When they first came into town, they decided, they needed food before anything else. Their search led them to a pizza restaurant, one that had an outdoor patio that commanded a wonderful view of downtown.
"Well, what do you think?"
He bit into the warm slice of pizza, letting the melted cheese shift around in his mouth for a few seconds before swallowing.
"It is cold."
"What do you mean, 'it's cold'? Are you serious, that's all you taste? I give up…" Was her exasperated exclamation, before the girl tumbled over the top of the table.
"Valentine, your hair is getting over the pizza."
"It's not like you can taste hair, anyways."
"I may not have a sense of taste, but my sense of texture is still very strong. Hairy pizza is disagreeable." He simply stated, before leaning back in his seat stiffly. He reached into a corner of his winter jacket, and pulled out a papered tube and puckered his lips about it. A lighter with a blue flame not long after met the end; afterwards he sucked hard and drew out a breath of white fumes.
Valentine backed away from the mist immediately, glaring, "Hey, don't get that stuff on the pizza. You might have a problem with hairy pizza, I got a problem with crumbly pizza."
He hummed his acquiescence while he watched her straighten out her pressed black feminine and embroidered three-piece suit, which clashed with the black knit-cap which was pulled over her long black hair, across the front of the cotton, the Valentine insignia; a macabre caricature of an eye looking upwards while a single tear fell from the bottom lid. Likewise symbols were printed on the back of the white gloves she always wore.
"Interesting." He murmured, drawing out another pale mist with every second breath. Valentine asked what was. "We are both very strangely dressed in a city like this?"
"Don't worry about it! There's a lot of freaks in this city! We'll be fitting right in!" Valentine laughed. He remained silent, hands in the pockets of his bright blue winter jacket.
"About the nature of the… 'freaks' in this city…"
"N'yeah?"
"You are confident that your research is valid?"
"Are you an idiot? Of course my research is hardly valid! All I had to work on is a tourist booklet! We've been living off the grid for what, months?"
"Conceded. I am just… concerned about early reprisals-"
"Look around you, you see any good guys? See any bad guys? Jump City's safe for the two of us to start up a business!"
"What about that large T-shaped structure that we noted in the bay?"
"Phhhw, as far as I can tell, it's just a big, fancy lighthouse. We're fine."
"And in the advent we are truly accosted by a non-federal local crime prevention agency?"
"Hey! I'm me, and you're you! We'll be fine!"
"Very well. Then before we begin we require four things: seed money, a location of habitation, more members, and aliases."
"Must we have aliases?" Valentine groaned.
"I believe it is traditional."
"Traditional is BORING. Valentine is fine."
"Very well, Valentine. Henceforth, you shall also be known as Valentine."
"Were you just trying to crack a joke?"
"No."
"Whatever. How about you?
"I am soon to decide upon a reasonable alias. I would prefer a personal confidentiality on the matter, though."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what's first?"
"Given our abilities, I believe it is suitable for me to procure the necessary funds. You shall find a suitable place of residence. Preferably one that does not require rent. We will work from there."
"Here we go…" Valentine smirked. The two rose from their seats, the pizza mostly finished. A few crumpled bills were tossed onto the table as they left.
Jump City. Nice quiet little place.
Hopefully, it would be the perfect city for two young villains to finally settle in and grow.
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Person With Many Aliases Presents:
"Teen Titans: Villainy"
A Teen Titans Fanfiction
Teen Titans series production by Warner Bros.
Original Characters property of Author "Person With Many Aliases"
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Entrance Routine
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For those on the other side of the glass, her nametag loudly proclaimed her existence as just "Cindy".
"Next!" Cindy would call out in her cheerful, bank-teller voice, while sitting behind the counter in her bank-teller vest and lined blouse. And everyday, she cried "Next!" and the man in a suit, or the happy family man would move away to make room for the next.
Granted, she was a recent addition to the staff of Jump City National Bank and Depository, in a city that was fairly notorious for being periodically threatened by utter destruction, but nothing happened to Cindy yet, so everything was fine and dandy.
"Next!" Cindy called out.
Black boots trudged a young teenager forward.
Cindy immediately had a feeling of something off. Teenager? This wasn't the usual business suit or happy family man. In fact, he looked very odd. The boy was dressed, along with the boots, in black Capri shorts, while a white and blue-highlighted buttoned shirt clung to his smallish form. In fact, he looked rather sickly in some ways, with his pasty pale neck and legs. Any other skin was buried deep within the deep blue winter jacket he wore, the hood pulled over his head, and hands sunken in the pockets.
A Winter Jacket.
A Winter Jacket! That stretched easily all the way to his knees! In the middle of Jump City! In Spring!
Cindy filed the warnings into the back of her head, while convention moved her mouth. "Hello! Welcome to Jump City National Bank, how may I assist you?"
The boy turned his head upward, piercing her through her forehead with his ice-blue stare. "May I make a few inquiries?"
"Huh? Of course!"
"This bank, what does it exactly store?"
"Oh! Jump City National Bank can store a variety of valuables for you! We not only are capable of holding accounts, but we also host vaults to store company bearer bonds, stocks, or other personal artifacts of value to you!"
"But this bank, it still mainly contains monetary funds?"
"Yes! This is still a bank, first and foremost!"
"I see… I would like to make a special withdrawal."
Special Withdrawal? That irked Cindy just the slightest. "What sort of withdrawal?"
"How do you say it… the discount of five fingers? No… Five Finger Discount, that is it."
"E-excuse me?"
"I am performing the act of armed robbery." The boy bluntly put it, while bringing a peculiar looking cigarette to his mouth.
Cindy didn't know how to react properly to such a casually put phrase, coming up with only a gawking, "This is a joke… right?"
The boy, removing his lit smoke from the blue flame of his lighter, inhaled, and simply blew the white mist into the glass pane separating the two of them. The window immediately was covered in white.
A moment later, the boy's black gloved fist smashed through the frosted glass, spilling shards everywhere while his fist grabbed the front of Cindy's blouse. People's shocked cries and screams at the violent sound echoed across the lobby, while the shattered pane immediately activated alarms.
The piercing ice-blue gaze never wavered, "This is no jest. I demand access to the vault where the majority of your monetary funds are being held. I will use necessary force to accomplish this task."
Marking this threat, the boy raised his lighter above his head, sparking the flint into a blue flame once more.
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In Valentine's supposed high-tech lighthouse, life inside was cut short by alarm klaxons and red lights. Computers digitized the location of the trouble on the map, while live feeds displayed the inside of the building.
Masked eyes narrowed, "Somebody's robbing the national bank."
Metal fingers scratched a chin in thought, "Don't look like anyone we ever seen before."
She wondered as she floated closer to the screen, "Perhaps then, he is a… new character of villainous nature?"
A graveled sigh, "Great. Another super-powered trouble maker."
A fanged mouth gawked, "DUDE! Did he just pull out the entire vault? What's he been taking?"
The first speaker turned around, face hard and dutiful to the city, "It doesn't matter. New face or not, we're stopping him in his tracks! Titans, GO!"
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Robin's mind raced back to the instant he shouted that phrase, as his thoughts worked in delicious irony: as the Teen Titans were going towards the bank at full speed in the T-Car, a large cylindrical bank vault, freshly torn from its cement embedding and covered in a sheet of ice, was exiting the bank at full speed.
The impending collision did not appear pleasant at all.
"Cyborg! Stop the car, now!"
"What? You don't think I'm tryin'!" The mentioned Cyborg shouted back, his steel fingers digging into the wheel as he tried to bring the electric blue and white vehicle to a stop, only getting it to start screeching on its side, slowing in front of the barreling steel coming towards them. Robin turned to another member of the team for that issue.
"Raven!"
"On it."
The sorcerer's hand stretched out, and the vault clouded over with black shadows, before the entire device was hefted over the sliding T-Car, bringing it to an unmolested sliding stop before the shattered front of the bank.
The boy in the hooded jacket exited the bank onto the steps just as the Titans left their vehicle, breathing in another of his lit cylinders. Eyes met.
"Costumes…" The boy in blue murmured, "I assume that you are a local crime-prevention agency?"
Robin smirked, "Yeah, and around here, we're known as the Teen Titans!"
"And you're not getting off easy just because you're new in town!" Beast Boy added in.
"I see… she made a gross misestimation of one of her core conclusions…" he muttered off somewhere to himself, "And you are going to attempt to apprehend and send me to your penitentiary? Very well, you may attempt."
Beast Boy frowned at the statement, "And who are you supposed to be? Doom Dictionary?"
He reached into his pocket and unearthed his lighter, before opening the lid and striking the flint into a blue flame as he spoke.
"Mr. Freeze."
In an instant, he brought his free palm towards the flame before thrusting it outwards, the blue flame suddenly bursting into a large stream and following the motion. The 'crime-prevention agency' only managed to leap out of the way while the azure flames washed over the T-Car, flinging it through the air.
A car-shaped block of white ice crashed to the ground instead.
Cyborg choked at the latest death of his baby, "My car! Oh man, new guy or not, Frosty's gonna get it!"
Robin put his teammate's feelings into a familiar command, "Titans, GO!"
In a moment, the group surged up the low steps towards the apathetic villain. Boy Wonder, up in the lead, also led with an array of his red-bladed birdarangs. Mr. Freeze noted the incoming projectiles, and flicked out his wrist, the lighter in his hand unleashing a short burst of ice-flames that the birdarangs flew into. What came out the other side was a crumbling pile of ice that impacted uselessly against Freeze's form. Immediately, the new face shot his weapon towards the ground, letting the flames wash across the stairway towards the grounded Titans' feet. This was no problem though; as Beast Boy took Cyborg up in their familiar Pterodactyl-based escape maneuver, while Robin leapt through the air, diving downwards towards Freeze in a kick. Before the blow could connect, Mr. Freeze skated away-
SKATED?
-Robin found himself slipping across the ground that was now iced over in the last attack, while the villain was racing down the ice-ramped steps with Olympic control, despite only being armed with simple boots. From above, Cyborg fired away with the Sonic Cannon built into his right arm, blue beams of amplified sound slamming into the iced ground, while the targeted villain continued to skate around the attacks with mechanical grace. Gaining enough momentum, Mr. Freeze shot out more of the blue flames, sculpting onto the ground a massive steep ramp that let the boy shoot upwards towards the man-machine perched on his prehistoric ride. The two only managed to give noises of shock before they found themselves plastered against the wall of a building several stories up with a layer of ice.
That attends to about three of them. That leaves only the flyers-
Mr. Freeze's thought were interrupted in mid-fall when he was caught in a literally flying tackle, spinning through the air with Starfire latched onto his back, her arms twisted in an steel grip around his arms and chest.
"You will not hurt my friends anymore!"
"I am unable to comply with that demand."
Another flick of his wrist, and the lighter shot a stream towards the building adjacent to the pair. As the blue flames crashed against the building, the ice began to build backwards against the stream of flames at a rapid speed, until a giant growing slate of ice slammed back into the two, smashing the two of them against another building, alien princess first. The impact was enough to jar the two of them loose and let them fall, Mr. Freeze attending to his own descent with another conjured ramp towards the ground, while he heard one of the males in the group call out to Starfire in horror. He paid it no mind though, paying more attention to skating at full speed towards the ice covered vault that lay in the street unattended, lighting another of his white tubes to breath through all the while.
Raven suddenly floated in front of the ice-gimmicked villain, her right hand burning black, "Dropped this? Let me help you."
To say that Freeze was surprised to find the giant cylindrical steel vault hurtling towards him was a bit of an overstatement. Regardless, he found himself carried away by the flying steel with a resounding thud, before he found himself bouncing across the ground at high speed. A green gloved hand grabbed the back of his collar in mid-slide, and Robin used the momentum to pick Freeze off the ground, before a cry threw him back into the ground, cracking frosted cement and eliciting a grunt from the new face. Switching grips, Robin grabbed Mr. Freeze's armed hand tightly and held it away, while another pulled him up to his feet roughly by his collar.
"You've done enough damage for a new guy." The leader growled. The aforementioned new guy merely exhaled heavily into Robin's face, the boy wonder reeling backwards from the white haze, as he clawed his face at the sensation of ice frosting onto his face. As Mr. Freeze began to back away from his last foe, he heard the sound of bursting ice, and a heavy crashing sound behind him. Turning around, he looked on in mild shock at the sight of a gigantic green tyrannosaurus rex shaking off snow, before roaring and lunging down at Freeze, teeth open.
It also reeled back; its open jaws suddenly stuff and trapped in place with ice. Suddenly, Cyborg was leaping off the changeling-dinosaur's back, arm pulled back with a Sonic Cannon.
"AIR MAIL!"
Caught off guard once more, Freeze was blown back by the burst of sonic energy. As he slid on his back, he noticed Starfire, having recovered from her fall, was flying past Beast Boy and Cyborg, hands and eyes alight with green.
There is no end to this, is there? Was what the villain thought to himself, as he lashed forwards with another stream of frozen flame, which intercepted the flying Tameranian. Starfire dove in headfirst, and for a moment there was only the blue fire.
A green glow, and the azure exploded in a gigantic display of steam and smoke, clouding the vision everywhere.
Mr. Freeze's mind was always on the move, gathering information. The result of that explosion is thermal expansion. For something to expand the low temperature cold like that must require high temperature of equal degree. She was also capable of actually surviving the low temperature as well.
A natural counter to my ability, what a compelling thought.
As Freeze whirled around in the heated smoke, he found Raven once more. Acting on instinct at the sight of her black hands, he raised his lighter to attack.
He found it turning the same shade as the Sorceress' power, and watched himself fall to the ground as the lighter was jerked out of his grip. Gathering himself to his feet, he heard the sound of compressed air cylinders firing, of whining wires, and a grappling hook suddenly shot out of the mist, wrapping him up tightly across all his limbs, leaving him fighting for his balance on his two feet that were suddenly lashed together.
As the smoke cleared, he found himself tied up, on the other end, the Titans triumphant, Robin holding the cable.
"It's over, Freeze. I think it's best for you to cool off in jail." Robin smirked.
"But don't worry! I heard they had orientation tours at the jail for new comers." Cyborg couldn't help but quip.
Mr. Freeze kept thinking, noting the lighter that was left on the ground. Irrelevant commentary belies a loss in response time. Neglected captured weaponry denotes lack of understanding of its uses. "You will release me immediately-"
He stretched his palm. The lighter on the ground suddenly opened up in a gigantic jet of blue flame.
"-Or I will ignite all the fluid in my weapon, freezing everything in a block radius around us. Choose wisely."
The Titans looked in shock as their feet suddenly started crusting over in frost, along with anything close to the ground, with the level slowly rising. Robin thought quickly.
"Raven! Throw it up!"
Another hand movement by the cloaked figure had the self-destructing device tossed several meters into the sky.
"Starfire, can you hit it?"
"I shall find out!"
Several green bursts later, one connected with the dark silhouette in the sky, causing it to burst in a white cloud.
The white cloud began to fall towards them.
As the crowd gaped at the falling mass, Beast Boy only had time to scream at their captive, "Dude! Did you just lie to us?"
"You have chosen wisely."
An entire avalanche of snow buried the six of them, the white high enough to bury the street up to several stories up. In Jump City. In the middle of Spring.
A few moments later, Mr. Freeze nonchalantly burst from the top of the mountain, the wire tying him super frozen into white crystal that shattered with little effort. Standing up, he threw his palms down, commanding the snow. Soon enough, the white powder compacted, solidified and hardened.
That should trap them long enough…The tinny sounds of a falling bomb reached Mr. Freeze's ears just then. Recognizing the ring tone, and the number connected to it, he reached into his other pocket of his winter jacket and pulled out a metal red, metal gray cell phone.
"Hello?"
"Hallo, Mr. Confidential! How are you doing?"
"That is Mr. Freeze. I am currently engaged in combat with the local non-federal crime-prevention agency, which you assured this city would be lacking."
"Oooh! Are you cool?"
"I am always of a low temperature, Valentine. But I assume you mean I am of satisfactory physical condition. And I would say that I was potentially fighting for my livelihood."
Somewhere in between, Freeze hunched downwards to ignite another of his frozen tubes against the cold snow.
"Well, since you're calling me, you must be fine now! How are things on your part?
"I think I can recover the funds. How is the condition of the task I have left to you?"
"I found a killer place! Killer! Nobody lives in it, and it's… really killer! It's been abandoned for a while, come to look at it…"
"What is the condition of the facility?"
"I think we can patch it up A-ok. I'm send you the location, now…Locium, Vindai…"
Upon hearing the rest of the phrase, Mr. Freeze hummed at the new memory. "Very well. I am cutting communication to continue with my task."
"And good bye to you, linguistically challenged fellow! Ha, ha, ha-"
Freeze snapped the phone shut, and thrust his palm towards the compacted snow once more. In an instant, the frozen vault burst out of the snow by his command. With an open palm placed against the side and iced stuck to the surface, Mr. Freeze easily hefted the entire ice-covered mass as if it were nothing, and took to the rooftops, leaving the non-federal crime-prevention agency in the snow.
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While Valentine could easily circumvent the problem of an elevator with no electricity, Mr. Freeze could not move upwards without a replacement lighter. And rather than waste Minutes on his phone just calling the girl, the boy opted to more efficiently just shimmy up the steel-plaited cabling.
He found himself in a windy… place. Valentine turned around from overlooking the city with a delighted sneer.
"Well, how is it? And where's the money?"
Freeze looked around. The entire place was shaped in a dome shape, much like an observatory. Blasted equipment was everywhere, along with scattered and abandoned police tape of long gone investigations. In the center of the room was some sort of giant rotating mechanical harness, whatever it held long gone by confiscation. Most notably, however, was the condition of the chamber itself. Holes were melted right through the walls of the dome, at various points, most notably at the upper walkway that ringed the insides of the room. More importantly, near half of the dome itself was cleaved away, leaving and abrupt edge that opened up the inside of the observatory to the exposed outside of the cliff air and the view of Jump City down below.
And it was cold.
"This location will be satisfactory for now, with the necessary repairs and renovation. The funds are down at the bottom of the shaft. I assume the repairs will also come from you? My abilities would only temporarily stop any holes."
"Yeah, yeah! I'll get my guys on it tomorrow. I've already started building my factory in one of the larger labs. You know this place has labs, right? I mean jeez! Whoever stayed here last was a real professor! There used to be computers here! Vats of who-knows-what just lying around! There are electric sockets just lying around waiting to be used! So much to do… I'll have to reset the mailing addresses so the stuff will come here…" Valentine mumbled to herself, looking around, bringing her white-gloved hand to her chin as she looked around viciously like a child at Christmas.
For some reason, Mr. Freeze knew he should have shuddered every time his partner brought up the nature of her "factory" so casually, if his nerves weren't so dead already.
"Valentine… I still find it rather… compelling where the origin of your… tools, come from-"
"Hey! The Valentine Foundation isn't a front, okay? It's a real medical company, and I do pay customers for selling-"
"But do they even know what they are being used for?"
"Look, they'll be dead by the time they get around to that, so they never care, yeah? Besides, I like to think of it as recycling! Too much space wasted these days, ya know?"
"… Valentine, I forgot to mention. The local crime-fighting agency destroyed my lighter in the feud I had today. You'll have to make another one soon, since I have no other way of lighting the tubes."
Valentine made a strangling noise before huffing off, "Geez! Nothing but work for me, huh? Just be glad I like doing what I do! Stay up here where it's cold! I'll be back…"
Mr. Freeze watched her march off and command the elevator to move upwards with a phrase, before turning back to look at the city below.
I have money…I only need equipment, and members now…
Jump City…might actually be hospitable…
Mr. Freeze basked in the cold as the sun finally fell past the horizon, coating the sky in a deep blue.
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A/N: This is my first Teen Titans fanfiction. Honestly, the prospect is slightly frightening, since there is a possibility I might portray the Titans incorrectly. There is a sense of layer to them, which I fear I might miss in their portrayal. Meaning, I might only write out Raven as a simple sarcastic Goth, Beast Boy as an idiotic joker, etc. So if you have any comment to their portrayal throughout the story, please inform me. Any error will not be out of spite to the character, only misjudgment. Feel free to comment on the original characters as well. I'm fairly well practiced in making them, and I share a general sense of pride in seeing them considered realistic.
Finally, the nature of the chapters will be fairly episodic, like a TV series, so like a TV show, minor details will probably be ignored, such as the recurring T-car, or etc.
Episode 2: "Knowledge is Power" – It's time for Valentine to strike STAR Labs in search of equipment. The Titans are on the case, but there's one problem: Mr. Freeze has fought the Titans and lived to tell about it, and his partner-in-crime is taking very studious notes…
