Off the Record

[asterful]

Now Dick is all for undercover operations. No one can ever say that Grayson isn't a team player. He is all for the playing on the team! But this is a new direction he never thought his life would take. At least he's still a handsome devil even in... in a skirt. He lifted it off a classmate from the locker rooms a few days earlier (that had been an adventure all its own). Underwear was easier to get on his own, especially when seeing the clerk's face. Hey, what can he say he's a very supportive and open-minded brother for his sick sister.

Dashing around in spandex from head to toe chronically, this skirt thing is a whole new sensation for him in the breezy bathroom air. It's all so open and revealing! Man, how do girls wear this? Every part of him feels exposed. And these panties are barely holding him together! He stands like a man too, and it ruins the whole image. Dick has to remember to pull his legs in, keep one bent at the knee with his foot pressed against his other heel. Much better. This time he keeps his shades off. Everyone likes a pair of baby blues and Dick's got ones that'll pull in any old pervert.

"Alright, I'm feeling it. Feeling the aster." Usually he doesn't need to pump himself up, but this isn't a usual mission. Hell, this isn't any kind of mission. It's nuts, completely reckless, but there's no one else who can pull it off. Not the other members and certainly not the Justice League. He's on his own to put this despicable pet ring out of business. Giving himself one last look in the mirror, he checks what little gear he can get away with bringing. He has a tranquilizing spray and a case for the drug once he gets his hands on a sample, both disguised as cosmetics.

Now it's just a matter of sneaking out, which is, of course, no problem at all. Neither Miss Martian nor Superboy is registered in any of the public spaces. Quietly, he sneaks out through the main entrance toward the zeta portals.

Comments

[symbols]

[ Ever since his arrival, Superboy had been lectured up and down about the importance of not leaving Mount Justice unescorted. "Too dangerous," they'd said, which was patently untrue. "Too conspicuous," they'd said, which might have been slightly less untrue but made him chafe at the bit all the same. He hadn't gone along with this team thing just to trade one cage for another.

The others of course came and went; they had homes and families and civilian lives to return to. Even M'gaan had a relative and mentor to visit or train with. He was the only one that simply waited like an object on a shelf to be brought to life for a mission. He was meant to spend his time learning, but for someone used to knowledge being dumped directly into his brain it was slow going to read every page in a textbook or focus on a two hour movie. He listened to his teammates talk to each other, instead.

He's become so used to eavesdropping that it's second nature by now. Robin treads the lightest out of all of them (save for M'gaan when she flew, obviously) and he's taught himself to listen for the faint sounds of equipment. Robin is not the leader of their team but he seems to be the brains, suggesting training scenarios and what he liked to call "let's teach the babies how to be human" lessons, and he arms himself for solo missions at the mountain sometimes, on his mentor's business or his own. Superboy envies and resents that freedom.

Kaldur tells him quietly of his own adventures when he was new to the surface world. Robin and the boy named Wally take it for granted, and he tries not to dwell too long on their arrivals and departures.

This time, though, he hears unfamiliar sounds echoing through the base. Robin's barely there noises have turned into the click of heels and the swish of fabric, and at this hour of night all the other inhabitants of the mountain are sleeping (or at least, those that do sleep.) Superboy has been painstakingly instructed about circadian rhythms and something called "regular business hours," though it hardly seems fair if Robin is allowed out on his own at two am while he is told to wait for someone to wake up and escort him when he's restless at night.

He sets his jaw belligerently and strides into the "hall" where the gates and main computers are located, the words out of his mouth as an accusation even before he sees Robin. ]

Where are you going?

Slutbag Ahoy!!

[wonderboys]

[ This high up on Gotham's dark skyline the wind is cutting right through worn holes in what's left of his uniform. Perched as he is, Robin can smell the scabbing blood across an open knee. No dignified cape would be caught dead in something this rag tag, but it's all he has for now. Alfred tried to toss it discretely, but Dick talked him out of it. He claimed he wanted to keep it for sentimental reasons, but really he still needed something to hunt in.

It's eerie to see how much and how little has changed from one world into another. It's the small things that have culminated into a brighter, more vivacious Gotham city. They both are molded by the fear of Batman, but his was a toxic fear that did little to build any beauty. Then again it's only him--was only him and Batman. This one has all of his Robins helping to the cull the criminal underworld. They seem to be doing okay. Then again he's only met himself, so of course he knows that one is doing their job well. But this "Red Hood" is another matter. He's a replacement for the original, just what does that say about him? ]