Deathstroke's Base:
Slade Wilson listened dispassively as he heard the HIVE Headmistress roll through her recitation. He knew at one level that it was a despicable thing to send these brats against a team that had in the presence of Kara Zor-El a physical God who probably would no-sell everything they could throw at her. But if they were in fact able to play against her, perhaps this team would be useful to send against his true target, the Gem.
He'd long-since sold his soul to the Demon Trigon, this he knew all too well. Bargains with Demons did not end well, but they gave him the prospect to begin individually what fools like Luthor needed entire companies to seek to achieve, a bid to remake the world in his image. He muttered to himself, "In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is King." That got the HIVE Headmistress to look toward him and he turned toward her, and briefly interrupted her speech, resuming where she left off:
"The HIVE Academy for Extraordinary Young People is proud to present these, our finest graduates." First was a midget with a jetpack, whose jet pack released lasers that severed robotic tendrils reaching toward him. "Gizmo, the genius, whose mental aptitude enables him to think his way out of any trap."
Next was a grey-haired woman whose hair was an odd pink color, eyes glowing pink. Rays of pink light hit robots, one of which fell, sparking, another of which dissolved into a literal flowing puddle of metal, a third of which exploded. "Jinx, who manipulates probability and creates hexes that can outmaneuver any foe."
The third was a tall and brutish-seeming Neanderthal-like man, his sheer size overwhelming as he tore through the robots in front of him with bare hands, ripping his foes apart and roaring in a bestial satisfaction. "Mammoth, whose genhanced physique speaks for itself."
She grinned and told him, "We are very proud of these people." Deathstroke looked.
"I see that they are suited to face mechanical foes without difficulty, but they need to show me what they can do against a living target. Let them take down the Teen Titans and we shall see what I shall use them for." She nodded.
THE WATCHTOWER:
As Raven meditated, she had a strange flash of…..something. A brilliant world of ivory and gold, and a disorienting vertigo-inducing rush to a great throne. The throne was seemingly almost bone and ivory in a skull-like fashion, and upon it sat a tall and a great figure in a crimson blood-red Sari. Her blue eyes were inhumanly crystalline and her dish-like face seemed to move closer as the entity leaned forward, lips parting in a vicious and inhuman smile of fanged teeth. The creature leered at her, and then as it prepared to speak the vision passed. She squawked as she fell to the ground with a thump, her meditation disrupted.
A few rooms across, the Martian Manhunter had a similar vision. He was walking in Mars when suddenly around him the Red Planet changed into a brilliant realm of ivory and gold. Hands of unstoppable force grasped him and hurled him to the Throneroom, where he beheld a monstrous figure. Tall and clad in a crimson-red Sari, it seemed human save that it was closer to ten feet tall, overpoweringly robust and yet feminine in a fashion that had no overlap or parallel with what human physiology was supposed to be. Its, no, her hair was blonde. Eyes of bright blue with crystalline irises and deep pupils that were pools of darkness blazed into him and the creature leaned forward, a monstrously wide smile crossing her face, baring those same fanged teeth.
The monster seemed to reach out for him but he blinked and the scene shifted, finding himself prostrate, coughing. He reached out to the other Psionic on the team:
Raven?
I felt it, too.
Zatanna, however, felt something different to the two of them. When practicing and honing her skills in the mystic arts, the mirror she gazed into to gauge her practices displayed a very different entity. As with the other two, she saw a monstrously robust female-seeming being, blonde and blue-eyed, dishlike face with blue eyes that marked an eerie and devastating power. The being smiled and cocked its head in an uncannily birdlike fashion, and as a hand seemed to start to reach out of the mirror, she spoke: Enogeb nemod!
Nothing happened.
I am not a demon. The voice was a rumbling and echoing sound, a contralto, but one that was overlain by a tremendous force that reached into the soul. I am the Undying Flame that sears what I wi- Uinuznalehzez enogeb! The creature blinked and the mirror restored itself to normal. She gasped. She'd heard rumors of the….other Azar….a monstrous creature that seemed the very Devil itself unleashed before. A multiversal virus that expanded through Existence but had hitherto seemed to avoid this corner of it. The presence of such a monstrosity….
She heard J'onn and Raven speaking to each other and reached out to them:
The Undying Flame. Why is she reaching out to here?
They were silent for a moment before they heard the Intercom summoning the members together. It was when they saw the sight on the screen that they stopped, in a more than slight gaze of awe at the sight unleashed. They nodded and as they prepared to head down to the battlefield where two destructive forces of nature had been unleashed, Zatanna looked at Raven.
"You all right?" Raven nodded. She was used to the pains by then, and it seemed second nature. It was why, in the end, Azarath had taught her all it had about emptiness and fractured her psyche, for the very thing that she could do that brought the greatest good was something on its own that could overwhelm her. Could release the Gem.
The Team headed down to Coast City where Solomon Grundy had joined with the sinister Maxima of Almerac, both bellowing defiance and unleashing destruction on a potentially Hiroshima-esque scale.
MARIO'S PIZZA:
As the Titans sat around discussing what kind of Pizza they wanted, Robin and Supergirl tuned out the discussion, initially focusing on the TV where the sight of Solomon Grundy and Maxima's rampage was followed by the arrival of the Justice League and their working together. Among them were a woman in fishnets and a top hat, who fired beams of mystic force, and a young girl, the youngest member, whose eyes glowed white and who shielded other members of the team and helped to move civilians out of the way.
Meanwhile Cyborg and Beast Boy were arguing: "Dude, I've been those animals!"
"Dude, meat is literally what people get pizzas FOR!"
Starfire, meanwhile, had listed literally everything on the menu on her pizza, and hearing that, Supergirl broke her concentration and whispered to her gently, "Starfire, not everything is a topping." Starfire nodded, meekly. "Oh."
As Supergirl smiled, she perked up. She'd heard a couple of things. Unnatural ones. A bus rumbling down the street, engine on, but she'd heard that it had been pushed. A baby-carriage likewise, but one without an actual baby in it.
She murmured, "What the fu-" Robin saw the bus and the carriage and as Supergirl said, "Guys w-" "TITANS GO!"
As Starfire went to the carriage, Supergirl tried again, "Guys, w-"
Cyborg stopped the bus, and as he and Beast Boy looked in, the bus was empty. Starfire held a teddy bear. "Um, I thought buses had drivers?" Cyborg asked, while Starfire looked and said, "I thought baby carriages had bab-" they heard a voice. Gizmo came in on his jet pack. "Are you pit sniffers always this stupid?"
As the Titans looked uncomprehendingly, the bear exploded, launching Starfire into the sky as Mammoth hurled the bus at the team. Supergirl's eyes turned red and she sliced the bus in half. As the HIVE looked at each other, they launched themselves at the team. Cyborg launched himself at Gizmo, only to be grabbed by Mammoth who asked him, "What do you call a guy who flies by jet pack?"
"I dunno, what?"
"Duped!" as Gizmo activated the pack and Cyborg hurled himself into the skies, trying to de-activate the pack. Beast Boy transformed into a rhino, hurling himself forward as an intentional unstoppable force, only for Mammoth to dig his feet into the ground, carving grooves into the street and slowing his momentum as Jinx zapped him, turning him back into Garfield Logan. As the team looked confident, Kara Zor-El hovered over them.
"That was unwise," she growled, her eyes beginning to heat up.
"Here goes nothing," Jinx said, as she fired several hexes at Supergirl. Two of them had no effect on her other than making her mad as Supergirl began to swoop down toward her, the third hit her square in the face with concussive force sufficient to hurl her up into the sky. Smirking, the HIVE then faced Robin, who launched himself at them only to be blast into the park by Jinx's hexes.
"How droll," Jinx laughed.
Supergirl growled more deeply and then maneuvered herself into the sky, catching Cyborg and removing the jetpack, crushing it in one fist and holding Cyborg away and shielding him from the brunt of the blast, while flying back with him, finding Starfire and Beast Boy with them. As she told Beast Boy, "Can you change back into a bird?" He nodded.
Starfire asked, "Where's Robin?" Supergirl's telescopic and X-ray vision fired around the city and she then smiled at the sight of Robin on a speedboat headed back to the Tower. "He's all right. Are you?" Starfire nodded. "Just mad." Supergirl grinned. "Well, we can't change what happened. We need to go back to the Tower and regroup."
The Titans flew back. As they discussed things, they were startled when the HIVE blasted in through a window.
"SERIOUSLY?" Robin's yell led to the HIVE laughing, as they said, "Hell yeah. This is our house now." Supergirl launched herself forward only for Jinx to hit her with a hex that managed to throw her through the floor, knocking her unconscious for a moment. Without Kara present, the same pattern repeated itself, the deadly combination of Jinx's hexes, Mammoth's strength, and Gizmo's gadgets leading to all of the Titans plunged into the ocean. Even the barrage of Starbolts and sonic lasers couldn't alter this, nor could all Robin's Birdarangs and Martial Arts wizardry. As the Titans swam to the nearest island to the one their tower was on, Supergirl awoke and decided enough with one kind of game.
The HIVE had messed with her team enough, it was time to even the scales and make them Beware the Supergirl. Maneuvering to her room in a sudden rush of super-speed, she turned off all the lights in that room and in a specific hall. The sudden rush rattled the HIVE.
"Um….." they heard Gizmo's nasal voice speaking. "We did get rid of all those Titans jerks, right?"
They moved cautiously toward the hall where Supergirl's room was. Bunching together in a triangular pattern, Gizmo on the left, Jinx on the right, Mammoth behind them, they were more rattled in the darkness enough that they failed to consider turning on lights. As they reached to her room, two glowing red lights suddenly appeared.
"Oh shit," was all Gizmo had time to say before Supergirl suddenly and brutally lunged forward, tearing off his jetpack and knocking him unconscious with a bitch-slap, followed by Mammoth smashed into the floor repeatedly until he was unconscious. As Jinx's hands glowed, Supergirl simply knocked her down with a gust of her super-breath, telling her, "Don't make me angry. You won't like me when I'm angry." Jinx whimpered "OK, I'll be good." As Supergirl placed them all in dampeners, and then flew over to the island, she smiled, seeing her team all together and ready to return.
Beast Boy cheered. "We don't have to live on this island anymore!" Eyes rolled all over the place.
COAST CITY:
Grundy and Maxima were enjoying the fight a bit more than the League that gathered around them. It was a brutal and straightforward slugfest, Superman, the Martian Manhunter, and Aquaman facing both intermittently, Superman facing off in particular with the gloriously hammy and bellowing Maxima, while Grundy faced the entirety of the rest of the League at times. Raven and Zatanna worked together, firing blasts of mystic force that kept Grundy both off his feet and prevented him from fully focusing or applying his strength, which was vital when only Aquaman was available to add sheer raw physical heft, as Wonder Woman kept maneuvering with great swiftness but never focusing too much on one target at the same time.
The fight had gone on for two hours when Maxima finally was overpowered by Superman and the Martian Manhunter and clapped into power suppressors, and the Manhunter made her sleep. As this went on, the fight with Grundy became a new focus. Grundy's raw unpredictable strength and chaotic combination of mindlessness and ruthless cleverness meant that he was able to at this point not only force Batman, Zatanna, and Raven to retreat with hobbled legs due to need for crowd control, but to face the Martian Manhunter, Superman, Wonder Woman, and Aquaman while taking injuries that would have both crippled and been mortally fatal to a lesser monster. With Grundy, they simply seemed to make him madder, and as Grundy surged forward, it took a combination of a trident impaling him and simultaneous blasts from four rays of heat vision and Wonder Woman's sword to still the monster and cause its vitality to finally collapse.
Gratified with their success, the League failed to note the appearance of Deathstroke, who'd just learned of their failure.
He told the HIVE Headmistress, "In truth I did not expect them to succeed. That they did as much as they did against a Kryptonian in full control of her powers speaks well of them. I shall look forward to employing their services and discipline won't be necessary."
He then smiled as he began to work his mystic incantation, the Mark of Skath blazing before him. Zatanna and Raven instantly stopped, both sensing the forces invoked, and as Deathstroke finished the incantation, his voice booming, he spoke:
"Goronn, Rise!"
Before him stood a creature taller than Grundy and Doomsday, some twelve feet tall. Its form was reddish, with a colossal spiked tail. It had strange elfin ears on its side, and the demon turned to Deathstroke with a gaze of malice.
"Why have you summoned me, Mortal?" The voice was deep and rumbling with infrasound elements that instilled anxiety even in Deathstroke the summoner. He pointed below him.
"The Gem is there. I wish you to bring her to me."
Goronn's voice rumbled with those same infrasound bassos, "Very well, Deathstroke the Terminator. Your request, your desires shall be gratified. But upon my return to my plane, I shall inform my father and the Gem's brothers of your schemes. I am not so certain that Belial and Skuge shall think kindly of a mere mortal intending to enslave the Gem, especially given your," the infrasound lingered on the last syllable before rumbling even more profoundly and sinisterly with an undertone of gruesome amusement, "predilections. Even Lord Trigon the Terrible has some standards with what he allows to happen to his property."
He looked at the League.
"These mere mortals in gaudy costumes are why you have summoned me?"
Looking at them ensuring the stilling of Maxima and Grundy, deliberately veiling himself from the sight of the Gem and the mage in the top hat.
Goronn's face broke out into a savage leer. "I look forward to the challenge, Deathstroke. And won't the dear Gem be so surprised to see manifestations of her Father's realm before her?"
A demon's laughter carried on the winds of Coast City as the League departed, bringing the two to Belle Reve, where they could reasonably be contained, at least for a time. Goronn followed, remaining veiled from their sight, glorying in the freedom of being active on the mortal plane….
Author's Note: Goronn was Trigon's minion in the very first New Teen Titans arc. This take is a bit more badass than that one and will be a recurring villain.