Sonic Resonator
Underwater Headquarters Schematics
Squid Cyborg
Pirahna Cyborg 01-07
Pirahna Cyborg 08-14
Training Faciltiy
Information scrolled past the screen, the blue light of the computer flashing across the rather bored features of Brother Blood. He sat, one hand propped up against his chin to keep his head upright, and watched the information scroll past. It was rather extensive, and unfortunately contained a lot of unnecessary information from Blood's thoughts. What he'd eaten for breakfast, his exact words when he'd yelled at this workers. Unimportant things. He'd been lucky to narrow the searches down and work on a day-by-day basis. As it was, he still had a lot of information to sift through.
Finally, it flashed across the screen.
"Ah... there it is," remarked Blood, all sense of boredom vanishing in an instant as he opened up the appropriate file, sliding the mouse into place and double-click. Instantly another flood of information assaulted him, but this time it was vital information. Schematics, designs, power source. Everything he could possibly need.
Shield Generator
"Having fun?" came a voice behind him. Blood's started but managed to maintain a cool aura as he turned, unsurprised to see the Ravager there.
"Found what we needed. But we'll need a few components," he stated, pointing at the screen. "Everything else we have."
The Ravager leaned over Blood's shoulder, eyeing the screen, and a smirk spread across her wine-red lips. "This is perfect," she remarked, a plot already forming instantly in her mind. "Go gather the first component and our final member... I will handle the rest. I believe you will find Cyborg is out in the city already."
A grin spread across Blood's features. Someone up there must have liked him to provide him with such a good opportunity. The Ravager must have thought the same, for her features mirrored his, showing all her pearly white teeth in a wicked smirk. "On your way out, summon Deathfang and Blackfire. It is time," she intoned solemnly.
Brother Blood stood and gave a bow to the white-haired assassin, and departed. Everything would be ready in virtually no time. And now the Titans would meet their enemy.
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Far below the surface of Jump City there existed a large number of natural rock caves and formation. However, the majority of them were unstable and had been sealed off to the public, the Jump City officials forbidding people to go down at their own risk of being crushed or hopelessly lost and trapped below the surface of the Earth. A number of criminals and low-level super-villains had tried to set up fortresses but they hadn't been very successful either. Near the outskirts of Jump City there had once existed a church of St. Sebasian that had been swallowed up by the mud and it too had once lain beneath the city. Before Slade had moved into it and his apprentice had destroyed it with an explosive surge of power. One that had very nearly destroyed the city.
This, the underground church of St. Sebastian (or what was left of it) was where Beastboy turned his steps this day, after placing Silkie back into Starfire's room for an afternoon nap.
For if any place and time had profoundly changed Beastboy, this had certainly been one of them. Others might have been the river in Upper Lamumba, Africa. Another still might have been the animal research labs on the far end of Jump City, which had been experimenting with splicing chemicals. Maybe even, he thought dryly, the Mega Meaty Meat fast food restaurant. But here, this was definitely a dramatic place for Beastboy.
This was where he'd last seen Terra. Alive, at any rate.
But she was still here. And the place was filled with memories of her.
A localized tremor made the entire place shake, but Beastboy barely paid it any mind, his body instinctively spreading his legs and bending his knees. It passed quickly. Tiny earthquakes like that weren't uncommon here. Some side-effect of Terra's last stand. Jump City, only a short distance away, never felt so much as a Richter. Here, well, the worst it could get would be a 2.0 or a 3.0, tops.
Reverently approaching the small stone statue that had once been Beastboy's first girlfriend, he reflected on her and how they'd met, and what had, ultimately, driven them apart. Slade. Not content to simply ruin Robin's life and later Raven's, the criminal mastermind had sought to make even Terra and Beastboy miserable by taking Terra away as his apprentice and then forcing her to spy on the Titans, pretend to be one of them. And then betray them. That had hurt them all. None of them would ever forgive Slade for that. Some of them hadn't been willing to forgive Terra either... Raven and Beastboy prominent among them... until they'd seen for themselves just how badly Slade had messed her up.
And in the end, Terra had paid the ultimate price doing the right thing.
Beastboy made his way up towards the statue, as always marveling how life-like it was. For solid stone, it bore a striking resemblance to the blonde-haired, blue-eyed rock tumbler who just waltzed into the Titan's lives, shook things up, and then left them again. She hadn't aged a day... she still looked no older than fourteen or fifteen. Terra hadn't known her real age. She'd lost track of her birthday during those first few rough years. But the stone had captured her perfectly, every strand of hair, every fold in her uniform, right down the heartbreaking expression of rage and sadness in her features.
Below her a plaque had been mounted, and the years of negligence around the place had cause dust to build up. Gently Beastboy knelt down, brushing them away, though he knew by heart what was written on it.
'Terra.'
'A Teen Titan.'
'A True Friend.'
"Hey Terra," he said, standing up and brushing the dust off his knees. "It's been a while, I guess," he said. Unsurprisingly, she didn't reply. "I want you to know we haven't forgotten about you. We're still looking for that cure. I... I mean uh... STAR Labs had a break-through the other day. I couldn't understand of what they were saying but uh... well..."
He gradually trailed off, and realize how dumb he sounded. Even to himself.
"We're still trying, Terra. We'll find a way to bring you back, just like we said we would. We promise."
Silence greeted that. But it was a comfortable silence. Beastboy had heard it before. And in this particular silence, he could hear something. He could hear his memories. He could hear Terra's voice, hear her laughter, hear the things she'd said that he remembered.
You were the best friend I ever had... she had said.
Beastboy sighed. "No, I'm not..." he said softly, almost to himself. "I should be visiting more often. I'm sorry, Terra. I've just... well... been busy, ya know? There've been... well... other things in my life and..."
Just go ahead and say it, he thought to himself.
"Terra... I've met someone. Well, not really met per se, I already knew them but... I didn't really know them before, ya know? I didn't... I mean... I'm not going to forget about you or anything," he said hastily. "I just... I realized how much I care about her. And... even if you can come back... things are different now. What happened between us is... gone. I'm sorry, Terra."
Another tremor made the place shake. A fairly strong one. Beastboy glanced around in faint alarm, but then the miniature-earthquake subsided. "Is that really you, Terra?" Beastboy asked, turning back to the statue and voicing aloud a suspicion he'd had about the tremors. "Are you trying to say something?"
A soft crumbling sound caught Beastboy's ear. He turned, glancing over at the far wall. Some of the stones had been shaken loose by the tremor. Also not uncommon. He barely paid it a cursory glance...
... and then did a double-take, his eyes nearly bulging out of his head.
No... it couldn't be...
Beastboy bounded over to the wall to make sure. He'd been right. It was a symbol. The cracks formed the image of a bird in flight. Terra was still alive, and she was communicating with them. Unless Beastboy's mind was playing tricks on him, and he was simply seeing what he wanted to see. He blinked his eyes, shook his head, and took another look. No, he'd been right. It was a message.
So Terra knew about Raven. But what did the image mean?
And then, with crystal clarity, Beastboy understood her message. He'd be hard pressed to explain how. But he'd known Terra longer and better than anyone else in the world, save Slade and Terra herself. He'd know how she would have acted if she'd known. The message confirmed it, in his mind. So he made his way back to the statue and stood directly before it, on top of the rough pedestal on which it stood.
"Thank you Terra," he whispered, planting a soft kiss on her stone cheek. "I promised I won't forget you, and I intend to keep my promise. But thank you... for understanding."
Beastboy leapt back down onto the ground, taking a casual, relaxed pace as he walked out of the abandoned church and memorial of Terra, sparing her one last, apologetic look as he turned and exited the darkness, walking back into the light. The skies were the crimson of sunset, tinged red by the setting of the sun.
Unnoticed, the cold statue of Terra, frozen in her likeness, shifted. Ever so slightly, ever so subtly. A casual observer, and indeed perhaps even a keen one would not have noticed a difference. But from Terra's stone eye came a single drop of water, trailing down her stone cheek like a tear. One that could have been attributed to condensation.
But was it really?
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The pizza was good.
Dick and Kory had been rather enjoying their time out alone, undisturbed by the antics of their teammates. Content in a quiet, almost peaceful solitude in a quaint little pizza-shaped restaurant with good food and better company.
It was too good to last.
None-the-less, when Dick's communicator went off, Kory was tempted to blast it into a billion pieces with her starbolts. If not for the holographic image covering them, her eyes would've been clearly seen as glowing emerald in anger. Dick opened up the communicator, keeping his hand in place over the distinct 'T's shape so casual observers might've mistaken it for a cellphone.
"Yeah?"
The image in the communicator was indistinct, filled with static, and the voice was obviously altered to conceal the identify of whomever it was. "WayneTech Laboratories are about to be hit. The Teen Titans are needed there. Hurry." And then, like that, the image vanished.
"What was that?" asked Kory, blinking her eyes in puzzlement.
"Anonymous tip," replied Robin. "Somebody who didn't want to reveal themselves."
"More secrets?" she asked.
"Sometimes secrets are kept for a reason," he remarked, standing, though trying not to appear in a hurry. He took Kory's hand, guiding her out of the restaurant. They left behind their payment and a fairly large tip with the half-eaten pizza as they exited the restaurant and slipped into a nearby alleyway. There, Kory politely turned her back as Robin slipped off his street clothes and revealed his uniform underneath, grabbing his mask from his utility belt and snapping it into place across his features. His clothes he tossed into a compartment of the nearby R-Cycle, hidden behind a dumpster. Kory's transformation was a quieter affair, as she slipped off the holographic ring and let her image shimmer, to be replaced by the bright, alien features of the Tamaranian Princess Koriand'r. Known among the people of Earth as Starfire.
Robin slid into the seat of the R-Cycle, sliding the helmet onto his head. Although she likely wouldn't need it (Tamaranians tended to be tough) Robin tossed a spare helmet to Starfire.
"Hop on. I'll contact the others."
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A sudden series of beeps came to Beastboy as he exited the underground church, and instinctively he glanced down at his belt buckle, which was flashing violet. Yup. A Titan signal. Reaching down to a hidden pocket in his uniform he drew forth his Titan communicator, flipping it open, and wasn't entirely surprised to see Robin's face appear on the screen.
"Hey man, what's up?"
"Trouble. Got an anonymous tip there's going to be a break-in at a WayneTech Research Lab. I'm sending coordinates," said the Boy Wonder, his face vanishing to be replaced by a map of Jump City, complete with two red blinking dots. One, of course, was labeled 'You are Here.' And the other, in a surprising twist of humor (the communicators were Cyborg's work) was 'Bad Guy's Here.'
"On my way."
"Good, Cyborg's on the other end of town, and Raven's still sick. They won't be able to join us. Get here quick, Beastboy."
"Roger," replied the green-skinned metamorph with a mocking salute to the communicator, which he snapped shut and slid back into it's pocket. Taking a running start, he leapt into the air, morphing into a dark-green raven and swooping up into the air. He'd be able to join Robin and Starfire in virtually no time, and they'd show the baddie a thing or two about breakin' the law in Jump City.
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Beastboy arrived shortly after the bright red R-Cycle skidded to a stop and Robin and Starfire leapt off it, placing their helmets on the back side for later. Shifting back into his natural form, Beastboy dropped into a crouch by the back door to the laboratory.
Which was lying on the ground, torn clear off it's hinges.
"Oookay..." he remarked, eyeing the doorframe. "Somebody with super strength. No problem. We must've tackled dozens of guys like that."
"Guys and girls," Robin added, eyeing the doorframe. Their were finger marks where the individual had grabbed the door and torn it of it's hinges. Very small, delicate fingers. A woman's hand. That narrowed down the possibilities a considerable amount, since most of the Titan's foes tended to be men and boys. And the few girls they'd tangled with didn't have the sort of power to do this sort of damage with their bare hands.
Thus, Robin was not surprised that, when the Titans burst into the laboratory and into one of the research centers, they found Blackfire hovering over one of the overturned computer consoles, a smug smirk on her lips, hands on her hips as she grinned at the Titans mockingly. He was, however, mildly shocked to see the great dark-haired Adonis in a trench coat, who gave out a low hiss of excitement as the Titans came into view.
"Sister!"
"Adonis!"
Blackfire's grin grew wider. "Glad to know we've got a following... though I think my friend here goes by the name of Deathfang now," she remarked idly. "Let me guess... here to stop us from committing anymore mean crimes, sister dearest?"
Starfire gasped, choking back a response that was pure venom. Thus, her accusations she was about to throw at her sister were lost along with her voice. She recognized that armor. Those gauntlets and that belt, bearing those Tamaranian sigils. Those belonged to a notorious Tamaranian criminal from centuries ago, who'd tried to usurp the throne and very nearly succeeded. Upon her death, she'd been entombed on an orbiting moon far away from Tamaran.
So her sister had...!
Robin stepped forward, sliding out his retractable bo staff and snapping it underneath his arm. "Alright you two. This is private property, and you're trespassing. Come quietly and we'll go easy on you."
"Works for me," said Blackfire with a saucy smirk, offering both of her arms to Robin as she dropped to the ground in front of him, posing in a most seductive fashion that brought all of her best assets to light. And on Blackfire, that was a lot of assets. "So you wanna play good cop/bad cop, Robbie?" she added sweetly.
Robin cringed, but brought out his handcuffs anyway. If Blackfire honestly intended to surrender, he had to take her in. Her kept one hand on his staff, however. He hadn't lived as long as he had fighting crime by being stupid. His precautions were well placed, it seemed, as when he got close Blackfire suddenly lashed out with an uppercut meant to send the Boy Wonder flying through the air. He swiftly snapped his head back, avoiding the blow and leaping backwards simultaneously to land in a crouch.
Starfire shot forward like a rocket, slamming into Blackfire's midsection and sending both of the Tamaranian sisters crashing to the floor. Beastboy leapt forward to offer his assistance but suddenly found Adonis in his way, who shrugged off his trench coat and tossed it aside. Beastboy, surprised by his tactics, skidded to a halt, and for the first time noticed the red and black breeches on his waist and the belt and vials there as well. Reaching down to his belt, Adonis drew forth one of the vials from the front, one of the sickly neon green ones, and, with no hesitation at all, jammed the needle sharply into his forearm as Beastboy watched with a horrific fascination. As he watched, Adonis began to change, his body growing, exploding out of it's smaller frame as a new one filled it, his muscles swelling, as his skin was suddenly thick with fur the color of the midnight sky, black with hints of purple. His nose and mouth pushed forward into a vicious muzzle, and hot saliva spilled from his lips as he gave a low growl, towering high over Beastboy.
Deathfang had reverted to his werebeast form.
A hand the size of his head grabbed up the front if Beastboy's uniform and hurled him into another part of the lab. Deathfang quickly followed up the attack, hurling himself fang-first at the green-skinned metamorph, who slipped into the form of a snake and slithered under a desk to avoid the attack. Deathfang lifted it up and hurled it aside, but was rewarded not by finding a green snake, but a green tiger instead, who lashed out with it's claws. Deathfang countered, grabbing the great beast and holding it high over it's head.
Blackfire, meanwhile, had broken the hold of her sister and countered with a kick that had sent her flying through the air and up into the ceiling. The dark-haired former Princess powered up some lavender starbolts and shot up through the hole in the ceiling after Starfire.
Robin idly glances left and up at the two combats going on, wondering which one he should get involved with. Ultimately, he settled on Beastboy and Deathfang. Last time he'd battled the purple werebeast he'd been one himself, and it had taken a sonic cannon, starbolt eye-blast and three exploding disks to bring one of those down... or another werebeast. Beastboy would need an edge, and Robin intended to provide it. However, as he charged forward, the room suddenly lit up, and a steel wall slid out of the floor, sealing off one side of the room from another. The Titans had been divided. And now their opponents had the edge.
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Robin backed away from the steel wall, staff upraised, glancing at the other exits. They too, were sealed off. He'd been sealed into a section of the lab with steel, sheer walls. The ceiling too. Idly, he placed his staff down, reaching up, and ran a hand along the wall newly formed. It was tough stuff, he could tell instantly. Must've been a security measure of the company in case anybody tried to steal anything. But why go off now?
He got his answer when he had to shift his head to one side and avoid a shuriken that nearly sliced off his ear. Robin turned around, staff upraised, to face his new opponent.
The Ravager stood at the opposite end of the room, one hand extended, the other by her side. Clearly, she'd just thrown the shuriken that had failed to slice open the bird-boy's skull. Idly she dropped her hand back to her side and rested it on her hip, giving Robin a good once-over. This was, after all, the first good look she'd seen of him in almost seven long years. Watching him through the eyes of camera spys and scouts wasn't quite the same.
Robin returned the look, taking in his new opponent, noting the swords sheathed on her back, noted the smug look in her eyes... the eyes of a trainer killer. The coloration too, was not lost on him. Whoever this was, they seemed to be emulating the Titan's arch-nemesis, the criminal mastermind Slade. But who was this girl? He quirked an eyebrow as he spotted the dull orange 'R' resting on her bosom. It matched his own, though of a different color.
Who was she?
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Author's Notes:
Most of the files being run through by Blood were machines in 'Wavelength,' which is significant later on. The final member of Tartarus I will leave a mystery for now. Since you all know already who Brother Blood is, the churches name should be an obvious reference. It was the public front for Blood's cult. They tended to masquerade as Christians. Considering Slade was using the place as his fortress (I was surprised by the stained-glass windows) and later becomes involved with Trigon and Raven in 'Birthmark' it seemed appropriate. Terra's fate comes from the very end of 'Aftershock part II' as does the line that 'they'll find a cure... someday.' Next time: The Leaders of Titans and Tartarus clash, and Robin has a shocking eye-opener about the enigmatic Ravager.
Ultimate R-Man: That they have so much in common despite a surface layer of vast differences? That's my reason. Really, comic Robin was like that? Lucky guess on my part. Keep your pretzels, we have no need for them.
Yomiori-Wolfdemon: Ah good, I do hope to avoid out-of-characterness as much as possible. And glad you enjoyed BB's brief role. You should like this chapter even more, methinks.
TDG3RD: Character building indeed. They're going to need such things later on. Glad you're enjoying the couple fluff. Ah, Jericho's sister will indeed be more than enough. More than the Titans can handle, in all likelihood. Heh.
Blackbird: Interesting idea, Terror Sect. I will have to check it out. And yes multiple character fight scenes can be tough, which is why I try to quickly divide them up in my stories. Makes it easier. As for what's to come… it's beginning.
Scathac's Warrior: Neither can I. Neither can I.
Todd fan: Great review! Hehe.
Pnaixrose: A clever ploy of mine, I do so delight in being devious. And perhaps I threw that in as subtle foreshadowing? Muwahahahaha.
Ray1: Er, I did mention the Ravager had -white- hair, right? Not blonde? She's a comic based character I transformed into a cartoonish version of herself.
Seth Turtle: I hate it when that happens. Glad you're enjoying the slightly more grown up Titans, as well as the secret identity scene. I was particularly worried about that, but you seem to have appreciated it for the same reasons I do. And yes, it reminds me of Nightcrawler too, that was some of the inspiration for it.
Comet-hime: Yay! I know you haven't, but you're reading this, and that makes me happy. Hope you can keep up but understand if you can't. Ravager's comic, not OC, but I'm flattered you would think me capable of such. Glad you enjoyed the HIVE trio's part, brief though it was. Expect more of them later.