Direct. Fast. No mercy.

You waste no time doing the armor. You wait until you enter the garage before activating the comm-system in your helmet and activation the police scanner. You catalogue the chatter as you grab the keys for one of the motorcycles. Robin is a dangerous combatant.

Underestimating him is your peril. A tactical genius whose skill at arms and keen mind have proven to be **** multipliers of staggering proportion.

You take your seat on the motorcycle. Feel it hum to life as the engine rev’s and you speed off into the night. Unlike so many people who stumble into power by accident, without goal, without direction, Robin stands apart. His power is forged. No blind stumbling. No guesswork as to what he would do with his powers. No, his powers come from the fact that he wanted, NEEDED to do something.

You veer off the highway, a promising report leading you to your quarry. Before he is a leader, before he is a hero, before he is anything else…Robin is an addict. His fix is justice. And justice to him means stopping criminals.

You juke, a homeless man pushing your cart not even registering your presence as you zoom towards the worst part of the city. Robin needs to sate it. He hasn’t been back for long and if recent events mean that he won’t head back to the tower. Not now. Not yet at least. He’s avoiding his team. Which means that he’ll head for the largest incidence of street-level crime that he can.

You take your hand off of the throttle, letting the wheel’s bleed off speed as you coast down the road. Engine turning silent as the grunting sounds of combat grow louder. The rest of the titans are uninterested in this kind of crime fighting. Too focused on powered criminals and world ending threats.

You turn leisurely and pump the break as your bikes lights illuminate the narrow alley. A man in a purple suit is trying to scale the chain-link fence at the far end. The boy wonder grunts as he delivers an unnecessary strike to a man in a balaclava. This here. This is where Robin feels most at home.

He turns to you, eyes wincing from the glare of your bikes brights. You turn them off, letting him see you for the first time. “X” he growls, delivering one last strike to the thug as you dismount the bike.

“So what, you’re Slade’s new errand boy?” You remain silent, as you kick the bike’s stand into place. “Finally decided to show your true colors huh? Thieving no longer giving you that rush anymore? Gotta upgrade to ****?” **** hm? Well, father does kill as part of his work and you are his protege. Still, the situation is ironic. You don't need to kill to get anything. He's the one that needs this.

To **** people. Break them down. Leave them sputtering messes afraid to show their faces. He’s the one who wants this. Needs this. Needs the rush. For you though the adrenaline is the worst part. Makes you lose focus. Lose control. Bad things happen when you lose control.

He starts circling you like a caged animal while you take one last measure. “What? Slade got your tou-“

You are behind him an instant. Your enhanced speed dwarfing his trained reflexes. One hand raises glowing with energy, the other reaches in a deft twist of legerdemain. You fire out a star bolt, scoring a blow on his back and charring the reinforced cape as you do so. As he struggles up he see’s you examining the titans communicator, the stolen object safely in your grasp. You look at him, offering him the smallest of mercies before you end this farce.

“I’m afraid you don’t know me at all.” Your voice is deep. Reverberating from the modulator embedded in the mask. You toss the communicator as far away as you can. The casing is shock resistant. It won’t break and alert the others, but now it’s out of his reach. Gritting his teeth, Robin lets loose a fist full of metallic pellets. He’s sloppy. And moving too fast for his own good. Already trying to run before the smoke is released. You gesture as several spheres of asphalt rise out of the ground encapsulating the pellets and squandering their smoke.

You give chase as Robin spins launching a bird-a-rang mid-run. You do not break off, instead drawing closer and extending your hand. The weapon explodes on impact, but you are close enough for Robin to feel the reverberation of the shockwave. Your suit is easily strong enough to take a weapon of this caliber and now he is too close to try escaping.

You feel his staff swing into your side. It’s a heavy blow but obvious. You do not flinch, applying your flight powers to maintain opposite **** on your body so you aren’t sent flying. You grab the end of the staff. It hasn’t seen proper maintenance in over a month. You charge a star bolt in your opposite hand and slam it down, shattering the stick.

Dropping the staff Robin backflips away sending more projectiles flying towards you. It’s smart, trying to build distance against an obviously stronger opponent. With another wave of your hand hundreds of pebble-sized projectiles launch themselves off the ground like bullets, careening with pinpoint accuracy into every smoke bomb, cryo-grenade, sonic-mine and acidic compound. The cloud would normally serve the same purpose as the smoke grenades, breaking your line of sight and allowing him to move before your counter attack can hit.

It is for this reason that you did not limit your initial volley to a mere-counterattack. Another wave of your hand launches projectiles circling around the cloud into a Robin who has most certainly ducked low to avoid the initial blast, slamming into the boy-wonder proper.

You’ve modulated the projectiles speed easily enough. And as you hear Robin scream you can already tell a number of your projectiles have embedded themselves within his body. As Robin collapses again you flex your hand and the stones within him react. Spreading him eagle and raising him into the air even as he screams in pain.

You briefly think of saying something as you emerge from the cloud of detonated projectiles. Something profound. Meaningful. Something that would punctuate your relation to the Titan. Something that would answer his questions and give some sense of rationality to your actions.

Instead you slam a star bolt covered fist into his chest. He gasps, shuddering for a moment, seeming to **** on nothing, before going still. You don’t check if he’s still alive. You don’t care. A final gesture and the streets asphalt binds him, practically mummifying the young hero.

You wince as you remove his utility belt, the electric discharges surprising, but not painful. You leave the belt and the communicator here. No one who mattered saw you anyway. Setting Robin immobilized on the back seat, your journey back to the compound is uninterrupted.

You run the fight back through your head even as you levitate Robin’s limp form behind you. Looking back on it he had made two great mistakes. His assumption of your identity left him flat-footed in your opening ****. From there, he was overly focused on you. He should have made efforts to destroy the communicator and trigger its emergency operation rather than escape himself.

Your enhanced physiology and armor more than outmatched any attack he could have leveraged against you, and your precise terra kinesis was able to answer and outstrip every one of his gadgets. It was strange…you would have though he would have prepared a countermeasure for Terra. Why didn’t he use it? Was he really so blind as to not consider what another terra kinetic could do?

You flex your hand again and let the stones fall away, dropping the boy wonder before your father.

“Well” Father began “that was unexpected.”

“I did as you asked.”

“Yes. You have exceeded my expectations.”

You nod to him, accepting his praise.

“Rest, for now my son. You have earned it.”

Turning away, you leave Robin to Father. Returning to your quarters you doff the armor and flop down onto your bed. You lay there staring at the ceiling. You did as Father asked. Utterly destroying one of the titans with barely any effort.

You feel so…so…