Author's note: This story deviates from the canon of the show in several respects, though the only one truly important to your comprehension is the existence of several original Titans. Savior was created by Legend Maker, and her story 'Black and White' is the starting point for this alternate timeline. Gauntlet was created by author BobCat and his unfinished 'Epic of Gauntlet' explains how he joined the team. Scalpel and Sophie were created by author Jedi-And and their story is explained in his 'Flashing Lights and Sounds'—there are quite a few other stories with this set of Titans, but those are the main ones. I don't own Titans or the Legends characters—I'm just playing in their world.
On a small, unnamed island in the Atlantic, uncharted except by satellite photos, there rested a volcano. Inside its dormant precipice, there rested the new base: The new location of the HIVE Academy for Extraordinary Young People.
"You'd think," Wilby Tierney said as he set a heavy box down, his massive form feeling very relieved as the weight vanished… "That after all this time Brother Blood would be able to prevent his bases from being infiltrated and/or destroyed so easily."
"You would think. How many bases does this make now that he's been through?" asked Progeny, his disembodied hands screwing in light bulbs as he walked down the high-ceilinged hall. Arturo Nicanor was relatively new to the Hive academy and wanted to make sure his facts were accurate.
Gizmo, the senior (well, senior in service, not in age) of the group on this end of the new volcano-concealed school, looked back at him and snorted. "Lemme think. There was the snot munching first one that the Headmistress built. Then the Crud-licking second one underwater that Snotborg blew up. Then the kludge-eating Titans East Tower, and the school that Crud-munching Savior infiltrated. And the Sky Base."
"Are you sure you named them all?" Wilby asked. As Rhinoceros Beetle, his massive strength allowed him to move the heavy boxes full of supplies and machines with ease.
"Of course I'm sure, snot face! I'm the genius here!"
Progeny, an immensely handsome villain, shook his head smirking as he finished the last light bulb. "No need to be so rude, Mikron."
"Don't call me that! My name is Gizmo!" Gizmo, aka Mikron O'Jeneus, shouted at the wall. He began to fume when his outburst only increased Progeny's amusement, however.
"GIZMO!" Mammoth blurted, entering the hall with another heavy box. "Brother Blood says he needs to talk to you. Why you I have no idea. He still hasn't got done fawning over Buzz Bomb."
"Crud," muttered Gizmo as he left. "That can only mean I'm in for it big time."
As the door slid shut behind the diminutive villain, Wilby spoke. "What is his deal?" He reverted from his massive "rhinoceros beetle" form to his normal human form, a small nerdy kid. He took a puff on his asthma inhaler. "He's been like this ever since the big explosion in Paris."
"Isn't it obvious?" Progeny asked. "I can't believe you all. So blind. The whole school knows he had a crush on Jinx. The whole world knows he detests Cyborg. How do you expect him to react when the girl he wants runs off with the guy he hates?"
"Well, you look like you're enjoying rubbing it in, Arturo" Mammoth said.
"Of course I am, Baran. The nicest guy on earth would pay money to see someone as annoying as Gizmo get his heart crushed. Crushed figuratively, of course."
"Yeah," said Wilby. "But it's easy for you to say when you've slept with pretty much every female in the school." It was an obvious sneer.
"That," said a new voice, "and the fact that he is mostly trying to cover up a more personal frustration."
The three students turned to see the psychotic telepath Psimon enter the room. Though he may have looked like an old geezer with a bowl on his head, his increased age was really the result of the experiments that had given him his super-powered brain. He had been there at Paris when that accursed Titan had, in unthinking rage, almost destroyed them all, and joined the HIVE Academy for kicks afterwards.
Psimon had a mind and a half. If someone would only fix that cruel black heart of his, he could potentially make a decent leader.
"What frustration?" Progeny asked dismissively, looking away from the telepath's gaze.
"The fact that the only girl you never bedded here was Jinx," he said. "I don't even have to read you mind to see it."
"Shut up." Arturo turned and crossed his arms. "Jinx is a turncoat. She isn't worthy of me."
"Yeah," Mammoth muttered, "Because nobody is that bad."
"Oooh!" Psimon remarked with exaggerated awe. "Was that a hint of wit I just heard in that big dumb brain of yours, Baran?"
In the next instant, Psimon had been knocked halfway across the room by Mammoth's massive fist. "Enough, Psimon!" he barked. He turned to Arturo and said, "You sure it's Gizmo that's the most annoying guy on the planet?"
"They both think they know everything," Progeny muttered.
The door opened again, and Gizmo reentered, hovering above the ground with his jetpack before stopping and sitting on one of the smaller boxes. For once, he didn't say anything.
"What did Blood say?" Mammoth asked.
"We have to pull a major job by this time tomorrow night or Blood's gonna have our hides!" he shouted.
"Bah!" Mammoth grunted. "How exactly are we going to pull that off? We're understaffed. XL and Billy are dead thanks to that spikey haired emo punk, the elementals bailed on us to go hero again, and most of the newer students couldn't tell a bank vault from a candy bar."
"You couldn't tell a bank vault from a candy bar two years ago, Baran!" Gizmo shot back. "Look, it doesn't matter how we pull it off, we just have to get it done. The problem is, the only adequate bank that we can fly to, rob, and be back here in time…"
Gizmo pressed a button on his belt and a small hologram of a thirty story building appeared in front of him.
"JUMP CITY NATIONAL?" Progeny blurted. "You think you could have picked some bank in a city where there are no superheroes?"
"They don't put banks this big in cities with no superheroes these days, pit sniffer," Gizmo jeered.
"So how are we gonna pull this off?" Mammoth asked. He snorted as Psimon joined the circle around the hologram. "The Titans are stronger than they ever were now that that demon kid Metatron joined their team."
"Luckily," Gizmo said, "Meta-snot is weak to cold… which gives me an idea."
"So how many of us are we going to send?"
"Ten," Gizmo said. "one for each person who lives in that tower. We'll be ready for anything they can throw at us."
"Which ten, though?" asked Progeny. "Preferably at least one girl so that I can show off to her."
"It's amazing your talent doesn't creep girls out," Mammoth barked.
"I take it I'm not part of this?" Wilby asked.
Gizmo shook his head. "We need a strong man here to help with the moving in, and Mammoth has invulnerability, unlike you."
"I'm going," Progeny said. "I want a shot at Terra. Maybe I can seduce her over to the bad side."
"Wishful thinking," Psimon remarked.
"Shut up, Psimon. By the way, you're going too," Gizmo said. "As much as I hate to admit it you're the one most qualified among us to defeat Raven. Mammoth, you know how to get under Scalpel's skin. He gets sloppy when he fights you."
"Angel can fight Savior—her razor wings verses his Shimmer is a no contest."
"Baran," Gizmo said, "Never under estimate Savior. Never. He is the kludge munching wad of snot that infiltrated us, remember!"
"Right…"
"But Angel is a good idea. She's coming whether she wants to or not. Kid Wykkid will be good against Robin. Libre and that big stupid mask of his will disarm Gauntlet into doing something monumentally stupid… hopefully. My intelligence" (Psimon snorted at that word, causing Gizmo to pause long enough to glare at him) "indicates that his gauntlet fails when his confidence is weak. So all we have to do is make sure he thinks they are gonna lose."
"I would suggest we send Private Hive as back-up," said Psimon, "And INSTIGATOR can turn that Beast Boy into road kill."
"That still leaves one more member," Mammoth said, counting his fingers to make sure.
Psimon glanced at Gizmo with a wicked smile. "I do have an idea about that, he said."
"Oh, no…" Mammoth knew what was coming, and he didn't like it.
"Shimmer can keep Metatron in check. Transmute the air in his lungs into ice or the blood in his veins to reactor coolant…"
"No!" Baran barked. "Leave Selinda out of this. She isn't ready."
"You always say that," Gizmo complained. "She 'wasn't ready' when the Boogeymen attacked us, she 'wasn't ready' when the Jackal showed up—well she's still alive! For cripes sake," Gizmo flew above Mammoth grabbed his hair, and began shaking his head back and forth, "She punched out Buzz Bomb. Did you ever punch out Buzz Bomb?"
The giant youth reached up a massive hand and swatted Gizmo away. Then he looked down, and finally muttered, "Alright. But if my sister gets hurt, I'm taking it out of your scrawny hide, Mikron."
"I'm NOT MIKRON!" he shouted. "GIZ-MO!"
"Life is good," Noel Collins said with a smirk as Raven removed her lips from his. "I'm so glad to be back in my own universe I might even go easy on Rob for a change." The figure embracing Raven was a tall, fairly well muscled young man in his early twenties. He wore a white pair of jeans and a white leather jacket over a light blue shirt that matched his eyes. The jacket bore a stylized S on the arm. But his most distinguishing physical trait was without a doubt his massive shock of snow-white hair atop his head, defying gravity in a manner that would make a Super Saiyan proud.
"Famous last words," Noel's girlfriend said with a wry smirk. "The day Gauntlet and Savior get along is the day Azarath freezes over."
"Azarath doesn't even have weather," Noel pointed out. Noel, alias Savior, was the first youth to join the Teen Titans since the original five members founded it nearly six years ago. "It can't freeze over."
Raven's wry smile deepened, and Noel shook his head ruefully. This let her know she had made her point. The aforementioned Titan Gauntlet, the seventh youth to take up that mantle, had been assigned to the team by court order after being caught robbing a bank in his home town of Uberton, South Carolina, the city with the highest density metahuman population in the United States.
Not that he was a career criminal, mind. In fact, he had stopped robberies in that very same bank earlier that week. He simply justified his theft as money the bank 'owed' him to fund his war on crime. (Which, translated into the language of Robert Candide, meant buying as much junk food, chewing gum, and caffeinated beverages as he felt he needed to stay alert.)
Noel and Robert famously disputed and fought like an old couple on just about every issue imaginable. Noel was a hardliner, politically conservative, and usually quite the jerk, whereas Robert was carefree, politically oblivious, and even more of a jokester than Beast Boy. On more occasions than Raven or Robin would care to admit, the spats between Noel and Robert had degenerated into physical violence to some degree or another, with Robert usually on the receiving end.
But that, for the moment, was not bothering Noel at all.
After a while of just letting Raven hold him, Noel stepped back and sat in his favorite chair within the Titans Tower ops room, sipping a cup of tea with his girlfriend. Nothing really needed to be said—Noel, who had recently returned from an accidental visit to another universe, had handed a stack of notebooks and several SD cards worth of photos to Robin and told him he was sick of thinking about this other world, and never wanted it to enter his consciousness again. Raven could sense how he felt, he knew, and if she wanted the details, she could just read the report Robin would eventually force Savior to type up.
With that misadventure out of the way, Noel could sit and just be with Raven—his Raven—and enjoy the tea she had made for them.
"You do realize that from our perspective you were only gone five minutes, right?" Raven asked.
Noel nodded. And he didn't care. Life was too good at the moment…
Which, of course, couldn't possibly last in ANY universe.
"BOOOYAH!" Cyborg screamed, as the pneumatic door hissed open and the couple's quite time was brought to an abrupt end. Victor Stone, Beast Boy, and the aforementioned Robert "Gauntlet" Candide strode into the room, all holding the latest handheld system, the immensely popular Gamestation GO. "I just totally whupped all your butts!"
"Only because you got the leader shell," Beast Boy muttered. "That thing is so cheap!"
Gauntlet, however, was a bit less of a sore looser. "Don't complain about it, Gar. Turnabout is fair play in Mario Kart." Gauntlet, the youngest Titan besides Beast Boy, was the embodiment of everything Noel was not. His namesake Gauntlet was a techno-magical artifact developed by an ancient race known as the Old Ones. Whenever he didn't need it, it existed as a small ring permanently bonded to a finger on his right hand. In its active form, it became a metal sheath that covered his entire forearm, and projected a powerful and malleable yellow energy field that could be used for offense and defense.
Otherwise, Gauntlet wore absolutely nothing that identified him has a hero. Not having a secret identity, Robert Candide saw no reason to wear a mask. He has a mess of spikey hair on top of his head, though it was much shorter and less upright than Noel's, and similarly blue eyes. His 'costume' consisted of a white T-Shirt with black sleeves and a big G in the middle, and a pair of blue jeans.
The absolutely nothing included the conspicuos lack of a Titan Communicator from its usual place on his belt loop, which Noel noticed immediately. After what the Brain had pulled with the communicator fiasco, Noel had become hypersensitive to any such potential security hole. Robin hadn't assigned him the position of tactical leader for nothing, after all.
The fact that Noel hadn't realized the tactical error in Robin's communication plan before it could be used against them was a constant thorn in his side.
A thorn that Robert Candide exploited with gleeful, reckless abandon.
"Where is you communicator?" Savior demanded of Gauntlet as soon as he had noticed.
Gauntlet's eyes widened. "Oh no! I must have left it at the game store! What am I going to do!"
"YOU'RE GOING TO RUN, DRIVE, OR SWIM IF YOU HAVE TO, back to the mainland and FIND IT!" Noel barked, jumping out of his seat just to get in Robert's face. "We can't afford another disaster."
"Did someone say disaster?" Tara Markov asked as she entered the room, mostly because she heard Beast Boy. "Don't tell me you've found another timeline where I turn into a statue…"
Terra was of course referencing the fact that the Titans had categorized at least two other realities where Terra had betrayed the Titans to Slade and in the end sacrificed herself to stop a volcano from destroying Jump City.
In this universe, however, Gauntlet had stopped her from leaving and joining Slade, and though his motive (hoping she would be his girlfriend) wasn't exactly selfless, Gauntlet's action ultimately saved the Titans a lot of pain…
And when the great battle known as the Last Wish came around, Terra had proved herself above and beyond anything expected of her, and for a while lost her powers completely as a result.
Gar and Tara embraced briefly, and watched the ruckus.
"I know it must be here somewhere!" Gauntlet said. The panic in his voice, though, was clearly off, even as Gauntlet gave himself a frantic frisking, insisting it had to be in the Tower, that he hadn't removed it in town.
And Savior's chagrin only increased. "Rob," Noel bit out, "you obviously don't have it on you. Get back to the city and FIND IT!"
"Noel," Raven said, closing her book and hovering over near her child… er… boyfriend. Mental slip, she told herself. Honest. "Please calm down. I'm sure Robert hasn't lost the communicator. It probably fell off in the T-Car."
"OH! WAIT!" Robert suddenly blurted, a big, evil smirk on his face. "HERE it is." He reached into his back pocket and pulled it out. "Silly me."
This was of course, the wrong thing to say. "YOU IGNORANT LITTLE…" Savior let out a flurry of insults and curses at Gauntlet that can't be repeated in a T-Rated fic, and reached out to grab Robert's shirt and pull him close for a good chew-out. But his arm was suddenly restrained by black energy. Raven stepped up next to him and pushed his arm down.
"No, Noel," she said, empathically projecting soothing emotions to calm his anger…."Allow me."
"Whu?" Gauntlet blurted, and a split second later he was encased in black energy and hurled across the room into the kitchen sink. "OUCH!" he said. Then he slid down the wall and doubled over, falling off the sink and landing flat on his face. "Ouch again," he muttered to the floor.
"Whoa," Terra said. "That was… unexpected."
Raven shook her head. "He's been a Titan for nearly four years. By now he should know not to mess with Noel like that."
"I swear I was trying to be nicer than I felt like," Savior said, blinking, still surprised by Raven's actions.
"As I said, dear," Raven said, her wry smile returning. "'When Azarath freezes over'."
Atop the roof of the Tower, the scene was quit different. Jinx stood, observed by Starfire, as she flipped, jumped, and half-twisted her with through a flurry of low-energy starbolts, and then landed on her feet perfectly.
"How was I?" she asked.
"Marvelous—it took Robin twice as many tries to get through that pattern without getting hit once.
Jinx glanced up at the toweringly tall Tamaranian princess with a small amount apprehension in her eyes. "Really?"
"Oh, yes, Friend Llarenes," Starfire answered, calling Jinx by her real first name. "Your agility is, as the earth expression goes, 'the top notch'."
Jinx turned and sat down on the roof, pressing her knees against her chest and hugging them. "Starfire?" Jinx asked, then trailed off. "I…"
Koriand'r of Tamaran regarded the former villainess for a moment, and started to understand what was going on… "Jinx… Is it that you fear you aren't cut out for this.. job?"
"All my life I was told I was bad luck. Even now it is hard for me to believe I can do any good for anyone…"
"But, Jinx, remember the battle in Paris? You helped stop the Brotherhood of Evil."
"But was I really acting to fight evil, or was that just to get back at Madam Rouge for betraying me?" Jinx pulled down a lock of her pink hair, which she had untied from its former state, mostly because of its resemblance to demonic horns, and began twisting it around her finger nervously.
"Jinx, I cannot answer that question. Only you can."
"Yeah," a new voice interjected, "That, and hey, if someone like me can be one of the good guys, anyone can." Jinx looked up to see the new figure and flashed a small smile at him. His Titan alias was Scalpel, and as far as looks went, he appeared to be a monster. His skin was a shade of grey a bit lighter than that of Raven's, but his hands and bare feet had metal grafted onto the backs of them.
He was an alien, a member of a race called the Blacktrinians, who had been at war with Tamaran for one hundred years until just a few years ago. He wore a red jacket and red pants, with a purple cape hanging from his shoulders. His 'shirt' was a white armor plate with an odd zigzagging button pattern up the middle. His mouth was full of extremely sharp teeth, and his light-blue hair was covered by a small akubra the same color as his jacket. His eyeballs were black, but had burning blue irises, and attached to his back was a massive staff with a blade on the end, called a glaive.
Jinx had once heard is real Blacktrinian name pronounced, and had given up on ever trying to get it right. So she settled for the English translation: Nigel Hastings.
"Hey…" she said. Nigel, called Scalpel because he was the Titans team doctor, walked forward, his three-digited hands clanging together in a clicking noise that Jinx realized was the closest thing his race could approximate to human clapping. "Scalpel… what's up?"
Scalpel shrugged. "Robin told me Starfire was up here drilling you, and I thought I'd come watch… Or more accurately Robin suggested I do so."
"To keep an eye on me?"
Scalpel sweatdropped. "Well, now that you mention it, Robin didn't give a reason… but knowing him…"
"Thanks for the vote of confidence," Jinx muttered.
"Do not worry," Starfire said. "Robin has trouble trusting anyone."
"He threw me out of the Tower completely for a while after…" Scalpel looked at the ground dejectedly, and glanced at Starfire. Koriand'r knew that he was trying to avoid bringing up the circumstances of his ejection. It had been no fault of his own—Robin and Starfire simply couldn't have children naturally. Tamaranians and humans were not genetically compatible, and even if a child formed, the body of the mother would reject it.
Robin had blamed Scalpel for the death of his child, a death he couldn't have prevented.
Jinx nodded, and got up. "I guess we're done for now…" She didn't want to admit what she really wanted—to go see Cyborg. He was the entire reason she had even agreed to stay at the Tower this weekend. With that demon named after angels away and the android that normally stayed in the basement trying to prepare a new team of Titans in San Francisco of all places, they'd had some extra space…
"If you wish, we can go to the mall of shopping or play the Dance Dance Revolution."
"No thanks, Starfire," Jinx said, walking to the door. "Maybe later."
A generic city set the state for an adversarial battle… Spiked hair fell to the asphalt, following the head it was attached to, even as the missile streaked by and blew up a car in the distance. Robin rolled out of the way of the follow-up spray of bullets and hurled a birdarang at the source, causing the machine gun mounted on his adversary's right arm to misfire and explode.
As fast as he could he jumped to his feet and darted forward, whipping out his bo-staff and smashing the robot's head around in a complete 360 degree. It's single red 'eye' narrowed—meaning at least one weapon had a lock on him. Robin dived out of the way even as a claw exploded from the chassis of the robot and tried to grab and/or impale the Boy Wonder.
But Robin saw his opening, and rolled away. He stood holding is bo defiantly, daring the robot to come at him again. The bot fired its last rocket, which Robin met with a birdarang, destroying the lethal projectile. Then the claw came again, and Robin threw up an explosive disk even as he hit the ground.
He heard, rather than saw, the disk make contact and stick, and smirked as the claw retracted into the robot's chassis…
Half of a second later, a muffled BOOM signaled the end of the battle, as the robot's smoking head fell off its shoulders.
The city around him turned into a light show and melted back into a simple large room—sort of like a holodeck or X-Men danger room—even as Starfire entered from the far end.
Robin picked up the head of the robot—which was quite real, unlike the rest of the exercise—and examined the back of it, and inside. He had to make sure there were no hidden surprises that Cyborg had missed reprogramming it. After all, it was originally built by Slade.
"Tim," Starfire greeted her boyfriend. She had a way with him—she could sense when things were amiss and Robin didn't have to say anything. "What is wrong?"
"Kory," he said, "Slade has been in a coma for nearly three years, and yet we still find his parting gifts. More and more of these 'Omega' Sladebots crawl their way out of the woodwork every month."
"True, but they have not proven especially difficult to defeat."
"They adapt. Every new bot is slightly different, and their deployment has grown less random, less sporadic. It is as if there is something intelligent guiding them."
"Tim, please do not worry yourself with this. Slade is no longer our problem." Starfire pulled Robin close and kissed him on the forehead, then on the mouth.
Robin pulled away with a sigh, then dropped the head on the pile of junk the rest of the robot had become. "I hope you're right, Kory."
As Robin walked toward the exit. "Tim, is it true that you wanted Scalpel to 'keep the eye' on Jinx?
Tim froze, stiffened and glanced back over his shoulder. He didn't want to talk about this. Seriously, why should he trust a former villain? So what she said she was reformed, that she had given up crime. So what if Kid Flash vouched for her? And Cyborg. Robin had seen far too many villains fake reform in Gotham to every be able to fully trust a former criminal, from Cobblepot to Poison Ivy, from Harvey Dent to Harley Quinn. It was ingrained in his psyche, the growing fear that reform was simply impossible.
He didn't answer verbally, but he knew, unfortunately, that his body language was all the answer Starfire needed.
Later that afternoon, just after lunch, Robin and Raven were busying doing the dishes (thought it was actually Gar and Rob's day to do them, they were as they put it, 'too busy'… which meant absorbed in a prolonged game of Ultimate Destructor) while most of the rest of the Titans sat around waiting for something to happen.
"Gar!" Terra insisted. "We've been planning to see Wicked Scary IV for weeks. Put that game down and come on!"
"Sorry, can't right now! If I leave they might get our flag and turn the tide."
Gauntlet interjected, "He'll give you a rain check, honest."
Tara Markov sighed deeply. "Gar, if you don't come on right now—I'll fill your moped's engine with dirt… or something."
"Mopeds run on battery power," Beast Boy reminded her without even glancing away from the screen.
Tara sweatdropped.
"Who the heck is this guy?" Gauntlet asked. "This 'RagNaRok0201'… whoever he is, he's good. I bet he's hacking."
Beast Boy shook his head. "If anyone is hacking it's this 'YinwithoutYang057'… Bullets seem to bounce right off of him! It's like he's made of rubber!"
"In that case you can't win," Terra said. "So it's hopeless. That means we should go to the movie. Which starts in TEN MINUTES."
"We're almost done," Garfield insisted.
"Besides, as long as Chaltab is our author, we have a chance!" Gauntlet added.
CRASH!
Then from across the room, a new female voice commented. "Hey, Tara! If you're so eager for something to do, why not go fix the fourth wall!"
"Shut it, Tubby!" Tara shot back, addressing Sophie Matthews. Sophie had been an undertaker for years, and had actually buried several people involved with the Titans in one way or another. After Robin had kicked Scalpel out of the Tower, Sophie had taken him in. Then, when Scalpel returned shortly after Sophie had been made homeless (by her own brother, no less), he had invited her to stay at the Tower, and Sophie and Nigel Hastings had gradually fallen in love. An odd couple to say the least.
For whatever reason, however, Tara hated Sophie with the white-hot intensity of 1000 suns, and rubbed in the fact that Sophie was hardly a little person incessantly.
"I'll get it," Scalpel—who was sitting with Sophie—commented, not wanting yet another fight to break out between the girls. Dragging a tub of mortar out of the kitchen cabinet, Scalpel got to work on repairing the fourth wall…
And no sooner had he re-laid the first brick that the alarm in the tower started blaring off.
The massive flat screen TV in ops slide out of its hiding place in the ceiling and displayed a map of Jump City, with a flashing beacon indicating a crime scene.
"Looks like Jump City National," Savior observed. "Who would be crazy enough to try there?"
Robin put the plate he was washing down and watched as the screen image changed to show the front of the bank. The police had cordoned off the area, but there were hostages inside. Robin goggled when he saw who was standing at the door.
"INSTIGATOR and Private Hive," he muttered.
"That means there is a list of about thirty different villains we could be dealing with in there," Savior said, "and all of them have a grudge against me."
Quiet enough for only Robin to hear, Raven whispered, "Who doesn't have a grudge against you, dear?"
Robin had to admit it was both funny and true, but grudge or no grudge they had to have Savior with them in a fight that could potentially be so big.
Cyborg, on the other hand, had some less tactical immediate concerns. "Jinx, hon… are you sure you're up to this? You can stay here if you want to…"
Jinx shook her head sharply, her hair again tied up to resemble horns for practicality's sake. "I'm going. If they think the fact I used to be their de facto leader is some sort of protection, they're wrong. They were probably the worst subordinates ever anyway."
Cyborg looked her in the eyes and saw that she wasn't going to budge on this issue. "Well, then, I guess there is only one thing left to be said…"
Robin said it. "TITANS, GO!"
The final score appeared on the screen, and Gauntlet and Beast Boy were in tears.
"This is totally NOT FAIR!" Beast Boy blurted. "How could we lose?"
"Chaltab," sobbed Gauntlet, "Why have you betrayed us! You're supposed to be the fair one!"
Suddenly, white strands of energy called the Shimmer shot in from the other room, grabbed both Gauntlet and Beast Boy by the necks, and jerked them out of their seats. "We're GOING," Savior barked at them, using his metahuman talent to drag them away into battle with the forces of evil…
"Sergeant Gizmo!" Private Hive shouted as he ran from the door to the middle of the bank's first story atrium. "INSTIGATOR says he has detected incoming Titans. What are your orders, sir?"
Gizmo sweatdropped as he tried to recall the proper military lingo. "Fall back to the inside, and get ready for a fight!" he said at last. "Crud munching Titans. I knew they couldn't just leave us alone."
"Did you really expect them too?" Progeny asked, stepping up beside Gizmo.
Gizmo ordered Private Hive to go warn the others, then began muttering something. He asked Progeny for a progress report.
"Mammoth and Libre have loaded nearly half the contents of the vault into Psimon's little pocket dimension, so I guess it's going alright—"
"Guess again!"
Gasping, Arturo and Mikron whirled around towards the source of Cyborg's voice in time to see INSTIGATOR fill their vision before slamming into them and knocking them backwards across the teller's counter and into the wall next to the vault door.
INSTIGATOR assumed his ball form and rolled out of the corner, crushing the teller counter, then deploying in front of his attackers.
"Arturo," Gizmo whispered, "stay down. Wait for my signal." Gizmo deployed his backpack's spider legs and jumped out in front of the counter to face his foes… only to gasp when he saw the line up: Robin, Starfire, Cyborg, Beast Boy, Raven, Savior, Gauntlet, Scalpel, Terra, and…
Metatron, the persistently erstwhile tenth Titan was nowhere to be seen, but instead…
"Jinx! You traitor!" Gizmo screamed.
"I told you it was nothing personal," she said. "I just realized what losers you are—what losers we all were. Brother Blood, the Brotherhood, it doesn't matter. We were always doing someone else's bidding. You're still with Brother Blood…?"
"So, what's it to you, turncoat?"
The three Hive members, Gizmo, INSTIGATOR, and Private Hive, were quickly joined by Mammoth and Libre.
"You had to go and become a law-abiding do-gooder," Mammoth grumbled.
Libre, just nodded his assent.
"Hey, guys, if it hasn't occurred to you, you're out numbered two to one. So why don't you just give up and make this easy on yourselves," Beast Boy said, turning into a gorilla.
Gauntlet slid over and handed him a pamphlet from his back pocket, the cover of which read Ten Really Good Reasons Not To Underestimate Supervillains.
"You kludge-brains think we're still the Hive Five, don't you? We're not! We're the Hive Five—TIMES TWO!"
As Gizmo said these words, shadows erupted from the ground, and transformed into Kid Wykkid. Progeny jumped over the teller counter and assumed a battle position. Psimon exited the vault, his hands and eyes glowing, even as Angel swooped down from the high ceiling of the bank's massive atrium. And a nearby large globe melted into liquid… and the elemental-transmutation metahuman Shimmer, Mammoth's sister, walked out of it…
"I guess the odds are more even than I thought.. heh.." Gar gulped.
"I don't care if we're out numbered fifty-to-one," Savior said. "We're taking them down. Titans, you know all their powers, you know whom you're good against and who you're not. Choose your opponents wisely."
At the same time Savior was speaking, Gizmo silently cursed the fact he had mostly brought Shimmer in order to transmute up some ice to disable Metatron—only to find him replaced by Jinx!
Robin stepped forward. "You know the drill. You're all under arrest. And if you resist, we're going to thrash you until the resistance is thrashed out of you."
Gizmo growled, but decided that if anything, Jinx's presence was a blessing. After all, even if she had no overt weaknesses, she wasn't as strong as Metatron.
"HIVE, ATTACK!" he shouted.
Robin shook his head. "They never learn. Titans, TOGETHER!"
Both sides charged… And both were completely oblivious… to a danger that lurked…
In a pie.
Hehehehe-hehehe!
Chaltab Presents
In
conjunction with Legend Maker
A Teen Titan Legends Story…
MATERNAL INSTINCTS
For the convenience of those who aren't regular Legendsverse readers and/or aren't familiar with the Hive Members:
Dramatis Personae
Teen Titans
Robin. (Tim Drake) The Boy Wonder, Batman's former apprentice
Starfire. (Kory Anders) Princess of Tamaran, heart of the team.
Cyborg. (Victor Stone )Half man, half machine, the gung-ho strong man.
Beast Boy. (Garfield Logan) Animal changeling, comic relief.
Raven. (Rachel Roth) Daughter of Trigon, Empathic sorceress.
Savior. (Noel Collins) Team jerk, master tactician.
Gauntlet. (Robert Candide) Artifact welder, team goof-off.
Scalpel. (Nigicalnack Hastionfarlock) Blacktrinian blade master, team doctor.
Terra. (Tara Markov) Geokinetic, team beeyotch.
Jinx. (Llarenes Morrath) Bad luck charmstress, former villain.
Hive 5x2Mammoth. (Baran Flinders) Muscle-bound giant, team strong arm.
Gizmo. (Mikron O'Jeneus) Midget genius, team techno-wizard.
Shimmer. (Selinda Flinders) Elemental transmuting sister of Mammoth.
Angel. (Angela Dark) Winged villainess.
Private HIVE. (Leonard) Soldier on the side of Crime.
Psimon. (Simon Jones) Dark psychotic telepath.
INSTIGATOR. Monstrous cyborg, living wrecking ball.
Libre. (Carlos Cortez) Masked wrestler of DOOM.
Kid Wykkid. (Donavon Merseric) Shadow master, silent assassin.
Progeny. (Arturo Nicanor) Body dissembler, ladies' man.
Progeny, Rhinoceros Beetle, owned by Legend Maker. Metatron owned by Prisionero. Viridian owned by Jedi-And. Teen Titans owned by DC Comics.