DISCLAIMER: I do not own Teen Titans, or any of the characters that support this genre.
Although, White Crow/Arthur Ferry is my own character, as is Stephanie. All supporting characters to ComicInk are Copyright 2017-2018. Thank you for reading and please enjoy some of the twists I have put on the series and its characters.
Ch. 1/ Robin had worked himself into a sweat. The bench press was starting to get to him. "365,366,367... 368,369,370." He put the bar down and walked to the newly upgraded shower. He tossed off his clothes and stepped in. The steam swirled around him and the warm water flattened his spiky hair.
Upstairs, Starfire was baking a traditional Tameranean dish for her friends. She slid the tray into the oven and looked out across the common room to the couch where Beast Boy and Cyborg sat, locked in an intense video game. "Ha! Ha ha ha! You can't drive to save your life, BB!" Beast Boy snarled like a dog. "It doesn't exactly make it easier when your opponent is the X-Box!"
"Friends! I have made the dish which we shall share. It will be ready in approximately 5 minutes." Starfire smiled warmly at her teammates. They whimpered.
Down the hall and two doors to the left, in a dark, forbidding room, Raven was meditating.
"Azarath Metrion Zinthos." She rose into the air and hovered like a music note on a blank page. From her chakra stone she saw Jump City. Her father growled in her ear unintelligibly. Then, suddenly, MEEPMEEPMEEP! Her Titans pager erupted. Raven pulled it off her belt and looked at the screen. Deathstroke. Slade. The tower is deserted in a hurry. Starfire's dish is left to cool on the counter. The video game has been abandoned. They all cramped into a central elevator. The team reached the garage, and the group loaded up. Cyborg put some mags in his sonic cannon, and Robin revved his R-bike. The team shot out across the bridge to Jump city.
At the border of Jump, the Teen Titans stopped at a police station that the pagers had alerted them to. It was burning from the ground up. Apparently Slade and some of his robot henchmen had attacked it, but the bots were left in steaming pieces in odd places. One looked like it had been thrown up to the top of a flagpole and used for target practice. One's face had been sliced apart when it got rammed into a sewer grate. But there was no sign of Slade. That is, until he burst out of the top window of the station.
He landed hard, cracking the asphalt, and one of his blades skittered away into the sewer grate. Some of his mask was twisted and bloodied, and his suit was mangled at the shoulder, keeping his head at an unnatural angle. A tall, lean figure leaped out of the window after Slade, and flames roared, reaching out behind him. He did a flip in the air, then landed on Deathstroke's chest, knocking his head into the pavement again.
"That guy is good!" Beast Boy said as the team watched from the shadows.
"We stay hidden. We don't know his intentions," muttered Robin.
"Well, he wants Slade dead," added Cyborg. "And that's okay in my book."
Slade kicked the figure back and pulled a small knife from his belt and threw it at him. It caught him in the shoulder and knocked him back. In the light of the fire, the Titans could see the young man. He had wavy black hair, and was clad in white and red, with an angular red mask and two wicked sharp katanas strapped to his back. He grabbed the knife and precisionally pulled it out, throwing it back, perfect form, into the asphalt an inch from Deathstroke's head. He walked up and leaned forward, stepping on Slade's right shoulder.
"Trust me, if I wanted to kill you, I would have done it by now," He said with terrifying calmness.
Slade growled as the boy put a katana against his throat.
"Tell me, how much do you value your life? 'Cause this isn't worth it. Where is she? Where are you hiding her, you sick sonofabitch?"
"As much as I want to see Slade's head rolling around like a bowling ball, we have to stop him before he goes too far," said nodded to Cyborg, and he lifted his sonic cannon.
The boy lifted his sword, about to bring it down, when a huge pulse blasted him into the building across the street. Rubble fell down on top of him. When the titans looked back, Slade was gone, and there was nothing but a pool of blood.
Robin climbed into the rubble of the old building and grabbed the young teen's boot. He gripped tight and pulled him into the street. Beast Boy leaned in and slapped the boy on the face a couple times.
"You knocked him cold, Cy!"
Cyborg looked down at the cannon in his arms. "It... it is a little powerful, I agree."
"Let's take him to the tower." Raven gazed at the boy. "We aught to question him. Plus I hear sirens."
Moments later, the T-Jet swooped in low and Cyborg piloted them home. The boy lay on a stretcher with gauze on his arm. Had he been untended by Raven, he would probably be dead now. But Rachel's healing had taken the brunt of the blow; he was almost healed. Raven sat on the foldout seat across from the boy. The rest of the team was up in the cabin. She looked down at the boy. Honestly, he was kind of handsome.
The boy's white chestpiece rose and fell, and he snored softly. But his dreams were filled with almost as much chaos as his awake job. He was always losing someone, and now he had lost her. He had time to rest, though. Time to prepare.
At the tower, Cyborg rolled the boy's stretcher from the plane hangar to his lab. He pushed the contents of a tabletop onto the floor and laid the boy down on it.
"Let's see who you really are."
Cyborg pulled the mask off the young man's face. He was amazed at how much gear was behind it.
He took a scan of the boy's face and immediately the screen came alive with news clippings and info.
"Arthur Ferry, 15, is from New York. Has a certain... liking to edged weapons and is very tech savvy. Doesn't mind killing. Other known aliases: The White Crow."
Very interesting.