Tales of the Teen Titans: Kidnapped Chapter 1, a teen titans fanfic

Tales of the Teen Titans: Kidnapped, chapter 1: Prologue

"We have gained so much in the last three hundred years. And we have lost much.

"We have undergone an industrial, technological, and cultural revolution that would have literally stunned our forebears. The world in which we now live, is not the one they knew. Poverty and want have been eliminated, to the point where we can find definitions of the very concepts only in a few outdated archived resources. Warfare between our mutual species is no more. The slave world of Apokolips, which once menaced galaxies, is ashes, and its Master, Darkseid, no longer a concern. We may mourn the loss of the paradise world of New Genesis, but its people have found a place here amongst us, and even now, guide our development, themselves free of the lash of war under which they lived, for so long.

"The roll call of the fallen is long and sobering, even without mentioning names: human, Hunter, Thanagarian, Kryptonian, Tameranean, Osiran—Lords, Warriors, and Thinkers, alike—New God, even some demons, have all perished in attempting to save our mutual worlds and our species from the forces the Great Powers unleashed in the last half of the twenty-third century. That we are still here, and still free, indicates to me that their sacrifice has not been in vain.

"But whatever their—and our-ultimate fate, one thing I can say with certainty: they will all be remembered."

-Excerpt from an address given by Professor M. T. Marco, holder of the Copernicus Chair at the University of New San Francisco, shortly before her disappearance (some say, translation), in the year 2489 A. D.

"All wars are holy wars."

-Anonymous

Chapter 1: Taken

Starfire was having a hard time remembering her own name.

She lay there in the dark, bound with chains (although, really, she was only peripherally aware of them) and tried to remember what had happened. Something had happened….she had been doing something, then something happened….but what? Who was she? What was she doing here? And perhaps most importantly of all, where was here?

On board the bridge of the Gordanian ship, Lord Trogaar surveyed his captive, depicted on the monitors. The Tameranean was, of course, drugged quite thoroughly; he'd learned from the last time she'd been his "guest." An awake and alert Tameranean usually found some way to break out. That wasn't going to happen this time. But now that he finally had her, what was he going to do with her?

He could, of course, always sell her to the Citadel. No matter who was in charge, they were always in the market for more slaves, and Tameraneans were among the strongest, and therefore the most valuable. And, once she was off his hands, how they managed her would be their headache. Who knew? With any luck, she might escape, he'd recapture her again, and sell her again. Double the profits.

But for now, she was his prisoner. And the Tameraneans had been a thorn in his side for some time now. He had a perfect opportunity to tweak their noses, so to speak, simply by somehow mistreating their oh-so-precious princess.

But how to do it best? His studies of the culture of the planet she'd been staying on, the one called Earth (what a ridiculous name! Naming an entire world for dirt!) had led him to uncover the strange human custom of rape, which, on the surface of it, sounded promising. He could just imagine the howls of anguish that would emanate from the royal court of Tameran should a video get back to them of their princess being violated in that manner.

Except…except he just couldn't see it. It wouldn't do for it to be some lowly soldier doing the deed; no, for maximum impact, he'd have to do it himself. And he just plain couldn't see himself getting that intimate with an ugly, dirty Tameranean.

Besides, to Gordanian noses, they stank to the high stars. An acrid, mammalian stench that clung to them even after repeated washings. Starfire's own prison cell had to have its own closed air circulation system so that the smell of her didn't sicken the guards outside.

No, attractive as the notion of raping the Tameranean princess was, he just couldn't see subjecting himself to such an excruciating ordeal even for the sake of revenge. In fact, just the thought of it…..he dialed up an anti-emetic and dry-swallowed it.

Well, there was time. He'd come up with something. Maybe something better.

…

"How long has she been out of communication?" Robin asked, his brow furrowing in worry. The Titans had met back at the Tower after a routine patrol, only to find that Starfire hadn't rejoined them.

"At least an hour and thirty minutes," replied Cyborg. "I didn't think anything of it at first…you know, sometimes Star takes off by herself and doesn't check in for a while…but she usually checks in before now."

"Can you pinpoint her location by her phone?"

"That was the first thing I tried. Her phone's not functioning. Either it's off or…." He didn't finish the statement.

"Hank?"

Hank Jones, aka Haywire, concentrated, putting his fingers to the side of his head. He was a low-level telekinetic, but a relatively high level psi. "Not getting anything, Rob. Either she's not in the vicinity, or…." He didn't finish that statement.

"Raven?"

The sorceress bowed her head slightly, closing her eyes. After a moment, "I can't sense her anywhere in the city. I don't think she's here."

"She wouldn't have left the city, not without telling us. Not voluntarily." A horrible suspicion began to form in Robin's mind. "Raven? Can you check with the Orb? See if she's anywhere around? At all?"

"I will." {{Orb? Are you there?}}

{{Vaguely. There seems to be something clouding her mind. It inhibits my ability to locate her.}}

{{Approximately twenty-six of your light-years away from this world, traveling at a high velocity. At least, that is the best I can do, as she herself is not sure where she is.}}

{{No. Something is hampering her mind. Her thoughts are fuzzy and disjointed. She does not know exactly where she is, therefore I cannot tell, either. But from what I can determine, I do not believe she is there of her own free will. There is an undercurrent of anxiety to her thoughts.}}

Raven turned to the others. "The Orb says she's in interplanetary space, about twenty six lightyears away. It thinks she's been kidnapped."

"Very well, then," said Robin mildly. "We'll just have to go unkidnap her."

Cyborg got the T-jet ready. Some time before, they'd outfitted it with a version of the warp drive the Gordanians used, scavenged from the wreckage of the ship they'd used to build their tower.

While they readied themselves, Robin found himself having to break bad news to Angelique. "But why can't I go?" she moaned. "Miss Starfire's my friend, too!" Kitten had already stashed her things in the T-ship.

Robin knelt before Angelique. "Look, Angelique. It's not that we don't want you to come. Goodness knows we could use someone with powers like yours. But it's dangerous. I know Slade didn't care, but Slade was a bad guy. As team leader, I just can't ask you to accompany us. If something happened to you, I'd never forgive myself. And I'm sure your Father Alpha would be dead set against it. You don't want to make him mad, do you?"

"No…."

"Besides," he went on, "we need somebody here, to look after the city while we're gone. There's no telling how long we'll be gone, and I can't think of anyone I'd rather have looking out for things here than you. So, okay?"

Angelique looked down at her feet. "Okay." But she sounded clearly disappointed.

It would be a mistake to say that they "blasted off," the T-ship having been converted recently to a field drive. As it was, the multi-pod ship lifted off, with no sense of acceleration, gaining altitude rapidly. "Raven? Can the Orb give us anything like coordinates?"

Raven reached into her pocket and drew forth….a small Orb. Before leaving, the Orb had detached a very small piece of itself, and nestled into one of the pockets in her cloak. Apparently, a piece was the same as the whole. "Orb? Which way should we go?"

{{Galactic northeast, longitude 38.5 47' degrees, declination +01.2802 degrees , mark .06. Now mark .07. I will give you updated coordinates accounting for their trajectory and vector.}}

"Can you sense anything of Starfire's thoughts?"

{{No. She herself does not know exactly where she is, but she seems to find her surroundings vaguely familiar. Though this familiarity does nothing to ease her anxiety.}}

"Alright, people," announced Robin. "We don't know who snatched Starfire, and we don't know their strengths, so it's best to assume the worst. On the other hand, they don't know ours. Orb, can you tell if whoever took her has any idea we're after them?"

{{I cannot really tell, Robin. Their minds are unfamiliar to me. However, I have detected no scanning sensor emanations striking us, and the vessel she is on does not seem to be taking what I suppose you might call evasive maneuvers.}}

"Good enough. But we have to prepare ourselves before we reach them. Kitten, Cyborg? No active sensors. Let the Orb guide us. Maybe once we have a visual, we'll have some idea who we're dealing with."

"Robin?" Raven's voice came over the intercom. She'd cut in the privacy switch, so none of the others could hear. "We'll find her. We'll bring her back."

"Thanks, Raven." He chewed on a knuckle. Thanks for trying, anyway.

…

Lord Trogaar was going over some reports, and was actually pleased with what he saw. Profits were up, always a welcome sign, and some of their latest ventures had proven to be more successful than they'd originally anticipated. So he was actually in a pretty good mood. Then he remembered the Tameranean in the holding cell.

Curse the creature, the troq, as some called her kind. Lord Trogaar didn't call her that; she wasn't nothing. She was a good deal more trouble than nothing.

How to maximize profits from her sale? He supposed he could put her up for auction on the open market, but in her current drugged state, she wasn't very impressive. And letting her head clear was an invitation to disaster, like last time. So he had to find someone who already knew about her, or at least about Tameraneans in general, someone who was aware of her potential. But who?

He'd already back-burnered his plans to brutalize her in some way. A simple beating, one that left scars (the only kind really worth giving in the first place) might detract from her value. That would never do.

Maybe he could blind her. Tameraneans had that annoying ability to shoot beams from their eyes….if he gouged out her eyes, she'd have a hard time doing that. But once again, that might cut into his profits from this venture, and that was just plain unacceptable. He hadn't gone to all this trouble, returning secretly to that world she'd been living on, stealthily striving to avoid attracting the attention of that thing they'd encountered last time, to waste money. It just wasn't good business.

With a very human-like sigh, he recognized that, value-wise, it would be best for the female to be alive and in good health. She'd bring so much more that way. Maybe he could find some market, some buyer that would find her sexually attractive, though, from his perspective, that seemed unlikely. Finding someone who'd actually desire to mate with an ugly, dirty, smelly Tameranean wouldn't be easy. And, by the time he found such a buyer, she'd probably smell even worse. Idly, he wondered if she'd soiled herself by now. Probably; she certainly hadn't been anywhere near a biowaste receptacle. Or in any shape to use one.

Her secondary value would be as a work slave. Tameraneans were, after all, very strong. With another sigh, he reluctantly decided that was probably the way to go. Get the creature off his hands, and get on with business.

Sometimes, you just have to swallow revenge in the name of the greater good.

….

Starfire's consciousness swam in and out of her head. She couldn't hold a thought for more than a few micro-seconds, and when she could, the drugs in her system, the drugs being administered by a small pump attached to her arm, saw to it that it didn't stay there long. She knew she was in some kind of enclosure, and that she was chained, bound up, unable to move. For a brief moment, she thought she recognized her surroundings…they seemed somehow familiar. But then the pump shot another dose into her circulatory system, and awareness faded.

But not before she got one coherent thought out: Robin!

…..

{{I have just detected Starfire. She is in great mental distress. So far, she is unharmed, but she is calling for Robin,}} the Orb said to Raven. {{Do you think we should tell him?}}

"Did you get anything more specific than that?"

{{No. I am monitoring her position, however. We are on an intercept course.}}

Raven bit her lip. "Let's….not tell him just yet. He's…got a lot on his mind, as it is."

…..

On board the Gordanian ship, the day crew had just come on. Those crewmembers going off-shift were filling them in on any information not immediately apparent from the screens. "What's this?" asked one of the newcomers, pointing one clawed finger towards a monitor. There was something registering on the extreme far end of the sector. Something big.

"Don't know," said his relief. "It wasn't there a few mintons ago. Here," she reached over and flicked a button, "let's run an active scan and see what it is."

All of a sudden, the great ship shuddered as if it had just run into an asteroid. "What was that?" someone asked, alarm in his voice, "are we hit? Did somebody take a shot at us?"

"Relax. That was no hit. Something just blew, that's all."

The female who should've already gone off-shift was running a quick diagnostic. "Hm. Looks like we just blew a sensor, off the port bow. Some sort of feedback. What could do that?" She tried another sensor, focusing it on the damaged area outside the ship.

A monitor, slaved to the sensor, depicted the wreckage of the first sensor, a scar marring the overall clean lines of the Gordanian battle cruiser. It seemed to have blown from within. Idly, it dawned on her that this was, or should be, the same sensor she'd set to scan the anomaly on the far edge of the screen…..

As a test, she aimed another sensor at the object, thing, whatever it was. Boooom! Lights flickered on the bridge.

"There goes another sensor. What's going on here?"

"Don't know. Visual? Put the thing on the main screen. Let's see what it looks like." Obligingly, the on-shift crewmember directed the portside hi-rez viewcameras towards the thing. They all looked up at the screen, eager to see what the strange object was. The image flickered, stabilized….

…

Lord Trogaar had finally chanced upon the perfect revenge against the Tameranean: he'd addict her to some powerful drug. That wouldn't affect her value as either a work slave or concubine, and would have the added bonus of making her life (what was left of it) a living nightmare. Her own kin would probably be ashamed of her because of her "weakness," and, thus further alienated from her friends and family, she'd be more compliant. Who knew? Perhaps she could be chemically programmed to be the perfect, submissive slave, with never a thought in her head save how to please her Master, who, of course, would utterly control the supply of the drug(s) she was hooked on.

Raping her body would subtract from her value, and be unpleasant, besides. But raping her spirit…ah, that was another matter altogether.

He touched the intercom. "Bridge? How long till we make planetfall?" After all, such a procedure as he was contemplating would require a certain amount of time.

No response. "Bridge?" Again, nothing. "Security. What's going on on the bridge? I'm not getting any answer to my calls."

"We will investigate the matter, Lord Trogaar." Trogaar could hear the captain of the guard singling out a security detail. He cut the 'com off, while he did some research on just what drugs Tameraneans were most subject to….

A frantic 'com signal interrupted his study. "Sir! This is Trobor, sir! Sir, it's the bridge crew! They've, they've gone mad! Sir!"

"Calm down, soldier. Let me speak to your captain."

"I can't, sir! He's dead! They killed him! Tore him apart, like, like wild animals or something! There's only three of us left….we've managed to seal off the bridge, but we can hear them pounding on it even now! And, and I think they've got some kind of cutting torch! Sir, what do we do?"

"Hang on, soldier, I'm on my way." He dialed up security. "Get everybody up to the bridge. Tell them to armor up and bring weapons. We've a mutiny on our hands."

…

In her holding cell, Starfire could feel—barely, through the chemical haze over her mind—the shuddering of the ship. On some level, she was aware that she was someplace she didn't want to be, someplace it would be unhealthy to remain. But forming a coherent plan was difficult.

With a supreme effort, she focused on her surroundings. There; attached to her arm was an automated hypospray. So that was what was causing her to be so woozy. But what to do about it?

The injection device itself was beyond her reach, bound as she was with heavy-duty chains. But the tubing leading to it…..

Starfire knew, that if she was to be free, she had to act now. Whatever was causing the commotion she was feeling was a good distraction, but she couldn't count on it to last.

She reached around, twisting her body into a painful knot, which had the added benefit of helping to clear her head somewhat, gathered the slender piping in her mouth, and bit down hard.

…...

Lord Trogaar surveyed the damaged bridge, not really wanting to believe what he saw. It wasn't that the bridge was unusable or anything; it could be repaired, and there was always the auxiliary bridge from which the ship could be flown. But what had happened here?

Thick, green Gordanian blood was everywhere. The bridge crew had all had to be killed, every single one. They had fought viciously, with a kind of mindless violence and complete disregard for their own well-being (or any wounds they received) that had chilled him right down to the marrow. He'd never seen anything quite like it, with any species. What could have affected the entire bridge crew, all of them, all at the same time?

Gordanians, like many other species, had their intoxicating and mind-altering substances, with varying degrees of legality. He could understand one or two of his trusted personnel succumbing to some sort of drug induced craze, but it was simply beyond the bounds of reason to think that the entire bridge crew, including those just then coming on-shift—would, all at once, choose to engage in such activity, and, even more, that such usage would affect them all in the exact same way simultaneously.

The bodies had been taken to the infirmary, with his strict instructions that his medics conduct a thorough autopsy on all that remained of them. In a few cases, that wasn't much. They had fought on, despite not-immediately lethal injuries, all the while completely ignoring any infliction of pain or any orders that they cease and desist, and give an account of themselves.

Trogaar felt his chief of security come up beside him. The sheer violence of what had happened had shaken them both, though neither of them were any strangers to carnage. This, however, went…beyond anything in their experience.

Trogaar turned to him. "You have the recordings from the security cameras?"

"Yes, milord." He proffered an infodisk. "I haven't seen it yet, but it should show us what happened here." His voice was hushed, as if he were in a long- forgotten cathedral. A cathedral of death. "Do you want me to view it first?"

"We'll do it together. How long until repairs are complete?"

The chief shook his scaled head. "They did some significant damage, Lord Trogaar. It will be several ooons before this bridge can be used again. Full repairs will have to wait until we make planetfall."

"Then we'll have to use the auxiliary bridge until then. Tell the repair crew to do what they can. Now. Follow me." And he led his security chief down the corridor into a smaller, more private room. Plugged the infodisk into a reader.

Lord Trogaar and his chief of security watched the view from the overhead camera as the bridge crew went about their normal, shift-changing duties. Saw and heard the normal banter as one shift came on to relieve the first. Saw and heard the inquiry about the mysterious object in the upper quadrant of the monitor. Saw the crew attempt to scan it, with the results of losing two sensors. They saw the officer aim an outside viewcamera at the anomaly…..

And saw every one of the Gordanians on the bridge suddenly reel back as if struck, clutching their eyes, as if trying to shut out the image of what they were seeing. Saw the bridge crew members, both shifts, turn from orderly, self-controlled intelligent beings into screaming, mindless maniacs, with no regard for their own safety.

Almost, thought Trogaar, as though they'd suddenly found death a preferable state of existence.

The chill he felt had absolutely nothing to do with the temperature.

…

{{Raven?}} The Orb's mental voice startled her; she'd been dozing. There wasn't much for her to do at the moment, and she'd taken the time to rest before what would surely be a battle.

{{I take it you mean, something other than what we are anticipating?}}

{{Yes, my friend. There is something out there, where we are going. We should not go there.}}

{{We have to rescue Starfire, Orb. That is why we are here. What sort of danger are you sensing? I take it you don't mean the ship and whoever has kidnapped our friend?}}

The Orb was silent for a moment. Then, {{No. It is not that. As to what it is, I…do not know. I am sensing something in the vicinity of the vessel carrying our friend. Something…..}} Uncharacteristically, the Orb failed to complete its own sentence.

{{What is wrong? What are you sensing? Can you tell me anything? Anything at all?}}

Raven felt movement in her pocket, and drew the small piece of the Orb out. The black, not-quite-there spheroid was vibrating. No, it was trembling. She'd never seen the Orb act like this before. {{It is something we do not want to meet. We should go somewhere else. Anywhere else.}}

{{Orb, you know we can't do that. We have to rescue our friend. Can't you give me any particulars as to the nature of this danger? Can we avoid it?}}

Raven cut in her comm link. "Robin? The Orb's sensing something in the direction we're going in, something close by the ship we're tracking. Something that scares it."

"Scares it? What could possibly scare the Orb?"

"I don't know, and it doesn't seem to know, either. Or else it won't say. I find that disturbing, all by itself."

"You and me, both. Is the ship we're tracking close by this…thing?"

"Orb?"

{{It was. Now it is moving off. The danger is still in the vicinity, however. I will endeavor to give you its coordinates, to the best of my ability, in order that you may avoid it.}}

"That'll have to do. I'll relay them to Robin…" But privately, she wondered. The Orb had sounded scared. What could possibly scare the Orb?

To be continued….

Please read and review!