CHAPTER ELEVEN

Legacy of the Tamaranian
Chapter 11

The T-Ship angled in, slowly entering the Earth's atmosphere.

"Oh man. No wonder we could find no trace of him," Robin blurted as his computer search ended.

"Why not?" asked Cyborg.

"Because in our world, there IS no Collin Roberts. The only grandchild of black market antiquities dealer Alexander Roberts was a girl named Paula. Born three months after what Collin told us was his birthday." Robin's words generated confused looks from everyone.

"Don't you remember a few years back when alternate versions of the Justice League came to this world? They called themselves the Justice LORDS and tried to enslave our planet and make it crime-free and freedom-free like their own, until their Batman betrayed them. And our Justice League stopped them.

"I um, seem to remember hearing something about that," Cyborg said. "I was a bit new to the metahuman scene, then, ya' know."

"It's the same thing," Robin said. "Delirium is from an alternate universe, and he's met us before. That's how he took us out so easily on Tamaran, and why he seemed to know us so well. How do you think he knew that you were allergic to metallic chromium, Star?"

"No!" Kori's voice was full of anguish. "That is why he befriended us… he must have killed me in the other world. He must have been unable to enter the temples! And for that reason, he came here, became our friend, and betrayed us to get the Catalyst… In fact, when we were preparing to fight the fire criminals at the bank… he almost called me Kori. I should have known…"

"You believe him?" Roy interjected. "About all these alternate worlds and nonsense?"

"Why would I not?" Starfire asked.

"So how do we go about beating someone who seems to have killed us before? He even said he'd 'absorbed the powers of Superboy,' didn't he?" Cyborg said, trying to avert an argument between Star and Arsenal. And refocus the group on strategizing.

But they wouldn't really have that chance just yet...

"What the…?" Robin blurted, and all the Titans looked out their cockpits to see a flash of light consume the ship.

And the universe changed.

0000

A giant robot rampaged through the Pacific-Coast paradise known as Jump City. In its pilot seat was a deranged youth known as Collin Roberts, aka Delirium.

Nobody knew where the giant robot came from or how a teen could afford one. And nobody asked; they just knew it had to be stopped.

And there were only five teens in California who could stop him: The TEEN TITANS.

"You fiend!" screamed the teen's leader Robin. "Fiend? Holy bad dialog! I'm talking like a comic book character!"

"You're not the only one, Boy Wonder!" Came the answer of Victor Stone, also known as the powerhouse Cyborg. "The entire world has been remade like a comic book!"

"And Delirium has become a COMIC BOOK VILLAIN, dude!" added Beast Boy, aka Garfield Logan.

"This is most terrible! I feel so two-dimensional!" yelled Starfire, alias Kory Anders.

"Enough. You're emotions are paralyzing me!" Insisted Raven, the empath. "We must fight this Delirium. We must return our world to normal!"

"The witch is right!" Agreed Cyborg. "We have to stop him!"

"Titans, Together!" Yelled Robin.

Robin leaped forward, and hurled some birdarangs at the giant Robot, but they bounced off.

Beast Boy transformed into a Brontosaurus and lashed his massive green tail at Delirium's robot, knocking its legs out from under it and causing it to fall to the ground.

"Have a nice trip. See you next fall, Delirium!" Beast Boy quipped.

But the robot leapt to its feet, and through the speakers, Delirium spoke.

"Not so fast, Titans! I am Delirium the Almighty!" Laser beams began to fire out of the fingers of the robot, and the Titans scattered, dodging behind cars and buildings. "You will NEVER defeat me!"

"Holy sitting ducks!" Robin gasped as the car he was hiding behind was suddenly melted by a laser, somehow miraculously not injuring him. "I have to get into that cockpit!"

"I can help, Robin!" Beast Boy said, swooping down as a winged dinosaur and grabbing Robin by the shoulders.

Delirium responded by swatting at them with the robots hands, and blasting with some shoulder mounted laser canons…

"Dude! That almost hit me!"

"Holy Close Calls!" Robin agreed.

"Would you quit saying that, Boy Blunder?" Beast Boy chided. "Holy this—Holy that. Who do you think you are, Burt Ward?"

"Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos!" Raven yelled, as cars coated themselves in black energy and flew towards the legs of Delirium's Robot.

"I hope you have DECIBEL INSURANCE!" quipped Cyborg as he activated his sonic canon and began directing sound towards the robot as well. When the cars Raven had thrown entered the sound waves from Cyborg's canon, the windows in them shattered, but the cars moved faster, slamming into the robot's right leg, and sending him staggering.

As the Robot fell, it swiped Beast Boy, causing him to drop Robin.

"Robin!" Yelled Gar.

"No problem," Tim said. "I'll just use my Bat-Grapple!" He continued to fall for an unrealistically long time, and finally removed it from his belt and shot it off screen.

The camera zoomed in on one of the shoulder mounted lasers of the robot, and the hook came in from screen and wrapped around the robot's weapon, and Robin swung up and under the opposite arm, looped over and landed on the robot's left shoulder behind the other gun.

Removing a Bat-Wrench from his utility belt, Robin stuck it in the barrel as it was about to fire. Amazingly, this plugged the barrel and somehow the shrapnel from the exploding laser canon didn't injur Robin. "Hah!"

"Yea, man!" Cyborg hollered. "That sure threw a wrench in his plans!"

"You know it Tin-Man!" Beast Boy said.

"Boys and Raven! That was marvelous work!" Starfire said, taking off. She flew above the robot and hurled Starbolts down towards it, it's armor somehow no longer impervious now that it was on the ground. She swooped down as the robot started to blow up and grabbed Robin, and took him back to a circle where the Titans had gathered.

Suddenly, a seat ejected from the exploding robot, and Delirium fell out of it, and landed on the ground, taking no damage from the fall "How did you beat this thing? It was supposed to be indestructible!"

"That's one thing you should have considered before making the world like comic book," said Raven.

"In all those old comics, the good guys always win, man." Gar gave a thumbs-up.

"Thank X'hal!" Starfire smiled.

"Don't thank X'hal, Kory," Robin said. "Thank the Comics Code Authority!"

At the end of Robin's bad joke, all the teenage heroes burst into a stupid fit of canned laughter.

"No! Curse you! Curse you all! This is not how it's supposed to happen! I am Delirium! And I always get what I want!" Suddenly, in a burst of light, Delirium was back in his normal armor. "The world will be remade the way I say it will!" He raised his hands and the Dark Catalyst discharged.

FLASH

The world changed again. And thankfully for their sanity's sake, nobody remembered what it had been for those fifteen minutes.

0000

Delirium was a fool, the cloaked figure decided as he finished climbing the fence. Whatever he had done to the world, it had some how allowed him to get to earth. He didn't know what earth had been during the time it had taken to get him back; he had no memories of the trip. But here he was, in Idaho.

His hood fell off as he fell to the ground and landed hard on the other side of the large fence, but the darkness still managed to hide his face.

This was the home of Alexander Roberts, the infamous but seemingly untouchable buyer and seller or black market rarities. He wouldn't touch weapons or drugs, however. His interests rested in antiquities. Artifacts, documents. Things of historic value, monetary value, but normally no practical purpose.

After all, they couldn't hurt anyone, right?

Wrong. In another dimension, his grandson Collin had taken one artifact—a Tamaranian battle suit. And with it, he had caused the Tamarans of seven universes to die. Six worlds lost their Teen Titans. And it seemed the same was about to happen to this world.

Unless, that is, the cloaked figure could find this world's version of what gave Delirium his powers…

0000

The Titans were back to normal.

Robin, Starfire, Cyborg Beast Boy, and Raven. What had happened to Arsenal, nobody knew, and it was really a moot point. Because now, all that mattered was stopping Delirium

What had been Jump City was a rocky, desolate place. No ocean, no bay. Just rocks and hills. And in the distance, a bombed out shell of what had might once been a town. A wasteland which he could lord over in a palace, forcing the masses to do his bidding. This is the world Delirium desired. And he always got what he wanted.

"This is where it goes down, then, Collin?" Robin asked, drawing his metallic bo staff. The other five lined up behind him.

Delirium smirked wickedly, just as he had done six times before. This time would be no different. Or so he thought. "Yeah. Right here. Just like before."

Robin stepped into a wide stance, readying his bo. Delirium feigned, and Robin flinched.

"I'd be scared too," said Delirium.

In response, Robin's bo snapped out faster than the eye could see, and slammed into Collin's face, knocking him backwards, causing blood to run from his mouth.

"Titans, GO!" Robin charged forward, swinging with the bo, punching and kicking. Collin dodge. He launched himself into the air and brought the staff down at Delirium, but in a blur of DC energy, he was out of the way.

Next Cyborg charged, firing several shots from the canon on his right arm, all of which Delirium dodged. Cy jumped up and smashed his left fist at Delirium, but he blurred out of the way again, and reappeared several yards away. Cyborg, angered, charged his sonic canon to 70 percent and fired.

The shot was going to be a direct hit in Delirium's face, which would probably destroy his eardrums.

But the Dark Catalyst saved him again, when he held up what looked like a photograph of what was behind him… Until the sonic canon shot went into it, fading into the distance and getting smaller until it curved around and came back around, erupting from the rectangular spatial impossibility and slamming into the attacking Starfire.

"You can't win, you know." Delirium launched a reality wave at Robin, but Robin dodged it and hurled a birdarang at Collin's head... but the weapon had become a chocolate bar by the time it got there. Delirium caught it.

Just in time for Raven to leap behind him, lashing out with waves of Dark Power, "I should never have trusted you! I knew you were hiding something!"

"You're just mad that such a handsome guy as me is so evil. Just like your old man!"

Raven made a noise halfway between a gasp and a gag, and stopped pressing her attack, long enough for Delirium to grab her by the throat and stuff the chocolate bar in her mouth, most of which Raven immediately spit out, before Delirium punched her and said, "By the way, I transmuted that little bit you swallowed into cyanide." A wicked grin popped onto his face. "You don't have long to liii…"

BLAM!Beast Boy crashed into him as a Rhino, knocking him into Cyborg's fist and then turned towards Raven, and ran at her. His heart almost broke; she was gagging, trying to get the poison out before it did any harm.

And without thinking Gar became a leaped at her mouth and became a tapeworm, diving into her throat to grab the poison…

Delirium had his own troubles, though, as an infuriated Starfire, her ears oozing orange Tamaranian blood from the shredded eardrums, launched herself at Delirium, punching and kicking him, bloodying him up.

And it just so happened that a cat wandered by.

"I wonder," Delirium thought aloud. He extended his hand to block another punch from Starfire, and then surrounded her in a Dark Catalyst bubble, and used it to switch her place with a distant stoplight, which crashed to the asphalt of the road behind him.

This kept Kori away long enough for him to blast the scared-out-of-its-mind cat with a burst of DC energy… and suddenly, the wounds on his face and chest were gone… and now on the cat…

The calico creature keeled over in agony, suddenly the victim of an angry Tamaranian's fury, simply wondering what it had done to deserve the terrible pain it was in.

"This could be quite useful indeed," Delirium said to himself.

"What did you do to that poor cat?" Beast Boy demanded.

Delirium turned around, and was surprised to see all five Titans standing behind him, Raven apparently having been saved by Beast Boys quick thinking. And indeed, Gar was covered in something moist… Which was something that even Delirium didn't really want to think about.

"Interesting you should ask." The monster in Tamaranian armor said. Suddenly, two bursts of DC energy flew out, one to the cat, and one to Cyborg, and suddenly, the cat was once again fine, and wisely ran off…

Cyborg on the other hand, was torn all to pieces, now himself the victim of what had originally been Starfire's wrath on Delirium.

Very useful indeed…

0000

There it was. The cloaked figure found it, just as it had been before.

The green orb; the brown artifact.

He put them together.

Nothing. Suddenly, the nothing became a something, as the orb glowed green, getting brighter and brighter until it was white. And it burst into a ball of energy, which circled around the room blazing through the air, but somehow miraculously not destroying the contents of this mansion's basement.

And then it crashed into the chest of the young man in the cloak, causing the cloak to fall away.

And there stood Collin Roberts.

But not the yellow-haired, scar-faced lad the Titans have been facing. No. His hair was jet black, as it had been when the ordeal began. And there was no scar on his face. Just Collin, alone in the basement of this universe's analogue of his grandfather's house.

"I've made a lot of mistakes," he whispered. "Thank you, grandpa, for helping me to rectify them."

Collin reached into the pockets of his worn out threadbare clothes and retrieved two round spheres.

The White Catalyst and a Dark Catalyst. The Dark Catalyst of his own universe. It still hadn't finished charging up again from its previous use, but if it had protected him before, in the skies of Tamaran, it would protect him now.

Because Delirium, the evil monster in human skin, the perverter of Tamaran's weapons that were meant for use in peace… the murderer who killed planets to get what he wanted…

Had. To. Die.

A flash of light, seemingly from within Collin's body resonated through the basement; the X shaped bandolier came over his shoulders and around his waist and snapped into place in the middle, the threat assessment goggles materialized on his head, his hair was forced back into the style we first saw it in, and the Catalysts in his hands were transported to the inserts in his gauntlets…

It had worked. He had his armor back. The old one, Delirium must have been thrown halfway across the planet when Delirium had switched places with him in the T-Ship in the skies above Tamaran...

But it didn't matter. He was back.

(Cue Kick-Butt Rock Music)

"It looks like Ragnarok lives again." Collin whispered.

A/N:Well, now the cat is really out of the bag, no? Whattadaya think? Did you see it coming? Was I too vague on one issue or another? Anything you want explained?

If you REALLY are confused and don't get it, email me; I don't want to waste story space with overly detailed exposition, OK? Anyways I want feedback on this intended WTF moment? Thanks again!