DISCLAIMER: I don't own the Teen Titans, Slade, Jump City, or any other related reference. I never will; the original characters are the only things I own.
When Raven returned to the tower, the Titans were gone. She assumed they were out chasing some petty criminal, so she sat down to review the battle tape from the previous night.
As she watched, she was amazed at the intruder's abilities. No normal human being could move that , fast or be that strong. She suspected the armor the intruder wore might have had something to do with, but she could see no obvious strength-enhancing hydraulics. In fact, it looked like a simple suit of plastic composite armor, lightweight but strong. A hunch led her to re-examine the fight on multiple light frequencies, but nothing was out of the ordinary. There was no excess infrared radiation that would suggest an engine or motor of any kind.
So how does he do all those things? she wondered. It was true; there were some metahumans that naturally possessed superhuman strength and speed, but these were quite rare, and any metahuman of this capability would have to be entered in the Justice League databanks. She quickly hacked into the main computer and started a search for criminals based on abilities.
After securing a half-dozen suspects, she began to extract biometric profiles from the criminal databanks and compared them to that of the intruder. None matched. For one, all of them were too large to be the intruder. For another, most made no secret of their superhuman abilities and wouldn't have bothered to wear a suit to disguise themselves.
It didn't make any sense, except that the armor granted the user his abilities. But a quick multi-frequency analysis of magnetic fluctuation in the armor revealed very little circuitry, so little that it could be explained as the feeds necessary for a simple biometrics display. Nothing about the suit seemed terribly out of the ordinary.
Raven sat back in her chair, sighing in frustration. She began to meditate, attempting to hold at bay the anger that came with that frustration and would, if left unchecked, rampage through her mind and destroy her control.
At that moment, the Titans were fighting the very same intruder whose identity Raven sought. The thief had once again broken into Syntech Industries, but this time, instead of white, his armor was a very dark shade of grey and had a metallic glint to it. And rather than fight them, the intruder spent all the time dodging or blocking the Titans' attacks. Not that they had any more success defeating him than they had last time.
Starfire hurled green balls of fury at the armored figure, while Robin threw explosive disks and bird-a-rangs at him from the opposite direction. The fanned pattern of Robin's projectiles provided the enemy with no opportunity to escape, and sure enough, both starbolts and explosives converged on the burglar with deadly force. But when the smoke cleared, there stood the intruder, unharmed, with a translucent sphere of glowing blue energy surrounding him.
Cyborg's one human eye widened. "He's got force fields!" His sonic cannon unleashed several sustained blasts, but these proved ineffective against his opponent's defenses. Beast Boy's tiger-like strength also failed to penetrate the fluorescent blue shield.
The interloper chuckled and straightened, the force field dissipating with a wave of his hand. "You know, it really shouldn't surprise you. That is, if you realized what I stole last time." He gestured toward the tank filled with the same fluorescent blue fluid that he had purloined during his last visit. "That's psitanium in the form of psitanium tetranitrite. The liquid can be purified to yield liquid psitanium." He pointed to his near-black armor. "I coated my armor in it, and that's why you can't beat me now. Not that you could have anyway. So, if you don't mind, I'll just leave with another load." He dashed over to the large tank, and before the Titans could do anything, both tank and intruder vanished in a flash of blue light.
"Did he just do what I think he did?" Robin asked in disbelief. The shock on the other Titans' faces confirmed his fear.
They had just encountered the perfect thief.
What is psitanium? How does it help this mysterioius masked marauder? Will the author stop using corny alliteration? Find out next time…
A/N: Sorry for the short chapter, but that's all I could come up with at the moment. So far, feedback has been good, but only 2 people have reviewed. Please, read, and review, even if what you have to say is critical.