Teen Titans. I'm branching out and trying a Teen Titans story. Teen Titans was one of my favorite shows, a shame it had to end. Still, I've found that I had to write this and get it down, just so I have it down. Leave reviews, favorite, follow, if you want, and all of that-it all helps in some way. This rated M, for obvious reasons. Intense violence being one of them.
So...Thanks for reading and giving this a try!
Depowered discs of light were rings of ghostly gray floating in the gloom of darkness. The shimmering jewelscape of the Jump City skyline haloed the knife edged shadow of the throne. This was his chamber. Within the throne's shadow sat another shadow.
Deeper, darker, with form and impenetrable, an abyssal void so profound that it drained light from the room around it. And from the city. And the planet. And the galaxy. The shadow waited. It had told the boy it always would. It'd haunt his nightmares. Every dark corner. Every crevice. Every living moment. Every sleeping moment. He was looking forward to keeping his word.
However, the boy's presence isn't what he felt.
Nor was it his comrades' presences that he felt.
It wasn't his mortal enemies.
It was a lone presence.
The shadow felt the presence's fercoity, and it was good. The shadow felt the grim determination and malice to achieve anything by any means. To be totally ruthless. This, too, was good. As the presence settled to landing deck floors above him, the shadow focused mind into the far deeper night within one of the several pieces of sculpture that graced his office. An abstract twist of solid stone, so heavy that the floors had all been specially reinforced to bear its weight.
It was more than ten feet thick. The standard security scans undergone by all equipment, personal, and furniture to enter his room had shown nothing at all. If anyone had thought to use an advanced detector, however, they might have discovered that one smallish section of the sculpture massed slightly less than it should have. The sculpture was not entirely solid, and not all of it was stone.
Within a long and slim cavity around which the sculpture had been forged rested a device that had lain, waiting, in absolute darkness for decades. Waiting for night to fall on the Titans, or the city. The shadow felt the presence stride the vast echoic emptiness of the darkened, meter high halls outside. It could practically hear the cadence of the soft thud of sandals.
The darkness within the sculpture whispered of the shape and the feel and every intimate resonance of the device it cradled With a twist of its will. The shadow then triggered the device. The stone got warm. A small round spot, smaller than a circle, turned the color of blood.
Then fresh blood.
Then open flame.
Finally a spear of scarlet energy tore free, painting the room with the color of solar flares seen through the smoke of burning supernovas. The spear of energy lengthened, drawing with it out from the darkness the device, then the scarlet blade shrank away and the device slid itself within the softer darkness of an armored sleeve.
As shouts of power scattered beyond the office's outer doors, the shadow gestured and the disks of light ignited. Another shout of power burst open the inner door to his private office.
As one person stormed in, secluded by a shadows, a final flick of the shadow's will triggered a recording device concealed within the desk. Audio only. Another recording device, concealed within his throne. Video only. And, finally another array of devices which was concealed within the very walls around him. Video and audio.
"Why..." The shadow trailed off, bemused, but pleased at the same time. "What a pleasant surprise. Nobody has ever gotten this far, not even Robin..."
Four dozen bodyguard droids spread out in a shallow arc between the shadow and the presence, raising their talon-like hands. The presence maintained a respectful distance; there were even more bodyguards starting to file in, and the presence felt no particular urge to unleash just yet.
"Slade..." The presence spoke, voice deep. "I see it's true...You do wear a mask." The presence stalked toward him, passing through his screen of bodyguards without the slightest hint of reluctance.
Four dozen fell instantly, while hundreds fell soon after.
There was a glint, for just a passing second-that eclipsed the darkness.
"Let me guess. This is the part where you give me the chance to surrender and turn myself in."
"Make no mistake, I am not a hero. Heroes don't exist." The presence spoke, brusquely. "Taking you in will still get me what I want."
"I'll take option three." Slade lifted his hand, and the bodyguards moved to box the presence between them. "That's the one where I watch you die."
Another gesture, and the bodyguards in the ceiling hive came to life.
They uncoiled from their sockets heads pointed downward, with a rising chorus of whirring and buzzing and clicking that thickened until it sounded like they had just stumbled into a hornet's nest.
They began to drop free of the ceiling, first only a few, then many, like the opening drops of a humid day downpour; finally they fell in sheets that shook the reinforced cement of the room and left Slade's and the presence's ears ringing. Thousands of them landed and rolled to a standing; as many more stayed attached to the overhead hive, hanging upside down by their magnetic boots, weapons trained so that the presence stood at the focus of a dome of blasters.
Through it all, the presence didn't move.
"Perhaps I wasn't clear before. I am here for your head. There is no option three for you."
Slade shook his head. "Here just for the price on my head? Is it not for the thrill of it?"
"It's a hefty price. You're the number one criminal in the entire world." The presence said mildly. "Killing you will ensure I am set for the rest of my life."
"So, you will fight with the intent to murder me?"
The glint returned.
"Certainly."
Slade inclined his head, chuckling.
"Kill him."
Instantly the box of bodyguards around the presence filled with crackling staffs of fire and electric whipping faster than the human eye could see. Which was less troublesome than it might have been, for the room was filled with them.
Their attacks collided.
He collapsed as though he'd suddenly fainted, then brought his sword from his side to over his head and swung it while he turned his fall into a roll; that roll carried his blade through a crisp arc that severed the legs and heads of dozens of the bodyguards, and as the momentum brought the presence back to his feet, he kicked the crippled bodyguards to topple sideways into the path of the blade and sent them clanging to the floor in smoking, sparking pieces.
The remaining bodyguards pressed the attack, but more cautiously; their weapons were longer than his, and they struck from beyond the reach of his blade. He gave way before them, his defensive velocities keeping their crackling discharges at bay.
five dozen bodyguards, each with a double-ended weapon that generated an energy field, each with reflexes that operated near lightspeed, each with hypersophisticated heuristic combat algorithms that enabled it to learn from experience and adapt its tactics instantly to any situation, would certainly seem to be beyond the presences ability to defeat.
He was only a vessel, emptied of self. Sharpened by his skill and instincts, shaped by his wit, honed by his reflexes and guided by his clarity of mind, fought through him. He felt their destruction: it was somewhere above, around, and behind him, and only seconds away. He went to meet one with a backflipping leap that lifted him neatly to an empty droid socket in the ceiling hive.
They sprang after him but he was gone by the time they arrived, leaping higher into the maze of girders and cables and boat-sized cargo containers that was the control center's superstructure. Here, his instincts screamed, and the presence stopped, balancing on a rail, precariously right over a forklift, frowning at the oncoming killer droids that leapt from beam to beam below him like malevolent steel primates.
He spotted a cement beam within reach of his blade. His blade flicked out and the beam parted, fresh-cut edges billowing with smoke, and a great hulk of ship-sized cargo container that the beam had been supporting tore free of its other supports with shrieks of anguished metal and crashed down upon any and all of the mechanical bodyguards that couldn't get out of the way with the finality of a meteor strike.
That worked out rather well.
Only ten thousand to go.
Give or take.
An instant later the presence was hurtling through a storm of blaster fire as every able bodyguard in the room opened up on him at once. More came swinging their weapons. The presence fixed his entire attention on a thread that pulled him toward Slade.
Not where Slade was, but where Slade would be when he got there...
Leaping cement beam to cement beam girder to girder, cargo to cargo, slashing cables on which to swing through swarms of ricocheting scorching beams, blade flickering so fast it became a deflector shield that splattered those same beams in all directions, his presence alone became a weapon.
He spun and whirled through the room's superstructure, the blasts of cannons from bulkier bodyguards destroyed equipment and shattered girders and unleashed a torrent of red-hot debris that crashed to the ground below, crushing droids on all sides.
By the time the presence flipped down through the air to land on the battered ground once more, more than ninety five percent of the droids between him and Slade had been destroyed by their own not-so-friendly fire or by his own swift movements. He cut his way into the mob of remaining bodyguards as smoothly, his steady pace leaving behind a trail of smoking slices.
"Keep firing." Slade ordered smoothly, one visible eye hard as stone.
The bodyguards that flanked him strode forward.
"Blast him!"
The presence felt the massive cannon of a droid track him, and he felt it fire a bolt as powerful as a rocket, and he lunged into a leap that carried him just far enough toward the fringe of the explosive's blast radius so that instead of shattering his bones it merely gave him a very strong, very hot push, that sent him whirling over the rest of the droids that were tossed like ragdolls to smash into the wall-opposite of Slade..
A single slash of his blade amputated the shoulder cannon of droid bodyguard and continued into a spinning kick that brought his sandal heel to the point of the other droid's chin, snapping the droid's head back hard enough to sever its cervical sensor cables.
Blind and deaf, the power droid could only continue to obey its last order; it staggered in a wild circle, its convulsively firing cannon blasting random holes in droids and walls alike, until the presence deactivated it with a swift arc that burned through the droid's neck, sending its head flying, and only leaving a burning white hot stump behind. "
"You impress me." Slade said with bland politeness as though unexpectedly greeting, on the street, someone he privately disliked.
"My offer is still open."
The presence secluded its glint once more.
"Do you believe that I would surrender to you now?"
"I am still willing to take you alive. It'll be easier for the both of us. I won't need to run you through, at least." The presence's nod took in the smoking, sparking wreckage that filled the giant room.
"So far, no one has been hurt. You've hardly broken a sweat." Slade tilted his head so that he could squint down into the presence's face. "I have hundreds of millions of these commandos, and other models. You cannot defeat them all."
"I wouldn't be too sure about that." The presence looked cocky for a second, before he wiped the emotion away. "But, I don't have to defeat all of them."
"This is your chance to surrender, Syrus." Slade swept an armored hand around him. "You are in my grip; lay down your blade, or I will squeeze you...Until this entire place brims over with your blood."
"Surrender?" Syrus asked, starting to smirk. "I've got you alone now. If you want to do things the hard way...I am not opposed to that. Dead or alive, I am taking you in for the price on your head."
Slade stepped forward. One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Five.
Six.
Seven.
Seven steps.
He stopped once he was exactly four feet away from Syrus.
"It seems you wield a katana, nodachi, or a ninhoto-judging from the length of your blade. You focus on lightning fast, and razor precise wrist movements and footwork. In short, you give the illusion of being surrounded by your blade, because of your cadence. I just have to keep my distance, and I should okay. Unless, you don't preserve your own life and attack with no regard for longevity."
Syrus clenched his teeth, wary and furious. Such deduction skills...
"If you think you can take my head, come and take it."
The tendons, muscles, ligaments, sinew, and bone powering Slade's arms let each of the two attack thrice in a single second; integrated by combat algorithms in the nerve armor, automatically adjusting for even the smallest fraction of a difference. Each of the thirty strikes per second came from a different angle with different speed, but they were all intense. They were an an unpredictably broken rhythm of crosses, jabs, chops, and elbows of which every single one could take Syrus's life.
Not one touched him. Countering thirty blows per second wasn't impossible.
Syrus's blade wove an intricate web of angles and curves, blindingly fast and swift, each motion of his blade subtly interfering with eight, nine, twelve, twenty of Slade's strikes, the rest shooting by him and smashing through pavement; his precise, minimal shifts of weight and stance slipping them by centimeters.
Snarling fury, Syrus ramped up the intensity and velocity of his attacks—thirty per second, forty—until finally, at ninety strokes per second, he overloaded Slade's defense. So, Slade used his defense to attack. A subtle shift in the angle of a single parry brought Slade's hand in contact not with the blade of the oncoming lightsaber, but with the hilt.
SLICE!
The blade winked out of existence a hairbreadth before it would have sliced through Slade's mask and deep into his forehead. Half the severed steel beam that that blade made contact with stumbled away, booming loudly as it followed its trajectory. Slade paused, eyes pulsing wide, then drawing narrow. He shifted hard to the side, sending the blade veering away.
Syrus easily drew it back, maintaining his stance.
They were deep in it now. Submerged in darkness, swallowed by it, he no longer existing as independent beings. They were a channel for darkness, and that darkness flowed both ways. Slade accepted the furious speed, the savage power, and the ferocious tempo of Syrus. He drew from the shadow's rage and power into his inmost center...
And let it fountain out again.
He reflected the fury upon its source as a mirror shows a reflection
They were an open channel, two halves of one superconducting loop completed by the other. They became a standing wave of battle that expanded into every cubic centimeter of the room. There was no scrap of metal nor shred of stone, nor slab of concrete that might not at any second disintegrate in flares of light or brutish strength. Light disks became brief shields, sliced into segments that whirled through the air, crushed into sparks of light that burned the air itself.
Stairs and railings became terrain to be climbed for advantage or overleapt in retreat. But there was still only the cycle of power, the endless loop, no wound taken on either side, not even the possibility of fatigue.
Impasse.
Stalemate.
It may go on forever.
Syrus could feel its end coming-he could see it.
But, so too, did Slade know it had to end soon.
He anticipated the ending.
Prepared for it.
The fighting was effortless. Both let their body handle it without the intervention of their mind. While Syrus's blade cut and slasj, while his feet slid and his weight shifted and his shoulders turned in precise curves of their own direction, his mind slid along the circuit of dark power, tracing it back to its limitless source. Prodding for a weakness. He found a knot of lines; he chose the largest fracture and followed it back...
It led him, astonishingly, to a woman standing frozen in the doorway-that was more like a huge opening at this point in time. Her pointed blue-purple eyes and blonde hair were like lightning and thunder.
Neither of the men engaged in battled had need to look; the presence was familiar.
They knew she'd arrive sooner or later.
Syrus disengaged from Slade and leapt meters away; he slashed away the wall with a single flourish.
"Master!"
"Stay back, Terra!" Slade ordered.
"But-"
"That is an order!" Slade rumbled.
Syrus's instant distraction cost him: a dark surge of power nearly blew him right out of the gap he had just cut. Only a hasty push off of his feet, altered his path enough that he slammed into a section of cement instead of plunging half a kilometer from the ledge three floors down. He bounced off another wall and cleared his head, but a flying boulder nearly decapitated him.
He barely avoided the next hailstorm of tonnage, and could only watch in mild shock as part of the entire building began to crumble to dust.
That girl was dangerous.
Syrus set his eyes on her.
"Terra!" Slade snapped, whirling on the blonde. "I said to stay back and not to interfere!"
"But, I can help!"
"Disobey my orders and you'll suffer the consequences."
Terra stepped back, looking concerned.
Slade could feel the end of this battle approaching, and so could the blur of force he faced. Syrus became a pulsar of aggression. Easily, almost effortlessly, Slade turned the shadow's rage into a weapon. He angled the battle to bring them both out onto the ledge. Out in the wind. Out with the lightning. Out on a rainslicked ledge above a thousand miles drop. Out where the shadow's rage gave it power.
Out where Slade could flick his arm in one precise arc and chip at the sword.
The rest of the blade was clasped by iron fingers, but it still managed to pierce into his chest armor. Now the shadow was only Syrus. Slade tightened his grip on the sword, unflinching as the blade began to pull into and through his skin, drawing blood. His other wrist held fast onto the wrist which held the sword, shaking, straining, Slade held it bay.
"How about a fourth option?" Slade asked evenly, staring past the blade, "Join me and become my apprentice."
"You must be out of your mind." Syrus hissed, struggling to drive his sword through Slade's chest.
"I know an opportunity when I see one. Besides, I know you have another ability that you haven't used, yet. I've been holding back as well, truth be told. I'm always looking for young, driven, and determined warriors that I can shape and mold into the perfect weapon." Slade shifted his footing, the nimble action allowing him to press the blade up-at the cost of cutting into his hand even more, and shove it aside along with Syrus.
He distanced himself, moving towards Terra who immediately put up a shield of earthen defense around the two of them.
"The idea of being under your control just rubs me the wrong way, even if your offer does catch my interest. I don't want you trying to make me an apprentice like that chick over there. I'm not going to follow your orders, and you're not going to order me around like some lackey." Syrus remarked.
'You're not exactly saying no." Slade commented.
"I will not be under you. You will not be my boss or boss me around." Syrus didn't relax, he eased subtly as he sheathed his blade, shrouding the area in darkness once more.
Silence passed between them, until lightning struck.
"Our real partnership has yet to begin."
Syrus hissed, shifting back so he was a little further away from the man. No wonder his head was worth so much money, just his presence was something akin to fearsome and overwhelming. "I have a question. What are your goals?"
Slade's lone visible eye pulsed. "Destroy the Teen Titans. Destroy Jump City. Destroy or rule the world. To simply wreak havoc and nothing more. I have my own reasons for wanting to do this. I will not tell you or speak of them, because they don't matter."
"The Teen Titans?" Syrus muttered.
"Surely you've heard of them."
"Who hasn't..." Syrus looked annoyed, his eyes narrowing to slits. "You have a dangerous ideology. It'd be better keeping you at an arm's length."
"Seems we've found a mutual ground."
Facing off against Slade...
No, being in the man's focus was like being tangled in a web.
"As long as I'm getting what I want out of this...You can call this a partnership, apprenticeship, or whatever you want."
Lightning struck again, illuminating everything.
"Very well, we'll move to another one of my bases." Slade clenched his fists, shaking with anticipation.
What will you do now, Robin?