Chapter 10: No Rest for the Wykkyd
At the crack of dawn, Kyd Wykkyd felt a stream of annoying bright morning light trickle on his face through the gap between the window and the black curtains, and shifted his head away to continue his rudely interrupted slumber. It didn't matter to him that he might miss breakfast or that he should be up to watch Trigon's daughter as his duty dictated; his body felt so wrecked and heavy from the events of the past few weeks, that he gave himself a free pass. At this point, even a full-fledged demon would be willing to let a prey slip past just to snooze longer. Sleep beckoned like a lover unwilling to part from their embrace. As he was drifting in and out of consciousness, he either heard, or dreamed of sounds of sheets ruffling and feet shuffling from a distance. "She's up." he thought to himself sleepily, before succumbing to the gentle, alluring call of sleep. "15… more minutes, she… needs… bathroom anyways." he subconsciously excused himself from getting up.
There was no alarm set, but there were several disrupting noises which Kyd tried to block out by ignoring so he wouldn't have to get off the couch. There was a clanking sound of mental hitting porcelain or some other sort of china, and a collective thud as they hit the ground together. It nearly pulled him away from blissful unconsciousness, but he paid it no bother; he couldn't care less about anyone or anything since it was the first time in weeks since he had such an opportunity to recover his strength, and nobody was actually telling him to get up. By the time he did rise, he wasn't sure what time it was or how long he had slept, but guessed that the clanking sound might have been a while ago.
Through his overly rested eyes and sickening feel of swelling in his head, he could see the figure of a girl sitting upright on the bed facing him, so he rubbed the sleep off his eyes to see if Raven finally had something to say. Instead of the Mistress of Magic, it was a girl with some sort of cloth wrapped around the upper half of her face with only one hole to see through. She was the girl from the night before; the Titan who called him a weirdo.
"Good morning, sleeping beauty." she said with almost friendly sarcasm.
Taking a closer look at her, he noticed that her uniform was vaguely familiar. It had been years since then, but he remembered a man with a similar costume who had visited H.I.V.E. Academy to recruit apprentices. The orange and black, the single open eye. Perhaps this girl was the man's new apprentice - he thought. But what would she be doing here?
Seeing her half-exposed face, and the pretty lips she had, made him realise that he hadn't had the time to put on his own mask which he had taken off in the night before going to sleep.
"Raven went out to meditate this morning." she said, before tilting her head in gesture, guiding him towards the tray on the floor. There wasn't much on it, just a bowl of dry cornflakes with a spoon in it, and a glass of milk. "Your girlfriend left you breakfast. Isn't she sweet?" she said sarcastically again. At the word "girlfriend", Kyd felt the blood rush to his head, which he hoped wasn't visible. His forehead arched in menace.
"She's not my girlfriend" he denied outright, irritation showing in his rare voice. Technically, she was more than that. Technically, Neron had plans for them. Technically, she was his betrothed. Or at least, according to Neron. Which was, considerably more scandalous - but the Slade-clone didn't need to know. Raven wouldn't have wanted her to know either.
"Whatever," she said, without a care, before continuing "but don't play dumb with me. Kid Devil's been hiding in his room all morning. I know something happened with the three of you. Whatever it is, if you have something to do with Eddie looking like his puppy died, I swear i'll teach you things with my kiddie sword that I won't even know I can do." she held up a rectangular cassette-like device and pushed a button. A beam of energy shot out of the inconspicuous device, which made more sense of it. The object was some sort of energy-sword, which the Slade-copy-cat proceeded to wave around like a child would do with a rattler, or a thug would do with his switch-blade. She instilled intimidation as easily as Slade did, and Kyd would not be surprised if she were in fact Deathstroke's apprentice.
Without much else said, the apprentice got off the bed and stood up, saying "Eat up, princess", apparently done with their mostly-one-way conversation.
"Just had to wake up to a threat. What is the problem with these Titans?" Kyd fumed to himself, induced by crankiness. And technically, he was more of a prince.
Breathtakingly attractive though she was, she was like a Slade-bot made of flesh. On her way out, she seemed to stop at the door. Another figure was standing outside, at whose sight the Slade-clone seemed to brighten up. Even from afar, Kyd could see her side profile lift into a smile, and she started to move her hands. It looked like she was communicating in sign-language. After the figure signed back, the Slade-clone shrugged and walked off. From the couch, Kyd could see that the figure was man with blond, curly hair that grew down the sides of his face as a side-burn. He seemed gentle, almost lamb-like. His soft eyes added to that impression.
The blond man started to walk in the room, reaching into his pockets for a notebook and pen and writing something on it as he walked towards Kyd.
Welcome to Titans Tower
I'm Jericho. It's nice to meet you.
Kyd read the note held out to him. This had to be the nicest Titan he had met in the tower so far. Kyd smiled appreciatively at the Titan, who continued writing.
Come join us in the lounge if you have time.
That wasn't much of a good idea, so Kyd just made another small smile and nodded softly, as if he meant he would consider the invitation.
Jericho held out a hand and waved, before turning around to exit the room.
"Does everyone come into Raven's room like this?" Kyd puzzled to himself.
After freshening up and putting on his costume before anymore Titans walked in and registered his civilian face to their memory, Kyd finally downed the plain cereal. Much like the big bad Bat himself, Kyd had a habit of covering himself with his cape. It felt like an impenetrable shield, only not so impenetrable; unlike the Batman's cape, Kyd Wykkyd's was not technologically enhanced saved for its sharp edges. In some ways, it could be said that Kyd held admiration for the Dark Knight, despite being a villain himself. The Bat was one protector who never hid behind a saintly, happy facade. Someone he could relate to.
Now that he was ready to start his day, he proceeded to think of a list of things to do. He had left H.I.V.E. rather abruptly once his mother went missing. When he remembered the other H.I.V.E. member who went M.I.A. and how the team begrudged her, visiting his friends in H.I.V.E. Tower was crossed off his list. Being in Titan's Tower made him feel so normal again (as far as normal goes for a demonic villain), that he nearly forgot his main objective. With Neron dictating his life at the moment, his sole purpose was to guard over the Gem of Skaath in preparation for delivery. Thinking back to the night before - when he left the dark Titan to teleport elsewhere to meditate out of sympathy for her plight, and his failure to wake up before she did in the morning, a sinking feeling began in his chest. When reality hit him that he had made a huge mistake, panic started coursing through him.
As if recognising his distress, an alarm sounded throughout the tower. After a second's thought, he realised that it was just their crime alert system at work.
"Titans, trouble!" a boy's voice yelled through the announcers.
Unsure what to do, Kyd stepped out of the room and made a decision to join the assembling group, hoping to find Raven there. She was his mission, and this time he would keep both eyes on her. Although he wasn't told to ensure she was unhurt, it was only logical that she would be of no use to Trigon or Neron if she were dead. In which case, at least one of them would probably like to skin him alive for starters.
Upon reaching the command centre, he could count Wonder Girl, Cyborg, Beast Boy, Starfire, Kid Devil, Jericho and the Slade-bot. The leader himself looked focused on the control panels, staring attentively at the screen. But the cargo he was responsible for, was nowhere to be seen. Just as he was about to resume the panic from seconds ago, the Gem's signature black portal opened and out she came, late to the party.
"Titans, there's been an attack at the S.T.A.R. Labs building downtown. Security footage shows it's the H.I.V.E Five," the large screen in the command room flashed to a greyish video depicting what was left of the H.I.V.E. Five, along with another girl, with wings covering the length of her back.
All eyes moved around the room, before landing on the unfortunate Kyd Wykkyd. He felt their stares of suspicion and distrust, and on some, looks of confusion. Responding in his immediate defence, he held out two hands in surrender, shaking his head several times like a child denying their guilt.
Robin broke away from the screen to look around him at the faces of confusion and quiet discontent on the faces of his teammates, and said "We'll talk about that later. For now, we have to stop the H.I.V.E. Five. Titans, go!"
Everyone seemed to dart in the same direction, and it took Kyd several moments before he could decide to follow suit, unsure if he should. His slowness was owed more to the fact that he would be following them to face his teammates and Angel, which he dreaded more than the cold treatment from several of the Titans so far. In spite of that, he could still feel the cruel iciness radiating from the green one and the Slade-bot who gave each other conspiring looks. Even Kyd could tell that they were silently communicating with each other about how Kyd didn't belong.
Unsurprisingly, Kyd slowed down, before the weight of what he saw dragged him down to a near halt. His responsibility over Raven wasn't enough to motivate him out of his personal dilemma and hurt, and soon enough, he caught Robin's attention. The Boy Wonder could see the hesitation in Kyd Wykkyd's steps.
Robin didn't want to doubt the stranger in his home and make him feel unwelcome, but Batman had taught him well on being cautious. This was a known H.I.V.E. Five member, and Robin was not about to leave the stranger alone in the Tower while the stranger's teammates were rampaging elsewhere in the city. Ironically, the person he had to exercise his judgement on, made him think of the mentor who taught him his detective skills. Out of focus, the costume, bar Kyd's mask, coupled with the dark looming and silence, made him look like a cheap copy of the Dark Knight. Or from another perspective, it was a mockery of the justice that Batman stood for. But whether or not the villain's costume was a coincidence, was a matter to be discussed another day. Right now, they needed to get to S.T.A.R. Labs.
The Boy Wonder chose his words carefully, and decided on a gentle "come with us." which to his luck, Kyd Wykkyd responded to willingly.
Heavy automated doors slid open with a swanky electronic swoosh. S.T.A.R. Lab's mechanical product storage basement was a labyrinth of electronics, ranging from bionic hearts, to a Prototype Thought Materialiser licensed from a subsidiary of Dayton Industries. On a usual day, there would be two security guards patrolling the outside of the room, but on this day, a computer genius had managed to crack open the security codes to the room while his partner immobilised the two guards using a hypnotic display, sending them into a state of temporary mindlessness.
"Man, Billy Numerous should'a come down here. We could'a grabbed all this stuff in no time." said a Cyclop-tic boy to his colleague, a small boy-genius harnessed to a mechanism on his back which spread out into the form of six massive spider legs.
"We have a plan. Mammoth and Boonie Boy upstairs as our muscle, Angel stays with them to make sure they don't fall for any stupid tricks, and we're the stealth team. Stick to the stinkin' plan." said the spiteful smaller boy. He continued to remind his colleague about their mission "Grab whatever you want but just remember we have to find the stupid magical dust detector so Angel can find her stinkin' good-for-nothin' boyfriend. None of you butt-for-brains had the guts to plan a heist since witch-girl ran off, and we need to keep Angel happy so there'll be at least two people with brains on the team." What he had referred to as a "stupid magical dust detector" was really a Mechanised Energy Tracer, also a prototype put into storage because of obsolescence in a widening world of Metahumans and magical beings with abilities to locate certain things and certain people.
A moment later, Gizmo had managed to find the aisle category for the one mandatory item on their procuration list, after searching for its serial identification number on the offline localised S.T.A.R. Labs database - which he also hacked into. Having little time left before the authorities arrived, he looked to his immediate left and right to see if there was any object which interested him, or could be useful for the gang's future plans. He smiled a wicked smile as he laid eyes on a remote-control shaped object, which he identified from the database as exactly a remote-control for weaponised drones kept in a separate, private location 214 miles north of the lab. With one mechanical appendage stretching out from the mechanism on his back, he grabbed the item and called out for See-More.
The H.I.V.E. stealth division crept back up to the lobby of S.T.A.R. Labs once they were content with their haul, and rejoined the rest of the team.
"Come on, we got the goods. Let's bolt!" shouted Gizmo.
The millisecond of greed on Gizmo's part had cost them; the Teen Titans had just arrived on the grounds and were standing at the main entrance. Mammoth, 5 Billies, and Angel had stood so eerily still, that it reached through Gizmo's inability to comprehend their lack of sense of urgency.
"Give up, H.I.V.E., give up what you stole and we'll let you get in the Police vans with your dignity." said the virtuous Titan leader.
Upon seeing a familiar face amongst the enemy team, Gizmo had to blink several times to be sure he wasn't seeing a ghost. Angel stood silent. The tech-whiz said the first word from their side "what the hell are you doing with them?" His occasionally humorous spitefulness was now fully cold and resentful.
Angel stepped slowly forward to her beau, as if to see if the boy was real. The Titans flinched when she got close enough to their side of the unspoken fence, and Ravager drew two of her swords to enter into her fighting stance, and Starfire held out one hand to charge it with Starbolts. Robin held both of them back with all his available arms, telling them without words to stand down.
The winged girl placed two hands on her boyfriend's face, to touch him, to affirm that he was truly there.
Kyd wasn't sure what face to put on for her or for his H.I.V.E. teammates. They hadn't seen him in nearly 2 months, and he never explained he was going away for a while, not to them, not even to Angel. And here she was, her hands on him. Without speaking to her, he could tell that she had been through hell although in a metaphorical sense, while he had been to the literal hell.
The dark boy had always been known to be quiet, but his silence in this situation had become intolerable, especially to the people who had been looking for him for months.
Angel searched his face for answers, at first longingly, before tears fell down her face and her face curled into one of despair and agony. Kyd felt a sharp whack on his left cheek as Angel lifted her hand away for a moment, before returning it to the surface she was touching. The place she hit started to pulse and sting with invisible fire.
Tension was clear on every face in the lobby as the room fell silent. Even Beast Boy resisted his natural urge to poke fun and jokes at every opportunity. The two teams seemed to forget what they were doing, instead focusing on the suspenseful drama at hand. Cyborg had mentioned ages ago when he infiltrated the H.I.V.E. facility about the people he had met, which included Angel and Kyd Wykkyd. Him being Raven's company was without answers, and even more puzzling was the fact that Raven openly announced he would stay in her room, which left them with a question of why. Few had suspected that they had low-key become a couple, others respected her privacy and didn't think of the reasoning. H.I.V.E. on the other hand, knew of Angel's desperate attempts to search for her boyfriend who had all of a sudden without explanation appeared in front of them, with the enemy team.
"You don't even know. You… do you know what I went through to find you?" the winged girl cried, her voice breaking. "We did all this. I did this, for you. I thought you were dead." she raised her hands to shoulder-level, gesturing around her. She sobbed, with heavy inhalation, looking like a wreck in front of everybody. It was embarrassing.
"Couldn't you have called me? Left a note? A text? How can that be so hard?" she raised her voice, and her composure completely fell apart.
Kyd maintained his neutral expression, in hopes that it wouldn't cause a stir in either team. To smile to his friends would implicate him as still being in league with a team that had just been caught robbing a facility in broad daylight and complicate his life even more than it had already become. Doing so still wouldn't pardon him from his unexplained absence from his group; given, they had the right to be angry at him for leaving without word in the first place. Not showing his allegiance would mean throwing his friends and girlfriend under the bus, standing aside idly as they get apprehended. Unlike with Kid Devil and Raven, Kyd's dilemma contained no way out without losing. There was nothing he could do to save himself, save his friends, his relationship. Neron was just too dangerous, his mother too important.
His lack of a reaction prompted Angel to shake her head in epic disappointment.
He chose the pragmatic route, remaining silent and unmoving as Robin broke the tension, moving to an unmoving Gizmo to cross his hands by the back in arrest. None of the H.I.V.E. resisted; they merely held their ground, in disbelief and quiet disappointment as Kyd's new team tied their hands behind their back, in wait for the Police to arrive and take them into custody, and only speaking when the sirens arrived. When they did speak, they spoke lowly and only to each other, their tone clearly about a certain traitor.
Of all the Titans, one was not moving to make arrests. Raven stood where she had been standing since the Teen Titans arrived. She stood inches in to the right front of Kyd Wykkyd. And Angel could see it. It didn't matter what the facts were; Angel had little patience and clear thought left to care. She saw Raven as the one behind her personal hell for the past two months.
"You bitch. I hope you're happy. I hope you're both happy. You can burn in hell for all I care." Angel commented for the last time with an ever breaking voice, full of bitterness and spite.
Raven tried her best not to react to those words. This wasn't supposed to happen. She was just trying to save Eddie's soul. It was clear to her that in doing so, she had inadvertently caused the end of someone else's relationship, even though it wasn't her decision to have Kyd stay by her side at all times until she went to Trigon. She had been trying all her life to be anything but what she was born to be. To be someone who brought the end to all life on earth.
Because she denied herself freedom of emotion, she was unsure what she was supposed to feel if she could. The only thing she allowed herself to feel, was pain. Not her pain alone, but the pain of all the parties hurt.
As the Titans finished up their day's work, Beast Boy let out a tired sigh and suggested they went for pizza, returning to his gleeful self at the thought of it. They had seemed to have gotten over the scene inside S.T.A.R. Labs, or they had just pushed it aside.
Feeling unable to join her friends in their after-work recreation, Raven gave an excuse to her friends who shrugged and walked off to the Pizza Parlour. She needed space and quietness, and so she decided to stand outside the building to feel the calm nothingness. Though, it was limited by Kyd Wykkyd's heavy presence. His lingering painfully reminded her of the consequences of her actions. Even so, she didn't want to be completely alone at a time like this. She turned back to him and gave him a meaningful look, as if asking him how they would go on from here. Neither had answers, only questions and pain, which they could gather from the look on each other's faces.
Disturbing their short moment of peace, walked a young man in black tunic towards them from a distance, holding a stack of papers on his hands. He handed Raven a flyer which she accepted out of politeness, smiled, and then walked away.
Raven took a look at the flyer, ready to roll her eyes at what she thought was about some bees in Canada that needed saving. It wasn't. It read:
Trigon is coming - A Sermon by Sebastian Blood
She tore the flyer apart with her telekinesis, and stared contemplatively into space.
Author's note: This update took a while. But I didn't want writing to become a chore, so I took my time. This chapter would have been out two days ago if I didn't decide to save and relocate half of it for later on. I.e. half of this chapter was not the original end to this chapter I had planned. I thought I had to re-read the comics to make sure character behaviour and speech and "historical events" were accurate but that would take me at least 2 months just to read through all volumes and rewatch the cartoon from S1E1. So i'm just winging it on the basis of this being a different Earth in the multiverse. But fair warning that the next few chapters will borrow plenty of elements from the comics and cartoon.