TITANS FOREVER
CHAPTER ONE: THE RANCIDS
In Jump City, everything can change in an instant. This is a fact that the city's people know well. Life is complex in its details, yet simple in its themes, and in a place like Jump City life happens big. People love deep and hate deeper. People aspire to new heights and, sometimes, to new lows. Each person tries their best to make their mark, and in this pursuit they create works and histories that build off one another, growing more and more extreme as time passes, until the city is awash in a culture of the surreal.
Thus, though it came as a terrible surprise, it was not altogether unusual when a peaceful morning in the Jump City Central Park exploded into mayhem. A robotic tiger, roughly the size of a two story home, fell out of the sky and impacted like a meteor into a statued fountain. Its landing caused the earth to shake. Shattered bits of pavement and stone flew through the air, accompanied by a blastwave of soil. All around, people screamed in surprise and terror, some taking cover, some running for their lives. The colossal automaton flexed its back, roared with mechanized might and slashed its bladed tail back and forth. As if cued by the roar, a swarm of smaller, life-sized tigerbots leapt out from their behemoth mother. These monsters immediately began rampaging throughout the park, causing further panic. They ripped and tore with razor claws and burned buildings and greenery with great gouts of fire that shot from their open mouths. Above the clangor of the sudden devastation, a rough laughter echoed as a human figure peered down from the behemoth's metal head.
"GOOD MOOOORNIIIIIIIIING, JUMP CITY!" bellowed Johnny Rancid, sneering manically from atop his latest creation, "WE ARE YOUR ENTERTAINMENT FOR TODAY! NO! No, wait..." Rancid paused for a moment to pantomime thought, "YOU ARE OUR ENTERTAINMENT FOR TODAY! HAH!"
Rancid threw back his long shock of greasy hair, flexed his tattooed muscles, and laughed with the sort of self-satisfaction that only the deranged can experience.
"THAT'S RIGHT!" came a shrill cry. A skinny, blonde girl stepped out from the shadows behind Rancid. She wore a hot-pink tube top, a jet-black mini skirt, and a metallic, clunky belt. "RUN! SCREAM! DANCE FOR ME! DIE FOR ME! HAHAHAHA!"
"You tell 'em, Kitten," said a smooth, luxuriously deep voice. Following the girl was a leather-jacketed, jack-booted thug with a four-legged spider for a head. His humanoid body dangled almost lifelessly as he jerked forward on his arachnoid limbs. Kitten turned to face this abomination with her hands clutched together and her eyes shining.
"Oooh, Fangy-Poo!" Kitten swooned, clinging onto the dangling human form inside the cage of spiderlegs, "It's just as beautiful as you said it would be!"
"I'd never lie to you, baby," Fang crooned through his jibbering mandibles, eight eyes blinking in random syncopation.
"'Ow lovely," mumbled a spikey-haired, gap-toothed, pox-faced lad from across the metal back of Rancid's behemoth. Punk Rocket lounged carelessly, his guitar on one side and a brown-bagged bottle on the other. He took a deep swig of hidden liquid and sighed, "Lemme know when the real action kicks off, yeah?"
"IT'S KICKING OFF NOW!" erupted a fifth and final voice. A muscular young man with a military haircut, black fatigues, and a belt full of detonators strode forth.
"Hahahaha! Yes!" Rancid cheered, his eyes burning with hateful glee. Rancid threw his arms wide and addressed the burning parkscape before him, "LADIES AND GENTLEMAN! BOY AND GIRLS! VICTIMS OF ALL AGES! ALLOW ME TO INTRODUCE YOU TO A GOOD FRIEND OF MINE! JUMP CITY, SAY HELLO TO THE REVOLUTIONARY! THE VISIONARY! ALL THE WAY FROM GOTHAM CITY! THE MAD MAN WITH THE MAD PLAN! MAD STAN!"
"JUMP CITY!" Mad Stan howled, striding forward to the head of Rancid's mechano-tigergiant. "YOUR ECONOMY RISES! OTHER ECONOMIES FALL! EVERY DOLLAR YOU SPEND EFFECTS US ALL! CAN'T EVER FIND BALANCE! EQUALITY ISN'T TRUE! WE'VE GOT NO ANSWER! SO WHAT DO WE DOOOOO?!"
Rancid, Kitten, and Fang all jumped and cheered the answer along with Mad Stan. Punk Rocket chanted blithely and pumped a lazy fist:
"BLOW IT ALL UP!"
Mad Stan pressed a button on one of his detonators. A nearby gazebo immediately turned to nothing more than hot ash and cindered splinters as it exploded with an overabundance of force. The blast sent out a bone-breaking shockwave and instantly charred all the greenery for several yards. A swirling pillar of flame roared in the explosion's wake, and a cloud of acrid smoke rose up into the blue of the coastal sky.
Citizens screamed anew. Those who had taken cover now began to flee in desperation, many clinging tightly to their children. The tigerbots' red glass eyes caught the movement of new prey and they gave chase. Punk Rocket yawned. The other three cheered. Mad Stan worked himself up into a greater frenzy.
"OUR SCARCITY IS ARTIFICIAL! OUR JUSTICE CORRUPT! OUR FAILURES BENEFICIAL! KEYNESIAN CUT UP! OUR OBSOLESCENCE IS PLANNED! OUR PAIN HAS VALUE! OUR ONLY CHOICE IS TO SUFFER! SO WHAT DO WE DOOOOO?!"
"BLOW IT ALL UP!"
Another of Mad Stan's fat fingers. Another big, red button. The nearby snack-shack erupted in a fountain of blackened aluminum shrapnel and a twenty foot spire of red-glowing gas. More terror. More tears. More cheers from the behemoth's back. Mad Stan tossed away his two spent detonators and pulled two new ones from his belt.
"OUR EDUCATION IS PUBLIC! OUR BEHAVIOR PRESCRIBED! INDOCTRINATION ENFORCED! INSTINCT CHEMICALLY DENIED! DON'T TALK AND DON'T THINK! REBEL HOW WE SAY! OUTRAGE IS ATTENTION! THOUGHT NEUTERED AND SPAYED! THE OPPOSITION CONTROLLED! REVOLUTION UNTRUE! ALL RECOURSE HIJACKED! SO WHAT DO WE DOOOOO?!"
"BLOW IT ALL UP!"
Mad Stan raised two mad hands, both thumbs poised righteously over red buttons. Many of the injured and cornered looked up at Mad Stan, fear and soot on their desperate faces. Others were in no position to look. The tigerbots were not killing people, but instead playing with their prey, cutting and scorching but never slashing or burning. They let their wounded targets up to run before chasing them down again. The helpless people cringed into one another as Mad Stan grinned widely and savored the moment, but just before the young man could trigger what would surely have been fiery explosions of excessive magnitude, a precisely aimed bird-a-rang swooped through the air and knocked both detonators of out Mad Stan's hands.
"GYAAHHH!" Mad Stan grunted, hugging his hands in pain as the severed detonators clanked uselessly against the neck of Rancid's behemoth. The bird-a-rang rushed airily back to its source, and Robin caught it in a green gloved hand.
The Boy Wonder smirked down from a nearby building-top just beyond the park's treeline.
"Sorry to interrupt your speech," said Robin, producing a handful of explosive discs from his utility belt, "But I've got a comment on your human condition: TITANS! GO!"
"FINALLY!" Rancid roared, rushing forward onto his behemoth's head and knocking back the still-wincing Mad Stan. Rancid brought two fingers to his lips and whistled sharply. All around the immediate area, the tigerbots turned towards Robin and snarled, their metal teeth dripping liquid fire. Jet-rockets whirred out from slats in their backs and the tigerbots launched into the air trailing flame and exhaust. The beasts roared fiercely as they approached Robin's perch.
Robin leapt into the open air with a blurring fury. As he fell to meet the burning maws of Rancid's monsters, Robin arced his arm forward and let the explosive discs fly. Rancid's beasts opened their mouths and set the sky on fire. Rancid grinned madly as the flames rushed up to meet the Boy Wonder, but before the beasts' searing screams could reach Robin, a hailstorm of glowing starbolts flanked the tigerbots from above, each one hitting their target with the force of an artillery blast.
Starfire blurred overhead in a streak of alien green. Her battlecries echoed across the sky as she destroyed each of Rancid's tigerbot's single-handedly. The flamebreath caught short as both Robin and his explosive discs whooshed unscathed through the weakened firewall. Robin tumbled to the grassy parkgrounds as his discs landed squarely in the eyes of Rancid's behemoth. The great automaton reeled backwards and roared in programmed pain as the lenses and circuitry of its cybernetic eyes exploded and began to melt inside its own metallic skull. Robin smirked as he stood from his roll and unleashed his extended bo-staff.
"DAMN IT!" Rancid pulled at his greasy hair, keeping his balance even as the behemoth reeled beneath him, "SO CLOSE!"
Kitten shrieked disgustedly into Fang's chest. Mad Stan wailed and rolled with the behemoth's movement.
"Yeah. Nice one." Punk Rocket smirked as he leaned up from his lounging position and eyed the destruction. He hopped up to his feet, letting his bagged-bottle fall, and readied his guitar.
"LET'S GO, BIRDBOY! RAAAAAUGH!" Rancid roared as he leapt off the head of his behemoth. As Rancid fell, a motorbike launched out of the behemoth's chest. Rancid landed deftly on the mid-air motorbike and, gripping its handlebars tightly, hit the ground accelerating towards Robin at a kamikaze pace.
"Show time, Kitten," Fang said wistfully. He placed an arachnid kiss on Kitten's pouting lips and then launched himself off into the nearest unburnt tree with an unsettling, spiderlike lurch.
"LEZ CRANKET UP THEN!" Punk Rocket wailed, finally excited. He struck a messy chord and shot off into the air, cradling his guitar as it sonically propelled him towards Robin. Robin held his ground, focusing all his attention on Rancid. Punk Rocket grunted and, mid-flight, struck an off-key chord that sent a warbling mass of devastating sound towards the Boy Wonder. A shredded frenzy of grass and soil marked the approach of Punk Rocket's lethal tones.
"HOW 'BOUT SOME AUTOTUNE? YYYYAAAAAAAHH!" Cyborg yelled as he jumped out of a nearby bush. Cyborg's forearm morphed into his signature sonic canon, but then grew and extended several acoustic panels. Cyborg fired his own beam of energized soundwaves, which cancelled out Punk Rocket's weaponized noise and knocked the crusty villain out of the air. Punk Rocket yelled as he crashed roughly into the hard ground.
"RRAAAUUUGH!" Rancid roared as he bore down on Robin. Robin kept his stance perfectly still. His eyemask narrowed in concentration as the villainous biker closed the last few yards between them. At the last second, Rancid stood, leaned back, and pulled the front of his bike up in a wheelie. As he did so, rows of spikes chunged out of his bike's tires, catching light as they spun.
"DIE!" Rancid cried as he allowed his front tire to fall at Robin just as they met. Robin merely side stepped and swung his bo-staff, catching Rancid squarely in the chest. Rancid could not scream, for the blow knocked the wind out of him and sent him sprawling back onto the scorched parkgrounds as his bike roared off unmanned.
"Aaah!" Kitten gasped as Rancid and Rocket both went down. She stomped across the metal back of Rancid's beast to stand in front of the still wincing Mad Stan, "GET UP IDIOT!" she shrieked, stomping an expensive shoe. "QUIT WHINING AND DO WHAT YOU DO!"
"Wh-what do I do again?" Mad Stan asked, tremble-lipped and teary-eyed, as he kneeled over his pained hands.
"Grrr!" Kitten ground her teeth together, "You moron! BLOW IT ALL UP!"
"Oh," Man Stan's face opened up with childlike surprise. A hazy gleam covered his eyes.
"Yeeess!" Kitten grinned as Mad Stan stood, his sneering smile wide enough to show his receding gums.
"Blow it all up," said Mad Stan, his eyes looking at nothing. His chest heaved with heavy breath and he drooled from the edges of his smile.
"YEEES!" Kitten cheered.
"Blow it all up!" Mad Stan repeated. He marched to the behemoth's head with heavy, lumbering footfalls, chanting to himself, "Blow it all up! Blow it all up! Blow it all up!"
As Mad Stan meandered, Rancid caught his breath, jumped to his feet, and whipped out a long, spiked chain all in one fluid motion. Robin backflipped away from the chain as it slashed underneath him, leaving a deep gash where he'd been standing a moment before. As Robin landed he side-stepped away from another chain-lash, and then another, and another. Rancid grunted as he whipped and whipped at the Boy Wonder fruitlessly.
At the same time, Punk Rocket gathered himself and began to shred his guitar, sending an audial onslaught in Cyborg's direction. Cyborg took a powerstance and calmly aimed his modified cannon-arm at Punk Rocket. The weapon-limb whined for just a moment before firing off a continuous stream of counter-sound. The two tones met like a thunderclap and struggled at the point of collision. The tonal tension shot out warbling waves of omnidirectional wind. A desperate sweat broke across Punk Rocket's forehead as his strumming intensified. Cyborg took a couple of relaxed steps forward with his cannon-arm still raised and firing, causing a knockback of Punk Rocket's own noise. The villain clenched his teeth and dug his heels into the earth. His constant string-slashing continued on even as the tonal forces inched him back. Cyborg strolled casually towards his foe, but turned his gaze away carelessly.
"We gonna finish this, or what?" Cyborg called across the way, a playful expression lighting up his face.
"Do it!" Robin called back as he twirl-dodged another lash from Rancid's spike-chain.
Making their moves in tandem, Robin lunged for Rancid with his bo-staff while mini-missiles launched from abruptly opening silos in Cyborg's shoulders.
Rancid grunted and backstepped, gripping a section of his chain with both hands and using it to parry a series of fast jabs from Robin's staff. Punk Rocket grit his teeth and struck a powerchord. The tonal tension reversed and launched Punk Rocket backwards and upwards just as the mini-missiles exploded around him.
"Not getting away that easy, dude," Cyborg smirked and followed Punk Rocket's trajectory with his counter-sound cannon-arm, forcing Punk Rocket to keeping shredding in an erratic attempt at his normal flight.
As the duos struggle, Mad Stan arrived at the head of the behemoth. His glazed gaze found his comrades fighting below him, but their plight did not seem to penetrate past his clouded eyes.
"Blow it all up," Mad Stan intoned, a mantra of mindless destruction. He pulled a detonator from his belt and pressed it without ceremony. A nearby playground ripped apart in a shockwave and a plume of fire. Mad Stan dropped that detonator and pulled out another.
"Blow it all up," repeated Mad Stan. A non-chalant button-press. A public washroom turned to burning rubble.
"Blow it all up," a pavilion with tables. "Blow it all up," an outdoor auditorium. "Blow it all up," a bike-rental rack.
One by one in rapid succession, a series of massive explosions tore through the park, causing Rancid, Robin and Cyborg to take cover, and allowing Punk Rocket to escape into the sky.
"Blow it all up!" Mad Stan's mad grin grew ever wider as his face lit up in another explosion. "Blow it all up!" The smell of ashes and burnt chemicals wafted into his nose, increasing his arousal.
"That's enough! You IDIOT!" Kitten wailed, clasping her hands over her ears in an attempt to block out the deafening blasts.
"BLOW IT ALL UP!" Mad Stan repeated, pulling out yet another detonator, heedless of Kitten's words.
Kitten growled at this and kicked Mad Stan in the back of the knee, "I said STOP IT!"
Mad Stan grunted as the kick brought him to a knee and caused him to lose grip of his detonator. For a moment the park was filled with a deafening silence as the echoes of the last explosion vanished.
"Huh," Kitten sighed, taking her hands off her ears.
"Blow it all up," Mad Stan said, standing again and turning to face Kitten, his expression almost inhuman in its intensity.
"Yeah, but NOT all at once, RETARD!" Kitten nagged, shoving a wagging finger in Mad Stan's face, "You'll blow US up, too!"
Mad Stan's eyes focused for a brief moment as something got through to him, "All at once."
"No!" Kitten stamped her foot.
Mad Stan undid his belt of detonators and held it aloft. Turning it around revealed one red button that had wires to every detonator slot.
"Blow it ALL up!" Mad Stan said with childlike glee.
"Why won't anybody listen to me?!" Kitten shrieked as she lunged for the belt in an attempt to wrestle it away from Mad Stan, but the much larger man held her at bay with a single arm. Mad Stan brought the final button close to his twisted face, entranced.
"Blow it all up! Blow it all up! BLOW IT ALL UP! NOW!" Mad Stan grunted and moved to headbutt the final button, but just before his forehead turned the Central Park into an ashpit, the detonator belt lit up with blackshine.
-DONK!-
"OWIE!" Mad Stan reeled back, clutching his forehead.
"I hate to agree with Kitten," Raven said, slowly ascending from a fountain of shadows that bloomed from the behemoth's back, "but, at least in this case, you really should listen to her."
"Ya!" Kitten crossed her arms and stuck her tongue out at the wincing bomber.
"Blow it! All! UP!" Mad Stan growled, his grin turned to a grimace and his drool started to foam. Kitten gulped and took a few steps back. Raven merely deadpanned and levitated the detonator belt inside the hidden folds of her cloak.
"You get one chance to think better of this," Raven droned at the seething villain.
"RRRAAAUGH!" Mad Stan roared and threw himself at Raven. She merely levitated to the side and allowed Mad Stan to careen off the behemoth's back, his roar quickly turning into a frightened squeal as he fell roughly two stories to the burnt ground below.
"Haha!" Kitten giggled, peering over the side of the behemoth, "Maybe that'll knock some sense into him!"
"Doubt it," Raven droned, floating up next to her. "Oh, and you're under arrest."
Shocked realization dawned on Kitten's face and she scrambled back up to her feet, "HA! You think you'll stop us?! My guys will tear you to shreds!"
"They seem kinda busy," Raven glanced over to the battleground before them. Kitten looked as well.
On the ground, Rancid's bike had swerved back around to the battle and found its rider again. Rancid tore through the blazing battleground, his spiked wheels throwing up ash and dirt as he took potshots at Robin and Cyborg with his blaster. At the same time, Punk Rocket strafed the Titanic duo with destructive noise from the sky. For their part, Robin and Cyborg scrambled to evade the villainous offensive and return fire. They were expertly avoiding damage, but were not gaining any control of the situation.
"Hah!" Kitten laughed, "They've got 'em on the ropes! Won't be long now before-"
The situation on the ground changed drastically as Starfire swooped in, tackled Punk Rocket mid-air, and then green-streaked him out of sight entirely. Robin and Cyborg immediately concentrated their fire on Rancid, who's only response was to rev his engine and peel off into a different part of the park with Robin and Cyborg hot on his heels.
"You were saying?" Raven grinned ever-so-slightly.
"Hhuhh... Fiiine!" Kitten sighed and pressed a button on the buckle of her clunky metallic belt. With a flash of light and a ringing of metal, a felinoid battle suit enveloped Kitten.
"Guess I'll have to tear you to shreds myself!" Kitten's voice buzzed out from her cat-eared helmet. She punctuated her statement by unsheathing a set of claws from her metal-gloved fingers.
"Sooo threatened," Raven droned, still grinning.
"You should be," a deep voice growled behind her.
Raven barely managed to dodge the stream of mutant web that Fang shot at her from behind, and then just managed to block Kitten's powersuited-lunge with a flat plane of blackshine. Kitten's claws raked across the mystic shield as if it were a chalkboard. Raven levitated up and away from the behemoth in an attempt to gain air superiority, but this was in vain, as Kitten power-leapt above her and pounced down with claws flashing. Raven shielded herself from above, catching Kitten's pounce but losing a great deal of altitude in the process. Raven used her magic shield to shrug Kitten off, but as she did so Fang managed to web her, binding her limbs together and tethering her to the spiderpunk. Kitten's powerarmor let her doublejump through the air and perch back on top of the nearby behemoth.
"Well well," Kitten's voice crackled through the helmet once more. She tinkled her claws together in pleasure as Raven struggled against Fang's ever growing cocoon. "That was easy enough."
"Ain't done yet, mama."
"Huh?" Kitten gasped. She turned to find the voice but instead found a green bull at the end of its charge.
Beast Boy collided hard with Kitten, sending the two falling through open air. While Kitten only shrieked, her suit reacted, producing a built in jet and flying her off to a safe altitude. Beast Boy morphed into a falcon and swooped back overhead.
"Baby!" Fang whipped around to check on Kitten, and that split second gave Raven all the time she needed.
"Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos!" Raven intoned. A surge of blackshine shredded the cocoon from the inside out. Raven's eyes glowed hot grey and she took an esoteric pose, coalescing the black energy into a spiraling wave that bore down on Fang. The spiderpunk moved inhumanly, wrenching his spiderlimbs into a sick angle before catapulting himself away from Raven's magic, his human torso ragdolling along the entire time. Fang landed deftly in a nearby tree, hoping to hide in the smoke and remaining foliage, but no sooner had he landed than a screeching chimpanzee fell on him from above.
"Damn it!" Fang cursed as the green ape wrestled him. Beast Boy's agility and hand-feet allowed him to keep up with Fang's spider moves, and before long the two tumbled to the ashen ground opposite one another.
"Give it up, dude!" Beast Boy said, morphing back into his normal form. "You're no match for the Teen Titans, and you know it, fool!"
"What he said," Raven droned, coming down to hover nearby.
"You two are forgetting one thing," Fang crooned, his human body actually moving as he held up a single finger.
"What's that?" Beast Boy asked, genuinely curious.
"THE POWER OF LOOOOOOVE!" Kitten shrieked as she swooped in from the skies.
Raven grunted and encased herself in a sphere of blackshine just as Kitten hammered her at an angle from above. The force of the blow caused Raven's black sphere to pinball off the ground and up into the air. At the same time, Fang lurched sideways, shooting paralyzing venom at Beast Boy. The green teen morphed into a snake at the last second, avoiding the poison, then shifted into a rabbit and darted after Fang.
In the air, Raven and Kitten traded blows, slamming into one another at high speeds and sending deafening echoes reverberating over the burning and abandoned wasteland that had been a tranquil morning park just minutes before. Beneath them, Fang and Beast Boy darted inbetween blazing trees and smoking rubble in a potentially lethal game of tag, with Beast Boy performing impossible maneuvers through constant shifting, trying to catch Fang without being stung, and Fang moving inhumanly on his mutated appendages, trying to do the opposite. The sound of small explosions and a motorcycle engine wafted in from somewhere in the distance. The behemoth whined electronically, pawing gently at its melted eyes.
At the boundaries of the park, a parade of emergency vehicles had just arrived, and the circus of the response culture began. EMTs ushered the wounded into emergency tents and ambulances. Police scrambled to talk to witnesses and gain an understanding of the situation. As they did so, they followed standard procedure by building up barricades around the main points of egress. Firefighters lined up into squads, coordinating with police to try and make a plan for containing the park fire. Journalists scurried like roaches around the edges of everything, snapping photos, speaking into cameras, and blasting questions at whoever they could pin down. News and images spread like lightning over Jump City. Social media updates and news reports inserted themselves into peoples' workplaces, schools, homes, lives, catching their attention and causing conversation but never once interrupting the flow of the morning. It was Jump City, afterall.
Back inside the park, the game of tag between Beast Boy and Fang had evolved. The two still darted between trees and debris, but now they fought in close quarters as well. Fang proved his human torso to be anything but lifeless as he struck out with unnatural strength using his normal arms and legs. His blows splintered black tree trunks and crumbled smoking stone, and all the while Fang lurched and leapt this way then that on his spiderlimbs, spewing poison from his jibbering mandibles, missing nothing with his eight eyes.
Beast Boy whirled around the spiderpunk in a chimeric blur of green. He danced back and forth as half-beasts and twisted proto-life; slithering away from blows, shrinking away from poison, swiping out with garish claws, and combining his various forms' relative-sizes with his instant morphing to cheat the speed he needed to match Fang's blinding quickness.
The twisted duel between the two grew faster and more frantic with each second it continued on. As the two dodged and struck and blurred the fight became less about actually landing a blow and more about controlling the flow of the other's movement, pinning the other down to a point where they could no longer dodge. Before long things came to a head and, in a split second where Beast Boy tried to frogleap/bearswipe at Fang to gain some initiative, Fang himself found an opening and struck Beast Boy with his venomous spit square on the changeling's lower back.
"Gyak!" Beast Boy grunted, stumbling to the ground in his normal form. He hissed in pain and broke out in a cold sweat as the paralysis began to move achingly through his body. In an attempt to slow the poison, Beast Boy began constantly shifting from one animal to the next. Fang laughed a deep, warm laugh as he jerked forward, looming over his shifting prey.
"That won't stop my venom," Fang told Beast Boy in a tone that would have been disarming in a different context. Beast Boy, still shifting, began to weakly crawl away from Fang, each form making small noises of effort and discomfort as the paralysis spread. Fang continued on, with a voice far too inviting.
"Once my Kitten takes your witch out of the way, we'll walk all over the rest of your friends, and then she and I will remake this town in our image, so that no one can question our love!"
"Dude," Beast Boy gasped weakly, settling in his normal form as the paralysis finally overtook his legs.
"Ya?" Fang asked, casually.
"Th-that's," Beast Boy gulped and smiled palely up at his foe, "a-actually pretty cute, my man."
"Thanks," Fang responded brightly.
"No prob," Beast Boy smiled, closing his eyes. For a moment things stayed silent, until-
"BRAAAAUGH!" -POW!-
Beast Boy morphed into a half-paralyzed gorilla and uppercut Fang ten feet into the air. The spiderpunk's whole body ragdolled into a disturbing pile of twitching limbs once it crashed into the ground.
As Fang twitched, Beast Boy morphed into a tiny green lizard. The lizard moved quickly on its forelegs, pressing its paralyzed hind legs and tail against a nearby stone until one by one each of them {popped} right off. The little lizard then shut its eyes and flexed for several long moments before, one by one, each lost limb -pop- regenerated in full. Beast Boy then morphed into his normal form, dusted himself off, and gave his legs a good stretch.
"Aaaah, yeeeahh," Beast Boy moaned with pleasure as he stretched, "Nothing like new limbs, man."
As he was stretching, Beast Boy paused, his pointed ears pricking up. He turned his gaze skyward, then immediately turtle-shelled just as Raven and Kitten collided with the ground in a massive impact.
As the sound died down and the dust cleared, Raven and Kitten struggled against one another. Raven hovered a couple feet in the air. Though she had kept her expression blank, several beads of sweat betrayed her effort. Her eyes glowed grey and her cape flowed in a wind that was not there. Raven's arms were thrown wide, and each hand posed in its own mudra, letting off jagged bolts of blackshine that ended as gigantic talons.
Kitten struggled against these talons. Her attempts to wrestle for supremacy caused her powerarmor to whine and screech with effort, her metallic heels were slowly forced ever deeper into the ashen dirt of the park. The powerarmor itself was dented and ragged. Its face covering had been partially shattered, and so Kitten's panting came without its former digital buzz.
"Surrender," Raven said simply. There was a slight echo to her voice, and it seemed to not come entirely from her mouth.
"Nnnngh," Kitten groaned as the talons forced her another few centimeters into the dirt. The exposed part of her face scowled at Raven from behind the missing portion of her shattered helmet, and she shouted with pure, spoiled rage, "Tch! Screw that!"
Kitten's powerarmor began to give off sparks in its most damaged places as its veins and creases lit up with a creeping energy that settled in Kitten's chest.
"Eat laser, ya freak!" Kitten cried as the energy bulged outward from her chest, and then blasted out in a wide cone of blinding light. Raven's silhouette could be seen inside the cone of light. The silhouette wavered for a moment, and then vanished. As it did, the talons dissipated, and Kitten fell to her knees. The buzzing drone of the power blast hummed to an end as the cone collapsed into a line and then shorted out. For a moment all was silent save for Kitten's panting. She looked left, then right, and amazement began to dawn on her features.
"Yes," Kitten smiled, "Yes! Hahaha! I did it! I FRICKIN' DID IT! HAHAHAHAHAAAA!"
"Raven?" Beast Boy called out, emerging from his hiding place. "Uuuh, Raveeeen?"
Kitten gasped as her eyes fell on Fang, "Oh, FANGY-POO!" Kitten power-leapt over to her lover's crumpled form and cradled him in her armored arms.
"Oh, Fang!" Kitten heaved with barely constrained lust, "Fang! Speak to me!"
Fang coughed as Kitten gently caressed the largest space between his several eyes, "Ugh, kid cheap shotted me. Let my guard down. I'll be fine though. He's just got a mean uppercut. Not to mention a fist half the size of the human body when he wants. Hahah-heeek!"
"Oh, Fangy-poo! Save your strength!" Kitten layered on the melodrama, "You just let your Kitten take care of you! No mean old Titans are gonna hurt us any more, baby!"
"Raaaaven?!" Beast Boy called, "Yulllloooooo? Olly olly oxenfree!"
"Tcha," Kitten turned from her love to sneer at Beast Boy, "She can't hear you!"
"Huh?" Beast Boy considered Kitten with a mystified look. The villainous valley girl stood and preened.
"That's right," Kitten gave a nasty giggle, "She can't hear you! Cuz I KILLED her you moron!"
"Riiiight," Beast Boy cocked a sarcastic eyebrow.
"Deny it all you want," Kitten's smile was pure venom, "That'll just make it all the sweeter when you accept the truth! I KILLED Raven with MY powersuit!"
Kitten flourished an arm down at her armor, and Beast Boy's ears perked up.
"There you are!" Beast Boy chirped.
"Huh?" Kitten asked, then looked down at her armor. There, around her midsection, she found an odd shadow that, by all rights, shouldn't have been there. Kitten's brow furrowed, and as she looked closer, two patches of hot grey opened up like eyes in the shadow's center.
"EEP!" Kitten jumped back, attempting to wipe the darkness off her body, but her gloved hands only scrapped against the metal of her armor. The shadow moved over the rest of Kitten's armor and then began to seep into the cracks and crevasses.
"No! No! Get off! Getoffgetoffgetoff of me!" Kitten cried as she swatted uselessly at the shadow.
"Kitten?" Fang's voice was strained as he struggle to sit up, "Baby? Tss! Ouch. Grrr! What's happening? I swear, if you hurt her!"
"AAAH!" Kitten cried as the last of the shadow entered her suit. She gave one final cry as a wave of blackshine covered her half-exposed face and silenced her.
"Kitten?!" Fang called out in pained desperation. Beast Boy watched on with a huge smile, recording the event on his communicator.
Kitten's armor rose slowly into the air. With an oddly echoing screech of metal, one of her arms snapped outward, followed immediately by the other. So crucified, the blackshine behind the half-shattered helmet began to build and warble with energy. The armor groaned as it began to bulge outward. A moment later the armor exploded in a wave of vicious darkness, and the unglowing form of Raven hovered in its place. Kitten fell out of this eldritch form, landing on the ashen ground with a thud and a huff, now clad only in her skirt and tube top. The wicked teen looked pale and had a startlingly open look on her face.
"What's happening?!" Fang grunted, growing angrier, "Kitten! KITTEN!"
"Huh?" Kitten's eyes blinked and she shook her head slowly," Wha- Where am- Fang?"
"Kitten?!" Fang's voice broke with relief.
"Fang!" Kitten scrambled over to her lover, all her usual priss and vinegar forgotten, and clung gently to his injured form.
"Oh, thank god!" Fang crooned, "I was so worried about you, baby!"
"Fang," was all Kitten said before kissing him tenderly on his mandibles.
Beast Boy cringed at the sight, but made sure to zoom in on the kiss with his communicator.
Raven's soul-self took a moment to dim and shift back into her normal body. When it did she pulled up her hood once more and floated over to Beast Boy.
"Good footage?" she droned.
"Oooh yeah," Beast Boy nodded.
Raven's eyes narrowed slightly and she flicked the tip of Beast Boy's pointed ear.
"Yeowch!" Beast Boy jumped, petting his ear, "What was that for?"
"Where are the others?" Raven's drone bordered on a growl.
"On their way, mama, chill!" Beast Boy whined.
"Did they call you?" Raven asked scrutinously.
"Not exactly," Beast Boy waggled his ears at her mockingly.
Raven raised an eyebrow and then looked off into the distance of the park, "Oh."
"Yeah," Beast Boy smiled smugly.
Raven flicked his other ear witch a spark of blackshine.
"Stop it!" Beast Boy whined.
"Do you want to stand in the way?" Raven asked as she floated to stand directly in front of the downed lovers.
"Huh?" Beast Boy asked.
Raven rolled her eyes, then brought her fingers up to her ears and waggled them mockingly at Beast Boy.
By then the approaching din of small explosions and a superpowered motorbike engine could be heard even by ears less acute than Beast Boy's. The green teen scrambled over to stand by Raven. Beast Boy grinned and started recording with his communicator once again. Raven rolled her eyes.
The sounds of fighting drew close quickly, and before long Johnny Rancid rocketed out of the nearby trees, his bike propelled through the air by twin streams of flame coming out from his exhaust pipes. Rancid laughed wildly has he blindly blanketed his 6 o'clock with automatic blaster fire. The red bolts of energy shattered the charred trees into splinters and cinders. Three bodies rushed unphased through the destruction and shot off attacks of their own. Robin's discs, Cyborg's cannon, and Starfire's starbolts all exploded in the air around Rancid as the madman landed his bike on the back of the behemoth once again. The mechanical beast shuddered at the sudden sensation and whipped its enormous head around blindly.
"YOU'LL NEVER TAKE ME ALIVE, TITANS!" Rancid bellowed, covered in sweat and soot as his spiked tires trailed sparks up the behemoth's back. Starfire flew, Cyborg leapt, and Robin grapple-hooked up to the behemoth's back in their pursuit of the final foe.
"Not that I really care a this point," Kitten asked, her voice strangely normal, "But shouldn't you be helping them?"
"And miss this sweet angle?" Beast Boy asked, clutching his communicator tightly, "No way!"
"Besides," Raven droned, "Robin and Cyborg will be obnoxiously grumpy if they don't manage to take at least one of you down."
Kitten could only blink at the frankness of the answer. Next to her, Fang's mandibles pursed in an odd expression before he asked, "We never stood a chance, did we?"
"Nope," Raven turned back to give them a shallow grin.
"YYYAAAAAUGH!" Rancid shrieked as he launched off the behemoth's head. Rancid's eyes bulged dangerously as his bike began to spiral. The villain dropped his blaster mid-air and slammed a hidden button in his bike's side. Just as the three pursuing Titans soared off the behemoth's head after Rancid, his bike unleashed an enormous volley of micro-missiles.
"Here comes the money shot!" Beast Boy cheered.
"Gross," Raven drone.
"Not like that," Beast Boy explained. Raven rolled her eyes.
As they bickered, Starfire swooped forward and clapped her hands together, sending out a wave of green energy that detonated all of Rancid's micro-missiles prematurely. Rancid landed, whipped his bike around, and looked up frantically at the wall of missile-fire above him. His expression fell as Robin and Cyborg both fell gracefully through the flames. Robin flipped in front of Cyborg and let fly a special type of disc. Cyborg reared back his cannon-arm and let out a gut-busting battlecry before firing a beam directly behind Robin's disc.
The two attacks merged and formed into a gigantic wave of white energy. Rancid's skin began to ripple as the attack approached him, and as the whiteness struck the ground before him Rancid could only shout, "HOLY SHIIIIIIII-!"
At the boundaries of the park, the response teams were starting to get a handle on the situation. The barricades were complete, the wounded were taken care of, the journalists were corralled, and advance teams were ready to enter the hotzone. Then an enormous explosion boomed through their ears as a flash of white light blinded them. When the light dimmed, a mini-mushroom cloud loomed over the park. The advance teams were called back, the journalists escaped the corral. Several men at the barricades needed a change of underwear. Video of the explosion was already trending.
Back in the park, Cyborg's laughter could be heard before the light of the explosion truly dimmed, "HAHAHAHAAA! Awwww man! The Sonic Boom? Seriously?! Hahaha!"
"It felt right," Robin swaggered up to Cyborg, his cape flapping heroically behind him.
"That is classic powermove!" Cyborg smiled hugely. He brought his massive metal hands up to gesture his feelings, "Class-ic!"
Several yards in front of them, Johnny Rancid groaned on the ground, surrounded by the wreckage of his bike.
"Joy!" Starfire called as she touched down beside the two. "We are victorious once again! I shall now perform the customary Earth whoops in celebration! Ahem, 'WOOOP! WOOPWOOP! WOOOOOP!'"
"Awww yee, that what's UP!" Beast Boy bounded up to the other Titans, holding up his communicator, "Got all that good footage right here!"
"Niiice!" Cyborg held up a hand that Beast Boy promptly high-fived. Raven floated up in the background, carrying Mad Stan, Fang, and Kitten in blackshine bubbles.
"Weeew," Cyborg winced as he looked through the magic spheres, "Dang, you got these guys good!"
"Yeah, you know, it ain't no thang," Beast Boy posed, trying to look cool.
"Two of them were mine," Raven droned as she plopped her captives down next to Rancid. Beast Boy deflated slightly.
"That reminds me," Robin said, "Whatever happened to Punk Rocket?"
"I have already delivered him into the care of the Jump City police!" Starfire exclaimed, holding up and explanatory finger. "They are waiting around the perimeter of the park to hear the 'All-Clear' signal."
"Nice work, Star," Robin smiled.
"Thank you," Starfire beamed.
"Yeah, good game, no doubt, but dang," Cyborg looked around, rubbing the back of his neck, "Not much park left is there? Yeesh."
"I dunno," Raven said, slight inflection actually entering her voice. The earth was scorched black all around them while trees and ruins smoked steadily. Across the way, the behemoth still whined and pawed at its empty eye sockets. Raven smiled, "I kinda like it this way."
Rancid coughed and leaned up on one arm, sneering at the Titans, "You, -hakk-, stupid kids. Hhuhh. You haven't won yet."
"I beg to differ, my dude," Beast Boy said as he walked up to the assembled villains, "Y'all are looking pretty rough. Wouldn't feel right kickin' dudes when they's down. That's not how heroes do thangs."
"Touch that," Cyborg smirked and held out a fist which Beast Boy blindly bumped.
"You think so, huh?" Rancid laughed, "We'll see about that. TINKLES!"
The behemoth stopped pawing at its eyes and turned its head in the direction of Rancid's voice. It let out a hopeful but terrifying, "MROW?"
"Uh oh," Raven droned.
"BATTLEMODE!" Rancid bellowed with the last of his strength before collapsing to the ground with a satisfied smirk.
"MROW!" the behemoth Tinkles let out a confirmatory meow. Its chest then spread into several segments as it stood up on its hind legs. Massive gears could be heard turning as steam leaked out from the robotic giant's seams. The beast's shoulders and hips resituated to accommodate bipedal movement. Lastly, the tiger's great mouth cleaved in two, and out from its throat emerged a humanlike face, complete with two new eyes. Everything settled into place with a series of final clinks and clanks, followed by the whining of high-powered cells. Tinkles took a powerstance, opened its human-esque lips, and let out an ear-shattering battecry:
"SKKREEEEEEEOOOOOOOOOOOOOONK!"
For a moment the Titans all stood silently gaping as Tinkles held its pose. Cyborg quietly took Beast Boy's fist, pressed his own against it, and then pulled it away while whispering, "Untoooouch."
Robin's face set in a stoic glare as he produced his bo-staff once more, shouting, "TITANS! END IT!"
All jocularity gone, the five teammates rushed forward into battle with the colossal monster. Each moved into position with neither word nor signal. Starfire picked up Robin and took to the skies, Beast Boy following the pair in the form of a green pterodactyl. Cyborg charged forward on foot.
Raven took to the skies and held a mystic gesture in front of her face while chanting, "Azarath. Metrion! ZINTHOS!"
Nearby, a thick tree, charred from flames, lit up in blackshine and ripped violently out from the ground. Raven took a centering breath and then swung her arms forward. The tree moved with the motion, and fell at the behemoth from above, slicing downwards. Tinkles repositioned its stance and caught the tree between two massive pawhands. Raven growled softly as her eyes glowed grey. The unglowing tree pressed downward, struggling against the mecha's mighty grip.
As Raven and the mecha struggled, Cyborg dashed directly at the hulking monstrosity. Opening up the display on his forearm, Cyborg moved a graphic labeled OUTPUT up as far as it would go. This caused a steaming cylinder to protrude from his forearm with a hiss. Cyborg slammed this cylinder back down and his arm morphed into its signature cannon, but it did not stop there. The pieces of the cannon all separated further as the weaponlimb elongated and increased its girth several fold. The blue lights of Cyborg's body began to flicker as this gargantuan cannon whined with building power.
In the sky, Raven sweat and ground her teeth as she met the mecha in a test of will. Forged indifference made up the mecha's steel visage as it held the blackshine tree at bay. With a rush of power, the behemoth's pawhands caught on plasmatic fire. The blinding energy enveloped the tree in an instant before detonating in an awesome blast of shadowed energy and burning fury. Raven cried out, grasping her head from the psychic shock as the concussive waves sent her spiraling backwards through the acrid air.
"HEY, TINKLES!" Cyborg roared. The mecha stepped forward through the lingering firestorm and looked down at the tiny man before him. Cyborg smirked as stabilizing rods shout out from his back and dug deep into the ground behind him. Cyborg hefted his massive cannon at the giant while shouting, "TAKE TH-!"
-BWWWWAAAAAAAMM!-
A massive beam of blue-white tore forth from Cyborg's arm and bored into the behemoth's centermass. The beam's power burned for a few seconds, causing the beast to backtrack several steps before the light withered and died. Tinkles took an earth-shaking knee and ran a nuclear pawhand over its smoking and scarred chest. Cyborg panted heavily. The blue lights on his body dimmed and flickered as his arm returned to normal.
As the behemoth started back to its feet, Starfire gently threw Robin at the beast's massive frame. Robin produced his grapple-hook and, firing it at the beast, swung into an exposed joint in what would be the monster's arm pit. Beast Boy dove in the same joint and morphed into a green orangutan. Robin swiftly produced several explosive charges from his belt and handed them to Beast Boy. The two then parted ways, both leaving a charge in the exposed joint.
The mecha stood, unaware of the two Titans currently swinging about its outer hull. It peered down at the exhausted Cyborg through uncaring, cybernetic eyes. Cyborg gulped at the sight. Tinkles raised a burning hand towards Cyborg and let fly a barrage of immolated claws. As the humongous projectiles seared through the air at him, Cyborg readied himself. At the last second, the stabilizing rods in Cyborg's back released with a hiss of steam, and then propelled him far up and forward with a metallic chung!, tossing him away from the claws' point of impact. The claws' fiery explosion rocked the park, and though he missed the brunt of the destruction, Cyborg was still thrown far further forward far faster than he had intended.
"AAAAAAAGH!" Cyborg screamed as he came crashing back down to the ground. He skipped across the ground like a stone across water, each impact resulting in a metallic clang and a grunt of pain. After a few skips Cyborg settled onto the earth at the end of a long skidmark.
"Nyyyah," Cyborg moaned as he struggled to stand up. His blue lights were dim but their flickering had ceased. Cyborg popped his neck as he found his feet, "Double-untouch. Wuh-oh!"
Cyborg reeled has he noticed that the behemoth had not lost track of him, and was raising a second flaming hand at his current position. Cyborg gulped and began to run. The behemoth easily tracked Cyborg's path, but before the monster could fire off another volley, a green star fell from the smoke-black sky.
"GRRRRAAUUUGH!" Starfire roared as she green-streaked into Tinkle's arm like a celestial hammer striking a massive anvil. The metallic sound reverberated well past the park, and for the first time some of Jump City's other citizens began to worry that the fight might be headed their way. The blow left a large dent in Tinkle's arm and jarred it far off course, causing its claw-missiles to fly wide, exploding well away from Cyborg.
Starfire took a steadying breath, shook off the impact, and turned to face the behemoth.
"You face Starfire of Tamaran! Prepare to meet your smaller brethren in the kitty afterlife, Tinkles Death-Claw!"
"SKKREEEEEEEOOOOOOOOOOOOOONK!"
The behemoth raised both burning hands and slashed with blinding speed at Starfire. The Tamaranean blurred through the air, dodging the plasma-trailing blows while simultaneously unleashing a steady stream of starbolts at the behemoth's face. The starbolts did little, but helped keep the monster's attention as Beast Boy and Robin climbed, leapt, and swung from crevasse to crevasse on the behemoth's massive body, planting charges as they went.
Before long the Boy Wonder and the green ape met once more. With a simple nod, the two leapt off the colossal robot and into the open air. Beast Boy quickly transformed into a pterodactyl which grasped Robin gently by the shoulders. As the pair flew off, Starfire pulled away, and Tinkles pawed after her fruitlessly.
"HEY, TINKLES!"
The behemoth looked down at the source of the voice and found Cyborg standing before him once more. The exhausted hero grinned viciously as he strolled forward, silos opening up one by one all over his torso.
"INTERRUPTED AT BREAKFAST!" Cyborg started, his grin widening, "WHO CARES IT'S PAST TEN? WE ARE THE TEEN TITANS! EAT WAFFLES ANYWHEN! EDGY THUGS WRECKED OUR PARK! BROUGHT THEIR KITTY CAT TOO! BUT ALL WE WANT IS MORE BREAKFAST! SO WHADDA WE DOOOO?!"
Cyborg's entire payload of rockets and missiles erupted from his body and flew towards the behemoth. The mecha raised one of its plasma paws to bat down the swarm of missiles, but before it could do so, Robin casually pressed a button on his utility belt. Twin explosions ripped through Tinkle's shoulder joint, causing its arm to fall. The missile swarm began to impact as the charges Robin and Beast Boy had placed in the behemoth's weakpoints went off in rapid succession.
Beast Boy and Robin landed next to Cyborg. Starfire soon touched down as well. Raven rose up from a shadow on the ground. The explosions began to pick up at a fevered pace.
"BLOW IT ALL UP!" The Titans cheered, Raven barely so, as the detonations reached a culmination. The blasts all combined into one massive exothermic event that shredded the frame of the behemoth and shot it apart in a thousand shards of white hot hellhail.
The Titans cheered. The villains wailed. The responders all buzzed at the park's edge. The Internet hummed. The people gossiped. And, somewhere hidden, a man watched everything from a glowing screen.
H here, saying thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed it and I hope you'll join me next week for CHAPTER TWO: QUESTIONS AND CHRONOTONS.
Did that Mad Stan guy seem a little familiar to you? I swear I've seen him somewhere before.