I suppose I should go on and put the legal crap up here. Yes, that's right folks, welcome to the disclaimer. I disclaim any and all ownership of all original-to-series-continuity Titans characters, events, etc. The other original-as-in-someone-else-thought-them-up-but-it-wasn't-me characters belong to their respective owners and are used with approval...I think. LM said it was ok, so that's good enough for me. Legend Maker owns Noel Collins/Savior, Bobcat owns Robert Candide/Gauntlet and Pangloss, and Jedi-And is the person behind Scalpel and Sophie. I own only some of the ideas to this fic and only my own original character, Kate Rivers. This is set after Wings, Cutting Edge, well after Epic, and a good while after Lights and Sounds. Now, I've wasted enough time on this farce of a legal disclaimer. On with the show. ..Wait! Before that, I'd like to thank the above mentioned for allowing me to actually write this monstrosity and helping. Now it can start. Almost jinxed the whole thing...
Gods' Playground
01 – False Alarms are the Bane of my Existence
Off the coastline of Jump City, on a small island populated by a giant steel-and-glass 'T' full of metahumans and a couple of aliens, it was just another day. Outside the tower, Tim Drake, better known as Robin, and the team's newest member—Scalpel, also known as Nigel Hastings—passed the time doing something useful: sharpening their skills through training. Farther inside the building, Gar Logan and Vic Stone—Beast Boy and Cyborg respectively—were engaged in something similar, though this could hardly be called training.
"Dude! You're button mashing!" Garfield yelled, nearly throwing his controller at the Gamestation in frustration—this was his third loss in as many minutes.
Beside him, Victor grinned. "Awe yeah, I win again! And we both know Noel's the only button masher here."
A few feet behind them, the kitchen was occupied by two of the resident females: Kory Anders and Tara Markov—Starfire and Terra—were sharing a bucket of ice cream over a game of cards, which Kory seemed to be winning. A good distance and a floor or so away, Raven and Noel—a.k.a. Savior—were spending some much needed quality time together, meditating.
That leaves us only Robert Candide—Gauntlet—unaccounted for. His current whereabouts: the shower...singing in the shower, no less—and badly at that. We'll spare the reader's eyes and ears with a conveniently timed alarm. Wait, let's stick around a second...
Loudly attempting to sing a rousing chorus of Henry VIII, Rob was cut off mid-word by the alarms. Groaning, he put down the soap and cut off the water before turning and opening the shower stall. Too bad he didn't notice the bar of soap falling from its place and then sliding across the shower's floor tiles, before it came to a stop directly under his foot as it came down. The reaction was instant: his left leg slid forward into an insanely deep split before the unfortunate teen finally fell over to the side, groaning now for a different reason. Now we can go.
In that special room where the Titans gathered to be briefed for nearly every emergency (unless they weren't actually in the Tower when it happened), the team stood around a large video screen. Glancing around, Robin noticed they were missing some members. "Where are—" he started, but was cut off by Raven and Savior literally stepping out of the shadows of one corner of the room. "Never mind. Where's Rob?"
Noel shrugged. "Beats me. Haven't seen him all day."
"Ok, we'll go on without him—"
"Wait for me!" the boy in question yelled, limping into the briefing room. His pants and shirt had been thrown on quickly, as evidenced by the fact that the shirt was on backwards and he was currently holding the pants together with one hand while carrying his socks and boots in the other.
"Man, what happened to you?" Gar asked, noting the limp.
Hopping around on one foot, Rob attempted to get a sock on. His pants slipped halfway down his thighs before he decided that it'd be better to fix those first. "Don't ask."
Robin coughed, drawing everyone's attention back to the screen. "Now that we're all here, let's see what we've got," he said, pressing a button on the remote that controlled the surveillance system erected throughout the city.
Onscreen, a giant blob monster was currently wrecking parts of downtown. A boot flew past Robin's head and smashed into the screen, but not with enough force to break it.
"I nearly cracked my balls open on the shower floor for Mortimer?!" Rob yelled, drawing a wince from the male half of the room.
"If that is Mortimer, does that mean we are getting a new member?" Kory asked, looking around the room.
Tossing Gauntlet his dropped boot, Tim shook his head. "No Star, not that I know of. Unless someone other than Legend Maker is currently writing this and knows something we don't."
After a short pause, Cyborg spoke up. "No yelling about abusing the fourth wall," he noted, glancing towards the ceiling. "Maybe she didn't notice."
Shaking his head, Rob managed to get into his other boot. "No, I don't think it's her. I've been the center of attention too long and she hasn't had Noel talk to himself or preach at me for thirty or more lines yet." He grinned, but was stopped a moment later by a thwack! to the back of his head, courtesy of Raven. "Oww. And whoever it is, they're abusive."
"You had that one coming Rob," Tara laughed, though she had to admit that he was right.
An explosion from the screen drew their attention back to the fact that Mortimer was still rampaging about the city. "One of these days, we're going to have to see about teaching the police how to deal with this guy," Gar commented, his sentiments echoed by the entire team.
"You know the drill. Titans, go!" Robin yelled as the team dashed from the room. By default, he got to fly with Starfire. Raven, Beast Boy, and Terra flew ahead of them while Cyborg, Savior, Scalpel and Gauntlet made their way downstairs where the T-car was waiting.
The flying Titans, along with Robin, were the first ones on the scene. They surveyed the damage below once they touched down on the roof of one of the taller buildings. "Ok, the police have evacuated most of the civilians. Terra and Raven, I want the two of you to round up anyone they missed and then convince the police to leave as well."
The two assigned girls gave their affirmatives before taking off below. Pulling out his communicator, Robin punched in the code for the T-Car. "Cy, how far out are you four?"
"Just three of us Rob, Gauntlet jumped out a few streets back after saying something about a fuel truck. And we're right behind you," Cyborg answered, parking the T-Car behind the building Robin was currently standing on. Shutting the car off, he stepped out along with Savior and Scalpel. "Man I hope that thing doesn't get on my baby."
Pulling out his own communicator, Savior contacted Robin again. "So what's the plan?" he asked as the three of them made their way around the building at ground level. "Same thing as always?"
"Find a way to separate it and burn whatever's left," Robin confirmed. "Gauntlet said he found a fuel truck?"
Savior winced. "Yeah. Stroke of luck, we drove past one on the way in. Though knowing Gauntlet, it could be bad luck."
Above the white-clad teen, their leader grinned. "We'll see when he gets back with that truck. Until then, we're going to distract it. Have Scalpel hang back for now and keep an eye out for Gauntlet unless he sees an opening. Robin out."
Putting away his communicator, Savior glanced towards Scalpel. "I suppose you heard that, huh?"
Grinning, the alien in question straightened his hat. "Big ears do come in handy. Try not to save any for me."
"Man, you're the lucky one. That thing makes a damn mess wherever it goes. It took the better part of a week to clean its crap out of my systems the last time we fought it," Cyborg groaned, hoping beyond hope that it didn't get anywhere near the T-Car. 'And I just waxed it this morning.'
Spotting a nearby car, Savior snapped out the Shimmer and wrapped it around the car's midsection. "Ready, Cy?"
"Awe yeah, let's rock and roll," he grinned, arming his sonic cannon. A second later, Noel braced himself and threw the car—luckily, it was something akin to a Volkswagen in size, as opposed to the SUVs soccer moms favor (sure, he could have handled that too, but smaller cars were just easier and faster to pitch around). When the car got close enough to Mortimer, Cyborg fired off his sonic cannon, propelling the vehicle into the sludge monster's midsection. "STAR!"
Above them, Starfire had already charged a massive starbolt, which she loosed into the car's underbelly with a yell, followed immediately by a pair of explosive discs thrown by Robin as he swung down towards ground level on his grapple line. The resulting explosions managed to separate Mortimer from a good chunk of his body mass, giving Robin time to land with a roll. He almost lost his footing however when the ground beneath them began to shake.
Turning, Cyborg saw Terra—eyes and body surrounded by a vivid yellow glow—summoning two large chunks of asphalt. "Someone call my name?" she asked, directing the rocks to either side of Mortimer. She was getting ready to smash them together when they were surrounded by a black aura. Realizing what Raven had in mind, Terra threw as much of her power as she dared into accelerating the two slabs of rock towards each other.
"Let's not give this thing a chance to attack, if we can help it," said the goth in question, really not wanting to ruin another costume with this thing's sludge.
Cyborg, who had started running towards Robin the moment he spotted Terra and Raven, began priming his sonic cannon for another blast. "Robin!" he yelled, catching their leader's attention.
Robin grinned, pulling out another pair of explosive discs. "Sonic boom!"
Cyborg fired off his sonic cannon, catching Robin's explosive discs much the same way as with the small car from earlier. The explosives struck Mortimer at the same moment as Raven and Terra's combined rock smash, splattering half of what was left across a city block.
Above, Beast Boy watched the action for a few moments before turning into a swift and making a dive for the ground. Just as he would have hit, he pulled up and shifted forms again to that of a pterodactyl, wrapping his talons around Cyborg's shoulders and using the extra momentum gained from his dive to hoist himself and his friend back into the air, where Cyborg continued to take random potshots, aided by Starfire, who continued to throw starbolts towards what was left of it.
"You know, this thing's just getting pathetic," Beast Boy commented, making another dive towards Mortimer.
As Cyborg would later tell Beast Boy—loudly, that is—he should've kept his mouth shut. By this time, Mortimer was beginning to get mildly upset—well, if a giant creature made entirely of mostly-flammable guck could get upset. It had been having a grand old time watching the humans run and scream while it took a leisurely stroll through downtown, and then these stupid kids with their superpowers had shown up and immediately began wrecking its fun. So it did the only thing it really knew how to do—it began regenerating itself while throwing out random balls of sludge at the annoying mammals.
Meanwhile, across town...
"Oh come on, it's not like I'm asking you to drive into it! I just want you to drive a few blocks down and park it, then open it up facing downhill or something so we can use it to get rid of the monster," Gauntlet pleaded with the driver of the truck.
Shaking his head, the driver—Sam Mills—took a few steps closer to his truck. "No can do, kid. These things have a bad habit of blowing up every time you and your friends show up, so I'm not going anywhere near there."
Finally though, Gauntlet had had enough. This day had started out fine: he'd woken up shortly after noon, ate some Lucky Charms (he'd had to hide the box, since Kory had eaten every last marshmallow out of the last one), and gone to take a shower...and that's where it went downhill. It seemed to him that sometime during the middle of his beloved morning shower, some other author had hijacked him and the rest of the Titans and decided that Robert's morning had been going too well and needed something to make it a little more entertaining. It was just too much for poor Gauntlet to take in one morning, so he decided to do what he did best...
"Oh crap, the monster! Duck!" he yelled, pointing behind Sam. Before the trucker had a chance to turn around fully though, Gauntlet had used the energy from his namesake to form a makeshift bludgeon and smack the man across the back of the head. Using the same energy to catch Mr. Mills before he cracked his head open on the concrete, Rob found a quiet place to stash him until this mess was over. "It's been a while since I've stolen anything anyway..." he grinned, forgetting that earlier that very morning he had stolen half of Noel's CD collection (and switched the discs and their cases around while he was at it) while the boy in question had been otherwise occupied with his girlfriend.
Back with Mortimer...
Savior, who had been helping Raven throw any and everything (except a kitchen sink, as they hadn't found one yet, but had managed to come across an old port-a-pot—besides, that was just too cliche) at Mortimer while Terra continued to hurl medium sized boulders at it, ducked yet another ball of crud hurled his general direction. "Crap, I hate it when they just randomly throw shit instead of actually aiming," he grumbled, using the Shimmer to spring up from the ground.
He almost didn't notice the young girl stumble out of the alleyway to his right—almost. When he did, he squinted. 'She looks like Raven,' he thought, glancing back towards where his girlfriend was hurling a mailbox at Mortimer. Turning back, he took a closer look at the girl. 'No, the skin color's wrong, and that's hair, not a cloak.' He had to admit though; he'd never seen hair quite that long. It stretched down her back, almost all the way down to her knees.
He snapped out of his confusion in time to spot yet another ball of sludge, this time heading for the mysterious girl, and react. With a Shimmer-assisted jump, he made a flying tackle that sent them both clear of its path...good thing too, since it slammed into the building behind where the girl had been standing and had left a decent sized crater. Glancing down, he saw that her eyes were closed and she looked pretty much out of it. Well, they'd mostly made it clear—the splatter had coated most of their clothes as well as her hair.
Standing, Noel picked the girl up over one shoulder and retreated back to where Scalpel had taken shelter near the T-Car. "Here! I think she may have broken something in the fall. She's out cold," he said, passing her over to their resident doctor before taking off on the offensive against Mortimer again.
Nigel quickly set the girl down as gently as he could before checking her over for injuries. "She's mostly unharmed, thankfully," he said quietly, wondering how Raven and Terra—and the police, for that matter—had missed this one. "Dislocated shoulder..."
Just as Savior was running over to join Terra and Raven, a loud noise from behind them caught their attention. Turning, they found Gauntlet getting out of the fuel truck he had.. uh... liberated! Yeah, he rescued it from a biker gang of twenty axe wielding maniacs and the driver had been so thankful that he'd let Gauntlet borrow the truck!
"I told you I saw a fuel truck," he grinned as the three others fell back to his position. "Think you guys can handle this while I go help Robin, Cy, BB, and Star occupy Mortimer?"
"Why you?" Savior asked, and then glanced at the truck. "And since when do you have a CDL?"
"I don't, I—ah... It just came to me," Rob grinned. He wasn't going to complain if the author decided to take liberties and let him get off relatively easy at this point—besides, grinding gears for ten minutes to get all of a mile and a half would have been boring.
Narrowing his eyes suspiciously, Savior glanced back to the fight with Mortimer. "Why you though?"
"Because I can do this," Gauntlet responded, throwing up a shield all of two seconds before a stray shot from Mortimer splattered against it when it would have hit everyone standing there. "Robin and the others need that more than you guys do at the moment, right?"
"Go!" Savior nodded, turning back to the truck. Unfortunately, it was facing the wrong way. "Raven, Terra—can you help me move this? Then we can direct the spray so that it coats most of the road around Mortimer while Robin and the others find a way to knock it into pieces small enough to burn too fast to regenerate."
Together, the trio managed to turn the truck completely around before waiting for Robin's signal. Speaking of Robin...
"Star, Cy, concentrate on its legs!" he yelled, throwing the last of his explosive discs at its left leg. The explosives detonated in the same instant that Cyborg and Starfire hit the right leg, which severed both...but Mortimer didn't fall. Instead, it raised both arms and flung a huge ball of itself at Robin. He was too close to dodge and he was out of explosives.
Robin opened his eyes, which he had closed along with holding his breath in the hope that he wouldn't drown in Mortimer's sludge. In front of him, the slimy black filth was sliding down off of a yellow barrier. "Miss me?" Gauntlet asked, grinning.
"Not a bit. Did you get the fuel truck?" Robin asked, silently thanking his comrade.
Gauntlet nodded. "Yeah. Raven, Terra, and Savior are setting it up now."
Digging through his utility belt, Robin came up with a freeze disc. "Right. Find a way to knock this damn thing down and it'll be all over."
"Yeah, all over us when it hits. Euck."
Laughing, Robin pulled out his communicator and punched in the code for the one built into Cyborg's arm. "It can't be helped."
"Robin! Please tell me that's a tanker truck I see and that you have something left that can put this thing on its ass," Cyborg greeted from his position atop Beast Boy's—who was currently in the form of a gryphon—back.
Glancing up at Mortimer, Robin nodded before waving the freeze disc into the communicator's video pickup. "Yeah—freeze disc. You and Star get ready to fire on it and tell Beast Boy to turn into something with enough mass knock it down and keep it that way."
"Brachiosaur!" Beast Boy called over his shoulder as he landed directly in front of Mortimer.
"That'll work. Gauntlet, cover Beast Boy and Cyborg," Robin added, turning to regard the boy beside him. "Titans! Go!"
With a running leap, Robin flung the freeze disc into Mortimer's leg, and then continued his dash until he reached what he thought would be a safe distance. As soon as the disc went off, Starfire and Cyborg let loose with a hail of bullets and starbolts. Seeing the leg shatter, Beast Boy changed into the largest dinosaur he could think of at the time—the previously mentioned brachiosaur—and brought his gigantic tail around into Mortimer's midsection. At the same time, up the small hill, Savior's group opened up the tanker and began coating the area around Mortimer.
Robin stood, turning his head up to watch Kory as she charged another massive starbolt in preparation to turn Mortimer into several small puddles. Unfortunately, this is where the plan snowballed. Without standing, Mortimer launched another blob at itself—this time up at Starfire, which actually hit and caused her to unintentionally disperse the energy she'd gathered. Luckily for her though, she wasn't weighed down or surprised enough to actually fall...but damn she felt filthy.
Deciding to hopefully burn Mortimer before it could gather itself enough to stand again, Cyborg ignited his internal blow torch and touched it to the fuel surrounding the creature—after making sure none of his teammates were standing in it. His plan half-succeeded: Mortimer did catch fire, but he managed to stand again. "Not good."
Checking in on our doctor and his patient, a little while before...
After finding that Savoir had dislocated the girl's shoulder whilst trying to keep her from becoming a greasy smear on the side of the building, Nigel decided that he should go ahead and relocate her shoulder for her while she was still unconscious enough not to feel it. Propping her up, he attempted to take stock of her arm again to make sure he was correct, lest he cause more damage than he was going to fix, but her hair got in his way. "This is going to be a problem later," he mumbled, deciding to go on and spare her the trouble of trying to remove Mortimer from her hair while he was at it.
Bunching the majority of her knee-length hair near the base of her neck, he used the claws of one hand to shear straight through it, and then discarded the monster-covered bunch in his other hand. Grabbing her arm and lifting it out straight, he tensed. "Here goes. This may hurt a bit," he told her before jerking on the arm sharply. The sick sound of a shoulder relocating itself was completely expected...feeling her go stiff in his arms wasn't. Later that day, Scalpel would repeatedly thank whatever gods his Blacktrinian ancestors could have named that he hadn't been directly in her line of sight...
At the sharp pain in her shoulder, the girl stiffened. Her head jerked up and her eyes opened. Before her, down the street, a giant flaming monster was currently attempting to burn the Titans to a crisp. Instinctively, she somehow knew that it had done this to her. Pupils contracted and something inside her mind took over. Scalpel leaned back in time to see a pair of symbols illuminate a bright orange on her forehead before she vanished. His last thoughts were the Blacktrinian equivalent of "holy shit, which gods did I piss off today?"
Above the Titans and directly even with Mortimer's chest, the mysterious metahuman girl reappeared...along with three giant...wings made of pure energy, each the same shape as the crest currently burned into her forehead—one above either shoulder and the final pointed down in line with her legs. Her eyes narrowed as she concentrated, then she threw out her previously injured arm—the internal damage regenerated instantly, as the pair of bracelets on her wrist clacked together. Her actions seemed to imply two things: 1.) Mortimer didn't stand a snowball's change in hell of hurting her at the moment, and 2.) since it had earlier, it was all of three seconds from becoming a flaming grease smear on the pavement.
Robin stared upwards, wondering what the hell was going on. Pulling out the communicator again, he opened a channel to all available Titans. "Guys, I think we should fall back."
Also watching the girl, Raven agreed. The power and emotions radiating off of the girl were impossible to ignore at this range—both of which felt unlike nearly anything she had ever felt before, and they ran deep, really deep.
The girl seemed to ignore all of this, but was actually paying very close attention. She waited until those below her got clear before bringing her right arm to bear on Mortimer. The pair of bracelets glowed the same shade of orange as the wings holding her up before those wings disappeared...only to reappear a second later, directly in front of her palm. Closing her fist caused the trio of wings to mimic her actions as they folded in close to one another. Had someone been watching from Mortimer's viewpoint (and not been too busy soiling themselves or running to pay attention), they would have brought to mind a flower closing its petals.
Mortimer, had he had any brains whatsoever, might have been worried at this point. Instead, it simply mimicked the human hovering in front of him by raising its flaming arm so that its giant palm faced the girl and her wings. Both girl and monster pulled their arms back at the same time as energy and sludge coalesced into disproportionate balls—one in the monster's fist, the other in the space between wings. A half-second later, both hands shot forward.
Time slowed for a moment as energy and sludge flew towards one another...then returned to its normal pace as they made contact and the ball of light struck Mortimer's flaming sludge before blowing straight through it and continuing on towards its owner. What was left of the ball of sludge was pulled back towards the one that launched it by whatever forced propelled the girl's weapon.
What happened next happened too quickly to accurately describe later. Before the odd girl's weapon struck Mortimer, the wings that had launched it began to spin at an insane pace, so that it looked for a second like a giant cone of orange light hovered in front of her. As the ball struck Mortimer, splattering it into a nigh-uncountable number of fragments of itself, the wings shattered into an equal number of orange light particles—each of which streaked towards a piece of the falling Mortimer. Poor Mortimer was no more before he even had a chance to hit the ground.
Panting, the girl's eyes rolled back into her head before the crests on her forehead faded and whatever force that held her aloft decided to stop defying gravity for the day. She fell.
Below, the Titans watched as the girl arched towards the street. Half of them were too stunned to move; the other half were already moving but were too far away. All...with the exception of one. Gauntlet had been the last to fall back after Robin had given the order to move. Running on instinct alone, he formed a catcher's mitt with his energy and extended it under the falling girl...only to have her fall right through it. Later, he would question simply putting it down to him missing because the sun happened to be in his eyes.
Going to Plan B, Rob jumped, mimicking Savior's move earlier of using his power to assist. "Gotcha!" he yelled, catching her only a dozen and a half feet from a messy end on the street, then using his power to soften their landing as he rolled across the asphalt. He wound up directly above her, looking down. 'Hey, I got the girl,' he mused briefly, grinning. His grin was cut short however when he noticed three things: her eyes had rolled back in her head, she was shaking like mad, and ...his gauntlet felt funny. Deciding to ignore the third one, he quickly turned her over and held her head up off the street, hoping to keep her from swallowing her tongue. "Scalpel, Raven, ANYONE! HELP!"
"How's the patient, Nigel?" Tim asked, walking into the alien's medical lab in Titan Tower. It had been Nigel's call to bring the girl back to the tower, as his lab had the best equipment in Jump City (partly due to Cyborg, partly to Batman), and the nearest facility with anything capable of dealing with metahuman problems was a branch of Star Labs. At the time, the Blacktrinian had had his doubts about her making it to the Tower, let alone out of the city.
"Very well, Tim. Almost too well, actually, unless she has some sort of healing ability."
"Oh?"
"Yes. Do you see this?" he asked, pulling down her shirt to reveal the previously-injured shoulder. "There should be bruising where this was dislocated—I put it back in place myself, so I'm not mistaken that it was before we brought her here. And even if there weren't, there should at least be a bruise or two where I held her arm to fix it. Her skin looks like it's the type to bruise easily."
Tim nodded, walking around the bed. "I see. Have you taken a blood sample yet?"
"No, not yet. I was going to do that when you came in. How did your search go?"
Laughing, Tim sat down. "She's dead, Jim." At the Blacktrinian's confused look, Tim shook his head. "Never mind. I ran her retinal scans and finger prints through every database I could... social security, criminal records, I even ran her description through missing persons."
"And...?"
"Everything came back the same. Like I said, she's dead. Medical records, hospital records... she died a month ago, just outside of Metropolis. I also found a few other things... she was a metahuman before she died, that much is for sure, but—from what I can tell, she never had that kind of power. All she had were a few empathic abilities—reading emotions and the like."
Taking out a syringe, Nigel attempted to find a vein in the girl's arm. "What did she die of?"
Tim 'mmm'ed. "That's the odd part. It didn't say. Try as I could, I couldn't find a cause of death listed. Unless someone somewhere was very sloppy, it should have at least said something like 'natural causes.'"
Finished drawing blood, Nigel put the sample into a glass vial and began preparing it for closer examination. "That is strange. Did you get a name?"
"Yeah, Kate Rivers. And there's something I need to check," he added, standing and taking the few steps required to draw alongside the girl.
Nigel turned his attention to his leader, ignoring the blood sample for the moment—it wasn't going anywhere. "What?"
Tim pulled off one of her shoes, followed quickly by the sock under it. "She was born with a birth defect," he said quietly, though he knew Nigel could hear him.
"Is it normal for humans to have four toes?" Nigel asked, regarding the foot between himself and Tim.
"No. Check the other," said Tim, raising the bottom of her shirt. "No belly button either—just like the medical records said."
Discarding the matching pair of shoe and sock, Nigel regarded the other foot, and then what Tim was looking at. "I am missing a toe here as well."
Tim nodded. "Then it's definitely her—" he started, but was cut off mid-sentence by the sound of glass breaking from nearby. "What was that?"
Nigel, with his much better hearing, knew that sound well: it was the sound of a test tube shattering. He had dropped several the previous day actually, so the sound was still relatively fresh in his mind. Turning, he regarded the counter where he'd placed the blood sample. He was joined there shortly by Tim. "The tube broke..."
Pulling a small plastic bag—for really small evidence, like hairs—from his utility belt, Tim used a nearby scalpel (no, not the alien) to sweep a few of the small dark crystals on the counter into the bag. "Look, they're changing colors."
Nigel had to agree. The crystals that had obviously caused the tube to shatter from inside were quickly darkening from the color of fresh blood to that of dried blood...and then to black. "Strange. It seems that if we want to give her blood a workup, we will have to find a way to do it inside her body."
"What could have made it do that?" Tim asked, glancing at the girl in the bed behind them. "Air maybe?"
"No," Nigel shook his head. "It was entirely air-tight. Light would be my guess."
"Ok. I'll go run this through the scanners in the lab and send the data to Oracle," Tim said as he made his way to the door, but was stopped by Noel.
"Raven wants to see you." The implied 'make it quick, please' was obvious almost to the point of waking the girl on the bed.
"All right. Hey, while you're here, why don't you and Nigel take a quick look around her head. Oh, and Nigel—anything else I should know?" Tim asked, wanting to get the results of his scans to Oracle as soon as possible.
"Just that she probably won't wake up for the next several hours—with what I assume is her current rate of healing, it will probably be late tomorrow before she is actually coherent enough for questioning. She completely drained herself of power with that stunt, which is possibly what sent her into a minor seizure. And Noel—I think that's a bad idea."
Raising an eyebrow, Noel paused the Shimmer line he'd been about to put into the girl's ear. "Why?"
Nigel pointed towards the shattered test tube. "Her blood crystallized. I don't think you want to do that until we know what made it do so. Of course, my own blood is flammable, but that is not normal for a human. It could just be some kind of built in defensive mechanism, but wouldn't your research have turned something like that up Tim?"
Rubbing his eyes, Tim nodded. "Yeah, you're right. Sorry Noel. Think you guys can get her into an isolation cell if she isn't in immediate danger of dying?"
"Sure," Noel replied, making a shooing motion towards Tim. "Go talk to Raven and Oracle."
As soon as Tim was out of earshot, Noel turned back to Nigel. "Let's go—I want to make this quick."
"Most certainly—your desire to spend time with Raven is completely understandable," Nigel grinned, wondering if he should pay a visit to Sophie soon, if she wasn't too busy.
"Busted," Noel laughed, helping the alien wheel the young Miss Rivers towards the isolation cells.
Rob passed Tim in the hall, on his way to the medical ward. "Hey, Tim. Raven said—"
"Noel told me Rob, thanks."
"Right. Where's uhh..."
"Kate. Isolation cells."
"Thanks, Tim."
Grinning, Tim regarded Rob more closely for a moment. Whatever he saw there, he kept to himself for the moment. "Could you tell Nigel and Noel that we're going to be debriefing on the battle in a couple of hours, just as soon as I get something back from Oracle?"
Rob nodded. "Sure—might as well warn Noel that he and Raven won't have much private time any time soon. Oh! About that thing earlier..."
"What thing?"
Darting his head around quickly, Rob stepped closer to Tim. "About the author... We're pretty sure it isn't any of the usual guys, right?"
Tim nodded. "Pretty sure. The writing style is different and the characterization could use a little work."
Rob coughed, glancing upwards. "Hope they didn't hear that. Anyway... that was Mortimer we fought?"
"Yes..."
"And there is a beautiful girl lying in a bed somewhere in the Tower...?"
"Yes..."
"Which means..." Rob asked hopefully, not quite daring to hope that the male to female ratio for the team might get better sometime soon.
"It means we'll probably find a reason that she'll have to stick around soon enough. Don't cross your fingers though Rob. I don't want a repeat of what happened the last time we picked up a new member. This team doesn't need that kind of stress again. In fact, if I can help it, she'll be out of here as soon as she's able to walk," Tim said grimly, thinking back to an incident in the not-so-distant past involving their most recent addition to the team.
"Come on! Every guy on the team has a girlfriend but me! And you saw her, she was cute..." Rob trailed off, remembering the feel of said girl in his arms from earlier...and then remembering something else.
"Everyone but Vic."
Rob nodded, sobering quickly—which was unusual for him. "Yeah... but that was just a fucked up situation at the time."
Sighing, Tim started off towards where he figured Raven would be waiting. "I know Rob and I don't want to see something like that happening again. Don't get your hopes up," he tossed over his shoulder, heading for the elevator.
Heading in the other direction, Robert Candide decided that despite what Tim thought, he wanted this girl to stick around...even though he didn't know her at all. Once again thinking back to the battle, he finally had time to run everything through his head. 'Maybe I should call Pangloss...' he thought, heading in the direction of the isolation cells.
"I'm calling Blood."
One of Tim's eyebrows rose in question. "Why?"
Sitting in the middle of one of the couches in the Titan's main living room, Raven looked the most agitated that Tim had seen her in a while. "You can't feel it, can you? Something just feels wrong Tim. And what she did—it wasn't possible. I don't care who you are—most metahumans couldn't do that... any that I can think of offhand anyway. With the possible exceptions of someone like Green Lantern or Superman, it's just impossible."
"I agree with you."
"You do?"
Robin nodded, waving the baggie at her. "Her blood crystallized when Nigel tried to take a sample. It wasn't instant, but it still happened within a matter of minutes. I'm going to run this through Oracle. Go ahead and call Jason. ...Maybe we should ask Rob to call Couch Potato the Mighty, depending on what Blood says."
"You don't like her either, do you?"
"I didn't say that," Tim denied, looking thoughtfully at the bag in his hand. "But unlike Rob, I'm not willing to just accept her presence as a coincidence, or even the beneficial effects of some new author wanting to introduce a new character. I'm not taking any chances, so... make the call."
Raven stood, making her way to a nearby phone—yes, a regular phone and not a videophone. Pausing before she picked it up, she glanced back at Tim's retreating form. "Vic and Rob had a point though—there hasn't been any yelling about the fourth wall. The fact that we're pretty much talking about it freely means that Legend Maker isn't at the keyboard."
"I know," he agreed before leaving the room in search of another with the equipment he was looking for.
Picking up the phone, Raven dialed a number that had anyone but the Titans, or Batman, or the Justice League, or one or two other people dialed would have just come back as an 'out of service' line. "Blood," the voice on the other end confirmed as a way of greeting.
"It's Raven. I need to ask you a favor..."
"So there's this girl, right?"
"Uhhuh."
Rob caught the sound of pork rinds being chewed from the other end of the line. "And she fell from the sky, and I caught her."
"Good to hear, Rob—glad you finally caught a girl. That all?" Rob's sometime-mentor asked, draining the contents of a two-liter bottle of Pepsi in one go to wash down his pork rinds.
"No. She uh... I thought I might have missed, but I didn't. She fell through the mitt I made with the gauntlet," Rob explained, glancing down at the inactive artifact.
"So, some girl fell through its power?" Pangloss asked, putting the pork rinds down in favor of a bucket of KFC and flipping through channels on his cable tv. 'Reruns of Dr. Phil, reruns of Oprah, reruns of Judge Judy...'
Rob nodded, though he knew the man couldn't see it. "It was like it wasn't even there. I had to actually jump and catch her to keep her from becoming street-pizza. And that's not all...the gauntlet feels weird any time I'm around her."
"Robert, I have two questions. First: Are you working under a different author right now?"
"Yes."
"Well, there you go. Problem solved. Secondly: Just what did she do?" he asked, only mildly interested—anything was better than more of the same old daytime tv crap.
Rob tried to explain as much of the fight involving the girl as he could but it had ended so quickly that he hardly understood it himself. "And then they just went out and she fell."
"Went out?"
"Yeah, kind of like a light flickering right before the power goes out in the middle of a storm."
Pressing his hand to his forehead, Pangloss tried to bring to mind anything that could explain what his young friend had seen, if only to get the kid to leave him alone. Rob's entertainment factor was starting to wear thin now and Dr. Phil was starting to look appealing—which would have been a scary thought to most people with an IQ higher than Rob's. "I don't know Rob. Nothing's jumping out at me. Maybe she's just got an artifact or something herself."
"Pangloss...it's not like you can just go to the local A-Mart and get one."
"Are you so sure?" he laughed, picking up another bottle and emptying half its contents. "The way things happen with you metahumans, I wouldn't be surprised. Hell, she may even have some fragment of a broken god for all we know."
Now Rob was really confused. "Huh? God, fragment, what?"
"Never mind. So, about that girl...she cute?"
Rob groaned, but knew he was busted. "Yeah."
"Ha! Robbie's in love!"
"Shut up, I am not! What do you know? You watch soap operas all day!"
"Exactly. You said you've got a new author, right? By soap opera law, one of three things must happen now—and it'll be sooner, rather than later. Either the two of you will pair up, she'll die, or she'll turn out to really be some evil bitch bent on world destruction. Well, I say three things... those are just general scenarios. Things may be a bit different, or it may be combinations of the three, but in a soap opera it's pretty much guaranteed."
Rob grinned. "This isn't daytime tv dude. The hero won't get the girl who later turns out to be an evil alien zombie clone who wants to use him to rule the world and in the end she winds up sacrificing herself because she's seen the wrongness of her ways and desperately wants one last chance to make it up."
"Robert, we're all living in a glorified cartoon soap opera. If it can happen, it will. Now, mind if I get back to watching reality?" Pangloss asked.
"Go ahead. I'll call again later."
"Later, G-man."
Rob hung up the phone, Pangloss's last words running through his mind. 'Man, he gets weird after watching Dr. Phil.' He shrugged and headed for the isolation cells. He found the cell housing the girl—Kate—and noted that she wasn't alone. Nigel was still watching over her.
"What's up?" Rob asked, glancing through the semi-transparent field blocking entry or exit to the cell and trying to ignore the near-incessant...pulling sensation coming from the gauntlet.
"Hello Rob. Something seems to be going on with our friend."
"What?"
Nigel stood and handed Rob a handheld gadget that he assumed made sense to the alien. "Take a look for yourself."
"Uhhuh... and this tells me what, Nigel? It's all Blacktrinian to me."
Nigel grinned. "It is a human device that monitors a patient's vital signs remotely, without actually having to attach more than one receptor."
"Oh," Rob looked sheepish. "So what's it say?"
"It says that her brainwave activity is rising. I do not know what to compare it to though, so I have no idea what is going on."
"Could it be leading up to another seizure?"
Nigel shook his head. "It is possible, but unlikely. My guess is that she pushed herself too hard when we first met her. Perhaps that was the first time her powers ever manifested themselves."
"But she looked like she knew what she was doing..."
"I know. There are many other things about her that we don't understand yet, but hopefully she can provide us with answers."
Rob shrugged, looking more closely at the girl behind the barrier. A high-pitched droning beep would have drawn his attention to Nigel's pocket-med device, had the girl abruptly sitting up in her bed and clutching her head not already done so. She said nothing, did nothing, other than whimper once and fall back down to the bed, panting softly. Looking closely, Rob could see the beginnings of tears in her one visible eye. "Nigel, what the hell was that?" he asked softly, not wanting to draw her attention just yet.
Glancing at the device in his claws, Nigel shrugged and then stated the obvious. "She awoke."
"Yeah, but why?"
A groan from the bed shut him up as the girl rolled over onto her side—facing the cell-wall—and promptly began to snore. If this was odd, it was overshadowed by the fact that she didn't so much as twitch when alarms started sounding throughout the Tower and Tim's voice came over the intercom. "Titans, assemble in the briefing room! Two minutes, people. This is an emergency!"
Taking one last look at his patient, Nigel pocketed his gizmo. "You heard the man.," he said, taking off at a run for the elevator. Rob followed shortly after, somehow managing to tear his eyes off the girl's face and finally drown out the incessant tugging coming from his artifact.
Inside the briefing room, Tim was forced to remind himself for the thirtieth time in as many seconds that he was on duty and they were in the middle of a possibly-life-threatening situation. For the thirty-second time, his lower brain as it were pointed out three facts: 1.) Kory was in the briefing room with him—alone, 2.) Kory—alone with Tim in the briefing room—was wearing naught but a two-piece swim suit, and 3.) Kory's skimpy swimsuit-that-doubles-as-floss, along with Kory herself, were currently dripping onto the carpet of the briefing room—in which said dripping wet, scantly clad, beautiful young alien girl and he were currently alone.
"Kory."
"Yes, Tim?"
"Why are you wet?" he asked, not realizing he'd made a double entendre.
Kory, for her seemingly-innocent nature, did pick up on his slip of the tongue however. Grinning shyly, she answered. "Because you called me..."
Tim blinked. Tim almost sweat-dropped. Tim came two seconds from pushing the girl of his dreams against the wall of the briefing room, locking the door, and saying 'to hell with it,' in regards to their current situation. As it stood, they could be screwed in a very bad way very soon—and what better way to go than making love with the girl you would literally die for. 'I won't go into that line of thinking.'
Kory could see where Tim's thoughts were taking him and truthfully, she would have welcomed it...well, the first part—not the whole dying thing. No, she'd rather live to do that again another day, and the day after, and... "I took a shower and then decided to go up to the pool and get some sun."
Taking off his cape, he stepped closer and motioned her to turn around. Wrapping it around her barely-clad form in a hug from behind, he grinned. "Maybe later, Kory."
Kory nodded, pressing back into Tim's armored chest. 'At least he took the mask off,' she thought idly. 'And the cape does feel so good. It is very soft...'
The two were interrupted by Victor as he strolled into the room and took his customary seat. "So are we taking bets?"
Tim nodded, pulling Kory's chair out for her and convincing her to sit as well. "Yeah. My money's on Raven and Noel."
"Robert," Kory said thoughtfully, remembering the events of that morning. "I shall bet on Rob."
"And you, Vic?"
Victor grinned, leaning back. "BB and the Rock-and-Roller."
A moment later, Nigel and Rob hurried in and took their respective seats. "What'd we miss, boss?"
"Who is attacking this time?" Nigel asked, watching curiously as Victor extended a hand towards Kory, who muttered something about leaving her money in her other change of clothes.
"It isn't an attack Nigel—at least not in the conventional sense," Tim answered, glancing at Vic. "Care to raise the stakes?"
"How much?"
"Loser buys dinner for the group tonight."
"Done," Victor said, not hesitating in the least. What Tim didn't know was that there was no chance in hell he would lose. He was proven right a few seconds later when Raven and Noel walked through the door.
"Damnit, you cheated."
Victor shrugged. "You know me better than that, man." Besides—it wasn't cheating really if you had a habit of monitoring the positions of your teammates by accessing their communicators' tracking beacon every few minutes, just to be on the safe side.
Soon after Noel and Raven, Gar and Tara made their way in. "Dude, you have the worst timing," Tara complained, taking her seat beside Gar.
Tim finally took his place at the head of the table and spoke up. "As of this moment, Titan Tower is under strict quarantine. No one comes in, no one goes out," he said, tapping away at a recessed keyboard in front of his chair. 'Take that, Victor!'
"Why, Tim?" asked Kory.
Nigel's following words were more of a statement of fact rather than a question. "It was a virus, wasn't it."
Tim nodded. "Yeah. Whatever this thing is, it's bad. It acts within twelve hours, crystallizing the blood the moment it comes into contact with oxygen. Once the reaction has started, there's no way to stop it. That's pretty much all Oracle could find. Right now, we need to know if it's communicable. Nigel, Vic, you're going to help me get to work figuring out just how nasty this thing is. Raven and Noel, I want the two of you to contact the JLU and see if you can't get in touch with someone there who can help. Gar and Tara, same thing with Star Labs."
"Tim, there is something you should know," Nigel interrupted.
"Yeah?"
The resident doctor slid his medico-gizmo across the table to their leader. "She woke up. It wasn't for very long, but I think it is possible to bring her around again."
Tim nodded. "Ok. For now, that's plan B. Kory, I want you and Rob to go through my notes, Oracle's data, and anything else you can find. When and if this girl wakes up, I want the two of you there to talk to her. Nigel means well, but..."
"I have a face that scares small children," the alien agreed quietly, though he was smiling.
"Exactly. Talk to her, find out what she knows—if anything—and report back to me."
Rob groaned for what felt like the hundredth time that day. "But I hate research. I never did well in school," he whined.
"Get used to it Rob. There is a lot more to this superhero thing than just going out and smashing the bad guy."
"But I like going out and smashing things. I mean, who doesn't? It's part of what makes us good at what we do! Deep down, we all love to blow stuff up."
"Despite the fact that it makes me almost want to bash my head against the table until I reach unconsciousness, I have to agree," said Noel, wondering if he could just convince Raven to do it for him.
"No dashing your brains out—I don't care how many times you say they'll grow back, I don't want to risk it."
Despite her warning, Noel's head fell forward until it thunked loudly against the table. "Just put me out of my misery. I can't believe I actually agreed with Rob. It's bound to be the new author. Rob isn't making more sense—I'm just being dumbed down to his level."
"Stuff it, you DBZ reject."
"Rob... I'm not going to go to the effort of flipping you off, so let's just say I did and get on with business."
"If the two of you are done pretending to be the main characters of this chapter, could you let someone else get a word or two in edgewise," Gar mumbled, drawing a laugh from Tara.
A telekinetic slap to the back of Rob's head and a thunk later, Raven turned her attention back to Tim. "Anything else?"
Tim shook his head. "No, not unless you want to call Jason Blood back and put his visit on hold."
"Maybe later."
Removing his head from the table, Rob sat back up. "I just remembered. Pangloss said she might have an artifact or be a demigod or something like that."
"Why'd you call him?" Tim asked, though he would have probably asked Rob to do it at some point anyway, depending on what Blood said.
"Just a hunch?" Rob asked, not wanting to go into his reasons just yet.
Tim let it slide. Rob would probably tell him when he was ready, if it were important enough. "Ok. Titans, you have your orders."
And that's it for the official first chapter of this ficlet. What did you think? This thing started off a few months ago as just a short intro for a plot to a Titans fic that had been floating around in my head for a while. Deciding it'd be better to just go on and get it out of my system, I wrote out a small prologue to this chapter which may or may not go into the final version... if there is one. There might not (read as "probably won't") be a final version for several reasons. 1.) I have a bad habit of leaving things unfinished. 2.) I may just decide that my idea sucks harder than hard vacuum (though technically, that blows I think) and decide to scrap the project or drop it for another when something new and shiny comes along, or I dust off something a little older. Ok, so it's really just two reasons.
Let's get a few things straight, while we're at it... Kate's real name is not Mary Sue. I repeat: Kate is no Mary Sue. Then again, with the way I write, she may damn well sound like it at times. Secondly: I have no freaking clue where this is going. If you figure it out, tell me, I'd love to know. Thirdly: "Are you actually writing this out of the need to come up with someone for Gauntlet?" I honestly have no clue, but probably not. I don't know if Pangloss is aloof enough this time around, but I think maybe. Any input whatsoever would be greatly appreciated.