I accidentally filed this new story in the crossovers section instead of just Teen Titans. My bad, it's been a while since I posted Chapter 1 of Alter-Ego. So I guess anyone just joining in now gets the two chapter thing again instead of just one for waiting so patiently. Read, review and all that jazz. :D
Arual-san
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"You had the rookie bots last time," he said with a poisonous grin. "I'm from the expensive line." And in the few seconds they had to react, Cyborg rushed the droid, Robin snapped out of his temporary freeze, but the droid was just a second faster and fired a laser beam from its palm straight at the girls at his feet.
Had he hit them both at once the damage to each might have been minimized but Starfire was closer and higher in that she was kneeling. It blasted her in the stomach and with enough force that she was expelled straight out of the window.
The glass provided little resistance and shattered into a thousand pieces and once it did, once that happened, Robin instinctively redirected his footing from the android to there.
"Starfire!"
That blast he had felt pulsing in heat waves in the air when it was fired and it had hit a vulnerable area on the girl. His imagination took him places he didn't want to go and he saw her broken body sprawled out at the base of the tower, just like so long ago when it had been two acrobats…
Robin had jumped onto the windowsill in a heartbeat and despite that he was a flightless bird his blood nearly urged him to jump off after her anyway. He could never let that happen again.
He looked to the ground far below and gratefully saw nothing that his nightmares suggested. Purple flashed from somewhere above and Robin saw Starfire floating out before him, already mostly recovered from the blast but still crouching a little at the stomach.
"You will regret that action," she said forebodingly, not needing to yell, "one who resembles our friend but is not!"
"Ha, show me then, Bright Eyes!" the android mocked and, playing Beast Boy's slight frame and its own speed to its advantage, he slipped out from under Cyborg's attempts to restrain and keep him from attacking the others. The droid was supposed to break Cyborg's fall in a body slam to the floor so Cyborg fumbled suddenly on his feet to keep standing. Nearby Raven was quickly getting herself over the electric shock.
"Excuse me," the android quipped and as he ran he shoved Robin from his way like there was a hidden bodybuilder beneath that skinny frame. "I've got to take that challenge from your little girlfriend."
He jumped off the ledge before Robin could get him back, engaged a pair of thrusters from his feet and was gone to chase after Starfire.
Shaking off what she could of her still present pain, Raven took straight off through the window after them both. The air space above the tower was just as quickly filled with the sounds of beams, dark energy and battle cries as the girls fought to take it down.
"It's trying to split us up!" Robin realized almost at once when the android was clearly more of an intellectual model than its sisters. "Come on-!"
"Yeah, to the roof, I know!" Cyborg grunted, readying his blaster as he tried to keep pace with Robin and his mad dash up the stairs. The blaster was only partially-charged at that very early time in the morning, enough for a single run for trouble, and one could only hope it was enough.
They made it to the flat-top roof of the tower and sights now accompanied the sounds they'd heard. Starfire and Raven had more fluid motions of flying but the android still held his own, more skating across the air than flying with his feet thrusters and supporting ones under his forearms. Now that it was fighting for real, this model resembled a robotic tank much more so than the ones that Robin remembered. It retained the blade-hands but any part of it that moved seemed equipped with blasters, blades or the electric shocks that had fried Raven.
"Nice you see you guys again," the android said sarcastically in Beast Boy's voice and he took a moment out from fighting to send a handful of miniature missiles in Robin and Cyborg's direction.
The two didn't need to signal the other to split off to either side when the missiles came down on them fast. But they didn't explode on the roof where the boys had been standing a couple seconds before.
"Heat-seekers!" Robin said, looking behind him to see the missiles nipping at his cape.
"I kinda figured that, man!" Cyborg retorted back and when he could afford the chance he turned up the heat frequency on his sonic cannon. Mostly machine, he gave off less body heat than the rest of the Titans but enough for the missile to still be attracted to him. He had a plan.
In the air, the android could again focus on taking down the Titan girls without interruption. For his ace in the hole there was the button on his forearm set to detonate the bombs in the tower. When the girl Titans went to save the boys who couldn't fly he would have free range to take them all down while they were vulnerable.
But not too soon, not when he could have a little fun first after being locked in the basement of a girl's academy on guard duty for months. The android already had blades for hands but then still more sliced through his forearms like fins through water.
Though she'd broken into a sweat to even keep up with the machine, Raven maintained her wit. "Is there anywhere you don't have another-?"
He didn't let her finish before he swooped down on her with those newly revealed weapons, going for a hit, and she could only bring up her dark energy as a shield. Still, as the energy caught the blade it gave a sickening screech.
Raven turned the shield into a battering ram and bashed the android several yards away from her.
"Keep it at a distance, Starfire," Raven warned, barely glancing to a side where she felt her friend's presence to be, doing no more for fear of taking her eyes off the deadly foe. "Aim for the thrusters."
Starfire nodded. "We shall bring it down to the roof where all may visit to claim a piece."
And the girls backed off, put plenty of safe distance between themselves and the droid as to not be skewered by any one of its numerous blades. Its "air-skating" couldn't match the ease of their real flying but it moved faster than either of them and locked in on Starfire. She rained her starbolts down, flying backwards to keep him in sight, and Raven trailed close behind the two firing as well so that the droid had to focus some attention on her too and could never get too close to Starfire.
By some stroke of luck, the girls both seized the same opening on the droid's left forearm thruster. It exploded the complete underside of that arm and the droid veered an unintentional sharp left. It took a guise under that moment of weakness to fire out another energy beam just when they wouldn't be expecting it but Raven noticed just soon enough and put up a wall for it to ricochet off of.
The missiles were right on Cyborg's tail just as fast as he could run but once he could afford to fire a shot he did. He transformed his arm into its cannon form and fired off a circular blast that had heat like a miniature sun.
He dropped to the ground. The missile nearer to him took the bait and there was a fantastic explosion above their heads. The other one remained locked onto its original target and, in the comprising position he was in on the ground, Cyborg fired another beam at it dead-on.
The second missile became lost in the beam's light but when the light dissipated it still remained, worse for wear. It seemed to overlook Cyborg's lesser heat signature as one and the same as the beam it had been blasted with and thus set a new target for the next nearest person.
"I just got rid of one!" Robin barked across the roof in riled irritation, back up to two missiles again after he'd managed to deactivate one by figuring the exact place to slice it in half with one of his birdarangs and taking a split-second to aim.
"Sor – ry!" Cyborg dragged out but he didn't stop for more than a quick breather when Robin hadn't even gotten that yet. This time he drew the bait closer to home by simply charging his cannon like an inviting campfire.
"Here, fishie…"
"I can't keep this up forever, Cyborg!"
"Sure you can, dude," Cyborg teased even in the midst of battle, continuing to shake around his heat bait. "You're our fearless, invincible leader, aren't ya? Isn't that what we've all been told to believe?"
"We need to help out Starfire and Raven! I'm not going to let couple of missiles get in my way!"
"And you'd say the same thing for any other "minor" inconvenience," sighed Cyborg, knowing his friend all too well. It would mean he wouldn't have more than a single shot left after but Cyborg charged the cannon hotter.
Soon enough one of the missiles deviated off course straight to him and he was off running again. The missiles were much too fast for them to be disposed of by conventional means and that was only why Robin hadn't been able to get rid of them with ease. They stole away nearly all of his reaction time but no more. The boys went for either length ways side of the roof and stared running at full speed towards the other so the missiles sped up too and would be unable to divert course.
"Low!" Robin called out when they couldn't afford to mess this one up.
"Got it!" Cyborg echoed as they were about to collide but before they did Cyborg arched his spine back far enough to snap a normal person's in two and Robin's slid underneath his friend's legs so that, by the time the missiles collided, they were both far gone from the blast range. The roof was built to withstand a heavy load and only received black scorch marks.
One of the droid's thrusters was gone and another lagging badly and it was taking its toll on its performance. He couldn't just outmaneuver every blast from Starfire and Raven anymore but had to block them with his arms, which were steadily showing signs of damage throughout that the circuits worked feverishly to repair it all. The girls stayed out of range of his blades so he could only use beams like they did but when he tried to strike Raven again there was a split-second cutting sound.
His outstretched metal hand fell from its wrist, severed like a hot knife through butter.
The droid glared back to where Robin caught the birdarang he'd thrown and fired off yet more weapons from his belt. Cyborg had only a single shot left after he'd used nearly all of the little energy his battery had, so he stood nearby ready in wait.
While the droid's attention was focused elsewhere, Raven took Robin's cue and trapped the remaining thrusters on his feet in an orb. She leeched out from it any traces of oxygen or other elements and condensed her hold so that the metallic feet were crushed under the pressure.
Starfire was ready with her part to ground the droid onto the roof where they could all finish it off but the droid wasn't down and out yet. The hand that Robin had severed had been falling to the ground but by some command from the android the hand sparked bright blue and came zooming back upward to its body as if magnetized to return. The level of concentration Raven needed to pull off what had slowed her reaction time to let her hold of him go all at once and so Starfire diverted course to get Raven out of the line of fire.
Like a loyal pet, the hand reattached to the android's body. Without Raven's influence, the droid began to lose altitude but it rerouted all its system functions into repairing its crippled feet to regain flight. The small section started being prepared at an alarmingly fast rate.
"All together!" Robin ordered his team when the opponent was weak. "Don't let it repair!"
Black, green and blue beams, coupled with compact bombs and birdarangs hit the droid all at once. The result pulled apart its metallic body at every seam and it could barely keep its shredded limbs attached, even as the system worked to repair itself.
The droid had lost and could delay no longer its detonation of the bombs planted within the tower. This time it fell for true and it struggled to move its limbs that deteriorated more with every movement. With only a couple fingers left it pressed the detonation button and it looked upon the tower, expecting to see that cocky grin wiped right off the leader's face as his footing crumbled beneath him.
The explosion never happened and the droid saw that its detonation wire had been disconnected. He refocused a portion of its repairs to stitch up the quick fix.
"Don't let it hit the ground!" But Raven and Starfire hardly needed Robin to tell them that when the droid was the only clue they had to Beast Boy's whereabouts. They swooped down after the broken body at once, Raven severing the few stray bits that connected the head to the neck, Starfire gripping hold of a small space on the body that bore no blades and heaving it out into the ocean below where no machine could repair itself.
Raven fluttered down to the roof with the head that couldn't hurt them anymore.
The livid glares the four Titans all inflicted upon the Beast Boy imposter's head could've rusted through the metal on his fake face but the head only gave a half-hearted sigh of defeat. "I still think goth-girl is the one that's been freaking out lately."
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All four Titans were plenty upset at the situation that were presently in but none so much as Robin who stormed back down the stairs a few paces ahead of the rest. He couldn't wait to get to the interrogation room of the tower so instead swept aside a space on the junk food disaster on the counter and slammed the disembodied head onto it with purposeful roughness.
"All right, you! I want some answers!"
The head huffed, "Not a very creative interrogation line if you ask me."
"I wasn't asking you!" Robin fired back, riled further than he already was with the snarky attitude of the android. "You replaced Beast Boy when we split up at the girl's academy to investigate, it was the only time you could have! What did you do with him!? Where is he!?"
"My memory's a little fuzzy," the android replied as if there was no way he could care less. "Normally I'd walk it off but…" He gave a snide glance to where his body ended somewhere along the fourth vertebrae and didn't need to say any more.
Though part of her wanted to join Robin in smashing the information they needed out of the droid, Raven held back and she put a hand to Robin to do the same. There was little left of the droid and they didn't want to push too hard.
Cyborg joined the rest in the den quite a few paces behind. "Once I picked up that B wasn't B on the scanners I ran a diagnostics check on the rest of the tower. It's laced with bombs but it's safe to say the detonation trigger is at the bottom of the bay right now." He set down a universal battery pack on the counter. "This should keep our little imposter up and running until you get what you need out of him. Hey Star, you want to help me sniff out all those bombs?"
That specific turn of phrase converted some of Starfire's righteous anger into sadness. "Beast Boy is the one to ask when one is in need of most powerful nose…not me."
That statement of hers brought the rest of them down a little in the same way. Only when Starfire had left the room was Robin unable to keep holding back for her sake. Rather than demand the same answer out of the uncooperative head, he returned with a blowtorch from one of Cyborg and Starfire's many kitchen experiments.
"Ooo, that's an awfully dark method for a superhero to take," the android commented, slightly amused. No fear bloomed on its face even as Robin lit the torch and drew it near to his face with a dead-set look of determination. He only seemed to goad Robin on.
"You're going to tell us what you've done with him!"
"Pain is a human emotion," the droid said in plain English when neither teenager reached that conclusion first. "I can't imagine why my manufacturers would ever want to program me with it. You have nothing you can threaten me with and you know it."
"I can burn a hole straight through your circuits," Robin threatened anyway, anything to get out the rage he was feeling at being tricked at such a personal level but he wanted to take it even further. He wanted to melt away that fake green skin from the metal muscles and burn its voice box into an unrecognizable croak, anything to take away that sight of the fake when he knew not the condition of his missing friend.
A warm touch closed over Robin's strained hand, easing its hold over the torch.
"This isn't the way to go about the situation," Raven said and she pulled the weapon from him entirely when he had calmed down on some miniscule level. She flipped on her communicator and was unsurprised to find Beast Boy's signal out of range. They were programmed to work on a global scale and so the only conclusion was that he wasn't even on the same planet anymore.
Raven flipped over to Cyborg and called him back from his bomb-sniffing duties. While she awaited his return she stepped before Robin to the head. "You don't have sufficient shields to block me from seeing into your mind. Tell me, why was it that for a few random intervals during our fight that the space behind your eyes flashed white?"
Caught off guard in that, the droid's composure collapsed and it couldn't regain it quickly enough for them not to notice.
Raven knew she had struck something and continued, "I saw a reel of images flash at lightning speed. They showed the four of us, the range of our powers and any other information you could gather. I'll bet you were hacking Beast Boy's memories right then. You want to know something else?"
He gave her a look of complete loathing.
"A human brain is the most complex device on the planet. It doesn't really matter if your programming is unmatched in this galaxy, you can't filter the exact information you require without receiving excess in the mix." Her lips turned up into a rare grin in that she had him cornered. "Those other thoughts were at the surface of Beast Boy's mind, things he was seeing at this very moment."
"What?" Robin started. "Then-?"
"He's fine, Robin," Raven assured the boy before he could work himself up over it. "The scene was dark and it moved by very fast but I can tell you that much. Cyborg," she said, moving right along when he came in, "normal interrogation isn't going to work on this one. I think you're going to have to get into its mainframe and pull a hack job on it."
Robin nodded and he elaborated on her point, "The previous models were hooked up to a motherboard. Gain control over this one's motherboard, all those more expensive models-" – he exchanged a look of contempt with the head – "and we'll gain some leverage."
To any onlooker that didn't know the boy well it might've seemed that Robin had effectively stomped down the rage he'd been feeling then and there but in truth he was only saving it. He'd only gotten two hours of sleep in but it was still the furthest thing from his mind when he attacked the punching bag in his training room with such ferocity he might've snapped the chains holding it aloft.
Only when no part of his uniform wasn't soaked with sweat did he feel he had the right to stop. Robin pulled out his communicator but Cyborg called him first. "Dude, everyone's packed and ready to go! You coming or what?"
"What?" Robin exhaled with some surprise. "I never told you to-"
"Yeah you didn't, we kind of drew out that conclusion ourselves. I've got what I need from the droid's mainframe and we've already made arrangements to have Kid Flash fill in for us while we're gone. Now get that spiky head of yours down to the garage and join us already."
Robin snapped the communicator shut and with a little frustration. He'd just gotten back but it was back to Gotham City again.