Teen Titans
Adaptation
By Cyberwraith9
The New Order: Titans Together
The city shook with a clash of titanic magnitude. For too long, it had known fear at the hands of Red X and his merciless gang of ne'er-do-wells. He came from shadows, taking as he pleased, leaving only terror for his victims. But at long last, heroes had arrived to challenge him: teenagers like him, with extraordinary power, but possessed of the notion that no citizen should ever have to fear those with gifts like theirs. These teenagers, these children on the cusp of greatness, fought Red X's ilk with everything they had to defend their city.
They were, to say the least, a bit outclassed.
Electricity filled the air from the hands of a painfully pale boy pressed back against a boutique storefront. Black, rubbery material clung to him, decorated with copper veins in the shape of lightning. His eyes glowed blue with the same energy that crackled from his fingertips. "I could use a little help here!" the boy, Juice, yelled at the top of his lungs.
A technological imp, Gizmo, hovered over Juice on jets extending from his battle pack. A globe of translucent green energy ate Juice's blue lightning without ruffling Gizmo in the slightest. When Gizmo extended his arms, his pack sprouted protonic cannons, the grips of which slithered into his hands. "You need a lot of help, Casper," he razzed Juice.
Close enough to hear the cry for help, Queenie was powerless to answer it. She was locked in a contest of strength with the copper-topped tower of muscle named Mammoth. Though Queenie was by no means a slouch—she stood a head taller than six feet, and her baggy sweatshirt concealed metahuman muscle that would make any bodybuilder flex with envy—she trembled and bent against Mammoth's iron grip. Her hands creaked inside his. Sweat glistened down her ebony forehead, making her sunglasses slip.
"Had enough, cutie pie?" Mammoth teased.
She tried to answer, but her banter became a cry when Mammoth twisted suddenly, surprising her into the air with superior leverage. Queenie flew end over end and fell into another of her teammates, a teen with golden skin and styled hair who wielded a pair of rusty revolvers. The boy fell prone underneath Queenie's rock-solid bulk with a grunt.
"Oh, real nice, Queenie," the buried boy snarled.
"Shut up, Magnum," Queenie snarled back.
The girl Magnum had been deadlocked with emerged from behind the old, parked Buick she'd been using as cover. Straps of leather bound her enticing curves. More leather clung to her hips and legs in a manner suggesting that it had been poured, not donned. She gestured at the street.
The pavement leapt at the command of her hand, wrapping around the stacked pair of heroes. Queenie and Magnum yelped as the street itself grasped them, keeping them at bay with fingers of hot stone.
With another gesture, the girl—Shimmer—transmuted the pavement into solid steel, entombing all but their heads. "Shoddy road, right? The city should look into that," Shimmer said with a sick grin.
"Great. Just great," Magnum huffed while Shimmer left them trapped. "I'm stuck underneath Queenie, and I can't even reach any part of her that'd make it worthwhile."
Forced to face up by their metal tomb, Queenie shouted, "I feel anything, I'm gonna squash ya!"
Further down the street, Jinx, the lilac-haired witch, kept two more at bay. To her left was a short, scrawny boy with wild hair that framed a set of dark safety goggles so large they dwarfed the rest of his golden face. He had an arm made of silvery alloy, which he aimed at Jinx and braced with his other arm. His voice droned with unnatural calm as he said, "I advise you to surrender."
Jinx snorted at the scrawny cyborg, and then at the scrawnier blue-skinned boy to her right. Both advanced on her as if to capture her. Both were in for a rude awakening. "And why should I, goggles? You Salvation Army super dweebs going to take me in?"
The blue boy barked, "His name is Stripwire, and don't make fun o' him! We're the Streetbeat, and we're gonna mess you up, pinky!"
"I do not believe she cares, Blink," Stripwire noted.
"I don't. I promise." Hex crackled in Jinx's hands.
Stripwire's metal arm mechamorphed into a hollow cannon. Wind whistled in its barrel as he answered, "Luckily, her opinion on the matter is extraneous." The cannon clicked and wumphed. For a split second, Jinx thought it had malfunctioned.
Then she felt a column of air punch her in the stomach. The thrust of air made her stumble back.
Blink crouched and vanished in a silent flash of light. He reappeared behind Jinx on his hands and knees, giggling. Jinx fell onto her backside with a yelp, collapsing through the flash Blink left while he teleported back to Stripwire's side.
The boy's cannon became an arm once more. It didn't stay that way for long. His forearm sprouted long, thin tentacles that wrapped around Jinx into a cocoon. She cursed and wriggled, but couldn't free even one hand.
"As Blink stated, we are the Streetbeat. This is our neighborhood. You are not welcome," Stripwire told his wriggling captive.
Jinx scowled. "That's a bit of bad luck for you, sparky," she said.
Lilac hex poured out of every part of Jinx. It seeped into Stripwire's tentacles and up his arm. Pink sparks erupted from the arm's joints, eliciting a raised eyebrow from its owner. Stripwire watched his arm disassemble into a jumble of interconnected components dangling from his shoulder. "This is unfortunate," he said.
Coils of cable sloughed off Jinx as she stood with crackling eyes. "You haven't seen 'unfortunate,'" she growled.
A gale descended around Jinx, five times the power and fifty times the magnitude of Stripwire's compression cannon. Her conjured wind swept Stripwire and Blink into the air, where they tumbled at Jinx's mercy.
The last of the Streetbeat watched his friends falling into the sky. A red, jagged blade flashed at his throat, recapturing his focus. He brought his own blade up to block, stopping the blow against the hilt of his old broadsword. His blade locked with the gauntlet of his foe, a skull-masked man in black armor and a red cape, who said, "So this is the infamous Streetbeat? I'm disappointed."
The last Streetbeat strained. Dirty blond hair fell into his eyes, obscuring his struggle with Red X. His broadsword trembled with effort. "Screw you," the teen snarled.
"Jason, isn't it?" Red X asked of the blond. He got a grunt in reply, and shrugged. The contest of blades didn't seem to test Red X's strength in the slightest, which infuriated Jason to no end. "When I heard of you, I had to come down to Jump Central to see for myself. You have quite the local reputation. I was looking forward to a challenge."
The blade of Jason's sword dipped inexorably toward him despite his best effort. No man had ever been strong enough to best his blade, especially not one-handed, as Red X did now. His suit must give him extra oomph, the Streetbeat leader thought. Wish I'd known that a minute ago. Jason abandoned the contest without warning. He slid his blade from Red X's and spun around, lashing out with is foot.
Red X simply wasn't there. As Jason's boot split the air, he felt something heavy strike his kidney. He staggered, and looked around in time to catch Red X's foot with his nose. Stars exploded behind his eyes while his body sailed off of the kick. He collapsed on the street, his face slick with blood, his vision swimming with Red X's haunting mask.
The villain bent over Jason and took up his broadsword. "Such a waste," he said, not of the blade he fondled, but of the Streetbeat who'd lost it.
Blood swam in Jason's mouth. He spit it a Red X. The spittle fell short, but the sentiment struck home. "I swear…" he slurred.
"You?" Amusement resounded from behind Red X's mask. "You aren't even close to my league, boy. Keep Jump Central. This ghetto deserves you, and you, it. Come look me up when you're a credible threat." Red X tossed the sword. It clattered onto the pavement behind him as he turned and walked away.
He approached Jinx, who kept her two Streetbeat helpless inside of a localized tornado, which she balanced on her palm for her own amusement. She smiled as she felt his arms slide around her waist. "Having fun?" she asked without turning around.
He peered over her shoulder, pressing his face next to hers. She smelled of an intoxicating blend of flowers, a scent that warmed his blood in the Californian winter. "Not nearly enough. These low-rent heroes bore me to tears."
Jinx reached around to pat his cheek. As she did so, her tornado dissipated, and her prisoners thudded on the street. "Aw. Poor baby. You want to go rob the bank again? They might have more money by now."
"That sounds like a laugh. I could do with a little excitement. Lately, it feels like things have gotten boring," he said. Hand in hand, they strolled off to gather the rest of their friends, who had piled the other Streetbeat atop one another for Shimmer to fuse together into the same metallic mound that held Magnum and Queenie.
Jinx slapped him hard on his hindquarters. "Careful what you say, Baby Face. Luck'll hear you, and give you all the excitement you can handle. And be extra careful about who you call boring," she added, squeezing his hand playfully.
In a claustrophobic examination room deep in the sterile white bowels of S.T.A.R. Labs, a desk monitor buzzed with another in a long series of depressing news reports. City work crews on the screen struggled with cutting torches to free six teenage heroes out of the molded metal mound adhering them to the street. It was a wonder they were still alive.
Working the foreground of the shot, the handsome reporter Hank McCoy glanced back at the scene with a grim expression. "Tragedy visited the beloved downtown of Jump City today. The vicious gang of metahumans plaguing the reconstruction of the city after last fall's Attack left the area in ruins and local residents huddled in fear. Despite the best effort of local Samaritans, calling themselves the Streetfleet—"
"Streetbeat!" Magnum shouted from the metal mound. "And you can stick your head right in this mess and suck it, hairpiece! Hey! Watch the 'do," he shouted at an orange vest working a torch next to his face.
"It would seem that no one can stop the return of the Red X. The police's newly reformed Special Crimes Unit still lacks the manpower and equipment to combat these teenaged terrors. The Justice League claims that their resources are engaged abroad, leaving them unable or unwilling to answer the cries for help ringing throughout the city. And the one question on everyone's lips remains, 'Where are the Teen Ti—'"
Metal fingers tapped the screen's power button, banishing Hank's newscast from the room. The fingers flexed into a fist the size of a cantaloupe under the watch of their owner's mismatched eyes: one, slate and somber; the other, red and glowing.
Standing across the small room, Doctor Katherine Brown watched the enormous metal man form and reform his fist experimentally. She shook her head, making her long braid dance behind her lab coat. "Victor, I'm all but begging you to reconsider. Every one of your implants is a prototype. It's all been redesigned from the ground up. There are a million and one things that could go wrong if we don't extensively test them before field deployment."
He glanced up from his fist. "All but?" he asked.
She gave him a wan smile. "I'm an administrator. I don't beg unless money's involved. But please, Victor, in total seriousness, you will very likely die. Five-to-one odds with unproven weapons… We didn't build you a new body so you could walk out of here and commit suicide."
His human eye narrowed. His lips twisted down. "I know how new it is. I helped design it. And dying is way down there on my list of things to do." He glanced back at the blank monitor. "But the man's got a point. This 'Red X' wannabe is major trouble, and nobody else is left to do anything. So it's time to answer that question on everyone's lips."
Two figures skulked the sunny streets in red cloaks. Hoods cast their features in shadow and hid their unusual clothing from the ordinary people passing them on the sidewalk. Their passing drew little notice from other pedestrians, who were accustomed to red cloaks among them by now. In fact, another red cloaked figure approached the other two from the opposite direction.
"Bright blessings of Blood upon thee, brother and sister!" the cloaked figure said cheerily, hidden in his hood like the others.
The second figure waved, and said quickly, "Yeah, totally bloody blessings, bro." When the friendly cloak left earshot, the second figure leaned down to the first and hissed, "Okay, I feel majorly scummy for stealing these robes."
His companion didn't even turn her hood. "It's the easiest way to get around town. These cloak guys are everywhere. No one will notice us," she said.
He shivered. "I know. Creepy, right? Practically everything's rebuilt, and now there are, like, ten bajillion of these Blood guys walking around. They have a church on every street. And the pizza place is gone. Everything's changed!"
"Which is why it's important we lay low until we understand what's going on," she hissed back. "That jungle nightmare cost us an entire month with all the time-space hopping. We need to figure out what the situation is before we charge headlong anywhere."
The second figure leaned back with a sigh. Then he noticed a bald, heavyset man walking beside him, who had obviously overheard the conversation. A snaggletooth grin shone in the figure's hood as he said, "Hey, bless your blood, dude!"
The fat man walked faster, outpacing them.
The first figure rolled her eyes in the security of her hood. "And try to keep a low profile," she told her companion.
He chilled her to the bone with a smile and a thumbs up. "Hey, it's me," he assured her.
"Y'wanna tell me why we're keeping such a low profile?" Bumblebee complained as she stepped out of Herald's glowing portal. The horn blower closed his portal after her, leaving the seven of them compacted in an alley behind a downtown office building. Argent and Jericho had to move over to give the striped southern hero room to glare at their de facto leader.
Tek shuffled to the alley's mouth to glance into the street. Both the building and the concrete beneath them were exceptionally clean, a detail she noticed and filed somewhere amidst the swarm of thoughts that rattled her skull. A heavy satchel thumped against her butt, slung over her neck and shoulder by a canvas strap. "Because flying a big, shiny jet over the city seemed like a great way to get blown up," she said.
A jumble of elbows, shoulders, and "excuse me's" pushed Bushido into Tek's back. "It helps that you wrecked the jet trying to take off," he reminded her.
"I did not—!" Tek lowered her voice and forced herself to breathe. "I did not 'wreck' anything. The jet experienced a major malfunction that forced me to set it down. It hasn't been serviced in ages, it was bound to happen."
"I've never heard a major malfunction accompanied by so many occurrences of the word 'oops,'" Bushido said.
Slipping off her drab, heavy winter coat, Argent sighed in relief. Her skin glittered in the sunny California winter, which felt like paradise after over a week on the tundra. "I'm just glad we're back to a temperature that isn't lower than the number of penguins you can see out your window. So what's the plan, love?"
Kid Devil winced as Jericho crushed his toes with an errant step. "Step One should probably be finding some elbow room," he suggested.
No immediate danger lurked outside of the alley, so Tek stepped out and waved for them to follow. While her bizarre parade of recruits poured onto the sidewalk, she stepped back and marveled at what the city had become in her absence. The construction zones and disarray she remembered were gone. Gleaming new faces covered the buildings that she had personally watched being demolished. The whole city shone with a sense of newness that dazzled her.
She staggered back, astonished, and murmured, "It's all new. Everything."
"Oh, yeah. This is a real hotbed of crisis. I'm glad we spent a month getting ready for this," Bumblebee said dryly, and glanced at Tek. "Seriously, are we going to have to quit again?"
Herald scratched his head with his horn. "I have to admit, this place looks less imperiled than I was expecting. Wasn't this all supposed to be tore up?"
Sensing Tek's shock, Bushido stepped between her and the rest of them. "Please. I was here, and witnessed the disarray plaguing the city. Though repairs have been affected, I have no doubt that the danger is yet present. Tek is merely surveying the situation in order to better gauge our best course of action. Aren't you?"
Tek said nothing until Bushido subtly jabbed her with his elbow. "What? Oh! Right. Um…okay. Things are obviously better than I thought, and that's good. But that doesn't mean there's no trouble. We should split up and run a patrol of the city."
"Excellent!" Bushido decreed. "It will allow us to assess the city, search for trouble, and establish a presence all at once."
"Uh, yeah. What Ryuko said." She drew her communicator. "I'll scan for other Titan IDs. It's a long shot, but someone else might have answered my call. The rest of you—"
The sharp rapport of weapons drew all eyes to the west, where a plume of smoke stood up above the new skyline. Windows rattled with distant explosions. Sirens cried warning. And the lump of fear permanently residing in Tek's gut tightened itself into a baseball that her monster grasped and hurled. As she watched the smoke spread above the city, her throat stung with pre-vomit.
"Someone's playing our song," Herald said, and spun his horn. "We'd better head over and change their tune." He felt five separate looks of identical disgust, and retorted, "What? I can't make bad jokes too?"
Bumblebee shrank, sprouting gossamer wings in the transformation. "Let's just go beat the bad guys before someone tries to out-suck Mal," she suggested.
She and Argent took to the air as Herald led the others into the street. As Bushido followed, he noticed that Tek did not. He paused, and doubled back. "Is something wrong?" he asked.
Tek looked up from the plastic bottle in her hands. A small white pill disappeared into her lips. "Hmm? Yeah. No, uh, yeah. I'm fine." Stuffing the bottle back into her belt, she took an uncertain step toward him.
His hand pressed against her shoulder, keeping her in the full effect of his glare. "You cannot afford doubt now, Tek. Doubt will kill one of your teammates as surely as if you deliver the stroke yourself."
A thin smile flashed in her lips. "Bushido, I'm fine. No more doubt. That's why we trained, right?"
"I am not inquiring. And I am not so easily placated," he said, and killed her smile with an upthrust eyebrow. "You are frightened. Fear has its place on the battlefield, but it cannot lead. You must command it, not the other way around."
Tek took his hand from her shoulder. His fingers felt strong and warm. She fought a blush as she wondered what a clammy mess her own grasp must have been. But she said, "Ryuko, I'm a basket case. I really am. But as long as you guys need me…as long as I still have to get this to Cyborg," she said, and patted the heavy satchel slung at her side, "I'm not quitting."
Bushido searched her face for an endless second. He nodded. "Very well," he said.
Blue-white light flashed behind Tek, only to be consumed by a wave of technology that swallowed her and her satchel whole. When the last of her armor fell into place, she towered over Bushido. She scooped him up with one hand and lumbered into a sprint that would catch them up to her recruits. "Let's move 'em out, Ry."
Bushido flipped and perched upon her shoulders, and steadied himself with a hand on her helmet. "Yippee-ki-yay," he deadpanned.
The doors of the Bank of Perez vomited gouts of fire, blackening the sidewalk and framing Red X in glowing destruction. He smirked across the police task force lying in ruins on the street. Flipped police cruisers and officers writhing in pain were nothing new to him, but the sight still made him smile. "It appears your SCU is TKO, Lieutenant."
Lieutenant Smith, the grizzled commanding officer of Jump City's Special Crimes Unit, glowered at Red X. Since forming the task force dedicated to taking down "super" crime, Smith had come up against his fair share of the so-called villains of the city. They all got under his skin to some degree, but Red X had the distinct honor of being the first villain to enrage Smith. In fact, were Smith not at that moment trapped in Mammoth's meaty grip, he would have leapt down upon Red X and shoved the teen's skull mask down his throat.
"Keep talking, Halloween Freak. The longer you yap, the closer my backup gets," Smith barked.
With a burst from his jets, Gizmo hopped onto Mammoth's shoulder. He leered down at Smith with his wide, unblinking lenses, and said, "It must get really old, having us trash your little squad ever time you try to stop us."
Shimmer stood on tiptoe to grin right in Smith's face. The air around her wavered, as though she couldn't decide what to make of it. "How much does it suck to be you? Is it like being an American soccer fan, or like drinking domestic light beer?"
The gang shared a chuckle at Smith's expense. Then Red X silenced them with a gesture. They backed away as he drew upon Smith. Even Mammoth grew reverent, lowering Smith at arm's length for Red X to speak. "Lieutenant, as much amusement as you and your wholly ineffectual squad is, I'm afraid it's time we bid each other a fond farewell. Of course, we'll just assume your screams mean 'farewell' while Mammoth squeezes you until your organs ooze out your mouth like toothpaste from a tube. Language, after all, is rich and diverse. There has to be room for interpretation."
Mammoth grinned and flexed his forearms. Then he yowled when a yellow bolt struck his arm, spoiling his grip and knocking Gizmo from his shoulder. The giant growled at Smith, who rolled onto the pavement clutching his fedora. When Mammoth reached out to capture Smith again, another bolt struck the ground between them.
The source of the bolts grew into a tall, dark, yellow-clad beauty a stone's throw away, who blew the smoke off her blasters and holstered them at her curved hips. Behind her, six radically different teenagers backed her up with one shared scowl. "Honey, y'all ought'a think twice," she told Mammoth.
Kid Devil swept his hair out of his glowing eyes. "Looks like thinking 'once' might give him a hard time," he said.
As his lackeys spread out behind him, Red X stepped forward. His blank, masked eyes passed right over the scrambling hindquarters of Smith and fell upon the familiar figure looming central amidst these new faces. A thrill reawakened in his cold, dead innards. "You. You're back," he growled.
Squaring her enormous armored shoulders, Tek announced, "No, 'we're' back. Your days of treating this city like a personal playground are over, letter-face, because the New Teen Titans are here to kick your butt!"
"I didn't know circuses had fire sales," Shimmer shot, glaring at the unlikely assemblage.
Jinx raised a hand, gathering the blaze in the bank behind her into a wall of flame. "That's a setup if I ever heard one," she said. Her hand clenched. The fire erupted, flowing around her and then re-merging into a solid wave that burned down upon the so-called Titans.
"Remember," Tek called, "work together. Now GO!"
Tek and her recruits scattered around the blast of fire. The street bubbled and popped behind Tek as she willed her cannons out of her forearms. Plasma bolts sprayed into Red X's gang to return Jinx's fire in kind. The gang split, and both sides frayed into furious melee.
Stings flashed from tiny Bumblebee's blasters. She darted through the melee on gossamer wings. Her golden stings sizzled at Mammoth's neck. The energy played havoc with his nervous system, turning his locomotive charge into a lurch, perfect for her foot to find as she grew and kicked him all at once. Mammoth staggered back after bloodying Bumblebee's boot with his nose.
"Tiny is in this spring, macho man," she said, thumbing her blasters to full charge. They quivered with golden radiance aimed right down his throat.
Mammoth reached out blindly and grabbed the first substantial thing he could find. This was unfortunate for Gizmo, who stood upon the long metal stalk that Mammoth grasped. Bumblebee fared worse when Mammoth swung his towering, spidery friend into her. Both Bumblebee and Gizmo crashed into an unwilling tangle that bowled down the sidewalk.
Mammoth's scrubby beard split for a grin. "Heh. Nice teamwork, Mik," he called after Gizmo.
A pure note rattled Mammoth's skull. He tried to turn around, but the ground beneath him disappeared into a swirling vortex. As Mammoth fell out of the world, he saw the cloaked horn blower Gizmo had been fighting. Herald waved goodbye before his portal closed, trapping Mammoth in a pocket dimension.
The street rumbled and then flipped up in an enormous slab that struck the whole of Herald with bone-rattling force. Concentration fled him while he sailed back into the door of an abandoned diner. His pocket dimension destabilized and spat Mammoth out onto the ground next to him. The giant steamed and shivered, curling into a ball, his teeth chattering with the force and noise of a jackhammer.
Jinx let the levitated pavement down with a gesture and a smirk. "Magical horn. Cute. But some of us don't need foci for real magic."
Silver energy descended upon Jinx in the shape of a tremendous golf club. The club knocked the smirk out of her, replacing it with an arcing flight that she could not control. High above her chip shot, Argent dissipated her silver construct and watched Jinx soar, borrowing the witch's smirk. "And some of us can actually pull off corsets and hair dye, shagbag. No need to judge," she shouted.
Argent's elaborate knee-high boots tingled as their leather transmuted into lead. The sudden weight yanked her twenty feet straight down. She drove two deep footprints into the ground, her teeth clacking with the impact. When her eyes stopped shaking, they focused on a pale, leather-bound girl who boiled the very air with her sneer.
The straps clutching Shimmer's chest swelled as she inhaled Argent's dazed fear. "It's a good look. Let's get it bronzed," she said, and tugged the molecules of Argent's clothes toward a metallic bent.
Argent's outfit became solid bronze. Her skin puckered at the cold clutch of metal. She struggled against the heft, barely able to support the weight of her skirt anymore. Her feet remained planted in the ground while Shimmer sauntered toward her with murder in her smile.
Two bare, red feet wiped the smile from Shimmer's face as Kid Devil drove his heels through her jaw. He landed without giving the villain a second look. "You okay?" he asked Argent.
Her expression grew more pained by the second. "Tops, Red," she grunted. It took effort just to draw enough breath to speak. Her metal corset squeezed her lungs, as well as some other organs and bits that she favored. "What say we do this backwards? Get me out of my clothes, and then later you can buy me a pint."
The red demon reached for her corset, examining the situation. He hesitated. If possible, his cheeks reddened further still. "I think I can get you out. Bad news: I might get to second base."
She gasped, and wheezed, "Dig in. Fair warning, though, metal panties are about as sexy as they are comfortable."
Half a battlefield away, Red X circled the mismatched pair in white. His footfalls echoed the silence in those of Bushido, and contrasted the echoing clang of Tek's. Fingers flexing, eyes narrowed, he crouched in anticipation of their attack. "My, my. Now 'this' is exciting," he purred. "And here I was beginning to think you'd never return. You certainly took your time. Did you have a nice trip?"
"We made lots of new friends," Tek retorted.
She lunged at Red X with arms spread to capture him. Her enormous fingertips barely brushed the edge of his cape as he sprang above her clumsy embrace. Impact thunked on her back. When his hand pulled away from her armor, it revealed a jagged cross that he had adhered between her shoulders.
The x erupted electrically, scrambling her armor's circuits. Tek fell to her knees with a scream, her metal legs ringing against the sidewalk. Her arms fell dead at her sides. Inside, messages flashed in her HUD, warning her of the necessary reboot that worked to correct the problem, even while it left her a helpless target.
Red X had no time to admire his immobile handiwork. He summoned red blades from his gauntlet to protect himself from Bushido's flashing katana. A deadly blow slid off his blade, allowing him to chase Bushido back with a sweep of his foot. Red X rubbed his neck where the blow would have landed. "Now how am I supposed to stand trial without a head?" he asked teasingly.
Unflappable serenity remained on Bushido's features. "My apologies. Old habits die hard," he said, and struck again. This time his attacks came less lethally, but no less enthusiastically.
"Shame," Red X said, and stepped into their renewed battle. He flung a handful of tiny crosses, which Bushido twisted around and responded with a spray of caltrops. Both warriors danced between the sharp weapons as they traded near-misses.
While X's suit gave him the advantage of speed, Bushido held his own with superior skill. But superior skill fell to surprise when a revived Mammoth appeared behind Bushido. The swordsman disappeared in Mammoth's grasp, and then flew through the air at a flick of Mammoth's wrists.
While Tek's vision flickered, she got an eyeful of pavement courtesy of Mammoth's boot perched on her helmet. He and X hovered over her with identical scowls. The alloy of her helmet creaked under the immense pressure, adding more warning messages to her already crowded HUD. "Gotta say, X, you were right about stickin' around. The little tin twip brought back a whole mess of fun," she heard Mammoth say.
Mammoth's fun ended then and there. A whistle lifted his smile and his eyes off of Tek. Dangerously close by, he saw a skinny little blond boy in a purple vest unpuckering his lips for a grin. Something inside the boy's hauntingly black and green eyes tugged at a deep part of Mammoth. He was too mesmerized to hear Red X gasp, "Joey?"
Contact. Jericho erupted into flesh-colored smoke that poured into Mammoth's eyes. The giant staggered back and blinked hard. "Huh. That was weird. Wait, wha—"
Before he could stop himself, Mammoth dropped to his knees and slammed his head against the sidewalk. His forehead cracked the concrete with a sound like a gunshot. His eyes lolled and closed. He slumped forward, unconscious.
Then, just as quickly, Mammoth was on his feet again with a chipper expression and blood dribbling down his forehead. He grinned. "I like this one. He's strong. Strong's easy. But not on you, Super X," he said, turning on Red X.
Red X backed away from Mammoth with his hands raised. "Joey, wait," he said, wide-eyed. "It's me! It's Grant!"
Mammoth stopped cold. He goggled Red X, listening to the reverberating name. His lips wrapped around the syllable, squeezing it out slowly and carefully. "Grant?" Then he scowled, and shouted it: "GRANT!"
A ham-sized fist parted the air where Red X had been. X jumped high to avoid Mammoth's lumbering swing, which he knew could bring down a building if it landed. Acrobatic flips carried X ahead of Mammoth's clutches, if only barely. "Joey, don't do this. These people aren't what you think. They killed Dad!"
The ground shattered behind Red X's leap. Mammoth pulled his fingers out of the crumbling pavement and swung after nimble X, spraying street from his punches. "Dad was a slimy jerk! And now you're a jerk just like him!"
"You never got it, did you?" Red X snarled. He dropped between Mammoth's clumsy grab.
"Oh, but you're gonna get it. Hold still!" Mammoth barked. "Family or not—"
Red X vanished from his sight. Mammoth stopped and scratched his head, confused. He didn't find X again until he felt sticky pressures slap his temples. Small gray domes clung to his skull and started singing unbearable agony into Mammoth with force enough to bring him to his knees.
Regret steeped Red X's voice as he landed and watched Mammoth clutch the smooth domes he'd affixed to Mammoth's skull. "Give it up, Joey. Those are sonic grenades. If you don't get out, they'll scramble Mammoth's brains with you inside. I know a little goody-goody like you couldn't stand that."
Fleshy smoke poured out of Mammoth's clenched eyes. It congealed on the sidewalk into a dizzy Jericho on his hands and knees. Red X planted his boot in Jericho's curly hair, putting the boy's face to sidewalk. Then he remembered to deactivate the sonic grenades on Mammoth. "Shake it off, Mammoth. We have work to do," he said.
If Mammoth could have steadied his shaking eyes, he would have folded X like an accordion. As it was, he found enough coordination to pull the grenades from his temples and grip them into powder. His vision returned enough to discern the wave of silver careening into his face. Then his nose folded into bloody origami against an enormous energy mallet that sent him flying.
Clad in a bodysuit of her silver energy, Argent darted overhead, pulling back her mallet construct. "Lay off of Jericho, creeps!" she yelled.
Pink hex snared Argent in midair, twisting physics with pure bad luck. Argent screamed as her flight accelerated out of control. Both her scream and her flight bounced off a brick building façade, and then spiraled to the ground for a crash that made Jinx flinch, regardless of her culpability in the matter. "Hurt and naked. That had to suck," she said of the bodysuit vaporizing off Argent's body.
Bumblebee saw Argent's swan dive to the pavement. Her blasters drove Gizmo back long enough for her to withdraw from their fight. She sped toward Argent as fast as her wings could carry her, aiming for Jinx's back. "Hang on, sparkles! The Bee's about to kick some 'A.'"
An electro-net manifested between Gizmo's hands. He gave it a push, projecting it after Bumblebee. The net snatched her out of the air and carried her into the same building Argent had struck. "Kick that, bug butt!" Gizmo snarked. Screams answered him as his net dumped its electrical charge into Bumblebee, forcing her back to her original size and robbing her of consciousness.
A swirling portal opened in the bricks. Herald emerged, hooking his horn over his arm so both hands were free. He grabbed a limb each of Bumblebee and Argent. Wincing, he dragged them both toward his portal. His progress slowed considerably when the sidewalk beneath him softened into a pool of quicksand. Herald cried out and released the girls to save them from the sinkhole swallowing him up to his stomach. He tried to reach his horn, but it was submerged beneath the sand, and then trapped when the sand hardened back into sidewalk.
Shimmer rounded the corner of the building with a grin. "You're sunk, Little Boy Blue," she said.
Herald groaned. "Will you knock me out already? Anything but that old—"
She obliged him with her boot.
"Hang on, guys!" Kid Devil cried. He bounded toward his teammates, tail swishing, hair flying, bouncing off of cars and streetlights. "This fearsome five is no match for…uh, why aren't there five of you?" As he landed, he counted Red X, Shimmer, Jinx, and Gizmo, all sneering delightedly at something behind him. When a tremendous shadow fell over him from behind, he slumped, and said, "Oh."
Red X watched Mammoth hurl the last of the new Titans into the wall. A snap of his fingers commanded Gizmo into action. Summoning a new device from his pack, Gizmo fashioned a shimmering containment field over the five would-be heroes.
The longest two minutes of Tek's life finally ended with her armor's reactivation. She hoisted herself out of her shapely crater. When she saw her recruits trapped under Gizmo's green bubble, it took extreme effort to keep her stomach from rebooting as well. "No! Guys, hold on!"
One step. One step was all Tek got before Jinx's hex and Gizmo's protonics smashed her chest. She felt weightless as the world spun backwards around her. Then she felt agony when a brick wall stopped her cold. The warning messages in her HUD grew larger and louder. She tried to shake them away, but every movement of her head sent pain spiking down her spine. It was all she could do to look up at Red X, who hovered above her flashing HUD.
"Well, this has been fun," said X, gesturing back to her trapped recruits. He planted a foot on her dented chest and leaned down. "I'll tell you what. If you run away again now, I might just let you go. But you have to promise to bring back more playmates."
"I like the gray one!" Mammoth called, leering openly at Argent's nakedness. "Bring back more of those, will ya?"
Red X had to pull his foot off Tek's chest when the armor split into a million interconnected components. Grinding servos pulled Tek's armor into her back, where it disappeared in a flash, leaving Tek's bruises and scowl unprotected. She laid atop a metal box that jabbed painfully into her spine. Her glare drifted down as she mumbled something.
With an unseen grin, Red X cupped where his ear would be. "Come again?"
Squaring her glare and her jaw, Tek said, "Go to hell. I won't run away again. I shouldn't have run in the first place. So just kill me already. I don't need to sit here and die from a gloating overdose."
"Giving up that easily?" Red X sounded genuinely surprised as he stood back. His gauntlet rearranged into a small cannon. Red lightning arced inside its barrel, punctuating his smug voice with a crackle. "Then I guess the Titans really are gone."
Both Red X and Tek were astonished when she laughed in his face. "Please. All you did here was beat a wannabe and some people that were dumb enough to try and help her. Sorry, guys," she called back to Gizmo's containment bubble.
"Buh…wha?" said Bumblebee, the most conscious of the bunch.
"But the real Titans will come back and kick that X right off your face. And even if they don't, there'll be others. Others like them," Tek said with another nod to the bubble. "People willing to stand up to a putz like you. The Titans are more than a team. They'll be around a long time after I'm gone."
Red X laughed. He laughed so hard that he doubled over, forgetting the electro-cannon on his wrist. "And people call me clichéd? That was just precious! Just the right combination of impotent anger and righteousness. Oh!" Gasping, he straightened, wiping at his mask as if to clear away a tear.
Shaky strength remained in Tek's scowl. "You're only laughing because you don't get it. The Titans are bigger than you, me, them, or anybody. And I'll never run away from that again. Because no matter what, Titans stand together."
The electro-cannon's aim returned to Tek's scowl, wiping it clean. Red X stood behind it, smiling secretly under his mask. His aim drifted lower to Tek's body. "Let's see you stand with anybody when you don't have any legs," he said.
Blue sound enveloped Red X from the waist up. His bones rattled against each other while the sonic stream swept him off the ground. His teeth resonated like tuning forks. Metal crunched when the stream deposited him two feet into a parked car without opening the door. There, he lolled against the faux leather interior, trying to put back together his smug expression.
All eyes followed the waning sonic stream back to its source. Hope and confusion sprang anew in Tek at the sight of the impossibly tall figure at the end of the block. Dozens of questions escaped her breathless lips in a single word. "Cyborg?"
This wasn't the Cyborg she remembered. This Cyborg had no blue circuitry in his alloy, which glistened with newness. He stood taller and wider than ever. There was obvious strength to spare in his new muscles. His sonic cannon mechamorphed back into a right hand, which he clenched into a fist at the flabbergasted four villains remaining.
"It's been a while, so I'll say this nice and loud," he told them. "BOOYAH!"
Gizmo snarled incoherent obscenities and turned his pack into a pair of bat-like metal wings. A black contrail followed him into the air, where he sprouted a baker's dozen cannons, all aimed at Cyborg. "Nice tin, robo-noob. Let's test it!"
Curling his arms, Cyborg unfolded his elbows. Machine cannons sprouted from the openings to shriek thunder and spit shells. Casings sprang from his biceps and jangled at his feet.
The attack caught Gizmo unaware with hammer blows. Wherever the shells struck, they detonated into pink foam that clung to his jumpsuit. Gizmo screamed and clawed at the foam, succeeding only in covering his hands in the stuff. It clogged his jets and covered him whole, and then hardened into a comical sphere, which he rode screaming all the way to the ground. He bounced once and then rolled, unable to move in the enormous foam sphere.
"Crud!" he screamed before rolling onto his face.
While Cyborg retracted his machine cannons, Jinx gathered together the mother of all hexes. Mammoth stood beside her, cracking his knuckles. "Nice entrance. Now how about a sendoff to match?" Jinx asked.
Ebony ether formed a cylinder around Jinx and Mammoth. The witch's hex vanished into impossible blackness, which contracted around the pair until they were pressed together. Their arms and legs trapped, they could only scream in frustration as Raven rode a billowing red cloak down from the rooftop.
"I thought that was Cyborg I heard," Raven said.
Shimmer leapt up from behind her, ready to transmute the saline in Raven's eyes into chlorine. "Hearing's all you're gonna do in a second, bitch," she shot.
The tail of a green Utahraptor in an ill-fitting red cloak struck Shimmer from behind. She bounced off Gizmo's containment bubble and backed into the fist of a green gorilla in a slightly less ill-fitting cloak. As she slumped to the sidewalk, the gorilla shrank and pushed back the hood of his still-not-quite-right cloak to reveal handsome features cast in forest green. "That's not fair. You should get to know Raven first. Then you can call her a bitch," Beast Boy teased.
Tek's mouth flapped, trying to find words to fill it while Cyborg, Raven, and Beast Boy surrounded her. Three helping hands reached down to pull her to her feet. She tried to take them all. "You…you guys came back? You guys are back!"
"Well, yeah," Cyborg said with a smile. "I've been stuck for a month with nothing to do but watch the news. It's a real mess around here."
Throwing off his cloak, Beast Boy unveiled a bare chest of muscles and five inches of height he definitely hadn't possessed before. His voice was deeper, his hair, shaggier. Tek actually felt herself blushing at the sight of him while he goggled Cyborg. "Vic! What happened to you? You're so…shiny!"
"Me? What the hell happened to you? You look like an underwear ad," Cyborg exclaimed.
Raven removed her red cloak and hood, revealing her blue cloak and hood already in place. "Maybe the reunion should wait. We need to free Tek's friends and pound this new Fearsome Five into the ground first."
Awash with the sound of grinding metal and blue-white light, Tek hid her smile behind her grille. Her massive hands rolled into fists. "Sounds good," she said, trying to keep her tears out of her voice.
Rending metal drew their attention across the street. A car door flew off its hinges, allowing Red X to explode back onto the battlefield. Gizmo burst from the pink foam ball with his spidery stalks. Fiery hex cracked the soul-cylinder, freeing Jinx and Mammoth. And Shimmer groggily picked herself back up. As his gang reassembled around him, Red X scowled delightedly at the returned Titans. "Yes," he purred. "Yes! This is exactly what I wanted."
Cyborg placed his massive new self between his friends and the assembling villains. "Okay, guys. Everything old is new again. Stay tight, keep together, and let's show these clowns what they've been missing. Titans—"
"Together!" Tek cried reflexively. When the others looked back at her, she clapped her hands over her grille. "I'm sorry. It's something I was doing with the new guys. Y'know, teamwork. I—"
"I kinda like it," Beast Boy said.
"It doesn't sound bad," admitted Raven.
Cyborg never got to voice his opinion. He noticed their shadows disappearing into pink light. Hex, fire, protonics, and a flying car hurtled at them all at once. With one shout, he scattered his team and united them again: "Titans Together!"
Tremors in the pavement bounced Kid Devil's head. He stirred, groaning, and pulled his face out of the sidewalk. What he saw outside their bubble prison made his ember eyes flare. He reached out and tapped the first recruit he could find. "Hey. Hey!"
Bumblebee moaned and chased his hand away from her thigh. "Watch the hands, KD," she mumbled.
"Bee, you've gotta see this. Everybody! Look!"
Cyborg and Jinx circled each other, trading sonics and magic. The former shot wide around Jinx's lithe acrobatics. The latter hammered Cyborg's armor, bringing him to one knee. His cannon reverted into a hand to clutch his side while he grimaced.
"Look at that. Magic trumps machine," Jinx sang.
Black ether formed a claw around Jinx. She yelped as the claw twisted her around to face Raven. The sorceress hung in the air, eyes ablaze with the arcane, hands raised to conduct her soul-self. "Maybe. But real magic trumps crappy community college magic."
With a gesture, she commanded her soul-claw to shove Jinx facedown into a mail box on the street corner. Jinx hung out of the tiny slot, her striped stockings dangling limply down the front of the box.
Mammoth's fist flashed at Raven. She recalled her soul-self into a shield just in time to feel her insides rattle with the force of his punch. He hit again and again, driving her back. The impossible blackness of her shield became less impossible with every blow. "And muscles beat magic, geek," crowed Mammoth.
Someone tapped Mammoth on the shoulder. He turned around, looked down, and caught Tek's armored fist on his chin. As he rocketed up, she called after him, "So machine muscles must trump everything!"
Shimmer turned the street into an oil slick, making things difficult for the green cat landing before her. The cat's paws went in every direction but down. It fell onto its stomach and morphed into Beast Boy. "Oh, come on! I've already fought you!" he groused.
"I bet some acid'll take the fight out of you," she sneered back.
With a bang, Cyborg's left hand shot from his arm, trailing a thick cable behind it. An instant before it struck Shimmer, its fingers extended into weighted lines that wrapped around her slender chest, pinning her arms to her sides. Shimmer yelped as Cyborg yanked the cable, dragging her into the air. He spun her hard until she swung into Jinx, who was trying to get up.
"Or take you out of the fight," he retorted.
An enormous metal stalk kicked Cyborg through a shop window. Atop the stalk, Gizmo aimed an oversized rocket launcher through the cloud of glass through which Cyborg sailed. "New package, same dweeb," he muttered.
Flapping green wings spoiled his aim. He pulled his ocular lens from the launcher's scope when he felt Beast Boy morphing human and clinging to his metal stilt frame. "Math quiz, half-pint: what number is greater than four?" Beast Boy asked.
Gizmo screamed in terror as Beast Boy's smiling face ballooned into that of a giant octopus. The mucusy creature wrapped its tentacles around Gizmo's stalks. Gears and servos broke into bits with a twist of the octopus's grip. Then the octopus shrank into a flying squirrel to chatter with laughter while Gizmo shrieked and toppled from his broken perch.
"No, it's not 'girly scream.' It's 'eight,'" Beast Boy chided him upon landing. "Zero points."
Red elastic bands crisscrossed Beast Boy, wrapping him up like a mummy. He teetered and fell onto his chin, already trying to shift into an animal that could burst from the bonds. A similar red cross struck Raven from the air. It wrapped around her mouth, cutting off her incantation. Electrified crosses punched Cyborg and Tek each in the back, flooding their circuitry with blinding pain. Both Titans fell to their knees, echoing each other's groan.
A black shape took form between them, becoming the haughty Red X. "Do you see? Do you see how things have changed? Send in more Titans. Send a thousand!" he shouted in Cyborg's face. "You all need to learn who is in charge here. You need to learn respect!"
Another shape, this one pristine white, wove between Red X and the Titans too fast to follow. Metal flashed, severing the bonds around Raven and Beast Boy, and prying the electrodes from Tek and Cyborg. When X's eyes caught up, they found Bushido standing just out of arm's reach with his sword propped on his shoulder. "You need to learn to count," he said.
Red X snarled, and then gagged as Cyborg seized him by the throat. Cyborg lifted him from the ground, blinking static from his optics, and said, "You probably chose that costume to make us hesitate. Maybe put a scare in us. But you screwed up. I know you're not Robin, and even if you were, he needs a good ass-kicking anyway. So that makes you two times a loser."
"Heads up!" Beast Boy shouted, peeling the red binding off his legs. He shrank into a sparrow that darted into the air to avoid the blast of fire Jinx flung at him.
Mammoth barreled at the tight Titan group with his head lowered. His skull lined up with Cyborg, who dropped Red X at the sight of the lumbering giant. The pavement quaked with his charge. "Comin' through," Mammoth bellowed.
Winding up, Cyborg answered Mammoth's charge with a full-bodied punch. Everything he had piled behind his knuckles as he drove them deep into the coppery folds of Mammoth's hair. Both his fist and Mammoth stopped cold, quaking at the point of impact. Cyborg felt servos in his hand pop, and shook their backups online while he watched Mammoth slump to the ground.
"No you ain't," Cyborg quipped.
Wavering air billowed behind Shimmer as she charged Raven. "Hope you like heavy metal, goth freak, 'cause I'm gonna 'mute your blood into mercury."
So focused was Shimmer's narrow scowl that she didn't see the bus hovering overhead in a skin of soul-self. The black bus cracked like an egg at Raven's command: "Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos." Shimmer screamed and noticed at once when the bus halves swooped down and crashed around her, trapping her in a slamming jumble of seats and metal.
"Yap, yap, yap," Raven grumbled at Shimmer, who crawled woozily from a broken window in the bus. "Fighting is fine, but please, just shut up and do it."
Gizmo giggled as Raven settled into his sights. He and his plethora of weapons squealed in anticipation of turning the sorceress into a smear. But quaking pavement spoiled his aim. "Hey, what's the…deal?" He looked back, and up, and up at Tek, who stood over him. Her forearms sprouted cannons that bathed Gizmo's stunned stare with heat as they powered up.
"Noooo, no," she scolded him. "Bad villain. Bad!"
Both of them were momentarily distracted when Jinx plummeted next to them. She struggled fruitlessly in the clutches of a thick green python. "Get…off…me…!" she gasped. The distraction left Gizmo wide open, allowing Tek to flick him in the forehead, knocking him out with a fraction of her strength.
Red X balanced atop a streetlight and watched a month of anticipation fall apart. "No! This isn't happening!" he shouted. He pulled a red cross marked with an orange stripe from his belt. His scowl fell upon Tek, whose back proved too tempting a target. "You…" he snarled.
Sharp, foxy eyes spotted X and his x when no one else's did. The mind behind them raced as quickly as the feet beneath them, which carried all of him straight at Cyborg. His sword swung in his grasp, coming to bear. "Cyborg, alley-oop!" he shouted.
The shout turned Cyborg. Up until now, the battle had kept his attention away from lingering on any of Tek's recruits, least of all this latecomer. Now his memory clicked with the face and sword running at him. He faltered, and said, "You? What the hell—?"
Instinct guided Cyborg through the maneuver as Bushido jumped onto his outstretched hand. Cyborg heaved him skyward, where Bushido flipped and stretched. His fingertips caught the edge of the cross flung by Red X, and then flung it back into the light pole upon which the villain perched. The pole and X vanished into a blossom of fire that tossed Bushido hard across the battlefield.
Bushido landed in Tek's waiting arms. It wasn't a soft landing, but she cradled his fall, and even smothered the embers in his hair with a metallic pinch. "Nice save, Bushido," she said as she set him down and completely missed Raven and Beast Snake's looks of horror. The shock of seeing Tek and Bushido (and a friendly Bushido at that) reverted Beast Boy into human form.
Jinx gasped with new freedom. Her eyes burned with pink fate as she called up forceful gales to lift her and Shimmer into the air. Three more gales lifted the rest of her insensate team high overhead, where her winds combined into a miniature cyclone. Try though she might, she couldn't spot Red X anywhere.
As the winds carried them higher, she spat down upon the Titans, "This is so far from over! This is our town, losers!"
As Jinx's cyclone faded from view, the street became unnervingly calm. Tek leaned against her knees and really breathed for the first time since arriving in Jump City. Her armor retracted around her, revealing her skinny frame and the security box pressed high on her back. Cheering pulled her eyes up to the containment field and her trapped recruits. They waved their arms, except for Herald, who was still stuck in the ground.
When Cyborg's fingertips touched the field with a countermeasure pulse, the bubble burst, freeing her recruits and making their cheers all the louder. Every one of them, again excluding Herald, rushed out to meet the heroes whose name they had sought to carry on.
Tears rimmed Tek's eyes as she smiled at Bushido, Raven and Beast Boy. As she gazed at the circle of Titans growing around her , she couldn't help but laugh. "I'm so glad you guys are okay. All of you. And I have so much to…" She trailed off when she noticed Beast Boy and Raven glaring at Bushido. Both Titans were tensed and ready for more battle. Bushido just smiled at them both and sheathed his sword.
"That was unbelievable!" Kid Devil exclaimed. His ember gaze bounced between Beast Boy and Raven, unsure of which one to gape at first.
Even Bumblebee grinned from behind her folded arms. "Not bad," she admitted dryly.
Wearing a simple shift made from her energy, Argent slapped Tek and Bushido on the back. "Looks like the new team has their star players here, eh?"
Cyborg pushed through the recruits and grabbed Bushido by the back of his keikogi. The teal belt snapped from his waist with one tug from Cyborg, taking with it his blade. "Tek, would you mind explaining why this sack of crap is here?" Cyborg snapped.
The circle fell silent. Confusion killed the joy in Tek's tears. "Th-that's Bushido. He's one of the people—"
"He's a murderer," Raven uttered bitterly.
"And a psycho!" added Beast Boy.
Smiling and dangling, Bushido said, "And an honorary Titan."
Back in the halls of S.T.A.R. Labs, Cyborg shook the hands of the newest batch of honorary Titans. He had barely seen them in action, and wondered about them just by virtue of seeing them. But they all had one thing in common that, for Cyborg, made them worthy of the Titan title hands-down. "You sure you guys don't need a ride home? We could probably put something together in a couple of hours," he said.
Herald spun his horn nervously. "Thanks, but I got this one. Besides, I want to get out of here before Tek explains what happened to your plane. One at a time, everybody," he called to the line.
"Take care, Mister Roboto," Bumblebee said with a wink while Herald trumpeted up her way home. "When there's trouble, y'all know who to call."
Portal by portal, Herald summoned ways home for the honoraries. Bumblebee and Jericho went first. Argent and Kid Devil lingered as they left, both exceedingly fascinated by their respective toes.
"So, um…thanks for getting me out of my metal knickers," said Argent. She wore a set of S.T.A.R. Labs' sweat clothes and a blush that went all the way to her bone.
Kid Devil tried to keep the swish out of his tail. "Well, you know," he mumbled.
Scowling, she punched him in the arm. "Don't make a big deal out of it. It probably won't happen again." Then, as Herald opened her London portal, she jumped onto her toes and pressed a black impression of her lips onto Kid Devil's cheek. "Bye," she said breathlessly, and flew through the portal.
Herald had to shove dumbstruck Kid Devil through the next portal. When he opened a last one for himself, he paused, and said to Cyborg, "Watch out for Tek, will you? She's a good kid, but she needs a lot of help. A lot."
"I will," Cyborg said, and waved goodbye.
Once the portal closed behind Herald, he strolled down the hall, putting off the talk he knew was coming. On the way back to the lab, he spied Beast Boy wrestling with a vending machine. Someone had found a sweatshirt, which his new jaw line made into a fashion statement.
"Yo, Salad Head," said Cyborg.
When Beast Boy looked up, it took him an extra second for Cyborg to recognize the lean, lithe shapeshifter as his best friend. If Cyborg didn't know the goofy kid underneath the looks, he might have been jealous. Beast Boy had changed considerably, possessing extra height and new muscle. But when he spoke, even through his deeper voice, his old self rang true. "Hey, Tin Butt," he said.
Cyborg scratched his neck in search of a delicate way to phrase his question. "Gar, what the hell happened to you? I mean, you look okay—you look pretty good—great, even, in a dudely sort of way…" He sighed and grasped his face. "Are you okay?"
Beast Boy looked into the distance, leaving Cyborg and the hallway without moving an inch. Whatever he had seen, whatever he was seeing now, Cyborg hoped he never saw it too. When he came back, Beast Boy managed a small smile. "Ask me again some other time, huh?"
With a nod and a slap on Beast Boy's shoulder, Cyborg left the shapeshifter to his wrestling match with the vending machine. Beast Boy's arm vanished once more into the flap at the bottom, seeking to dislodge the Milky Way dangling from the bottom row. His fingers brushed the very edge of the wrapper, tantalizing him, teasing him.
"C'mon," he grunted, twisting his head to one side to shove his shoulder further in. The metal bit into his arm. His stomach rumbled, demanding that he get his candy. "C'mon! I paid for it, and I want it. Now give it up!"
He felt the bar close in his grasp. Crying with glee, he slithered his arm from the flap and looked down at his prize. Then he gasped.
A serpent's head stared back at him where his hand should have been. His entire arm up to the edge of his rolled sleeve was a twisting, rippling python, spotted with all shades of jungle green. The serpent stared at him with yellow eyes, its tongue darting out around the candy bar squeezed in its jaw.
Beast Boy stared back. He shut his eyes hard, and then opened them. A normal hand sat at the end of a normal arm, holding a delicious candy bar. Horrified, he turned the hand over, making sure it had skin instead of scales. He looked around in a panic, praying that no one saw what he hoped had been imaginary.
Cyborg was already around the corner. He walked down the hall with a slowing stride. When the hall tilted to one side, he realized how long it had been since he had recharged. Or slept. Hunger gnawed at his new stomach. Fatigue blinked in his battery indicator. If today was any indication, this was the first of many long days to come. Part of him felt grateful for that. Part of him.
A single chair sat outside the lab. Cyborg was surprised to find Raven in it. She hunched over the edge of her seat in a heap of her own cloak, and pulled back her hood at his approach. Dark circles hung under her eyes. Her legs wobbled when she stood.
"Is she in there?" Cyborg asked. Raven nodded. "Good. You should find a bed. You look like you could use it."
She nodded again, looking down to avoid his gaze. But when he tried to enter the lab, her outstretched arm kept him in the hall. "Wait," she whispered.
Cyborg paused, waiting for her to speak. A minute passed in silence. "Raven?" he asked.
Raven bit her lip. She looked down either direction of the hall until she was absolutely certain they were alone. Then she sprang forward and wrapped her arms around Cyborg's waist. Her head rested against his chest. For a second, Cyborg wondered if Raven was tired to the point of collapse, and why she hadn't simply sat down. But then it dawned on him.
"Raven? Are we hugging?"
She didn't answer right away, and when she did, her voice was husky. "I've been thinking lately about how important it is for us all to stay together. And that maybe I need to do more to show all of you that I feel…that way. Even though I can't always show you that. Because I do feel…that way."
Cyborg stared a hole through her twilight crown. "You died, didn't you? You died, and pod people replaced you. You and Gar. It's okay, you can tell me."
Something that might generously be called a chuckle stuttered briefly from Raven's throat. "Just hug me," she murmured, pressing her cheek into the cool metal of his chest. She felt Cyborg's strong embrace envelop her, and closed her eyes to keep her cheeks dry. When she finally felt ready to let go, she made her face stern and looked up at Cyborg. "That won't be a habit," she told him.
He traded nods and smiles, and then pushed through the lab door.
Inside, the scene was almost exactly as he'd imagined. Starfire lay in her bed, bathed in sunlamps, wrapped in a simple hospital gown. A month of rest had done wonders for her body. No visible scars remained from her epic fight. The respirator tube was gone from her throat. Her chest rose and fell on its own now. Smaller tubes fed and bled liquids through her sallow gold skin. She was beautiful, and heartbreaking.
Tek rose from her bedside. The heavy security box bounced against her hip from the strap over her shoulder. Her sad face plunged into despair at his entrance. "Cyborg, I am so sorry," she stammered before he could say anything.
He smiled thinly. "It's okay. Lieutenant Smith took Bushido into custody and tossed his ass into a holding cell. The little bastard didn't even put up a fight."
She kept on babbling as if she'd never heard him. "I had no idea he was an assassin, or that he'd jammed a knife in your eye, I swear. I should have known. I should have known! But I never flashed on him, or whatever it is my brain does. I didn't know. I should have—"
Cyborg pushed his finger into her lips. "It's. Oh. Kay," he said. "I'm just glad you're safe. And, actually, I'm…"
When he trailed off, she lifted her watery eyes off the floor, and saw Cyborg staring at the box at her side. Hurriedly, she ducked under the strap and offered him the box. "Here. This is yours," she said.
He took the box, stunned. "Thanks. I can't believe you hauled this all over with you," he murmured.
"Yeah, well… At first, I didn't think it was important. Just something you had me fetch to get rid of me. But then I thought, 'well, maybe it is important!' It had its own safe, right? And maybe you were just testing me, seeing if I could really be a Titan."
Tek's smile grew sad. She let her gaze drift back to Starfire's morbid slumber. The idea that she could be half the hero Starfire was made her want to laugh and cry.
Through wobbly tears, she said, "But then I realized that either way, you were right. Raven was right. I'm not good enough to be a Titan. And when it all fell to me, I just wanted to keep things going until a real Titan came to take over. The best thing I could do was to just keep everything going until they…you came back."
Cyborg stared at the box as he let Tek's admission sink in. He sent a silent signal to the box's internal lock. It opened with a click that pulled Tek's teary gaze back. Cyborg opened the box and held it out to Tek. "Take a look," he told her.
Tek held her breath and looked inside. Then she exhaled. "Paper?' she asked flatly.
"Yep."
"A piece of paper? Just one? That thing weighted a ton!" she exploded. "I hauled that stupid box all over just for one piece of idiot paper? I thought it was a computer core, or a super-weapon!"
A chuckle shook Cyborg's stomach. He held the box toward her again and said, "Take a look."
Exasperated, Tek pulled the single piece of paper out of the box. The three words written in bold across the top dulled the edge in her voice. "This I Vow," she read slowly. Five short paragraphs followed the words in smaller font. And down at the bottom, six scrawled names consumed a quarter of the page. She read each signature aloud. "Robin. Cyborg. Starfire. Raven. Beast Boy. Terra."
"It's the Titans Charter," Cyborg explained. "When we started out, the five of us wrote down the one thing we wanted to stand for. We all signed it."
The tears Tek had been fighting finally won. An entire month caught up to her, dragging her into the pit in her stomach she'd been teetering into all this time. Her chin dropped to her chest as she hiccupped a sob. "I've been trying so hard. It's too hard, Vic. When I try to be better, my head gets so loud. I…I've been…"
She tore open the pouch on her belt and showed him the bottle she'd taken from the Icarus's cabinet. A few white pills remained, rattling as her hands shook.
"I'm doing it again. I tried, but it's just too hard. I keep doing things like this," she whimpered, rattling the bottle. Her ruddy cheeks ran slick. She couldn't even look at Cyborg. "You were right. I need help."
Cyborg stared at the bottle in her hand. It took him a second to recognize it. When he did, he struggled to keep his reaction muted. "If those are keeping you from going berserk, it might be a good idea to keep some around. I'll…talk to Doctor Brown about getting you a prescription."
"Yeah…"
Unable to put it off any longer, Cyborg resolved himself to do what he came to do. "I'm sorry. I was wrong before, when I tried pawning you off on Social Services. You're our problem, not theirs." When she hiccupped another sob, Cyborg said, "Tek, look at the Charter. Read the last paragraph."
She sniffed hard and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. Her other hand lifted the paper to her watery eyes. "Once a Titan, always a Titan," she read. "Vic, I don't get—"
She looked up and gasped at the pen in Cyborg's hand. He pushed it at her. "I heard what you said to Red X, or that jackass dressed like him, or whatever. And you were right. The Titans are bigger than all of us. But you're wrong, too. The Titans wouldn't exist without the people who make it. Whether it's five, or seven, or fifty, or just one. It can't exist without people like us."
Tek stumbled back from the pen. A terrified look wrought her face. "I don't…I…"
"You still need help. A lot of help. And you're going to get it, I promise," Cyborg said. His pen did not budge. His gaze settled coolly beneath her tears.
She sniffed and laughed an ugly laugh. "Vic, I'm a basket case. You were right before. I can't."
His pen didn't budge.
"You can't mean it," Tek said, refusing to get her hopes up. "The Titans are—"
"Us," he said firmly. "An outcast, a refugee, a monster, a half-wit…"
He laid the pen in her hand and closed her fingers around it.
"And a basket case."
Tek stared at the Charter. She laid it against the wall. With a shaky hand, she scrawled three letters at the bottom of the page. The pen moved as if it were mired in cold peanut butter. She finished her name and let her heavy arm drop to her side, suddenly exhausted. Her burning lungs reminded her to breathe.
"You've earned it," Cyborg said. "You stuck with it, no matter how hard things got. You came back. So it's the least we can do to stick with you. That's what Titans do, right? Stick together."
His eyes wandered from the uncomfortable sight of Tek crying and smiling. Down at the bottom of the security box, he spied a smear of color against the flat gray metal. He reached in and pulled out an old photograph that had been stuck to the bottom underneath the Charter.
Reading the Charter through her tears, Tek asked, "Vic? Does this mean we're the Teen Titans again? I mean, we're really gonna stay here? Even if it is fixed, the city's a real mess."
Cyborg lost himself in the photo. Five young teenagers stared back at him with frozen smiles. The teens stood atop a bluff against a backdrop of glistening tower, their faces stretched with the exhilaration of taking an entire city into their care. He couldn't help but wonder, if they knew what he knew, would they have stuck through it like he did? Would they take the bad with the good, and think it was all worthwhile?
"Vic?" Tek asked.
Cyborg smiled.
To Be Continued
And that wraps it up for the first story arc of Teen Titans: Adaptation. I hope everyone's enjoying the story so far. It's been a lot of fun to write, and even more fun to publish regularly.
Speaking of which, I'll be taking (at least) a week off before starting up the new story arc. In the meantime, drop a review and let me know what you thought. Who knows, you might get a reply.
Until next time, dear reader, when (don't I always say it?) the best is yet to come.