Gods' Playground
05 – Causality: Actions
Kate groaned, leaning against the shower wall and getting the water flow as hot as she could stand it. She'd just finished another grueling day in what had quickly become dubbed 'Hell Week': six days of insanely fast-paced crash-course combat training. She was making it, but it was murder on her muscles. Everything between her scalp and her toes either throbbed or was numb and would probably make its displeasure at her previous actions known later. Her mornings had started just as Robin had said they would: basic exercises from 6:30 to 7:30, unarmed self-defense training for another hour and a half, her first run through the obstacle course (that had been a trial in and of itself), training to use her sword against Robin, and then 'Battle Tactics 090' (as Savior had dubbed it) with Cyborg. The obstacle course had, by far, been the worst.
Her objective: make it to the end of the course while trying not to be tagged by any of the stun drones or other such instruments of displeasure. She didn't make it a quarter of the way in before getting her first hit. Cue the flashback... "GO!" Savior yelled, which sent Kate dashing into the obstacle course. For a moment, she thought that perhaps the course had malfunctioned... that is, until the first blast from a popup stunner flew past her ear and struck the wall ahead. Then she could hear them—several dozen energy discharges firing off and nipping at her heels. Ignoring them, she gauged the distance to the wall ahead and her chances of making it up that wall without using her power: slim to none. Only feet before impact, she tapped into her gravity manipulation ability and jumped, which sent her flying to the top of the wall. Ahead, she could see the end of the mud pit and her next objective. Not wanting to risk falling into the man-made pit for fear of what could be lurking in its depths, she touched down on top of the wall and jumped again... or would have, had two blasts not caught her in the back and sent her tumbling face-first down into the very pit she'd been hoping to avoid with a resounding splat. She had stood and attempted to make her way back to the Tower, but was intercepted by a trio of converted Slade-drones. Obviously, Savior had other plans in mind for her. After realizing that complaining and/or attempting to leave wouldn't get her out of it, she'd just given up and gone through the rest of the course—thrice. It got slightly better after the first day though, in that she knew what was expected of her now. Besides, the faster she made it through the course, the faster she got back to the showers... and she had desperately needed one after that first-day's mud bath. Getting yelled at in that way that wasn't really yelling because he didn't raise his voice when he did it by Savior for trying to quit the course might have had something to do with it also. End flashback.
Yawning, she eventually cut off the spray and proceeded to dry and dress. The fact that she had been unable to sleep well for the past few days wasn't helping. For some reason, she had been waking up in the middle of the night either with a massive headache or just not tired any more. Making a mental note to ask Nigel about it later, she left the showers and made her way towards the kitchen, thoughts of food occupying her mind. Speaking of food, she had quickly learned to fend for herself in the kitchen because more often than not, any time the group was together for a meal, things got rowdy to say the least. Yesterday's food fight at dinner was a prime example of just how rowdy things could get... Raven had been the only one not sporting lumpy mashed potatoes or green jello, though only because she could put up shields. Perhaps after a bite to eat she might be able to catch a nap.
Kate's soon to be hunt for something edible was cut short as she entered the Titans' living area where the majority of the group (save for Tim, Kory, and Nigel as the three of them were currently on patrol (somehow, they had all wound up on today's schedule together)—which made since due to the fact that Kate needed to ask Nigel about the headaches anyway) was giving orders to Gar, who was attempting to write everything down on a notepad to keep it straight. "Ok, so that was one order of Thai noodles, two large meat-lovers' pizzas, five Big Macs—"
"No! Five meat-lovers', two Big Macs!" Victor broke in quickly.
Gar blinked, but corrected his list and ran through it again. Finally getting an ok, he sighed with relief and turned towards the elevators before spotting Kate. "I knew we forgot someone," he muttered, also drawing the attention of those there to the freshly-showered girl.
Kate began to wilt under the team's scrutiny. "What? Do I have something on my face?" she asked, covertly trying to make sure no 'nose goblins' as Gar had called them were clinging to her.
After a moment, Victor broke the silence. "Why don't you take new-girl downtown with you and show her around?" he suggested, grinning. "She could use the exercise."
Gar shrugged and made for the elevator. "Sure. Can I take the T-Car?"
"NO!" came a chorus of answers.
"You guys are no fun," Gar grumbled as Kate joined him and they were on their way.
The pair neared the city limits in silence... and it was beginning to drive Gar nuts. Gar didn't know what he could talk about with the amnesiac beside him and Kate simply didn't have anything interesting on her mind—literally. Finally, Gar entered into a state of mind that his friends knew could be potentially dangerous: he got bored. This time, it manifested itself as a sudden urge to take to the rooftops of Jump City, which wasn't altogether uncommon. And besides, Cy had said to show her around, and what better way to do so than by air? Grinning, he took off ahead of Kate and transformed into one of his more common forms for air patrols—that of a hawk. "Race you to the top!" he called before starting his ascent.
Kate, standing beside him at the time, had picked up on his abrupt mood shifts from slightly bored, to dangerously bored, to mischievous and had been waiting for the other shoe to drop, so to speak. This turn of events took her off guard and it took a second to figure out what he meant, before she caught on that he was circling his way up towards the top of a nearby building—easily the height of Titan Tower. Grinning, she ran after the changeling before coming to what she judged an acceptable distance to the building, then tapped into her power and jumped. Her takeoff proved much the same as it was the time she had tried to scale the Tower, though this time she knew about what to expect and kept her cool. Somewhere around a quarter of the way up the building, she arced slightly in her trajectory before her feet came into contact with its safety-glass windows, where she kicked off again and was sent flying further upward. If one were to shift their angle of view so that it appeared Kate was running across instead of up, it would look almost as though she were playing hopscotch.
At the top, Gar was surprised when he looked down to find Kate flying (falling upwards with style, really) directly at him—so surprised in fact that he let out a very inhuman squawk (which sounded about right for his current form though) and banked hard to his right. Half a second later, Kate flew through the airspace Gar had been occupying, laughing all the way, before catching sight of the building's roof and letting gravity mostly reclaim her before landing with a thump. Standing from her crouch, she grinned at Gar who had landed nearby. "That was fun."
"The landing could use some work. I'd give it a five."
Kate stuck out her tongue before looking around. "Which way?"
Gar pointed deeper into the city. "We've got to make about four stops, but they're all pretty close together."
"Oh," Kate nodded, then a question came to mind. "Ga—"
Gar interrupted her with a hand over her mouth. "Shh! Out here we go by our codenames. It's Beast Boy, remember?" Sure, they rarely had to use codenames inside of the Tower, but once outside they guarded their identities fiercely.
Once Ga...er Beast Boy had removed his hand from over her mouth, Kate quickly apologized. "Sorry, I thought since we were alone it wouldn't matter."
"Yeah, but that's the problem. There's almost always some creepy guy with a camera and a recorder hiding in the shadows somewhere waiting for us to do something that would look good on the Six O' Clock News. So what were you going to ask?"
"Oh yeah. Why doesn't everyone just go out and get their own stuff instead of sending one or two people after it?"
He shrugged. "We do—but sometimes we like to take turns with it. Actually, half of the time someone winds up cooking. My turn! You figured out how to keep from falling?" Seeing her questioning look, Beast Boy elaborated. "When you tried to do the same thing when Robin asked you to, you fell, right?"
"Oh, that! Yeah," Kate nodded. "I guess I just needed to relax. Robin makes me nervous—and Savior. It's like everything's a test to see how I measure up, and I don't think I'm cutting it."
Beast Boy grinned. "Yeah, that's pretty much exactly how it is, especially with Savior. He's really anal about things sometimes, especially with people new to their powers. Robin's cutting you a lot of slack that Savior isn't, since he's giving you the benefit of the doubt. And we don't expect you to just jump right into it and amass several years' worth of experience in a couple of weeks. The best thing to do is just stop worrying so much and let things come naturally, the rest will follow."
Nodding again, Kate glanced towards the neighboring rooftop along their path. "So you're saying I should just have fun with it? Turn it into a game?"
"If that's what it takes. It got you up here, didn't it?"
"That works for me," Kate grinned, taking off for the next building.
Gar blinked, watching as she made the jump between buildings easily and kept going. "Hey, wait up!" he called finally, hurrying after the girl and keeping a mental note of her progress. He had noticed something that might need to be brought up with the others later. It seemed that though Kate had a decent grasp over her manipulation of gravity, she didn't have the balance necessary to make better use of it. He himself had taken a while to get used to his own powers, and shifting forms from a human to an animal with a completely different center of balance had been confusing before he got the hang of it.
Half an hour later found Beast Boy and Kate—or Medley, as it were—at yet another fast food establishment. Fifteen pounds of food stood stacked in boxes and plastic bags arranged haphazardly on the counter top, and they were about to add to that. Kate stood by the door, as far from the line of customers as possible, admiring the miniature indoor water garden which was this restaurant's most reputed attraction besides the food. The mounting frustration from the forward-most customers peaked when Beast Boy had to repeat his order for a third time because the ink on his notepad had smeared a bit and he had been in a hurry when he wrote it in the first place. Someone's temper finally snapped.
"HEY BUDDY! Hurry it along, would ya? Some of us have real jobs and don't have all day to waste dicking around here!"
Beast Boy's hackles rose but he ignored the rude man behind him and finally got the order straightened out before stepping to the side so they could move on to the next person's order. He also ignored the next few muttered nasty comments the rude businessman threw his way.
From her place at the display, Kate shook her head and watched as a few coy swam along beneath her, idly pondering why it was that most of those funnily-dressed people in the suits always seemed so frustrated and rude. Being in such close proximity to several other people just like the exceptionally rude businessman had started to foul her own mood, so Kate attempted to strengthen the weak walls separating her mind from the rest of the world. Perhaps that was why she didn't notice trouble coming their way until it was right on top of her.
Outside, a girl perhaps a year or so Kate's senior stumbled up the sidewalk, the lunch hour crowds giving her as wide a berth as they could and still manage to keep out of the street. And who could blame them for doing so? The girl in question was dirty, her dress and blouse torn in places and blood ran down one side of her face, obscuring one of her eyes from view. The way her breath heaved and her hands clutched at her chest told not only of her physical exertion—that she had run this far from wherever she had come—but of the fact that she had minor internal injuries of some sort. A deep bruise could be seen just above her right knee, the skin already swollen and discolored. It was probably a small miracle that whatever it was had missed the joint and it hadn't been ruined. Panic fueled her motions and it had convinced her brain to release enough of its own natural chemicals that she wouldn't be feeling that injury any time soon.
Kate's head jerked up the moment the girl's hand came into contact with the door, which she'd used to steady herself in order to keep moving. Despite her blocks, panic flooded Kate's system, threatening to overwhelm her. Her heartbeat and breath quickened and she desperately wanted to run—somewhere, anywhere—but as it was, she was frozen to the spot. "Beast Boy," she finally croaked, drawing his and a few nearer patrons' attention.
Beast Boy quickly stood, making his way over to Kate who had by now started sweating. "What is it?"
"Outside," Kate answered. By now, the feeling was starting to fade as the girl walked further from her position, but it had been so intense. It had overwhelmed her senses, held her torn between fight or flight, and the conflict between those two desires had nearly brought her to her knees.
Leaving Medley to gather her wits, Beast Boy dashed outside and glanced around before catching sight of what had probably upset her. He ran up the street, quickly catching up to the girl and assessing her injuries. "Hey, what happened to you? Are you alright?" he asked, putting a hand on her shoulder lightly to get her attention. The girl's face came up and her eyes locked with his, and for an instant Gar could see what had gotten to Kate. Then, as abruptly as it had come, her expression changed to one of relief as she latched onto Beast Boy for all she was worth. It wasn't until she spoke that he recognized her.
"Please, it's my dad, you have to help him! Something terrible has happened, please," Kitten Walker sobbed, collapsing to her knees.
Kate, who had managed to get herself together enough to exit the restaurant, had caught the last part of this. She could feel the relief coming from the other girl, and it helped to ease the residual effects of her earlier exposure to the girl's terror. "Who is she?" she asked of Beast Boy, who was helping Kitten to stand and directing her to enter the building they'd just vacated.
After getting her seated, Beast Boy asked for the establishment's first aid kit and set about cleaning the wound on Kitten's forehead. It was shallow, but long. After rinsing the blood away, he used a pair of tweezers to dig out a couple of small pieces of glass. "Her name is Kitten Walker and her dad is Drury Walker—better known as Killer Moth." Here, he paused to gauge Kate's reaction to the name. Seeing no sign recognition cross her face, he turned back to his task of bandaging Kitten's wound. "She, her dad, and her boyfriend Fang—this dude with a spider for a head—caused some problems for the team a few years back, but after we got them the attorneys couldn't make anything stick, so she got out. We haven't heard anything about any breakouts lately, so her dad is probably out on parole or something. What happened?" he asked, directing the last part at Kitten, now aware that he should be suspicious of her motives despite the physical evidence to the contrary that this could be some sort of ruse.
Staring down at her hands, Kitten shrugged. "I don't know. I came home and dad wasn't there. I thought he may just be in the basement, so I took the stairs down to the lab. It was dark and smelled like there had been another electrical fire. The floor was covered with water. Then I heard something just as it dropped from the ceiling. I tried to back away, but it hit me. I think my head hit something... I'm not sure. I just remember getting up and running up the stairs, out of the house, and as far as I could get from it. The next thing I know, here I am." Here she paused, looking up to Beast Boy in near desperation. "I think it got my dad. Please... You're a Titan, you have to help me find him!"
Standing, Beast Boy glanced at Kate before pulling out his T-Communicator and scrolled through the list of other T-Comms. The first number he tried was for Robin's. After not getting an answer for a few seconds, he tried the next number down, then the next, until finally giving up on reaching them any time soon. Something had probably come up—maybe even a call about whatever it was that had snagged Drury Walker and beat up his daughter. Re-dialing Robin's communicator, he left a message apprising their leader of the situation and requesting that he get back to them as soon as possible. Putting the yellow T-Comm away, Beast Boy turned back to Kitten and Kate. "Ok, we'll help. Can you walk?"
Kitten stood, favoring her bruised leg, and made her way out of the building followed closely by Kate. Beast Boy followed last, after asking that the owner hold their orders until they returned.
"This is the place?"
"Yeah," Beast Boy nodded, in answer to Kate's question as Kitten led the way in. He had been here before and on the outside it hadn't changed much. Taking in the general state of destruction of the rooms they saw, Beast Boy attempted to piece together what had happened. Something about all of this wasn't adding up for him, but he didn't have enough information to guess what it was yet. "Was it like this when you got home?"
Kitten shook her head, flipping the switch for the stair lights and beginning her descent. "No, this is new."
They made their way down into the basement lab and Kitten gave the light switch there an experimental flip before deciding that it was useless. The only light came from the glow of a few monitors and a couple of unbroken UV lamps. It seemed the overhead lighting had been trashed. She made sure the switch was securely on the 'OFF' position before stepping down off the last step into water almost over her toes. "This is where I found it," she started, pointing towards the ceiling and tracing a path with her finger to the floor. "That's where it dropped from the ceiling."
Beast Boy turned to Kate and motioned her closer for a moment. "Keep an eye on her, would you? If it comes back, take her and get out." Seeing the girl nod her understanding, he grinned before putting on his best Sherlock look, complete with pipe and funny hat. "Now, help me look for clues."
Missing the reference, Kate shrugged and watched as Beast Boy started sniffing around for evidence/clues as a dog of some sort—a Bassett hound, but she wouldn't have known that. She took a couple of steps forward before turning in a circle to take in the whole room. Something about one of the far corners seemed to call her attention. "Hey, Beast Boy, what's this?" she asked, looking down on a computer screen. The monitor was on its side and cracked, but its display still worked.
From his place across the room where he'd found a pile of...goop that smelled interesting to say the least, Beast Boy reverted to his human form and gave it a prod with his fingers before taking a sample in a discarded test tube nearby. "What's it say?" he asked, forgetting whom he was talking to for a moment.
Kate turned her gaze on the screen and tried to make out the letters displayed there. It read C. H. A. R. A. X. E. S. Sounding it out in her head first, Kate shrugged before attempting to read it aloud. "Sh—no, Chairaches... that doesn't make sense. Char axes?"
"Charaxes?"
"Maybe. It still doesn't make sense though."
Beast Boy stood, pocketing the sample. Something about that name sounded familiar. He made his way over to the terminal and looked it over himself. "Yeah, Charaxes... that's a phylum name for.. moths," he mumbled, clicking the mouse once. The display changed, letters scrolling down below those already present to form more words.
'Chemical Hybrid Accelerated Retroviral Arthropodal Experimental Evolutionary Serum.'
Beast Boy blinked and re-read it before pulling out his T-Comm and transferring all of the salvageable data from the computer. "I think we should go," he mumbled, standing quickly and making his way to the stairs. Kitten followed him up, followed closely by Kate.
"What did you find?" Kitten asked, noting that Beast Boy was quickening his pace.
"I don't know yet, but—" he was cut off by Kate stumbling on the steps below and using the closest thing to catch her balance, Kitten's arm, which in turn nearly pulled the other girl down. "Are you two ok?" he asked, helping Kitten back to her feet as Kate stabled herself on the stair railing.
Shaking her head to clear it, Kate frowned. "I felt something... weird."
His eyes narrowing, Beast Boy poked his head out of the door leading back into the main house slowly, taking in as much of the surrounding visible rooms as he could. "Any idea what it was?"
"No. I haven't felt anything like it before. It felt... disordered, chaotic. And there's something else. It felt like fear, but it stopped almost as soon as it started."
"Do you still feel it? Any idea how close it is?" he asked quickly, still looking around.
Kate turned her head from side to side as though to find something she could barely hear. "Outside. Whatever it is, it's strong. It doesn't feel like it's getting closer though, or moving much." She gestured roughly back the way they had come. "That way, somewhere."
With a nod, Beast Boy made his way quietly out of the stairwell. He paused to shift through several forms and turned their various senses towards where Kate had pointed before reverting to human. Crouching, he urged them to follow his lead before speaking in a whisper. "You're right, it's out there, in the house behind this one. I'm going to try to lead it away. Give me about a minute and then take off in the other direction. Medley, try to find the other Titans. I can't get them on the communicator, so they're probably in town dealing with something. Stay together."
Kate nodded before a thought crossed her mind. "What if it doesn't want you?"
Beast Boy grinned. "I'm going to make myself pretty hard to ignore," he answered before taking off at a run through the front door and hanging a left around the side of the house.
Lowering her blocks, Kate could feel the whatever-it-was outside moving away after a moment, seemingly following Beast Boy. Standing quickly, she and Kitten dashed to the door and did as he'd asked, taking another route that would lead into the city. Since Kate didn't know her way around, she let Kitten guide them. After several blocks, Kitten had to slow to catch her breath. Her exertions of earlier were begging to wear on her, and her ribs felt as though they were trying to puncture her lungs. "Don't you have any powers?" she asked of Kate, dragging in another lungful of air at the cost of more pain.
"Yes, but I don't know how useful they'd be. I'm sort of new to this."
Kitten blinked before placing a hand over her eyes and groaning. "We're so dead."
Kate's eyes narrowed. "What makes you so sure? It's not like I'm completely defenseless, you know."
"Please. You're just some dumb rookie looking to make a name for yourself. How'd you get on the team, get the source of your powers from a cereal box? Or are you even one of them?"
Though half the reference was lost on Kate, the feeling behind it wasn't. "That's none of your business. What is your problem? I haven't done or said anything to offend you, have I?"
Kitten stood, stepping nose-to-nose with Kate. "Your presence offends me. I don't know why he left you with me. You would have made a better decoy anyway. You'd have at least provided some entertainment if it had caught you," she smirked. It felt good to have someone to blame for this situation, even if it was one of the people that were supposed to be helping her make everything right in her life again. They would bring her daddy back and she could get back to her life... In the meantime though, this one was expendable.
That last comment took Kate off guard. "What is that supposed to mean?" she asked warily, sure she wouldn't like the answer. Kitten was really starting to get on her nerves. It didn't help matters any that the feeling from the basement stairs was back and eroding her mental defenses, gnawing at them like a swarm of locusts...
"What are you, dense or something?" Kitten asked before trailing off as Kate's eyes widened. A split second later, Kitten felt a sense of movement and heard a sharp crack before they set down again. In an instant, the girl she'd been arguing with had grabbed her and thrown the two of them a quarter block down the street somehow. In the back of her mind, Kitten wondered if she should feel guilty about her previous statements.
...The feeling of chaos had intensified almost to the point of being unbearable before Kate realized what it meant. Reacting on instinct, she dove for Kitten and threw figurative throttle on her power all the way to the stops, hurling them down the street just as a blurred form crashed down where they had been arguing and cracked the concrete sidewalk. As Kate—no, Medley now—set them down, she turned back to confront their assailant. It stood from where it had impacted the sidewalk, rising to a height of nearly eleven feet. Parts of it were pitch as night, others gray as fog, and others red like blood. Some places, Medley noted, were not merely blood coloration, but that fluid of life itself. Idly, she wondered why that dripping from the creature didn't harden and flake off in the light.
The wind carried with it a rasp from the creature's maw—a word she had heard before, just recently. "Chaaaaarrraxeeeesss..." It had a name, apparently.
So, this was to be it, the first real battle of Kate as Medley? Medley's sword flashed into existence as she took up a guarded stance, her face losing that childish look it usually carried. "Go!" Medley yelled to Kitten as the beast charged forward and she rushed to meet it. In a flash she was there, lashing out and... overbalancing as her sword swung through empty air. It had evaded, its target not the sword-wielding almost-a-threat, but the one trying to get away. Not really conscious of the action, Medley drew on her gravitational power again, righting herself and taking off after Charaxes at a speed she hadn't thought possible as adrenaline flooded her system.
Charaxes was fast, but fueled by desperation and a little of something else, Medley quickly gained on it, just as it reached Kitten. Something blurred out from behind Charaxes and struck Kitten at the same time as the monster turned on its heel, something lifting from its back and dipping forward to intercept the gleaming helix-blade before it could do any damage. Blade met winged carapace and cut in, though the force of the blow was diverted, rendering the strike ineffectual.
It swung, one of its four limbs flashing out blade-like to rend the girl in twain, only to meet open air as Medley pulled a slightly-less-crude flip over the appendage—tipped with a long, narrow pincer that would bring to mind a scorpion, or a preying mantis (more of a cross between the two, actually), had Kate known what those were—to land on its other side. A glance confirmed that Kitten had fallen and was not moving. From the look of it, she wasn't even breathing... Shutting out the sight, Medley fought on, if you could call it that.
She darted in close, swinging once and missing, reversing the swing and bringing it back around for a glancing blow off one of its limbs, finally ending in a thrust at its abdomen that it dodged aside easily. Frustrated, she called on the other power hiding within her, crests flaring to life for a brief second, and time slowed... Probability, possibility, chance itself danced around her senses. She could see what would happen one, five, fifty moves from now, and it all ended the same way. She would fall dead to the street, a bloody wound marking her back. Digging deeper into her meager reserves, she tried to find an outcome that wouldn't end that way... and then she realized something. Something that had been tugging at her subconscious before brought itself to the fore of her mind now. Kitten stumbling past the establishment where she and Beast Boy just happened to be getting food, even as far back as getting up a certain way this morning—none of it was chance, none of it probability. Back further, to a girl stumbling out of an alleyway into the middle of a battle, further still to that same girl stopping for just a moment as a solitary vehicle passed by on a lonely stretch of highway, further still to the girl jolting to sudden life in a hospital morgue... None of it was chance or luck. She was that girl. There were no coincidences, everything up to this point had happened for a reason. And now, she would die again.
The shock of that realization drew Medley out of her power and she jabbed forward, hoping against all odds that what she had seen was wrong... before something hit her behind and beneath her right armpit, stabbing deep and pulling out quickly, though thankfully not puncturing her lung. Pain, hot and searing shot outward from the wound, but she ignored it. After all, Etrigan had smashed her elbow to a bloody pulp and she'd surprised him by staying conscious after, this should be nothing!
Medley took a step towards Charaxes and her vision blurred, another step, she couldn't feel her arm, another step, she wanted to draw back the sword and ram it through this thing's ugly face but her limbs just wouldn't obey... Kate fell, eyes unfocused somewhere in the middle distance and breathing shallow. She couldn't move, couldn't talk, and was barely aware of the world around her. A nearby flash and the comforting warmth of her bracelets—muffled but not muted by whatever coursed through her veins—told her the sword was gone. She was defenseless. There would be no stepping out a door and shedding her wounds, the Titans would not fly in to the rescue—of this she was certain—and there would be no coming back this time.
So it was with quite a bit of surprise that she found herself being lifted and coated with something warm and sticky, binding her arms to her sides and her legs together, though she wasn't able to move those at the moment anyway. Another form swung by her shrinking field of vision—Kitten, similarly swathed in that white substance. Perhaps it was a bit of leftover borrowed power, or maybe just gut certainty, but Kate knew beyond a doubt as the blackness overtook her that she was about to lose her hold on a critical piece of information. She could feel it fading already...
A communicator chirped out its special ring tone for several seconds before it was answered. On the screen, the masked face of Robin stared back. "Beast Boy, we got your message. We would have responded sooner, but there was a problem downtown."
"That's what I thought," Beast Boy acknowledged, not looking at the communicator screen. "Can you get the team down here?"
"What happened?"
This time, Beast Boy pulled his eyes away from what had been holding their attention—a few strands of what looked like spider webbing and a stray piece of clothing. "It took Medley and Kitten."
"What did?" Robin asked, though he had a sneaking suspicion that it was related to what the rest of the Titans had just been dealing with.
"I'm not sure yet," Beast Boy answered, kneeling to pick up the fallen jacket—Kate's jacket, which had a hole that looked like it had come from a 9mm round below and behind the armpit and was surrounded by what could only be crystallized blood, which started to flake off as soon as he touched it. "I'll fill you in when you get here."
Robin shut off the communicator and replaced it in his utility belt. Turning, he regarded the other Titans, who were in various states of disarray. Wordlessly, they left the scene of their latest battle, following the signal from Beast Boy's communicator into another section of town.
Once the Titans were out of sight though, something stirred. Not just one something, but a thousand somethings. Insects of all types crawled out from every hiding place conceivable until they covered the street, where they quickly began to devour the corpses their dead fellows. Then, as one, with the droning hum of countless wings they took to the sky. Something was calling them again, and their simple minds responded the only way they knew how: obedience.
A short time later, the Titans stood at the scene of the battle, if it could be called a battle, and surveyed the damage. "What did this?" Raven asked, kneeling to hold her hand over a crater in the concrete somewhere in the vicinity of a foot and a half in diameter and a third of that in depth. This hadn't been caused by energy or magic but by brute force, and something told her that it hadn't been even a tenth of what whatever did this was capable of.
A green timber wolf reshaped itself into Beast Boy and he exhaled a moment before answering. "Charaxes," he said simply, not really knowing where to start. Something was still nagging at him, as though he knew something but didn't quite know that he knew it yet.
"Can you track it?" asked Savior. If Beast Boy was right, and Savior had no doubt that he was, then they couldn't waste time standing around figuring out what to do.
"Yeah, but someone should go back to Titan Tower and take a look at the stuff I pulled off of Walker's computer."
Apparently thinking along the same lines as Savior, Robin looked to Raven expectantly. "Rae, can you?"
Furrowing her brow slightly, Raven concentrated on the scene, shutting out the noise caused by her team mates. "Yes. It's in such a state of mental chaos that it leaves a fairly distinctive impression wherever it goes."
"All right, Raven—find this thing. BB, Cy: I want the two of you to go back to the tower and try to find out just what it is we're dealing with. Terra, Star, Savior, and Scalpel: follow Raven from above. Maintain visual contact, but try to stay out of sight. If we catch up to it, I want some element of surprise. Gauntlet, you and I will follow from ground level. Everyone got that?" Getting an affirmative all around, Robin pulled out his communicator and punched in a short code before replacing it. "Keep your communicators on at all times. Titans, go!"
The Titans split up to their assigned tasks, seven headed deeper into the city following Raven's senses and two piling into the T-Car and driving back to the Tower. Along the way, Beast Boy began his recount of the events leading up to the present...
"I'm going to make myself pretty hard to ignore," he answered, taking off out of the house at a run and hanging a sharp left, circling around the building quickly and running almost directly under where he thought whatever it was that was stalking them had crouched down to wait. He got a response faster than he'd expected as it burst out the side of an adjacent home. He tried not to think about what had drawn it there...
True to his name, Beast Boy shifted forms as soon as it made its presence known, dropping down to all fours and taking off as a tiger—though not as fast as a cheetah, it could go for a greater distance, and that was exactly what he needed to give Medley and Kitten at the moment. Surprisingly though, after only a few dozen meters, it had come dangerously close to catching up. A second later, Beast Boy heard the sound of its feet hitting the ground stop and without pausing to check, he jerked hard to his right, barely avoiding the creature as it landed in the space he had been occupying and continued its run without slowing down. It was faster than he'd given it credit for, and this was not good. He changed again, this time to a velociraptor, hugging the ground and weaving in between as many obstacles as he could find.
The thing chasing him never slowed. Trees, street lights, fences—it tore through them all in its pursuit of the changeling. With a high leap over a brick wall dividing an alleyway, Beast Boy was surprised when it followed, only to pass over him in midair and land several paces ahead, forcing him to stop. It turned around and he got his first good look at it. It towered over him at nearly eleven feet at its head—twelve to twelve and a half if one counted the pair of antennae-ish things protruding from it. It was a deep black, broken by patterns of grey, red, and even a few harder to see yellows and deep greens. Its exoskeleton—for it had no skin—shimmered in what light penetrated the alley, giving it a look almost like spilled oil in the sun. It had four arms, the lower two of which were tipped in pincers that looked like a cross between a preying mantis and a scorpion while the upper two were vaguely human, though sharply clawed. Both its legs and arms were covered in short spines, down-and-back swept, though several of those spines reversed and elongated towards its wrists, and two to each arm had lengthened near its elbows to nearly a foot and a half. Its head was perhaps its most gruesome feature: starting at the bottom, it sported two sets of mandibles—one shorter inner set and a much longer outer set. It lacked a protruding nose; instead it had only twin slits set in-between a pair of disturbingly human eyes. Above its human eyes, it had two large compound eyes, both of which were a deep shimmering green reminiscent of a dragon fly which stood out from its mostly-triangular head and seemed to be able to rotate independently of each other in greater than 360 degrees. Its head was topped by a large pair of something akin to antennae, what one would see on some species of moth—they were almost leaf-shaped in their appearance and colored black like the rest of it, though fading to grey from the middle to the tips. To complete the image of a monster that it exuded, it gave a raspy hiss and drooled—the salivate falling to the pavement where it hissed and began to smoke. Apparently, it was highly acidic.
After what seemed an eternity, though was in reality only somewhere close to six seconds (just about one round in D&D, enough for Gar to get a good spot check... ahem Sorry, I'll be good), its mouth opened fully and it roared its challenge. "ChaaAAARRRAAAXEEesss!" It charged, dashing forward and attempting to spear Beast Boy with both of its forward pincers. Instinctively, Beast Boy found himself shrinking to a much smaller form, that of a ferret as he jumped between its legs to its other side. There he again changed, this time into an African elephant, and swung his tusks up to catch Charaxes about the midsection (thorax?) and hurl it into the wall of the alley.
Finding the tight quarters a little too confining for that form, he changed again into a triceratops. That was probably what saved him as Charaxes regained its footing before revealing a part of itself that had remained hidden up until now. From underneath and below its wings, something streaked out almost faster than Beast Boy could track, landing him a glancing blow to one of his horns. He didn't know how he knew, but instinct told him that its tail was tipped with something nasty that probably wouldn't be good to get stuck with. Once more he changed forms, this time into a rhinoceros, something whose hide he doubted even this freak of nature's sting could penetrate. It tried again—once, twice, and a third time, each attempt rebuffed by Beast Boy's tough skin.
With a growl, it gave up that attempt in favor of something else as it rushed forward and took hold of the changeling's head in its two humanoid hands. In a show of strength, it lifted the green rhinoceros with almost no visible effort before smashing him back into the pavement. Another lift brought the Titan over Charaxes's head before the creature let go, flinging Beast Boy through the air. Midair, Beast Boy changed forms again, this time into an eagle... but luck wasn't with him as momentum carried him into a wall which he struck and rebounded from with bone-cracking force. He fell, landing behind a dumpster just as Charaxes vaulted over to the other side. After a few moments of turning its head this way and that, the beast gave up on finding the green Titan, assuming that he had simply gotten away before taking off itself. Spreading its wing carapaces, it extended its flight wings—thin, almost delicate things compared to the thick, leathery shells covering them—and took to the sky with a droning hum. It could smell prey, prey the green one had led it away from. They would not escape...
"So it knocked you out and took off?" Cyborg asked as they neared the end of the road. Ahead, a bridge connecting Titan's Tower to the mainland rose up out of the water just as the T-Car neared, allowing them to drive onto the island and down into the garage.
"Well, no. But it cracked my head against that wall pretty hard," Gar mumbled, rubbing a rather large, throbbing bump on the back of his head. He was torn between admitting that it had actually sent him into unconsciousness for a minute and sparing himself the embarrassment and telling his team mates that it had merely knocked him senseless. He chose the second one.
A voice from the Titan-communicators built into Cyborg and affixed to Beast Boy's belt challenged that assertion. "It knocked Beast Boy more senseless?" Terra teased.
Gar's blush pretty much answered that question. "HEY, aren't you supposed to be on MY side!" he shouted indignantly, pulling the communicator off his belt and glaring at it, though he wasn't rewarded with Terra's face, as none of the Titans save for him were actually looking into the cameras affixed above the devices' display. Cycling through the displays from communicators rewarded him with varying views of the city—including an awe-inspiring view of Jump from the air, courtesy of Starfire (though he'd seen it countless times before, it was always amazing to look at). Giving up, he replaced the device as he and Victor made their way to the nearest computer, which just happened to be in the garage. Nearly all of the computer systems in Titan Tower were connected to one another and the one in the garage was an especially robust system, seeing as it was the one Victor used to design, build, test, and run diagnostics for all of the Titans' vehicles and a good number of other gadgets—it was probably only rivaled by the one in his personal lab and Robin's terminal for contacting Oracle.
"Ok, we're ready to start," Victor announced, taking Gar's communicator and transferring the data collected from Drury Walker's computer onto his own, along with the test-tube sample which was placed into a device for spectral analysis. After a few moments of sifting through and reorganizing data, he directed Gar to sit at screen beside his own. "BB, I'm giving this stuff to you. It's all genetics—DNA models and specs I don't recognize. See if you can make heads or tails of it. There's some fragmented data in what looks like his recent security logs. I'm going to try to recover that while I look over the technical aspects of this crap. This could take a while..." Victor directed, murmuring the last part as he connected directly to the computer and began processing data faster than nearly any human could handle.
Beside Victor, Gar sifted through the data he'd been given and started looking everything over. "How's the search going?" he asked absently. Most of the DNA models were of insects—several hundred species. Each file contained a DNA sequence taken from a member of that species along with notes detailing where that sequence would go later into a master sequence.
Raven's voice came from the terminal—Victor had switched them over to it as well—in answer to his question. "More slowly than I thought it would. There is a good deal of mental clutter to sift through. There are two other impressions along with that from Charaxes—I take it one of these belongs to Kitten. The other feels like Medley, but it's not as strong as it should be, unless she was deeply unconscious at the time. It would be almost easier to follow hers, if it weren't this weak. Also, it jumps around a lot, as though this Charaxes thing knew we would be following it and made the trail intentionally harder to follow."
"It looks like it's leading us towards the warehouse district," Savior added.
Scalpel's next comment gave Gar pause for thought. "At least that part of town is less crowded. There will be less people there to stumble across it."
Deciding to keep his gut feeling to himself that something about that statement didn't seem to fit a certain pattern he couldn't quite put his finger on at the moment, he asked the question that had been on his mind since first finding Kitten. "So, what was it that brought you guys into town—bank robbery, jail break, a riot over tickets to the new release of (insert latest Marvel based movie here and add one to whatever number is at the end of it)?"
It was Starfire who answered first as the Titans who had been there took turns telling the tale. "It began with a call from the local authorities..."
Starfire, pausing in her flight path to hang in midair, answered the call to their communicators. "Yes?"
A Sound-Only display met her eyes as a dispatcher for the police relayed her message. "Oh please lend us your assistance, brave heroes of our fair city! Though our often ineffectual police force has tried to contain the situation, a large swarm of insects is devouring everything in sight! We urgently request that you take over our fight against this menace, though we will not thank you later and the media will surely find a way to slander your names while you protect them as they watch from the sidelines and get in the way."
Robin, who had also been listening in answered for Starfire. "Why certainly, miss. We will rise up and defend you from this heinous threat!" he declared, his handsomely chiseled face setting in steely determination and his cape flapping dashingly in the wind...
"Wait, wait. Hold on a minute," Robin cut in, interrupting Starfire's retelling of the story before one of the Titans burst a gut. "You'd better let me tell it Star. The dispatcher did not sound like a cheesy Speed Racer reject and my cape did not 'flap dashingly in the wind.' I told her we would be on the scene as fast as possible then called in to Titan Tower for backup. I had a feeling it was going to take more than the three of us to take care of whatever we were walking into..."
Three of the Titans arrived at the scene of the incident. Around them, chaos reigned. A number of people were running around, madly flailing their arms and screaming. Of course, this was a perfectly understandable reaction since the majority of them were covered from head to toe in stinging, biting, and crawling insects of all types. The air was thick with clouds of bugs swarming the street while several fire trucks attempted to spray them into submission. Police wielding shotguns and grenade launchers filled with gas grenades fired almost wildly into the air from the relative safety of their vehicles.
Taking stock of the situation quickly, Robin began giving orders. "Star, swing in and try to knock out as many of those clouds as you can. Scalpel, start directing people closer to those fire trucks. I'm going to see about getting the firefighters to use their spray to give those people some relief. I'll meet back up with you in a few." That said, he took off at a run towards the fire marshal, who stood atop one of his ladder trucks, manning one of the spray nozzles himself.
Starfire rose into the air, gaining altitude until she was level with about the middle of what looked to be the main body of the swarm. She knew they would scatter as soon as she started firing, but it couldn't be helped. She could only try to maximize the damage she could inflict while they were clustered. Her eyes and hands lit up as she charged a pair of starbolts before hurling them into the swarm. Waiting until the bolts were deep into the cloud, she willed them to detonate, consuming who-knew-how-many insects in their heat. She followed up by firing beams from her eyes, trying to sweep through the still-clustered swarm without punching straight through and hitting a building or bystanders. Unfortunately, they had realized that something was attacking them and countered it the only way they knew how: by massing around the alien in an attempt to bring down the threat before it could remove more of their numbers.
Below, Scalpel was having much less luck convincing screaming panicky people to stop running around in circles or rolling on the ground long enough to move closer to the water pumping vehicles Robin had pointed out. After several frustrated attempts to get their attention, he gave up and grabbed the nearest one around the collar, pulling the instinctively terror-stricken individual over to where Robin had informed the fire marshal of his plan. Together, two of his men cut back the pressure on their streams enough that they wouldn't injure anyone, but would still do the job of knocking the bugs clinging to their clothes off. Once the man Scalpel had dragged into the flow stopped screaming like a little girl, several of the on-looking police officers got the idea and started to assist the oddly-clad alien. That is, until a yell and a burst of green light drew their attention skyward.
Starfire shrieked as a living tidal wave of black swept around her, closing in on all sides and cutting off her escape. A moment later, several insects attached themselves to her form and began doing what they did best. What followed was a jerky pattern composed of attempts to scratch, swat, and/or claw the maddening creatures off of her. The feeling of bugs on and in her ears, nose, and lips was too much for the girl and she reacted instinctively. Loosing a furious scream, she curled in on herself most of the way before thrusting back outward, sending with the motion a massive burst of energy that cleared the sky around her. Huffing slightly, she idly wiped bug guts off of one arm while casting a glare towards the remaining swarm. "I am beginning to very much dislike these Earth insects," she muttered before flying in again to strafe the cloud with small starbolts.
A birdarang hurled into the fray announced Robin's joining the battle. It exploded in their midst, scattering dead bugs everywhere. Several explosions of fire and light reverberated through the swarm, further scattering them. But just as it seemed that the unruly pests were on the verge of dissipating, a droning that seemed to come from everywhere at once announced the arrival of reinforcements... for the wrong side. Countless more bugs, a hundred times as many as had been gathered above the street filled the sky so full as to blot out the sun. It grew dim and Robin knew with certainty that a few explosive discs and starbolts weren't going to put this colony down. It seemed as though every last bug in the state (and they were in Florida, where there are Everglades and swamps full of mosquitoes nearly big enough to drag off a grown man) had decided to gather at this one point in Jump City. From the rooftops, several pigeons that had been using anything they could for shelter suddenly took flight. The swarm above moved, swallowing the birds whole. Individual bones fell from the mass of writhing insects—feathers, flesh and blood stripped from them in less than a second. As one, the massive clouds of bodies dove into the street, seeking warm flesh and blood to sink their little teeth into. They were hungry.
Author's Notes: Thanks go out once more to LegendMaker for giving me the idea for this arc (and for beta reading, and for putting up with crappy ideas... and it's more like I begged for something to write since at the time all I had were the first couple of chapters and a nice ending, but nothing for the creamy center everyone loves and she tossed me Charaxes). I think I've got the scene division thingie fixed now, but the formatting still looks terrible. I changed the arc-title to "Causality" because "Growing Up," didn't sound like what I was looking for. Well actually, it sounded cheesier or something I think. Expect the next two installations of Causality, "Consequences" and "Accountability" some time after the vacation gap. Sorry for the slow progress. When I asked for more hours at work I didn't think they'd pay attention and pretty much have me working nearly every night. It's murder on my writing routine. Oh well, can't be helped. Expect a fairly large lapse in chapters (yes, larger than usual) between mid-May through about mid-July. Going on vacation with my girlfriend. Heh. Of course, knowing me I'll wind up packing my notebook and getting work done on random stuff anyway. And yes, I mean 'notebook' as in one of those binders of paper held in place by metal rings and not a laptop. On a personal note, my aunt was recently in a car crash way on the other end of the state. She's in a neck brace at the moment... besides a really bad case of whiplash, her head hit the steering wheel (older model car with no airbags, and yes, she was wearing a seatbelt) and knocked out a few of her bottom teeth. I don't remember what exactly they said it did to her jaw, but she'll be having liquid meals for a while. Perhaps the most ironic thing about this is that she (Shelia) was visiting HER aunt (Ruby, I guess that would make her my great aunt) at the hospital and had her wreck all of fifteen minutes away from it. Right front tire blew out and the car wrapped itself around a light pole. Fun stuff. Annoyingly enough, the police ticketed her for "failure to maintain control."