Prelude: Doverie Nikto

—

It was beautiful really. Some exotic quality made the metallic surface of the pole shimmer in the evening sunlight and reflect a gorgeous array of colors. The way it connected with the larger body almost seemed like a form of abstract art. Never before had a simple stop sign seemed so mystical — everyone at the crime scene certainly thought so. Everyone that is, except the robot impaled on it.

But the explosion a few moments later took care of him before he could complain or ruin the moment.

A foot and a half away, a wide-eyed, masked teenager sat dressed in a tight red and green getup with a black cape stretched across his back. The look of shock on his face was probably due to the fact that the end of the stop sign was formerly a meager five inches from his face.

Or that the sign had stopped the robot from completing a crippling blow with a mailbox to his head.

Or that the falling path of the sign led up six stories to the top of a building across the street.

For a moment, both the Titans and the rampaging robots seemed to fail to even realize that they were still in the heat of battle. A flying lamppost encased in a black aura smashed the head of another robot and quickly reminded everyone of the pressing matter at hand.

"Does anyone remember the simple fact that we are still in a battle!" an ornery, floating, blue-robed girl muttered loudly. The five teenagers suddenly sprung back into action and continued their struggle, completely oblivious to two pairs of eyes watching their movements several stories above.

—

"Whew... Used to be psycho robots actually needed a reason to run rampaging through the city!" a large-built half-robot wearily commented to various others around him. "Stupid things weren't even trying to take any money or anything. They were just blowing crap up!"

"Maybe they were really bored… Hey Cyborg, do robots ever get the urge to go kill some time by exploding things?" asked a small, conspicuously green boy with a mischievous grin.

"Only when they run out of animals to run over on the road," came the retort.

The green boy gulped.

"The criminally insane never need a rational reason to lash out," replied the female cloaked in blue. "It could have been anything from greed to some perverse lust for destruction."

The masked boy of red and green interjected. "True Raven, but why would unmarked, coincidentally-untraceable robots strike at a seemingly random part of the city with no clear goal in sight?"

"Perhaps we interrupted their mission before it even began, Robin," proposed an unusually orange young girl as she flew in to join the small group, "In which case, we would have been victorious in our undertaking, would we not?"

"Would think so," replied Robin with a slow nod. "We should still keep our eyes open for anything suspicious. Something tells me this is far from an insolated incident…"

During the discussion, each of the team members had been candidly glancing at the building tops along where the stop sign originated. Nobody had said anything about it up to the moment. They had all hoped it had been aimed at the robot and not the leader under it, but no one really felt comfortable discussing such a bizarre and random event.

"Glorious! Then our occupation in the vicinity is complete, is it not?" asked the floating orange redhead ecstatically.

Robin stirred from his inconspicuous gaze and lightly chuckled. "Sure, Starfire, 'our work here is done.' I got some unofficial 'samples' of the robots that we can use for examination. I'm sure the police department wouldn't mind letting us borrow them…"

The team quickly turned to scramble into flight, vehicle, or sprint, but Raven faltered; she lifted her gaze once more towards the rooftops in the direction of the miraculous street sign. She saw nothing unusual: an emergency ladder, a couple of trash bags, and a bulky ventilation shaft; everything was completely harmless. Something inside of her felt oddly amiss, but seeing no imminent cause for concern, she slowly turned and raced away to join the others in their path to a distant structure in the shape of a large capital T.

Seconds later, the outline of the ventilation shaft shifted and a pairs of eyes followed the group further and further away, until they were specks in the horizon.

—

"Dang it, Beast Boy! Move your freaking hairy gorilla leg out of my face!"

"Sure… right after you stop cheating at every game we play!"

"Hey! I can't help it if I naturally pwn you at any and everything you can think of!"

The green elf moved his foot and mumbled at retort under his breath.

"And don't think I didn't just HEAR you…" came the next insult. Their simultaneous bickering drowned the rest out.

"…And that is the true way to create a pan-dimensional vortex," the orange alien girl stated with satisfaction as she walked with Robin into the kitchen of the Titan Tower. Robin smirked casually as he sat at the counter in the Main Room, several yards away from the squabbling duo. His companion Starfire had just finished passionately explaining the correct manner to sustain the ability to transverse light-years in a matter of nanoseconds. He mentally swore never to let her watch anything on the Sci-Fi Channel.

A look of earnest curiosity suddenly came to the face of the red-haired alien. "Robin," she began, "from where do you suppose the sign of stop that rescued you originated?"

He looked off at the feuding Titans yards away and shifted in his seat. "I honestly don't know, Star. But we can't assume that the sign was meant to save me. Whoever threw it could have had no real idea of how deep it was going to go. Their intent may have been more sinister than we suppose..." His brow furrowed. He still hadn't answered any of the questions that had arisen since the incident.

Robin looked up and saw that his concentration had worried the alien. "Don't worry, Star. It's probably no cause for concern. We should be more concerned about the scrap metal we tore apart, anyway."

As he led her away, he mentally added that his search would have to continue later that night on the Titan computers. Much later.

—

Inhale…

Exhale…

On the roof of the tower, the pale Raven sat cross-legged in complete silence. Her lips moved slightly softly, but no sound came forth. The scene around her was almost as peaceful as the setting of her concentration. Deep within her mind, she stood on a calm, serene lake on the tip of her toes, rhythmically inhaling and exhaling to the beat of her own heart. She stared into the expansive black void of her own psyche.

Inhale…

Exhale…

Many minutes passed in subtle harmony when, despite the gentle winds swirling around her body, she recognized a barely perceptible warmth across her face inconsistent with the rest of her body. Slowly, sapphire light poured into the blank slate of her mind.

Heavy exhale…

Startled, she opened her actual eyes and saw the most curious sight of the day: a navy blue rose floating a scant four inches from her face. Oddly, it was made completely out of some sort of fire; azure flames seemed to begin at the stem, flow through the flower, and flicker off every petal. She sat transfixed to her spot for several moments before impulsively reaching out for the rose.

Her pale fingers went clear through the flower and it whisked away with a passing breeze. She abruptly came to, stood up, and instinctively looked around the rooftop.

But she found nothing.

He had already left.

—

It smelled like a hobo had thrown up on the floor and then attempted to mop it up with whiskey and tar. Incidentally, as I turned down at the alleyway and started down the narrow passage, I saw a homeless man regurgitating his last meal onto the pavement.

Klassnyi.

Nevertheless, I walked on, ignoring the man and his former lunch. At sunset, I finally arrived at the bridge that overlooked the dirty street below. This was the stark conclusion to my journey. No more aimless walking. No more weary searching. It ended here.

I walked up to the edge of the bridge and looked down at the street about six meters below. Turning again towards the road I was on, I looked dead forward as I slowly began to lean backwards. The wind pulled at my scarf and extended it to its full length. My hair whipped about in all of its brown fury. And I fell.

As I plummeted towards the road, all the memories of my life flashed before my eyes. It was short.

I shot out my left hand and latched onto a cable with my nunchaka. My body swung around and flew towards the inner wall of the overpass. As my feet connected, I shot forward and barreled out into a roll across the street. I finished standing on one foot and stretching my weapon so that all three sections of the nunchaka aligned straight across my back. I stood for a minute in that pose, not moving a muscle as my heartbeat slowly lowered and regained normality.

"Okei," I mumbled, "I'm sure the bridge is quite impressed."

It ended here. No more aimless walking for today, and certainly no more searching. I was at my resting place. I was home.

I looked out at the entire skyline of the city. The lights were wondrous and thrilling… mesmerizing and almost… intoxicating. They all stood out proudly, like they had something to say to world, and yet… they blended in unison to paint the nighttime sky. Thousands of cars and people bustled about below it and never looked up to observe the same beauty I saw. They didn't get the details, no one ever did.

I sighed, looked down at the small bag at my side, and pulled out a shiny, clear ball: a cat's eye. Closing my eyes, I lightly concentrated on the sphere in my palm, then tossed the marble at a stop sign a good eleven meters away.

The stop sign exploded brilliantly.

"Doverie nikto."

—

"Ha HA! That leaves the score at Elf Boy: 0, Cyborg the Cyberking: 6 billion!" exclaimed the satisfied robot.

"No! You just… well I was…" began the flustered Beast Boy. Unfortunately, he was cut mid-mumble by the blare of the beloved Titan siren.

WREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

"Argh! Son of a motherless pig—"

WREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

"Titans! Trouble," shouted Robin as he checked the monitors and barreled downstairs with Starfire at his heels.

"…Blasted robots…" he muttered.

WREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE…

—

People ran amok. Already, several vehicles had been overturned and various others had been crushed and thrown aside. The gang of chrome, geometrically-designed robots was on a rampage again. And they were all apparently pissed off at cars.

The lead robot, which seemed to be quite fond of the U.S. Postal Service, had torn off a door from one of the slow-moving mail carrier vehicles and was in the process of batting aside civilians when his sensors detected a specific object of interest: a little boy sat huddled several feet away, numerous tears running down his face. A silent voice within flashed a series of computational commands and drove him to darted in his direction. Pulling the broken door far back, he began a swing at the weeping boy's lowered head.

The robot never finished his swing; his arms were too busy being lassoed together by a well-timed grappling shot. He turned to the right to face the new threat… and received a metal boot to the face.

"Come on, scrap heaps. I say we even up the teams," Robin said as he whipped out his bo staff and sent the team into action. "Titans, go!"

A green T-Rex charged into two unsuspecting androids; they were confetti in a matter of minutes. Cyborg shot at robot after robot with his arm cannon as they slowly tried to advance on him. "Like fish in a barrel," he snickered aloud.

Pair after pair of machines met their doom as Raven encased them in ebony and obliterated them with a twitch of her fingers. Bolts of green swatted many bots aside as Starfire attempted with futility to reason with the brainless metal heads. "Please, cease your criminal activity and perhaps we can reach an agreement."

A swift blow to the head sent Starfire flying into a dumpster. "Oh," she cried out as she sat up and pulled a banana peel off her face. Clenching her fists, she stood up quickly and lowered her eyebrows. "I am afraid my offer of mercy has ended. You will receive justice for your unkindness!" The green bolts of fury from her eyes did the rest of the talking from that moment.

In a matter of twenty minutes, the battle was over. No robot was left standing; not a single threat was posed in the street. The Teen Titans looked around expectantly. They hadn't even broken a proper sweat.

"Heh, what gives?" asked Beast Boy to no one in particular. "Isn't there a part somewhere in there where something goes really bad and one of us has to like… risk their life to save everybody else's life and then we're all, 'Awesome, dude!' and then we eat pizza?"

"Yeah… that seemed too easy. Almost like it was setup by someone," Robin answered. "Everybody keep on the alert; we may not be done yet."

And so they walked around the entire area, listening for suspicious noises, searching for suspicious sights, and feeling all the more creepy every second that nothing happened. The minutes silently passed as the team searched high and low for anything that could indicate a threat. Their efforts were fruitless.

"Titans. Report." Robin stated when they all met back together at the scene of the struggle, standing uncomfortably at the opening of a dirty alley.

"…"

"I found nothing out of the ordinary," ventured Starfire. "Everything was as it would normally be."

"Yeah. The weirdest thing I saw was some dude with a green mohawk."

Robin opened his mouth to begin his reply, but he was violently interrupted by a small complication: a dumpster six feet behind the team suddenly detonated. Titans and trash went flying everywhere as flames flailed at anything within twenty feet of their fiery grasp and singed nearby trees.

As suddenly as it screamed, the blackened street became very quiet, nothing stirring.

Finally, groans arose from the ashes as the team regained their composure.

"Is anybody hurt?"

"Argh... No, we seem to be okay... We just…"

The voices trailed off as a giant television screen on the side of a large corporate building began flickering spastically. Black and white noise covered the 25-foot screen for a few minutes before it finally settled on a black screen with white letters. The message was brief, but its intent was as clear as the day it had interrupted:

Congratulations on your exercise, Titans.
However, you are advised to work on your reflexes:
next time, the explosion will be right in your face.

Consider this a sign from ABOVE.

—

I threw three marbles in the air and they exploded into different colors. The little kids clapped. The older kids stood in the back and whispered among themselves. More marbles danced in the air. More "oohs" and "aahs" came forth. The final display included various marbles, a ball of confetti, and – as a special surprise – a banana. As the confetti floated down and the banana splattered everywhere, the kids shrieked with delight and looked back for more, but I was no longer there, having made my quiet retreat into the rest of my day.

I stood on the railing of the emergency stairs high above the kids in the alleyway and stared as they wandered in their separate directions.

My God, they were fat.

The way the children walked around, you'd think they'd never done a day of work in their lives. I could easily imagine the smug look on their faces as they walked home to eat whatever it was they demanded of their parents and spent the rest of the day captivated by the latest toy of the moment.

I stood straight up on the railing, my wrapped feet holding delicately onto the metal pole.

In one swift motion, I tied my hair back into a ponytail and dived face first off the railing. The wind swept by and my face felt icy cold for a moment. I caught a random pole with my nunchaka and swung upright as my face came only inches from the concrete.

I blinked.

…And realized that I'd never noticed how much whiter the road was in this part of town. Tucking my weapon in my waistline, I sprinted down through the alley. I ran for hours. Or maybe just a couple minutes. Or maybe I only ran a single city block.

I don't know. I didn't care. There was no hurry.

There was nothing waiting for me anywhere in the city.

—

The screen on the Titan's central computer hadn't changed for almost an hour. Two files were open: one was a window displaying the fruitless end of the scan of a robotic part, and the other was a simple, solid black browser window with a symbol at the top of the page of a flying mammal with outstretched wings. Inside were the words "ABOVE category:organization (0 Results Found)."

The glow of the screen outlined Robin's unmoving figure. Hours searching and he had found nothing. Thoughts raced across his mind and failed to make the connections for which he was searching. His mental hunt was abruptly interrupted by soft words.

"Excuse me, Robin… am I intruding?"

"No, Star… I was just… investigating. I can't seem to locate any data from the samples of the robots."

"How? Is there no way to identify the unusual alloy of which the robotic assailants were composed of?" she asked curiously.

"No. Actually, it's the opposite. Their design is so overly simple and the construct so common, that it's nearly impossible to pinpoint the manufacturing to just one source."

Starfire paused for a moment, staring at the mangled robotic arm that was under the Titan scanners. "Why would anyone go through the trouble of attacking an entire city and settle for such easily destroyable toys?"

"Why anyone would want to capture our attention badly enough to do it in the first place?" Robin answered.

Silence.

"Perhaps, Robin," she slowly began as she placed a hand on the shoulder of her teammate, "these matters can only be resolved with time and toil."

He slowly nodded in agreement and continued to stare blankly at the computer screen.

The alien's mouth suddenly widened. "Come, let us go and partake in the late evening activities of the Main Room."

As he casually glanced at the hand on his shoulder, the Boy Wonder barely allowed the corner of a lip to turn slightly up. "Maybe I can spare a minute…"

"Glorious!" she shouted, as she gripped Robin's arm, nearly tearing it out of its socket, and flew off. She continued to float and converse down the hallway until the distance drowned her voice out.

Inside the thickly armored computer room, everything was motionless: papers lay where they were last set, cables were snaked this way and that around various cabinets of files. And inside a broken robotic arm, a blue light flickered on.

—

Starfire burst through the set of double doors and into a flying ball of brown laundry.

The voice of an outraged Cyborg pierced the stunned moment. "DANG IT, STAR! How're we supposed to play a fair game and keep score with you frolicking around with our sports equipment?"

She delicately peeled away disgusting gunk from her face for the second time that day and ventured, "Remind me, friends, what is the joyous delight derived from flinging the ball of the stank at each other?"

"Duh, Starfire!" chimed in Beast Boy, tossing his own weapon of waste onto a kitchen counter. "It stinks! And it's a ball! And… It's STANKBALL!"

"I see…" Starfire glanced at Raven reading beside a window in the far corner of the room. "Raven would you like to jo—"

"No."

"Aw c'mon, Raven," pleaded Cyborg. "You promised."

"… … … No, I didn't."

"Well, will you do it anyway?"

"Maybe."

"Really?"

"No."

Before either beast or bot could further protest, Raven stood up and announced, "I honestly don't know how anyone can stand the smell of that compost heap. Besides," she frowned, "…I cringe at the thought of what could make Beast Boy's jockstrap that lovely shade of brownish green."

As her eyes widened in terror, Starfire scrambled from the hill of filthy laundry and bowled over Robin. Raven quietly slipped past them and exited the room.

All eyes were on the jockstrap.

Beast Boy smiled. "She's just jealous of my mad Stankball skillz!"

A black-outlined ball of moldy clothes smacked him in the mouth and sent him flying into a distant couch.

"That's another point for me," said Cyborg, grinning.

—

The harbor finally came into view.

"There it is!" I shouted, betraying hidden excitement. The older boy behind me faintly grinned and gripped my hand.

It ended here. It began there.

"This is what freedom looks like," I exclaimed. "This is what freedom tastes like!"

He nodded in agreement and looked around. Little separated us now from the Valley and the rest of our lives. But the little was just enough.

"Green. Card. Green card! Do you have a passport? C'mon people, do us all a favor, and have your papers ready when ya get up here!" Turning back to the immigrants before him, the immigration officer at the front desk continued the standard inquiries. "Do you have any fruits or vegetables you would like to declare before we start…" As he finished with a batch of Italians, a discrete pair of children snuck past him under cover of other adults.

"What is next?" I glanced around nervously. "Are we yet in?"

As if to answer my question, a banner flew proudly over us. "Welcome to America," it read. Our sign from above.

Finally, we stood on American soil and beheld the world around us. People and small stands littered the small seaside business strip. The fresh smell of the ocean swirled around me as I ran out to the nearby food carts and street musicians and crowds.

It felt too good to be true. And, it was. Glancing behind me, I saw something odd.

I ran towards him.

"Wait. What's going on—" I shouted.

It ended there.

I bolted up in cold sweat.

Nothing stirred in the midnight air.

My face fell between my knees and I shuddered.