A preview of things to come. Soon, very, very soon.
(A screen flickers to life. In the center is a large, bold, pale blue T on a round, ringed shield of deeper blue. Music plays, building tension)
"Titans, GO!"
It has been several months since Robin, leader of the Teen Titans, spoke those words. With the defeat of Brushogun last year, most of the world's supervillains have been incarcerated, or otherwise beaten into submission. But peace is tenuous at best, and before they know it, their world will once again be thrown into utter chaos.
There came the sound of a crash from the big screen. Moaning in dismay, they saw their vehicles in smoking ruin as GAME OVER in huge letters flashed over the scene. "Cyborg," Beast Boy whined, "why didn't you pause it!"
"Why didn't you?" he shot back.
"Because I was more worried about the end of my stomach as I know it," he grumbled. "And I was gonna win this one!"
"The heck you were!" Cyborg declared, thrusting his finger in the other's face, and with that, The Bickerfest was on, their argument growing louder, more childish, and more heated with each passing moment.
They flinched away as Raven closed her book with a crack like a pistol shot and gave an angry outcry. "EeeEENOUGH! Gahh... who can read with you two going at it like two year olds!" She hopped over the couch and stormed off, the book in one hand, grumbling.
"Dang," Beast Boy whispered to Cyborg, "we usually get at least five minutes of fun before she blows." His friend could only nod in agreement.
Well... that wasn't exactly the chaos I had in mind-
Beast Boy began fanning his arms around wildly in front of her bedroom door. "Oh! Hey! Yeah! Uh, Raven's... gonna powder her nose. For a few hours."
"What the heck does that mean?" Cyborg exclaimed. Starfire nodded, wondering how nose powder helped make her feel better. The boy's antics caused something to spring to mind, and he added, "Or, did you pull a skunky on the poor girl?"
"No, I didn't pull a skunkie!" he growled at them irritably.
"Barking spider?" he added with a grin.
"NO!"
Now listen, I mean serious, peace threatening chaos-
Robin watched the dark mystic wander off down the hallway, musing aloud, "I wonder if it's that time of the month-"
*RECORD SCRATCH*
He realized that instant that he had made a mortal blunder as Raven froze in mid-step, arching her back like a panther that had its tail stepped on, and whirled around to threaten the Boy Wonder with utter doom, standing inches away from him. It seemed that she had grown to monstrous size, her teeth dagger-like fangs, her eyes yellow orbs of flame. He leaned back precariously, somehow managing to keep his feet planted as she snarled at him with deadly menace. "If you ever... ever mention that subject in connection with me again... so help me, I will chew your head off! And you know damn well that I can!"
He could only gape at her, frozen in horror, unable to do more than twitch as the outraged wraith fixed him in that dreadful stare like the Angel of Death. The others came to his rescue, prying his ice-stiff body from the floor and backpedalling with silly grins. "We'll just get Robin out of your hair for you," Cyborg said, beaming cheerfully.
"You have a nice-" began Starfire as Beast Boy slapped his hand over her mouth.
"Rotten-" the changeling started to say, as Cyborg muzzled him.
"Whatever kinda day you want," he finished, then raised the board-stiff body of his friend overhead, beating a hasty retreat down the corridor.
(sigh) Teenagers... I. Said. CHAOS! -Ahh, that's more like it.
"Oh, look! It's the Tween Titans!"
The heroes gaped at the trio facing them in disbelief; Jinx, Gizmo and Mammoth. Cyborg spoke up first. "Aw, come on... you three again? This is like a bad filler rerun."
"Oh, really?" Gizmo retorted with a leer as he hovered. "Did you butt-whiskers come ready to tango, or just spit out lame cliches and watch?"
"What did you call us?" Beast Boy snarled.
"Oh yeah! I forgot your amoeba brain can't handle big words with three syllables!" He rotated around, wiggling his rear at them. "A - S - S-"
He gave a yelp as Raven sent a crate into the young villain, smashing him from the air. "Can we please drop the typical childish banter and just get straight to the fighting-?"
She cried out as Mammoth threw a crate into her as well, then cracked his knuckles. "Works for me."
And now, the fun begins in earnest...
(Music plays: "Burn" by The Cure)
"Don't look don't look," the shadows breathe
Whispering me away from you
"Don't wake at night to watch her sleep
You know that you will always lose
This trembling, adored,
Tousled bird mad girl... "
Starfire was standing apart from everyone, her hands clasped, her eyes downcast, as miserable as they had ever seen her. Robin came to stand in front of her, asking quietly as he reached for her hand, "Hey, Starfire... what's wrong?" He grew more concerned as tears welled up in her jewel-like eyes, and the next thing he knew, she had fallen into his arms, limp and weeping bitterly. "Hey, Star..." he murmured, stroking her back softly, really worried now. "What's the matter?"
He cupped her cheek in his hand, urging her to look into his face. "I... am responsible," she sobbed. "I caused all these terrible things to happen! Oh, Robin-!"
As he cradled the forlorn girl, Raven looked aside with a sigh. "Starfire... don't let it get to you. Things happen. You should be thankful you don't have to bear the burdens which eat me alive every day."
She looked up as Starfire reached for her hand, wiping her face of its tears and mucus with the other, offering her a thin, melancholy, but grateful smile. "You always have words of such great wisdom to offer. But Raven... so that you do not suffer with them alone, your burdens should be shared with others."
The mystic looked to the sky, wishing it could be so, but murmured dejectedly, "No... not all of them..."
But every night I burn
But every night I call your name
Every night I burn
Every night I fall again
Raven's body stiffened as something came from behind... some one. A certain someone. He whispered in a British accent with a sultry husk in her ear, "Are you waiting for me, dark angel?" She couldn't react, could scarcely move or breathe, as he touched himself against her, pressing himself into her back and her bottom, sliding his leg along hers, slipping his arms around her to wrap her up tight.
She shifted slightly to feel him more, aching to comply with his desires, his whims, his demands, whatever he wanted of her. He slid around to her front, pushing her against the wall as he laced his fingers with hers, stretching her arms over her head, and something inside warned her to resist. But something else told her not to as his lips closed on hers, and he took them in a torrid, burning kiss, hungry to drink her in completely. She opened her mouth in welcome...
And then the whole world was shattered in deafening hate.
Robert and the bass player began throwing themselves into each other in a way that made Raven feel moist and full of desire, but also terrified. They were out of their minds, sparring for advantage as they slammed their bodies against each other. As she watched in fear and wonder, Robert toppled him, stomping his boot on the man's chest in victory, leering at him as his fingers scraped madly at his guitar strings, his playing growing ever louder and more demented. She gasped in horror as he threw himself several feet in the air, intending to smash the vanquished foe to a bloody pulp with his instrument of hard, deadly wood. "Robert, for god's sake NO!" she screamed in alarm.
They all looked to the wounded dam as a dreadful, deep cracking jarred them in the marrow of their bones. "Oh no!" Raven gasped, flying up to the splintered walls restraining millions of tons of water, but perhaps losing the battle. She cried her mantra, mustering up all of her essence she could, "Azarath, Metrion, ZYNTHOS!" The blackness covered the face of the dam, but still that terrible crack of breaking concrete rang out into the entire mountainface. It soon became clear that Raven was struggling against titanic forces which dwarfed her powers, as the rock face concealed by her dark forces was slivered with ever more fractures. She groaned, "I can't... hold it..."
Cyborg cried out as his cybernetic gear began to crackle with the energies produced in his power cores. He couldn't endure the terrible voltage arcing from him to the ground, unable to focus on undoing the seals on his chestplate, and fell on his back, groaning, "Get... out of here...!"
"Cyborg!" Robin shouted, sprinting over to his friend's side, but was thrown back by a bolt of electricity. He jumped back up, though his whole body was numb and tingling from the jolt. "Power down!"
"Can't..." the cybernaut managed to groan out. "Gonna... blow...!"
"No!" Robin exclaimed, producing his metal staff, but the energy surged into it that instant, searing into his arm. He forced himself into the hellish storm of energy, driving himself on to thrust the pole into his friend's chestplate, trying desperately to force it open. But it wouldn't budge. A dreadful rasping hum began to build in intensity, and with it, the terrible burning, arcing discharge of those power cores. He screamed into the sky, afraid they were both done for, but he couldn't let go of that metal rod that burned into his hands. Couldn't leave his friend to die alone. "CYBORG!"
"Oh don't talk of love," the shadows purr
Murmuring me away from you
"Don't talk of worlds that never were
The end is all that's ever true
There's nothing you can ever say
Nothing you can ever do... "
Raven's voice died in her throat at the sight of her friends lying before her, their bodies twisted like broken dolls, as if hurled to the floor by a malevolent Puppet Master who had his fill of torturing them. The meditation CD continued to play its sickly-sweet tones over the scene, dreadfully out of place in this tragedy. "Ohmygod... Starfire!" she gasped, practically falling to the woman's side, but there was no response. Her skin was clammy and cool, her arms limp... lifeless. Half-sobbing, she croaked out Robin's name as she sank beside him, but he was as fargone as the others. She feared she was going to scream, but as she touched his throat, she found a faint pulse, and with it, a thin strand of hope. Their chests were all rising and falling, if faintly. 'Alive... all alive, oh, thank heaven!'
She snarled bitterly, smashing her fist into the stereo's power button, then jumped to her feet. "Me and my damned bright ideas - AZARATH METRION ZYNtho-!"
Blackness rushed out from her soul, beginning to seal the room off from the rest of reality, but she stopped herself just in time. She almost missed it, but there in the midst of the yet unclosed circle of darkness were four thin silver threads. Tenuous, vulnerable threads of life, binding their spirits to their bodies, the one thing keeping her friends alive. And she had almost severed them.
She dropped to the floor as the darkness she had invoked slowly drew back into her, quivering in horror from what she had nearly done. The realization ached in her stomach like venom. "My god," she gasped through a strained throat as she hugged herself, squeezing her eyes shut. "I... almost killed my friends..."
Still every night I burn
Every night I scream your name
Every night I burn
Every night the dream's the same
Every night I burn
Waiting for my only friend
Every night I burn
Waiting for the world to end
They all gaped in shock at the display, as crimes began blinking up like kernels of popcorn. Cyborg began rattling off incidents. "Robberies, muggings, vandalism... lots of vandalism, riots, stabbings, shootings... it's everything, happening everywhere!"
"This is insane!" Robin shouted in dismay. "It's like everything is coming unglued. Has the whole world lost all control?"
"At least the southwest of the country, anyhow - uh oh." Cyborg noticed an icon popping up, and with it, a call to the Tower. "Guys, this is Beast Boy!"
"I don't suppose you noticed, but there's one heck of a situation out here!" he cried, hiding behind a car as the streets erupted with violence. "I could really use some backup!"
"Looks like he's in the thick of it!" Cyborg pointed out, as the indicator was in the midst of a red mass spreading across the city map.
"Hold on as best you can!" Robin ordered. "Fight smart, and leave a channel open so we can find you. We'll be there as soon as we can." He added worriedly, "Be careful."
"Oh, you know me! Mister Safety!" he chuckled halfheartedly, then pocketed his communicator, ducking as a brick glanced off the window of the car. As it clattered to the sidewalk, he whined, "Oh man, this is like a freakin' war zone! What's gotten into these mosh heads-?" He gasped in alarm as a family made a foolhardy break for their SUV, the woman carrying a toddler, the husband with a crying child in each arm. This quickly drew the mob's attention, and the ugly crowd descended on them, brandishing their crude weapons with deadly intent, gleaned from alleyway debris.
They all stopped in the middle of the street as a small, green skinned, elfin-eared youth landed in front of them, clad in purple and black. "All right, you freak jobs! You all act really tough, pickin' on helpless citizens! Well, let's see what you make of a real head banger!"
Before he could transform, he fell to his knees as a brick struck him in the temple, pain exploding in his mind, and it suddenly became very hard to think straight. Dimly, he was aware that the mob was descending on him, intending to make his life much, much shorter. "Hey... dammit, you guys... please, don't..." he whimpered as he fought to crawl away, but terrible pains erupted all over as they fell on him, driving him to cower in a senseless, painless, quiet black void.
Raven sprawled across a dozen open books on her desk, of all manner of subjects from quantum physics to world religions. Time was running away from her, but she couldn't absorb any more of it tonight, her eyes burning, her head throbing. She whimpered, aching for a short nap, at least. "Ohhh... I know it's crazy to think I could solve mysteries which entire civilizations struggled to fathom for ages, in just a week or so, but if I don't... it could all be over..."
"Just paint your face," the shadows smile
Slipping me away from you
"Oh it doesn't matter how you hide
Find you if we're wanting to
So slide back down and close your eyes
Sleep a while, you must be tired... "
Raven stared almost vacantly into the mirror in her room, black eyeliner dabbled around her eyes, black lipstick applied thickly, crudely to her lips, drawn down past the corners in a sad, macabre, clown-like frown. "What is going on?" she whispered, as if someone could answer her. "What is wrong? What am I becoming? Nothing more than the avatar of a world gone mad? Is my fate death, life? Something else, something more?"
"Surely, you know the answer already," spoke her reflection, to which she could only nod mutely.
High above the Tower, deep in the atmosphere, a ring of vapor spread dramatically across the moonlit sky with a deep, reverberant boom. From its center erupted a cloud, billowing like a dark nuclear explosion, surging upward and outward rapidly, until it had nearly swallowed the sky to the horizon, cloaking the heavens with blackness, but only for a time. The people of the city cried out in unbridled panic as flames licked along the bottom of the cumulus in jagged lines, taking the shape of a sky-spanning raven with a baleful red eye. If the apparition wasn't frightening enough, the cloud erupted in fire and lightning. Blinding bolts of blue and garish pink stabbed into the bay, and the region was shaken with blasts of deafening thunder. All who were unlucky enough to be outside fell to their knees, grovelling in mortal terror.
But every night I burn
Every night I call your name
Every night I burn
Every night I fall again
Every night I burn
Scream the animal scream
Every night I burn
Dream the crow black dream
Every night I burn
Scream the animal scream
Every night I burn
Dream the crow black dream
Some nightmares should never, ever be dreamed. Especially if they are real...
Stephen Stryker presents
Teen Titans
in
The Big One
Teen Titans copyright 2003-Present by DC Comics and Warner Brothers Entertainment
The Big One and all "episodes" contained within, and all original characters, copyright 2012-Doomsday by Stephen Stryker
Lyrics from "Burn" copyright 1994-Present by The Cure and Fiction Records, and provided by azlyrics-dot-com
Author's Note: This fiction is long. Wordy. I use archaic English in a style reminiscent of Tolkien. It's loaded with detail. There are lyrics strewn throughout the first chapter, and it's VERY long. Get used to it. You'll spend more time in these characters' heads than you ever have before, so enjoy the fact that these chapters will give you many days of reading, and you might get to know the Titans better than ever. Stryker style, anyhow. ;D
Some scenes will appear in altered form in the actual fiction.
