Time is a Thief 3 - #419 - Splatter
Title: Time is a Thief 3
Fandom: BtVS/Teen Titans
Prompt: 419 - Splatter
Words: 2329
Warnings: Past Character Death, Some dialogue from Teen Titans 1.03 - Final Exam
Rating: Teen
Summary: Xander thinks both heroes and villains are stupid, being a thief is so much smarter (unless you get caught)
Mammoth, Gizmo and Jinx were supes, even if there was a constant whispered debate behind Gizmo's back over if he actually had any powers. Xander thought that any 10 year old kid that was capable of building a remote controlled cold fusion reactor from a vacuum cleaner was clearly either super powered or a reality breaking deus ex machina. Heavy on the machina. No one ever bothered asking him his opinion though, so he kept his thoughts to himself.
The trio was the pride and joy of the Academy, the strongest, most intelligent and most powerful students respectively. They were watched so closely that the whole school immediately knew when their darlings had been hired out. It was apparently very exciting, the whole student body buzzed around like someone had kicked their HIVE. Xander figured their vaunted reputation was why their inaugural mission was being recorded by the Headmistress’ gimmicky robotic bees. He had long since hacked one of the robo-bugs to be his little spy and rerouted it's uplink to a full-sized prototype wall monitor he had installed in his room after 'acquiring' it from the tech department. Anything she saw, he had access to.
In his defense, he could now turn his whole wall into a touch screen, the tech was much too cool to leave it to get dusty on its shelf and the fist sized bug was important spyware. Anything the Headmistress had her eye on was worth knowing since she had her fingers in every pie and the little fellow was kinda cute. He watched it dance in circles over the screen wall as it wirelessly fed it's surveillance through the sensors in its legs. Even an antisocial jerk like Xander needed a pet to talk at or he'd go nuts. Not to mention that it was ridiculously easy to steal things in a villain school, so why the hell not. Every single student was a viable suspect for any wrong doing and secrets were so viciously protected that attempting room searches was a life threatening endeavor. It wasn't like he ever had any visitors that might rat him out either. Xander settled in on his plush queen sized bed, ill-gotten of course, and enjoyed the show.
The trio made a good showing of themselves initially, actually managing to embarrass the Titans into fleeing back home to regroup and then ousting the heroes from their own tower. Something that no one else had managed in the months since the tower went up. Xander thought it was idiotic of the hero team to make so obvious a target of themselves, his Lair Design 101 class stressed the importance of secrecy and discretion. He waved away the bitter thought that a public library was a much more vulnerable HQ. The Scoobies had paid dearly for their strategic errors and he was living proof that whatever didn't kill you made you stronger. He brushed a hand over the deep scar tissue on the side of his throat.
The fight was the first real confrontation between HIVE and the Titans, despite both groups having co-habitated the same city for several months since the hero squad planted their flag on the island in the bay. Heroes had a sixth sense for trouble and despite not knowing about the school, were drawn in by the sky high crime rate in the area. There was no subtle way to house a whole campus of troublemakers without collateral damage and mayhem to the surrounding neighborhood. Teenage villains weren’t subtle, they were drama queens who thrived on pageantry and they regularly wrecked their own backyard.
Xander didn’t know how long the HIVE school had existed, but he was surprised that it had taken the heroes this long to mobilize. He had personally been in Jump City for three years and at HIVE for two of those years before the heroes had even stepped foot in the city. At first, the Tiny Tots squad hadn’t been taken seriously, but they quickly racked up a reputation among norm criminals and then as their teamwork got better, they started facing off with supes. In the early days any HIVE student that was captured was humiliated and ridiculed by the rest of the school for their failure, but then it became a regular occurrence and expected hazard of the city. Still, no one thought very highly of the Teen Titans until they started taking down big game like Plasmus. He was an actual proper villain, not a crook of opportunity or a half trained student. The school's smarter strategists had sat up and taken notice of the team after that, but some still thought of them as children in capes.
It was their own arrogance that then turned around and bit Jinx, Gizmo and Mammoth on the collective behinds. They took over the tower. They didn’t destroy it or loot it or even change the security programs. They just settled in as if the defeated heroes would hang up their capes forever in shame and never darken the doorstep of their own home base again. This idiocy confirmed in Xander’s minds that either all supes were arrogant morons or thieves were just inherently that much smarter than the colorful but dim circus of heroes and villains. Gizmo had obviously hacked the trio’s grades in Mastermindery since no one would have been allowed to pass the class if they displayed this level of buffoonery on their assignments.
He caught the scent of remedial lessons in the air with a sense of glee. Anything that humiliated a supe was a good thing in his book. It wasn’t like he had any school spirit or team loyalty that would get him all huffy over HIVE’s reputation, so he could just sit back and enjoy the show as the situation hit the fan and splattered everywhere. He may not have any friends, but he had schadenfruede and that was almost as good. He wasn't good company these days anyway, his humor was a dark and viciously twisted wreck of what it once was. Not exactly the kind of jokes that you'd amuse a crowd with, even a villain crowd. He'd come a long way from his role as class clown.
"Sorry to interrupt the victory celebration, but like I said… 'This isn't over.'"
"It's just getting started."
"Attack Pattern: Alpha!"
It was like watching a train wreck. He wished he had some popcorn. Xander actually felt a faint tickle of second hand embarrassment over the trouncing the Titans were delivering. The HIVE trio's lack of diligence in their combat training was shining through loud and clear. They just kept repeating the same attacks they'd tried the first time. Attack Pattern: Alpha was pretty and all, but it was a basic frontal attack. It was powerful when it hit, but it was slow, obvious and easy to dodge. Not to mention that they weren't anime characters that needed to shout their attack names. If they needed to coordinate an attack they should have used subtle hand gestures or cues. Starfire didn't fly around screaming 'Starbolt!' and Beast Boy wasn't always shouting 'Shape of an elephant!' or ‘Kangaroo power, activate!’
They'd beaten the Titans through a lucky combination of surprise and diversionary tactics, not their own skills. Gizmo was well suited to disabling Cyborg and distracting Starfire, and Jinx's unusual magic was more than enough to take down an unprepared Robin to divert Raven and Beast Boy, but then they'd gotten sloppy. They allowed the heroes to recover, regroup, analyze their abilities and take their revenge.
"Hey, Robo-wimp. Feel like getting hacked?"
"Nope. How about you? ROBIN, NOW!"
"AAAGH! CUT IT OUT, YOU'RE GONNA CRASH MY WHOLE SYSTEM! UGH! GET IT OFF ME! GET IT OFF ME!"
Robin easily overpowered Gizmo's system with a simple surge generator. Electricity vs delicate electronics was such an obvious weakness Xander was legitimately surprised that Gizmo hadn't thought of putting a grounded casing on it or fixing the flaw some other way. Turns out that genius level intelligence didn't guarantee proper application or follow through of basic common sense. He wondered if the pipsqueak had even waterproofed his techpak. He snickered at the thought of a rainy mission turning the brat into a Gizmo-B-Q.
"Beast Boy, GO!"
"Your luck just ran out."
Jinx's situational awareness was awful, and she panicked too easily. Allowing herself to be herded with starbolts and taken down by an 18-inch monkey. You'd think for a girl with such destructive power at her fingertips, she'd be more careful not to use it on herself or her immediate surroundings. She was uncharacteristically lucky that the falling scaffolding didn't crush her. At least she hadn't shot herself in the face with a hexbolt while trying to pry Beast Boy off, it was the only thing she’d done even halfway right, although firing randomly wasn't much better.
"RRRROOOOWWWWR!"
"AAAAAAAAAHH!"
Mammoth was just muscle. Scary muscle, but just muscle; all he had going for him was his strength and durability. Once Gizmo and Jinx were down, he didn't stand a chance. Seeing him running scared from a T-Rex was delightful though. Guys like him were bullies through and through. He totally deserved having the fear put into him by something bigger and meaner.
"Crammit, I'm calling Slade."
"Who is Slade?"
"Wouldn't you like to know, barf-brain."
What really caught Xander's attention was the hero, Robin. He didn't display any super powers but he was still team leader. The others didn't look down on him or belittle him; they followed his orders easily and without argument. Once he mobilized his team, he took complete control of the flow of the fight, dominating HIVE’s finest from start to finish. Robin fought confidently and incorporated several recognizable schools of martial arts into his highly mobile, acrobatic combat style. Xander itched to test himself against the kid. It was obvious from their body types that he had height, weight and strength against the hero, but- he craned his head to get a better angle as the kid flipped upside down while throwing a bird-a-rang- he was definitely not that flexible and wasn’t sure he could out maneuver him. For the first time since he’d left Sunnydale, Xander was able to look beyond himself and his self pitying depression to become interested in another person. He had to know more about the Titan.
A manic grin spread over Xander's face as he felt the stirrings of actual enthusiasm kindling in the ashes of his heart. He was excited to see what he could dig up about the kid. If the hero turned out to be in the least bit interesting the thief might have a full blown obsession on his hands. Obsessions were good, or at least better than the complete apathy that had hazed over the last few years. At least an obsession would be something to do, he needed a hobby. Stealing HIVE blind was getting boring.
“Alright, Buzz. Let’s see that again in slow-mo and see if you can get any stats on their abilities.” The robo-bug made a whirring noise, its multi-faceted eyes glowing bright yellow as it processed his command. He flexed his fingers and settled them on the home row of his wireless keyboard. The room went silent except for the faint buzzing and rapid tapping of keys as the pair pulled up window after window, taking clips and screenshots of the fight and analyzing every bit of information they could gather and hack about Robin.
Xander found out all sorts of fascinating tidbits. Robin, the Boy Wonder, protégé of Gotham’s own vigilante, Batman. The Dark Knight, who had been nothing but an urban legend for years until the JLA went public seven years ago. From that point forward he was acknowledged occasionally in the company of a young sidekick. The kid ran with Batman, jesus… and the first report of the Bird Wonder was seven years ago. No wonder he was so good. The Bat had no powers and habitually kept the company of the most powerful and successful heroes in the world. Judging from his current age, Robin had been younger than Gizmo when he first donned his kevlar tights. Xander started the long, slow process of setting up an information network in the dark city, he would have to earn some trust before anyone willingly spilled their Bat-speriences. Criminals were an untrustworthy, supersticious and distrusting lot, naturally he fit right in.
Xander jerked awake hours later from where he had fallen asleep mid-hack. Buzz idled quietly, running the calculations he had requested while it waited for more commands. What had woken him up?
It was with a dawning sense of horror that Xander heard the beep of an override code on his door and he jumped to his feet just as it swooshed open, revealing the Headmistress. She looked him over with a stern glance. Her ice queen routine didn't even crack when the giant hacked robotic bumblebee he had stolen pretty much directly from her buzzed loudly. Buzz had been startled out of sleep mode at her entrance and was crawling all over his screen wall in agitation as it fought conflicting programming on who it's master was. The screen wall he'd made out of stolen school tech, the very same screen wall that was currently plastered with screenshots from the video feed he shouldn’t have had access to and hacked information on the Boy Wonder. Oops.
Never the one to admit when he was beaten, no matter how obvious his crimes, Xander cocked out a hip insolently, ignored the fact that he had the imprint of a keyboard across his face and drawled, "Can I help you?"
Rule three of being a thief, even when you're caught red handed, stay silent and don't incriminate yourself until they accuse you of something and then deny, deny, deny. Why no officer, I have NO IDEA why you decided to pull me over today.
Fandom: BtVS/Teen Titans
Prompt: 419 - Splatter
Words: 2329
Warnings: Past Character Death, Some dialogue from Teen Titans 1.03 - Final Exam
Rating: Teen
Summary: Xander thinks both heroes and villains are stupid, being a thief is so much smarter (unless you get caught)
Mammoth, Gizmo and Jinx were supes, even if there was a constant whispered debate behind Gizmo's back over if he actually had any powers. Xander thought that any 10 year old kid that was capable of building a remote controlled cold fusion reactor from a vacuum cleaner was clearly either super powered or a reality breaking deus ex machina. Heavy on the machina. No one ever bothered asking him his opinion though, so he kept his thoughts to himself.
The trio was the pride and joy of the Academy, the strongest, most intelligent and most powerful students respectively. They were watched so closely that the whole school immediately knew when their darlings had been hired out. It was apparently very exciting, the whole student body buzzed around like someone had kicked their HIVE. Xander figured their vaunted reputation was why their inaugural mission was being recorded by the Headmistress’ gimmicky robotic bees. He had long since hacked one of the robo-bugs to be his little spy and rerouted it's uplink to a full-sized prototype wall monitor he had installed in his room after 'acquiring' it from the tech department. Anything she saw, he had access to.
In his defense, he could now turn his whole wall into a touch screen, the tech was much too cool to leave it to get dusty on its shelf and the fist sized bug was important spyware. Anything the Headmistress had her eye on was worth knowing since she had her fingers in every pie and the little fellow was kinda cute. He watched it dance in circles over the screen wall as it wirelessly fed it's surveillance through the sensors in its legs. Even an antisocial jerk like Xander needed a pet to talk at or he'd go nuts. Not to mention that it was ridiculously easy to steal things in a villain school, so why the hell not. Every single student was a viable suspect for any wrong doing and secrets were so viciously protected that attempting room searches was a life threatening endeavor. It wasn't like he ever had any visitors that might rat him out either. Xander settled in on his plush queen sized bed, ill-gotten of course, and enjoyed the show.
The trio made a good showing of themselves initially, actually managing to embarrass the Titans into fleeing back home to regroup and then ousting the heroes from their own tower. Something that no one else had managed in the months since the tower went up. Xander thought it was idiotic of the hero team to make so obvious a target of themselves, his Lair Design 101 class stressed the importance of secrecy and discretion. He waved away the bitter thought that a public library was a much more vulnerable HQ. The Scoobies had paid dearly for their strategic errors and he was living proof that whatever didn't kill you made you stronger. He brushed a hand over the deep scar tissue on the side of his throat.
The fight was the first real confrontation between HIVE and the Titans, despite both groups having co-habitated the same city for several months since the hero squad planted their flag on the island in the bay. Heroes had a sixth sense for trouble and despite not knowing about the school, were drawn in by the sky high crime rate in the area. There was no subtle way to house a whole campus of troublemakers without collateral damage and mayhem to the surrounding neighborhood. Teenage villains weren’t subtle, they were drama queens who thrived on pageantry and they regularly wrecked their own backyard.
Xander didn’t know how long the HIVE school had existed, but he was surprised that it had taken the heroes this long to mobilize. He had personally been in Jump City for three years and at HIVE for two of those years before the heroes had even stepped foot in the city. At first, the Tiny Tots squad hadn’t been taken seriously, but they quickly racked up a reputation among norm criminals and then as their teamwork got better, they started facing off with supes. In the early days any HIVE student that was captured was humiliated and ridiculed by the rest of the school for their failure, but then it became a regular occurrence and expected hazard of the city. Still, no one thought very highly of the Teen Titans until they started taking down big game like Plasmus. He was an actual proper villain, not a crook of opportunity or a half trained student. The school's smarter strategists had sat up and taken notice of the team after that, but some still thought of them as children in capes.
It was their own arrogance that then turned around and bit Jinx, Gizmo and Mammoth on the collective behinds. They took over the tower. They didn’t destroy it or loot it or even change the security programs. They just settled in as if the defeated heroes would hang up their capes forever in shame and never darken the doorstep of their own home base again. This idiocy confirmed in Xander’s minds that either all supes were arrogant morons or thieves were just inherently that much smarter than the colorful but dim circus of heroes and villains. Gizmo had obviously hacked the trio’s grades in Mastermindery since no one would have been allowed to pass the class if they displayed this level of buffoonery on their assignments.
He caught the scent of remedial lessons in the air with a sense of glee. Anything that humiliated a supe was a good thing in his book. It wasn’t like he had any school spirit or team loyalty that would get him all huffy over HIVE’s reputation, so he could just sit back and enjoy the show as the situation hit the fan and splattered everywhere. He may not have any friends, but he had schadenfruede and that was almost as good. He wasn't good company these days anyway, his humor was a dark and viciously twisted wreck of what it once was. Not exactly the kind of jokes that you'd amuse a crowd with, even a villain crowd. He'd come a long way from his role as class clown.
"Sorry to interrupt the victory celebration, but like I said… 'This isn't over.'"
"It's just getting started."
"Attack Pattern: Alpha!"
It was like watching a train wreck. He wished he had some popcorn. Xander actually felt a faint tickle of second hand embarrassment over the trouncing the Titans were delivering. The HIVE trio's lack of diligence in their combat training was shining through loud and clear. They just kept repeating the same attacks they'd tried the first time. Attack Pattern: Alpha was pretty and all, but it was a basic frontal attack. It was powerful when it hit, but it was slow, obvious and easy to dodge. Not to mention that they weren't anime characters that needed to shout their attack names. If they needed to coordinate an attack they should have used subtle hand gestures or cues. Starfire didn't fly around screaming 'Starbolt!' and Beast Boy wasn't always shouting 'Shape of an elephant!' or ‘Kangaroo power, activate!’
They'd beaten the Titans through a lucky combination of surprise and diversionary tactics, not their own skills. Gizmo was well suited to disabling Cyborg and distracting Starfire, and Jinx's unusual magic was more than enough to take down an unprepared Robin to divert Raven and Beast Boy, but then they'd gotten sloppy. They allowed the heroes to recover, regroup, analyze their abilities and take their revenge.
"Hey, Robo-wimp. Feel like getting hacked?"
"Nope. How about you? ROBIN, NOW!"
"AAAGH! CUT IT OUT, YOU'RE GONNA CRASH MY WHOLE SYSTEM! UGH! GET IT OFF ME! GET IT OFF ME!"
Robin easily overpowered Gizmo's system with a simple surge generator. Electricity vs delicate electronics was such an obvious weakness Xander was legitimately surprised that Gizmo hadn't thought of putting a grounded casing on it or fixing the flaw some other way. Turns out that genius level intelligence didn't guarantee proper application or follow through of basic common sense. He wondered if the pipsqueak had even waterproofed his techpak. He snickered at the thought of a rainy mission turning the brat into a Gizmo-B-Q.
"Beast Boy, GO!"
"Your luck just ran out."
Jinx's situational awareness was awful, and she panicked too easily. Allowing herself to be herded with starbolts and taken down by an 18-inch monkey. You'd think for a girl with such destructive power at her fingertips, she'd be more careful not to use it on herself or her immediate surroundings. She was uncharacteristically lucky that the falling scaffolding didn't crush her. At least she hadn't shot herself in the face with a hexbolt while trying to pry Beast Boy off, it was the only thing she’d done even halfway right, although firing randomly wasn't much better.
"RRRROOOOWWWWR!"
"AAAAAAAAAHH!"
Mammoth was just muscle. Scary muscle, but just muscle; all he had going for him was his strength and durability. Once Gizmo and Jinx were down, he didn't stand a chance. Seeing him running scared from a T-Rex was delightful though. Guys like him were bullies through and through. He totally deserved having the fear put into him by something bigger and meaner.
"Crammit, I'm calling Slade."
"Who is Slade?"
"Wouldn't you like to know, barf-brain."
What really caught Xander's attention was the hero, Robin. He didn't display any super powers but he was still team leader. The others didn't look down on him or belittle him; they followed his orders easily and without argument. Once he mobilized his team, he took complete control of the flow of the fight, dominating HIVE’s finest from start to finish. Robin fought confidently and incorporated several recognizable schools of martial arts into his highly mobile, acrobatic combat style. Xander itched to test himself against the kid. It was obvious from their body types that he had height, weight and strength against the hero, but- he craned his head to get a better angle as the kid flipped upside down while throwing a bird-a-rang- he was definitely not that flexible and wasn’t sure he could out maneuver him. For the first time since he’d left Sunnydale, Xander was able to look beyond himself and his self pitying depression to become interested in another person. He had to know more about the Titan.
A manic grin spread over Xander's face as he felt the stirrings of actual enthusiasm kindling in the ashes of his heart. He was excited to see what he could dig up about the kid. If the hero turned out to be in the least bit interesting the thief might have a full blown obsession on his hands. Obsessions were good, or at least better than the complete apathy that had hazed over the last few years. At least an obsession would be something to do, he needed a hobby. Stealing HIVE blind was getting boring.
“Alright, Buzz. Let’s see that again in slow-mo and see if you can get any stats on their abilities.” The robo-bug made a whirring noise, its multi-faceted eyes glowing bright yellow as it processed his command. He flexed his fingers and settled them on the home row of his wireless keyboard. The room went silent except for the faint buzzing and rapid tapping of keys as the pair pulled up window after window, taking clips and screenshots of the fight and analyzing every bit of information they could gather and hack about Robin.
Xander found out all sorts of fascinating tidbits. Robin, the Boy Wonder, protégé of Gotham’s own vigilante, Batman. The Dark Knight, who had been nothing but an urban legend for years until the JLA went public seven years ago. From that point forward he was acknowledged occasionally in the company of a young sidekick. The kid ran with Batman, jesus… and the first report of the Bird Wonder was seven years ago. No wonder he was so good. The Bat had no powers and habitually kept the company of the most powerful and successful heroes in the world. Judging from his current age, Robin had been younger than Gizmo when he first donned his kevlar tights. Xander started the long, slow process of setting up an information network in the dark city, he would have to earn some trust before anyone willingly spilled their Bat-speriences. Criminals were an untrustworthy, supersticious and distrusting lot, naturally he fit right in.
Xander jerked awake hours later from where he had fallen asleep mid-hack. Buzz idled quietly, running the calculations he had requested while it waited for more commands. What had woken him up?
It was with a dawning sense of horror that Xander heard the beep of an override code on his door and he jumped to his feet just as it swooshed open, revealing the Headmistress. She looked him over with a stern glance. Her ice queen routine didn't even crack when the giant hacked robotic bumblebee he had stolen pretty much directly from her buzzed loudly. Buzz had been startled out of sleep mode at her entrance and was crawling all over his screen wall in agitation as it fought conflicting programming on who it's master was. The screen wall he'd made out of stolen school tech, the very same screen wall that was currently plastered with screenshots from the video feed he shouldn’t have had access to and hacked information on the Boy Wonder. Oops.
Never the one to admit when he was beaten, no matter how obvious his crimes, Xander cocked out a hip insolently, ignored the fact that he had the imprint of a keyboard across his face and drawled, "Can I help you?"
Rule three of being a thief, even when you're caught red handed, stay silent and don't incriminate yourself until they accuse you of something and then deny, deny, deny. Why no officer, I have NO IDEA why you decided to pull me over today.