A little child dies, but not for real.

A little human dies, but not for real. Its heart has become so still, it is found to be dead. The little human is buried with naught but a music box…the snow covers its grave, and the child awakens to the sound of its toy, resounding in its coffin.

Crack…

(A fist erupts from the ground)

Author's Notes: I have returned, things have been rough, I am STILL NOT QUITTIN' this story!!

Disclaimer: I don't own Teen Titans; I do take credit for Reaper Robin and the new character introduced here, but seeing as they wouldn't exist without the originals, that's not saying much. I also don't own the board game referenced at the end of this chapter. Short intro, story now!

Chapter 26: Ashes of the Risen.

" People say 'a phoenix rises from its ashes' like it's a good thing. What the fuck? If a phoenix were to light itself on fire, these days, it would be shot on sight. Think about it: those things never die. So they never stop consuming the planet's resources, or the Universe's, for that matter, they never stop reproducing and what's more: they burn to stay alive. They consume things in the most literal sense and are reborn, leaving behind nothing but their waste: ashes. We know what happens to a phoenix when it rises, but what about the other bit?

What happens to a phoenix's ashes, after it's risen?"

Weidar, Gale Master of XYZ 392

"Reaper is off venting his frustrations again," Slade said," he's been doing a lot of that lately."

Trigon grumbled, sending tremors through the realm.

"Yes…if this keeps up, he won't be of any use to us."

"He has lost much of his substance. He is juvenile frustration incarnate, and without any symbol to latch unto…"

"I'm aware of his limitations, slave. I had hoped to slay of my daughter's friends with this kind of demon, but perhaps… a different approach is in order."

"What do you have in mind?"

"Take away their material belongings first. Destroy their infrastructure."

"You mean demolish the T-Tower? How?" Slade risked questioning the demon.

"I know you have attempted it yourself and failed. Your mistake was relying on schemes and elaborate machinations. This kind of quest requires something a little more… blunt. This calls for a blind, uncaring and unrelenting force of destruction."

The second magic mirror matrix Slade had collected from the spirit realm came into view, merging with the free energy he'd been gathering from high schools and juvie psychiatric wards. The two met to form a glowing red-hot globe; a demonic placenta to nourish the thoughtform clone already growing in the heat of the underground.

Slade marvelled at the sight.

"I do so enjoy a good throwback once in a while."

Kai and Terra were going over manoeuvres again; rapid fire pebbles, huge boulders and of course sand-based defence and attack. The little gourds she carried on her belt and back hardly bothered her at all now; her body had gotten used to the extra weight, not only putting up more muscle, but actually enveloping the sand in her aura, making it a more reliable part of her arsenal. Things were calmer than usual: the other Titans were off in space to check up on a civilian recon satellite. Mayor Tilton had thought it prudent to give the Titans a non-crime related assignment, so that when they returned Terra to public life, they'd have a PR-buffer, as he put it. This left the aspiring Earthbender and the tortoise dwarf alone in the Tower, save Silkie, who kept quiet most of the time.

Terra was just practising her blocks when Kai froze. He looked around, sniffing the air.

"We have to get inside. Now," he ordered.

Stopping Terra's protests, he took her and Silkie to a safe room. After firmly shutting the door, he ran as fast as his little legs allowed to the main control room. He pushed a button with his clawed hand and sent out a distress call.

"This is Titans Tower of Jump City. We are under attack by a Code Red enemy. Repeat: Code Red enemy. Request immediate backup. This is not a drill," he added that last, mostly unnecessary bit to erase any doubt. His senses told him there was little time. Whatever was coming, it was coming in fast. He went to the main gate.

Sensing an attack coming from underground, he morphed his claws into fingers and made a hand sign. Slamming his hands into the ground, he caused a waterspout to shoot out of the ocean floor, catapulting a young, lithe girl into the air. As she landed, Kai could see her ashen-black hair and what looked like mascara. She was dressed in a dark grey copy of a costume he'd once guided a young man into removing. So this was a thoughtform clone, like that Reaper Robin. Only this one was clearly modelled after Terra.

The two energy-based lifeforms regarded each other, standing face to face on the rocky beach.

"I am Kai, which is short for kaijin, water spirit. I am a kappa, a turtle demon of tricky and deceptive disposition. I am part of the living spell that brought the Titans together, and part of my aspect is that of a mentor elemental. So… who are you, to challenge me?"

"I am Tephra, means ashes. I am sorrow, despair, sadness. But above all, I am death."

That explained it. This thing was made of negative emotions, the skeletal framework provided by Terra, and the sustenance…Kai guessed it was mainly teenage sadness that made her whole, while the other one, from what he'd heard, was pure male, or boyish, frustration. And to make matters worse; this thing didn't need any physical base like Red X's belt to draw power, because Terra's own power was one that bridged the ether and the physical. Plus, Terra's power was sure to have combined with her own negative emotions to at some point, which meant that this Tephra person had existed before being summoned. It was probably her, or rather the whole of ideas she represented, that had caused Terra's extreme astral infection, locking her in stone.

Kai contemplated all of this as the tulpa standoff continued. The ashen-haired girl squeezed her hand into a fist. The pint-sized turtle adjusted his footing. How to best strike at this one?

A stream of fire erupted from the girl's hand. It was filthy, clotted, corrupted with can only be described as burning dirt. The stream became an enormous ball that impacted on the Tower's shields, which Kai had luckily remembered to switch on. The forcefield took both the heat and the pile of dirt it carried, but it wouldn't stop anyone from actually entering if they just walked up to the thing, which was exactly what Tephra planned to do. She couldn't see her target, but she reckoned she'd made turtle soup of the thing.

However, if nothing else, the Invisibles make sturdy servitors.

As she stepped forward to properly lay waste to the Tower and anyone inside, Tephra was stopped short by a blue uppercut launched from underground, with one very angry turtle in its wake. True, Kai's head would only reach the girl's stomach, but his jumping prowess let him give her one wopper of a blow to the chin.

Careening back, Tephra barely managed to put up a wall between herself and Kai; a searing hot wall of half-molten lava.

Kai retreated his fist as soon as he felt the burn. Judging by the murderous look in the girl's eyes, she preferred the mid- to long-range, consistent with the emotions she was made of. She wanted to strike with impunity, and felt that any who laid a hand on her automatically deserved to die. She was just a petulant child, not at all familiar with the mechanics of combat.

Just like Terra was as Slade's apprentice. This one hadn't had too much development yet, meaning her powers and personality had to follow a fixed pattern.

Kai pressed his attack once the burn had healed. Darting around the now cooled wall, he led with a backhand to her side. Hastily, Tephra blocked the blow with her arm, but Kai just kept going. In a smooth motion, he grabbed a piece of her lower back and let himself slide in between her legs, then drove his hind paws into her stomach, ending in a summersault that left him facing a flabbergasted lavamancer and his back to the Tower.

Catching her breath, Tephra called forth a wave of boiling earth, blood red energy pouring from her arms. The wave rose up high and wide, just over half the size of the Tower, which was still pretty impressive. Kai looked on in surprise. She was stronger than he'd given her credit for.

The wave came down hard and fast.

A lot stronger.

Kai was lost in a sea of heat, pressure and darkness.

When the dust settled, a rocky mass stood between the girl and the Tower. That little speed-bump of a turtle hadn't lasted long, but still long enough to be annoying. Now to do what she'd come for…

A crack appeared in the mass. Tephra stopped.

Another crack.

"Not possible…"

An ash-covered blue hand came out.

"Un…bloody…believable."

Dragging his steaming, dirty carapace out of the volcanic ashes, Kai the kappa worked out his strategy. The main goal was to keep the Tower intact, which meant stop her from penetrating the shields. She preferred the long range, and had enough power to a short-ranged attack at bay.

He only had one option: hit her hard, hit her fast and keep punching 'till it stops being funny.

Preparing for another round, he took a deep breath. Tephra shot blazing ribbons at him, which he dodged with a great leap into the air. The lava-wielding girl squinted as the turtle got right behind the sun. She tried another shot, but was stopped short by a blue beam of energy that hit her in the stomach like a mule.

'Good,' Kai thought,' looks like the stomach's her weak spot. Makes sense.'

Coming down from his jump, he twirled around in a short and brutal spinning kick towards the girl's ankles. As soon as she was flipped up, Kai completed his spin and drove his the back of his forearm into her gut. The girl's eyes closed as her face contorted in pain, but only for the split second it took for her body to be launched into the rocky ground. Before Kai could split open her skull and put her out her misery, her eyes shot open and her body began to boil, along with the earth around it. The only thing Kai managed to hit was ashes.

'She's gone underground. Either she's hoping to get an ambush, or…'

anticipating her move, Kai put his hands on the ground again and cast forth another watery projectile, one that only formed on contact. His enemy had clearly counted on him being able to only manipulate water to a degree, not summon it.

But as he cast the water, he realised his mistake. Steam erupted from where he'd placed his hands, giving him only a moment 's warning that he was about to get searing hot lava in his face.

Despite the painful counter-attack, Kai's own waterbomb found its mark and blew the girl to the surface again. She was in better shape than he was, though: his face was burned, eyes unable to fully open. Tephra had her back to the Tower, she'd gotten past Kai, but she didn't want to leave him in this injured state, not when she could do a lot worse.

"Aww, look at that. Does it hurt? It looks that way. It's game over for you, little one," she taunted him.

'Damnit, I'm not healing fast enough. If she goes on the offensive now,' Kai didn't get much thinking time, as Tephra started shooting a volley of glass shards at him, black volcanic glass capable of tearing his skin to shreds and piercing even his hard shell. Biting through the pain on his face, he jumped to the side. He winced as two of the black shards made paper cuts in his right arm, the ones aimed at his face nearly clipping his ears off. He could see Tephra was enjoying this; she looked almost ecstatic. Born of pain, she delighted in inflicting it to others. She was single-minded, torment incarnate, or rather 'being tormented' incarnate.

With his eyes and face hurt as they were, he couldn't risk lunging at her. The only thing he really could do now was to try and dodge her attacks and hope he could recover quickly enough. That tactic went up in smoke, though, when Tephra followed up her attack with a choking cloud of dust. Kai couldn't risk going underground in this situation, so he left the cloud the only safe way there was: up. Just as he feared, the glowing hot streamers of flame impacted on his shield, knocking the air out of him and sending him flying towards the ocean.

"Enough of this," she got a little closer," time to get you out of the way," she raised her hand at him," then your Tower."

As if on cue, gusts of steam erupted in front of Kai. True, he wasn't in any position to be manipulating water, but the Atlantean who'd just arrived was.

"Aqualad," Kai greeted him," I must say, your timing is impeccable."

Tephra tried to look surprised, but she was soon too busy dodging arrows, Speedy laying down a rapid fire from the T-Car 2.

"We got the emergency call," he said, not even taking his eyes off the raven-haired girl darting around.

"Well, so I see. Watch out for her; she uses lava, and she's tricky to boot," the maimed turtle added.

Tephra, meanwhile, had recovered from her initial shock and launched a counter-attack: red energy blazing from her hands to form a burning hot missile aimed at the car. Aqualad was fast, though: in a fluid motion he sent a serpentine body of water from the ocean to the mass, letting it cool and turn to harmless stone. As the thing landed on the ground, Kai noticed two flasks of water on the boy's back.

'Not another one…' he thought.

And even as he thought that, he wondered why the other Titans East weren't joining in the fray. Random should have had some experience by now, and the twins were a force to be reckoned with, so why would they stay in the car?

Kai's attention turned to Tephra again, as Aqualad helped him up. A shrunken Bumblebee zapped the lavamancer right in the face, and it would have been an eyeshot, too, if the girl hadn't bobbed her head at the last second. The follow-up, though, did connect: returning to normal size in a heartbeat, Bumblebee slammed her foot into the still stumbling girl's stomach, knocking her down. Tephra nearly caught Bee in a patch of boiling rock, but only managed to burn the soles of her shoes as the winged hero took off.

"Wow," she gasped, glancing at her shoes," you weren't kidding; she is tricky."

An egg dropped out of the Titans' vehicle. It hung in the air a little, sprouting short legs and arms. It fluttered them a little to keep its trajectory.

"Am I hallucinating, or did a huge egg just drop out of your car?" Kai asked. He didn't get an answer, or rather it came in the form of touch: it lightly tapped him on the head, and when it did, all of his injuries instantly healed in a flash of light.

"I didn't know you had a healer on your squad," Kai mouthed his surprise.

Said healer then started bouncing this way and that, confusing the enemy with its erratic motions and giving the occasional tackle. It was a strange sight, by any standard.

"Where on Earth did you pick that up?" Kai asked.

Bumblebee came buzzing past.

"You remember the girl your creator so wantonly dropped on our doorstep?"

Kai would have answered something involving shards of personality, completing development through rescue and fnords, but he decided against it.

"Yes," he simply said," that's not her, is it?"

"It is. She had a wristwatch surgically implanted on her. Apparently someone in the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation thought it was a good idea to give people implants that let them alter their genetic code, over their entire body."

The egg thing bounced away from Tephra, stopping just long enough to add to the conversation.

"It's called the Omnitrix upgrade. You like it?" and she was off, back into the fray.

"So she's a shapeshifter now?"

"Yeah, the thing's got a few kinks in it, but it's better than what she started off with: flight and an anti-grav gun."

"What's wrong with that?"

"Flying the way she did required a mind trick she couldn't use in combat, and the anti-grav gun… well, the instructions were printed specifically so anyone who tried to use it would blow themselves up. We kinda figured that out when we had to scrape our dinner off the ceiling."

"My…" Kai voiced," how perfectly random."

"Komaan kerel, ze is weg, we moeten niet meer achterblijven," a young lad appeared in what looked like a black lion-themed costume.

"J'arrive, j'arrive," another one came, this one in a red costume, modelled after…a rooster?

Speedy didn't seem to object to their late arrival, must have had something to do with Random's machine being a little unreliable. Kai simply looked on.

Tephra had already gotten seriously annoyed at the bouncing egg thing, but these two new arrivals really pushed her to the edge. As one, they unleashed a sonic assault, the black-clad one letting out a low, vibrating roar that shook the girl's organs, the red one a high, painful pitch that made it feel like someone was running their fingernails over her bones. Combined, the attack left her reeling, and she felt blood coming up through her throat.

Rushing towards the stricken girl, Random and the two new kids coordinated their attacks so she never got any breathing time. Even her glowing hot barriers didn't help, as her concentration was too shot to make them last in between Random's bouncy blows and the foreign kids' red tonfla and black shuko.

(A/N: a tonfla is an elbow baton, shuko are tiger claws carried in the palm.)

She succumbed to the onslaught, raising a smokescreen to cover her escape.

"Well, she's gone" Kai announced," drinks, anyone?"

Some time later, over soda...

"So, where are Mas and Menos?" Kai asked.

"Exchange program," Bee replied," so we got these two clowns to replace them."

"Wie noemt ge hier ne clown, hé, noedelkop!"

She had the black one by the collar before anyone could even blink.

"I told you, don't call me that!" she kept shaking him, messing up the manes trailing from his costume.

'Vraiment, c'est toujours la même chose avec vous deux,'' the red one replied.

"Don't start with me, chicken boy !" Bumblebee threatened in reply.

Kai turned to Aqualad, the voice of reason.

"I take it the red one's French and the black one's German?"

"Worse: they're both Belgian. The black one's called Leonard, apparently that means Lionheart, or something. The red one's called Plume, which is French for 'feather'. They both have vocal powers, one has a low pitch, the other a high one and they have some jumping ability. Leonard can break his fall like a cat, while Plume can sort of float in the air for a very short time. Leonard uses shuko claws in combat, Plume's got his elbow batons. Both mutants, both Belgian, yet strangely unrelated, save their themes."

Bumblebee, meanwhile, was thoroughly shaking up both of them.

"Leonard based his costume on the Flemish Lion, the symbol of the Dutch-speaking Northern part of Belgium. Plume based his on the Walloonian Rooster, symbol of the French-speaking South. They tend to get along about as well as those two parts, too. I hear there's some German-speaking guy who completes the set, but they've never met him. Belgian politics, it seems, get repeated on a smaller scale."

"Little love lost, eh?"

"I'm not sure about the details, but from what I hear, Belgium is one messed-up country. Been on the brink of a split for a few years, I think."

"Hmm…pity. I've wanted to visit Belgium ever since I saw Goldmember," Kai added.

"So, who did we just beat, anyway?" Speedy asked, calm returning.

"That was a thoughtform clone, with a skeleton of bad memories and flesh of sadness. Usually it takes months to incubate one, but I suspect Trigon the Terrible has a loophole or two," the mentor elemental replied.

"A skeleton of memories? What kind of memories would make a thing like that?" Bee asked.

Just then Terra walked in, Silkie in tow. An awkward silence fell. Bumblebee got the idea.

"Yes, quite a predicament, but for the moment I'm actually more interested in you, Bumblebee. You used to be an Invisible, I once worked with your friend Absinthe, before she left for Japan. What changed?"

"Well, me and her loved to roleplay. I guess that's really all there is to it: I liked the character I was so much I never went back. I think it's a morphic field thing that gave me my powers. Anyway, some people with the College asked me to infiltrate the H.I.V.E., and I got so immersed with being a superhero I never quit. Never told anyone about it, either. I just got caught in a role I liked. But we still get Invisibles stuff thrown our way, don't we, guys?"

"Uch, don't get me started. If it's not squid-worshippers it's hypno-toads," Aqualad moaned.

"Don't forget the ciphermen and tadpole farms," Speedy added.

"Or the viral graffiti," Random added.

"Of the lotsverzegelaars," Leonard jumped in," ou les peintures prédatoires," Plume finished.

"Yeah, those two've pretty much seen all of Steel City's weirder crimes in the few days we've had them."

To break the awkward tension that seemed to hang around her, Terra tried to join in the conversation.

"Hi," she said.

"Hey," Random returned the greeting," don't I know you from somewhere?"

"Uh… I wouldn't know. Memory's a blank. Some mage thing, apparently."

"Wow. That sucks," the orphan replied," that sucks hard."

"Say, Aqualad," Kai said out of nowhere," we have a slight issue with a family of dolphins nearby. If we don't move them, one of these days they'll get run over by the T-sub or fired by one of our enemies. We can't even get our guns up with moving targets in the water."

"Ah, I see your problem. Lead the way," Aqualad got up from his seat and followed Kai out of the room.

"Good thing you came, actually. I'd do it myself, but my specialty's reptiles and amphibians. I can't do warm-blooded telepathy."

"Really? That's funny; you move like a warm-blooded creature, and I've always been able to do both," Kai and the Atlantean went out of the room.

"Oh, I am warm-blooded. It's just an affinity I have, is all."

"Huh… strange," Aqualad said.

Suddenly, Kai changed the subject.

"Okay, we're out of earshot. I need you to listen very carefully to what I am about to say to you. When we get back, I need you to relay the same info to the Titans East, without Terra noticing."

"O…Kay. So what's the big deal?"

"I saw the way you moved in that fight," Kai raised an eyebrow to emphasize his remark.

"What? That Tai Chi? It just helps me control the water, is all."

"Yes, I understand that, but you can't say a word of it to Terra, especially about where you got the idea from."

"How would you know…" realisation struck the boy's face," why?"

"Right now Terra isn't her normal self. Juro put a block on her memory so she could develop her powers without being burdened by her past. But if she finds out exactly how her powers are being developed, her inner censor will activate and undo everything Juro and myself have tried to do for her."

"Wait a second, you mean to tell me…"

"Yes. She is being trained based on the same principles and ideas you seem to have incorporated into your repertoire."

Aqualad buried his finger into his brow.

"Why in the Dark Depths would you do that, if you know she'll be mad when she finds out!"

"Because Terra isn't like the other Titans. Her power was spawned from grief, some primal reaction she had to the Earth that took shape as a cave spirit. She somehow managed to tap into the Earth's morphic field, pulled an elemental into being that lived only to pity her, and it in turn made her even more of a martyr," Kai rubbed his eyes," the point is, her powers came from being in pain, and if she gets them back as she is now, she'll keep on being in pain. She is stuck in a downward spiral, and amnesia is the only humane way to get her out of it. Believe me, the Invisibles have other methods for fixing this type of thing, but they'd leave her insane or dead."

"Okay, I'm with you as far as that. But what makes you think you should train her to…"

Kai interrupted him.

"Because that keeps her powers intact in a different state of mind. She's basically becoming someone else, and she'll need to be that other person in the future, at least partially, if she is to have any kind of life, Titan or not."

"But why not let her know? She seems stable enough as is," Aqualad tried.

"True, but she's not a mage, despite her powers. If she was, if she had been, the answer would have been simple: a paradigm shift. But the problem is: she still thinks like a normal person. All she really knew, all she ever was, was a regular teenager, and the problems that came with it got blown up with her powers. She never had the hero's determination, a joker's resilience at adversity, or the enlightenment of a mage. And as such, there is no way her mind could accept an idea as absurd as the one you and I simply toy with. She'd grow angry, demand her memory be restored, and either she gets it back and she's bad off as before, or she doesn't and the whole thing starts over again, this time with amnesia thrown in the mix. She needs to fully accept this new truth before she gets any old ones thrown in her face."

Aqualad let the whole thing sink in.

"Okay… I think I understand. You want her to have a different personality to fall back on once her emotional baggage is returned."

"Exactly. I see Bumblebee has led you on many an Invisible business."

"Yeah, you could say that. Just one more question I have to ask: I hear you're a part of a living spell that started this whole… Titans thing. Care to explain?"

Kai looked a little lost in thought before he answered that.

"Hmm, that. Well, basically, when Slade came to Jump City, he had some access to the Archons' technology. They're basically behind every slavery, crime or conspiracy. I take it you're familiar with them?"

"We ran into a lower one a while back, not the ruling five."

"Well, you get the idea, then. The basic problem that the Jump City cell of Invisibles had is this: it takes Invisibles to fight Archons. But it takes superheroes to fight supervillains. 'As above, so below,' any chaos mage will tell you. It's just like an organism defending itself against a new disease. When the disease mutates, the body must adapt. Now, altering chance events is relatively easy for people with the kind of power we're talking about. So the five Invisibles that were here, Juro included, made it so Slade would have a suitable enemy to fight him. Only Slade evolves as well, so the spell, and the heroes, need to evolve with him. That's why I came into the picture; to provide a sentient element. Plus, Juro has a certain…reality handicap that made him more suitable as a superhero than an Invisible. He adopted a very specific persona that allowed his powers to grow, but that sort of backfired when Terra came into the picture: his superman complex triggered when she was turned to stone, something that wouldn't have happened in the first place if there hadn't been any Teen Titans here. I'm sure you know how it is: Bumblebee adopted her persona as well."

"Yeah…that never really made sense to me."

"Basically, the strongest kind of magic comes from living as something else. Writers and actors do it all the time and never know it. In any event, if my creators hadn't done what they did, Terra wouldn't be in this situation."

The Atlantean nodded.

"Okay. I'll keep quiet about the… thing, and I'll make sure everyone else gets the message."

"Much obliged," quoth the turtle.

Upon their return, the subject turned to the enemy again.

"So what do we do now? Wait for the other Titans to get back, or…" Speedy tried.

"No. An enemy like this will want to recuperate for a while, a couple more hours, given her strength, then she'll want to feed," Kai replied.

"Feed?" Random asked," on what?"

"Well, Trigon's using thoughtforms because if he exposes his own influence too much, there's chance we can work around it. Juro and Raven can both adequately tap into Trigon's veing and use his own power against him, at least as long as he's stuck as an idea. So this mode of attack lets him act without really exposing himself. He'll try to bring himself into the material world at some point, and that's pretty much when the world will end…if he succeeds."

"Oké, maar wat gaat die meid dan nu doen?" Leonard asked.

"She doesn't have any of Trigon's essence in her, so she'll likely seek out some centre of… well, misery, and feed on it as she destroys it."

Plume raised a hand.

"Est-ce que ça veut dire qu'elle va guérir des gens? "

"No," Bumblebee replied," it means she's going to the nearest building where there re enough astral parasites to devour. Those things basically gorge themselves anyway; they only revert to ideas when they lose sustenance and turn physical when they've developed enough. She needs to pierce their own auras, to get any energy, and that means piercing an already compromised aura… that of the host. In other words, she's going someplace like a rehab clinic and slaughter every patient, or anyone who gets in the way."

"Tof," Leonard voiced.

"So the best course of action is to patrol all the negative centres in the city, especiall the ones dealing with teenagers: she'll be looking for her own frequencies. Judging from the damage you all dealt, I'd say we have about two hours before she's at fighting potential again."

Some time later…

"Kai here, everyone in position?" Kai remained in the T-Tower, centre of communications.

"Aqualad here, I've got the psych ward and rehab centre in the east."

"Bumblebee reporting, I've got the dance academy, but I doubt this is a potential target."

"Well, there are mostly girls there, and it's a likely place to find an eating disorder epidemic. We need to keep our options open. Random?"

"Random here, covering the games convention. I dunno about this, a lot of these guys seem pretty normal; no real addicts in sight."

"So much the better. Be ready to move. Speedy?"

"I'm coming up on the gospel church now. Are you sure you're not just being racist about this?"

"People: the targets involve places where teens are more vulnerable to astral infection, or places where infected people meet. So yes, that includes games centre, if there are any excessive players there, and yes, that includes the gospel church, that mainly relies on submission through exhibitory trance. Now, Belgians, where are you?"

"Nous avons pris notre position, mais j'ai une petite question : ne serait-il pas possible de détecter ces énergies en place de deviner où elles sont ? "

"Well, we can't. The things we're looking for border on ideal and material, something between shaped and shapeless. It's impossible to get a reliable detection system going."

"En wat als die Tephra ze wel kan voelen? Straks zit ze derop en kunnen we ze weer op volle kracht bevechten," Leonard queried.

"She can't, Leonard," Bee replied," she's material, and untrained. She's just as blind as we are."

"Dus wij zitten hier in een hinderlaag voor iemand die niet eens weet waar het aas is?" Leonard panicked.

"What did he say? My Dutch is terrible," Kai admitted.

"Leonard's on to something, Kai," Bee concurred," Tephra doesn't know about most of these places, does she? If Terra's never been there… even if she has, there's no way that info would go over to her. We shouldn't be staking out these places, we need to find…"

"Oh gods…" Kai realised his mistake.

The 'La Grenouille' Company has its roots in Belgium. Its Jump City outfit is a silvery skyscraper located near the centre of town, a little eastward. As a company, they're mainly specialised in communication; producing ever more wonderful add-ons for cell-phones, laptops, GPS-systems and the like. It is a respected corporation, with many people in its employ.

And somebody just blew up their front desk.

Kai was the first to get the signal.

"People, we have explosions at 'La Grenouille', centre of town. Who's closest?"

"I am, Aqualad quickly replied," I'll try and hold her for as long as I can," he added, rushing in with a tidal wave he got out of a manhole. He always remembered to clean the sewage water first, then ride it, though the stench would give him an advantage in dodging traffic.

Tephra, meanwhile, simply stood in the smouldering remains of the reception floor. A handful of security guards were clutching at their wounds, clinging to life. The explosion had caused a lot of damage, but nobody was dead…yet. According to what she'd been told in Hell, her target was up about twenty floors. She looked up at the ceiling. Might as well…

The water hit her hard, sending her sprawling towards the elevators. The last few members of staff were still evacuating, and Aqualad hoped the people on the upper floors would follow suit and get to safety.

The girl rose from the wet floor, angry vapours steaming off her body. Maybe the pain she'd suffered in the last fight had affected her personality, making her more… cold and calculating. Her eyes told of schemes and ideas, prospects of pain, and Aqualad had half a mind to give her a black eye just to get her to quit staring.

The Atlantean found himself in a bind. This building didn't have a sprinkler system, but a thrice-damned gas outlet for their fire safety. Besides that, the girl had evaporated most of the water he'd brought in. Of course, that was exactly the reason he carried two bags of water on his back. Kai had remarked on it already, but Tephra didn't know quite how subtle Aqualad's water powers had gotten.

She didn't stick around to find out, either. Rather than fight head-on, Tephra ignored the Atlantean and shot herself straight up, covering herself in a scorching missile. The boy reeled from the blast, but he quickly realised her plan: whatever power source was in the building, it had to be up. And he had to give chase.

"She's going up, you guys," Aqualad reported.

"What, on the stairs?" Speedy asked, dodging traffic on his cycle.

"No, the ceiling, actually," came the reply, as he positioned himself underneath the hole.

"Just checkin'."

Aqualad braced himself for the jump. He got out the water he carried as a back-up and let it wrap around his legs, moving his fingers in a delicate pattern he'd copied from some dumb cartoon about bald kids. He'd never actually done this before, but he'd seen it on TV, and it looked pretty easy, so he figured it should work. He built up tension in the liquid, adding more and more power to it… then he released.

Like riding a whale's waterspout, he shot up just as high as Tephra had, landing neatly on the tenth floor, give or take. As he recovered his balance in the executive office, he tried to recover some of the water that he'd spent on his jump, catching most of it in mid-air. He didn't need that much, anyway. He continued his pursuit and quickly caught up with her, or rather, she almost caught him. He ran right into a black cloud of smoke launched from behind a corner, and had just enough presence of mind to duck beneath a follow-up, even as the ashes burned his eyes. In true warrior fashion, he kept his close hand between himself and the opponent, using his far hand to reach for the water and clean his eyes. Making a waterglove was easy if you knew the trick for it. Making it into a weapon was when it got really cool. Before Tephra knew what was going on, she felt a dull thud on her forehead, like a rock, only…wetter?

She barely managed to regain her balance as she heard and felt the two snic waves coming at her. She shot up again, gaining another floor or two. Plume and Leonard came running.

"Wait, you were farthest off, how'd you get here so fast?"

The two boys looked at him gravely.
"On est belge," Plume said," wij weten wel iets van files," Leonard added.

"Sorry I asked," even as he said it, the two led the way with their prodigious jumping abilities, leaving Aqualad to heave himself up in his own time. It was just like getting out of the pool, only heavier… harder…and twice in a row. It was times like this Aqualad considered a career as a lifeguard. He knew he would miss the heroics, but the sight of women's beach volley would definitely soften the blow.

By the time he'd reluctantly dragged himself up, Bumblebee and Random had already arrived. Random into her slower airborne form: a giant crab with bat wings. Bumblebee always said that thing looked decidedly Lovecraftian, but the rest preferred the term 'weird'.

"She's headed for the elevator," Random called, chasing after Tephra in that pseudo walk/float/fly only an alien crab can pull off. Aqualad noticed a water cooler, and decided he needed a quick refill for the next round.

Random came flying in with her clumsy claws and carapace on ramming speed, as the two Beligans tried to get a shot in. However, Tephra was faster than before, more potent, or sharper, like she was resonating with something in the building. She dodged every single blow as she casually waited for the elevator, or blocked it easily, never dropping her guard to attack. Leonard was the first to voice his suspicions.

"Ze probeert ons gewoon voorbij te komen. Ze doet niet eens haar best om te winnen!"

"Tephra blocked another blow,"Oh, ik doe wel mijn best," she replied in perfect Dutch, before shoving him away to block a claw.

"You speak Dutch?" Random asked as the lavamancer held her claw with both searing hands.

"I'm evil. What do you expect?" came the reply. Then she pushed the claw away and drove the Titans back with a low spiralling kick, blazing ash trailing from her foot.

A bell sounded, signalling the arrival of the elevator.

Tephra turned around, facing a nocked arrow.

"Hello," Speedy greeted her, before letting it loose. None of the Titans really knew how those photon arrows worked, but they did know that it was the same mechanism as Robin's disks, and that it packed a wallop. A big wallop.

Grunting at her surprise concussion, Tephra tried to stand up as the Titans East surrounded her, weapons at the ready. Tephra was feeling queasy, and her head spun. It felt like the right half of her body was doing the butterfly while the left half was going at a crawl. It was a tense moment.

And the moment shattered with a most disturbing sound. Everyone turned to look at the woman who'd just appeared out of nowhere… literally. The reason they turned was… she was clapping her hands in applause. Tephra glared at the woman.

"Miss Spectra, just the person I was looking for."

Said person was a redhead who appeared to be in her mid-twenties. She wore glasses that did nothing to hide her stunning looks and eerie aura, and a red business suit. Her hair went up at the sides, making it look like she had devil's horns. The Titans were a little confused, to say the least.

"Well," she said to Tephra, ignoring the rest," let's get started then, shall we?" then she became transparent and lunged at the lavamancer, making them both intangible and driving the pair through the floor as they grappled.

The Titans East stood flabbergasted.

"Ooo…kay, anyone know what that was about?" Speedy asked.

"Kai, we got a ghost here," Bee went on the comlink," it just went through the floor with Tephra, looked like a C.E.O."

"That's bad," Kai replied," no matter what, you have to stop them from merging. If two of those things try to take over each other…"

"Whoever comes out on top will be unstoppable," Bumblebee finished.

Just to kill the suspense, Random's Omnitrix returned her to normal.

The two landed in a dimly lit basement, form restored. Tephra thought she heard her bones breaking, and her head felt even worse when she came down on the cold hard floor.

Spectra took a fighting stance as the wounded girl got back on her feet.

"Son how did a girl like you find a creature like me? Archons got tired of me?"

Tephra wobbled a bit, then bit through the pain in her head to take some stance.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Archons and Invisibles, girl," Spectra sneered," the ultimate battle of ideas. Infinite possibilities against infinitesimal, freedom against control. How can you not know the two sides? Those heroes up there are on one side, we're on the other. And there's no way you could have known I was here if you didn't know someone in the conflict."

"Oh… that," Tephra muttered, stumbling a bit," it was this guy with an orange mask."

Spectra loosened her stance, still ready to lunge, though.

"Slade… but he's with Trigon…he's betrayed the Kings?"

"Hmm, everyone's on one side, huh? Then I guess Trigon's on the bad side. Except his idea of control involves turning people into stone and wrecking the Earth. That's his version of paradise, while yours leaves people enslaved but standing. But both are trying to do the same thing, so I guess you might say Slade… Reaper…Trigon…me…we just have to start killing our own."

Spectra glared at her. There was no way she had any power left. She was stumbling, injured and weak.

Just as the Titans came bursting through the elevator doors, Spectra flew through the air and into Tephra, knocking her to the back wall. Bumblbee saw the girl contorting as the ghost tried to consume her essence. They were too late. Bee looked at Aqualad. He gave her a curt nod.

Tephra felt the presence taking over her body, permeating her every muscle, tendon, organ. Her mind was invaded by the alien feelings of hatred and malice.
Then, her whole body shook with a low monotone that came from inside her head. It sounded like a whale's song, or more like wailing. Her lungs and heart started to lose track of time. Her muscles burned, lactic acid piling up in the anaerobic environment her body had become.

The Atlantean. That damned Atlantean was using telepathy to attack her autonomous nervous system. The outside influence panicked in realisation and cut the bonds with its would-be victim. Spectra stumbled back towards the Titans.

"What in blazes are you? You're no apparition," Spectra exclaimed, shocked.

Tephra giggled, doubled over from her ordeal, as the Titans closed in on her and Spectra, carefully to avoid any surprises.

"No, I'm nothing like you. I'm solid, so you never really had a chance of absorbing me."

Spectra looked at the heroes behind her, a look of terror in her face.

"For Boriah's sake, don't just stand there! Take her down!"

As the Titans lunged, Tephra took an access card and ran it through the reader. Funny how you forget things like that: she'd lured in Spectra, tricked her into trying to absorb the girl, swiped her card when she became physical again, and she'd been pushed into the very door she wanted.

The Titans rushed at her. She grinned as the door opened and ran in, sending up a cloud of ash.

The Titans East emerged from the cloud into a dark room, contrasted by blue lights. The lights were stacked were like groceries in the aisles of a supermarket. Hundreds there were, each one a human-sized pod. Inside, they could see the damned: runaways, juvie delinquents, or just downright unwanted children. Boys and girls, surgically engineered to be genderless, anonymous drones with only the function that their slavers and masters gave them.

This was a tadpole farm, children's division. Each blue light was no more than a projector, sending thoughts from a program through an otherwise useless human brain to another, receiving human brain. These were the cornerstones of the nameless industrial gods that plagued the Earth. These were the mindless, lifeless though living servants of the demons that sent PG-rated corruption into the hearts and minds of children all over the world.

This very place was the enemy. This place was a horror where mutilated children were exploited like machines.

"Didn't we do this last week?" Speedy asked.

Tephra was twirling near one of the aisles, her injuries already healed. Every time she moved, another tank came alive with spasms, before stopping forever, a death after death. Speedy nocked an arrow and let it fly. Tephra caught it in a magmatic wall without even blinking. The Belgians gave her combined sonic blast, but only managed to break all the pods in its path, spilling their contents but not waking up the comatose occupants. Tephra just danced around in the newfound temple of sacrilege, riding on a high of energy.

Tephra spinned, little red globs of lava shooting out at insane speeds. Aqualad barely managed to put up a thin watery membrane as Random ran for cover, the other Titans pelted by hot but not burning stone.

Random frantically twirled at her Omnitrix. Damn Sirius Cybernetics technology never worked the way it should. Which alien could fight an ecstatic lavamancer? Neggy? No, she was too fast for that now. Migo? It didn't work five minutes ago, wouldn't work now. She banged her head in her palm, still unfamiliar with all this hero business.
'Get over it, Random,' she thought to herself, 'get over it and think.'

She thought long and hard. The best alien to fight Tephra was…

The fight with the Titans too odd to watch, to say the least. At every move, Tephra destroyed another tadpole, taking what was left of its corrupted life energy. As the Titans laid down fire, water and fists, Tephra stood unharmed, turning the underground farm into a silent cacophony of death struggles. Her power was growing fast, and chances were even if they tried to flee Tephra would chase and kill them.

They needed a miracle.

Tephra stopped dancing, paralysed by some unseen force. Something seemed to suck the light out of the around her. The Titans got the hint. Speedy let out a freezer arrow at the dazed girl, frostbite on her skin denying her even the chance of grimacing at the impact in her gut.

"What the…" she felt her power flowing out, slowly but surely.

"Meet Lich," the darkness spoke," it's an intelligent shade of black capable of sucking your body heat 'till you're as cold as space itself."

That thrice-damned girl…she her in an etheric vicegrip.

"Give up," Random said.

Tephra had trouble breath as the cold from the arrow and cold of the darkness made her shake; it was draining heat from her skin first. If the cold got to her blood, she was done for. Still, she had an idea. Intelligent shade of black, eh? Why not find out of colours can feel pain?

Lave pourded from her every pore, heating the girl back up, and more importantly, lighting her up into a bright red. She cackled as she was released and Random's watch returned her to normal. Tephra didn't get time to finish her off, though, as the other Titans pressed their attack again. This time, Tephra's speed was off, and it wasn't long before the shots started connecting, driving her back against another pod-ridden wall in the endless farm.

Random's little trick had apparently shocked the girl out of her high. It was over. She'd taken as much energy as she could handle, and they'd snapped her right out of her power trip.

She raised her hands in surrender as the heroes formed a semi-circle around her.

"I give up. I know when I'm beaten."

The Titans were surprised for a moment, before a burst of steam erupted in front of Random, pebbles knocking her back. Aqualad was the only one who didn't break eye-contact as Random fell, hit but still not burned.

"I've seen Avatar. That trick doesn't work on me."

He went at her with his bare hands, the others in tow, but they were too slow. A cone of fire enveloped the black-haired girl, and when it cleared, Tephra was gone. The Titans picked up a shaken Random from the ground and went to miss Spectra, who was crawling towards the exit.

They neatly surrounded her as they began questioning.

"Now, what should we do with you?" Bee asked.

"I'll talk. Just tell me what you want to know and I'll talk," she was at the end of her strength.

"First question: what are you doing here?"

"Well, I'm a demon, obviously. I specialise in adolescents. I used to work schools as a counsellor, but this is more profitable, you see. Kids disappear, get processed, and then they become transmitters."

"Then what exactly are you broadcasting?" Aqualad asked.

"Thoughtforms, nightmares… the surgeon fish of the Nether Side. Every body in there is a factory for lower ghosts. Or was, at least, with the quarantine broken they're all useless now. Brains non-functional, you see."

"And what about Tephra? What do you know about her?"

"She's complete now, fully solid. She can't be banished with a simple spell any more. Neither can I, mind you, but she's got a body that's rooted in the material world. She works for Trigon, but you knew that. And Slade, well… he's on the same side, but a different division. From corruption and deception to destruction."

"What do you mean by that?" Bee asked.

"Heh, Slade's still on our side. You think the Invisibles conflict has a limit? Everyone and everything fits in one plce or the other. Trigon's a contingency plan: if all else fails, blow up the world. Even the damage done here will repay itself once Trgion gets through. Collateral damage and all that."

"You hearing this, Kai?" Bee asked on the com.

"Every word. Looks like this is bigger than even we knew."

"Which of course brings us back to the original question: what do we do with you now?" Bumblebee half-threatened.

Spectra lay there, spent by her failed absorption.

"What are you gonna do, kill me? You think I'd talk if I didn't know I was protected from you? I'm already a ghost and you can't lock me up. There's no jail you have that they can't break me out of. I'm on the chain, kids, and there things in place to keep me there."

"Oh, we know," Bubmblebee replied," see, I used to have a white badge myself, so I know how to deal with the likes of you. Aqualad?"

The whale's call sounded in Spectra's head, blotting out her sense of time. They must be really desperate if they're trying the same trick as they did with… whatshername…

'Oh damn,' was the last thought that went through her before she reverted to being a non-sentient idea. Funny thing about the Archons, or any other conspiracy, for that matter: they never think outside the box. Take Spectra, for example: she was made of thought and emotion, but not in a fully physical form. That meant she could fly through walls, temporarily possess people, and feed on certain high frequencies of energy. It also meant she could monitor the now dead tadpole farm without going mad with exposure. She was protected against most conventional modes of attack. However, she was very vulnerable to telepathy.

Usually, in order to kill, a telepath needs to attack the autonomous nervous system and shut down a few bodily functions, like heartbeat or breath. But for creatures who weren't fully solid, a more subtle approach was in order. Being without the weakness of a respiratory or cardiovascular system, the best bet was to get into their very essence and make their energy vibrate on a different level, thereby denying them their foothold in the physical realm, taking away their sentience, and rendering them no more dangerous than any other idea. It was a fairly clean way of dealing with Spectra and the like.

"Say hi to Quimper for me when you see him," Bee taunted before Spectra disappeared entirely.

The Titans East left the dead tadpole farm to the police to clean up as much as they could (it was a conspiracy, after all) and went back home after getting the okay and good work from Kai.

"So now Robin and the gang need to deal with Tephra too, huh?" Speedy asked on the way.

"Yep. That one'll be handful," Aqualad reply."

"I'm more worried about Terra," Random added," are they really doing the right thing? I mean, if those two ever go head-to-head…"

"Terra sera déjà prëte si ça se passe, " the Walloon replied, " et elle aura des amis pour l'aider, enfin, je suppose. »

"Tja, je weet nooit hoe ze zal reageren eens ze weer zichzelf is," the Flemish boy said," voor hetzelfde geld legt ze alles in puin."

"Nah, I don't think, so,' Speedy added," I think if she sees why they did that, she'll understand everything. It's facing her own memories that'll be a problem."

"Yeah," Aqualad replied," having to fight a part of yourself must be rough."

Bumblebee swallowed hard, repressing some latent memory.

"If Tephra and Terra ever do fight… you're forgetting just one thing."

Silence fell.

"Tephra's a separate entity now, not just memories with energy thrown in. It's never that simple: she can think, she has moves Terra could never have know. Terra wouldn't be fighting a part of herself."

Bumblebee adjusted her steering as silence returned.

"She'd be fighting yet another supervillain, and that's all."

"I don't give a rat's ass about your ash-collecting, you cannot roll another D-20 to save yourself just 'coz you keep dying!" Tim Hunter, a.k.a. Malorik, Dungeon Master, to Johnny, a.k.a. Weidar.

End of chapter 26

Okay, the reason I've been so long...summer exams. Very...very...bummed out about that. But on the bright side, my first semester now opens up a lot of free time. If I have to force myself to keep writing, I will, because this fic has changed my life, and I won't quit it. Okay, maybe that was exaggerating a bit, but still...no quitting this! Also, about the chapter, it was necessary, even if it wasn't as good. I've introduced the Invisibles conflict numerous times already, I've mentioned Bee's involvement in it, all that needed to be fleshed out more. And as for the Belgians... I don't speak Spanish. Period. And to get the same feel as with the Spaniards, I decided to use Dutch and French. Also note I didn't proofread this chappie as much as I'd liked to, mostly because of time constraints. I wanted it up as soon as possible. So now it is, review!