Linkonpark100: Taking cues from Bruce Timm, I see?
Re: Don't know who Bruce Timm is, so I'd have to say "no" and it was just coincidence. I did sneak a "Hellsing Ultimate Abridged" line in there, though.
danielhaywoodsnow: I appreciate the well thought out and totally agreeable answer. I truly feel 4 girls is perfect. If you added more it would feel forced and not a true love story. Each girl has a real connection with him, and have their own ways of showing it. So please dont add any more girls or they won't be able to have a deep connection with him. I'm really excited to see how he deals with all 4 of them and their feelings for him.
The only one I'm worried about is raven. I know about her prophecy and that's why she is keeping herself distant, but I think he should be a little less dense and get a clue. Does she really need to kiss him before he understands basic human emotions? Yes, she is good at suppressing herself, but her actions should be a bit telling. Anyway, love the story and am excited for more.
Re: Yeah, in the context of things, 4 is pushing it given the medium. There won't be any more girls joining the Teen Titans, that's for sure; and certainly no more joining the harem (I've had this Harem planned out for a long time (circa 2011 give-or-take & WOW it's been a long time since then), and not even a force of God could make me change that plan).
At the very least it'll be one more boy making a total of 10 Titans for "Titans East" in this iteration of Earth-12 to make an even 50/50 split.
Raven has "a clue" about how she feels for him, but not only does she have to stop her powers from running rampant, she also is trying to spare his feelings as much as her own "when the time comes". Ventus knows about the Prophecy, and unlike the Canon, the Justice League will actually get brought in on this, it's just a matter of getting the Supernatural crowd into one room at the same time when none of them happen to be in another dimension fighting Lovecraftian horrors (like in Justice League Episode 41 & 42 "the terror beyond") or something of that nature. Raven is still treating her father's eventual emergence into the mortal world as something he will survive at the expense of "letting her go".
Prophecies, historically (in the context of Myth and the DC Universe), have always "sucker punched" people that try to sidestep them. The very act of trying to change them, when you know what the prophecy predicts, turns it into a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy, otherwise known as a "Closed Loop", the form of time travel that makes the most logical sense but there are also really troubling Free Will issues.
On the opposite end of the spectrum however, Prophecies are not "100% infallible", which means being part of a Prophecy doesn't always make you "functionally immortal" until your "due time" where you're prophesized to die; a good example of this is in God of War (2018) where Kratos killed Thor's son Magni, and Modi proceeded to lose his shit because they knew about their role in Ragnarok, thus they thought "nothing can kill me until then", but that in of itself was not a guarantee.
So yeah, Raven's holding herself back "for everyone's sake", but she's still allowed to feel jealous about it, and also angry she can't do anything about it.
CountOrlok777: that hellsing abridged quote might just barely be in character, but I so love it when it's quoted.
Re: Well, when I was writing that part, it just came to me. I couldn't help myself~
Plus, Robin and Ventus have that sort of pseudo-antagonistic relationship it doesn't sound completely out of left field.
Kalbario (Guest): Kalbario:Ha! I knew this had something in relation to red x rising. I read that YEARS ago. Shame it got dropped. The Kom'Secrit was what brought up my memories.
And another Ha! You used my spray bottle idea and cranked it up to firehose. Noice touch with the fireman helmet too.
Well I guess after that, Blackfire's not so THIRSTY for a while
*BOOo*
Ahh shat ap, it was begging for it!
Re: It's so-hard to find good stories, I couldn't help but be inspired by that one. I've been waiting ages to finally get around to using that, and it feels good that I finally can.
Well, part of the scenes I imagine as they're read are visual, so it's a "sight gag", with big quotation marks around it.
LoamyCoffee: Oh god, my friend just showed me the DC Superhero Girls. Hal reminds me much of his comic counterpart, many of the characters though get me thinking~ It's an odd feeling.
But on to this wonderful chapter! Again, I wonder why more people don't do stories about the other lanterns.
Obviously, Green Lanterns are used the most but I'd like to see the other colors get used due to the potential that the other Corps all have. I've seen Agent Orange Naruto and Yellow Lantern Gaara.
But back to the chapter, excellent work with Blackfire's showcase and the results are understandable due to her backstory. My feels are going strong. Loved the Hellsing Abridged bit and that someone actually did that with the 'I need an adult' schtick.
Re: Well, there are some really good Lantern Corps. stories on Space Battle Forums that get really inventive.
I think part of the issue is, because there's so much more nuance to the other Lantern Corps., people would just rather write about Will because the Weaknesses are less-blatant; Red turns people into uncontrollable rage monsters, Orange turns people into Hoarders on steroids, Yellow makes people effing sadists, Blue turns people into limp noodles, Indigo brainwashes people, and Violet makes people really crazy about their OTPs.
Glad you liked the references. They were fun to write in~
Anime PJ: To be honest, if you hadn't said you were inspired by another fic at the end, I'd have just thought you were combining the Teen Titans Go! comic version of her backstory with that of the mainstream DC comics version. The pieces were all there. Her appearance is vaguely alluded to in TTG (though given her mother shares it, I don't think they thought that through), and the idea of her being born a "bad omen" is straight out of the original comic version of her.
Re: Humans aren't the only ones who can be superstitious.
Chaotic dumbass: Wait didn't superman offer him a ***whistle for this exact scenario shame he didn't take it
Re: No. Superman offered, but Ventus said he wouldn't need it because he didn't think she'd go that far. Now that that has happened however… he might reconsider.
Thanks for reminding me!
Dark White Fang: The best moment of this fic so far : the "I am an adult !" intervention of Cyborg. I needed 10 min to stop laughing.
Re: Ha, glad that joke went over so well. And technically, Cyborg is the only "adult" there (apart from Wintergreen). Apart from the others who started out as teens, Cyborg/Victor Stone was a college-age student on a scholarship until the incident that cost him his body; either that or he was in his Senior Year and just-about to go to college on a sports scholarship. He mainly dumbs himself down so he can be part of "the in-crowd" since nowhere-else would take him.
CrimsonGeist: Holy references. The subtle Flip the bird was good, love me some Hellsing Abridged, and the Handsome Jack reference with everyone being the hero of their own story (although the last one isn't "NECESSARILY" a Handsome Jack reference, thats how I interpret it.) All in all, another fantastic chapter.
Re: I had fun making it subtle, but as for the Handsome Jack ref., it wasn't explicitly that, more a generalized "every villain is…" monologue.
dcoon: I'm rereading this and I don't think the cat parts on kitten ever show up again. Is there a reason for that?
Re: She's trying to distance herself from her old "brand", which is why she's leaning into the whole "magical girl" angle and not her highschool persona that held the city hostage to get a date for junior prom.
*TEEN TITANS*
The following morning after Blackfire's change of heart, a portion of the Titans' animosity towards the former dictator had vanished. She'd had the opportunity to make off with a power-amplifying alien artifact, and if they hadn't been on a stakeout after baiting her into taking it, she'd have made a clean getaway. The fact that she confessed it, at least to Ventus, of her own volition instead of trying to cover it up somehow was proof that she wanted to change, but was unsure as to how.
Then again, it was kind of impossible to miss the torn-off door to the floor safe under Ventus' desk…
The hidden nuances of the Tamaranean culture and how her motivations could be relatable wouldn't be revealed to them at-large until much later, but for the time being, while they were still wary of her, that sentiment was more in the background. They were still rightly peeved about her trying to marry Starfire off to an alien snot monster, but it was hard for them to stay angry with her for that when the victim herself had forgiven her.
That was just the kind of person Starfire was.
Cyborg was the only one to nearly blow their cover the night/morning prior, but the fact that he could wave his appearance away by saying they tripped a silent alarm and he could key into any of the security cameras at any given time with his cybernetic brain, and Blackfire remained outmaneuvered.
At the very least, it didn't seem like she was aware she had been set up.
Though on the one hand if she had known, she could've faked her change of heart, while on the other if she knew she was being monitored she wouldn't have made a grab for the gem in the first place. But by that same logic, she might know that if they knew, she could fake her change of heart, though that might not work because they'd anticipate such a move if they knew that she knew that they knew.
This line of thought would lead Robin to lock himself in a recursive loop for three hours as he stared irritably at a flow chart on his bedroom wall where his "Slade Conspiracy Board" had previously occupied, but thankfully in a rare moment of brilliance, Beast Boy was able to scribble together a Loop Counter and an Escape.
It'd have been more brilliant if he hadn't blatantly stolen it from an episode of Big Bang Theory they'd watched while channel surfing the day before, but you couldn't have your cake and eat it too…
Of course, all the animosity wasn't purely on Starfire's behalf. Some of it was from a romantic side of things, because now it seemed, in addition to "the magical girl", "the childhood friend", and "the girl next door", Vincent had unknowingly seduced "the alien princess" like the protagonist of a harem anime; irresistible to the opposite gender, and completely oblivious to the "game" he possessed.
Of course the latter descriptor was wholly predicated on whether or not his obliviousness was genuine, or fraudulent… Robin held his doubts about that.
Another new development following their round trip to and from the Vega System was how the Titans were now, in-full, aware of Ventus' true name, courtesy of a lippy Power Ring that had no filter. Of course, no-one really called him by his "secret identity" unless there were some element of intimacy involved in the exchange of dialogue.
Robin, filed that knowledge away for later use, but didn't have anything he could use it for in the immediate future. Cyborg found the idea of Ventus sharing the name of one of the most-iconic characters of the Final Fantasy franchise more interesting than humorous, but just couldn't bring himself to associate "some guy" with the Hero who'd taken down Deathstroke the Terminator; directly or otherwise. Beast Boy did find it wildly hilarious, but he refused to call him that on the sheer principle that calling him by his real name made him feel like "just a guy", which was really reductive given all he'd accomplished in his short tenure as an official superhero. Starfire and her sister for their parts didn't understand the nuance of what it meant to have a secret identity, since they technically proclaimed their names for everyone to hear, just in Interlac instead of Tamaranean. Raven didn't really care one way or another because they already knew one another's identities; same with Terra. Kitten tried coming up with something "cutesy" to call him but decided that "Venty" would suffice, at least until Terra let her call him by the still-reserved pet-name of "Ven".
Interestingly though, to Blackfire, "Vincent Valentine" was the alias, given "Ventus" was the only version of him she'd ever known.
The thing that made Blackfire's current infatuation for him obvious was how close they'd become since the night before, even after Cyborg hosed her down. While in the Tower she was practically joined at him by the hip, elbows locked, and she made no secret of her desire to become "joined at the hip" in the "sexy fun way". That on top of her sighing wistfully in his direction whenever they were apart, and it was obvious she'd fallen for him, making the Titans wonder what he'd even said to her to break through that prickly shell the former dictator put around herself.
All that teen drama aside, Star-Girl and Blackfire's reception in Jump City was going rather well. With more Titans in the city, fewer low-level criminals were venturing out now that the Titans could split into two or more teams at once and still have enough stopping power to foil most "B-Listers". The inclusion of fanart and fanfiction on the fan sites was yet another sign that the people were accepting of the Teen Titans' additions following Slade's occupation of Jump, which the city was still recovering from; at least in their own way.
Turned out no matter where you were in the galaxy, people still wrote disturbing fanfiction about real or fictional people. Who knew?
The only real pitfall that came up for the Titans as of late was the girls bickering about who would go on patrol with Ventus and for how long each day.
Robin for his part found solace in that while Starfire too enjoyed going on patrol with him, she let that be decided by chance, not by bickering with most of the other half of the team who happened to all be infatuated with the same guy and were somewhere between wanting to keep him for themselves or being open-minded enough to share him because getting married off-world would make a harem legal, apparently.
Robin would've been worried about Ventus forming his own power base within the team. However, since he'd already made his power play by controlling what went on in the Titans' off-hours and splitting the other managerial duties amongst the other senior members, he just decided to wave it off as teen drama that'd wind down as they matured.
Hell, there was probably just-as-much drama up in the Watchtowers, of the adult variety, and he just didn't know about it.
Like the Justice League and their hypothetical "adult drama", Robin refused to let any of it leak to the public. They had a reputation to maintain as something other than a "token superhero team".
*TEEN TITANS*
Days passed, and though Blackfire had been a conniving supervillain who made a great amount of trouble for the Teen Titans, at times her cunning could actually come in handy, bringing forth ideas that the more straight-laced of the Titans couldn't think of in a hurry, or weren't imaginative-enough to conceive.
One example was when Beast Boy had accidentally crammed an illegally-downloaded bootleg video game into Cyborg's recharging station and infected him with a virus.
While Ventus contacted the Justice League Watchtower to consult cyber security, the Teen Titans endeavored to keep Cyborg contained within the Tower.
It didn't work.
It'd become swiftly apparent that whatever this "Monkey Flu" was, it was causing acute visual and auditory hallucinations centered around food. In his warped perspective, the sofa was peanut brittle, the tables were cheese pizza, and… well…
Basically everything that was and wasn't nailed down was transformed into food inside Cyborg's personal wonderland. And not just the landscape like the parking meters or the street signs, or even the car tires; it got to the point where even the people resembled food to him, and cannibalistic urges aside, whatever was eating Cyborg, literally or metaphorically, it was spreading!
Somehow, Cyborg could spread the "Monkey Virus" to other electronic devices through touch, most of which violently exploded after the cross-contamination. If the Virus itself were wireless he'd have spread it like radioactive fallout on the winds, but no! That shit was literally transmitted via physical contact.
What the hell had Beast Boy bootlegged through the Tower's computers?!
. . . Moving on.
If it were a base-level Cyborg, containing him would've been easy since he always held back; with as-extensive as his cybernetic augmentations were, it was quite easy for him to destroy everything around him, even by accident. That's why, in his addled state, his self-imposed limits were no longer in effect, surpassed like the time he'd had his rematch with Atlas. For that reason, the Titans were largely powerless to stop Cyborg's rampage for lack of not wanting to hurt him, instead opting to stop him from eating anyone, since that in of itself was a very real possibility…
Several thousand dollars' worth of collateral later, and Blackfire was able to offer some new insight into the matter.
"If Cyborg sees all of us as food when we try to talk to him, what happens if we talk to him while dressed like food instead?"
This of course led to a heated debate about who would be putting on the banana costume they "borrowed" (read: stole) to try and talk some sense into the cybernetic cannibal before he spread the "Monkey Virus" to the entire eastern sea board via the Communications Hub that Slade had tried to utilize for his last big scheme.
Since Beast Boy had caused this fiasco, the others decided to cram him into it. To everyone's surprise, the ploy actually worked.
At least long-enough for Robin to fit him with a Restraining Bolt he'd prepared as a countermeasure after Cyborg had created a countermeasure to his original countermeasure from when he was Red-X.
Once Cyborg had been restrained, the Teen Titans were able to get him back to the Tower right as Ventus finally got in touch with the most-qualified man on the planet to help remedy Cyborg's condition; Dr. Silas Stone, head of STAR Labs and the man directly responsible for transforming his son into the biomechatronic organism they colloquially knew as "Cyborg".
Despite the sheer absurdity of how Cyborg had even contracted what was officially called the "Endzone Virus", or rather, in spite of it and how-much mayhem Cyborg had caused, the solution was ridiculously simple; trigger an automatic reboot, and virus protection would come back online. The only reason Cyborg even could get infected by something like the Endzone Virus was because it'd somehow cross-contaminated from his charging station into his own neural net, and its ability to become transmittable across medium made the Endzone Virus diabolically more-terrifying than anything else the Darkweb had churned out in a long time.
After flushing the Endzone Virus out into a cartridge that could be hand-delivered to the Watchtower so the League could get to the bottom of where it'd been created and why, this had allowed Cyborg to "come down" at the worst possible moment.
When he was face-to-face with the father he'd forsaken for turning him into a monster.
"Son…" Dr. Silas said tensely as he stared at his son through the monitor.
" . . . "
"How are you? Have you been eating well?" the doctor groused awkwardly.
"I have nothing to say to you," Cyborg said brusquely, completely and utterly dismissing his father before turning on his heel and leaving with heavy footfalls, eager to sleep the day off "like a baaaad hangover."
"So…" Raven hummed aloud. "You're the one who made him like that?"
"I had no choice. After what happened-"
"Why'd you make him look like that, though? Couldn't you have just given him something passably 'human'?" the mage asked brusquely. "You don't have to be an empath to know he's got a body complex. Even after all this time, he's still adjusting."
"I just… I didn't want him to get hurt ever again…"
"So you turned him into a monster instead-"
"My son is not a monster!" he said pounding a fist.
"Funny. He doesn't see it that way."
"Yeah. Cy even called himself a monster," Beast Boy spat.
This harsh rebuttal caused Dr. Stone to clam up, the head of S.T.A.R. Labs having no retort.
"Dr. Stone," Starfire spoke up with large, innocent eyes. "Can you please come here and talk to your son? As someone who has lost both of their parents, I know the pain of becoming disjointed from one's family, and though the only version of him I have known is Cyborg, I know that in his heart, he still longs for a time when he was not partly robotic. And though this thing called 'nuance' is largely lost on me, I believe he feels like his body… is not truly his 'body', but a 'prison'."
"Yeah! Like Robocop from the reboot movie!" Beast Boy spoke up before Raven shot him a glare.
"I… Now isn't the right time…" Dr. Stone said dejectedly.
"And when will the time be?" Kitten huffed. "Take it from a girl whose daddy has been distant because of work; you aren't doing him any favors by holding him at arm's length. You might not be coddling him, but the least you could do is come here in-person and apologize for whatever it is you did or didn't do to make him brush you off like that!"
" . . . I should go."
And that was the story of how the Teen Titans met Cyborg's father and/or maker.
*TEEN TITANS*
"Seriously, did you have to throw me under the bus like that?" Beast Boy groaned the following morning.
"Someone had to take the fall for your boneheaded stunt," Ventus huffed indignantly as a news channel replayed Cyborg's rampage the day prior, which had been accredited explicitly to Beast Boy trying to play a bootleg video game on Cyborg's system recharger, which in turn had infected Cyborg with the Endzone Virus.
"And it sure as hell wasn't going to be-" *Urp!* "-meee…" Cyborg groaned, still holding his stomach. Cybernetic or not, the feedback on that chemical pit of his hurt like a MOTHER FUCKER!!
"So why all the transparency?" Kitten asked, still new to the whole 'hero thing'.
Sure, she got to home-school herself and get a GED instead of slogging through the rest of her time at a school where most-everyone was still pissed about what happened at junior prom, but that just traded one set of shackles and obligations for another…
"The Justice League has always been under scrutiny, especially after that thing with the orbital laser, and since we're planetside, it's in our best interest to make the people feel safe around us," Ventus answered. "Also, if we admit to our mistakes as we make them, we don't create the 'illusion' that we're omnipotent 'demi-gods' that don't make mistakes."
"That reminds me for whatever reason…" Cyborg hummed as he composed himself. "Robin, what the actual hell?!"
"Heeere we go…" Raven groaned, dreading what was to come next.
"Cy, can we just… not talk about this?" Robin asked hopefully.
"No we can not!" Cyborg snapped, scratching at the spot of his chassis where the Restraining Bolt had flash-welded itself to him.
"Yeah, dude, what did you expect when you started making anti-us weapons again?" Beast Boy questioned. "Didn't you learn your lesson last time?"
"Also; Star Wars? Really?" the cyborg asked incredulously.
"Yeahhhhh… They're gonna be at this for a while," Ventus hummed. "Blackfire, wanna go on patrol with me? It's your turn isn't it?"
"I thought you'd never ask~" the former dictator purred, linking arms with his and allowing herself to be led out, her feet hovering a couple inches off the ground as she leaned her head against his.
"Dammit…!" Kitten scowled as she angrily chewed her thumbnail. "If I weren't banking on that harem, I wouldn't stand for this…!"
"You were serious about that…?" Raven asked incredulously, something bitter rolling across her tongue.
"I'm playing the 'long game'," Kitten rebuked. "I could try to get him all for myself, but the odds of that happening are three-against, whereas if I take the 'Harem Route', I'll get to be with him regardless of who 'puts a ring on it'," she explained as though she were talking about the weather and not polyamory. "Plus, I always wanted a prince to sweep me off my feet~"
"If he married Blackfire he wouldn't become a prince, he'd only be a 'royal consort' to a banished princess."
"Meh, tomato, tomatoe."
"Who the fuck says 'tomatoe'?" the mage quipped incredulously.
"Blackfire isn't the only princess around here…" Terra huffed dejectedly.
"What was that?" Kitten asked.
"Nothing, nothing," Terra waved off.
*TEEN TITANS*
"You know, I've been meaning to ask you something!" Blackfire called out over the wind as she and Ventus flew over the city, side by side.
"Go on."
"Why don't you wear a costume?"
"Excuse me?"
"You know, a costume like the others," she clarified. "The others wear a uniform of some sort but you… you wear what I assume to be terrestrial street clothing," she said gesturing to his current attire; a hoodie, a scarf, cargo pants, and sandals.
It wasn't a bad look, and he could always blend into a crowd before hitting a bad guy when (and from where) he least expected it, she was just curious, was all.
"Oh! Well, I mean… for the longest time all I really had was what I could carry in a shoulder pack and the clothes on my back. Getting an actual superhero costume was just never… a priority for me," he answered since he'd been asked so-directly. "I mean, I have all that money from Slade's bounty so I guess I could get a 'real' costume, but I wouldn't really know where to start…"
"Well, if you want this girl's opinion, I think something to cut down on wind resistance would be a good starting point," she hummed as she watched his clothes flap and flutter in the wind he'd enveloped himself in. "Seriously, how do you expect to get around like that?"
Just because she'd become sweet on him didn't mean her fangs had completely dulled.
"Back then it was never about the destination or how fast I got there, it was the journey. Not to mention, I can't actually go fast-enough for drag to really be an issue, sooo…" Ventus defended.
"Yes, well… maybe an anti-gravity belt, some retractable wings, maybe some rocket boots?" she suggested.
"Maybe… I guess I should think on it…" he conceded. "But enough about me, I believe I owed you that tour?"
"You mean we haven't already~"
"Nah, that was all work, didn't really have time to take in the sights," Ventus waved off. "Figured I could take you by my haunts, the places I go when I need to get out of the Tower and away from all the… weirdos," he whispered conspiratorially.
"Well, don't threaten me with a good time~" Blackfire purred. "Lead the way!"
*TEEN TITANS*
When Blackfire had learned Ventus was taking her to his haunts, she'd expected many things out of the deceptively-cunning teenager. A dojo, a rooftop café, the beach, or even just the city park; anywhere he could be outside with the sky above his head and lots of open space.
What she didn't expect was to be led into a cramped, second-hand bookstore filled with shelves. And it wasn't only books being sold there; movies in modern and primitive storage medium, video games, graphic novels, musical instruments, cameras, appliances. A little bit of everything to be honest.
In such close quarters, Ventus looked like any other pedestrian, sans the white hair which had allegedly bleached to shock white after Slade's occupation of Jump City. She on the other hand was immediately recognizable; orange skin, purple eyes, and a skin-tight bodysuit that left little to the imagination would do that.
"Honestly, I didn't expect… this," she said trailing behind him as he lazily perused the shelves. "I kinda thought you'd go to a place with more windows, or, you know… no walls. Something… nature-y."
"Which is exactly why this is my private place… at least before this happened," he said fiddling with a loch of hair that fell between his eyes, the shoppers nearby stopping to gawp at him. "Admittedly it was easier to blend in when I was a brunette, but, you win some, you lose some," he shrugged.
He'd long accepted the fact he could no longer become "invisible".
"So an indoor market tailored to second-hand goods…" Blackfire hummed, a little intrigued at the concept of purchasing another person's cast-offs. As a former princess, most-anything she wanted was given to her and it was always the highest quality, so from her perspective, the idea was pretty novel. "What are you looking to buy?"
"I don't know yet."
"Wait, you came here without even knowing what you wanted to buy?" she asked confusedly. Normally when you went shopping, you had some idea of what you wanted beforehand. Or at least that's how they did it on her planet…
"Sometimes, you don't know what it is you really want until you see it with your own eyes," Ventus shrugged. "Back when I was a vagabond, I'd just browse and fantasize about, you know, owning stuff. But now that I have a home, and a place to put the stuff I buy, it's actually much more fun, finding that diamond-in-the-rough item I didn't know I wanted until I found-Ooooh!" he suddenly stopped short. "A Pink Panther box set! And for such a reasonable price!"
Blackfire could only chuckle at the young man's tone, deciding to get into the spirit of things and look around for herself, seeking out something new and unusual.
Just because Tamaran was a space-faring race didn't mean their entertainment media was automatically interesting.
*TEEN TITANS*
A couple hours later and the two took to the skies once more, a bag in each hand laden with whatever movies, books, and knick-knacks happened to catch their eye.
"I'll admit, I had my doubts, but this was strangely exhilarating!" Blackfire grinned. Sure, the weight of the bags didn't actually mean anything for someone as strong as her, but it was what the bagged items meant that stuck with her.
Back on Tamaran, she'd never had any reason to go out to the market; everything she ever wanted was brought to her. The times she did venture out of the castle keep however, and everyone backed away from her, treating her like some diseased animal; even the royal guards tasked with her safety in her juvenile years. Before she learned.
Here and now however, though she was admired from afar as a superhero, none of the former stigma she possessed on Tamaran mattered here. On Earth, she was just an extraordinary person, out with a trusted friend and confidant, browsing through second-hand wares. And she had to admit, though she hadn't gone into the store knowing if she'd wanted anything, that she'd actually found things to catch her interest, was part of the fun Ventus had been espousing.
"I know, right?" he grinned. "When I'm browsing like that, I just feel… normal. Like I don't have the weight of the world on my shoulders."
"One city, and you feel like you have the weight of an entire world on your shoulders?"
"After I got Slade killed, I became a Justice League Reservist, which means as soon as they're pressed for manpower, I'll be the one getting the call," Ventus answered. "Speedy already got called in to help Green Arrow fight some general hopped-up on some sort of… 'Captain Nazi' serum, so I can't help but wonder… Do I have what it takes to save the world? As in, the entire world?"
As a Reservist, he had access to previous mission reports regarding the League's exploits, and given all they had faced…
It was just… intimidating! Alien invasions, Atlantean uprisings, Amazonian biological warfare, World-altering magic… And they expected a teenager to carry his own weight in all that?!
"Blackfire…" he said somberly, landing on a nearby office building and letting his bags fall to his feet. "I… I never told the others this, but…" he paused as he looked down at his JLR membership card. "I'm scared. I'm scared that when the Justice League calls on me to help, I… I won't be able to step up. That I'll let everyone down…!"
"Ventus… You destroyed half the Drenthax fleet, by yourself!" Blackfire spoke up with a grin. "Sure, the whole thing was automated, but still! If it were anywhere else apart from this planet, feats like that would automatically make you a 'heavyweight'!" she said putting a hand on his shoulder. "Ventus… That this 'Justice League' your planet has hasn't made you a full member yet, well… Frankly, that's just insulting."
"I appreciate the sentiment, but…" he said holding his hand out to the sky, a ribbon of wind twining through his fingertips. "The only reason I've gotten as far as I have is because for most of the time, I've been playing 'The Fool'; the one everyone underestimates. Now that I'm in the big leagues however…" he said fishing the indigo ring out from inside his shirt, Blackfire recoiling at the sight of the Indigo Tribe's insignia. "I'm afraid… I might have to use this again."
"You're afraid even though you could stand up to a Green Lantern?! One of the strongest law-enforcement officers in the galaxy!?" she asked incredulously.
Even though the Green Lantern Corps. never arrived to help Tamaran in its time of need, she never once felt like she'd been "forsaken" by them.
The fact of the matter was, an entire "Sector" of space was a big place, and apart from 2814 which was an outlier among outliers, most-other Sectors of the Milky Way had only one Green Lanter, two max. That Earth had four Green Lanterns in the grand scheme of things actually meant very little with how-big the galaxy was, and even if aGreen Lantern had been in the Vega System at the time of the Gordanian invasion, her home cluster was still an enormously huge swath of existence.
There was no point blaming a single grain of green sand for not revealing itself upon an infinitely-large shore.
"Blackfire, you don't understand…" he said turning it over in his hands. "You only wore this thing once. I, have worn it twice, and after each time I took it off…" he paused, his body trembling and a cold sweat running down his temple. "This thing… it changes you. I don't know how or why, but I can feel this thing's taint in me. Maybe I'm just being paranoid, or I was just stressed over the whole forced marriage thing, but every time I wore this thing and took it off, it felt like… It felt like some… some thing… some monstrous, indelible force had chipped away at what made me… me! Like I'm losing myself to this power! I'm afraid… I'm afraid if I put this on again… I might not be able to come back…!" he said choking back a sob.
"Ventus, it's okay," Blackfire said wrapping her arms around him and pulling him close, molding his body against hers. "You don't have to use the ring if you don't want to. You're strong-enough without it."
"But that's just the thing…" he choked out. "I'm really not. Sure, I can handle the small-scale stuff just fine, but every time there was an alien invasion, or some natural disaster, I hid, and the one time I didn't…" he said hugging at himself from inside Blackfire's embrace. "They… They almost killed me… and I was powerless to stop it."
"They? Who's 'they'?" Blackfire blinked.
"I… I don't want to talk about it," Ventus said extricating himself from her grasp, stepping toward the edge of the roof. " . . . Blackfire… I need you to promise me something. I need you to promise me this, because you're the only one I can count on to do what I need you to do. Because as much as it pains me to admit it, I know that if I asked this of anyone else, they'd let me down," he said turning her palm upward, purple eyes going wide as the glint of the Jewel of Charta caught the afternoon sun. "If this ring, this… this thing takes me over, makes it so I'm not… 'me' anymore," he said holding it up for her to see. "I… Don't let me turn into that mindless… thing again. Don't abandon me."
"Ventus, what are you saying?" Blackfire asked, her eyes wide as her gaze flitted between the indigo Power Ring, the Jewel of Charta, and the one who'd wormed his way into her closed-off heart.
"Blackfire, if the worst happens, then please…" he pleaded. " . . . set me free," he said somberly. "If it comes down to it, I'd rather die as 'me', instead of living my life as a 'stranger'."
"It won't come to that," Blackfire said tersely, holding out the Jewel for him to take.
"Maybe not… But if it does… I need you to be my mercy angel," he said closing her fingers around it. "Please…?"
" . . . Very well then."
The next moment Blackfire closed the space between them, palming his face before drawing him in, his nose brushing against hers before her mouth molded against his own. A shocked gasp passing his lips, with closed eyes Blackfire took the opportunity to slip a vaguely cat-like tongue into his mouth. Her saliva mingling with his for several seconds before she pulled away, just a little, a wet thread linked their lips briefly as she stared lovingly into wide eyes.
"So, was that as good as my sister's~?" Blackfire grinned cheekily.
"Wh-What was that for…?!" Ventus flushed to the roots of his hair.
"That was the Gorlockan Seal of Trust~" Blackfire grinned.
" . . . I can't tell if you're fucking with me or not…" Ventus pouted, Blackfire letting out a hearty laugh at the face he made, tinged pink with embarrassment.
*TEEN TITANS*
After the rather… heavy subject matter they'd discussed atop that building, Ventus never getting a straight answer as to whether or not the "Gorlockan Seal of Trust" was a legit thing, the two Titans continued their tour of Jump City. Catching onto a nice tailwind, Ventus and Blackfire alighted upon a high rise with a circular design, a disc-shaped roof with an observation deck a couple stories down, and a walkway leading off to an adjoining building. It overlooked most of the city, Titans Tower gleaming brilliantly in the distance in the bay.
"This might just be my favorite spot in the city…" Ventus hummed as his gaze panned across Jump's crescent shape. "I've always enjoyed high places. Falling still freaks me out, but getting to look out at everything helps put it all into perspective."
"I see what you mean," Blackfire hummed, taking a seat beside him. "It's strangely quiet up here," she said glancing down, the wind currents insulating them from the city noise far below. "And you're sure the others won't follow us?"
"Nah… The lack of handrails freaks them out," Ventus waved off. "Apart from a couple lab techs sneaking a cig', we've got the place all to ourselves."
"That sounds nice," Blackfire replied, sliding over to sit next to him, shoulders brushing.
" . . . Hey Blackfire, can I ask you something?" Ventus asked after a couple minutes.
"Sure. I'm an open book~"
"You broke out of a Centauri prison before taking over Tamaran. Do I need to be worried about them coming back here now that you aren't the ruler of your own planet?"
"The space lobsters? Oh, they pride themselves on never letting anyone escape, so they won't come after me a second time. At least not as long as I keep my mouth shut about it," she waved off.
"Oh, well that's good to hear," he nodded. "You know, I've been meaning to ask, but how does the Jewel of Charta work?"
"I'm not sure," she admitted. "It's either a chemical reaction, or something radioactive. With how-vast the Vega System is, it's no small wonder that materials which bolster a Burning One's strength exist. I suppose it could be magical in nature, since the radiation this thing lets out isn't harmful, but I'm not sure if it'd be 'magic' by the same metric you'd use on Earth."
"I see… Is it possible there's more of those things on the Swamp Moons of Drenthax IV?"
"I don't think you can just keep piling on the power-multipliers."
"I know, but I figured having one for Starfire too could give us a little more stopping power in case something particularly… nasty, comes around."
"Nasty? Like that?"
"Let's just say there's 'always a bigger fish', and leave it at that."
"What, you mean like space sharks?"
"Space WHAAAT?!"
"As for your original question," Blackfire waved off the question about space carnivores, "if there are more, the Sclurch have hidden them away very well. Probably why they have so much bargaining power."
"Yeah, speaking of which, how do we know they won't come back here looking for a fight?"
"It was only the one Sclurch that would feel 'slighted' by how things turned out," Blackfire waved off. "Think of it like… a single nobleman of a low-brow family trying to get himself a pretty slave-wife to elevate himself in polite society."
" . . . You're lucky Starfire forgave you for that, otherwise the others wouldn't have let you stay."
"Yes, I know, and I'm grateful… I really am," she said softly. "I guess in the end, I had to lose 'everything', before I could truly gain anything."
"Yeah, you… You made that pretty clear," Ventus returned, Blackfire threading her fingers with his. "So uh… They have police auctions in the Vega System?"
"Why do you ask?" she blinked.
"Oh, just thought we'd go by there next," he shrugged. "It's always interesting to see what gets seized and sold after the fact. The others were never interested in it, or rather, Robin doesn't like us going by there."
"I won't say anything if you won't~"
"Did I ever tell you how much fun it is having you on the team?"
"You could stand to do it more~" Blackfire purred, batting her eyelashes at him. "Lead the way~"
*TEEN TITANS*
As it turned out, there were not police auctions out in the Vega System. At least not on planets with high-end Reclaimers.
On Earth, when evidence was no longer relevant to a case, the police would usually sell the less-dangerous items off, but out in space, most contraband was just broken down into its constituent materials to help with interplanetary trade. A perfectly-good spaceship could only have a scratch on it, but the arresting planet would still scrap it for parts. To Ventus it seemed like such a waste, but what did he know? He came from a backwater planet in the middle-of-nowhere space that only got invaded every other week because it was out in the middle of nowhere.
Or at least that's how Blackfire explained it, only not in as many words…
"Hey, Chief O'Malley!" Ventus called out as he and Blackfire landed outside the site of the nearing police auction. A while back he'd dropped by the prescient in order to express his thanks for making it so he could sleep soundly at night without having to wake up at ungodly hours, and he'd hit it off with the current chief of police pretty darn well.
Probably helped that he actually expressed gratitude for the work the JCPD did, despite it not being as-glamorous as the Titans who had their own headquarters and island.
"Oh it's you kiddo," O'Malley stated, his voice gruff. The man had a large build and his hair was in a crop cut. He was the first to arrive at the scene of a major incident, and the last to leave, making him one of the most respected and feared –depending on who you asked- officers on the force. "So who's your friend. Someone new or did Starfire just pull a 180 on us?"
"She's actually Star's older sister, Blackfire," Vent answered. "Anyway, this may sound strange, but I was wondering if there were any vehicles in the current police auction."
"Why do you ask?" the man said crossing his arms.
"Well… The T-Car can only seat five, and with three more girls on the team, we're going to need some additional transportation in the future. Especially if we add more members," Vent explained.
"Can't half of you fly?" the man asked poignantly.
"Beast Boy has to flap his arms, Raven can only go so fast, and the rest of us get tired after too long, hence the T-Car," the brunette answered. "If we flew everywhere by our own power, we wouldn't have anything left in the tank to fight the big-bads."
"Well I can understand where you're coming from. Even if I could fly, I wouldn't want to do it all the time," the man said leading the two to the back of the impound lot where tables covered in various forms of seized goods lay strewn about. "We seized this last month after the owners broke parole. They won't be getting it back any time soon, so how about I just give you guys this. You've done more than enough for Jump to earn yourself a little treat," he said motioning them to a black convertible. One that seemed very familiar to the brunette.
"Holy shit…" Vent gaped at the sight of the sleek frame and the red leather seats.
"What is it?" Blackfire asked.
"I thought I was just seeing things, but this is the exact same car that belonged to the guys who stole the first T-Car after Cy built it!" the brunette gasped. "Oh hohohoho~ The irony here is sweet," he said before turning to O'Malley. "We'll take it," he said clapping a hand on the hood.
"Alright then. I'll just let the boys know and hand you the keys," O'Malley stated. The man was just as much if not more of an authority figure than the mayor himself, and the only reason he hadn't run for mayor himself, criminals beware, was because until his legs stopped working, he wasn't going to end up as a desk jockey.
"The people on your planet are very… strange," she said looking out at some of the contraband strewn about.
"We're only human, though I'm not sure how the term applies in the company of aliens," Vent chuckled.
"Hey, on our world, you're the alien," Blackfire rebuttled with crossed arms, the two laughing on it after a few seconds.
*TEEN TITANS*
With a sweet (and ironic) new ride secured, Ventus and Blackfire decided to hang around for the auction as special guests; albeit, out-of-sight so no-one would feel intimidated by their presence. Or more-specifically, by Ventus' presence.
Let's just say that after word got out about Ventus getting a large chunk of Slade's $5,000,010 bounty, he'd received a lot of junk mail; and also a bunch of randos at city hall claiming that they knew him trying to petition his time for… "investment opportunities".
The auction had a little bit of everything. Cars, boats, guns, furniture, art, even a triple-reinforced steel mansion gate; which seemed kind of redundant to sell without the adjoining mansion. Unsurprisingly, none of it caught Blackfire's eye; none of it could really compare to what was to be had out in the Vega System.
To Ventus' surprise, nothing of Slade's had appeared for any of the previous auctions, and here was no different. Though he was the inheritor of Slade's estate, he'd have though that something would've been seized by police, though admitting that Slade was leaving him the majority of his estate seemed like a somewhat foolish thing to do, given how many people the Terminator had displaced before his death.
While he technically could have used Slade's money to pay reparations, it was technically money Slade received from legitimate, and non-legitimate, governments and persons to do legitimate and non-legitimate work. Unlike most Villains whose funds were largely stolen, Slade actually earned his money, albeit in a legally-questionable fashion.
Also, even with all of Slade's money, he doubted there would be enough for everyone he screwed over to get a fair share, so he would continue to keep his new estate under wraps.
The auction was set to conclude without incident… and then there was an incident.
Big shock.
"GIMME BACK MY CAR!" a hulking man roared as he tore through his trench coat with a dermal patch of Venom, buyers scattering out of his way as he stormed toward his seized vehicle.
"How the hell didn't they catch this guy at the gate?" Ventus gawped as the roided-out thug lifted his car above his head.
"Earth-bribery?"
"On Earth, it's just called 'bribery'."
"Could've fooled me with how-often your planet uses 'space' as a prefix," Blackfire hummed. "Shouldn't we be stopping that guy?"
"Yeah, yeah, I've got it," Ventus hummed as his eyes alighted with silver. His hand waving in the thug's direction, suddenly a sphere of air formed around his head, the hooligan gasping in shock before he fell flat on his face, his own car pinning him to the ground as he was asphyxiated.
" . . . Remind me to be thankful I don't need to breathe air," Blackfire hummed at how-quickly Ventus had beaten that guy.
"When we get back," Ventus waved off, leaving the clean-up to the police. Not like O'Malley would need any help sniffing out who took that bribe.
*TEEN TITANS*
When the two got back to the tower, Ventus immediately had the Titans convene at the garage. When the team inquired as to what was underneath the tarp they found waiting for them, he and Blackfire threw it off with a flourish, presenting what they'd gotten from the police auction for free; nothing else really caught the two's eye.
At first the team was confused as to why he expected them to recognize it, but after a few seconds, Cy nearly busted a gut as he started laughing at the oh-so-delicious irony.
"Ah hahahahaha!" Cy laughed. "Well isn't this ironic? Those two punks took my car, and now we have theirs! Haaaa hahahaha!"
"Yes and no," the whitette stated, earning a confused look from the others before he explained. "Since I was the one who arranged to get this for later remodeling, I'll be the only one driving it," he said twirling the keys on his finger. "Or at least not without my consent that is."
"Well, I can understand that," Cy said shrugging his shoulders, while Beast Boy sulked at not having anything to drive. Again. "So, when do we crack this baby open and put in some toys?" he asked reaching for his toolbox.
"Actually, I was thinking of stepping out of town for a week or so to have that done by my own people," Vent answered, Cy's hand stopping short.
"Your own people?" Cy asked.
"Hey, I'll have you know I've gotten some real networking done in the past couple years," Vent argued. "Besides, you wouldn't want your trademark aesthetic done to death, would you?"
"I suppose not," Cy admitted in defeat. The T-Car bore his design quirks because he was the one to build it, but he wasn't about to push aesthetics on every vehicle the team got. Otherwise the T-Sub/Ship would just look gaudy.
"Excellent. Robin, you're okay with this right?" Ventus asked.
"I guess. We could use another car on the fleet, and we do have the members to spare," Robin admitted. Even if he did have his R-Cycle, the Titans were still over-capacity for how many people they could carry vehicle-wise. Having another car in the fleet could only help them if they had to spread out.
Plus, if he had to listen to the girls bicker about who got to sit in Ventus' lap one more time…!
"Great. I'll start making some calls, have some parts shipped, and head out in a few days," Vent said clapping his hands together.
"Sister," Starfire said waving her sibling over as the Titans started to go their separate ways. "How was your outing this afternoon?"
"It went very well," the elder sister returned. "Here, I got something for you," she said fishing in her bag from the used bookstore.
"Oh my!" Starfire gasped. "One-hundred-and-one soup recipes!" she said elatedly holding up a slightly-used book titled 101 Soup Recipes. "Thank you, sister!" she cried wrapping her arms around her.
"Yeah, well… I've tasted your cooking. You need all the help you can get."
"This is such a wonderful gift! Thank you, sister!"
'That was more of a back-handed compliment, but okay,' Blackfire shrugged as her sister held her.
"Whenever did you find this?" Star asked with large glistening eyes.
"I found it while I was out today and thought you might like it," Blackfire shrugged. "I mean, after all, how-badly can you screw up soup?"
*TEEN TITANS*
"Oh, my Goood!"
"Holy craaap!"
"OH! It's eating my face!"
"AAAH! It's eating his face!"
Apparently, that was how-badly Starfire could 'screw up soup'.
"I love this planet~" Blackfire grinned as all hell broke loose, stabbing the alien concoction in her soup bowl before partaking of it.
" . . . I'm not hungry," Raven, Terra, and Kitten said simultaneously as they pushed their soup bowls toward Blackfire, their contents looking up at them with blinking eyes.
"Okay, seriously, how in the actual hell does something like that happen?" Ventus asked incredulously, wrist-deep in his own soup bowl as he strangulated… whatever it was.
"Sith Alchemy?" Cyborg groused
" . . . Sounds about right," Ventus shrugged.
And thus was the story of why Starfire was banned from making soup.
Ever. Again.
For all time.