're gonna keep skulking after him?" asked Roy. "This is what you guys do? Just wait around chasing a guy for hours?"

"What, you wanna be like the Titans?" Dick said, without facing Roy. "They would go in and beat people up, but we can't do that."

"And the Titans wouldn't just talk to a criminal either like your leader wants you to do," Vic said.

"Brett is not a criminal," protested Bee.

"Well, how've you been doing missions?" demanded Gar.

Garth said, "This is our first mission actually-oof!" and was promptly elbowed by Roy.

Brett finally coming out of the back room ended the debate. Vic was baffled to see that the boy was empty-handed, where he'd expected him to come out with the stolen goods. When Ding Dong Daddy took Brett by the shoulders to lead him outside, Vic spoke into his phone. "They're coming out, guys."

Ding Dong Daddy went back outside the school, and Brett stayed in, leaning against the hallway wall.

When Ding Dong Daddy was safely past them, Roy and Garth moved after Brett. Dick nodded at Raven and Gar to go after them, and held Kori's wrist so she knew to stay with him.

Brett looking deep in thought when the four got to him.

"Brett," started Roy.

Brett took one look at them and took off running.

"Hey, wait!" called Garth as the four went after him. "Don't run, we just wanna talk!"

Listening to this happen through Gar and Raven's phones, Vic and Bee exchanged a bewildered look.

"He's running?" Bee asked. "How stupid can you be? I sit behind him in Chem. I'll see him tomorrow. I think I actually remember where he lives."

Raven, Gar, Garth and Roy ran after the guy until they came to a point where the hallway split. As they didn't see which way he took, they staggered.

Dick wasn't there to call the shots. Gar was the one who pushed Roy, closest to him, in one direction, "You and Raven take that one!" he said, and pulled Garth with him on the other one.

Gar was kind of baffled when they actually did as he said.

Meanwhile, Dick and Kori burst into the cafeteria.

"Move aside," Dick said, "I'm lock-picking the door."

Bee saw red. "If I let you!"


When Raven opened her phone's communication, shouting came from the other side.

"-I'm not saying you can't have a Project Club! I'm just saying it's a huge responsibility!" Dick's voice shouted.

"I stepped down as volleyball captain to make this team happen. Don't you tell me about responsibility!" Bee's voice returned.

"Dick?" Raven interjected.

"What?" Dick returned.

"We lost Brett. He must have slipped past us and gone back around out of the school."

"Never mind. Come back and help me hold back this girl long enough to pick the door."

Raven cut the communication off before Bee's retorts.

When they returned to the cafeteria, Vic looked like an overgrown child of divorced parents, as Dick and Bee fought it out next to him.

"How would you feel," Bee was saying, "if someone came and mishandled your classmate?"

"It's our classmate's phone in that fridge!" argued Dick. "That's who we're defending!"

But Dick stopped arguing to take note of his friends, because Gar was rubbing his forehead, and Raven looked troubled. "What happened?" Dick asked.

"Gar hit his head on a locker door someone left hanging open," Raven replied.

Gar opened his eyes, seeming surprised. "Oh. It's nothing. I've got a hard head!" He made a show of knocking the side of his head, then winced, regretting it because it still hurt. "I had this Brett guy on sight. He only got away 'cause I went down, and Garth thought I'd really hurt myself." He noticed Dick's constant look of concern. "Really, I'm fine."

Gar really did look fine; it was the way Raven looked upset that gave Dick pause.

"What I've been trying to tell you both," Vic said, standing. "Is that there can be a way of getting Brett to fess up about the phone and absolve him. Bee and I caught a video of Ding Dong Daddy exhorting Brett."

"Oh," went Dick. "Let me see it."

Vic snickered at Dick's need to make sure everything was under control, as Bee, pacified by the prospect of a compromise, pulled up the video.

Then her eyebrows furrowed. "Wait… Oh no."

"What?" asked Vic and Dick at the same time.

"The file's corrupted!?" said Bee, and tilted the phone to them. "Look, it comes up as an empty file from."

"Are you kidding me?" Vic grabbed for the phone. Bee let him take it, kneeling on the ground to contain her frustration.

Vic was grabbing his head. "It's like we have all the bad luck today!"

Dick saw out of the corner of his eye as Raven shifted in place, giving a heavy sigh.

Then he turned to Bee, sitting on her heels with her head down, and crouched to face her. "So we have nothing. That means we have to face Brett and get him to fess up. If I promise you we won't accuse him, and we'll let you decide what to do with him, can we do it?"

Bee raised her head. She studied Dick's face and seemed to decide his word was good, or else she was at the end of her rope. "Deal."

The teams moved. Only Raven lingered behind, and Dick was already looking at her when she asked, "Dick? Can I talk to you?"

"What is it?" he returned.

"I don't think we should do this anymore," she said lowly. "I-I can't really explain it. But I have a feeling it won't end well. It can't end well. Maybe we can put it off for another day. There's something… wrong about today."

Dick had come into this meeting fully intending to do whatever Raven told him to do. As time went by, he'd come to, if not understand Raven's hunches and feelings, at least accept it. He saw how she knew things she had no way of knowing, did things she shouldn't be able to do, and generally moved through life like it held no mysteries from her—like she had access to alternate dimensions, and skipped to the one that had the answers they needed and back while the rest of them were stuck in one plane.

Though his logic didn't like it, and would've fought if he'd brought it closer to the forefront of his mind, Dick couldn't deny that going with whatever she said was historically the right thing to do.

…But he had never expected she would want to pack up the mission entirely.

He looked back at Bee, waiting expectantly by the door, and her team and the rest of his team behind her.

This case was too big. And they were so close: Brett would lead them to Ding Dong Daddy, which would close the case, and they would have stopped the town's wave of muggings—and their classmates would believe in them again. It was so clear-cut he couldn't think why Raven's sixth sense was dragging its feet.

"What if this isn't what it looks like?" Raven posed.

It annoyed him more that she seemed to know what he'd been thinking. "How could it not be what it looks like?"

"Everything today has been keeping us from going through with the mission. The power outrage, Vic's car not starting, the corrupted file, Gar hurting himself… I've felt it all day. Something's telling us to stop."

"Then Ding Dong Daddy gets away and we lose all our work. What if there isn't another chance like this?"

Raven started to bite her lower lip. Dick was staring at her, demanding a good reason to listen to her, and she couldn't really give him that.

She had an automatic respect for her own cunning, herself. If it had been just her, she wouldn't have asked the omens to repeat themselves; she would have walked away from this situation several times today, and she didn't care to find out how it would've ended if she hadn't. But this wasn't just her. She couldn't ask her friends to move on the basis of faith like she did.

Dick saw her doubt as an opening, and delivered a final hit. "Look, are you in or out?"

Her eyes shot up with reproachful glare. "I don't think we should go through with this. But if you all go, of course I'm in," she said scathingly.

He knew it was exasperation at his suggesting she'd abandon them on her part; but he took the chance to shut down her doubt and his.

"Good, then let's go." And he avoided her eyes as he rushed her out the door.


The eight of them went out into the hallway. Dick looked one way and the other. "You guys know the school best. I say Bee and Vic lead two big teams, and then split people off as they see fit, okay guys? …Guys?"

He turned back to see a teacher clasping a mortified-looking Bee by the shoulder; behind them was Ding Dong Daddy, grinning.


It's a sneaky Titans East collab episode! :D

It will never not be funny to me that Ding Dong Daddy has only had two media appearances in the whole DC Universe: when he was created for the 60's Teen Titans comics, and in the 2003 cartoon. Literally no one but the cartoon picked him up (and then TTG, but that's a spinoff), and as this whole fic is a love letter to the uniqueness that is the 2003 cartoon, I'm ecstatic to include him.

krumelmonster: Ooh of course Raven's friends are gonna find out eventually! ^^ One by one though, and by the time they ALL find out, it's kinda gonna be eclipsed by other drama… :D Stay tuned! Thanks for reading!

~The Lighthouse