I'm not sure who I think I'm sharing this story with. This fandom seems pretty dead to me.

Gun fire.

3 bullets.

A black rhino instead of a turtle.

Sirens.

Shouting.

Wheezing, gasping for air.

Abrupt silence...

"…doesn't look too good," a voice brought Beast Boy back to consciousness. He was too tired and sore to groan – too tired and sore to even open his eyes. But he didn't need to have his sight to sense that his friends were nearby.

"I shouldn't have let him go. I can't believe I didn't see that this would happen." He recognized Robin's voice and was semi-startled by his proximity. It sounded like he was right above him. He flinched.

"Sshh!" Starfire hissed loudly, voice drawing closer, "You will wake him!"

"You're not any better," the dull, apathetic droll of Raven's voice came from a divot near his feet that he hadn't noticed before.

Without thinking about it, Beast Boy took a soft but deep and contented breath, happy that his friends were there. It hitched hallway through, pain sprawling across his chest like ice cracking under the burning weight of sudden heat. He cringed and the relaxed sigh became a wheezy hiss. With numb and uncooperative limbs he tried vainly to curl into himself.

There was a long silence, the titans holding their breath in fear of their friend's waking.

"Beast boy…? Cyborg's voice was so hushed and tentative it was like he was hiding from a monster.

The youngest titan was too fatigued to even think about opening his eyes, let alone trying to engage in conversation so it didn't even occur to him that he should reply.

Unfortunately, Beast Boy hardly ever thought about whether he should or shouldn't open his mouth.

"Hmnnn," he groaned and cringed tightly, every muscle aching, as he tried to open his eyes. Both efforts felt like fire – like he'd completed the longest, most arduous triathalon of his life just a few hours prior and his muscles were bulging with gas bubbles. "It iz time tah gedup?" he croaked, his tongue feeling swollen in his mouth.

He had thought that he'd fallen asleep in the common room but the ceiling didn't quite look right. His vision was so blurry though he might as well have been blind.

A blur – blue, grey, with a glowing red dot off the center – shot in front of his eyes. As it spoke with a voice like Cyborg's the figure split into several clones of veritable opacity and saturation that each began to float away from their origin. The other various things hanging around above him did the same thing but it wasn't as bad. Each movement Cyborg made left a trail of these confusing after images behind.

It was like one of those animated cursers from an old windows 2000s computer.

Through thick sheets of fabric something patted his hand. He wondered if he could move it and tried, expecting the task to be easier for whatever reason. It felt like he was trying to move through molasses and when he tried a little harder his whole hand jerked, agony climbing across his muscles and cutting them up like unraveled, tightened spools of twine in an old textile machine. The pain punched him so hard it forced a gasp out of his lungs

Cyborg – or whoever had been touching his hand – withdrew, looking worried.

"No, BB," Cyborg said, answering his earlier question, "You don't have to wake up yet. Go back to sleep."

But the air was suddenly suffocating with the thickness of fear and worry and anxiety.

Fear meant many things to Beast Boy and none of them were good.

Animal instincts in response to that fear were what held him in a net of consciousness. Without knowing it he reverted back to his first language.

"Kuna ni kitu… fu-fulani- hnng! – …v-vib-aya," he huffed, adrenaline seeping into his bloodstream, "Nini kinaendelea…?"

"-east Boy?"

"Spe-…-ing gibberish- …- alm-…own!"

"-ey, hey-…-ight-….k?-….-ome o-…-be-…-me"

The words around him blended together until he no longer even recognized the language anymore.

"Ku-s-saidia…"

Someone was speaking.

Someone was stroking his forehead.

Someone was telling him everything was going to be alright and that he needed to go back to sleep.

He didn't understand why they thought he was awake to begin with.

Someone was screaming.

Someone was crying and begging.

Someone was holding a gun – an SKS semi-automatic rifle.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

The cries cut off, interrupted by panicked, wet, gurgling sounds. Dark, syrupy splashes of blood slapped the dry road. Distant explosions threw out powerful vibrations in the air, bruising skin and tearing through his eardrums.

Faces – familiar faces – open-mouthed, haunted and glassy eyes, bodies limp like fleshy, rubber Ndebele dolls fitted with gangly arms and legs.

He was crying out their names, trying to reach for them but unable to move.

Stop it –

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Please, Nyambe -

Bang! Bang! Bang!

I'm begging you, please stop - !

Bang! Bang! Bang!

The name burst from him like a pressurized bubble of hot air; Robin, stop it!

But Robin didn't stop. Like the image of his leader holding that SKS, forever burned into Beast Boy's retinas, he stayed…

…and kept shooting.

I was going to write a footnote but again, not expecting this thing to get any kind of attention so eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeehhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Oh, hell, fine:

(Swahili) Kuna ni kitu fulani vibaya: There is something wrong.

(Swahili) Nini kinaendelea?: What's going on?

(Swahili) Kusaidia: Help