Author: Nazran

Shattered: Act II

Chapter I

§Oo–.–oO§

"Come now Daniel, you must see this fuss is pointless." The voice was smirking in his ear, smug and sweet, dripping arrogant honey all over the fancy shoes of the owner.

The teen struggled against his restraints, muscles straining against the hard metal valiantly with his enhanced strength. He glared at the man across from him with all of the hatred that boiled within his considerable reserve of it. The Halfa could not offer retort against the monster that had dogged his steps these past years. His restraints were complete and fully impregnable as far as he could tell; a thick and heavy metal device was strapped to his face, covering his mouth and hooking beneath his chin and over his nose with green lenses covering his eyes, the straps arching back over his head; even heavier shackles, if they could be called such, covered his arms from fingertip to elbow, pinning them together and forcing his fists, closed about pillars within; the arm restraint was raised up over his head and connected to a bolt in the wall of the cell; his feet were similarly locked to the floor and bands crossed over his thighs and torso at regular intervals.

"You cannot escape. This facility was constructed to house you comfortably for an extended period of time. Be wise boy, do not continue to make your life difficult here or it will end prematurely." Vlad Masters in his human form, all slick suit and grey-white oiled hair, turned and strode from the confined cell. The man turned just before he slipped through the doorway that was usually blocked with an impossibly thick door, "Now, they will return shortly. Do not struggle and perhaps anaesthetic will be given to you."

Danny was left in darkness, the door slamming shut with a finality that weighed heavily on his heart. Never before had Plasmius been so undeniably evil, so vicious and brutal in his execution of his mad obsessive plans. His pain was constant, whoever Plasmius had working with him was working with ghost technology that burned his insides, even through the application of his cryoplasm. They'd done things to him though he was unsure what exactly, he was weaker than he should have been and his healing was slower than it usually was. He could not revert to human. After a time he fell limp, retreating into his mind.

Vlad should have been stranded somewhere in outer space, millions of miles from the earth. It should have taken him years to return. But the man was here and had facilities and technology beyond anything Danny had seen. It had drawn him into the Ghost Zone and sapped his power, left him weak and helpless. And the labs, Danny shivered. They were experimenting on ghosts for some reason, he'd seen feral ghosts from the zone vaguely during the times they'd transported him. They were experimenting on him.

Danny's eyes opened, his head limp and staring at the white floor of alloy everything green through the device clamped around his head. How long had passed? How were the titans? How was Raven? She had defeated her father, Danny knew that she must have. He could feel the harmony returned to the earth through the emanations of the Ghost Zone as the two dimensions were intricately connected. He wondered if they had survived the encounter as a whole. Trigon had pushed the Titans to the very limits, had nearly killed them in his casual dismissal of their powers. The team had held through the trial, had not given up. He in turn would not.

The door thudded open and three figures, clad in white suits that separated them from the atmosphere of the Zone entered. Danny's head lifted and he glared at them with his ghostly eyes. The figures saw the flicker of green light in the orbs through the mask and one snapped forward with a rod he held in two hands. Danny's screams were muffled by the contraption covering his mouth as his body convulsed with the surge of energy that tore at his molecules. When the blast let up, his body hung limp with thin streams of smoke drifting off the boy's hair. They released the lock on his arms and the shackle swung down heavily, clanging into the floor and pulling him down to his knees. The other two hoisted the incapacitated boy's body up and dropped it onto a metal slab with metal eyes for restraining him. Danny offered no resistance, his vision flickering in and out of darkness and the constant ache of his muscle and bone overriding his awareness.

§Oo–.–oO§

Dick Grayson, the impeccably trained protégé of one of the greatest heroes on the planet, stood on the top of the building in his city, much like he had once perched on gargoyles in the more gothic construction of Gotham, on the other side of the country. From behind the black mask that was carefully pressed about his eyes he watched the bustling night life of Jump City, the myriad coloured lights winking in and out far below him. Weeks had passed since the lights had been dead grey stone and the team had been reduced to the edge of death. His face and gouged body had healed, helped along the way by the power of Raven's healing. His nose was straight and dignified once more.

Clad, he was, in a different armor. The battle with Trigon had reduced much of his other outfit to tattered and broken pieces. He'd been forced to requisition new parts and put a different suit, only partially through construction, on in the meantime. It lacked his colours, the one remnant he kept with him from his training and instead was still solely black. It was a poor substitute but the only choice he had currently. Robin sighed and sat down on the edge of the building, allowing himself to relax from his vigil and kicked his feet out from the wall in the high heavy boots he wore.

The physical injuries of Trigon's take over had faded from the team; his nose and wounds sealed up with nary a scar to show for it, Star's scuffs had faded, Cyborg's arm replaced with a spare he had had and Beast Boy having done his own healing. The psychological scars had yet to fade though. He could see it in his team, the hollowness of their eyes and the sag of their shoulders. Cyborg had been locked away in his room working on something. He wouldn't say what, only coming out for meals and the newest requisition orders for advanced cybernetics from S.T.A.R. Labs. Star had been forlorn, mourning the loss of both Phantom and Danny in her overly compassionate manner. She had been quiet, performing Tamaranean mourning rituals at noon each day, following the edicts of her people. BB had been training, working himself to the bone. He had felt inadequate, Robin supposed, faced with his own limitations in the battle against his clone and the near death they had all experienced. Robin himself felt the twinge of doubt in his abilities. His clone had soundly beaten him down, reduced him to a novice in martial skill with ease.

And Raven. Well Raven had seemed to most normal of the team after the invasion of Trigon. She had emerged from her room the following morning, her hair shortened to her shoulders again and the dark robe back in lieu of the newer stark white. She had made a cup of tea, silent and unfazed, and gone to the roof to watch the sun rise. Robin had wondered, perhaps if it had been a sign of respect for Danny. The other boy had vanished without a trace. Phantom's appearance had been just as sudden and Robin had been puzzling over that since the incident. Raven hadn't spoken in all the time since her magic returned to her, not a word, and it was unsettling. It was the bigger priority. Robin had to heal the rifts that had been carved into the Titans by Trigon's minions and the near death of the world. It was his duty as the leader of the team, but where to begin?

He looked into the night sky, only a bare glance on a whim. His sharp eyes, trained to pick details up from anything, caught a glint. It wasn't characteristic of a commercial plane, flying so low as it was, and certainly not of an orbiting object. A UAV? Something reconnaissance based though how big Robin couldn't begin to guess at this range. His hand snapped to spare belt he had, the only one now on his person, and withdrew his viewfinder device. The powerful optics within the device allowed him to zoom in on the distant object, engaging FLIR to pick out the shape and figure out what exactly it was.

The eighteen year old frowned in consternation, "What?" he breathed.

A conical shape detached from the high flying vehicle and angled toward Robin on the rooftop. Bursts of light flashed before his eyes as the engines on the incoming device adjusted its course. The device was black in the visible spectrum, neatly vanishing against the backdrop of the sky. Robin wouldn't have seen anything except the course adjustment thrusters but for his FLIR device. It angled toward him and parachutes deployed, fluttering and snapping into bloom with air. The flat bottom of the cone, coffin like in shape as the whole thing was, touched down and braces folded down into the roof to support it. Along twin seams that crossed diagonally on the side facing Robin panels folded out. It appeared as a bat, wings splayed before him and the body reaching down to the rooftop, then. Within were set many packages in composite black crates of different sizes.

A screen flickered to life at the top of the case's interior space. Robin, to aid in the replacement of your suit. Your team has done well, the League expects a report in the next few days. That is all. The text scrolled across the screen in white block lettering.

Robin stared a moment, "Batman."

§Oo–.–oO§

"Azarath Metrion Zinthos." She meditated, intoning her spell with careful calm. Her mind reached out across the cosmos, scouring the world over and the solar system she found herself in.

Raven floated over the center of a traced circle in her room, the magical lines of the circle glowing in a mix of bright colour. Runes pulsated in the rhythm of her low voice as she reached. In the third eye of her mind she held the image that was Danny to her. The last sight she had was the sad smile on the pale face and the bright blue eyes behind long black hair. And it had disintegrated in front of her. The stubborn nonchalant way in which he had dismissed entering an atmosphere in a capsule that certainly wasn't designed for it. The friendly smile he had given her when she'd been trapped by fear. His reverence for the glory of the setting sun. The defiance that was in his eyes when she had pinned him with magic, the same defiance that had knocked Trigon down with a release of power that rivaled anything she had ever seen.

His sacrifice had brought to her the strength to put her father away, sealing him in a new pocket dimension that her magic had formed for the express purpose of containing the monster. She had refused to shed more than a tear for the boy, she did not think he was gone permanently. I'll be back, I promise. He had promised after all. She'd berated herself for being so entirely foolish but couldn't help the feeling. The ghost boy had given her hope as a little girl, she still hoped he was alive now as a young woman.

The sorceress did not mourn. Her hope would not allow that. Not for Danny anyways. The team though, she mourned their lost innocence and the deep scars that had been left on them in the face of Trigon. Never before had they been pushed so far. They'd gone impossibly far for her in the conflict, farther than they should have had to go and it made her heart ache to think of the suffering they'd endured. She would not allow such weakness to affect her ever again or allow her friends to bear the burden that was rightly hers. Trigon was no longer a threat but such was the life of a hero, particularly an arcane hero—to bear the burdens of protecting others. She wouldn't allow them to bear anymore of hers. Raven, if she could, would aid them in any way possible. The sorceress owed them that much, at least.

Her mind touched that of Cyborg, the consciousness dimmed in his half robotic nature; Starfire, awaiting Robin's return; and Beast Boy, in the gym relentless working on his strength. She twisted her mind around them, not diving too deeply into their emotions and extending her mind further. Raven's empathic power touched every soul in the city of Jump and extended further, enveloping the planet. Only with the carefully designed circle of runes and patterns was her power able to be so stretched and her focus kept clear enough to ignore the more than seven billion other people she was not searching for. Danny was not on the planet, not that she could sense anyways.

An image came to her then, from weeks before, before Danny had assimilated into their lives and basically became part of the team. She had been angry, still full of Trigon's rage and his legacy, and had nearly hurt Danny with her powers. He had escaped, vanished in the first display of his true power. She knew now that it wasn't simply teleportation as she had first presumed. It was an extension of his ghost powers but not the power of invisibility or the ability to move through solid objects that he had exhibited that day as Phantom—she would have still been able to detect his presence if that had been the case. And she had not felt the same build of power within him that she had felt in the apartment or when he had faded, as did his energy. It had the markers of dimensional travel, something beyond the realm of magic. Innate power beyond magic, this was something connected to Danny's being whatever that may be.

With this realization she dropped the magic, letting the power slip from her mental grasp. Her eyes opened, fluttering as she blinked away the fatigue from the magic. Research. She would need any of the information that Danny gave to Robin about ghosts, everything she could use to try and locate the magical gates through which she could send her consciousness or even physical form into the new dimension. Some she knew, like Azarath's gate design and location, but wherever ghosts did reside she would need to track down independently.

Points on her many shelves flickered with her magic and books swooped down before her, piling about. Each was a dimensional tome, outlining various theories and methods for tracking a particular dimension from the many thousands that were known and the even further numbers that were yet to be documented in terms of magic. She would need to find a way to track and fix the dimension she suspected the mysterious boy to be in, in her mind. And then a ritual spell would need to be devised to open a portal to the dimension. Even after getting that far she would need to use her powers to locate her friend. It was a daunting task, it would take time.

Through the window opposite her seated place the sky was beginning to lighten with the first rays of the new day. So much time had passed. Weeks. If Danny had the power travel between the two dimensions then why hadn't he remerged? Soon the sun appeared fully, burning away the mists that had gathered over the bay and revealing the city as it awoke. Robin would be in soon, Raven knew. He hadn't been spending his nights at the tower, the leader spent very little time in the Tower now and that which he did was in his evidence room working on figuring out his suit. The whole team had given up so much for her. She would need to do something for them, bring back the friend who they thought was dead. In this way she could repay their loyalty to her.

Raven stood and moved to the door, walking instead of her customary hovering. The Tower was deathly silent, nothing moving in the long hallways with their sterile light. In the Op Centre it was just as silent, if not more so. Where usually the screens would be blaring with news feeds, cartoons and whatever else the team was interested in it was quiet and the room dark. The kitchen was silent as well, no Cyborg or even Beast Boy cooking breakfast as was the norm. She set the kettle on the stove top, the cool blue flames of the gas stove a faint reminder of the lost boy. She collected the dried tea leaves for her jasmine tea. The fragrant tea helped her meditate best, even more so than the earl grey or other varieties. She packed the tea into the mesh cloth. The kettle boiled and she pulled it from the flame with her magic while tying the package of tea. The packed jasmine tea was dropped into the cast iron kettle and she waited for the water to cool enough to not burn the leaves. The task was methodical and it wiped her mind cleanly in the peace of the routine.

The door slid open and Robin stood in the portal. Raven examined her leader carefully, looking for any outward sign that something was wrong. He appeared haggard, unkempt without the usual application of hair product and a smattering of stubble covered his angular jaw. He had yet to replace his suit. On his hips was only a single belt of metal clipped over an outfit of black. She knew enough about the young man to know that this was more of a training suit than something for legitimate service. It was an impact absorbing plastic material over a Kevlar cloth shell under which the Titan leader wore a performance outfit of tightly fitted wicking cloth with a hex weave overlay.

"Raven." He greeted stoically, moving toward the fridge.

"Robin." She replied considering the boy two years her senior, "You look terrible."

"Mm." was all he responded with.

"You're stressing out about the team too much. Have you spoken to Starfire in the last week?" He poured himself a glass of water, not looking at her as he moved about the task. "I thought as much. Robin, you need to talk about what is bothering you."

"And what about you? These are the first words you've spoken in weeks, s-since Danny vanished." He stammered. Robin never stammered. "And we've not heard anything from Phantom either. They both disappeared."

"What happens to me is of no concern, not after Trigon. You are the leader of this team Robin, you have to keep them together. You're failing, they are drifting apart. The team is breaking."

The Boy Wonder put his glass, empty now, down on the stone counter and sighed. His weight settled on the heels of his hands as he leaned heavily on the counter, "I know. I failed when I let Danny go with Slade, I've been failing ever since."

"You're wrong. Danny was not your responsibility, he chose to come after me. You were needed by the others. Danny did what was required of him and some day he will come back. That was not your fault. You need to focus on the present, you need to pull Starfire and Cyborg and Beast Boy from the pits they are in, just as Danny pulled me free. Just as I am pulling you out of your own." Her voice was monotonous but for a barely noticeable edge to it, just on the boundary of hearing. Robin, however, could pick up the miniscule difference in her voice knowing her as well as he did.

He looked at the sorceress, "How?"

Raven blinked. She had not expected him to not know what he needed to do specifically. She sighed, "Start with yourself, Robin. Get your act together, you look terrible. The team can survive a few more days while you recover but then you need to get them sorted. It's your duty."

"I-I won't have to worry about you will I? You seem . . . Stronger Raven, considering what happened."

Raven inclined her head slightly, "I know what must be done now. I am not worried about the future any longer."

Robin flicked a hand through his hair in gesture that starkly reminded Raven of Danny and said, "Thank you Rae, I owe you." He strode from the room with new purpose in his step and his shoulders once more squared.

§Oo–.–oO§

The door slammed open and bright white light flooded into the previously dark room. It stung his solid green eyes after hours kept in gloom. Danny barely had the energy to lift his head from where it lolled on his chest as he hung by his arms against the wall. Figures stormed in and unhooked his restraints, first at the legs and then his arms as they supported him. He was being purposefully kept weak, he knew that much and was aware of what was going on around him through the pain. He flopped face down onto a metal gurney, the same one they had thrown him on repeatedly in time they had had him. Not that he could measure the passage of time or anything else in the place they had him.

The Halfa did not struggle against the inevitability of the experiments. There was no way to escape the coming pain, the prodding and poking and torturous applications of science. Everything he had feared for the first three years of his powers had come true, he was being held in lab and torn apart just to be rebuilt afterward. The metal of the facial restraint pressed into his cheek bone painfully, wearing and chaffing the pale ghostly skin. His wrists ached as did his shoulders and back from hanging in the cell for hours, days—he couldn't tell. His eyes stared listlessly at the ceiling, white lights flashing by as they wheeled him down a long hallway. Thirty seven lights; that was the distance to the lab they kept him in for their experiments.

He was moved, hoisted up and attached to linkage points at each of his extremities. Muffled voices murmured in his ears and shadows moved before his hazy vision. A rubbery gloved hand slapped against his temple, sending his head lolling about. The hand grasped his chin and lifted his head up, turning his face from side to side as though examining him. A prick sunk through his neck. A dull throbbing pain resonated for a few moments before Danny's head jerked and his eyes snapped open, his breath catching before exploding out of him in great painful gasps.

The hand slapped him again, "Ah excellent." The figure, masked in a large hazmat hood with a window, "He's awake." The voice was muted by the mask but he could make out the words well enough.

Danny continued to suck great gasping breaths in and out of his sore chest. The mask, restraint blocking his airway and dampening his energies. The Halfa here now again, tried to draw forth the energy of the ectoplasm bound intrinsically with his DNA. And just as before nothing worked, the restraints preventing him from breaking free with their leeching technology. He jerked against the metal, the muscles in his arms and shoulders refreshed by the serum he had been injected with. His eyes blinked rapidly, taking in the lab with its sterile white surfaces, glowing green liquids, and assorted implements. The figures, a set of three wearing identical white suits moved about the room. One approached him again, a cylinder in his hands and with a hiss the covering on Danny's face released and hung free on his neck. He coughed, drool slipping from his slack lips.

"How are we today Mr. Fenton hm?" The voice was falsely polite, he could hear the cold malice behind the words that were filtered through a device lending them electronic tones. He didn't answer and the glove smacked him again in response, "Now now, don't be rude." The clammy rubber grabbed his face and tilted it upward so he had to look at the shadowy face.

Danny blinked, beleaguered, up at the figure. The chemicals in his system had returned to him enough energy to be conscious, reviving his dwindling reserves. His face twitched and he snarled, spitting at the figure. A bloody green mixture slapped wetly against the plastic of the mask, sliding slowly down the smooth tacky surface. The man in the suit stared at the ghost boy for a moment longer before dropping his chin, turning away and wiping the globule from his covering.

"Good news Mr. Fenton, today we are testing the limits of your flesh, in ghost form of course." Danny could hear the evil in the voice, the cold calculation. "I'm sure you'll enjoy the acid."

The Halfa shuddered, knowing that he'd pay dearly for the defiance he'd managed to show. His eyes burned in the light, pulled from the haze of green that had kept his powers in check and shaded them for who knows how long. The hard edge of a slab pressed into his back, cinching up tight with his restraints and digging into his skin where it was bare. When he was stretched tight over the slab it, together with his constraints, rotated backward and soon Danny found himself staring up at the ceiling with cold metal against his back and stimulant solution running through his veins. The figure inserted a long, large gauge needle into his left arm, the tube from it running up to a bag of ectoplasm, a solution that would keep his heart and body functioning. They crowded around him, the scientists that Vlad had set upon him for whatever his purpose was.

"Make sure to record everything. This data will be used for later trials." The leader spoke again and produced an apparatus hanging from the ceiling. He held it out to another and it was taken, positioned over his chest as the one in charge turned away.

The first drop of a green fluid fell from the thin end of the device. Danny's eyes watched it fall, taking in the excruciating detail of the coming suffering as it fell. It was like ectoplasm but a darker, more potent. The muddled miasma of his mind supposed some form of ectoplasm had been altered, given corrosive properties through molecular manipulation. He'd seen ghost's naturally harness that level of power, had seen his parents, particularly his mother, manage to do so in their experiments. He knew he could do it. The fluid splashed onto his chest, striking the point just beyond the edge of his sternum. Immediately jolts of fire ripped through his flesh. His nerves screamed, veins standing out like roads from his thin and pale skin. His teeth clenched, Danny trying not scream and perhaps bite his tongue off. His skin bubbled, dissolving in the fluid as it ate through his body. The metal clanged as he thrashed.

"Idiot! Not his chest, we're to preserve the organs. The arm, use it on the arm!"

The Halfa finally screamed, the primal vicious sound ripping from his throat in a bloody, pained sound. The pain coursed in his nerves, arcing through his chest and abdomen in sharp, hot lines as it spread from the point of acid. And suddenly the pain cooled; wet, foamy relief slopped onto the wound and relieving the acid. The shackle on his arm released, gloved hands gripping his forearm firmly and forcing it backward to readjust the restraint and leave a section from his palm back along to where his forearm widened with muscle. The skin bubbled and fizzed, popping like fat on a fire as more of the vicious fluid was applied. Danny's vision popped and flickered—the lab vanishing beneath the flashing lights. Lights that weren't there. The pain overrode everything and as the Halfa lay writhing and screaming, fighting against the torture.

Suddenly a flash of energy rippled through his body. His skin washed with a tingling sensation and the pain was snuffed out, puffing like a flame beneath a winter wind. Danny's body was stricken then, his eyes rolling back to only reveal the blood shot green sclera and his spine arching against the hard metal. He saw nothing but the lab exploded into chaos. A flash of black and green precluded an exploding dome that filled the lab. The scientists that had crowded around his prone form were blown away to fall against tables, counters and walls. A mirror set into the wall burst into a web of white cracks and shattered reflections.

A gasp burst from his mouth and the eyes flickered open. They rolled about, bleary and unseeing. And instantly snapped to a point above him, locked in disbelief as the vision returned to the Halfa. Consciousness found Danny then, struck him with such jarring power that lightning would have been less of effect to the half human. There was a face he'd never though he would see again. A face that had been with him since his earliest memories and one of the legion that followed him since the Disastroid. Jazz. His sister was there, hovering in the air. Her red hair lifting free of her shoulders, as if she were submerged in water as her blue eyes pierced his soul. She smiled at him. And then vanished.

§Oo–.–oO§