DISCLAIMER: I do not own Teen Titans or its characters, TV show or otherwise. This story is for entertainment purposes only. It will take place within the universe of the TV series (though within the alternate universe I established with Raven's Story and Nothing Is Harder Than Love), and be after the end of said series as well as the movie Trouble in Tokyo. If you don't like yuri, don't read any further. If you don't like Teen Titans, then I have no idea how you found this story in the first place. Rated M. I do not own the character named Artemis; she is a creation of Echo of an Idiot. He has given me permission to use her in this story, though I have re-imagined her for this purpose. I do, however, own the characters Shadow (daughter of Raven and Jinx), Phase (son of Changling and Lavender), Stinger (son of Cyborg and Bumblebee), Nightfire (daughter of Nightwing and Starfire), and Lavender herself. The character of Shift is the property of DantesClover, and was created specifically for this story. The character of Vulcan is the property of Starbuck Viper, and was also created specifically for this story.
Author's Note: I'm glad you guys are really liking this story. It's a lot of fun to write this. I would appreciate some reviews from those of you reading this, since it does take time and effort to keep you fanfic mongers fed. And I know it's been a while since I updated, but think about this before you complain: To keep the same level of quality you've seen to date, time and effort must be put into it; fast updates may mean poor writing. That said, I won't deliberately take my time every time, but I hope y'all will have patience in waiting for the updates to come.
Titans Forever
Chapter 9 Part 1 - First Step to Destiny
Shadow was, once again, locked back in her room. Only this time, she wasn't recovering from a near-death experience; this time she was, essentially, under room-arrest. Everyone knew that should escape from there, if she wanted, but after a week without a stir from her, nobody was sure if they should be on edge still or if they should just relax. Well, Raven and Jinx were certain - had been certain from the first day of her 'probation' - but nobody else was; not really. Nightfire, like her mother, always wanted to believe the best about someone. Cyborg was willing to give her another chance - especially since Shadow's 'arguments' to Nightwing were not only valid but true. Right now, though, the team - and their 'trainers' - were more focused on working their new members in to worry about her.
"I'm not so sure about this," Vulcan said skeptically. "I mean, I know you're the training instructor and all, but this seems a little reckless - even for me."
Cyborg chuckled. "I'm pretty sure you can handle it," he said.
"You do know that 'pretty sure' isn't the same as 'confident,' right?" she pointed out.
"It may seem pretty difficult, but we need to chart the limits of not only your powers, but your level of control with them," he told her. "Better to find out in a training environment than to wait until you're actually fighting a super villain, right?"
"I . . . guess that makes sense," Vulcan said hesitantly. "I mean, I've kinda done the whole hero bit already, but nothing like the Teen Titans."
"Yeah, about that," the former Titan said. "You mentioned it before, before I brought you in, but you haven't elaborated on it."
"Not really much to tell," she replied. "I was only, you know, my village's resident 'saviour.' Everyone looked upon me as some kind of gift or deity or something. That's one of the reasons I chose to go with you; I got tired of being treated like that. So I can create flame on my own, and manipulate existing fire. I know it makes me special, but doesn't everyone have a gift that makes them special?"
"I'm sure they do," Cyborg agreed, "but some of us possess gifts so unique that we stand out from everyone else. And, also, how we use those gifts. Not everyone with super powers chooses to become a hero." He smiled, then. "And not all super heroes have super powers."
"I bet it helps, though."
"Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't."
"So I guess I need to practice a lot, huh?"
"We all practice, train. And we don't stop training. It's not just because we're heroes, either, and always need to be in top form to handle whatever comes up; it's healthy, too." He looked at her for a moment, then grinned. "Alright, lecture over. Go run The Gauntlet again."
Vulcan stood at the 'starting line' of the randomized, bot-filled training room known as The Gauntlet. She had a general idea of what to expect from the last few times she'd run it - the first time being a solo 'performance run,' the other times working with one of her new team members (That Stinger is pretty cute.) - she'd had absolutely no idea what it would throw at her each time. And this time would be no different. Taking a deep breath, she opened her eyes and looked ahead of her as she lit up her hands. "Go," Cyborg said, at the exact moment she sprinted out into the room. Almost immediately, a pair of bots sprang up before her in ambush - only to be taken down by a flaming roundhouse kick that literally knocked their heads off. Vulcan didn't stop moving forward, the kick done on the fly; when she landed, she tucked into a roll that allowed her to keep the momentum she'd started with. Unfortunately, she didn't have time to catch her breath before three more combat drones sprang at her. Reigniting her hands, she blasted the ground underneath and rocketed into the air; incidentally, one of the three drones was damaged by the debris from the exploding 'ground.' Flipping and spiraling in the air, she landed fast, her momentum causing her to skid backwards several feet. Pushing off, she sprang at the two 'untouched' bots. Clasping her flaming hands together, she mimicked holding a gun and blasted several dozen fireballs at them. Though somewhat fireproof, the high heat of the multiple hits - combined with their sheer kinetic energy - overwhelmed the bots' armor and smoke poured out of their pierced plastrons as her blasts melted and fused circuits and gears. This isn't so bad, she thought, right before three chain guns and five bots popped up out of nowhere and took aim at her.
"How's she doing?" Nightwing asked as he walked into The Gauntlet's control room.
"She's doing pretty good," Cyborg replied, looking at the displays and monitoring the computer's randomization program. "This is an endurance trial rather than a speed trial. According to the systems I have monitoring her power and usage levels, she has a high tendancy to expend a lot of energy each time she uses her power, which exhausts her quicker." He paused, then went on. "In the typical actions the team will most likely be involved in, that won't be too much of a problem. However, if they were to go up against someone like Slade or Brother Blood it could prove to be a liability."
"I suppose you've already got suggestions for improvement?" his friend asked dryly, to which the cybernetic former Titan grinned.
"Absolutely. I'll probably set up a 'firing' range for her to use to improve her accuracy and control, and maybe develop some kind of gauntlet or glove or something that can monitor and regulate her energy usage to maximize the efficiency of her attacks."
"I use a lot of tech, but that made even me zone out a bit." Nightwing looked at the main monitor screen. "Do you think she can go all out with her flame?"
"You mean turn into some kind of being made of fire? Or covered in fire?" Cyborg asked. "I don't know. Sounds kind of like something out of one of Changling's comics. It could be possible, though."
Artemis sat in a comfortably upholstered chair in her 'bedroom', staring at the open closet. The only thing hanging in the closet - in fact, the only thing in the closet - was her mom's modified costume. According to the note she'd found in the folded outfit, her mom had made this alternate costume shortly before discovering she was pregnant. It exchanged the red for blue and the black for white. She found it somewhat ironic since her own hair was now permanently blue. I don't know about that hat, though, she thought. She was surprised to find that she was contemplating wearing the costume, but even more surprised that she wasn't really all that surprised at the thought.
"But I don't know if I can be a hero," she whispered to herself - even though no one else was there with her. "I mean, after all the stuff I did after the Joker kidnapped me and . . . and warped me. I know I'm not mentally stable. At least, not entirely. But . . . after what I did to Shadow, I felt really guilty about it. I think my heart knew before my head did, but she had never done anything wrong to me. Certainly nothing that warranted me trying to kill her." Sighing, she looked down at her hands, clasped together in her lap. "She's the only friend I've ever had, that I can remember ever having. She only wanted to help, and I shoved her away - then tried to kill her. And after I turned myself in, she breaks me out. I knew she'd get in major trouble for that, and I could see she knew it, too. Yet she did it anyway. We only knew each other for about a week, at most, and yet she rescued me." Looking back at the costume, Artemis pondered everything. What her mother had told her in that letter (which was placed, folded up, under her pillow), and what she'd researched on her own, about herself. About Shadow and the 'life of a hero' she represented. As she stared at her mother's altered costume, she came to a decision.
"So you can morph any part of your body into a weapon?" Phase asked, impressed.
"Not exactly," Shift replied, popping her neck a little. "I need to be touching something - metal, wood, plastic - then I can morph it into my body as a weapon."
"Sword?"
"Yep."
"Club?"
"Yep."
"Gun?"
"Sure."
"What about-"
"When I say 'anything,' I mean 'anything,' Phase," Shift said.
"Have you tried making an armored suit or something?" Stinger asked. Shift blinked.
"You know," she said, "I never thought about that before. I suppose it could be possible."
Vulcan threw up a wall of fire that vaporized the first burst of rounds aimed at her, giving her time to duck under the immediate line of fire. What she hadn't expected was the fourth turret popping up right underneath her. That threw her into air, incidentally helping her to evade the semi-accurate fire of the drones; chain guns were, after all, notorious for their inaccuracy. Generating a large fireball in each hand, she brought them together and forced them to compress into one mass that was half the size of both of them separate. Focus, she thought to herself, building up the thermal and kinetic energy contained within the fireball as she soared through the air on her way back to the 'ground.' A grin spread across her face as she felt the ultra-compressed fireball in her hands starting to escape her control. "Time for a little pyro-storm," she taunted, yanking her hands to either side and causing the golf ball-sized fireball to shoot straight towards the ground. A thought hit her just as she hit the ground in a roll: I hope I didn't overdo it. And right after that, the little fireball slammed into the ground and eruped into a firestorm that would've made a volcanic eruption in the Ring of Fire proud.
In the control room, Nightwing and Cyborg had to duck as the superheated air blasted out the direct observation windows.
The Titan Tower didn't exactly shake from the force of the explosion, but the vibration definitely traveled through the entire structure. Everyone in the Tower reacted differently to what happened: the rest of the new Teen Titans started from the unexpectedness of it (until Shift pointed out that Vulcan was in the training room), Changling and Lavender looked a little concerned but continued helping Starfire and Bumblebee make dinner, and Raven and Jinx continued meditating together on the roof. Shadow, like her mom, had already sensed what had happened. The gray-skinned teen wasn't meditating like her parents were; instead, she was thinking about Artemis. The girl had felt lost, adrift, her emotions a chaotic swirl that seemed to pull her in different directions. Probably from her time with the Joker, she thought sadly. She felt an inexplicable connection to the other girl, one she couldn't explain. Nightfire was still her best friend, she hoped, but there was something . . . . different about her friendship with Artemis. She couldn't put a finger, literal or mental, on what that difference was. She knew it was there, though, so that was a step forward. Looking over at her bedside nightstand, she reached for her mirror . . . .
"It's about time you came back," Anger growled at her.
"Alright! Let's go find something dangerous!" Courage shouted, punching the air. Happy just bounced around, happy that Shadow was there. Of course, Happy was always happy so the reason never mattered.
"Everything okay in here?" Shadow asked.
"There's someone new!" Happy exlaimed, well, happily.
"Someone new? You mean a new emotion?"
"What else would she mean?" Anger asked. "It's not like we get door-to-door salesmen here."
"H-Hap-Happy is r-ri-right, though," Shyness murmured, looking at the ground and twisting a foot on the ground.
"Alright! Someone new! Let's go after her!" Courage said. Knowledge shook her head at Courage's antics, then looked at Shadow.
"We haven't been able to find her," the emotion said, pushing her stylish shade-like glasses back up the bridge of her nose. "Courage and Anger have found signs of someone new in here, and Happy has glimpsed someone going through her area, but no one's seen anything definite. Shyness thinks she may have seen her, but she isn't sure. Crush has disappeared, though."
"Why?"
"It's probably because you're no longer crushing on Phase," Knowledge suggested.
"Where's Fear?" Shadow asked.
"Hiding in her part of your mindscape. She comes out every now and then, though."
"Well, don't force this new emotion to come out. We need to let her introduce herself in her own time. Any ideas on what it could be, though?"
"I have several ideas, yes, but not the information to confirm or discard any of them."
"I have to go now, but I'll be back again later."
Chapter 9 Part 2 - A Blast From an Unknown Past
The threads of destiny so often hinge on the tiniest of decisions, the ones that don't seem to mean much at the time they are made. An individual's fate is in their own hands, as each choice they make along the road of life forges the legend they will become. 'Legends are not born, they are made' is a phrase that is only true to some extent. A person only becomes a legend when others witness their actions and spread those stories. Everyone possesses within them the capability to become a legend, to forge a legacy of greatness. Heroes are so often the last ones to learn they are heroes, legends become legends after they are gone - although sometimes they become 'living legends.'
Nonexistent, though, are the legends who are legend long before they are born.
Three weeks after Shadow was placed on probation she was released from it and allowed back on the team. Nightfire, of course, was happy to once again see her best friend and gave her an almost-back-breaking hug, Phase just said hello and left the main room, and Stinger gave her a high-five and said, "Welcome back." Vulcan and Shift introduced themselves, Vulcan holding back to a cautious greeting but Shift going into 'hero-worship' mode and expressing her respect for the gray-skinned teen. Shadow held up a hand to stop the flow of words from the other girl's mouth.
"I'm just a girl like you," Shadow told her. "We're both Teen Titans now, so just treat me like a friend instead of an icon." She shuddered. "I hate that."
"Oh, sorry," Shift replied, blushing. "I didn't mean to offend you."
"You didn't, since you didn't know," she replied. Then she grinned. "Have you gotten one of Nightfire's hugs?" Shift's wince was enough of answer for the other girl, who laughed. "She can be a little . . . enthusiastic."
"Just a little?"
"You'll fit in just fine."
And just then the danger alert went off.
In downtown Jump City (why villains always seem to target downtown no one knows) a car was slammed to the side as what looked like a twister or cyclone made up of nothing but sand brushed by it at high speed. The car exploded in mid-air as electricity shimmered around and through it. The sand cyclone came to a stop outside of a bank and vanished, revealing two costumed teenagers - one wearing loose tan cargo pants, a black boonie hat, and a red short sleeve shirt while the other wore ripped and torn blue jeans, mirrored blue shades, and a white-and-blue long-sleeve shirt. The two stood outside the bank for a moment, before the shades-wearing one turned to his partner and said, "Dust Storm, go for it." The sand-manipulator grinned and morphed his hand into a giant spiked ball - made out of sand. He ran forward and slammed his 'fist' into the bank's doors, shattering them. Taser, as the other called himself, reached out and touched a car. Sending electricity through it, he turned it on and got it to move out into the road. He did this to a few other cars to form a blockade against police intervention, then started to follow his partner into the bank. He only got as far as the sidewalk before Dust Storm came flying back out.
"What the hell . . ." he muttered, right as a girl wearing a blue-and-white jester outfit stepped out of the shattered bank doors. Her hair was a deep blue color, and her face was wearing a satisfied smirk. "Just who do you think you are?" he snarled. "Don't know that nobody messes with Dust Storm and Taser?"
"'Dust Storm' and 'Taser," huh?" she said, chuckling. "Sounds like a really bad B-rated movie to me."
Dust Storm groaned as he sat up, then stood back up. "You're gonna pay for that," he growled, shaking his head.
"Sorry, I'm broke," she taunted, adding a 'bring-it-on' gesture with her hand.
Shadow teleported the Teen Titans - all six of them - to the bank where the computer said the 'disturbance' was at. When the 'shadow field' shrank away, they saw that someone else had already gotten there ahead of them and was already battling the super villains. Shadow almost didn't recognize who it was; fortunately, the blue hair was a dead giveaway.
"Artemis?" she said in shock.
"Hey, Shadow!" the girl called back, back-flipping out of the way of a blast of sand with the ease of an acrobat. "Nice of you to join the party!"
"So, who's the leader here?" Vulcan asked. For some reason, everyone looked at Shadow.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" she said, holding up her hands and taking a step back. "I'm not the leader! I just got let back on the team!"
"Just take the job," Stinger said with a grin. "Your friend needs help, and you're just standing there."
"Alright, fine, whatever," she growled. "Titans, Go!"
"Yeah!" Vulcan shouted, fist-pumping the air. "Game time!" She then sent a carefully aimed fireball at the Taser, forcing him to jump back from Artemis. Phase ran into Dust Strom, intending to knock him down, only to get a giant sand-fist coming at him. He phased his body, and the sand-fist went through him - and hit Taser as he dodged the fireball.
"Well, shit," the teen villain said, right as a burst of pink-tinged black energy slammed into him, knocking him backwards into the path of an exploding starbolt. He reacted by shifting into a sandy-form, although he lost some of his mass when the starbolt's heat and energy turned a bit into glass as it passed through. He moved to run away, only to cross into an area that was so cold he lost his concentration and turned back into his 'human form.' Shivering fiercely, he turned around to see the jester-girl standing right next to him.
"You're freezing? Seriously?" she asked with mock incredulousness. "In this weather? It's gotta be at least eighty degrees!" Then, with a smirk, she flipped over him and kicked him in the head, knocking him out. She turned to see how everyone else was doing, and saw that one of the girls had shorted Taser out by connecting him to the metal cars in the area. She walked over to the Teen Titans as nonchalantly as she could, although she was rather nervous about being around them. Fortunately for her, Shadow eased the tension that had started to build by saying, "So you're a hero now?"
"Well, I wasn't ever really a villain," Artemis replied. "I mean, sure I did some things that were bad and probably broke the law before, but I never became a villain."
"Are you the one who hurt Shadow?" Nightfire asked, sorrow and hope in her tone.
"If by 'hurt' you mean 'tried to kill her,' then yeah," she admitted. "I . . . wasn't exactly myself then." She sighed. "I'm not really the most mentally stable person in the world, and a lot of things hit me all at once. So I overreacted badly and did things that I normally wouldn't have." She looked at all of the Teen Titans. "Shadow was the first person I could ever remember who was just my friend. Turning on her like I did . . . if I was a friend to her at all, I wouldn't have done that." The blue-haired girl half-smiled. "When I turned myself in to Raven, I will admit guilt at what I'd done was a factor. But it was mostly out of a desire to make amends for what I'd done to Shadow, and what I'd convinced her to do with me. And in spite of what I did and had almost done to her, she still helped me out."
"Breaking you out of jail wasn't exactly a legal way to help you out," Phase pointed out, a little hostility evident in his voice.
"It sure wasn't," she agreed, "but she did help me out. I expected her to leave me in that cell, or to at least hurt me in some way for what I'd done to her, but instead she got me out of there - and got in big trouble for it, too. No one had ever risked so much for me in my entire life - except for my mother. And I gave everything that had happened to me throughout my life a lot of serious thought, and made a decision."
"You became a hero," Vulcan said, nodding.
"I didn't want to waste the second chance Shadow gave me," Artemis said, nodding in agreement. "And . . . it was what my mother had wanted for me."
"Well, since everyone's decided that I'm the team leader," Shadow said, knowing that she would get a lot flak for this from quite a few people, "I say, welcome to the team, Artemis."
When the police had arrived and taken Dust Storm and Taser into custody - using specially-designed containment vehicles - Shadow teleported everyone (including Artemis) to Titan Tower. And, as she had expected, she got a lecture from Nightwing, Cyborg, and Phase but, surprisingly (to her), not from her moms. In the end, though, Nightwing put it best: "We may not like your decision, we may not agree with your decision, but it is your decision. Since everyone's chosen you as the team leader, they'll just have to accept your decisions - provided they don't endanger anyone."
Because of the Tower's size, there were actually more living quarters in it than there were Titans living in it, so Artemis was able to get a room of her own - although she didn't get a badge-communicator yet. Even Shadow agreed that she had to earn it first.
And she would get that chance sooner than anyone would have believed.
It happened almost a week after Artemis had joined the team. During those intervening days, the team went on several missions, though never the entire team at once. Artemis was usually paired up with Shadow and either Nightwing, Phase, or Stinger (Vulcan and Shift, like Artemis, weren't full members of the team yet). Since Shadow had recruited her, everyone considered her the gray-skinned girl's responsibility. It didn't hurt that they seemed to complement each other rather nicely, a fact everyone noted but at which only Raven and Jinx would smile.
The first hint that anyone had that anything was going wrong was when one of the observation satellites Cyborg had put into a lagrange point between Earth and its moon (back in the days of the original Teen Titans) just exploded. It would have just been put down to equipment malfunction - except for the fact that it transmitted data to the Tower just before it was destroyed about a massive energy surge in the area (relatively) near it.
The second hint that something was going wrong was when an orbital telescope transmitted a fuzzy image of something unknown - right before it, too, went offline. By this point, all of the old and new Teen Titans had gathered in the Tower's main room as Cyborg tried to bring up any kind of orbital scanning system to help him figure out what was going on. Then the communications system came online, taking over the two-story-tall visual monitor dominating the room. The figure on the screen looked pretty vicious, with long fangs extending out and down from the upper mouth of his/its ape-like face. The tri-slit nose and quadruple eyes sort of ruined the ape-like similarity, though it had fur on its head that was similar to that of an orangutang. It spoke in some kind of gutteral, hooting language, with an audio English-language translation following.
"Inferior primates of this insignificant world!" it boomed; the imperiousness of the voice actually made it through the artificial translation. "I am Lord-Master Gishta of the Oodanga Empire of Stars! Your pathetic world is too far beneath our notice to be even considered as a slave world! I have come here, to this cesspool of a life-bearing rock, at the divine order of the Oodanga Empire of Stars' most powerful ruler, the Great Emperor Shitak! You will submit to my authority as I carry out my great task, or I shall destroy the offending population centers one by one!"
With that, the transmission ended, and everyone looked at each other.
"And here I was thinking I could have a break from all of the super hero stuff," Artemis said with a sigh.
End Note: And here it finally is. The promised update.
And I bet not one of y'all saw that coming! :D