Teen
Titans
-
A Fan Fiction

Chapter Two: Slade's New Apprentice

"Odd place... Lots of machinery. What is it, An old factory?" Pyro asked.

"Possibly. Do you have the chip?" A deep voice replied it the shadows.

"Possibly. Do you have my money?" Asked Pyro.

"I can have it wired to your account within the hour."

"Good. Where are you, anyway?" Pyro looked around, not seeing anything untill a man walked out of the shadows.

"So, I finally meet the infamous Slade, face to face. You know, you're taller than they make you out to be."

"Really? What have you heard of me?

"Not much, just a few silly rumors from a few underground fight clubs. They say you're the unly undefeated world champion of the Underground. No one has ever defeated you. Personally, I'd like to see for myself, but I'm not gonna make any money by fighting a ledgend, right?"

"I was watching you fight today. You easily defeated the best I have. You didn't arrive much later than the Titans did."

"The Titans?" Pyro inquired.

"The Teen Titans. They have caused me more problems than anyone else ever had. I was going to have the Hive team finish them off, but that was before I heard of you and the great skill you possess. I can make you better, stronger, faster, if you become my apprentice..."

"I may just take you up on that, for the right price."

"Am I right in assuming you would do anything for the right amount of money?" Slade asked, curoius about just what Pyro would do.

"No, not entirely. I do have standards, you know. Ever since my father died, my family has been in financial ruin. All sorts of usurpers have been trying to take the position my father held, just because no one could contact me until several months after his death. Right now, one of my uncles is holding his position untill I can return and fufill my rightful place among the Order."

"How did your father die?"

"From the injuries sustained while fighting his mistake of a twin brother... I had the displeasue of meeting him once, just before fleeing this dimention for another,as well asanother planet."

"How sad..."

"Indeed."

A few days after someone named Pyro had dropped her off at the Tower, Raven woke up in the hospital wing, feeling much better. She got up out of thebed, andwalked to her room.She went to the place where she regularly put her cloak before she went to bed, and it wasn't there.She suddenly realized that she was still wearing it. remembering that she had been wearing this particular outfit for the past few days, she decided to get a change of clothes and went to take a shower.

Later, Ravenwent to the living room, feeling rather refreshed. It was rather late in the morning,as everyone else seemed to be awake. Beast Boy and Cyborg were fighting in some new game they got a few weeks ago. Robin looked from watching the others and noted Raven come in.

"Nice to see you awake, Raven. How are you feeling?" he asked.

"Much better."

"Ohh, Yeah! You might as well give up!" Cyborg shouted at Beast Boy. They had the volume up quite high.

"No way, Dude! You are so totally loosing!" Beast Boy snapped back.

In the end, Beast Boy beat Cyborg, much to his dismay, but the call soon came. An attack on a high level science laboratory.

"Kitten, I think I noticed! Now would you just take this junk and run! I think I can handle them by myself!" Pyro yelled, incredibly annoyed.

"Oh, Fine! I will then!" Kitten replied, slightly annoyed at Pyro. The both went outside, and were greeted by all four of the Teen Titans. Then, Robin, Starfire, and Kitten gasped.

"Robin!"

"Kitten!"

"Kitten?" Starfire asked, suddenly steaming out the ears.

"I thought you were in jail, Kitten..."

"I've found a guy so much better than you or Fang! So strong and so handsome!" Kitten then wrapped herself around Pyro's arm.

"What..? What the hell? Get off me! Dammit, are you nuts! GET OFF!" Pyro managed to pull himself away from Kitten. His eyes were quite wide. "Don't do that again! Haven't you got the picture yet? I DON'T LIKE YOU!" Pyro shoved a bag into her hands. "Take this back to Slade, and GO. AWAY." Pyro enunciated the last two words.

"You are just so difficult! One of these days, you'll change, and grow to love me like I do you!" Kitten said, looking like she was about to bite his head off.

"Then shortly after, I blow my brains out!" Pyro said enthusiastically at Kitten, who was starting to leave.

"Umm, could somebody tell me what just happened?" Cyborg asked, looking utterly baffled.

A voice came through an earpiece Pyro is wearing: "Attack, now." Pyro replied: "Too late." He ducked as a flying kick flew over from Robin.

"Hey, you're pretty quick."

"I thought you were on our side!" Robin said angrily as he pulled out his staff. Pyro then looked around. Cyborg was on the ground, his cannon at the ready, Beast Boy as a Gorilla, Starfire and Raven up in the air, their eyes glowing, then Robin in his stance with his staff.

"Well, The ultimate handicap match, and the only possiblity of victory being TKO. great... Slade should have said something about this." Pyro noted. The look on his face changed, he looked darker, colder, maybe.

"Lets mix it up." Pyro said, his voice very deep, his tone serious. Then, the Titans charged

Pyro immediately threw his giant sword away in some general direction, then blocked a swing from Robin, dodged a car courtesy of Raven, blocked several punches from Beast Boy, reversed a grapple from Robin, throwing him at Raven. Beast Boy ran at Pyro at full speed, still a gorilla, but Pyro clothslined him hard, picked him up,andtried to throwhim. The blade soon returned, cutting into Beast Boy's arm, but he grabbed it and threw it at Pyro. He easily caught it. Moments later, Beast boy fell, unconscious. Robin charged at him again, but Pyro parried every swing of his staff, and soon found an opening. Pyro slashed, cutting into Robin, but not too deep. Then he blasted Robin back into a building with a high pressure discharge of fire from his left hand. Robin didn't get up after falling out of the wall, and that made Starfire lose it completely. She shot a flurry of starbolts at Pyro, but he pulled a move thatseemed rather unreal for a weapon of that size. He used his buster sword as asheild, and deflected all her shots back at herself.Shedodged them, butdidn't expect Pyro the throw the sowrd at her immediately after, as the edge of the blade knicked the side of her torso, losing it's rotation and falling down. She tried to attack Pyro again, but couldn't stay up long enough. She soon fell to the ground, unconscious. Pyro made a motion of drawing something back, and the blade shot towards Pyro, and he caught it. Cyborg then attacked, and Pyro parried every attack from him, and found an opening after several minutes of fighting, and lanced his blade through Cyborg, right where his heart would be. Then, for a brief moment, the look on Pyro's face lightened.

"I'm sorry for this, please forgive me." he whispered. Cyborg just looked at him as his systems shut down, all except for an important few, exactly what Pyro had in mind. His face grew cold one more, and he quickly withdrew his sword from Cyborg. He fell, energy crackling around him. He put his sword over on his back, it holding there with nothing to hold on to, seemingly no sheath. Then he turned to his final opponent, Raven.

"Looks like it's just you and me now. Why don't you check their lifesigns?" Raven did so, and returned to where she was before, almost shaking with anger.

"They're dead. All dead."

"So they are. What a loss." Pyro tossed casually.

"You will PAY!"

Raven started gathering her strength, as did Pyro.

"Azarath..." Raven started.

"Ion..." Pyro started.

"Metrion..." She continued.

"Strike..." He continued.

"ZINTHOS!" She yelled

"CANNON!" He yelled.

A sphere of darkness emanated from Raven's hands andflew at Pyro,gathering speed, but at the same time it started from her, energy from the surroundings gathered to Pyro, thenit shot at Raven. The two blasts met, and reacted violently back to both Pyro and Raven. Both were knocked very far from the point where the two attacks met, and Raven was knocked unconscious once more, but Pyro was still standing. Then, everything blacked out.

Pyro woke up several hours later, in a prison cell.

"Looks like the criminal is finally up. Interrogation in half an hour. If you believe in a god, start praying." The guard said to him, his voice almost dripping with contempt.

"Don't I get at least one free phone call or something?"

"Yeah, right." The guard said with a laugh.

"Fine. Sixty dollars gets me two."

"Make it a hundred."

"Deal." Pyro started digging into his pockets for his wallet, and found it. He pulled out five Twenty-dollar bills and gave them to the guard.

"This way please." The guard led him to a telephone booth, and let Pyro in.

"Two calls only." The guard warned.

"Got it." Pyro replied, and dialed a number.

"Pyro. Are you gonna bail me out, or you gonna leave me to my own devices?" Pyro said.

"Neither. I saw your fight with the Titans. Very good, but I've found someone with a bit more ruthless efficiency..." A calm cool voice replied, then hung up. Pyro slammed the phone down.

"First one give you the finger?" The guard asked. Pyro nodded. Then he dialed another number. Raven answered the phone.

"What?" She sounded annoyed, or stressed, or maybe both, Pyro thought.

"Your friends aren't dead"

"Go to hell."

"Do you have them, or should I start checking morgues?" Pyro asked, but his reply was a click, She hung up. Pyro slammed the phone down again, slightly cracking the plastic.

"Heh, two in a row. Time to back!" The guard said, pulling him by his armout of the phone booth.

"Sorry, but you have the wrong guy. I'm not a bad person, just in the wrong place at the wrong time." Pyro said. He pulled away from the guard and said good bye. The ground below Pyro turned into magma, and he sunk into it, the magma turning back into the floor after Pyro dissappeared completely into it.

"How in the heckdid he...?" The guard wondered, then he realized that his prisoner escaped.

"I'm so screwed."

Pyro checked all the morgues in the area, and the remainingTitans werent there, so it was all narrowed down. They were all at Titan Tower,and that was his next stop. He checked all of the rooms but two, they were locked. Suddenly, he remembered something. Pyro stopped just short of one of the doors, and summoned his sword. It shot through the ceiling and buried itself two feet deep into the floor. Now I see why Dad liked this one so much. Mom, You are the coolest! Pyro thought. He pulled it out andflipped it over onto his back. He had changed clothes from his prison suit thanks to a local sporting goods store.it felt more comfortable as he wasn't wearing the bodysuit Slade gave him anymore, and wasn't as easy to identify as the prison suit.After making sure everything seemed to be in order, he took a deep breath, and knocked on the door.

No response.

He knocked harder this time, and still no response.

Pyro knocked really hard, putting a dent in the door. No immediate response, so Pyro turned and started to walk away, but stopped when he heard a voice come through the door.

"Who is there?"

"Umm, Can I come in? Or should I wait?" Pyro asked. The door opened a few inches, then quickly shut. Pyro scratched his head.

"That was... Odd." Pyro said to himself. He could hear something going on behind the door, then something unintelligible.

What is going on in there? Pyro thought to himself. Then the door suddenly all but dissappeared.

"ZINTHOS!"

"AAAAAGGGHHHH!" Pyro was startled by a hundred things flung at him. He yanked his sword around and started swinging andblocking for all he was worth. Nothing hit him, but he walked into the room with his sword ready, in case anything else should take flight. Raven's eyes lit the room casting shadows everywhere, all of them creepy at the worst.

"Raven...?" Pyro cautiosly asked. She said nothing, but her eyes turned bright red, and she started towering over him, growling. Pyro felt something draw him into the darkness, into somewhere where he could see nothing, until quad sets of eyes started appearing around him. Some crept closer, but Pyro opened the blade and fired a few warning shots. They backed off momentarily, but they soon lunged at him. He closed the blade, and attacked every set of quad eyes he saw, but soon, he was being overcome. Just before he was drawn into the pool of red eyes, he remembered something his father taught him. How to fly. He blasted himself up into the air, and the light of the afterburners gave him just enough light to see what some of those eyes belonged to, and what he saw horrified him. Then he remembered something else. He summoned a large fireball and launched it at the seething mass. The fireball exploded on contact, but the creatures kept coming.

"Raven! If you can hear me, Stop this at once! If you kill me, you kill your friends as well! I know how to bring them back!" Pyro yelled, not expecting any response. "Please! Youdon't kill me! I know somewhere underneath your cold hard exterior, you have a good heart, and that you care for your friends! And somewhere, you know that I'm not lying!"

The creatues below Pyro stopped trying to reach for him, and better yet, all those red eyes dissappeared. He felt himself thrown somewhere, the he hit a wall and fell to the ground, in Raven's room. Heslowly pickedhimself up to find Raven on her hands and knees, breathing heavily. Lightning thrashed, casting eerie shadows across the room. He went over to Raven and bent down on one knee.

"It's going to be okay... I... I can help..." He said, somewhat uneasily, as he wasn't used to comforting people, because of twenty years of military service. He never particularly enjoyed being around the guys who talked about women incessantly. He mainly kept to himself, and never really liked a girl much, for some reason unknownt to him, until now. Something about her appealed to him.

"Don't touch me!" She knocked his hand away, as he was about to put iton her shoulder. She started to stand up, then lunged at him, swinging her fists. She managed to hit him several times before she just fell into his arms, cursing him, yet crying. She was sobbing in his arms, to the complete surprise to Pyro, at just holding her like this sent shockwaves up his arms and into his chest. Oddly, he was one who wasn't much for being touched, not to mention in a way like this, by a girl... He never really had much interest in girls for most of his life. and they weren't much for him, either. He felt powerful tendrils of her power attempting to lash out, but he could somehow supress them from destroying anything.

"Why...? Why am I... I don't..." Raven tried to speak, but her voice failed.

"Don't worry. You can't keep something like this bottled up forever...I know how you feel, and it wouldn't behealthy for someone... like you." He tried to say. He squeezed a little harder, as did she. a few minutes later, he heard a voice, faking a southeren accent.

That's right! Get-R-Done! someone said.

Wha..? Who is that, and why does he sound familiar? Pyro thought.

Oh, wait, did your memory repress that? I'm sorry, let me bring that back for you! At that point, Raven knew something was happening, so she broke away from Pyro.

"Pyro? Is.. s-something wrong...?" She asked, but got no reply, because something happened to him. Pyro fell to his knees and held his head as pain coursed all through his body.

"AAAAAAGGGHHH! What's going ON!" Pyro could see flashes of what happened before his eyes, but nothing was coherent. Then it all stopped and he collapsed.

"Ugh..." He felt sick. "R-Raven..? Please..." Pyro started, holding up a hand. She ignored it and walked over to him.

"What's happening?" She asked. She was trying not to sound too caring.

"I... I'm..." Pyro was having trouble speaking... Oh, come on! Don't tell me you think she's that ravishing! The voice said again.

Shut up! Pyro thought back.

You wanna take this outside? I'm all ready out here, but you might wanna leave the little lady in there, cause I don't wanna kill her by accident! The voice threatened. Lightning broke again, as Pyro tried to stand up again.

What I don't get is why you like her. Both of us know that relationships with goth chicks don't last, and besides, she's so not your type. You could do so much better, anyhow. I saw this really fat girl on the way here and- the voice was cut off by a mental blast from Pyro even Raven felt.

SHUT UP! I've had ENOUGH!

Well, looks like you're dead set on her. I guess I'll have to show you the proper path, then. I'll just make her dead for you. Lightning flashed, showing someone's figure from behind a thick curtain. Then, by themselves, the curtains drew apart, and there someone was, grinning evilly.

You know, from this angle, she looks like a stick. I'll bet she has an eating disorder, or something... The man started to say.

Not one word more... Not one word more... Pyro thought, warning the voice. Lightning flashed, and it began raining hard. Pyro drew the giant sword, and jammed in the floor in front of Raven.

This is my fight... Please, stay out of it. Take this... Hold on to it for me, because right now, you are the only one I trust... Pyro thought to Raven. Everything is happening as it was foretold to me... He continued.

"Foretold?" She asked him. Pyro put up a hand to silence any further questions.

Looks like I'm gonna have to pull you out the hard way. I hope she enjoys her time in Hell! The figure held out a hand, and chenched it into a fist. Raven arched over backwards in pain, Dark energy crackling over her body, she was lifted into the air, her limbs twitching. A tear went down Pyro's cheek, and then something inside him snapped.

"No... NO!" Pyrofelt a scream of anger burst out, gathering power within himself, and then it happened. A silver aura surrounded Pyro, and with a crack, his hair turned silver, and his normally blue eyes turned silver.

Well, It's about time. the voice said. I'll be nice just this once and release her. I'll let her live another day. with the last word, Raven was dropped. She hit the floor roughly, and just lay there, moaning softly.

Now she knows the pain in living... the other man grinned.

You want a fight? Fine. I'll let you have one. Pyro thought.

Good. I was hoping you would finally achieve your father's Silver form. This should be fun. The other man said.

How do you know of it? Pyro asked, completely ignorant of who the other man was.

"Because, I'm you dark self. In all essence, I am what would be yourDark form." The other man said, his voice exactly like Pyro's.

"W-What...?"

"Thanks to your goth friend, we were split apart. You, you are Sam 'Pyro' Rage. You are your father's son. I am someone else entirely. I am now known as Soran. I have practically no relation to you now, other than who I came from, and what I originally was. The ability to handle that giant sword of your mother's came from her. That is a family weapon, as is the Sword of Rage. Now that I think about it, now that your father is dead, why don't you take his nickname? Start calling yourself Rage?" Soran asked.

"No. I am not Rage, nor will I ever be. I am Pyro, and that's all I'll ever be." Pyro told him flatly.

"No? Fine then. Why don't you at least summon the Swordnow, so we can fight. It's perfect weather!"

"Fine, I will." Pyro held his hand in the air, andfeltthe timeless words used to bring theSwordto it's rightful weilder come from his mouth,the words to summon the sword.

"I summon the symbol of the Order of the Flame, the heirloom as old as time, the weapon of the great leaders, The Sword of Rage!" A column of fire and lava came up, engulfing Pyro's outstretched hand, and then receded a moment later, revealing in his hand, the seeminglyall-powerful Sword.

"So, Shall we begin?" Soran asked.

"Yes. Lets dance." Pyro replied, deepening his voice, feeling the anger flow through his body.

The two bothers took their battle stances in the sky by Titan's Tower, ready for a fight to the finish...

(Author's Note: The second chapter in the story has been redone for coherence, and it's much better and realistsic to my OC.)