"Titans: Legacies"
Chapter 2: "Striking Antitheses"
Disclaimer: The characters seen here largely belong to DC Comics, with a few created by me. The one thing I purely own is this story.
Author's note: Here comes the second chapter of this story, which will focus on the new Titans' personal and heroic lives before Deathstroke makes his move. The question is, however, just what does Deathstroke really want? You'll find that out when I'm good and ready for you to find out. In the meantime, on with the story.
Damien Wayne began another day at Marion Grange Preparatory School, dressed in the standard uniform of the school. Said uniform was a dark blue blazer over a white dress shirt with black tie and dark gray pants with black dress shoes. Damien didn't much enjoy the uniform, nor did he enjoy what came with it. He didn't enjoy being surrounded by spoiled brats who felt entitled to whatever they desired just because of who their fathers – or mothers – were. He didn't enjoy the attention of the girls who attended the school with him; vapid whores they all were.
Damien was what one would call a loner, someone who could always be found sitting at the lunch table by himself, someone who could always be found a little separate from everyone else. Damien didn't mind that very much; it allowed him peace and quiet. Another thing that allowed him peace and quiet was his reputation.
Damien Wayne had a reputation as a vicious son of a bitch liable to kill someone just for breathing wrong in his presence. That was not too far from the truth, although he was able to restrain himself most of the time. The times that he didn't restrain himself were times in which he was just in a very bad mood already and some presumptuous jerk had pushed him over the edge. Said presumptuous jerk would usually end up not being able to return to class for a few periods due to the medical attention he needed.
There was one person, though, who reached out to him, who tried to pull him out of his shell. That person was Mar'i Grayson, who also attended the school with him. They didn't see each other too often, as Damien was a senior and Mar'i was a sophomore, but whenever lunchtime came around, Mar'i would invite him to sit with her.
Mar'i was his exact opposite, beautiful, vivacious, and open. She easily charmed boys and girls alike, not necessarily in the romantic sense, but it was almost impossible to hate her if one knew her. Pretty much every teenage boy in the school wanted to date her – or just sleep with her – and a lot of teenage girls wanted to be friends with her. Mar'i was rather on the famous side, being the daughter of an extraterrestrial supermodel-slash-superhero and the first scion of Bruce Wayne and also being a superhero herself.
That was another difference between Damien and Mar'i. Mar'i proudly acknowledged both her human and alien roots and didn't build walls around her heart. Even now, Damien could see her surrounded by girls and boys alike, sitting with them, laughing with them, exchanging stories and advice with them. He sighed enviously; she just had so much love and joy in her that it was almost impossible to keep hidden.
If only I could be like that, he mused almost ruefully.
Just then, he saw Mar'i waving to him. Damien stood from his lonely table and walked over to Mar'i's table, taking a spare seat wedged between a bespectacled, lanky boy and a small, almost boyishly built girl. He vaguely knew them; the boy was Danny and the girl was Mickey. He grunted out a brief greeting.
"Hey, Damien," Mickey greeted with a slight blush.
Damien was not blind to his own physical attractiveness; he knew he was a lust object for a lot of the girls in the school. He also knew that Mar'i was a lust object for a lot of the boys in the school. Fortunately for them, many of the boys that found their way into Mar'i's social circle saw her as more than just a lust object. Fortunate for them, as Damien would show them just how vicious he could truly be if he thought they had any untoward intentions where Mar'i was concerned.
She was his sister, his kindred, the one person who truly understood and accepted him. His so-called brothers, Dick and Tim, tried their best, but they had never truly accepted him; they saw him as an encroachment on their legacy. He knew that, he saw it brewing in their eyes whenever they looked at him.
That was why he needed the Titans, whether he would ever say it out loud or not. He needed to be around people who could acknowledge him as something other than Bruce Wayne's bastard child, other than an unwanted adjunct to the legacy of Batman.
"Damien?" Mar'i asked.
"Yeah, I'm listening," Damien grunted. He caught the scent of damp clay, somewhere at the table where he was sitting. He gave seemingly cursory looks at the others sitting with him and Mar'i, trying to deduce who was giving off that clay scent. He locked eyes with one of them. "I'd like to speak to you in private."
"Uh, sure . . ." Mickey replied with a more vivid blush. She stood first, Damien rising with her and walking away with her. As they walked out of the cafeteria, Damien spared a brief look of warning at Mar'i.
Once out in the hall, Mickey turned to Damien. "What is it, Damien?"
"This," Damien replied and punched her as hard as he could. Unsurprisingly, her face seemed to absorb the blow, actually sucking his fist in as though he had just hit clay. When he pulled his hand back, he saw wet clay on his fingers. "Clayface. You might as well show your real face."
"No fooling you, is there?" Clayface retorted as he shifted into his true form of a humanoid mass of clay. "Robin. Or can I call you Damien?"
Damien snarled and pulled out the kris he kept hidden in his blazer, the pockets of which had been lined with a mesh that blocked metal detectors. Clayface sharpened his appendages into solid blades, as ready to fight as Damien was. "Come on, then, pretty boy. Let's do this."
Damien made the first move, slashing at Clayface with his kris. Clayface blocked the blade by shifting one of his appendages into a shield, only for Damien to somersault over him and kick him in the back of the head. Unfortunately, Clayface shifted his mass to easily absorb the kick and suck Damien inside. Damien used his kris to cut himself free and rolled on the floor, springing to his feet despite the clay staining his pants leg and shoe.
"What are you doing here?" Damien asked. "How did you even know to come here? Where's the real Mickey?"
"So many questions," Clayface replied mockingly. "Tell you what, how about I answer them after you're dead!"
"You first," Damien retorted with a vicious grin.
Back in the cafeteria, Mar'i could hear the sounds of battle from the hallway. "I'm gonna check up on Damien and Mickey," she said to her friends.
"Sure," Danny said.
Mar'i left her table and went out into the hallway, only to find Damien on the losing end of a battle with Clayface. Her hands glowed with violet energy and she fired a double-fisted starbolt at the shape-shifter. Damien, fortunately, had gotten out of the way just before the starbolt hit Clayface, the blast punching a large hole through Clayface's midsection.
"What happened?" Mar'i asked.
"Clayface was disguised as Mickey," Damien replied. "And somehow, he knows who I am."
"What are you doing here?" Mar'i asked the regenerating Clayface.
"I'm just here to take you two Bat-brats down," Clayface answered, stretching his arms out as bludgeons aimed for Mar'i. Mar'i met Clayface's bludgeoning arms with her own fists and Clayface's arms fell apart from the force of Mar'i's blow. Of course, Clayface just regenerated himself again. "Ok, bitch, you're dead!"
Clayface transformed himself into a fast-moving liquid mass, aimed at Mar'i, but Mar'i levitated above his grasp and fired a starbolt at him. The heat from the starbolt turned Clayface from quasi-liquid to barely coherent and semidry mud. Mar'i floated over to Damien, landing next to him with a questioning expression.
"How did he know to come here?" she asked.
"I don't know," Damien replied. "But I'm going to find out."
"You mean we're going to find out," Mar'i corrected.
Damien shrugged. "Same difference."
As they were talking, Clayface was reconstituting himself. Damien noticed that reconstitution out of the corner of his eye. "Too bad we don't have any ice capsules. I was barely able to get my kris in here."
"I have an idea," Mar'i said, firing a starbolt at the sprinkler on the ceiling. The intense heat from the starbolt activated the sprinkler and water sprayed forth onto Clayface's re-forming mass, trapping him unless he could slither away. Slither away he did, pursued by water spraying from the sprinklers that Mar'i activated with her starbolts. Finally, he just fled the school.
"Now we have to find out where he might be keeping Mickey," Damien said.
They exited the school building together, ready to go find Mickey when Mar'i's supersensitive ears heard a blade cutting through the air. She ducked, as did Damien, and the two jumped back to sight their assailant, a small young woman clad in black with blue chain-mesh and wearing a bisected black-and-blue mask. The costumed woman wielded a sharp katana and her stance signaled that she was more than ready to fight.
"Who are you?" Mar'i asked.
"Executrix," the costumed woman replied, just before she slashed at Mar'i with inhuman speed. Mar'i dodged the swing and flipped backward to kick Executrix's sword arm. Executrix took the blow and redirected the momentum from Mar'i's kick into a 360-degree spin that finished with her thrusting her sword at Damien, who blocked with his kris.
Sunstone High School, Olivia Queen sat in her AP Literature class and listened to the discussion of Dante's Inferno. It wasn't as though she couldn't follow along or participate; she simply didn't feel like it at the moment. In truth, she found it rather boring, although she supposed her dad would have loved it. Then again, her dad at her age – physical age – hadn't much cared about books like this.
The part of Olivia that psychologically remained a child wanted to go outside and play. Of course, her sense of discipline prevented her from leaving the classroom in order to play. Thus, she sat in the classroom and continued to listen to the class discussion until someone called her name.
"Miss Queen?" the teacher asked.
"Yes?" Olivia replied.
"Could you tell us – as succinctly as possible – why there is a Limbo in Dante's vision of hell?" the teacher asked.
Olivia thought about it, her mind processing the instruction with inhuman speed. She answered the question tersely. "There's a Limbo in Dante's interpretation of hell because he didn't think anyone who wasn't baptized or who didn't believe in the Christian God deserved to be in heaven. At the same time, he didn't think they deserved to go to hell because of that; they were mostly innocent people. Thus, there's a Limbo for them, a place where they are simply permanently isolated from God instead of being tortured."
"All right," the teacher said. "Not bad."
After the class was over, the students quietly filed out. As Olivia was about to leave with the other students, the teacher called her name. Olivia turned to acknowledge the teacher. "Yes, Mr. Briscoe?"
"I'd like to talk to you about your work here," Mr. Briscoe replied.
"Is there something wrong?" Olivia asked.
"No," Mr. Briscoe replied. "To the contrary; you are by far one of the most exemplary students I've had this year."
Olivia blushed. "Thank you."
"I was wondering, if you'd like a little private instruction," Mr. Briscoe suggested. "Some one-on-one tutoring."
"Thank you, but I don't think I need it," Olivia said.
"Oh, it's not going to be with me," Mr. Briscoe explained. "It'll be with a student-teacher I have as one of my assistants. You'll like her."
Olivia breathed out a sigh of relief. She'd almost been worried that Mr. Briscoe intended to molest her or something. Not that she'd have been surprised by that; she wasn't bad-looking by any means and Mr. Briscoe was kind of handsome for a middle-aged man. It was still good, though, that she'd have someone closer to her own age to privately instruct her.
"Ok, you can go now," Mr. Briscoe said.
"Thanks," Olivia answered. "Bye, Mr. Briscoe." She turned on her heel and walked out of the classroom, headed for her locker so that she could prepare for her next class.
Later on, Olivia was enjoying her lunch in the courtyard situated just outside of the school building. She didn't have a care in the world, except for the fact that she really, really wished she wasn't in school right then. It was rather boring, having to sit still in class and listen to people talk. Of course, it wasn't boring when she was sitting still in the T-Cave and listening to Mar'i talk; Mar'i's voice had that musical quality that made Olivia hang on every word the half-Tamaranean girl spoke.
Olivia was so caught up in her thoughts about Mar'i that she almost didn't notice the arrow that was flying at her. Emphasis on "almost," as her eyes caught the arrow speeding at her and her reflexes snapped into action a split second later, her hand gripping the shaft of the arrow before the head could embed itself in her chest, her eye, or her head. She examined the arrow, finding it to be incredibly old-fashioned on the surface.
She dodged another arrow that was fired at her by jumping up into a higher branch of the tree she was sitting under. She scanned her surroundings, magnifying her vision so that she could track the source of the arrows being fired at her. She spotted someone, a young man, in skintight black with a dragon print on one side of his body and armed with a bow and arrow.
Olivia bounded out of the tree and sped in the archer's direction. She wasn't a speedster by any means, but she could run fast enough to outrun a race car. She could handle this guy who was trying to kill her, whoever he was. She moved so fast that she was a blur to onlookers, crossing the distance to her would-be assassin within seconds.
"Who are you?" she asked, standing on top of the atrium where he had calmly sniped her.
"Hello, sister," the assassin archer greeted.
"Sister? What are you talking about?"
"You mean Dad didn't tell you?" The assassin archer chuckled. "Of course he wouldn't tell you. So happy with his little Canary. He probably wants to forget that I was ever conceived, let alone born."
Olivia glared. "What are you talking about?"
"You'll have to ask him. For now, call me Oni."
"I don't care what you call yourself; you're going down." Olivia threw a fast punch, only for Oni to duck and twist into position to throw a punch that caught her in the stomach. Olivia took the blow without flinching and grabbed Oni's wrist, using it as leverage to throw him over her shoulder. Oni flipped in midair and landed on his feet behind her, throwing another punch that Olivia sidestepped, the blonde sweeping her leg out to trip him. The dark-haired young man jumped over her leg and launched into a flying kick that Olivia caught, using his momentum to throw him to the edge of the atrium roof.
Oni quickly got back on his feet and swiftly nocked and released an arrow from his bow, Olivia catching the arrow with superhuman reflexes. She discarded the arrow, only to barely dodge another one that nearly grazed her eye. She threw herself into a forward handspring that ended in a kick to Oni's chest. Oni took the kick despite the rattle to his ribcage and grabbed Olivia's ankles, throwing her over the edge of the atrium. Olivia simply flipped backward in her descent and landed gracefully on the ground.
Oni jumped down after her, rapidly firing arrows at her as he descended. Olivia dodged and caught the arrows, but Oni was surprisingly fast for a non-augmented human and his arrows were getting dangerously close to striking her. Within her, the weaponized symbiote called Excalibur awoke. Olivia was its host and master, and it would not allow her to come to harm.
Without Olivia really thinking about it, Excalibur began to cover Olivia, her clothes slowly being torn away by a silvery quasi-organic metal covering. When it was over, her arms, shoulders, and sides were covered in the organic metal carapace that was the material representation of Excalibur. The covering had shredded Olivia's shirt to the point that it was little more than a glorified tube top, but that was not the farthest extent of the bio-metal sheath. Excalibur had also formed a protective web around Olivia's legs, also shredding her pants until they were little more than daisy dukes.
The biomechanical substance had also covered the sides of Olivia's neck and face, and her eyes had turned completely black with gold circuit-like patterns surrounding what might have been her pupils. Olivia's inhuman eyes landed upon Oni with a look of steely determination. Oni just chuckled.
"So this is your power," he remarked. "I'll enjoy testing myself against you."
Olivia lunged at Oni so quickly that to a normal human's eyes, she might as well have vanished. Oni, however, had special ocular grafts that sharpened his sight enough to detect fast-moving targets, allowing him to somewhat keep up with Olivia. Of course, it was useless to have enhanced perception of an opponent's moves if one was not fast enough to match those moves.
Such was what Oni discovered when Olivia tagged him with a vicious palm thrust, nearly caving in his sternum. The force of the blow propelled Oni backward, only for Olivia to leap over him and deliver a spine-crunching kick to his back. Oni collapsed on his front, only to roll over and quickly nock and release an arrow at Olivia, who caught the arrow and threw it aside contemptuously. Another arrow flew at Olivia, this time hitting her in the stomach, just above her navel.
To Oni's surprise, Olivia smiled at him, grabbing the protruding shaft and pulling the arrow out of her. The wound only bled a little before sealing up and closing. She then snapped the arrow in two, revealing sparking circuitry from either broken end of the arrow. She pointed her hand at Oni and the bio-metal covering it formed into a sword blade.
"I can do that, too," Oni retorted, a blade popping out of his forearm.
"Then let's do it," Olivia challenged.
The two children of Oliver Queen, or so Oni purported himself to be, battled with their blades. Olivia proved to be the faster and stronger of the two, overwhelming Oni. Of course, Oni had sheer determination on his side, but he would have to rethink his strategy. A direct fight with a superhuman opponent such as Olivia Queen was not necessarily a good idea for a non-powered fighter such as Oni. Then again . . . he had backup.
As Oni and Olivia fought, Olivia was suddenly impaled in the shoulder by an arrow, the head of which detonated inside her. The explosion brutally separated her arm from the rest of her body and Olivia collapsed to the ground, bleeding profusely from the stump to which her arm was formerly attached. Olivia looked up, her eyes wild with pain and rage, wanting to know where the attack had come from.
"Quincy," Oni greeted tersely.
The other archer, a pale, darkly garbed young man, mock saluted Oni from his position, holding a high-tech chrome-plated bow. He jumped out of the tree in which he'd been hiding and walked up to his partner. "I suppose that takes care of this bitch."
"Now for the other one," Oni answered.
"If you mean Lian . . ." Olivia growled, her voice ragged. ". . . you're not getting anywhere near her."
Olivia had forced herself to her feet with just one arm to help her. She had also picked up her severed arm and held it to the stump of her shoulder, the biomechanical fibers that substantiated Excalibur reconnecting her arm to her shoulder. Despite the physical reconnection, the harder task of neural and synaptic reconnection was still in progress, thus impeding Olivia's ability to use that arm. It didn't matter; she'd just use her one working arm and her legs to their utmost capability.
In Atlantis, Cerdian was practicing with his magic. He had already learned how to form psychic vectors that acted as extra limbs, effectively mimicking telekinesis. He also knew how to generate mystical force and shape it into a melee weapon, although he typically used it as a last resort, for he typically chose the form of a blade and the blade was capable of killing. He knew how to perceive the flow of magic through the Eye of the Clear, a genetic trait passed on to him by his father. Despite this, he still had so much to learn, but then he was only 14 in surface world years. In ten years, he'd probably be even better.
As he practiced, Cerdian sensed a disturbance. It was a blip of dark magic moving quickly and stealthily, approaching his position. He didn't recognize the source, but then he hadn't been exposed to dark magic very often. He went on his guard, waiting for the source of dark magic to come to him. When it did, he was rather surprised.
"Lian?" Cerdian asked.
It certainly looked like Lian. Same curly shoulder-length red hair, same jade crystal eyes, same feline physique, same "classy tease" style of dressing, but . . . it wasn't her. He could tell by the eyes, those eyes that had an unnatural hardness and coldness in them. That wasn't Lian. Not Lian at all.
"You're not Lian," he spat. "Lian doesn't know any magic, and certainly not dark magic of Olympian origin."
The false Lian laughed. "No fooling you, is there?" She shifted into her true form, a girl with long lavender hair and violet eyes. She was dressed in an outfit that seemed to be a hybrid of Diana's Wonder Woman costume and Cassie Sandsmark's Wonder Girl costume prior to Kon-El's death, but the colors were amethyst and silver instead of ruby and gold.
"Who are you?" Cerdian asked.
"My name's Lyta," the "Dark Wonder Girl" replied. "I'm the daughter of Circe and Ares and I've inherited the sum total of their powers. And depending on how long you last with me, I might be inclined to show you mercy."
"I don't know how you got in here, but you're not going to be staying." Cerdian extended twin telekinetic vectors at Lyta as blades, only for Lyta to seemingly disappear and reappear behind Cerdian, who whirled around in a seemingly futile attempt to block her attack. While Lyta's punch still sent Cerdian flying through the wall and into the sea outside, it didn't do nearly as much damage as she was probably expecting. Cerdian stopped his uncontrolled propulsion and spotted Lyta flying through the water to attack him again. This time, Cerdian was ready and evaded her attack, moving behind her and grabbing her arm to twist it behind her back.
"Getting rough with me already?" Lyta taunted. "What would your girlfriend think?"
Cerdian didn't allow himself to be distracted, catching Lyta's other arm as she swept it backward to strike him and twisting that one behind her back as well. "This is my territory."
"I forgot," Lyta remarked. "You're even stronger in the water than you are on land." She chuckled. "But not as strong as I am."
With a burst of mystically fueled telekinetic force, Lyta forced Cerdian off her, Cerdian wrapping himself in telekinetic vectors to protect himself from the full power of Lyta's assault. He unwrapped himself and shot the vectors at Lyta to act as restraints and as attacking instruments. Lyta swam higher into the water, attempting to avoid the vectors, but the vectors increased their speed to the point that two managed to grab her ankles.
Lyta shot a bolt of mystical lightning at Cerdian, only for Cerdian to shield himself with more vectors. More of his vectors began to wrap around Lyta, binding her as surely as gauze wrappings wound bind a mummy. Lyta struggled fiercely to free herself and with a cry of determined rage, she burst loose, diving into an attack on Cerdian that the Atlantean mage caught, throwing her some distance away. Lyta recovered quickly and charged her hand with mystical lightning, using the current to enhance her already prodigious speed even further and launch herself into a killing strike on Cerdian.
Cerdian summoned his force blade and dived at Lyta. It all came down to who was the faster and more precise of the two . . . and to sheer luck. Depending on how those three factors played out for each of them, one would still be alive and the other would be incapacitated, if not fatally so.
In one of those rather screwy quirks of fate, Cerdian and Lyta ended up stabbing each other. Lyta's mystical lightning penetrated Cerdian's iron-like flesh and left a gaping wound somewhere between his shoulder and his heart. Cerdian's force blade perforated Lyta's torso somewhere between her ribcage and her navel. Both mystically oriented fighters were bleeding profusely from the wounds they had dealt each other.
Lyta found it in herself to laugh. "You hurt me . . . you hurt me after all. I suppose you're not so worthless now."
Cerdian glared. "I don't see what's so funny."
Lyta glided to Cerdian and pulled him into an embrace. Cerdian struggled in her grip, but he was losing so much blood . . . getting woozy. Lyta smiled and brought her head to his wound, lapping up the escaping blood. Oddly enough, Lyta's saliva acted as a cauterizing agent, stopping the wound from bleeding any further, but that didn't necessarily mean Cerdian was healed. She lifted her head and pulled Cerdian into a deep kiss, muffling Cerdian's screams of pain as her power began to work on him.
She broke the kiss, leaving Cerdian to drift through the sea in agony as she flew back up to the surface. When he recovered, he would be hers . . . and there would be nothing that piddling wannabe Artemis could do about it. Besides, she needed a boyfriend, anyway, and if her father didn't like it, then he could take his opinion and shove it. If Deathstroke didn't like her particular method of neutralizing a Titan, he could shove it, too.
End Notes: All right, the assault of the Reverse-Titans has begun. Mar'i and Damien managed to take out Clayface, but now they have to deal with Executrix. Olivia has her hands full with the dark archers Oni and Quincy, and Cerdian's been taken out by Lyta, although it seems Lyta has more in mind than that. If you want to see how they and the other Titans do against their foes, you'll have to wait for chapter 3. In the meantime, let me know what you thought of this.