Teen
Titans
Avatar
by Cyberwraith9
Honor: Duel
"What's going on?" Beast Boy bounded from wall to wall, snorting and pawing at every sealed door they encountered. With each doorway denied to him, his frustration doubled. Animalistic grunts stumbled out of his throat as he scratched at the smooth metal with gloved claws. "It's like that time somebody tripped the fire alarm, except this time nobody's around to blame me for it."
Raven glided through the corridor after him. Her twilight brows laced together with concern. "And this time, the Tower isn't filled with the smell of burning tofu," she quipped distractedly. Her heart wasn't in the repartee. Every sense she possessed, mundane and demonic, buzzed with intense attention toward her surroundings. She held her breath at every corner they rounded, wondering if this assassin they were supposed to be hunting would pop out at them. Which one of them would he attack first?
Her waking nightmare of seeing Beast Boy gutted dispelled at his squeaky voice. "I can't raise anyone on the communicators," he insisted. The canary yellow gadget shook in his grasp, blatting a negative response from any of the other Titans' identical devices. "Nobody's answering. Do you think maybe the others got out on their patrol before the Tower went berserk?"
As much as she didn't like killing hope, even Raven had to admit that she had a phenomenal knack for it. "I wouldn't bet on it," she said with a shake of her head. She watched the optimism on his face crumble. The tiny sliver of guilt resulting dug into the heel of her soul, but Raven continued regardless. "It's more likely that this was Bushido's plan all along; Lock us in our own home, and then eliminate us at his own leisure."
"We have to get the doors open," insisted her friend. "Maybe if we get back to Ops, we can—"
"Fiddle with the computer until we realize that we don't know what we're doing?" The gloomy tide flowing from Raven's mouth refused to ebb, no matter how positive Beast Boy became. "However he got in, Bushido's obviously the one who tripped the Lockdown. Cyborg and the others can handle that much. Our best bet is to sweep the corridors, try and pinpoint his location." She pulled her own communicator from her belt. "Hang on a second." With a press of a button, she began speaking into the device. Her voice filtered through Beast Boy's duplicate, "Check one. Check two. Can you hear me?"
He chuckled. "Aw, sweet! Hold on." Beast Boy toddled over and held his communicator up next to Raven's face so that the speaker faced him. "Okay, okay, now say something."
Because of the half-second lag, Beast Boy got to hear her twice. "Stop screwing around before I hurt you," came the stereo reply. If possible, Beast Boy felt her projecting anger double right along with her voice.
Beast Boy pulled back. His communicator's cover snapped closed with a flick of his finger as he forcefully sobered himself. There were no extra eyes growing in the shadows of Raven's hood, but her two amethyst eyes burned with more than sufficient intensity to kill his sense of humor. "Right. Coming through loud and clear, Raven."
"Good."
He seemed unconvinced. "Are you sure you want to split up?"
"Our forces may be thin," she countered, "But he's in our home. Nobody breaks into our home." Raven pointed in one direction, leading down a lonely corridor of the Tower with barricaded doors lining either side, identical to the one they had just patrolled. "You head that way." Her tilted head indicated the other direction, leading down a corridor that mirrored its neighbor. "I'll head this way. Stay out of sight, and above all, stay quiet." She hesitated, then added, "And be careful. If you see him, don't take him on. Contact me."
"Yeah, yeah," he waved her off. "Call you, beep you. If I need to reach you, I will. Relax, will you?" He flexed his muscles, hardly stretching the purple fabric of his suit. "We're the Teen Titans, Raven. What's one ninja gonna do to us?"
Raven glowered at his bravado, once again sucking the joy out of his performance. The heat seemed to flee from the room in the wake of her growing shadow. "It's time to grow up, Beast Boy. You can't joke your way through life forever." She turned away so she would not have to see his hurt expression. The other Titans might think otherwise, but she didn't take any real joy in taking Beast Boy down a peg or two. The thought of seeing him hurt because he was too busy screwing around drove her to do just that, for his own good.
His footsteps trailed off down the opposite hall as Raven skimmed over the floor atop the hem of her cloak. Solitude was no stranger to the sorceress, but even she found the poignant silence of their home a little daunting. Just moments ago, the noise had reached unbearable heights, and those idiotic flashing red lights Robin had insisted on designing into their alert system still danced in her vision. But that was all that remained. Now, rather than peaceful, their Tower felt like one giant trap. No corner could be trusted. Every air vent could be hiding their quarry. Any one of their treacherous doors could pop open and spit out a stone cold killer, armed and ready for whatever she had to throw at him.
"Settle down, Raven," she muttered to herself. "You're psyching yourself out before the fight's started." She was Raven, daughter of one of the most feared beings in existence, sorceress of Azarath, and a founding member of the Teen Titans. She wasn't about to go run and hide because some otaku with an oversized steak knife had broken in.
The bottoms of her cobalt boots rolled softly against the tile floor at a clipped pace. The confidence returned to her step and her posture, for she drew herself up straight and drew the edges of her cloak closed. Pursed lips and a smoldering gaze were the only things to escape the powerful darkness beneath her hood, just as she liked it. "Come out, coward," she challenged openly. "I hear you like to warn your victims. Is that what you did to Terra?" There was no answer. "Well, I got your message loud and clear. Now I've got a little memo of my own for you. So come on out."
Silence burned in her ears. She ignored those useless flaps on the sides of her head, and instead stretched out her ethereal senses, hoping to find him there. Again, the emptiness of their tower stared her in her face. It reminded her of why she remained in her room, where the silence and isolation remained manageable. Her soft footfalls pounded off of the lofty ceilings and barren walls. There was nothing else.
"You must think you're some principled saint," she drawled, keeping her eyes in a steady sweeping pattern. "You warn people, and then you kill them. You must get a big kick out of seeing people dance when you pull their strings. Fear makes you feel powerful." Her violet eyes narrowed with the promise of violence. "But you'll never scare me. I'm not afraid of you."
Raven couldn't take another step. She felt a pressure at her throat, and froze in the middle of planting her foot on the floor. Slowly, carefully, she eased her weight onto the ball of that foot, feeling an edge dig further into the delicate flesh beneath her chin and spying a glint of silvery light. A gentle hand grasped her shoulder and held her fast, steadying the light shake of her frame that shamed her deeply.
"I don't doubt that you do not fear me," an intimate voice whispered through her hood, snapping her narrowed eyes open. "But the question must then become, do you fear death?"
"Patience, Robin," clucked Slade from his seat atop the hood of the T-Car. His legs swung to an unheard tune as he regarded the object of his admonishment. "We haven't seen each other all these months, I know. But pace yourself. I don't intend to do anywhere for a good, long while."
With one knee on the cold concrete, Robin clutched at the scorch marks on his red tunic and gasped, ignoring the protest that burned from the deep welts with every inhalation. Slade's attack had taken him by surprise, and those electroknucklers crackling on his fists seemed to pay Robin's new invulnerability no mind. Anxious fear rolled out of the creature behind his ribs in great waves, mixed indistinguishably with the notion that a few more solid hits like the last one would be bad indeed. "You hired Bushido," gulped Robin, fighting to get back to his feet.
"Expensive, yes," Slade admitted with a shrug and a roll of his eye. "But well worth it in the end." He gripped the T-Car's wheel well and leaned forward. One could scarcely miss hearing the sinister smile his voice passed between. "Of course, the original plan was for him to kill all of you. But once I heard about these marvelous new powers you'd received, I had to witness them firsthand."
The metal bottoms of his boots scraped against the cement as Robin stood. "You almost…" He coughed into his glove, spraying crimson across its green curves. "You almost killed Terra."
"Yes. Shame, that." There was nary a sound as Slade dropped off of the hood and began to pace the length of the Car. His eye never wavered from Robin for an instant. "Bushido insisted on giving you fair warning. He seemed to take to my idea of using one of your little friends. Of course," added Slade, "I wanted him to slice open…which one is it you're so fond of?" Impish delight sparkled in his monstrous gaze. "The alien, isn't it?"
Robin howled and leapt to one side. His gloves found purchase on the smooth frame of his R-Cycle, and crushed new grips into its bulletproof armor. Without so much as a grunt, he hefted the Cycle to shoulder height and threw it like a javelin. Quick though the maneuver was, Slade sidestepped the flying bike, letting it sail instead into Cyborg's pride and joy. A gut wrenching crunch reverberated across their underground garage as the two tough armors met. The R-Cycle's nose crumpled and shattered before punching through the T-Car's door and smashing a dashboard's worth of sensitive equipment.
Slade examined the wreck, running his hand along the protruding aft section of the R-Cycle. He gave its hanging wheel a good spin. "Temper, temper, Robin. I doubt your friend would appreciate you breaking his toys. Assuming he was going to live to see this mess."
The smell of ozone overran the air, emanating from the R-Cycle's broken fuel cell as it scorched the air. Between the bike's dying hiss of loosed fluids and the throaty chuckle cascading through Slade's mask, Robin could hear a pounding, painful thud, thud, thud, rebounding inside his ears. He would take this madman apart at the seams. He would rip out his throat with his own teeth. He would…
"SLADE!" The one word torn from Robin's throat held a world of significance. Robin charged full-tilt at him, feet pounding, legs pumping, fists clenched and swinging with each lunge. His new strength carried him further than he ever expected with each step, making his dash somewhat clumsy, but faster than ever. An arsenal the equal of any seasoned soldier bounced, forgotten, at his waist. His fingers tensed with anticipation, longing to crush Slade's windpipe.
Just beyond Robin's reach, Slade took to the air and flipped. Still inverted, he tossed an explosive disc into the heart of the double-wreck. The R-Cycle's sputtering fuel cell consumed the low-impact blast, digested it, and came back with one of even greater magnitude. Cyborg's baby joined in, adding its own power source to the mix. Combined, the two vehicles created a gruesome blossom of fire that engulfed everything in its reach, including the hapless teen hero running headlong into its clutches.
Robin sailed back, trailing tendrils of plasma as the explosion spat him out. His spine met with the very door that had trapped him, spooning the thick, dense alloy before flopping back onto the ground. Shreds of his uniform hung off of his wiry frame as he drew up on his knees and coughed clear the superheated smoke searing his lungs. Something burned at his waist, and it was only when he ripped it off and tossed it away that he realized it was the melting remains of his utility belt.
Cast in the light of the crackling fire, Slade appeared even more the monster Robin knew him to be. A pair of hands fought their way over the roar of the flames with a slow, steady applause. "Now I am impressed," said Slade. "That would have killed a normal man. I can see my time hasn't been wasted after all." A crimson spark snapped from his knucklers each time his hands came together.
A surge of adrenaline drove Robin's fingertips into the concrete floor. He dug them in as deep as they would go and then bucked back with a gritty groan. The floor cracked, then gave, relinquishing a large and misshapen chunk of processed stone. Robin pushed off with one foot, rising and spinning, and let the rubble fly.
The casual stride of Slade's feet never once broke step. Instead, he leaned forward, ducking beneath the desperate attack with his hands clasped behind his back. The concrete shattered behind him, spreading out into uneven gravel that coated the distance to Cyborg's workbench. The flickering firelight in Slade's eye twisted with amusement. "Throwing clumsy elements of your surroundings in lieu of strategy or skill? Really, Robin," he admonished the teen, coming to within a few yards' distance, "Why don't we simply paint a large, red 'S' on your chest and ship you off to Metropolis?"
Robin shuffled forward with a backhand that could have decapitated Slade, but it never landed. The miss left Robin wide open, allowing Slade all the time in the world to plant his electroknucklers into Robin's stomach. Wind whistled in his ears as Robin sailed back. Though the impact of Slade's fists never even registered, Robin nevertheless felt sharp flames spread through his chest. Muscles screamed and shuddered, and his symbiotic alien howled in silent reprisal. All this power, and he hadn't landed a single blow against Slade? Unacceptable.
His breath left him in a rush as he bounced to a halt, inches from the briny access pool leading beneath their island. The stingray lines of their T-Sub hung above him, angled down for a rapid launch along guide railings into murky ocean depths. As he tried to sit up, a pair of hands grabbed what remained of his tunic and dragged him into the air. Robin saw a trio of the two-toned masks rotating counterclockwise, each with a furious eye attached burning deep into his face.
With knucklers shooting random charges into his skin, it was all Robin could do to make Slade's words out above the crescendo of agony. "I take it back," Slade told him, "I am disappointed in you, child. I had hoped your chance fortune would make you an actual threat. Instead," he lamented with an unseen sneer, "You've become just another talentless metahuman. How pathetic."
The world spun as Slade slackened his electrocutioner's grip. Robin felt another impact as he struck cold, salty water. A sharp, instinctive gasp drew the stuff into his lungs, where it sat, most unwelcome, until Robin bobbed back up to the surface. He gagged the water out of his lungs, vomiting brine and bile until his body considered itself rid of the offending liquids.
Then a crackling disc struck the water, and his vision went red. So great was the pain, like liquid fire pumping through his body, that Robin didn't notice Slade destroying the chocks on the T-Sub until the great orange vessel dropped on top of his head and exploded.
"You can scream if you like," Bushido offered in her ear. "I won't mind."
Raven stiffened, trying to control the tremble in her legs as she felt the razor edge of his blade press deeper into the soft flesh of her neck. There had been no sound, not even a wayward breath of effort, to warn her of Bushido's approach. She could sense no stray emotions spilling off of his psyche, only a cold, purposeful determination that her empathic ear had mistook for an echo of her own focus. Her meditative incantation rolled through her head as she gathered her soul-self for a counterassault. "You have three seconds to let me go," she said, feeling her words vibrate against the katana.
A small sliver of amusement tickled her empathy. Raven couldn't help but feel impressed at his skill; as he spoke, his weapon didn't twitch so much as a centimeter. "I suppose your famed telekinesis will stop my blade. No doubt you'll tear it from my very hands and turn it against me. Well," he offered, "Don't let me keep you."
His sneering jest pooled bitterly in Raven's ears, but she banished her irritation. "Azarath, Metrion, Zintho…"
Something wasn't right. Raven watched from the corner of her eye as her obsidian power ensnared his katana. But as she prepared to wrench it from his grasp, she felt another force contest her mystic grip. A thousand voices chorused in harmony, denying her and belittling her and jeering her and forcing her away with a single thought. Her soul self trickled off of the katana and vanished back into the oblivion from whence it came, leaving Raven at the mercy of Bushido and his blade.
"You see? My ancestors protect me from your bewitchery." There was an instructive quality to the voice murmuring to her. Moments from her murder, Raven could still sense no malice in him. The katana's pressure increased just a fraction, drawing a small welt of black blood from Raven's skin. "Decapitation is a tried and true method of killing demons, correct? I receive so few opportunities to pit myself against your kind."
"Are you going to kill me," Raven grunted, "Or are you trying to bore me to death?"
"My apologies," Bushido said. "I have a natural flair for dramatics, or so I am told."
"Put the sword down." The feral snarl, barely recognizable as speech, rattled from the back of Beast Boy's throat. He stood to one side of the victim and victor with teeth bared and hands raised like claws, crouched low, coiled and ready to pounce. "Now," he barked.
Bushido didn't budge. "Do not move," he said without any trace of his former, casual joviality. "Stay where you are or she dies."
"You'll be dog meat before she hits the ground," promised Beast Boy.
"You are not that fast."
"I've got a whole world of animals right her," he snapped back. "All I have to do is pick which one is gonna kick your ass." Never removing his eyes from Bushido, he said to Raven, "See? This is why I didn't want to split up."
Raven retorted, "Hindsight is so clear, isn't it?"
"Oh, that is so like you!" he said in a huff. "You're about to die, and you can't even admit you were wrong."
"I wasn't a liar in life," Raven said coolly. "I don't see why I should change that in my death to appease your ego."
"You are so full of it!"
"Excuse me," interjected Bushido as politely as he could, "But can we return to our life and death situation?"
"Sorry," said the Titans.
The trio lapsed into uneasy silence. Raven felt beads of sweat welling up on her brow. She swallowed, pressing her throat further onto the blade by accident and renewing the trickle of blood it drew. Beast Boy's rage returned at the sight of the leaking demonic broth. His legs flexed, carrying him left and right in a light anticipatory bounce. Nostrils flaring, he looked the part of the jungle cat waiting to pounce from the underbrush. It was a side of him Raven had never seen, or even imagined.
Bushido broke the quiet when his curiosity could no longer be contained. As a sign of good faith, he lessened the pressure on Raven's throat, but not enough to convince her to try and bolt. His head he tilted quizzically around the side of her hood to examine Beast Boy with greater scrutiny. "How did you arrive? I did not hear your approach."
"Pretty hard to hear a dust mite riding the air conditioning currents," Beast Boy explained.
"Clever." Genuine admiration fueled Bushido's new smile. "Slade's Apprentice made mention of your unpredictability. I can see now this quality was grossly underestimated." They stood a moment more, watching one another with their prize remaining still and quiet. "So, what shall we do to solve our predicament?"
"You could put the sword down and let me beat the sushi out of you," Beast Boy supplied.
A small chuckle buffeted the back of Raven's hood. "Your witless rejoinder aside," he told Beast Boy, "It will be an honor to defeat you."
"Honor…" A rare, powerful moment of inspiration grabbed Beast Boy by the nose hairs and yanked him headlong into an idea. Tricky, desperate, and stupid all seemed to aptly describe the plan, but he couldn't count on another idea coming to him then or any time soon after. Before he could overthink his strategy (never a real threat for Beast Boy anyway), he blurted, "I challenge you to a duel."
Both Raven and Bushido said, "A what?" in unison.
Sweating, Beast Boy repeated, "A duel. Two honorable guys, duking it out without slitting anyone's throat. No weapons," he added, eyeballing the katana. "I don't want to wind up gargling a sword either." His hands dropped to his side to punctuate his sincerity.
Raven choked down her shock and concern for their lives with a biting remark. "This has to be the dumbest thing you've ever tried, Beast Boy."
"I'm inclined to agree with your comrade," remarked Bushido. "A duel without weapons against a one-man animal kingdom is a poor choice from my perspective."
Beast Boy shook his head. "No morphing. Like I said, just two guys fighting until one quits."
"Beast Boy, get out of here." The indifferent snarl fought to keep Raven's real hidden. "Find the others and go. Throwing your life away won't do anyone any good." Beast Boy remained still, staring down Bushido with uncharacteristic focus. "For once in your life, just listen to me. Go!"
The subtle chuckle infesting Bushido's speech worsened, becoming a light, unfettered laugh that shook his shoulders. "You are full of surprises, aren't you, Mister Logan? Very well. What shall the stakes of our bout be?"
"If I win, you leave me and my friends alone. Everyone goes home alive."
Bushido smirked at this, indulging in a private joke. "And if I win?"
"Then you kill me." Beast Boy shrugged. His grassy eyes darted to Raven's upturned, tensed face. Their gazes locked a moment, and Beast Boy was struck by the staggering emotion she tried to hide. Though her eyes were hard and cold, his sharp gaze caught the subtle tilt of her brow that begged him to save himself. The air swam with her panic, undetectable by normal senses but overpowering to his feral snout. Beneath Raven's fearful scent, he perceived Bushido's lingering uncertainty, so he added, "And you can kill Raven, too."
"Beast Boy!" Raven barked.
"No fuss," continued the changeling, "No muss." He spread his arms out, palms up, in a broad shrug. "Unless you think I'm too much man to handle. In that case, it's totally okay to wuss out like a major wussy wussbag who rocks at wussing."
Bushido's smile flitted over Raven's shoulder, almost lost in the torrential storm of anger pouring out of her features. But the smile didn't give any indication either way of what he would do. For thirty seconds that lasted an eternity, Bushido stood in absolute silence, considering the offer with that cheshire grin of his. He kept count of the time by way of the explosions that rattled in his chest.
The silvery blade flashed like lightning. For half of a pounding heartbeat, Beast Boy feared he had failed, that Raven's blood would spill over the floor. There was no new river of blood, though, left in the katana's wake. Bushido's ancestral sword rotated at the hilt. A quick jab brought the hilt crashing across the back of her skull. Raven's acidic glare rolled back into its sockets. Bushido caught her around the waist and lowered her to the floor with tender care. His face shone at Beast Boy all throughout, as if daring the Titan to challenge his handling of Raven. Beast Boy bristled, but said nothing.
"I accept," he informed his target mere seconds before the space between them blew up.
Robin grasped the twisted remains of a ladder and hauled himself out of the boiling seawater one hand at a time. The ringing in his ears played him up the metal framework and to the edge of the crumbling concrete. He flopped onto the ground and secreted steaming water like it was going out of style. The burning remains of the T-Sub burbled behind him as they slipped beneath the surface of the water, never to rise again.
A pair of boots scraped the concrete in front of Robin's face. "You are quite resilient. I must admit, I would give up if my submarine exploded on top of my head." The boots toed Robin's cheek. "But then, you always were a stubborn one."
"Slade." Despite the overwhelming trauma the fight had pressed upon him, Robin could feel his faculties returning. The question of whether or not he could recover fast enough weighted heavily on his mind as he felt those rough electrocutioner's hands grasp the corpse of his Kevlar tunic and haul him into the air. "You bastard…"
"Shh," Slade shushed him. "Don't ruin this for me. All the time I've spent, all the resources I've invested, all the setbacks I've suffered; don't you think I've earned the right to enjoy this?" A twist of his grip pressed his electroknucklers into Robin's chest, drawing a delicious scream out of the Teen Wonder."
When the torment ceased, Robin forced his masked eyes to focus back on Slade's split face. "You're insane," he sneered. If he could only keep Slade talking long enough, just a few more minutes. He could feel his strength coming back to him, but it just wasn't enough yet, not even sufficient to break Slade's grip. "No," he amended in a sudden burst of inspiration, "You're pathetic. You're so afraid of the Big Leagues that all you can do is poke at a couple of kids living inside a giant letter."
Slade's eye narrowed. "Mind your tone," he growled.
Robin forced a smile on his cracking lips. "Tell me the truth," he said with a hollow laugh, "Do you wet yourself at the thought of the Justice League finally considering you a serious threat?" He laughed again, sending flecks of spit splattering onto Slade's faceplate. "Maybe you could even rate Booster Gold or Wildcat. But I doubt it."
"Be quiet," Slade growled, and twisted another charge into Robin's laughing chest.
Once his spasmodic twitching ceased, Robin mustered a great guffaw and threw it into Slade's face. The electric shocks were slowing his recovery down, but a little more taunting would bring him back to battle-readiness. "Other guys do this for money or power," he rasped. "But you? You're the supervillain version of the guy who lures kids into his van over the internet." He punctuated this realization with more empty laughter.
Then Robin suffered for his own success. Slade twisted his shoulders and threw the Titan onto the floor with everything he had, knocking the wind right out of Robin. "I was going to be civil about this," he snarled, and twisted a control hidden inside his palm. The glowing power in his knucklers amplified to blinding levels. "I hadn't planned on using these at full power. I even considered letting you live, letting you reclaim your rightful place at my side. But time and again..." He brought his fist down into Robin's heaving chest, ripping a blood-curdling scream out of the teen. "Time and again," he hissed, "You prove the need for your annihilation."
Robin could only scream. He couldn't see, couldn't feel, save for the arcing death pouring into his body. The creature inside of him swelled with panic. Its fear begged him to stop the torture, to fight, to win. Nothing would please Robin more, but his limbs danced at Slade's behest, not his, and refused to listen to his desperate commands. His throat became raw as the edges of his vision turned red. The smell of burning meat dominated his sinuses.
"I hope I find your little alien girl first," Slade confessed in a whisper that whistled through the grill of his mask and into Robin's ear, "Before Bushido gets to her." His knuckles dug deeper into the Teen Wonder's smoldering flesh, and he relished the fatal scream that resulted. "For every insult you've given me, I'll return each one tenfold into that pretty little face of hers. Every last iota of trouble, every fleeting irritation you've caused me will be repaid out of her flesh. I will—"
Scarlet light enveloped Robin's hands, burning brighter and hotter than Slade's electroknucklers. The energy leapt from Robin's fingertips and slammed into Slade's armored harness, sending a shockwave through the villain's chest as the metallic weave buckled and melted. Slade flew into the air along the energy's arc, then sprawled back onto the floor with a grunt.
It took Slade a moment to reclaim the wind that had fled him at the powerful blast. No stranger to pain, he noticed the burning of his own flesh with an academic cant, retracing the last few seconds' activities that had altered the status quo of their fight. "This is unexpected," he concluded, sitting up with a slight grunt.
The glow around his hands remained as Robin pressed them against the floor and pushed up to his knees. Indentations in the shape of his fingertips lingered in the concrete when he lifted them away. His equilibrium returned to him in leaps and bounds, enough so to make standing possible again. But his head still swam with confusion as he examined the slight enveloping his fists. He felt its warmth, but it did not burn him as it clearly did Slade's smoldering armor. Inside him, the symbiote sang with delight at this new evolution, but broadcasted to its host a livid reminder of what he should be doing with it.
Slade rolled back over his shoulder and crouched low to the ground. "It doesn't matter how many powers you acquire," he yowled. "I will always be your master!" An elecrodisc snapped from the ends of his fingers, burning a crimson path through the air.
Instinct jumped in to pick up the slack left by Robin's confusion. His hand curved around the energies that pooled into his palm from some inner reserve. Soon he grasped a ball of shimmering light and, without thinking, he hurled the orb like a baseball. Crimson and scarlet met in midair, annihilating each other in a storm of thunderous, blinding fury. Before the light had faded, Robin started repeating the unfamiliar act, raining bolts of molten force into his enemy's shocked expression.
Slade strafed past the hail of deadly light, already rethinking his strategy. He didn't get long to muse, though, because Robin pressed his attack with unmatchable ferocity. The Titan charged opposite Slade, flanking him as the villain sought to do the same. The two twisted in a circular dance, Robin hurling his energized orbs, and Slade dodging them. Their loop grew smaller until the two met hand-to-hand. Robin set his luminous fists against Slade's knucklers, feeling their brutal bite wrack his body again.
"What do you say now, boy?" demanded Slade. Insane rage shook his narrowed eye as Robin writhed in his grasp. "Where are your quips now? Where is all that confident bantering of yours? I don't hear any of that now."
With a burst of scarlet, Robin's energies overpowered those of Slade's devices, overloading them as the Titan's overwhelming strength crumpled their delicate electronics. Slade snarled as Robin's scorching grip pressed into his skillful hands with the sickening smell of cooking flesh. A melted boot crashed into his chest with the face of a battering ram, releasing him from the grips but slamming him into a wall in exchange. More of Robin's energy orbs barreled into his torso, keeping him aloft against the wall. After they ceased, Slade pitched forward and collapsed face first into the floor.
"You blackmail me," snapped Robin, "Threaten my friends, hire flunky after flunky, and concoct your twisted little schemes, and you still don't get it." Robin's voice grew stronger with every word. He straightened his posture and held his fist at his sides. Red energy still trailed in his hands' wake, anticipating any fight still left in Slade. "You won't beat me. You won't beat my friends. As hard as you try, you'll never beat the Titans. I won't let you."
Slade resumed standing with noticeable effort. "No, Robin," he grunted, clutching at the slagged craters in his armor. "It is you who misunderstands. Your friends will die. Your team will fail. Your efforts will be in vain, and you will realize all this as you kneel before me!" Upon shouting his last word, Slade threw an oblong device into the air. It detonated, bathing the Vehicle Bay in a tidal wave of white light for a split second. Once the spots ceased their frolic in Robin's vision, he bore witness to the empty space where Slade had been. No trace of him remained.
The glowing of his hands persisted as he brought them to his face. Vindication of Doctor Brown's prior, ambiguous warning of his continued mutation stared back at him through the bloody light. Only a concentrated effort banished the energies, though Robin's gaze lingered still. "Bring it on, Slade," he uttered, wiggling his again-unfamiliar digits (for who knew what further miracles they waited to reveal?). "I'll be ready."
An unwanted voice made silent addendum to his bold statement: I just hope it will be enough.
Beast Boy rode a concussive sapphire wave back, morphing into a sparrow to better surf the sonic energy. Across from him, Bushido's blade had already cleared its sheath, and projected a funky blue barrier that slurped the buffeting energy up and left its wielder unharmed. Despite this, the samurai wore a look of vile contempt aimed in Beast Boy's direction. The expression flashed just as quickly in the direction of the attack's source, where it found…"Cyborg!"
The Titan filled the hallway with his massive frame. He kept his sonic cannon leveled at Bushido with the solidarity of a mountain. His concentration, already impressive, became nothing short of miraculous when one considered the polished metal hilt of a dagger protruding from his left eye.
"Move," he warned Bushido, "And I'll liquefy your brain from the inside out." The focal amplifier at his cannon's end tripled its illumination to support his claim. "I have enough decibel power in this thing to make KISS sound like Kidz Bop."
Upon hearing this, Beast Boy decided to put some distance between himself and Bushido. As much as he and his friends joked about its feeble capacity, he enjoyed having his brain. "Cy," he said, "Are you okay?"
Cyborg gave his friend a look that made it clear Beast Boy could not have asked a stupider question. "He jammed a knife into my brain," growled Cyborg. "How do you think I'm doing?"
"And yet, you live." Bushido sounded less than pleased as his mystical shield retracted back into the tip of his blade. He listened with half an ear to the protestant cries of his ancestors at this outrageous injustice. Their scathing criticism he bore with some chagrin. Of the many people he had slain in his tenure as the Bushido, only three had risen up again, and the other two were through magic or happenstance. This was the first to result from a lack of preparation.
"When my CPU crashed, it took a few minutes for my systems to reroute control to my backup processors." A grimace soured Cyborg's chocolate complexion. "I always told my dad that I thought having a second brain in my chest cavity was a dumb idea. I guess you proved me wrong." He shifted his sonic cannon, resting its sights squarely on Bushido's nose. "BB, hit 'em hard and fast. He's tough, but—"
"No." Beast Boy placed himself in front of the cannon's aperture. A black scowl darkened his features. "We're in the middle of something here."
Cyborg brushed the changeling aside with his cannon. "Quit foolin' around, Beast Boy, this is serious."
Before Cyborg could take another step, he found a green gorilla towering over his path. The great beast bellowed from behind slavering canine teeth as it shoved him back the way he had come. "So am I," Beast Boy said upon shifting back to his human form. "This is my fight, so back off." The uncharacteristic snarl silenced Cyborg's rising protest and stole his breath. Then he caught sight of the nigh-imperceptible twitch in Beast Boy's lips, and the flutter of his left eye. "You got it?" Beast Boy added with hammy menace.
"I got it," Cyborg nodded once, and stepped away. His sonic cannon morphed back into his arm, but his muscles remained tensed and ready.
Bushido smiled. His callous foot rolled the insensate Raven off to one side, where she would remain safe and out of the way. Beast Boy's eyes flashed at the heap of blue robes with concern. For her sake, he hoped this would work. "You honor your word," Bushido praised him.
"Now hows about you honor yours?" A gray glove jabbed at the hilt on Bushido's waist. "Lose the sword."
A look of brief hesitation sparked in Bushido's features before he untied the sheath and laid his ancestors onto the floor with a lover's care. "Honorable, but not foolish," he said with continued approval. "I must say, Logan, you are a refreshing change. In the past, I've found metahumans to be a sneaky, underhanded breed."
Beast Boy sniffed. "That's big talk coming from a ninja." He began circling left, crossing one leg in front of the other to keep his sights square on his opponent. His hands hung in a pattern that loosely resembled some of the simpler Kung Fu he had seen Robin do. Wisely, he chose to not try mimicking that bizarre hooting noise the Teen Wonder made as well.
Shadow crept into Bushido's whimsy. "I am no ninja, my emerald aggressor. I am a samurai, and in keeping with my code, I have given you ample warning to prepare for my coming." He adopted Beast Boy's circular path, maintaining the distance between them. "And because you demonstrate a modicum of nobility unusual to your kind, I shall continue to do so. I will tell you every move I will employ to defeat you."
"Is that a fact." Their slow circle continued, the sequel to their earlier standoff. Beast Boy's heart pounded in his ears. He had to struggle to hear Bushido's pompous play-by-play.
"First," he said, "I will feint in with a backfist strike. You will expect this, but because you do not trust me, you will fall for it anyway, and leave yourself open to my side kick. Your right knee will suffer for your ill preparation, and shatter, dropping you." His imagery returned the joy to the fight for Bushido. "Once you lay in helpless agony, it will be a simple matter to break your neck."
"And after you kill me…what?" Beast Boy stopped and let his guard drop. They now stood on opposite sides from where they had started. His hands fell to his hips as his sarcasm leapt to strike. "Lunch?"
That tiny, damnable chuckle floated from Bushido's throat. "Why, I claim my prize, of course." He glanced back at Raven and imagined the thrill of her soul howling in release as he cut her head from her body. Other demons that died at his hands gave such a marvelous scream, and the sulfurous blast of light that accompanied their deaths rivaled the aurora borealis. He could hardly wait. "Then, I imagine I must deal with your walking cadaver friend." His tilted head indicated the glowering Cyborg standing at their fight's perimeter.
"Wow…" drawled Beast Boy.
"Being faced with one's mortality and its imminent cessation is a powerful experience," Bushido agreed.
The Titan shrugged. "No," he said, "I actually meant, 'Wow, you're such a douche bag.'" He threw himself up and over, tossing his wiry body into a flip that carried him back to where Bushido's precious sword rested on the floor. As he landed in a crouch, his stubby fingers curled around the smooth lines of the katana sheath. "Cy, catch!" He tossed the blade through the air before Bushido knew what his nemesis was up to. The assassin could only watch helplessly as his ancestors were snatched up by Cyborg's super strong hands.
"NO!" sobbed Bushido. His ancestors screamed in a thousand panicked voices as Cyborg grasped them by the hilt and yanked them from their sheath. They begged Bushido to rescue them from the filthy metahuman's clutches. "Please," he fell to his knees, "Give them back to me."
Now it was Cyborg's turn to chuckle. The empty sheath in his off hand crumpled like an empty paper cup before tossed it aside and took up the sword in both hands. "I'll bet you've got all kinds of tricks to take me down without this pig sticker, don't you?" Bushido's katana creaked as he applied a light pressure to either end, meaning to bow the ancient metal out. "But I wonder how many of them are fast enough to stop me from snapping it in half."
The fight had fled Bushido the instant his precious blade became endangered. He knew Cyborg was right; there was no way he could get to the sword before it broke in the man/machine's metal grasp. His shuffling knees failed him as he neared Cyborg, and he collapsed at the Titan's feet, clinging to his boot-like feet. "Please," he begged, "Do not harm it."
"You were gonna kill us." Beast Boy strode over to Raven, completely turning his back on Bushido. The sorceress began to stir with a moan, rising like a cobalt ghost into a vaguely human shape. He helped her rise, pulling back her hood to check the lump on the back of her head. Loathe though Raven was to let anyone touch her, the spinning room refused to let her stand on her own without help, and so she tolerated his administrations. Beast Boy's gentle hand lifted her chin so he could examine her neck. "You almost killed Raven."
"It was never personal," insisted a desperate Bushido. "I swear, it is my job."
The black-stained line on Raven's throat disgusted Beast Boy. He circled his arm around her waist to keep her steady and turned back to glare at Bushido. "Killing people seems pretty personal to me, dude." Raising his glare, his eyes joined with Cyborg's. "Cy, snap that toothpick."
The metal creaked again. His ancestors' wails became deafening, begging Bushido to save them. Their pain became his, and he clutched at his chest. Tears squeezed out of his closed eyes as he sobbed, "Please, no. If you break my blade, you murder countless souls."
The Titans didn't understand what he was talking about, and none of them particularly cared. "Say uncle," Beast Boy demanded.
"Uncle," wept Bushido, "Uncle." The voices cried out, but he could do nothing. Cyborg's grip was too strong for him to break, and he could never free his ancestors fast enough.
"You lose the fight," Beast Boy told him in no uncertain terms. "Your little contract is over. Get out of my house." He turned away, leading Raven away from the scene. She still hadn't spoke, but a look of silent gratitude escaped the folds of her hood. Somewhere within that gratitude was the promise that they would speak about his offering her life up to an assassin, but Beast Boy enjoyed the brief approval from Raven nonetheless. "Give him his sword and let him go."
"B, you can't be serious," Cyborg grunted. His pressure on the sword lessened, but he kept it firm in his grasp to mollify his would-be killer at his feet. "We should take him in and—"
Beast Boy stopped. "We made a deal, Cyborg. Besides…" He and Raven looked back at the weeping assassin with contempt. Beast Boy spat, "He doesn't look like much of a Big Bad to me."
His two teammates rounded the corner, leaving Cyborg alone with the teen whose knife still rested in the debris of his primary brain. Cyborg knelt down, looming over Bushido. He waved the assassin's sword over his head. "If it was up to me, you'd be rotting in a jail cell." The sword lifted high in his grasp, its point angled down. "Or worse."
Bushido flinched as his ancestors shattered the tile in front of his helpless face. Their screams silenced at once, becoming a constant stream of shrieking insults. He was worthless. He was nothing. He wasn't worthy of carrying the name of Bushido. What a pathetic whelp. Beaten by a childish metahuman. Pathetic. Pathetic.
Cyborg rose from the quivering blade and its blubbering owner as the sniffling subsided. "I guess you're lucky," he told Bushido. "Beast Boy's a much nicer guy than I am. Now get the hell out." And with that, he walked away, knowing full well Bushido wouldn't be there when he returned. With any luck, they would never see him again.
The walls of her stone dome blotted out the sunlight, leaving them in total darkness. Earthen smells swamped the tiny bubble, where she heard another person scrambling against the blackened walls. With a snap, a bright flare demolished their sightlessness and revealed a white-clad figure trapped within the claustrophobic confines with her.
"We must work quickly, Apprentice," Bushido whispered to her. He pounded against the interior of her bubble to simulate the sounds of a great struggle within. Already, they heard the Titans pounding back on the outside. It was all the Apprentice could do to maintain her structure against two meaty fists (probably Beast Boy's). "Slade does not wish you harmed in the coming storm, and I must deliver my warning to the Titans."
The Apprentice scowled, shielding her eyes against Bushido's blinding flare. "I know what to do." She hesitated a second. "You're sure you can—"
"My blade is swift and precise," he assured her. "I can avoid hitting anything vital."
She drew in a deep breath, and exhaled. "Do it."
The sword flashed in the burning magnesium, moving so swiftly it became a blur. The Apprentice's stomach tore open at its touch, and a white-hot snake of fire wormed its way into her stomach. She had no more need for the acting that had masked her subterfuge during her tenure with the Titans, for the pain was both real and intense enough to draw from her a piercing shriek the likes of which had never before terrorized her throat. Such pain she couldn't bear, even as the sword dug deeper, deeper, tearing her skin and—
Terra sat up from her covered biobed with a scream. Her hands flew to her stomach and her eyes stretched at their edges as she desperately sucked in cool, crisp air to quell the fire in her belly. As her scream trailed off, another just like it howled from beside her bed from a green shape that snapped back at her violent awakening. The second scream drew a third from her, this one out of fright as her green nurse tilted back and fell along with his chair. His scream cut off with a grunt as the back of his head smacked into the carpeted floor.
"Beast Boy," she huffed, still clutching her stomach. The pain was nowhere near as badly as in her nightmare, but a dull ache persisted between her abdominals. She watched her friend pull himself up with a groan and straighten his seat, reassuming watch over her. "What are you doing?"
"I was just…I just…" His eyes darted back and forth as his fleeing instincts kicked in. After a few more seconds of blathering, he managed, "I wanted to see you. I wanted to be here when you woke up."
"Oh." What a sweet gesture. It brought a grin to her face as she said as much. "So, what'd I miss?" Then her features darkened. "Is everyone—"
He rested a hand on her shoulder, easing her back down against the cool, soft surface of the biobed. "Relax," he assured her, "Everyone's fine. Cyborg needed a new brain, but S.T.A.R. Labs'll have one here in a week or two. Bushido's gone. Turns out he was working for Slade."
Beast Boy's dark revelation inspired the same feeling inside of her. Everyone was still alive. "That's great," she said. A heavy fatigue settled into her words and onto her shoulders, making it hard to fight his hand as it eased her down to her sickbed. "Really great."
"Not as great as your being awake," Beast Boy confessed nervously. His hand rested on the back of his neck, rubbing to keep its shaking to a minimum as he laughed away his apprehension. "I, uh…I was really worried after Bushido stabbed you. I thought I wouldn't get to…" Terra's interest rose again as he looked away, trailing off. She sat up again, pulling at the blanket to swing her legs around. Beast Boy's staying hand kept her in place once more. "Maybe you shouldn't get up."
"But I feel a lot better." It was a partial lie, as each movement still tore at her delicate stomach and the pink flesh sealed together with bailing wire and luck. His hand still kept her on the bed. "Why can't I get up?"
His green face darkened with a blush. "Because you're wearing a hospital gown," he pointed out. "They aren't really known for their, ah, coverage."
Terra wriggled her bottom, feeling her bare skin drag against the biobed's leathery surface through the backless garment. Looking down, she saw the powdery blue fabric covering her chest where her Titan uniform had been, and immediately laid back down without any further insistence from Beast Boy. Her own blush turned her face into a beacon of red embarrassment.
A throat cleared behind the two. Turning, Terra and Beast Boy saw Raven standing in the doorway to the Medical Bay. The sorceress lowered her fist from her lips and looked pointedly at the two teens. A clipboard rested in the crook of her elbow, waiting for the latest update on Terra's condition. "Terra needs a once-over and at least another night of rest here."
"Aw, can't I stay?" pleaded Beast Boy.
Raven seemed adamant about the subject. "Take a hike."
"Right." It had been worth a shot. Beast Boy turned back to Terra, taking her hand in his and giving it a squeeze. "Once again, really glad you're okay," he said again. The dark blush in his cheeks lingered even as he turned to go. He ignored Raven's rude sniff as he passed, too busy trying to break his face with an enormous smile. As he reached the door, Beast Boy stopped and turned around. "Hey, Terra?" At her questioning glance, he blurted out, "You wanna catch a movie this weekend? Y'know, it's cool if you're not feeling up to it, but I thought…"
Terra kept him waiting a moment with a thoughtful glance and a rub of her belly. "Dunno," she mused, watching his poorly-veiled disappointment. "My stomach hurts pretty bad. But," she added quickly, "I bet popcorn would make it feel a lot better."
Beast Boy managed a squeak and a nod before scrambling out of the room, tripping over his own feet as the doors swooshed shut behind him. The instant they closed, the girls heard a whoop filter through the armored alloy. It reinforced the smile on Terra's face, but soured Raven's expression something fierce. "Popcorn is hardly proper medication for a stomach injury," the sorceress said snidely.
"Oh, act your age," snorted Terra. She allowed Raven access to the readout monitor above her head, and laid back and folded her hands over her stomach. Serene contentment settled over her face, even when Raven lifted her arms and pressed into her stomach with icy fingers. The pain spiked and then lessened as radiant black trickled from Raven's palms and through Terra's hospital gown. Her tensed abdominals relaxed when a light euphoria tickled her extremities and soothed her to the core. "Guys and girls are supposed to flirt. It's what we do, in case you haven't noticed."
"I have, and that's the problem." Her pen scribbled a few notes onto the clipboard. She used the writing surface to hide her face and its grimace. Bad enough that Beast Boy knew, which probably meant everyone else would in a few more minutes. "Personally, I think you could do better if you took a walk down the block at midnight. With your eyes closed."
Terra waited a moment, letting Raven's cruel comment simmer in the air between them. The geokinetic wore a look of sad confusion that cocked Raven's eyebrow with curiosity. Finally, Raven let her clipboard drop (though not until the pain was well and gone) and returned Terra's look with one of challenge. "I don't mind it so much when you're hard on me," Terra said. "I'm the new girl, and I understand why you have to hate new people." Her head tilted as her sorrow grew. "But I can't figure out why you lean so hard on Beast Boy, especially when it comes to me."
"I just call them like I see them," Raven commented. She gathered her cloak around her, tucking the clipboard out of sight, and buried her face back in the shadows of her hood. The door was only a few steps away, and she tried for a quick escape before the inevitable reply came.
"No." Terra didn't disappoint her. "You don't. You go out of your way to bring him down." Raven's steps trailed off to nothing as she waited for Terra to finish. "I know you don't hate him. Beast Boy wouldn't stand a chance if you did. So what's your problem?"
Raven remained silent. After a full minute without words or movement, Terra began to shift nervously about. "The problem is both of you," she said. "You dance around, feinting at each other, teasing each other, and screwing around when you should just be together." Terra sat up to listen closely as Raven turned around. For the first time since their first meeting, Terra knew she was seeing Raven as honest as the half-demon would ever be. Her indigo eyes shook with glistening misery, a complete one-eighty from the scorn Terra usually received. "Just give it up and go to him."
She tried to leave again, but Terra stopped her with another question. "Why does this bother you so much?"
This time the nervous shuffling belonged to Raven. She turned again. The indifferent mask had returned, but Raven's words held a quiver of truth to them. "I'll never have what you have. Never. I can never love, and I can never be loved. So seeing someone else purposely deny herself something that…wonderful…" Raven choked on the word, and had to look away. "It doesn't sit well with me." She turned back to the door, resuming her escape. "So quit screwing around."
"You're wrong," Terra called. Raven paused one last time between open doors, though she did not look back. Whatever schmaltzy drivel about to dribble from Terra's lips wasn't worth the effort. "You are loved."
Raven hated being right sometimes. "Whatever," she grunted, and left Terra to wallow in her guilty distress.
Once more, Bushido approached the circle of light amidst the mausoleum of gears and chains. His approach wasn't shrouded at all this time. He walked with heavy steps, which echoed mockingly off of the unseen ceilings somewhere high above. Pale, weary horror haunted his features beneath a thin sheen of sweat as the spillover light from Slade's throne trickled over him. His employer sat on that elevated seat with steepled fingers, nearly identical to the image Bushido recalled from their first meeting. The only differences were the melted craters marring his armored harness, and the dull look in his single eye.
"Honorable Slade," Bushido began, kneeling down on one knee and bowing his head. "I ask for your forgiveness as I come to you in defeat. My honor demands that I abandon my contract."
Slade barely grunted at Bushido's entrance. His heartfelt regret received even less attention, though Slade's eye did point in the assassin's general direction. "Your honor?"
He kept his eyes glued to the featureless floor, gritting his teeth. "I would prefer not to discuss it. Sufficed to say, I will return your fee along with a generous gratuity, and my most humble apologies. I have failed." He stopped, rolling the words around in his mouth. They left a repulsive flavor that he thought might never leave him. "I have failed," he said again and almost vomited because of it. That notion made him feel worse than the rumors he had heard of Slade's reaction to those who failed him. "I…"
"You failed," Slade said offhand. "Yes, I heard you." His fingers tapped against one another as he considered his new hire a moment more. "Please keep your retainer. For your troubles."
"I…"
"You may go now," Slade said. His chair pivoted away from Bushido, delivering the coldest shoulder the teen had ever felt. Somewhere in the darkness beyond, an enormous screen, fit more for a movie theater than this lair, lit up with an image of the Titans' colorfully clad leader. Several more images of Robin in various places, in various poses, slid atop one another. "I trust you can show yourself out," Slade called out.
Bushido stood and turned. Every step he took pounded the vile word into his mind. Failure. Failure. Failure. And between each step brought Beast Boy's words back to him. 'He doesn't look like much of a Big Bad to me.' But he wasn't a Big Bad. Was he? He was a warrior. He was the Bushido.
And he failed.
"Help me, ancestors," he pleaded as the darkness of Slade's lair swallowed him whole. "Please, I need your guidance now more than ever. Tell me, what must my path be? How may I absolve myself of this failure? What path must I take? Please, tell me. Whatever you command, I shall do."
But Bushido found no answers in his deadened sword or the pitch blackness. His ancestors refused to speak, and his soul remained adrift in a sea of confusion. For a fifteen year old who had never known true family or friendship since his master's death years ago, Bushido had never felt so alone in his entire life.
The doors parted for Cyborg with obedient expediency, a sight for which he was uncannily grateful. He was in no mood for doors to deny him entry to any part of the Tower ever again. The new lens of his replaced optical sensor clinked at his touch, filling his vision with the tip of his finger. The components behind it might not be repaired yet, but at least he could see properly again. He would need the aid of Doctor Brown and her miracle workers at S.T.A.R. Labs to completely fix the damage to his brain.
In the meantime, he had a task even more unpleasant before him, and remembered this as he entered their training room. Its two occupants waved in greeting before returning to their activities.
"Okay, Kory," Robin called to his partner up in the air, "Pull!"
Starfire nodded. Her hands powered up with her metabolized solar energy as she hurtled a trio of starbolts straight at Robin with a war cry at each toss. They didn't get halfway to Robin before the Teen Wonder had charged up his own shots. He mimicked Starfire's movements, tossing his red-tinged balls of light into hers. The two energies met and eliminated each other with a thunderclap and a bright flash. Two more streaked at Robin, and again he kept them at bay with his new power.
"Marvelous, Robin!" Starfire sang, applauding as she floated back down. "Your adaptation to this new development is quite startling." She landed next to him, examining the scarlet energy welling up in his hands as he did the same. Cyborg joined in, staring openly at Robin's hands. Were either of them to look at the new arrival, they would have seen his concern shining through.
Robin extinguished the organic, homogeneous flame and rubbed the back of his neck. "I guess I catch on pretty quick," he admitted modestly.
"So what do you call those things?" asked Cyborg.
The two secret admirers looked to each other, then away, each coming back with a pang of red in their faces. "Bird bolts," Robin answered, abashed.
Cyborg couldn't help but chuckle. "Pretty catchy," he teased the two. Starfire seemed to suffer the worst of their embarrassment, but recovered in a moment. Her discomfort became curiosity as Cyborg then said, "Hey Star, could you give us a minute? I need to talk to Robin about something."
She looked to Robin, but their stone-faced leader nodded in agreement. "It's okay, Kory. Why don't you take five? We'll get back to it in a minute. And this time," he added with a wag of his finger, "Don't hold back."
"If you believe you can handle it," she countered with a flip of her hair. Her playful look back as she floated away told a story that everyone except Robin could read like an open book. It was as if the language of her green eyes was somehow unreadable to the Teen Wonder, even though Cyborg scanned it like the lines beneath the colorful pictures of a Dr. Seuss novella.
Turning back to his tremendous friend, Robin asked, "So what's up? How's the new eye working?"
"Works okay," Cyborg said, hoping to get straight to the point. "Robin, I think we have a problem."
He grunted, and turned toward the weight bench and barbell rack he and Terra had trained at that morning. "I know we have more than one," Robin quipped. "What's our latest one?" A fifty pound weight found its way into his hands, where it rotated end over end in his contemplative grip.
Cyborg steeled himself with a deep breath. "Bushido got into the tower. So did Slade."
"I noticed." The weight bent in twain as Robin twisted the ends. With a shriek and a creak, the hefty ends broke apart at the handle, stringing at the ends like Play-Doh.
"They got into the Tower, man," he insisted. Didn't Robin get it? "Nobody gets past my security."
"Puppet King."
Cyborg hissed. "Ah…" He coughed, looking away a moment. "Let's forget that ever happened, and remember all those upgrades I put in after that thing that never happened…happened." He swung back and gestured vaguely with his hands. "They got past my defenses, and we didn't hear a peep. There's only one way they could have done that, and that's if someone gave them the codes."
"I considered that," Robin told him. He squeezed the broken weight in either hand. The solid metal squashed like putty between his fingers. By the time he dropped them, nothing recognizable as what the weight had been struck the ground with a sharp clank.
"Bushido said something about an apprentice." He paused, then added, "When I was down in Techmann's lair, the dude contacting him said something about an apprentice too. Then when you guys showed up, the whole operation went to hell in a hand basket."
It didn't take a math whiz to put Cyborg's two and two together. "You're saying that Slade has a new apprentice," Robin revealed matter-of-factly. "And that it's one of us. That his apprentice is a Titan." His open glove resonated with a smack as he drove his fist into it with the force of a wrecking ball. The lenses of his mask narrowed into slits and bored into Cyborg's grim face as he delivered a promise. "If that's the case, then we'll be ready. Because we're going to train, and we're going to prepare." The gifts from his symbiote made training difficult, this Robin knew. But he wouldn't use it as an excuse to slack off. He would train with Cyborg's weights. He would design a uniform that could handle his strength and compliment his invulnerability. Whatever these bird bolts were, he would learn how to use them properly too. "And I promise," he added, "I'm going to personally track down whoever this apprentice is, and I'm going to make him pay."
Cyborg grunted, folding his arms as he glared down at his leader. "I don't know if that's such a good idea," he said.
The comment surprised Robin. "Why not?"
"Because," said Cyborg, "I'm not convinced that you aren't him."
END: HONOR
NEXT: ANNIVERSARY
Author's Afterward
Well, that's one more step in Robin's transformation. This is the first arc with Robin openly using his power. Quite the switch for me, and I hope you enjoyed it too. Even if you didn't, I hope you review. I'd like to expand readership (because I'm conceited and an attention hog, naturally), so I'd like to ask a favor of you all. If you like my story, tell a friend. Put it under your favorites (unless you just sort of like it, in which case you can wait until I dazzle you into putting it there legitimately). If you hate it, tell someone else how much it sucks, and make sure you mention me by name. That way, they can go out of their way to find out for themselves. Any way you can get this story out there would be great.
And, without further shameless plugging, I present to you my latest post-arc essay.
THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF BEAST BOY
It isn't a stretch to say that any one of the Titans represents a walking, talking impossibility. An alien whose physiology so closely resembles that of a human? A half-demon magician? A half-robot kid? A pint-sized martial artist, capable of taking down men five times his size with a few kicks? Absurd, but still capable of being enjoyed if you suspend disbelief to a generally synonymous level among all of comicbookdom I like to call 'Comic Book Sciences.' But there's one Titan whose unfeasibility rises above the rest, one whose powers are so scientifically ludicrous, that they deserve special attention all to their own. And of course, assuming you've read the title, you must know that I speak of our own Garfield Logan, the Beast Boy.
First, we'll start with the actual transformations he undergoes. Beast Boy starts out as a normal, everyday (green) fourteen year old human. With but a thought, he becomes a whale. He becomes a whale. His body doesn't stretch into the shape of a whale. He instead becomes physically identical to a whale, which means he takes on its relative mass, size, and cell count, a crime against both nature and physics.
Biologically speaking, this transformation would mean that he experiences a massive increase in cellular division, an increase that would require untold amounts of nutrients, proteins, and all those other niceties that cells need to multiply. I'm no biologist, but I imagine Beast Boy would need some kind of constant nutrient IV drip the size of a semi trailer to keep doing these metamorphoses.
Speaking in terms of physics, Beast Boy the whale gains several tons worth of mass from virtually thin air. Mass cannot be spontaneously created, only converted into other forms of mass or into energy. Even if Beast Boy were somehow performing a reverse of the process (converting energy to mass), that energy would have to come from somewhere. If it were chemical energy, we would again require that semi IV drip. If the energy were drawn from his surroundings, then Jump City would experience massive and sudden drops in ambient atomic activity as Beast Boy sucked surrounding heat to fuel his mass-increase transformations. I couldn't begin to describe the math behind the process, but I envision the city being flash-frozen as Beast Boy turns into a whale, thus defeating a villain by freezing the battlefield to absolute zero. This process would reverse as Beast Boy converted his existing mass into energy when he turns into a house fly, winning a fight by way of becoming the epicenter of a massive exothermic reaction and scorching the landscape around him.
The second impossibility is Beast Boy's brain capacity. I know, I know, Beast Boy isn't all that intelligent to begin with. But bear with me for a moment, please. Let's say Beast Boy turns into a goldfish. This means that, along with his body, his brain must have decreased in size as well. So now, he has the mental capacity of a goldfish by necessity. Five minutes after his metamorphosis, he would have forgotten all about ever being human, and continued through the rest of his existence as a goldfish. If he's a dinosaur, how is his walnut-sized brain going to remember how to work with Cyborg on the T-Rex Takedown? There's a reason animals never invented the automobile and people did; our neurological functions are incredibly different. And assuming Beast Boy's brain retained all its functions anyway, how would his human brain be able to process the different and vast information that animal senses would feed him? A wolf's nose would overload his olfactory processes. Would he even be able to figure out how to swim as a dolphin?
Third is the way he retains the ability to speak when he transforms. I realize that this is far more prevalent in the comic series than in the show, but it exists nonetheless ("Crash," Season 3). An amoeba does not have vocal capacity. It cannot speak. It barely has any organelles at all, much less a face. Maybe that's what Beast Boy thinks an amoeba looks like, but I don't see how he could possibly create an organelle that can vibrate to mimic human speech.
I could expand on any one of these points. I know just how pathetic I sound in pointing all this out. But, this insane impossibility has just been sticking in my craw, and I had to get it out. I apologize to you, my victim, but now you're far better off thanks to my ranting. The next time Beast Boy irritates you, you'll have one more reason to get ticked off at him.