Chapter 7: Harbinger

"I don't know WHY you even bother Gar, you never win! I always win! And you will never…you won?" Cyborg said in confusion as Gar suddenly zipped past him at the last second and crossed the finish line ahead of him.

"Yes! Who the man! Who the man!"

"Rematch! Never happen again!"

And so Cyborg and Beast Boy played their video games.

Outside on the T-Tower, there was a box. This box had a lock code that would be nearly impossible to guess.

Or if you had the combination.

A dark figure approached the box, all detail lost in the shadows and the long coat the figure wore. He reached the box, and after some effort, opened it. Reaching in, he selected a few certain wires and cut them. He then trimmed another wire away and attached one of the cut wires to it.

Satisfied, the man closed the door and walked towards the T-Tower.

In the T-Tower, the security systems shut off. Had it been a simple cut, a backup alarm would have sounded to alert the team.

If the figure hadn't tied up the wires in a certain way. It would delay the backup a bit.

All he needed.

"You are NOT going to win!" Cyborg yelled, gripping the controller so hard it threatened to break. He had left Beast Boy in the dust at the beginning, but a series of well-done turns and good items were causing Beast Boy to catch up. Now he was breathing down Cyborg's neck. "Over my dead body!"

The elevator was working, but the figure took the stairs, calmly walking up past the security camera which showed nothing but static on their screens.

He reached in his coat and pulled out a shotgun.

"Now I put you in-NO!" Cyborg screamed. He had been about to drop a bomb, which would have surely hit Beast Boy at the distance he was following.

But Beast Boy had beaten him to the punch, activating a scrambler at just the right time. With his controls screwed up, Cyborg had somehow blown himself up with his own bomb, and Beast Boy zoomed past and over the finish line again.

"YES! YES! YES!" Beast Boy yelled, and he got up and started doing a dance.

"This can't be happening…" Cyborg groaned.

"S-U-C-C-E-S-S! That's the way you spell…!"

BLAM!

Cyborg's head jerked up from his hands as Beast Boy stopped dancing. Slowly, he looked down at the huge hole that had suddenly appeared in his chest.

He looked back at Cyborg in confusion.

"Vic?"

And then he fell over, lifeless.

"Gar? GAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Cyborg screamed in horror, looking at his now dead comrade and then past him at the man in the black coat holding the smoking shotgun that had snuck into the room and shot Beast Boy in the back while he was dancing.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Cyborg roared as he leapt off the couch and charged at the figure.

BLAM! The figure fired the shotgun again. But Cyborg's body was a lot tougher then Beast Boy's, and despite a few pellets hitting his face he continued his charge, planning to rip this murderer's head off with his bare hands for shooting his best friend in the back in cold blood.

The man didn't even seem to care that an extremely powerful and angry cyborg was charging at him, as he cocked the shotgun and fired again, with the same result. He just cocked and fired again. No effect, and now Cyborg was on him, reaching out for his throat…

And then the man spun away, gracefully dodging Cyborg's mad charge, spinning around as he pulled something out of his sleeve. Cyborg was just realizing he had missed the guy when he felt him slap something on the back of his neck.

The man took a jumping step away as Cyborg whirled…

And then Cyborg screamed at the top of his lungs as the man pressed a button on his arm and detonated the EMP grenade. EMP's, electromagnetic pulses, were usually generated by nuclear explosions, and they destroyed anything with electrical systems. Cyborg had shields for those kinds of things…

Except it had happened so quickly that he had neglected to turn them on…

The side of Cyborg's head exploded even as the TV and gamestation blew up followed by every single electronic device in the room. Cyborg fell, spasming and smoking, as his organs were cooked and his brain fried as his systems short-circuited and exploded.

"What's going on in here? Guys? GUYS!
Robin ran into the room, Starfire on his heels. The first thing he saw was the back of a man. The man was bald with the exception of a long black tightly-tied ponytail, almost like one a monk might wear, from his head. All Robin could see besides that was a long black Matrix-like jacket hiding the rest of his body.

The second thing he saw was Cyborg and Beast Boy's bodies.

"No." Robin said in horror.

The man turned, revealing a face that was totally unremarkable…except for the eyes…and the shotgun…

"NOOOOOOOOOOO!" Robin screamed in shock and rage. The man was bringing the shotgun up, even as Robin heard Starfire shriek in horror behind him…

A Birdarang knocked the shotgun from his hands, even as Robin whipped out his staff and extended it. He leapt at the man, swinging the staff, wanting to hurt someone more then he ever had in his life…

The staff hit the side of the man's head. Robin felt the impact run all the way up his arms.

The man grunted as he stumbled a bit, and Robin swung again…

And a gun slid out from under the man's sleeve and into his hand, a gun he jammed into Robin's chest.

BLAM!

Blood splattered on Starfire's shocked face.

"Robin?"

The pain was quickly replaced by a numbing darkness, and as it claimed him Robin realized he had played right into the man's hands, that the man had used his anger and took his attack so that Robin would be close enough for the man to shoot him.

But I have body armour…was Robin's last confused thought.

Too bad for him the man had Teflon-coating bullets specifically designed to go through body armour.

"No. NOOOOOOOOOOO!" Starfire screamed as Robin fell, as she raised her hands as green energy…

Her left kneecap exploded as the man shot her in the leg. The pain was so great that her brain temporarily over-loaded, as she gasped rather then screamed.

Then her other kneecap was blown apart as the man shot it as well. Starfire crumbled, tears dripping from her eyes as the pain started to come.

"Why…" she cried as the man walked up to her.

BLAM! Starfire's question was left unanswered as the man shot her in the head. He fired two more times.

Calmly, the man walked over to Robin and shot him in the head. Just to be sure. He heard the shadows shifting and stepped back.

Raven appeared from the ceiling, coming from the blackness. Her peaceful meditation had suddenly been interrupted by a storm of pain and other emotions. She had thought that maybe someone had gotten into a fight…

"No…" Raven said, her shock echoing those who had gone before her.

Her teammates…all dead. Gone. She could sense no life in them. All four gone, brutally snuffed out in less then a minute.

She heard, rather then sensed, the man behind her. But as she turned, she did not know how. She could sense emotions if she chose, and that "sense" had been turned on to see what was going on. Surely she would have sensed a man behind her.

There was a man behind her.

And in her final shock, she realized why she couldn't sense anything from the man.

THERE WAS NOTHING THERE.

The man had walked behind her and had raised a gun as she turned around. Raven could see right down the barrel in a detail she never knew her eyes possessed. But the darkness in the man's gun barrel was nothing compared to the darkness in his eyes…and in his heart…

She frantically tried to cast a spell.

"AZARATH METRION…!"

BLAM!

"AHHHHH!" Raven gasped as she sat up in bed. Her room shook as one last pulse of fear flowed through her, and then it and her heart settled.

"Oh god…a dream…no…wasn't a dream…no…oh god…" Raven said as she drew her knees up and shook for a few moments. She was not used to being scared, nor did she like it. She had stared down angry metahumans, vicious demons, and all sorts of other nastiness that made the average human flee in terror without fear.

But that man…

"Blank." She whispered to herself. "Nothing…nothing at all…beyond ice…complete oblivion…"

Sweat soaked her, and she suddenly became aware that she was too cold. She got out of bed and floated her cloak over to her. She looked rather silly with it and her nightgown on, but she needed it. It helped her think.

That wasn't a nightmare. It wasn't even a night terror, a waking semi-hallucination where you saw things you were SURE were real (indeed, one of the proposed reasons that people saw witches that they tried to burn in the infamous Salem Witch Trials was a series of night terrors that the primitive and superstitious Puritans saw as reality. Oh, that and a bunch of men seeing a great opportunity to take some women who were tasting a bit of independence and get rid of them so that all the others would stay firmly under their thumb, if you care). It had been…

"Prophecy." Raven said to herself.

Her powers were still a mystery to her, but her link to her abilities sometimes manifested in strange ways. And she was sure she had just been given a warning.

Her teammates.

She had to see if they were all right.

Sinking into the shadows, Raven went to her teammates' rooms.

Beast Boy was snoring loudly and appeared to be sleeping with a sock. Cyborg was hooked up to some devices that beeped at Raven. Starfire was in a rather uncomfortable-looking position. And Robin woke up when she leaned over him to check, startling her and then him,

"Ah!"

"AH! Raven, is that you? What are you doing in my room?" Robin asked.

"Sorry Tim. I…I had a nightmare." Raven said, and immediately regretted her choice of words.

"A nightmare?" Tim said incredulously.

"No! Yes! It was…but it was more, Tim! It was a…well, a glimpse of something."

"What?"

"We died, Tim. We all died. I saw our fates. And it's going to happen, and soon…I feel it…"

"…………I see…I don't suppose you got tomorrow's lottery numbers while you were at it did you?"

"THIS IS SERIOUS ROBIN!" Raven yelled, as Robin's room shook. "Something is out there, and it's bad. And it wants to kill us."

"Ok, ok, I believe you Raven. But what? Who?"

"There was no name spoken…but something…is on the tip…can't quite…get it…"

"I wish whoever sends these messages wouldn't leave out such crucial details when they're warning of someone trying to kill us…" Robin said.

"Kill…KILLJOY! That's it! That's the name!" Raven said. Robin's eyes arched.

"Did you say Killjoy?"

"Yes! Do you know him?"

"Yes and no."

"What do you mean?"

"Because as far as I, and a lot of other people know, Raven, Killjoy is an urban legend."

The room he was in was completely black, except for the glow of the monitor screen. The man watched the words as they finished appeared.

…WELL-COMPENSATED IN ANY WAY YOU CHOOSE. WILL YOU ACCEPT THE ASSIGNMENT?

The man thought it over for a second, and then typed in his answer.

YES.

EXCELLENT. I WILL PROVIDE YOU WITH A PHOTO AND ALL THE DETAILS YOU NEED. SPEED WILL BE GREATLY APPRECIATED.

The man got up from his chair and crossed the room. He turned on a small light as a fax machine began to whir.

A picture of the Titans slid out. Savior was not included: he was still healing, and Slade didn't care much. Once the original team was gone, a newly joined link would be unimportant. The core was what mattered.

The man picked up the photo and looked at it for a few seconds. He then put it down and walked over to the computer again.

IT WILL BE DONE BY TOMORROW.

EXCELLENT. MANY THANKS.

And then the message deliverer turned off. The man closed it himself and went back to the fax machine that was now spewing out printed sheets.

Killjoy picked up the sheets and read them twice each, and then put them in the garbage. Once all the details were memorized, he threw a match in as well and burned the information to ash.

Realizing he had missed the picture, he picked it up and looked at it again, and then tossed it into the air, turned on his heel, and began to walk away.

The picture fluttered up about four feet and then began to flutter down.

And Killjoy whirled as he drew a gun.

BLAMBLAMBLAMBLAMLBLAM!

The five shots came so close together it sounded more like two. Killjoy spun the gun, his right thumb making a weird clicking sound, and replaced it in his holster as he turned again and headed for his weapons closet, planning his strategy already.

The photo floated to the floor, five neat holes in it, all of them in the place where the Titans' heads had been.

The mark was on.

The reality would soon follow.