Diversions & Digressions | fanfiction by mara

Tim dragged his wandering mind back to the reality of a bubblegum-chewing teenager. If Oracle hadn’t been sitting right there, chatting with Superman over the comm, he’d have been much more concerned about safety. As it was, he was just confused.

The girl looked up from the magazine she was perusing and eyed him. “Either you’re Robin or there are multiple guys running around town in those colors.”

“I’m Robin, and you are…?”

“Jubilee,” she said, tossing the magazine onto a table. Tim noticed that the magazine landed precisely between two CPUs with very little flutter.

Oracle glanced up from the monitor she was studying. “Hey, Supes, you good to go now?” Pause. “Great. Later.” She spun her wheelchair around. “Jubilee, Robin. Robin, Jubilee.” She pointed at Tim. “Superhero.” Jubilee: “Mutant.”

“Uh…” Tim began.

“Now that the preliminaries are over, let’s get to the point.”

Over Oracle’s head, Jubilee and Tim exchanged shrugs and confused looks.

“The point,” Oracle said with a look at Tim that showed she hadn’t missed the look, “is that Jubilee doesn’t belong here.”

“In Gotham?” Tim asked, still confused.

“No, in this universe.”

Tim looked at Jubilee, who shrugged and smiled. “Okay. How did she get here?”

“Hey, standing right here!”

“Sorry. How did you get to this universe?”

“A guy named Gateway. He sits on a rock in Australia and teleports people around.”

Tim blinked.

“Look, it’s complicated. He has some mystical thing going on and he sends people where they need to go or something. Whether they want to or not.” She shrugged. “He showed up at my school and *boom*, next thing I knew, I was standing on a street corner with some dude trying to mug me.”

Oracle grinned. “Tell him what you did.”

“What you did?” Tim repeated faintly, wondering if this was all some joke and Dick was going to leap out, laughing hysterically.

“Nothing much,” Jubilee said. “I just pafed him.” She held up her fingers and fireworks popped and crackled above her fingertips.

Tim nodded, resisting the urge to look around for Dick hiding behind the curtains. Instead, he reached behind him for a chair and sat down.

“See?” Oracle said with barely restrained glee. “Mutant!”

“Some people,” Tim said, “would just buy a cat.”

“Hmmph. You have no sense of wonder for a Boy Wonder.” Oracle rolled past them, waving for them to follow. “C’mon, we’ve got work to do.”

“Is she always like that?”

“Like what?”

Jubilee looked him up and down. “Never mind. I forgot who I was talking to.”

“You just got here and you’ve already got an opinion about me? Good grief.” Tim hunched his shoulders, feeling very put-upon as he stood.

Jubilee followed Oracle down the hallway. “The guy who picked me up and brought me here talked about you.”

“Ah.” Tim grimaced. “Black spandex with dark blue?”

“Major dish with dark hair and a great ass?”

“I’ve never actually looked at his ass. But yes, that’s the one.” Oracle wheeled into the kitchen, Jubilee followed, and Tim rocked back on his heels. “Ah…”

“Get the ice cream out,” Oracle said, waving a peremptory hand. “I’m pretty sure that figuring out dimensional travel needs Rocky Road.”

Jubilee nodded. “I like the way you think. I’m gonna suggest that to my team leader when I get home.”

“Ice cream makes any crisis better.”

“Absolutely.”

They smiled in perfect accord and Tim’s heart sank. He had a feeling this was going to be a *long* evening.

Ping! Tim touched the comm in his ear. “Robin.”

“What’s your status?” Batman asked.

Tim winced. “Uh…getting ice cream for Oracle and a teenager from another dimension?”

There was a long silence. “I see.”

“It’s kind of a long story. Do you need me?” he asked hopefully.

“I think it can wait. But I *will* want the whole story. Batman out.”

“Right.” Tim trudged to the freezer.

“Have you got whipped cream?” Jubilee asked.

“Kid, we’re going to have to call in Zatanna the magician. She’s going to want cherries, hot fudge sauce, *and* whipped cream by the time she hears this story.”

Tim leaned his head against the freezer and hoped for a call from the Titans.

–end–