Teen Titans: Incarnate - Chapter Fifteen

[Reaper of Despair]

Chapter Fifteen: Discovered

“As Tom Robinson gave his testimony,” Robin read, “It came to me that Mayella Ewell must have been the loneliest person in the world. She was even lonelier than Boo Radley, who had not been out of the house in twenty-five years.”

Starfire sat atop the velvety, violet folds of her new bed. Her legs jittered over its side with rapt excitement as Robin read from the book she had chosen herself. The disappointment she had felt at discovering that the bird on its cover was no robin had ceased to be when the world of Maycomb came to life and invited her to take part in its adventure. Eyes closed, she tried to imagine the courtroom exactly as it would have been almost an Earth century ago. Images from the pictocube in Ops helped somewhat. She could have asked Robin to approximate the room for her, but disliked the notion of interrupting his engaging voice from its story.

As it turned out, she needn’t have worried; Robin’s voice faltered of its own accord. “When Atticus…” and he stopped with unnatural pause that pulled Starfire’s eyes open. “When Atticus asked…” She looked over at Robin as he cursed under his breath, seated next to her with the book seated atop his legs. His gloved fingers worked at the bridge of his nose just beneath the edge of that accursed mask of his. “Sorry,” he said, breaking her narrative dream. “Give me a minute.”

Concern, not annoyance, shone in Starfire’s eyes. “Robin? You are ill-functioning?” she asked. He had been igniting copious amounts of nocturnal petroleum in his endeavor to bring their headquarters to operational status. Oftentimes, Starfire would retire to her sleep cycle, bidding him goodnight as he worked on a project, only to awaken the next day-cycle to find him still at work on that same task.

It seemed that all his efforts were catching up to him. “I’m okay, Kory,” he insisted weakly. “My eyes are just tired, that’s all.”

“You have been working hard.” The understatement seemed to Starfire like saying that the noxious tar pits of Gorkon Twelve smelled bad. But at his repeated and infuriating refusal of her offered help, what else could she do? “Perhaps it would be best if we saved our book for next Wed-ness Day night,” she suggested glumly.

Robin kept the book firmly in his lap, despite her tugging to the contrary. Though she could have easily taken it from him, Starfire allowed him to retain the book. “No way,” he said. “This is the first chance I’ve had to catch my breath all week. Besides, I said I’d help you learn English.” An unusual display of uncertainty infected his face. “This is helping, right?”

Starfire smiled. “Yes, Robin,” she assured him. “Our time spent together has aided my instruction in your language a great deal.”

A small laugh chased his doubt away. “It’s not hurting mine, either,” he agreed. “Before this, I had no idea what a chiffarobe was.”

They chuckled together for a moment before his laughter became a gaping yawn. Her concern returned as he smothered his yawn closed into sheepish silence. “But the fact remains,” she argued. “You are too tired to read.”

“Just my eyes,” he countered, and then, “I mean, not really.” At her doubting look, he added, “Logan got bored and decided to play stickball with one of the cyber-nodes. I had to reprogram most of its security subroutines manually. Took hours. Wasn’t great for my eyes, either.” Another yawn pulled at the corners of his mouth. He fought as best he could, destined to lose to the impulse.

“I see.” Starfire took his next yawn as opportunity, and lifted the book from his lap and placed it on her own. Her lips worked a few words in silent practice while he finished his massive yawn, and felt ready by the time he was done. “Ah…As Tom Robin…Robinson gave his tes…testimoe…test-i-moe-nee…”

Robin’s jaw hung slackened as Starfire stumbled her way into a slow, even pace. When a word gave her problems, she would feel her way through it, until it became familiar to her, and its meaning surfaced in her recollections. She took open delight in his shock as she conquered the first page and moved to the second. “Kory,” he said, lost for words. “You can read?”

She gave him a brief look, expressing appreciation as the foremost of a thousand other emotions. It pleased her to no end when he sat back, resting his head against her pillows and allowing Starfire to weave the tale. An hour after she began, Starfire felt doubly accomplished as she spied the even rise and fall of Robin’s chest. She knew he was asleep, despite the wide, untrustworthy lenses of his mask. She covered him in her sheets for a well-earned rest, kissed him atop his forehead, and went to seek a quiet corner of the new Tower to finish their book.

******

“Come on, Starfire,” Jinx snapped at the crowd of cowering hostages. Pink hex energy crackled and popped violently between her ropey fingers. “We haven’t got all day.”

The scene at Nook for a Book throbbed with terrible, terrifying tension at the Troika’s direction. Mammoth stood behind Jinx in the rubble of his entrance through the storefront window, clutching their bargaining chip by his neck and wearing the grim smirk of an executioner who enjoyed his work a great deal. Above them, the tiny Gizmo loomed on his steely spider legs. He alternated between sweeping an oversized cannon’s muzzle across the mewling patrons-turned-prisoners of the store, and smacking the side of a handheld scanner that didn’t quite match the style of his other tech. Among the toppled bookshelves, their future victims all cowered in fear.

Gizmo snarled and threw the alien scanner to the ground. It made a satisfying crunch at the tip of his stomping spider strut. “I can’t pinpoint her,” he snarled. “But I know Sherbet Face is here somewhere.” His free hand became occupied with a second cannon, larger than the first, which holed a display stand with a smoldering beam of red death and drew panicked wails from the crowd.

“I’m gonna count to ten, Titan,” Mammoth grunted. He waggled his hostage, enjoying the grunts and squirms coming from the boy’s constricted throat. “Then I snap this spick’s neck.”

“You can count to ten?” sneered Gizmo.

Mammoth shot, “Shut up,” and then swung his hostage back out toward the crowd. Legs dangling, the teenaged boy pulled uselessly at Mammoth’s enormous grip, not quite choking, but trapped nonetheless. Never one for empty threats, the towering Troika began his count. “One…Two…”

“Stop.” A member of the crowd, a girl Mammoth had bowled over during his entry, pulled herself from a heap of books. She strode to the front of the trapped throng with a regal gait, head held high, chest puffed out in indignation, green eyes aglow with biting fury. Her ginger hair streamed out behind her determined pace; yet she did not appear hurried, only purposeful. “I am Starfire,” the teen said. “Let him go. Now.”

The Troika gaped at this stranger’s audacity. Certainly, there were similarities between the helpless civilian and their Titan nemesis, but certain incongruities existed that Gizmo was the first to point out. “You’re not Starfire,” he said. “Starfire’s orange!”

A bolt of green volleyed into his ill-prepared chest as an answer, projected from her palm. Gizmo squealed as the shot carried him high in to the air and slammed him into the opposite wall, where he bounced and fell to the floor, silenced. Gaining a moment from Jinx and Mammoth’s resultant shock, the girl touched her wristwatch and shifted her lithe body into a well-practiced battle stance. Her skin tone hiccupped and then darkened, swallowing most of her eyebrows as it became burnished gold, while the green in her irises bled throughout the rest of her eyes. Fully transformed, dressed for a quiet night on the town, Starfire stood ready to face the Titans’ grudge rivals with no fear of the tilted odds.

In a rare display of level-headedness, Mammoth jangled his living doll between the remainder of the trio and their target. “Nu-uh,” he rumbled, juxtaposing the teen’s head with his own. “Back off,” he growled. “Or he dies.”

“Hey, jackass,” the hostage croaked. He glared at his captor, still clinging to Mammoth’s thick fingers lest his neck snap. As Mammoth looked over, his hostage raised a hand and touched a finger to the bridge of the villain’s nose. “I’m not Latino,” he hissed through his constricted airway. “I’m Hmong.”

The force of a freight train barreled through the hostage’s finger and struck Mammoth square in his face with a blast of tactile telekinesis. Invisible and silent, the blow’s only herald was the sound of Mammoth’s nose breaking down the middle as his head snapped back. His hand opened, allowing Magnum to drop to the ground and roll in Starfire’s direction, eager to escape the avalanche of muscle, which shook the floor with its descent.

Magnum scrambled to his feet as Starfire’s side. A cool hand swept his disheveled hair into an equally messy, apparently trendier array in an attempt to recapture his composure. “You’ve 'heard' of me, huh?” he groused at her.

A series of starbolts kept Jinx busy enough for Starfire to answer, “I merely wanted to avoid your undesirable advances without hurting your feelings.”

Laser fire from an awakened and enraged Gizmo forced Starfire into Magnum to avoid being cooked on the spot. She lifted him from the ground, but not before he scooped up an armload of ammo. A hail of books flew at Gizmo, tele-hurled to obscure the heroes and force Gizmo back. “I see,” snapped Magnum. “Lying to me is so much better than breaking my heart.”

Scythes of pink magic sliced through their path, forcing a midair u-turn for Starfire and whiplashing Magnum. Below them, Jinx kept up a steady stream of hexes, tearing apart the ceiling in her unrelenting pursuit of the airborne pair. Plaster fell like snow, blanketing the ruins of the store and those victims caught on the scene in choking white drywall.

“I did not lie,” Starfire said unconvincingly. “I…merely omitted -”

Another hex stole the tips of Magnum’s spiked locks. “Can this wait? We’ve got some ass to kick.” To the gawkers below, he added, “What are you people waiting for? This is a fairly hostile discussion between four metahumans and a superpowered alien. Get the hell out of here!”

Formerly frozen with fear, the civilians now flooded out of the store in screaming panic. The stampede confused Gizmo and Jinx, who lost sight of their enemies in the clouded air. They let the minnows escape unopposed; theirs were bigger fish to be fried. A minute later, the ruins of Nook wallowed in absolute stillness. Only Mammoth’s soft moaning in the corner broke the silence.

Jinx nodded for Gizmo to begin checking in one direction while she would walk in its opposite. He answered with a rude gesture, but complied. Turning, Jinx listened for signs of the wretched do-gooders between the methodical clacking of her designer boots against the floor. “You should give up, Twinkle Star,” called Jinx to the empty air. Rows of bookshelves, still upright and intact, revealed nothing yet to her. “There’s no way out except through us. Your friends won’t get here in time to save you, and you know the police don’t stand a chance against us.”

“Will you cram a cauldron in it already?” Gizmo shouted back from his perch atop his mechanical limbs. His search had been as fruitless as hers so far. “We’re trying to find her, not bore her. Less Hannibal Lecter and more Sherlock Holmes, airhead.”

The whiney protest went ignored. “It’s a shame you brought that trashy freak in on this,” lamented Jinx, walking down a row of mystery novels in search of her quarry. “I hope you’re at least putting out for him, for all the trouble you’ve gotten him into. If you give up now, maybe we’ll let your boyfriend live.”

An entire bookshelf of action/adventure pulp fiction leapt at Jinx without warning. The witch had no time to evade, and took the brunt of the impact with a bleated yelp. Screeching against torn carpet and the concrete beneath it, the bookshelf sandwiched Jinx against the far wall, effectively trapping her.

Magnum stood in the shelf’s wake with fingers still raised, and panted. His brow dripped with the exertion of telekinetically shoving eight hundred pounds of mediocre literature across a room. “Been hittin' the books pretty hard lately, huh, b*tch?” he taunted.

The hum of a proton blaster in his ear cut his brazen attitude short. Heat wafted from its barrel and singed the hairs from Magnum’s neck as Gizmo pointed it at the back of the Streetbeat’s head. Gizmo’s voice oozed from above. “Don’t move a stinkin' muscle, scud monger, or I’ll turn your face into a crater from the back of your head.”

Emerald heat enveloped Gizmo’s weapons, melting them into slag and burning through his protective gloves. Gizmo shrieked and relinquished his ruined creations. Clutching his hand, he glanced up in time to see a sandaled foot overtake his vision before it pounded into his face and launched him into the air. His limbs, mechanical and otherwise, flailed about before gravity mercifully reclaimed him and slammed him into the Nook’s Sci-Fi section.

“Took you long enough,” Magnum complained to the glowing beauty as she touched down. He felt at the back of his neck, checking his precious new hairdo for photonic damage. “Gonna squash that little pile of walking vomit if he messed up my locks.”

Starfire afforded him the barest of glances. “You are undamaged,” she informed him. If only she could say the same of the store. “Why did the Troika wish to capture me?” Guilt dripped from every word as she picked up a charred copy of To Kill a Mockingbird, and brushed at its cover. Sadness trickled through her guilt as the dead eyes of the mockingbird stared back. “This is all my fault,” she murmured.

“Ah,” scoffed Magnum. “Don’t sweat the small stuff, Star Girl. They came, they saw, we conquered. That’s what insurance is for.” Satisfied that his hair would cut the mustard, he placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder and let it linger much longer than was appropriate. Starfire didn’t even seem to notice. “You gonna be okay?” he asked. “Need a hug? Maybe a quickie?”

The grip on Starfire’s shoulder vanished as a backhand stole Magnum from the scene. Mammoth’s follow-through slammed Magnum up, up and away, and through an unbroken pane in the storefront, where he disappeared outside in a hail of razor glass. Starfire whirled about as the leviathan’s shadow pooled over her. Blood dribbled from his misshapen nose, which now loomed over her, set between glaring eyes. Behind him, Gizmo rose from the rubble on metallic wings and a tail of blue flames. Jinx had already worked her way around the shelves. Her eyes crackled with pink fury.

Starfire backed away as the Troika advanced on her in a tight formation. “What say we try this little dance again,” Jinx growled, cradling the mother of all hexes between her palms.

*****

“Stay sharp, everyone. There’s no telling how this will go.”

Robin headed the Titan’s formation atop the Tower. His blank eyes scanned the bottom of the overcast night sky. Yellowing urban light rebounded from carpeting clouds, giving Jump City an angelic blanket to sleep beneath. Its fraying edges teased the top of the Tower, seemingly within reach of Robin’s gloves. He resisted an impulse to tuck the city in.

“Is anyone else weirded out by all this?” asked Beast Boy from behind Cyborg’s shoulder. The green shapeshifter jittered all throughout his body as he eyed the untrustworthy sky. “I mean, we’re about to go up against an alien.”

Cyborg grimaced and rolled his eye. “We live with an alien, Salad Head. She ate the last of the Lucky Charms this morning.”

A despondent breath wafted out of Terra’s downturned mouth. “Yeah,” she gloomed. “She also totally ruined our surprise. We really blew it.”

“You have no idea.” Silent reproach piled high on Robin’s forehead. He kept his eyes glued above them. Anxiety worked over the lining in his stomach into anticipatory gymnastics, testing his focus. But, it did give him something to think about other than his gross breach of Starfire’s trust and friendship.

“She seemed pretty upset about it,” continued Terra. The geokinetic’s skyward face adopted confusion at her recollection. “I guess she doesn’t like surprise parties, or something. Hope she and Raven are okay.” The confusion vanished, replaced with worry. She hugged her chest as a stiff ocean breeze nipped through her inadequate uniform.

Beast Boy snorted. He, like the others, missed the cringe in Robin’s jaw. “Man, who knows? For all we know, they use parties on Tamaran to spank their kids, or some other weird hoo-hah like that.”

Cyborg couldn’t help but laugh at the thought. “Yeah,” he chimed in. “Or maybe surprise parties are Tamaranian foot-shaving rituals.”

“Kory wasn’t upset because of the party,” barked Robin to the cloudy night. The boys’ good-natured snickering shriveled beneath the intense cold in the Teen Wonder’s voice. With clenched, shaking fists, he broke his gaze from the sky and crushed his lenses between reproachful eyes. “We lied to her,” he said. “We lied to Starfire.”

Confusion retook some ground in Terra’s facial battlefront. “Wait, what?” She shook her head. “I remember some weak fibs and lame excuses. But even Starfire isn’t flighty enough to buy those.”

Robin’s jaw clenched tighter. Flighty? Is that how Terra saw her? Robin could spend hours thinking up ways to illustrate Starfire’s character with millions of words. 'Flighty' would never fit the girl he watched learn fluent English in less than three months, and rewire a television to receive military broadcasts because she thought it was a malfunctioning communicator, and any of a thousand other phenomenal things that kept her always near the forefront of his thoughts.

“Tamaranians don’t fib,” he explained. “They don’t color the truth, or tell white lies. There’s no distinction in their culture.” Graveled guilt tore at his voice, and made the words grate at his throat. “It’s deception…all of it. And deception is saved for the vilest of their enemies.”

Beast Boy frowned at the revelation. Accordingly, he didn’t get it. “You mean they don’t lie on her home planet?”

“No,” said Robin. “I mean; lying is one of the lowest things you can do on Tamaran. It’s anathema. There’s nothing worse than concealing true thoughts and feelings, especially,” he added, “from those you care about.”

“Oh.” Terra pursed her lips in pursuit of a proper response, but the right words eluded her. “Oh,” she said again.

“So when we fibbed to Star about our little shindig,” Cyborg intoned with a scowl. “What we really did was the Tamaranian equivalent of slamming the door in her face?”

Robin nodded. “That’s about it.”

“But if you knew, why did you…y’know?” Terra worked her hands together, recalling Starfire’s troubled face in a new light. The confusion and hurt on those golden features no longer mystified her. She half-wished that they still did. It took a pretty low person to make Starfire feel bad. “How could you, Robin? Starfire is…”

That very question had plagued Robin ever since he had entrusted Starfire’s distraction to Raven. Why? Because she had caught him off-guard, because he wanted the surprise to remain intact, because he had put too much work into this for it to fall through at the finish line, because of a whole slew of other reasons that couldn’t possibly stand up to the heartbreaking accusation of betrayal haunting him from the memory of her perfect green eyes. Every excuse evaporated when he realized what his little, cultural slip might have cost him.

Questionable luck tugged at Jump City’s heavenly blanket, stealing Robin’s coming answer and returning the whole of his focus back to the sky. “Everyone on your toes,” he barked. “He’s here.”

From the overcast sky came a wide, black-bellied shape that trailed wisps of cloud as it descended in a narrow arc toward Titans Tower. Long cylinders tipped with sputtering fire propelled it forward from the ends of fat wings. It moved with obvious gracelessness at cross-purposes with gravity. Its flat bottom faced the Titans at all times, denying them any real assessment of its power or potential until it came down atop their heads.

For a moment, the gathered heroes wondered if the trundling ship would plow straight through their home without stopping. But the squeal of some unseen generators began negating the planet’s omnipresent grip. The black belly slowed, becoming evidently patchwork as it closed with the top of the Tower. Large sections of the ship had been covered with mismatched metal plating, riveted and welded by a sloppy hand to keep the ship going. Bathed in the shrill squeak of antigravity drives, the Titans examined this new arrival with mixed reactions of unease and distaste.

One of the riveted seams snapped and hissed before lowering a section of the ship to the roof on pneumatic hinges. Robin’s team tensed as sickly blue light trickled from the new ramp. A hiss different from that of the machinery hovering above their heads echoed from the opening, preceding its owner. “You are, ahhhh, the Robin who has called me to this, shhhh, planet?”

Ignoring the edgy looks from his friends, Robin called back, “Yes. You are Zorblarth the Obdurate?”

A serpentine silhouette slithered from the depths of the ship and onto the ramp, bulging at the middle and wrapped in a cloak of alien silks. Parchment eyes infested the center of its bobbing head. The creature pushed itself into the light of the towers flood lamps on a thick, winding tail. Saffron scales peeled from its body and face, which offered the Titans a wide, fanged smile.

“I, wshaa, am he,” he said with a polite bend at his bulging belly. “Pardon my appearance,” Zorblarth hissed. “I am in the middle of my molting cycle.” He patted his midsection. “It always makes me, oohhh, peckish.”

Terra eyed the bulge. For a moment, it looked as though a four-fingered hand clawed at Zorblarth’s skin from the inside with desperate terror. “Super,” she said, choking back bile.

“No time for pleasantries,” Robin insisted, stepping forward. His green glove flexed with opened expectance as he stopped before the strange creature. “Let’s just conduct the exchange and go our separate ways.”

Zorblarth shook his melon-sized head. “Is such rudeness, ahhhh, always this common on your planet?” His spindly arm dug inside his cloak and withdrew a small box, offering it to Robin. When the Teen Wonder reached for it, Zorblarth snatched it away. “Your orbiting meta-friends were especially rude,” he said with cunning on his snakelike face. “I think that increases the price, no? Kaahh, I think so, yes.”

Rather than scowl, Robin smiled and stepped back. “Think of the League as Earth’s customs depot,” he suggested to the merchant. “They’re part of the deal. I’m sorry if you felt put out, but…” His voice became steel wrapped in velvet. “The price stays the same.”

Zorblarth shook his head. “Do not presume too much, shhhh, human,” he cautioned his client. “First-time customers should concern themselves with ingratiating themselves to dear old Zorblarth, not dictating terms. Besides, I have yet to, muhhh, see my payment.”

The smile on Robin’s face took a smug turn. He nodded back at Cyborg. Knowingly, Cyborg punched in a command on his arm, and led the other Titans in stepping back. At his silent command, the section of the roof between Robin and his friends split apart into a wide, black chasm, the depths of which shrank to nothing as the bottom of the service elevator clanked upward, coming to rest flush with the remainder of the roof. Eight clean, unmarked metal barrels sat in a neat configuration atop the lift, covered and waiting.

Robin led the beaming alien over to the drums. “Eight hundred kilograms,” he said, lifting the edge of one lid. The smooth face of packed white powder glistened beneath, the sight of which threatened to pop Zorblarth’s fangs out of his mouth with an impossibly wide smile. “Go ahead,” coaxed Robin. “Try some.”

Zorblarth dipped a careful claw into the barrel and touched it to his forked tongue. An immediate shudder of pleasure rolled down his lengthy body. He tried to take a second sample, but Robin snapped the lid closed, denying it to him. Disenchanted, Zorblarth withdrew his rejected hand and said, “It’s probably, hhaaa, cut.”

“It’s pure,” countered Robin. “And you know it. Now let’s do this.”

Grumbling, the alien begrudgingly handed over the box, which Robin took with a satisfied nod. A brief glisten of green danced on Robin’s cheeks upon opening it, before he clapped the box shut and placed it in a pocket on his belt. “Lobo was wrong about you humans,” noted Zorblarth as he checked his other barrels for possible reasons to complain. “For hot-bloods, you’re actually quite, ahhhh, shrewd.”

The Teen Wonder grunted. “So glad you approve.” He chucked a thumb skyward. “You’d better hurry out before our military gets edgy. Extraterrestrials don’t have a great reputation on Earth.”

A beam of light shot from the bottom of Zorblarth’s ship and enveloped the barrels. Their outlines blurred under the orange barrage, eventually vanishing altogether as the light winked out. The old snake shook his head and examined the colorful earthlings before him. “A poor attitude for a planet to have,” he lamented. “I see much, shhhh, potential in this planet. The mineral rights alone…” The ruminations carried him back to his ship, which swallowed him with a mechanical whirr. Moments later, the patchwork ship made back for the clouds with groaning hull and struggling engines.

The Titans didn’t relax until his ship had vanished. As its underbelly slid back into the clouds, a collective breath escaped Cyborg, Terra, and Beast Boy. “What a creep,” Terra muttered, eyeballing the sky as if afraid the merchant would turn back around. “I hope all that was worth it.”

Robin felt the tug of the weight in his belt, and smiled. With a little luck and a dash of charm, it would go a long way toward fixing his problem with Starfire. “It was,” he assured her.

As they walked back to the roof hatch over Ops, Beast Boy asked, “Hey, um, what was that stuff we traded him? He seemed pretty jazzed to get it.”

The entry code peeped from the control panel beneath Robin’s practiced fingers. He felt a sense of accomplishment at having not crushed the keypad with his new, ever-increasing strength. “Confectioners’ sugar,” he said offhandedly.

Beast Boy blinked as his friends cracked the Tower’s entry hatch and descended into Ops. “You’re kidding me,” he said, knowing full well that Robin was not. It was common knowledge that Robin had no sense of humor. Why else wouldn’t he laugh at any of Beast Boy’s jokes? “Huh,” grunted the shapeshifter as he followed. “Go figure.”

All questions of the offworld value of sweetener disappeared once he joined the rest of them in Ops. The new line of inquiries belonged to Robin, and he compiled them into a single, effective word. “Raven?”

Their sorceress sat curled up on the couch with a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore opened in her lap. Head tilted down at its pages, Raven glanced up through the sheen of violet indifference dangling from her creased forehead and returned his question with equal eloquence. “Robin.”

Cyborg stepped forward before his fuming friend had the chance to do something regrettable. “Raven, weren’t you supposed to be distracting Starfire right now?” Terra and Beast Boy echoed his confusion, while Robin just stood by and steamed.

Clarification only brought a look of indifferent contempt to Raven’s face. “I already did,” Raven said, turning the page of her book. “I sent her out of the Tower. Told her to go away, come back in a few hours.” A shrug rippled the folds of her cloak. “Problem solved.”

Throwing Starfire out of her own home? Robin couldn’t believe it. Is that what Raven called taking care of things? At her reluctance to participate in the party’s preparations, Robin had assigned Raven the easiest task of all, one he would have done himself if not pressed for time. And Raven couldn’t even be bothered to spend time with Starfire so that they might -

Red lights and blaring klaxons filled Ops with urgency and tore Robin’s thoughts asunder. Computer monitors came to life, displaying maps, statistics, reports, and other things he didn’t want to deal with at the moment. “Looks like we’ve got other problems,” noted Cyborg with a crack of his metallic knuckles.

“Perfect,” growled Robin.

*****

Books crashed like water against shoals at Mammoth’s monstrous fists as they pounded after Starfire. The alien princess darted between his blows, but could not escape them completely. Between Gizmo’s air superiority with the auto-cannons mounted on his wings, and the waiting hexes of Jinx, Starfire couldn’t risk exiting the melee without being torn to pieces. Mammoth missed her head by mere inches, tearing apart a solid metal bookshelf in one blow and reminding her that staying in the melee wasn’t a grand idea either.

Jinx’s hand shook with a curse powerful enough to turn Starfire into a pretty, pink memory. She braced the spell with an added hand at her wrist, swinging it about to track the Titan as Mammoth chased her all over the store. “Baran,” she snarled. “Get out of the way. I need a clear shot.”

Starfire answered the careless words with a green bolt, plugging Jinx in the stomach. The witch fell back with a grunt. Cherry sparkles trailed behind her as the spell in her hand dissipated, creating localized chaos as books all around her exploded into a cloud of literary confetti.

But the moment’s distraction cost Starfire a great deal. With a stationary target shooting at his teammate, Mammoth had all the opportunity he needed to swing a double-fisted hammer blow down at the Titan. Starfire caught his fists and strained mightily against several tons of pressure, but her alien strength wasn’t enough to win the contest. The foundation beneath her feet began cracking as Mammoth’s hand inched closer to her head.

“Give up, girlie,” Mammoth grunted through a twisted grin. The creaking of the delicate bones in her hands encouraged him to double his efforts. Reward came in the form of a yelp and a grimace from Starfire. Mammoth could scarcely wait to hear her skeleton compress like an accordion. “I’m bigger and stronger than you. You know you can’t beat me.”

Starfire’s knees began to buckle, and her arms bent inexorably toward defeat. “Yes,” she agreed in a shaky voice, eyeing his tilted center of balance. “I also know basic anatomy. Most especially…”

A hollow, hideous ‘thump’ of bone on flesh accompanied the ballooning of Mammoth’s eyes when Starfire tucked her shin up between his legs. Tons of pressure on Starfire’s frame transformed into nothing in the space of a tortured squeak. The Titan fancied that she heard the creak and moan of a toppling tree in the background to help Mammoth in his floor-shaking flop into a heap atop strewn books and rubble. “Male anatomy,” she finished with some measure of satisfaction.

Starfire took no lasting victory in the moment. Instead, her subdued cheer died in her throat as a pulse of scorching energy tore into her back. Ignoring the odorous agony of her own burning flesh, she turned to face Gizmo’s next shot, and so missed the hex Jinx conjured into her ribs. The blow staggered her, giving Gizmo plenty of time to line up his next shot.

Wind whistled in her ears before the sound of bookcases shattering beneath her spine overcame her senses. Starfire pounded through one, two, three rows, and wound up buried beneath a laden shelf. Galaxies spun in her eyes beneath a mountain of Chicken Soup.

A shrill cackle rose above the pain ringing throughout her body. “You like that, alien whore? Not so tough without those other crud-munching slobs, are you?”

The suffocating darkness vanished with a sweep of Jinx’s pale hand as she cleared the books away from Starfire’s face. “I would love to finish you off right now,” Jinx told the Titan. Leaning over, she teased Starfire’s cheek with a crackling touch, leaving pink welts in her golden skin. “You have no idea how tempting it is,” breathed Jinx. Then her hand withdrew. “But we have something even better in mind.”

Panic overcame Starfire’s addled brain as she saw a pair of electrified restraints extend from behind Gizmo’s back on the end of a telescoping pole. Her body refused the commands her mind demanded of its battered bones. A mountain of books pinned her to the floor. She had one chance left: ‘Righteous fury,’ she thought, and squeezed her eyes shut. ‘Righteous fury. Righteous fury!’

“Um, tell you the truth…” Cyborg said, and then proceeded to lie to Starfire’s face.

“Just leave the tower,” Raven said, casting her out with trademark coldness Starfire had never truly understood and now felt knifing into her heart.

“Something’s come up. Important business,” said Robin, lying with each word.

Something had come up. Her friends didn’t care a single iota about her anymore. They felt the need to lie to her, trying to spare her feelings and instead shattering them. They didn’t want her around, they wanted her out of the tower, they plotted a celebration she could not take part in. They didn’t want her anymore, they didn’t want her, they didn’t -

Green radiance swallowed the literary pile that pinned Starfire to the ground and belched out blackened ash into Jinx and Gizmo’s faces. Unsatisfied, the energy continued on from there, spreading in a pulse that overtook first their row, then their section, and finally the entire store itself. The two Troika rode an emerald wave back, wailing as mutated solar energy nipped at their fronts with searing heat and shoved them roughly into opposite walls. Centered at the explosion, Starfire’s voice echoed off the walls in energized waves that peeled the drywall from its studs. Righteous fury filled the Nook, blackening everything in the store and setting books everywhere aflame.

The ashen remains of her literary prison poured from Starfire’s tattered blouse. The silken white fabric, however little still remaining, hung in grayed ruins. Exhaustion stabbed into the pit of her stomach, but the desperation within her still burned hot. Dizzily, she rose from the ruins of her haven and flew for the door with all of the speed she could muster.

Jinx tore herself free from the twisted slag of a bookcase in time to see Starfire’s feet disappear out the door. A dark smile plagued the witch’s face. All according to plan. “You’re up, Kermit,” she muttered.

Starfire found comfort in the open air, though not much, and aimed herself at the overcast sky. It felt as though liquid metal pumped in her veins. The ground pulled mercilessly, slowing her ascent, tiring her further. Because of this, a pair of propelled prongs had no problems catching up to her and burrowing deep into her thigh.

Pure electricity flooded Starfire’s body, cutting her shriek into a stunted squeak as her body seized up. Every muscle cramped into painful knots and froze, useless. The stunning agony forced joy from her thoughts and plunged her downward. ‘Joy,’ she screamed to her psyche as the world pinwheeled at her. ‘Joy! Puppies, kittens, mustard, Robin –’

That last thought plunged her face-first into the street. She heard the screech of traffic as yellow lines pulverized her nose before yielding to it. Tar and concrete geysered from Starfire’s new crater, sending cars skidding from the road’s center to avoid hitting one of their city’s saviors. They continued swerving with honking panic when a large green shape leapt to the crater’s edge, heedless of the dangers of traffic.

Starfire pushed against the blackness that smothered her eyes, refusing to go quietly into that good night. Rubble rolled off her back, spilling grit into her open, bleeding cuts, as she struggled to rise. ‘I must flee. I must find the others.’ Reaching for the crater’s edge, Starfire pushed her head back above the surface. A walking, reptilian nightmare gazed down at her, leering with fatherly affection and clutching a glowing taser in his three-fingered hand.

“Hello, little one,” he cooed before his weapon kissed Starfire goodnight. “It’s been ages.”

******************************

[ImperialStingmon]

Dude, having read all fifteen chapters I must say this is excellent. I have seen one maybe two errors gramatically throughout the whole thing, but still it's excellent. I wish my stuff was this good, but the best thing I did I never ended up finishing. Maybe it's time to change that. Keep up the good work man.

[Reaper of Despair]

Thank you for the compliment, Sting. I thought that I'd gone over all of the grammar in my chapters thus far, but I suppose I missed a few things. That happens sometimes.