All right guys, here's the ending to last week's cliffhanger. And for those of you who might be Avatar fans, please check out my new story Others, containing a couple of characters from this story(shameless plug)

Chap. 12

Testing Results

The core continued to fall, seeming to gain speed with every second. Everyone reacted differently to this seeming oncoming death. Martin reformed his hands into a huge metal shield and yelled for the others to get behind it. Rivers struggled to turn his flight power back on, hoping to catch the device before it hit. Bart just screamed for his sister to get out of the way. Lisa tried to plan out some way for her to leap up and catch the device, but there was nothing that she could reach in time. Eddie and Terra began to use their powers to create some kind of landing pad. Sara summoned her armor and prepared to fly after the core. But Brett had only one action in him. He stood there silently, staring at the girl who had caused this, waiting for her to fix it.

But Katie was still too panicked to do anything about it. She stood there too terrified to decide on a course of action. Part of her wanted to run to the safety of Martin's shield. Another part wanted to stop the core from descending. Another wanted to get her friends out of here. Another still just wanted to get herself out of here. Too many voices crowded her head, paralyzing her body and making it impossible for her to act. But when it all came down to it, it wasn't a voice that caused her to do anything. It was the screech of a hawk that finally broke her out of her paralysis. Looking up towards the sound, Katie saw a large bird flying up towards the core as it plummeted towards earth. It took her less then a second to determine where it had come from. "Bart get back!" she screamed. But the hawk gave no notice, as it flew closer and closer to the unstable core.

Katie's eyes widened in horror as her brother came closer and closer to ending his own life. She turned towards to Brett, hoping he could do something. But her grandfather was only looking up, watching the flight of the hawk towards the device. Katie couldn't believe that he was being so indifferent to this. What the hell is wrong with him? She thought angrily, looking at his calm demeanor. How did he expect to train them when he didn't frigging care about them at all? Screw him, if he won't do anything, I will. Katie finally decided, her anger overshadowing all the voices. Katie looked back up towards the bomb, as her hair began to fly around her face in a wave of purple strands. A crackling noise could be heard from around the girl, as she pushed through her insecurities and activated her powers again. The black energy shot forth again, reaching the core before the hawk or any of the others could even attempt to do so. Eyes glowing white, Katie slowly lowered the device to the ground, right at the feet of the Shadow Knight.

"Happy now?" she snapped, as Bart returned to the ground and to human form. "Somewhat." Brett answered. "What is wrong with you?" she yelled, her anger coming out. "Why didn't you try to stop the core? We could have been destroyed!" "I knew you could stop it." The bat replied simply, as he bent down and picked up the device. "Um dude, notice your use of the word could." Bart added. "What if you had been wrong?" Katie asked. "What if I couldn't had stopped it and it hit the ground? What would've happened then?" "Exactly what I expected to." Brett replied, as the others moved over and watched the conversation. "And what was that?" Eddie asked, with a mix of curiosity and anger. "Nothing." Brett said, as he tossed the core over his shoulder back into the pile of robot parts. It flew through the air and landed in the pile…. Without exploding. The others stared in shock as Brett said, "Do you really think I would let you handle a bomb on your first try? Even I'm not that crazy. I just told you that so I could be sure you were using your full strength to keep it under control." Now even the Elementals stared at the bat in shock. A huge argument was sure to follow this revelation, and it didn't look like that bat would have much chance in it. But they didn't know, as the doors suddenly opened and the Titans walked inside.

"Time to go home guys." Beast Boy said as he entered the room. "Has it been two hours already?" Brett asked. "Time does fly." "Two hours?" Bart asked. "Yeah, that's the schedule we worked out." Sara explained. "Two hours of training every day after school, three on the weekends." "Weekends too?" Lisa asked, with more then a hint of disappointment in her voice. "Yes. Sadly you can't expect to save the world by cutting corners." Sara said. "Indeed. Guys, can we talk to you alone for a moment?" Brett asked, motioning to the Titans. Nodding, the Titans moved to the side of the room, so the kids couldn't hear. "What is it, Brett?" Robin asked. "Something with the kids?" "Naw, nothing like that. Although I have to say, Lisa is gonna be a bit of a handful. Kid's waaaayyyy more aggressive then you or Star were." "You should see her on the field." Star added. "She got banned for beating the crap out of her umpire." That got a few raised eyebrows from the Elementals. "Anyway, I think that they'll do well. They seem to have good control of their abilities, and they know how to follow instruction, for the most part." "Yeah, we saw that from up there." Cyborg said. But at that, Brett put on a sad smile and said, "Well that's the thing. We don't want you to see it anymore."

"Huh?" Cyborg asked in confusion. "We don't want you to watch their training sessions after today." Brett said. "What? Why?" Beast Boy asked. "It's nothing personal. You're just a distraction to the kids." Brett said. "OK Dad. You'd better have a good reason for this, or I'm gonna rethink letting Katie and Bart do this at all." Raven snapped. Thankfully, at that moment Terra came forward to try to calm them down. "Look guys, it's not because we don't want you here. We just don't want the kids to feel like they have to succeed because you're watching them. Let's face it; you guys set the bar for them. It was hard for me to train under your gaze. Imagine how difficult it'll be for them." The Titans were silent a moment, then nodded, seeing the wisdom in the girl's words. "OK, but I do want to come in here and try to get the systems back on line." Cy said. "Of course. We don't want you banned from the Tower. It still is yours after all. Just don't watch the kids train." They nodded and the group separated, the Titans moving to take their kids home. But as they walked off, Brett could feel the resentment move off them. The bat recognized it, and he was pained by it, but he took it, because he knew that he had earned it. But he also knew that he would earn much more of it in the coming months.

The Titans left the island, and returned to their homes. The adults were quiet, thinking about the events of the last few days and how they were going to deal with it. The kids were different. Some were happy to be put in the position of hero. Others were angry over things that had happened in the day. And as night crept over the city and they went to bed, none thought more about it then Katie. She was still unable to believe what her grandfather had put her through. How could he lie to me like that? She thought, as she sat in bed, unable to sleep. "He's in my life two days and he screws with me like that?" she muttered aloud. "How does he expect that I'll listen to him?" "Well, if not, we're gonna have to face Slade alone." A voice said from nowhere. Katie whirled around, only to see a fly on the wall change into her brother. "God, it's gonna be even worse with you now." She muttered. "You could always put up flypaper." Bart suggested.

As he moved over to the bed, he asked, "So when are you gonna forgive Grampa?" "When do you think?" "Probably never." "Look, he just doing this because he wants to help us." "How can you say that Bart?" Katie asked incredulously. "He put you into danger too." "No he didn't. It wasn't a real bomb." He said defiantly. "It doesn't matter. He lied to me and made me worry about you and the others. Can you imagine what it would've felt like if I had gotten you or one of the others hurt? I never could've forgiven myself." "Kate, we're all gonna get hurt eventually." Bart said. "I could've hurt somebody, or Rivers could've, or any of the others. And if they had, we wouldn't have blamed them for it, just like we wouldn't have blamed you. Well, maybe Martin would've, but I don't think even he's a big enough jerk for that. And Grampa is just trying to make sure we do everything we can to make sure we don't hurt anybody. Maybe he shouldn't have tried it like that with you but come on. Weren't you trying way harder then you would have if it had just been a piece of trash?"

"Well, I guess so, but…." She stopped then, unable to finish her thought. Bart smiled, thinking the argument was in the bag. "Look, we're gonna have to do things we don't like here. The best we can do is learn from it. I mean, think about it. We're gonna be heroes! Who knows, maybe after this mess with Slade, we can keep Titans Towers open, do this stuff from now on! Can you imagine how cool that would be?" "Maybe." Katie said, with a yawn. "How about you go back to sleep and we can dream about it?" Bart nodded and moved over to the door. But before he left, he said, "Look Katie, maybe he feels just as bad as you do for doing it anyway." With that, he closed the door. As the darkness covered the room, Katie pulled up the covers and wished she could believe him.

Meanwhile at the tower, the Elementals were sitting down to a meal of take out Chinese and discussing the course of the next day's training. It would be accurate to say that neither the meal nor discussion was being enjoyed. Brett was the only one really talking about it. The others were simply sitting, eating, and occasionally responding with a yes or no. Brett tried to keep it going, but eventually even he realized that there was no point to continuing. "What is it now?" he said with exasperation, as he sank back into his chair. "I've been going on about this for almost twenty minutes and none of you seem to care. What is wrong?" "What do you think?" Terra said, as she put her fork down. "You being an idiot today."

"How was I an idiot?" the bat asked. "Gee, maybe it was when you lied to your granddaughter about a live bomb?" Eddie snapped back. "Is that why I'm getting the cold shoulder?" Brett asked with astonishment. "Come on guys, we've done that sort of maneuver a million times." "Yeah, but we always knew about it." Sara said. "You didn't even bother to tell us you were doing this." "If I had told you, you would have given it away." The bat replied simply. "Brilliant. Robin said the same thing once and look what happened then." Sara replied. "Look Brett, we're not just here to get these kids trained. We need for them to trust us, and frankly that stunt today set us back. Besides that, you've been so goddamn strict with this training. I mean, you told the kids you were God, you pretty much told the Titans they were a problem and kicked them out of the Tower, and you made Katie hate you. I know we have to get these kids trained, but we shouldn't have to alienate them and our friends and family in the process.

Brett's face was a mask of anger, prompting a huge argument that was to follow. But then it broke. "I know." He sighed, as he slumped further down into his chair. "But I don't know any other way to do it. I mean, we've trained kids for this sort of thing before, sure. But it was never our kids. Raven said it best, we're sending our own children to the slaughter. I guess the only way I could see through it was to just concentrate on the training. And the Titans being around, I guess it just kept reminding me about what I was doing, so I tried to get rid of them. And I know I'm hurting them too. I can sense how pissed Raven is getting. But I just don't know any other way to do this."

"Brett, you don't have to keep pushing them away." Sara said. "They don't need you to be God; they need you to be human. You need to show that even the best of us screw up." "Well I suppose it couldn't hurt." Brett said. "Besides, I guess I can over do it." "Ya think?" Eddie asked, as he moved to the fridge to get a soda. "You just need to calm down a bit and they'll start to trust you." Sara said. "Hell, maybe they'll actually think you're a leader of some kind." Suddenly Eddie called out from the fridge, "Hey look what I found!" The group turned and saw Eddie holding up a plate of gelatin like food, with strange bits stuck inside. "Hey, Starfire's glorg!" Terra said happily. "What the heck is Glorg?" Eddie asked, as he set it down on the table. "Don't know, but it tastes like sushi and ice cream." "Damn! Let's get some!" Eddie said, as he tossed her a fork and the two of them began to eat. As they eagerly devoured the quivering mess, Sara said, "That should've tipped us off right away." "Uh-huh." Brett said in agreement, as he watched the disturbing sight unfold. But as he watched, an idea began to form in his mind, about how to prove gods can be human.