Just a little heads-up before the chapter starts. When I eventually get to Winner Take All (or Episode 22) with the Master of Games (soon-to-be abbreviated MoG), if I can, I'd like to add onto the roster and add onto the "Tournament of Heroes" part of the story a little bit by adding some fresh blood to the little tourney. That means I'm looking for male teen heroes from the DC Comics Universe to add in (i.e. Blue Beetle). They don't necessarily need to be from Teen Titans, but can be in their early 20's in other DC storylines and be "fitted" into the Teen Titans Universe.
In addition, at the end of Winner Take All, the Master of Games makes a comeback, this time with the "Tournament of Heroines". If I can collect enough names, I'd like to make a "Tournament of Heroines" chapter too. I know Raven, Starfire, and Terra would have taken part, but there were other silhouettes behind them, so I'm also asking for teen heroines to add to the roster (i.e. Wonder Girl). Supergirl appearing is debatable since she's in her 20's (and may be somewhat overpowered), but I'm keeping my options open.
If you can think of a few names of teen male or female heroes, I'd appreciate them for later. With all that aside, please enjoy the chapter.
P.S.
If you can come up with any OCs that have reasonable powers and/or backstories (no Gary Stu/Mary Sues), I'll also take those too, since I'd never heard of Wildabeast or Hot Spot before watching Teen Titans.
It was five in the morning. The group was snoring the night away, and would've continued to do so had it not been for the-
"Good morning, Teen Titans. I do hope I haven't woken you," Slade spoke to the team from the monitor in the living room.
"*Yaaawn* What are you, an insomniac? Who calls at five in the morning-" BB was about to ask before Raven elbowed him in the side.
"What do you want?" Robin demanded.
"Well, that's precisely what you've been trying to find out, isn't it? And in spite of all your efforts, you're still in the dark about my intentions," Slade stated. "Disappointing, Robin. I expected a little more from you."
"Like I care what you-"
"But since you've been unable to discover my plan, I suppose I'll just have to reveal it myself," Slade said interrupting Robin's sentence, the camera panning away from him, two Sladebots standing next to a large object covered in a tarp. "I'm sure you're all familiar with the concept of a chronoton detonator," he stated as the tarp was pulled away, a large egg-like piece of machinery covered in black plating with a few red lights set into its surface. The upper portion of it telescoped towards the ceiling, the inside revealed to show more lights.
"No!" Cy cried as Star gasped.
"Uh-oh," Raven gaped.
"No way!" Beast Boy cried. "Um, what's a crouton detonator?"
"A Chronoton Detonator eradicates all chronotons within a localized area, utterly destroying the temporal component of the space-time continuum," Vent explained with crossed arms as he leveled a glare at Slade, who if the others were watching would've seen he was glaring right back. At his statement, the green changeling could only dumbly ask- "Hmm?"
"It stops time. Permanently," Raven stated, causing BB to cry out and faint.
"If he triggers that thing downtown, it'll freeze-frame the entire city," Cy gaped.
"Tell me where!" Robin shouted pounding his hands on the console.
"You're a clever boy, Robin. I'm sure you and your little friends can figure it out," Slade said before pulling up a grey transmitter-like device. "However, since I control the detonation, time is not on your side," he said before the screen filled with static. Robin knew immediately that with Slade, he bounced all his transmissions off a dozen satellites before it reached its destination, so trying to trace it based on that would be no good.
"Fan out! Find it! Shut it down!" Robin said storming out, BB and Cy moving to block his path, Vent moving towards the console and making a subtle hand motion to Raven, the mage reading his thoughts -metaphorically- and binding the teen's feet to the ground without him noticing.
"Hey uh, maybe you should stay here and coordinate the search," BB said nervously.
"What?" Robin growled.
"Man, when it comes to Slade, you've got issues," Cy stated twirling a finger around his temple in a classic "this guy has a screw loose" gesture. "Might be better for the team if you sit this one out."
"No. There's too much at stake for me to-"
"Robin..." Star said nervously. "We have not forgotten the last time you faced-"
"I made a mistake, Starfire. It won't happen again. I can handle it, I promise," he stated trying to move his feet from the floor, only to scowl at the mage for her supposed interference, the bluette giving him a flat look in return.
"Robin, do you at least want to know where to go?" Vent asked poignantly, rewinding the video sent and pausing when it showed the time-stopping weapon in question, a hazy letter-like image appearing when isolated. "Slade gave us more to go on than he realized." Or maybe he does, the brunette thought on the end. "It's here in the contours of the reflection."
"Ooh. Squiggly lines. Real informative," Beast Boy muttered. With a huff, Vent tapped a few more keys, refining the image before inverting it.
PIER 41
"You were saying?" Vent asked flatly.
"Heheh... Uh... Yeah..."
"Thought so," the aerokinetic returned as he got up from his seat and headed for the T-Car.
"How... did you know to do that?" Robin said as he and the others entered the elevator, Raven using her powers to get to the garage since with Vent, Rob, Cy, BB, and Star it was a tight fit.
"Heh, there's more to me than a goofy kid who can fly and wears open-toed sandals," Vent said with a smirk as he wiggled his toes, confounding Robin's assumption of who the brunette actually was even further. If that was possible.
Arriving at the scene, Cy let his cannons to the talking for him by blowing the door off its railing, the group rushing inside with their own weapons in hand, only for the warehouse to be-
"Empty?" Starfire cried.
"Oh man!" Cy groaned.
"I don't believe this!" Robin growled.
"Guys, we've got company," Vent stated motioning to the ceiling, a few dozen Sladebots appearing out of the shadows on the rafters. "Titans! Go!" the brunette shouted taking charge for once. However, Robin suddenly began moving so fast he was nearly everywhere at once, beating down the Sladebots leaving Cy to say- "Hey! I was gonna do that!" –Elsewhere, Star was about to fire her starbolts, only for Robin to wipe out the lot again. The things dog-pilled BB and forced him to the ground, only for the greenette to turn into a bull and buck them away, the changeling snorting like... a bull, ready to fight only for Robin to once more level the Sladebots. Raven was about to use her magic, having performed five sixths of her incantation before Robin once more began beating the Sladebots.
"And Robin's worried about me snapping any moment?" Vent asked as Robin began beating one of the remaining thing's metal skulls in with his staff. "Pheh. Hypocrite," he grunted as he continued recording. If Robin did snap, then this evidence may be the difference between him being let off with a warning and potentially hurting an innocent bystander, or being locked away until he got the help he needed. Guy's too serious for his own good and may end up with a heart condition with all the hell he's putting himself through. Oh well. In the meantime if he gripes at me about snapping again, I'll just whip out Exhibit A and whammo! Instant shut-up, he thought as Robin continued beating the thing's skull in.
"Okay. We know the chronoton detonator was here. Now we just have to figure out where it went," Cy said looking around.
"No problem. We should split up and-"
"-waste hours of searching only to come up empty-handed?" Raven asked scathingly.
"Well, when you say it like that," BB said nervously.
"Raven is right. We must find some way to track the device," Star said, Robin's brow cocking quizzically as the sound of footsteps reached his ears. In the distance, a man walking between two warehouses was minding his business before-
"Freeze!" he said taking off like a shot, the terrified man racing away before a birdarang embedded itself into th concrete in front of him, stopping his advance before he was thrown against the wall, Robin holding up the S insignia from one of the Sladebots. "Tell me everything you know about this!" he demanded, the man stuttering and mumbling inarticulately as the much-smaller-than-himself person held him off the ground. "Answer me! NOW!"
"I-I've never seen it before! I don't know anything! Honest!" the man cried before Raven's power yanked him away while Vent ushered the man off. Had he really known anything the guy wouldn't have even been around.
"You said you could handle it," Raven stated holding up.
"You promised," Star said worriedly as the mage released him when he calmed down.
"We're wasting time," Robin growled striding off.
"You know, just 'cause we're trying to catch Slade doesn't mean you have to act like him!" BB called out, Robin stopping mid-stride and whirling around at the changeling.
"Don't you ever compare me to him," Robin growled, Vent suddenly standing over him with arms crossed. What was most unsettling was that it wasn't the happy-go-lucky brunette standing there, but a perfect emulation of his own instructor, down to the emotionless expression.
"Robin. Let me tell you a liiittle something I haven't said to anyone before for their own peace of mind," Vent said with narrowed eyes. "I was born and raised in Gotham. I've seen the scum of the Earth and how far people are willing to go for what they want, even for something so trivial as twenty bucks. Hell, I had to watch a homeless man kill another over a wheel of cheese that some douchebag threw between them for laughs when I was eleven," he said, much to the other's shock and horror. "As far as I see, you can either claim you and Slade aren't alike, or you can start acting like it!" he finished with narrowed eyes, Slade's mask superimposing itself over Robin's face before he shook it off. "ALL of us know you want to stop Slade and save the city. We get that, but so far you aren't really helping your case by acting like a total whackjob."
"I AM working with everyone as a team!" Robin growled with narrowed eyes.
"Really Robin? Really?" Vent asked before pulling out the camcorder and flipping the screen to face him. "Cause as far as I see, you're not as team-oriented as you claim to be," he stated as the footage of Robin beating all the Sladebots by himself played. "Lastly. You think I'm on a hairpin trigger? Well just look at this," he said showing Robin beating the metallic face of a Sladebot in for an entire minute even after it had stopped moving. "Or maybe this," he said pulling up footage of Robin threatening the dock worker.
"You've been videotaping the whole time!" Robin growled.
"Well it's kinda hard to fight evil robots when you're killing them all!" Vent returned, only to look out the corner of his eye and see Starfire sneeze violently, sending a starbolt out from her nose and nearly vaporizing the team.
"Gesundheit," Raven stated as she readjusted her hood.
"Forgive me. I am allergic to metallic chromium. There must be a source near-" she said in a tone like she had hay fever, the girl getting ready to sneeze again. Bailing out, anyone who was watching would've seen a massive green mushroom cloud, much like the one from right before the Gordanian invasion started. When the smoke cleared, Robin rapelled down a wall he'd somehow used to climb out of the blast, Beast Boy poked out from behind a trashcan, and Raven pulling Vent out of a wall-mounted portal. "Sorry," she apologized once more.
"Interesting," Cy said looking at a graph readout on his arm.
"Not really," Star said as he sniffled and groaned a bit. "On my world, chromium allergies are quite common."
"No. The key component of a chronoton detonator is a metallic chromium core, which means-" he said closing his panel.
"Starfire can track it!" BB said with a wide grin, the Tamaranean girl tilting her head to the side and sniffling slightly.
"Hey Rae. Thanks for the save back there," Vent stated as he and the others walked forward, Raven nodding and accepting the thanks as they followed the group. Understandably, the two kept to the back, Cyborg, Beast Boy, and Robin acting as their meat shields.
A minute later, the team was drudging their way through the sewers, thankfully with only water as Star took point, her "sneezebolts" intensifying every so often. Leading the way, Robin was about to apologize for earlier, and was about to ask Vent if he really did see what he said he saw, only for Raven to point to a speedboat at the end of the tunnel, loaded with the Chronoton Detonator in the back. The group was about to take chase, but Cinderblock suddenly smashed through the wall and separated him from the others. After being ordered to get the detonator as he fought Cinderblock, the group flew down the tunnel after the speedboat.
"I will not be having attitude from a boat!" Cy growled out as the thing began firing a salvo of lasers at them, they cyborg blasting wildly as Star maneuvered around the salvo, finding that it was more difficult to maneuver around them carrying Cy's 400 lb bulk than on her own in Dr. Slim's simulation. Blasting the laser turrets off, while Cy and Star fought the two commandos, BB and Raven having been knocked back a bit by laser fire, Vent ran up to the control panel, only to find the buttons without label. Tapping a few keys at random, the only response he got was-
"Invalid code."
"Invalid code this," Vent growled as he punched throught he console and yanked out some wiring, the boat slowing to a crawl as it came out into a large open space. The appropriate setting for where they would have to disarm the bomb.
"Uh... You do know how to stop this thing don't you?" Beast Boy asked shaking some sewer water out of his ear.
"How hard could it be?" Cy asked as Vent threw the control panel overboard, the cyborg reaching towards the device only for it to suddenly telescope upward, the red lights suddenly illuminating. "Ooh," he then said, realizing just how in over his head he actually was.
"Whatever we're going to do, we should to it before Slade decides to trigger this thing," Raven stated, Cy nodding as he reached toward the device once more, hoping he wouldn't accidentally set the damn thing off.
"Hold on," Vent said placing a hand on his wrist stopping him. "Cy, have you ever actually disarmed a bomb under pressure before?" he asked holding his arm back, the cyborg shaking his head causing Vent to sigh. "Stand still then and don't make any sudden movements," he said giving the robotic teen's hand a twist at the wrist, causing it to come off on a long metal connector like he had used to tie up Gizmo.
"How'd you know how to do that?" he asked before the teen pressed a button on the inside of his wrist, a small acetylene torch suddenly rising out of his hand's index finger. "How'd you know how to do that?" he then cried out as the brunette shut it off.
"When I got stuck in your body, I immediately knew how to use all your body's systems, both from within and without, or at least everything in there up to that point," he answered.
"Uh, what makes you qualified to disarm this thing?" BB asked over the brunette's shoulder.
"I'll have you know I'm more qualified than Cyborg because I had to diffuse a real bomb when I was thirteen," the brunette stated.
"So wait, then you really did see two dudes... *gulp* kill each other over a wheel of cheese when you were eleven?" BB asked with a gulp.
"You really... think I'd JOKE ABOUT THAT?" he said rounding on BB who reeled back in fright, the brunette visibly fighting back the tears that stung his eyes as the memory came back to the surface. Seeing that happen was one of the most traumatizing things he'd ever seen in his entire life, and the memory of it caused him to clutch at his head and whimper pitiably as he fell to his knees.
"It will be alright. We have all seen things we wish we had not," Star said putting a calming hand on his shoulder.
"You've never seen one human murder another before. Even after looking away, I could still hear it, and that's something that'll stay with me 'til the day I die..." Vent wheezed out, trying to shake the memory out of his mind.
"If Vent says he has more experience in this sort of thing, then maybe we should put our faith in him," Raven stated before turning to the others. "Our only other options are an alien girl who could set it off the next time she sneezes, a changeling who can't even set the TV right, and a guy who's completely in over his head," she stated pointing to Star, BB, and Cy respectively.
"Where does that put you?" BB asked, Star about to sneeze before Raven trapped her head in its own bubble, the girl's hair blown wildly out of place after the barely-holding energy bubble dissipated.
"Star detail," the mage stated evenly as Vent began removing the Chronoton Detonator's casing with a screwdriver that came out of Cy's pinkie.
"BB, I need you to be an octopus for when I unscrew the panel," Vent instructed, the changeling manually twisting the screws instead of using the electric screwdirver's tiny motor. That little jarring may accidentally set the thing off, or if anything else let Slade know it was in the process of beind disarmed.
Elsewhere, Robin was in the middle of fighting Slade and was about to snatch the controller out of the spotlight it had been placed under, only for Slade to hit him broadside with a flying kick.
"Come now, Robin. You'll have to do better than that. I haven't even broken a sweat," Slade stated condescendingly, then rushing and leaping at Robin before performing a backflip and leaping into a roundhouse kick that sent Robin reeling. Exchanging more blows only for them to be blocked, Slade then planted another steel boot across Robin's chest. Snarling in rage, the ex-sidekick tried to clear his head, the two sparring once more before he caught Robin's fist. "Good technique," he said before bending his arm at the elbow, the sound of bones grinding against one another as Robin yelled out in pain, the villain throwing Robin across the floor to slam into a wall. "Good, but not perfect," he then said as Robin woozily got to his feet, the teen screaming in pure fury before charing at Slade once more.
"Alright. The panel's off. BB, take it off with your suction cups," Vent stated after having unscrewed the four screws holding the thin metal plate in place. "And remember, no sudden movements. This thing goes off and next thing we know we're 10,000 years in the future," he whispered to the others. It didn't matter the distance, since if any of Star's sneezebolts went off, the Chronoton Detonator might go off anyway. Nodding in recognition, Octopus-BB placed a few of his tentacle's suction cups on the panel before lightly freeing it, then gently placing it on the floor before carefully returning to normal.
"Vent, are you sure you know what you're doing?" Cy asked, the group whispering out of fear of the thing going off by just that.
"Why? Do you?" he asked, the teen staying silent for a moment before he shook his head. "Didn't think so," Dead-Serious Vent said as he tapped a few buttons on the inside of Cy's wrist, the acetylene torch on the middle finger igniting as he looked at the core's inner mechanics. The chromium core is held stable within the chamber until detonation. Eleven wires connect the core chamber to the device. Two on the top. Two on the left. One on the right. Six on the bottom. Based on the style alone, cutting five wires should be enough to disable the core, he thought to himself as he analyzed the wirework both around and behind the core chamber. "Cy. When I disarm the core, I need you to remove it with your free hand. Without it, this thing's nothing more than a giant paperweight, even if Slade does push the button," he stated with no room for argument, as he got to work. The first he cut was the upper wire on the left side, the blue stabilizing energy over the red core fluctuating as it was before he cut the left wire on the upper part of the core chamber. He then clipped the one on the right, the remaining one on the left, and then lastly the one on the top. Seeing that the core was still fluctuating and had yet to deactivate, he noticed a small button placed between the fifth and sixth wires from the left on the bottom panel. Shutting off the acetylene torch, he pressed the button, the Chronoton Detonator's core slowly shutting down, the low whirring stopping until the core turned blue.
"Holy crap... You actually did it," Raven gawked, thinking the brunette had been all bravado back then.
"Yeah..." he said as his eyes glowed silver for a moment, a small breeze blowing across his sweating brow before he slowly inched backwards. "Cy, don't reattach your right hand yet. Focus on removing the core, and whatever you do..." he said nervously. "Don't let it hit the ground…" he squeaked weakly as though the results of such an action would be worse than the detonator going off, Raven squeezing his hand in reassurance as Cy reached towards the core.
"Nanoscopic probes," Slade explained to Robin several minutes later, readouts showing Cyborg, Beast Boy, Ventus, Raven, and Starfire's vital signs, as well as live images of S-marked probes clinging to their body's cells. "The chronoton detonator was merely the bait for a much larger trap. You see with the push of a button-" he said as a push-button device extended from a brace on the inside of his wrist. "-my probes will destroy your friends from the inside out."
"You can't control them. No matter what you threaten, they'll never obey you," Robin growled while Slade paced around him.
"This isn't about your friends, Robin. It's about you. It's always been about you," Slade said cryptically.
"What?"
"Sending trouble your way. Leaving cryptic clues for you to unravel. I was testing you. For some time now, I have been searching for an apprentice. Someone to follow in my footsteps," he said with his arms crossed behind his back as he leaned toward Robin. "And Robin, I've chosen you. Congratulations."
No way would I ever work for-" was as far as Robin could go before Slade held up the trigger, shutting the teen up as his thumb just barely grazed the button.
"If you join me, if you swear to serve me, if you never speak to your friends again, I will allow them to live," he stated. "But... if you disobey even the smallest request, I will annihilate them, Robin, and I'll make you watch," he threatened. "So, do we have a deal?"
To be continued...