5

Cyborg was the unlucky one to answer the doorbell the next morning.

"Ummm. Are you sure you have the right address?" he asked, fearfully hoping for an answer he knew he wasn't going to get. The delivery man stared back at him levelly, and Cyborg sighed. "Right. Just, just had to ask, man."

"Yeah, I know how it is. All those admirers sending crazy things... anyway, sign here, and here." Scribble scribble. "Thanks. Enjoy your, heh, gift," the delivery man added with a chuckle, leaving Cyborg to glare at his retreating brown shirted back.

The half-man half-machine paused to really take it all in and get over the emotional threshold of grudging acceptance, then finally let out a sigh.

"STARFIRE!"

The Tamaranian floated up behind him. A bit more slowly and cautiously than usual, either due to recent tribulations or simply due to the fact that Cyborg sometimes accidentally sounded scary when he was being loud even when he didn't mean to. "Yes, Cyborg?"

"When we were talking with Ms. Ashton after Rob left yesterday, did you happen to mention that you liked mustard?"

"I believe the subject was spoken of for a brief period of time. Why do you ask?"

Cyborg stepped to one side, and pointed.

"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

Several floors away, Beast Boy swore and clutched at his ears.

Starfire flew into the midst of the towering pillars of endless mustard containers, and tried to hug them all at once. Your standard Heinz yellow. Spicy brown mustard. Dijon style mustard. Beer-based mustard. Whole-grain mustard. Mustard sweetened with brown sugar, regular sugar, or maple. Honey mustard. High-brow brands of mustard with chunks of fruit. Mustards with fennel, dill, garlic, lemon, tomato, or basil. Hot pepper mustard. Mustard with horseradish. Mustards from Poland, Russia, Austria, Sweden. It was an enormous multi-tiered monument to brown and yellow condiments. Cyborg hadn't even known that many kinds of mustard existed. Some of them looked pretty good, too.

He felt really bad about what he was gonna have to do, wishing Rob were here to be the bad guy instead.

"Starfire, don't open those," he told her even as her fingers were posed like daggers to plunge in to the nearest pillar. "Don't you realize what this is?"

"This is a WONDERFUL present from a misguided but well-meaning friend, clearly," she replied with a vicious green glow in her eyes, practically drooling. "Do not fear, friend Cyborg, I will share the delicious mustard. After I have tried one bottle. Or two. Or possibly twenty."

"That's dirty mustard! Don't eat the dirty mustard, Star! It's a just bribe!"

Her eye-glow dimmed. "Oh..." Her feet touched the ground in disconsolation. "Does that mean we must hurt our new friend's feelings by refusing this undoubtedly costly present? All the green paper money will become wasted, as well as the tangy condiment!" She had learned, at some point, that mustard wasn't really a drink. It hadn't stopped her from continuing to treat it like one, though.

"Look, we'll talk to the grocery store or wherever she got this stuff, and we'll work things out. We can get Ms. Ashton her money back, and the mustard can go to store shelves where it belongs. No one'll get hurt. But if you accept this, it'll hurt you, in the long run. Trust me." He laid a comforting hand on her shoulder. "Okay?"

"Very well," she grumbled, kicking at the dirt and shrugging his hand off. "I am not a child, as you are well aware."

"Oh, I know, Star, I know. Maybe later we can go to the store and get you some of your own mustard though."

Her head lifted up a bit, body going an inch into the air with it. "Truly?"

"Yeah. And we can even find some of these hoity toity fancy brands, the ones with the spices and the herbs and stuff. How's that sound?"

"That does sound most delightful!" She beamed at him, back to her usual good cheer, eyes emeralds again.

He let out a little whew of relief. That was that crisis over and done with. Now he just had to get rid of all this stuff. Ideally before Robin saw it and had a heart attack. Again. Unfortunately he wasn't nearly finished with the T-Crane, but maybe he could jury rig the car to...

Then he saw that there was a few feet at the base of one yellow pile devoted to mustard 'specially formulated for grilled beef.' Unable to stop himself, he walked over to it, mouth slightly open. His good eye glazed over the more he read from the label, which was okay because his mechanical one retained crystal clarity. It was a brand new Jack Daniel's off brand, 'Manly Grillin' Mustard.' Horseradish. Bacon. Bourbon. Paprika. Worcestershire sauce. Soy sauce. Garlic and onion. Half the ingredients had the word 'hickory smoked' in them, whether it was a natural fit or not. The bottles had five golden stars all in a row on each label, and below the stars was a caption:

'Officially endorsed by Aaron McCargo Junior.'

Tears of joy formed in his eyes as he unconsciously reached towards the mustard.

"Cyborg," Starfire said from behind him, her voice one of motherly foreboding.

"It says you'll never want to use barbecue sauce again, Star," he whispered, feeling himself to be in the presence of the divine.

"Friend Cyborg."

"It's imported! They don't even SELL it in this state!"

"Friend Cyborg, do not eat the dirty mustard."

"I know," he whimpered in agony. "I knowwwww! Just... just let me pretend for a lil while, Star..." He fell to the ground on his knees, clutching the packaging that dare not be opened in vain supplication.

Then Beast Boy got involved after coming down to see what all the fuss was about. After that it was pretty much inevitable that they would build a mustard fort, which Cyborg considered the easiest way to keep Beast Boy out of trouble while he went to have a talk with Rob. After the fourth mustard avalanche, though, he figured it was best that he take charge of engineering and architecture personally, if only to keep the goods undamaged for safe return. He ended up building a small castle that was the pride of his eye, if he did say so himself. And he did! Parapets, spy holes, battlements, arched windows, and flag poles, all of mustard. With, of course, Aaron McCargo Junior's own in a place of honor, forming the throne of the throne room. Not bad for a mere hour's work, if he did say so himself. It helped when you had intelligent (or semi-intelligent, anyway, haw) livestock and super-strong flying aliens to lend a paw, hoof or hand. He was more than a little surprised that Raven hadn't come out to berate them yet. Only later would he learn that she was busy trying to persuade Robin that bribing the head of the Ayn Rand Institute into doing house calls was counterproductive.

While Beast Boy preoccupied himself sitting as a pigeon on a mustard statue of Superman in the mustard courtyard, Cyborg and Starfire found themselves together in the eastern outer ward mustard tower's spiral mustard staircase. He started to explain to her how human architecture, like spirals stairs, had evolved from various historical traditions, particularly the Roman ones, and from there things slid over into other kinds of history.

"...so yeah, that's why our God's depicted like that. They weren't really very mad at him or anything, the Romans just had what they felt were bigger things goin' on, and other factions pushed for them to get him outta the picture."

"But the empire of the Romans is no longer here, while there remain yet people who worship this man," Starfire added thoughtfully. "I wonder if some day people will think that the Batman and the Superman are no longer important, and attach great importance to things that we think are trivial."

"I dunno. Maybe. It depends on a lot of things." He sat down on yellow blocks with care, mindful not to put too much weight on any one spot. Couldn't dent the bottles. And man, this was a weird place to be having this kinda conversation! "We all wanna know that the things we do matter, but that doesn't have to mean bein' acknowledged. Even if no one worshipped God, He'd still be God. Or, you know, your God. Zzz. Gods. No 'fence." He shifted awkwardly.

She didn't seem pissed, though. "Tell me, Cyborg, why do you not visit the church more frequently?" She sat down on a honey mustard pedestal, swinging a leg idly. "Is it because you feel it would be an imposition upon the Titans, since Beast Boy, and Raven, and Robin and I do not share your God?"

"Eheh, no, noooo, nothin' like that!" He grinned and waved a hand. If he were a cartoon character he was pretty sure he would be sweatdropping right now. "It's just that things get so busy, you know, it's hard to make time. And a lotta people I know, well. They turned it into this big showy ritual, of how you go to church and dress the right way and talk to the right people. And that always seemed like missin' the point to me. I could probably stand to go a little more often, 'specially around the holidays, but I don't feel like believin' in God and followin' the faith has to make you a slave to routine. I mean, the big thing about being Christian is love. God is love. And who do ya know with more love in his heart than me, eh?"

They shared rather sly smirks. It was a rare moment when Starfire's sense of humor and an Earthling's sense of humor collided, but it did happen sometimes. "No one at all," she replied, patting him on the head. Stiffening himself for an unintended bruise, he was pleasantly surprised when she only used an appropriate light touch. Wow. She had been practicing a lot. Maybe all those makeout sessions with Robin helped. Then her expression turned down a tad. "Robin does not exhibit a sense of comfort around your faith. It puzzles me that he would react so to a faith native to his planet, but not towards mine, which should be strange to him."

He thought that through with a pondering frown. "Well, I didn't agree with a lot of what that lady said, but I will say that it's true that it's hard to respect somethin' if you've spent your whole life seein' how the gears of it churn. Maybe he doesn't care about your beliefs one way or the other because he hasn't seen enough to make a judgment call. Now, us Christians... for better or worse we've left a mark on this old mudball. And it's easy to get caught up in the people who use Christ as an excuse to hate, instead of a reason to love. But even if we've got some bad apples, it really is all about the love. Don't ever let anyone tell ya different."

"I will allow anyone to tell me anything they wish, of course, but I do not have to agree with their opinion. I am a little afraid to share my faith with Robin, now that I have seen how he reacts to a religion he is familiar with. But perhaps, while we wait for him to do the mellowing, we could share our faiths with each other to come to a greater understanding. Perhaps we can debate Ms. Ashton's theories with suitable rebuttal points once we have contrasted our own beliefs appropriately? That is, unless you would consider learning of Tamaranian deities to be the bore, in which case-"

He held up a hand and she obligingly halted in her verbal tracks. "Honey, that's the difference between me and Beast Boy. After all these years, haven't you noticed?"

Starfire looked at him, two-thirds blank, one third puzzled.

Cyborg grinned, the sheen of yellow plastic wobbling across his red lens. "I haven't let myself get bored of anything in this great old life yet, and I'm not startin' now. So, you share me yours, and I'll share ya mine. Deal?"

She clasped her hands in joy. "It is a deal!"