Your Greatest Enemies
Disclaimer/Notices: Hello. Just to make sure I'm not unplugged, I own no rights to the Teen Titans show or established characters; only the original characters I come up with. Also, just to recap, this is the third story I've written.
Chapter 1: Seeing Double
The Titans sat in their living room; no crime, no responsibilities. That meant that Robin was having them waste their free time on the obstacle course. For the past week, he'd been having them work in effective team pairings. Obviously he paired himself off with Starfire. The pairings that really were effective were: Beast Boy and Raven for stealth; Cyborg and Starfire being the tankers of the group; and Naga & Raven as her dark powers greatly enhanced his elemental powers, much to Inferno's disgust.
"That was a good run guys, but I think we can do a little better."
"Ugghh," exclaimed the four.
"Dude, we've been doing this all day; we've been wasting time training when we could've been wasting it our own ways," Beast Boy complained.
"Beast Boy, if there's one thing I learned from Bruce, it's that lapses in crime are when you should be training the most."
"Well if there's one thing I learned from the Guardians, it's to enjoy your time while you can."
"That's kid with ancient spirits one, spiky haired loudmouth with brooding mentor zero."
"Hey!"
"May we at the very least take the breaking for lunch?"
"Okay, but after that's over, it's straight back to training."
Naga, Cyborg and Beast Boy didn't seem to hear as they were already in the T-Car.
"Why do I even bother?" Robin asked himself.
Before they even got to the restaurant, BB and Cy started arguing over whether to get meat lover's or vegetarian.
"No way! I am not letting you be the cause of another animal's death!"
"They would've been killed either way grass stain!"
Should we try to end their feuding? Marina asked.
No, this is my favorite show, Who has a Thicker Skull than Sub-Terror, Airheart said. Marina had to use both of her tentacles to restrain the earth spirit.
Eventually though, both the cyborganic and the shapeshifter's fighting was wearing down on everyone's nerves; so to get a point across, Naga caused their sodas to explode right in their faces.
"Let this be a warning, keep arguing, and next time it'll be more than sodas," he said menacingly.
However, right when they got the pizza, they heard an explosion coming from not too far away.
Hopefully this will sway Robin out of more training later.
When they found the source of the explosion, they found Mumbo, Control Freak, and Johnny Rancid.
"Titans, so nice of you to attend our little performance."
"Have you idiots learned nothing?" Raven mocked.
"Like the old saying goes, if at first you don't succeed, steal steal again."
"Blah blah blah, enough talking you old sideshow carnie, I want to crush some skulls," Rancid said.
"Titans go! Naga, Raven, give us some cover!"
"Got it!"
Naga dropped to the street and smashed his fist into the road, causing a large tremor that shattered the pavement while Raven used her telekinesis to launch them at the villains.
Rancid went into his demon form and used his demonic pistols to shatter the projectiles heading his way, while Mumbo used his magic wand to transmogrify the remaining shards into a flock of doves.
Then from out of the flock, a green dove quickly transformed into a T-rex.
Control Freak aimed his remote at a line of trucks. With a white glow from his remote, the assembled vehicles and various other inanimate objects came to life and merged into a giant, metal monster.
Cyborg and Starfire stood in front of the monstrosity and started blasting at its legs, quickly immobilizing it.
While Naga was preoccupied with what his friends were doing, a beam of red energy shot him in the back.
Turning around, he found Rancid looking particularly angry.
"You didn't think I'd forget about you nearly killing me, did you?"
"Honestly, I thought that the coma would make you forget."
Rancid flew his bike full speed in blind fury, shooting off red energy in every direction. Naga tried to counter the red energy with his dark lightning, but found that when the two attacks made contact, they resulted in a very volatile explosion.
Okay, now I know not to do that, he thought as he wiped the smoke from his eyes.
Out of the dust, Rancid came at Naga like a charging bull. If it weren't for Raven raising an energy barrier, he would've been run right over.
Mumbo aimed his wand at the ground, and suddenly, a bed of orange flowers appeared in the middle of the street. A split second later, six giant serpentine vines with ravenous, eyeless mouths with purple tongues shot up, into the air; their stalks were at least two feet thick. Each of them raced after a Titan.
Naga learned that not only were these flowers fast, but they were also immune to fire and ice.
"Try a different trick, these pretties have skin as thick as concrete!" Mumbo yelled.
Robin merged two of his birdarangs into a sword to try and fight the plants. Although he couldn't cut all the way through their thick stalks, he was able to leave a dent about an inch deep.
Meanwhile, Beast Boy was shifted into a prehistoric giant ground sloth and tried to dig his claws into the plant monster.
Starfire flew up the neck of her monster and shot off starbolts across it.
Cyborg shot his sonic cannon at the source shrub. When the smoke cleared, he found that it was barely harmed. At least the true parts of it. Underneath the flowers, the plant necks all convened into a mass of thick roots overlapping each other, with tentacle roots digging into the ground.
When two of the plant heads chased after Starfire, she was able to easily evade one, while the other snuck up in front of her while she focused on the one chasing her. She quickly flew down and let the two heads collide with each other.
The villains looked on in pleasure as Mumbo's creation played with its meal.
"Titans, team up!"
Cyborg and Starfire tried to draw the plant heads' attention.
From behind, Naga started to focus on the spot of earth that held the plant monster in place. He started to lift a chunk of stone that held the creature's roots. Raven came in adding her own power to turn his standard earth manipulation, into dark earth manipulation. The plant monsters howled in pain as the dead stone started to wither it to layers of flakes.
A while back, they found out that Raven's dark energy brought out the more, destructive, aspects of Naga's own powers, though they stayed away from mixing her dark energy and his fire powers.
"Titans go!"
The Titans charged at the villains with the intent of subduing them.
At once, Mumbo shot energy out of his wand, Rancid fired off both his demon pistols, and Control Freak accessed a secret button at the base of his remote which emitted an ominous greyish-orange glow that shot out in an unstable bolt arc. The beams merged into a force that seemed to incinerate the very air around it. To counter, Raven sent out a beam of black energy, and Naga sent out a stream of dark lightning.
The beams collided. The contact was so impressive that a white hot orb was formed. It was so destructive that it lowered to the ground and formed a crater by pulling the ground into its form like a vacuum.
Everyone was stationary. Not moving lest they wanted to feed themselves to the quantum singularity.
Out of curiosity, Naga grabbed a piece of rubble and tossed it into the white orb.
It didn't disintegrate on contact, but it didn't pass through to the other side. It never came out. It was strange, probably deadly, yet beautiful at the same time.
Naga started to feel a small tug at his hands.
Looking down, he saw his hands stretching out as if it were made of water. Soon his very being was being pulled in.
The white hole was affecting his powers, as he couldn't even affect the air around him.
When he grew his wings out to fly away, they too were pulled towards the vortex.
Starfire grabbed him from under the arms. Planting her feet solidly in the ground, she tried to use her alien strength to pull her friend away from the pulsing white orb.
The villains piled on Rancid's motorcycle and flew away from the destructive mass like the cowards they were.
Although Star was effective in slowing down his progression in, even she wasn't strong enough to pull out of its reach.
"Friends... please help!" she screamed. Everyone formed a line behind Starfire, with Beast Boy as a giant squid using his tentacles to latch onto a street lamp.
At first they succeeded. However, even this wasn't enough to stop the white vortex from trying to pull them in. Empty cars were pulled into it, adding to its mass, putting it closer to them. In a momentary lapse in concentration, all the Titans were pulled into it. As soon as their heads went in, everything was white nothingness. Everything around them started spinning. On the outside, the white hole sent out intense pulsewaves. Then instantly, the white hole collapsed in on itself.
All the Titans could make out from inside was the sound of their screams, and feeling of extreme dizziness; they weren't sure whether up was down, or down was up.
The power of the hole's gravity was so strong that it was pressing them together, and hurling them from one side to another, although it was impossible to tell if there was even an end to the vast emptiness they were in.
They felt themselves slow down, and now they weren't sure if they were floating in a single spot, or falling so fast that they didn't know it. This didn't last long, as they started to go faster and faster, until they felt themselves hit pavement.
"Is everyone alright?" Robin asked.
"Right now I'm trying to figure out if my stomach's switched places with my brain, so take a wild guess."
They got up and stretched out from being stuck together so tightly. Looking around, they found themselves in Jump City, only it wasn't the Jump City they knew.
The buildings looked ramshackled, with barred entrances and blown off roofs. All along the streets, rusted cars were lined up with fire billowing out from under their hoods. In the alleys they could hear hastened footsteps.
"Uh dudes, where are we?"
"Weird, my sensors say we're still in Jump City."
"I think your arm was screwed up from the fall."
"Yeah, let me get this thing fixed."
After ten minutes Cyborg came back with his conclusion.
"Huh, nothing seems to be wrong."
"I think that vortex, or white hole, or, whatever, I think it must've taken us to the future," Naga said.
"Friend Naga, what would make you think that?"
"I've seen enough sci-fi to get a good idea of what's happened."
"Yeah, that's a vast well of reliable information," Raven said sarcastically.
"It does kinda make sense, we must've been put so far in the future, things just went south without us," Beast Boy said.
"I don't think we've went through time; my atomic clock says that the day, month, or even year, hasn't changed at all."
Beast Boy's ears suddenly twitched. He heard something, something metallic. "Who's there?!" he shouted at nothing.
Metal cables whirred out from a shadowed alley and struck Raven in the back. Electrical currents poured onto her in waves, forcing her to her knees instantly.
Naga grabbed the cables and tried to pull them off, but found that steel spikes had been lodged into the empath's back, so he couldn't take them off to fast without scarring her. Instead, he coursed the electricity through his arms and fired at into the shadows where they emerged from. It seemed to work as the cables started to feel loose. Pulling them out he saw that they were burnt from where he hit them.
"Show yourselves cowards!" Starfire screamed, her eyes glowing a violent green.
"As you wish."
On the roof in front of them they saw the H.I.V.E., only different.
Mammoth's H/M that was usually gold, was now silver. See-More, instead of having one big eye, now had three smaller eyes placed in a triangle shape. Billy Numerous was sporting a grey suit with a multiplication sign on it. On top of that, this new costume didn't cover his whole head, revealing scraggly brown hair. Instead of dangling from a multi-purpose harness, Gizmo sat atop a hovering chair with multiple buttons on the arms.
"You punks got a lot of nerve com'n out here," Billy said.
"Your reign ends today! H.I.V.E. destroy them!"
Mounting up the change in attire as merely a cosmetic change, the Titans sprang into action.
See-More stayed on the rooftop and fired his triple beam lasers off like a machine gun. "Mammoth, behind you!" he screamed into a communicator.
Mammoth turned around and caught Naga. For some reason he was unprepared when Naga grew out his wings to get away.
"Since when can he do that?!" he screamed.
Before Naga could question the matter further, a group of Billies tried to pull him to the ground from his waist.
Charging up electricity, Naga clapped his wings together, sending out lightning shockwave which paralyzed the duplicates.
Gizmo floated up to See-More. "Ops, don't you think that the Titans look, different?"
"Different looks, same crooks!" See-More continued to blast single-mindedly.
"Time for a crushin embrace y'all!" Another set of Billies wrapped themselves around Cyborg and started squeezing with their combined strength.
When Starfire flew off to help Cy, Mammoth blocked her path. With speed that belied his immense size, he slammed her head into the ground.
"Naga Raven!" Beast Boy screamed.
"Don't let them power up!"
Gizmo tapped a button on his chair which shot a purple beam at the two. Soon they could feel themselves drop to the ground, unable to stay in the air. The beam was increasing their very mass. They crashed into the ground forming silhouette craters; they couldn't even lift their arms.
Billy and his clones dispatched Beast Boy and Robin fairly quickly.
"That leaves you two, Talon and Shifter. If you ever see Kid Quick, tell him I'll find him. Just kidding, you won't be around that long." See-More said.
"Talon?"
"Shifter?"
"Hm, amnesia, that makes our jobs much easier."
"What are you talking about? What reign?" Beast Boy questioned.
"I'm surprised you guys can forget the pain and misery you've created. Tell me you don't remember the countless innocents you've struck down in hateful blood."
"I don't know who you guys have us mixed up with, or where you've been for the past few years, but we're the good guys."
"They don't look like the Titans we know."
"I think I agree with ya Billy."
"Thanks Billy."
"Let's not get into this again," Mammoth said.
"Don't let them trick you, it's time to finish this." See-More started to charge his triple beam blast.
"Wait; something doesn't add up here. I don't think these are our Titans," Gizmo said.
"No, that would be us!"
Pillars of magma gushered out from the street. Fortunately, Raven was able to teleport them away when Gizmo deactivated the mass field.
When they made it to a rooftop, they were able to get a look at their attackers.
If they didn't know any better, the Titans could've sworn they were looking into a mirror. A twisted and distorted mirror, for on the rooftop opposite them, they saw what was supposed to be them.
Robin mirror image's costume was only black and white, with a tattered cape and a white "T," on the right side of his chest. The colors on his mask were inverted, and the left half of his head was shaved.
Beast Boy saw himself with dark green skin and hair. Instead of a Doom Patrol uniform, he wore a black and purple leather jacket. The look in his eyes were not loveable, but rather crazed, and hungry for slaughter.
The duplicate Raven wore a cloak of deep blood red, the same color as her eyes and hair, which reached down to the top of her back. On her face was a look of disgust.
The alternate Starfire wore an outfit similar to Blackfire, with dark red hair and blue eyes that matched the starbolts on her hands.
Cyborg's evil half looked like himself only packed with more weapons and scopes, with his cybernetic eye over where his right eye would go and red highlights on his armor.
Naga's opposite seemed like his worst fear come to life. He wore a trench coat similar to his own, though the sleeves were ripped off from the shoulders down, revealing dark gray fur-like hairs growing across his skin. His feet lacked the dinosaurian claws that Naga possessed, but were also covered with the same gray fur. The counterpart's face was probably the most disturbing. Two extra red eyes were located underneath his regular eyes. They lacked anything other than color and seemed like only red dots. Out of his mouth sprouted large mandibles that made continuous clicking sounds. To confirm his fears, the counterpart was wearing a shirt with a red spider on it.
"Wait two groups of Titans?"
"No, we're the real deal, those fools are merely copies," the negative Raven said.
"Titans, slaughter!"
The evil Raven used her powers to make dark tendrils ensnare the two groups. Unlike good Raven's powers, this energy was black with red outlines.
"Kyd, table for ten!" Gizmo's presumed counterpart said into a communicator in his ear.
A white disk soon started to engulf each of the trapped teens.
"Lost them Talon."
"Looks like the Hive's got some old familiar faces for allies."
"Hmph, their numbers do not matter, one by one, they will fall," the evil Starfire said.
"I can't wait to go pick their carcasses clean," dark Beast Boy said as he licked his lips.
"Save the legless muckdweller for me," anti-Naga said as his mandibles clicked together.
