Teen Titans Leader

Dick Grayson was fifteen years old. He had been Robin for seven years. And he was beginning to feel something he had not felt in a long time.

He was beginning to feel restless.

Gotham was small. Not in the way a city is small — Gotham was huge, of course, all dark spires and stone gargoyles and rain-slick alleys — but small in a different way. Small the way an old jacket feels small when you have grown an inch in the night. Dick still loved Bruce. Dick still loved the Batcave. Dick still loved swinging from the gargoyles in his bright yellow cape. But he was beginning to wonder if there were other things in the world for him to do. Bigger things. His own things.

Bruce noticed. Bruce always noticed. Alfred noticed too. Alfred had been quietly mentioning, at breakfast, articles he had been reading in the newspaper.

"Did you see this, Master Dick? Young metahuman in Detroit. Half man, half machine. Calls himself Cyborg."

"Mm-hmm," Dick would say, biting into his toast.

"And this one. An alien princess. Came down in a meteor near a place called Jump City. Bright orange skin, can throw bolts of green light from her hands. She calls herself Starfire."

"Mm-hmm."

"And here — a young sorceress. Quiet, polite. Goes by Raven."

"Mm-hmm."

"And — oh dear, Master Dick — this one is delightful. A green-skinned boy from Africa. Apparently he can transform into any animal he has ever seen. The newspapers are calling him Beast Boy."

Dick would look up, his eyes a little brighter every time Alfred read one of these articles.

Bruce, on the far end of the table, would not look up at all. But the corner of his mouth would do its tiny, almost-invisible smile thing. Because Bruce had been planning this, in his quiet Bruce way, for months.

The phone rang one Saturday morning.

Alfred answered it in the kitchen. "Wayne Manor, this is Alfred Pennyworth speaking. ... Yes, yes, of course. ... Oh, indeed. ... How extraordinary. ... Yes. Yes, I shall let him know at once. ... Of course. The hill behind the manor would be ideal, plenty of room to land, no flight paths to disturb. ... Excellent. Today, then."

Alfred hung up. He walked into the dining room with a small careful smile.

"Master Dick. You have a visitor coming. In approximately seven minutes."

"What? Who? From where?"

"Jump City. By air. I should put the kettle on."

Seven minutes later, Dick was standing on the hill behind Wayne Manor in his sweater and jeans, when a low rumble began in the sky. He looked up. Coming down through the clouds was the most beautiful jet he had ever seen — pure white, sleek, and shaped, very distinctly, like the letter T. The T-jet. He didn't know that name yet. He would learn it.

The jet landed gently in the meadow. The hatch opened. And out walked a tall, broad-shouldered young man with kind eyes, a brilliant white smile, and a body that was about half flesh and half blue-glowing chrome. There was a sonic cannon on his right shoulder. There were soft blue circuit-lights running down his arms.

"Robin," the young man said, holding out a giant chrome hand. "I'm Cyborg. You and I need to talk."

They talked for two hours, sitting on the back porch of Wayne Manor, while Alfred served tea and tiny sandwiches.

Cyborg explained. There were four of them so far. Cyborg himself, the engineer. Starfire, the alien princess. Raven, the sorceress. Beast Boy, the shapeshifter. They were all young. They were all powerful. And they were all, in their own ways, lonely. They had been doing solo work — Cyborg in Detroit, Starfire wandering, Raven hiding, Beast Boy bouncing from team to team — and they had decided, together, that they wanted to be a real team. A family. A young people's Justice League.

But they needed a leader.

Cyborg said, very simply, "We talked it over. We've been watching footage of you for two years. Of the four of us, none of us has been a hero as long as you have. None of us has been trained as well as you have. None of us is as good in a fight as you are. We need you, Robin. We need somebody to call the plays."

Dick was quiet for a long, long time.

Then he went and found Bruce in the study.

Bruce was already standing by the window, looking out at the T-jet on the hill, with his hands behind his back. Bruce had clearly been listening. Bruce knew. Bruce always knew.

Dick said, "Bruce. They want me to —"

"I know."

"It would mean moving across the country. Living in a tower."

"I know."

"I'd still come home. For holidays."

"I know."

Dick said, very small, "Are you... okay with this?"

And Bruce turned around. Bruce looked at him. Bruce did something he almost never did — he reached over and put his hand on Dick's shoulder.

"Dick," Bruce said. "You have been my partner long enough. It's time to be somebody's leader."

Dick flew west the very next week.

The headquarters was already half-built. A tall, gleaming building on a small green island in Jump City Bay, shaped — exactly, perfectly, ridiculously — like the letter T. The T-Tower. From its top floor, you could see the whole Pacific Ocean. The bottom floors held workshops and garages and a hangar for the T-jet. The middle floors were living quarters, one room per Titan. The top floor was the common room, with an enormous curved window, an enormous television, an enormous beanbag chair (Beast Boy's), and an enormous fridge that Cyborg was constantly raiding for late-night sandwiches.

Robin met his team that first night.

Starfire — Princess Koriand'r of Tamaran, but please just call me Kori — was tall and bright and joyful and a little confused about Earth. She floated several inches off the ground when she was happy. She tried to shake Robin's hand by lifting his whole arm into the air and waving it for him. She greeted him in fluent Tamaranean, which translated roughly to: "Greetings, friend Robin. I have heard much of your courageousness. May the moons of X'Hal bless your noggin."

Raven was small and pale, in a dark blue cloak, with a single red gem on her forehead. She did not float. She did not laugh. She nodded once, very gravely, and said, "Welcome. The tower has a library on level three. I will be there." Then she vanished into a fold of shadow.

Beast Boy was bouncing on the giant beanbag chair, in green sneakers and green pants and a purple-and-black uniform, with green skin and green hair. "Yo! Robin! Are you ready for some PIZZA?" He turned into a flamingo, then a dachshund, then a parakeet, in the space of about four seconds, just to say hello.

And Cyborg was already in the kitchen, building what he called a "twelve-decker breakfast burrito" out of every food in the fridge.

Robin stood in the middle of the common room and looked at his new team.

They were a mess.

They were exactly what he needed.

The first weeks were rough. They had powers, yes — incredible ones. But they didn't work together. Starfire wanted to FLY at every problem. Raven wanted to THINK about every problem. Cyborg wanted to BLAST every problem. Beast Boy wanted to make JOKES about every problem. They argued. They tripped over each other. Once, during a training exercise, Cyborg blasted a wall right in front of Beast Boy turning into an octopus, and Beast Boy got stuck mid-transformation as a half-octopus half-boy for almost an hour. Raven had to magic him back. It was not, Robin thought to himself privately, going great.

So Robin did what Bruce had taught him.

He watched. Patiently. He took notes. He learned each one of them. He learned that Starfire was fastest in the air, so she should always scout. He learned that Raven could fold her shadow around hostages to keep them safe, so she should always be assigned to civilians. He learned that Cyborg's sonic cannon worked best at medium range, so he should hold the middle. He learned that Beast Boy was at his best when he was given one clear job, so he should always be told a specific animal to turn into — "BB, mouse, under that door, NOW" — and then he was a wonder.

Robin built a playbook. Literal index cards. He wrote them out by hand, the way Bruce had taught him to write everything by hand, because the hand remembers what the eye forgets.

Within a month, the Teen Titans were a team.

Their first major enemy was Slade.

Slade was a calm, quiet, deadly man who wore a mask that was half orange and half black. He had no superpowers. He was simply a very, very good fighter, and very, very smart, and very, very patient — and he had decided, watching Robin from afar, that Robin would make a wonderful apprentice. Not a friend. Not a partner. An apprentice. Slade wanted Robin to wear an S on his chest instead of an R. Slade wanted Robin to learn from him instead of from Bruce.

Slade thought Robin would be tempted by the offer of greater power.

Slade was very wrong.

Robin had grown up with a man in a black cape who had taught him that power without restraint was a kind of sickness. Robin had grown up with a butler who had taught him that kindness was its own kind of strength. Robin had a mother in a folded photograph in his belt who had called him mio piccolo robin, my little robin, because robins were the bravest little birds that came back even when winter was still in the ground.

Robin was not tempted.

When Slade finally cornered him alone, in the steam tunnels under Jump City, and offered him "all of it," Robin smiled, very small, behind the mask. He reached up to his collar. He pressed his T-communicator. And he said, very quietly, "Titans. Go."

What came down through the steam tunnels in the next ninety seconds was a thunderstorm.

Starfire blew a hole through the steel ceiling above and dropped through it, green starbolts blazing. Raven came up through the floor in a wave of dark shadow. Cyborg came around the corner with his sonic cannon humming. Beast Boy came in as a green rhinoceros at full charge.

Slade fought hard. Slade fought brilliantly. But Slade was alone. And the Teen Titans, after a month of Robin's patient coaching, were no longer five young heroes. They were one thing now, with five sets of hands.

By the end of the fight, Slade was sealed inside a steel-and-shadow box of his own underground hideout, and the Titans were standing over him, breathing hard, grinning at each other.

"Booyah," Cyborg said softly.

"Friends," Starfire said, hovering a foot off the ground in pure delight. "We have done the kicking of the butt!"

Raven, for the first time anyone had ever seen, smiled. Just a little. Just at the corner of her mouth.

Beast Boy turned into a chihuahua and yipped happily.

Robin laughed. The full bright Dick Grayson laugh that nobody in Gotham had heard since he was twelve years old. The laugh of a circus boy who has just landed a perfect catch.

After that, the Teen Titans became famous.

They handed out little round T-shaped communicators to young heroes all over the world — Bumblebee, Aqualad, Speedy, Wonder Girl, Kid Flash, Argent — so that any young hero could press the T and call in backup. They became the team that other young heroes called when they needed help. They became, in their own way, a family.

And Dick Grayson — the boy who had once flown on a trapeze under a striped big top in Gotham — was the leader.

The robin had grown up. He was leading a whole flock now. And the flock was bright, and brave, and a little messy, and it was his.

Years later, somebody asked Bruce Wayne, in a quiet interview, what he was most proud of in his entire life. Bruce thought about it for a long time. He did not say "Batman." He did not say "Wayne Enterprises." He did not say "the Justice League."

He said, "Dick. I am most proud of Dick."

And then, because Bruce was Bruce, he did not say anything else for the rest of the interview.

But that was enough.