The indigo light glowed brighter the further she walked down this road; almost pulsating with each step she took like a visual heartbeat. The floating prophecies surrounding the road grew fewer and further between as she neared the end. This part of the Field was virtually empty of images, but somewhat louder than the other sections of the Field that she'd visited before, yet the added volume did absolutely nothing to help her understand what the voices were saying. In fact, the voices were even more unintelligible than when she'd first entered this realm, if that was even possible.
The mental Soothsayer squinted her eyes as she progressed further, the path glowing brighter, throbbing with an intensity that would burn through her retinas if they were real. She faltered a bit as the brightness increased by another hundred watts, frowning at the implications.
The only time The Path ever glowed this ferociously was when a prophecy was at the brink of fruition. But surely something this imminent would have caught her attentions before? She usually came across these things far longer in advance.
Shaking her head, Soothsayer plunged ahead, bringing her hand up to shield eyes that were squinted so hard they were mere slits against the bright light rays as she pressed forward.
One step…
Two steps…
…And suddenly, the light cut off and she was plunged into darkness…and still, still silence.
"…the hell?"
Her eyes widened as she took in her surroundings. She was standing at the edge of the abyss, where the path dropped off into nothing. The brightly glowing road that had beckoned her forth for what seemed like hours led to…nowhere.
Putting her hands on her hips, she glared around the multicoloured dots that speckled her vision from staring into the light for too long, into the never-ending black, tapping her foot in annoyance.
Suddenly, her eyes hit on something just in front of her, veiled in the shadow cast from her body by the bright Path behind her.
She dropped her hands to her sides as she paced slowly forward, her vision adjusting to the darkness more with every step she took.
Finally, she could make out faint streaks of dull indigo light stretching forward, away from the main field, leading up to what seemed to be a stone tablet, crookedly half-buried in the dark 'ground' like an old gravestone, strangely devoid of the ever-present white mist, but seemingly enshrouded with shadow.
When she was close enough, she crouched and reached out, touching light fingertips to cold, grey stone, tracing the words with her skin before she graced them with her eyes.
Unbeknownst to her, the darkness slowly, silently, encroached upon them, until suddenly it surged forward and swallowed up the stone before she'd even had a chance to decipher its meaning…
Then, just as unexpectedly, shadow rushed in on invisible wind and engulfed the entire field, thrusting her mind back into reality.
Sarah could barely suppress a shudder as her consciousness returned to the small Math class at Jump City High School.
Those shadows…they felt…cold…unnatural to her mind.
Whatever it was, it definitely didn't come from her.
Shaking her head, she blinked the slightly glazed look out of her eyes and glanced around the classroom.
Everyone was staring forward, as would be expected if you really wanted to survive Ms. Hartwell's class with your social life/free time still intact, that is. It wasn't an inherently odd occurrence. What did give her pause was the fact that everyone, especially the female population of the class, was looking forward with genuine interest, something she hadn't seen since the first ten minutes after Ms. Hartwell had introduced herself when she'd started teaching here at the beginning of the year. Furrowing her brows, she glanced forward.
As expected, the entire blackboard was covered in white-chalked Mathematical gibberish, but instead of standing in the midst of it, mercilessly adding more confusing equations and droning, as was her custom, Ms. Hartwell was staring off to the side, left hand on her hip, right hand tapping her chalk pen on her dusty desk with an annoyance that was mirrored on her scowling face. Her eyes narrowed dangerously.
"Is there a reason you're disrupting my class? Because you're not one of mine, but don't think I can't still make you thankful you don't have the privilege."
Sarah shifted her eyes towards the open doorway, following gazes of her other classmates.
A boy moved further into the classroom, holding out a white square of paper to the glaring teacher. He barely flinched as Ms. Hartwell snatched the paper roughly from his hand, as if he had expected such, and merely turned to survey the class as she read, finally giving the rest of the room more than just a profile view of his face.
Long, jet-black hair hung loose and straight against the sides of his face stopping just above his chin, framing a ghostly pale face. He had soft cheeks and full, pouty lips. Dark eyebrows curved neatly above a pair of eyes the colour of mist in moonlight, a blue-grey so light it was almost transparent against white cornea.
Suddenly, his eyes hit on her and rested there for a few moments, making her feel like they were peering into her very soul. The corner of his mouth quirked into a faint smirk, before he finally moved on, and Sarah had to fight to hold in a shudder.
'He's cute,' she decided, 'but his eyes are creepy as all hell.'
"So you're a new addition," Ms. Hartwell murmured to herself. "That explains the extra desk." She gestured vaguely to the rest of the classroom with her chalk pen. "Welcome to Trig. Go find your seat. You're bothering me."
The boy smiled brightly at her before turning back to the class and manoeuvring down the crooked middle aisle.
Ms. Hartwell's scowl deepened. Nobody smiled in her class. She waited until he slid into the empty seat next to Sarah before addressing the rest of the class.
"Well, now thanks to Mr. Ivanov, we've lost ten minutes of our lesson." A slow smile stole over her face as realisation crossed over half of her class's faces. "To make up for it, the fifty questions Mr. Bradley somehow managed to save you from earlier are now reinstated." Now the whole class was a mask of dawning horror and glares thrown in the new kid's direction. Dmitri Ivanov graciously shrank back in his seat, a nervous glint finally lighting in his eyes, as it should have been to begin with.
Her smile widened.
Damn, she loved her job.
CRASSSHHH-DOOOUUUZZZHHHH!
"Feel my power!" a deep voice cackled from the middle of the traffic-jammed bridge as numerous citizens abandoned their cars and scurried away to safety, screaming. "Taste my wrath!" A woman shrieked as a ten foot tall, mutant steroid monger ripped off her door and wrenched her out from the confines of her silver Volvo, lifting her so close to his face that she could feel his steaming, rancid breath burning through her nostrils. "Who ya gonna call, girlie! Your weenie super-pixie in blue tights?" He sneered at her, blood-shot eyes wide around dilated pupils. "Well, he can't help ya now, sugar, 'cause I…I am HyperChondria! I am invincible! And Supergeek could never take me down!"
HyperChondria flung the woman down, laughing maniacally with his hands flung in the air, not even noticing as she scrambled away on the asphalt. "Hear that, Superman! I'm here to take your greasy alien ass down!"
"Um, dude?"
HyperChondria spun around to find a green boy with pointed ears perched on an empty Mac truck, staring down at him.
"Superman's, like, a couple thousand miles thatta way," he said, throwing a thumb vaguely over his shoulder. "You gotta hang a left at Kansas."
HyperChondria flexed in his direction. "Who the hell are you, kid? Get out my face."
The boy stood up, taking on a standard Superman-esque pose, his shaggy hair vibrating in the wind in lieu of an actual cape. "Beastboy," he answered. "Think of me as…your one way ticket to jail. All expense paid by the Titans."
HyperChondria glared at him, cracking his knuckles as he took in the black-and-violet bodysuit that, outside of Halloween and an eighties aerobics class, would never be worn out in public by anyone but a superhero.
"Fool," he snarled. "You can't defeat me! I'm HyperChondria!"
Beastboy's brow furrowed between a confused frown and…well, a confused eyebrow raise. "You're afraid of getting sick? Dude, should I, like, bring you one of those sugar pill thingies?"
"They send the village idiot to stop me!" he yelled to no one in particular. "I am invincible, boy, and I'm gonna make them sorry they even bothered to send a scrawny littleshit like you to fight me." He punched his palm as he strolled closer to the truck. Beastboy sweatdropped. "They'll see when I leave a flaming pile of neon green crap on their doorstep! RRRAAAUUUGGGHHHH!"
He surged forward, fist flying into the hard steel of the truck's side, forming a knuckle-sized dent two inches below Beastboy's feet. "Get down here so I can pound your face in!"
Beastboy turned into a cat and leapt off the truck, landed on the ground as a gorilla and charged with an angry roar. HyperChondria seemed slightly surprised, but still managed to catch his gorilla fist in his left hand before it could impact on his nose.
The villain caught his other fist just as easily and head-butted Beastboy before he even had a chance to realise he was trapped.
The gorilla roared in pain as thick forehead met thick forehead again. Beastboy shapeshifted into a velociraptor, dropped out of HyperChondria's grasp and landed on clawed feet. He screeched up at him as he spun on his reptilian heel and slammed his tail into the back of the villain's knees, making the man pitch forward.
HyperChondria caught himself on his hands and rolled out of the way as a green lion pounced at him. He swung a leg out and slammed it into his ribs.
Beastboy roared and swiped at the offending leg with a front paw, claws extended.
"ARGH!"
HyperChondria flinched back as Beastboy's nails cut four long grooves of red diagonally across his calf.
The lion morphed into a grizzly bear and lunged at the crouching villain.
HyperChondria rolled onto his back, planted both feet into the bear's midsection, and, using his own momentum against him, flung him forward over his body.
Beastboy went sailing through an abandoned Jeep, plowing through the open driver side door and landing across the two front seats, the gear stick digging painfully into his furry back. The front and passenger side windows shattered and rained glass upon his prone figure.
STOMP STOMP STOMP
CR-CRUNCH
"RrrraaaAAAHHHH…HAAAAA!"
Beastboy reverted to neutral form and looked up just in time to see a puke green Volkswagen Beetle careening towards him.
"D'aaahhh!"
He turned into a giant bullfrog and leapt out the opposite window milliseconds before the Beetle crashed into the Jeep. The Jeep rolled off its tires and skidded sideways towards him, the Beetle latched onto its side, metal and asphalt grating against each other in a shower of orange sparks.
The changeling shifted into a cheetah and sprinted in the opposite direction, flying embers hot at his tail. Turning away from the sliding clump of metal, he focussed on where he was going…
He faltered slightly on his paws as he saw a gasoline tanker loom before him.
Beastboy stopped his front legs suddenly, allowing his hind legs to skid around, sending him spiralling in a sharp ninety-degree turn. Then, pumping his borrowed leg-muscles in a desperate burst of speed, he catapulted himself out of the way just as the two cars slammed into the tanker with a resounding crash.
Beastboy skidded to a stop a few feet away and reverted to his semi-human form, eyeing the wreckage warily.
He puffed a sigh of relief when it didn't explode.
A sigh that suddenly turned into a gasp as a burly fist grabbed onto the back of his suit, hauled him about three feet off the ground and flung him through the air, back towards the tanker.
Beastboy flipped in midair, turned into a kangaroo, and kicked off the side of the tanker, propelling himself at top speed towards the villain.
HyperChondria rushed forward and swung a speeding fist at the flying marsupial…
WHAM!
Heavy knuckles slammed into green fur, and Beastboy went flying back the way he came.
At that moment, a spark ignited beneath the two crashed cars, following a long line of leaked fuel, trailing fire towards the underside of the slightly damaged tanker…
Beastboy turned into a pterodactyl mid-flail, pumping leathery wings hard to propel himself higher in the air with a loud screech.
HyperChondria cackled madly. "Yeah, you better run! Bring me back a challenge and a box of chicken while you're at it!"
The pterodactyl flipped in the air, turned into a hawk, and dive-bombed HyperChondria. Just before he reached him, he turned into a rhino and plowed into the villain's midsection.
Both went tumbling head-over-feet along the bridge in between the long lines of cars. They came to a stop fifteen feet away with HyperChondria straddling Beastboy's chest, grinning triumphantly.
"Lights out, kid," he said with a smirk, before bringing both his fists crashing down at his head.
Beastboy turned into a gorilla, grabbed HyperChondria by the waist, and tossed him off of his torso.
HyperChondria went sailing through the air…
SWOOOSHHH
…landed on the hood of a Lexus…
SLAM!
…then rolled off, landing flat on his face on the asphalt.
WH-WHAP-THRUMP
Beastboy pushed himself into a crouch, and glared across the way at the fallen HyperChondria as he pulled out his communicator.
"Guys," he said. When Robin finally answered with a frustrated 'Report!' he could still hear the fight on Main Street raging on in the background. Beastboy sweat dropped. "Er…never mind. I'll handle it myself." He flipped the communicator off and pressed the little button on the side, a beacon for the J.C.P.D.Metahuman Containment Unit to make a pick up, before tucking it away and shifting into a pterodactyl again.
"Skkriiieeeeaaahhhh!" he screeched as he flapped green wings and took to the air, zooming towards the downed villain.
Meanwhile, flames licked at the side of the gas truck, finally finding rapidly escaping fumes from the crash site to fuel their fury until…
KABOOOMMM!
The tanker exploded.
Robin back-flipped onto the roof of a parked SUV, flinging three exploding disks at the bank robbers that were happily, and mercilessly, shooting at him with high-powered laser rifles. One of them just shot the disks in midair, making them explode early, while the other continued to shoot at the Boy Wonder in abandon.
"Damn it," Robin grunted. Fed up was the understatement that his brain insisted on supplying as the sound of metal crunching under exploding gunfire assaulted his ears. It wasn't even remotely strong enough to describe how he felt about getting shot at like a target at a shooting range.
Pulling a grappling hook out of his utility belt, he shot the line out and swung away from the car just as a bullet hit the fuel tank and it exploded. He let go of the grapple, landing in a crouch with his cape wrapped around himself, the polymerised titanium protecting his relatively soft body from flying shrapnel.
"I hate guns," he grumbled to himself as he ducked into an alley and shot another grapple to a nearby rooftop.
Just as his feet hit the concrete, his communicator decided to chirp to life. He gritted his teeth. "Report!" he grunted into it, only half listening to Beastboy as he stared down the building to the street below, holding two birdarangs at ready.
From his new vantage point above the street, he could see the two villains high-five each other in victory seconds before being attacked by a volley of starbolts. It looked like Star was trying to talk them into surrender even as they pointed their guns at her. She seemed to sigh, before releasing a steady stream of green heat from her eyes, effectively melting the weapons.
Robin smirked to himself as he put away his projectiles and the communicator, and prepared to swing down to the street again. Just as he pulled the trigger on the grapple, there was a rumble in the distance.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a huge cloud of black smoke and fire billow into the air a few blocks away.
And he just stood there, frozen, staring into the distance.
"What the…?"
A wave of heated, compacted air rushed outwards in a circumference of destruction and flying shrapnel, pushing everything nearby outwards in chaotic ruin, before the rushing gases around the tanker heated up with furious flames and thick smoke.
The bridge vibrated with the force of the explosion.
All other sounds seemed to be buried by the crackle of the fire.
Orange embers rained over half the bridge.
A green being, halfway between a pterodactyl and a human, was flung forward at the very edge of the concussion wave, sailing over the grounded form of HyperChondria, careening through the shattered back-window of a still-idling bus, galumphing through rows and rows of high-backed seats, then crashing through the unfortunately still intact windscreen, before landing flat on his back on a shoddy old, once-white jalopy, cuts and bruises covering his almost-face, and scratches and scrapes showing through his torn and singed uniform.
There was a shrill whining as the car's alarm went off.
Beastboy groaned without the energy to even lift his head.
For a moment, the only movement on the bridge was the incessant flickering of a roaring October fire.
HyperChondria lifted his head and looked around, smirking to himself as he saw the annoying little superhero lying limply on a car roof a few feet away. Not giving the flaming debris that littered the ground around him a second thought, he pushed himself to his feet and slowly limped over to the downed boy, a malicious grin forming on his face.
Now was his chance to rid the world of one of its useless spandex-clad killjoys.
Beastboy's eyes fluttered slowly open, his vision pitching and swimming, and alternating between mammalian and reptilian eyesight without his control, but even then, he could make out the burly hands wrapping around his throat, and feel the pressure, yet simultaneous weightlessness, of being lifted into the air by his neck.
Beastboy's eyes slid closed…
And suddenly, he felt himself slump to the ground.
With a pain-filled groan, he managed to force his eyes open again.
The figure standing over him wasn't the huge and bulging HyperChondria as he'd expected. It was thin, and around his height, with a slight, girlish frame, leaning casually against a dangerously glinting sword.
He blinked slowly again, and suddenly she was crouched next to him, and he could just about make out large, almond-shaped eyes, a tiny nose and long, flowing, blonde hair swaying in the wind. And he was sure it was his spontaneously morphing eyeballs throwing his colour perception out of whack, but it kinda looked like she was tinted in gold. Nevertheless, she looked eerily familiar…
The girl tipped her head to the side and smirked down at him with a semi-nefarious glint in her eyes. "You'll die at no one's hands but mine, Green One."
She dragged the tip of the sword over the asphalt, and twirled it around in her hand, stopping with the tip pressed lightly against his forehead.
"T-T-Terra…?" he wheezed.
She scoffed. "You wish."
Then all went black.