Part 3: Terra Nullius
From a young age, Officer Bill had been convinced that he had precognitive powers. He did the right meditation practices, he ate the right herbal supplements, and he read the right books.
Of course, he was an idiot. But occasionally, he got lucky with his 'precognitive' hunches, which were actually brought on by an untreated case of ADD.
And as a result, on a cracked computer screen, moments before everything fell apart, the follows events had occurred…
ACCESSING FILES-VILLAINS. PLEASE ENTER PASSCODE.
(typetypetypetypetype)
ACCEPTED. PLEASE SELECT DESIRED FILES.
HOTSTREAK: Francis Stone aka F-Stop. Mutant via exposure to mutagenic compound known as 'Quantum Juice' laced into tear gas during the result of a gang war known as 'The Big Bang' in Dakota City in the Midwestern states, resulting in metahuman powers: one of many that was affiliated with this condition, dubbed by the media as 'Bang Babies'. High grade pyrokinetic, able to manifest and manipulate fire.
CARMEN-DILLO: Real name known, assumingly Carmen Something. Mutant 'Bang Baby' (See above). Animal-human hybrid, said animal being an armadillo. Bulletproof hide, capable of using his rolled up body as a weapon. Poor hand to hand skills, weak-willed and cowardly otherwise.
ONYX: Name Unknown. Mutant 'Bang Baby' (See above). Body composed of rock (evidence is lacking if it is actually onyx quartz though), which grants greatly enhanced strength and durability. Constant partner of Puff (see below).
PUFF: Name Unknown. Mutant 'Bang Baby' (See above). Capable of transforming her body into a gaseous state, granting her flight and intangibility. Gas powers also allow high impact projections of gas from her hands, and the ability to exhale knockout gas or a potent acidic smoke. Gaseous form, however, is vulnerable to liquids. Formed team with the three aforementioned 'Bang Babies', the 'Meta-Men'.
Status: Currently At Large
Well, to be technical, the Meta-Men's status was 'just outside the First National Bank of Topeka, raising hell'.
Despite one officer's claims, the SWAT team had not run away, and was in fact engaging the four criminal metahumans. But the officers of the law found that their guns were rather ineffective against two bulletproof and one intangible metahuman, and that their tear gas wasn't as useful as a neutralizer when said intangible metahuman could apparently produce some kind of neutralizing compound of her own. Add that to the animal-meta bowling through any officers he could be pointed at like they were the proverbial ten pins, the deadly acid and knockout gas exhaled by the female meta, and the prodigious production of fire (all for offensive purposes) aimed directly at them, and the police officers quickly found themselves outmatched and overwhelmed.
Onyx put the cherry on the cake by hoisting up one of the SWAT armored vans and, ignoring the bullets being poured into him, hurling it into two police cars. That was enough: the police officers retreated, carrying their wounded with them. Hotstreak, cackling gleefully, aided their swift flight by blowing up the other SWAT Van and a police car.
"BURN PIGGIES, BURN!" He crowed, and then blew on one finger like the classic Texas gunslinger.
"Forget the pigs, Francis, we have a vault to loot!" Puff ordered as she flew down and blew her corrosive smoke on the entrance of the bank, melting it to slag.
"DON'T CALL ME FRANCIS YOU BI-!"
"Whatever!" Puff retorted, as she and her crew strolled into the bank. "You and me are gonna weaken the vault door if we have to, then Onyx is gonna finish it so we don't damage the…"
Puff trailed off as she stopped, surprised.
The vault door was wide open, requiring no sophisticated or primitive lockpicking. The Meta-Men could just scroll in and help themselves.
"Da phuck?" Puff said, for a moment wondering if it was a trap. But how could a random bank that had never seen metahuman activity possibly have the foresight to set a trap for any criminal proceedings of such?
Then again, Puff hadn't thought some punk kid with electric powers could have ever beaten her once too, and wasn't in the mood to take chances.
Fortunately, Onyx had worked with her long enough to get good at reading her moods, and perhaps more fortunately, while most of the bank's employees and customers had long fled out other doors, some had not.
Onyx located one hiding under his desk and dragged his screaming, mewling form out to his team.
"All right, listen asshole. What gives with the free buffet?" Puff snapped, as she glanced at Hotstreak and he generated some fire on his hands to really drive home the point they'd better like his answer.
"Ah! The vault…we don't…actually lock it!" The employee managed to gasp out.
"…What?"
"We don't lock it unless it's being inspected most days! It's just easier!"
Puff looked at Onyx, who shrugged and smacked the manager type on the head, knocking him senseless, and then, after a shoulder roll that produced a very loud cracking noise that made Carmen-Dillo wince, he strolled up to the bank vault, seized the door, and with a snarling roar tore the massive metal barrier off its hinges and hurled it across the bank, crushing most of the teller stands.
"Because I can." Onyx said quietly in regards to Hotstreak and Carmen-Dillo's confused faces.
The two quickly got over their confusion, as they realized the bank was open for business, and ran it, ripping open security deposit boxes, stuffing money and other valuables into large bags Onyx had been carrying on his bag, and generally revealing in their lawbreaking like the young punks they were.
"All right, hustle hustle! We need to keep moving before the pigs get organized and call in some help! Twenty more seconds!" Puff yelled, and then melted the final wall of safes with a carefully controlled acid blast, destroying the doors without damaging the goods inside (mostly). Onyx scooped and stuffed what he could into his final large bag, and then the four headed back out, lugging their loot. They'd stolen a large truck before making their move: they'd take their ill-gotten goods to it before moving on to a new target.
At least, that had been the plan, until the villains stepped out of the bank and found themselves confronted.
Not by a regrouped police force.
Not by any superheroes who had been alerted or happened to be passing by.
And not even by the titular blonde.
Instead, they found the usual reaction to carnage and destruction: the media, and lots of them. Where the police had fled, the news crews had swarmed in, in the usual complete disregard to their safety. When they were covering a war or something, said disregard seemed a touch noble. When it meant getting footage of several dangerous criminals with superhuman powers, especially when there were no superhuman counteragents in the vicinity, and ESPECIALLY when they could easily get said footage from a distance or a news helicopter, but instead chose to charge right up to the group like they were celebrities at a movie première rather then criminals in the very midst of a felony, well, other words came to mind. Like 'stupid'. And 'suicidal'. But hey, those 24 hour news channels aren't going to make their own grist for the mill.
"You gotta be kidding me." Puff commented, and then flinched as a mass of flashbulbs went off even as cameras trained in on her group.
"Don't they know who we are?" Carmen-Dillo commented.
"No. They must have heard YOU were on the team." Hotstreak snarked.
"HEY!" Carmen-Dillo retorted…and then realized something. "OH NO! WE'RE ON THE NEWS! NOW THEY'LL KNOW I WAS INVOLVED IN THIS!"
"Well DUH, dumbass, how many giant armadillo men are there? OF COURSE THEY'LL KNOW YOU WERE INVOLVED IN THIS." Puff snapped.
"But…"
"Shut up! That's not why we can't be seen on the news! It's the fact that it'll bring heroes down on our heads like a swarm of goddamn locusts!" Puff cursed.
"So Skeets, should we go in?" Booster Gold asked his robot companion and fellow time traveler from the 25th century as he watched the bank robbery unfold on his TV.
"Negative. Only one of the three major 24 hour news stations is represented." The small floating droid replied.
"Yep, waste of time."
"…damn." Puff said in honest disbelief. How did she know about the aforementioned scene? You tell me.
"This is Kia Carter, reporting live for 27 News!" A black reporter said to her camera as she was jostled by her many fellows. "We currently know nothing about the status of the robbery: we don't know who is robbing the bank, what they want or just what the response of the police will be when they return, but we will continue reporting live, giving you up to the minute information…"
Miss Carter really should have had her eyes in other places. Like the four metahuman criminals who were clearly incredibly pissed off at being filmed.
"This is News Corporation, we give you the news as it develops…" Another reporter was saying as Terra cautiously drove up to the massed media, having liberated KITT from the police impound yard (which the police had thankfully put some gas into her empty car to drive to, she'd have hated to try and find a gas station at the moment) with her teeth gritted. She'd hoped that maybe she could have used KITT's defense systems to take out or at least distract the Meta-Men, but with all the reporters swarming around there was far too much of a risk of collateral damage.
"Damn it. Now what Kitt?" Terra groused.
"If you can acquire some cover, Lady Terra, you can sneak up on the villains and perhaps disable one."
"But there isn't any cover!"
"I shall make one." KITT said, as the headlights on his front slide aside to reveal twin mini missiles. "I hate 24 hour news anyway."
"Kitt! You can't honestly be considering…!"
A blast of heat and force struck Terra's face as the news van in front of her exploded in a giant fireball, as she ducked to avoid shrapnel. She blinked, and then slowly raised herself up to look at the flaming chassis.
"Kitt…you didn't…there were people in that van…"
"Newscasters count? Damn, so much for the first law of robotics…oh god, I forgot all about the first law of robotics…" KITT said.
Terra was about to say something else when a fireball streaked past her and struck a nearby car, and she ducked again as the vehicle went up in a destructive blast.
As she lay there, the realization occurred to her that she hadn't seen the stream of white smoke that indicated missile launch come from KITT when the car had been blown up. That, and the fireball that had just flown past her, suggested that it had not been KITT but the fire-manipulator, Hotstreak, that had blown up the van.
Indeed he had, and still was, as he continued to hurl blasts of intense heat at the reporters and their vehicles, and they finally got the clue that maybe they shouldn't hang around and ran for their lives.
"Uh Kitt, about that first law of robotics…" Terra said as she sat up.
"How could I forget? It's built into me. Any robot that violates the three laws of robotics is doomed to a slow, agonizing, and error filled death…I, am not long for this world…" KITT moaned, and then much to Terra's surprise he actually started weeping, or at least made the appropriate mimicked sound effects of a human doing so.
"No wait Kitt, you didn't blow up that car! Besides, I don't think there were any people in it." Terra said, having no idea if she was lying.
"What? Oh, then I'm fine." KITT said, as his 'crying' abruptly stopped.
Terra stared.
"Although I will have to be debugged when we return." KITT added.
"You idiot! Why the hell did you do that?" Puff yelled at Hotstreak as he continued to hurl fireballs.
"Only one national news organization? Oh, I'LL GET THEIR ATTENTION." Hotstreak snarled. "Besides, it's fun to blow stuff up."
Puff looked at the 'trigger-happy' metahuman, and then noted that Carmen-Dillo was riding Hotstreak's destruction by doing muscleman poses and generally acting like a fool. Especially considering moments before he'd been upset over caught on camera. Apparently he'd gone a snap 180-degree turnaround in the past ten seconds from disliking to mugging.
"I'm SURROUNDED by IDIOTS." Puff muttered.
"You and your old man." Onyx quietly replied. Puff glared at him.
"Until you opened your mouth, I wasn't referring to you."
"Ho boy…" Terra said, as she watched the chaos around her. She pondered if there was anything she could do in all the fire and smoke and running…the smoke. Well, at least her cover had been provided.
"Okay Kitt, listen, I'm gonna run up and distract them, then you drive up and hit them with some laser nets or something and if that doesn't work we run like hell!"
"As you wish, Lady Terra." KITT said, as Terra jumped out of the car and tried to find a route to the criminals that wouldn't result in her getting fried or trampled.
"Be careful of that guy's fire blasts!" Terra said, as she spied one and ran off.
"Oh do not be concerned my lady, those blasts are wild and only effective because of the lack of any sentience in their targets. With such an unexamined rate of inaccurate fire that young metahuman could not hit an elephant at this dista-"
A fireball exploded at KITT's front and KITT found himself being flung backwards with a squeal, landing with a crunch on his rooftop, his wheels spinning in the air.
"…General John Sedgwick of the Union Army, burn in hell." KITT grumbled.
"All right enough, ENOUGH!" Puff snapped as she slapped Hotstreak's arms down. "Quit wasting your energy, you've made your point!"
"Wasting my energy? Who cares?" Hotstreak smirked. "The cops scattered like piglets! Who's gonna stop us?"
………..
…………………
……………………………..
The Watchtower.
"Not me, I just like watching." Superman said.
"…A new development in the Topeka robbery!" One of the dumber reporters yelled into his camera as destruction finished raining around him. "It's official: Superman…is a dick!"
RRRRRRGGGGK!
Noel: Okay look, I really hate to hijack this story…well not really, but for the sake of convenience and what some idiots consider humor are we going to have every hero that appears act dangerously apathetic?
(HEAT VISION'D!)
Noel: ……….owtch.
"Still got it." Superman said as he turned and held out his hand to Batman. "Pay up."
"Don't think just because you could blast a child from orbit that you're necessarily great." Batman said as he handed over money.
"What, are you dense? Are you retarded or something? I am the motherfrick'n Superman!"
"I keep telling you Clark, that's not going to catch on."
"………DAMN." Puff said.
"Hey you better watch it, Ron Simmons is going to sue." Hotstreak commented.
"Oh shut up." Puff snapped. Which gave Hotstreak the opportunity to throw off a few more fireballs. "OKAY, ENOUGH!"
"Yeah, run, you forth estate bitches! You better fear the Dillo!" Carmen-Dillo taunted. Had Onyx been next to the animal mutant, he probably would have smacked him over the head for that.
Carmen-Dillo got something almost as bad: an outright suicidal reporter running up to him and sticking a tape recorder into his face.
"And why exactly should we fear you? The world wants to know!" The reporter questioned fiercely.
"Uh…I gots the frickin THREE FOOT LONG CLAWS!" Carmen-Dillo announced.
"So do a dozen other D-List villains."
Carmen-Dillo decided to let his actions speak for him for his next and final reply and headbutted the reporter, sending him flying back and tumbling down the stairs.
"LET ALL FEAR ME, FOR I…Owwww, my head." Carmen-Dillo said, clutching his temple.
"Funny, I'd expect that would be the LAST part of you to suffer some kind of injury." Puff said, and looked at Hotstreak. "Are we done?"
Hotstreak seemed to ponder it a moment…and then fired four more quick fire blasts, though by now everyone was gone and the streets were so awash with smoke he probably just blew a few holes in the concrete.
"Okay, done now." Hotstreak said, swinging his bags of ill-gotten gains back onto his shoulders.
"Look Francis…"
"HOTSTREAK!"
"Whatever, if you're going to do that at every place we rob you can just piss off right now." Puff said as the group headed down the stairs of the bank.
"Oh come on Puff, don't act the innocent with me, I've seen you raise plenty of hell."
"When it was feasible! Damn it Hotstreak, you keep screwing around, we won't NEED any damn superheroes to show up, the cops will be able to beat us!"
"Yeah, right, what are they going to do, make us laugh ourselves into submission? Stop thinking precision assaults and start thinking party, Puff."
"Yeah! This city is ours!" Carmen-Dillo declared, having finally gotten over his headache.
Until the large rock that had been thrown through the air slammed into the back of his head.
"OWWWWWWW!" Carmen-Dillo shrieked as he fell to the ground. "You can have it back! Take it! Owwwwwwwww…!"
"What the, did we just get attacked by David?" Puff said, referring to the slingshot-using bible hero.
"You wish…"
Terra thought her dramatic stride out of the smoke was pretty good. At least she'd managed to do it without the pungent air causing her to break into a fit of coughing. And the obscurity of said smoky air probably hid the slight tearing her eyes had and were still going through due to said smoke. Yeah, at least a 7.
Besides, she knew a trick or two about misdirection, and she was pretty sure the villains would focus on the large smooth stone she was tossing up and down in her right hand, the brother of the rock that had just brained Carmen-Dillo (and damn that was lucky).
"What the…YOU?" Hotstreak said in disbelief as he looked at Terra. Well, at least one of them had some idea who she was, or thought they did. She'd take it.
"On average there's about 10,000 metric tons of rock, concrete, graphite, tar, and other such stone materials in a city block. That's all pointing right at your head!" Terra said. It was a pretty good line. Definitely good for the time she'd had to think it up. She had no idea if it was any way accurate, but then again she'd never heard of anyone actually pulling someone's head off and using their neck as a toilet either.
"Who's this bitch?" Puff snarled, clearly pissed that the Meta-Men's attempt to avoid any superheroes had failed (and she was discounting Captain Hero: she still wasn't sure if she'd hallucinated that).
"She's from that Florida superkid team! Some earth girl name…Gaia!"
"Terra. Close enough." Terra said, as she gave her rock another toss.
"I thought they were located in California." Puff said.
"That joke's been done already." Onyx said quietly.
"Well SORRRRRY!"
"It doesn't matter where we come from! I'm here, and so are you, dammit." Terra said, phrasing her sentence so she sounded annoyed at that fact. "You guys just can't stay away, can you? I was on vacation, damn it." Perfectly cool. Like there was nothing wrong.
"Then screw off!" Puff snapped.
"Sorry, can't. Union rules." Terra said. "But you're right, I'm really not in the mood for a fight. I got enough of that at home. How about we make a deal? You put down the money, and go away. And we'll all walk away considerably happier."
"…WHAT?" Puff snapped. "Are you HIGH?"
"I wish." Terra muttered. "Look, we all know how this will go. You'll yell about kicking my ass and we'll fight and we'll get all dirty and in the end you'll end up in jail, quite possibly missing several pounds of flesh. Hell, I took one of your number down by throwing a rock at him. That doesn't bode well for you."
"He's an idiot! And so are you if you actually think we're going to do anything YOU say you stupid bitch!" Puff threw back. Terra winced inwardly: she hadn't actually expected the group to fall for her bluff, but it would have been nice.
"Yeah, you really think you can take us ALL on?" Hotstreak added as his arms and hair exploded into flame. Terra could feel the heat from the fifteen plus feet distance she was from them. Yeah, definitely not good.
"You think I can just throw rocks?" Terra retorted anyway. "When Mount Saint Helens blew, the energy released was 27,000 times that of the Hiroshima atomic bomb! Do you think I'd need even a FRACTION of that to take you guys down?"
Well, at least her snappy banter was still firing off nicely. Even if she'd stolen that line from the disaster film Volcano, but hey, not EVERYONE could come up with grandiose taunts on the spot, thank you very much.
Still, she suspected the time for talk was rapidly running out. Where the hell was KITT?
"Bring it on, baby. Because paper beats rock…!…because you can light paper on fire…and…well…you know what I mean!" Hotstreak snapped. Well, at least she hadn't stumbled verbally yet.
"Why does this always happen?" Terra said, as she tried to hide the way her eyes were darting around. "Why do you people always want to do it the hard way?"
"It's what we're good at." Hotstreak smirked.
A low, cold fear was starting to bloom in Terra's gut. If KITT didn't distract her opponents soon, things were going to become incredibly ugly.
"No, what you're good at is hard time. And I came here for some time off. Really. Last chance on that offer, then you'll be eating dirt."
Kitt, where are you? PLEASE!
And then suddenly, with a quiet sentence from Onyx, it all fell apart.
"I believe she has no powers." The stone giant said.
"…what?" Puff said, as she looked at Onyx. "What do you mean? You mean she's just standing there with a rock and nothing else?"
"If she could control rock to the degree that she claims, she could have easily taken control of me and laid you both out while you were yelling at her. She has not. Therefore, I strongly believe that even if she did have such powers, she does not have them now."
Puff stared at Onyx, and then turned a cold glare at Terra.
She tried to keep, as the saying went, a stone face.
Apparently not good enough, as Puff's coldness suddenly shifted into a nasty, cruel grin.
"Heh heh heh heh heh…"
"Crap." Terra said.
"Cook her." Puff said, and Hotstreak smirked himself and threw up his arms.
So Terra did the only thing she could think off: she threw her other rock.
Apparently, Hotstreak had equated 'realizing her bluff was called' with 'paralyzed with fear and unable to take any action at all', because he clearly hadn't expected her to do that.
"GAH!" Hotstreak yelled, as he dodged to the side. The rock bounced off Onyx's impassive form.
It didn't stop the pyrokinetic from hurling his fire blast.
But it threw his aim off enough so that when Terra dove to the side, instead of hitting the ground where she'd just been, it hit what was behind her.
A fire hydrant.
Which promptly exploded, as Hotstreak's intense blast of heat instantly converted a large amount of the first part of the emerging water from liquid to gas, the result of which was a large cloud of water vapor/stream blooming up the erupting stream and freshly obscuring everything anew.
"GAH!" Puff yelled, recoiling as the water vapor bothered her unique body chemistry. "You idiot!"
"Hey, I didn't see YOU picking up my spare!" Hotstreak retorted.
"Forget it! Find her! Powers or no powers, we take the hide of a superhero and our reputations are MADE!" Puff said. "This just makes it more fun."
"I hear that." Hotstreak said, as fresh fire exploded on his limbs, and the hunt was on.
Oh god, what the hell had she been thinking?
To her credit, Terra didn't let her fresh panic make her run herself into a wall, or trip over one of the potholes Hotstreak had made with his earlier blasting storm, but that meant little to her as she ran for her life, not even bothering to find out what had happened to her so called 'partner' KITT. Indeed, that question was one of the furthest things from her mind.
She'd had a choice, and it was now abundantly clear to her she'd made the wrong one. What had possessed her to go out there without her powers and beard three well-known and dangerous criminals? Superhero life was risky enough WITH powers, what on earth had she been thinking trying to attempt being a hero without them? The only reason she wasn't already cooked through was because of luck, and her good fortune was rapidly running out: she suspected it had hit bottom when Hotstreak had blasted that fire hydrant and given her some fresh cover. Now her only option left was escape, even if it meant she ended up back in jail. She wasn't about to expect any mercy from the criminals she'd…
Terra felt the intense heat behind her and threw herself onto the ground at the last second as the fireball whipped over her and exploded against a nearby wall.
"Titan…!" Hotstreak's voice called out through the thick mist (man, the steam was thicker then one would expect. Maybe it had mixed with the remaining smoke to give it its more fog like consistencies? And if not what were they putting in the water in Topeka? Well, whatever the reason, Terra wasn't complaining). "C'mon girlie! Come out and plaaaaaaay!"
So he hadn't aimed at her and missed. He'd fired into the smoke and almost gotten lucky. Even as her panic clawed at her, Terra figured her luck would probably work better if she didn't stay still, as she partially got up, ran over to an overturned police car, and hid behind it.
"What's the matter, you were all ready to rock before!" Hotstreak called out again, as Terra pressed her back against the car, hyperventilating and hoping that if he tossed out any more random fire blasts it didn't hit the gas tank of her cover. "Man, I hate teasing bitches."
Silence, except for Terra's gasping air and thundering heart, which she could swear sounded as loud as a stampede of water buffalo.
She heard the whooshing noise of air as Hotstreak fired off some more blasts, and she winced as she expected a sudden blast of heat and pressure, and then oblivion as her cover car exploded, but it didn't come: he'd apparently been aiming elsewhere. That didn't reduce the direness of the situation an iota though.
And it wasn't like Terra hadn't been in tight spots before. There'd been her Titan missions, but she'd had friends there. And there'd been her life on the road, her past a cipher and her future not looking much brighter. You ran into a lot of bad sorts when you were touring a country by your feet and your thumb, and Terra had only escaped a few life-shattering possibilities by the wild manifestation of her powers, the same powers that had always stolen her stability as well.
Now she had neither. No friends, and no powers. Not even a car. Just her fear.
…fear…
"Is going to come."
"What?" Terra said, looking up from her semi-slumped posture: despite her best efforts she still found the 'talking' parts of her training dull as dishwater. That hadn't stopped Robin from doing them with her though. Later in her life, she'd finally appreciate just what that meant.
"Fear is going to come. In our life, you're going to be afraid."
"Well, duh…"
"No Tara, you misunderstand. I'm not saying you will because of your life. It applies to all of us. In the Titans and beyond. We will all know fear."
"Oh come on. They can't all be afraid. Surely Bats has never been afraid." Terra said semi-dismissively.
"You'd be wrong there."
"But why?"
"Because he knows, perhaps more then any of us, the realities of this world."
"Fine. Superman can't be afraid. He's frickin' super-everything…"
"Even if, and I doubt it, Superman has never felt fear for himself, he has surely feared for others. This is a part of this life, Tara, and you need to understand that. Not just for our sakes, but for yours."
"Why?"
"Because people are going to expect you to not be afraid. They're wrong. In fact, I'd be far more concerned if you WEREN'T afraid."
Terra stared.
"Can we go back to learning deductive reasoning? That was actually starting to make some sense to me."
"Tara, as uncomfortable as you may be being afraid, you need to heard this. It's important. A man called…"
"Oh god don't. Please don't quote. Noel ALWAYS quotes. And Noel's a goddamn ASS." Terra groaned.
"Heh, sorry, it's appropriate." Robin grinned, as Terra groaned again. "But an author named Robert Heinlein gave the best example of why you will be afraid. 'Courage is the compliment of fear. A fearless man cannot be courageous. He is also a fool.'"
"…Okay."
"But, as another saying goes, the devil is in the details. People have been trying to prepare themselves for fear for centuries, and it rarely works. Each human mind is different, and hence so are their reactions."
"So why are we here?"
"Well Tara, you should know what you're getting into. Because if it ever comes down to the worst, well…fear may be inevitable, and lack no certain solution, but I know this. You can let it motivate you, or you can let it paralyze you. I won't blame you if I can't teach you the former and you fall victim to the latter, but I hope I can lessen the chances of that. You can't stop fear. But you can stop from giving in to it."
Oh, it was so easy for him to say that. He was the scion of the goddamn BATMAN after all. She was just a girl…
…and he'd told her he understood that.
Now here she was under fire and she was completely forgetting everything…but damn it, she wasn't him! The fear just came! It was so strong. What…
"…the point?"
Raven calmly looked at Terra as she sat across from her.
"Meditation, once you learn how to do it properly, calms the mind and the soul, and helps you find your center. Basically, it serves as a filter for the chaos of the world and the ill vibes of our society."
"I doubt that. Your boyfriend's with you all the time and yeessssh." Terra commented. Raven's expression did not change.
"Noel has a flaw in his way of thinking…a weakness that makes him find the harshness of his observations appealing on some level. We're working on it."
"You should work harder."
"Believe me, I have my limits, and he knows them. So do not worry about me, and give little more worry to how Noel treats you: even if he disliked you enough to try and remove you from the team he'd have no ground to stand on, and he doesn't. He's just…"
"An ass."
"…that is putting it simply and ignoring some of the subtle aspects, but yes, fine. But that's not your concern Terra. I can look after myself. What we're trying to teach you here is how to look after yourself."
"Okay, okay…" Terra said, as she tried to mimic Raven's posture.
"Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos…" Came Raven's familiar chant, and Terra tried to follow along.
"…argh, I don't feel any different. I might as well just be sitting here and doing nothing." Terra groused after about two minutes. Raven opened one eye and sighed.
"Don't try and run before you can walk. This is like learning a combat skill, albeit with more applications then doing harm to someone."
"Well, I mean, you're all steeped in magic and otherworldly hugga-mugga. I…I'm just a girl!"
"…and so am I, Tara Markov." Raven said calmly.
"…right, right. Okay, but really, what am I trying to do here?"
"Like I said, you're trying to steady yourself, but perhaps you need to shore up your balancing platforms, as it were. See if you can filter out ambient emotions and focus on one. Then try and switch yourself around between opposing emotion states. Perhaps it will help, and it can be useful under certain circumstances. Certain emotions are better then others."
"Yeah, Robin gave me the fear lecture."
"And it's true. Fear can, if you let it, bog you down. But if you can't quite conquer it, you can always try to seize it and ride it…"
But how the hell did you do that?
God, she wished her friends were here, and not just because they had powers. But they weren't…
In fact, they'd trusted her to go off on her own, without her powers.
…wait…
Surely they hadn't all thought it was a good idea…
But Robin had thought it was best if she did what she thought she had to do.
Cyborg? He'd given her the car.
Beast Boy? He'd wanted to come with her, but respected her when she asked to go by herself.
Starfire? Was that alien girl even biologically capable of having a malicious thought?
Raven? No, she was aloof, not heartless, and she'd said nothing.
And Gauntlet…if it hadn't been for him, she'd have given into the fear, a fear much like the one that gripped her now, and run, and run right into the arms of Slade Wilson, if so called 'otherdimensional claims' were true, which would have lead her into the abyss. He'd saved her once, surely he had some idea what was good for her.
But Savior…
He hadn't said anything. He hadn't disparaged or put down her choice to go off and find herself. And he certainly wasn't the type to let the recognition of his own failings keep him from pointing out the failings of others, and the way he talked to her he seemed to think she was one big mass of failings. Surely he'd have said she'd get her stupid rear end killed and protested her going off, surely he'd have protested the Titans giving her resources so she didn't have to hitchhike and eat out of garbage cans, surely he'd have protested it tooth and nail because he was so sure she was a failure…
And he'd said nothing…
…of course he hadn't. Who did he ride in the Titans? Her and Rob. The new members who'd joined after him. Like he couldn't tolerate anyone muscling in on 'his territory', even though he sure as hell wasn't a founding member himself.
Of course he'd said nothing! He'd seen this as his chance! He must have been sure she'd get into trouble and he'd be rid of her!
Well, SCREW HIM! She'd survive just to spite him, the son of a…!
"I'M GETTING BORED BITCH!" Hotstreak suddenly yelled, and Terra was snapped out of her growing outrage by the nearness of the voice. She'd been so involved in her mental recollections and processes the past dozen or so seconds she'd almost forgotten about him. But he was still there, and he was almost on top of her.
The fear returned…and in reality, had something not happened immediately afterward, Terra's attempt to subconsciously wrest her fear into anger by irrationally blaming Noel and thinking he wanted her dead would have been pricked by said reality and burst, and chances are the fear and panic would have come roaring back and reduced her to a fetal position, leaving her a sitting duck for her enemies.
But for once, reality favored her in the next sentence Hotstreak tossed out.
"You know, considering your little performance and how damn flat you are, I expected you'd have SOMETHING approaching balls!" Hotstreak taunted.
His words washed over Terra. Was he calling her…damn it he was calling her boyish! She HATED it when people made fun of her in that vein! She couldn't help her damn metabolism, damn it…
And that fresh burst of anger broke through the paralysis, as Terra realized Hotstreak was right around the side of the car: within seconds he'd have her in view.
"AHA!" Hotstreak yelled, as he jerked around the car with a fireball at the ready.
And found no Terra.
"What the…bitch!" Hotstreak snapped, having been sure his prey had been hiding behind the car. He hadn't heard any screams from his earlier random shots, which meant his target was still alive, most likely, and probably hiding somewhere. Hell, he was SURE she was nearby, and he knew that the longer he took one of his teammates might come along and try and muscle in on his kill, and quite frankly after all the beatings at Static's hands the scalp of that skinny Titan blonde would do Francis Stone's ego a world of good (or bad, as it was), and it just wouldn't be the same if he didn't do it alone. But instead of getting a located target, a scream, and a panicked scramble, Hotstreak had found nothing.
His temper flared, and he almost lashed out and blasted the car.
That might have done Terra some good, as Hotstreak's temper would have caused him to forget that while he would be immune to the heat of an exploding car, he would not be as immune to the shockwave and shrapnel that he would be subjected to from standing right next to said exploding car, but it would have done her much more bad, as she had snuck around the other side and was now cowering behind the vertical trunk, trying to figure out an escape route: if the car had blown up, she'd get the same treatment as Hotstreak, with the added disadvantage that heat worked perfectly well on her.
But, once again, chance finally favored her, as a sudden loud bang came from a nearby alleyway.
Hotstreak snapped his head around, drawn by the noise. His face lit up.
"There you are." Hotstreak said, and headed for the alleyway.
Terra slid down and around a bit more to stay out of the pyrokinetic's peripheral vision, as she watched him head for the alleyway. Apparently he thought she'd made the sound.
Great! RUN!
But as soon as the thought came, another did.
No, wait, he might hear or sense it. Wait.
But he might turn around and see us anyway!
He could turn around and see us no matter what we do…!
And it was in that realization that Terra came to her decision.
Her decision that, she was sure, clarified that she had finally lost her damn mind under all the strain.
She didn't run.
She didn't hide.
Instead, she quietly picked up another small slab of concrete from the wrecked roads and started after Hotstreak.
How to ensure he didn't see her?
Make him see stars.
Hotstreak had already reached the alleyway and began striding down it. Terra cursed inwardly and picked up her sneaking pace, trying with every fiber of her being to be silent. How did those sneak people walk again…
"Knees slightly bent. Roll your foot from the heel to the toe." Robin said, and demonstrated by walking through an artificial square of dried out vegetation. It wasn't perfectly silent but Terra had to strain to hear it.
Her own first attempt was considerably noisier, but not as noisy as normal walking or running, Terra noted.
Apparently she'd retained her lessons better then she thought. Unfortunately, that kind of pace didn't favor speed and she needed it…
Wait, Hotstreak was slowly down.
The red-haired young criminal glanced back and forth in the alleyway. It was strewn with garbage and trash cans, but nothing else. He could have sworn that noise had been a dumpster lid closing.
Terra crept up, her stone raised, her breath held as it roiled in her lungs…
Maybe it had been a door opening and closing? Hotstreak couldn't see any doors. It hadn't sounded like a trash can…
Just a dozen more feet…
Would she hide under all that garbage? Desperate times and all, but Hotstreak would have thought he'd have recognized an abrupt…
And then, after a brief pause, he saw it.
And he turned around.
Terra froze, still about seven or eight feet from the teen. Fortune gave and fortune took away, and unfortunately the sun that peeked into the alleyway was at Terra's back.
Hotstreak had spied her shadow.
"Well. Maybe you do have a set, after all." He said, as Terra stared in horror. She was going to die. She couldn't make it to him in time, the alleyway hemmed her in and wouldn't let her dodge fire: fleeing was out of the question, and she doubted the third time was a charm when it came to thrown rocks.
She was out of options and out of time.
"Thanks for the fun. It'll make a good bar story. Bye now." Hotstreak said, and ignited his right hand.
Nothing left but pain and her last conscious regrets. There were a lot of things she'd wished she could have told people. Like Gar, and Tim, and Rob, damn, she'd let fear get in the way and now…
"Do it again!"
"What?" Terra said.
"Do it again! If at first you don't succeed and all…" Gauntlet said from where he sat above the training course.
"Heh. You never read the lesson plan, did you Rob? The general consensus of your teammates seems to be that repeating yourself is a bad thing. The villains will recognize patterns and then comes the running, and screaming…"
"Hey, it always worked for me!"
"Right. You were the one with the bad guy who threatened people with welding and the the strong bruiser villain who was so stupid he only succeeded on his missions when you reminded him what he was doing, right?"
"Hey, don't knock 'em until you fought 'em. Though I do remember that yeah, I once talked the Brick out of robbing a bank by convincing him he really wanted an ice cream. But they're not all like that." Rob said. "My teammates are right, but that doesn't mean they're perfect. Yeah, being able to come up with new avenues of attack quickly, if not immediately, is a near-necessity, but sometimes you'll find the best thing to do is repeat yourself."
"Why?"
"The villains won't see it coming! They'll be expecting Attack B, so they'll fall right into the trap of Blow A, Take Two!"
"And how many times has that worked for you?"
"It's why I've beaten Noel's sorry ass at every game of Halo we've played."
"Really? Whoo! Anything that works on Noel!"
"Really, when it's desperate, sometimes you should just charge them head on. If you're already screwed, no reason not to press the attack, or try something else again. Just because it's been done before doesn't mean it won't work again. And if they KNOW you're screwed, then they never see it coming."
So, she did what Rob said: she repeated herself.
"Oh well, guess I'm screwed." Terra said, as she tossed the rock down on the ground. "Guess you should get ahead with barbequing me."
"Yes I…WHAT?" Hotstreak said, as his arm stopped in mid raise. "What did you just say?"
"Well you've surely won. I'm helpless and trapped. Why delay?" Terra said, and shrugged. "Is this where I do the futile begging? I've never done it before so I'm unsure how it goes. Do people actually get on their knees or is that just an expression?" Terra said, as she actually started kneeling down by going to one knee.
"…what the, oh no, you're not gonna trick me! What are you planning?"
"What plan? I'm all alone here. You can kill me and get away scot-free."
"…you're bluffing on something!"
"Duh, I tried that already. Did it work? Am I such a blonde to think it will work again?"
"This is not how people about to die act! You're up to something!"
"I'm pretty much helpless, so what does it matter if I am?"
"…okay, just a minute…" Hotstreak said as he dispelled the fire on his hand and began poking his palm with his finger in an expression of mental effort, his face scrunched up in thought as he spoke, thinking out loud rather then talking to Terra. "Okay, if she could do something to me she would have, but she hasn't, therefore her powers are still on the fritz and she doesn't have any help, but on the other hand, she's a blonde, blondes are dumb, and would do stuff like trying to bluff again, but bluffing requires intelligence, and she's already tried bluffing, but a blonde can't bluff, so she is telling the truth, or maybe the truth is a bluff…or the bluff is the truth, ergo I should fry her, but that might produce a bad result, therefore I should surrender…ARGH DAMN IT WHY DIDN'T I PAY ATTENTION IN SCHOOL!"
"Was it your ADD?" Terra suggested.
"…what were we talking about again?" Hotstreak asked.
"Should you fry me or not."
"Oh yeah. I think, yes." Hotstreak said, as he raised fiery hands again.
"All right, go ahead, since I clearly can't do anything."
"Okay."
"OR CAN I?"
"DON'T DO THAT!" Hotstreak yelled.
"Do what?"
Hotstreak stared at the blonde Titan, still down on one knee and looking more like someone engaged in a casual conversation with an acquaintance then someone about to be killed violently.
"…Okay…logically…if you can do something, you'd have already done it. But you might be waiting for me to stumble into a trap. So maybe I should just stand here and do nothing…but then if you are bluffing, you could get away or hit me with something. Or maybe you have a gun…or maybe you're totally unarmed and powerless and buying time…or maybe your powers somehow came back and you're waiting for the best time, or they're going to and…hold on, I need to write this down." Hotstreak said, as he turned to the alleyway wall and, with a fiery finger, began writing on it with soot.
Terra stared, unable to believe what she'd just did: she'd turned her certain death into a classroom lesson on logic.
Of course, she was still stuck in the alleyway, which kept her from running away, and she still couldn't rush Hotstreak or pick up her discarded rock and bean him before he could fry her, and eventually his confusion was going to fade and then she'd be out of options, so really, what could she…
Life answered for her.
And perhaps fitting of the past minute, in the last way she'd have ever expected.
As she suddenly realized the ground was trembling slightly…
About a minute or so ago…
"Stupid chicky hitting me with a rock, she's messing with the freaking Carmendillo, I'll show her…!" Carmen-Dillo cursed as he stumbled down the road, holding his still aching head while he looked for Terra: he had no idea where Puff or Onyx were and he didn't really care where they were or if they believed him a joke, he was going to get that girl…
And much to his surprise, he found her.
Well, he saw her as he walked past an alleyway, standing there.
"…oh HO!" Carmen-Dillo said. He was about to call out to her, before he spied Hotstreak over her shoulder. Damn it, he always was stealing Carmen's thunder…
Wait, no, not this time. Carmen would deal with her before Hotstreak could. She hit him with a rock? Well then he'd hit her with…him! Himself! His own! Something! Whatever! He was going to roll over her and crush her into paste!
And that was just what Carmen-Dillo set out to do, as he ran backwards across the street and then charged at the alleyway, and just before he reached it he tucked into himself and turned himself into a spinning, crushing ball of doom, barreling right at the back of the young teenage girl.
Unfortunately, Terra didn't need her powers to sense the vibrations in the ground (kneeling helped), plus Carmen wasn't exactly quiet, as she turned around and saw him barreling down at her.
"HOLY…!"
Terra lunged to the side, plastering herself against the alley way.
"HEY! NO FAIR!" Carmen yelled as he rolled past her.
"…all right, is that correct, I…" Hotstreak said, before he heard the noise and turned. "WHAT THE!"
"I CAN'T STOPPPPPPPPPPPP!" Carmen wailed, as he bore down on his partner, whose eyes went wide.
"CARMEN YOU IDIOT!"
And then Hotstreak jumped to the side as well, and Carmen flew on past him.
"Whew, that was close. Aw damn, I smudged my equations!" Hotstreak complained, and then looked at Terra's stunned face. "What, you expected something else? I saw him coming!"
"…is he always like that?"
"You have no idea."
And Terra, who moments ago had seen a possible salvation, saw herself staring at her death again…
"AHHHHHHHHHHHH!" Carmen yelled as he rolled out of the alleyway, rolled across the street, and crashed into the building located there.
Which had a sign on it declaring it to be THE MUSEUM OF TRAMPOLINES.
"Now this is the only trampoline ever made with a large spring at the center of it." A tour guide said. "Thus, one hits it and will accelerate without additional effort. It was never sold because it was impossible to stop jumping. Fortunately, to prevent anyone from testing this we have safely propped it against the wall and surrounded it with fuzzy ropes."
"HELP MEEEEE!" Carmen wailed as he came rolling through the room, slammed into the same trampoline against the wall the tour guide had just pointed at, and as several tourists rapidly took pictures he sprang off and went right back the way he had come, screaming at the top of his lungs.
"HEY! I SAID NO JUMPING ON THE TRAMPOLINES!" The tour guide yelled. "Sheesh, it's like he just ignored the fuzzy ropes."
"Okay, it says I should kill you, but maybe to be sure I should carry the one…" Hotstreak said.
"I'M GONNA PUKE! AHHHHHHHHH!" Carmen screamed as he exploded out of the Museum of Trampolines and headed straight for the alleyway again.
"Wait, why is there even a one…" Hotstreak said, as Terra's eyes goggled as she looked past Hotstreak and saw what she saw.
"LOOK OUT!" She screamed…and then facevaulted as she realized what she'd done.
"What? What is…" Hotstreak said as he turned around. "…huh, Museum of Trampolines, what are the odds."
"AHHHHHHHHHHHH!" Carmen screamed.
And Hotstreak jumped aside again.
Terra rolled away as well as Carmen went back the way he came.
"Huh, you actually gave me a warning." Hotstreak commented.
"Uh…yeah…does that mean you can't kill me now?"
"Oh no, I'm afraid that's pretty obvious."
"Nerts."
Carmen flew out of the alleyway, across the street he'd originally run across, and crashed into the building there.
Sign On Door: OTHER Museum of Trampolines.
"Now, those charlatans at the OTHER Museum of Trampolines will say that they have the world's largest trampoline. That's absurd!" Said a tourguide who looked exactly like the first one except for a mustache and glasses. "WE have the largest working model, mounted here, sideways, on the wall."
And indeed they did.
"And over there next to it is the world's largest slingshot. Unfortunately the donor was suffering from dementia as he donated and installed it at the wrong museum."
"OH NOOOOOOOOOOO!" Carmen screamed as he blazed through the room and flew into the giant slingshot.
Guess what it did. Just guess.
"AHHHHHH MOMMY MOMMY MOMMY…!" Carmen screamed as he flew back out of the room going even faster then he had before.
"…maybe we should invest in some fuzzy ropes." Tourguide 2 said.
Terra barely got a chance to have the fear come back as she felt the rumbling again and it was quickly replaced by a sense of the surreal as she turned around to see Carmen blazing at her once more.
"Oh screw this." Terra said, and ran.
"So, in conclusion, YES, you are going to be…" Hotstreak said as he began to turn…and Terra ran past him. "AHA! I KNEW YOU WERE TRYING TO TRICK ME! WELL NOW YOU BURN YOU…!"
And then Hotstreak, one hand afire, heard it and turned around, as roughly 1/3 of a second later his vision filled with Carmen.
"Oh-"
KER-WHAMMO!
Hotstreak flew down the alleyway, almost crashing into Terra's back, and even as he landed on the ground Carmen bore down on him.
"-crud."
KER-SQUASH!
"…Oh look, the Ker-prefix. It's migrating." Hotstreak babbled, and then passed out.
Great for Terra, except for the whole rolling 500 pound ball about to crush her, as she threw a glance over her shoulder and then doubled her efforts, even as the ball bore down…
(Raiders of the Lost Ark theme starts playing)
"Huh, what does it say that I more expected the Katamari Damashi theme?" Terra said. How she managed that while running at top speed is something I'll leave you to figure out: the exit to the alleyway was in sight…
But Carmen was almost caught up…
"AHHHHHHHH!" Terra screamed as she reached the exit and dove to the side. She landed on the ground and sucked in a deep, needed breath.
Then she saw the inexplicable fedora that was sitting at the mouth of the alleyway.
"AH! HAT!" Terra yelped, and grabbed it.
Her arm with the hat missed Carmen's wild roll by about 2 centimeters, as he flew out of the alleyway again…
And found that, this time, a vehicle was driving across the street. Specifically, an 18-wheeler truck.
Whose engine front was pretty much destroyed as Carmen slammed into it…and bounced off, the mutant ricocheting off the vehicle like a pinball and continuing on his out of control roll down the street.
"PLEASE I'LL NEVER BE BAD AGAIN JUST SOMEONE HELP MEEEEEEEEE…" Carmen wailed as he rolled off and disappeared into the distance.
"…I'll take it." Terra said, and placed the hat on her head in a gesture of victory.
Only to have a man dressed in a leather jacket and carrying a whip walk up to her and snatch it off.
"That's mine." He said in a low somewhat growling tone, and walked off as he put his hat on.
"Sorry, got caught up in the moment." Terra said, and began turning away.
Then she abruptly realized just what had happened and whirled around. But the man was gone.
"…Okkkkkkkkkkkay." Terra said. "Captain Hero, Acme setups, that guy, is this really happening or did I eat some bad fried chicken last night and as a result am having very strange dreams…"
"HEY! HEY YOU!" Came an angry voice, and Terra turned around again as an angry trucker, seemingly unharmed, finished climbing out of his wrecked cab and started heading for Terra, who sweatdropped. Oh uh.
"WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON! WHAT JUST HIT ME?" The trucker yelled, clearly thinking Terra had something to do with it.
"Hey whoa wait, calm down!" Terra said, as she raised her hands. But the trucker kept advancing, so Terra started backing up. "Hold it, this wasn't my fault! Let me explain!"
"YOU BETTER…"
And then the trucker abruptly trailed off. Terra, still backing up, raised an eyebrow.
Then she backed into it.
An unmoving mass that was clearly a body. A body hard as rock.
And once again, came the fear, as Terra's eyes went as wide as saucers, and she turned and looked at the massive, stone-faced (literally and metaphorically) face of Onyx.
"Not dream." Onyx said quietly. "Nightmare maybe."
The blow would have floored a tank.
And Tara Markov's frail form was nowhere near as tough as a tank.