Titans Legacies

Chapter I

The Fly on the Wall

Disclaimer: The Teen Titans franchise, together with the majority of the characters presented in this story are the intellectual property of DC Comics. I make absolutely no claims of ownership to anything herein.

"God damn it Red, pay attention!" barked a familiar white-haired woman, now in her thirties. In her teens, Ravager would have never thought she'd see the day when she would choose to come out of the field, but she fit the mentality of a drill instructor better than anyone else who remained in the Titans organization, and she had developed a special desire to see that the new generation of Titans would be properly trained. "How many times do I have to say it? You slip up in here..."

"...you'll die out there!" Red finished Ravager's statement in a smart-alecky tone. Of all the recruits she was presently training, this one had the greatest ability to elicit emotional reactions. "I get it, mom. You're just being harder on me because I'm your daughter," the girl noted while continuing to just barely dodge shots from the various laser turrets and projectile launchers that guarded the path through the obstacle course. Although Red had yet to be hit by anything—indeed, it had been several months since she had actually been hit—some of these were coming in way too close for her mother's comfort.

High above the obstacle course, the girl's father watched through a window in his office. When Raven accepted an invitation to join the Justice League fifteen years earlier, the man was left as the only founder remaining within the ranks of the Titans organization. Two years later, the Titans organization was restructured and a central command—Titans HQ—was erected over all of the teams; he was elected president of the overall Titans organization, a position which he simultaneously loved and loathed.

Beast Man—a codename Gar Logan had adopted in his mid-twenties—smiled as his emerald eyes took in the sight below: a white-furred, red-skinned kangaroo jumping over the final hurdle in the course, morphing immediately into a cheetah as she cleared the obstacle and running a mad dash to the finish line. Beast Man did not share his wife's misgivings about their daughter's capabilities. Indeed, the only thing that really troubled him about the girl was her tendency—one of the ones inherited from both parents—to be a cocky smartass. As he noticed the look on Ravager's face as their daughter was approaching her, he decided it might be a good idea to head down there.

"One," said Ravager through clenched teeth. Red knew she was in trouble the moment she noticed her mother's wide stance and closed fists. "You're damn right I'm harder on you because you're my daughter!" Rose growled, slaming her fist into the top of a near-by table. "I've been a Titan for over two decades, and I've seen the price of failure far more times than I would ever care to list. I've watched friends, loved ones die because they made a single mistake. A single fucking mistake," she punctuated the point with more pounding, "that's all it fucking takes! You go to the lobby of this building and look at those statues standing around; every god damn one of them was someone I knew! And, god damn it, I do not ever want to see a statue of you there!" the elder woman's lips trembled slightly.

"Geez, mom," Red responded, "I get it."

"No," her mother responded, her voice wavering slightly, "you don't get it. You're not going to get it until you see the life fading from one of your teammates, or—and you have no idea how much this thought keeps me up at night—you're the one dying."

Red felt the weight of the guilt from the emotional responses she'd triggered in her mother pulling her down. "Sorry."

The elder woman's features returned to a somewhat normal state. "I just want you to be conscious of everything you do. You need to be serious and thoughtful about every risk, and you need to use everything you've got to see that you don't end up being the one who loses." Ravager gave a short chuckle, "you signed up for one hell of a screwed up job, Lil. When we lose, it can mean anything from a shitload of pain, to the morgue. We're not allowed to kill unless it's absolutely necessary, but we sure as hell can be killed."

"What else did you want to tell me?" Red reluctantly asked after a pause.

"What?"

"Well, you preceded your statement with 'one,' showing that it was only the first of two or more points that you wanted to make."

"Oh, yeah," Ravager slapped her daughter in the back of the head. "The next time you take a smartass tone with me or your father when we're trying to teach you something, I'm going to ground you until you hit menopause. And don't think that just because you're his little princess..."

"Woah, woah, hold the phone," stated Beast Man as he walked up to his wife and daughter, "I'm not in trouble here, am I? I haven't spoiled her all day, I swear," he said, holding up his hands defensively.

"Except for that bowl of ice cream you let me eat for breakfast," Red lied.

"Traitor!" her father shouted, sarcastically, as Red decided to use the opportunity to slip out of the room.

"Ice cream for breakfast?" Ravager cocked her eyebrow. "I've been trying to keep her in tip-top physical condition, while you've been replacing the most important meal of her day with empty calories?"

"No! I swear, I have not been feeding our daughter ice cream in lieu of breakfast!," Gar shrunk back a bit, eyes widening. "She made that up to get you to focus your attention on me instead of her!"

Ravager cracked a seductive smile. "I know," she said, kissing her husband, "which, seeing as hers was the last training session of the day, means that you have my full and undivided attention. Care to escort me to our suite, so we can have a little fun of our own while our daughter thinks she's turned us against each other?" One thing about Gar's and Rose's relationship: People always steered clear of them when they thought she was mad at him.

"Sure," he tilted his head back while moving his arm around her back at about waist level, finger tips grazing the northern latitudes of her buttocks, "if you still want to after I talk to you about something."

"Are you sure you don't want to save it for pillow talk?" she pulled him as close as she physically could before giving his ear lobe a gentle nibble.

"Oh, babe, you have no idea how tempted I am," he said before breaking their embrace. "But this is too important for me to risk forgetting about it, even if I'm pretty sure you're not going to be in the mood afterward."

"I'll be the judge of whether or not whatever you need to tell me will kill the mood," she replied. "I kinda wish you could save it for later, but if it's so important..."

"I wish I could too," he brought his hand up to rub the back of his neck as he let out a nervous chuckle. "I got a personnel request from Robin. The Titans West are down to just him and Jai, and given that Jai is... well... Jai, they really need new a few team members out there..."

"It must really be a problem if Damian of all people is requesting help..."

"But, there's more," he continued. "Damian is fed up with the turnover... he wants them all to be legacies." The new generation of Titans had become notorious for high turnover rates, as most new members quit within a few weeks on the job. That is, except for the so-called "legacies"—the children of Titans, Justice Leaguers and various other established heroes. The legacies had grown up in the superhero life and were accustomed to it already. Additionally, most of them had a desire to prove themselves as being worthy of their parents' legacies. "He wants four new members, at least two fliers and one arcane specialist. But he wants all four to be legacies."

"Well, Zatara is definitely ready, so we can send him as West's new arcane specialist. I'm pretty sure Nightstar is ready, so that'll give him one of his fliers. Stonehenge is definitely ready. And I know what you're thinking..."

"Rose..."

"No," she said with a heavy emphasis. "Lil is not ready."

Garfield pulled his wife into an embrace. "I know how you feel, Rose. I really do—it's disturbing to send our child out into this life. But she's more ready than I was when I became a Titan, and I had years of Doom Patrol experience before that. She's almost eighteen; I've been a Titan since I was thirteen, so have you."

"She still gets distracted too easily, she's too cocky..." she started listing off reasons she felt this was a bad idea.

"Yeah, she's my daughter," Gar cracked. "But you know I wouldn't even suggest this if I wasn't absolutely convinced she was ready. For an animorph like her or me... we've got so many competing instincts that, under safe circumstances, the clutter in the ole noggin is too much, especially in the teen years. But, all of those species have one prime imperative: Survival. The clutter clears when the shit hits the fan. As for her cockiness," he paused for a moment before a smirk formed on his face, "I'm sure Damian'll bring her down a notch pretty quick. We both know he's his father's son as much as Lil is our daughter. Besides, Mar'i will have her back and I'm pretty sure that Damian ain't gonna let anything happen to her either—we haven't had a single hospitalization from the Jump City team since he took over, all thanks to his desire to prove to Papa Bats that he's worthy of the cowl. It's not like we'll be sending her out to fight crime all on her lonesome; she'll have a team to watch her back."

"You put way too much faith in these kids, Gar," Ravager spoke before letting out a sigh. "You always have."

"Someone has to have hope, bright eyes," Gar looked his wife directly in the eyes and gave her a soft smile. "These Titans would never realize their full potential without it."

"I'll think about it," she said as she turned toward the door and began to walk away, suddenly turning back to him to add "but, if anything happens to her—the no-kill rule be damned—I will hunt down everyone who is responsible. I will strangle them to death with my bare hands. I will cut their god damn heads off, and then I will chop up their bodies into tiny little pieces and send them to all the villains of the world."

"I wouldn't expect any less of you," Beast Man replied as his wife left the room, "I'd do the same, and worse." But, even if he was the face of hope to everyone else, he couldn't help but wonder to himself: Was he was doing the right thing?

"Lillian Marie Logan," Gar said in a mock-angry tone, "how many times have I told you it's impolite to spy on your parents? Or, just plain wrong?" Just then a red fly flew from the wall and transformed back into the teenage girl.

"How did you know I was there?"

Gar chuckled. "You do know that there's not a single extant animal form I haven't taken, right? Hell, I've even taken some non-animal forms... like this one time, I was an amoeba, and there was this one time that Mumbo Jumbo turned me into a lamp..."

"Um, point dad?"

"Since I've actually been a Musca domestica a few million times over the years, I can sense them a lot easier than you'd think. And I can especially sense when the fly on the wall is my own daughter. I've known you were there since you flew back into the room."

"Oh," she responded in a dull tone. Red had inherited several traits from each of her parents: The pointed ears, claws, metamorphic powers, etc. came from her father, although she was far less inclined to hide her claws than was Gar. Among the things she'd inherited from her mother were naturally white hair and the trait that had more of an emotional effect on Gar than anything else: Her bright blue eyes. It was quite hilarious in its irony, but with her blue eyes, the youngest Logan had been so much more easily able to use her father's trademark "The Face" against him than he had ever been able to use it against others—although that says a lot.

But now it wasn't "The Face" that was causing an emotional reaction from the green man. No, it was the absence of the very brightness in her eyes which made that expression so potent which was grabbing his attention now. As the girl sat down, her eyes visibly darkened, dulling the bright hue which normally shone from them and hiding it behind a well of unshed tears. It always broke his heart to see her sad.

"Hey," he said to his daughter as he sat next to her, placing his hands on her shoulders, "it'll be okay."

"W-what am I gonna do, dad?" she asked as the tears began to fall. "Mom'll never let me go. It was bad enough when Irey and Lian went to Titans East, but I don't know if I'll be able to handle if Mar'i gets sent to Titans West without me." Gar was all too aware that she would feel this. Red and Nightstar had the distinction of being the only biological children of founding members of the Jump City team. The two were extremely close in age—Mar'i was only older than Lil by two months—and had been very close throughout childhood and inseparable ever since they entered the Titans Academy together.

"Don't worry sweetie," he said trying to calm her down, "I promise I'll do everything I can to convince your mom to sign off on sending you to Jump City with Mar'i."

"Thanks daddy," she said before willing herself to stop crying. Drying her tears, she got up.

Author's Notes
To any readers of my other unfinished stories: Yeah, I'm alive! Sorry for how long it's been since I've posted any content, but my creative energies with the AotB series kinda ran out. Since I haven't really been able to surmount the writer's block for those stories, I've decided to go ahead and work with other ideas I had, including this one.

Now, obviously this is a Titans' children story. Pretty much all of the characters I have in mind at this point actually exist in some canon, somewhere in the DCU. This chapter primarily revolved around Red, who appeared briefly in the New 52 era Teen Titans Annual #2. I've never been much of a fan of the New 52 universe, but the Beast Boy (err, Beast Man, rather) and Ravager pairing seemed like a breath of fresh air, and, to my knowledge Red has the distinction of being the only child ever attributed to either Garfield Logan or Rose Wilson in ANY DC canon. Red was not given a name other than her codename, so I improvised and created one for her—I'm pretty sure most of you are not in need of any explanation of where I got the name "Lillian Marie Logan," however.

I will, however, note that, even though at least two of the main characters for this story are pulled from the aforementioned annual, the universe for this story will be mostly based on the Teen Titans animated universe and the pre-New 52 New Earth universe.

The first few chapters are mostly going to be introducing the main characters and the parameters of the storyline. I don't think it would be too much of a spoiler to acknowledge who each of these characters is, however, as, again, they all exist in DC canon somewhere.

Robin, in this case, is Damian Wayne, son of the Bat, sole biological child (excluding clones) of Bruce Wayne and Talia al Ghul. He has existed in multiple canon continuities, in New Earth, Prime Earth, as well as multiple possible futures.

Nightstar, naturally, is Mar'i Grayson, daughter of Dick Grayson and Koriand'r of Tamaran. She primarily existed in the Kingdom Come Earth-22 continuity.

Stonehenge is a character from the same annual I pulled Red out of. His real name is revealed in-story as being Oliver. His powers appear to be geokinetic, which suggests a royal Markovian origin; as such I do not think it's much of a stretch to assume him to be Tara Markov's bastard son, and as such call him Oliver Markov.

Jai West is Wally West's son and Iris West II's twin brother from the New Earth continuity.

Zatara is the son of Zatanna Zatara and John Constantine from the Earth-22 continuity. While I've never seen a proper name given for him, I decided to go with the most obvious one I could find (John Zatara Constantine—hence naming him after Zatanna's father).