Disclaimer: I don't own Teen Titans and I am not recieving any profits...so there!
Chapter 1: Introduction
The bedroom was chilled in frozen airs as he opened his eyes up that morning. The coldness of the room cooled his eyelids and gave him a moment of clarity. He did not feel warm and deluded by any heated emotions. The cold embraced him and nourished his perception. He had always liked the cold darkness of his room.
Beast Boy was not a warm person.
He rose proudly from the trenches of his rigid bed to wake up and greet another day. He plastered another happy-go-lucky smile on his face that could have been pictured on any of the idiotic children's TV shows that Cyborg enforced upon the Titans' TV. Another cold day… he felt too detached from his fellow Titans to ever feel like they were his friends. They were beneath him mentally. They were taller than him, but their heights only served as an inverse relationship between their heights and their intelligence. Their false senses of superiority couldn't compare to him.
No, they were beneath the real him: the cold and calculating him. Even Raven and her empath powers could not dissolve Beast Boy's cheery façade and reveal his inner self. Under his nauseatingly green flesh, he was even darker and more twisted than her. While Raven was one of those whiny, depressed mall Goth types who wrote poetry about feeling like a criminal and being in love with bad boys, Beast Boy actually went out and actually committed the acts. Who would ever suspect Beast Boy?
Raven's empath abilities sensed that he was constantly happy, but in truth, he was jovial about plotting against the Titans. He fantasized so many ways to defeat them: his only comfort while being bound in the Tower.
They thought he actually liked trite things like playing video games and devouring food. His false obsessions over such things should not have been believable. Every bad B-movie and science fiction plotline would have shown that the Titans that he was not to be trusted. He wasn't even a vegan; it had been a front to make them see him as weak and "kind towards the poor little animals."
Beast Boy wasn't kind, but cruel towards animals. The true animals, his fellow Titans, deserved punishment.
The Titans were not as unintelligent as he derided them: they were certainly smarter than the average teen, but did that really mean anything? Robin, despite his tactical and suspicious mind that could have been a problem to Beast Boy, valued and trusted his friends too much. His trust in his fellow Titans and support of them was zealous.
Exploiting Robin's trust was effortless. It helped that Robin had feelings for Beast Boy as more than a friend. Despite that Beast Boy felt his body to be obnoxious and almost comical in how underdeveloped and child-like it seemed (never mind its green color), Robin's feelings for Beast Boy couldn't be denied. Robin's affection for Beast Boy was certifiable proof of his mental unfitness. Their bodies barely qualified as teenagers in how monstrously thin they were.
Toying with Robin's emotions and arousing jealousy from Starfire were some of the rare times that Beast Boy felt as overjoyed as he pretended to be. No, he felt almost intoxicated by manipulating them. Lately, Raven had been giving him strange looks lately when he was around Robin. He must be more careful, but he didn't think that Raven would suspect anything.
In the beginning, Robin had done most of the early flirting and subtle hints at wanting more. All that Beast Boy had to do was act mechanically and pretend to be his usual self. Robin would "coincidentally" brush into him during sparring or touch his hands and shoulders while sitting with the rest of the Titans in the living room watching another brutal round of movies. Of course, Starfire noticed; she observed everything that happened with Robin on a level that rivaled the most dedicated of the Titan's stalkers.
A few nights ago, Beast Boy "randomly" asked Robin to stay beside him in his room while he was recovering from an injury during a mission. Robin didn't need to know that Beast By had purposely dislodged his leg, right? Robin had been close to kissing Beast Boy, but the fashionably challenged, primary color-monstrosity had refrained from taking that kiss. It was a first step anyway; more could happen later when Beast Boy wanted something. Thoughts of Starfire's reaction to Beast Boy finally succeeding in claiming Robin flashed though his mind.
Had Robin ever been interested in Starfire?
Probably not: even in the beginning of Starfire's "flirtation" with Robin, he had never responded to her advances. It's not like she wasn't pretty; Beast Boy could appreciate her beauty, but her overpowering naivety and Tameranean background made her unbearable. Some people were just so annoying that sane people such as himself shouldn't have to deal with those lesser beings.
Beast Boy had appreciated the criminals that the Titans fought more his fellow teammates. The villains might have been simple-minded, but at least they were attractive in a distinct way. The villains of Jump could have been described as the rejects from a model shoot that had been flooded in radioactive rivers of chemicals. Each villain was exotic, dark, and forboding in appearance. Always interesting no matter how grotesque and horrid they looked compared to regular people. Despite this, their brainless criminal ploys rivaled the Titan's stupidity and disheartened Beast Boy's interest in them.
The Criminals of Jump were all the same: cast from the same paltry background and always lusting for more money and nothing else. Money, money, money. Not one of the Titan's enemies craved true, undiluted power and dominance. Slade did, but the Titans hadn't dealt with him in almost a year. Beast Boy had hoped that Slade would have returned by now, but he dashed those hopes and decided to be more realistic. Beast Boy could be the villain or trick lackeys into cleverly calculated plans to fight the Titans and make missions more interesting. Money was always involved with pettier criminals. Money was the stich that bound those villains together and drove them; they were too primitive to have complex reasons for their crimes.
So why? Why was he still one of the Titans when he could have easily defected and defeated them?
Public image. Even Beast Boy understood the benefits of swaying public support. While his fellow Titans had distanced themselves from the media and their fans, Beast Boy had embraced his sheep. He was now the most popular of the Titans not just among Jump, but wherever the Titans broke headlines. Raven was a loner, so despite being his biggest threat other than Robin, she would never to able to rile the masses against Beast Boy. The Titans' fans supported him and would commit to whatever cause Beast Boy wanted them to support. The public could be easily manipulated into hating Raven, for which, Beast Boy could have a reason to put her down. Robin and Cyborg rivaled Raven in their isolation from the public. Starfire could have been a threat, but her inability to understand human culture and language prevented that from ever happening.
He didn't want to fight Raven though; he liked her despite her obliviousness to his plotting. Her pessimism was refreshing amongst the Titans.
His celebrity kept growing, but his criminal life was no longer just a fledgling interest. The Titans seized a lot of evidence, weapons and other technology from the criminals, which could easily be stolen from the Tower and right back to the criminals. Never mind that those criminals didn't know who was selling them back their belongings; they weren't cunning enough to try and find out who he was. They paid quite handsomely because they felt like they were the ones who had tricked the Titans.
He hadn't been involved in any bank robberies or other petty thefts that the Jump criminals tried repeatedly like animals but to no avail. No, he had just looked the other way and accepted the bribes of certain criminals. He wasn't as money driven as they were, but Beast Boy could appreciate the value of cold-hard-cash money and criminal connections if he would ever finally defect from the Titans. His criminal network was growing.
Beast Boy had gathered information, technology, and every password and file related to the Titans and planned to give it to ones he deemed worthy, but so far he had only helped Red-X. It's not like any of them would ever win in the end even if every criminal fully knew the Titan's tactics and technology. Beast Boy always restrained himself from ever showing his full potential anyway and purposely flubbed his attacks. Pretending to be pathetic at combat was another rare thing that made him smile and not that cheerful toothy grin he showed to the Titans. Despite this, all of the Titan's fights had been easy and would still be easy even when Beast Boy would be frail and close to death. Robin still somehow believed that their fights with villains weren't predictable.
He wondered what would happen if he would fight to his full ability, perhaps during a practice session with the Titans. He could easily take on his other four teammates, but how would they react? Supportive? Jealous? Or would their view of him finally be shattered? They somehow still believed that their green transformer was weak. Cyborg had originally befriended because he believed Beast Boy needed to be protected. What would Cyborg do if Beast Boy knocked him out unconscious?
In a worst case scenario, they would be suspicious, but they would probably try to overanalyze the situation and deride Beast Boy as depressed and violent. They would never went to believe that meek little Beast Boy could ever deceive them. In all probability, they were more likely to be supportive. Robin and his heroic ego would believe that his tutelage had finally changed Beast Boy. Even if Beast Boy stopped hiding his strength, he would never reveal his criminal activities until he was engaged in an open war with them. Secrecy was what he traveled and reveled in.
Beast Boy gathered the stolen pouch of Robin's weaponry and video archives of his battles. They could easily be studied to defeat Robin. The pouch also included the data needed to hack into the Tower's defenses. Beast Boy didn't even need to study Robin or the others to be able to defeat them in combat, but he must continue to cloak his strength for now.
He had chosen to help Red-X for simple reasons really. Red-X was the antithesis to Robin: a villain born from Robin's own past. Red-X was the perfect rival. As a villain, Beast Boy knew that Red-X wasn't as money-crazed as his thieving led his fellow Titans to believe. Red-X loved the sport of fighting the Titans and understood the absurdity of their crime fighting. Beast Boy dreamt about joining Red-X and fighting his teammates, but that could not happen soon.
Red-X had agreed to meet Beast Boy in an abandoned factory on the outskirts of town. Jump was never as prosperous as the people believed. Its poverty and degradation was well hidden. Many abandoned and dilapidated structures still existed on the city's outskirts, becoming nests of activity for villains. It wasn't the villains who truly harmed the economy of Jump; the people's own ineptitude and ignorance that was only further nourished by their belief in their Titan saviors detracted from the social issues of the city. With the Titans removed and exiled, Beast Boy could easily stage a coup within the criminal ranks and take control of the city's people and resources. He could do it all without any of them ever knowing that he was in control; it would be as though nothing had changed while the people were being secretly controlled and sapped into submission. Money was only a means to Beast Boy; power over the people and the destruction of his supposed friends were his ultimate goals. He might keep them the Titans around; he needed a challenge and people to toy with. The populace would never hope to challenge him; the Titans in all their splendid glory offered entertainment. He had waited this long to do anything so that he could build up his public image and wealth, but he could not wait any longer. Jump would soon be his to command.
AN: I was thinking about making this a slash pairing between Red-X/Beast Boy or Slade/Beast Boy. Any suggestions?