(A/N: Warning: vivid description of mild gore at some point. Nothing super bloody, but it could be a possible trigger. It does take some inspiration from the Xenocites in "Ben 10" and even the supposed "signs" of being possessed by a demon or even the Devil. People familiar with the history of the Salem Witch Trials will probably get it. It will be something that gets brought up a bit as this progresses. It won't be said in every chapter, but it will be mentioned or referenced every once in a while.
As I said at the end of chapter 2, the identity of the Titans "guest" and the shadowy figure will be revealed at some point. And this chapter will be the start of a friendship between both teams.)
X~X~X-O-v-O-X~X~X
They left the recycling plant and walked to the alley where the android was last seen. The walk was silent, not even the sound of a car driving could be heard, despite the fact that this was a city.
Wanting to break this awkward silence, Ben decided to ask Starfire something that he had just learned about from Kevin. He just hoped that it wasn't something too personal or weird to ask someone you just met less than five minutes earlier.
"Hey, Starfire, right?" he asked.
"Yes, is something the matter?" she asked curiously.
"Well, Kevin just told me that he thought you were a Tamaranian," he started awkwardly. "And the Ultimatrix doesn't seem interested in your DNA, so that probably means that a sample of your species' is already in there somewhere."
She looked at him oddly, obviously not really knowing where he was going with this. Though, truthfully, she almost felt faltered that he could have a Tamaranian transformation.
He saw the look on her face and laughed nervously, "Sorry, you must think I'm some kind of weirdo."
"No, no, it is alright," she reassured. "I must admit it is quite an honor to have your species recognized for their abilities and not because of how they look."
While they were having their conversation, Gwen and Raven were having one of their own. Theirs mostly consisted of topics about magic.
"What did you mean when you asked if I was from Ledgerdomain?" Raven asked.
"Ledgerdomain is where all known magic in the universe originates from," Gwen explained. "You see, it's the place where mana comes from. Mana is the energy present in all living things."
"I'm not from Ledgerdomain, I was born in a place called Azarath," she told her. "I've been practicing magic since the day I was born and I've never heard of that place. Not even in any of my spellbooks."
"I could teach you about it if you want or we could practice our spells together," she offered.
She gave her a small smile, "I'd like that."
"Hey," Robin started grimly, getting everyone's attention, "we're here."
Ben and his friends looked down it and saw large cracks in the sides of the buildings and fresh potholes that looked to have been made by large fists. A look down and another off to the side revealed huge pools of dried vomitus. A closer look showed drops of a blue fluid that looked identical to dried blood. It was obvious that this was the sight of more than just a battle.
The Titans didn't need to look down the alley to know that this was the right place. Frankly, they hoped that would never have to come back to it for a long time; if not a lifetime.
Gwen used her powers to know what happened next and where it went afterwards. She wasn't exactly sure what to expect, but what she found was something she definitely didn't expect to discover.
She turned to the Titans with her arms crossed and had a look on her face that could only be paralleled to someone accusing or suspecting another. "Robin, is there something you forgot to tell us?" she asked in a tone that mirrored her face.
Instead of accusing her of accusing them of lying to them, they looked away from her gaze. None of them could make eye contact with her or her friends.
"Gwen, what are you talking about?" Ben asked. "Are you saying that they've been lying to us?"
"If that's the case," Kevin started, absorbing the brick exterior of the building nearest to him, "they have a serious pounding coming their way."
"No, we'd never lie to you guys," Robin assured them, "but there are some details that, and I think I speak for all of us, we felt had to be... omitted from everyone."
"It is something we all wish to forget, though we cannot," Starfire voiced, almost as a confession.
"What did you find, Gwen?" her cousin questioned.
"Well, the battle did happen here, but it didn't continue at another location," she told him.
"You mean it got away?" her boyfriend asked, almost gritting his teeth.
"Sort of," she answered, "the five of them fought it for a little while, then a sixth person walks into it, then... nothing. The sixth person was just walking by, then gets sick and collapses."
"Care to explain?" Kevin questioned expectantly.
Before they could say anything, Ben was already on the case, "They won't have to."
He slammed his palm onto the Ultimatrix and transformed into another alien. The light faded and revealed a black and golden metal alien with a black face, green eyes, and a green plate with lighter green gears on his abdomen.
"Clockwork!" he exclaimed in a thick German accent.
"A Chronosapien," Starfire gasped.
"Another alien?!" Beast Boy exclaimed. "Dude, how many more surprises do you have in that thing?!"
"I'll tell you later, but now we have to get to the bottom of this," he stated.
As much as they would like to argue with him, he had a point and they needed to know. This was going to be stomach-wrenching for everyone.
The key on top of his head started turning and their surroundings turned green as time flew back. Most of the activity in the area since the Titans had been here last was just alley cats catching and eating mice.
The key turned faster and time went back quicker, it was like watching a montage. A rather dull and boring one, but a montage nonetheless.
It kept going like this until Robin uttered, "Stop, this is it."
The key stopped momentarily then started slowly turning in the opposite direction. It was slow enough that it was almost as if they were watching it first hand when it happened and not just viewing it. It showed that the fight originally began in the street after the battle in the plant.
They watched as four of the Titans fought the android, who had absorbed the properties of something molten, possibly melted metal from the recycling plant. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure that this would be a difficult battle even if all five of them were present.
Cyborg fires his sonic cannon at it, but it's able to counter it with an attack similar to that of a flamethrower from its palms. It shot a fireball at him, hitting him square in the chest and causing him to fly up the street, damaging the pavement in the process.
Robin gritted his teeth and threw several disks at it. One of the disks exploded, causing the others to be destroyed due to being in close proximity when the blast occurred. Inside those disks was liquid nitrogen, which splattered all over their molten enemy. The liquid nitrogen caused the melted metal to solidify, but not enough because it was still able to move, just much slower now.
Before it could cause anymore destruction, water suddenly shot at it from behind. The water was coming from Beast Boy, who had returned to his team and was transformed into an elephant; a broken fire hydrant next to where he stood.
It turned to face him and raised its hands to protect itself. It tried to approach him, but the water coming from his trunk slowed it down greatly. Before long it was completely hardened and stiff.
Starfire shot down powerful rays of starbolts onto it until a thick dust cloud made visibility of it zero. Raven used her psionic powers to lift two abandoned cars and bring them down onto the eye of the dirt storm. The gas lines in the two cars ignited as soon as she brought them down and caused the one spot in the street to set aflame.
Cyborg got up and rejoined his team to see the blaze burn. "Well, that's it."
"Yeah, that was a lot easier than I thought it would be," Beast Boy commented after turning back into his normal form.
"Too easy," Robin stated, starting to grow suspicious.
He was right to be that way. Earlier they couldn't defeat it even with the help of Beast Boy, so why was this instance different?
Only, it wasn't defeated. It came out of the fiery wreckage looking miraculously undamaged. It was no longer in the state it was in before, it was back in its normal form. Just because it was no longer hardened metal doesn't mean it wasn't dangerous.
Gritting his teeth, Cyborg ran towards it, leaped up and fired his sonic cannon at it. The attack was strong enough to send it flying up the alley.
"We can't let it get away from us again!" Robin commanded.
They ran down the alley to find it standing with its hand on the brick wall of the buildings. They all watched as it acquired a scheme exactly like the building wall.
Just as they thought that the fight was about to end. This thing had already taken a lot of them and doesn't seem ready to stop anytime soon.
Beast Boy turned into a jaguar and charged it, but it was easily able to fling him into one of the buildings. But how? How does it still have so much power after so much fighting? The Titans may not be the most powerful heroes in the country, or even the state, but they are not usually defeated so easily.
Raven's hands radiated her dark powers and she used them to lift a close by sun-beaten dumpster and brought it down onto it in an attempt to immobilize and capture it. This attempt was in vain, however, as it was able to smack it away with ease.
Cyborg ran at top speed and pounced it, much like a lion would do to a gazelle. He was able to knock it to the ground and pin it down by using his own body mass to his advantage.
He tried to punch it, but it kept evading the attack by moving its head and shifting its weight. He wasn't the only one who knew how to use their weight to their advantage. Each missed punch left a fist-sized, pothole-like indentation in the aged asphalt.
It moved its legs underneath him and kicked him off to the side. He slammed right into the wall, cracking it and almost knocking him out.
As it stood up off the ground Starfire fired her starbolts at it from behind. The blasts caused its back to crack like the fragile earth after an earthquake.
It turned in her direction and placed a hand on a nearby trash bin, absorbing the thin yet durable metal. She shot down another starbolt, but it bounced off of the strong, smooth surface and redirected right back at her with enough power to make her fall.
It relieved itself of its armor and made a run for it. It was time for it to complete the mission it was sent to accomplish on this world. Hopefully, it wasn't too late and hopefully it still had the time it needed to find the person it was sent to find.
Robin, believing it was off to cause more destruction and unaware of what it was trying to do, fired his grapple at it. The long rope wrapped itself around it like a magnetic attraction. The rope wrapped around its entire body, including its legs, and caused it to fall to the ground.
It stared at them as they discussed something, most likely what to do with it, and it struggled to break free. It turned its gaze to the empty and damaged street and saw an opportunity.
Although it was not obvious through the numerous battles it went through with the Titans, it had lost much of its power. It needed a way to rest and recharge its energy. In a city this would not be difficult, but it was given the order to attack anyone and anything that gets too close - the reason why it attacked them out of nowhere - and that would most surely draw some unwanted attention.
It would have no other choice but to improvise. And it saw an opportunity to recover its lost energy when a person in dark clothing walked by.
They turned their head slightly to peer down the alley when something caught their eye. They quickly looked away when they saw the Titans and started to walk faster, as if to get as far away from them as quickly as possible, but it wouldn't allow them to.
It broke free from the ropes and grabbed the person by the neck, bringing them close to it as they were hoisted up. Although it wasn't visible, the person's face was frozen with fear as they tried to get away, but it was simply too strong, even in its weakened state.
"Let him go!" Robin demanded, twirling his bo staff and taking out a couple of birdarangs from his utility belt.
It didn't listen to him, however, and did something nobody would have ever expected. It pried open its captive's mouth and forced its hand down his throat! They watched in absolute disgust and shock as its hand was followed by its entire arm and, before long, its entire body!
The unknown person was set down onto the ground and to his knees as he swallowed it. As soon as the last of it was down his throat, he met the surprised looks on the Titans' faces with a traumatized one.
He held onto his stomach and vomited onto the ground. Drops of an unknown fluid dripped from his face next to the vomitus. He collapsed to the side and trembled as more of his stomach contents poured out of his mouth.
They approached him with caution, not knowing what it could have done to him, to see who he is. Using his staff as a precaution, Robin pushed back the hood of his dark jacket to reveal his face.
Clockwork turned back into Ben and everything went back to normal. The three of them exchanged glances, now understanding why they were so reluctant to say anything about the android.
"How is something like that even possible?" Ben asked, almost shouting.
"I guess our Highbreed friend has some explaining to do," Kevin stated, cracking his knuckles.
"Do you know who the person is and where he is?" Gwen asked.
"Unfortunately, yes to both questions," Beast Boy answered grimly.
"Well, don't pause for suspense, who is he?" Kevin questioned impatiently.
"His name is XL Terrestrial, a freelance villain with a troubled past," Robin told them. "We knew right away that this case was high profile, so we took him with us back to Titans Tower, our headquarters."
"What's his condition?" Gwen questioned.
"He was in a coma for the first couple of days, since then his condition has been up and down these past couple of weeks," Cyborg informed.
The unknown person from the recycling plant had seen the entire story when shown by Clockwork. He bore a slight look of content behind his mask when it was over and saw that the person he was looking for was alive.
His expression then switched to a more determined and focused one. He pushed a couple of buttons on a device on his wrist and left. He could have stayed and dealt with them himself, but he had places to go and someone to see.
They were about to finish their conversation when a red laser beam was suddenly shot at them! They looked in the direction of the laser and saw twenty to thirty ninja-like soldiers.
"Friends of yours?" Ben questioned, activating the Ultimatrix.
"They're robot soldiers," Robin informed.
"Robots? Oh, man, this is going to be fun," Kevin smirked as he absorbed the material of a downspout drain. He was covered in a white painted metal armor. He morphed his arms and hands into lance-like blades and started slashing them.
Ben gave a smirk of his own, "And I have the perfect alien to deal with these guys!"
He pressed down on the face and was enveloped in the green light as he transformed. He turned into a short, white alien whose body appeared to be some kind of containment suit.
"Echo Echo!" he exclaimed, then groaned, "Oh, man! I wanted Upgrade. I can still make this work."
He made clones of himself and they started to take out the robots with their sonic screams. One of the robots they took out just happened to be near Starfire and Raven, who covered their ears as they made their attack.
"I had forgotten how loud Sonorosians can be," Starfire commented.
"They're louder than Beast Boy," she remarked in a deadpan tone.
Gwen smashed a few of them to pieces with her mana. Perhaps Kevin and her cousin Sunny were right, she mused, this was kind of fun.
It only took a few minutes for all of them to crush all the robots into tiny pieces. Just as they thought it was all over, more of them suddenly showed up out of thin air.
"Oh, come on!" an Echo Echo grumbled.
"This is getting annoying," another finished in the same way.
Then, he got an idea for how to deal with them. "Get them into a circle," one of them commanded. "I have an idea."
They were able to accomplish just that and he duplicated himself again. All of the Echo Echoes surrounded the robots and thus trapping them.
"Cover your ears!" one of them strongly urged.
"Do as he says!" Kevin shouted, he and Gwen already having covered their ears. All five of them did the same at their recommendation and his behest.
"Sonic Chamber!" an Echo Echo ordered.
They all let out a sonic scream and concentrated the sound waves directly onto the robots. It wasn't long before they were nothing more than bits of metal.
All of the duplicates came together and formed one Echo Echo. He touched the Ultimatrix symbol on his chest and turned back into Ben.
"Looks like that's the last of them," he stated.
"Question is: why did they attack us in the first place?" Gwen asked.
"What do you guys know about 'em?" Kevin asked the Titans.
"Usually when we fight these robots, it means that our old foe Slade can't be too far away," Robin responded.
"The guy's been trying to kill us for years," Beast Boy shrugged.
Then, the spiky-haired leader suddenly realized something, "If the robot commandos already knew where we were, then that means that Slade knows too!"
"Yeah, so?" Ben questioned.
"It means that he had a reason to know and might be searching for something," he stated.
"So he sent his robots as a distraction!" Kevin inferred from past experience.
Gwen quickly used her powers to know if someone really was there previously while they were there too. "Guys, someone was here and left in a hurry," she informed, her eyes widening.
Putting the pieces together, Robin commanded, "We need to get back to the Tower!"
Starfire grabbed onto Cyborg and lifted him as she flew away. Beast Boy morphed into a pterodactyl and Robin grabbed onto his ankles as he flew after them.
Raven stayed behind for a brief second to tell them, "Follow us," before she took off after her team.
Ben glanced at his friends, "You heard her."
They immediately went back to Kevin's car at the recycling plant and got inside. He drove back to the Rust Bucket and they followed them to their headquarters.
They flew across town and over the Pacific Ocean to an island just off the coast with a huge 'T' shaped tower. They landed on a landing platform on the roof. There Robin was already waiting for them with the door leading into the Tower open.
He greeted them as they walked out of the hatch, "Nice to see you got here alright."
Ben smiled with a slight shrug, "Look for the front side of the 'T' shaped tower."
He turned and gestures for them to follow, "Follow me, I'll show you where we have him."
They followed him inside the Tower and he led them to the room where they kept him in. The entire walk there was full of an awkward silence.
This was broken only by Kevin, "Nice place you got here."
He finally stopped in front of a room where the rest of his was, "This is it."
He opened the door and they all walked inside. Immediately, the three of them noticed the containment quarter that took up most of the room.
"You keep him in quarantine?" Gwen questioned, the anger rising in her voice was clearly audible.
"It's for our safety and his," Robin replied.
They walked up to the glass panel and peered inside. Inside, they saw XL Terrestrial laying on the floor, fresh vomitus was all over the floor along with papers strewn all around him.
"We have to get inside! I don't think he's conscious!" Ben shouted.
Before he could turn into one of his destructive or wraith aliens, Robin held up a remote and pressed a button. It opened a hidden door in the glass and they all rushed inside.
Gwen knelt down and used her powers to check his condition. "He's conscious, but just barely," she started.
"And he's fading quickly," Raven finished, after using her powers as well.
Cyborg lifted him up, "I'll take him to the infirmary."
He left the room and was followed by Beast Boy, Raven, and Kevin. Robin, Ben, Gwen, and Starfire stayed behind.
Robin picked up several of the papers on the floor and began to look through them. On the papers themselves were scratchy drawings. A broken pencil was on top of a paper, which he picked up and examined it.
On it was a drawing of four stick figures surrounding a fifth stick figure in the middle of a rectangle. The four figures had characteristics that resembled features that his friends had and the figure in the rectangle had spiky hair, just like him. The outside figures looked angry yet tears were falling down their circular faces like rain drops.
He put all the pieces together and realized that this was a paced drawing of a funeral. Not just any funeral though, his funeral.
Starfire noticed an angered and calculated look on her boyfriend's face, "Robin, what ails you?"
"This," he showed them the crude drawing.
Ben looked at it, but had no idea what it was exactly, "Okay, I'll bite, what is it?"
"A funeral. My funeral," he answered grimly.
"S-So, it's a threat?" he asked, his voice shaky. "He's threatening you?"
Gwen closed her eyes and concentrated her powers on the paper and the drawing. "It's not a threat, it's more like a confession."
"A confession?" Starfire repeated.
She nodded, "While he was drawing this he was under a lot of stress and in a lot of overwhelming pain, but also guilt. At that moment, he wanted us to know something in case he loses consciousness and never wakes up."
While she was explaining it to them, Ben thought he heard instruments and someone shouting. He found the source: a dark red music player and black headphones.
The headphones acted as speakers as the final lyrics of the song "The Trooper" by Iron Maiden echoed eerily throughout the room.
"And as I lay there gazing at the sky
My body's numb and my throat is dry.
And as I lay forgotten and alone
Without a tear I draw my parting groan."
X~X~X-O-v-O-X~X~X
(A/N: Oh, man! I'm not gonna lie this took a lot out of me! But, hey, I got it done! And I'm proud of it. :)
Now, I can already hear you guys shouting, "XL Terrestrial?! WTF?!" You know what? There are just some things you have to trust me on. There is a reason for all this and it pretty much explains why the descriptions of his people and planet are so vague.
Reinrassig and Slade will appear very soon and everything will be cleared up. Again, you guys just have to trust me.
I recently put up a poll for my new story series. There aren't a lot of choices, but you can still check it out if you want.
I'm also currently working on a story involving the species of XLR8 and Fasttrack. It's pretty much a head cannon story if anything else.)