Author's Note:
So, yeah. This is my first Teen Titan's fanfiction. I love the show - you can thank Cylor for getting me hooked on it - but, I really wanted to do a somewhat... darker, version of it (and yes, the show can be very dark. I have seen Haunted, thank you very much), which leads me to post this fanfiction, set after Season 5.
Greg Sandler was terrified. This wasn't like any of the games he had ever played. Not like Splinter Cell, or Halo, or Half Life. Having a gun pulled on you was horrible.
Slick, black, dangerous; a metallic creature, a malevolent life form. It was alien to him, something that he had never previously encountered. Something that he had never wanted to encounter.
And now it was pointed against his forehead, a gloved finger on the trigger. One wrong movement, a single wayward quiver, and he would be blown away. At just eighteen years of age, he was a genius, one of the great minds of his generation.
If he did anything wrong, he could end up with his most treasured gift splattered all over the pavement.
"Give me all your cash, now." The gunman spoke calmly and casually, as though nothing was wrong, as though he did this every day. "Now!" He raised his voice, only slightly, but made his insistence all the more known by jamming the barrel further into Greg's temple.
"It's in my pocket, man, my front pocket. Please don't hurt me!" At any other time Greg would have been disgusted with himself, with the pitiful, whimpering wreck that he had become. But he found that he could no longer act as himself, that his defiant, anti-establishment streak had evaporated the very moment that he had seen the gun.
"You won't get hurt, as long as you don't try anything. If you do, if you so much as scratch your balls, I'm going to provide you with free ventilation." The man reached into Greg's pocket, whipped out his wallet, and then retreated a few steps as he rummaged through it. He swore and threw it into the gutter, then bought the pistol down upon his head.
The brutality of the impact flung him back against a wall. He heard a sicking crunch as his head smashed against the brick, a sharp pain as his crown was torn open. Hot, stinging tears sprung from his eyes, mingling with the blood that pissed from his nose, pure misery, fresh from the tap.
Reeling, he got woozily to his feet, only to be knocked again to his knees, this time with a punch than flattened the front of his face. His cheek caved in, watery fluids leaking down the back of his throat, burning him, choking him.
A meaty hand tore at his hair, pulled him back up to his feet. He felt his scalp rip open further, the skin actually being lifted away from his skull. It was unbearable. Then, he heard his assailant speak again, his voice still unwavering, despite the pain he was inflicting.
"Hey, buddy; I don't like it when people hold out on me. I saw you go to the ATM. I know you've got something on you. Now tell me where-"
"I don't have anything," Greg sobbed pitifully, his cheek now so swollen than he was blind in his right eye, "I just checked my balance, I do it every week, I swear."
"No one does that. Now, where is it, in your boot?"
"I told you, that was all I have." It was a fifty, why didn't he just leave him alone, leave him to crawl into the gutter and die.
"Don't," He felt something, his jaws being forced apart, "lie to me." Metal. He tasted metal. Oh god.
Then, a voice. The taste was gone, his jaw clamped shut involuntarily. He saw the gun, an outstretched arm, pointed at some else. The trigger was squeezed; a brilliant fiery tulip blossomed from the barrel, flinging the slide back. Then, the gun split in half, along with the arm that held it; a sword, pinning the gunman to the dirty brick wall.
The beginnings of a scream escaped his lips, cut short by a Hira Shuriken, a throwing star, which bit deep into his neck, severing his carotid artery.
It gave Greg a grim satisfaction, of sorts, to see the man die painfully, to watch his blood seep from the wound in his neck, coalesce on one of the sharpened tips of the thin metal plate that had ended him, drip steadily onto his own grimy boot.
Then, out of the shadows, a figure stepped, clad in darkness itself. He pulled on the sword gently, runes on the blade glowing blue as it slid free of the cadaver's extended arm with a nauseating schlock. The blood evaporated quickly, moonlight shining on the perfectly thin, flat mirror.
The man turned towards him, his face perfectly hidden by a featureless mask, any possible detail obscured by the night. There was something about the mask though, something that made it seem evil, malicious, despite the fact that it hid the identity of his saviour.
The eye. It was missing an eye. Nothing existed where it should have, just light. Dull, crimson light, burning into his eyes, into his retinas. Into his mind.
Then, it was gone. He was lying on a stretcher, paramedics standing over him, asking all kinds of pointless, irrelevant questions.
He saw police officers taking photos of the body, camera flashes reflected by the pooled blood, tainted red.
Then, there was morphine, and the inevitable sleep that followed. If those eyes, haunted, broken by the events of that night, had remained open just a second longer, they would have beheld something else. An observer, a teenage girl, enshrouded in a cloak fashioned from the dusk, face hidden beneath hood of shadow.
Raven was not shocked by the brutality of the act she had just witnessed, nor by the skill of the man who had killed the thug. She saw brutality every time she closed her eyes, every time she meditated, she met the potential for death, horror, cruelty her father could cause. He had caused. Skill was something that came naturally to some, something that was learned by many.
She was shocked, however, by who this assassin was. By who she thought he was.
"Slade…?"
"No." A voice, malevolent, full of rage, hatred, yet as calm as the stuffy, midsummer air that plagued her. A voice in her ear.
Raven turned, greeted at first by darkness, empty, blank.
"Up here." Her hood slid back as she looked upwards, revealing her violet hair, her chakra, resting at the centre of her forehead, portal to her soul.
There was the assassin, face hidden beneath mask of steel, flesh beneath cloak of shadow. Though she was prepared to fight him, if she had to, something told her that he hadn't come for her. That he hadn't come for anyone.
"Who are you?" The figured laughed at her question, gazing into the bruised clouds that hung above as he did. Raven felt tempted to use this chance to attack, or flee, but the rational part of her knew that doing so would merely draw his ire.
No. She activated the locator she had on her, hoping that Cyborg or Robin would be able to trace her signal, quickly.
"I am but a shadow; from the darkness I strike, committed to destroying that which created me. I have no purpose other than this."
Deluded by some grand idea of justice. Perfect. Perhaps if she could probe him, sense what he was feeling, or thinking… no, a brick wall. But that was impossible; even the strongest of mental shielding, left traces, allowed wisps of what flowed within the mind beneath to be detected. Disconcerting.
"Shadows shift and glide and seethe, offering no glimpses of their intention. Your intention, Raven, is to entrap me, with the aid of your allies. But know that as powerful as a Titan is, not even a God can cage a shadow." He jumped from his vantage point, landed beside her, catapulted himself over the railings, hurtling to the ground far below.
Raven exhaled deeply, lowered her hood back over her forehead. His words hadn't offered an explanation as to how he did it, but at least now she knew that she couldn't read him. She hoped she wouldn't have to, that they would never cross paths again. It was what she had seen him do that disturbed her so. There was something strange, deeply unsettling, about him, the way he behaved, the way he spoke. Even the way he stood was… was… simply not right.
Then came the wind, her cloak fluttering one moment in a gentle breeze, nearly torn from her shoulders the next, a howling gale knocking her body this way and that. That's when she noticed a shadow, leaping across the rooftops, away from her, away from the tower.
Again, she felt breath against her ear, strained, as though through the fabric of her cloak, yet confident, suave, just as his had been.
"Very soon this city will be consumed by shadow, it's citizens cleansed of the evil and vice that so freely infects their very souls. Tell Dick to join us, rejoice where his mentor did not. Tell him that there will be consequences for failure to cooperate."
He knew who they were? She pivoted as fast as she could but there were no shadows, there was no darkness. Only gleaming white metal, and scruffy green fur. Cyborg. Beast Boy.
"Sorry 'bout the delay, Rae, but-" Cyborg never got to finish this sentence, his words were muffled as he and Beast Boy were enveloped by and all-consuming hug. Jeez, whatever she had seen must've been terrible, to have this effect.
None of the gathered three noticed the shadowy figure watching them, taking in their every movement. Then he was gone again, only vile darkness in his place.
My mind presents...
Chaos
A Teen Titans story
Written by Kieren P. McGovern (AKA Untractable Evocation, or Loki, or Fedaykin Guard).
With thanks to Corey W. Smith (Cylor) for everything he's done to help, which, trust me, is a lot.
The Teen Titans universe and all characters depicted therein, apart from those of my own creation, are the intellectual property of DC comics and Time Warner productions. The (original) characters and situations depicted within this fanfiction are MY intellectual property, and use of these characters without my expressed permission will result in serious action.