Chapter One: Jump City
By the time the portal opened up, Dethl had already fully inserted itself into Vaati's mind. Now it would feed off of the nightmares and bad memories that Vaati's weakened mind had to offer. It did not bother to look at the new world surrounding them. Vaati didn't either, but this was due to the fact that he felt so weak from the loss of blood from his battle with Ganon. In fact, he could barely contemplate what had managed to bring him to another place. As his vision darkened, he could barely make out five strangely-dressed figures rushing towards him.
And then Vaati's world went black.
The Teen Titans had been in the middle of returning home from a trip to the pizza parlor of Jump City, but a very bright flash of light had waylaid them. When they saw the young man clad in bloody clothes that appeared to have once been purple lying on the sidewalk, they had immediately stopped the car and rushed over to help him. But he had passed out before they could reach him.
A young man dressed in a green, orange, yellow, and red jumpsuit with a black cape and a mask covering his eyes looked at the mysterious figure and turned to a pale-skinned girl hovering in the air, also staring at him intently. "Can you heal him a bit, Raven?"
"Yeah, but we should get him to the Tower," she replied, deadpan.
"Look at those ears of his," a cybernetic teenager said, a look of worry on what was left of his organic face. "And his skin's as pale as Raven's. Come to think of it, he doesn't that much different from you, Rae. Except for, you know, the hair, and the…hat…"
He faltered as he saw Raven glaring at him. "Guess that means he ain't human, then," a green-skinned boy surmised.
"Why are we just standing here?" a girl with red hair and fiery green eyes said. "We must get him to Titan Tower!"
"Right!" responded the caped teenager. "Rae, close his wounds if you can. He's lost a lot of blood as it is."
Raven nodded and knelt over by him, quietly chanting her mantra as they looked on. Little did she know the implications of what she was doing.
This child… Dethl pondered excitedly as it sensed Raven's presence. She harbors many terrible memories. Suppressed emotions…anger…grief…hatred…heh…heh heh…heh heh heh heh! She is the one who will be crucial to our plan!
But Dethl planned on waiting first. It would wait until she was asleep, and then it would leave Vaati behind and invade her dreams and feed off her nightmares.
It had been several hours since the Titans had taken the mysterious stranger to the Titan's Tower. Raven had been working on his injuries, pausing every so often to retire to her room and meditate to regain her strength. All the while the others were keeping watch over the man as he lay unconscious on the couch. They did not remove his bloody clothing, having a hunch that whoever this was would probably not like having his normal attire changed so suddenly.
One particular topic about him was his uncanny resemblance to Raven. They both had pale skin and had a taste for purple clothes and capes. The red-haired girl known as Starfire had earlier expressed curiosity about the black T-like markings on his cheeks. Robin had thought it best to let the man rest before they started bombarding him with questions. Cyborg had made a few comments about how the man looked feminine due to his long hair. It was a while before Raven was done healing his injuries, and it took even longer for the man to finally awaken.
"Nnngnnhh…W…Where am I?" the man asked, rubbing his forehead.
"You are with friends," Starfire answered in excitement. "I am Starfire! This is Friend Cyborg, Friend Robin, and Friend Beast Boy."
"Friend…what?" the man apparently didn't like the word 'friend' very much, and they could tell Starfire's overly cheerful attitude already irked him. He also seemed to be astonished by their names, if not by their appearances.
"We saw you come out of a flash of light," Robin explained. "You were pretty beat up. You can thank Raven for healing your injuries, but your clothes are still…"
He was interrupted as the man's eyes widened as he cried, "Ganon! That bastard! He sent me here! He must have!"
The man tried to get up, but he still felt somewhat weak from his climactic fight with the King of Evil. "What is your name, friend?" Starfire asked innocently.
They thought for a moment that he might not answer, but finally he said, "I am Vaati, Sorcerer of Winds. Or, at least I was, before Ganon took my powers after he had bested me in a fight against him."
Vaati stared at his hands, and the Titans could tell he wasn't over the loss of his so-called powers yet. Finally he clenched his fists and said, "Now, the answer to my first question…where the hell am I?"
"You're in Jump City," Beast Boy answered. "Where did you come from?"
The man scrutinized each and every one of them with his disconcertingly red eyes before he answered, "I am from a land called Hyrule. I assume you've heard of it?"
Their blank stares seemed to confirm what he was dreading. "I see. So I'm in another world, with no way of getting back. Damn you, Ganon. DAMN YOU!"
The man angrily made a gesture with his hand, and the Titans felt a burst of wind issue from his fingertips. While not very strong, it was enough to tip over a pottery plant on the other side of the lounge. The crash made them wince. The man known as Vaati threw down his hands and growled, "My powers are weak. I can barely control the winds now…I am nothing…"
The way Vaati said those last words almost resembled the tone of one delivering the news of someone's death. His loss of power apparently had hit him hard. Vaati slid down on the sofa. "My power…gone…What am I now?" he said to himself. "I'm nothing…I am as weak and inferior as I was when I was with Ezlo…Damn you, old man…Damn you, Link…Damn you, Ganon. DAMN YOU ALL!"
And Vaati did something completely out of character for him; he broke down and cried.
Robin and the others had patiently waited for Vaati to regain his composure before they continued their questioning, but he would have none of it. He asked for his clothes to be washed, and himself as well. They figured it was because he had no knowledge of showers. Starfire directed him to the showers and told him how they worked, and Vaati assured her he would be able to operate it. And so she left him to sulk in silence under the showerhead's warm water as his clothes were washed elsewhere.
When his clothes were cleaned, Robin brought them to Vaati, who quietly accepted them while hiding behind the door that offered him a sense of privacy. Not long afterward, the former Wind Mage slowly stepped out of the bathroom, his garments in all their purple glory. But the man hardly felt any glory. He had hardly felt anything since he had recovered from his injuries. His powers had been a part of him, and he felt hollow without them.
Robin could understand how Vaati felt. It was always hard for someone accustomed to the abilities they had all their lives to have them robbed one day. He also had a feeling this man had a dark past that had led to his demeanor. His violent show of anger, though not very dangerous, sent a statement that this man had probably not been very well liked in the land where he came from. But he was no longer in his world, and his power over the wind had significantly decreased, but this seemed to have broken him somehow. That ambitious fire in his eyes had died out when he had realized what had been done to him.
By this time, Raven had come out of her room. When she saw Vaati, they both stopped. Purple eyes stared into red ones. Each could feel a great power in the other…a demonic power. These powers were both chained, although Vaati's demon form was literally trapped in spell-binding chains, hers were chains of discipline. Studying her carefully, her graceful curves, her brooding eyes, he felt a small pang of desire, but he suppressed it. Such attachment was unbecoming of the Wind Mage Vaati. True, he had captured many maidens in his lifetime, but that was because they had served their purpose in spreading his power over the land.
They were also seeing how their clothes were so…similar. Even though Raven had a hood and was dressed in a more seductive tightfitting one-piece jumpsuit, her cape and Vaati's cape were unnaturally identical, as was their affinity to the purple color scheme.
Finally they broke their gazes and turned away to do their separate things. Vaati simply sat down on the couch in the lounge and closed his eyes, while Raven sat over at the dinner table as the Titans prepared for dinner. Tonight was pizza night. As everyone was sitting down, Starfire noticed that Vaati had not joined them. "Wait," she said, looking around. "Where is Friend Vaati?"
"If you enjoy life, you will never call me that again," Vaati answered irritably from the couch. "I am in the middle of meditating. I do not need you to try and engage me in idle chatter. I am not in the mood for it."
"Dude, we're eating dinner," Beast Boy answered, a little irritated at Vaati's unbecoming attitude.
"I am not hungry," Vaati said simply, and was then quiet as he returned to meditating.
Everyone looked uncomfortably at each other, and then at the meditating Vaati. "You should really eat something," Starfire admonished. "You have endured many troubles at the hands of whoever Ganon is. It will help recover your strength."
Vaati tried to ignore her, but then his stomach made an awful churning noise that unfortunately he could not ignore. He tried several times, but his concentration always broke as his empty stomach gurgled, begging for sustenance. Vaati opened his eyes and saw that his hosts were all looking at him.
"Very well. I will join you."
Everyone seemed to be enlightened at this. As Vaati approached the table, he wondered why these people would be so kind to him, even after the things he had done in Hyrule. But then again, this wasn't Hyrule. They didn't know. They didn't need to know. As he made himself comfortable, he eyed the strange triangular food on his plate. He grimaced. "What in Din's name is this?"
"Pizza," Beast Boy answered. "Don't they have pizza in Hay-rule?"
"It's Hyrule, you green-skinned twit. And no, we do not. And that does not answer my question. What is it?"
Beast Boy was a little miffed that this purple guy was just as snarky as his well-known counterpart. Cyborg answered Vaati's question. "Well, it's dough flattened into a circle, covered with tomato sauce, cheese, and whatever meats or vegetables you want on there."
"…I see. This does not help me much, but it's better than nothing, I suppose." He glanced up at Robin, his voice a very severe one. "You didn't poison it, did you?"
"No! Why would we want to do that?"
"You've no idea how many times I have been told that, and yet one of my samplers falls down dead after tasting my meal."
"So, were you, like, some kind of big-shot lord in your world?"
Vaati smirked slightly. "In a certain retrospect, yes."
Beast Boy raised his eyebrows, now realizing why this man seemed to be so demanding. He was used to telling people what to do, and he had had the power to convince them to do that. But now that he was without these powers, he was out of his element.
Then Raven's question cut through Vaati like a knife. "You were a villain in your world, weren't you?"
Vaati closed his eyes as everyone turned to him, waiting for an answer. "Yes…I was. But I was not nearly half as bad as Ganon was. I managed to rise to power four times, although twice it was because of Ganon's wicked manipulations, where he used me to distract the hero while he formulated his own plans, knowing I would lose. Ganon has risen from the jaws of death at least a dozen times I can remember, and each time, many people died and much of the world was covered in darkness. I was never like that. The cruelest thing I did was turn a few people into statues and kidnap a few maidens. My monsters simply harassed citizens. His outright raped, tortured, and murdered them. Ganon is more evil than I will ever be…more than I ever want to be."
The Titans looked at each other as Vaati continued his story. "I was always attracted by the evil in men's hearts, how it could allow them to gain so much power over their enemies and victims…But I knew that every power has its limitations…or is supposed to. Ganon's hatred and cruelty knew no limits. He was driven by vengeance and a thirst for power, but it drove him mad. In the end, it simply amounted to him trying to beat the hero for the sake of beating the hero more than taking over the world. Hyrule was always in a decrepit state. Its entire army couldn't hold back a small platoon of the most dim-witted of all Moblins if their lives depended on it, which in most cases it did. I thought I could change all that. Of course I changed the castle infrastructure and filled it full of monsters to keep the curious from entering. I graciously did not attack Hyrule Town, nor did I ever plan to, though they always expected it.
"I truly thought that, given enough time, I could rebuild Hyrule into the glorious and proud nation it once was, but nooooo, some meddling little hero dressed in green had the gall to call me a monster? And he stopped me in the name of "good?" The princess of Hyrule wouldn't have been a total loss. She just would have been reborn sometime later just like the hero. It was just like what one great king of Hyrule once said, "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few." Stupid elitist Triforce wielders. And because of that, I became exactly like them. I'm not proud of it, either."
"Wow, that one king must've been a big fan of Star Trek," Beast Boy mused.
"What?"
"Never mind."
Vaati sighed. This boy was starting to get under his skin. It took a minute for him to realize just how much he had vented to them about his previous actions. Right now, he didn't want to see their faces, so he simply looked down at his plate and sampled the food dish these people called 'pizza.' He was surprised by how good it tasted. Quickly he chewed down more, savoring every bite. The others could tell that Vaati at least liked pizza.
Some time after dinner, everyone decided to turn in for the night. Vaati was given a spare blanket and pillow so he could sleep more comfortably on the couch. After everyone else was gone, he kicked off his red sandals and removed his cap, a perfect replica of his former master's wishing cap, and set them down on the other couch before returning to his spot and lying down. Pulling the cover over him, he tried to fall asleep, but at first it wouldn't come to him. Vaati twirled his finger absentmindedly, forming a tiny cyclone in the air which danced on the palm of his hand.
At least I can still control a small amount of the wind's power, he thought to himself as his eyelids drooped. The cyclone dissipated as Vaati fell asleep, weary of his first day in Jump City and the house of these strange, rather eccentric people.