Disclaimer: The Teen Titans are not my personal property; I'm just borrowing them for this here fic… for no profit, of course.
(A/N: This fic is a direct sequel to my other fic, A Dish Best Served Cold. If you haven't read it, you should, because without it, this one simply won't make any sense to you whatsoever…you have been warned. If you HAVE read my other fic, then proceed on, and thanks for taking an interest in my fics… it means a lot. –The Mad Phantom…)
Gunsmoke and Black Roses… the Prologue…
12:00 PM, The Jump City Military Base
A tall elderly man's footsteps echo around a dimly lit corridor. He is neatly dressed in a military outfit with a number of badges and 5 stars on the shoulder of his uniform… a five star general, a very high rank. The man's name is General Randall Kingsley.
He walks down the corridor of the military base… it's late, so other than a few patrolling guards, he sees no one on his way to his destination. The mood of the place is downright creepy… the military man, despite his years of combat experience, found himself getting nervous in the night… he speeds up his pace a little.
Finally, he reaches a set of stairs going downward for countless floors… with an elevator right next to it. Getting on in years, the General opts to take the elevator.
With the push of the call button, he waits a moment for the elevator to come down. Shortly, he begins to hear a muffled, high-pitched buzz, tipping the observant general off that it was coming.
With a soft grating, the old metal doors open up as General Kingsley steps inside. The atmosphere inside the elevator is just as foreboding as the corridor… it was cramped, and the only light source came from a small, fluorescent bulb on the ceiling, making it seem artificially bright… a fake light covering the lurking darkness underneath.
The old General sighs heavily and pushes a small, round button reading '20 B', or 'Twentieth Basement Floor.'
With a loud, metallic screech, the elevator sets off on it's age old rounds once again. General Kingsley shifts uncomfortably… he wonders when this rickety thing passed it's last safety inspection…
After roughly five minutes of tense, solitary waiting, there is a slow lurch, and the aging doors ground open again… the general steps out and begins striding briskly down another corridor much like the last… except, with a more neglected appearance, as if the subterranean place was rarely graced by human presence.
Several minutes of walking ensue, and the general makes his way down hallways and rooms, coming down to a flight of steps… he walks down and winds up at a shining metallic door, with a hi-tech looking terminal complete with a key-slot, flashing lights, and a small screen beside the door, mounted to the wall… all this seemed bizarrely out of place in the unkempt basements…
The old General rummages around in his coat pocket for a brief moment, muttering annoyed as he did so…
"Ah! There's the little bugger…" he mutters, as he picks a small, rectangular, yellow-and-red card key from his pocket.
With one, quick, fluid motion, General Kingsley swipes the card key through the terminal… a few seconds pass, and the screen lights up with the bold message, 'ACCESS GRANTED.'
Then, the shining door slid quickly and noiselessly open… not groaning and grating as the other doors had… perhaps this one is… newer…
The General pocketed the small card key and walked through the door… he walked into a room that absolutely shone as if freshly washed and swept.
Immediately, he turns a corner… and comes face-to-face with a pale man in a white lab coat and large, round, mirror-like glasses.
"General." The man chuckles in a soft, sly sort of voice.
"Professor." Kingsley replies promptly.
The man in the laboratory coat is Professor Karl Wagner… the head scientist for weapons and genetics research and development at the Jump City military base.
They begin walking down a nearby hall and come to a room full of strange experimental equipment, dangerous-looking surgical supplies, and vials of what looked like blood, chemicals, and other strange fluids. Several metal hospital beds on wheels are scattered about the room, some of them with drips and heart monitors nearby…
On the rear wall of the room, there was… a tube. A very large tube, one that you could easily fit two or three people inside of. A metal shutter covers the front.
"Well… I take it the research is going well?" The General asks, taking out a small handkerchief out of his pocket and wiping his brow.
"Yes… I can personally assure you, General. We've just finished the prototype, and our initial test results are very impressive. It's limb strength is phenomenal… 15 times that of an average marine. It's top running speed is roughly 70 MpH. We've also taken the liberty of creating an advanced arsenal for it's use." Prof. Wagner's voice is cold, calculating, yet somehow pleased at the same time. "The higher-ups have been putting a lot of funding into our little… project, here… and now, their investment has paid off.
The General blinks for a moment, and then sits down on a nearby metal folding-chair with a heavy sigh.
"You know… this is… extreme business we're dealing with isn't it? I mean, I'm no science-man m'self… but as far as I know, no one's ever done this have they? Created a living, breathing being from a few cells in a test tube?" General Kingsley sounded somewhat hesitant.
"If you want to call it that." The professor said with an indifferent shrug. "Living, yes. Unique, or significant, no. It is a synthetic construct… nothing more."
"Right, right…" the General says with a nod.
"If you wish… I could show you. It is ready, after all." The prof. offered.
"Sure… my bosses back at HQ would be eager to know what this little 'super-soldier' of yours looks like… what they've been pourin' so much money into." General Kingsley chuckled.
Prof. Wagner walks slowly over to the large tube, and presses a large button on the side… causing the thick, metal shutter to flick open.
The General gasped out loud as a dim, red light flooded the room.
There, in the tube and suspended in some sort of reddish chemical or liquid… was a boy. He could be hardly older than sixteen or seventeen. His brown hair was short and spiked upwards on his head. He wore a white, sleeveless muscle-shirt with a pair of blue-denim overalls over it. Over these, he wore a black-leather jacket with the collar turned up. On his feet was a pair of brown-leather, pointed-toe cowboy boots.
"What the--? THIS is the super soldier? He's only a boy!" the General protested, mouth agape.
"It. Not he." Wagner corrected simply.
"Fine, it!" Snapped Kingsley. "That doesn't change the fact that it's still just a kid!"
"Appearances can be deceiving, General." Wagner grunted. "That 'kid' is strong enough to bench press a platoon of Green Berets."
"Are you trying to—" the general was cut off by what he saw behind the professor.
The boy in the tank's eyes were open.
"What in the name of—" again, the general was cut off.
The glass of the tank was suddenly shattered by the boy's fist, before either of them could react. The boy leapt out, dripping with red liquid, and grabbed the general by the throat.
"Sorry, sir…" he hissed with heavy sarcasm. "… But I ain't your damn science-fair-project anymore."
With a disgusting 'snap!', he twisted the general's neck all the way around, killing him instantly. Then, in front of the numb-with-shock Wagner, he dashed out the door and into the dark military base.
"Mother of God… it's loose..." The scientist whispered hoarsely, just before running over to the wall and activating an alarm.
As the alarm began blaring all throughout the base, the young boy from earlier was running at incredible speed through the dark halls… though incredibly lost.
He panted heavily and blindly turned corner after corner, beginning to panic… he just wanted to get the Hell out of here…
After a few minutes of running, he turned another corner… to find himself face-to-face with three armed guards.
"Stop! Put your hands in the air!" One of them yelled as they raised their machine guns.
"Grr… the Hell I am…" muttered the boy.
The soldiers opened fire, but the boy jumped back and did a barrel roll on the ground into another hallway… where he took refuge in a small storage room.
The boy fell to his knees and panted for a minute… until he heard the scuffle of army boots outside the door.
"Oh no…" he groaned, looking desperately around for some means of defense… and that's when he spotted it.
A large crate sat on a shelf with the label: 'EXPEREMENTAL SUPER-SOLDIER GEAR; DO NOT TOUCH'
He jogged over and immediately ripped the top off the crate… and gasped at what he found…
A sawed-off, four barreled shotgun… a pair of .44 magnum, six-shooter revolvers… and there, under these odd firearms… a chainsaw.
The body of the saw was brown, and the 60" blade was curved slightly, not like a normal chainsaw. It was almost shaped like a scythe… sleek, silver exhaust pipes slid along the sides and bent upward at a sharp angle, and on the left side was a small ventilation grate with the crank cord just above that.
Looking in awe at his new ordinance, the boy grinned and grabbed the shotgun, putting it in a gun-holster that had also been in the crate and strapped it to his back. He got the revolvers and got the holsters that had been with them, putting them on the left side of his waist. Finally, the saw had come with a strong, steel clasp that would attach to the belt loops on his overalls, and hold the saw on his waist.
Next, he grabbed a large, camouflage colored military backpack from another shelf and filled it to the brim with all the shotgun shells and bullets he could find in the storage room, tossing in a couple medical kits for good measure.
"All right… let's see 'em come in here now… let's just see if I don't blow their Asses to kingdom come…" He muttered, cocking his quad-barreled shotgun and aiming it at the doorway.
Back outside, the security guards were looking for the escapee.
"There's only one room we haven't checked… the storage room." One said, reloading his machine gun.
"Then that's where it's gotta be." Another grunted.
Then, they heard something that confirmed their theory…
'Vroom… Vra-Vra Vroom… Vrreeeeeeeeeeee!'
A muffled cranking noise coming from the storage room…
When the soldiers began to approach the doorway, the door was abruptly kicked out of it's frame by a cowboy boot.
There stood the boy, loaded quad-barreled shotgun in one hand and cranked chainsaw in the other…
The soldiers stared in amazement and fright for a moment, before the boy spoke.
"Alright… who wants some?"
The lead soldier immediately shouted a command: "FIRE!"
And they did. They let fly with bullets, but the boy dodged and returned fire with the shotgun, blowing the guy away.
With a yell, the boy charged the soldiers, who were still firing… and sliced the fronts of their machine guns off with the saw.
Left standing dumbstruck with destroyed guns, they stood stupidly for a moment before breaking into a run and running away from the boy, who just smiled and holstered his shotgun and clasped his chainsaw back to his overalls… then, he pulled the pair of revolvers up…
As the soldiers retreated, he raised the revolvers and took careful aim…
A dozen, loud bangs rang out, and the soldiers fell to the ground dead, and the boy stood there blowing smoke away from the barrels of his twin revolvers.
Staying silent, the boy holstered the revolvers, but then… he screamed in pain as he was shot from behind.
He turned around clutching a small tranquilizer dart protruding from his shoulder…
There in the distance stood Prof. Wagner with a tranquilizer rifle.
The boy's eyes went wide as he realized he had to get out of there before he lost consciousness from the tranquilizer.
Flipping the scientist the bird, he ran back and soon found the elevator, going in and pressing the 'top floor' button.
Wagner pulled a radio out of his lab coat pocket and spoke…
"I hit him with the maximum strength tranquilizer… he won't get far."
An hour later, at Titan's Tower…
Sub-Zero was in the kitchen, eating ice cream… an odd activity for this time of night, but hey, when you can't sleep and are hungry, what else you gonna do?
"Ahhh, Vanilla! Hits the spot…" Zero sighed. Ever since Jinx had introduced ice cream to him, he had become rather partial to the stuff.
It had been exactly two months since the whole ordeal in Norblitz… and his relationship with Jinx had only gotten better and better. They now went out on a date usually once or twice a week, maybe more.
Sub-Zero was interrupted from his thoughts when he heard a sound coming from downstairs.
He walked down to the entrance of the tower and realized the noise he had been hearing had been knocking on the door…
"Huh? Wait, it's like… 1:00 in the morning, who wants in?" Zero asked no one in particular, his red eyes going wide in surprise.
Against his better judgment, the ice knight opened the door… and got a big surprise.
There stood a boy of about seventeen with a four barreled shotgun and camouflage backpack on his back and two revolvers and a chainsaw attached to the waist of his overalls.
"P-Please… H-Help… Me…." The boy moaned in a weak voice… right before collapsing upon the floor unconscious.
Well, my second OC is now officially introduced. We'll find out his name in the next chapter, and find out what the Titans have been doing the past two months…
Please Read and Review,
The Mad Phantom…