To you the reader
All information from this story, and any others like it was taken from DC's Arkham Asylum / City, as well as from the Batman Wiki, as well as the Teen Titans TV series on Cartoon Network. Due to the lack of comic book stores in my region, more specific details could not be used, I apologize in advance if this leaves my material lacking in your eyes and you may stop reading now.
If you continue beyond this point, I ask you read with a grain of salt, be constructive with your criticisms, keep vulgarities at a minimum and let me know if you'd be at all interested in my continued work.
This could be the first in a chain of short stories involving major Gotham villains such as Killer Croc, The Riddler and any others that are recommended by you the readers.
Enjoy the words sprawled out before you; I do hope you find them entertaining.
Sincerely
Heavy's Sanvich Cook
And At the End of Fear, Oblivion
Prologue
When the day is not quite over, and the night hasn't begun, lies an hour in which they say magic can happen, where the anguish of the daily life melts away and we feel the soothing embrace of night envelop us. It is during this time that Jump City's federal bank finds itself besieged by none other than Doctor Light, who has already breeched the vault door and is in the process of gathering gold bars from the inner vault when, suddenly, every light inside the building goes out at once, causing the culprit to stop dead in his tracks and examine his surroundings.
"Hmmm…must be a new security system; keep the thieves from finding their way out…but they didn't count on Dr. Light breaking in, now did they?" he declared, grinning devilishly as his hands began illuminating the cramped vault.
As the veil of darkness is lifted, a lone hooded figure is seen standing in the entryway to the vault. The figure bares a tan gas mask with orange lenses and a sewing pattern resembling a skull with a hood tied off around the neck by a severed noose. Extra cloth from the hood rests along the shoulders and partially down the chest stopping around the pectoral region. Dr. Light, now seeing the figure, smirks to himself and comments "Well I see the titans were too busy to come after me themselves, so they sent a Halloween reject to fight me. How amusing…"
The figure simply steps forward, moving one of the hands from behind his back to reveal an elaborate gauntlet with four syringes going along his primary four fingers, each syringe being filled with an orange liquid, which matched the faint glow from the eyes of his mask. He responds in a voice that seems augmented to echo slightly upon itself. "You seem to know a lot about the Titans, so…tell me, from one doctor to another, everything you know of them," he demands, approaching Dr. Light slowly.
Light, slightly off put by the figure's needle gauntlet responds with "And why should I tell you anything? What do I get for th—"
Before he can finish, the figure stabs Light in the arm, injecting him with a small dose of the glowing liquid, responding simply with "…the antidote."
When the figure removes the needle, Light finds himself staggering back, his vision becoming blurred. The light from his hands flickers out, leaving him vulnerable to horrors unimagined, which envelop him from within the darkness, he screams and swats at things only he can see "Alright! Alright! You'll find them in Titan's Tower—the giant T on the island in the bay! Now please!"
The figure shakes his head and fades into the shadows, commenting in his trademark echoing voice, "What's the matter….afraid of the dark?"
Moments later, responding to the silent alarm sent by the bank's vault, and picked up by their computer, the titans arrived on the scene. Gazing upon the horrified corpse of Doctor light, his facial expression recounting his final moments of terror, their investigation began.
Cyborg, after scanning the body, rose and went over the results displayed on his arm-mounted terminal. "Cause of death; cardiac arrest. There're also signs of massive amounts of adrenaline in his system…likely the underlying cause of the heart attack, if I had to guess."
At this time, Raven, who had been meditating in the hopes of learning more from the latent psychic resonance of the remains, simply shakes her head. "I couldn't get anything relevant to the killer; all I sensed was fear...fear...hopelessness…which probably supports Cyborg's theory…"
Beast Boy, who had been leaning against the wall, propped up by his hands, his back to the body, groaned more and more audibly as his friends discussed the event. "Dude…this…is beyond wrong. I mean…who would do something like this? Would Slade…? This is way beyond even him…" he rambled, his tone displaying increasing amounts of nausea, confusion, and anger.
Robin, who had been looming in the doorway since they arrived, finally responds in an icy tone "This wasn't Slade…it's somebody else…" He looks to his team who stare at their leader with confusion and disbelief in their eyes. "This is the work of somebody further removed from sanity than anyone we've faced before. I'll explain everything when we're back at the tower. For now, let's leave this for the police. They'll know what to do."
The Titans look at one another, confused and not a little worried about what they were about to face, but never the less, followed their leader home.