Let It Rain [Robin]

[Tim Drake]

Robin ran after her and swung down to street level in time to see her blow a manhole cover off with an arrow then dive in headfirst into the sewer system, which at almost any time before recent global events, would have been a smart move, but with the way things where now, the sewer was fast becoming a stew of toxic waste the likes of which only Gotham or Steel City had anything comparable to...


Firing his grapple at her again to now try and save her he watched with grim horror as it missed and hit somewhere inside the cavernous tunnel the return mechanism automatically clicking into play as he skidded to a halt, his thumb uncharacteristically missing the brake button as his grapple tugged in his hands, suddenly pulling him forward into the hole in the street, his arms pulling hard as the spool wound up tightly and he fell into the hole, his left hand suddenly free, clamping a small breathing mask over his nose and mouth, the tiny compartment he kept it in, next to a pouch full of explosive goodies, namely Thyrcordazone core heat disks and nitrogen core freeze disks...


For the first time in well over two years, Tim was fumbling, trying to stop his forward motion, gadgets spilling from his belt like it was a busted trick or treat bag dumping candy along the road, only, unlike candy, the items hitting the toxic sludge below his feet where hardly sugar coated...

An explosion of ice, fire, heat, electricity, and tear gas rocked the tunnel, the toxic brew first freezing as electric current flowed through it, then it shattered into trillions of razor sharp shards, that expanded into the boiling heat, turning into a thick gas...


And hanging just above the surface, in the middle of it all, was Robin, his cape drawn about him with one hand, his grapple just barely holding the roof of the tunnel, still in his iron like grip as he coughed and gasped, the breathing mask blown from his face, lost in the sludge below him, just like the girl had been, only, as far as Robin could reason through the fog of both the tunnel and his quickly clouding mind, unlike himself, the girl was dead for sure, because if the toxic soup didn't kill her, the massive explosion he had inadvertently set off, surely would have...


Reaching to his belt, letting his cape fall back to hanging from his shoulders, he pulled his communicator from his belt and opened it, and called out to the only other hero he knew would hear him; "Robin *cough!* calling Darkbrand *hack!* I need help... Explosion... Sewer... Mallory road and Highclif avenue, look for smoke... Hurry..."



{{{I need Darkbrand to save mah!!!}}}

[Dahlia Michelle]

When Dahlia had jumped into the sewer, she hadn't really given any thought to what Robin would do. She figured he wouldn't be able to stop her in time (because he wouldn't), and that he'd give up. So she hadn't really thought to look behind her to see what Robin was doing.

Regardless, she did think of him when she heard a quiet boom inside the sewer, followed by a rumbling inside the pipes. She could barely believe it; he had blown up the inside of the sewer to try to get her. Dahlia quickly reached to fire an arrow, only to realize that... well...

The chemicals had burned off her clothes.

The arrows were fine, and so was the bow - the weapons were fireproof- and Dahlia shot a non-explosive arrow with a string attached to it, holding on and bracing herself for what she knew would come after the explosion. A second later, she felt the liquid moving, rushing, and it began flowing harder, pushing against her and wearing away at her skin so hard that Dahlia saw blood. She winced, but her body kept itself intact, and presently the wave calmed, and Dahlia let go of the arrow.

It occurred to her then (although she was distracted by the lack of clothes) that the explosion of toxic waste could have hurt many people nearby -- Robin wouldn't want that. So was it possible... was the explosion really an accident?

Dahlia wasn't sure why she did it. She didn't like Robin, she didn't mind hurting him. In fact, she enjoyed it. But somehow, she found herself turning around, swimming back through the sewers to where Robin was. Oddly enough, her body was beginning to get used to the pain, and it was actually learning to heal faster.

When she reached the sewer hole, Dahlia was rather surprised at the sight: explosions were coming from all around the hole, as if Robin was repeatedly dropping different kinds of flammables in there.

What the hell was he doing?

Then she heard him speak: "Robin *cough!* calling Darkbrand *hack!* I need help... Explosion... Sewer... Mallory road and Highclif avenue, look for smoke... Hurry..."

Dahlia almost laughed. This was an accident. She swam a little further, careful to stay out of view (for two obvious reasons), and saw that he was suspended over the toxic waste. The only thing keeping her from laughing was the pain. Still, she quickly pulled out an blunt arrow, a non-flammable, and fired it a Robin square in the stomach. This arrow was one that basically punched a person backwards, sending them flying while conveniently spreading knockout gas in the person's face, and that was exactly what it did to Robin. He was safe.

Well then. What to do now? The best answer would probably have been to keep swimming, but Dahlia hated the pain. Although it had lessened, it was still excruciating. She needed to get out. But what about the clothes issue?

Grimacing, she swam over to the sewer hole, poking her head out above. She could just imagine the sight of herself; eyeballs bloody, face torn to shreds... She shuddered, but she pulled herself out of the sewer, toxic chemicals dripping down at her.

She took half a second to look at herself as she sprinted towards an unsconcious Robin. Well, she needn't be worried about people seeing her naked. She was covered in blood.

Dahlia undid Robin cape, tying it around her. And then she ran.

... or tired to. The second she turned, took a step, she felt herself rise. Dahlia almost gasped.

What the hell?

She looked down at her feet.

She was flying.

[Violet Schultz]

Patrolling seemed to make up a lot of her duties lately. Of course, she was glad to do it, and she relished the chance to ride her motorcycle around Jump, but taking the same route and seeing nothing could get old after a while. She rolled into the lot of a restaurant after the circuit was complete, pulling her meager food funds from her pocket as she entered. There was plenty to get some food...

Stepping up to the counter, she was about to order when Robin's voice came in on the communicator. The strain in it alarmed and troubled her. Without a word to the irritated person behind the counter, she hurried away and got back on the bike, revving it loudly and leaving, a black mark on the pavement where she'd burnt rubber. There was no reason for her to look into the sky to see the explosion. She could feel it quite clearly.

"On my way," was her only reply.

She raced through the city, weaving through traffic in her haste to come to his aid. When she arrived, she found Robin unconcious on the ground. His cape was missing, but he was alive. His breath smelled as chemical and irregular as the sewer, and from the devastation and peculiar remnants of whatever encounter had caused this, she could tell that by some strange twist of fate, the gadgets he carried with him had worsened the situation.

Checking his pulse first, she examined him for injuries. The worse of it seemed to be poisoning from whatever chemical he'd inhaled. Her practical mind raced over the possibilities. There were three options. First, she could get him to a hospital and hope that he was still breathing when they got there. Second, she could take him to Titan's Tower for treatment. There wasn't time for those options. She chose the third option. First, she created a flaming barrier which would stop any more of the toxic gas from getting to Robin. It would burn up before it got near him.

Opening his mouth, she inhaled the chemicals through her own, drawing the breath as deeply as she could. Her system could handle the toxins much more easily than his could. The molecular structure would denature quickly in an environment as hostile as her system. The heat would take care of that. Of course, it wasn't a fun experience for herself. While her system could cope with smoke inhalation without trouble, toxic gas wasn't exactly pleasant to the lungs.

In any case, the heat of the air around them, while uncomfortable for him, would get rid of any excess gas which was on his skin. After a few seconds, she swept the flame barrier away from herself in an expanding half oval which disappated after a moment. The heat dropped noticably.

"Robin?" she asked, ignoring the queasiness she was experiencing. "Robin, can you hear me?"

She could feel the effects of the chemical lessening by the second as her body defended itself.

[Tim Drake]

Even as he hung there, being hit by some blunt object, he remembered his training, and even as he felt himself slip away into blissful darkness, he remembered his training, and even as his grip at last failed him, he managed to remember his training, his body falling to the side of the stream of toxic crud that flowed off into who knew where, the sidewalk of sorts being old stone that was holding up quite well, and it was what kept him from falling in and dying...



He stirred slightly when he felt a warmth that wasn't rolling, but constant, pulsing softly like a heartbeat almost, then he felt a burning in his lungs that felt like death was eating at him from the inside out, until it was suddenly taken from him, his head spinning, his mind fading again, but still, his training kicked in once more time and he coughed out; "The Tower... Medical lab..." before he slipped back into blissful nothingness...

[Violet Schultz]

Violet nodded once. She turned to see how far away the Tower was as she elevated his head. Dear God. It was too far away to get their by walking and she didn't have a sidecar like Robin did. She pushed a button on her motorcycle to lock it down and pulled Robin off of the ground. The guy had to be mostly muscle to be so short and yet so heavy. It didn't really matter, though. This was going to be a little dicey, but it was her only option. She had to fly him there without lighting him on fire.

Careful to establish her balance, she propelled herself and Robin into the air. She carried him in a fireman's carry, focusing on balance and on keeping the heat output to a minimum. As soon as they arrived, she stumbled to a stop, trying her utmost to keep from dropping him.

TWO DAYS LATER

The moniter beeped to Robin's heartbeat, but it was the only sound in the otherwise still section of the tower. Violet sat a silent vigil in a chair at the far end of the small medical room, watching to make sure he was doing okay. She hadn't slept in nearly two days, during which Robin had been unconcious, recovering from the poison. His IV's were giving him the fluid he needed to flush it from his system, and his lungs were clear enough that he didn't need a mask any more.

She sat forward as he began to stir.

[Tim Drake]

Everything hurt.


As the veil of darkness slowly faded and his blood shoot, pale electric blue eyes opened to take in his surroundings Tim became aware of three things; one, his skin itched in a strange way. Two, everything seemed terribly sharp and clear for how badly his eyes hurt. And three, he could feel a warmth deep in his body that seemed out of place...


Blinking, Tim stirred, and once he found the strength, sat up, forcing his tingling elbows to support his weight as he shook his head clear of the last bits of fog, his bright blue eyes falling on a tired and slightly relieved looking Violet.

"Hi." he croaked out dryly, his throat and lips dry, making him cough and lick and smack some before he made a drinking gesture with a splotchy looking hand.
It was then he noticed that he was just in the armored leggings of his suit, his tunic open, exposing his bare ripped torso, a few light scars here and there.

He wasn't embarrassed per-say, but... Well he was still... Uhh...
Still a a boy in a manor of speaking?

So no, he'd not had all that much experience with girls and a lack of clothing, but uhh, well, just when would he have had the time anyways?

It was also something he'd not really gone into detail with Violet, insomuch as her past and experiences and the like, after all, it wasn't exactly proper boy/girl conversation material now was it?

[Violet Schultz]

He looked tired and ragged, but still considerably stronger than he had been as of late. She wasn't exactly medically trained, but the computer in the medical lab had been invaluable and had told her exactly what she needed to do. Heaven knew that she had seen it done enough times to have a rough idea of how to do it in the first place. One couldn't get as many scars as she had and survive without medical intervention at some point.

"Hi," she replied, her voice saturated with relief. She walked over to the cupboard by the sink and pulled out a styrofoam cup with a lid and a straw. Filling it with filtered water, she handed it over, making sure that he was lucid enough to hold it without dropping it.

"How are you feeling?" she asked, sitting back down.

[Tim Drake]

Carefully taking the cup from her hands, he stuck the straw between his lips and sucked hard, his thirst suddenly overriding everything else, his slightly burned cheeks pulsing as he gulped the cool liquid down, quickly emptying the cup.


Sighing out softly he licked his mildly chapped lips and took a breath, then looked over to Violet and offered an ironic smile; "I'm alive, what more do you want?" he said jestingly as he adjusted himself, sitting up more and then running his other hand through his ragged and matted hair before he looked at himself in the mirror behind Violet.

"Man... I look like death warmed over huh?" he said as he flopped back down and gazed at the ceiling for a few moments the rolled over and faced her once more; "Here's the next part of you're training, assessing a situational incident... Basically, I slipped up... I was chasing some girl, pale skinned, blue hair, an archer, she had these exploding arrows, like Speedy, only she wasn't quiet as good, she had some kind of vendetta against the high-rollers on mansion row, seemed to think all the recent social problems where the fault of the upper class, and that the social services and heroes such as us show them preferential treatment..."

Rolling again to his back Tim at last set the cup down and gingerly rubbed the bridge of his nose as he went on, knowing that Violet was plenty smart and would provide valuable insight into what happened; "To make a long story short, she dumped some drug into the neighborhood's water main, blew the windows out of a house and then we had a running fight until she blew a manhole cover up and dove into the sewers, I tried to save her, but my grapple line missed and I slipped up, and got pulled into the flow way, and in grabbing a breathing mask, inadvertently dumped a few pouches of disks and other items into that crud, and almost blew myself up." He closed his eyes and whispered to her; "If it hadn't of been for my cape..." he red and dry looking eyes then opened, narrowed and focused as he turned to face his newest teammate; "Violet, what state was my cape in when you found me?"

[Violet Schultz]

"This is so weird," she commented. "It feels so backward. A month ago, no one would ever have accused me of siding with the 'high rollers', but in the last week, two different people have."

She shook her head in amazement, looking bemused. Taking a breath, she turned her attention back to the task at hand.

"Well, with what you've told me, I think it's pretty obvious that she's taken the Robin Hood persona to heart. She seems to think that because she is poor, she is entitled to do whatever she wants; to take whatever she wants to take. It's not so different from the way I was..."

Her dark blue eyes were distant, maybe even a little ashamed.

"If she's anything like that, there are going to be other incidents. And if she's like that, there's no way of really making out her character based on the intel that we have. No way of telling how much of a threat she is. However, if she was dumping some toxic crap into the mains, that tells us that the threat level is definitely higher than ideal."

She tilted her head in confusion.

"Your cape? It was gone before I arrived."

[Tim Drake]

Tim nodded in agreement; "Yeah, I didn't even get a name from her, but even so, if she's willing to dump stuff into a whole areas water supply, then we have had to make her a top priority. Or at least she would have been, if she fell into that just, I honestly don't see how she could have lived, her clothing was simple and wouldn't have offered much protection from either the waste or the explosions..."

He didn't comment on her musings about her own past and what the girl had to say, because in his mind, while the argument was fairly valid in some ways, in others it wasn't, because the simple facts where that some had plenty, and others lacked plenty, then again, the definition for "plenty" could mean lots of things, and some people never had lots of money, but where perfectly happy with life as it was...


Tim looked at her and then shook his head; "But how? I remember wrapping my cape around to protect myself when the first explosions went off, if I hadn't, well... You would have never heard from me and become a Titan by default..."

He puzzled it our for a few moments and then looked off across the room in thought before he looked back at Violet and voiced an idea; "What if the girl I was after had some kind of powers? Something that would have protected her from that waste tainted sludge? And then what if she took my cape as a kind of trophy?"


Tim suddenly had the feeling that he had yet to see the last of the blue haired archer, and that worried him...

[Violet Schultz]

Violet's eyes narrowed infinitesimally at his words but didn't comment on it. Become a Titan by default? It didn't really matter for the moment. There were more important things to discuss. She listened to his own assessment silently, considering his thoughts.

"It's entirely possible," Violet agreed. "I don't see any other way for her to survive and get away before I arrived. It couldn't have been more than a minute from the time you radioed to the time I got there."

She stared at the wall for a few moments, musing over everything they knew.

"Here's what I don't get. If by your account, you were about to fall in when you called and that was the last thing you remember, how were you securely on stabile ground when I got there? Is it possible that she helped you?"

[Tim Drake]

Tim sniffed slightly and coughed again, hard, his head pounding for a moment, the heat in his stomach rippling out for a moment before setteling down again.

Looking straight up again, he sighed; "I was hanging by the grapple, it had anchored into the upper part of the flow way, as soon as the explosions had died down, I called you, and I was passing out at that point even from the fumes... I think your right Vi, she could have very well have come back and pulled me to the side onto the walkway, I mean, you saw how wide the sewers are, you could fit a small motorboat down there with ease and room to spare... But then why take my cape? Protection? A prize?"


Tim rubbed his temples and closed his eyes, his frustration growing quickly, but that instantly turned to shock when he opened his eyes and sat up yanked at the IV in his arm, and started to scratch at it like he was possessed; "Ahhhhh! That hurt!" he exclaimed as he rubbed the crook of his arm, then blinked in awe: His left arm looked perfectly fine.

Unlike the rest of his skin, which still looked irritated and rash covered, which was both very puzzling and very scary...

[Violet Schultz]

Violet jumped up and grabbed his hand, gently pulling it away from the IV. She checked the needle and the tube to make sure that he hadn't broken it or hurt himself. It seemed fine.

"You've been unconcious for two days," she said. "That IV is keeping you from being dehydrated. Don't tug at it."

She went back to sit down, checking the moniters just to be sure.

"Look, I had to suck the poison from your lungs on site, and I had to get as much poison from your skin as I could by using my powers to evaporate it. You were burned a little, but if I had left it there, you'd probably be dead, so please be a little patient and let it heal."

[Tim Drake]

Tim let her pull his had away from the IV, it still hurt but he wasn't in the mood to argue, and she was right about it anyways.

Closing his eyes and sighing again, Tim just laid there and thought for a moment, digesting everything they had both said, linking his memories with her observations, forming a kind of chain of evidence in his head about what this all could mean for him...

"What did the med lab's computer have to say about my injuries?" He pointed to the monitor next to his bed as he sat up once more, his mind now far too active to allow him rest at all, so why not try and hurry his recovery along?

[Violet Schultz]

"You've got scrapes, bruises, minor chemical burns, and heat burns all over you," she reported. "Nothing's broken, and your system is still trying to flush out the toxin. You're a little malnurished, but that's because you haven't eaten in two days and the computer said that it wouldn't be safe to give you anything but water for now. By the computer's calculations, you should be fully recovered in about a week."

She looked at him and sighed.

"I've put a lot of effort into making you healthy again. I would appreciate some help. Lay back down."

Her blue eyes were firm as she spoke. It had been a while, but natural leaders never lost the authority in their personality. While Robin was her leader, she could assume that persona when she needed to. She was fully aware that most guys didn't really take their own health into consideration a lot of the time.