Teen Titans
Adaptation
By Cyberwraith9
Terrorize: Welcome Home
"This just doesn't make any damn sense," Cyborg groused. He leaned up next to Raven against the side of the CUTTER and stared down at the screen on his arm. A map of the city glowed beneath the Titan Alert System. Two green dots pulsed on the map, one of them at his location. A third yellow dot blinked halfway across the city.
The CUTTER sat in the shadow of the Convention Center, parked between police cruisers and ambulances on the street. City work crews had arrived to clear out the battlefield and repair the craters in the road. Though the orange-vested crews shot dirty looks at the Titans while sweeping debris, they gave the CUTTER a wide berth. Everyone did, save for the lone police transport parked next to the tank.
Three officers tried to roll the blue foam ball that incarcerated Fang up the ramp of the transport. The ball was a hair too large for the gaping back of the truck, leaving the officers to fit him in with Sisyphean results. Kitten, in the meantime, cooled her heels at the foot of the ramp with the officer in charge, waiting for her turn into the truck.
Looking at the pair, Cyborg couldn't believe that they had just decided to make a brazen display of force at a major event on a whim. Nor could he believe in a coincidence that tied up the rest of the Titans with two other emergencies at the exact same time. Someone had obviously orchestrated the attacks. But which attack was real, and which were the fakes?
"Bonnie and Clyde here aren't the masterminds," he mused aloud. "We'd better check with the others."
The map on his arm de-rezzed into static. Seconds later, Beast Boy's image replaced it. A squad car was visible behind him, its lights dancing like those of the cars parked around Cyborg. Mechanical wreckage carpeted the dock behind Beast Boy, some of it dressed in flamboyant rags. "Ahoy, Cy."
Cyborg blinked. "Uh, okay. Are you all right?"
"Aye. I mean, yeah. Control Freak showed up at the docks. He tried to make off with some junk in a warehouse, so I whupped his poop deck."
Cyborg's brow creased. They hadn't heard from Control Freak in months. Obviously, his physical therapy had gone better than expected. But simple robbery, however flamboyant, wasn't Control Freak's style. His crimes typically had far nerdier impetuses. "What was he after?" asked Cyborg.
Beast Boy squinted at something off-screen. "Dunno. Machine parts, I think. Does it matter? The cops are here, hauling him off to the brig. I mean, jail. Sorry, it's been a piratey kind of day."
"Piratey?" Raven echoed dubiously.
"We just went toe-to-toe with a cat girl and a guy with a spider for a head. We got no room to talk," he told Raven. Back to Beast Boy, he said, "We're secure on our end. The Brother Blood thing's been called off, and everybody's safe. You heard from Tek?"
The screen on Cyborg's arm shoved Beast Boy's image aside to make room for Tek's beleaguered face. She stood with a downtown street behind her, which was lousy with disarray. Flipped police cars and parked ambulances made traffic impossible. Tek, sans armor, looked tired and pained, but otherwise unharmed.
"I'm here," said Tek. She combed her fingers through her short, dark hair, kneading her scalp. "I just got my tin can handed to me by some skinny meta. Billy Number-something. He dropped a bunch of fridges on me. Then he overwhelmed the SCU outside."
"'He' overwhelmed…?" Cyborg repeated.
"He. They. It's a complicated pronoun situation. Took a bunch of electronics and stuff. I need to fish Lieutenant Smith out of a tree now. He's pretty…Um, he's pretty high, and he's yelling stuff. Mean stuff. I think he's mad," she said, and winced.
"Hold up," said Cyborg. "We need to figure this out. We—"
Beast Boy and Tek both lit up with surprise as their images were superseded by the Alert map. Cyborg's arm blinked a fourth point of emergency onto the map, one whose corresponding location was miles away from any of them.
It took Cyborg only a second to recognize the location. He'd spent every day of the last month there on a construction site, building their home with his own two hands and a battalion of expensive LexCorp construction drones.
Cyborg shouted a word that made every city laborer and police officer in the area crick their necks. They stared as his fist pounded the side of the CUTTER so hard it made Raven jump away from its side. "The Compound!" snarled Cyborg.
""The Compound?" Beast Boy and Tek asked in unison.
"What? It's starting already?" shrieked Kitten.
Every eye in earshot turned on the skinny blonde in pink. The officer babysitting her shrank back as Cyborg stomped toward her. Cyborg's steps shook the ground, knocking loose the false bravado in her features to reveal her true fear. He grasped her arms and lifted her face to his. His head turned, bathing her in the light of his furious ocular implant. "What's already started?" he demanded.
Her quivering lips moved out of synch with her thoughts as she stammered an answer. "H-He said today was a tr-tryout, a-and if we did right, we could j-join—"
"Join what?" he snarled.
Fang, upside down in his foam ball, shouted at Cyborg, "Leave her alone! S'not like you can stop it anyway. It's already happening."
Cyborg dropped Kitten, ignoring her squeal, and marched up the transport ramp to Fang's wedged foam ball. The officers trying to push Fang in leapt aside, practically thrown by the ramp's bouncing under Cyborg's stomping feet. Cyborg held Fang in place with one hand, leaning down into Fang's gruesome face. "Start making sense, or I'm gonna go 'water spout' on your itsy-bitsy ass."
Sneering, Fang said, "Some guy. Got a real 'Slade' vibe about him, but he's a lot younger, and he's got twice as many eyes. He sent out word to all the real players in the city that today was auditions. Gave us a place and a time, and told us that if we did well enough, we could be part of his big plan."
Cyborg growled. "You were bait."
"Looks like," Fang spat. "What a gyp."
"That's our home, you wall-crawling son of a bitch!"
A pale hand caught Cyborg's punch halfway to Fang's flinching face. The ebony ether behind it kept Cyborg from spattering the villain. "Don't do it," Raven told Cyborg, and lowered his fist. "Besides, we have bigger problems."
His fist uncurled and fell limp out of her grasp. He scalded Fang with one last, nasty glare, and then shoved the ball hard. Foam shavings flew off the edge of the door as Fang's spherical bond reshaped itself to fit the inside of the truck. Fang slammed into the back wall with a startled yelp and a clang.
Cyborg marched down the ramp, bending it in his anger. A black afterthought of Raven's tossed Kitten into the truck with an ethereal hand. Raven followed Cyborg back to the CUTTER, which had already started at Cyborg's unspoken command.
"BB, meet us at Tek's location. We have to get back ASAP," Cyborg said into his arm. He darkened its display without waiting for any answer. The CUTTER's entry ramp lowered at a snail's pace. He was tempted to rip it out of its housing just to get in faster.
Raven countered his toe-tapping impatience with calm. "Who do we know that has a 'Slade' vibe?" she asked.
"The question is, who are we gonna beat who has a 'Slade' vibe? I just built the damn place, Raven. For God's sake, Beast Boy hasn't even tracked mud in yet. Some of the paint's still wet!" he spat.
Raven didn't like the Compound. Not even a little. It was too public, too big, too bright, too close, too noisy, and in too crowded an area. She had objected to everything about it from day one. "Home" was just a word, and not a particularly weighty one to a demonic sorceress from another dimension.
But the pain she sensed under Cyborg's anger made Raven's mind for her. Her soul-self poured into the CUTTER's hatch, speeding its parts to the point of breaking. The hatch slammed down next to Cyborg, who jumped back in surprise. He looked to Raven as she floated over the hatch ramp.
"So let's go save it," she said.
Chaos reigned inside an elongated green dome outside of Titans Compound. Beneath the energy barrier, a human stampede crashed from end to end. They tore down tents, bright banners, booths, and tables erected for a festival that now lay underfoot. People in the crowd tripped and were trampled, vanishing under a panic of feet. Behind that panic, something much worse chased it, egging it on.
Mammoth bent and hefted an entire booth. The ring toss game above him cast a long shadow over the people teeming around his legs. He laughed, a short and ugly kind of barking that came from deep in his stomach. With a heave, he sent the booth into an arc high above the crowd. It fell in a crash of rotting wood and aluminum piping that swallowed a man and his scream.
Billowing winds carried Jinx above the stampede. Hex bolted from her fingers to bewitch the banners strung over the street. The plastic sheets banded together into the ropey shape of a giant beast, whose fluttering claws tossed people through the air. Screams trailed behind the people thrown by the banner golem. The muffled crunch of bone and organ awaited them at their landing.
"What's the matter?" jeered Jinx. Fire blossomed in her hands. She stretched it into a ceiling that descended upon the crowd, alighting the air with dancing flames. "You should all be having fun. It's Titans Day, right?"
Ravager stood behind the stage, observing the panic with a chest bursting with pride. He turned back to an imp grumbling at the Compound lobby doors, and said, "Well, things seem to be going well out there so far. Your barrier is working like a charm."
"Super-keen," Gizmo grumbled sardonically. He grasped a data jack extending from the tech pack strapped around his shoulders. The jack was plunged into a security panel next to the doors, trading code at Gizmo's unspoken command with the central mainframe of the building. "Now shut the hell up so I can disable their security. If we don't get inside, all of this 'terrorizing' is just foreplay without payoff."
"Colorfully put," Ravager conceded.
One man stood as a blue-suited oasis in the hysteria. Hank McCoy, microphone in hand and hair still fabulous, shouted above the panicked din that was buffeting his cameraman. "I'm reporting live on the steps of the new Titans Compound, where festivity has given way to disaster. An unprovoked attack by the metahumans who menaced Jump City for months—"
The ground beneath the cameraman transformed into a cement quagmire. Hank watched in horror as his cameraman and five other nearby people fell into the soupy ground, splashing out of sight with little more than startled gasps. They revealed behind them the scandalous Shimmer, who coaxed the ground solid with a touch. She strutted across the recongealed sidewalk, little caring about the six people entombed beneath it.
"I'll save you some breath, pal. We're the Teen Tyrants," Shimmer said. She filled her leather-strapped chest with a breath, and then blew Hank a kiss of pure chlorine. The gas toppled Hank. He writhed on the ground, coughing, gasping, grasping at his throat, and rolled at Shimmer's boots.
"DADDY!"
The scream drew Shimmer's sick smile up from Hank. She spotted a figure all in white atop one of the news vans. A little girl clung to his shoulders with a teddy bear wedged against his back. Both the bear and the girl reached out for Hank, hoping to stretch the impossible distance. The boy in white who carried her appeared annoyed by his burden's sobs.
Shimmer's smile sickened. "Hey, I remember you!" she said, and snapped her fingers. "One of those Titan wannabes from before. The ninja, right?"
Tears swam in Melvin's eyes as Shimmer kicked Hank aside to stalk upon the news van. She crushed her face into Bobby's tummy. Then she felt her stomach fly as Bushido dropped to the ground.
"In the future, 'stay quiet' means to stay quiet," Bushido admonished her.
After setting her on the ground, he put his elbow through the window of the van and unlocked its door. Blood dribbled from the jagged bottom edge of the window, and swept through the pristine white of his sleeve.
Bushido ignored Melvin's goggling stare as he opened the van. He set her on the passenger seat and, as an afterthought, buckled her in with the belt. "Do not move unless someone you know comes for you. Do you understand?" Melvin trembled, unable to speak. Shimmer was all but upon them, her hands twisting the air with anticipation. But Bushido's voice never wavered or rose, and his face remained sternly calm. "Do you understand?" he asked again.
Even as Melvin nodded, she whispered, "Don't go."
Shimmer reached for the van, her eyes glistening with possibility. Bushido kept watch of her from the corner of his eye, which dived into Melvin's, plunging a fragment of his courage into her. "You will not be harmed," he told her.
Mere steps away, Shimmer lunged for Bushido, already grasping at the molecules of his keikogi with her power. Bushido whirled away and swung the door back toward its housing, startling Melvin into shrieking. Snarling, Shimmer lunged again, intent on snagging Bushido. She failed to notice that he hadn't closed the door all the way. He swung it back open hard, catching Shimmer with the very edge of the door. It bounced off her face and closed while she staggered back with a fountain of blood for a nose.
"Ah! You bastard!" Shimmer roared, clutching her face.
Bushido darted past her clumsy grasp. He cracked her hard across the seat of her tight leather pants with his palm, knocking her forward into the side of the van. "At least my parents knew each other's names, whore. Is poor parentage the reason you do not know how to dress, or is that just symptomatic of indiscreet promiscuity?" he taunted, speaking quickly.
With a scream, Shimmer pushed off of the van and chased Bushido into the stampede, forgetting completely about Melvin.
The people already running from Jinx and Mammoth didn't give Bushido another glance, but they did recognize Shimmer. Her presence made the stampede fragment and collide into itself. Bushido danced between the panicked fragments. Shimmer, unable to concentrate, had to shove and struggle while she was buffeted back from her quarry.
The stampede offered Bushido cover that he knew he couldn't afford. Eventually Shimmer would just atomize everyone in her way to get to him. But while he had it, he hid and followed the crackling pink witch overhead. She wasn't hard to track, hovering above her banner golem, directing it with wild gestures as if it were a marionette.
The golem, tinged with pink chaos, reached down to crush a pair of teenagers dressed in matching Titan T-shirts and clutching an autographed picture between them. The teens screamed and cowered beneath the looming banner-hand.
Bushido leapt from the crowd in a flash of fluttering white. His sword left its sheath with uncanny speed as though it hungered for the work. A single stroke robbed the golem of its hand and covered the teens in a sheaf of sliced banner. Bushido landed on a parking meter, balanced precariously for an instant, and then leapt again. His sword cleaved the golem in half, ending its reign over the crowd with a shower of colorful plastic fabric.
"Hey, that was mine!" Jinx cried.
A trio of plastic black pellets answered her from Bushido's blind toss. He was already on the ground and running again. As Jinx descended to follow, she swatted the pellets aside with hex. They exploded violently, throwing Jinx back with a shriek and a clap of smoke.
Mammoth heard the explosion over the sound of the screaming around him. He dropped the pickup truck above his head and saw a white blur charging at him from the direction of the sound. "Hey, I know you," he drawled.
Bushido's running jump became a kick that rattled Mammoth's back teeth. Bushido landed behind the toppling giant, sword in hand, and then dove above the heads of the crowd to skid onto the stage.
Ravager heard Bushido's landing on the modular paneling. He turned and saw Bushido charging toward the door. The flash of a katana chased Ravager aside. "Gizmo, move!" he shouted too late.
"Huh?" Gizmo turned away from his work and saw a silver flash. As he ducked reflexively, Bushido's sword severed his data jack. Feedback seized Gizmo's body with agony while Bushido spun, knocking Gizmo away with a horse kick.
Bushido whirled and caught a crashing saber with his katana. Ravager stood behind the saber, applying considerable effort to its task of halving Bushido. Their hilts locked in their struggle, pitting the swordsmen face to face.
"You're quite the lingering nuisance," growled Ravager.
"I've been called worse by far better men," Bushido answered through his teeth. "Usually right before I killed them."
The swordsman in white abandoned their contest of strength and ducked. As Ravager stumbled forward, Bushido bounced, burying his shoulder into Ravager's stomach. The villain stumbled back and struck the stage. He jumped and rolled backward, climbing onto the stage in one smooth motion.
The stampede had slowly transformed into a ring of terrified silence, spellbound by the self-proclaimed Tyrants gathering on the stage. Their fun forgotten, the terrible teen villains converged around Ravager, who backed all the way to the podium at the stage front. He drew a second saber from his back to match the first. His eyes smoldered inside his featureless two-toned mask.
"I've heard about you, you know," he told Bushido while his Tyrants lined up around him. "You should be working with us, not against us. Just name your price, and you'll have it. I know what kind of person you are."
Bushido climbed onto the stage slowly, his sword trailing at his side. His posture softened. He stared down at the katana in his hand, lost in its reflection. Silent words rolled from his lips in a prayer that no one heard. Then, with the blade's tip, he gouged a line in the stage between the Tyrants and the compound.
"Then you know that crossing this line won't end well for you," Bushido said.
Ravager scowled. "Fool. No one denies me." He lifted his sabers into a cross. They intersected in his vision across Bushido's resolute expression. To his Tyrants, Ravager said, "Kill him. Destroy the base. Leave the people for the after-party."
Bushido gripped his katana in both hands. A slow breath emptied him of everything he did not need.
"Attack!"
Screams swamped the crowd at the Tyrants' charge. The stage shook beneath their onslaught. The air crackled and trembled. Bushido held his ground, his blade at the ready, his features calm. Only his heartbeat betrayed his excitement.
Halfway across the stage, the Tyrants' charge was met by a blur of white. Bushido darted into their midst, forcing them to stop and change direction. That half-second of indecision gave him all the time in the world to strike back. In another life, he would have killed two, maybe even three, before the rest of them noticed the blood underfoot. In another life.
The flat of his katana slapped Shimmer hard, knocking her into Mammoth's swinging fist. He pulled his punch enough to avoid killing his sister, but he couldn't stop himself completely, and launched her off the stage.
Gizmo ascended onto his spidery stilts to squash Bushido. Cackling, he stomped his long legs through the plywood paneling, rending the framework beneath it. Each near miss peppered Bushido with splinters. "C'mon, Hong Kong Phooey! Let's tap dance!" Gizmo taunted. Cannons slid over his shoulders. They tossed Bushido into the air with a concussive blast of energy that cratered the stage.
The stomping stalks came closer to cleaving Bushido with every blow. Bushido bided his time, bleeding from the tiny cuts the peppering shrapnel drew into him. As Gizmo's tall rig leaned to one side, punching through the stage to obtain a shooting solution on the swordsman, opportunity arrived.
Bushido swung his katana with his entire body, driving its blade through the knee joint of the stalk. Hydraulic fluid gushed from the severed limb upon which Gizmo leaned. The leg slid apart. Gizmo's pack whined in effort to compensate his balance, but his other legs were stuck in the stage. He screamed and collapsed, tearing the entire front half of the stage apart.
Bushido jumped back from the disintegrating stage floor. As he landed, a wave of hex ensnared him. He staggered under the agony of bad luck attacking every cell in his body. His muscles cramped into knots. His heart skipped a beat, setting fire to his chest. His tongue swelled, his lungs seized, and his vision went black. It left him woefully unprepared for the flying kick Ravager planted in his stomach.
As Jinx released Bushido from her hex, Ravager watched him fall to the stage just shy of the line he had drawn with his sword. With a vicious kick, Ravager knocked the swordsman back across the line. A gesture from the villain's gauntleted hand brought Mammoth trotting gleefully forward. The giant lifted Bushido by his leg and dangled him upside down, presenting him to the crowd.
"I want every one of you to take note," Ravager addressed the captive audience, facing the few remaining cameras. "This is what happens to dissidents. This is what will become of all who stand in our way. Now and forever, your lives belong to us. You are ours to use and to discard as we see fit." He turned back to Mammoth and drew his hand across his throat.
Mammoth grinned. He seized Bushido's neck with his other hand and held the wiry teen out in front of him. Glancing at his feet, Mammoth wiggled the toe of his boot over the line in the stage. "Heh. And you said we wouldn't cross your little line," he whispered conspiratorially to Bushido.
Bushido's bones creaked in Mammoth's grasp. His muscles screamed. His sword lay miles away across the stage. But his strained voice never wavered. "No. I said it would not end well for you."
He flicked his arm.
Mammoth roared in pain. He tossed Bushido aside and bent to his foot, which was pinned to the stage by a dagger, the blade of which stuck just behind Bushido's line. Blood pooled underneath Mammoth's foot.
In his rage, Mammoth broke the hilt off the top of his boot. He lifted his foot with a splash of splinters and blood, and grasped the blade protruding from his sole. His sausage fingers slipped off the blood, making the blade impossible to pull out.
Bushido tried to roll upon landing. His body wasn't up to the task, and he flopped and tumbled onto his back. When he tried to sit up, Ravager's boot shoved his shoulders back to the ground. The tip of a saber dug into Bushido's neck.
"What do you think you accomplished here?" Ravager demanded, snarling loudly enough for the hushed crowd to hear. "Why are you fighting us so hard?"
As Bushido gagged in reply, a bass rumble captured Ravager's attention. Far outside the translucent walls around the block, he saw the Titan's CUTTER roaring down the empty street, leading behind it a small army of police cars. Flashing lights sparked rage in Ravager's eyes as he turned back to the smiling swordsman at his feet.
"I wasn't fighting you. I was stalling you," Bushido croaked.
Ravager braced himself to shove his saber through Bushido's throat. His balance was thrown when the CUTTER's forward turret belched a gout of white fire into Gizmo's barrier. The green energy had been designed to keep people in, not plasma weaponry out. The barrier generators overloaded in tandem, vomiting sparks while the barrier melted away.
The captive crowd cheered wildly as they parted for the CUTTER, which screeched onto the street with locked, smoking treads. The CUTTER's roof and side hatches opened with a deluge of Titans.
Cyborg's sonic cannon trailed blue light as he lifted its sights on Ravager, and snarled, "You need to back the hell away from here, Mini-Slade. We puree our trespassers."
Ravager kicked Bushido aside. A sweep of his swords drew the rest of his team to him. Even Mammoth, who limped and cursed with each step. "You don't give the orders here, Titan," spat Ravager.
The reverberating voice narrowed Cyborg's eye in recollection. "Red X?" he asked, confused.
"Teen Tyrants, TERRORIZE!" Ravager bellowed.
Jinx swept the air into a tempest with a grand gesture. The winds descended upon the Titans, drawing debris from the ground to scrape them raw. While the Titans were blasted back, Shimmer stepped next to Jinx and thrust her hands at the apex of Jinx's tempest. The air at Shimmer's palms blackened into putrid smoke that Jinx's wind consumed, turning her tempest into a choking tunnel of smog.
The crowd screamed and ran, clearing the area. Now that Gizmo's barriers were gone, nothing held them back. Those too scared or injured to move sought shelter from the tempest's edge behind the few structures remaining or under those news vans still uncrushed. The vehicles teetered in the intense wind, their suspension wavering.
Even the CUTTER rocked in the heart of Jinx's focused storm. Cyborg grasped the side of the tank and squinted. His lung filters protected him from the worst of the roiling smog, but he could hear Raven and Beast Boy's coughing above the tempest din, and knew they couldn't last long.
Unfortunately, the hand steadying him was also his sonic cannon in disguise. If he let go to mechamorph it, he would be blown away. "Tek!" he bellowed into the wind. "Take Jinx out with your blasters!"
Tek bent low, fighting the wind with the sheer strength and weight of her armor. Her deadly blasters blossomed out of her forearms. She pointed them toward the pink glow beyond the edge of the black tempest pinning them to the CUTTER.
Her arms trembled badly with the memory of what her blasters had wrought the last time she had used them. Her armor rattled as she shook. As her HUD reticule squared over Jinx, she threw her arms aside. The blasters retracted into their housings. "I…I can't!" she shouted into the smoke, unable to see Cyborg, and glad he couldn't see her. "My guns are…jammed."
A green beam lanced through the billowing smoke. The beam missed the Titans by sheer chance. Every hair on their bodies stood on end at the electrostatic charge following the beam as it struck the CUTTER. The tank's face glowed white hot, and then slumped forward, cooling into a radioactive red sludge. Its horn warbled one final time before the front of the tank melted into itself.
"Damn it!" swore Cyborg. "Raven?"
Raven, bent upon her knees, chest burning for clean air, squinted up into the source of the tempest beating her down. Her face curled into a nasty smile.
Outside of the tempest, Jinx shot a sidelong grin to Shimmer, whose hands continued feeding her wind with smog. "I'm thinking another minute of this, and they'll be corpses."
Adjusting the aim of his cannons, Gizmo spat, "If you'd let up with your wind tunnel, they'll be dead in two shots." Gizmo squinted into the swirling windstorm, trying to find another target. His glassy eyes bugged at a dark shape emerging from the wind.
In a burst of smoke, the CUTTER tumbled out of the tempest, encased in impossible blackness that turned it into a negative image. Gizmo's scream led his fellow Tyrants in a mad scramble to escape the CUTTER's growing shadow. The CUTTER pulverized the ground where they had stood. Its side crumpled against the ground, grinding the street as it slid to a stop.
Four Titans strode through the dissipating wind, scowls and idioms ready to face the self-proclaimed Tyrants of Jump City. A fifth figure limped into their formation, forming up at Tek's flank with his sword in hand. Cyborg grimaced at Bushido, but turned back to the bigger threat at hand.
Ravager crossed his sabers. His glare met Cyborg's from betwixt the blades. He announced, "You cannot beat us, Titan. We rule this city. Surrender now, and I'll grant you a quick death. It's far more than you deserve."
"Now, this is weird. I'm hearing Slade, but I'm seeing a cheap 'Made-in-Taiwan' knockoff," said Cyborg.
Hatred burned inside Ravager's mask. "Don't you dare speak his name, you filthy cadaver. You will rue the day you ever besmirched his legacy. You'll all pay for what you did."
Beast Boy's skin crawled, aching to don that of a predator to clean the meat from Ravager's bones. The desire was so fierce that it frightened Beast Boy. "So, are we gonna listen to Senor Monologue all day, or are we gonna squash this Fearsome Five?" he asked.
Sheathing his blades, Ravager motioned his Tyrants back with a sweep of his arms. "Enjoy your housewarming, Titans. We'll be back to finish what we started today. Fall back!"
At his final shout, he yanked two discs from his belt and hurled them at the Titans. The discs burst with radiance and thunder that staggered the Titans back, giving Ravager's Tyrants cover to disappear.
Slowed by his injury, Mammoth was last behind the others. He saw a handy news van parked along his avenue of escape. Digging his grasp into its sides, he hefted it over his head. "Here's some breaking news, geeks!" he bellowed, and flung the van.
Spots danced in Cyborg's eyes. The others seemed in worse sorts than he, clutching their eyes and ears. Computer-regulated senses sometimes had their advantages.
He saw the van flying through the bevy of spots. His arm mechamorphed into its cannon. "Everybody down," he bellowed.
Bushido knocked Cyborg's cannon aside, making the sonic stream spray wide. Cyborg was ready to backhand the assassin's head clean off his shoulders, but Bushido was already airborne, leaping straight at the van hurtling toward them. "Move!" he shouted.
Beast Boy streaked away as a cheetah. Raven melted into her own shadow. Cyborg simply ran. But Tek held her ground, shouting after Bushido. "Ry!"
Everything slowed in Tek's perceptions. She watched Bushido curl into a ball to crash through the van's windshield. Somewhere in the hail of glass, he straightened. His blade flashed. Then the van fell upon Tek, its grille meeting hers in an explosion of force.
Tek shielded herself with her arms as the van disintegrated around her. Metal roared and ripped. The van shoved her violently back as it swallowed her through its engine block. Her feet dragged trenches into the ground beneath the squealing wreck sliding to a stop.
When Tek opened her eyes, she stood waist-deep in the remains of the van. Its innards had blended into a slurry of upholstery, plastic, metal, and glass. Her armor's front was scratched and dented, but otherwise all right. Bushido was nowhere to be found.
"Ry? Ryuko?" she shouted, and waded out of the wreck. Outside, she saw the other Titans gathering around a white, dingy shape on the ground. Tek's armor flurried off of her body and into her back as she ran to them. She pushed past Raven and bent to the figure on the ground. "Ryuko!"
Bushido smiled dizzily. Clutched in his arms, a little girl with pigtails and a scuffed teddy bear sobbed into his chest, alarmed but unharmed. A nasty cut on his forehead masked Bushido's satisfaction in blood. More cuts littered his uniform, staining it red. "You are all right, Melvin," he told the little girl. "You are safe now."
The Titans stared, flabbergasted. Beast Boy turned to the wrecked van, and then back to Ryuko. He couldn't think of a single animal, or any combination of animals, that could get in and out of the van as Bushido had as quickly as he had. "Dude, how did you do that?" he asked.
"Stylishly," answered Bushido.
Cyborg stared down at the little girl with a pang. He hadn't even seen her in the van. He'd nearly blown her out of the sky. "Why?" he asked Bushido. "Why did you…?" He couldn't even finish the thought. It was anathema to him.
With a grin, Bushido gently rocked Melvin, trying to soothe away her tears. "Titans do good things," he said.
Raven spread the medicated patch over Bushido's forehead, sealing his last cut beneath antiseptic gel and gauze. She pressed the adhesive edges of the patch down none too gently. "There," she said, and stepped away from the biobed. "You can put your shirt back on."
Bushido examined the bandages littering his naked torso. His gaze wandered across the interior of the Compound's Sickbay. The finest in medical equipment and supplies surrounded his and four other biobeds. Glancing down at the simple bandages over his cuts, he asked, "Do you not have something more…super? Bio-regenerative enzyme paste, or dermal cellular regenerators? You could even heal me with your powers, could you not?"
She pulled his gi top off the back of her chair and tossed it in his face. "I sure could," she said, and then stalked out of Sickbay.
As Raven passed through the sliding double doors, Cyborg poked his head in. He watched silently while Bushido donned his keikogi. The swordsman didn't acknowledge Cyborg's silent glare. He tied his sheath around his waist, hiding its strap beneath his teal sash. It he was in pain, Bushido's face never revealed it. Only his ginger movement hinted at the twinges he felt.
Bushido tried to exit. Cyborg filled the doorway with his broad chest and folded arms. Bushido glanced up at the mismatched glare in his way, and said, "Are you now going to incarcerate me for trespassing? As I recall, you invited me in to tend to the wounds I incurred while defending your base."
"No, we dragged your ass in here after you got schooled by a second-rate lineup of our rogues gallery," Cyborg corrected him. "And no, we aren't holding you. God knows I wish we could."
"Ah," Bushido said, and nodded. "Then thank you for the ass-dragging and medical attention. If you will excuse me, I will show myself out."
Cyborg didn't move, and so neither did Bushido. "You're not going anywhere, are you," Cyborg said. It wasn't a question.
"No," Bushido agreed. "Not in the grander sense of things, at least. But I will leave the premises if I am not welcome."
"You aren't," said Cyborg. "We don't like you, and we don't want you, and if it wasn't for a really crappy court ruling, we would see you rot in prison for the rest of your life. You aren't a Titan. You aren't one of us."
Bushido's serene smile enraged Cyborg. "I would disagree. And I might point out, there were several reporters present for your press conference who would also disagree."
"I know. They're still outside," Cyborg said darkly.
Thin eyebrows rose in surprise above Bushido's self-satisfaction. "They are still here?" he asked, and tried to see past Cyborg.
Cyborg leaned to block him. He barely had to do even that, as his cybernetic bulk nearly sealed the doorway. "They're camped out front. Won't leave until they get a statement about the yahoos that wrecked today for us."
"I see. Would you prefer I left through a side door?"
Cyborg glowered in silence. He waited for Bushido to squirm, to confess to something. He waited for any kind of sign of the brutal murderer that had infiltrated the Tower last year to kill him. Aside from the smugness he saw, nothing of that murderer stood before Cyborg. He saw only the heroic boy who had risked his life against five-to-one odds to protect innocent people. It galled Cyborg to no end.
"Why?" Cyborg said.
"I assume you didn't want me seen leaving—"
"Why do you want to be a Titan?" Cyborg demanded impatiently. "Why are you trying so hard to convince everybody you're different now? Why the big switch?"
"I am different now," explained Bushido. "I will not deny my past…to the extent to which my legal counsel advises. But I know that my destiny now lies here, with the Titans. If that means sitting outside on a bench for the rest of my life, waiting to help, then so be it. I will not ask you to accept me, but I must follow my path as I see it. And my path lies alongside yours."
A tug of war raged inside Cyborg. He already knew which side would win, which made him fight all the harder. In the end, he thrust a fist at Bushido. It took the sum total of his willpower to uncurl his fingers, revealing a yellow communicator in his palm.
"We don't like you. Matter of fact, I hate your guts. But if you're gonna be up in our business, we might as well get some work out of you," he said.
Bushido's smile widened. His eyes twinkled, as though he had predicted this exact moment. But when he reached for the communicator, Cyborg's hand closed, freezing Bushido halfway to his prize.
Cyborg's implant eye blazed. His human eye narrowed into a sliver. "One slip. One mistake. One little, tiny, microscopic sign that this is all one big scheme. If any one of us sees anything like that, we will break you in half, toss you out the door for garbage pickup, and forget we ever made this huge mistake."
Bushido's smile dulled. "So noted," he said.
When he reached for the communicator again, Cyborg closed his hand once more. This time Cyborg's eyes burned with curiosity as well as disdain. "Why didn't you use your magic sword stuff? Energy fields and shields, that kind of thing? It might have made the difference in the fight," he said.
The last of Bushido's smile died as he drew his hand back. He rested the hand on the hilt of his katana, grasping the worn, weathered wrapping. "I used all the tools and skills at my disposal to save those people. I gave my best effort, as I always do, and always will."
"That's not what I asked."
"No. It wasn't."
Their stare lingered, long and uncomfortable. Finally, Cyborg tossed the communicator. It bounced off Bushido's chest before he caught it.
"Get down to the lobby. We'll give the press a quick statement. It's been a long day. We've got a room for you, right next to mine," Cyborg said, leaning down into Bushido's blank face. With a nasty grin, he added, "So I can keep an eye on you. Neighbor."
Cyborg stepped aside, allowing Bushido out to the sprawling hall of Sector Prime. The rest of the Titans leaned against the wall next to Sickbay's doors. They watched him with mixed reactions. Beast Boy looked sick to his stomach. Raven's scowl was all that pierced the shadow of her hood. Tek kept glancing between Bushido and the others, her face a mess.
With a nod to them all, Bushido strode down Sector Prime, his footsteps echoing in the uneasy quiet.
They waited until he disappeared through the security door. Then Raven said, "This is a mistake."
"But you voted him on the team," Tek said, confused.
"I know. It's still a mistake."
Tek stared after him. She reached reflexively into her belt, drawing out a small vial. She shook a white tablet out of the vial and popped it into her mouth. "Maybe he's changed," she said around the tablet. "Maybe he really does want to do good. He saved all those people."
"People don't change," Raven told her.
"No, people change," the tall, lanky, handsome Beast Boy said. Then he added, "But not that douche bag. He's gonna slit our throats in our sleep and then sell our organs on eBay."
Cyborg stepped before all of them. His looming presence ended the discussion at once. "No, he ain't. We're keeping him close so he can't cause trouble. Nobody takes their eyes off of him for a second. Not for one second. Anybody sees him twitch funny, you take him down fast and for good. No questions asked," he added darkly as Tek opened her mouth. Her lips snapped shut.
Beast Boy threw his arm around Tek's shoulder, herding her off the wall and through Cyborg's scolding scowl. "C'mon, Armor All. Let's go get rid of our adoring public. I'm bushed."
"Wait," Cyborg called as the others trickled past him. They stopped and turned at the nervousness in his voice. "Look, guys, I know we haven't talked about it yet, but… Well, with Robin gone, we need to decide who's in charge. We've been doing okay so far just managing ourselves, but somebody's gotta call the shots. I think we should—"
"Dude," Beast Boy chided him, "Come on."
Tek said, "Of course it's you. Duh. Right?" she asked, looking between Beast Boy and Raven.
Cyborg shook his head. "Guys, that's cool and all, but I really think—"
"Why are we still talking about this?" Raven asked. A smirk ghosted beneath the edge of her hood's shadow. Her eyes twinkled for just an instant. "Shut up and get outside before Bushido gets bored and murders someone out there."
Cyborg grinned. A sliver of the morning's enthusiasm edged into his downtrodden spirits. He trotted forward and scooped up Beast Boy and Tek, placing them each on a shoulder. "Well, then, my first decision is to go out there and let people know who they're dealing with. Let's show 'em the New Teen Titans are here to kick ass and take names."
As Cyborg jogged through Sector Prime, Beast Boy looked back from his bouncing perch. Raven lagged behind, walking calmly in their wake. "Hey, are you coming?" he called.
"You go ahead," Raven called back. "I'll catch the next cyborg and meet you outside."
She watched the others traipse through the security door. As they grew more distant, her steps slowed. She stopped entirely when they disappeared from sight. Her arm emerged from her cloak, lifting her hand to her hesitant expression. Ten smudgy numbers sat in her palm, barely legible.
It was a miracle she could read them after the slime, sweat, and general Titan shenanigans of the day. If left alone, the numbers would probably be washed out by midday tomorrow. She would never even remember them being there.
Raven stared at the numbers. They crinkled with her skin. Then she heard a ringing tone next to her ear. She glanced to one side and saw her communicator opened, its screen filled with the numbers from her palm. She didn't remember drawing her communicator, nor dialing. Panicking, she tried to shut the communicator, but then heard the ringing stop as the signal connected. A familiar voice spoke on the other end of the line.
"D-Dominic, hi, I…" She trailed off, listening as the voice continued through her stammering. A swell of relief filled her chest as she listened to his voice mail instructions. At a short beep, her panic returned twofold. "Dominic. Hi. Um, this is Raven…from the bookstore…"
"What was supposed to be a day of celebration became a nightmare," said Hank McCoy. The mustachioed reporter held his microphone in one hand as he stood before the ruins littering the street outside Titans Compound. In his other arm sat Melvin, who clung to Hank for all she was worth. A squashed teddy bear poked its head out between them.
"A malicious gang calling themselves the 'Teen Tyrants' arrived on-scene, trapping those present and attacking without provocation or intent. Sixteen are dead in the wake of this tragedy, with dozens more injured."
Jinx slid the small, battery-powered television set off the end of the warped counter, letting it smash onto Ops' cracked floor. Her lips curled with disgust as she kicked the pieces of the television at the object of her frustration. "That was a complete waste," she said.
"And that was our only TV, bitch!" Gizmo complained. "Not that you're wrong, but now what am I supposed to watch?"
The rest of the Tyrants surrounded Ravager, who appeared underwhelmed by the show of annoyed force. He bowed his head out of his helmet and tucked it under his arm. An irritated expression revealed itself behind the faceplate. "Was I the only one watching that report?" he asked, and sighed.
Shimmer swept her coppery crop from her eyes, unveiling a scowl that made the air quake. "Look, I like pointless violence as much as the next sociopath, but today was a total wank. The Titans' new pad is still there. We didn't even kill one of them, just a couple of nobodies."
Impatient breath whistled through Ravager's nose. "Dead heroes breed martyrs. Dead innocents breed panic. We took something just as valuable from the Titans as their base. We stole their moment."
Mammoth clutched his rumbling stomach. His foot throbbed inside his boot. He loathed the thought of pulling it out and seeing how much of it remained. "Yeah? Can you spend a moment? Is it gonna buy food?"
"Or parts to fix this dump up?" added Gizmo.
Jinx stepped forward, glaring. She jabbed her finger into his armored chest. The gesture made him smirk, fanning her ire into full flame. "We all went out on a limb for you on this scheme. We moved into this crap heap because you said you had a real plan. You said we were going to the city. 'Tyrants,' right? Well, I'm not going to squat in the Titans' hand-me-downs so you can steal their 'moments.' I'm out."
Ravager just smiled. He tilted his head, and said, "There's the door."
Disgusted, most of all with herself, Jinx led the march toward Ops' doors. They were stuck halfway in their sockets, leaving just enough room to slip through. Because they would not close, Jinx saw the figure in red approach the door from the other side.
He blocked the opening and knocked on the metal leaf of the door. "'Scuse me, ma'am. I'm looking for a 'Ravager' fellah. Said he'd consider me for his team. Do I got the right 'T,' or is he in the giant letter down the block?" he asked with a smile.
Jinx sneered and tossed her thumb over her shoulder. "You want the dork in the armor back there."
"Hope you like living out of a box," Shimmer scoffed.
The boy all in red grinned. "Actually, I brought my stuff over already. Hope y'all don't mind. I brought enough to share." He looked back into the hallway and whistled. "Hey, Billys! Move it on up, huh?"
Two more boys identical to the first, right down to the division symbol painted on their chests, appeared from the hall to yank the stuck doors open. Jinx and the others had to jump out of the way as a parade of duplicates poured into Ops. Each one carried something different. Boxes, bags, sacks, jewelry, gold, food, food, boxes, furniture, and boxes of food came through the door atop a never-ending stream of the boys.
The first boy watched his duplicates pile their bounty into Ops. He squeezed past the stunned Tyrants to join Ravager, who observed the parade through an expression of insufferable smugness. "Mister Ravager, sir, I hope y'all like this. Just think of it as my way of saying, 'I saw the whuppin' you gave the Titans, and I want in,'" the boy said.
Ravager clapped the boy's shoulder. "Mister Numerous, I like your style. And your résumé. Welcome aboard."
The other Tyrants trailed back to Ravager through the Billy stream. Jinx's cheeks flushed pink as she softly squeaked, "I, uh, don't suppose 'I'm Sorry' sex would make up for all that stuff I said."
Mammoth's mouth watered as he watched a pair of Billys bring in an entire side of cured beef. His stomach rumbled harder. "Hell," he said, "I might take that hit if it means I get to eat that."
"Not necessary. From either of you. Not that I'd refuse," he added to Jinx, giving her a hungry look that made her smile. "But I don't expect you to follow me blindly. You deserve results. Hopefully, this will just be the appetizer."
The growing pile of pilfered electronics made Gizmo's unblinking lenses glisten. "Holy hard drive! With this much stuff, I can actually get this place running again. Better than that half-bot ever could!"
"Leave the exterior alone. We don't want to advertise our location. Yet. But otherwise," said Ravager, gesturing around them with a bright smile, "let's get to work. We have a home to fix, and a city to enslave."
To Be Continued
Sorry for the delay, everyone. It's just been that kind of week. There'll be another week's space between here and the next chapter, which is due to be a one-shot. Until then, Titan-scribes, keep reading, because the best is yet to come!