Disclaimer: I don't own Teen Titans, all rights to the owners.
KORI'ANDER
Dinner does not, in fact, make up for the embarrassment earlier, but the Emperor still says little, because saying anything antagonistic only spurs on the Yaemanese. It is frankly incredible how they manage to keep the Emperor in check using their cultural peculiarities.
Even so, small talk is agony. I must still perform my role as prince, as do the other nobles, if only for the sake of not letting on to the Emperor that anything as wrong (as well as to convince the servants that we are doing our noble duties), and so I have to try and navigate talking to Thaernun while remembering when I am supposed to smile, or nod politely, or any of the other thousands of nuances that come with noble politics.
This is why I have always been happy to leave the role of crown prince to Kom'ander. I despise little more than noble politics.
It does not help that Thaernun needs to put on her façade, and consistently makes the conversation very awkward to play into her fake shame fetish.
I could not care less for this whole thing. I am simply waiting for the opportunity to talk to Thaernun when she does not have to keep up her façade so we can try to organize something against the Emperor.
I am immensely thankful, for once, that Kid Flash is here, because she (eventually, after watching me flounder for half an hour) does a fantastic job of occupying Thaernun and giving me an excuse not to engage in that painfully awkward conversation.
To my frustration, however, I get no chance to properly speak with Thaernun for the rest of the day. Either the Emperor or my brother are present, preventing us from having the conversation we both want to have.
So I have to go to my room that night after talking with the other Titans, all of us trying to come up with some plan to get time alone with Thaernun and/or her parents. We do not have a lot of time before the wedding happens, and as much as I might have time to speak with Thaernun after the wedding, I would rather not go through the hassle and scandal of a royal divorce if I do not have to, or else shackle myself and her to a life neither of us particularly want.
It is easier said than done to get time alone with her, because organizing the royal wedding is a time-intensive process, and the Emperor continues to be a constant presence that interrupts any opportunities I find.
I just have to pray that the others are having more luck than me.
CHANGELING
This time I hear her before I see her. The staggered footsteps are quite distinct now that I know what to listen for, and her ragged, harsh breathing is plenty audible. The lack of wind helps me hear her as well.
I'm not here to confront her though. I turn into a bat and flutter up to the roof, and wait patiently for the owner of the approaching footsteps.
The obsidian-skinned zombie girl appears from around the corner. Her red, pinprick eyes scour the hallway of the decaying apartment building, and light on my form for a moment.
I'm counting on her night-vision being imperfect. Night-vision is usually in monochrome or a form of seeing heat, both of which my green color won't give away. To her (hopefully), I'll be just another bat.
My bet pays off. The girl's eyes slide off me and she moves down the hallway, checking rooms with surprising quietness. As if sensing that I'm nearby, her breathing has gone quiet, and her shuffling is much less pronounced.
The girl checks each room, sometimes moving into them to open closets. I can't help but notice, as she silently follows her, that the girl doesn't bother to go in to check rooms that have ruined closets, even ones you can't see from the doorway. That means the girl knows the exact state of each room, which is something I need to keep in mind.
I'm trying to figure out a way to either defeat or capture her, because she attacked me on-sight before and I don't want to leave her loose, but it's not easy. She's basically me, but minus the animal transformations and plus a lot of regeneration, and I know perfectly well how dangerous that makes her. There's no way the JCPD could easily capture her considering she could shrug off bullets, and trying to fight her in close quarters would be a death sentence.
If it weren't for her regeneration I could take her on myself, but of course nothing is that simple. If it were that simple, I would have won our first round.
Tonight my only mission is to follow her around. I want to see if she has a home or den, somewhere I can direct the JCPD for an ambush in the future.
Following the girl is super fucking boring though. She shambles around the giant abandoned apartment building for hours, checking room after room and freezing every time she hears a sound.
This dull monotony is suddenly and brutally interrupted when a small furry form, a racoon, crosses the hallway in front of the girl. Within half a second of spotting the animal she's lunged forward with claws outstretched, and a second later there's a dead racoon on the floor and blood dripping from her claws.
I make sure to keep a few meters back from then on. I'd rather not share the same fate.
There are no other such incidents through the night, but that's little consolation. I have to be constantly alert despite a grand total of zero interesting things happening for several hours. She does the same things over and over, checking every level of the massive apartment building from top to bottom, moving to the next big building, and repeating the process.
This goes on all night. She's like some sort of twisted night watchman, ensuring her designated territory is free of intruders with single-minded dedication.
I have to wonder just how conscious, how sentient, she is. Everything I've seen so far suggests either unreal amounts of patience and dedication, or a total lack of the ability to be bored. She seems instinctual in how she reacts, like an animal lashing out at anything that moves rather than a person.
I also notice the complete lack of animals in the area, aside from that one racoon. You'd expect to see something out this late at night. Maybe a rat, a mouse, a rabbit even. More racoons maybe. But no, there's nothing. The closest thing I notice is an owl perched on a rooftop, but it quickly takes flight when the girl shambles close.
The small skeletons scattered around some of the buildings give me a vague idea as to what happened. I have a suspicion she's killed all the wildlife in the area that doesn't hide itself well enough, and is unfortunate enough to cross her path.
This is all well and interesting, but that's not what I'm here for. Dawn starts to break, and suddenly there's a shift in her behavior. She squints against the sunlight and quickly shields her eyes with her hands. She also stops her patrol entirely and starts shuffling off back to the apartment… or close to the apartment.
Switching to a more normal bird, a robin, I follow from a distance as she moves around the back of the abandoned apartment. She steps through the broken back fence to reach the building directly behind it: an old two-layer bowling alley.
I have to make a split second decision as she goes to open the back door. Am I following her? Can I do so with relative safety?
Well no, of course I can't do so safely, but that's rarely stopped me before and it's not going to stop me now. I shapeshift once again, this time into a fly, and flit inside the door when she opens it up.
The back entrance opens directly into a kitchen, probably because this is how they take out garbage. To the left is a crew room, and to the right is a stairway. The girl takes the stairway.
The stairway leads to behind a snack counter that has long been stripped of its contents. At the same time, there's a suspicious lack of dust on said counter and everywhere else. Either this place is oddly dust-repellant, or someone is actually cleaning the area… which frankly doesn't seem like this girl would do.
Other movement catches my eye, and I buzz deeper into the unlit building. Fly vision really isn't suited for the dark though, so I'm forced to switch again to actually see what's going on. I opt to land up high on a sprinkler and shift into an ogre spider, which have incredible night vision.
The sight that greets me is a surprising one, and a worrying one. It turns out that the girl isn't the only zombie-like person around. In various places in this second layer of the bowling alley I can see other people just like her. There's an extremely elderly looking man and woman sitting together in a corner, completely motionless, on an assembled bed of seat cushions that have clearly been ripped from various stools and chairs around the building. Their eyes are closed, but their chests rise and fall slightly, showing that they are, in fact, alive. Just like the girl their skin is the color of obsidian, and they have long claws on their fingers.
There's a middle-aged man near them, sitting cross-legged just off their cushion pile. He's awake, and his head snaps to the girl I followed in here when he notices her presence. They stare at each other for a moment, and I half expect another impulsive rush of violence from the girl, but the moment passes without incident and they then go on to ignore each other.
The girl's path quickly brings my attention to some of the other residents of the bowling alley. There's also a middle-aged woman standing in a corner with her back to me, fiddling with something on a table she's dragged over. She's directly blocking sight of what she's working on, but I can see small gears and screws scattered around as well as tools so I guess it's mechanical.
That's not all though. As if summoned by the girl, or just not appreciating the light probably shining through the windows of the upper level, four more figures descend the main staircase. In keeping with the odd pattern I've noticed, there are two more pairs of age-identical people, one always male, and the other female. This time it's adults (20-30 years old I think) and infants.
The infants in particular are… disturbing. When I say infant I mean less than six months old, they shouldn't be able to walk, yet they run around on their tiny legs with no apparent issues. As always, they have obsidian skin, red pinprick eyes, and claws. One of them, the girl, is holding a small windup toy which she occasionally gnaws on.
There's something very wrong about seeing an infant in such a state, knowing they're one of Chang's experiments. At least they don't seem to be as crazy as the girl I followed. As soon as they're fully down the stairs they run to bother the middle-aged woman in the corner, jumping and holding up their hands as if asking for something, exactly like you'd expect a child to do. Maybe not what you'd expect an infant to do, but I'd wager that their actual age doesn't add up with their physical appearance, and they're not exactly showing unusual behavior for a toddler or something.
I can't help but notice there's something missing from the pattern. Every pair is complete; adults, middle aged, elderly, infants… but there's only one teenager. The girl I followed here has no counterpart.
I also notice other small things about these people. While their skin color has all been turned to obsidian, even in the pairs there are noticeable physical differences that make it clear to me that these people might not have been related to each other like twins or something. One of the adults is clearly of African descent, and the other looks Japanese. The two infants… well it's hard to tell with them from this distance, but one of them has slightly fuzzy hair you'd expect off someone with a natural afro, and the other has almost unnaturally straight hair. You get the idea. Only the elderly pair both share a phenotype, being both very distinctly Korean.
What exactly was Chang hoping to accomplish with this weird mish-mash of people? Why control for age and opposite gender at all? Chang doesn't strike me as someone who cares for the thematics of having this weird "family" of pairs.
I watch this group of people with a fascination. The girl I followed shambles to the back of the room, curling up inside at the end of a depowered lane where the pins would be. The area around her is notably scratched up except for a small television and old VCR player hooked up to something behind the pin curtain that allows them to stay powered, and a thin blanket. The girl pulls the blanket over herself, pokes the television and VCR on with surprising delicacy, and then motionlessly stares at the flicking images on the screen.
The infants are clearly interested in the flickering lights, but unlike with the middle-aged woman, they don't approach the girl. In fact, no matter how much they run around the room, they noticeably avoid the girl's little cubby.
Deciding I've seen enough, I shift into a bat and turn to leave, only to freeze in my spot. At the stairway I entered from, watching silently and staring directly at me, is the teenage girl's missing counterpart. He holds my gaze, and I get the distinct impression he knows exactly who I am after seeing me shift.
He's got various things in his hands, held in plastic bags. I can see a number of cans and food boxes peeking out from the top. He's also the only one of them not wearing the blue outfit from Chang's lab, as instead he has dark pants and a hoodie that covers most of his face, not to mention glasses to obscure his eyes and thick gloves. I can only identify that he is, in fact, one of the group because of the way his skin clings tightly to his chin, which is just about the only visible part of his body, and only because the face mask I can see peeking out of his pocket isn't on his face at the moment.
After a full minute of sustained eye contact (at least, I assume so, the glasses sort of hide it) he finally turns his vision away from me and walks into the room, giving no sign to the others that anything was amiss.
He also speaks perfect english, which completely throws me off. There's not even a hint of the moaning, near animalistic vocalizations of the girl. He calls for the kids to come help him, and hands them each a bag, nearly the size of their whole bodies, which they hold awkwardly in their clawed, undersized hands. They take noticeable care to avoid grazing the handholds with the pointy tips of their claws.
I take this opportunity to take off and fly up the stairwell, untransform, and slip out the back door into the sunlight. I'm remarkably less sure of what I should do about them now. If it was just the animalistic girl, I wouldn't hesitate to give away their location to the JCPD. The girl is a threat. The others seem less crazy though.
I think I'm going to have to return her for more surveillance in the future, but for now I'm just exhausted from staying up all night and I want to get home. I'm in no state to be thinking over anything important.
I know where I want to end with both story arcs (roughly), but I'm kinda winging it when it comes to exact plot points. Especially Changeling. I have a few ideas here and there of course, but stringing them together in a useful or coherent way is rather difficult.
Origami Stars: Ah, got it.
Maaaybe Kom does. Who knows?
Yay!
TREBOR.E: Indeed.
iHateFridays: :D
Azarath Cat: Glad to hear as always. They were fun to write as well. Kima is always a treat for me.
Thehumblereader2772: I've gotten this far, and I don't plan on stopping yet!
Battlesny: If Rose's son ever shows up that would indeed be his name. He probably won't, but you would be right.
Yash Jacob: This story is over four years old at this point and I kinda forgot how hard I leaned into that at the start. I remember changing it because it even annoyed me, and I was the one who decided on that character trait in the first place.
Also, allow me to be direct right now, no, there won't be a pet. I have not introduced one, and I will not be adding one. Mostly because I know I'd never use it and would probably forget it exists. Sorry to disappoint.