X My Heart Ch 5

“X” My Heart (Chapter 5)
The only time I had broken into Titan’s Tower was the day I had decided to take the Red X suit for myself.  Lucky for me, the tower’s defenses had been much less impressive than they probably were now, so my little breaking and entering was fairly straightforward.  Hell, if I hadn’t missed the security software that Mr. Boy Wonder had installed on the interior of the safe to monitor interior temperature, I wouldn’t have been caught at all.  I still got it, but it was so much harder than it had to be.  
While Mammoth, Angel, and See-More charged towards the front entrance of the Tower, I grappled up towards the roof with Gizmo flying up on his jetpack right next to me.  My feet touched the roof at the same time Wykkyd appeared by the door that would lead inside, hiding around the corner just in case any of the Titans decided to take this exit to reach the battle below.  I moved to the door, looking back to see Gizmo peeking over the ledge, smirking as the echoes of combat reach our ears.  
“HAH!  The all the Titans are taking them on!” He crows as he looks back at me with that ugly sneer on his face. “What are you waiting for numb nuts, get that door open!”
I put my focus back to the security panel in front of me, studying it quickly as my fingers run along my utility belt.  It was beyond anything any freelance security corporation could afford to have in their arsenal for one, but that was no shock to me.  The only thing that surprised me was how absolutely thorough Cyborg had been in his design of this single system.  But considering how many times the Tower had been broken into in the past few years, I would have done the same thing.  I blinked hard to get the distracting thoughts out of my head, I needed to focus on the job at hand.
Slipping my fingers along the bottom of panel, I find the latch and pull it back, the front of the security panel opened to reveal number-based keypad.  Closer study showed the keypad was on top of a touch screen that had been adapted to perform several security checks all on one screen.  For anyone else, even for Gizmo, this would have been a big challenge to overcome.  But lucky for him, I had some of the best technology of the modern age to get me through any security system I had encountered to this day.  
Activating my right glove, I press my palm over the screen, a large crimson “X” spreading its way across all four of its corners.  Pulling my hand away, I grin as the image on the screen begins to short out due to the small bursts of EMP that contracted directly over the circuitry contained inside.  The screen finally goes black, the door next to me clicking loudly as the locks deactivate.  I stand up and give the door a gentle push, pressing my back against the wall just to be sure there weren’t any special traps waiting just inside the door.  
Wykkyd goes to the other side of the doorway and holds up a finger for me to wait.  His palms pressing against the wall, a circular portal big enough to fit his head opens between his hands.  I wait patiently as he presses his head into the portal, moving into the open door after he gives me the standard “thumbs up.”  Gizmo runs into the door after I do, closing it behind him while Wykkyd pulls the rest of his body through his now expanded portal, dusting himself off with a smirk.
I hop down from one staircase to another until we reach another door near the bottom, opening the door just enough to peek through the small opening to ensure that no one was running around inside of the tower.  Seeing no one, I pull the door open fully and sneak in the hallway, closing it softly after Kyd and Gizmo made it through.  
“Ok short stack, where is Beast Boy’s room?” I whisper to Gizmo, my eyes roaming down the hallway.  
He didn’t answer right away, causing me to turn and see what he was doing.  He wasn’t even paying attention to his surroundings while he was fiddling with a device of some kind.  He must have realized I was looking at him, jerking away from me so I couldn’t see what he was doing.  Yeah, I know I should have been more worried about it from the beginning, but right now I needed to get what I had come all the way here for.  Whatever he was planning would remain at the bottom of my list of priorities until I was finished with my own mission.    
“Geez, give me a second woulda?!” he snapped at me before pulling out a layout of the Tower, pointing straight down the hallway.  “Just go down there, second door to the left.”
I speed down the hallway, stopping by the door Gizmo had indicated, watching as the door automatically opened for me.  I guess the kid never thought of locking his door behind him.  I looked over to my right, Kyd standing there looking a bit pensive, probably worried I was going to cut and run with the prize.  Which of course, as naughty as I was, was the whole plan.  
That’s when the stench hit me full in the mask.  Oh it had filters for such occasions, usually powerful enough to keep out even the most powerful of poisonous gasses and sleeping agents.  But this… this was something else entirely, a stink that would have would have made even the most evil villains not want to weaponize it.  I literally fell onto my back, gagging as I tried to turn up the filters to get rid of any residual gasses that had snuck in.  
After a few minutes of my head spinning, I finally managed to get back onto my feet and take a tentative step back into the room, Kyd sprawled out against the wall while he silently gags.  I managed to find a light switch, finally seeing what form of hell that had created such a vile aroma.  Beast Boy’s room was the absolute worst offense to home cleaning I had ever seen.  Boxers and socks that I didn’t thing were supposed to be a dark green lay in piles all over the room, often accompanied by food items that should have been removed years earlier but were just left to grow a blue moss (and yes, I said blue).  
I slowly began to sneak around the room, making absolute sure not to touch anything in that room in fear of my suit becoming infected with some foreign disease.  His bed was the first thing I searched, first the top bunk and then the bottom one, neither yielding anything out of the ordinary.  The piles of clothes hadn’t been touched so I didn’t bother looking in any of those, so that only left two places: his dresser and the closet.  When the closet suddenly emitted a low growl at me, I decided the dresser was the best place to look.  Yanking out each and every drawer from top to bottom, I finally managed to find what I was looking for: a silver box engraved with a red ruby on the lid, a black raven’s head cut right into the stone.  
I grabbed the box and got out of that room as fast as I could, looking over to see how Wykkyd was holding up.  His face seemed to have returned to its normal shade of grey, so I was just going to assume he was fine.  My fingers were hovering over the center of the belt buckle, ready to teleport myself up to the roof when I noticed Gizmo was nowhere nearby.  
“Hey, where did the midget go?” I grumble, looking over at Wykkyd, who just shrugged and looked just as confused as I felt.  
I moved back down the hallway, trying to see where he could have gotten off too, tucking the box in a small sling at the back of my belt.  He didn’t leave, and it didn’t look like he had slipped into any of the other rooms while I wasn’t looking.  I glanced back at Kyd, motioning for him to go look for Gizmo.  He seemed a bit pensive about taking orders from me, but just nodded and placed his hand on the wall.  A small portal appeared and expanded enough for him to step though, disappearing with barely a sound.  
I took that opportunity to find Raven’s room, figuring that she would have been one of the only ones that made sure to actually lock her door.  She was apparently very well known for not wanting people going into her room without her direct permission.  After a few rooms checked and eliminated, the door at the very end of the hall was the only one left unchecked.  Considering I had to use a quick hacking tool to unlock the door, it was a pretty good guess on my part.  
As soon as I walked into the dark room, I could have sworn I had stepped into a whole other dimension.   It wasn’t just that it was filled with books of ancient magic and sorceress lore or even that there were several artifacts from various cultures carefully placed around the room.  It was like the very air itself was heavy with a presence that wasn’t of this world, watching my every movement as I snuck through the room.  It was more than just a little unnerving; so getting the hell out that room was all I could think about.  Pulling the small box from the back of my belt, I placed it on top of the pillow on Raven’s bed and quickly found the exit just as Kyd reappeared through the portal he had made before.  
Kyd looked really frantic, pointing for me to follow him to wherever he had just come from.  Running off would probably have been the normal reaction for any regular thief, but curiosity got the best of me.  He gripped my wrist hard, opening a portal on the wall closest to us, pulling me into the swirling darkness right behind him.  The journey from one space to another only lasted for a couple seconds, but the extended travel time made me a bit nervous.  Teleportation for me was instantaneous, so the fear of disappearing and reappearing in a different place never had the time to sink in.  A quick jerk on my arm broke me out of my thoughts, pulling me back into the present of the moment.  
What I saw as soon as I stepped out of the portal was what I assume is the ever famous “trophy room” of the Tower.  Technology and weaponry from enemies the Titans had defeated in the past had been given their own pedestals for display.  For a thief such as myself, it was nothing short of a bounty for the eyes.  At least it would have been, except more than half of the room was completely trashed.  I finally spotted Gizmo standing in other end of the once impressive room, holding a black and red computer chip in his hand.  
My eyes open when I recognize that particular piece of deadly hardware as the super villain known as Overload.  A literal powerhouse of electric destruction, the rogue AI had become very well known for its continuing obsession with gaining power over any electronic device that it could get close to.  The Titans had taken it down about a month ago after it’s escape from the high security prison it had been held in.  Robin himself had apparently taken possession of the defeated powerhouse and imprisoned inside the Tower itself, saying it would be much more secure in his hands.  I really had to remember to smack the kid upside his head for overestimating how safe his base was once again.  
“What are you doing with that thing, you little punk?” I growl, slowly stepping towards him with my fists clenched under my cape.  
Gizmo, now encased in what appeared to be a battle suit, turned to face me with that disgusting sneer splitting his face once again.  Before I could make any move to attack him, he installed Overload’s circuit card into a port on the chest of his battle suit, his laugh beginning to fill the room.  The air crackled around me when Gizmo’s suit suddenly began to glow with electric energy, everything electronic in the room jerking as power was drawn out of them.  Within a few seconds, the suit had begun to emit a low hum as its systems began to reach their optimum power levels.  
“Oh nothing much, just getting ready to knock your stinking can into oblivion,” he finally replied, his voice now resonating throughout the room.  
I stepped back as the little twerp began to hover in place, his battle suit now drawing its power from the main power core of the Tower.  I knew that I had to get to him before he reached full power, throwing several explosive X shuriken at him.  Without so much as a twitch of his finger, Gizmo’s suit erected a protective field around itself, my shuriken exploding harmlessly around him.  While I flipped over a pedestal to attack him from another angle, his arm extended with a small pulse cannon aimed right at my direction.  I barely had enough time for my arms to cross protectively over my chest and face before the blast knocked right out of the air and into the concrete wall.  
Pain shot through my entire body, leaving me crumpled on the ground while the mad genius hovered towards me to finish the job.  Through the murkiness that had clouded my mind, all I felt was disappointment at my failure.  I should have seen what the little freak had been up to, but I had been too stupid to see any of the warning signs earlier.  And now I was going to die for it; all that I could think of was how pathetic it all seemed.  
Just as Gizmo was about to deliver the final blow, the most unbelievable thing happened: Wykkyd attacked Gizmo from behind.  From what I could see with my fading vision, he had managed to use his powers to create a portal inside of the protective barrier surrounding Gizmo’s battle suit, hitting him right in the mouth with his fist.  The cannon pointed up to the ceiling, leaving a large crater with the rest of the concrete heavily cracked around it.  My eyes closed just as Gizmo spun around and began firing at his former teammate, the muffled echo the cannon echoing in my ears as I let myself fall away from the rest of the world.