Unsuspected Heroes
An alternate look at the Prophecies Universe
Raven was rather rudely shocked out of her ruminations on Ker by the phasing-in of one Red X right in front of her. Of course, his reaction was equally surprised, both of them stumbling back a few steps into combat crouches. X's hands formed a pair of loose fists and Raven clawed her fingers, outlining them in ebony telekinetic energy.
"Fancy meeting you here…come here often?" asked X, regaining his composure.
"Titans! X is here!" yelled Raven.
"And I thought we were going to have a tender private moment," lamented X sarcastically. With that he launched himself at Raven with a series of quick steps, spinning around into a smooth roundhouse kick at Raven's torso as he made the last one.
Raven was ready, though. Close combat was certainly not her specialty, but that didn't mean she didn't know how to fight. Drawing her left arm in close, she took the kick on the side of both her fore and upper arm, wincing at the force behind the kick, then reached over and grabbed the thief's ankle with her free hand, intending to treat the rouge to a TK-enhanced toss.
It didn't quite work out that way. Raven got her hand and TK on X's ankle sure enough, but he used it as a pivot point to bring his other leg up in a kick against the side of her head. It looked absurd, but because Raven was using TK, she could support his weight for as long as X needed to make the strike.
Of course, taking a kick to the head is an excellent way to screw up one's concentration, so the TK was dispelled on impact, but X was ready for that, too. Arcing his back, he threw his palms flat against the floor and turned his fall into a backflip that freed his ankle from Raven's grasp as she slumped against the wall.
And then he was ducking under a myomer-driven punch from Cyborg, extending one leg straight out while he compressed the other. Taking advantage of Cyborg being off-balance, he grabbed onto the arm that had just completed the right hook and pulled down, vaulting himself into the air, and sending the half-machine teen towards the ground, a condition that he aggravated by using Cyborg as a springboard for a flying kick at the newly-arrived Beast Boy, who was in a howling wolf form leap one second, and in a sprawled and dazed heap against the wall the next.
Landing, X spun to see Cyborg aiming a sonic cannon at him, and sensibly dodged the blast…right into a telekinetic burst from the still slumped Raven, who let a hint of a pleased smile cross her lips at that moment. X was knocked to the ground, giving Cyborg the time to rise to his feet and move in on the disadvantaged X, bent and ready for a tackle.
But X wasn't as down as he seemed, sticking his legs out and rotating them as he cracked his body like a whip, regaining his footing acrobatically, and using the momentum from his recovery to bring a pair of joined down on Cyborg's skull. As Cyborg was once again driven face-first into the floor, X rose above the failed tackle with a split-legged vault and fired off a flurry of Xs to intercept Starfire's volley of starbolts. There wasn't much he could do to avoid her flying tackle, though, and the breath was blasted from his lungs as he was carried down the hallway a ways before disappearing into a phase teleport.
As a reflexive escape, it worked out well for the thief, as, with a lack of cushioning from his body, Starfire's momentum drove her head through the wall up to her neck. It didn't hurt her exactly…but it did daze her, and force her attention upon freeing herself. Robin, however, was not stuck in a wall. Having just arrived on the scene, he extended his staff and charged in with a fierce war cry, opening up with an vertical two-handed blow that X ducked to the side of, then jumped back as Robin switched his grip so as to snake it to the side and into X's ribs.
The tip of the staff just passed by X's body as he jumped back, and Robin used the lack of resistance to his strike as his cue to change his attack. The staff twisted three-dimensionally and Robin brought it around in a stabbing arc that looked as if it was to tag X in the chin. X dodged it with a step back, as the Teen Wonder had predicted. Adjusting his grip again, Robin turned the follow-through into a strike that flashed up in between X's legs.
The thief only barely got his hands down in time to interpose his palms against the hard metal pole. "That's just not nice."
"What can I say?" asked Robin, "I just don't like you very much." Then he snapped his body forward and reversed the strike to tag X right where his nose would be under the mask with the other end of the staff. The thief staggered backwards as Robin smirked viciously. "Ready to give up, X?"
The thief shook his head to clear up the dazed feeling he had gotten from the shot to the face. "No…but I guess playtime's over." Three X's appeared in between his fingers with a deft motion, and were soon spinning towards Robin, X following right behind them with spinning blades on the backs of each of his wrists. The Teen Wonder, having just barely sidestepped the thrown weapons, found himself hard pressed to keep up with X's assault. It was a simple equation. Robin had much more range with his weapon, as well as the ability to do quite a number of very deceptive things with it, but X could chain attacks much more easily and was effective close it, some thing which Robin was really not, needing space to get in a good swing. And now X had closed the range to near nil.
The Teen Wonder gave ground steadily, doing his best to misdirect strikes that he simply couldn't avoid with small movements of his staff, but it wasn't going so well. Already he had a bloody groove in his leading upper arm and another thin red line across his cheek. He grit his teeth as he twisted painfully out of the way of another spinning blade, then gasped as his forearm was scored by a deceptive rising strike. "Dammit…" Robin took the risk of snaking his staff down to work a leg trip on X, leaving himself without defense save to dodge.
It paid off, for a change, and X found himself off balance with a view of an onrushing green-gloved fist. Robin's uppercut landed squarely on X's off-balance chin and sent him stumbling backwards, only to be further accelerated by a roundhouse kick. Still, X was starting to regain his form when Robin came down with the kicking foot leading, using a torso twist to add power to his palm strike, which landed true on the thief's sternum, sending him flying back. "Like you said…playtime's over."
X coughed and tapped at his belt, the phase-teleport taking effect. "Not bad, kid. But you got lucky this time. You can't keep me away from that xenothium forever."
The somewhat beaten Titans formed up around Robin, who pressed a hand to the wound in his upper arm.
"He's right, you know," observed Cyborg. "We really can't keep him away forever."
Robin frowned. "I know. But we only need to keep him away long enough so as that he runs out of xenothium. He's already started to conserve his power. If we can keep him from getting any, the suit will become useless, and he won't be able to phase away."
"How long will his power last?" asked Raven somewhat bitterly.
"I can't really say."
"I am filled with joy," deadpanned Raven, irritable due to the throbbing of her head. "Now, I'm going back to the Tower and meditating." With that, she shadow-warped out.
Had all the troubles Ker had that day be of the sort that his order at the fast food restaurant been a little wrong, he would have been relatively content. But his problem that day wasn't that. His order was perfect when he got it, the drink machine wasn't low on syrup or carbonation…all in all, it was one of the most pleasing fast food experiences of the last few months.
That didn't mean that the day wasn't a bad one. After all, most people consider it a less than pleasant business when someone tries to kill you.
Ker was, at that moment, trying to keep someone, he wasn't sure exactly who, from cutting him into little pieces with what looked to be a pattern-welded longsword. Their face wasn't visible, the helmet of a full suit of plate armor hiding their head. Over the burnished steel shell, they wore a white cloth slip with crosses in crimson on both front and back, gold thread outlining the crosses…the spitting image of the Crusader.
"Die demon! You have no place on God's green earth!" The armor-wearing swordsman punctuated his command with a single-handed thrust of his blade, which Ker dodged with a turning sidestep, putting his gaze even with the flat of the sword.
Yeah…definitely pattern-welded. Nice blade…just wish you weren't trying to use it to KILL me! Ker still hadn't draw either of his swords yet, hoping that reason could yet win out in this highly unusual situation. That didn't mean that he wasn't going to fight back, though. Entering, he grabbed the knight-like warrior's forearm at both wrist and elbow, then swept his leg through the other combatant's forward leg while tossing with the other arm. It worked well, dropping the knight to the parking lot with a sound like the clattering of twenty pots and pans.
The slender martial artist retreated a number of steps as the knight struggled to their feet. "Dammit, I'm not a demon! Get that damn sword away from my body! Whoa!" Ker ducked a sword swing, the fine blade trimming a few strands out of the fast growing ponytail he now sported. "Boneheaded, overly religious, fanatical, sword-wielding pain in my ASS!" cursed Ker in Japanese.
"You think I would trust the words of one of the devil's servants? HAA!" Ker found himself needing to sidestep a looping thrust that raised his estimation of the armored warrior's skills a few notches. That was the kind of move one performed with a rapier or jian, not a two-handed longsword…perhaps it was a very large bastard sword, thought Ker, reassessing the hilt. They had coordination, as well as arm strength.
The attack would have been better suited to an enemy holding a sword though, instead of one who was merely dodging. From this, Ker gathered that his opponent had trained for a very long time by himself, but never got much of a chance to spar or fight. A wolfish smile began to spread across his face. The fight was his, so long as he actually did something proactive, and didn't screw up by the numbers.
When the knight set up for a straight stab, Ker decided that it was time to get to work. As the blade shot at his skull, he swept it out of the way with the back of one gloved hand. Entering, and switching to a side-on stance, he grabbed the knight's wrist and twisted, popping the sword from his opponent's hand, the weapon striking sparks as it skittered across the blacktop. That accomplished, he arced a toe kick up into the other man's unprotected armpit before using the knight's wrist as a pivot point to come up and around, smashing both his heels into the side of his opponent's helmeted head.
The martial artist landed amid yet another clatter of armor, looking down at his opponent, holding a defensive stance. It wasn't long before the knight was rising off the ground in a rush, shoulder leading to smash Ker in the chest. "DIE, DEMON!"
Ker just wasn't there. He had sidestepped and arced a kick into the charging man's back, sending him to the ground again, skidding along with a bow wave of sparks. "Now look," said Ker in English, standing with his back to the other combatant. "I think I've been more than reasonable to not draw steel and set you to leaking, but by the Fates above, that if you persist in trying to slay me like a demon…which I'm NOT, I will be forced to put you down and hard. And it won't even be difficult considering you've got…no…sword…" Realization dawned on him and he turned to the armored swordsman, grimacing. "That was stupid of me, wasn't it?"
"Just a little bit, hellspawn," agreed the religious man with a hungry mirth Ker didn't feel as well. "Come on then, draw your blades! It will not avail you!"
"I've been controlling this fight without using my swords…and he thinks that he can win if I actually draw?" muttered Ker to himself in Japanese as he drew his two gleaming blades. "Baka." He set for the larger man's attack, which came in the form of a overhand cut that was parried by Kanesada, Ker's right-hand blade.
Feeling the vibrations as the longsword's edge impacted on the katana's flat, Ker pushed outwards with his weapon, moving the arc of the swing away from his body, even as he brought the pommel of the other blade across and into what would be an unarmored man's temple. The impact sounded like a cross between a bell and a gong, and sent the armored warrior to their knees.
Disengaging Kanesada from the longsword, just as the blades' tips were about to hit the pavement, Ker brought it up and under, tip edging in underneath the helmet's lip. "Fight's over, wakimarisen ka?"
"Yes," replied the armored man sullenly, nodding slightly and dropping his sword.
"Naze. Now…I think it's high time that you explained why you so diligently attempted to forcibly exsanguinate me."
"I have been given a mission from God to exterminate demons and those that love them," came the defiant answer.
"Chikushou…you aren't one of those idiots that call metahumans demons are you?"
"Of course not…who would be so stupid?"
"Far too many people," muttered Ker. "Now…this brings up a question. Why me? I'm a meta, if only barely. Not a demon. Well…I suppose the one I love might be a half-demon."
"How does she fare in her test?"
"I'll assume that you're asking whether she prefers her demon or human blood. And the answer's human."
"She fares well…it seems I attacked you unjustly."
"You think?" asked Ker, not without a dose of sarcasm. He removed Kanesada's tip from under the helmet's lip and gestured upwards with it. "Come on Chuckles, up." The Japanese-speaking metahuman sheathed Muramasa, his other sword, as he watched the armored man stand.
"My name is Templar," offered the armored warrior.
"Kenkaku. So paladin-boy, what precisely were you doing here. I mean, it's not exactly standard attire for Wendys, full-plate armor."
"God's will."
Ker had just picked up the longsword and was just about to toss it back to Templar when he heard that and froze. "Hadn't we established quite firmly that I'm NOT a demon. Correct me if I'm wrong…"
"You're correct."
"Explain."
"It might take a little while…"
"Humor me, altar boy."
Half an hour later, Ker shook his head as he drove along the highway, a large Aryan-esque boy with claw marks across their left eye in the passenger's seat next to him. "I can't believe I let you talk me into this."
"Have faith in God's will, Kenkaku."
"Oh, shut up."
A/N: It's been forever...I know. Honestly, it's getting to be a bit of a refrain. But here's the goods. Some nice combat to sooth what ails you. Please do review...I love those reviews, and I'll try to be faster with the next update.