~The Fight~
Every hero has a particular villain that he or she hates more than any other. The Doom Patrol has the Brotherhood of Evil, Batman has The Joker, and I have Slade. Slade is the most despicable villain I have ever met, and here he is proving it once again.
"Why is it that, of all the Titans, you are the only one who never attacks me directly? You attack my robots, and the villains I send after you all, but you never directly target me." Slade continued to mock Beast Boy.
"Even the incident with Terra, you were more concerned with protecting her than fighting me." He continued.
"Don't bring Terra into this!" he shouted back, having had enough.
"Look around you Beast Boy, you are hardly in a position to demand I do or not do anything." Slade directed Beast Boy's attention to our position. Sadly, Slade has a point. He sent Cinderblock and then Plasmus after us in rapid succession, and once we were exhausted, used a swarm of his robots to trap all the Titans save for Beast Boy.
"Release them." Beast Boy snarled quietly, sounding much more animalistic than I'd ever heard him in his human form.
"And you could have prevented this, if you'd only listened to my warning, Titans." Slade continued as though Beast Boy had not spoken. Slade had contacted us at the tower some days prior, saying something about wanting his first apprentice back. I don't really get what he's aiming for here, he's already captured me, why is he torturing Beast Boy?
"That's enough Slade!" I shout, I will not stand for him mocking my team.
"And what can you do about it, Robin?" Slade sneers in my direction, and then turns back to Beast Boy.
Again, he had us. We were too exhausted to resist his robots, especially considering he had about five restraining each of us.
"In all honesty, I just want to see how you fight, Beast Boy. It's been a while since I've had a good fight." With no other warning, Slade lunged at Beast Boy.
Beast Boy dodged Slade, turning into a wolf in the process, and countering almost as quickly with a bite aimed at Slade's neck. Slade responded with a kick, which Beast Boy dodged by turning into a pterodactyl and flying upwards, grabbing Slade by the shoulders with his talons in the same movement.
Slade rolled out of the way and Beast Boy shifted into the form of a wolf again, growling. Slade eyed Beast Boy interestedly.
"You can do better than that." He stated plainly. What is with this guy? Didn't he just finish saying that he's never directly fought Beast Boy before? How would he know what BeastBoy can and can't do?
Beast Boy snarled at Slade and charged toward him in the form of a cheetah, lunging constantly from every direction as Slade dodged. Each lunge laded Beast Boy closer and closer to the villain, and the dance got more and more deadly. Before long, Slade was only just barely dodging the attacks.
"Better, Beast Boy. But not good enough." At beast Boy's next lunge, Slade jumped up and grabbed him by the neck, dragging him down to the ground and landing on top. Beast Boy wasted no time in turning into a bear and pushing Slade off of him.
"Maybe you need more convincing. Attack to kill me, Beast Boy, or I'll hurt your friends." Out of no where, Slade's bots brandished knives at us. I saw Raven and Starfire struggle against this, but as Ravens mouth was currently taped shut she couldn't say her chants and Starfire was blindfolded and her arms were tied behind her back so she couldn't use her starbolts.
Cyborg and I were in similarly helpless situations, tied up and beaten down after so much fighting today. The knives were being held up at our necks and Beast Boy wasted no time in attacking once more, this time as a wolf.
As I watched, it seemed as though Beast Boys form was blurring, like he was trying to transform, and trying not to transform, at the same time. It was reminiscent of that time when he was fighting to contain the Beast created by the chemicals he was exposed to during the fight with Adonis.
They kept fighting, Beast Boy visibly slowing down by whatever was interfering with his phases.
"Show your true potential, Logan, or watch your friends die!" Slade shouted. Something in Beast Boy's eyes changed, and suddenly he seemed to lose all humanity, giving in to the animals inside him. Then, my green teammate did something I will never forget, something I never thought possible. He transformed into a creature that doesn't exist, that never has existed, that none of us knew he could turn into: a demon. He was huge, standing at seven feet with the head of a fly, the body of a muscled man with a beetle-like exoskeleton armor, and the claws of a t-rex and feet with the talons of a large bird of prey. He also had fly-like wings protruding from his back and a horned tail. Needless to say, I, and I imagine the rest of the team as well, was somewhat terrified. The only indication that this creature was our Beast Boy was that it was green from head to tow.
"Now there is the changeling I remember." Slade said gleefully. Wait- what? What does he mean 'the changeling HE REMEMBERS?
Beast Boy let loos a fearsome wail that sounded as though hell itself was contacting us from his vocal chords, and moved towards Slade with a speed unparalleled by even Kid Flash. Slade himself seemed both proud and worried, he could barely keep up with Beast Boy in this form. Actually, scratch that, he couldn't keep up. Slade was blocking and dodging only about half of Beast Boy's swipes, the rest he was enduring.
The fight went on for about five minutes, Beast Boy clearly having the upper hand and Slade taking a serious beating.
There was a pause as Slade got one of very few hits in, and Beast Boy backed of, switching out of that form and kneeling, apparently incapable of holding himself up any longer.
"Beast Boy!" We all shouted immediately, worried. All the shock of what we just saw finally setting in.
"Well done, Logan." Slade was out of breath and swaying as though he were about to fall. He was bleeding from many of the places Beast Boy's claws had reached. Why the hell does he keep calling Beast Boy Logan?
"You have not been training, Logan. You used to be able to dominate even the most evil of your demon forms. You were much faster in that form, have you lost control of that forms' mind? Can you no longer control it? Pity, you will have to improve if you're ever going to be acceptable again." Slade continued, still calling Beast boy by that name.
"Let my friends go." Beast Boy demanded quietly, will power alone keeping him conscious.
"You are really in no shape to demand anything of me." Slade answered cruelly. I had had enough. Beast Boy had kept him occupied for enough time fore me to regain some energy. I kicked the bot in-front of me with wicked force, and made quick work of those behind me. I saw Cyborg do the same, then rush towards the girls to help them out of their bindings as I ran at Slade.
"It seems my work here is done, for now." Slade said and ran before I got to him, his robots releasing the rest of the team and retreating with him. A split second decision, one only I could make as the leader of this team: pursue the highly dangerous and intelligent villain who was already considerably weakened, or help my teammates, all of which were still very weak, myself not much better.
The decision was made for me as I saw Beast Boy turn into a wolf, howl, and fall forward. I ran to him, catching him just before he hit the floor.
~Back at the Tower~
"What was that?" Shouted Cyborg in the common room.
"I was not aware friend Beast Boy could transform into such horrible creatures." Starfire added in sadly, worried about our friend.
"None of us did, Star. What was that anyway? All I could think of was that it was some sort of demon." I answered Starfire, then addressed the rest of the team, excluding Beast Boy, who was still in the infirmary.
"A beezlebub, biblically one of the seven princes of Hell." Raven said in an almost monotone. She was quite shaken by the spectacle that we had witnessed only an hour prior.
"And what was with Slade calling Beast Boy 'Logan'?" Cyborg voiced my own mental query.
"And did they not seem more acquainted than they should be?" Starfire added.
"It seems as though Slade has known Beast Boy for a lot longer than we thought. He clearly knew Beast Boy was capable of turning into such creatures." Raven added.
"We're going to have to ask Beast Boy when he wakes up. I think... I think Logan might be his actual name." I added finally. There was a collective gasp. To protect our respective families, the Titan's have all kept their pasts and identities secret.
Some of our pasts have been exposed for us, like Starfire's and Raven's, but only because neither of them could really hide anything anymore after Blackfire and Trigon, respectively, showed up. Cyborg's past was sort of displayed on the news for months. When he became a Titan, some news reporter connected his being a half machine man to the case of the boy that survived the attack of that rampant robot in S.T.A.R. Labs because his father made him a body out of metal to make up for everything that robot tore off.
In reality, the only Titans whose pasts have been kept secret from the other Titans are Beast Boy's and my own. Though the others know I worked for Batman for a long time before going off on my own. Batman is famous, so obviously his side-kick would be known. They didn't know how I got to working for Batman though.
The same is basically known of Beast Boy. He was in the Doom Patrol. However, his story is even more vague. The others know how long I worked for Batman, and they've known since we met. The rest of us only found out Beast Boy used to work for the Doom Patrol when he was contacted by them, and even then we don't know for how long or at what point in his life.
In reality, though Beast Boy is the most carefree and most naive-looking, he has been most effective at obfuscating his past, until now. Beast Boy has never, in his time with the Titans, transformed into something remotely similar to what he turned into today, meaning he and Slade somehow have a history that pre-dates the Titans.
Again, what Slade said to him during their battle comes to mind. Beast Boy had never, until today, actually fought Slade. Wherever Slade has been involved, Beast Boy has occupied himself in fighting the villains Slade sends to annoy us, never actually targeting Slade. How did I not notice this? And how have I worked with Beast Boy, with the Titans, for three years and not known the extent of Beast Boy's powers? Not even when we were fighting Tirgon did Beast Boy use that ferocious power.
I was brought out of my thoughts by Cyborg.
"Guys! BB's waking up."
