2015-02-23 - Sushi And Superheroes To Go

Who sells sea stars by the sea shore? In this case, an invasion of evil, mutant, mind controlled sea urchins had been fought off in San Francisco harbor. The area now covered with fish guts, large amount of hardened seaweed and corral, and a dismembered clockwork submarine made out of coral which had risen from the depths to chants of "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn," before having been beaten down and smashed. So with flying fish fleeing back into the depths of the sea, the Tamaranean Princess floated, exhausted, but not badly hurt. "Go back to your dark depths!" Then, seeing a particularly large bit of urchin. "And I am hungry for sushi."
"I know just the place," says a voice as a burly, blond-haired man rises up from the depths nearby.
Aquaman, his trident slung over his shoulder and wearing his usual Atlantean chainmail and leggings, dips his Waterbearer hand just beneath the surface of the ocean and causes the water around Starfire to warm up, soothingly. He smiles lopsidedly and casts his gaze toward the shore.
"Good work, but can't imagine what sea water is going to do for all that hair, Kory."
Red Robin stood on the shoreline herself with bow drawn, and one final arrow notched. These were the 'I mean business' arrows that even Green Arrow himself would be proud of--They were explosive tipped. Which is precisely how she had managed to help against the, er, rather... okay let's face it you can't punch sea urchins unless you're very, very stupid. And nets sure weren't going to work nor were bolos. So explosives and electric were what she'd opted for. She wasn't wounded herself having played backup to the stronger Starfire, but she had some Eau de Fish Goop in her hair and on her cape she was not happy about. "Think that about does it. Now... how the hell are we going to clean up this beach?" It's said aloud as she thinks on the matter only for her eyes to refocus on a new potential target.
Aquaman's arrival was unexpected and her bow has risen again taking aim but not shooting. No, not shooting thankfully as she recognizes him soon enough even though she'd never met him herself. Again it's lowered, and finally she un-nocks the arrow to flip down into the quiver slung at her hip. With a sigh she reaches up to pluck off a bit of goop from her hair discarding it with a flick of her wrist as she approaches closer to the water's edge to join the other redhead. "I'd say you're the only one who could consider food after this... but you know who my brothers are." Endless guts the lot.
Starfire nods over at Red Robin, "Yes, such things are quite.." She searches for the right word, "Common amongst the Robins." There's probably some sort of record around for creepiest after Joker setups that Nightwing and Robin have had pizza after that's quite highly competitive. Floating over, "Are you all right, Red Robin? And thank you again for your aid." Starfire's hair now seems more proportionally relative of her body mass than usual, sticking out at a wide variety of angles and curving through the air. Kory herself does not seem to mind. "And I am still hungry. And now that the situation is secure, we can let the authorities handle it." Let the sanitation crew clean up possibly evil magic infused mutated fish from the darkest depths of the ocean. They're janitors, they'll have seen far worse.
"One moment," says Orin.
The man turns his back on Kory and Robin for a few seconds - keeping his left, magical hand in the water and raising his right hand to his temple. >> Come, friends. There is food here. << Out across the waves he projects the thought, and then gathers his feet up underneath him. With a brief kick, he leaps out of the ocean and lands in a minor spray of sand some feet away from Starfire and Robin.
"Well met, Robin," he says with his voice raised and a smile on his bearded features. "I appreciate the help - oh. You may both want to back up off the sand, now. I... invited some friends to din - ah, here they are."
Crabs.
Lots of crabs.
Hundreds of crabs crawl their way out of the sea and onto the shore, attacking the gobs and goops of urchin remains, and devouring them. In seconds they will cover the beach, and reach the trio of heroes standing there.
"They're growing boys," Red offers back to Kory in regards to her 'brothers' in a friendly, teasing way. Never mind Nightwing was far older--she was older than Tim so that worked out well enough. "I'm fine. A bruise here or there isn't going to kill me." A gloved hand flips over her cape shaking off any remaining gobs of soon-to-be-eaten goop while watching Orin curiously. As he works on calling the creatures she leans to the side to murmur quietly to Kory, "What's he do--" The thought becomes cut off when he flips out of the water nearby. Immediately she straightens again acting as if she weren't just talking about him in hushed tones at all.
Offering a smile she dips her head toward him in greeting. "Just call me 'Red'. It'll be easier in the long run to keep track, trust me." The skitter of crabs approaching does cause her to step backward gingerly to avoid treading on their impending meals as well as on any of them. "Okay I am seriously reconsidering the whole 'visiting the beach' thing in the future at this point. Let's grab some food."
Starfire nods over then as she watches the wandering crabs, "I have never seen such a large case of crabs on the beach." Likely for the best that Red Robin's commentary is quick to distract her before she can go on, either with the metaphor or how they make her hungry and would they mind if she had a few for a quick bite. "And yes, let us. Will the crabs be all right?" She watches them with concern, before floating along and then going after Red Robin. "There are a numerous amount of you, yes. We will need to work out another way of telling you apart over when we operate together, or calling all the Robins Robin will get very confusing!"
"Red it is. I've met your brothers," Aquaman comments regarding the other 'Robins', past and present. From his tone, he could mean this is a good thing... or a bad thing. Or perhaps both. At Starfire's question, the man turns about to survey the 'clean-up crew' and looses a mild snort through his nostrils.
"They will manage. What they do not eat, they can drag back into the ocean for other carnivores - crabs can at least come onto shore... I didn't want to make the seals sick." He gives the younger two a smirk and crosses his arms over his chest. "Did someone say sushi? There is a good place for it nearby - one that doesn't require gills to appreciate.
Red Robin bites down rather hard on her lower lip to keep from laughing or making a far worse remark in response to Kory's slip of the tongue. Lightly she clears her throat to regain her composure though the ghost of a smile still plays along her lips making her seem far less severe than the Bat himself would likely appreciate her being. Oh well. She was the 'odd one out' in the family anyway.
"I could go for some veggie sushi. I never could get the hang of fish though. Didn't exactly grow up where fish are good eating." Gotham was... not a fishing town. Not in with the level of pollution in that city. Flipping her bow back to collapse it down and tuck away she nods to the pair. "Lead the way then. And if it was the older one, sorry. If it was the youngest -- really sorry."
Starfire nods over and floats along, "Well perhaps you could do it sometime then, Red Robin. Just take a pole and go out and sit. It can be quite relaxing, or so I have told." Koriand'r is more the spear-fishing type, if one had to ask. Heading along with the others then. "And the poor seals.. They are so adorable when they bounce things on their noses.. And the otters are so cute.." Yes, Koriand'r has her priorities straight.
As the public start to return to the beach - if only to gawk at the... aftermath of 'Attack of the Killer Urchins' (the sea kind, not the street kind), and to take ridiculous selfies with goop and crabs in the background - Orin frowns. "This could be a problem. You land-dwellers - present company excepted of course." Clearing his throat, the man lifts a hand to his temple again and signals the crabs to return to the sea - before someone loses a toe...
"YEOUCH!!!"
Too late.
Some onlookers tried to get too close. Typical. The sea-monarch shakes his head and follows after Koriand'r and Red Robin. "Seals and otters are both very intelligent - enough for a decent conversation, if you're not too used to episodes of Big Brother or Jerry Springer. It's sad when animals have to 'dumb it down' for us 'higher evolved' types."
He pauses.
"Hmm. Everything looks the same on the shore. Where is this sushi place again?"
"Seals have teeth, and like to eat penguins," Red Robin supplies in response to Kori's remarks of cute ball on nose balancing critters. "The captive ones might be taught to do tricks but I'd rather not run into one out in the wild for the most part. Nature can be vicious." She, at least, had an appreciation for the fact that most everything in nature is usually out to kill something for food. ... That didn't stop her from fuzzling cats of course. Fuzzy cats.
At the pause she regards the gawkers only to break out into a grin again at the yelp from the individual. "I'm sure they'll manage to figure it out." With a shake of her head she dips her hand into a pocket pulling out a smart phone which she quickly pulls up a search for sushi. "There's one two blocks from here, down on Pasadena Ave. That might be it. It's this way," she supplies gesturing down the boardwalk.
"And there is no way I would fish in Gotham, Starfire. I'd probably pull up some new rogue that's been mucking about down there."
Cats are creatures of wanton evil and total spawns of darkness. Koriand'r's experiences with the creature which tormented Supergirl had long taught her such things. Otherwise, there was a cheer from Starfire as she went to fly along after the group. "Well, Batman does not currently have a fish themed adversary unless he has had a new one crop up recently from the files. He has an Eye themed adversary, many Alice in Wonderland themed adversaries, a mime adversary who talks very much, but no fish themed ones. Perhaps he might have a use for one then if you go in search for it!" With Koriand'r, it could be somewhat difficult to tell when she was taking something seriously in her straight way or playing along with an extended joke. This was likelier the second.
As the trio of superheroes leave the beach in the direction of their restaurant of choice, bystanders grow all the bolder in surveying the 'carnage' of the latest uprising from the sea. Phones are out. Photos are taken. Blogs and social networking sites are simultaneously updated with captions such as:
"I'm with heroes!"
"It's Spongemageddon at the Sea today!"
"Who is the real hotness? Starfire or Red Robin?"
"Is she a real ginger?"
"Who's the guy in the orange shirt?"
Aquaman's face notably darkens as he strides past pedestrians, and motorists parking nearby for a look-see. He tries to keep his attention on the conversation at hand, rather than the spectacle forming around them. "I'm fairly sure there are some truly bizarre criminals out there... above the surface. Most of them below the surface tend towards just one theme: not drowning." He ignores the fact that there's a Manta-themed guy, a Shark-themed guy, a Crocodile-themed guy...
"I think it's worse on the other Earth." He looks at Robin. "How is the Old Man now, anyway Red?"
Red Robin is usually the cheerier of the bunch when it comes to dealing with people, but she wasn't really used to publicity. That was just odd. In Gotham it was 'avoid being seen at all costs' for the most part. On this side of the continent it was an entirely different experience. Growing quiet she works simply on walking with eyes darting from one side to the other keeping careful, habitual watch in case someone might try to take advantage of her being out in the open. In daylight.
"Mm? Obstinate and surly. So he's doing well," she responds to Orin with a casual shrug at the topic. "He's still annoyed at me. He'll get over it eventually I'm sure."
Starfire nods over as she goes to sit then, cocking her brow and noticing the not-quite wariness over of Red Robin, "It is fine, this is completely normal. No one will bother us." Crossing her legs and sitting back.
Starfire nods over as she goes to sit then, cocking her brow and noticing the not-quite wariness over of Red Robin, "It is fine, this is completely normal. No one will bother us." Crossing her legs and sitting back. Giggling quietly, "Imagine if you did this over in Gotham with all of you." That would probably cause enough stress induced seizures to put half the city in the psychiatric ward while the other half stopped, stared. And probably more of a drop in the crime rate than anything else.
Sitting back over as she waves cheerfully at the onlookers, "Hello! Red Robin is with us from Gotham and this is the King of Atlantis." Well, a King of an Atlantis. But the one with the best chin.
At the sushi restaurant, Orin takes a seat outside the place and swivels his chair a bit to see the people at whom Starfire is waving. He tries to form a smile for the benefit of the crowd - benevolent king and all that - and it almost works.
"King?" remarks one spectator.
"What's Atlantis?" asks another.
"A theme-park twenty miles outside o' Metropolis."
"Oh."
Orin's smile turns into something more like a grimace of pain. He looks back at Starfire and Robin. "I doubt Batman will ever change any time soon, Red," he says with a tone that resembles something like an 'apology on behalf of the Batman'. "I think he has integrated himself into the laws of physics as one of the last great Constants of the universe. He makes stone feels like an angsty teenager." He snorts. "What about you, Kory? How are the Titans?"
Red Robin reaches up to pinch the bridge of her nose just where the mask covers as she listens to the onlookers. Unlike the others she wasn't quite so... relaxed. Or unlike Kori at least. None the less she remembers her posture while sitting, and clears her throat lightly as she plucks up a menu to look it over. "Oh look, so many good things for us paying customers to buy." Hint. Hint. Move along people.
"He actually isn't that bad if you get to know him. He's just very serious about the job, and with good reason. We don't exactly have powers like so many others do. And I would never do this in Gotham. I might get recognized."
Starfire looks over at Red Robin and can't help but giggle then over at the response of the girl, and then over at the other customers passing on by then as she glances over at Orin. "And the Titans are well. We are not so much a team as we are.." she searches for the right particular combination of words to say that do not include 'juvenile delinquents'.
"Apparently a repository for Robins outside of the East Coast." Safety.
Whether or not table service is a regular thing at this sushi restaurant, a young man walks over from the kitchens to enquire as to the superheroes' orders. Meanwhile, the onlookers stick around - not at all swayed by Red Robin's comments to leave the restaurant for paying customers. Orin ignores them and makes his order, adding a bottle of Evian to the list. Nearby, a small child tries jumping up and down to see past his older brothers for a look at Robin and Starfire.
"Is that - ? It's the Titans! Well, two of the Titans!"
"Which ones?"
"Starfire and Robin!"
"Man, they're hot!"
"What, Robin too?"
"Robin's a girl."
"Sheesh, I coulda toldya that."
"Careful, they're chaperoned by... King Triton."
Orin tries not to hide his face in the palm of his hand. "So... what would the two of you like? The treasury of Atlantis can cover this."
"Robins are migratory birds and you can't tell me that Nightwing does this often. I can't imagine him sitting around getting oggled by..." Red Robin looks up. She's more than happy to give a pleasant smile to the girl bouncing up and down but her brothers earn a narrow-eyed glare. Her head ducks down again holding the menu up as if it were a shield of more strength than just laminated paper. "I guess if they were girls he wouldn't mind, actually. He always was a bit of a show off."
Risking a glance over the top of her menu she looks between the two only to nod at Orin. "Thanks. I do have cash though if needed. I don't use cards when on the job." For obvious reasons. "I'll go with a California Roll. It's fake crab so that shouldn't annoy your friends on the beach." Was that a tease? Maybe.
Starfire glances over at Red Robin, "What? Nightwing is ogled quite often when he is in public. It is virtually every time that he is out in it that he is. By the women and the men." That's probably not helping over with Red Robin at the moment as Koriand'r gives a cheerful wave over to the others. "yes, Robin is a girl. And there is a boy Robin as well! For they are birds of a feather, and they flock together."
While going to order sushi with a heavy heap fo wasabi on top of it then before looking back over to her companions.
"I. Don't. Talk. To Fish." Orin clears his throat. "Or crabs. I meant crabs." He sighs - apparently this notion of 'which of his subjects he can eat' is a soft spot for him. It takes a moment or two longer, then he flashes Robin a sidelong smirk, then Kory. "You're both trouble. Here."
The tall man rises to his feet, then points his left hand (it always tends to get more attention, as if he might cast a spell or something with it) at the onlookers... specifically the brothers standing in front of the young girl. As if by mental compulsion, the older boys step to either side sheepishly, allowing a young, dark-haired, dark-eyed girl of about 6 to peek out.
Orin smiles at her, and then motions his hand toward their table - rather, to Starfire and Robin. "Would you like to come say hello?" He asks her. The girl nods mutely and steps out of the group to walk the few meters toward the Titans and the sea-monarch. She is dressed in a school uniform, but wears a button on her blouse with a very familiar stylised 'R'.
Red Robin blinks at the rather terse remark about talking to fish only to nod slowly. "Right. My bad. Sorry." She was still getting the California roll though. Avocado was the bomb. When he stands from the seat however to signal over to the little girl that had been looking her way, her attention returns to her.
It was impossible to miss that stylized 'R'. It was one she'd worn for years even when she herself was on the 'off duty' roster. Red puts down the menu and swivels in her seat toward the girl with a friendly smile.
It's then that she mock-gasps, and lifts a gloved hand over her mouth. "Oh, it's you, Robin!" She utters only to slip out of her seat into a crouch to be far closer to the little girl's height. Adding in a whisper she assures her, "I didn't recognize you without your mask!" She manages, somehow, to make it sound as if she were honestly surprised at finding her cohort out of costume.
Even as she greets the girl in this manner her hand dips into one of the many varied pouches at her belt. What's withdrawn is another green domino mask which she offers out to the little girl. "Here, you can use my spare."
Starfire looks over at Red Robin, "So, what are you to do over when you run out of Robins then? You will have to come up with new colours. Perhaps you could be Pink Robin, and another could be Orange Robin.." The display of cuteness has Starfire smiling then, and otherwise glancing over at Red Robin in approval then with her eyes, a slight nod given that is almost invisible before she returns her attention to Orin.
"Aqua-Robin," Orin blurts out before he can stop himself.
He immediately clears his throat and turns his attention to the little girl. The 'cuteness' in the air is palpable - and there are already photos on Facebook, Tumblr etc to prove it. Eyes wide as saucers, the little dark-haired schoolgirl accepts the mask from Robin, murmuring a very soft, "Thank you, Robin!"
Promptly, the girl throws her arms around Robin in a quick hug - then turns about and dashes back to her family, waving the mask triumphantly in the air. Orin looks on with the fondness of a father, and a deep, deep sadness at the same time. He tries to keep it mostly concealed, but it is still there. He does not realise he is crying until the tear falls past his cheek, then he shifts his seat to face more within the restaurant, rather than the crowd outside.
"I think you made a friend," he remarks quietly to Robin, giving Starfire a smile as well. Then he reaches for a small pocket in his pants and produces a solid gold coin. He slides it across to the young man that served them and says, "Exchange this for cash. Keep the change."
Red Robin smiles warmly at the girl, and even accepts the hug with a light pat offered to the girl's back in return. She doesn't hold her back from running off with her new prize however, and after she goes she rises to her feet to reclaim her seat. It's only then that she looks back between the pair feeling only marginally self-conscious now. "Hey, I used to be a hero-worshipping little girl, too. I know how it can be." Glancing over to the table again she nods slightly with a grin. "Especially having so many brothers."
Lightly she clears her throat again, and settles back down to sit looking far more relaxed than she was before at least. "Boss isn't going to like all the photos though," she muses quietly. "Thanks," she adds to Orin when he offers over the coin. "We can take this to go if you want. I mean, there are a lot of people."
Starfire nods softly over at Red Robin, and speaks quietly, "And this is why I appreciate this city more than I do Gotham." Her words are quiet and audible only to the pair over at the table with her unless one happened to have super hearing. "And I do not mind it at all so long as it does not bother you two." Starfire has long since become adjusted to crowds, both on her homeworld and in this one.
Orin smiles, the expression both grateful and wistful - bittersweet would be the word - at the same time. "To go," he repeats, agreeing with the Titans. As someone from the restaurant packs their food-orders in takeaway containers, the monarch of the seven seas rises to his feet. He stands there in front of the crowd - waiting. Not saying a word.
It takes a few moments of awkward silence, but people quickly get the hint and back away from the little sushi restaurant - parting like the Red Sea before Moses (except Charlton Heston didn't wear orange and green. Or carry a trident). Finally, Orin nods and motions for the Titans to follow as he heads out into the street.
"Where shall we go to?" he asks, his usual stoic demeanour returning after a lapse of painful emotion - a memory perhaps. "Have either of you ever ridden a dolphin before?"
END TRANSMISSION.