Hello boys and girls and welcome to chapter twelve of The New Teen Titans. Ok, I am really sorry that this chapter took so long to post, especially after last time when I said I was going to try updating sooner. The reason this took so long was because it was just a hard chapter to write so I ended up redoing it and re-editing it over and over again. But now it's done so I will finally respond to you reviewers. Mr. D 91, as you can see from the title this chapter will not be the end of the arch and don't expect every different story to be three-four chapters ether. In fact don't expect everything to be just three chapters as I don't set a length for my story arches I just write them for as long as the story will go. Mortal Guardian, the kids are kind of always looking for their parents it's just since the HIVE thing last story arch Slade hasn't popped up to give them anymore clues as to where their parents are. If it helps Rave does have an obsession room just like his dad did it's just until they get another lead they fight other crimes just like in the TV series how they only have a few episodes that are connected to the finally. Though just so you know this series is a bit more connected then that. Oh and my last reviewer Elsa, your question is actually answered in this chapter by the Titans themselves so just read on to find it. Ok well that's all I have to say so now without further ado here is chapter twelve of The New Teen Titans.
Chapter 12: X's and O's: Part 3
Black Bird awoke and sat up from the half sitting, half lying down position she had been placed in. Around her was a cage made of crisscrossing bars of energy that were two close for her to even get her finger through though she could see through them easily. She looked around the room and with her ability to see in the dark she scanned the room for anyway out. It appeared to be a lab of sorts with sheets covering tables and equipment, some of the machines still humming eerily under the sheets. Her cage was pushed up against the back left corner of the room. She looked over to see that Beast Lad and Red X were in similar cages. Beast Lad was in the cage next to hers and pushed in the right hand corner was Red X. Black Bird closed her eyes as she began to fully realize her situation but her eyes quickly popped open as she heard stirring beside her. It took her a minute to realize that it was just Beast Lad waking up.
Beast Lad took a deep slow breath as he sat up and held the back of his head, "where are we?" he asked as Black Bird watched his eyes gleam and she could tell he too was scanning the room with his night vision just as she had.
"I was hoping you could tell me," Black Bird said as she leaned back a little but went too far and her head hit the lasers making them zap her. She quickly moved away from the lasers and felt the back of her head where a small burn was forming from the lasers.
"I don't know," Beast Lad said, concern flashed in his eyes as he watched his sister get zapped by the bars, "Red X shot me so I figured she was behind this but she's over there," he explained as he gestured to the unconscious Red X beside him.
"Yeah it wasn't Red X," Black Bird said as she remembered the men in the gasmasks, "I'm not sure who it was."
"Someone new?" Beast Lad asked as he tried to analyze everything that was happening.
"Yeah I think," Black Bird said as she stood from the sitting position she was still in from when she woke up.
"Then all we have to do is wait," Beast Lad said simple as he leaned back on his hands in complete relaxation. Black Bird flashed him a very confused look which he noticed but chose to ignore.
"Wait! Why?" Black Bird nearly shouted as she looked at her brother who was very over relaxed at this whole situation.
"Listen, eventually he'll come in here and tell us his master plan," Beast Lad said with a smile but the scepticism stayed on Black Bird's face. "They all do it," Beast Lad said with a shrug of his shoulders.
"That is the stupidest thing I have every heard," said a voice from behind Beast Lad. The two teens turned to see Red X was standing up in her cage with her hand on her head. Black Bird was a bit depressed to see that Red X's eyes were glowing slightly with what was obviously some night vision setting, she was hoping Red X would be blind in the dark.
"Hey you're new at the villain thing," Beast Lad said with out any waver in his voice that would have been there if anyone else was talking to a thief through two layers of energy bars. "And I'll have you know I'm second in command of the Teen Titans," Beast Lad added as a offended afterthought.
"Alright leader boy," Black Bird said as she crossed her arms and leaned slightly to one side as she looked down at her brother with even more scepticism then before.
"Make with the plan," Red X finished from the other side of Beast Lad with almost the exact same position and look as Black Bird.
"Great, you two have found a common cause," Beast Lad said with sarcasm rolling off his tongue as he looked between the two girls, "harassing me."
"Just find me a way out of here," Red X said as she shifted her weight and tilted her head at Beast Lad.
"Fine, be impatient," Beast Lad said as he stood and once again scanned the dark room, "there," he said pointing at something in the dark as his finger was zapped from putting it in-between the bars. The thing he had pointed at was a panel with a beeping red light on the wall next to the large steel door of the room. Beast Lad quickly stuck his finger in his mouth to null the pain of the zap and finished, slightly muffled from the finger, "just zap that control panel and these bars will probably come down."
Beast Lad and Black Bird both silently turned their heads to look at Red X who didn't notice at first but then quickly raised an eyebrow. "Hey don't look at me, the bars aren't far enough apart for any of my Xs to get through."
Beast Lad and Red X then turned to Black Bird just as the twins had turned to look at Red X. Black Bird only needed half a second shorter then Red X before saying, "I cant do it. Anything that moves through the bars gets zapped, so that eliminates my animals and Beast Lad's transforming," Black Bird explained.
"What about your powers?" Beast Lad asked with a little desperation poking through his usually present goofy attitude.
"I'll try," Black Bird said but some how she already knew it wouldn't work. She got her nerves together and put her arms out as far as they could go in the tight cage before shouting her mantra, "Azarath Arella Azar!"
The control panel was covered in black magic and Black Bird even smiled but right when she was about to yank the panel out of the wall the cage came to life and began zapping her. She quickly released her hold on the panel and fell to her knees and the cage stopped its assault as soon as the magic left the panel. "Sis!" Beast Lad shouted out as his sister's cloak smoked a little but it soon stopped and she seemed ok though breathing hard.
"Some kind of security on the cage or on the panel," Black Bird panted as she stood again and wearily looked out at the panel as she got her composer back, "I'm ok."
Beast Lad took a second to show some compassion for his sister before another idea popped into his head, "hey, couldn't you destroy that with your gun?" Beast Lad asked Red X.
"Yeah I could have done that," Red X said as aggravation slide into her voice, "if somebody hadn't made me drop my gun," she finished as she stretched out the word 'somebody' and glared over Beast Lad's shoulder at Black Bird.
"Well maybe if you didn't shoot my brother," Black Bird yelled back. Beast Lad couldn't help but notice that a few of the sheets that covered things around the room were beginning to glow with black magic.
The two girls continued to yell back and forth and it increasingly got louder as well as more intense judging by all the machines begin crushed by the glowing sheets that had been draped over them. Beast Lad put his hands over his ears when the childish fighting didn't stop and finally shouted, "Stop!" making the girls go quite just from how loud he was. The girls continued to glare at each other, though the yelling stopped as Beast Lad said "now, no mater if this guy comes to tell us his plan or not the Titans will find us," Beast Lad said being very sure of himself.
"They better," Red X said as she crossed her arms and looked over at Black Bird when an idea popped into her head, "otherwise I wouldn't be able to ask Rave out," she added just to get Black Bird mad.
"Wait, you like Rave?" Beast Lad asked before Black Bird got a chance to yell. Red X nodded dully as she glared over Beast Lad's shoulder at Black Bird again. "Well you've definitely found my sister's kill switch," Beast Lad said just before his sister exploded with anger.
"He would never go out with you!" Black Bird yelled, stretching out the word you as if it was dirty.
"Well he isn't going out with you," Red X yelled in retort and just like before the two argued like little girls who both wanted the same doll.
Beast Lad moaned and sat down in his cage as he said, "come on guys, where are you?"
At that exact moment across town Rave and the rest of the Titans stood in the room that was once full of zinothium but now only had specks of it left littering the floor. The glass which Red X had broken a side of was now completely shattered with all of it piled in one line that still divided the room. The smoke had long since left the boat but Android still stood using her arm to do a radiation check on the room to see if it was ok, through also to see if she could follow the zinothium's radiation trail. Alakazam and Mystic were just standing to one side as they were useless in this situation and Rave just stood with the glass under the toe of his boot as he looked over the whole situation.
"How could this have happened?" Rave asked as he turned to the other's as if they had the answer.
"We all thought the same thing Rave," Android said as she finished her check, "the plan was if you see her chase her and call us so when we saw their coordinates where downtown we figured that's where they had chased her to."
"But we didn't even check the harbour," Rave said as he tried to balm himself more and more for his missing team-mates, "now all the zinothium is gone and so is she." He bowed his head and that was probably why it took him a minute to see the odd looks his team was giving him and quickly realized what he had said. "I…I mean they're gone," Rave said in a rush, "as in Black Bird and Beast Lad," he finished stretching out the word 'and'.
"Right," Alakazam stretched out to break the silence that followed Rave's 'correction', "right now I think it's important just to find them and figure out who took all this zinothium."
"I thought that was obvious," Android said as Rave turned away from the team again, partly in embarrassment but mostly to think, "Red X took it."
"No," Rave said simple, "a hand full of this stuff could power her suit for years. She'd probably just filled up the secret compartments in the suit and was off. She'd have no reason to take it all or to take Black Bird and Beast Lad."
"So what someone else came and took the rest of the zinothium and decided to take Beast Lad and Black Bird too?" Android asked as confusion raised in her after begin proven wrong.
"That's what we have to find out," Rave said as he turned towards Android and asked, "how did the radiation scan go?"
"It's just like I thought," Android said with a sigh and depressions filling her voice, "they took it out by air, most likely a helicopter that was covered in at least ten layers of lead plating. There's no way of knowing where they went from here."
Rave turned his head down and tightened his brow in thought before asking, "what about Black Bird and Beast Lad's communicators?"
Android turned on the panel in her arm again but instead of a radiation scanner this time a grid came up with two beeping dots that had the words BB and BL in them. "Well they moved from downtown which means they're probably working," Android said on the light side, "but they're not moving which means they don't have them, or…" she paused for a second and everyone knew what the 'or' was.
"We follow the single," Rave said as he tried not to think of what Android meant, "it's our best guess on where she is…I mean they are," Rave said correcting himself quicker this time, the grim sound leaving this voice during his second 'correction'.
He once again got an odd look from his team as well as another awkward silence. This time it was broken by Android, "well, lets get going then," she said engaging her jets and flying out the hole in the side of the ship. Alakazam smiled slightly before a card came out of her sleeve and enlarged until it was large enough for her to jump on and soared out the window after Android.
Rave was about to fly after his team but was stopped by a large hand on his shoulder. He looked up solemnly to see that Mystic had his hood down and it felt like his piercing blue eyes were looking into Rave's soul. "We'll find her," he said and all Rave could do was nod before taking off after the girls. Mystic flipped his hood back up and a small smile found its way to his lips, hidden by the hood, it took him a few seconds to realize he was now completely alone. "Hey!" he said as the smile dropped from his face.
Alakazam came flying back into the room and scooped Mystic up onto her card shortly after his exclamation with an apology of, "sorry big guy."
As all this was going on Red X and Black Bird had continued to argue and Beast Lad had chosen to sit Indian style so that not to get in the way of the two fighting women. "How did I end up in the middle of this?" Beast Lad asked himself as he lowered his head into his hands. Just as he did this though his ears picked up something past the fight that happened above his head. His enhanced hearing picked up a key being put in a lock. Black Bird appeared to have notice the noise too as she stopped her insult midway to listen more closely.
"Ha, give up have you?" Red X laughed as she crossed her arms and got a smug look on her face like she had won.
She got a stern, "Quit!" from both the twins at once as the door slide opened. Light flooded the room and all three of the teens where blinded for a second as all they could see was the shadow of a skinny man against the light and the gleam of his small glasses. He then reached one of his long skinny arms over to the wall and flipped on the light switch. It was the same man from before only he didn't have his gasmask on and his doctors coat was open. Underneath was a black button up shirt that he had buttoned all the way and a tie that had skulls going up it. He gave off the look of a relaxed doctor and without the mask you could see his blond hair was all combed forward and held in place with gel.
"Hello children," he said in a smooth voice as he seemed to glide over to the cages. As he moved away from the door two of the large men from earlier entered in single file and fanned out so that one of them were on ether side of him. They seemed almost too precise in this action and their gasmask were still in place hiding their faces as the energy of the charged tridents they still held reflected in the lens of these masks.
"Who are you?" Beast Lad ordered as he stood and came right up to the bars as to face the skinny man in front of him.
"My name is Professor Chaos and I am a member of The Order," he said sinisterly, "The Order of Chaos!"
"Isn't that an oxymoron?" Beast Lad said as he slummed his shoulders, now not sure if this villain in front of him was serious or not.
"You're an oxymoron," Chaos said as the dramatic voice he had used to announce his organization left his voice, replaced by childlike mockery. He then cleared his voice and straightened his posture in an attempt to look more composed before continuing in his smooth voice, "but my name is not important."
"Alright what are you going to do?" Black Bird asked as she rolled her eyes at the fact that her brother was right about the villain announcing his plan.
Chaos chuckled before saying, "oh well I want to spread chaos and the best way to do that is to destroy this town."
"Great, you guys got me caught up in some stupid 'destroy the city' plot," Red X cursed the Titans as she pointed an accusing finger at them.
"On the contrary Miss X," Chaos said making Red X turn to him, "you got them caught up in my plot. You see for years I have been trying to impress The Order in which I am thought of as nothing more but an underling."
"I think it's the tie," Beast Lad said as he leaned back in his cage, no longer intimidated by the professor.
"Quit!" Chaos said harshly before continuing, "you see long ago I knew that destroying the town would spread enough chaos to get me noticed, the only question was how? I knew I had to be discreet about it and I knew that what I did had to leave an impact. That's when I realised a zinothium powered bomb would do just that."
"Wait, you think a bomb is discreet?" Beast Lad said as he laughed slightly at the skinny man in front of him.
"I told you once I wont tell you again," Chaos said as he pulled a device from his pocket and pushed a button on it that made the cage zap Beast Lad until he was brought to his knees. "Now, as I was saying," he said with a smile as he put the device back into his pocket, "I had the idea but I didn't have the way. You see my speciality is nether zinothium or bombs, it's robots," he said as he put a hand on both of the men besides him, revealing them to be robots.
"Then I popped up and you thought you could use my tech to make your bomb," Red X said finishing his though for him.
"Exactly Miss X," Chaos said as he applauded a little for Red X, "but not only did I need the technology but I needed a large supply of zinothium. Just my luck a huge shipment of it came in and you tried to steel it, that's when my plan really came together. You see I take the zinothium and kidnap you and by the time I'm far away from this soon to be hellhole you'll be found near the bomb, Red X having destroyed Jump City."
"Your plan was going good until the Titans got involved," Black Bird said gaining the attention of the lanky society member.
"Oh no, from there it only got better," Chaos said as he came close to Black Bird's cage. He then raised his arms in the air as if to show a headline and said dramatically, "In their finally throws The Teen Titans were able to stop Red X but not her bomb which killed them and destroyed the city they protected. It's such a poetic death don't you think?"
"What about the other Titans?" Beast Lad asked in shock as he stood back to his feet, "they're going to find us and stop you."
"Keep on thinking that," Chaos laughed, "frankly when it comes to mass murder the more the merrier."
"Wait!" Red X said suddenly, interrupting everyone's train of though, "I never made any zinothium bombs and I definitely never made any big enough to destroy a city."
"No you didn't, but you did make this," Chaos said as he moved from Black Bird to Red X and held up Red X's gun. He tapped the side and the bottom extended revealing a small glowing red spear shaped battery. As the case opened the red smoke the zinothium emitted leaked out from the chamber. In the centre of the ball shape battery was a panel that opened for a very small amount of zinothium to be put in. "This little battery when over heated with just a little more zinothium then it is meant to take will cause an explosion big enough to destroy a small house. Now imagine if this small battery was enlarged a thousand times and filled with all the zinothium from that very large shipment of that sweet red substance."
The repercussions rang in all three of the caged teenagers heads as Chaos laughed medically, "you can't do that," Beast Lad said in shook as he once again fully respected the skinny professor of chaos.
"I can and I will," Chaos continued to laugh as he turned on his heel and left the room still laughing, his robots following him in military fashion. As he laughed the door closed and locked and the lights turned out once again in the small dark room.
"Well lets get out of here then," Black Bird said as she levitated the controller that Chaos had used on Beast Lad just outside the cage.
"How did you do that?" Beast Lad asked as all depressing thoughts left his head and his eyes went large in excitement and glee.
"I took it when he was busy talking about his master plan," Black Bird said with a smile as she used her magic to push two buttons on the controller making the energy bars disappear from around her and Beast Lad's cages.
"Come on lets go then," Beast Lad said as he stepped out of his cage and dusted off his clothes slightly before walking to the door.
"Hey, what about me," Red X said as she came a bit too close to the bars and was shocked sending her recoiling back. Black Bird paused and looked down at the controller in her hand and then at Beast Lad who's entire body language said to hurry up.
"Come on, leave her here for the cops," Beast Lad said as he examined the control panel next to the door to see if he could open the door that way.
Black Bird sighed and said to herself, "I'm going to regret this," she then pushed another button on the controller and the bars around Red X disappeared.
"Why?" Red X asked simple as she stepped out of the cage a little weary that maybe the bars would pop back up and be revealed as a trick by Black Bird.
"As much as I hate to admit it," Black Bird said as she walked over to Red X and sighed before saying, "I need you. You're the expert on zinothium and without you there's no way we could take care of that bomb."
Red X didn't say anything but Black Bird knew she was saying thank you, sadly this meaningful silence was broken by Beast Lad, "well that's touching that you two have bounded and all, but there is a bomb about to turn this whole town into a parking lot."
"Then bust down the door already," Red X said as she quickly shifted back into her normal persona and urged Beast Lad to move quickly.
"All right then," Beast Lad said as he turned into a huge sasquatch looking creature and began to ram his shoulder into the steel door. As he did this Black Bird and Red X shared a glance and they both knew what they had to do. No matter if they're villain or hero, friend or foe, thief or champion they had at least one common goal. Because even if they hated each other even Red X had to admit that she loved this city even if nether of them were raised here. So when the door finally falls after Beast Lad's tenth push this goal was fully realized in everyone's eyes, to stop Chaos.