Let's Make A Statement

Heroes

The next day at school he regretted not just running away the night before because since he hadn't he had to come back here. It seemed like he got a new injury every day and having to deal with people while he was injured got on his nerves. The bullet wounds were doing better but his hand and shoulder still had some healing to do and they actually hurt.

He would never admit it and he wasn't going to show it but the injuries could have done with some time to heal. He walked straight to his locker and dropped off some of his stuff, while he did someone spoke next to him, "Hey Danny."

Danny paused for a second before looking at Richard, he could tell from his voice alone that something was up. Something was bothering him, Richard did his best to smile but Danny could tell it was fake. "What the hell is wrong?"

Richard looked confused, "What?"

"Don't play dumb, I can tell something is wrong."

Richard quickly shook his head, "Nothing is wrong."

Danny just grabbed a book out of his locker, "You don't have to tell me but don't lie to me."

Richard was quiet and Danny started walking to his first class, Richard walked with him and they were both silent. Danny was obviously irritated and Richard had absolutely no idea what to say, he'd never felt so worried about talking to someone. Richard kept glancing at Danny and when they reached an empty hallway Richard decided it was now or never.

He glanced at Danny again, "Do you really hate superheroes?"

Danny stopped and looked at him, "What?"

"Izzy and Lucas talked about it, so is it true?"

Danny sighed and ran a hand through his hair as he thought, "I guess I don't completely hate them, I just don't like them."

"But why?"

"You really don't want to know."

"Oh I think I do."

He glared at Richard, "You want to know, fine, it's because they're a bunch of self centered stuck up pricks. Take Superman for example, the guy has a hell of a lot of powers, he's strong, and he uses that to solve all of his problems. When he fights villains he doesn't even try to take it out of the city so people end up getting hurt and even die."

"He could easily get whatever villain he's fighting out of the city, even taking them somewhere less populated would be better. He just doesn't, he destroys entire buildings during his fights when there are ways to easily avoid that. Sure not all heroes can take it out of the city, Batman and Robin would have a hell of a time doing it."

"But when you can lower the risks and you just don't that's not being a hero, that's being reckless. But people look at them like they're fucking gods, if they hadn't become heroes in the first place these villains wouldn't have shown up at all. There are ways to lower crime rates without drawing enough attention to make supervillains appear out of nowhere."

"Sure, some of them might have been around before but they didn't exactly handle it the way they should have. They think not killing criminals makes them better when they endanger innocent people, I don't like heroes because they're fucking hypocrites."

Richard felt hurt now but Danny wasn't paying attention and the teen sighed, "I don't hate them. They're not bad people, they just go about shit the wrong way sometimes and people get hurt because of it."

Richard was quiet for a minute before he hesitantly spoke, "Is that why you're so angry all the time?"

"That's not what happened to me if that's what you mean, and I'm not going to talk about it."

The two were quiet as they started walking to class again, Richard spoke once they were right outside their classroom. "I admit you do have a point, if they can take the fight away from innocent people they should at least try."

Danny actually looked relieved, "Thank you, I mean the guys work with the government, they could set up an alarm system, evacuation routes, or something. At least give them a little warning before crashing through their living room, I mean come on."

Richard couldn't help but smile a little, "You've thought about this a lot haven't you?"

"I've had plenty of time to think about a lot of things, that's just one of the topics that came up more then once."

Richard's smile widened a little before he thought of something and frowned again, "So how are you doing?"

"Meaning?"

"You got injured."

Danny thought he was talking about his shoulder for a split second before remembering that he knew about the bullet wounds. Though something did seem off to him, why did he suddenly ask for Danny's opinion on superheroes right after he ran into Robin? He said Isabella and Lucas talked about it but he wasn't buying it, something was up and he wanted to know what it was.

Nonetheless he answered anyway, "I'm fine, the wounds will heal soon enough."

By now they were sitting in their seats and students were starting to walk into the room so they stayed silent. Thankfully it was a comfortable silence, Danny still seemed like his usual angry self but he actually seemed more calm. Richard thought he might actually be getting through to Danny a little and that made him very happy.

The bell rang and the teacher started class, they were mostly taking notes so it was pretty quiet aside from the teacher talking. Once that class ended they went to their next one and the teacher just had them watch a video and fill out a worksheet. The teacher stopped the video about a minute before the bell rang and then the announcements came on over the intercom system.

Danny didn't really listen until something caught his attention, "And for those of you that don't know prom is less then a month away, we encourage you to find someone to go with. You can even go with your friends as a group but we want as many people as possible to attend."

Danny rolled his eyes, even if he did like dances no one would ever go with him, he was pretty sure he scared half the school his first day there. Dances were annoying, there was loud music and they were crowded as hell so you ran into people no matter how hard you tried not to. Though he did notice Richard glance at him when that announcement came on, there was no way that was possible.

The next two classes were just as boring and pretty soon it was lunch, Danny somehow disappeared into the crowd of the lunch room. Richard, however, found Artemis and she'd apparently heard about Danny's hate toward heroes. Artemis looked at Richard, "So he actually hates heroes?"

"He doesn't hate them, not completely at least, he said he doesn't like how reckless heroes can be."

Artemis looked offended, "What's that supposed to mean?"

"I mean he doesn't like how innocent people get put in harms way when we're fighting villains. He used Superman as an example, instead of trying to take fights out of the city or away from crowded areas he smashes through buildings."

Artemis thought about that for a minute, "Okay that kind of makes sense, but there's no way to prevent it."

"Danny actually had some ideas on that too, we could set up some alert system or escape routes, it's really not a bad idea. I'm sure he had more ideas about it but I haven't gotten a chance to ask, it's an interesting idea though."

Artemis thought about that as well before she huffed, "Okay fine I'll give him that but he's still angrier then he should be on a daily basis."

"So was Superboy, but we've only known Danny for a few days and we don't know a lot about him. Plus he is hurt, and he got hurt last night too, I mean I jumped in before he got seriously injured but his shoulder was bleeding a lot."

The two were getting closer to their usual table now and ended the conversation there for now so no one would hear them. Unbenounced to them someone did hear, Danny didn't hear everything but he did get the last few lines, now things were making sense. It sounded like Richard was actually Robin, and at the very least Artemis knew, this was going to be interesting.