Parousia

A Left Behind – Teen Titans Crossover

Note: The Titans herein depicted are based on the animated series, though in a fanfic continuity that has progressed several years into the future. New Titans have been added, Robin is Tim Drake, and even Beast Boy has left his teen years behind. The Left Behind timeline here is probably a jumbled mess, but I no longer have any of the early books handy to reference.

Check out the works of Legend Maker or look up the Titan Legends Wiki for more info.

Chapter One

Point of Divergence

Light, tumbling, end over end. Noise and pain and then air, sweet oxygenated air. Robin clawed his way up from the frazzle that consumed his brain and awoke in darkness. There was damp and cold in the air, and the place smelled of dust and mold. He could hear the pitter-patter of rain pouring down, and there was a peal of thunder accompanied by a burst of nearby lightning. In the brief second of light, Robin was able to assess some basics:

He was in a room, old and run down. A thin layer of dust covered the floor, and there was a leg a few inches from his face, a leg sheathed in a violet boot.

"Starfire?"

"I am here, Robin." Her voice was soft. "Beast Boy has injured his head. He's bleeding."

"Give me some light, I have gauze." Robin pushed himself up on aching limbs and reached for his utility belt.

"I have already tried," said Starfire. "Tim—I can't use my starbolts. It is as though the power is blocked, or—"

"Not there?" The voice was Raven's. Robin turned to see it and flicked on his night vision. The sorceress moved down a narrow, broken staircase that appeared to lead up to the second floor. Her motion was odd and bobbing, and it took Robin a second to realize what was off: Raven wasn't gliding—she was walking.

"Your powers are gone?" Robin said. With the problem of being able to see solved, he was able to quickly patch up Beast Boy's cut. The green Titan stirred slightly, muttering something about Negative Man and his stupid practical jokes.

Robin turned to the sorceress. "What happened?"

Raven approached in the darkness and sat down, legs crossed, in front of him. Her cloak was gone entirely, which worried Robin. It was a physical manifestation of her power, an extension of the soul-self she used to manipulate objects and power her magic. If she didn't have that—

"I don't know yet," said Raven. "I can still feel all of you. I can still feel arcane energies around us, but there's something different. The flavor of the magic is wrong."

"We need to do recon." Robin motioned towards Beast Boy. "If your empathy powers are still working, then you can still heal Beast Boy, right?"

"Probably." Raven cradled the green Titan's head in her lap and moved her hand over the bandaged wound. "Azarath Metrion Zinthos," she whispered. There was a faint, white glow, and Beast Boy stirred.

"Damn," he said, sitting up. "How long was I out?"

"We don't know. We've been shifted somehow." Robin motioned to the room. "Definitely through space, and maybe through time as well."

Outside, the rain came down by the bucket load. Cars moved through the streets, sloshing rain up on the sidewalks and spraying passersby. Not far from the ancient tenement where they'd woke up, a skeletal police precinct smoldered with days-old flames. A stone wall bore a pewter plaque: LAPD Precinct 10.

"Los Angeles?" said Beast Boy. "How did we get here?"

Starfire crossed her arms, hugging herself against the cold. "The last thing I remember is that we were fighting Warp."

Robin closed his eyes, tried to remember. Warp. That's right—the time-travelling villain had appeared at Wayne Enterprises in Jump the day before the unveiling of the new WayneTech Crimeputer. Bruce had meant to donate it to the JCPD, but apparently Warp had other things in mind for it. Robin didn't know what a man from the 22nd century needed with a 21st century computer—nor did he remember how the fight had ended. If it ended—with time travel involved, the fight might still be going on at that very moment in a parallel plane of existence, or frozen mid punch with the Titans now trapped in the space between instants.

Stranger things—much stranger things—had happened to them.

Down the next street, Star spied a storefront with the lights on and an open sign in the door. As they approached, they saw it was a small Japanese soup shop specializing in various flavors of Ramen. The man behind the counter, a bushy-haired Asian septuagenarian, greeted them with a bow and a konichiwa.

"I'm sorry to bother you," said Robin. "This is going to sound insane, but what is today's date?"

"Today is the twelfth of October, boy wonder. Could I interest you in some fine Tokyo Tornado? Or perhaps the Kyoto Accord? Very spicy, very hot, just like global warming!"

"What year is it?" Raven said, her tone more of a command than a question.

"Year?" the man looked puzzled. He walked back behind the counter, brought forward a tulips-of-many-colors calendar and pointed to the front. White digits against the green read: 20XX.

"It is the Year of our Lord Twenty-XX," he said with a big smile. He took calendar into the back, then returned grabbing four bowls in order to make soup. The Titans traded glances. There seemed to be an empathic pulse from Raven: don't make a Megaman reference—though it might have just been Robin's imagination.

"We don't have any money," Robin called to the shopkeeper.

"Ah, nonsense." The shopkeeper continued making the soup. "In times like these, people have to take care of each other. Besides, I haven't sold any soup in days. I'm probably going to put it all in a truck and take it over to the hospital in the morning. Fill my little German car with as much gas as it will hold and drive until it runs out. My name is Frank Watanabe by the way."

Times like these? Robin almost asked, and when Beast Boy opened his mouth to do so, Robin raised a hand to stop him. With no explanation forthcoming, it would be something obvious, something everyone would know. Not knowing would draw attention. Whatever the times entailed, Robin bet it had something to do with the burnt-out police office across the street. Once four bowls of hot Ramen appeared before them, Starfire gulped it all down quickly. Robin ate fast as well, not realizing how hungry he had been. Beast Boy played with the food for a while, making sure it wasn't full of meat.

"So, what convention are you in town for?" Frank sat down at the table across from them and sipped a soda.

"Convention?" Raven said. "We're not actually in town for a convention."

"Ohhh, I see. So, who are you dressed as? I know you, Boy Wonder. I'm not familiar with the costumes of your lady friends or the green fellow."

Robin arched an eyebrow.

"Costumes?" Starfire said. "We are not dressed as anybody. We are ourselves."

"Ha!" Frank gave a huge belly laugh. "You kids these days. Taking Kospurei so seriously!"

Robin took a sip from his bowl, letting the spicy flavor calm his nerves. Kospurei? He thought they were cosplayers?

Frank looked at Starfire. "So, I can see from the way you two look at each other that you must be Mrs. Dick Grayson—"

A torrent of Kyoto Accord broth spewed out of Robin's mouth and into Starfire's face, even as his lover's eyes shot wide. The stinging spices of the soup caused Starfire to recoil. She let out a short, high squeal—and then there was a flash of green. Two beams lanced out of her eyes and burned holes in a ceiling panel.

Robin looked over at Frank, whose mouth was agape.

"Holy shit!"

"Dick Grayson?" Robin said, whirling to face the old man. "How do you know that name?"

Frank looked confused. "I read comics, I mean, I did as a child. How did she do that?"

"Read comics?" Robin tried to make sense of it in a way that didn't sound like something Gauntlet would say, but couldn't. They weren't in the future—they were in another world. A world where Robin—maybe all superheroes—existed only as fiction. He made a gesture of apology towards the bewildered shopkeeper. "I'm sorry. We—we aren't who you think we are."

Frank stared at Starfire, who was still trying to clean the last of the pepper from her eyes.

"Is she an alien?" Frank gasped. "Was she involved in the disappearances? Did she take my grandchildren?"

The elderly man lunged forward, the knife in his hand suddenly seeming a good deal less innocuous. Robin leapt up before anyone else could react, blocked the knife-arm with his gauntlets and twisted the shopkeeper into a tight hold.

"Listen to me!" Robin growled. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. I don't know anything about these disappearances. But if we can find your grandchildren, we will. I promise. You need to tell us what happened."

Seventeen months. It had been almost a year and a half since the disappearances, since millions of adults all over the world had vanished—along with nearly every child under twelve. Billions of people, then. Gone in an instant. Cars unattended, planes without pilots… chaos had ensued. Now, all that seemed to be holding society together was a person, a single man who the world now appeared to be rallying around—someone called Nicolae Carpathia. He was the Secretary General of what was now called the Global Community, formerly the U.N.

"The nature of these disappearances sounds uncomfortably familiar," said Raven. "You said all the adults who vanished were Christians."

Frank gave a nod mixed with a shrug of non-commitment. "I guess. Lots were, but not all Christians vanished. My younger brother converted to Catholicism before we even left Japan, forty years ago. But he's still here on this Earth, assuming he hasn't killed himself. I haven't talked to him in weeks. So like I said, there's no discernible pattern to this. It's all nonsense. And then you—kids dressed like comic book heroes with superpowers. What was I supposed to think?"

Frank's wiped the tear-dampness from his face.

"But the Christians that vanished," Raven said. "Would it be reasonable to say they were predominantly from certain denominations—Evangelical Protestants, particularly fundamentalist groups?"

"God, Raven." Beast Boy moved closer to her. "Don't even go there. You're not saying you believe in the Rapture."

"Considering we personally know a boy from the thirtieth century?" Raven stared through him. "No, I don't."

"Rapture?" said Frank. "I think I know what you're talking about. Man named Preacher Billings made a video that got leaked on to the internet. All over Youtube before it got taken down as 'Hate Speech'. One of those look-like-they-oughta-be-on-TV types that want to bludgeon you over the head with their religion. Some said it was a hoax, that it was made after the disappearances, but a lot of people believed it."

Though the look on Frank's face failed to stay angry for long.

"I guess any explanation seems reasonable these days."

Robin stroked his chin. "So, we're not the only ones who have noticed how similar this event is to dispensationalist Christian eschatology."

"You too, Tim?" Beast Boy gave an exasperated sigh. "Look, I know you keep your own beliefs close to the vest, but you're a smart guy. You have to know all the ways they twist and turn the scriptures to support the Rapture theory."

"Gar," Tim said sternly. "We know. Nobody is saying that this was actually the Rapture. Hear us out."

"I am actually not in The Know," said Starfire. "But I am not sure that I want to be."

"The sort of power it would take to instantly vanish a third of the human race, Robin—" Raven closed her eyes, reaching out with her senses. Her body was adjusting, growing accustomed to the different tenor of the supernatural power in this world, but it wasn't there yet. "Something like that could also wreak havoc on the planet. Cause the earthquakes and disasters described by John of Patmos, turn the seas to blood, and blot out the sky."

"You're saying something set up a fake Rapture?" Beast Boy grimaced. "Why would they do that? What do they gain from it?"

Raven glared at him. "I can't know that, but depending on what did it—it could be anything. Slave labor, experiments, soldiers—food."

Beast Boy turned greener.

"Then what should we do?" asked Starfire. "We must free the people stolen from the planet, we have to—"

"First things first," said Robin. "We have to get our bearings in this world. Not only do superheroes apparently not exist, but some of us are known fictional characters here. We need intell, and we need new clothes."

0000

Not far from Frank Wantanabe's shop, the four Titans found an old looted clothing store, windows smashed and shop abandoned. Few scant articles of clothing remained, but the Titans were able to cover their outfits. Raven mustered enough power—drawing from the many runes embroidered on her cloak—to shift it into her soul-self, then traded her unitard for a frilly violet shirt and jeans half a size too tight.

Robin opted to wear his white button-up and loose jeans over his armored tights and vest, but traded his mask for a pair of sunglasses.

"What are we going to do about my orange skin and Beast Boy's green everything?" said Star, emerging from a dressing room in a yellow sundress.

"We'll tell them your skin is a spray-on tan," Robin said. "As for Gar, I have a pair of holo-rings."

Robin removed two of them from his utility belt—thankfully a more muted goldenrod instead of the bright yellow one he often wore—and gave them to Beast Boy. Gar pressed them together, but there were two sparks of light and then smoke belched from the two rings. Beast Boy flung them off his hands.

"Hot hot! Ouch, damn it."

"Did the warp-displacement short them out?" said Raven.

"None of my other electronics are disabled," Robin said. He examined his communicator. "I don't have bars here, presumably because Starr Telecom doesn't exist on this Earth. But the internals are working okay. I'm setting it to hack the nearest available com system."

"The rings likely malfunctioned the same reason that our science powers don't work," said Star. "The laws of the physics themselves may be so different that the quantum differential values of the rings do not hold up. Michael Holt's quantum physics work has demonstrated that the vast majority of superpowers would function badly, if at all, if string-theory equations solved differently."

Beast Boy's eyes were saucers. "Sometimes I forget you're really smart," he said. "Hey, Robin's smart, you're smart, Raven's smart, Cyborg's smart—why do I have to be the one with the short straw here?"

Robin grimaced. Their powers and gadgets were on the fritz, and they were deep in the middle of some scary operation by a powerful force of unknown origin and motive.

And superheroes in general didn't exist. He eyed Beast Boy.

"Put on a hoodie and tell them you have a skin condition if they get a close look. Mr. Wantabe said that the official government explanation was some sort of radioactive feedback from the planet's nuclear weapon stockpiles. If the general public is swallowing something that preposterous then there must be some sort of psychic interference controlling their credulity."

"I think I understood most of that," said Beast Boy, pulling a gray UCLA sweatshirt from a rack. It was stained across the front with long-dried ink from an anti-theft device, but otherwise serviceable. "Bad mind mojo making people believe bogus crap."

"On a global scale," said Raven. "Meaning a massive arcane or technological operation—or a being of incomprehensible power."

Starfire hovered to the door. "Where shall we go now?"

"Somewhere I can get WiFi access," Robin said. "There will probably be coffee shops or hotels still carrying service closer to the inner city. With Raven's powers dampened, we're going to need help getting home."

"Lead the way," Beast Boy said. "You can't even know how much I hate this universe."

Two thousand miles away, a glass of gin and tonic fell from a desk, the noise of its shattering against the hardwood floor startling awake the room's sole occupant. Noel Alexander Collins sat up in his chair, fighting back the headache that his hangover brought with it. It was nearly one in the morning. The incredible load of paperwork that had come through his office since the Global Community had begun replacing the currencies of the world with its new proprietary dollar was, without a doubt, the most mind-numbing repetitive task he'd ever had to do. CollinsCorp, formerly one of the premiere tech suppliers to the United States armed forces, had faced plummeting stock prices since the announcement of the global disarmament. The Republican in him—the right-wing, cut throat business mogul that his father had instilled in him—despised every last moment of this. More government interference on a massive, completely unnecessary scale. And now every government in the world was getting in on it, not just Uncle Sam.

Uncle Sam had been taken out back and shot.

The liberal in him—the softer, hippy, 'marriage is not an iron clad contract' side, instilled by his mother—hated it too. The violations of civil liberties—his own, those of his employees and of every God-forsaken human being who didn't welcome their new Romanian overlord. It pissed him off something fierce.

Lady Liberty had been cut down where she stood, bidding welcome to the weary.

But more than anything else, the Global Community scared him. It terrified him. A one-world government, taking for itself all the military and political power of the planet, without one word of resistance from the masses. The President—that jackass Blue Dog Fitzhugh, never raised a word of public protest. It was uncanny, unreal, unnatural.

Noel sat up picking up his bottle for a drink, then thinking better of it. The world was going to hell, it seemed. "Mother, I wish you were alive," he whispered to the photo on his desk. "I wish I had some sort of guidance."

Maxwell, his father, the bastard could not help. Simultaneously braver and more cowardly than Noel himself, had declared Los Angeles a no-Global Community zone. That zone quickly shrank to the eight blocks of Los Angeles surrounding the West Coast Collins Corp building when Carpathia's humvees rolled in, but it still turned his stomach. A totalitarian Maxwell-controlled state was bad enough. Maxwell wasn't stupid enough to oppress anyone—the GC was giving them enough oppression. But his 'freedom' came at too great a cost. Thousands died in his little war. Los Angeles—Noel's childhood home—was torn to shreds.

He took a brief sip of his spirits and then stuffed the bottle into the bottom desk drawer.

"Enough of that," he whispered. Noel opened the top file on his stack, skimming through it. It was a work order sent in from Carpathia's office.

Noel scanned it, and then reread it to confirm he'd seen what he thought he'd seen. The automobile of one Captain Rayford Steele was to be given an overhaul—armor plating, unbreakable glass, and the CollinsCorp proprietary fuel efficiency system. For an airplane pilot?

"Oh," said Noel. "My god, he's the pilot of GC-1. He flies Carpathia's plane. No wonder he has such high clearance."

The name sounded familiar, too—which was odd, because it was an unusual name. Old fashioned, almost like the alias of a 70s porn star.

Steele. A memory sparked.

"Oh. What? What the hell?" Noel pulled his tablet computer from the top drawer and skimmed through his files. Noel's middle name, Alexander, came from a famous man with that name, a man who died hundreds of years Before Christ. Some called that Alexander 'Great'. Noel had no intentions of dying of fever in the palace of a dead king, but he still studied the art of war from time to time. If war with the GC came—if it proved inevitable—he'd been keeping tabs of assets.

Rayford Steele was one of the assets—he was the member of a church outside Chicago where the preacher, a Bruce Barnes, was among the fundamentalists who believed that the Vanishings were part of the predicted Christian Rapture. He'd even attended—incognito—a church service where Barnes all but identified Carpathia as the Antichrist. So what in heaven, hell, or the Earth between was Carpathia doing with such a man as his pilot. Rayford Steele, Christian, pilot of the Antichrist. It made perfect sense on one level, if Steele were suicidal inclined. But from Carpathia's point of view?

Unless he knew something Noel didn't, Carpathia was tempting fate.

Noel thought, deviously—Maxwellesquely—that he might give fate a little nudge.

CollinsCorp had developed plenty of toxins in their day, for various uses both industrial and military. If his father had disclosed all of their dealings to the government, CollinsCorp might have been dismantled, its researches prosecuted for crimes against humanity years ago.

One toxin, created by the brilliant, deceased chemist Richard Lorre, had an interesting effect of targeting the ethical reasoning and critical thinking centers of the brain. If Noel could get that into Rayford Steele's system, maybe combine it with a depressant…

No. God, no. What was he thinking? That was Maxwell talking. His mother—his mother wouldn't approve. But Carpathia had to go. There was nothing else to it.

He just had to figure out how.

Chloe Steele—no, Chloe Williams—turned over in bed, her hands instinctively moving down to her hips, to her groin. She ached dully, though a pleasant warmth fluttered around it the pain. There was blood on the sheets and sticking to her legs. So, that was it, then. The real thing—sex. Hymen popped, virginity lost. Welcome to nuptial bliss.

Her husband snorted loudly and turned over, draping his arm across her shoulders. Her brain buzzed with all sorts of thoughts: what happened now? Would they grow apart? Would Buck, ten years her senior, grow to think of her as a kid? He said that despite not being saved until after the Rapture, he was still a virgin—that his career as a journalist had taken precedence over romance. But then, was that even true? How could you tell? Chloe didn't think—didn't want to think—that Buck would lie to her, not now, after they'd been through nearly a year and a half of the Great Tribulation, now that they'd said their vows….

Chloe got out of bed and sauntered gently into the bathroom. She pulled off her cozy sports bra and stepped into the shower, washing herself down with the warm water, letting it embrace her like Buck's knobby arms did in the night. It was a minute or two more until the door swung open and Buck stepped in. The dorky bowtie he'd left around his neck through their lovemaking was now discarded as well, and Buck stepped into the shower with his wife, embracing her from behind, hands cupping her breasts.

"Well," he said, kneading with this fingertips, "I think that was the second best night of my life."

Chloe glared back at Buck. "Second best? What's the first?"

"My first night on staff at the Global Weekly," he said, lip twisting up in a grin.

"Oh yeah," said Chloe, feigning mock hurt. "That's really what a woman wants to hear the morning after her wedding night."

"Calm down, Chlo. Just joking with you. You don't need to be so sensitive."

After their shower, Chloe got dressed and slipped into the living room of her and Buck's massive New York penthouse. Seeing the view sent a strange wave of thrill and guilt down her spine. Buck's new job as the Global Weekly's head honcho—a position given to him by the Antichrist himself—seemed like too much of a coincidence. Chloe believed that God wanted him to take the position, but now that he had it, what did He want Buck to DO with it? So far, the only thing that had changed was Buck's new nearly-unlimited line of credit, which had got them this place. Chloe had used the card occasionally, usually for basic necessities, evangelistic purposes, and once just to withdraw a stack of cash and hand it out to people destitute from the loss of their children or Christian loved ones. Even that had raised Buck's eyebrow.

'Don't do that too often' he said. 'People will get suspicious.'

Feh, to suspicion, Chloe thought now. Buck could be remarkably unobservant in his personal life for an award winning journalist. She could start organizing, creating networks to protect the underprivileged—particularly those persecuted by Nicolae in the coming years—from famine and disaster. She'd have to read up on web security, on making her presence undetectable even to the Lord of Evil.

Hell, with that as her baseline competency requirements, there's no way Buck would figure out what she was doing. But where to learn?

"Chloe?" Buck stepped out of their bedroom buttoning up his shirt. "Admiring your own handiwork?"

He motioned to the decorations Chloe had done to the apartment. It wasn't much—or at least it hadn't felt like it. Just a rhythmic, soothing coping mechanism, almost mechanical in how detached she had been from the process. Something to quell the anxiety of the coming Horsemen of the Apocalypse while they awaited Bruce Barnes to return and give them some direction and strategy.

"Actually, just musing about what our next step is. There are so many souls to save and so many lives at stake. How do you process it all?" Chloe stared into Buck's eyes, but found them unreadable.

"I try not to," he said after a moment. "I take it one day at a time. Chaim and Nicolae are both furious at me for giving the two Prophets at the Wailing Wall screen time."

"Men with magical powers isn't newsworthy," Chloe said caustically.

"Not in Carpathia's America," Buck said. "I guess when you can borrow some of Satan's evil mojo, Moses and Elijah breathing fire seems passé."

Just then, the phone rang, a shrill piercing noise that made Chloe wish regular cell service would return to pre-Rapture levels. The phone tag they'd had to play via answering machines and secretaries made her feel like she was caught up in an episode of Mad Men. And poor Loretta back at New Hope, she'd lived through the actual 60s.

Buck stopped after a brief conversation and hung the phone back up. "That was Plank," he said. "Apparently magical powers are newsworthy now. There was incident in LA last night with supposed security footage of a flying woman and—no joke—Robin the Boy Wonder."

Chloe stared at Buck, trying to wait for a smile to crack or a chuckle to give him away. But none came.

"Do they really need you to cover that? Why can't a local reporter do the job?"

"The footage has already gone viral, Chlo." Buck pulled on his coat. "I'm supposed to debunk it. People trust me."

"I can't imagine why," Chloe said.

Buck shrugged. "Can you imagine this face lying to anyone?"

"No," Chloe said. As soon as the door slammed shut, she added: "And that's what I'm afraid of."