Hello and welcome to my attempt at writing a Teen Titans fanfiction. Please try to have an open mind when you read this. For one thing, T.Id stars mostly original creations. The Titans themselves are not going to be in it a lot early on (though still more than originally planned), and will be major supporting cast much later on. Now for the hook: other-dimensional versions of the Titans and their enemies and allies are going to be important characters in almost every story arc. And now, without further ado, the first chapter of the first arc of my sad little Teen Titans fanfic. This is Titans Interdimensional, and it starts, now.
Titans Interdimensional
Somewhere
Between Here and the Moon
World
1-1: Da First Chapter
VRRRIEEEEEWWWWPppuhpluhpluhvschhhh…
The obnoxiously loud dimensional portal closes behind three weary wanderers.
The first, known as Zee, is somewhat stockily built; with fair skin, short, spiky brown hair, and exceptionally long and pointed elflike ears. His hazel eyes are tired and world-weary, having witnessed more in his 13 years of life than anyone his age should ever have to. A headband adorned with a foreboding containment spell talisman covers his forehead. He wears a baggy navy blue and orange hockey style jersey, equally baggy silver shorts with black trim, and well-worn faded green Chuck Taylors; his hammerspace duffel bag haphazardly hanging across his body.
Next to him is Julio. He is a slender yet muscular 14 year old with dark brown skin and very long and thick jet-black hair tied off in a pony tail. He sports a distinctively patterned tattoo that runs the length of his left arm, across his shoulder blades and encircling his neck, and random scars throughout his body. Sticking out of his hair are two light brown doglike ears. His eyes are also similar to those of a dog, partially obscured by stylized round framed sunglasses. On his upper half he wears only an elegant white silk vest, hands and wrists taped. His bottom half is covered by a grayish blue hakama; hiding his tale. A backpack is draped over one shoulder, and two strangely mismatched swords are sheathed at his sides.
Finally, the young girl with them is Rose, a lonely but outgoing 10 year old left to Zee under complicated circumstances. She is skinny with long, stringy, silvery hair, pale green eyes and a slight tan. She wears a reddish orange and royal blue t-shirt and shorts, a utility belt, headphones connected to an mp3 player/universal translator in one of the belt's pouches, and hiking shoes with long, loose fitting socks.
"Guess we made it safely, for whatever that's worth," Julio mutters to himself. Adjusting to his new ever-changing life on this extra-dimensionally spanning 'road trip', as he describes it, has proven to be especially difficult for this particular creature of habit. "Man, how can you be sane doing this your whole life? What am I missing?"
"Who ever said I was sane?" Zee deadpans wryly. "You want the talk again?"
"Yeah, why not? Maybe it'll start sinking in this time," Julio grunts, completely devoid of optimism.
"I doubt it." Rose badly fails to stifle a giggle.
"Lay off, brat," Julio fires back.
"What-ever," Rose does her best valley girl impression, rolling her eyes as she walks off to inspect her surroundings.
"You were saying," Julio says through gritted teeth.
"Right," Zee sighs without looking up from the cluttered pocket dimension in his duffel bag. "You just have to deal with it. Or else it's a dumb metaphor about your mind taking a long walk off a short pier, or something.
"No. I think I'm going to try something else this time," he starts over, sensing the pointlessness of the situation. "Look, I know this isn't easy for you. You were ready to make the ultimate sacrifice, and I forced you back from the edge at the last possible second. That is some seriously intense emotional baggage. And now, having to deal with the completely stupid randomness that is the multiverse, when, even at this point, you are still trying to come to terms with what happened. It's rough, man.
"You are not the first person to leave their heart and soul on another world, and you won't be the last. Trust me on that."
"I know what you're trying to say, at least. Thanks. I know your words are true," Julio, feeling a little better, half-heartedly feigns a smile; his mind dwelling on something else. Those words, enigmatic and ominous, from seemingly forever ago, 'There's always more to the story.'
His mind snaps back to reality, "Hey, Zee?"
"Yeah?"
"What about Rose? She has only been with you a few weeks longer than I have, right?"
"Uh-huh."
"How does she deal with all this so easily?"
"She is young and resilient and still, somehow, has some semblance of innocence left," Zee briefly looks up and glances over at Rose, eyebrow slightly raised, "… She also hides her feelings better than you. Anyway, we better get to finding out what interesting little kinks this world has in store for us," he calmly states as he continues to dig around his duffel bag for his Series 5-B Variant Personality APS Unit, Scandexter for short.
"It might help to think of it as an opportunity to live as something you wouldn't normally be, for a little while, anyway. An escape from our particularly sad little lives. Cosplay on a grand scale, perhaps. I don't know. Find out what the spirits have to say, if you can concentrate. Ah, here it is."
Scandexter, a somewhat clunky looking piece of technology reminiscent of a portable video game system or PDA, but considerably bigger, greets him with it's usual upbeat and vaguely New York accented, "Hey, boss."
'What the heck is cosplay?' Julio thinks to himself, looking visibly perplexed as he wanders off a short distance, looking for a knowledgeable spirit.
Zee is muttering something about the 'screwy' random weather on this earth and how far they are from civilization when Rose asks, "Hey bro, did we scare off all the animals?" causing Zee to take notice of his surroundings for the first time.
In every direction, a lush savanna extends into the horizon. "No animals at all. And this heat… It stings my skin. Must be 150˚ out here. Kind of hard to breathe, too. Hey Rose, are you feeling okay?"
"Does my insides melting count as okay?" Rose asks, not really joking as much as she wishes she was.
"Let's see. Where is- Ah, here, drink this. It should keep you right for a good while," Zee says, tossing her a bottle of the miraculous, so-called hyper-chilled megavitamin water from the last world they visited.
'Mad scientist tries to raise Atlantis, no doubt a classic tale if ever there was one,' Rose thinks back to the cliché at the center of the adventure at their previous stop. 'The hydra was a pretty cool touch.'
Lost in exploits of the recent past, she utters an absent-minded, "Thanks." She quickly opens it and takes a big gulp, remembering only too late how ridiculously bad the stuff tastes. "GLAHHH! I've been poisoned!" she hollers, gagging uncontrollably.
"I've got bad news, Zee," Julio states, eyes unusually wide, as he returns to the scene to see Rose still sputtering. "Lemme guess, megavitamin water?"
"It is pretty repulsive, I must admit," Zee says, almost shuddering just thinking about the improbably, but still very much, fishy, peanut buttery, and horribly outdated milk tasting (at the same time) translucent 'water'. "Unfortunately, Rose won't last long without it. Still, I must bow to you in apology, sis. I think if it were me, I would've chosen death, but you deserve a better fate."
"Gee, thanks," she smirks sarcastically between fairly desperate gasps for breath.
"Actually, I kind of like it," Julio says, laughing at his comrades' horrified expressions.
"You like everything!" Rose shouts at him accusingly, her composure somewhat regained.
"Nuh-uh. I don't like gramps' cooking," he argues, referring to their gruff old pseudo spirit guide.
"I was just thinking it kind of tastes like something Jonah might make," Zee muses, in both mild awe and revulsion.
"The only thing he can cook that's edible is beans," Rose laughs before making herself ill again.
"It has been… creeping, slightly closer to edible lately," Zee vainly tries to find something nice to say.
The conversation/argument/bash the old guy's cooking fest ends when a suddenly pale and serious looking Rose asks, "Is that the bad news you were talking about?" looking up at rapidly approaching thick, dark, and menacing storm clouds, that seemed to have sprang up from nowhere, throughout which lightning constantly, and disturbingly, dances.
"Oh, right. The freak storm that was about to commence. Yes. Ahem, it's a bad one all right. This lovely, and if I may admit, smokin' hot, earth spirit I was speaking to also informed me that-" KERRRAAACK! Julio is briefly cut off by heartbeat skippingly loud and violent sounding thunder. "Anyway, as I was about to say before nature so rudely interrupted me, the rain is going to be highly acidic. So we better get to some kind of shelter soon."
He thinks for a second and then asks, "Uh, so… is there any kind of shelter around here we can get to before the storm reaches us?"
"Well, there is this impressive looking city that is about a week's walk from here, so that's out for now. There is an encamp-" KRRAACK! "Oh, jeez." Zee looks like he's going to be sick himself, his already pale complexion now looking freshly cadaverous. Nonetheless he continues, though with noticeably more urgency, his voice rising to a yell before he finishes, "A, by all indications, scientific encampment north of here might just be in range. We might make it if we run full out the whole way and no other random storms pop up!"
"Scientists? They should let us in, right?" Rose asks. "I hope they don't wanna experiment on us."
"There are four kinds of scientists," Julio states as if it were common fact. "The evil mad scientist; the somewhat similar, but with directly opposing personality, the eccentric nice guy scientist; the arrogant, close minded, holier than thou scientist; and the entirely too trusting, 'for the good of humanity', scientist. Allegedly, there is also a fifth kind that supposedly moonlights as some kind of action hero, but I've never met one. At any rate, here's hoping for some trusting or eccentric ones."
"Can we go please?" Zee interrupts loudly, clearly fighting panic brought on by the oncoming storm, though curiously, even the highly acidic rain or being struck by a powerful lighting bolt would cause him no worse than fairly minor pain.
"Zee's right. We should get going. I'm the one who isn't going to survive if we get caught out here. I'm not a demon with super human strength and invulnerability like you guys," Rose says, trying to hurry them up, the last sentence sounding just slightly whiny and jealous.
After Zee briefly gives Julio grief about having no sense of direction, the trio take off with all the speed their legs can generate in the direction of, hopefully, safety.
After running a few minutes, Zee shouts over the rapidly increasing winds, "Hey Julio, congratulations on talking to a pretty girl without turning into a noodle-legged mess of hormones!"
"Thanks! You could see her?" he shouts back.
"Yeah, she must be a pretty powerful elemental for my weak extrasensory powers to pick her up!"
"Not really! Your power must just flow better than usual on this earth! She told me what cosplay is! That is per-" Julio is practically screaming, but no longer audible over the now constant roar of thunder and violent, swirling winds; therefore ending anymore would-be conversation the rest of the way.
End of World 1-1