#pre-robin

Tim spends most of his time in his bedroom, and his bedroom is definitely the best place in the Drake house. It’s cavernous, with a ten-foot ceiling and pale green walls. He has light beige carpeting and enough room for a four-poster queen bed. His bedspread is one of his favorite things. It’s a perfectly scaled star map of the night sky, and sometimes he sits on the bed and runs his index finger over his favorite constellations (Libra and Carina) before he crawls under the covers to sleep. He has a walk-in closet full of suits, school uniforms, polos, khakis, and button downs, and a dresser full of t-shirts, jeans, and sweatshirts. In the very back of his closet he has a box where he keeps clothes he’s bought himself – mostly skater-punk style – that he wears into the city when he sneaks out by himself, which is almost every weekend now that his parents really only come home every few months. There’s a gaming area near the closet with a navy-blue beanbag and a gaming console for a small, black flat-screen television mounted on his wall. He has an oak roll-top desk in one corner, but he only uses it when he wants to draw or do homework with pen and paper, or when he wants to pretend to be a detective working on a case. He leans back in his chair and says, “No, Mr. Batman, I don’t think that’s what the evidence suggests,” and then goes on to solve the case.

He also has a regular desk, a blocky, modern one with a desktop computer sitting on it, and a small stack of computer programming and hardware-building how-to books next to the monitor. He pretends to be a detective sometimes, but he is, in reality, a computer nerd who’s getting better and savvier about it every day. He spends most of his afternoons at that desk after breezing through his fifth-grade homework and the extra ‘enhancement work’ his mother assigns him every so often. He works at the desk until the window grows dark and his stomach growls. He traipses down to the kitchen to fix a quick sandwich or some pasta, and then he heads back to his room to work on his programming some more or to play video games.

Tim loves his room. He can entirely forget about the empty, echoing house around him when he’s in his room.

But sometimes, especially the first few days after his parents leave for another trip, he slips out of his room when he finally gets tired enough to sleep and chooses one of the guest bedroom doors, opens it, and goes in. He pretends he hasn’t ever been in the room before (and they have enough guest rooms that he can avoid the same one for months) and he pokes around the room, muttering, ‘oh, this is nice!’ or ‘hmmm, why would they decorate like this?’. He stretches his arms and goes to the vanity mirror and talks to himself for a moment, “That was a very long day, wasn’t it? Yes. I think I’ll just turn in tonight. Maybe go sightseeing tomorrow. The trip has absolutely wiped me out.” He goes to the bed with the plain colored bedspread and climbs under the covers. When he wakes in the morning, he leaves the bed unmade and says to the mirror, “I’m going to go see what they’re offering for breakfast,” before heading down to the kitchen to go about his actual day. He returns to that room each night for a few nights, before he makes the bed carefully one morning and closes the door with a quiet, “Well, wasn’t that a nice few nights away,” and heads back to his own bedroom.

The young girl who stood inside her High School's Martial Arts club was anything but the image that came to mind when one thought of a Martial artist. She barely stood at 4'9'', and her body was lithe and willowy rather than the strong, solid muscular individuals that dominated the martial arts scene. Still, she wore a well-fitted Gi with the sleeves cut off and a black belt wrapped around her waist, displaying the high level of skill that she possessed. She stood directly in front of a man much larger than herself, who was giving her a death glare for telling him that not only was he horrible at Martial Arts, but that he smelled like a wet dog.

Carrie placed her left fist in her right palm and bowed, never taking her eyes off of her opponent as he stood across from her on the mat. A confident smirk graced her face as she did so, countered by the angry scowl that marred the large brute's face as he shifted into a traditional Karate stance. The young girl, over a foot shorter and much smaller than the large man that she was facing off against, turned her body so that she was facing the man sideways, her feet spread apart and planted in a solid manner. Her left hand and foot led, with her left hand motioning for him in the universal "bring it on" way, and her right arm was tucked in close to her side with her hand closed into a fist.

"Are both fighters ready?" the officiater of the match asked, though he was simply the Hamilton High School Martial Arts Club's Captain, a sixth-level black belt in Tae Kwon Do. Carrie Kelly, the vice-captain, nodded in assent at the same time that the ugly brute that she had managed to piss off did, prompting him to raise one hand. "Begin!" he shouted as he brought the hand down and leaped back away from the combatants.

The larger man let out a war cry and ran forward, thrusting a frying pan-sized palm directly at the spot that Carrie's head occupied... only a single second before it reached her. Within that second she had weaved around the strike and was now inside his reach, giving him a gigantic smile as his face transformed into a look of terror as he realized that he had played into her hands. She curled both hands into a fist with her middle and index knuckles slightly extended before striking his arm in three places with unbelievable speed and precision. The brute's arm went totally limp as the pressure points she struck deadened the appendage, right before she grabbed his arm at his elbow and armpit and used his momentum to toss him over her shoulder. 

The brutish individual slammed onto his back and immediately rolled to his feet, his right arm hanging uselessly at his side as he regarded the girl who had just done what many thought impossible. Carrie stuck out her tongue in a petulant taunt that enraged him, causing him to run at her regardless of his dead arm. She smiled and tossed herself straight backwards when he attempted a roundhouse kick, landing on her shoulder-blades as he was thrown off-balance once more by his huge movements.

The small girl grinned at him again as she coiled up her body and placed her palms on the mat behind her head before kicking out as hard as she could directly at his exposed side, as he was using his left arm for a counter-balance. Her heels dug into his ribs with enough force to send him stumbling away, barely catching himself in time to see her spring back to her feet and come running at him for the first time since the match began. He spun with a backhand aimed at her face, though his injury caused his movements to be just slow enough for her to duck under it before coming up and bringing both of her hands to slap directly on his ears.

The brutish man let out a howl of pain as the sudden increase in pressure strained his sensitive inner ear, causing a small rupture in one of his eardrums that let blood flow out of his ear. Carrie ignored this as she crouched down and performed a sweeping kick, knocking the man's feet out from under him due to his off-balance stance. As soon as he hit the mat she mounted his chest, knees on both of his shoulders as she struck down at his trachea with enough force to crush it completely before stopping just short of it.

"Yield, dog-breath," she said sweetly, still giving him the cocky grin that had graced her face at the beginning of the match. His eyes bugged out at her as his mind tried to come to terms with the fact that this small girl had just absolutely dominated him. It was utterly incomprehensible, but there it was, and he had no choice but to raise his hands above his head in surrender.