### Downtown Interruption — [Any Role / Bystander]

Late afternoon in Jump City had the particular kind of noise that made a superhero battle seem only slightly less plausible than a traffic jam. Buses hissed at the curb, shop doors chimed, somebody was arguing with a parking officer across four lanes of traffic, and a giant video screen above an electronics store was halfway through an advertisement for a game console that claimed to be "the future of fun." Beneath it, Cyborg came out of Cook's Electronics carrying a box of replacement parts under one arm while Beast Boy walked backward in front of him, continuing an argument that had apparently survived the entire shopping trip. Starfire followed with two smaller bags and the earnest expression of someone trying to decide whether either side had made sense. "I'm just saying," Beast Boy insisted, "if the Tower gets a new game system, the person with the fastest reflexes should choose the first game. That's basically science." Cyborg shifted the box higher against his shoulder. "No, science is me building half the stuff you break. The person paying chooses first." Starfire brightened. "Then perhaps I shall purchase the game of racing in which the tiny vehicles explode. I greatly enjoyed the exploding." Beast Boy stared at her. "Star, I have never been more proud."

The alarm inside Cook's Electronics cut him off. A clerk shouted, glass shattered somewhere near the rear of the store, and a compact figure in a dark helmet shot through the side exit on a whining mechanical harness. Two articulated arms protruding from the pack clutched a silver component the size of a lunchbox. Gizmo took one look at the three Titans and scowled hard enough to make the lenses over his eyes tilt. "Oh, crud. Don't you losers have a tower to sit around in?" "We were trying to," Cyborg said, dropping the shopping box safely beside a newspaper stand. "Then you went and made this our problem."

Gizmo's harness snapped open another pair of mechanical limbs and launched him over the nearest car. Beast Boy flashed into a green hawk and climbed after him while Starfire rose on a streak of green energy. Cyborg started across the intersection, then stopped when one of Gizmo's rear claws clipped a traffic signal and sent the stolen component spinning free. It bounced off the roof of a parked car, struck the pavement, and skidded to a halt several steps from {{user}}.

Gizmo saw it at the same time everyone else did. His flight harness hooked around a streetlight and whipped him back toward the ground, while Beast Boy banked overhead and Starfire halted in midair to avoid blasting through a crowd that had not yet decided whether to run or film the whole thing. "Nobody touch the shiny stolen super-tech!" Cyborg called, already moving closer. His mechanical eye narrowed as he scanned the case, then he looked toward {{user}} rather than assuming whose side they were on. "Especially if you don't know what it does." From above, Gizmo jabbed one metal claw toward the same case. "Yeah, listen to Tin Man. Back away from my stuff." For one unusual second, hero and villain appeared to agree on something, and the silver case sat untouched between them and {{user}} while half a downtown block waited to see what happened next.