Disclaimer: This is a fan work created at no profit and for entertainment purposes only. The author acknowledges that Teen Titans and related characters are property of Warner Entertainment.
Teen Titans – What Grows From Deception
Chapter 37 – Go! (Part 3)
Malchior instantly broke off his pursuit of Robin and Starfire to zero in on what was quickly becoming the focus of his greatest annoyance and derision. "Still alive are you? That's quite unfortunate. I imagine that your companions secretly feel the same way."
As little as a day ago, that barb might have hurt Beast Boy. Not being wanted was terrifying to him and even a tiny doubt like that might have made his stomach turn. But today was a new day and he'd spent most of it finding out a lot about how the others really saw him and how much they really did care.
"Nice try, dude, but you're gonna have to try a lot harder to make me feel bad. I'm having a really good day." Beast Boy lowered his head, clearing the forward cannons on the former T-car. "Now, Rae!"
Inside the cramped and dimly lit passenger cabin, Raven was still less than happy with the plan, especially the part where she'd largely been left out of it right up until they were in the middle of executing it. "'Now' what?" She droned.
"Push the button." Beast Boy said, confident as he watched Malchior roaring toward him. His bravado slipped when screaming blue death didn't lance out from his back to deal with the evil dragon. "Um... push the button please?"
Raven looked around. Gizmo had been in the middle of rewiring everything so Malchior could control it while wearing it when they hijacked the rig. Control panels lay open, spilling wires everywhere until it looked like a bondage convention for octopuses. "What button?"
Beast Boy felt sweat on his brow—did dragons sweat, or was he imagining himself sweat-dropping like in anime? It didn't seem to matter at the moment. "Any button Rae. Cannon, lasers, even the oil slicks would be good about now!"
"I don't know what any of these do and half of them aren't even really buttons anymore." She snapped, starting to get frustrated.
"But you helped Cy build the T-car. You should know it in and out!" Malchior was very close now.
"In case you haven't noticed, there've been some changes since it was a car." She grabbed panels and examined them as quickly as possible. Most were unlabeled because Cyborg didn't see the value in it when he was the only one allowed to drive 'his baby'. Is she survived this, she would have words with him about that.
Beast Boy started to retort, but Malchior was almost upon them. "too late!" He leapt off the gantry just as Malchior arrived, the dragon's claws sheering off the top few feet of the metal structure instead of Beast Boy's throat.
Malchior wheeled and Beast Boy matched him, using a current off the ocean to speed his ascent like he'd done so many times before as a seagull. They passed each other in air, Beast Boy upside down as he barely cleared the ridge of Malchior's back.
Stuck in the cabin, Raven was treated to a view of black scales flashing by overhead, plus a flicker of yellow that made her blink. Robin's sword was still stuck in the great beast's hide. It made her rethink their odds. Just as he'd hit them while they were worn down, now they were hitting him before he was fully healed. It could work.
With a few powerful wing beats, Beast Boy opened pace between him and Malchior before winging over to face Malchior once more. "He's coming back."
"What do you want me to do about it?" Raven groused, "None of the buttons are labeled."
"Then do what I do: just press everything."
"You would do that, wouldn't you?"
"Of course, it's more fun that way. Besides, we're doing things my way this time, remember? Aionor would never expect you to press all the buttons." Beast Boy grinned as much as his draconic beak-mouth could manage.
Raven rolled her eyes and grabbed a panel at random. "I think you're taking this concept further than logic allows. But what do we have to lose?" She pushed a likely button. The heads' up display came up on the windshield, including a targeting reticule that let out a long tone.
"I don't believe it." She said in monotone. "I actually got a missile lock."
Another tone started. Then another, and another.
"What? Thirty missile locks? What did I push?"
It was too late to stop it. The two missile racks on Beast Boy's wings opened and suddenly disgorged their entire arsenal. Lines of white exhausted crisscrossed behind more than two dozen missiles as they each tracked in on Malchior.
"That was TOTALLY the best button to push!" Beast Boy laughed.
Malchior back-winged in the face of the fusillade, turning and corkscrewing to evade as missiles burst all around. The odds were against him, however, and one hit his left wing joint directly, throwing him into a violent spin with more missiles still inbound, striking him again and again.
Raven wasn't done yet. She knew that the light missiles the T-car packed wouldn't be enough to keep the dragon down. "But if this is the weapons panel..." She pressed another button. Oil sprayed out from under the armor, coating Beast Boy's flanks.
"Yeah... that was the oil slick." groaned Beat Boy.
"Sorry." She said simply, and tried another button. This time both the sonic cannons spoke, sending win lanced of blue energy out to pound Malchior out of the sky to crash on the rocky shore of Titans' Island. His impact was accented by a volley of starbolts as Star rejoined the battle.
If it could have, Beast Boy's grin would have grown. "Hey Rae, do you see where he just landed?"
She did. "Just get me close enough to use my powers."
Laughing like a maniac, Beast Boy dove toward the back side of the island where Malchior had landed.
TT^TT^TT
The scene unfolded before Aionor's disbelieving eyes across the big screen and the six smaller ones surrounding it.
Deep in the central structure of the tower, far from Malchior's reach while in his true form, Cyborg's room had become home base; her inner sanctum. All of the tower's systems were accessible from there, and the mechanical Titan's slab, once put in a fully horizontal position, formed a perfect work surface. By and by, it was strewn with the debris of her practice spellcraft and the Puppet King's own efforts.
Efforts which, thanks to the recent turn of events, would need to be re-purposed.
"So Beast Boy and Raven survived. I hate to think that little bit of brilliance only killed Cyborg, but I suspect even he managed to survive." She tried to sound like she didn't care, like she was still in control. But was she? Her best case scenario for this point was that she killed all of them, or left a broken and half-mad Raven to grieve. Worst case, she expected to kill at least one, leading to a suicidal charge against Malchior.
Except things had changed. Beast Boy was using the armor she'd ordered Gizmo to build to make Malchior look even more insurmountable at the moment of truth, and the Titans weren't coming at the tower blindly howling for revenge; they had a plan and it was something she hadn't foreseen.
Suddenly she knew how Robin felt when Slade played him time and time again.
Puppet King picked the exact wrong time to open his sycophantic mouth. "But mistress; surely Malchior can defeat the Titans. He nearly did before. You've told me this."
It took all of Aionor's self control not to send a bolt of electricity into the animated toy.
"The Titans can't beat Malchior, but Malchior can't beat the Titans." she explained in a huff. "He's too arrogant, too gloating. He'd always let them live to run away and fight another day because he gets an ego boost from beating them. That's why I needed to destroy or weaken them myself before letting him fight them. And I need them dead before I can finish this."
Silence. A chance to think this through. Only Puppet King opened his wooden yap again.
"Then... what shall we do?"
Aionor's teeth ground. Fine. She'd show him and the Titans that she was a force to be reckoned with; a better sorceress than Raven, a better strategist than Robin.
"The only reason Malchior can't kill them is because of his personality. There's nothing wrong with his powers and body. Only the will." She turned from the screens and walked over to the slab. Amid other odds and ends, she found what she was looking for; the puppets she'd used to switch bodies with Raven.
Tossing little Raven aside, she gingerly picked up the control stick for little Aionor and made her stand up. "Waste not, want not, I guess. Puppet King, break out that other one."
"Yes, Mistress." Puppet King quickly produced a shoebox sized container from under the slab and opened it so she could see inside. An adorable black and purple dragon with a goofy sewn on smile stared up at her with googly eyes.
"Excellent. Before, I was just going to use this to make him easy to kill; making it so I saved the city from a threat that killed their beloved Titans. Looks like first I'll have to use it to do the killing.*
TT^TT^TT
A/N: This wasn't part of the original plan, but around the time I was writing the mountain segments, I realized that I had already had BB vs Malchior and Raven vs. Aionor and that the finale somehow had to out-epic those. Hence Raven and Beast Boy 'combined' by way of the armor vs Aionor with Malchior's powers and durability. Thematic! Literary! Capitalization!
We're drawing near to the end, folks. The final battle, the fluffy aftermath, and roll credits. But don't despair, sequels are coming! At the end of this fic, I'll have a stinger for TT: Menace in Mexico and you can check out first chapter of the other sequel, Freak Out, Geek Out, starring Control Freak and the girl from the video store, right here on FFnet.
Next Chapter: It's all come down to this: Raven and Beast Boy face down the one behind all the chaos, heartache and hurt feelings that have plagued them for the past month—Aionor, descendant of Rorek, last Scion of Nol.
Comin' at ya: Louie PUNCH!
… Sorry, wrong fandom.