Summary: StarxRob, BBxRae. With the world on it's knees, the Titans find themselves fighting in a legendary battle… and discover the legendary romance that started it all. Romance/Action/Adventure/Humor.
A/N: I thought it would be fun to write an action/adventure fic… but, as I'm used to writing romance and humor, bear with me. ) More important Author's Notes at the end!
BTW - I make a reference to one of the episodes of Teen Titans (Spellbound). It's nothing big, just something I decided to put in that doesn't really have to do with the story line. In short, you don't need to watch the episode to understand this fic, just consider it a kind of "spoiler alert." Even though Spellbound was like, one of the easiest plotlines to figure out… heh. It's like a classic plot!
Disclaimer: Teen Titans not mine!
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Legendary
By: xSPiNx
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Chapter One: Visions
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Somewhere, Long Ago…
They had never understood! They never would! The young girl sobbed, biting her lip. She fought back tears, but they streamed down her face anyway. Why couldn't they understand? Hadn't anyone in her family felt this way before?
She ran as fast as her legs would take her. She wanted to escape, to get away from this harsh world of rules, hierarchy, and laws. To somewhere where she could be accepted. To somewhere where they could be accepted.
But where could she turn? They would find her no matter where she hid. They had their ways. They had connections, money, manpower, and willpower. And more importantly, they had knowledge. The power to think, to feel… and along with it all, the power to destroy.
She ran blindly, through the twisting gnarled branches of the forest that surrounded the perimeter of her property, not caring about the branches that nicked her arms or the strange glowing eyes that watched her with intent curiosity as she tore through the trees and growth.
She felt herself run into what she thought was a brick wall. She collapsed, gasping for air between her ragged breaths, the tears still streaming down her face. She glanced above her to what she had collided with and felt her breath catch in her throat.
It's glowing red eyes stared at her menacingly, and she could faintly see the traces of its face hidden in the shadows. It's voice was deep and cold, mechanical, yet laced with faint amusement. "I can help you…"
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Raven's eyes flared open, and a tiny gasp escaped her lips.
Strange. True, sometimes she had weird visions while she was meditating, but none of them had ever felt this… real. And this one she felt weirdly connected to. As if somehow, in some odd dimension, she had met this girl.
She shook her head, ignoring the weird tugging feeling in the back of her mind. She had learned to dismiss feelings at the wave of a hand, because if she didn't… then, well, there would be certain consequences. Consequences that she would not be able to deal with.
Not now, anyway.
Every so often, she would lose control of her emotions, and her powers seemed to gain a mind of their own. Things exploded, random projectiles were hurled through the air, and things went haywire.
And with one stray emotion, these things were amplified. Things went out of control. Anger was usually what triggered it, but one other strange feeling, one unexplainable emotion that made her feel a tugging in her chest, that made her breath catch in her throat, was just as bad. In fact, in a way, it was kind of worse. She always had to keep her anger in check, but more importantly, she always had to guard her heart. People just thought she was disconnected. Her cool exterior made her seem like she didn't care. But she could never let her guard down.
She had let somebody in, once. But, to make a long story short, he had just been using her. He wanted her to free him from his prison: a ragged book which he had been trapped in for hundreds of years. She had opened her heart to him, and he had betrayed her.
Even then, when she thought she had mastered her feelings, they had taken control of her anyway. She cursed the man, sealing him in his book. Raven had been lucky. That time, no one had been hurt. Not anyone who didn't deserve it, anyway.
From then on, she swore that she would never let anyone get to know her as well as the man in the book had. Sure, she would let her fellow Titans get closer to her, but she would never, ever open her heart. She would build a wall around it and never let anyone in.
But all walls have cracks. They may start as tiny, insignificant things, but under the right conditions, they increase. And the crack in her wall was growing.
Sure, he was annoying. He was always joking around. He never knew when to be quiet. Seriousness was not a word in his vocabulary. And he had the absolute worst timing. But, as much as Raven hated to admit it, Beast Boy was growing on her.
Like, after the whole book incident, he had comforted her. Maybe it was because he knew what it felt like to have loved and to have been betrayed. No matter what the reason though, when he had come to her, for the first time Raven felt a sense of comfort. Of security. Which only meant that she had to build her walls higher.
But little did she know that her walls would come toppling down. She didn't stand a chance. Because love, perhaps the most powerful emotion, is useless to avoid.
Straightening her cloak, she inhaled deeply to soothe herself and then reached across her to one of the many ancient texts that littered her room. It was a huge book, bound together yet still strangely falling apart. She leafed through it aimlessly, not knowing what she was looking for.
The Book of Azar had held the answer to many of Raven's past mysteries. So maybe, just maybe, it held the key to her visions.
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"Booyah!" Cyborg pumped his fist in the air.
"Cyborg is the victor!" Starfire clasped her hands together.
"Dude!" Beast Boy exclaimed, "You so cheated!" He threw the Gamestation control on the couch, then picked it back up in less than a second. "Best fifteen out of, uh…" he held out his fingers and stared at them cluelessly. "Wanna play one more?"
Cyborg raised his arms in the air, stretching. "I dunno, BB, I don't think you can handle it. Plus, I wanna go work on the T-Car." His eyes - err, his human one, anyway -- welled up with pleasure.
"Aww, c'mon Cyborg, just one more!"
"Nah, I think I've beat up on you enough for one day." Cyborg stretched again, then yawned. "How 'bout you play Starfire?" Cyborg chuckled as he left the room.
Starfire beamed, doing a loop-de-loop in the air. "I would be delighted to take part in the Earth custom of video games!" She frowned in confusion. "But I do not know how to play."
"It's easy!" Beast Boy said excitedly, grabbing the control. "Let's start with the basics. You press this red button to jump."
"The red button is used to jump," Starfire repeated.
"Good! Now it gets even easier! To use your powered up moves, you press left, right, up, start, the red button, the blue button and yellow button, left, down, triangle, then down and the green button!" Beast Boy demonstrated, his fingers flying over the control. "That is, unless you want to use your ultimate powered up move. Then, it's even simpler. You just hit the red button, down, left, right, left and down, the green button, down, the blue botton, square, circle, the green button, and up." He gave her a cheeky grin. "See? Simple."
"Err…" Starfire looked at the controller in uncertainty.
"It's easy!" Beast Boy shoved the controller into her hands. "Trust me. You'll get the hang of it."
"Yes," Starfire agreed enthusiastically, happy to be invited to take part in the ritual of video games. "It is as simple as the pie! Let us begin!"
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Ahh, the simple joys of working with mechanics. The cold, hard, steel of machinery, the fluidity of their motorized movements… it was all so soothing. Cyborg hummed as he absentmindedly screwed an extra fuel burner onto the car.
He was just about to disconnect a large segmented pipe from the underside of the car when he was interrupted by Beast Boy, who was muttering something about how Starfire must have cheated, because no one on Earth could catch on to the Gamestation controls that fast.
"What happened to your game with Starfire?" Cyborg asked him as he walked dejectedly in the room.
"…She beat me," Beast Boy grumbled in response.
"So how come you're not playing again?" Cyborg said, unscrewing a part of the car.
"She beat me that bad." Beast Boy replied grudgingly. "And now she's practicing." Beast Boy eyed the various tools and machines that lay strewn around Cyborg's workplace. "Can I help?"
Cyborg almost dropped the tool he was working with. "Uh, I dunno about that, Beast Boy. Remember what happened last time?"
"I promise I'll be really careful this time!" Beast Boy was as excited as a kid in a candy store.
"I guess you can help…" Cyborg winced, almost instantly regretting his decision. Suddenly, his face lit up with a bright idea. He motioned to a spare sheep of scrap metal and a small hammer that lay at Beast Boy's feet. "Flatten out that sheet for me. Just whack it a couple of times with the hammer."
Excited, Beast Boy tried to pick up the hammer, but couldn't lift if off the ground. He tried using two hands.
Still a no go.
He morphed into a gorilla, picked up the hammer with two fingers, then shot Cyborg a proud smile. Forgetting that he couldn't carry the hammer himself, he morphed back into his regular body. The weight of the hammer being too much, he dropped it clumsily.
BOOM!
"Oops!" He looked at Cyborg sheepishly. "Wait, I can do it!" With great effort, he picked up the hammer and slammed the sheet metal with it.
BOOM!
"Hey," Beast Boy exclaimed. "This is kinda fun!"
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BOOM!
The books in Raven's room rattled. Her hood fell over her face as the force of the noise.
BOOM!
Raven tried to concentrate, but she couldn't. She tried to focus her eyes on the yellowing pages of the book as she flipped through it.
BOOM!
It seemed like everything in her room jumped. And she just couldn't focus with all the noise.
She threw the Book of Azar hastily on the floor, determined to get to the bottom of things. The book landed with a loud thump near the corner of her bed, and, as if by magic, lay opened perfectly to a page with an illustration of a ragged young girl. She was on her knees, her face wet with tears. She was looking up hopefully to what seemed to be a humongous tower, leaning over her. Upon closer inspection, it could be seen that the tower was in fact a shadowy figure. And if you really looked closely, you could see the faint traces of a sinister smile curled upon the figure's lips…
Raven didn't take a second glance at it as she impatiently threw the door open and walked out of her room.
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BOOM!
Beast Boy grinned, his mouth taking up about half of his face. "So Cyborg, is this how you got so strong?" Beast Boy wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead, and Cyborg just grinned.
"…Would you mind keeping it down?" A monotone voice sliced through the air. It was quiet, yet it unmistakably filled the whole room with it's silence. "I was trying to concentrate."
Raven had snuck up on them so well that Cyborg and Beast Boy both jumped about ten feet in the air. The hammer fell to the ground sharply.
BOOM!
"Aww, lighten up, Raven!" Beast Boy flashed her a toothy grin. He struggled to lift the hammer up with two hands, but he failed. He gestured to the tool at his feet. "Wanna try?"
"I'd rather not."
"Aww, c'mon Raven!" He got closer to her and flashed her another lopsided grin. "It's fuuuuuuuun," he added in a singsong voice. He tried to lift the huge mallet up again, but it dropped another time, barely missing Raven's feet.
BOOM!
"I said… NO!" Raven's eyes flashed a deep amethyst, and she could involuntarily feel the black swirls of energy leave her, filling the room. A split second later, the hammer, which had been laying uselessly at Beast Boy's feet, flew suddenly across the room. In the blink of an eye, it whizzed from Beast Boy's feet, straight to where Cyborg was standing.
Cyborg could feel the air from the hammer as it forcefully whizzed inches by his face and lodged itself into the T-Car, which was directly behind him. It must have hit an important connector joint, because seconds later, the T-Car fell to the ground as a noisy heap of scrap metal.
The room was deathly silent, as Cyborg and Beast Boy stared at their fellow titan with their mouths open in disbelief. In fact, it was so quiet that Beast Boy had to fight the urge to become a cricket and chirp.
Cyborg was the first to break the silence. "My… my car!" He stammered.
"Woah, Raven… relax!" Beast Boy held his hands up in front of him and slowly backed away from her.
But Raven wasn't listening. Her eyes growing wider with fear, she slowly receded towards the door. "Keep… keep it down…" she managed to sputter out, before she fled from the room, her purple cape flapping swiftly behind her.
As she left, Beast Boy stared at Cyborg, who was about to bawl in the corner. "What happened?" he asked timidly.
"My car…" Cyborg sputtered pathetically, his eyes welling up. "My poor car…" Cyborg rested his head in his hands.
Another voice cut through the air, making the Cyborg and Best Boy jump in the air again. "We can fix your car, Cyborg." Robin had snuck on them about as well as Raven did. He was leaning in the door way, his arms crossed across his chest. "But I don't know what we can do about Raven."
"Whaddya mean, Robin?" Beast Boy asked curiously, cocking his head to the side. He sniffed. "I was just trying to be nice, and she made something go whacko again!"
"…My poor, poor car…"
Robin sighed. "Giver her a break, Beast Boy." He ran his hand through his jet black hair, a thought obviously weighing heavily in his mind. "She was taking it so well," he muttered to himself. He was silent again. Finally, he spoke. "You don't remember?"
"Remember what? That she's a few fries short of a happy meal?" Beast Boy pointed a finger to the side of his head and rotated it in circles.
Robin shook his head, obviously not amused. "Her birthday is coming up…"
To be continued…
A/N: Reviews, comments, suggestions, flames, yadda yadda are all welcome.
Oh, and for future reference, I just started watching Teen Titans a couple of weeks ago, and I totally fell in love with the show! And I thought it would be fun to write this fanfic. So if anything doesn't agree with the show's timeline or history, please don't hesitate to let me know in a review or something… because I haven't seen all of the episodes yet. I'll even dedicate a chapter to you! P
And I know the beginning of this fic was kind of weird, and kind of boring, but I had to set up the background stuff first. I promise, once this fic gets in the swing of things, it will pick up!
So, what did you think? Should I keep on going? Trash it?
Thanks for reading!