One thing has always bothered me about the series. One niggling detail, that just bugs me to heck and back. Plasmus. What's up with him? Only human when he's asleep? What in the name of comas could cause that? Is he hypersentive or some... Thing? And that's where my muse took over and here we are with this ficlet. Enjoy. I don't own Teen Titans in any way, shape, or form. That honor belongs to Cartoon Network and I wish to avoid being sued. On with the show...

Transcendent Agony

By Wordbearer

Plasmus didn't think, not really. Powerful, agonizing sensations poured into its mutated neural net every waking minute: blinding kaleidoscopic images, pungent odors, deafening blasts of sound, and fiery tactile feedback. Sensations went in and Plasmus reacted. The screaming of people prompted it to spit acid at them as it burst from freezing sewers. The rich tang of chemical waste drove it to split the frail tanker in two as it gorged on the glowing substance inside. The agony of bullets ripping through its form goaded it to lash out at the JCPD in front of it with lashes of purple ooze.

Plasmus was a very simple, very direct, problem solver.

Air pressure changes hammered into its torso from above as a darting figure dropped from above. Painful vibrations rumbled through its feet as a car pulled to a halt before it. Were Plasmus human enough for memory, it would clearly recognize the quintet of metahumans from scores of encounters. As it was, the monster merely saw them as more sources of endless pain. The short, wiry leader-beast issued a meaningless cacophony. Plasmus bellowed in reply, the challenge cry vibrating painfully through its being. The beast charged.

The brown-and-white one ripped a hole through Plasmus with a blue blast as a frail, green figure melted into the form of a flying creature. Plasmus tackled the brown-and-white one, burying it beneath tons of mutated flesh. Bolts of emerald energy boiled the flesh on its back, filling the monster with pain. The beast knew pain like a demented mistress though, and willed a geyser of filth skyward. The orange source of the burning pain was caught and thrown into a building.

Thunderous footfalls caused Plasmus to scream as it rose from the still form of the brown-and-white one. A towering green beast charged Plasmus and the leader-beast rode its head. Plasmus brought up its limbs for hammer blow. A trio of freezing cold blasts locked its liquid flesh in place beneath chaffing ice. The monster's multitude of eyes ached from the chill as they made out the out line of the green beast's form moments before impact. Plasmus shattered into dozens of pieces at the crash; the pain blinking out its coherence for a second.

The monster rose as the leader-beast and the green one helped the brown-and-white tormenter to its feet. Plasmus swatted them all aside with a gooey fist and glued them to a concrete wall. It swelled, gathering a massive gout of acid in its throat in preparation for a death blow. A pair of powerful beams sliced off its left arm at the elbow. Plasmus willed the hunk of mutant flesh to form limbs and lunge at the orange source of pain.

The monster spat, but the wave of acid death was deflected by a black shield of energy. It growled as a blue one appeared from thin air, a surge of black light setting off a matching wave of torment. The blue one issued a string of incomprehensible noise while Plasmus lunged. Before the lunge hit home, an ebony shadow leapt into the monster's head, past the hyper sensitivity, past the aggression of biology gone wrong. The shadow dove where Otto Von Furth, the man behind the beast, hid from the waking world.

"Otto."

Confusion. Disbelief.

"Otto Von Furth."

An Awakening. "Who are you? How can I hear you?"

"None of that matters. You have to listen to me."

"Okay… Okay. I'm in my safe place. I must be awake."

"Yes, you are, and people are getting hurt. My friends are getting hurt. You have to stop."

"I can't I want to, but it hurts so much. Everything. The pain controls me."

"You have to."

"I'll try. It's so hard…"

"You have to succeed."

"I… I… I will succeed."

"It doesn't have to be for long. If you can hold still, my friends and I will hit you so hard that you will go back to sleep."

"I understand. I'm a monster."

"No. You're not a monster. You're a victim. Don't be a victim for one moment in your life."

Plasmus froze inches from the blue one's face as streamers of black energy withdrew from its purple flesh. The orange one tore loose from the maw of the monster's paralyzed pet. The trio of others liberated themselves from the glue holding them. Pain urged the beast to lash out at them as the blue one spoke again, the others scattering in response to the gibberish.

Something kept it from reacting; a little voice telling it that to attack was wrong, to attack was weak. The monster was in too much pain to understand the silent words, but the voice had such force that the words were true without understanding. The beast howled inside as the tormenters gathered force. Three of them began to glow. The leader-beast held handfuls of hatefully humming discs. The green one took off as a flying thing.

Plasmus couldn't move as the little voice that seemed like its own insisted, "This is right. This is what needs to be done."

The voice faltered as the quintet of tormentors opened up their attack. Twin beams of focused noise ripped into Plasmus from the brown-and-white one. Emerald blasts bored into its torso from the orange one. Waves of cold emanated from black scythes cartwheeling around and through the monster. The leader-beast blew Plasmus to pieces with a barrage of exploding discs. The monster began to pull itself together when a shadow bloomed into being above it. An emerald stomach smashed Plasmus flat with unimaginable force. The pain crescendoed past the monster's tolerance and Otto Von Furth found the only relief he could: unconsciousness.

Gobbets of twitching, purple flesh dissolved into mist. The rampaging muck-pet lost cohesion after a single howl and evaporated in swift succession. The largest mound burbled away to reveal a pale human form, bald and gangly. Otto Von Furth lay with a smile on his lips, locked away from pain by veils of sleep.

So, you made it to the end of my little literary experiment, odd duck that it is. Somehow I doubt Plasmus is going to star in his own multichapter epic. Good? Bad? Jerky as hell? Thank you for your time.