Disclaimer: Digicowboy doesn't own Teen Titans, people called Katie, or Caves. But if you're interested in, he's got a copy of Wicked Scary that he doesn't watch anymore on account of 'The Terrors That Lurk Beneath The Skin Of Reality' whatever they may be.
CHAPTER ONE: Deeper Underground
"This way." Beast Boy murmured, sweat pouring down his brow. He clutched his side in the vain hope that it would lessen the pain. The girl nodded mutely, scared out of her wits. Beast Boy couldn't blame her. She had almost been sacrificed to Trigon, after all. He forced himself down the tunnel step by step. His breath loud in his ears, ragged.
Take your mind off it. Don't think about it. He thought sternly. The scent of the sea mingled with the metallic tang of his own blood and the acrid taste of the girl's own fear.
"So, uh...what's your name?" he asked, forcing himself to sound confident and assured. If he panicked, then she would, and then...well.
"Katie." She told him, and her voice, although timid and quiet, bounced off the rough stone walls, echoing and reverberating, causing strange resonances. It was dark in the tunnels, too dark to see. She sounded older than him, probably somewhere in her mid-twenties. He hadn't gotten a good look at her before, so it was only a rough guess. When they had gone in to rescue her...
...It was all fire, and chaos, howling, shapes, cloaked members of the cult...The piercing blue of Cyborg's cannon, the blazing green of starbolts, the roaring detonation of Robin's projectiles, and the cloying shadows of Raven's magic. The burning flashing confusion of light and fire and darkness had hurt his sensitive eyes, and the screams and explosions hammered in his eardrums like the end of the world. Nevertheless, he continued his panther-charge, relying on speed and surprise to see him through. He ran clean past the guards and their guns, bunched the powerful muscles in his hind legs, leaping for the altar, shifting in mid-air to his human form. He landed on the cold flat stone in a crouch and sprang forward, cannoning into the girl, tackling the both of them away from the sacrificial stone. He hit the ground on silverback feet, the girl cradled in a powerful arm as he knuckled towards the passage opposite their own entrance. His mad dash was over in seconds, and the other Titans closed in to subdue the cultists.
"Don't let them destroy the altar!" Someone yelled. Beast Boy ignored it. Behind him, there was an angry roaring explosion, and he felt something scythe through his unarmoured flesh. He staggered, but plowed on, reaching the lip of the corridor. He resumed human form, almost dropping the girl who was wide-eyed with fright. He slapped the disc Robin had given him onto the wall, priming it. There was a pain in his side, intense, but distant, lost somewhere amidst the flow of adrenaline. Urgently, he pushed the girl down the passage.
"Come on!" He encouraged her, glancing down at his side. His costume seemed to be intact. The charge went off, collapsing the tunnel entrance behind them. It ensured they wouldn't be followed, it cut off the cultists from a line of escape. And it killed the small amount of illumination the tunnel had had...
In the darkness, beast Boy had lost track of the time. That could have been five minutes ago. It could have been forty-five minutes. Time was meaningless in the dark silence of the caves, and now the pain was intense. He touched his side where the pain was most vivid, trying once again to find a cause for the pain. His fingers felt warm, and damp, and sticky. His heart was pounding hard, and his breathing sounded laboured in his own ears. He slipped, and stumbled, and felt Katie catch his arm.
"Are you OK?" she asked, concerned. Beast Boy's head sagged on his shoulders.
"Nuh.." He groaned, pulling himself together. "I'll be fine." He reassured her. He thought he could feel her gaze on him, doubt vying with trust in her expression. Beast Boy felt his arm pulled over her shoulder. He dragged himself back to his feet – she was a lot taller than he was, so she didn't have much choice. He smiled in the darkness and walked forward, supported by the hostage he was here to help.
"So, Katie…what's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?" He asked quietly, trying to inject some cheer into his voice, the conversation, their situation. The pain in his side was like a dull flow, undiminishing.
"They grabbed me walking home from work." She whispered. It was human instinct to talk quietly in the dark places of the world. "When I came to, I was in that cave and they said they were going to…" The girl fell silent, contemplating what she had left unsaid with a shudder that Garfield felt moving along her whole body. He went to say something comforting, and felt something rising in his gullet. It coursed up his throat, gurgled up into his mouth. He coughed harshly and spat it out, the coppery taste playing on his tongue and teeth, a memory from long ago…
No-one started off as a vegetarian. Not even when they find themselves with the ability to turn into animals, both living and extinct. When he had begun, the whisper of the Beast has been a roar, a vast and primal sea of primitive feelings and instinct that Garfield Logan had been adrift in, lost. He had always listened to the animal, and the change was never just skin-deep. When the Beast had directed him to run, to bite, claw, sever and rend, he had. Blood had flowed over his tongue like salty wine, and he ran with the lions of the plains. It had been intoxicating, and for a while, he had ignored the side effects. His human body wasn't set up to properly digest the raw and bloody meat he had eaten as a beast, and he had often been violently ill. And then, one day, he had found himself looking out from the eyes of the animal with the mind of a man, the torn and gutted carcass of a Gazelle beneath him. He'd not looked back since that day. He'd learned to control the animal, suppress it, force it down, compress it and condense it. In hindsight, maybe he'd become too good at it. He remembered all too well what happened when it had escaped him, overrode his control...
Katie stopped walking, and Beast Boy stumbled again, his arms sliding from her shoulders as he lost his footing. She lowered him gently to the ground.
"OK." She said finally. "That did not sound good…I know you're not doing so well. Are you sure you're OK?"
"Yeah, yeah…I'm fine. Just…transforming takes a lot out of me. I'll be fine in half an hour." He lied, wheezing. "All we have to do it follow this tunnel to the end, and we're out of here."
"Well, if you're sure…" She whispered dubiously. "Can you walk?"
Beast Boy nodded and levered himself up against the wall. His face, he knew, was pale, his limbs shaking with exertion. He groaned, and slid back to the floor.
"Guess not." He said foolishly. Katie picked him up bodily, slinging him onto her back. He clung on, his arms around her shoulders. He hadn't had a piggyback since before his parents had…
"You're lighter than I thought." She said quietly.
"Superheroing is a great workout." He murmured. He had to keep her hopes up. After all, he was the superhero here, but sometimes it was such a heavy burden to bear…His ears twitched. He could hear his own erratic pulse in his ears, and the murmur of the sea growing ever louder, and…something else? He wished he'd not lost his communicator in the madness of the cave and the explosion, and he wondered how the others had gotten on with the Cult. The narrow, confined walls of the tunnel bounced sound around them and off them so poorly, there was no way of telling where the new sound was coming from. The quiet tread of feet moving slowly along the tunnel.
"Wait." He whispered quietly in her ear, and she stopped obediently. "There's someone coming. You go on ahead…I'll stop here, I can hide in the shadows."
"No way." Katie disagreed, and Beast Boy felt rather than saw her shake her head vehemently. "You're not doing so well, remember?"
"Are you kidding? I'm feeling better by the second." He whispered, forcing confidence, even arrogance, into his voice. And it was true. The dull pain in his side was growing less and less noticeable. He just felt a little cold, but he'd seen enough in his short life to know what it most likely meant, and he didn't think Katie should see it. Besides, if it really was the cult, she'd move faster without him…
She lowered him hesitantly, and he slowly sank to his knees on the floor.
"There…they won't be able to see me down here." He murmured. "Get moving, Katie…It might be nothing, and I'll catch you up later, OK?"
"OK." She said tersely, and to his surprise, he felt her warm lips briefly on his cold, clammy forehead.
"See you outside, Hero." She whispered, and then she was gone, her steps lighter and faster now as she moved up the tunnel towards the ever-nearing prospect of daylight.
Garfield Logan smiled into the darkness all around him, and hoped he'd done the right thing.
Katie ran up the tunnel, her long blonde hair flying behind her as she picked up the crash of the surf outside. Her nightmarish ordeal was almost over, and she redoubled her efforts, her entire body singing and tense with nerves. She rounded a corner, and ran full pelt into a dark-robed individual in the fading shadows. She staggered and fell back, screaming and weeping as terror overtook her common sense, and felt a cool hand upon her shoulder.
"It's OK. You're safe now, I'm one of the Teen Titans." The figure said, and Katie felt a wave of relief washing through her. But it didn't last long, and she gripped the young girl's shoulders.
"You have to go back for him!" She hissed. Raven reflexively pulled away from the girl's grip. She didn't like to be touched.
"What do you mean?"
"Beast Boy! He made me leave him behind! He said he was checking to see if we were being followed but I think he was in a really bad way! I…" She collapsed, sobbing, tears streaking her face as she allowed herself to collapse utterly in the face of the moment. But Raven scarcely noticed. Because although the front of the girl's jacket was white, she could see in the dim light that the back was stained a dark, damp red. Her stomach convulsed, and she soared on ahead, creating a tiny glow that raced ahead of her, illuminating her passage. Behind her, she heard the others find Katie, but she paid them no heed, gripped in the cold hand of mind-numbing fear. A short while later, lying against the wall, she saw him. He seemed so small, and by the light she'd brought with her she could see that his dark uniform was stained darker still around his midriff. He stirred, moving his head weakly, his eyelids fluttering open to reveal unfocused eyes.
"Raven." He said, just audible on the cusp of her hearing, and smiled, and was still. She dropped to the cold rock, far away from the surface, from the sunlight, and knelt beside him.
"No. Nonononononono…" She whispered, stretching out her arms almost hungrily, placing her palms upon his chest and sending out a wave of healing magic. Nothing happened. She did it again, and again and again and again. Still nothing.
"Come on, Garfield…Come on, please, come on, please…" She whispered, sending out burst after burst of energy to no avail, barely feeling the tears welling up in her eyes, blurring her vision and trickling down her cheeks to fall unheeded to the floor. She tried and tried, until she had no more magic left to give, but she kept trying, unwilling to give up, he couldn't be, he just couldn't…Firm and gentle hands pulled her away and she reached out towards him, imploring, but Starfire's shaking but firm arms held her fast, and Raven could hear the alien girl's sobs in her ear as Cyborg punched the wall hard enough to leave crater. There was a flash of colour in the darkness as Robin took off his cape, and laid it reverentially over the body of Garfield Logan.
DC: Well, it took me a while, but I'm back in the saddle, baby, with the first chapter of Sapphire Bullets 2 Hell And Back. See what I did there? 'Sapphire Bullets 2'. '2 Hell and Back'? That's right, I went there. Anyway, feel free to enjoy this story without reading the precursor, although I'd hope you'd get more out of it by reading the prior story, 'Sapphire Bullets'. Anyway, reviews are loved as ever, being the grease that oils the creative wheels. Let me know what you thought!
Peace out, True Believers, and I'll see you for Chapter 2...
DC