Teen Titans
Adaptation
By Cyberwraith9
Terrorize: Familiar Ground
Thick silence choked the cab of the rebuilt CUTTER. Through the front seats of the tank were mounted two feet apart, the distance felt far greater to Cyborg. No amount of glancing over at Raven seemed to penetrate her unreadable air. She just stared out the windshield with her hands carefully folded in her lap.
His curiosity at last bested his common sense. Sounding as casual as he could, he asked, "So, who was that guy in the bookstore? Dominic, right?"
Raven didn't twitch. "Just a guy," she said.
A moment passed, and then Cyborg ventured, "He seems nice."
"I guess."
"Are, uh… Are you going to see him again?" Cyborg felt like he was talking through a verbal minefield.
"Maybe."
He tried to hold it in. He did everything he could, biting his lip, suppressing his language subroutines, and even shunting power away from his vocoder. But in the end, he lost the battle to himself. With no choice left, he said in a low, tight voice, "Do you think it'll be a large wedding?" A snicker choked his words halfway through.
Raven launched a scowl over her shoulder. "So mature," she sniffed.
"I just want to know so I can get a tux in my size," he said, giggling. Raven regressed into her hood. "Oh, come on, Raven. I've known you for years, and all you ever do is give everybody crap about everything they do. This is the closest I've ever seen you act like a person outside of your own head," he said.
She stared at him for a long moment, killing his smile with uncomfortable silence. Her eyes glimmered with a hint of hurt before she turned to the window. A sharp gesture pulled the edge of her hood between her and Cyborg.
Cyborg sobered. "Okay, my bad. But you know what I mean."
"Obviously, I don't," she said frostily to her window.
He grimaced and kicked himself. "What I meant was that it's cool to see someone getting through that Ice Queen bunker of yours. I've never seen anybody make you look the way he did. It's just nice that you found someone you like, is all."
The rod up Raven's spine softened. She let her shoulders relax. Pretending to watch the city roll by, she examined her own reflection. Her hard-edged expression stared back at her without any of the niceness for which Cyborg mocked her. "I barely know him. What makes you think I like him?" she asked in an idle tone.
Cyborg's smile trickled back. He tapped the side of his head. "Telescopic vision. It's not just for ball games and bird watching anymore. And it doesn't lie."
Raven pulled her gaze from her reflection and turned it inward. She knew how Dominic made her feel, and that she wanted to feel it again. But she had never considered it a romantic attraction. The whole concept of romance felt alien to her. Raven didn't think of Dominic like that. She didn't think like that, period. She couldn't.
So why was it, as she thought on the possibility, that she felt a strange tingle in the pit of her stomach, like it was trying to lift her body from the inside. Is that what this was? A crush?
"He's just a guy," she said again.
The dashboard trilled nine notes at them, answering Raven's prayer for a change in topic. She mashed her thumb against the comm panel before Cyborg could say anything more. Tek's troubled face filled the screen between them on the dash.
"Calling all Titans!" she said breathlessly. "We have a level two Teen TroubAlert."
"You have got to stop calling it that," Cyborg muttered, while Raven pulled down the dashboard computer terminal. He said crisply, "We're here, Tek. What's the emergency?"
Her image on the screen shrank and squashed to make room for Beast Boy's face, which slid into the other half of the screen. "Yeah, what's the deal? We're too busy for emergencies today. I was just on my way back to gel up my hair for the big to-do. That's a complicated process, you know. Takes hours."
"Tell that to the grid. I've got three different emergencies showing," Tek said. "A robbery at an electronics store in Uptown, some major weirdness happening by the docks, and an emergency call from the Convention Center."
Cyborg scowled. "That's a handful," he said in a loaded tone. "We'll have to split up. Raven and I are already mobile in the CUTTER. We'll make an appearance at the Convention Center. It's gotta be packed by now, so doubling up makes sense."
"Roger that, Motor Head. I'll fly and check out the seaside. It's on my way home anyway," said Beast Boy.
"I guess that leaves me with the robbery. Alone," Tek said nervously.
Cyborg pressed down on the gas pedal. A wireless command made the CUTTER's siren cut a path through traffic with its howl. Outside on the roof, lights arose from beneath retracting panels to paint the buildings they streaked past in red and white.
"Let's make this quick, y'all. We have an adoring public waiting for us. CUTTER, out."
The plasma-driven engine hummed with speed. Cars ahead of them swerved to the curb to allow the besirened CUTTER roaring passage. Their treads rumbled against the pavement. But with all the noise outside, the cab's interior remained still. Cyborg and Raven sat in echoing silence.
Finally, she said, "You know this is no coincidence, right?"
"Yeah, I figured that out all by myself," he said. "Three emergencies on opposite ends of town all at once? Somebody wants us busy and out of the way. Question is, why? Which one of these is the real emergency, and which ones are distractions?"
"So what do we do about it?"
"Keep our eyes and ears open while we take out these small fish, and smack the big fish down as soon as he splashes up." Glancing sidelong, Cyborg smiled, and added, "Then we can go back to picking out a china pattern for your reception dinner. Does Dominic like floral prints?"
Raven's eyebrow twitched. "Just watch the road, comedian."
"You can name the first kid after me if you want."
"You don't think naming a child 'Moron' is too cruel?"
A stiff ocean breeze carried Beast Boy high over the shoreline. His wings cut the salty air while his sharp eyes combed the docks for trouble. It didn't take eagle eyes to see why he had been called in, but they did let him see the trouble with perfect clarity.
Jump City possessed a thriving seafaring economy, the crown jewel of which being the extensive system of docks lining its shore. Carefully engineered, this system had turned the young city into a major shipping port in the last two decades. Tall ships bobbed next to the city, stuffed to the brim with cargo that could be heading anywhere in the continent after a brief stay in any of the hundreds of warehouses built adjacent to the shore.
At one particularly lively dock, however, the direction of cargo had been reversed. Hulking creatures dressed like men lumbered in long lines out of a warehouse and onto a commandeered cargo vessel. Enormous crates perched on their shoulders. They moved with preternatural organization, queuing onto and off the vessel under the direction of its colorful captain.
"Keep it up, ye scurvy dogs!" the captain bellowed. He was a portly boy cursed with perpetual acne and a stout shape that his ruffled shirt and tasseled jacket could not flatter. A plumed tri-corner hat capped his long, greasy red hair. "Faster, blast ye! I aim to set sail with the tide, and I'll not leave without me booty!"
An avian shriek drew his piggish eyes high. Then he screamed and ducked as a green eagle swooped low over the deck and knocked the hat from his head with its dagger talons. The eagle screeched again as it spread its wings to stop before him. Then its outline blurred outward into an elfin teen wearing purple and white.
"Avast, dude!" Beast Boy crowed. Then he frowned, examining the captain. "Wait. Don't I know you? Remote Control Carl, right?"
"Arrgh, filthy Titan!" he screamed, yanking the hat back onto his head. "It is I, your arch-nemesis, Control Freak! Scourge of the high seas, and captain of this fearsome ship!"
Beast Boy glanced around the rusty deck. "You mean this cargo scow, or do you have another ship? And since when are you a pirate?"
"Silence! Arrgh!" screamed Control Freak. He drew his monstrous remote control from his jacket with a flourish. "I aim to rule the seas and live by the code of the pirate, not unlike the characters of a certain super-cool and highly successful summer blockbuster movie franchise! Call me Freakbeard the Pirate!"
"Dude. Pirates are lame."
Nerd rage blazed in Control Freak's scowl. "You're lame!" he screeched. "Get 'im, me hearties!"
Beast Boy spun around. From the air, Control Freak's crew had appeared to be a string of large, interchangeably anachronistic goons dressed in salty rags, wearing bandanas and hats that were wildly out of date. Now that he stood eye-to-eye with them, Beast Boy could see he had been mistaken.
At some point in the distant past, each crewman had probably appeared identical as a broad, thick android. But rust and holes marred each droid's gunmetal alloy in a different pattern. Some possessed gaping sockets where their yellow optics had been. Others had wires jutting from cracks in their exo-plating. Still others possessed sharpened stubs in lieu of limbs. All of them dropped their cargo in unison to advance on Beast Boy.
A delighted gasp pulled Beast Boy's lips into a grin. "Oh, man! It's the dreaded robot zombie pirates of Nimbus Four, from—"
"—from the Irrepressible Captain Taylor, episode two-fourteen!" cackled Control Freak. "Now, my undeactivated horde, capture this stowaway and make him walk the plank! Arrgh!"
Delight gave way to horror on Beast Boy's face as he fell into the shadow of the robot zombie pirate army. Dozens of clanking hands reached for him, above him, leaving only one direction to go. He shrank into a rat and scampered through the mechanical mob, dodging past heavy metal boots that stomped to squash him into the deck.
Beast Boy scurried through the sea of feet, off the ship, down the gangplank, between the abandoned crates of the horde. A mousey leap put him onto the dock, where more robots waited to squash him. Each near miss of their boots tossed him up until his tiny claws could grab the pockmarked wood again. Finally, he burst through the edge of the mob in a triumphant squeak. Then he grew.
"Arrgh, ye filthy dogs!" Control Freak bellowed. He watched his summoned army of television henchmen being tossed and torn asunder by a tremendous green gorilla. In a rage, Control Freak jammed his thumb on the stop button of his remote. A red cutlass blade sprang from the remote's mouth. It hummed as he waved it overhead. "You call yourselves pirates? Get him!"
The robots lurched at Beast Boy in waves. He picked up one and smashed it against another five, reducing all of them into sparking parts. Then he shrank from a gorilla into a kangaroo that ducked under the next robot's dagger. He kicked the robot back into two more, smashing all three, but the force of his kick launched him into another pair of robots behind him. They grabbed his stubby arms and pulled, hoping to split him down the middle. He slipped from their grasp by shucking his arms for the guise of a snake.
Beast Boy slung himself around the pair and constricted them until their clenched innards ruptured from their tattered pirate garb. When he fell to the deck, panting in his reassumed humanoid form, he looked up to see a sea of robots advancing on him still. The old dock creaked at their march.
"Okay, I like smashing robots as much as the next dashing hero," he gulped, "but this could get old really quick. I'd better think of some clever plan for taking them all out before—"
Red rays scorched the air around him. Beast Boy broke his ruminations with a yelp and looked up to see that the advancing robot horde had drawn cartoonish ray guns from inside their tattered clothes. Several robots in the back were clumsily shooting their own fellows, but the majority of them filled the space around Beast Boy with laser death. He ducked behind an overturned dinghy, which the lasers chewed.
"Right. Better stick with smashing," he muttered.
As the dinghy disintegrated, a green sparrow soared from behind his crumbling remains. Laser fire tracked his high arc until he neared the dock again. Inches from the old planks, the sparrow ballooned into a rhinoceros, whose hide weathered the robots' fire with only a few welts to show for it. The green rhino thundered at the robot horde, lowering his horn.
With a sharp crack, the dock's planks snapped beneath the rhino's front feet. He teetered and fell through the old wood. A quick morph gave him human hands to catch the edge of the hole. The treacherous planks splashed into the surf below, kicking water onto Beast Boy's boots.
Dangling under the dock, Beast Boy stared down at the old wood bobbing in the surf. The horde's footsteps shivered through the dock in his grip. He thought of the shabby bots' plating, their exposed wires and gaping sockets and maws crackling with electricity.
"Ding! Clever plan, ahoy!" he cried merrily.
The horde had surrounded his hole with lasers at the ready. Beast Boy zipped through their midst as a humming bird, making them fire on each other. He darted through laser fire and flaming shrapnel, climbing until their dilapidated optics could no longer perceive him. Then he flipped and reverted.
"Belly flop!" he yelled.
A shadow swallowed the entire robot zombie pirate horde. They stared up at the growing blot that had stolen the sky above them. To the end, they never truly processed the green orca that smashed into them, crunching a hole in the dock and crushing half the horde at once.
From the gaping hole erupted a wave of water that radiated ten feet high. It fell upon the rest of the horde, steeping their open wounds in salt water. Electricity arced from within and between them, frying their fragile systems. They convulsed, deactivated, and smoldered on the wet dock, optics dimmed, maws darkened.
Beast Boy climbed out of the hole. He hung with his arms and chest on the dock, breathing hard through a smile. Trendy hair lay plastered in his face until he flipped it back with a spray. "Judges?" he asked no one. After a brief pause, he mimicked a cheering crowd, and crowed, "A perfect ten, ladies and gents! Beast Boy takes home the gold!" He threw up his arms in victory, which made him fall back into the hole with a splash.
A loading crane on the cargo ship squeaked against Control Freak's weight. He swung on its line from the deck to the dock while Beast Boy hauled himself from the water a second time. Coat flapping, hair streaming, Control Freak dropped to the dock and stumbled before Beast Boy. The villain's cutlass scraped a scorch mark into the wood. "Avast, ye land lover! Arrgh!"
Beast Boy stood and emptied a mouthful of ocean. "Dude, it's 'lubber.' Get a clue. And a new tailor."
"Silence! Ye'll be dealing with me now!" screeched Control Freak.
Control Freak's clumsy stance and paunchy pose made Beast Boy shrug. "'Kay," he said. As he bent, his body elongated into that of a velociraptor, whose terrible claws raked curls of wood from the dock, and whose snorting snout brandished teeth longer than Control Freak's fingers.
The blade fizzled off Control Freak's remote. He shrank from the raptor, quickly reweighing his options. "On second thought, a good captain always delegates. That's why ye'll be dealing with this instead."
His remote spat a red beam over the raptor's swishing tail. Beast Boy glanced back at the red beam spacking against the ocean. The pathetic display jarred him back into his humanoid form. "Dude, what was that? That was just weak. I'm, like, four feet in front of you."
"Aye, that ye be, matey," Control Freak said with a sneer. "But I wasn't aiming at ye. I was aiming for he. I mean him. Just look!"
Control Freak's fervent pointing guided Beast Boy's attention back to the ocean. The calm waters bubbled where the beam had struck. With a swell of white foam, the water broke for a tall, metal shape that kept growing and rising, pushing the ocean aside in a low wave.
Beast Boy staggered back as a metal monster erupted from the ocean. Its head towered over the dock, casting a long shadow over Beast Boy. The water broke again, and again, and again, as long tentacles slithered up from the depths to menace the dock.
"Behold the Atomic Kraken!" cried Control Freak. "I don't have time to keelhaul you, so this'll have to do! Get 'im, Keira!"
The villain's laughter fell on deaf ears. Beast Boy leapt into the air, already choosing from a catalogue of creatures in his head, when one of the Kraken's tentacles snaked around him with speed unimaginable for a creature its size. The segmented metal was as thick around as Beast Boy's whole body, and it coiled over all of him in mid-morph.
A wet crunch filled his ears from the inside. Pain wrenched every part of him, grinding his bones together. As his innards spilled together into useless slurry, the tentacle dragged him into the water, drowning his last scream. Cold rushed through him, deadening his pain into emptiness.
Control Freak's final laugh haunted his blackening consciousness. He tried to think small in his final moments—a shrimp, a plankton, a sponge—but his mind and body couldn't reach one another across the numb space filling him. In desperation, he grasped that shrill laughter and plunged it into himself. The laughter festered in his darkest thoughts, which the tentacle wrung with bone-crushing force, until it blossomed into hate.
Beast Boy let that mortal outrage fill every corner of himself. He refused to die. He refused to be beaten by a popular b-list animated villain, or by the greasy nerd controlling it.
The rage filled Beast Boy until he grew out of the Atomic Kraken's grasp. He kept growing, larger and larger, until he touched the shallow seabed. He grew larger still, rising in a geyser of ocean that broke the surface and tossed the Kraken.
A leviathan emerged from the waters to terrify Control Freak. It easily dwarfed the Kraken, which already dwarfed the dock. Doubly dwarfed, Control Freak stared in horror at the creature. Its face was a twisting nest of tentacles and eyes. Its chitinous armor glistened wet, so green that it turned black in the sun.
Two grand pincers emerged from its long shell to grasp the Atomic Kraken. It lifted the Kraken whole from the water and over its tentacled maw, where it tore the mechanical beast apart. Flames and sparks bled from the dying Kraken before the leviathan consumed it whole. Its wreckage vanished into the leviathan's maw, crunching metallically, spraying wreckage into the ocean.
Its meal finished, the leviathan's thousand eyes fell upon the dock. Control Freak felt death brush its hand up his back beneath the gaze of this otherworldly monster. He dropped to his knees and sobbed as its claws descended upon him. "No! No, please!" he wailed, and covered his head. Rivulets of water poured from its claws, drenching him in brine. Fetid breath blew the hat from his head as the leviathan's tentacles reached for him.
He screwed his eyes shut and screamed.
For one endless moment, Control Freak prepared himself for the end of all things. He heard a loud splash that ended the leviathan's rumble. When he found the courage to look, he discovered the leviathan's absence. Beast Boy stood on the dock, soaked to the bone, swaying and reeling as though he'd just been spun for a solid hour.
"What did…? Where did I go just now?" the dizzy shapeshifter muttered, and clutched his head.
Control Freak crawled to Beast Boy and threw himself over his boots. "Oh, thank you, thank you!" he cried, and kissed Beast Boy's salty soles. "Thank you!"
Beast Boy found his footing, and then gagged at the villain atop it. "Ugh, cut it out. And you're under arrest, dude."
"Damn right, I am," yelped Control Freak. He hugged Beast Boy's leg. No amount of shaking would remove him. "Just don't turn into that thing again," he begged.
Beast Boy's innards froze. He remembered looming over the docks, and rending the Kraken apart, and reaching for Control Freak. But what animal had he been? A giant squid, right? Only, no, he'd had claws. And tentacles. How?
A primal urge answered Beast Boy. Something inside of him wanted to grasp the prostrate villain, to shape Beast Boy's hands sharp, and tear, and rip, and feed.
He shook the thought away in a spray of water. When he looked down again, Control Freak had resumed kissing his feet. "Um, that isn't helping you. I'm still taking you to jail," he said.
"Oh, thank you!" sobbed Control Freak.
Traffic yowled at Tek. Honks, high-beams, and screeching tires made Tek cringe inside her helmet while she jogged between cars at a brisk forty miles an hour. The rear camera streaming in her heads-up display was a string of shaking fists and angry shouts that worsened her cringe.
"I need my own Tekmobile," she mused breathlessly, and passed a Mack truck without signaling. "Or maybe a bus pass."
Down the row of stumpy skyscrapers, Tek spotted her destination. Police cruisers semi-circling the entrance gave it away. The flashing blockade of black-and-whites cordoned off the front of a boxy building wedged between a department store and an office building. Neon lettering identified the store as The Electronique. Aside from the row of armored police officers aiming rifles at the storefront, the scene seemed peaceful.
She spied a familiar trench coat flapping between the heavy gear and stomped up to the old cop inside the coat. Her tremoring steps made him turn and start even before she reached him. "Oh, super. Here comes the circus," Smith said, and lowered his gun.
Tek leaned on her knees. "I'm here. What's the problem?" she asked between breaths.
Smith scowled. He leaned around Tek, looking behind her. "What, just you? Where's the rest?"
"What's that supposed to mean?" She straightened, finding her breath at once. "I can handle things here. Things here are totally under control. So…what's the deal here?"
A second passed as Smith pierced her visor with a hard look. The armored officers behind him tensed, watching the scene, miming his tension. When he shrugged, they relaxed. "Okay, kid. We've got one-plus suspects cornered inside and at two friendlies possibly down. The responding officers broke contact ten minutes ago. No ID on the weirdness in there, but the people we evac'd are good and upset. Called the perp a 'one-man army,' if that means anything to you."
Her helmet swiveled to either side. She couldn't help but notice the decidedly sedentary attitude of Smith's Special Crimes Unit. Anything that they hesitated to tackle made the hairs on the back of her neck slither against the inside of her armor. "So why are you out here and not in there?"
With a smirk, Smith retorted, "Orders from City Hall. If I think a situation is hot enough, I wait for the Titans. And I know you're all eager to earn that prime real estate the city up and gave you for your clubhouse."
"Great. Sure." Tek turned to the looming Electronique. The store stood silent and empty. Its neon display filled her ears with a deafening buzz that broke only for the pounding of her heart. Everything slowed down. The swirling lights of the police cruisers existed only to blind Tek. She could feel the eyes of every officer on the scene, and none of them thought she could handle this. She could feel it. They knew she would just screw everything up, and then—
A knocking on her arm pulled Tek out of her own suffocating thoughts. She looked down and met Smith's concerned stare. "Hey, kid? You okay?" His usually gruff tone had softened paternally. His hand rested on her arm.
Tek looked down further and saw her armor's hand clutched tight to the point of straining the alloy. She forced it open with a short breath. She could do this on her own. Not that she had a choice. "No problem. I'll radio back with the all-clear once I take this guy down," she said, and tapped the side of her helmet.
At Smith's nod, she crossed the barricade and clanked to the storefront. The doors slid apart with a chime. Tek lifted her arms and edged into the store. An afterthought opened the tops of her forearms to bear her cannons.
Electronique was a sprawling field of aisles and displays bathed in fluorescence. Endless rows stood tall and packed with packaging of the latest gadgets, competitively priced, as the signage assured her. Beyond the aisles, escalators churned steps to and from the upper level where more great bargains, and possibly danger, lay.
Tek crept past the empty registers, having to turn sideways to fit between checkouts. The emptiness of the store gave her chills. Places such as these were meant to be teeming with people. As she looked around, her HUD and its sensors found nothing. No motion. No heat signatures. Not even an active computer. Just rows of gadgets and appliances at low, low prices.
Suddenly she heard a crash of glass and plastic from the upper level. Her armor's external mics found and amplified the sound, and caught the tail end of a voice cursing. Tek followed the sound to the escalators. She wedged herself onto the steps and trundled up.
The upper level consisted of an open ring of larger appliances. Televisions and home entertainment on one side, washers and dryers on another, power tools to her left, and refrigerators keeping watch behind her. The center held a display of home and office furniture.
"What's the matter, flatfoots?" A skinny boy all in red taunted two police officers bound to office chairs by an industrial extension cord. The boy leaned over one of the unconscious women, his hands on his hips. A broken stereo system lay at his feet. Pieces of the system were sprinkled over the woman's body. Blood dribbled from her hairline. "That was my greatest hit, y'all. I think the tune packs a wallop, don't you?"
Tek progressed from apprehension to relief to curiosity to outrage in the space of her first step off the escalator. She wasn't sure how a pipsqueak like him had incapacitated two officers, but she knew he wasn't going to get away with it. "Hey, you!" Tek barked, her voice ringing from her grille.
The boy turned. He didn't have an ounce of muscle or fat anywhere on his body, as evident by the ribs Tek could count under his tight red uniform. A red hood clung to his head and framed the dark goggles over his eyes. A circle clung to his spooned chest with a division symbol in its center.
"Hey!" he snapped. "Who in tarnation are you supposed to be? One of them police bomb disarmin' robots? I thought y'all had wheels."
Tek stopped and looked around, partly to check for accomplices, and partly to spot the hidden camera crew. This had to be one of those asinine shows where an unsuspecting victim—namely, her—became the butt of a nationally-syndicated prank. No one this stupid could warrant a Titan and SCU response. But there was no one else around, aside from the bleeding police officers bound before him.
She strode forward, fists clenched, cannons retracting into her arms. "Yeah. I'm a big, scary robot here to pound the stupid out of some wannabe thief. Oh, and by the way, 'math' is not a cool gimmick, 'Captain Divider.' Now hit the floor."
His face flushed red to match his uniform. "The name is Billy Numerous, sass-bot. An' how about I hit you instead?"
Billy hoisted an office hair and charged Tek, screaming at the top of his lungs. Tek stood, nonplussed, while Billy swung the chair into her with his whole body. The chair smashed against Tek's armored chest without imparting even a scratch in her enamel. Billy skidded to a stop behind her, confused, holding the broken back of his erstwhile club.
"You're tougher 'n you look," he said, turning with fists raised.
"Thanks. You're not."
Tek snatched Billy from the floor with one hand. Her fingers and thumb met around Billy's waist. He struggled against her grip, muttering slurs that offended and confused Tek. She would need to look up the word "polecat" later. But he clearly wasn't going anywhere.
She held him up to her scowling visor. "Quit struggling. You'll hurt yourself."
A sick grin twisted Billy's face. "Correction: we'll hurt ourselves!" he said.
With a nauseating slurp, Billy Numerous divided himself into two identical selves. The new Billy flowed from the original's upper half and coalesced atop Tek's arm. Both Billys grinned as the copy, or clone, or duplicate, jumped onto Tek's head. He wrapped himself around her helmet, filling her HUD with his division insignia.
"Nya-ha! Who's tougher now, Robo?" crowed the new Billy.
"You are, Billy!" the first Billy cheered.
Tek's free hand tore the second Billy from her face. She clapped him together with the first Billy. Both her massive hands wrapped around the squirming pair. "Okay, so you surprised me. But like I said, I…"
She didn't get to finish. Mirroring each other's sneer, the Billys divided again, stuffing Tek's grip with a total of four Billys. These all divided again, and again. They kept dividing when they became too much for Tek to hold, and all dropped to the floor. More than thirty Billy Numerouses stood up on front of Tek, who staggered back at the sudden tilt in odds.
"Get 'er!" Three Billys shouted in succession.
A wave of skinny and red crashed over Tek. Billys clung to her arms and wrapped around her legs and piled atop her shoulders and blocked her helmet with lewd expressions. Her gyros panicked and she toppled onto her back, buried beneath a writhing pile of Billys.
One Billy hammered her visor with laced fists. "Ha! Let's crack this tin can open," he whooped.
The fists in her face sparked something terrible in Tek. She sat up with a sharp movement that sprayed Billys across the room. The rest of them she batted aside. "Get OFF ME!" she snarled, and rolled into a crouch.
Several Billys picked themselves up and then started helping other selves off the floor. One of them had a bloody lip from the fall, which he pulled into a smile. "Ooh-wee! Lookie here, Billy. Somebody lit a fire under this girl-bot."
"I reckon she'll burn up 't this rate, Billy," another Billy said.
"Then let's stomp that fire for her own good, Billy!" a third cried, and mounted a dryer to take charge of his selves. "Get 'er! Again!"
A low growl started in Tek's thoughts and worked through to her grille, where it resonated underneath the disjointed shouts of the three dozen Billys. She met their charge in kind, pounding the floor as she waded into the Numerous wave.
Billys crashed off her armor like a tide against an unyielding pillar. She swept her arms, knocking them weightlessly over the heads of their other selves. But for every Billy she tossed, two more slurped into being, fresh and ready to stand against her. They clung to her armor, laughing, hooting, slapping the alloy until Tek's head rang inside and out.
Her anger swelled. It found its voice and roared. It consumed her every thought and vomited hatred. Its roar stripped Tek's throat s it took command of her hands. She smashed the floor with a two-fisted blow. Concrete, carpet, and Billys exploded in a shockwave that rattled the entire store.
A plasma screen television smashed against her shoulders. Tek whirled and snarled, and spotted a battalion of Billys hefting demo TVs from their stands. Working together, the selves heaved their televisions across the room to shatter against her fixed scowl.
"What's on TV, Billy?" one of the selves asked.
"Nothin' good, I reckon," his opposite cackled. Together, they hurled a widescreen set held between them.
Tek stormed through the television barrage. She tried to reach them to break their teamwork, but they kept multiplying. More TVs, more boxes, more stereos, more speakers, hammered her backward. Eating the last of her control, her anger pushed the cannons out of her forearms. They blazed with white light, spraying staccato death around the room.
A chorus of screams rose above Tek's tinny roar. The sound of terror broke her anger. She lowered her smoking cannons, reeling with the return of her mind. She gasped.
The world around her was a swiss cheese of smoldering holes. Her plasma bolts had burned into everything. Fire licked the carpet in a half-dozen spots. By some miracle, she had missed the two policewomen tied in the middle of the room. Past them, she saw a dozen heads poke nervously from behind whatever cover they could find.
She willed her cannons back into her armor. The sight of what they had wrought made her taste bile. She had almost murdered three people. Or thirty, depending on how she counted.
As she stared at her handiwork, a refrigerator driven by eight Billys plowed into her from behind. The Billys multiplied and pushed the massive appliance through her, driving Tek forward. She stumbled helplessly until they pushed her to the escalator. With a final heave, the Billys threw their refrigerator ram down the up escalator, shoving Tek down underneath it.
Her gyros wailed at her through her HUD, which blinded her with error messages and warnings. They were grossly unnecessary. Tek figured out her troubles all on her own as she bounced and rattled down the moving steps. The refrigerator shoved her to the steps, which groaned and grinded to a stop, unable to move past her pinned armor. When she tried pushing off of her, she felt another fall on top of the first, punching her with its landing. Another followed, and then another after that.
It was three more refrigerators piled atop her before she felt and heard the Billys descending down the other escalator with boxes lugged between them, the spoils of their victory. Their laughter pierced the pile of appliances atop her to burn in her ears.
"Aw, that hothead robot ain't nothin' but a can o' hot air, Billy!"
"Shoot, never mind her, Billy. Check out this blender I picked up. It was a real steal."
"Ten settings? Shee-oot!"
"You know it! Let's go steal some fruit and make smoothies!"
Pandemonium swamped the Convention Center. The streets around the colossal, domed coliseum teemed with panicked people pushing each other in their rush to escape. Uniformed police tried to direct the crowds into some kind of order, and were trampled for their trouble. Overturned cars lay across the streets adjacent to the Center, forcing the crowd into bottlenecks.
Cyborg gripped the steering yoke hard as he did his best not to mulch an innocent pedestrian under the CUTTER's treads. Their wailing siren pierced the crowd's hysterics enough to clear room for the tank to crawl through to the epicenter of the problem. But when they drew closer, even their siren became useless. The crowds were too thick, forcing Cyborg to slam the brakes.
He watched the rippling sea of people through the windshield. "This is pretty bad," he said.
The panic crashed over Raven's psychic defenses. She could barely deal with crowds on a peaceful basis. This raw, chaotic tempest of fear and confusion made her skull throb. She clenched her armrests and peered past the overturned cars. The panic's intensity was greatest in the direction of the Convention Center's main entrance, but a bus flipped on its side blocked her view. "It's worse over there," she said, and pointed. "We need to move."
The CUTTER's roof hatch retracted, revealing clear sky. Cyborg took Raven's hand, grumbling, "All that work to fix the tank, and I don't even get to use it. It's not fair."
Raven took to the air with a swinging Cyborg in tow. She slid her soul-self into his arms to keep hers from wrenching from their sockets. Together, they flew over the crowd and past the cars blocking them. What they found didn't improve either of their moods.
Six figures dangled from a street light next to the Center's entrance. They swung lazily in viscous cocoons that trapped them up to their shoulders. Five of the figures wore red hoods, the very kind used by acolytes of the Church of Blood. They swung stoically, their jaws clenched and eyes closed in either prideful resolution or a means of staving off nausea.
The last figure in the line possessed a robe of white, or so they surmised by the hood pushed back from her crop of iron hair. Her lined face puckered when she spoke in a commanding, almost regal tone. "You will release us now," she announced.
Standing atop a flipped Oldsmobile, her captor laughed. He possessed a strong build beneath his leather jacket and torn jeans. He carried no weapons. Likely the most memorable feature about him was that he possessed no head in the traditional sense, but instead an enormous spider whose body and long legs curled around his human half.
His mandibles spread for a scoff that loosed a stubborn scrap of web from his mouth. "You aren't going anywhere until your grand poobah shows up, y' old hag," he said.
"I am the Mother Méhymn," the woman insisted imperiously. "I speak for the Church when the Brother Blood is not present. You will release us. Now."
The crack of a blazing whip scorched her cheek. She turned and glared at the spider-head's accomplice, a svelte young woman standing next to the car. The girl coiled her fiery whip around a striking pink suit that may well have been painted on. Cat ears poked through her flowing blonde hair, presumably attached to her matching pink mask. "You tell her, Fangy. These Bloodheads think they rule the city, but we'll show everybody who's really in charge! Right?"
She lifted her whip to crack over the heads of the thinning crowd. A blue beam struck her hand, knocking the whip from her rattled grasp. She yowled and clutched her offended hand as her glare backtracked the beam to a silhouette descending from the sky.
"Fang and Kitten," Cyborg groaned in Raven's grasp. His sonic cannon glowed with another primed shot during their descent. "And here I thought we were responding to an emergency."
Kitten stamped her heeled boot. "Don't call me that! We're the real masters of this city, and you'll treat us that way! We are Catwoman and Fang!"
Raven settled Cyborg onto the street. She landed next to him, falling into her billowing cloak. A miserable expression radiated from her shadowy hood. "Catwoman, huh? Real original."
"Can we skip to the part where you give up? We've got somewhere we have to be," Cyborg said.
Snarling, Kitten threw her hands to her sides. Claws of fire erupted from her gauntlets. The fiery claws trailed behind her wild, enraged gesturing. "You Twerp Titans are gonna learn some respect. Get 'em, Fang!"
"Boys with the girls, Raven. I promise not to tell your bookstore boyfriend," Cyborg said, and then charged Kitten. "Titans, GO!"
Raven ascended in a swirl of blue cloak, guided by her rolling eyes. "You're still not funny," she said.
Cyborg's cannon sprayed sonic across the battlefield. He kept his aim tight to avoid the trapped or injured pedestrians. Kitten's acrobatics kept her one step ahead of his cannon. The car behind her crumpled and skidded back with the force of his misses. Frustrated, Cyborg tried to steady his aim with his other hand, but Kitten remained just shy of his beam.
She hand-sprang at him, melting gouges into the street. "Too much for you? Maybe you should give up before you taste the fury of Hellcat!" she cried. She coiled beneath his sonic cannon and then leapt over its beam, slashing his arm with her flaming claws.
The cannon didn't suffer, but her claws scorched long marks into Cyborg's plating. He yanked his arm back, mechamorphing away his cannon. His thumb rubbed the black marks to no effect. "Hey! I just buffed that!" he snapped.
Kitten ducked under his reach and scored his side with more dark marks. She sneered, and said, "If you can't stand the heat…"
Cyborg split his left palm down the middle, revealing a nozzle in his arm. A jet of white foam coated Kitten from head to toe. Her claws sputtered in the foam before flickering out with a cough.
"…you put the fire out," Cyborg finished smugly, and closed his palm.
"Eyargh!" groaned Kitten. She pawed at the foam, trying to wipe it off her bodysuit. "It's like a fire extinguisher just horked all over me!"
She hissed as Cyborg grabbed her by the scruff of her neck and hoisted her to eye level. "Yeah, well, that's what bad kitties get," he taunted.
Kitten shoved her gauntlet in Cyborg's face and slapped its side. A mixture of fire foam and mace sprayed from her glove. Cyborg howled and dropped Kitten, doubled over by the chemical agony on what little skin he had left. He clutched his face and staggered.
"Ha! And that's what 'you' get for messing with the Black Cat! Bad luck, hero," she jeered.
Tears in his eye, Cyborg shot, "Your costume's pink!"
High overhead, Raven skimmed the Convention Center's wall in hot pursuit of Fang. His human hands flipped middle fingers at her while his head's legs kept one step ahead of her. The spidery limbs propelled him to dizzying heights along the building's side. Whenever she got close, he leapt out of reach, landing five stories away.
Between the panic below and her own frustration, Raven felt her control slipping. Fang's catcalling didn't help. "You've got to be faster than that, goth freak!" he called between leaps. Glaring at her from above, he spread his mandibles to gurgitate a wad of webbing at her.
The viscous wad struck Raven's soul-self. She glared at him through the translucent barrier covered in web. "This is so unnecessary," she grunted.
She thrust her hand to the wall. The new brick shuddered, buckled, and tore free from the building as a wave of soul-self erupted from within, rending the mortar free from its rebar and beams. Fang jumped from the disintegrating wall with a shout, trailing debris from his sticky feet. He sailed across the street and grabbed the edge of an enclosed skyway strung between two office buildings.
Flying through the brick hail, Raven threw soul-talons from her hands. She saw Fang scamper under and behind the skyway. The people inside the glass screamed and ran to either building at the skyway's ends. Raven told herself it was because of the man with the spider head, and not because of the demonic figure with ebony claws reaching for them.
As she flew under the skyway, she fell into Fang's trap. Fang had pressed himself flat on the underside of the skyway. When she descended, she came right into his sights. His grin spat a slew of webbing that penetrated her talons.
She flinched and covered her face. The webbing enveloped her arm and hand. It felt warm and wet, with the consistency of stale mucus, and would not come off no matter how hard she shook.
Raven jerked back while her soul-talons merged into a new shield to deflect the poison barbs Fang spat next. She stared at her web-slimed hand, and suddenly realized that Dominic's phone number lay somewhere beneath. She hadn't memorized the number. By now, it could be smudged into illegibility.
Red rage flashed in her eyes. "No!" she shouted, her voice reverberating in the urban canyon of downtown. "NO!"
The webbing burst from her arm with a blast of black arcane. Her soul-self hammered Fang in the chest, propelling him through the skyway windows in a hail of broken glass. He smashed out the other side and kept going, long legs twisting behind him.
Fang vanished into a parking garage through its uppermost concrete barricade. Her anger's object gone, Raven's red glare drifted down to her hand. She read ten numbers that eased the knot in her stomach. Her eyes faded. Her hand trembled. She mashed her eyelids and clenching her hand until she felt the outburst inside her cool.
"Ahh! Ow! Ow!" Cyborg's cries opened her eyes to the ground. He staggered with Kitten on his back, her legs wrapped around his neck. She had hooked her finger in his cheek to yank his face. Her other hand had its long, manicured nails dug into his nostrils, pulling back on his nose. Every time he reached up to dislodge her, Kitten yowled and pulled harder, throwing his balance into disarray.
"Don't you ever tell me what to do, you stupid gear head!" she screamed in his ear, which she then bit. "You'll never stop the Thundercat! I will rule—!"
Ebony consumed the vibrant pink of Kitten's costume. She shivered, and then screamed as invisible force tore her off of Cyborg. Her costume yanked her across the battlefield and slammed her into the overturned Oldsmobile. The blackness seeped into the car's door to bend the metal around Kitten, trapping her in impregnable bonds.
Cyborg checked the remainder of his face while Raven floated above him. Insufferable smugness coated the surface of her features. Something less mirthful lurked underneath. "Need a hand? She looked like trouble," Raven teased him.
His elbows split to sprout machine cannons, which he aimed at Raven. She gasped at the cannons' thundering. Blue pellets whizzed past her and struck Fang, who hung poised above her in mid-pounce.
The pellets expanded into a sphere of impact foam that swallowed Fang up to his neck. He sailed past Raven and bounced on the pavement. All six of his ankles twitched at the edge of the foam as he rolled to a stop next to Cyborg, spitting and snarling, and altogether harmless.
The cannons slid back into Cyborg's arms. He leaned against Fang's blue sphere and grinned. "I think I'm okay," he said to Raven.
"Excuse me," the Mother Méhymn called from her high cocoon. "I'm sorry, but if you children are finished congratulating yourselves, could you possibly get us down?" Annoyance dripped in her frosty tone.
Raven set to work cutting and lowering the priests with a soul-sickle. Cyborg caught the cocoons and pulled them open one at a time. He heard sirens pushing through the thinned crowd, and saw nearly every emergency vehicle in Jump City push past the upended cars blocking the street. The magnitude of their response surprised him a little, as no one seemed hurt, and the property damage was nothing he hadn't seen before.
His unspoken question was answered by a black limousine that pooled into the battlefield in the midst of the rush of police and ambulances. While the cruisers swung into a circle around the Center's entrance, the limousine continued fearlessly until it reached the Titans, their captives, and their rescued.
Cyborg had just finished freeing Méhymn from her cocoon when the limo's door opened. Two burly men in robes emerged, an avalanche of muscle and menace that surveyed the situation. At a nod from Méhymn, they stepped aside. Both men fell onto their knees in reverence.
A figure appeared from the limo door. When he stood, he loomed. Robes of the deepest crimson flowed from his broad shoulders. He surveyed the scene, pushing a large hood back from his head. A golden helmet adorned his head, flared with the spiraling horns of a ram. A silver mask hid his face behind the gruesome visage of a skull.
Upon sight of the figure, the crowd thickened and swelled. Newly arrived police formed a wide ring around the limo. The crowd struggled to break through, screaming his name, jumping, cheering. Those in the crowd dressed in red robes fell to their knees and chanted. Many not in robes did the same.
"Brother Blood!"
"Brother Blood!"
The masked figure stepped past his burly bodyguards and approached the Mother Méhymn. Nothing else warranted his attention, least of all the throng raising his name to the heavens. "Are you well, Mother Méhymn?" he intoned. The mask made his voice resonate, or so the Titans surmised.
Mother Méhymn pulled free of the cocoon in Cyborg's grasp without a single word of gratitude. She offered Brother Blood a hasty bow. Her expression puckered into disapproval. "You are late," she said.
"I apologize, Mother. Are you well?" Deep concern rang through his mask.
The old woman brushed strands of web from her white robes. "I suppose it is just as well you exercised your habit of tardiness. There was an incident. I and the high priests are unharmed." With a distasteful glance back, she nodded to the two Titans, and said, "These two saw to our protection, such as it was. I suppose we owe them thanks for their samaritanism. Barbaric as it was," she added just loud enough to be heard.
Her words furrowed Cyborg's brow. But then Brother Blood surprised him. The towering high priest stepped around Mother Méhymn and bowed to Cyborg. It was a low bow, barely more than a nod, but it shocked the fervent crowd around them into silence, and drew an irritated gasp from Mother Méhymn.
"Please," said Brother Blood, lowering his helmeted head, "accept my deepest thanks for the protection of the Mother Méhymn and my priests. I am indebted to, and awed by, your selfless heroism."
Cyborg stared, stunned by the thanks, more so by the reverence it drew from the crowd. He shook his head clear and filled his gaping mouth with a smile. "Hey, we're just glad to help," he said.
He stuck his hand out to Brother Blood. Immediately, the two burly robes were at Cyborg's sides, menacing him back with dark glares. But Brother Blood gestured, and the guards stepped aside, cowed. Brother Blood stepped forward and shook Cyborg's hand warmly. His grip vanished into Cyborg's enormous grasp.
"Thank you again," said Brother Blood, who ignored the scandalized scoff of Mother Méhymn.
"You've done some great things for the city," Cyborg conceded. As much as Blood's appearance and position made his skin crawl, he found himself warming to the man. It wasn't hard to see why so many people looked to him for leadership. Not that Cyborg planned to be fitted for robes of his own. "The money and manpower you've donated to the reconstruction effort has been amazing."
An audible smile accompanied Blood's words. "And we have so much more yet to accomplish. I hope we can work together for a brighter future." He broke grips with Cyborg and offered his hand to Raven.
Raven joined his hand with hers. Her eyes trailed up his vestments. His opal belt, cloak, and clasp all rang familiar with her. They weren't so different from her vestments. When her eyes reached his, a chill ate her spine. Her hand grew clammy in his warm, dry grasp.
"Thank you," he said warmly.
"Sure. No problem," mumbled Raven.
Brother Blood turned to the reverent crowd, his robe flaring with a wave of his hand. "My children, I offer my apology to you. In the wake of these events, I feel it is appropriate to cancel today's engagement. You will each be offered a refund or an invitation to a future engagement in recompense. But for now, please disperse peacefully and quickly, and allow our civil servants room to operate. Bright blessings of Blood upon thee."
"Blessed are we," arose a murmur through the crowd. The people around them turned and filed off of the battlefield, devoid of their former exuberance. Police officers staggered forward as the crowd they had contained simply left.
Brother Blood offered the Titans another shallow bow as Mother Méhymn ushered him back into the limo. The priests followed after, their heads bowed and hidden in hoods. Cyborg watched until the door closed and the limo pulled away.
"Tell me this isn't at least an eight-point-two on the weirdometer, right? …Raven? Raven?"
Raven's eyes were glued to the back window of the limo. Her gaze grew more distant with each passing second. She rubbed her hand where Brother Blood had touched her. Her fingers traced the lines of her palm, running over the numbers that were starting to smear. The chill persisted inside of her.
"Raven?" Cyborg's touch jolted her out of her reverie. She stiffened under his hand, startling it back. "Are you okay?" he asked.
Her voice wandered back into her throat. "No. I mean yes. I'm fine. It was nothing," she murmured.
Cyborg glanced at the bound villains de jour. The police rolled the blue ball filled with Fang toward a cruiser. They had to stop him at the door, through which he clearly wouldn't fit. As they pondered the problem, another pair of officers dragged Kitten after Fang. Her yowling slurs were drowned out by the scraping sound of the door wrapped around her.
"I know what you mean," he said. "I was half sure that the other two hits on the Alert were distractions for this. All these people? Recipe for disaster. But the happy couple here wasn't exactly 'End of the World' stuff. So why the synchronized mayhem? What could possibly be bigger than this Brother Bloodstravaganza today?"
Bushido sat in quiet contemplation of the orchestrated madhouse that Titans Compound had become. From his bench, he could see everything: the carnival booths lining the streets, the food vendor carts parked between them, and the small convoy of news vehicles parked inside the orange barricades blocking off the street. One such news van had thought to park in front of Bushido's bench, blocking his view of the modular stage. Its tires had mysteriously blown, forcing its owners to have it towed out of Bushido's view.
The work crews were just finishing with the stage. They erected a podium to stand directly before the impressive structure. Microphones emerged from the podium's top, curling up at a teamster who tapped and checked each one.
Reporters gathered at the foot of the stage like preening peacocks waiting to be fed. Their cameramen stood idly by, chatting with their counterparts from rival stations, enormous rigs propped on their shoulders. The sight of so many mustaches and wavy toupees made Bushido smile to himself.
A small girl pulled herself up onto Bushido's bench. She wore her scrubby hair in pigtails, and lugged a fearsome teddy bear after her. Once she had pulled the both of them onto the seat, and situated her bear so he could see the proceedings, she looked up at Bushido. "Hi," she said. "My name's Melvin. This is Bobby. What's your name?"
He glanced down at the little girl. "Ryuko," he said.
She shaped her mouth around the unfamiliar name. "Ree-yoo-koe?"
"Close enough. Hello, Melvin. Hello, Robert." He glanced around, and asked, "Where are your parents?"
"Aw, my dad's over there. He's a 'porter for TV news," she said. Her pudgy finger singled out none other than Hank McCoy, Jump City's premiere national correspondent, as he checked his nose for stalactites in the reflection off his cameraman's lens. "He couldn't find a babysitter, so I had to come to work with him today."
Both she and Bushido giggled at Hank's mugging as he warmed his face and voice up for the impending press conference. "You picked an excellent day to come. I imagine it will be quite exciting to see the Teen Titans."
She looked at him funnily, noticing the polished hilt at his waist. "Why do you have a sword?"
Bushido glanced down at her, pulling his attention fully from the proceedings. The little girl looked back up at him with unabashed curiosity, her gaze unfaltering. It was refreshing to see something besides fear and mistrust. "Truthfully, I am a Teen Titan."
"Really?" Her gaze traversed the lines of his keikogi and returned to his placid face. "Is that why you're in your pajamas?"
"That is precisely why I am in my pajamas," he said earnestly.
"Oh." She considered him a moment longer. "Well, why are you out here? Shouldn't you be inside with your friends?"
"The other Titans are not my friends," he told her.
"Why?"
"Because they do not like me," he said.
"Why?"
"Because they believe I did bad things."
"Why?"
Bushido blinked at her. "Are you certain your father is working right now? Perhaps you should go to him. Talking with strangers can be dangerous."
Melvin shook her head. "Did you really do bad things?"
He took a moment in answering. "Yes. I suppose I did," he admitted.
She tilted her head, and spoke with the sage wisdom of a five year old. "You can't do bad things if you're a Titan. Titans are good guys. Good guys can't do bad things. They do good things."
A condescending smile wrought his lips. "I am afraid it's more complicated than that, Melvin."
Her doe eyes cut through his smile as quickly as if she had used his sword. "Why?" she asked.
He started to speak, but then stopped, lost for words. A moment later, he nodded to her teddy bear, and suggested, "Perhaps you should ask Robert. He seems like a sharp fellow."
Another "why" blossomed in her lips, but was forgotten at the sound of a trumpeting fanfare. The street filled with ostentatious music that captured the attention of every person present. The crowd milling throughout the street drifted toward the stage, which still-working crews abandoned quickly to get out of the way. Camera crews sprang into action with their rigs. Reporters crowded against each other, vying for a better spot at the foot of the stage.
Melvin's stunted stature soon left her staring at the backs of the growing crowd. "I can't see!" she whined.
Bushido picked her up by her waist and stood on the bench. Lifting her to his shoulders, he raised both of their heads above the crowd. Melvin wrapped an arm around his forehead and squealed with delight as they watched the stage, waiting for the grand event to begin. Her other arm clutched Bobby so that he could see as well.
For several minutes, the music continued, sounding the arrival of nothing at all. The stage stood empty, while the crowd stood, confused. Everyone looked in every direction, trying to see what the music heralded, or for that matter, from where it came.
Then the stage erupted with a burst of black smoke that covered every inch of the modular paneling. Those eager reporters too close to the stage were caught in the cloud's edge, and coughed violently in the acrid smoke. A collective gasp of wonder travelled the crowd as they watched and waited for the smoke to clear. Only Bushido's sharp eyes spotted the rapid flash of five shapes entering the cloud from behind.
As the cloud cleared, silhouettes emerged in the smoke. The crowd began to cheer wildly, clapping and crying out. But when the smoke dissipated, their cheers fell to silence, squelched by confusion.
Recognition of four of the figures drew screams of panic from the quicker in the crowd. They recognized the malevolent leers of Mammoth, Jinx, Shimmer, and Gizmo, who flanked the figure standing behind the podium. Though the villains remained stoic, the crowd erupted into a panicked frenzy, tearing itself apart as its people ran from the frightening fivesome.
The figure behind the podium tapped the bouquet of microphones as he cleared his throat. He wore two-toned armor of blue and red in a design that rang familiar with anyone in Jump City.
Melvin gasped and clutched Bobby to her chest. Only Bushido's deft hand kept her from toppling from his shoulders. "It's Slade!" she shrieked.
Having worked for the villain in question, Bushido knew better. He frowned, and said, "Not quite…"
"Thank you all for coming out today," the figure said through a featureless mask. "I'm very glad to see such a turnout for our 'grand opening.' It's all very exciting."
As the panicked mob reached the end of the street, the barricades blocking traffic erupted with greenish light that spread in a wall to block the street from sidewalk to sidewalk. The momentum of the crowd carried it into the wall, smashing those fleet in front into an unforgiving barrier that was every bit as solid as stone. More green barriers flared along the sidewalks from hidden projectors. The walls met high overhead, and then turned inward, sealing the street in a green dome of impenetrable energy.
Trapped, screaming, the crowd had no where else to turn. They looked back to the booming voice behind the podium, which halted long enough to glance at Gizmo. The grinning imp pulled his hand away from the force field controls of his rig and tapped another button. Immediately, the music filtering from his pack stopped.
"There we are. Now, as I was saying, I'm glad you all could come. My name is Ravager," the man behind the podium explained calmly. "And you are all going to die. I understand this may be an inconvenience for some of you, but, well…that's life, isn't it?"
The cameras remained fixed on him as he grasped the podium and heaved it aside, filling the air with the hiss of feedback. Reporters backed away in fright as he and the others walked to the edge of the stage. Lilac hex danced in Jinx's eyes as she grinned malevolently down upon the cowering news crews.
"Dibs on the media," she purred.
"Dibs on the hot dog stand," Mammoth said.
"Dibs on the ho…damn it," Gizmo said a second too late. He crossed his arms with a huff.
Ravager silenced them all with a gesture. From that gesture appeared a sharp shuriken bearing a stylized 'R.' He coiled and threw it overhead, where it exploded, spilling smoke across the panicked crowd. The air grew thick and black, turning the crowd into a stampede.
"Teen Tyrants, TERRORIZE!" he bellowed.
To Be Continued