Author's Note: Early apologies, but there WILL be a total of six original characters that will play main characters in this series. Hopefully no Mary Sue's, but let me know if any are going that way. I will try to make it work, and hopefully it won't get too confusing juggling so many, plus the Teen Titans and Slade. The cliché but fun idea is to have the six travel to various manga/anime/book/cartoon/TV show worlds to collect jewel shards to save the universe! If it gets too confusing, let me know and I'll see what I can open to any advice/criticism/comments/ideas, so send them my way!
Author's Note 2: Complete rewrite of chapter one, posted 4/11/11. Will change later chapters to match new events. If you notice anything that you feel needs a rewrite, feel free to point it out to me. This story is still very much a work in progress, so don't hold back!
Disclaimer: I do not own Teen Titans.
—Chapter One: The Clueless Elemental—
"Don't let them get away!" commanded a strong voice. It came from a confident young man atop an enormous and incredibly beautiful palomino stallion, who reared and whinnied loudly, as if assisting its master in relaying orders.
Around them, beaten and wounded villagers cheered at the coming of their heroes, the legendary Elementals, led by the one and only Light Knight, the Lord Sunray, the master of the sun itself.
"Oceania! Flora! Wisp! Assist the townspeople!" called out Lord Sunray, his eyes flashing. "Everyone else, with me!"
Without question, three girls leapt off horses and hurried to help the wounded. The rest took off at a gallop.
A fiery reddish-brown horse galloped along the young lord's right, a black horse to his left, and a gray one behind.
"Chill, Ray! They won't get far," laughed a cheerful red-haired young man on the reddish horse.
"We've got them right where we want them, brother," added a serious black-haired young man riding the black horse.
"Meeting in three minutes at current pace and direction," called out a stern, silver-haired young woman, pulling her gray horse alongside the reddish horse so that the four galloped together.
"Slow them up, Zirconia. Shadow, circle around," instructed Ray, hazel eyes flashing golden. "I'll support you."
"Oh, my," said the silver-haired young woman, a grin appearing on her face. "I haven't shaped a cliff in a while."
She dropped the reins, and with full confidence in the horse beneath her to continue its path, mimed a flat surface with her hands and began pushing up, her eyes closed tight with concentration and frowning with effort.
The black-haired young man and his black steed leapt forward and disappeared, vanishing into the shadows.
Beside them, the Light Knight's eyes blazed golden as he maximized Zirconia and Shadow's powers.
They heard a scream ahead, as the gang of thieves that had yet to come into view almost crashed into a cliff that rose from the earth right in front of them. The screaming continued, taking on a new depth as they found their escape route blocked by Shadow and his steed.
"Ash, you take the extras. I'll get the leader," growled Ray, dropping his own reins and readying his own hands, which began glowing and sparking as he collected the energy needed to strike down the one who had dared to wound and pillage innocents.
"No problemo, Ray," said the red head, grinning in anticipation. "I can't WAIT to burn some bad guy bu…"
And, before Ash's very eyes, the Light Knight vanished. Not like Shadow, who had earlier slipped into the darkness. Ray had completely and absolutely vanished in broad daylight. The palomino stallion skidded to a halt, almost tripping over its own hooves, and screamed in panic for its master.
Ray crashed hard to the ground, only barely breaking his fall by landing on his side and rolling. He groaned as he felt the energy he had charged up vanish.
Oh, crap, I thought I was past stupid mistakes like falling off my own horse. Thank goodness my team is here to catch those…
The Light Knight, who was really only seventeen years old, despite his usually heroic and confident appearance, sat up from his ungraceful position on the painfully hard ground and looked around.
And froze.
He was not… where he was supposed to be. His team, his family, was nowhere in sight. Even his horse was not to be seen.
What was to be seen was hundreds of townspeople in very strange clothes, walking past him on either side and giving him puzzled, slightly annoyed looks for blocking their way. He seemed to be on some sort of thoroughfare, a road of sorts, but there was no dirt beneath him, but some sort of gray rock that was perfectly smooth, flat, and cut into perfectly square sections. When he looked up and around, getting to his suddenly shaky feet, even the buildings were made of, and filled with, strange materials and objects.
Panic started to set in. A familiar panic, the one that plagued him whenever he found himself alone or despaired that he was not up to the monumental fate he had been born into. The panic that drove him into thinking he was deficient in some way or other, and thus incapable of effectively leading the Elementals and keeping his world safe. The panic that occasionally came up in nightmares as his mind replayed times he had almost lost one or more of his Elementals, his family…
He took a shaky breath and forced his feet to move out of the two-way pedestrian traffic, ducking into an alleyway alongside a shop of some sort, made out of what looked like extra-large bricks.
His hands were shaking. He fisted them and leaned back against the building, eyes shut tight.
Not good not good not good… Ash? Zirconia? Shadow?
Normally he could contact his team mentally, but there was nothing. The part of his mind that always seemed linked, connected to his family grasped blindly at nothing.
Oceania? Flora? Wisp?
Complete silence. He was completely separated from the rest of the Elementals. Wherever he was, he sensed it was far, far away from home. He took a deep breath, which helped him regain an appearance of being composed and confident, even if his heart was pounding away a mile a minute, and looked up and down the street with all the people. This was obviously real, not some sort of dream, so he had to get himself together and deal with it.
What on earth happened? Where am I?
A large wooden sign of some sort proclaimed the name of the town proudly. A city, not a town or village, which possibly explained all the people.
Jump City.
Some sort of alarm, a combination of whistles, bells, and some sort of screaming noise, suddenly blared from the building he was standing next to. He winced and covered his ears, noticing that all the people that had been walking by on the street suddenly started shouting and screaming and running away. Someone was laughing loudly from the store next to him, in that cruel tone used by selfish criminals everywhere.
The store suddenly flared with light and crackling energy and the alarm died. The laughing continued.
Ray frowned and lowered his hands from his ears. Besides the laughing, he heard the crying of at least one child and mother, and whimpering from various civilians.
"None shall stand against the brilliance of Dr. Light!" shouted what had to be some sort of insane, egotistical maniac.
"Hurting people? Not while I'm around," growled Ray, fisting his hands and marching around to the front of the store and throwing the glass door open.
A man in the strangest black costume with white accents and a yellow… something on his chest had his hands spread out, laughing insanely as ball lightning crackled around his hands, terrifying the civilians who had been shopping and now whimpered in corners, plus several shopkeepers.
"Stealing my ability? Shame on you," announced Ray, holding up his own hands, crackling with lightning.
"Who are you?" demanded the man, spinning around with a frown on his face. "Some other blasted Titan?"
"No idea what that is," commented Ray, as a lightning bolt sprung up in his hands far faster than he was used to. Regardless, he waved a hand and it charged for the villain, striking him in the chest and sending him flying into the nearest glass case of merchandise.
To Ray's surprise, the man suddenly smiled greedily and began climbing to his feet.
"Ah, another electrical superhero! My suit has been needing a boost lately. Thanks for the recharge! Why don't I take the rest of your electricity?" With that, the man flung his hands out towards Ray, with some sort of whips made of energy snapping out and winding their way around the Light Knight.
"What on earth is electricity?" asked Ray, frowning as he couldn't follow anything the man was talking about. He blinked and the energy whips disappeared. They were made of lightning as well, he could tell, but somehow channeled in a way that was completely alien to him.
The man froze and stared, completely in shock. "Is this some new sort of tactic?" he finally asked. "Playing stupid?"
Ray charged forward, glowing fists swinging, not liking that stupid comment.
The man actually leaped at him, grabbing the teenager around the neck and setting his hands on the boy's back.
Nothing.
"What? Aren't you an electrical superhero? A master of electricity?" shouted the man, as Ray wrestled him off.
"I have no idea what a superhero or what this 'electrical' stuff you keep talking about is!" insisted Ray, setting his own hands on the man's suit, sensing the great amount of lightning stored within and releasing it.
The crackling around the man's suit flared, then faded to nothing. "Blast you!" shouted the man, jumping away. "You've drained my suit! What kind of Titan are you?" He charged forward to exchange hand-to-hand blows with the unknown superhero.
"This is getting ANNOYING!" shouted Ray, his irritation at not understanding anything reaching a head. He clapped his hands and the area flooded with light, temporarily blinding everyone within the shop. Unfortunately, Dr. Light often used that sort of attack himself, so his goggles easily shaded his eyes from the flash. Even more unfortunately, the energy from the flash recharged his suit enough for him to throw out a different sort of energy weapon, another whip but this one designed to work against electrical superheroes. This one pulled electricity instead of releasing it.
Again, for some strange reason, draining the superhero didn't seem to work, until the teenager, not understanding the nature of the metal whip wrapped around him, pinning his arms to his sides, growled and tried to collect the energy around him to send it at the villain.
Dr. Light laughed as sparks collected around the whip and traveled back to his suit, recharging his battery to full immediately.
He stopped laughing when the boy narrowed his eyes, which suddenly glowed a fierce golden, and a wave of electrical energy blasted outwards from the boy, shorting out his suit, shattering the lights in the shop, and triggering the fire sprinklers, which started pouring water down to combat a nonexistent fire.
Dr. Light wanted to scream threats and run away, but the stunned, confused look of the boy gave him pause. The electrical superhero seemed to be in complete wonderment at the water falling from the ceiling, as if he thought it was raining indoors or something.
Was this boy really from another world or something?
Outside, on top of a building across from the jewelry store Dr. Light had been trying to rob, Robin was thinking the same thing as he watched the scene play out on his supped-up binoculars.
This superhero-of-sorts didn't seem to understand anything, and moreover didn't seem to have full control of his abilities. Did he have no idea how to fight? Did he think that if he just released all his energy at the bad guys that they would be defeated and he could go his merry way, having done his good deed for the day? He'd caused more damage than Dr. Light!
Seeing that the villain was about to escape while the wannabe superhero stood in a daze as the sprinklers poured down on him, Robin jumped down, landing right on Dr. Light's shoulders and bashing him to the ground. Robin quickly and efficiently handcuffed the villain and knocked him unconscious with a jab to the side of his neck. With his suit dead, the thief was pathetically easy to subdue and capture.
Robin frowned and headed into the shop, to see the wannabe, dressed in some sort of medieval outfit out of Robin Hood, except for his short cloak being a bright yellow, actually being shouted at by the store owner, who had not appreciated being blinded and having his store destroyed. If the boy was an actual Titan or something, than he might have made an exception, but for a young upstart…
The teenager didn't look insulted, as Robin had been expecting, but rather completely confused.
"Excuse me, sir," interrupted Robin. "I'll take him from here. The police will arrive in about five minutes for Dr. Light."
"Ah, Robin! Thank goodness! But couldn't you have stopped this fake earlier?"
"I apologize sir, but your insurance should cover all damages incurred in fights with supervillains," said Robin dismissively, grabbing the teenager's elbow and steering him out of the shop into the empty street. Police sirens could now be heard approaching the scene.
"What was that about?" hissed Robin, as he pulled the superhero along. "You should know that Jump City is Teen Titans turf. I would've had that situation under control with minimal damage inside of two minutes if you hadn't interfered! Where are you from? What's your affiliation?"
Ray had suddenly had enough. "WHAT IS WITH YOU PEOPLE?" he demanded, planting his feet and ripping his arm from Robin's grip. "How many times do I have to say that I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT?"
"No idea?" growled Robin, grabbing Ray's arm again in case he was planning to run. "Just who are you?"
"That's MY question! I hear some villain trying to hurt people, and I went in to help, and he has some sort of strange powers that seem to come from his CLOTHING, and is talking about something called electricity and something called Titans and what are superheros anyway? And… and… I just want to go home." He groaned and put a hand to his forehead, not noticing the look of resignation and understanding coming over Robin's face.
"Look, I'm sorry," said Ray, taking a deep breath. "I was just trying to help. My name is Ray, I'm a Light Elemental, and I have no idea how I got here because twenty minutes ago I was with the rest of the Elementals, riding my horse and chasing after bandits…"
"I think I get it," said Robin, the harshly critical tone that had been in his voice gone, replaced by calm professionalism. "Calm down, Ray."
"What?"
"You're from either an alternate dimension or another world."
"A what now?"
"A different world. From your clothing and lack of knowledge of technology, probably one filled with horses, thieves, lords, knights, villagers, and kings, sound right? And you're somehow in charge of protecting that world."
"Yes, but what does that…"
"I've met people from other worlds before, and always managed to figure out how they got here and get them back home again. Follow me back to Titan's Tower and we'll get started looking for some sort of anomaly."
"You lost me again, but if I understand correctly, I'm far from home and you can get me back, right?"
"Yes. My name is Robin. I'm the leader of the Teen Titans, a group of teenage superheroes who protect this city."
Author's Note: Again, this is an entirely new chapter one, so there will be inconsistencies between this and later chapters. Feel free to point out those inconsistencies or give your opinion about the chapter! I was having a serious problem with people not reading past chapter one of this story, so hopefully this new version is more interesting! Thanks for reading and PLEASE PLEASE review!