A Crime of FASHION

[Silv]

Characters: Robin (Silv) & Jinx (Commander Zucchini)
OPEN TO TITANS~ Kenni , Bry, and Elenaphant if you're interested.
Setting: At the mall, late in the evening.
Previous Threads: Set during the events of Circus is in Town - at the very start when they're just starting to get suspicious that this is a re-occurring but don't have much in the way of leads yet.
Plot Summary: The Titans are called in to stop a bunch of teens stealing from the mall. Being surrounded by so many fashionable things makes Robin stick out like a sore thumb.

[Silv]

Glass shattering broke the quiet of the Jump City night. The windows crumpled into little squares of glass, bouncing off the pavement, before crackling as a small mob shuffled inside across them. The small group of unruly teenagers didn't look terribly intimidating, or even cognizant, as they wandered through the now broken glass doors.

The alarms went off, screaming at the intruders, but they didn't so much as flinch. The security camera caught it all: the way the group of teens smashed through the windows, what they stole, what they trashed, and how oddly zombie-like they seemed. It also caught the arrival of the Teen Titans.

"FREEZE!" the Boy Wonder shouted puntastically as he dropped down outside the door with his cape flaring out behind him in cartoon dramatics. The freeze payload disks were firmly wedged between his fingers giving him the opportunity to fire off three in rapid succession.

This wasn't the first zombie-teen robbery they had stopped, and it was an unsettling trend. His first thought was this had something to do with the HIVE. Which was one of the reasons he'd asked Jinx to come out here with him. The other logical conclusion he just didn't want to think about.

Speaking of things the Titan leader didn't want to do: Robin didn't really want to use weapons against a bunch of other teenagers, but they weren't leaving much in the way of options. The Boy Wonder found himself completely ignored as a pair walked past him like he wasn't there carrying a large television between them.

The Boy Wonder's masked eyes widened comically in shock before he could shake his head free of the cartoonish expression. "Hey!" Robin put out an arm to halt a teen with a coffee maker in her hands.

He hadn't expected her to smack him across the face.

Robin reeled backwards, a bright red hand print throbbing on his cartoonishly swollen cheek.

[Kenni]

There had been at least three alerts like this in the past few weeks alone.

Why were teens acting up?
Why was it happening in packs, specifically in packs of highschool cliques?

If Speedy was half the detective Robin was, these questions would interest him.

For now, he was reading shallow; just reading along for the funnies section.
Which happened to feature the Chief himself.

"Slapstick will never die!" Speedy snickered, as he entered the scene gracefully from a GrapplArrow hang-glide, to land next to his spiky-updo-toting teammates.
One now sporting some seriously lopsided blush.

"Hey, at least she didn't hit you hot with the Joe machine, Chief."
Trying to control his mirth, his questioning turned to Jinx.

"You're like, bad luck, right? That why Robbers' monkey reflexes couldn't kick in just now..?"

Okay, so coffee-girl's friends were making it really hard for Speedy to avoid a similar fate tonight.
Some twins near her were clutching a large beanbag chair apiece over their shoulders, and started swinging them like so many sacks of flour if he so much as tried to approach them.

"What's the plan?" he asked, releasing an UmbrellArrow shield to prevent another girl from effectively using the new Justin Bieber fragrance as pepper-spray at the three Titans.

[Commander Zucchini]

When Jinx realized that their targets were at the mall, she was elated.

That is, until she remembered it was closed right now and she was now a hero.

Kinda sorta.

Yeah. A hero.

So she simply sighed and resigned herself to nothing more than an evening of crime fighting and window shopping.

Crime fighting was cool, she supposed. It was always a great feeling when she'd show up to stop some baddie she used to be allied with. The look on their faces when they realized she wasn't there to help them (unless by 'help' you also meant 'lock up') was priceless. She almost felt bad about it.

As they approached the group of teenaged robbers, Jinx noticed that they were acting really weird. Of course, that is why Robin called her, but this wasn't anything she'd ever seen before. They completely disregarded Robin's theatric entrance, his terrible pun, and his blaring traffic light-esque clothing. 

Jinx was momentarily distracted by that last thought. If she gonna be working with the Titans, they'd really need to work on Robin's fashion choices. She didn't think she could handle seeing those colors threatening to give her a brain aneurysm every day.

She put her thoughts on hold when the coffee-maker-grabbing teen gave Robin a good resounding smack across the face. 

"Oh look, they do at least acknowledge our existence," Jinx commented dryly. "And they're not going for our limbs," she added as an afterthought.

She turned to Speedy and raised an eyebrow. "Yeah, that's probably exactly what happened. You're all doomed," she said sarcastically.

As Speedy warded off some appalling scent from showering them, she noticed the teens with the TV were making some good headway. They needed to stop them now before they could waltz out of the building. Not waiting for an ok from Robin, she launched a couple hexes at the television the two were carrying, causing it to explode and sending the two kids tumbling. Without the TV, they had nothing to run away with.

Unorthodox methods, sure, but hey, it got the job done, right?

Only, it didn't. 

The two just turned around and went back for another one.

"Uh, excuse me?" Jinx grumbled. "You're just gonna up and walk away? You're not even gonna fight me? Sissies." She rolled her eyes and left the boys to deal with the two now loot-less thugs. "Fine, I'll deal with feisty here."

She did a run, jump, and somersault and landed a safe distance in front of the coffee-maker-girl. "Alright then, zombie girl," Jinx growled, eyes glowing pink. "Bring it."

[Silv]

Robin didn't find it half as amusing as Speedy apparently had. His masked eyes narrowed, and he turned to glare at the archer, as his cartoonishly throbbing cheek dulled down to a bright red handprint. "It wasn't Jinx," he said even after her sarcastic comment otherwise. "She's a Titan." Which should have been the end of the matter, especially considering the zombie kids were starting to put up more of a fight. What was the plan?

"Try to disarm them without hurting them," Robin ordered Speedy and Jinx. He launched an ice disc at the feet of one of the advancing bean bag wielders as the scent of too think alcohol based perfume stung his nose. A second one followed quickly after. He smirked as the twins were frozen in their tracks as thick bands of ice formed around their feet.

The sound of something exploding behind him caused the Boy Wonder to wince and quickly turn around to see what was going on. It was the television. The two kids carrying it didn't look hurt, but they didn't look down for the count. Robin decided to move to intercept, letting Jinx deal with Ms. Slappy McSlapperton who had apparently already displayed her entire skill set. She held onto the coffee maker with one hand as the other went for Jinx.

"Speedy!" Robin called to his friend. He'd managed to herd the TV kids back towards the group. "Bag 'em, and tag 'em!" Backing the zombies into a corner and then catching them in a net meant they wouldn't have to hunt them all down individually.

[Kenni]

"Right, we're all on the same team, here. Insinuating otherwise would be a slap to the face."
Having missed the H.I.V.E.'s multiple antagonising moments of his Jump Titan siblings, Jinx's apTitanitude went without question from smirking Speedy.

"10-4, Bigbird."
He allowed the UmbrellArrow to collapse, nearly jabbing someone tall, dark and gloomy in the eye.

Whoops.

"Ive got this, rrreally!"
Best to stick to the Chief's instructions.
Which was easier said than done.

For unwieldy, zombified teenagers, the amalgam of hallway hooligans sure were determined to escape with their wares!

"Bagboy? Golly, Chief, a demotion awready? I just got here~."
Robin had hardly called the 'Bag!' command when they began to scatter, somewhat strategically, even, as if on cue.
While Jinx tangoed with McSlapperton and Robin became a shepherd to his eerily silent, non-bleating herd, Speedy sent an equally strategic volley of NetArrows to reign the two going back for a new TV set, and their friends all in.

At least, the ones attempting to exit only one of several leading out from the mall.

This was a big job that they just didn't have the Titanpower to handle with 3 of them, if the same amount of teens were operating similarly all across the premises.

[Commander Zucchini]

With Speedy's incessant chatter, Jinx was pretty sure she was about to bust a vein. 

Hopefully after the Walking Deadlike Children were rounded up.

At the rate he was going, she wasn't so sure, though.

Jinx blocked Coffee Zombie's oncoming slap with her forearm and used her other hand to grab and twist the silent girl's arm behind her.

And she was still holding on to that coffee maker.

Jinx forced her to drop the thing and soon had both the girl's arms pinned against her back. 

"Alright, now let's go to the corner and you can think about what you've done," Jinx said as she forced the girl to walk to where some of her companions were stuck in Speedy's net.

"A little help, boys?" 

She didn't carry around nets on a normal basis. She wondered only vaguely if that was a requirement to being a Titan. 

Must carry nets at all times. 

Suddenly, there was a loud crash and a telltale squeal of tires. 

A thug lookin' teen had just hotwired an SUV that had been on display. 

"You've got to be kidding me," Jinx muttered as the non-netted teens ambled quickly over to the new getaway vehicle.

"So. Plan B?"

[Silv]

Robin was busy herding teenagers, a feat only slightly more possible than herding cats, when Jinx brought over coffee girl. He had to wait a second, for Speedy's nets to fall, but when they did his herd was partially captured, and he could easily help his teammate. The Titan leader pulled out a handcuff and went to Jinx's aid. He cuffed the girl's wrist Jinx had a hold of to the beauty counter. She could stay there, hug her beloved coffee pot, and slap anybody that came within arms reach all she wanted at that location until the police picked her up.

He headed back for the other teens, wishing his bostaff had a shepherd's crook attachment, and hoping the rest of the team had the other entrances under control. By his calculations they had captured the majority of the teens in this store. Or at least, that was what he thought before one of them crashed through with a hotwired SUV.

Great.

The Boy Wonder ran forward to try and stop the vehicle but stopped when a better idea crossed his mind. He skidded to a stop, cape flaring out behind him, as he reached into his belt to arm himself. Robin threw a birdarang with a tracker in it. His aim was rarely off, and the device easily glued itself onto the SUV's roof, as the car turned with a squeal and raced back through the broken entrance windows.

"Help me secure any of them unlucky enough to not fit in the getaway vehicle," Robin ordered his teammates. The nets wouldn't hold forever. It was better to secure them with cold, hard steel. He pulled a number of collapsible handcuffs out of his belt and tossed a few to Jinx. "I got a tracker onto their vehicle. If they think we lost them, maybe they'll show us their headquarters," he suggested with a wry smile.

[Kenni]

As if psychic, the teen-wrangling ginger cleared up one of Jinx's burning questions, offhandedly slinging the last shot of ArrowTech containing the containment tool.
He must have caught her checking him the NetArrow action out.
Or thought he did.

"Tools o'the sidekick-trade, these kinds of tricks. You look like you play games, with or without toys," he quipped at her, referring vaguely to her earlier nicknamey, taskmaster demeanour in sending Robin's Java-jostling nemesis 'to the corner'.

It was a pathetic kind of bragging that sought to legitimize self-awareness of number-2 status alongside a 'real' hero, of a not-so-distant past, but it was bragging nonetheless.
However, he didn't say 'Titan' trade, so the Hex Girl would have to come to her own conclusions about how 'necessary' the 'toys' were to Titan-ing.

Speedy had ducked at the crashing sound, head whipping around to face the startling new development.
Except it was speeding away in the opposite direction, down an escalator, and finally, somehow without ending up totalled, through the main entrance of the mall!

"The one that got away~. And two. And five.."
A whole handful of the punks had gotten away, but Robin was on it with his tracing device.
If they wrapped up here, they would easily be able to pursue.

Their quick-thinking leader had taken care of the majority of cuffing duties, so with him and Jinx on that, Speedy set about turning the deployed netting into ankle hobbles, further limiting the zombified teens' movements.

These kids weren't going anywhere fast, and like your average teenager, soon the blasé attitude returned once they realized it would be too much work undoing all these boy-scout level knots about their feet, while handcuffed no less.

"As long as we keep them out of my headquarters, I'm down for the thrilling chase and crazy ride," Speedy said somewhat saltily, fixing his hair.

Everyone's favourite--Coffee Chick--had taken a successful swipe at his noggin in passing. Due to his go-to duck-manoeuvre, she'd managed to make the sides stick up like so many cowlicks.

[Commander Zucchini]

"I wouldn't know, I've never been a sidekick."
While Speedy captured the rest of the teens with his Arrow-net-thing, Jinx was checking out the window display of the nearby shops. "Don't need toys to have fun," she quipped.

One display caught her eye. "Hm. Superhero fashion? That's a new one." She admired the accessory arrayed, spandex-clad mannequins. 
Finally, Robin came to cuff Coffee Girl, and Jinx was
free to study the display a little closer.


"And I wouldn't get my hopes up about finding their headquarters," she said casually as she strolled over to view it better. "They might have gotten one or three flat tires on their way out," she said a bit cheekily.


Yeah, sure, they were on duty, but when fashion was present, someone had to pause to appreciate it. "Not bad!" Jinx appraised a well-toned mannequin (seriously, though?) sporting red and black spandex and a full set of tactical gear. She put a hand on the glass and peered in.  "Do they really offer this stuff to civilians?"



She glanced at Robin who was rounding everything up and visibly cringed. "Hey, Traffic Lights, I think I found you a new suit!" She grinned at the brightly clad leader. She paused, then added as an afterthought, "You may need to grow into it, though."

[Silv]

There really wasn't much to do here, besides wait for the police, and hope Jinx's aim wasn't as good as he knew it was which might give them a clue as to where these teens were coming from. The Titan's leader checked his communicator. The tracker was still moving. For now. He pocketed his device and moved to help Speedy secure the criminals they'd captured.

Clickclick. Robin snapped the last pair of handcuffs tying together a string of three teenagers and glanced up to see Jinx window shopping. He frowned, his masked eyes narrowing more at the idea of civilians being allowed to have fancy equipment then at lagging on the job. Robin might have been a straight-laced sort of leader, but he understood his team well enough to know that not everyone could put a hundred percent into being a super hero all the time.

He pulled out his communicator again. The car wasn't moving anymore. It had stopped, in what appeared to be a ditch, and he quickly dispatched the location to the police and EMS workers. Because, probably, teenagers shouldn't be driving while zombified. If the flat tires hadn't been what had gotten them. He stowed his communicator again and went back to criminal-duty. He was having trouble getting the netting off of one guy's head.

Maybe if he hopped up onto the counter he could reach it?

"I'm not that short!" Robin protested unnecessarily, bristling at Jinx's comment that had come too close to home. He tried to make himself look taller than the criminal he was currently handcuffing to the other side of the beauty counter from Coffee Girl. It didn't work out so well, but his spiked hair made cartoonish effort as it stood at attention with the rest of him. He given up getting the net off the taller criminal. He could stand there like a tuna until the police came. Might build character or something.

The Boy Wonder gave up with a sigh, his spikes also relaxing, as he double checked the criminal was secure and wandered around the counter towards Jinx. "Besides, there's nothing wrong with my uniform."

[Kenni]

"Oof."
She had him there. The grinning ginger let it roll off his shoulder.
Not right off, though; first he staggered back a step as though physically buffeted back by her burn.

"Touché. Little beats imagination. Unless your gear feeds into it!" he retorted in sing-song, ejecting the UmbrellArrow once again to temporarily twirl in his point.

While he wondered what exactly she'd done to the getaway vehicle, the focus soon shifted to the title of this thread fashion. At least, first Jinx's did.
By the narrowing of his fellow domino-mask-wearer's mask, the other boy's focus had followed suit.
Speedy wasn't far behind.

The focus soon micro-shifted, this time onto Robin's height supersuit in particular. And his prospective new one!

"All it's missing is a flashy cape! Robbers could fix that in a jiffy, though." Nodding slowly with an arm crossed over his chest and chin crooked in his thumb and pointer, he admired the dark ensemble Jinx had picked up.

Until he found himself admiring the newer Titan's new applications for that sharp tongue, through hearty laughter.

"Yeah, Hex Girl, give him and puberty some time to box it out. I for one have high! expectations for your future, Chief."

"Think this might work for my red scheme, though! Maybe I could modify my stealth-mode suit." he continued, shooting the breeze as the authorities showed up for pick-up of the oddly-acting-out zombie-teens.

[Commander Zucchini]

Jinx rolled her eyes at Speedy's overdramatic reaction. But her annoyance was soon forgotten in the fascination of fashion.



Perhaps it was a good thing, too. She was this close to hexing Speedy. Right now, she was trying to make a good first-ish-impression-kinda with the Titans. As soon as she got her communicator though…



As Robin rounded up the last of the teens, Jinx wandered further along the display case, giving a few appreciative ooohs and aaaahs at the plastic figures decked out in superhero gear. They really had some clever designs here. She may have to come back in the morning.



At Speedy's mention of Robin adding a cape to the nice ensemble, though, Jinx twitched slightly. "And give him the risk of ruining a perfectly fine suit?" Not a chance. For all she knew, he'd take Speedy literally and really try to make it flashy. Like metallic. She shuddered. Please no metallic.



Suddenly, all thoughts of zombies and fashion went out the window for a moment. "Hex Girl?" She rounded on Speedy. "Nice one, did you come up with that on your own?" She asked sarcastically, seriously hoping he got the implication to never call her that again.



At Robin's indignation though, she couldn't help but give a surprised laugh. "Umm, Short Stuff, there's a lot wrong with your uniform," she said with a raised eyebrow. "With an outfit like that, you might as well be the patron of all vehicles and pedestrians. Is this really how you want to spend your life?"



She folded her arms and leveled a stare at Robin. "First, red and yellow? Just no. Red and green? Were you a sidekick to Santa? And green and yellow? Really? It's like a can of mixed vegetables. And them all together?" Here, she made a face for emphasis, allowing her expression to convey exactly what she thought of the headache-inducing ensemble.



"Trust me. Let me do you a favor. We're going shopping."



Honestly, it'd be even more of a favor for hers and everybody else's eyes.

[Silv]

They were discussing his taste in capes when the Titan leader caught up with them. "What's wrong with capes?" Robin protested as he pulled his own to the front with a scowl. The black cape hid most of his uniform, except for the bright green pants, front view. "Superman wears a cape," he added as if this was the best reasoning for capes ever. "So does Batman," he added as an afterthought.

Speedy's affirmation that Robin would grow taller caused the boy to grin at his friend appreciatively. Coming from a line of short gymnasts his genetics were against him but they didn't really need to know that. And he was perfectly fine with the conversation switching to make fun of the archer's poor taste in puns, until it went back to him being short.

"I'm not-!" Robin's protest about how he wasn't short was cut amusingly so as he was informed that he looked like the Patron Saint of Traffic Lights. The Boy Wonder's lips thinned into a scowl and his masked eyes narrowed at Jinx. But before he could ask what was so terrible about being dressed like a traffic light the girl elaborated.

Red and yellow?

Robin's masked gaze slid to Speedy and then back to Jinx. There was nothing wrong with red and yellow. Robin, Speedy, and Kid Flash all wore red and yellow. He could agree about red and green though. And green and yellow? What was wrong with vegetables? "Have you told Kid Flash his uniform is just no?" Robin asked, half of his mask raising in question.

"We don't need to go shopping," Robin protested. "There's nothing wrong with my uniform. It's supposed to draw the enemy's attention."

[Kenni]

“FASHNPOLYSCI101, currently in session,” Speedy chortled through grinning, clutching at a catch in his side. Robin’s ‘fashion sense’ (and to be honest, his own, although he had much less colour-spread to complain about besides the brightness), in terms of costume were often quite the topic.

“No need to point out the Gorilla Grodd in the room. Like Robbers said, most costumes aren’t supposed to coordinate~. You think this is bad? Should’ve seen the speedo he used to hop around in, like some of out other old crew..it was like no one but Green Arrow could afford his kid pants. Their old man brigade sure knew how to be distracting, tell ya that much,” Speedy continued nostalgically, irreverently referencing the Bats, Aquaman and friends, while clutching at his other side now that he got thinking about Aqua’s young protégé’s similar unfortunate exploits, just to name one other past photo-op gone wrong.

“That said, unless we’re talking Red X-level Five-Finger Discounting, we’re not doing any shopping at this mall tonight.” The ‘this’ was stressed, as though he was suggesting they go off to one of the, believe it or not, 24-hour malls that did successfully operate at this time of night. One hardly wondered why the zombie-teens had chosen this deserted mall instead of that one to rob. Speedy continued his drama-run, and looked off dramatically into the distance, imagining his hair blowing in the wind if it wasn’t a gelled-cap of perfection. He even propped his boot up on Robin’s nearby R-Cycle for effect.
He was evenly staring off into the distance..and into the Red X make-off costume across the aisle from them. Had Jinx seen those yet?

“Hey, check these out! Talk about weird palettes..must be somat about copyrights.”
There seemed to be costumes based on all of the Titans, but in the wrong colours. Speedy shook his head; who ever heard of a Pink X, and why was X so popular..?
X’s costume had probably the most iterations, from ‘Sand Tan’ to ‘Electric Rocker Lime’! Speedy had yet to find his own tights in the conveniently broken-glassed display room, giving them access since the alarms had long since given up alarming, but he’d merely overlooked them since they were in a dampened shade of burgundy and cream.

“I bet if we look hard enough, Hex-Girl’s outfit made it into here, too!”
There was Starfire’s tank and skirt in red, Beastboy’s supersuit in skyblue, even some villains stuff, like Billy-Numerous' in a more bubblegum style of pink and teal, or Gizmo’s get-up in royal purple.

“..er, depends on what she thinks of canary yellow, though.” They’d turned Jinx’s costume (or perhaps her regular clothes? He hadn’t asked yet, and she used the same get-up from when she was with H.I.V.E. so it was hard to tell if this was her go-to style for work and the streets) into something a ratty Ronald McDonald might strike out in.

OoC; If you guys want, we can wrap this one up after one more round of posts since I’ve lethings drag and Silvo adleast is in a buncha new threads, ahah. My bad, guys! Once CoZu gets less busy, these three are a fun hang-out OR kickbutt squad, though. C: Let’s do it again sometime. |