Instinct
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[A/N: This one has been in the back of my head
for a while now and just won't leave me alone.
It's sort of an extrapolation of what happened
to him in "Transition", except without the going-
completely-batshit part. And please understand
that this story is not a sequel or prequel or in
any other way related to any of my other stories!
It's just an expansion on an idea.
I've been TRYING to get the next chapter of
"Gone Wylde" finished, but my Muse had other
ideas. So did Real Life, which has, once again,
been kicking my butt.
Please feel free to pronounce the aliens' species
name any way you want, but keep in mind that
they possess neither teeth nor tongue, and only
the most rudimentary voice box.]
Disclaimer: Titans good! Copyright infringement bad! Me no do bad! Me no own Titan!
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We've got a minute now, so I'm gonna try to get this down as best I can. Jinx loaned me her cool little recording dealy-doober, and promised that whatever I say will be preserved, no matter what. So here goes.
Oh, right! Station identification. Um, this is Terra. Tara Markov. I'm a Teen Titan. Well … sort of. And I know the news people probably have a lot more information about most o' the things that have been goin' on, but I think I need to tell my side anyway. So I am.
As invasions go, the Mmn!'m prob'ly thought they planned this one pretty well.
The first inkling anyone had that something was wrong was when this big-ass wormhole opened about two klicks behind The Watchtower, and a massive self-propelled particle cannon fell out. It hit the Justice League space station with an energy beam that tore through it like a bullet through aluminum foil. The hole wasn't very big, maybe a meter or so across, but it knocked out the electronics all through the station, an' it totally went dark.
Keep in mind that I wasn't there. But I talked to the ones that were, 'k? This is the straight shit, as far as I know.
Yeah. The Leaguers on board were Flash, Superman, Green Lantern, Hawkman, and Black Canary. As even more evidence (if they needed any, which I doubt) of the invaders' totally crazy attention to detail, the energy beam was two-colored, green and yellow. The green part was based on kryptonite radiation, and knocked Superman out cold; the yellow part just saturated the place and drained Jordan's ring completely. It was only a good bit later that they were able to figure out that magic had been used in making that cannon, so it was a lot more effective than a simple physics-based machine would have been. If Flash hadn't been there, been on duty at the time, and seen the wormhole open, none of 'em might have made it out alive. But he was. So he was able to collect 'em all as soon as the Mmn!'m attacked, bundle 'em into a shuttle, and get the hell out.
Things weren't any better on the ground. Eight more wormholes popped open, an' dropped eight siege ships right over Brussels, London, Beijing, Bombay, Sydney, Los Angeles, New York, and Rio de Janeiro. One North American and both European branches of the Justice League International caught some serious fuckupedness before the automated defenses came online. The Australian and South American offices were basically totaled. So was L.A. The Asian branches were quicker, or the invaders were slower, maybe, and the heroes managed to get their defensive shields activated before the kinetic beams hit. Howsomever, the Mmn!'m had 'em all bottled up tight, and had force fields of their own as, you might say, a deterrent to the various military branches that eventually showed up to attack them. Hah. What a joke.
The only real problem the invaders seemed to have was that they couldn't count very well. Either that, or they had some sort of blind spot for the juvenile superhero teams. Y'know, lookin' back on things, that might not have been entirely unexpected, since their own youngsters were immobile, being stuck in a sort of pupal form and glued in place in their nursery. (Nightwing says it's 'cause the Mmn!'m 'lack an endoskeletal structure' – why can't he just say they don't have bones? – and, despite the rows of scissor-hook-looking things down each side and all those armor-plate things covering its front end, they reminded everybody of [Dick's words again] 'certain land-based mollusks'. That's how they got tagged right off the bat with the slang name 'Slugs'. Hee-hee! They weren't amused.) In any case, they completely ignored the Teen Titans wherever they were in the world.
And that was a big mistake.
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Strike Leader 2-Red-Short (that's the best translation we could manage, given how the few surviving Slugs refuse to communicate with us) stuck out an armored pseudopod to try to fend off the barrage of blows that Nightwing was giving it. But to do that, it had to expose the soft spot where it joined, and that opening was all that was needed. Three quick pricks made it wince (not that it had a face exactly, but it gave the ersatz-mollusk-equivalent of a wince – you get the idea) and pull the pseudopod back inside. Four seconds later, it detonated.
Nightwing had already jumped away and was using a loose sheet of metal roofing to shield himself from the multiple-birdarang explosion (and the rain of purple-tinged alien slime that followed). We were all very happy that the Slugs didn't smell as bad as they acted. In fact, as far as we could tell, they didn't really give off any sort of scent at all. Gar said he could smell them, though, and had proved that by tracking down a few hidden cells of the nasty things.
They weren't as tough to kill as you might think, given what they look like. If a snappin' turtle had somehow mated with a rag mop, and their offspring got knocked up by a garden slug, the result would prob'ly look something like what we were fightin' … if it was spray-painted in blue and green pastel stripes. Actually, if you didn't know what they were, and didn't know they were tryin' to take over the planet, and ignored the fact that they seemed totally unconcerned by collateral deaths, they were sort of pretty. Assuming you unfocused your eyes enough to blur the outline. Anyhow, even though blunt force didn't seem to do much to 'em, edged weapons or energy blasts were another kettle o' fish. Whatever sort of home planet had produced them evidently didn't go in much for sharp edges, because the Mmn!'m didn't seem to have anything like a clotting factor in their … um … bodily fluid. One deep cut and they would begin to slowly deflate, kinda like my Mom's waterbed after the cats got through with it. Then they'd go unconscious and then they'd die.
Of course getting to 'em to cut 'em in the first place was tricky, what with their personal force field generators. But it didn't take Cyborg very long to figure out a hack for those, and then it was open season on the Slugs.
They didn't take hints too good either. They couldn't seem to realize that they were being beaten. It was ... it was like the success of their attacks against the JLI meant there wouldn't be any other opposition, and they couldn't wrap their minds around the fact that they had opposition in plenty. Oo, hey, yeah! That little bunch that attacked Japan! They got wiped out to a Slug by Bushido, that Honorary Teen Titan, 'cause his magical-type weapons weren't affected by the force fields. And while the Slugs had some really impressive energy weapons on their ships, it wasn't like that, one-on-one. For their own use most of 'em carried these bulky, no-frills projectile weapons that fired long, sharp ceramic needles that looked a little like a flechette round. Nasty if they hit you, but they had a real slow fire rate, like thirty a minute or some such. The standard North American military-issue M16 was a waaay better weapon in all respects, and once the shields were down that got pretty damn obvious.
So, something like forty-two hours after first contact, the invasion had turned around and become a mop-up operation for the various armed forces around the world.
But I didn't come here to talk about global military maneuvers. I came to talk about Garfield Logan, aka Beast Boy, aka Changeling. And right now a very unhappy camper.
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Remember when I said that 'most' of the Slugs carried projectile weapons? Emphasis on 'most'? Well, it turned out that some squad leaders also carried a kind of … well, remember the old 'phasers' from the Star Trek TV show? Kinda like that, only bigger. Except they used magic. Sort of. It was, like, combined with a laser or some such. The JLI is still studyin' the few they scavenged and, last I heard, they hadn't even figured out what kind of magic they use. Raven has one, too. She's really hoping … yeah, I'll get to that.
So there we were, helpin' the Army guys do mop-up in Newark. Lemme tell ya, I been through that place a few times, and I wasn't too keen on goin' back. Dirty, dangerous, and smelly, or so I always thought. Turns out I'd just seen the bad parts. Not that there weren't a LOT of bad parts, but it wasn't all like that. We were chasin' the bunch of Slugs that came out of this transport ship that crashed right in the middle of West Side Park. Messed up the north corner of the football field. But like I said earlier, shock just don't do much to Slugs, and I don't believe any of 'em died in the crash. They oozed out of the wreck and formed up ranks on the field. Then the police got there and it got crazy. The Slugs broke off into smaller groups and headed west, and that was when we got there.
Me and Gar teamed up with a squad of Rangers. Now, most Army guys are pretty much by-the-book, you know? Rules and regs and all that shit? Not the Rangers. They think on their feet, they got the tools and the talent, and that lieutenant knew how to use us. He didn't act like we were extra baggage, or just in his way or anything. You want my opinion, he was a lot better at it than Nightwing, who has a bad habit of taking everything personally. But I guess Lt. Rogers never had to train with ol' Bats, so he was good to go.
Anyhow, he had me doing transport, on account of I was faster than a chopper and could land us anywhere and could throw up a defensive earthwork in about a second … all of which I did. Me and two of the Rangers had some up-close-and-personal time with those nasty ceramic bullets of theirs (hell I still have the field-dressing on my arm) and none of us wanted a repeat, so I made sure there was four or five meters of hard dirt between us and them. The Lieutenant pointed out where each of us was to go and what we had to do, and we got busy.
I wanted to stick close to Gar. Ever since I gave up the charade and admitted to remembering everything, he's just been so sweet! You know, forgiving and stuff? Sometimes it feels like all that bad shit I did was just a horrible dream. But I know it's not. You know? I've been back to the cave a few times, and it feels …
… it feels …
… something …
Eh. I don't know the right word. Weird, I guess.
Anyways, Gar's a doll. We talked a lot. I mean a LOT-a-lot, about all kinds of stuff. Lots about our, uh, you know … feelings and shit. Neither one of us had anything LIKE a normal childhood that we could use as a base, and with him hanging around super-types since he was a kid, and me moving from place to place every few weeks for better than half my life … yeah. We talked. And talking led to sharing, and sharing led to … well, really caring about … you know. Each other. And then we admitted to thinking about each other as more than friends. Not like he wasn't up-front with that from the word 'go', you know?
But I can be totally dense, 'cause, you know, that 'feelings' stuff is some scary shit, and I didn't like to think about it. It never really … never worked out … for me … too good. Either I'd get hurt – what usually happened – or I'd hurt someone else. I guess I pretty much sucked at it. Lots of baggage. But he didn't care, and he didn't let any of that shit stop him.
And then we were just sorta hangin' in his room one night, talking like we did all the time, and we sorta talked ourselves to sleep, leaning up against his lower bunk, curled up with each other on that ratty little rug. I was dead stiff when I woke up a few hours later, but the first thing I saw was his eyes, and he looked so … solemn. And I said, "What?" And he said, "You look like an angel." And I laughed and said, "In your dreams!" And he said, "You always are." And I won't lie. That floored me a little.
And then he kissed me.
It wasn't like I didn't know he wanted to. I'd have to be made of rock … heh, like, 'still', you know? … not to get that he liked me … like that. 'Liked' me, liked me. You know. So I wasn't shocked or anything. But I wasn't expecting him to do it right that minute. I'd just woke up. My hair was a wreck and I really could have used a shower and I know my breath was prob'ly bad enough to peel paint. But he didn't care. He just leaned in and kissed me and his lips were so soft and warm and it surprised me, but in a good way, and then I kissed him back and … and we just sorta … kept going. We … um … didn't make it to breakfast.
Uh … yeah. I got a little off-topic. Sorry about that. I'll, um … I'll do some editing later. Need to make myself a note.
So. Where was I? Uh … right. Lt. Rogers had Gar and me split up. I was with the bigger group, about ten or eleven Rangers under Sergeant Wallace, and we were supposed to attack the main Slug concentration. Gar went with the Lieutenant and five men to scope out where the others were hiding. And there's where the, uh … the tricky part comes in.
See, Gar and Lt. Rogers spent a good three hours earlier talking about the various animals Gar could become, and what all different abilities they had. So when they split off from us, he morphed into an extinct kind of hyena thing. It's called a Megistotherium, and it's just about the scariest thing, to me anyway, that he can become. It's huge, for one thing, close to two meters at the shoulder and maybe four meters long, not including the tail. It's wide, and dense, and hairy, and its head is almost as big as I am.
And those jaws! I mean, damn! The rest of its official name is 'osteothlates', which means 'bone crusher'. In that form, he's got a bite strength roughly twice that of a full-grown great white shark. He can bite right through sheet steel, and anything organic doesn't have a chance. He could walk up to a grizzly bear and bite off its head without breakin' a sweat. Plus, his sense of smell is totally off the chart. Plus, he can run at about fifty klicks for hours and hours and never get tired. He's just … awesome. Yeah. That's the word, all right. And from what I heard, when they found the Slugs they were after, he, uh, kinda let the animal's instinct take over a little. I heard it was a real short fight.
But the Slugs were tricky, or one of 'em was. Musta been the leader. He had one of those phaser-things I mentioned before, right? And we … well, at the time, you know, nobody really had a clue how they worked so we all just tried to steer clear, and Gar's totally terrific at dodging, but … see, the Lieutenant told me the Slug was hiding, and that was kinda out of character, so nobody … yeah. It got off a lucky shot.
But, like I said, Gar's pretty damn tough in that form. The, uh … the weapon burned off a patch of fur on one shoulder and charred his skin pretty good in an area a little bigger than I could cover with one hand, and it hurt. It hurt him a lot, and he howled and jumped around, and I guess the Slug musta thought Gar was the biggest threat, 'cause he … he shot him again. Hit him in the neck. And Gar just about went crazy. Burns hurt, I know, but there was somethin' else goin' on with that beam. Had to be. Gar started running then, and he can put on one helluva burst of speed. He spotted where the Slug was shooting from and ran around to try to flank him. The Rangers had already opened up on the creep from their position, and … well. Long story short, they got the Slug, but not before he'd shot Gar again, this time on his left hip. And that shot … it, uh … it put him down, hard. He was just … lying there. See, I'd heard him howl, an' I knew that was a 'pain' howl, an' our group had already taken out the main bunch of Slugs so I wasn't really needed there, so I … I kinda grabbed me a good chunk of dirt and zipped over to where I'd heard the fight. And I got there right after the third shot, an' I saw Gar sort of … stagger, and … an' then he just … dropped.
I landed beside him and glommed onto that huge head and think I might have started to cry a little. I don't cry much. I learned a long time ago that it didn't do any good to cry for myself. But this was different. He didn't look so good, and was just lying there panting an' he …
Crap. Okay, hang on. We're moving out. Slugs spotted over in Peapack. I'll get the rest of this down later. Promise.
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[A/N: Let me know what you think. The next chapter should be up in a week or so. Maybe less.]