A/N: This story will be AU starting roughly around the beginning of the first season but will continue to go beyond them. There will be mentioning of certain events that transpire outside of Farbe-Tier's direct influence, as I will not rewrite events that are unchanged and/or occur without Farbe-Tier's... help... in said events. Please Read-&-Review.
DISCLAIMER: I OWN WHAT IS MY OWN.
The Spectrum of Light
By Corvus no Genmu
00: First Impressions
White gloved hands tapped the crystalline glass class, fingers playing to an unheard rhythm while the gemstones and precious metals beneath sparkled like stars. "Shiny." A tap of a finger and a few words whispered on an unfelt wind and glass returned once more to sand. "I'll take them." With the store's owners well into dreamland, courtesy of some… borrowed… equipment from his last escapade into Gotham; the would-be jewel collector was very precocious with his selection.
Oh he didn't follow any set theme like most villains were want to do, really if there was one thing he hated it was repetition, and though he possessed no clear eye for jewelry, if it had enough shine to it, it certainly got his attention, but he did have an eye for work worth taking.
He held up a gold ring and scowled at it before glancing down at the sign. "Girmaunt? More like Girmaunt's sick bastard cousin! The welding on this could be used for a backscratcher." He tossed the ring aside and picked up another. "Hmm… gaudy… Too gaudy." He scowled, his German accent growing thicker. "Lehrlingsarbeit!" He tossed it away, shooting a dark look at the unconscious owner of the so-called "upper class" jewelry store. "I'd fire your procurer if I were you."
The thief glanced down at the other tray and slowly started to smile. "Now this is more like it…" He plucked a tiny gold ring and gazed upon it with pure adoration. It was fashioned in the shape of intertwining vines with tiny flowers sprouting from them. A serpentine tongue tasted the air. "Sehr gut…"
Several inspections and one large jewelry case later and he was out the door with a satisfied smile on his face. Out in the light of the early morning, one could at last take his full appearance into account and it was by no means a normal one, even for the common villain of Jump City. Dressed in the stereotypical style of Victorian steampunk, minus the actual tech, the boy, who could only be midway through his teens at best, looked like he stepped out of the pages of a fantasy novel. Dressed in shades of grey and black, the only true color on him was his hair, which was a vibrant shade of orange from what one could see as only a few small clumps of it were sticking out beneath the wide rim of his moderately sized top hat, which beheld a playing card in its rim, the joker to be precise.
The thief paused and glanced up and down the empty sidewalk. "Well… that is never a good sign… I guess that means it's time to play…" He glanced up atop the building across the street where five heroes stood with the sun shining at their back. "Wouldn't you say?"
"More like it's time for your penalty game." The leader of the Teen Titans and former protégé to the world's greatest detective, Robin was nothing but serious. "Ten years sounds about right."
"Ten—For an even dozen pieces of jewelry?" The thief shook his head, lifting up the latch of the case to show that he did in fact only steal a small handful of rings and a few necklaces. "I don't think so."
The green-skinned changeling known as Beast Boy could help the dumbfounded stare that was matched by most of the team. "Dude, what kind bad guy are you?"
"Bad guy? I'd like to think I'm a new kind of player in this game of heroes and villains." The thief closed the case with a snap and placed it within the large cuff of his sleeve before revealing an empty pair of hands with sleeves occupied only by his arms. His smile grew with their surprise. "In point of fact, call me the world's first true wild card! I do what I want when I want to, and right now, I want to kick your sorry asses for getting in my way!" A faint splash of red appeared at the tips of the thief's otherwise vibrantly orange hair and disappeared just as quickly.
"Titans, Go!" Robin dived down at the thief; his bo staff at the ready only to suddenly find himself without an enemy as the thief twirled past him, moving lightly on his toes before leaping past a lunging green tiger and rolling beneath a sonic energy blast. The thief ran up to Cyborg, a strange smile on his face as he grabbed the metal Titan by the arm. "Nice gun! I think I'll take it!"
"Wha—HEY!" Easier than Cyborg thought possible, considering the amount of safeties and securities he had installed the last time someone body snatched his parts, the thief had yoinked his arm right off. It was all the more humiliating as the thief actually had the gall to yell out a loud "YOINK!" as he took off with the robotic limb. "Gimme back with my arm ya fruitcake!"
"Azarath Metrion Zinthos!" Black light enveloped the limb and would have torn it free from the thief's grip had not something strange happened, at least to the purple-haired spell caster.
"Mine!" Orange energy sparked and Raven's hold on Cyborg's arm vanished with the sound of shattering glass. The thief turned a heated glare at her, his hair still sparking underneath his hat. "No take backs! I took it fair and—Gott im Himmel!" The thief fell back flat on his behind as a star bolt flew where his head would have been. He rolled quickly, dodging the storm of birdarangs and jumped to his feet just in time to come face to face with a snarling green grizzly. "Well isn't this— Oh my god, what the hell is that?"
It wouldn't be until several months later that Cyborg would let Beast Boy live down the fact that he had fallen for what had to be the oldest, if not the stupidest, trick in the book.
The thief was just feet away from vanishing down one of Jump City's numerous back-alleys when a blue-cloaked form appeared out of the shadows, a pale hand enveloped in black magic. Raven's eyes were narrowed and the thief realized that while she had been surprised that he was able to break her hold on objects, at least those in his grasp, she knew a direct blast would do a lot more lasting damage and by the look in her eye she was sorely tempted to do just that.
The thief gulped and started to slowly back away before he felt the cold steel of Robin's bo pushing against the small of his back.
"Drop the hand and raise 'em up."
The thief frowned and looked between the arm, the Titans (including one seriously P. Cyborg), to the arm again before sighing. "Fine… I don't like modern technology anyway…" The thief suddenly smirked, his forelocks suddenly bristling. It wasn't as sudden as one of Beast Boy's transformations but it wasn't slow enough to not be startling to the Titans for standing in the thief's place was a monster straight out of legend.
Reaching well over sixty-feet in length, the thief was now in the body of what could, at first glance, be called a massive orange-scaled snake with stripes of faint red, but the crest of white feathers at his forehead and the crown of black horns upon his brow spoke of something much deadlier. However, of the gathered Titans only Raven was able to recognize the creature for what it was and so was able to keep her eyes away from the monster's own.
Being eighty-percent machine, Cyborg's systems remained in perfect condition but the human portions of his body froze like ice, his one human eye with wide sudden terror. The lenses of his mask were not particularly special, almost a set standard in their line of work, but they were unique enough to grant Robin a similar fate to his cybertronic friend.
Beast Boy and Starfire were not as fortunate for they are not as well-informed in the supernatural as Raven, and their eyes had no protection like Robin's nor were they blessed, or cursed, with an unnatural eye like Cyborg. Because of their severe lack of such things, they received the full power of the eyes and so fell to their terrible power.
They had been turned into stone.
Raven kept her head bowed and her face clear of all emotion though there was a faint flicker of black energy dancing between the nearby lampposts.
"They won't die." A pause. "Well, not today or because of me at any rate…" She heard massive coils shifting, the tip of the monster's tail appeared and lightly pushed against her chin but she resisted the motions. "Why do you not look at me?"
"… I may not know who you are but I do know what you are…"
"Truly?" A hissing laugh and she heard the beast shifting, circling around her and her friends. "Tell me then… just what am I?"
She almost looked up to see if he was actually being serious and though it was almost in her nature to be condescending to anyone who asked what constituted as a stupid question, which was nearly any kind of question that involved her opinion in some way, she resisted the urge and remained respectful as she could. "A basilisk…"
A soft hissing laugh. "Well… at the moment, yes but not always… Besides if you've read your lore as I'm sure you have, you know that nothing short of the Serpent's Tongue could allow one to hear a basilisk's voice." Coils shifted, a monstrous form rising high above her, glaring down with discolored eyes. "I might share the form, the power, but I am no mere basilisk."
Realizing she wasn't truly getting anywhere, Raven decided to get straight to the point, at least as much as she dared with him. "What do I have to do to cure my friends from your eyes?"
"Do…? What do you think that you could possibly do? Together you might be assured in victory but you are merely a small piece of a broken puzzle. But you know that already don't you?" The basilisk continued his slow circling around the frozen Titans, his eyes, white iris with black sclera, never leaving the stiff-shouldered Raven, tasting her fear and surprise, sweet and sour on his forked tongue. "However… as I said I am a wild card, not a villain or a hero… I will break the spell my eyes have cast upon them… for a price… I want something, Little Blackbird… something worth the lives of your friends…"
"What do you want?" growled Raven. The basilisk's tail appeared but did not reach for her face, instead reaching up to the hem of her hood, lightly stroking the soft material.
"That… is a very nice cloak…" Raven's eyes grew comically wide. He could ask her for anything and if it were in her power she would gladly have granted it to him, but all he wanted was her cloak? Just who was he? The tail paused and she realized that she had spoken the question aloud. "My name is of no consequence but if you must refer to me as something… Call me, Farbe-Tier. Simple and to the point to be sure but really, considering the names you lot share I'd like to think its originality is sound if only by the language its spoken in. Now then, do we have a bargain? The cloak for your friends?"
"… Fine, take it." Raven unclasped the cloak and tossed it up into the air, still keeping her eyes firmly on the ground. She heard it being snatched out of the air and the pop of air being displaced, a sudden large form shrinking down in the blink of an eye. She cautiously started to glance up only to fall back in surprise as Cyborg's stolen arm was thrown straight at her face. As she recovered from the sudden shock, fumbling rather disgracefully with the mechanical limb, Raven heard the sound of footsteps echoing from the nearby alleyway, laughter echoing from the shadows.
The Catacombs of Jump City deserved the capitalization in its name for while it was a pale second to the more famous, or perhaps even infamous, Catacombs scattered about the world. It wasn't built for burial like the one in Rome nor did it contain the frighteningly morbid decorations like its sister in Paris but it did share the same core responsibility as them.
Protection.
The thing about cities, particularly ones large enough to be called a… metropolis of sorts, is that they always have a vast underground system of pipes and tunnels that are always changing, always evolving into something bigger, wilder, and all the more terrifying for even the best of navigators can become lost inside a labyrinth with no enchanted thread to find the way back toward the light of day.
Even Farbe-Tier, who claimed the vast underground as his personal domain and had it marked appropriately with several arcane and mysterious sigils, had a hard time finding his way back toward "Home".
"Okay, I took a left, a right, two more lefts, down a shaft, through an old waterway, and down a rusty ladder so I should be… Somewhere… Why did I decide to make my home in the underground?" Farbe-Tier took his top hat off and scratched an itch at the top of his head where orange hair was fading to natural blonde. "Hmmm…"
"Are you lost again?" A soft voice, like scented smoke on the winds echoed in the otherwise silent tunnel.
Farbe-Tier chuckled glancing around with a small smile on his face. "C'mon, it's not like we've been living here for long. Stop teasing me and come out."
Sandy-colored smoke slowly swirled before Fabre-Tier before the smoke condensed tightly and became more solid and defined in the shape of a young teenage girl that, though she herself was colored in shades of the smoke, one could clearly see the blonde of her hair and the blue of her eyes. She was dressed a leather like bodysuit with a trench coat that made her look more serious than she truly was. She smiled and flew down and embraced Farbe-Tier, pressing her face against his neck.
"Oof!" Farbe-Tier grunted in surprise at the sudden show of affection and stared down at her in confusion before he took notice of the quiver in her shoulders, the tightness of her embrace. A small splotch of indigo appeared in his hair, dead center of the blonde before it was overwhelmed and gone as quickly as it came. "Hey now… I thought we were over this already…"
"Sorry…" She tried to pull away but his arms wouldn't let her.
"Do you want me to say it again?" Stillness than a shy nod. He chuckled, a hand reaching up to stroke wisps of blonde hair that fluttered like smoke under his gentle caress. "I promise you, I'm not going to leave you alone in the dark, not now not ever. That is my promise to you, Little Sister…"
Raven stood before her frozen friends with her usual neutral mask in place once more, a new cloak resting on her shoulders to replace the one she traded for the lives of her friends. Fearful of what a long flight across the city and over water might do to them, Raven had teleported them straight to Titans Tower and had carefully placed them to stand before the window of the common room that overlooked the ocean where the shining disk that was the sun slowly began to fall. She placed Cyborg's stolen arm on the table and glanced over her shoulder to see the sun slowly beginning to vanish on the horizon.
"GIANT SNAKE!" Beast Boy's girlish scream had Raven fly right out of her cloak. The green changeling blinked and looked around in confusion. "Uh… when did we get back to the Tower?"
"I do not recall…" murmured Starfire, floating in midair to their equally confused leader. "Robin what has happened?"
"I… don't know Star…"
"Oh man, if I have to replace another arm so help me—Hey there it is!" Cyborg quickly snatched up his arm.
"You're alright… Thank Azar…" Raven sighed.
"Raven? What happened?" asked Robin.
"Yeah, last thing I remember was seeing a mondo huge snake-thing and then—WHOOSH—I'm here… and it's nighttime now… Ah, man! I missed all my afternoon 'toons!" whined Beast Boy.
Raven sighed, not really surprised by Beast Boy's immaturity but secretly glad that he and Starfire will both alive and well. As for herself, that would remain to be seen as soon as she finished explaining what had happened to Robin. It was highly doubtful that Robin would be happy about the choice she made.
One long, deadpan told recap later…
"You let him go!"
Raven's hair blew back from the force of Robin's yelling but her face remained impassive as always. "To save your lives, yes. Yes I did." She took a sip from her teacup. "You and Cyborg might have merely been paralyzed but Beast Boy and Starfire were turned to stone and I know of no spell or enchantment strong enough to break the curse of a basilisk's full gaze, however different it might be from the norm."
Robin winced, not liking her choice of words; still he had to give her credit on that. Scattered about the common room of Titans Tower, the other Titans were dealing with the experience in their own ways. Starfire was busy distracting herself making another Tamaranian dish that'd likely crawl away as she paid only half-a-mind to its creation. Cyborg was sitting at the couch, grumbling angrily to himself as he set about reattaching his arm, which seemed to almost be fighting with him.
From where he sat on the opposite side of the table across from Raven with a dish of untouched tofu, Beast Boy raised a hand. "Ah… Basi-whatisit?"
"Basilisk," repeated Raven.
"Like in Harry Potter?"
"… Yes, Beast Boy… like in Harry Potter."
"Sweet!" Beast Boy's elfin ears suddenly dropped, his face turning an interesting shade of mint. "Wait, not sweet. Totally not sweet!" He blinked. "Wait, uh… shouldn't Starfire and I technically be—"
"Finish that sentence, Grass-stain and I'll throw out all of your tunes." Cyborg growled, still working on reattaching his arm. "Man what did that little steam-punk do to my—There we go! … Wait, what the heck?" At long last, his arm was reattached but from the way that Cyborg was looking at it, something was amiss. "How did—When did—That better buff out!"
"Is there something amiss with your arm, Friend Cyborg?" asked Starfire, looking away from her bowl of… something… which then took the opportunity to try and flee into the safety of the fridge only to be stabbed with a fork and dragged back to the bowl by the Tamaranian.
"I don't know when or how but that little punk went and branded my arm!" Cyborg held out his arm to reveal a strange burnt marking on the underside of the forearm. The mark consisted of a circle with four dash-marks at its "corners" with a small V at its top. Robin's eyes narrowed but he did not recognize it as any kind of gang marking he was familiar with. He shot a glance at Raven whose gaze was more intense.
"Raven? Do you know that mark?"
"No… but I feel that I should…"
"Well, well… If this isn't an interesting turn of events…" Gears turned slowly in the darkness, moving massive machinery to their work and though the noise should be loud and grating, the machines moved with eerie silence. The screen all paused on the same image, a boy dressed in Victorian wear straight from the pages of fantastical science. Another screen lit up, each taking an item from the boy's choice of clothes and imposing it upon another person. "Very interesting…"
"Sir? The weather anomaly you've been expecting is to arrive by tomorrow evening…" There was a touch of sarcasm in that old voice, a firm disbelief in the accuracy of a weatherman. Thin eyes spared a glance at the screen, widening in surprise. "Is that—"
"Someone of little importance or consequence. For now, I'll allow him to do as he will. As he's stated, he has little reason or justification for wanting anything grandiose. Besides, he knows what I would do to him should he appear before me, for or against." A muscular form rose from his throne, his lone eye glaring with cool intensity at his manservant. "Is that clear enough for you, Wintergreen?"
"… Transparently, sir."
To Be Continued...
On the next wavelength…
A Touch of Compassion