Lord of the Robins

Prologue: Is it Rude to Wear a Tux in the Jungle?

Despite the legion of mercenaries with automatic weapons surrounding Robin, he couldn't help but wonder at the functionality of their uniforms. Sure, they were stylish and intimidating - what villain wouldn't want to impressive looking soldiers - but they seemed entirely wrong for the setting. Peruvian jungle wilderness and classical tuxedos don't tend to go hand in hand, but who was Robin to judge; he was wearing tights.

This seemed the wrong time and place to discuss clothing choices, however, given the imminent death that awaited the young man if he stood still for too long. It was one against fourteen and wouldn't be easy, but Robin had faced worse odds.

Leaping upward, Robin grasped a branch and swung forward, throwing his full weight towards the front line of men.

Soldiers toppled like bowling pins, and the vigilante rolled to his feet, sprinting away as fast as his legs would carry him. The dense undergrowth and unfamiliar terrain hindered his progress. He had grown up in a concrete jungle, not a plant-based one, after all.

Behind him, the sounds of rallying men and gunfire grew ever closer, and Robin scanned the trees, desperate for some way to evade the soldiers and their offending fashion.

His breath rattled in his chest and the thick jungle miasma made footing precarious. The nimble boy almost twisted his ankle once or twice as he dove through the bushes, saved only by the grace of lady luck and adrenaline.

"The jungle is no place for a little birdie!" bellowed a voice from the pursuing crowd of men. "Little birds get eaten by snakes."

Um, can you say "creepy"? Robin was entirely nonplussed by this disturbing wordplay and gave a breathless chuff of dismissal as he ran, rolling his eyes in habitual disdain.

Big. Fat. Mistake.

Turns out, when running at top speed through ill-lit tropical forests, it was a bad idea to roll one's eyes and remove focus from the path in front. This was a truth Robin discovered a little too late.

With a yelp, he tumbled forward, tool belt over tea kettle, through the sticks and seemingly illogical number of rocks that lined the jungle floor.

Robin crashed through the brambled, cursing whoever had introduced gravity to his life, and doing his best to avoid serious injury. Through some divine lottery, he splashed into a small pond at the base of the slope, spluttering, and cursing.

Yum: mud water, Robin's favorite.

This day had been had enough, to begin with, but being plunged into bacteria teeming pond scum at 50 mph really took the crappy-cake.

"If I hadn't taken that stinkin' kids advice, I wouldn't be in this mess!" thought Robin, clambering to his feet continuing his sprint through the jungle.

But it was too late now, and he HAD taken the bad advice, and there was nowhere to go but forward. Preferably away from the thugs rapidly gaining on him.

His heart raced almost as fast as his feet slapped the heat-baked ground. He wasn't sure how much longer he could keep this up, especially without knowing where the heck he was going.

The entirely fucked up ground was hard to navigate. End of Story. Or, it would have been the end of Robin's tragic story, if not for a resounding crack, a moment of silence, and a flaring pain in his right arm.

Normally, gunfire marked the end of a saga, given the death that tended to follow closely behind, but this was not the case. His body screamed in protest, and Robin's base instincts told him to fall over and pass out. Luckily, he had spent the last seven years working to override his instincts, and instead of cursing and crying like he desperately wanted to, Robin jackknifed to the left, away from the direct line of fire.

This, as it turned out, was the stupidest decision he could have made. The jungle, which was lush and filled with hiding spots in the direction he had initially been running, became ragged and sparsely populated in his new path.

Green and brush gave way to rock and slate, and Robin was funneled into a small warren of foothills. The path became narrower and narrower between the sloping greens until Robin found himself at the base of the real towering mountain, unable to climb the sheer rock face. Just twenty feet above his head the lush green brambles resumed, but there was to way to reach the relative safety of the mountainside from his current location. Damn. If he were Superboy, he could just jump upward and be home free. Even Kid Flash would have been able to tackle the rock wall, simply running up the face to the freedom that taunted him above. But no, he was the team member with absolutely NO metahuman ability. Lucky him.

Putting his back to the wall and his body poised to fight, Robin turned to face the thugs. They streamed into the warren-like swarms of stylishly dressed ants, each leveling a gun at the young man.

"Alright guys, jokes over," Robin called to the men, his tone light, and bantering. "Let's call this all off and head home for some lemonade. How does that sound? I know this guy gets it!" He chuckled, nodding his head to the nearest soldier, who jerked his gun higher in response to the snark, clearly unamused.

Loose rubble crunched under his heels as he shifted his weight, trying to figure out where the first attack would come from. If he could anticipate the first few waves, he had a better chance of taking down at least a few men before they overwhelmed him. He couldn't take them all, that much was certain; he only had two arms after all.

With a soft "fwip" and a "thunk" of impact, a narrow dart buried itself in Robin's upper thigh.

"Low blow guys! C'mon! Not cool!" The dark haired boy complained, jerking the dart free, and throwing it aside. That was it then: capture by the dart. Not exactly a glorious way to get taken captive, but at least he hadn't slipped and knocked himself out, allowing himself to be captured. KF had done that once, and the team never let him live it down.

Robin wouldn't have to be embarrassed like that...assuming he lived long enough to recount the story. His vision blurred, and as the first line of thugs advanced, Robin slid to the dirt and gravel ground, hoping to high heaven that he didn't drool in his sleep.