Firestorm
Teen Titans/Batman: The Animated Series
By Amos Whirly
Chapter Eleven: "Revelation"
Nightwing saw Beast Boy go down hard. He grabbed the green man by the arm and dragged him behind a counter as the bullets continued to rain around them. Starfire was not having trouble blocking them, though, as she had generated a shield of pulsing green light around her slender body. Every bullet that touched it instantly melted.
Raven did much of the same, black energy crackling around her white-cloaked frame.
Seeing that the girls were all right, Nightwing turned his attention to Beast Boy who was sporting a bloody wound in his left arm.
"Owie!" the green-haired metamorph wailed aloud.
"Just hold still," Nightwing ordered, snatching a towel off the counter and wrapping it securely around Beast Boy's arm.
Suddenly, the hailstorm of bullets ended. Nightwing peered around the cabinet at Starfire who was frowning darkly.
He stood up slowly, looking around. The little station was filled to capacity with gunmen in white coats. The gunmen slowly parted, and a figure in a gaudy purple parka appeared in their midst.
"Well, what do you know?" the figure cackled in a too familiar voice. He pulled the hood down revealing his unnaturally white face and gelled green hair.
"Joker," Nightwing growled. "What are you doing here?"
"I could have asked you the same question, bird boy."
"I asked you first," Nightwing gestured unobtrusively to Starfire who let her glowing green shield drop. Raven followed suit. "Why are you here, Joker?"
"Well, since I'm going to kill you all anyway," the Joker burst into obnoxious laughter, "I here for her." He pointed to Raven. "Blackfire sent me to recruit her."
"Raven will not work along side someone so evil as my sister!" Starfire stomped her foot.
"Why not?" the Joker's grin was malicious. "She's a murderer now, after all."
Green energy flickered in Starfire's clenched palms as Raven lowered her gaze to the floor.
"Why are you taking orders from Blackfire?" Nightwing demanded. "You've never taken orders from anyone."
The Joker eyed Nightwing darkly for a moment before bursting into loud laughter again. He gestured to the gun men who closed in on Starfire, Nightwing, and Beast Boy, and he approached Raven on quiet feet.
Raven did not move.
"Tell your girlfriend, bird brain, that if she tries anything, the boys here will paste your shape shifting friend all over the wall," the Joker threatened as Starfire raised her shield again. She dropped it immediately at the threat.
One of the gunmen hoisted Beast Boy to his feet and shoved him at Starfire who caught him.
"So what do you say, Raven?" the Joker set his hands on his hips. "Want to join the club?"
Raven did not answer.
"See the world? Live the life? Getting richer every second?"
Raven did not answer.
"You don't talk much, do you?"
"I want nothing to do with you."
"Why not?" the Joker cackled. "We're alike now, you and me."
"I'm nothing like you."
"But, you killed your friend," the Joker circled her like a vulture. "That's the mark of a bosom buddy if I've ever seen it. A kindred spirit! An ally, as it were, in a world full of goody-two-shoes!"
"I didn't mean to kill her."
"Of course, you did," the Joker chortled. "People like you always mean to do what they do even if they don't realize they do."
"Do not listen to him, Raven!" Starfire cried. "He is crawling under your skin!"
The Joker rolled his eyes and leaned closer to Raven. "How did you stand living with these idiots for so long?"
"They are my friends."
"Great. Go hang out with them. Maybe you'll kill them too. That would do me a big favor, and they wouldn't keep messing my plans up."
Raven fell silent again.
"Come on, Raven, baby!" the Joker held his arms open, his unnatural grin daunting. "You don't belong with them anymore."
"Yes, she does!" Beast Boy shouted. "Leave her alone!"
The Joker looked over his shoulder at the gunmen. "Why are they still talking? Shouldn't you have shot them by now?"
The gunmen shrugged.
"Raven, we are your friends," Starfire clasped her hands against her chest. "We shall always be your friends, and you shall always be welcome in our company no matter what you have done."
The Joker glared pointedly at the gunmen who grabbed Starfire, Beast Boy, and Nightwing and forced them to the floor, guns at their heads.
"So what do you say?" the Joker leaned in toward her.
Raven looked up, her violet eyes piercing through her friends. Eyes full of pain and guilt.
"You and me, baby," the Joker circled to her other side.
"Against whom?" Raven hissed. "Them?"
"Of course, not," the Joker laughed. "They won't make it out of here alive. It's you and me against Blackfire."
Nightwing looked up sharply.
"Against – Blackfire?" Starfire looked confused. "Is she not your ally?"
"I don't have allies," the Joker spat. "And the friends it looks like I make, I only make to benefit me. I agreed to work with Blackfire because I wanted something only she could give me."
Nightwing's gaze shifted to Raven. "You wanted a partner."
"You're perceptive, for a bird brain," the Joker nodded at the gunmen.
The men pulled the triggers.
And the guns did not fire.
Each weapon sparkled with a strange black electricity. The Joker whirled to face Raven whose eyes were flashing white.
"You wanted me as a partner?" she hissed. "I would never work with you."
"I had hoped by murdering your friend you would have realized—"
"Realized what?" Raven's voice was shaking with fury, the remaining walls of the station beginning to ripple with her rage. "That I could be evil if I wanted? That I could kill people with a thought? I knew that. I've always known that. And I've done my best all my life to avoid it!" She clenched her fists and the guns ripped out of the men's hands. "What makes you think that I'd agree to let that happen now?"
"You're a killer, Raven," the Joker leveled a withering glare at her. "You killed an innocent, slaughtered her in her sleep. Murdered her while she clutched her little rabbit. You've done it once, now. You'll do it again. That's the way these things work. Que serà ser."
Raven lowered her hands.
"Raven, do not listen to him!" Starfire was crying openly now.
The gunmen had grabbed their firearms out of the air and were preparing to shoot again. Nightwing searched desperately for an opening.
Raven suddenly looked up, something dangerous flashing in her violet eyes. "How did you know that Ingrid slept with a stuffed rabbit?"
The Joker opened his mouth to respond and fell darkly silent, his eyes showing for a split second a moment of hesitation. "It's a fact, stupid," he shouted, "that all Russian scientists sleep with a toy rabbit. It's something about communists."
Raven's eyes flashed again, rivers of red light creeping into the white. "How did you know?" she repeated, her slight frame levitating off the floor, and the white cape billowing around her. "How did you know that she slept with a rabbit? No one knew. Only I knew!"
The Joker took a step back.
Raven clenched her fists, and the guns exploded in the men's hands. They screamed in pain and started backing away from the levitating woman in the white cloak.
"Tell me!" she demanded, her voice taking on a darker, deeper tonality as dark energy crackled around her. The walls of the station were tearing apart.
The Joker, for the first time Nightwing had ever seen, actually seemed cowed, gaping in shock at the storm of black lightning that was filling the ruins of the laboratory.
Raven clenched her fists, the energy surging around the Joker's body and jerking him off the floor and holding him in the air. "Tell me!" she roared.
The gunmen shouted in terror as the storm of black energy reached its peak and the walls gave way. The roof collapsed on top of the storm of Raven's fury, blasting apart instantly at the contact. The force of her rage formed a whirlpool of energy on the ground. Nightwing grabbed Starfire and Beast Boy and held them down as the waves of power washed over them.
"Now!" Raven's arms trembled with anger.
"It was Blackfire!" the Joker finally cracked, glancing warily at the icy ground below him and the furious woman who held his life in her hands.
Her eyes no longer flashed white – they were red.
Blood red.
"When Blackfire got to earth," the Joker cajoled, "she knew that her sister would follow and try to reunite her friends. So Blackfire tracked you down first. She found you out here with that scientist and decided to kill her and make you think you did it."
"Blackfire must have triggered the nightmares," Raven hissed. "Her presence must have reawakened the memories of Trigon I had hidden." Her fingers went rigid, and the wind increased. "You killed her. You watched while Blackfire killed her!"
"What do you expect?" the Joker shrugged. "Would you put me down now?"
The black energy surrounding Raven's body suddenly shuddered, red light surrounding both her and changing the sparking electricity until it became frenetic and wild, crackling and snapping at everyone trapped within its grasp.
"I won't let you get away with this," Raven snarled.
Her fists opened.
Raven, the Joker, Nightwing, Starfire, and Beast Boy vanished in a blast of power that melted through the ice and snow and shredded into the clouds.
When the light faded, all that was left of the station was an enormous crater in the ice, filled with the melted remains of the snow that formerly covered the ground.