Worst Case Scenario

Chapter 41: Taking Stock

This could be harder than I thought thought Rocket.

It was (roughly, it's not like she had a watch) twenty minutes later, and she didn't have any ideas as to how to escape two pairs of handcuffs and take out two guys with shotguns without either dying (again) or being tasered into submission. Rocket mentally added escape artistry and lockpicking to the list of things she'd need to learn if she ever got out of this, along with kung fu and ninja stealth.

Focus, Raquel. Rocket looked around, taking in the situation again.

The two goons were still sitting there, looking bored but nevertheless attentive. If they got suspicious, they'd probably shock her again, and if she tried to attack them they'd likely shoot her. Even with her hands freed and without guns or shock collars weapons, they looked big enough that she could only really expect to take one of them out with the element of surprise, let alone two.

She herself was sitting in an uncomfortable plastic chair. Her arms were secured behind her back with a pair of handcuffs, the chain of which went through a set of slits in the back of the plastic. She wasn't going to be able to get up unless the cuffs were opened, the chain broke or the entire chair was ripped in half, and none of those seemed like very likely possibilities. Her feet were also secured by a pair of cuffs, with the chain behind the chair leg.

Finally, Aqualad was still unconscious, slumped over in another chair. He looked pretty beat up, and the inhibitor collar around his neck was presumably blocking both his strength and his control of water and electricity. Large super-strength cuffs engulfed his wrists in metal and kept them firmly secured behind his back.

Rocket scanned the room again. And again. It felt like this was a test of some sort. Robin probably could figure out how to escape easily. Most of the others probably would whip out some cool idea or hidden power or something. But Raquel had nothing. No combat-useful skills, no superpowers (outside of her belt), nothing.

Raquel could feel doubt seeping into her mind. Was she really hero material? Just because the stuff in the hospital and with Artemis killing her and all that had been (probably) a hallucination, it didn't change the fact that she'd been damn useless the entire mission. Worse: she'd been a liability, and an agent for the bad guys without even knowing it.

What did I contribute? Let's see... I caught half the Bioship after it broke. And then I dropped it and only lived thanks to Red Arrow. Then I got Zatanna captured, after I'd already poisoned her under mind control. Not good. I didn't help at all in escaping, I almost got the others killed when we ran into those guards, I ran away from some robot monkeys and I paid Red Arrow back for saving me by throwing him into a hundred-thousand-volt electric fence. While being mind-controlled. Again. And then I passed out, leaving Robin to face an evil psychic by himself.

...

I totally suck at this, don't I.

Robin stopped tugging for a second and ran all the information through his head again. It came back the same.

There was no way out of here.

They'd removed all his equipment, he couldn't move his hands or fingers, his feet were cuffed together and attached to a pipe, there was a shock collar around his neck and he was gagged, so he couldn't even try to talk his way out. Not that Tala seemed like the listening type. She was still reading her book, a bored expression on her face, but he wasn't so stupid as to believe she wasn't keeping one eye on him.

He'd spent the last half an hour trying to see if he could pull the pipe his feetcuffs' chain was wrapped around off the wall. It was probably a water pipe of some sort, and it went straight from the floor to the ceiling, with barely an inch between it and the wall. A quick application of the scientific method confirmed that it was really stuck, and that he probably break the chain or his legs before he could wiggle the concrete the pipe was embedded in loose.