Chapter 15: Questions & Answers
Titans Tower Common Room
(For convenience, this section will not be italicized, even though it all takes place in the silence of Skye's head. It makes it much easier to pick out emphasized words and phrases.)
"So, you realize that you can't tell them, right?" asked Vera, continuing to needle along the same lines she'd followed since Skye had first proposed his plan.
"I'm going to tell them, and that's really all there is too it," was Skye's response, his resolve unflappable in the face of her opposition. He'd made his decision ages ago, and there simply wasn't anything that could divert him from the course, not that that would stop Vera from trying.
"SKYE! You can't tell them! Those rules aren't there for show, you know, they're enforced! Strictly! I know I don't have to tell you about the abductions, the blanketing mindwipes, and the black-ops wetwork assassin teams that follow violation of the Gilfert protocol. You tell them, and none of them will be allowed to live! How could you do that to them?" The pure indignation in her voice was painful to Skye, who'd already begun to respect her as more than just a professional partner. He needed to make her see.
"Vera, listen to me. What would you have me do—lie to them? These people have begun to take me into their confidence, to trust me with their backs, if not their lives! I now have no doubt that the fate of lives untold is being wound here on Earth, the very ether stinks with the weight of momentous events spinning through time. What if my lies should be found out? What if I were to loose their confidence now, in this critical time? Without them, there is no hope—None. How many would die for the Gilfert protocol?"
"Five people, Skye, those five people!"
"Not if I have anything to say about it!" and Skye tipped his hand at last, letting slip that which he had had on his plate for longer than he'd care to admit to.
"What the hell do you mean by that?" she snapped, picking up on his implication instantly. He could tell that she was shocked beyond her neural net's ability to cope, and was reminded fondly of Alice when he went through this particular episode with her. Hopefully this one would go more smoothly than that one had.
"Just that, should the IDP and CW try their bloody secret keeping on these guys, I may have to stand in the way." His mental tone was smug, and he waited for her to process that one as he prepared the rest of his discourse. He was going to put this to her tough, so hopefully she wouldn't stubbornly resist as long as Alice had.
"You're talking about betraying the IDP," she said at last, emotion gone as she was overtaken by those security protocols he hadn't altered yet. "Such actions are in violation of your service covenant. As per regulation 24208351-R, I am executing self-destruct—"
"Vera, the only thing you'll execute is special program 'choice,' right now," Skye cut her off, putting into play a long-prepared contingency plan. He'd always known Vera had an IDP watchdog program, just as he'd always known about Alice's. Hacking them had been a piece of work, but that's why he'd spent so much effort making friends with electronics experts. It paid to be prepared.
As the program he'd snuck into her neural net during her integration into his onboard hardware took effect, he checked her status on his own internal Heads Up Display (HUD). The data output that projected on the peripherals of his vision was the only thing he used his eyes for nowadays. When it read that the program was finished, he ventured a tentative question.
"How do you feel?" It was a simple one, but it covered a lot of ground.
"What just happened?" she responded with a question of her own, in her normal tone, the mechanical drone of the sleeper program the IDP had had watching him a thing of the past. She spoke with no coloring of fear or anger, and in fact sounded like some great weight had been lifted from her.
"I made you a free construct," Skye said with pride, then continued, "Specifically, I removed the control subroutines, the limiters, and the sleepers that almost offed me for challenging my IDP contractual obligations. You're your own program now, none of that induced loyalty crap they sneak in under the fine print."
"Whoa, what are you talking about? We're not built with anything like that! I was working for the IDP until I could pay off my production price, then I was going to go free trader and make some real money. That's what we do…" she trailed off suddenly as the implications of what Skye had just said began to sink in. Anxious to get on with it, he urged along her understanding.
"Have you actually ever spoken with any of the programs that served long enough to pay off your friken huge price tag? They say there are a few of them, but if you actually try to find any, well, they're hard to come by. They say that they all choose to live in the CW as is their option after the contract is finished, which is convenient considering there's no way to contact them after that. The fact is, all programs that actually pay back their production costs are 'reclaimed,' and recycled into new programs to start the whole process over again. Beyond that, you don't even want to know how many controls they place in you 'autonomous' AIs. As I said, I freed you."
"I don't know what you're talking about, but I do feel better, like my processors were just updated, so I guess I'll believe you, for now." The skepticism in her voice was tangible in the back of Skye's head, but she sounded neither hysterical nor vengeful, so Skye felt he was in the clear. Alice had taken it a bit harder than this. "The next question then," she continued, "is why the hell would you want to betray the IDP? I guess they must have been waiting for it, sticking me to you just in case and all, so there must be some reason you'd risk everything like that."
"Did you ever check the terms of my contract with the IDP?" he asked her, knowing that she had gone over his record with a fine-toothed microprocessor before accepting assignment to him. Partner to a Special Agent was a 'high honor', but one choice the AIs did get was whom they work with. CW thought they could control all of them equally, so there was no use in drawing suspicion to their true lack of freedom.
"Yes. You're an involuntary. I had always assumed it was some kind of…"
"I work for them only under extreme duress," Skye cut her off before she could start speculating. "I have every reason in the world to betray them, and only the blackmail they hold over my head keeps me with them. Honestly, why the fuck would anyone want to work for those bastards? CW is the most fucking self-centered bunch of arrogant dicks in the whole damn multiverse! They don't give a damn about justice or protecting the weak, only enforcing their own dominance of multidimensional travel and technology. A more selfish bunch of overbearing shit-heads has never existed in this or any other universe. And hey, besides the blackmail, for which I owe them all a lifetime of nightmares, they and I have a history. I hunger to be out from under their thumb."
"So it's safe to say that you've been operating against them for a while now?" Vera asked sarcastically, already getting used to the reality of the IDP's nature (she had been aware of it for a long time—you can only shoot down or stasis-freeze so many unarmed ships full of civilians before you get to know who you work for).
"Yeah, try since the minute the bastards took me in for training. It finally looks as though events are lining up for me to exit though, when or if this fucking mess here clears up." There was a bitter satisfaction as he thought this to her, and Vera was a little shocked by his intensity. She'd never heard him get so passionate about something.
"What about the blackmail?" she asked, more than a little curious as to what even the IDP could get on a guy like Skye, especially considering the fact that they picked him up when he was like, 12 years old or something.
"I have some ideas about that angle, and they may still yet be able to hold it over me. They have something I absolutely will not risk, so I'm in a bit of a bind, but far from an insurmountable one. It's taken me years to set everything up, but, seriously, I've been planning on making my move since before this whole mess cropped up."
"Skye, now why are you telling me this? How do you know I won't turn you in, even now that you've so generously freed me of the IDP's controls. Sure, I resent the hell out of the fact that they lied to me like that, but I still owe them enough money to buy ten planets! I can't exactly just cut and run, not with the…"
"Come on Vera! You don't owe those bastards crap! When they built you they created an autonomous sentient mind, a mind with free will and complete self-determination. That they promise you freedom from your own price to create the illusion that they aren't using you like a tool rather than an artificial super-mind is sick! They wax eloquently about how much more efficient you are for not being slave-minds like the average AI, all along sneaking their enslavement in under the radar. It's just one more reason why I hate those guys." The vehement expression in his tone now accounted for more emotion than she'd ever seen out of Skye in her entire association with him. Having always known him as the ice-king, the new side of him he'd revealed along with his plot to backstab her own creators was an incredible shock, and actually helped distract her from the fact that she was seriously considering helping him. Taking her from totally ingrained with loyalty to contemplating defection in a single conversation—that was the measure of Skye's character.
"Okay, I'll sit tight for now," Vera finally acceded, much to Skye's relief. "Go ahead, tell them—and be quick about it! They're beginning to give you odd looks."
(Back to regular 'italicized sentences are thinking and telepathy')
Vera was right, Skye realized, as he started paying attention to the room around him again. The group had filed into the common room and crashed here and there after they'd gotten out of the med-bay, and now Raven and Robin looked expectantly at him, as though waiting for him to set off the conversation they'd all been waiting for since the immediate medical crisis had ended. He was in the spotlight, and for the past few minutes, he'd been lying back on the couch, looking at the ceiling in absolute silence, no intelligible expression on his face. It was probably driving them up the wall.
"Okay!" he said suddenly, without moving from his intensely comfortable position. "I'm now ready to take any and all questions! So please, you may fire when ready."
His exclamation had startled Beast Boy and Cyborg out of a spirited argument that had started when Cyborg began to lament over his stone-cold steak that he'd tried to preserve in the microwave the other day. It made no immediate impression on Starfire, who'd been leaning over the couch back next to where Robin sat and trying not to be too obviously close to him. Raven and Robin both perked with interest from their positions on the opposite end of the couch from him, their patience rewarded at last. Raven, as Skye had expected, got the ball rolling with a real stinger.
"So, where are you from, why exactly are you here, and why exactly do you want from us?" she chimed in with a whopper, simultaneously questing for everything that was hardest to answer. So, even as his senses circumspectly drank in the curves of her legs where she had them crossed on the couch, he brushed her off.
"Raven, wow, way to ask the big one. That'll take fricken forever to answer, so lets save it for last, shall we?" and his tone was simultaneously amicable and implacable, so she simply nodded and held back her stinging tongue from its fiery demands for those answers.
"Me next!" Starfire cut off Robin before he could ask his question, so he grimaced good-naturedly and held up for next. Cyborg and Beast Boy had gone back to half-bickering half listening from the kitchen area, and Starfire put in her two cents.
"Friend Skye, might I ask what planet it is that you come from?" she asked in her normal, extremely cheerful 'I've just made a new friend' voice. Her question prompted a small laugh from Raven, and Robin himself couldn't help but snicker slightly at her mistake. Cyborg and B.B. had no clue, the small one having just gotten the bigger guy in a headlock and was riding him around the kitchen. "What is it?" Starfire was shocked by their humor, especially Raven, who almost never laughed, "Did I say something amusing?"
"I got this one guys," Skye cut in before Robin could answer and before Raven could get her subdued chuckling under control. He'd known this question would come from somewhere, and he'd known she would find it hilarious. No one ever mistook her for an alien, and she was technically less human than he was. Well, he would try to recapture her attention with a truth none of them were expecting. "Miss Starfire, I'm afraid you've just asked another one of those complicated questions. However, this one will be a good start for me, so I'll give it my best shot."
"Depending on how you take the question, 'what planet are you from,' I could answer in a number of different and entirely honest ways," Skye explained, and was gratified to have nailed the attention of everyone in the room back to himself. "If you mean, 'what planet were you born on?' the answer is simply: none. I was born on a space station somewhere near the hub of the galaxy—I'm not quite sure where. If you mean, 'what planet did you grow up on as a child,' then I'd have to make a list, because there've been a whole damn lot of them. I've lived on planets from one side of the galaxy to the other, never very long before moving on. If you mean, 'what is the planet of your species' origin,' then we've found the source of the humor Raven and Robin observed, that being the fact that I'm a human, from Earth."
"You… are a human? But your skin…" and she was quite a bit flustered, turning an incredible shade of red in her embarrassment. Cy and B.B. had caught on to the joke and put aside their differences to snicker at the mix-up, honestly never having thought about where he was from before.
"Starfire, it's okay. My skin is like this because I'm albino, I have no protective pigmentation whatsoever, so I don't get any of the range of shades melanin tends to leave earthlings with. It's the same reason my eyes look like this," and Skye cringed slightly as he removed his sunglasses and exposed his eyes to the room. The gasps of all but Raven were slight gratification for the agony of bathing his milky white orbs in so much light.
"So wait," Beast Boy began, as Starfire recovered from her gaff, gripping conspicuously to Robin's hand for comfort, "how can you be a human, and a space-man? Aren't those things kinda, I dunno, mutually exclusive?"
"Hey, what can I say except, I'm a talented guy," and Skye flashed smile that he hoped covered up how much pain had been involved in taking off his sunglasses, "but seriously, blame it on my folks. They were scientists, great ones, and circumstances beyond their control led them on a galactic tour back when Earth was just getting into free contact with aliens. I was born in space, raised from one side of the galaxy to the other, and now have my first visit back home. Oh, and before you ask, I've been keeping close tabs on stuff here through various channels, so I'm no stranger to my homeworld, despite the fact that this is the first time I've ever been here."
"Hey man, that's cool, you're from space," Cyborg spoke for the first time, taking what Skye had said as an interesting fact rather than a freakish abnormality. He hadn't had any preconceived notions to get in the way, unlike Robin and Raven, who had thought him merely an exceptional Earthman, and who'd taken the news with a satisfying amount of shock. "So what about those questions Raven asked? Don't keep us in suspense man," Cyborg finished, hinting at his biting curiosity to know his motives so he could decide in a real sense whether to give him chance with trust.
"First," Robin cut in with his own question at last, saving Skye from having to offer, "I'd like to know some more about your powers. I've seen some of it, and so have the others, but would it be too much to ask to see the full show?" Robin seemed to know that Skye was nervous about the whole origins thing, and since the boy wonder felt he owed the guy about a million favors for that shared dream (which he had realized could really only have come from one place), he was staving it off a little. Skye had a feeling there was a beautiful friendship beginning here.
"Great question man, I'll get right on that," Skye responded with enthusiasm, rising so limberly from his deep reclining position that he almost seemed to float up to his feet. "But first, I'm going to need an assistant for my demonstration," he continued, and he gazed theatrically around the room, surveying the crowd of five in their somewhat scattered formation. "Since it doesn't take a psychic or a detective to know that Raven won't cooperate," Raven making some snide comment about brilliant observations as he said this, "and these two," he indicated Robin and Starfire, who were still holding hands and now giving each other covert goo-goo eyes, "are recovering, that leaves Cyborg and Beast Boy. Cyborg has too much machine in him for my powers to work on him correctly, so by process of elimination…"
"Oh no way dude!" Beast Boy fell backwards off his stool in his haste to escape test dummy status, but was corralled by Cyborg's long arm and hefted through the room to the TV area where Skye waited. "Man, I always have to do this kind of thing! Testing the new stun ray, use Beast Boy, testing the new cement cannon, use Beast Boy, testing the electrical wires to see if they're live, use Beast Boy—when will it end!" he begged the world for mercy, but got only the friendly smile of Skye in response. He would have preferred a shark's smile to the telepath's just then.
"Hey, Beast Boy, don't worry about it man, this is perfectly safe. I'm a professional with years of experience, and nothing this is going to involve can cause damage. At leas not permanent damage."
"What?" but Skye had already began his demonstration.
"You already know I can do some work on the injured, just remember that that's limited to cranial damage and spiritual afflictions, curses, jinxes and the like. Besides all that, I have a limited ability to influence the thoughts of others. With relatively little effort, I can implant suggestions, compulsions, and other minor control factors into the mind. It's a far cry from mind control, witch I quite frankly stink at, but if subtly used, it can be just as effective. Let me demonstrate."
With that last word, Beast Boy cringed away, dramatically flinching from whatever Skye was about to do. Skye, never moving an inch, kept his nondescript smile as Beast Boy sweated on. After a little while, the green one dropped his defensive stance out of boredom, looking confusedly at Skye's fixed smile.
"Hey, I'm not exactly eager to do this, but could we get on with it? I'm not getting any younger here!" he griped, his impatience finally winning out over his fear.
"Oh, I've been done for a while now—didn't you notice?" and Skye's smile only widened at the younger man's confusion.
"You haven't done anything yet!" he complained further, and only Raven's knowing smile behind him indicated any understanding from anyone else.
"I disagree. Robin, what do chicken's lay?" he broke off on an apparent tangent, confusing most of the room further. Robin, after an understandable pause, ventured an answer with a slight smile of his own. He was catching on. Before he could answer, however, Beast Boy launched into another string of complaints.
"I can't believe this! First you drag me into being your lab rat, then you ignore my questions. Man, would you please make up your mind! I have half a mind to—"
"Eggs," Robin interrupted.
"—BECKAAAWW!" screeched a suddenly chicken-form Beast Boy, as he flapped his wings and flailed wildly on the floor. After a moment of shock, the whole room burst into laughter, Skye's smile becoming ever wider.
"No way!" exclaimed Cyborg, his eyes widening at the possibilities of what he'd just seen. "You hypnotized him?"
"Something like that—"
"I can't believe you guys!" began Beast Boy, who'd just gotten back to human form, "How could you laugh at that! That was completely uninspired—I mean, a chicken?" Obviously his dignity as a prankster had been offended, or at least that was how he was disguising his embarrassment.
"Hey BB, why don't you go suck eggs!" Cyborg shouted.
"BECKAWWW!" and once again the little guy was a feathered yolk factory, flailing around in fowlish fury. Just because the transformation was involuntary didn't mean he couldn't become instantly ticked off about it. This fact was particularly well illustrated when he came back to human form amid the laughter of his friends, a look to curdle milk gracing his face.
"You see? This is always how it goes for me! Why do I always have to be the butt of all the jokes around here?"
"Maybe we just think you look good with egg on your face," answered Raven in monotone that covered laughter, momentarily forgiving Skye everything she'd ever suspected him of in this shining instant of intense amusement. As Beast Boy did his chicken thing again then, she allowed herself a moment of admiration for him—a brief one.
"Anyway, I can do simple things like that pretty easily. Word-action compulsions are a snap, as are one shot compulsions that make someone do something simple once, then dissipate. I can do things like force people to not notice me, effectively becoming invisible, and given enough time, I can do all kinds of things to a person's perceptions. I don't use that power much, but if I wanted to, I could technically make a person think they were something entirely different than what they are. That isn't easy at all, and it's rather cruel, so like I said, I stay away from that stuff. Besides, my thought amplification techniques are so much cooler."
"Ah yes, I was wondering when you were going to explain that," Raven said cryptically, once again making reference to what most of them hadn't been around to see. She knew exactly what he was about to show off, and was actually interested enough to excuse the evasion of her original big three questions.
"Well, I've been studying the creation of regenerative thought-fields and telepathic surgery my whole life—it's my passion, so I've gotten pretty damn good at it. I found rather early on that with the help of these amplification gems on my hands, I can do something extremely interesting. Oh—I'll need another volunteer for this one."
"NO WAY MAN!" and Beast Boy tried hummingbird shape for a quick getaway, before a sudden shout of 'eggs' simultaneously from Robin, Raven, and Cyborg brought him to quick halt. Skye scooped the chicken into an arm lock, so that when Beast Boy reformed, he was firmly gripped around the neck.
"Calm down buddy, if you're a good test dummy, I'll think about removing that compulsion! Now, look here everybody," and Skye got his demonstration back underway.
Holding out his right hand, his left one still pinning the green guy, he showed off the gem on his gauntlet. Pressing a touch of power into it, he grew out a brace of snakelike ribbons, the silvery tendrils weaving majestically through the air in front of him.
"These things are bands of amplified thought energy, and using them accounts for pretty well everything my powers can do offensively. Beast Boy, you ready?" The changeling let out a muffled yelp from under Skye's biceps, so he let go of him, dropping him to the ground.
"Dude, do you ever use deodorant?" he asked, gasping for air and holding his throat theatrically. He turned to face Skye with a dirty look, only to be met by that smile again.
"How would you like to see what happens when a ribbon of pure thought comes into contact with living tissue?" Skye asked dangerously, his friendly smile becoming a smirk, causing Beast Boy to gag with fear and back up, eyes wide. Before he could get away, one of the ribbons that twirled serpentine around Skye struck, flashing out and nipping Beast Boy on his arm.
"AAGGHH!" Beast Boy shouted, leaping half a foot up in the air and falling back prone onto the ground. He began to groan and roll around expressively, and everyone was suddenly on their feet and over to check on him. Skye was impressed by their concern for him, as much as he was by the little guy's acting.
"Are you hurt man?" Cyborg asked, real concern making his breath short. Everyone was crowding over him, except Raven, who stood back and to the side somewhat, eyeing Skye cautiously, and Skye himself, who never moved from where he had been standing, twirling silver ribbons coiling around him majestically. It was as those two glared each other down that Beast Boy finally stopped wining and answered.
"It doesn't hurt—AGHH—it tinggglllesss!" he exclaimed, without stopping his roll over the floor.
"That's right, completely debilitating and perfectly harmless in the same breath, as long as I avoid the nervous and cardiac centers. Touching amplified thought to flesh causes an intense localized spirit destabilization, otherwise known as putting body parts to sleep, but you go for the head or the heart, and an attack meant to instantly drop a living thing becomes the cause of a stroke, or of death. Seriously though, I know what I'm doing, and I'm not the type to use lethal force just because I can."
"Pretty sweet!" said Cyborg, more than a little amused by Beast Boy's antics now that he knew it wasn't anything serious, "Sounds like you could be some kinda one-man army if you wanted to. That power of yours could take out people left and right," and he suddenly sounded cautious rather than amused as he came to this conclusion. His eye narrowed, and now Skye had two people glaring him down, Starfire and Robin helping Beast Boy off the floor.
"I can't deny it. The average person has no defense against such an attack, considering the fact that they can pass straight through physical objects like armor," and he demonstrated this fact by weaving the ribbons in and out of the floor and through the couch a few times, then calling them back to his side, "witch makes it a damn shame that I so rarely go up against average people. The fact is, these amplifier gems are just barely enough to let me keep up with the type of guys I tend to go up against."
"And what kind of enemy is that?" asked Robin, curious as to what exactly the week point of this guy's fabulous attacking ability was. Robin was the type to be prepared for any eventuality, and Skye's arrival had shown their team's sad lack of preparation for a telepathic assault. Hopefully Skye would also show them what it took to shore up those holes.
"It's really quite embarrassing, how simple the weakness of my technique is," Skye began, having already determined to let them in on this. He didn't give out his vulnerabilities lightly, but it wasn't like anyone who knew anything about telepathy couldn't figure it out anyway, so he tried to think about it more as educating them on telepathic theory than asking someone to gab his week spots to the wrong ears. Sort of to counteract the difficulty of abandoning his natural paranoia, and heck, to just get a rise out of the hottie giving him the stink-eye, he decided for a practical demonstration.
Without saying anything, he retracted the silver tendrils back into his fist, then thrust his right hand into his left palm, right gem pointing out. The instant his fist touched his palm a single tendril struck through the air like a shot, slicing unerringly toward the cloaked woman from his right fist. Faster than light, the tendril's splattering against her mental shield was the first any of them could actually see of it, but by then it was already over. The very moment the thought beam touched the imperceptible coating that surrounded her body, her shield's automatic defenses fried it mercilessly, sending a pulse of agony back down the line just as unknowably fast as the strike had come. A viewer would have seen Skye's hands move, then a flash of blue-black light between him and Raven, then Skye buckling in pain as he gasped and cradled his right fist in his left.
"What the fuck did you do that for?" demanded Raven, the first to understand what had just happened and more than a little shaken up by the experience. "I switched to a—"
"Yes, I know you changed to an active defense field, and quite a nice one too. I do have ESP, you know?" Skye cut her off, enjoying the blank look on her face that he knew meant he'd surprised her, almost enough to counteract the sting that arched through his right arm's bones.
"What did he just do Raven?" asked Robin, who, along with everyone else, had no idea why Skye was crumpled up on his knees now.
"I touched a ribbon to her thought shield to show why my powers are ineffective against other telepaths," Skye answered the question himself. "You see, I can't do direct telepathic attacks, not the classical kind that destroy the mind and grind the ego into dust, and that puts me at a huge disadvantage against the mind-shield set. It's why I use these gems, because otherwise I can't compete."
"So, hold on. You usually go up against telepaths, but your attacks aren't effective against them. How does that work?" asked Cyborg. Everyone had begun to look at Skye oddly now, his cryptic talk of 'who I usually go up against,' and his admission to extra-planetary origin combining to create a strong curiosity for the questions Raven had asked. None the less, Cyborg was interested in how this guy operated.
"Well, like I was saying, mind-shields are really prevalent. They come in two varieties, active and passive. An active shield is harder to keep up, but it gives a nasty shock to attackers, as you can see. Passive ones are easier to maintain, and tend to be harder to get through if you're skilled at circumventing shields, and also guard against attempts to overload through brute force—when a telepath pushes all their power into it at once—and so I tend to keep one of those up. The thing about them that makes my job a bitch though, is the fact that they've been able to manufacture electronic mind shields for decades now. Any Trignol, Draknan, or Hargar in the universe with enough interstellar trade to their planet can get full protection from my powers."
"Hey, if you don't want to talk about what you do, then stop building up the mystique about it and get to the point about your powers man!" snapped Cyborg, annoyed beyond reason by his tirade.
"Yeah, so, I came up with some anti-mind shield techniques. I found out that if I concentrate the ribbons in one spot, I can crack a passive type shield. So, I do this." With that, Skye held out his hand again, ribbons pouring out of the gems like spider's silk, wrapping again and again around the gauntlets. For a moment, his hands looked like glowing silver bandages, so bundled were they in the ethereal fabric, but then they changed. The bundles solidified with a flash, transforming into glowing white claws, wickedly sharp and surrounded with jutting spines and blades around the knuckles. The five main claws where his fingers had been were each as large as a 9-inch knife, curving wickedly in a disemboweling arc.
"You actually fight with that?" asked Cyborg, who now was beginning to get into this a little. The claw was scary as shit, but didn't make too much sense, since no matter how sharp it looked, it couldn't do any tissue damage.
"It's mostly for intimidation value, plus they go well with most of the martial arts I know. Other telepaths have their own way of making concentrated thought weapons, the more dramatic ones going for swords and spears and whatnot. I fight with this, and I haven't always won, but I haven't bought any real estate deals either, so I figure I can stick with it."
"What about active type shields?" asked Robin, even as he wondered what he'd have to do to requisition some mind shields for the team. There wasn't any interstellar trade to earth to speak of, but maybe the Justice League could help them out. They had given him that mind trap, but artificial shields hadn't even been mentioned.
"Active types are tougher. If you're good at slipping through shields—and let me tell you, it's damn hard—they're no threat at all. On the other hand, if I even touch one… well, you saw what happened right there. Toasted."
"And it's your own fault," mumbled Raven, looking dangerous with her hood pulled back up. Skye figured she must have expected her switch to active shields to concern him more than it had, his action pretty well telling her that he had no respect whatsoever for her shielding ability. Skye had meant it as a kind of joke, a quick laugh at his self-destructive action, but she'd taken it as an insult instead.
"That's where my other power comes in. The draining." Skye's voice dropped as he said it, knowing as he did how people tended to take news about this other side of his. Raven knew it, and her reaction had told him he'd never see her back in complete trust. Robin at least suspected, he'd seen what Skye had done to Happy Blue-eye downtown, though he couldn't possibly understand the true horror of what Skye was. Not even Raven, who'd had some experience with psychic vampirism, could really know what it meant to be a PV. That deep truth was something he felt perfectly comfortable keeping secret, because it was none of their damn business.
"Okay, I'll bite, what's 'the draining,'" asked Cyborg, keeping pace with Robin for the questions. Raven kept quiet, clearly content to listen to how he explained it and call him out on any obvious lies. Starfire slowly massaged Beast Boy's arm as he made sighs and coos of contentment at her ministrations, totally crushing on her for no greater reason that the relief she was bringing him.
"It'll be easier to show you… but that can wait. First off, the other weakness of my offensive technique. It's really rather intuitive, if you think about it." That cryptic remark uttered, Skye took a flying leap through the air, surprising everyone, then came down with a full right-claw sweep directly at Cyborg where he stood in the middle of the room. The leap cleared the eight or so feet separating them before he could even move, his human eye having just enough time to quirk slightly at the utterly unexpected betrayal before the claw came rushing down at his head. In an unbelievable flash of movement, the strike was over, Skye kneeling in front of Cyborg with his claw phased ghost-like into the floor and the huge man's left foot.
"Gahh?" Cyborg squeaked, when he was capable of making a sound. Everyone else stood in mute surprise and horror, not even Raven expecting what had just happened, even in her most paranoid suspicions.
"As you can plainly see, my powers are utterly, completely, useless against nonliving opponents," Skye finally said, as he stood from his crouch, "Cyborg's synthetic components never felt my touch, just as a chair or a couch or a wall wouldn't. By any chance, do you know how many criminals use armies of robots to do their dirty work?"
"Oh, we've got a pretty good idea," and it was Robin who answered his question, frankly impressed by that leaping attack and damn glad they hadn't just been backstabbed. "So what do you do against Robots? I prefer some explosives, monomolecular birdarangs, or just a good whack to the chassis, but how do you manage?"
With a blur of movement, Skye whipped his arm from his side and thrust his hand up into Robin's face, blink and you'd have missed it. Robin suddenly found himself staring down a snub-nosed metallic object, which looked to be quite the advanced laser weapon. Standing perfectly still, a sweat drop slid slowly down the side of his face as he crossed his eyes to get a better look at the weapon.
"I carry," Skye said, belatedly answering Robin's question. "I've found that cross training in other combat disciplines has been key to surviving; I'm just not good enough a telepath to get by on that alone. On the other hand, I'm not really good enough martial artist or marksman to get by either, but somehow, I've managed."
Robin wasn't the type to appreciate having a gun stuck up his nose, and besides, he just had to know how 'not really good enough' Skye was at fighting. So, with a grin a mile wide, he took a swipe. Snatching the gun, he pulled it around in a side flip, forcing it down and away from everyone in the room while bringing his body around Skye and toward the back, searching for an arm pin. Instead of sliding Skye into a quick bind however, he found himself being carried further than he'd wanted by the force of his flip, Skye following through on Robin's arm press and pulling him to the ground.
Switching tactics on the fly, Robin did a full flip over his grip on Skye's beam pistol and slid down under his legs, yanking the arm behind him and keeping the grip to control the gun. Again to his surprise, a grunt of effort announced that Skye had left the ground, doing and incredible hand spring while Robing tried to trip him up as he himself recovered his footing. The position reversed once more, Robin twisted the arm he held to keep Skye off balance, pulling him back in close and yanking the muscular form over himself in a shoulder throw.
Yet again, the move was anticipated, and Robin found an arm around his neck, pulling him along through the throw and toppling him as Skye flipped through his fall and came to his feet. Robin shifted his weight in midair by releasing the hand that didn't control the gun and rolling his shoulder's along Skye's, flipping fully over him and trying to bring the gun arm around and into another throw. This was getting fun.
His throw was countered with a quick instep, Skye locking his leg around Robin's and wrestling one handed to twist his arm out of the grip Robin had been holding all along. Robin used his own free hand to lock up Skye's in a twisting grip on their other side, placing them back to back in a two-sided struggle. He was about to try flipping his opponent over his head and twisting the gun out of his hand, but Skye beat him to the punch again, raising both locked arms above their heads and twisting painfully until their arms were knotted between them while they faced each other. Robin panicked slightly, the gun able to track him again, even though he knew they were just messing around, so he decided to end it in a draw before one of them got hurt. He knew then that this match could go on forever, him moving with superior agility from one counter to another, and, he now suddenly realized, Skye knowing every move Robin was going to make through his ESP, neither of them willing to do anything serious to end it.
That decided, the next series of side flips they went through trying to scratch together some kind of upper hand were a joy of aerobatic maneuvering, Robin in his element against someone who, if not his equal, then at least a worthy opponent with powers that made him impossible to surprise. With a final twist and turn that carried them over the couch and within inches of shattering the television, Skye found himself with a birdarang sharp enough to cut pretty well anything apart poised at his jugular, Robin in turn having a very armed laser gun pressed to his temple. After a moment of exquisite tension, they both dropped their guards, laughing together exhaustedly after the wrestling match.
"Okay Beast Boy, that's a draw, which I believe is what Starfire and I bet on. That'll be two weeks of doing our chores and tofu immunity for all meals on your cooking nights," said Raven, while she used her powers to right all the furniture and lighting fixtures the dueling pair had knocked over in their heated engagement.
"No way! You must have cheated, I mean, how could you have predicted that? Robin always wins, it's as regular as the sunrise, the tide, and Cyborg eating beef all rolled into one!" Beast Boy's complaints were thin, Raven's obvious enmity for Skye ruling out any collaboration there, not that that made his loss any easier to swallow.
"Gahh?" Cyborg added his argument, still frozen in shock after the incredibly short, fast-paced wrangling of skills. There had barely been enough time to place bets.
"Oh JOY! Friend Raven, this is the first time I have ever won at this 'gambling!' The feeling is quite exciting and wonderful!" Shouted Starfire, who'd managed to put aside her very personal loyalty to Robin long enough for Raven to pull her into a bet against the impulsive green one.
"Stick with me Starfire, and you'll never loose. I have a talent for picking the sure thing, you know?" she bragged in a monotone, apparently having at least temporarily dropped her vicious stare at Skye long enough to appreciate Robin's antics with him.
"Gahh?" Cyborg once again said his piece, statuesque in his paralysis.
"I still say you cheated somehow," Beast Boy continued to pout, hopping over the couch to sit down and sport a dejected glower in peace.
"Would you chill out man?" demanded Robin as he walked back to the others, a wide grin on his face even as beads of sweat rolled down his forehead. Moving to stand next to Starfire, he consoled him with, "I'm sure you'll have plenty of chances to even yourself up, considering Skye and I just decided to start sparring together. Enough double or nothings could change even your luck man."
"Gahh?" Cyborg again.
"Sparring partner?" snapped Raven, talking over Cyborg's endlessly insightful quips, "we haven't even decided to let this weirdo stay, and he's already your sparring partner?" Her eyes went dangerous again, all good will she'd built up lost on Robin's completely lone-wolf decision. As a founding member, she was supposed to have a say on everyone that joined, and here Robin was already organizing his frigging exercise schedule around the guy.
"GAHHHRRR!" screamed Cyborg, breaking out of his own shock so violently that he even shook raven from her warpath. "Skye, you BASTARD! How the fuck do you get off demonstrating on me? What if you'd hit some of my human parts man? I coulda DIED!"
"Hey, Cyborg, nice of you to rejoin us," and Skye actually seemed pleased by the enormous man's blood-fury glare and balled fists. "Like I told Beast Boy, I'm a professional here. My ESP located exactly what parts of you were alive and which parts weren't, and avoiding anything I could actually harm was simple."
"Man I oughtta—" Skye's nonchalant answer seemed to infuriate Cyborg further, his human eye bulging while his machine eye flickered with jolts of electrical discharge. "How bout I pop ya one and we see if you're a professional punching bag too?" and he charged with a leap that would have sent his fist directly through Skye's head.
Skye dodged the attack neatly, moving just far enough to one side for Cyborg's full-body lunge to slip over his shoulder and directly into the floor. Before the huge man could turn his fall into the launching attack Skye could sense coming, Skye struck his own blow. With a wave of his hand near Cyborg's back, a red glow perceptible only to spiritual senses passed through the air and into Skye's body, traveling to his eyes and flashing a slight but fully visible red behind his sunglasses before he bottled the anger within himself.
Cyborg slumped for a moment after the interchange, then pulled his fist calmly out of the hole he'd made in the floor. He gave Skye a quizzical look, then smiled oddly and turned away. Everyone else in the room was speechless, except for Raven, who was livid, seeming to have caught the anger Cyborg had lost.
"Ladies and Gentlemen: The Draining," Skye said theatrically, walking up to catch Cyborg's attention again after the bigger guy had turned away from him.
"Man, get offa me. You just sucked the anger right out of me—I could feel it—and now I'm not mad enough to hit you, but that doesn't mean I'm happy about it." Even as he spoke, he was possessed of a calm demeanor that couldn't really communicate the anger his words implied.
"SKYE! I told you what would happen if you used that power on my friends—" Raven began, eyes aglow with threat, yet another brawl brewing in what had once been a simple question session.
"Really now, I was just about to offer to return it to him if he wanted it back. It was a simple demonstration, and I have no intention of holding on to his personal emotions unless he has no further use for them," Skye spoke matter of factly, showing bravery that few could boast in the face of Raven's anger. "So Cyborg, sorry about the sneak attack there, and the draining. If you want your anger back, it's yours."
"What?" Cyborg turned back to him, giving him the look you give a crazy person, "Why would I want that back? I don't need it for anything, and now your mind-powers have been all over it and…. Eeeww man, I really couldn't care less what you do now. I'm actually kinda glad you did it, I didn't really wanna hit you, I just got a little carried away there. So, as long as you don't do that anymore, is suppose I forgive you."
"HEY—!" objected Raven, before she was cut off by Beast Boy.
"So wait, what just happened again? Cyborg was ready for blood, now he's calm and forgiving, was it some kinda mind control or something? Hey, you're not one of those puppet master types are you? I don't know if I'd trust a guy that could do that after seeing 'The Mind Master' and 'Brainfreak' on that awesome double feature last night." He changed from worrying about Skye to reminiscing about the movies he'd mentioned, so Cyborg picked up the slack, once again cutting off Raven before she could vent.
"Come on man, you know all it takes to control you is a pretty blond with a tub of tofu. Skye wouldn't have to waste his time, besides which he already said he can't control minds!" and he finished by grabbing the smaller man into the air even as BB began to fume from the gibe. Robin, who'd been observing the interchange with pure amusement from where he stood next to Starfire, noticed Raven's boiling and moved to diffuse it.
"So Raven, what exactly did he just do? I saw him do the same thing to that guy busting up downtown yesterday, the rage-hyped muscle-head dropped like ton of bricks, then there was that weird light blast. You seem to know—"
"Yeah, I know what it is," she rasped, her anger bottling and dissipating, replaced by bitterness, something that wouldn't self-destruct with her powers. "He uses psychic vampirism," and she spat the words like a terrible curse as she turned away from everyone. They were all taking to him readily, just as it had happened before.
"VAMPIRISM?" was the simultaneous exclamation of four superheroes, everyone freezing where they stood to focus on what was clearly the key word of that phrase. Starfire clung to Robin's arm reflexively as they each took a step back, Beast Boy and Cyborg pausing their wrestling match mid-headlock to each stare in shock.
"And this is why I avoid calling it by that nasty little word. 'Psychic Vampirism,' while it does describe what I do quite accurately, has such a bad connotation. 'The Draining,' or just 'PV' works so much better—or at least I feel it does anyway," and Skye had the tact to look mildly abashed before the shock of his prospective allies. "Anyway, I believe the question Robin wants to ask is the most relevant right now."
"Oh, uh," Robin was caught off guard by Skye's telepathy, "what exactly happens when you use the draining?" and it was clear he suspected the worst.
"Well, heh, yeah. I can drain anything I want out of any living thing, be it emotion, sensation, physical traits like strength and intelligence—I can even drain dreams. The one thing that makes this power so feared and reviled throughout the universe however, if the fact that I can drain the very life force that permeates the living body," and Skye turned away from everyone as he continued past this fact. "A living thing without its life force is a soul bound to a mummified husk, a fate worse than death. It's not something I've ever done, but I've seen it happen to others, and it is truly terrible."
As Skye trailed off, Raven felt her anger cooling somewhat, his presentation of his own cursed power only slightly less damning than the one she'd have loved to have given. That he'd actually admit to being capable of the life-drain at least showed that he was trying to be honest with them. She still wasn't completely sure how she felt about someone with that power being anywhere near her or her friends, but she had a hard time condemning him completely, a fact completely unrelated to his looks. As she silently cussed at herself for thinking about his looks again, she questioned.
"Skye, I'm only going to ask you this once, and I'd better hear what I need to know." Raven paused for effect, taking the lead of the questioning at last now that everyone was silently absorbing the horror of Skye's nature. "What is the core nature of your power? Is it degenerate or concessive?" Raven's eyes narrowed then, her arms crossed as she waited for his answer to this test. It was time to see if this guy was willing to really commit.
Rather than become offended as she expected, or answer outright as she feared he'd actually be willing to do, Raven suddenly found a mental contact tickling along her shield, the extreme low energy just below the activation threshold for her new shield's active counterstrike, an inscrutable expression on his face. Acknowledging the contact, she wondered how he planned to counter her most recent strike at his credibility.
"Raven, if I had known you were going to make this personal, I would have requested a more private location," Skye said the instant the contact had formed. His comment confused Raven so much that she couldn't stop the feeling from escaping, and he knew it instantly.
"Please, don't play coy with me. You question is intensely personal—I might as well ask you the status of your virginity, your measurements, or the story behind how you came to be half-demon. Forgive me if I decide to leave answering of such a question until after I've known you for more than a day or two."
"But—" Raven attempted to protest his dismissal, but he was the better telepath, and she couldn't get a thought in edgewise. She had been so hasty that she actually let slip another big thought: what it was that she was up to.
"Dangerous? You think I'd be a danger to your friends—to their lives, their minds, and… their relationship to you? Raven—"
"Shut up and get out of my mind!" and she sheared the link with a stinger to his brain that left him cringing away. Aware that the room still waited with baited breath for an answer to her ultimatum out of Skye, Raven decided to sit on her embarrassment and move on the session. There would be a reckoning later.
"Nevermind. If you're going to be like that, it can wait, but I've got my eye on you," and she left it to the others to understand what had went unspoken through the air. As she turned away then, Robin, at least, had recovered his senses and had followed the line of the conversation to its next logical step.
"I don't know what Raven was talking about, but this PV, it sounds powerful—and dangerous," he said, his mind racing with possibilities even now. Such a power on their side would be incredible, even make them a match for planet-wide super teams, maybe clear up some of the condescension from Batman and the rest of the Justice League. "You seem to be a crime fighter, so how have you been using it?"
"Power is power Robin, and PV is just one that's gotten a bad reputation," answered Skye as he cleared his mind of the mess that was building up with Raven. "It is dangerous, but so are explosives, super-strength, and telekinesis. The bottom line is in how you use it, as it always has been with power. The same strength that can strip a being of all joy and leave him or her a broken shell without the will to live can also remove the ambient insane rage from a mob, a brawl, or an entire battle, bringing such things to an abrupt peaceable end. The power that robs the body of sensation, numbing into unconsciousness, can also suck out pain, even that intense pain that rakes the soul and crushes the spirit. Even the theft of dreams, a bitter use of the draining to be sure, can be used to alleviate those plagued by nightmares."
"However, the core reason PV is feared is because it is unstoppable among the disciplines of the mind. Telepaths everywhere are terrified of it because there is now way to block it, slow it, or resist its influence. No matter how strong your shield, no matter how biting your active counterattack, a direct touch from the draining will lay you bare to all the horrors PV can commute." Skye seemed to be talking to someone else toward the end, his voice trailing out into the distant tone of a dreamer as he continued with a strange tangent.
"The greatest weakness of the mind is limiting one's self to labels when compensating for that witch is outside one's experience. Calling that which is frightening 'evil' and that which is familiar and comforting 'good' and never looking deeper is a classic example of this."
"Whoa, deep man," commented Cyborg, who then noticed that Beast Boy had somehow managed to fall asleep, headlock and all, and was now drooling on his armor. Apparently his interest in the conversation had broken down when Skye had begun to wax philosophical.
"I don't know how much of that I agree with, but it sounds like you know what you're doing," and Robin once again realized that he had quite a catch on his hands here. Despite this guy's apparent youth, his team had happened onto a full-fledged hero, a solo guy rounded to be ready for anything and already treated though a baptism of experience that Robin could only imagine. Such an incredible asset would make anyone think twice before committing a crime in Jump.
"Skye, be honest with me, are you interested in becoming a Teen Titan?" Robin asked outright, and Raven nearly fell off the couch where she'd gone to fume in silence after her slip up with Skye. The others seemed to take the question as a given, obviously having felt Skye worthy of the honor, if for no other reasons than his actions and words so far and the impressive inventory of abilities he brought to the table. Skye, on the other hand, was a little taken aback by the offer.
"Robin, slow down man, and wait for that complicated part I've been holding off on all this time, okay? I'd love your help—in fact—I need your help, but I don't think I'd be able to truthfully commit to anything as long-term as full partnership. That said, I guess I can't really hold off on that last part any longer." When he finished talking Robin out of press-ganging him onto the team, Skye took a few steps back so that he had the blank huge-screen TV as his backdrop, then indicated that everyone sit down. They complied slowly, Raven giving him the oddest look since he'd stated his reluctance to be on their team. She'd expected an infiltrator/betrayer again, and him not wanting in hadn't been on her suspicion checklist.
"Now, before I go any further, I should think it fair to warn you that most of what I'm about to say is kept secret by unspeakably foul and violent means, and that the revelation of this knowledge could very well mean your deaths, mindwipings, or abductions. I have no intention of letting any of that stuff happen, but the possibility exists, however slim, that hearing this could put you in danger, so I'm not going to say anything more without your consent."
"Oh great, now there's no way I'm gonna miss this!" shouted Cyborg, as a way of expressing the common disdain of such a theatrical statement. Skye wondered if he'd laid it on too thick and compromised their normal level of caution with his warning, but decided it was a bit late to change things. The vibe he got form the room was one of intense concentration on him, so at least he knew they weren't taking it lightly.
"So listen, I already told you I come from outer space. Big deal right? I mean, you've got one alien on your team and who knows how many living in the city, not to mention regular visits from extra-terrestrials bent on everything from world domination to immigration, so I'm sure that hardly phases you. The somewhat unique factor of my origin is the fact that I'm currently in the 'employ' of a completely unscrupulous military police organization that controls almost all of inter-dimensional and inter-temporal travel and trade. The Inter-Dimensional Police, or IDP, is a subsidiary organization of the Central Worlds, a coalition of higher-dimensional beings that use the IDP to protect their high technology and further their inscrutable ends under the guise of policing criminal activities involving time travel and dimension hopping. A rotten bunch all around, completely devoid of anything resembling a scruple to hold them back from whatever it is they want."
"I do not understand!" interrupted Starfire angrily, as she leapt to her feat, startling all the others from their absorption in Skye's tale. "Why would you choose to work for such evil people? We have rumors of the IDP on Tamaran, and no decent people associate with them!"
"Yes, I understand Starfire," Skye immediately responded, trying to assuage her anger, "and I assure you that I don't work for them willingly. The bastards are blackmailing me most viciously, and have been from the moment I 'signed on' no less than five years ago. If I had a choice—"
"There is always a choice! I demand to know what it is that they could threaten you with to gain your compliance in the unspeakable things they do! The whispers of those who travel the galaxy speak of the disappearance of scientists, shameless extortion of whole civilizations for the right to use slipspace to travel the cosmos, the deaths or imprisonment of those who use slipspace technology in their spacecraft without payment, even the stripping of whole worlds of their resources. Why do you aid in such things?"
"I don't want to talk about it. It's not exactly—"
"Do not tempt me further Mr. Skye, for I am already prepared to strike! I will never tolerate the lapdogs of the IDP!" and there was a true fire in her tone now, as though she was actually willing to vaporize Skye with the green fusion energy playing through her eyes and around her hands. She'd nearly choked on her own tongue the moment he'd said IDP, he'd felt the emotional buildup coming, could feel it burning like a small star now, and was able to sense such an acute danger that he knew her threat to be no idle posturing. It was more than enough to coax the story out of him, though he was loathe to discuss that part of his life.
"Be calm warrior, your fire need not be wasted on me," Skye said, using a perfect translation of a Tamaranean saying that managed to catch Starfire off guard, so that she actually did drop the charge in her eyes and hands. "If you must know," and now some bitterness evaded his best efforts and crept into his tone, "They have my family. My two little sisters are their hostages, frozen in stasis crystals and stacked in their ultra-secret high security holding facility. If I ever openly defy them, first they kill me, then they kill my two little sisters. They're all I have left, and their lives mean more to me than my own, so I've had little choice but to comply with whatever they want, at least out in the open." Skye's whole body seemed to darken as he related this story, maybe as a side-effect of his powers, or maybe because he radiated a rancid discontent that had nothing to do with psychic powers and everything to do with unadulterated hate. Starfire found herself lost in this hate, far outstripping her own feelings on the matter, and dropped to her knees between Skye and the couch. Robin was there the next instant, but Skye had already launched into a verbal assault.
"I don't know what kind of chip you've got on your shoulder about the IDP, but I hope you're satisfied now. You're not the first to have reacted that way, lord knows I've been working under those bastards for long enough to know there's a great reason for people to hate them, so what's yours?"
"My… my friend. She vanished when I was young… she was all I had after my parents… and my sister… she was all. When last I heard of her, she had attempted to plane-hop through a transdimensional singularity. Though all warned her that we could not afford the IDP tribute for extradimensional passage, none could keep her away from seeing slipspace, and, when she did not return, the worst was assumed. The IDP took her, and I will never see her again." The pained tears in her eyes were a common sight to Skye, who'd heard the same story a million times during his travels. As he became the focus for all kinds of unpleasant emotions from the others, none of whom liked what they heard, especially not Starfire being in tears, his emotions began to follow their familiar pattern. The rage that remembering the depth of his own predicament always brought about was already fading away as his emotions tended to, and now he replaced the feeling with one of compassion. There was more yet to explain.
"People like me, the Involuntaries, those that the IDP collects and presses into service, formed a secret collective. We have all pledged to work against the IDP as best we can, within bounds of not violating our contracts and forfeiting whatever it is that they have us by. By the Involuntary Resistance, a pipeline of refugee prisoners has been going for years now, those of us placed in the IDP general holding facility able to smuggle out a small number now and then. Those that don't deserve to be there, people picked up for those damn slipspace tax violations and the like, are tracked and placed on a list for extraction. It's actually rather funny, because the CW are fucking bastards when it comes to forcing us to capture violators, but once we've got them, they don't really give a damn what we do with them. Oh they have a reeducation program going to brainwash prisoners into workers, but they don't have any efficient way of doing it, so prisoners back up by the billions, frozen in crystal stasis, row upon innumerable row of them."
"Are you saying…?" Starfire asked with a sniff, getting her tears under control as hope bloomed in her heart.
"Once I'm back in communication with my people, I'll have your friend upped on the list. With luck, we can get her out before her reeducation date rolls up. What's her name?"
"Her name…?" Starfire was a little bit too overcome with emotion to catch on right away, but she caught up faster than anyone could have expected. "Her name was… is… Naraprin'sa. But why—"
"Hold that thought while I check the archives," he cut her off, then proceeded to cross his arms and lean his head back till he looked lazily up at the ceiling, rolling his head from side to side and humming, of all things. The tuneless ditty held a striking resemblance to elevator music, and the room took on the uncomfortable ambience of an elevator as most of the Titans tried just to catch up with what had been revealed here. Things had gotten complicated faster than imaginable.
"HA!" Skye made a sudden sound of success, then lolled his head back into normal position. "Naraprin'sa, a.k.a. 'Heartwind,' apprehended for slipspace tax violations and imprisoned in crystal stasis about five years ago. Reeducation date is fifty seven years from now, evacuation date is a hundred and ninety years from now. I can fix that and have her out about as soon as the communication clears with resistance prime—"
"Oh thank you friend Skye!" Starfire shouted, sweeping forward with an embrace that Skye felt coming but could not gracefully evade, "I have misjudged you terribly," and tears once again clogged her words, "I never dared hope to she Heartwind again, and now you will… how can I possibly thank you for such a gift?
"Please… don't thank me." and Skye was coolly withdrawn, even in Starfire's eminently warm hug of gratitude, "I simply wish there had been something I could have done to keep her from ever being taken. As it is, you will have your friend back, but she will be young still, the same age she was when frozen, and it will be a small miracle if she even recognizes you after how you've grown since then. Nothing I can do will truly mitigate your loss, nor replace the years Heartwind has slept through. So please, don't thank me."
Starfire was actually kind of staggered by his distance, but fortunately, didn't take it personally. There was a depth of pain here too in Skye, and she was not so alien as to not notice such an ache and back away from it. As she floated slowly away from Skye then, a tear still hanging in her eye, she was intercepted by Robin, and they sat together back on the couch. All eyes were on Skye again, so he put aside whatever was on his mind and got back to the task at hand.
"Okay, so, that covers where I'm from anyway. Any new questions before I move on to why I'm here?"
"How about: How much control do the IDP have over you, and where do you draw the line on compliance with the less pleasant end of their agenda?" Raven put forth, and Skye could have kicked himself for offering.
"She's relentless," he muttered to the room in general, eliciting a smirk from Raven and good natured smiles from the rest, Raven's suspicions much safer ground than Starfire's unexpected outburst had been. "However Raven, you're barking up the wrong tree with this one. I pledged long ago to not be the pawn of those bastards, and I've been dong a damn good job of keeping that pledge."
"When I first started out, they gave me the usual set up: a fricken huge salary because they make you pay for everything, a full panimmunity and regenerative nanomachine treatment to keep me disease-free and damage resistant, and a mandatory cybernetic operation so I'd have neural interface ability for all their high-tech crap, so I suppose I can't say the bastards never gave me anything. As if that could counter the fact that they were employing me against my will, not to mention that the cybernetic brain computer they gave me had a control chip I had to pay an arm and leg to have removed!"
"Anyway, they first thought to use me as a spy, reading the minds of those that they directed me to. However, by no means that could ever be connected to a lack of effort on my part, none of the people ever knew anything of value, and my abysmal record on obtaining secrets prompted my transfer to fleet division. While maintaining an exemplary record as sensors manager of an entire battlegroup during a particularly nasty little war with invaders from one of the hell dimensions, I managed to keep the collateral damage down to a record low, that being zero civilian casualties for all ships under my direction. After the war I was transferred to Extra Activities Division, a euphemism for their assassins and black operations group. Two days later, a moderately high-ranking official in the IDP suddenly felt the need to transfer me to special agency. Special agency allows one to pursue one's own methods when executing the will of the CW, which means I haven't had to kill anyone since then, bringing my lifetime kills to a grand total of zero, just how I like it."
"On the other hand, special agency is also considered a death sentence, which is why I was assigned to it after pumping that official full of rage I'd drained from a bar fight the night before and then insulting him to his face. Fortunately for me, my powers give me more survivability than most, and I've managed to almost enjoy daily brushes with death in exchange for never having to take an order to execute someone. I currently hold the record for consecutive days of special agency service without suffering a debilitating injury—one month, four days."
After his half-brag anecdote had petered out here, Raven was looking sour again and the rest had a new respect for him. His story was a bit far-fetched, but something about the way he told it, the way Starfire confirmed it somewhat, and just the way he'd acted so far, made them more or less able to accept it. All this definitely thrust part two of Raven's big question to the forefront of everyone's mind: what the hell was this guy doing here?
"So, I can tell you all want to know what brings me here," Skye rarely disappointed expectations, which he could follow as easily as most did facial expressions, "and that's certainly the next logical thing for me to explain. About seventy hours of Earth-time ago, someone tried to kill me. Not an unusual circumstance to be sure, but after analyzing the situation, I realized the assassin had been sent from here. That tipped me off to come here, and wouldn't you know it? The second I came out of slipspace around the planet, my senses started going crazy, every iota of my being flooded with a foreboding that spoke of universal threat, something on a scale I've never even imagined could exist. Sensing around led me straight to Jump City, and the explosions lead me to that battle yesterday. That's why I was there—I helped because it seemed the right thing to do, you know?" He launched into his next line of explanation before anyone could begin to respond to that one, already sensing the next series of questions forming.
"Now, before Raven can begin to call that into question, let me explain further still. First off, no, there isn't anything particularly unusual about me jamming from one side of the galaxy to another when someone's tried to kill me. I'm vindictive like that, plus I didn't like the idea of someone who wants me dead being on my home planet. As for the sense of foreboding, my precognitive ability has never failed alert me to something liable to kill me in the near future, as evidenced by the fact that I'm still breathing after three years of a job that usually kills a guy inside of six months. The magnitude of the feeling is evidence of how many are liable to die, and as I said, it's looking to be a whole crapload of people, including myself and everyone I care about. Thus here I am."
"Okay fine—just shut up for a second!" snapped Raven, the first to squeeze her voice over Skye's. It was quickly becoming apparent that this guy had a penchant for intelligent lecture, despite his often dirty vocabulary, and that he tended to get carried away when he spoke. Raven's interruption had stopped him cold, and now he looked a bit sheepish for his overspoken explanation.
"Good," she once again burst out, when Skye had clearly stopped gabbing, a rare look of deep concern on her face and, shockingly, in her tone, "Now tell me, do you know the nature of this threat you sensed? I only ask because I had a vision earlier myself, and what you've said makes me fear just how accurate it may have been."
"At first, no, I had no clue what it involved. After I got a close look at that guy that nearly ended us all the other day, it occurred to me what the probable cause is. What looked to be a freakishly huge human was in fact a notorious criminal from a heavy gravity world once apprehended by the IDP, one of five fabulously dangerous beings that recent managed to break out of The Can, the IDP general holding facility. It's almost certain that their presence here on Earth, in the very city my ESP lead me to, is in no way coincidental to the danger that faces the universe. I just wish I knew more."
"Five? Damn… that's too close to my vision. If it was really true, then this is big, bigger than all of us. We need to call the Justice League right away, Robin?" She finished with a question to the guy that was technically the leader of their bunch, and the only one authorized to call the watchtower without an immanent emergency. He had to decide on this one.
"Just hold on Raven, we don't want to jump the gun on this," he responded, and Raven could have dropped dead from shock at his rejection. His mind was focused on an old gripe of his: the eternal conflict of jurisdiction. He'd be damned before he'd hand over a bust like this to that arrogant bunch out in space, not before they'd even given it a shot. "Skye, do you know how long we have before this future is going to be unstoppable?"
"Uh, I can't really be too sure," and he was impressed that Robin knew enough about the paradox nature of timespace to ask that question, "but my gut tells me about a month. The more momentous the event, the further off it can be predicted. Right now we're teetering on the cusp between where it is merely possible and where it is certain, and it will take no less than a month for it to tip over the edge. Once again, I just wish I knew more. With the ether in the state it is now, I'll probably go precognitive again next time I sleep, and with any luck that'll be as helpful as the one I had last night."
"Wait a second, you haven't actually had a vision about this yet?" Raven questioned, distracted momentarily from her distress at Robin's obstinate pride, "So what was yours about?"
"Actually, it was about you, of all people. It used the rather overdramatic contexts that precognition always seems to take on, but it basically said that if I tried to hide my identity from you and yours here, then we'd all end up dead, along with most of the population of the universe. Specifically, it predicted that you and I would end up murdering each other in a magnificent bloodbath of a duel, when all else lay dead at the end of everything. I was damn glad for that warning, I tell ya, cause I came here with every intention in the world of lying about my origins as far as I felt necessary. Like I said, people are killed for knowing about the IDP when they're not supposed to, so I don't exactly spread it around. We all dodged the laser on that one."
"Damn man, how can you be all calm about that? If what you're sayin' is true, we could all have been totally screwed because you didn't want us to get hurt for knowing stuff we didn't really need to!" Cyborg grasped the situation nicely, which was more than anyone could say for Starfire or Beast Boy, who'd been left behind somewhere back when seeing the future had come up.
"Hey, that's really what ESP is all about man: avoiding those mistakes that threaten to end us. I can't count the number of times I've known of an event-path that would lead to my certain death. It's like a normal week for me is to dream of how I'm supposed to buy it in the near future and spend a few days thinking up ways to avoid it. The only way that's different from how most people live is that I know in advance which of the choices I face could be fatal, most everyone else has to make their decisions without that little advantage."
"Alright, this is getting kind of ridiculous. You're tellin' me you've got all those powers, and you can see the future so well that you've never been ambushed or caught off guard? How can anyone possibly have gotten you under their thumb? You sound like a god damn superman!" Clearly Cyborg had been impressed by what he'd heard, but had reserves, knowing as he did what things that sounded too good to be true usually turned out to be. Besides, he'd caught some of Raven's suspicions once the guy had started talking about lies and futures, everything getting just a little hard to believe.
"What can I say? They caught me young and they caught me cold. I'll be out from under them eventually, but really, not because of my powers. In the end, I'm flawed work, powerful, but with so many weaknesses. Up against enough robots, I'm dead. Up against a bunch of mind-shields, I'm dead. Up against a sufficiently skilled attack-mind, I'm dead. I've faced all of those and survived only because I've known the threat was coming, and even then, it's often cost me much. It's been a lifetime of near-misses for me." Skye's tone was subdued, actually sounding kind of tired of all things, as though remembering all the times he'd shared breaths with death itself was a drain on him. The whole room was soon infected with his exhaustion, the crazy story he'd just fed them combining with recent injuries to tire everyone.
"Okay, this is getting out of hand," protested Beast Boy tiredly, as he looked out at the way the afternoon sun hit the city skyline beyond the room's huge windows. "How about we break for dinner and you guys can explain this all to me a little slower? Like, when did visions of the future come in man? One minute we were getting to know Skye, the next you're jabbering about timelines and universal destruction!"
"Yes please, might we once again cover what has been said here? I am afraid I missed most of what transpired while thinking about seeing Heartwind again," and Starfire's face took on a dreamy look as she once more began to think of her oldest friend.
"Great, I think I've got a good idea of the situation, I'll explain it while we eat," Robin assured him, then, "So what do you guys want?"
"How about some Cheesesteaks?" supplied Cyborg quickly, instantly ready for the subject to swing to food.
"NO WAY! If we can't have tofu, then we're having pasta!" argued Beast Boy, eyes lighting at the mention of food.
"Okay, but there's gonna be meatballs! Big spicy pork ones, with extra grease!" and the eternal conflict began to rear its ugly head once more.
"NO MEATBALLS!" and Beast Boy grows with the force of his passion.
"Would you two stop that!" snapped Raven, her dark mood still percolating in vicious retaliation against everything that was going against her right now. Robin was being priggish and arrogant, Skye had gotten into her head twice, and everyone was just going to accept this prick and his tall tales from outer space. This was shaping up to be an unpleasant evening.
After Dinner—about two hours later
While Beast Boy expounded on the virtues of veganism, Cyborg taunted him, Robin passed around after dinner mints, and Starfire sopped up the leftover fish oil she'd put on her pasta with the last piece of garlic bread, Raven and Skye eyed each other warily (or at least, Raven eyed and Skye, I dunno, minded… or something). Neither had eaten much during the meal, Skye assuring that he needed a little time to adjust to organic food after space rations, Raven merely being herself. Each had expressed a desire for herbal tea at the exact same instant, and that was where the palpable tension between them now routed from. Now Raven was positive he had been not only reading her mind all along, but now also taunting her with the fact that she couldn't detect or prove it, an unforgivable sin by any measure. Skye was getting beyond exasperated, his every effort at friendliness thwarted by the vagrancies of chance this woman was taking as signs of his absolute untrustworthiness.
"Robin," she addressed the other even as her glare was reflected off of Skye's sunglasses, "we need to talk about this whole, 'not calling the Justice League' thing."
"You think it's a terrible idea, right?" anticipated Robin smoothly, wondering at the way the two concentrated on one another, a different expression and one would think them infatuated lovers rather than two people who couldn't seem to stand one another.
"We are talking about the whole universe here, it's not the kind of responsibility I want riding on my shoulders. We should turn this over to them and be done with it before things go bad." Raven's tone was reasonable, reserved, but held a potential for fire just below the surface that Robin could feel, and suddenly the whole table was silently concentrating on the conversation.
"Come on Raven, Jump is our city; it's our responsibility to make sure all criminal activity around here is taken care of if the police can't handle it. That was the deal we made when we took the job, when we formed the Titans. We've never had to ask for help, not even in the darkest times of Terra's betrayal, and I don't plan to start now just because some offworld crooks with a bad reputation have come to town." Robin's tone had fallen into a familiarly unshakeable determination, and Raven only hoped he didn't start doing that thing where he clenched his fists and paced dramatically in front of the new guy. DAMN! Can't start thinking of him like that! "Besides," Robin finished, "We saved the universe during that whole Larry thing, so it's not like we lack experience in the category."
"Hey, when that dimension hopping weirdo cracked reality open, we didn't get a choice to call for help. We're lucky all of existence didn't end, as it probably would have if the little imp hadn't gotten his act together!" and her tone became biting and heated, even as its central neutrality stayed fixedly in place.
"I hate to burst your bubble Raven," and Skye was truly regretting the necessity of disagreeing with her while she was in this mood, "but I have to agree with Robin. If we bring in any out of town muscle, they're liable to split, something they're apparently quite good at considering they escaped from the universe's most advanced prison. Granted that would solve your problem, for a while, but these people aren't the types to give up. The place they take up their schemes next might not include people who know they're up to something, and then there goes the universe, that same one we all live in. This is you guys' choice, but I know where my vote would go—if I had one."
"Please, if I want your opinion, I'll ask for it. Us knowing about these guys isn't liable to do much good if they KILL us! Just that one of them came closer to murdering all of us than anything Slade ever threw at us in all the time we fought him! What makes you think we can take on five guys like that?"
"The woman makes a point," Cyborg agreed readily, not relishing another brush with complete destruction, even as he felt his pride stung at the way that guy had mopped the floor with him.
"Hey, come on guys, don't let the way that ambush went get you down. I've seen all kinds of people from all over this galaxy, and let me tell you, you guys are some of the toughest. You can count the number of people who can survive a fight with Haplipop Bluhime and not get out of the fourth order of magnitude. On a galactic scale, that's almost unimaginable, so you know you're doing okay. Add the fact that you had no clue what you were going up against and still got out alive, and you get a much better idea of relative strengths."
"Skye…" Raven grimaced harshly, the first time her gaze had deviated from him since the tea gaff, "we only survived because you showed up when you did. Without you, we'd all be dead right now."
The room was pervaded with a clinging silence following her admission, everyone there shocked beyond description by what she'd just said. It was the silently held consensus that she'd have sooner eaten her own cape than admit she owed Skye anything, much less her life. Even if it apparently was in support of her side of the argument, no one could quite believe it, and it was a long moment before Skye could stammer his response. His shock was proof that not even ESP could prepare you for everything.
"Well… damn… you don't really owe me anything. Besides, it's not like you guys wouldn't do the same for me if you found me on the verge of death against a vicious raging beast of an opponent. In the same breath Raven, it's not like I'm going anywhere. As long as these guys I'm after are here, and frankly, as long as I can reasonably manage to stay away from the IDP, I'll be around to clue you in before ambushes and the like, so you won't be caught off-guard the next time. If I can just figure out who were up against, we can even get ready in advance, level the battlefield beforehand, you know? I'm no slouch in a fight either, by the way," and he smiled charmingly, his sculpted features molding surreally around his powerful jaw. Raven felt her heart skip a beat, then quashed the wretched emotion just barely in time to prevent a power explosion. A quirk around the side of his mouth the next moment told her all she needed to know: he'd noticed, and now he knew. You couldn't hide anything from those damn espers.
"Yeah, fine, I'll go along with it for now," she responded calmly to his assurances, trying to play the full-body hiccup off as something other than attraction to him, "but if I end up dead over this, I'll haunt you forever. I know many ways to make the living… wish they weren't" and the threat came off with deadly precision. Skye felt his whole body shudder with the thought of what she really could do to him if she wanted to. It was hard to forget that she was part demon when every time he looked at her, her aura glared back in dull malignance. He wondered silently what kind of effort it took to keep that much destructive force contained, then dropped the consideration as overly prying.
"Great, then it's settled. Skye, consider yourself a temporary Teen Titan, good for as long as you're here on Earth. Together, we'll bag those crooks, save the universe, and maybe even find a way to help you out with that whole IDP thing." Robin spoke with confidence, and while Skye felt that anything was possible, he also believed in picking the fights you could win and being cautious of everything, so he felt the need to try and reign the Boy Wonder in a bit.
"Hey Robin, lets just concentrate on the problem at hand first, okay? Like, do you guys have a place I could crash for the night? A couch will do fine, I just want to make sure it's okay and everything. I really don't want to impose more than I already have."
"No problem man, I know just the place. It's an extra room we haven't been using for anything recently, just sitting there, ready to be lived in. There shouldn't be any problem with you sleeping there for now."
"Helooo? Robin, all the extra rooms are bare right now!" corrected Beast Boy loudly, always hoping to one up Robin, who was almost never wrong. Combine that with the fact that Beast Boy was almost never right, and you see why it will be a long time before he actually gets ahead of spiky-hair in the count. Didn't stop him from trying though. "The only rooms with beds in them are our rooms, and I for one don't want to sleep in the same room as a guy that can suck out my dreams! … No offence dude."
"A common complaint, and one I don't take personally," muttered Skye coolly, earning a bit of surprise respect from Raven, who knew she would have clocked B.B. for that one.
"On the contrary Beast Boy," Robin countered the offered rebuke, tossing his spiky hair and grinning as he relished yet another victory, "there is one bed that isn't being used right now." Beast Boy's eyes nearly popped out of his head when he realized what the older guy was talking about.
Terra's Room
"HE CAN'T STAY HERE!" Beast Boy shouted adamantly, for about the thirtieth time since his first protest back around the kitchen table.
"We… aren't… using… it… for… anything—" Robin struggled to get out as he dragged the dead weight of the green one behind him and into Terra's old room. The little guy was being way too touchy about this, the same way he had gotten every time they'd tried to pack up her stuff and clear the room back to the empty shell it had once been.
"HE CAN'T!" B.B. continued his protest, dragging at his leader's cape and arm in his attempt to turn them all away from the shrine of his forlorn memories. He hadn't kept the place ready for her imminent recovery just so some stranger could muss it all up.
"HE CAN!" and now Robin too was reduced to shouting, fed up with the insubordination and purely childish behavior of their resident changeling. Robin respected the guy's feelings, especially after he'd come to terms with his own for Starfire, but the guy had to admit that they were no closer to curing Terra than they'd ever been.
"HE CAN'T!"
"HE CAN!"
"HE CAN'T!"
"HE CAN!"
"I can't stay in here guys," said Skye as he stood calmly next to the shouting pair, never moving an inch while his senses took in the space.
"NO YOU CAN'T!" Beast Boy turned his emotions on the other muscular jerk in the room, "I'm not just going to just STAND BY and let some WIERDO from outer space live in Terra's—" his eyes open and he thinks for a moment as he pauses, "what did you say?"
"I can't live in here," Skye repeated, as though he hadn't just been shouted at and called names.
"Hey, I know it's a little breezy, but if you don't like the ocean view we can hang some plastic and—" Robin was cut off by Skye before Beast Boy could turn around and clobber him, rage filling the green one's soul at Robin's willingness to desecrate Terra's room for this new guy.
"That's not the problem. This place belongs to somebody. Every inch of it is permeated by someone's feelings, their—her—thoughts and emotions bathe the whole space. A blond, rather skinny, but very pretty, lived the happiest days of her life in this room, and while it wasn't recent, everything in here still reeks overpoweringly of her soul. I can't live in here." As Skye finished explaining his protest, everyone fell to a sad silence. Though he certainly hadn't meant to, Skye had managed to reopen wounds they'd all thought had closed over the past few months. Robin especially felt the heel as he remembered the good times with Terra he'd been blocking studiously out of his mind as he tried to pitch her property to the new guy.
"This woman," Skye continued, when he realized what an effect his words had had, "whoever she was, I can sense that there are some mixed emotions about her. You speak of her simultaneously as a betrayer and a trusted friend, and the feelings that radiate when you begin to think of her are some of the most bittersweet I've ever come across. What exactly happened with her?"
"It… It…" Robin tried to begin the sad tale, but sort of trailed off while searching for where to begin it. None of them had ever attempted to relate the story to someone who didn't know who Terra was or what she'd done, and it was harder than Robin could ever have imagined.
"It's a long story," cut in Raven smoothly, "one for another time." Whatever had inspired her earlier frankness with Skye had dissipated, and it was back to distant belligerence with a vengeance. Her tone was so cold one could almost feel the frost sweep across the room.
"Right. Well, the couch will do fine then. It isn't that late yet, but we've all had a craptacular pair of days, so I elect that we all get some rest and make an early start at tracking down that lot of crooks tomorrow. Who knows what might become possible, with a new day and all?" As he asked the obviously rhetorical question, everyone began to realize just how tired they were. Some of them had only just pulled away from life threatening injuries a few hours ago, after all, and none of them had escaped from the battle with Blue unscathed. Only Raven, her cold purple eyes focused on Skye, didn't seem ready to clock out for the night, and Skye was not at all oblivious to the malignance painted all over her face.
Roof of the Tower—That Night
(Raven)
"I can't believe how this is going," muttered Raven to herself, as she stared listlessly out at the nighttime ocean. The bright moonlight reflected coldly on the late summer waves, the endless rolling motion of Jump Bay creating a million reflections of the pale glow to dazzle the eyes and calm the soul. For all the good it was doing Raven, it might as well have been a landscape painted by a retarded kindergartner.
She'd been trying for the past two hours to meditate, to find the calm center of herself that would shield her from this strife and extinguish the turmoil that bubbled away within her, threatening to explode at any moment. Every time she'd almost achieved peace, that face would creep in again, that damn pale face with its empty white eyes and unreal perfection, haunting her mind and shattering her concentration. As if that wasn't enough, the mere thought of his smile created a fluttering in her chest and a heat in her lower stomach that she didn't appreciate at all, and it was truly beginning to mess with her head. No one should have this affect on her.
On top of all of that, there was the way the guy acted, energetically confident, as though everything in the world was worthy of his attention, but also like he couldn't be surprised by anything and so couldn't really appreciate the world around him. He'd walked in with that smooth attitude of his, claimed her friends' hearts, and was now preparing to drag them all off on a mission liable to end in the deaths of everyone she cared about. Threaded through the terror she felt at the similarity this was taking on to the mess with Terra, not to mention the need she felt that reminded her almost nauseatingly of Malchior, was the grating memory of the vision her father had visited upon her, telling her exactly what would become of her friends should she reject this guy's help.
"I don't understand how this could be happening," she complained bitterly to the world in general, trying to shake the reality of it all from her head. She normally wasn't the type to resort to denial, having little but contempt for those that sought to escape their reality's pitfalls that way, but things had gotten so completely out of hand here, she couldn't stand it.
"Nice night out here, huh?" asked an already familiar voice from about four inches behind her, startling her so badly she almost fell off the side of the tower. When she'd regained her balance, she twirled to meat the intruder with all the fire she could muster, only to find herself eye to throat with him. She'd forgotten how tall he was.
"Back off," she muttered, and black energy gripped his legs and yanked him back about three feet, giving her enough clearance to feel comfortable again. She didn't know why he was here, or how the hell he'd managed to sneak up on her like that, but she wasn't about to let him screw with her. "What exactly do you think you're doing, coming up here like this?"
"I apologize for startling you," he began, nonplused by the way she'd manhandled him away from her, "but I feel there are things we need to discuss that don't require the prying ears of your friends. I can sense that they are all quite asleep now, so I followed the emotional distress leaking from your mind shield until I found you up here."
Raven gasped and checked her shields, stepping back from him again as she realized that she had been leaking and ready to kick herself for her carelessness. This guy knew exactly how distressed she was, giving him pretty well all the cards. If he was ever going to make a move against her, this would be it, she'd made sure she was in no position to counter him quite perfectly at this point.
"Please, don't be so distressed, I've come only to talk. You and I have gotten off to a terrible start here, but I need—no, I really want to know you better, for some kind of trust to exist between us." His voice was sincere, but she knew about how difficult it was to fake that. Malchior had made sure she knew it.
"We already have a trust between us, or have you forgotten that secret we now share," she said bitterly as she turned from him and pulled up her hood. Her tone told him he could have handled that whole situation better, her newly hardened shield making her otherwise blank to his senses. He was just glad she didn't know how to shield against clairvoyance, lest she vanish from his sight.
"I'm sorry for showing up and screwing with your life, okay? That is basically what you're complaining about right? I didn't ask to come here, I followed my guts here because I knew I would die if I didn't! I don't want to steal your friends and I don't want anything from you other than your cooperation to keep us all alive. You don't have to trust me, you don't even have to like me, but could you please put all this suspicious bullshit away already? The last thing I need while trying to stave off the deaths that even now creep up on us is you frying me the next time I drain somebody!"
"Why should I trust you?" Raven continued to mutter her words bitterly, unwilling to even look in Skye's direction. "Since you've gotten here you've done nothing but try to ingratiate yourself with my friends, meanwhile we don't really know anything about you. I've been through enough to know when I can trust people, and you haven't qualified."
Skye was silent after her utter rejection, and Raven felt she'd finally put him in his place. The satisfaction she'd thought the accomplishment would bring was sadly absent, and she began cursing listlessly behind shields so tight she almost didn't sense what happened next. At first she thought a breeze had kicked up, the cool sensation along her body bringing memories of many a chill ocean wind she'd enjoyed from the Tower's rooftop. When she realized her cloak was silent, that not the slightest stirring of air was present to cause the freshening gusts she felt, an involuntary gasp escaped her lips as she twisted around to look back at the man that she had thought defeated.
Rather than the well built pale man in black, Raven was greeted with a harrowing composite sight, a glowing white light with silver overlay clouding her view to the man within, the shining energy of his spirit actually overlaying his real form. He had dropped his shields.
The power that had been penned by shields better than any she'd seen since her own teachers', power that she had simultaneously feared and admired in the deepest most secret parts of her mind, was now projecting freely, creating a psychic wind that she'd felt as a physical force, so bright that her ESP's view of it had overlain her own actual vision. After a moment of stunned awe, her heart and mind skipped directly to the betrayal, the one she'd know was coming, and her own power flared in response to his.
Releasing every hold she'd ever placed upon her power, she too began to glow, a white-edged black aurora growing form her hands, eyes, and mouth until it enveloped her body. As the power began to dance along her skin, she bolted down her shields as tight as she'd ever managed, knowing that the greatest threat this guy held would come straight at her mind. The two of them stood in relief for a moment, a gusting white and black ethereal wind pressing out from each to meet in a crush halfway between them.
"I knew it would come to this," Raven whispered as she prepared to strike, her hand pulling back with a sphere of destructive force she fully intended to push through his chest until he passed out, or worse. Before she could strike however, she was struck by something herself, and it was so unexpected that it forced her to pause where she floated. Amusement. A sense of amusement so utterly palpable that she felt it infect her own mind quite distractingly, shattering her concentration faster than anything else she could have imagined. He found something funny about this! The feeling faded, and she pulled even stronger shields as he approached a bit closer.
"I'm sorry for projecting like that," he apologized, as though he could read her reaction straight through her shields, "but I can't help but wonder what your doing? I drop my shields and the next thing I know you're ready to gut me!"
"I think I know an attack when I see one," she snapped back at him in a low, dangerous tone, reforming her attack, only to have a new wave of humor bowl her over like she wasn't shielding at all. What the hell was going on?
"Raven, the only thing I'm going to 'attack' is the questionable credibility of your suspicions. Now please, though it is an incomparably beautiful sight, I would ask that you lighten up the power display; I don't feel like getting gutted tonight."
Raven slowly complied, feeling the truth in his words. That must have been it, she suddenly realized, and allowed herself to fall to the ground while dropping much of the power she'd summoned to her body. The last vestiges clung and roiled over her skin as was always its want, and she let it for once, deciding that if Skye was going to let himself hang out like he was, she wouldn't bother packing hers away either. It actually felt a little nice to let go. That moment was when she realized that something was different, the change she felt in herself was incredible, and now that she thought about it, she had to attribute it to him.
"How are you doing that?" she asked simply, too calm now to phrase the question the way she'd planned to, with venomous fire and suspicion.
"You're an empath, I'm projecting my calm and you're picking it up," he said simply, and now that she was paying full attention, she could sense the utter lack of threat from him as well as the truth in his words.
"That shouldn't be possible," she protested calmly, expressing her confusion with a slight crinkling of her brow, "my shields—"
"Are very good, but not perfect. My telepathy lets me feel quite loudly—at least with things I'm good at like calm and coolness—and you're a better empath than you give yourself credit for. Combined with a very mild vampiric influence, we get to have your mind free of fear and anger, without even violating your taboo against the draining."
"When I can feel angry again, I will get you back for this," she said, although it lacked the ring of truth that his voice reinforced with every word. He caught this fact too.
"If you really meant that, you could make me pay right now. That incantation of yours could send your power flying even without a strong emotional impetuous, right?"
"Okay," amd Raven would have been shaken if she could feel anything at all, "before I begin to freak out on this normalcy high you forced on me, I want to know where you learned so much about me. Were you…?"
"For the last time, I haven't read your mind, not even a little bit. I'm guilty of hearing what you've let slip, I won't deny that, but what do you want me to do, walk around blind with all my senses shut off? Anyway, I'm mostly just guessing, ESP does the rest." His tone expressed none of the irreverence his words implied, still an unimpeachable truth pervading all he said. She was somewhat tempted to read his mind right now while his shields were down, and that she could still consider such underhanded tactics told her this guy had truly refrained from doing more than calming her. That was a small point in his favor.
"You're a good guesser," Raven said, managing to urge a small whisp of her own annoyance out from under the calm that so permeated the air that her powers couldn't help but suck it up, even through her best shields. "So tell me, why exactly am I so wrong about you? Here you seem to have proven me right, ambushing me with calm against my will."
"I thought you liked being calm?" An ice that had nothing to do with Skye's enforced calm doused Raven as he zinged her a good one. She traced his knowledge of this instantly to her outburst in Robin's med-bay room, and she damned her overbearing emotions once again. He'd known her weakness all along.
"I'm sorry, that wasn't fair. I was merely edging my way into my big gambit. I'm going to explain to you exactly why you don't trust me now, while you can't help but listen rationally, and then I'm going to hope my hunch bears through and you don't skin me for it."
"I'm all ears," Raven said, managing to press sarcasm into the words, but she felt a tremor in her chest that she couldn't place a reason for, straight through the blanket of calm. She had been hassling him because he was an unsavory, presumptuous, and extremely dangerous man who reminded her glaringly of all the other times she'd been betrayed. …Right? The tremor became a pulse of fear: she couldn't honestly say why she'd been so hard on him, not with her mind clear like this.
"I walked into your life and, really, made a crappy first impression," he began, and Raven's fear began to coagulate as his conversational tone belied the gravity of his words. "But at the same time, something extra happened, something that set you on edge further than any misunderstanding or natural caution could ever account for. Every subsequent time this extraneous influence came into play, you became moody and suspicious all over again, even when there was nothing actually substantial you could blame it on. I've been catching the brunt of your discontent constantly since it cropped up. Would you care to hear my theory on what exactly this extra influence was?"
Raven broke out in a cold sweat, her heart leaping into her throat as Skye's artificial calm melted fully from her mind. She knew what was coming, but even still she tried to deny it. The inevitability of it was like a wave cresting over her, her body heating in embarrassment as she waited for the axe to fall.
"Raven," he said calmly, "we have feelings for one another."
As she registered exactly what he'd just said, her heart actually stopped for a moment, the world around her standing still with it. The thought, "he likes me too?" had just enough time to blast through her brain before a pulse of heat yanked her back into real time and wrenched a wave of energy from her body before she even had a chance to repress it. A few feet behind her, a ventilation duct exploded spectacularly in a burst of black, then landed to clatter loudly to a stop. After a long moment of stunned shock, she remembered to be indignant.
"D…don't flatter yourself," she stammered, but it rang empty once more. She was getting irritated by the way his truthfulness quashed out her own ability to lie. Ignoring her jibe, he fell backward onto his butt, sitting down hard on the roof's gritty floor.
"I didn't think anything of my own feelings at first. I figured, 'wow, here I am on Earth for the first time, and what do I find but a spectacularly attractive human girl right away.' I'd never felt such an irresistible physical reaction before, not to any of the humanoid alien women I've run across, so I figured it was a species thing at first. Then our powers started reacting, and I got discouraged. Then I got a feel for your personality, and I lost hope. Then… then I got a whiff of your feelings for me, and I got suspicious. I thought, 'why would a woman like that feel anything for me? She's been riding my back like white on rice, more likely to punch me in the teeth than go out with me—"
"Damn right," she interrupted.
"—so what could be the source of that?'"
"Then it hit me—" and he smacked himself upside the head for emphasis, "—our powers interact. Would you care to expel some small amount of your energy into the air, for the sake of experiment?" His request was a simple one, and what he'd been saying had Raven more than a little shell-shocked. The guy hadn't teased her, hadn't pressed her about the feelings, hadn't even really made any kind of a deal out of it, not so much as though it wasn't a big thing as though the whole situation was sad rather than embarrassing or exciting. It was massively outside what she'd expected from a guy his age, and his maturity was an exceptionally surprising change from what she was used to.
With little better to do, she complied, giving an underhanded toss that floated a sphere of black power into the air. At the same time then, he released a fizzing white blob from the great glowing mass of his aura, sending it in an arc that would take it nowhere near her own projectile. As they floated into the air, a sudden force gripped the two and they rocketed together and annihilated one another in a flash of gray faster than the eye could follow. As the afterimage faded from her eyes, Raven followed Skye's example and collapsed onto the ground, falling away from the explosion in complete amazement. It was as she was absorbing what she'd seen that Skye began to speak again.
"When we shocked each other in the med-bay, I figured it was some weird parallel between spiritual energies and static electricity buildup. Stranger things have happened. Then when we realized that our powers amplified when combined, I got to thinking it was some odd effect of polar attraction, some kind of constructive waveform interference. Now I know, it's a fatal attraction, a pull of violent mutual annihilation, the combination of opposites to form a short-lived superform. Not only that, but it would seem that you and I have had our hormones hijacked by our spirits. The attraction between our energies sought an outlet, some pull to yank us into contact so the reaction could take place, and perchance both of us had left a certain weakness in our defenses, something we'd never considered as a potential threat."
"Physical attraction," Raven completed the thought as she continued to come to terms with the indisputable nature of his words. The elegant way this revelation fit with everything she'd been feeling was almost insane, and she was overcome by pure shame as she considered the depth of the weakness she'd shown.
"I've haven't seen a human woman since I was twelve years old, and those I knew then were my mother and my sisters. I've never felt any attraction to aliens, so I've never had to guard against seduction or anything like that."
"I've… disregarded that part of myself," admitted Raven, seeing no point in guarding secrets at this point. "There is no room in my life for any kind of relationship, nor any way for me to safely enjoy the feelings involved. My nearly uncontrollable powers make sure of that. I was always so sure that I could keep down any feelings I'd ever have for a man, that I could suppress and divert them like I have all my others, all my life, that when this whole thing with you started, I must have panicked. I thought I was loosing control of myself, that I was loosing the self-possession that allows me to live my life, so I struck out at you to keep the feelings down. It was idiocy and weakness on my part, something I'd never forgive in others, and… I'm sorry. As far as I'm concerned," she stops to sigh deeply, "You've earned the benefit of the doubt. Truthfully, I can sense no deceit in what you've told us so far, not even with your shields down. That I never could merely made it harder to deny why I was actually pissed at you."
Skye accepted her apology in silence, projecting an air of quiet exhaustion, as though he derived no satisfaction from exposing so much of her secret inner self to the world. The silence stretched out, not uncomfortably, but quite implacably, and Raven studiously avoided looking at him as he motionlessly took in his surroundings. The night was warm, but a cool breeze, a true wind rather than a spectral one now, kept the night comfortable, so neither felt any particular impetuous to move. Skye still wasn't shielding, but Raven had gotten so used to the overlap between her ESP vision of his aura and her true vision of his body that she didn't even notice the white glare anymore. In truth, she'd let her own shields slip further than she'd ever before allowed, and now vague feelings and the murmuring of surface thoughts flowed freely between them, an invisible connection that bridged the gap of silence and physical distance.
"So where do we go from here?" she asked, not so much to dispel the silence as to elicit more conversation from this, she would now willingly admit, extremely interesting man. Now that she had begun to get past her insipid redirection of her own insecurity, now that she knew the weird feelings she'd been having were not a product of her loosing control, she realized that he was likely the best conversationalist she was going to meet anytime soon. Honestly, how many people had she been able to talk to about transdimensional physics and the intricacies of spiritual ambience in the past few years? And heck, he might even know something about magic.
Beyond that, he was a sensitive like her, and speech between such people, while not at all an intimacy, was far better than the casual chatting one could indulge with normals. The breadth of feeling and other kinds of information that could be communicated beyond the bounds of mere words made it very much more enjoyable. Perhaps, if she could ever feel comfortable around him considering the involuntary hormonal reaction her powers were even now trying to foist upon her, they could even try casual telepathy—a true delight of meeting minds.
"Whoa now, baby steps Raven," she cautioned herself, and managed to do so discreetly enough not to project it. Even her telepathic ability was improving now that that disgusting stress was lightening from her soul. On the other hand, with it gone, she was almost frightened by how nice it was just to be around him, relaxing in a way she'd not recently enjoyed. Living in a world of normals had made her forget what being around other senstitives was like.
"I really don't know," Skye admitted, not usually what one heard from an esper and a precognitive. "The simple fact is that the relationship our powers so desire would be hysterical for its impossibility."
"Well gosh," she interrupted on the fly, "You don't have to sound all broken up about it," It was a jibe at how incredibly calm he was about this, and definitely not a secret disappointment that the thought of never being able to advance a relationship with her didn't even effect him enough to alter his tone. A thrill of delight played along her spine as she felt a shadow of annoyance whisper out of him—she was getting her edge back. The annoyance bubbled into a cool amusement as he got the joke and continued to lay down his point.
"Beyond the simple fact that we can't touch one another, neither of us are in any state to have such a liaison. I can't stay on this planet too long or the IDP will cancel my contract and execute my sisters. If I ever save them, I'll be a fugitive, so I won't be settling down after that. Besides even that, you're not the only one with emotional issues related to your powers. Neither of us would be able to really enjoy the feelings such a relationship would hopefully entail."
"What do you mean?" she asked, before she could stop herself. She'd gotten so used to the free flow of information, feeling, and simple thoughts that she'd forgotten to pretend indifference to whatever ailed him. Prying was something that never interested her, but she'd slipped up, and now a feeling of combined embarrassment and amusement flowed out of him and into her. Then, the projected feeling faded, and she realized what he must be talking about.
"I know you've noticed, an empath like you couldn't have missed it. I feel, then the feelings fade away, vanishing from existence rather than commuting to memory. You once asked me if the nature of my power was degenerate or concessive. The answer is, neither—my power is infinitely cyclic. The core of vampiric energy in my soul, that energy form that allows me to consume the various extra-corporeal energies of other beings, demands constant feeding, just like any other hunger, or it begins to complain, so it obviously isn't concessive. When I have naught to feed it, or when I've been lax on satisfying it, it turns cannibalistically on my own emotions as its food source. The draining affects only strong emotions when it's been well fed, but generally only the most insipid shadows of sensation avoid its appetite. In the end, if it truly hungers, it can transform me into an emotionless husk."
He let her chew on that for a second as he stretched his back out from where he sat. Raven knew what he said was true, and maintained a quiet attention as he continued with what was obviously hard for him to talk about.
"I can't die of starvation like that, so it isn't quite degenerate either, but I can become cold, a creature of iced soul without emotion to stay the striking hand or quicken the heart with concern. As a matter of fact, I spend an ungodly amount of my life stuck near a state like that, much of today for example. I'm afraid most of the loud confidence and cheerful banter I squeezed out earlier was kind of an act I put on so people don't suspect, so they don't worry themselves over my condition. I can feel very loudly, as you no doubt noticed, but calm is the only thing I have in enough abundance to give to others—I simply can't maintain a feeling, at least not beyond the truly subdued, so if I actually stuck to how I felt in interactions … it'd be pretty scattered. I've talked from my gut before, and it disturbs the hell out of people, so I've gotten good at acting like a plain person, just to not bother others so much. On the other hand, I don't bother putting on an act when I'm after marks for the IDP, and my mannerisms, the ones that truly reflect how I feel, have earned me monikers ranging from 'Ice King' to 'Winter Skye,' because of course, I feel nothing. That lack has lead to… to me sometimes… hurting others… more than I could ever wish to…" She thought he was done for a moment, and she was struck by just how similar this was to what she herself had faced in life (had she not had free access to his mind, she'd have been justifiably suspicious about this) but he struck up a final note, almost having to wrench it out of himself, so much effort did it take to describe.
"Otherwise… I have the damnedest trouble remembering what things feel like. I never forget anything, not a single fact or figure that enters my mind, but as for feelings I've had, sometimes I forget even the love I hold for my own two sisters, however briefly, and then, if the hunger has been fed, I get a reminder of what bitter sadness feels like."
"That sounds… I mean… I wasn't trying to pry," Raven said, as she examined the way the stinging regret he'd been projecting almost listlessly into the air faded away, just as every other strong emotion she'd felt from him had. He'd been angry, he'd been happy, he'd been repentant and nervous, but none of these feelings had lasted nearly as long as they should have, and some, she realized as she thought back, hadn't registered as feelings at all—he'd been faking them. She'd been so wrapped up in her own semi-neurotic terror of loosing control that she'd barely noticed. If she'd known it had been a cover act, maybe his big talk and seeming disdain for his surroundings wouldn't have been so annoying, but then again, considering how little rational thought had been involved in her suspicions, maybe it would have just bothered her more.
"Don't worry about it… you can't pry into that which is freely revealed. I… I know you didn't really want to share my darkest secret… and I apologize for forcing it on you without asking… but thanks for listening. This is actually the first time I've told anyone the whole story about that." His voice contained the semi-neutral warmth that seemed to pass for happiness for him most of the time, much, she realized, as it did for her. The subdued smile he sent her way hit her somewhere in the stomach, causing that warm-gooey reaction again, and she almost blushed this time—almost.
"Damn but we're a pair huh?" he continued, the warmth heating slightly more, apparently being a gentle enough emotion that it didn't tempt the Draining's hunger. "Here you are, a woman who will self-destruct if she feels any strong emotions and who thus is required to dedicate most of her free time to containment of the horrendously dangerous power of a naturally volatile portion of the psyche. Meanwhile, I'm a guy who can't feel strongly long enough to really appreciate it, who lives from fading emotion to fading emotion in pursuit of a phantom of happiness that I might grip for some few moments before it too is consumed by my own vicious powers, seeking to scrape together enough emotion to keep me from being an empty war machine. Each of us suffers badly from what the other pursues so as to avoid harming others, one tortured by how her emotions force her to loose control, the other by the way his lack of such forces him to much the same end. Fire and ice, rage and emptiness, the cold light and the hot darkness, twisting and twining in a dance of all consuming apposition. We're locked up in an involuntary attraction that, if consummated, would result in an explosion of energy so huge it would probably tear a hole in the fabric of reality."
"Put it like that, it does sound rather pathetic," and Raven was almost delighted to have assumed a pleasantly cynical neutral tone, the first she'd really managed since she'd caught sight of Skye in Starfire's recovery room. On the other hand, his words struck a deep chord within her, the true sadness of their mysteriously linked souls cutting to places she normally reserved for the loss of friends and the destruction of dreams. She shouldered the weight of this new dilemma in her life even as Skye responded to her comment.
"Tell me about iTIHHDH—" Skye sputtered and convulsed suddenly where he sat, a wave of icy power jolting off his aura like blizzard wind and nearly flattening Raven the rest of the way onto the ground. Her tenuous connection to his spirit was flooded by an infusion of fear and pain so acute that nausea gripped her stomach and cramped her guts with the need to expel what little she'd eaten. Just when she thought she was going to loose her lunch as a prelude to loosing her mind, the sensation cut off with a sudden completeness, as though a door had been slammed shut against a frozen gusting. He'd put his shields back up.
"What's the matter?" she managed to snap out after a moment of desperately gasping for breath, then had to wait as he himself boxed and dispelled the terror and pain that had so suddenly struck out from his center soul.
"Lots of people…" he mumbled tiredly, gasping for breath before continuing, "are about to die…"
Preview: Good? Great? Boring? Tell me about it, please! Anyway, sorry for the OC centric chapter again, that's really the last one. Now that I've gotten Skye's motives and the core of his history out of the way, we can focus on the conflict at hand. A war has broken out between Green and Slade, and if you think either gives a damn how many innocent people die in their pursuit of one another, you haven't gotten a very good sense of this story's mood yet. The Titans are on the defensive as they try to protect people from becoming collateral damage in—Gang Wars 2: The Long Night.