Disclaimer: I do not own the Teen Titans, or LOTR, but I do own Shadow.
Hey, sorry I took so long to update, I had two essays to write, a math test, and a science pretest to do this week. Thanks for all of the reviews, I hope you enjoy this next chapter!
The Titans were bored. You would think they would jump at the chance to relax after all they had been through in the past few months, but they were bored out of their minds. It had been at least two months since the defeat of Trigon, and there hadn't been a single new or major villain since. Not even the HIVE 5 had tried anything, the biggest threat they had had to deal with was Johnny Rancid, who, lets be honest, is just annoying.
Everyone was bored enough to try anything new as long as it broke routine. Wait I take that back, almost anything, Cyborg still fought tooth and nail about not eating tofu, and BB still fought just as hard about not eating meat. Some things never change. It had gotten to the point where Beast Boy was seriously considering picking up a book and reading it, that was a scary thought to the others, but they were all beginning to consider new and unusual activities just to do something. Raven had actually almost started playing the gamestation one night at about two in the morning, but then BB and Cy came down to have a spontaneous rumble on it and her pride wouldn't let her be caught dead touching the machine.
Robin had been considering actually spending all of his time playing video games with the other two guys. While normally that wouldn't shock anyone, the activity that he was going to cut back on was searching for leads on where Slade might be. That was something to be worried about! Starfire had taken to trying to become an 'Earth' chef, and had stopped making her Tameranian puddings. Cyborg seemed to have found a project to occupy himself with, but the only one who knew anything about it was Shadow, who would spend hours in the Garage with Cy and all you would hear after those doors closed was the sound of power tools and computer keys. Shadow was the only one who wasn't complaining about the boredom in one form or another. In fact, he always seemed to know what he wanted to do. This fact alone made everyone else jealous, they wanted to know why he didn't find all of this peacefulness disturbing but no one had the nerve to ask him.
Raven was going to try a video game tonight just to prove to curiosity that it was a mindless, brain-rotting thing that wasn't worth her time. That damn emotion was driving her up the wall! It had been bugging her for days when she saw a new game that BB and Cy had been playing, some kind of RPG game that involved creating your own character and choosing a class, race, physical features and their name. Even then she was about to ignore it but saw that you could play as a sorceress. After that her curiosity wouldn't let her be in a different room if they were playing, and after a while she began to enjoy the story line of the game, it was just as complex as some of her favorite books, the ones she only read in her room so that BB wouldn't make fun of her for reading fantasy instead of horror.
She was silently making her way down the stairs to where she knew the game would be waiting. She just hoped that the three boys wouldn't be there already playing. They had been playing for almost three days straight and had made almost no progress in the game and she was sure that she could do better than any of them. As she was headed to the main room she heard indistinct voices coming towards her and she quickly melted into the shadows to avoid being seen. As the voices got closer she could finally make out what was being said, and by whom.
"Are you sure you don't want to tell the others yet Shadow? I mean, they are beginning to wonder, and haven't all of the experiments worked so far?" Cyborg's deep voice echoed down the hallway.
"Yes Cy, I'm sure I don't want to tell them yet. I still don't have enough evidence that I can pull this off yet. And while all the experiments have been successful, they were all on a small scale, a hair here and there, but we still aren't sure that we could do the whole body, and I don't want to get their hopes up about something that might not work." Shadow was obviously tired of arguing about what they had been working on in the garage, but Raven couldn't figure out what they were talking about. A hair here and there? What were they working on?
"All right man, if you say so. But I still think they have a right to know." Cyborg definitely sounded as if he was saying that they would talk about it later.
"I know, but not yet. Remember what I told you would happen if we weren't successful? I want to make sure it will work before Beast Boy adds his pressure to the pressure we already have. I don't want to disappoint him, but I know he will rush us to finish faster. There can be no mistakes on this one." Shadow seemed to feel torn between being honest with is friends, and making sure whatever he was doing worked.
"I guess you're right about BB, but we tell them in three days, fair enough?" Cyborg seemed to have forgotten how BB would react to their news, making him more accepting of the idea of keeping it a secret. "Well, I'm hittin the hay. See ya tomorrow." Cyborg then lumbered over to the elevator and headed to bed.
"You can come out now, I know you're there." Shadow started to head towards the kitchen in the main room obviously knowing about the questions Raven was about to ask and started the water on to boil.
Raven sighed, she knew better than to hide from him, it never worked. "What are you two working on that is so fragile?" Shadow smiled, good ole Raven. Straight to the point.
"I know why you originally came down here." Raven gasped, how had he known? She decided that there was no way he could have found out and decided to call his bluff.
"Really, if you know then you wont mind me asking what it is I supposedly came down to do?" Raven smirked, she finally had the upper hand on Shadow. She would never let him live this one down.
"Well you certainly didn't come down for tea. That leaves me to assume that you want to play the new video game I got Cy and BB." It was obvious that Shadow was enjoying the completely shocked look on her face. He couldn't help but think that she looked extremely cute with her mouth hanging open and a blush from pure embarrassment creeping onto her face.
"How did you know I wanted to play that?" Raven was too stunned that someone had found out to try and deny it.
"Well actually I got that game to get you to play. But I knew that it was working when I saw you completely enthralled by the story line. You fooled the others with the book in your lap, but you can't fool me." Shadow was so much enjoying this. "But I'll say again, I'll teach you how to play, and even play with you at night, but you have to promise to drop the subject of what Cy and I are working on until we tell everyone. Deal?" He put his hand out for her to shake, he knew she wouldn't be able to resist his offer.
"All right. I'll keep quiet about it for three days, but you have to tell us then."
"I will, now how about I teach you how to play? I'll bet we can create two characters that can absolutely destroy the other three's in the versus mode in just a couple hours of gameplay tonight." Shadow was glad he would be able to spend some time with Raven. After all, that had been his original intent with the game to begin with. He knew more about her than she would ever give him credit for.
After spending about three hours playing that night, Raven finally decided that she needed a little sleep. As she walked up the stairs she couldn't help but think that the game was just as good as she had imagined, but she had enjoyed Shadow's company even more than that. She would ask him if he wanted to play again the next night just so she could enjoy his company some more.
Three days later Cyborg gathered the other Titans together for news that he said would change their lives. Beast boy was the hardest to get to come to the main room to hear it.
"Dude! You can't make me I don't want to hear any so called life changing news!" Beast Boy just blurted out while he lounged around on the roof doing nothing in particular.
"Why not, it's not like you have anything better to do. And anyway Shadow hasn't had any sleep in the past three days getting this to the point he wanted it to be mostly for you." Cyborg was ding his best to be patient with the younger boy, but sometimes Beast Boy drove him insane.
"Wait, you mean that the reason Shadow looks like crap is because he wanted to do something for me?" BB was astonished, nobody ever went through anything like that for him, at least not since Terra. "Fine I'll come, but this had better be worth my while."
Once Cy had the others gathered together Shadow came into the room carrying a bunch of charts and a disc that he put into the computer. Raven noticed that he looked tired, as if he had gone right back to working on the project every night after she went to bed. Other that Cyborg she was probably the Titan that had seen him the most in the past three days. The others were completely engrossed as Cy brought in a small device and a small vial. The vial seemed to have a peace of rock in it. What were those two trying to do? Grow rocks?
"All right if I may have everyone's attention. I would like to explain the strange behavior of myself, and Shadow, for the past few days. We have been working on learning how this little machine here works and building a larger one. We also perfected the performance of the device to eliminate any mistakes. This device has the ability to 'unpetrify' certain rocks that were once living organisms. Shadow came up to me after obtaining this to ask me to help him improve on the model as well as make a more powerful one. With the larger one we hope to revive a former Titan. But we want the teams approval on it before we go through with it." There was obviously some tension in the air when he had said what their project was. Beast Boy was willing to do anything to get her back, Starfire joined him in that regards, but Robin and Raven were a different story. Terra's betrayal was still a sore spot for the two birds, and they weren't so sure they wanted her back.
"Before you say anything, I want to make certain things clear. If we fail, there will be no hope of returning Terra back to her normal state. She will die if this does not work. These machines work best about fifty-fifty, but with our upgrades we brought that up to about ninety-nine percent. Even though the odds are better, no one has ever attempted to bring back an actual person after being instantly petrified like that. If we fail she will crumble away into nothing. It is your choice." Shadow knew exactly how each of the felt, but he had to give Beast Boy a reason to think the other way, he couldn't have the green shape-shifter hate him for eternity because he had failed in this.
"I think everyone needs some time to think about this. I mean, I know Rae and Rob don't really want her back as much as I do, and I know I don't want to lose her. So I think we need to weigh the options and decide what we're willing to risk on this." Beast Boy's hidden wisdom shown through for that moment in time. True he had seen how the birds reacted to the news and he knew Star wouldn't understand if they didn't try. She was just to naïve to understand the consequences if they failed. He himself wasn't so sure after finding out that he might not be able to see her again, if they didn't try then they didn't fail, and if the didn't fail, then there was still a chance that technology would become advanced enough that they could be 100 positive that it would work. They really did need time to think.
The rest of the day was spent in quiet contemplation. Every Titan except Star and Shadow went off to some quiet place to think and decide what they were willing to do to either risk the chance of losing Terra, or risk the chance of having her back on the team. Beast Boy had actually gone to the cavern that held her stone body to look at her and decide whether he really wanted her back or not. This decision was hardest on Beast Boy but they had no idea just how hard it was. All he had been able to think about during his idle moments and throughout the battle with Trigon and the other demons was just how badly he wished to have Terra at his side again. But now, now he didn't know if he wanted her bad enough to risk the fragile amount of life she had left because of his selfishness. If only he knew what Terra would want. Was she able to know what was going on in the world around her, or was she sleeping peacefully without a care in the world? What Garfield Logon wouldn't give to know what Terra's, the girl he actually loved, was thinking right now.
Shadow was the one who had originally helped him realize just what he was feeling. It was shortly after Terra had betrayed them and joined Slade. He had been crying in his room one night when Shadow slipped in with his trademark silence to ask him why he felt so miserable. As Beast Boy had explained what he felt he slowly changed the subject to Terra and described what she did to his insides, how she made him so nervous yet at the same time made him feel invincible. How bad it hurt for her to turn against him yet he couldn't bring himself to hate her. After listening to this for about an hour Shadow had finally told him in that creepy voice of his back then that he was in love and that he had no use trying to deny it. Since then it was so much easier for Gar to classify just what he wanted Terra to be, but he was still terrified about what to do if she was revived but didn't feel the same about him.
Cyborg was going through a scrapbook that Terra had made during her time among the Titans. Terra was actually the one who had gotten everyone to take pictures of everything they did. Cyborg had even installed a camera into his system to make that task easier, but he had really done it because he wanted to help her preserve the memories they had made. She would always ask his opinion about the page she was making and though he had always acted annoyed if there were others present he secretly enjoyed that fact that someone valued his opinion so much. He had actually taken up that job after she had defeated Slade. He had been taking pictures of everything they did, he had made sure to get tons form their journey into Mumbo's hat, He had actually tried to make scrapbooks for when she came back. They were nowhere near as good as hers but they were there so she could learn about what had happened while she was out of it. Cyborg felt that they had this one chance to bring her back and that they should at least try to get her back. But he didn't want BB and Star hating him for failing, he just didn't want to mess this one up.
Robin was pacing back and forth in his room. He wasn't sure about what to do on this one. He was extremely grateful that BB had told them all to think about it, this was a big decision with some very big consequences. He wanted his team to be happy, but he also couldn't risk having his team betrayed like that again. Terra's betrayal had wounded them all far deeper than they each cared to admit. The only one who probably knew just how had it hurt the team as a whole was Shadow. Why did Shadow decide to do this? Why now? Was he planning on leaving again, so he had now decided to bring the team's ability to fight up another notch? No use going down that road, no one in the world could psycho-analyze his brother, that was one mind that would never been fully understood. Speaking of Shadow, he would have to pull Star away from him so that the poor guy could get some sleep. After coming to his own conclusion Robin left to help his brother. (A/N: I know I didn't say what Robin decided but I plan on leaving that to their vote later that night.)
Raven was trying to calmly meditate and clear her mind but she couldn't. Terra had betrayed them. She had taken their friendship and used it in an attempt to destroy them. This was an unforgivable thing that didn't deserve forgiveness. But then, why did Raven want her back? Yes, Raven wanted to bring Terra back, and she had somewhat of an idea as to why. She felt guilty, she had recently realized during a talk with Shadow that had somehow gotten to the subject of Terra that she had done almost the exact same thing. They had been talking, and as they lingered on the subject of Terra, Shadow had done something that Raven would always be grateful for. While her voice was filled with bitterness about what Terra had done and how it made her unworthy for forgiveness and life, Shadow had calmly and in an emotionless voice called her a hypocrite. When she heard him say this she had almost torn him apart, how could he call her a hypocrite! She had never betrayed her friends! When she had voiced these obvious facts to him he said to as herself had she really never done anything like that. When she hadn't understood what he meant he had pointed out what she had done on the day of prophesy, She had given in to a far greater evil than Slade, nearly destroyed the whole world, and yet each of her friends had forgiven her for what she had done after she made up for it by saving the world. Couldn't she do the same for Terra, who had joined Slade, taken over the city, but had made up for it by stopping the eruption before it destroyed the city.
After that Raven's view on Terra had changed drastically. She no longer thought that she had been weak to give in, because she had the exact same thing. Yes, when the Titans voted on the subject that night, she would vote to bring Terra back. No one deserved to live as a stone for the rest of their life, and she trusted that Cy and Shadow wouldn't fail. She had been getting better about reading Shadow after living in the same building as him for a few months and thought he had been holding something back while telling them about the plan. He had something to use as a drastic last resort but he wasn't willing to do this unless it came to that. He knew what the outcome of this vote would be.
Shadow had been trying to ignore Starfire for the past hour. Why did this alien have to be so damn clueless! Why didn't she realize that Terra no matter what happened would not be the same person? This idea of his basically was to revive her life force to the point that her body reverted back to its original form. It had worked in every experiment up until now, but that was just a small piece of hair every time, now to try and revive her completely would be a major challenge. The biggest worry he and Cy had was that they wouldn't have the power to do it, but he hadn't told anyone that Terra would be back no matter what, because he had something to try as a last resort, but the side effects could be drastic and he didn't want to attempt it unless it was a last resort. But he needed sleep before they tried tomorrow but this girl wouldn't stop screaming at him.
"Why are you not going to revive Terra! She needs to come back as soon as possible so we may have life return to normal with the mall of shopping and such! I need another girl to spend my time with, but you are hesitating and not taking the action!" That was it he had had enough, he would have to apologize to his brother later for breaking his promise about being nice to the alien, but he hadn't had any sleep in the last week and he couldn't get any with her like this. So he pull his hood back and pulled the actual Red X mask back on to make himself more intimidating. Starfire didn't notice any of this as she continued to rant on and on about the completely stupid girl things that Rae wouldn't do with her, so she needed Terra back to do them with her.
"SHUT-UP!" Starfire immediately became quiet. "Listen Tameranian, I have not slept in the past week trying to make this as fool proof as possible! But I need to be fully awake to successfully pull it off, I have to be completely alert of how the systems are operating or else there will be no Terra for you to spend time with. And it seems to me you need to reevaluate your resins for wanting her back. Robin tried to tell me you weren't shallow, but I guess I was right about you, do you even realize that Terra might not survive this!" With that shadow yanked his Azerathian cloak off his shoulders so that he was dressed as just Red X and jumped out the window onto a waiting Shadewing.
As Shadow drove off to some quiet place to get away from everything Star was trying to interpret what he had meant. She wasn't a liquid, so how could she be shallow? She went in search of Robin to see if she could find the meaning of Shadow's mean sounding words.
When Star came walking towards him with a confused look on her face Robin was already planning the stern lecture he would have to give his brother when he got back. But first he had to see what Shadow had called her and explain the meanings in a small way. Star then proceeded to tell him the whole story, being to naïve to know what shallow meant, she also told him what had made Shadow so mad. She told him the exact story word for word, which she would later regret.
"Then friend Shadow told me that I needed to reevaluate why I wanted Terra around. Please what did his words mean? I also wish to know what is so bad about why I want friend Terra back." Star finished her story in her sweet little voice that had always won Robin over before.
"Star, I suggest you get a dictionary for this one because I need to reevaluate my assessment about you. It seems that Shadow is once again a better judge of character than I am." Robin couldn't believe what he had just heard. Star was lucky, if Shadow had been any more sleep deprived and he would have thrown her against the wall and forced the lesson into her, painfully. He slowly walked back into his room leaving a confused Tameranian princess behind to locate a dictionary.
Shadow returned to the tower after a few hours to find the other Titans sitting patiently waiting for him in the main room, well everyone except Starfire who was at the library trying to locate a dictionary. They looked at him expectantly when he entered the room.
"All right, its time to vote. I hope you thought this over carefully an-d I hope that we make the right decision." He had pulled off the mask while sying this he looked around at the four faces looking at him. Yes, they had all made the decisions he had been subtly pushing them towards for the past month.
"All right everyone we will go around the room and each say what we have decided, then we will debate the fact until we make a decision. Okay, I'll go first then Robin, Raven, BB, and then shadow. I vote we try." Cyborg said slowly, there he had said his choice, now if only Rob and Rae would see it their way.
"I vote we do it. I don't really want to, but I trust Shadow's judge of character, and he wouldn't be doing all of this if he didn't think she was capable of being reformed." Robin's Choice earlier had been reinforced by Star's story, and he knew she wouldn't have lied about something like that.
"I vote we bring her back, partially because of the same reason as Robin, and I think that Shadow might have something as a last resort to bring her back or else he wouldn't have even brought it up." Raven startled everyone with her answer.
"B-but Raven, I thought you hated her!" BB was astonished, Raven and Robin were willing to forgive Terra, that was the greatest thing he had heard in like, forever.
"No Beast Boy, I don't hate her, but I don't like her either. I just feel she deserves forgiveness."
"Well… uh… okay, I vote we try, I don't think she wants to stay in that rock any longer, and I trust Shadow." Gar was showing a major amount of newfound maturity not bothering Raven about the fact that she was forgiving Terra.
"Well that means that we need to wait for Star's answer and then we can get started." Cyborg was positively beaming, he knew what Star's answer would be and he knew that Shadow would do whatever the others wanted.
"No, we're doing it tonight, and Starfire is to not come any where near me for the next week at least. She has no opinion worth listening to in this matter. And I suggest you all be careful about what you do and say around her, she might just decide you aren't doing enough for her and ditch you." With that Shadow walked into the garage to start loading the equipment into the T-car without explaining his words.
The Titans were at the cave and completely setup in less than an hour. Now that they had made their decision they worked without hesitation and with an almost feverish pace.
"All right Cy, start it up. We're going to give a friend back her life." Shadow seemed to have completely reenergized him self after he had left the tower. He was now working like he had no other purpose in his life.
After Cy flipped the switch the generators began to hum to life, blue energy filling the room as electricity flowed into the girl's stone form. The others quietly watched as the half-robot and tortured warrior studied the monitors, careful to not miss anything. After this had gone on for about an hour Shadow finally told cy that it had been properly stimulated and that it was time to go the full power. As the energy filled the room Shadow's face grew more and more grim. The girls pulse wasn't returning fast enough, they didn't have enough power, but they were still in the green he might not have to resort to the other choice.
"Yo! Man we don't have the power we're losing her!" worry was edging his voice. The others gasped could they have made a mistake?
"All right, I know something else to do that will help her own powers free her but I don't know what the consequences will be! What ever happens, she will not be the same Terra. Are you all willing for this to happen?" Shadow's voice somehow easily rose above the noise from the machines. Everyone nodded, this girl deserved life, and they had to try everything possible to give it to her before they let themselves fail. Shadow then pulled on his full faced Red X mask to protect his own body from what he was about to do. What ever happened to the young girl he was doing this for, he would be the one the face the most side effects.
Shadow jumped up onto the rock she was standing on, and stood behind her. The electricity flowing into the stone immediately started to rush through him but he used his own body as a conductor for it, but because of the xinothium stored in his suit it changed the blue energy into red xinothium energy that raced through the stone and straight into the girl charging her powers to heights she had never thought possible in her petrified state, more than enough to break out of this stone prison of hers. All of a sudden her screams of pain from the strain joined shadow's as her eyes and hands began to glow with the same color red as the electricity flowing into her body. With a final scream of triumph she shattered the stone encasing her and destroyed all of the machinery surrounding her. Dirt and debris flew into the air covering the scene from the view of the other Titans present.
As they watched in anxious silence they saw the dust slowly settle and they saw two figures slowly getting up. The first one visible above the cloud of dirt was Shadow with all of the X's on his suit still glowing from the amount of xinothium he had just processed through them but what startled the others was that even the one on the skull part of his mask was glowing but they quickly wrote it off as nothing as nothing as they watched him reach down and help the girl to her feet. As Terra walked into the light they all gasped. That must have been one of the side effects.
"Why is everyone looking at me like that? Do I have something on my face?"
"Uh… Terra look in that mirrored surface over there." Raven didn't know what else to say she wasn't good at this kind of thing and decided that Terra had better see it as soon as possible.
Terra on the other hand was absolutely terrified, was she horribly disfigured? Would Beast Boy never want to go on a date with her again because she was no longer pretty? When she looked in the mirror she gasped, she had grown up while in that stupid rock, there was no way Garfield wouldn't want to date her now(little did she know that he was thinking the exact same thing). Then she saw her hair, it was no longer the blonde that she had prized, it was now red, but not just the normal carrot-top, or even Starfire red hair, it was a deep red, a blood red. She passed out because she didn't know what else to do. Cyborg then carried her up to the car. None of the tech was salvageable, so they decided to leave it.
So… Like it? I hope so. This chapter lays down one of the key items in the future. Sadly this fic may not last much longer than a few chapters, but I'm planning on doing a sequel, that picks up during the time of Batman Beyond. This fic will not have the happy ending I had originally intended. Instead it will have a kind of tragic one that leads up into the sequels storyline. Don't worry for those of you who like Shadow, he's not gonna die, but he will be a darker person who lost all meaning to his life after the ending of this one. Hope ya'll like it. And please review. I want your opinions.