Teen Titans
Story One: Titans Reborn
Somewhere in space, in one of our neighbouring solar systemsa small planet that went by the name of Tamaran was under attack. The enormously powerful Gordanian fleet was pounding the placid planet's defences with a barrage of fire and the pitifully small Tamaranian defence force was being wiped off the face of the cosmos like an unwanted raindrop. Down on the planet in a small antechamber of the gigantic palace sat a confused girl, her knees up against her chest in fear from the loud explosions and other sounds of siege. Suddenly a huge explosion rang out, shaking the palace loose from its foundations with its sheer force. The girl stood then on shaky knees and peeked her head around the door to her chambers, the door at the other end of the corridor swung open and an armed guard burst in. The girl hid in fear until the guard shouted out to her.
"Princess, your older sister needs to speak with you," he said as he lowered his weapon, "she says it is a matter of utmost importance."
The girl who was the princess poked her head back around the door to see the guard's honest face, then she stepped out into the open. The guards eyes went to the unconscious royal guardsman on the floor, a large rock next to his head, and surmised the reason the princess was so scared. He held out his hand towards her and beckoned her closer.
"Princess you must come quickly, I do not believe this area of the palace to be structurally sound," the princess took a step closer and then took the guard's extended hand, "don't worry, I'll look after you," he said with a reassuring smile. The princess took in his white teeth and his raven black short hair and nodded him permission to lead the way.
"Thank you," she said quietly as he led her through the collapsing castle.
Within minutes they reached her sister's quarters, after being waved away from the throne room by some of her men. Her older sister was stood by her amazingly intact bedroom window. The princess now noticed that her room was slightly larger than her sisters but then she supposed that her sister was older and had less need of the space, after all she didn't play with toys anymore.
"Kory, you've arrived," her sister said in uncharacteristic joviality, especially considering the situation, "I've something terrible to tell you."
"Should I leave your highness?" the gentle guard asked and whilst her sister nodded the assent the princess held onto his hand with all her might and he could not extract himself from her grip.
"Stay then, it is no matter," her sister said as she knelt down to be in the same line of sight as the princess, "Kory, our parents are dead. Killed by falling rubble in the throne room."
"What?" Kory said astonished, her fear and disbelief mixing together to become a paralysis of her words, stopping her from articulating or even displaying the anger and fear she felt.
"They've gone on to a better place," her sister said as she placed a hand on Kory's shoulder, "I'm now ruler of Tamaran. And as ruler I need you to do something for me, can you do that?"
Kory said nothing and the guard seemed just as astonished as she was.
"You remember at the first peace talks you met the Gordanian emperor?" Kory nodded nubly and her sister continued, "he says he will order a ceasefire if you go back with him, as his slave."
"What?!" the guard said, careful not to raise his voice so as to be disrespectful, "with all due respect you cannot do this, she's only nine years old!"
Her sister stood up, "Do not forget your place soldier, you are only here because of my sister's will that you stay. Should you persist with your insubordination then you will be relieved of duty."
"No, I won't let you harm him. He saved me," Kory said, her emotions bursting through.
Her sister looked her square in the eyes and smiled, "I promise that he'll always be safe as long as I'm princess of Tamoran. But in return you have to go back with the Gordanians, it's the only way to save our race."
Mere moments later Kory and the guard raced through the corridors of the palace to the shuttle bay, Kory was to be sent up on a small shuttle to the Gordanian flagship where she would be taken into the ownership of the Gordanian emperor. When they were alone in the corridor the guard turned to Kory and pulled a small syringe from his belt.
"This is the army's vitality potion," he said as he prepared her arm for he injection, "it should keep you from feeling hungry and increase your metabolism allowing you to heal faster. They give it to all us troops before any major conflict but I didn't find the time to use mine during all the commotion. I want you to have it," he readied the needle and looked her in the eyes awaiting her permission.
Kory nodded and closed her eyes as she winced through the pain of the needle, her young body unused to the sting of pain usually kept from her delicate skin.
Two of the green-skinned aliens stood next to the open doors of the shuttle holding spear-like energy weapons of advanced design, these were Gordanian shock troops, the personal guard of the emperor. Kory was escorted to the shuttle by the guard who let go of her hand and waved goodbye as she was taken roughly by one of the soldiers and dragged into the shuttle. As it began to take off Kory stared back out through the rear window of the shuttle and into the quickly shrinking view of the shuttle bay, she saw her guard standing in the meddle of the bay waving to her goodbye and then saw her sister come up behind him. Suddenly her guard's body went limp and he fell to the ground, her sister held in her hands a blood-stained dagger.
"I'm not princess anymore," she said under her breath, "I'm queen."
Earth, 8 years later
Gotham City is not a nice place to be at night. In fact during the day it can be quite hazardous, but its really at night when you have to be careful. This was a lesson learned the hard way for the son of Thomas and Martha Wayne, a lesson he learned as he watched his parents gunned down before his helpless eight-year old eyes in a dark alley behind a movie theatre. Twenty-seven years later and Thomas and Martha's son had been protecting Gotham's innocents for nearly ten years. For the last six years he has been helped in his quest by former circus acrobat, Dick Grayson, now known as Robin. After an accident that left Batman temporarily blinded Robin had been asked to patrol Gotham's mean streets alone for the first time, and he wasn't doing that badly.
Robin leapt down from a three-story building, firing his jump line out to catch a streetlamp and swinging down through the smashed window of a Crime Alley jeweller's shop, for a fleeting moment Robin wondered why people opened up these shops in Crime Alley but then realised that rent here was probably half that of the rest of the city. He swept his feet up under him and landed in a suitably heroic pose on the moonlit floor of the jewellers, normally at this hour most of the stores were closed but this one was apparently doing a roaring trade. They were doing so well in fact that they let people in balaclavas take pretty much what they wanted.
"Wow, I knew this place did good business but I didn't know they had special offers for stupid goons," Robin said loudly, getting the robbers' attention.
"Hey guys, it's the boy blunder," one criminal said with a laugh.
"What happened to your tights bird-brain?" said another.
"Your mama's washing them for me," Robin joked before leaping into action, he whipped his arm around unfolding his collapsible metal staff and knocked one of the crooks unconscious with one swift knock to the head. He smiled and raised his eyebrows under his domino mask before whirling into action once again.
The crooks came at him now, seeing the threat this teen could really be. But he was much too quick for them, a lifetime in the circus and under the Batman's expert tutelage had taught Robin how to easily overcome four larger men. He swung out his staff to connect with one crooks jaw and a loud crack burst forth into the relative quiet of the shop, one other crook tackled himself as he slipped on the broken glass from the window and crying out in pain as he fell upon the tiny knives of glass that littered the floor. Robin used his staff to pole-vault across the small shop to connect his feet with another thug who went straight down. Robin whirled to face the last remaining crook, who had been allowed enough time to draw his pistol and level it at Robin.
"Don't you move, or I'll put a bullet in your skull," the thug said nervously. His gun hands were shaky at best, and Robin knew he couldn't judge the angle of the bullet enough not to kill one of his fallen comrades. He held his hands up in defeat and snapped his staff back into its holster on his utility belt.
"You don't want to do this," Robin said simply, "all you've got now is armed robbery, that's gonna get you at least seven years. You pull that trigger and you're talking at least double that before you even get a chance at parole. That, and that you're obviously such a lousy shot that when you miss me and hit one of your buddies I'll slip my cuffs on you and leave you and your buddies as a present to Gotham's finest. So why don't you just put the gun down and go quietly, I'll tell them to go easy on you."
Suddenly there was a flash of black in the dark shop and the gun flew from the crook's hands, the trigger was pulled during this but nothing came out. The gun wasn't even loaded. The there was a flash of a midnight blue cape and suddenly the crook was on the ground, his assailant hidden by the shadows. Robin shouted out to his saviour.
"Hey, I could've handled this one myself you know? You're supposed to be resting," Robin stepped forward and reached out, "how did you get out anyway? You're shouldn't be out here in your condition."
The figure turned and was revealed to be a young woman, her face hidden within the recesses of a large midnight blue hood. Under her cloak he glimpsed a black flowing tunic-like costume and long thin legs clad in knee-high dark purple boots. Robin's left eyebrow cocked in confusion for a moment before the young woman introduced herself.
"My name is Raven, and I need your help."
Ten minutes later the two costumed teens stood on a nearby rooftop, after Robin had cleared up the situation at the jewellers and called for the police. He stood facing outwards towards the city and watched as the first cops in the scene found the Batman's calling cards and special Bat-cuffs, nobody would know Batman was out of action.
"So why do you need my help?" Robin asked bluntly, one thing he'd learned from the Batman was not to skirt around the issue at hand.
"Not just me, the world needs your help."
"Okay," Robin turned to face Raven who had pulled back her hood to display her dark brown hair and stunning features, "why does the world need my help?"
"In about four days an alien spacecraft will come into our solar system looking for a very important escaped slave, that slave will seek refuge on Earth and the alien ship will ravage our entire planet until it finds her," Raven replied matter-of-factly without showing any emotion whatsoever.
"That's a pretty outlandish theory," Robin said whilst inwardly keeping in his mind that aliens did exist, he'd even met one in Superman, "what makes you say all this? And how does this concern me?"
"It's not a theory, it's the truth," Raven said emotionlessly, "I get my information from very reliable sources, normally I would have dealt with this myself but after several recent battles I am too weak to fight them alone. I remembered that several years ago you and several other teenaged heroes banded together to defeat their Justice League mentors when they were brainwashed."
"Antithesis," Robin said venomously, the name of the villain who'd brainwashed Earth's mightiest heroes, "me, Kid Flash, Wonder Girl and Arsenal all teamed together to deprogram them."
"Yes," Raven said with a very slight hint of satisfaction, "I was going to approach the Justice League but felt I would get on better with heroes my own age. I didn't think that the League would take me seriously."
"You think I will?" Robin asked with a slight smile.
"I can tell you are already contemplating a reunion with your friends," Raven replied, "I am partly empathic."
"Oh," Robin replied sheepishly, "well I suppose the threat of alien invasion is something I have to take seriously. After all if we didn't and then we all got conquered I'd feel really stupid."
"Yes, quite," Raven replied stoically, "so you're in?"
"I have to speak to Batman first," Robin mused, "but count me in anyway."
Wally West sat in class watching the world go by at a snail's pace, his mind was wandering as to what he'd be doing now he'd finished high school. He'd given up being the Flash's sidekick, Kid Flash, two years ago to concentrate on his studies and now he was going out into the real world he wondered what he would do now. Having lived a perfectly normal life for the past two years he found he rather enjoyed it, and one quick meeting with his old mentor. Flash had asked him simply whether he missed the hero business, whether life was less interesting at normal speed. Wally had simply replied with his one anecdote:
"You don't have to be breaking the sound barrier to enjoy life." Which in retrospect could've been worded better, but his mentor got the point. Wally liked life slowed down, and he intended to stay that way. The bell rang and Wally walked slowly out of class and into the open summer sunshine, he walked around the corner of the school and stood still and thought about it. He made a quiet decision and started to walk briskly home, he was going to do one final patrol tonight, one last run around the city at super-speed. That way if he realised he really missed the feeling of being faster than almost every man alive he could always go back to it, but if he felt he could live without it again then it was almost a commutative run. One last go around the city could purge any lingering desire he had to go back.
As Wally started walking quicker he went out of sight and Raven stepped from the shadows beside the school's outbuildings, pulling her hood back over her head she stopped sending the mild hypnotic suggestions to Kid Flash. Hopefully this would give her a chance to recruit Kid Flash as well. She felt a slight feeling of unease as she melted back into the shadows, she hated being in direct sunlight and now would have to wait until nightfall before being able to fly out in pursuit of Kid Flash.
Night fell and so did the harmful sun, Raven muttered a meditation spell and leapt into flight, away from the shadowy corner of the building. Once in the air she could feel Kid Flash's presence again, just as she had done to find him at his school, he was running along main street. At this rate Kid Flash would finish his run by about nine o'clock and Raven would be able to wait for him at the intersection between main and 5th street on his return journey. So Raven flew slowly, undetected by the citizens below, towards her planned rendezvous with the fastest teen alive.
Kid Flash was only running at about three-quarters of his maximum speed, although he had never run for very long at his max as it accelerated his metabolism even further. His accelerated metabolic rate was one thing he wouldn't miss about being Kid Flash, after an hour of running at high speeds he would have to eat in order to keep going and not get muscle fatigue. He was just running along 5th street when he saw a cloaked figure standing in the middle of the road, the road was not a busy one and there weren't any cars but it was still somewhat dangerous. The cloaked girl whispered something under her breath that Kid Flash did not catch and then he found himself suddenly floating in the air, with his feet off the ground his powers were useless.
"Hey!" Wally shouted, "What gives?"
"I had to get your attention somehow," Raven replied sarcastically, "what was I supposed to do, stand by the road and flash my leg as you went past?"
"That would've been much more interesting," Kid Flash replied as he caught a flash of Raven's leg beneath her cloak as though it had been purposefully revealed, suddenly for some unknown reason Kid Flash felt himself highly attracted to this newcomer.
"My name is Raven, and I have a favour to ask of you," Raven said stoically.
"Anything," Kid Flash said unwittingly, he hadn't meant to sound so drippy.
"I need you to get back in the saddle, I'm putting together a new team of Teen Titans and I could use your speed," Kid Flash was silent for a moment so Raven continued, "there's a ship full of hideously violent alien warlords coming here to find their most treasured slave, who recently escaped captivity. I need your help to stop them destroying the entire planet to find her."
"Wow, that's a lot to ask," for a moment the two sides of Kid Flash's personality clashed, Wally West wanting just to live a normal life at a normal pace and Kid Flash wanting to speed forward into a battle with an alien race for the fate of the Earth. However inside both of these personalities was a huge desire to et to know the mysterious Raven better, and it was this desire that won out, "If you're going to be there then count me in."
Raven's lips curled up ever so slightly in a very small expression of emotion which she quickly stifled before putting Kid Flash's feet back on the road, "Yes, I will be there. And so will Robin."
"Robin? I haven't seen him in ages, not since the Titans first disbanded after we defeated Antithesis," Kid Flash said to himself, "so what happens next?"
"Meet me at the Titans Tower next Friday, all will then be fully explained and you can meet your new team-mates," Raven replied before turning on her heel and with a muttered prayer she leapt into flight and out of Keystone City.
"Wow," Kid Flash said, sitting down on a curb, "if this is what happens every time I try to give up the hero thing I might as well just go with it. But she is really hot…"
