Teen Titans
Adaptation
By Cyberwraith9
Legacy: Hold the Line
The view from the air brought back a host of memories that Cyborg would have been glad to leave buried. He wrung the grips of the Icarus's yoke as he peered over the nose of the craft at the black wave below. His glare narrowed to a needle's width. "Exactly how bad are we looking at here?" he asked.
Raven worked the control board behind him. The sensors painted a grim picture, which her hooded features mirrored. "The computer puts the count at just over five hundred drones. Imaging analysis indicates that they're fully functional, minus a few pieces of armor here or there."
Sitting across from Raven, Beast Boy swung away from the communication board and pulled the headset out of his pointed ear. "Emergency Services is working double-time to evacuate the eastern suburbs, but we're looking at hours before everyone squishable is out of zombie robot harm's way. Lieutenant Smith says he needs at least forty-five minutes to mobilize enough SCU to even scratch something this big."
The copilot seat creaked as Tek leaned forward. She could see the green line of the suburbs in the distance. The wave of robots blackened the bland brown landscape at such a rate that it would be upon the green line in almost no time at all. "We've only got minutes," she whispered, horrified. "It's going to be a massacre."
"The hell it is," Cyborg snapped. He tilted the yoke, turning the Icarus toward the lagging edge of the robot stampede. "Nobody messes up my town twice. Raven? BB? Let's cook some chrome."
The rear stations opened, each of their panels sliding away to reveal tactical screens and control grips molded for their hands. Beast Boy caught his grips as his station shoved them into his stomach. He cackled, and glanced back at Raven. "Wanna make it a game? Whoever hits the least has to pay at Hot Za tonight."
Raven's chilling glare did little to quell his mirth. "Grow up," she muttered.
Even so, she felt a sliver of satisfied excitement as she slid her hands into the grips and fingered the twin triggers. Her controls commanded one of two cannon arrays currently extending from the bottom of the Icarus. At the twitch of her finger, Gordanian-engineered energy death would rain down on the robot stampede below them. When her screen lit up with a crosshairs, she exhaled slowly, waiting for the black blot on the monitor to resolve into actual targets.
The jet's course continued circling until Cyborg straightened them out. He dipped their nose perpendicular to the stampede. Four stomachs were left behind as they dove. The altimeter spun toward zero at an alarming rate, but Cyborg refused to pull up until they could count the robots through the view port.
He yanked on the yoke and yelled, "Fire!"
The Icarus swooped over the robots in a screech of straining ailerons and engine wash. Green bolts spat from its cannons into the wave as fast as Beast Boy and Raven could mash their triggers. The energy splashed into the ground with a terrific spray of carbonized dirt. Blackened craters marked the jet's passing.
Cyborg grunted against the force of their climb back to a sane altitude. Once he'd leveled off, he leaned back, and asked, "How'd we do?"
"We nailed 'em, that's how we did!" Beast Boy whooped. He leaned down and kissed his grips. "Man, I love this jet."
"Hold on." Raven coaxed a new count out of her tactical sensors. The dust filling the air made a visual count impossible. When the sensors gave her an answer, she gasped, "No…"
Wirelessly, Cyborg brought up a view from their rear cameras and projected it onto the forward view port. He had to see for himself. And when he did, he understood Raven's disbelief. "Son of a bitch," he uttered.
From out of the mile-long dust cloud in their wake emerged the robot wave. Their numbers appeared unaffected by the artillery sweep from the Icarus. If anything, the robots were spread wider now, dotting the Doldrums instead of consuming it as a single mass.
"We got a few of them with our first shots," Raven reported. "The rest of them adjusted their trajectory almost instantly to avoid us. They dodged. We were just putting holes in the ground by our second shot."
"What? But that… That isn't…" Beast Boy kicked his console as he crossed his arms. His bottom fangs jutted from his lips in a pout. "What a gyp! I freakin' hate this jet. Can't even hit a few lousy robots."
Tek stared at the streaming video in the view port with mounting nausea. The Icarus had more firepower than anything else in their arsenal, and it hadn't made a dent in the stampede. "Wh-What about torpedoes? Or bombs?" she asked.
Cyborg grunted, "No. Torpedoes are even slower than the blasters. We'll never touch them. And we're not exactly equipped for carpet bombing."
Raven folded her cloak around her, tugging it free from her chair's restraints. "We should have brought the tank. At least then we could have run a few of them over. We might as well be giving them dirty looks in this thing."
"The CUTTER never would have made it here in time," retorted Beast Boy. "Unless you could poof it from the Compound all the way out here. But I guess you're too tired from smooching Emo McDreamy—"
"Enough! Both of you shut up!" Cyborg snapped. "We need to think of something else. This isn't working." He glared out the view port, tapping furiously on the control yoke in thought. Then he pinched his eye shut and swore, "Damn it. We're gonna have to do this messy."
Raven and Beast Boy saved their mutual glare for a later time. They looked to Cyborg, serious and attentive, and asked together, "What's the plan?"
"Tek, Rae, you two are our heavy hitters. Drop ahead of them and hit them with everything you've got. B, I want you and our resident assassin behind to cover them. Pick off anything that gets past our girls, but don't get in their line of fire."
Tek stared out at the miles-wide line of robots. Even if she didn't feel the beginnings of a panic attack—which she certainly did—there was no way she and Raven could do more than pick off a few of them before the rest ran past them through the acres and acres of ground the two Titans couldn't physically cover. "Cy, this would be a great plan if we could bottleneck them, but—"
He smiled grimly. "That's my part of the plan. Now get back to the hatch, and get ready to drop on my say-so," he said, and twisted the yoke.
As the Icarus soared back toward the city, Tek unfastened the straps of her seat. Her hands shook. She stood on unsteady legs and lingered at the cockpit door. Cyborg glanced back, and offered her an encouraging half-smile that she returned as best she could. She didn't hide her worry well, and she knew it.
The problem was, Tek wasn't worried for her friends, or even herself. The last time she had faced these mechanical terrors, she had lost control. Worse, she had withdrawn into herself for fear of losing control again. She had let Cyborg down.
How could he smile like that? He must have known she would probably let him down again. Tek knew she would.
Bushido sat strapped into the bench in the compartment for lack of a fifth seat in the cockpit. He seemed unbothered at being left out of the conversation. A pleasant calm emanated from him as he waited patiently, his katana sheathed and resting across his lap.
Raven emerged from the cockpit door, bracing her walk to the hatch against the equipment lockers to keep upright as the Icarus tilted. "Get up," she told Bushido.
"What is the plan?" he asked as he ducked out of his safety restraints.
"Drop and stomp," Beast Boy said as he staggered behind Raven. "We get a few miles' head start, set up a meat grinder, and make robot hamburgers. One hundred percent vegetarian, with your daily recommended dose of ass-kicking."
Raven spared Beast Boy's banter an arched eyebrow before she elaborated, "You'll back Tek and me up."
Bushido tied his katana to his waist. "Understood," he said simply.
Sneering, Beast Boy added, "Now, I know those aren't people, but try to kill 'em just the same. If things start to get too boring, maybe you can imagine that they're nuns, or babies, or baby nuns, 'kay?"
"I shall endure as best I can," Bushido said with a smile.
Her sickly expression souring, Tek said, "You can ride down with me, Ry. I'm not sure how high we're dropping, and a chute would leave you hanging too long."
He bowed. "Thank you, but I fear your suit would not protect me as well from the inertia as it would you."
"I'll fly you down," Beast Boy said, and shoved Bushido toward the hatch. "Try not to stab me on the way down."
"…said the Frog to the Scorpion," Raven muttered.
A wave of armor and light swallowed Tek's apprehensive frown. She towered behind her teammates at the back of the hatch, which sealed behind her, trapping them in the airlock. Her lurching stomach tracked the movement of the Icarus beneath them. They were descending again.
"Ready?" Cyborg's voice filled the hatch. "Get to ground. I'll send them your way. Titans, GO!"
Raven slapped the airlock control. The hatch in front of them rolled into its housing, letting in a vicious wind that tore them out of the Icarus.
Tek staggered out last, hoping that she didn't land on anyone. The open air spun her without mercy. She lost sight of the others in the spinning blue sky, and so passed the time by trying to not throw up in her helmet. She didn't need to accidentally drown in her own bile before she got the chance to let everyone down.
Knock that off, alley girl, she told herself. She stuffed the spinning landscape behind her eyelids, and thought, This won't be like last time. You're going to be okay. You can do this.
Provided you don't screw up again.
No. That won't happen. I took a pill before we left. I can't even hear the monster anymore. I haven't heard it in weeks.
The monster isn't your handicap, sport. It's the only thing keeping you alive. You're the one who'll screw this up. Just like with Cyborg in the bus. Just like with Billy in the Electronique. You're going to fail, and everyone will die because of it.
Her self-retort was cut off by the sudden arrival of the ground. The armor's gyros kept her legs underneath her where its compensators and enhancements could keep her intact while she stomped a six-foot crater into the cracking dirt. Her teeth rattled and her knees screamed, but she survived, and climbed back up to level ground a few seconds later.
A green pterodactyl circled overhead with Bushido on its shoulders. Raven flew with it, her cloak spread behind her like the wings of a predatory bird. As they landed next to her, Tek lowered her attention to the wave of robots rumbling toward them. Even several miles off, their tireless sprinting made the ground quake and blurred the horizon.
Fear clutched Tek by the throat. She planted her feet in a wide stance against the stampede, if only to keep her metal knees from knocking together. Raven stood next to her, stirring the air with arcane power that spilled from her eyes. Beast Boy and Bushido both backed behind them, drawing claw and blade in anticipation.
The silvery Icarus swooped low and slowly above the stampede. Its underside rained green bolts upon the edge of the wave. Rather than strafe them as a whole, the Icarus tracked its fire along the retreating edge of the wave, forcing it in further. As the robots continued forward, they drifted into a tight horde, whose point drove straight at where Tek stood.
Tek felt her chest unclench as their plan came together. Then her entire body clenched and wrapped around her seizing heart when the entire robot horde glowed with deadly red buildup. "No!"
Hundreds of needle-thin beams consumed the sky. They converged upon the Icarus with frightening collusion. The lasers sheared Icarus's wings from its fuselage. They punched holes in its belly, and smashed its engines. Bleeding smoke, the jet plummeted into the horizon. A plume of dust marked its fall. Seconds later, a tremor shook the Titans' feet, only to be consumed by the steady quake of the horde.
"Cyborg!" screamed Tek. She ran two steps forward before a hand of black ether held her back.
Turning, she felt chilled by Raven's glowing glower. "Cyborg did his part. We need to do ours. All of us," she added to Beast Boy behind her, who looked ready to bolt to Cyborg's rescue himself.
Trembling, Tek took her place back at Raven's side. Servos pushed the plasma repeaters from her forearms. Her visor zoomed upon the horde. Dozens of reticules lit her vision, boxing each robot with crosshairs. Her whimper became lost in the growing thunder of their approach.
Roiling soul-self burgeoned in Raven's hands. "Steady. Wait for them to close."
Tek lifted her arms. Her repeaters clacked with fear as her visor zoomed out from the horde. They were close enough to see with the naked eye now. Their red circles and white eyes bobbed with the rhythm of their intense intent.
Through the robots and the reticules, Tek came to see the interior of an electronics store. The Electronique was riddled with smoldering holes. Red bodies littered the store, all duplicates of Billy Numerous, all struck dead by her weapons. Try as she might, Tek couldn't escape the image. Dozens of corpses lay around her, the product of her lack of control. It could happen again.
It will happen again.
Raven cupped her soul-self, focusing her mind on the enormous scythe she would shape it into to decapitate the robot horde as a whole. She braced herself, and said, "Tek, right flank. Fire." Her soul-self stretched from her hands into a lancing sickle, but stopped when she noticed a distinct lack of plasma fire coming from Tek. "Fire!" she barked.
Tek's armor stood statuesque. Inside of it, Tek shook violently. Her whimpering filtered through the grille of her helmet. Tears blurred the sight of the horde as she begged her repeaters to fire. No matter what command her mind screamed, her weapons remained silent.
The ground quaked. The robots were close enough to spit at, if the Titans' mouths hadn't gone dry with horror. Beast Boy let fly a word that did him little credit, and then shrank into the shape of a tiny turtle.
With a split second to decide, Raven yanked back her soul-self and draped it over them. Her ether hardened into a wedge canopy in time to buffer the first robots. The horde broke upon her canopy, crashing around it, pouring across her soul with force enough to rattle her very core. She collapsed to one knee, gritting her teeth against the stampede.
In seconds, the horde passed. The last robots ran past without needing to near the canopy. None of them had stopped to attack the Titans or even investigate their presence. The Titans evidently weren't worth deviating from their true goal, a city that now lay closer than ever.
Beast Boy reverted to catch Raven, who teetered as her soul-self evaporated around them. She scowled woozily at his help, but said nothing while he lifted her back to her feet.
Bushido, however, had plenty to say. "Why did you not attack?" he asked Tek in a cold tone. "You had every opportunity. We could have eliminated the bulk of the threat in mere seconds."
"Hey, lay off, Terminator!" snapped Beast Boy. "I didn't see any throwing stars knocking back that bunch."
"Had I been made primary in the attack, I would have done so to the best of my abilities. Tek's inability to perform endangers us all as well as the city," Bushido stated. Steel whispered as he sheathed his blade.
Beast Boy's skin quivered with the yearning to become any of a thousand different predators. His slitted eyes burned as he snarled, "You ever been punched by a gorilla? Your head and body are gonna need different zip codes if you don't—"
"Stop it." Raven's voice rang with startling volume. The bickering pair stilled as she said, "What's done is done. We need to get ahead of them again. They can't be more than five minutes from the suburbs at this rate. Everyone hang on."
Raven's cloak billowed with a portal that swallowed them whole. The last thing Tek saw was the trailing half of the stampede, and the lush green edge of civilization toward which it thundered. Her cold repeaters slithered back into her armor.
Cyborg reactivated his systems, and then promptly regretted it. Reports of minor damage to his superstructure poured into his CPU in the form of a full-bodied ache. He groaned and leaned forward, snapping the restraints of the pilot seat. Dust rolled off his body.
The view port had been blown out in the crash. A hot, gritty wind blew into the cockpit unimpeded. He grimaced at the barren wastes outside, and then climbed through the port and onto the nose to get a better look. Once more, he wished he had just stayed unconscious.
Icarus lay in pieces. The largest piece on which he stood was the mercifully intact fuselage. Scattered behind the jet for miles were pieces of wing and tail. A landing strut jutted upside-down from the dirt a dozen yards away. The engine assembly was a shredded mess dangling from the rear. A hard kick would probably dislodge it completely.
"I just fixed this damn thing," Cyborg grumbled, hopping down from the nose. "Why does karma hate my jet so much?"
His eyes turned telescopic and tracked the dust cloud moving east. Bitter frustration clenched his jaw as he saw the robots continuing toward the city without opposition. The rest of the Titans were nowhere in sight.
"Titans," he said into the airwaves, "this is Cyborg. The bots are still moving East. What's your situation?" Crackling silence answered him. He tapped his ear, and said, "Guys, respond. Icarus is down for the count, but I'm still mobile. What's your location? We need to meet up—"
Static attacked his ear. Cyborg hissed and shut down his communicator. He scanned the airwaves, and found the cause of the interference. "There's some kind of signal. It's jamming everything else in the area," he mused aloud, and tracked the signal's frequency and incredible strength by the readout projected above his arm. "Five gets you ten, it's the reason all those bots decided to head to the big city."
He dismissed the hologram from his arm. His telescoping vision lingered on the receding horde. Even at his fastest run, he would not catch them before they reached the city. Blinking, he changed his vision to broaden his electromagnetic perspective, and narrowed his sights upon the rogue frequency blanketing the area.
"If you can't beat 'em, cut 'em off at the source," he said as he started running. "And stop talking to yourself, Stone. It isn't healthy."
Cyborg ran a hundred yards before something new caught his attention. It wasn't a signal, but another dust cloud, this one smaller than the robot horde's eastward charge. He limited his eyes back to their usual spectrum to get a better look, and slowed to a stop. Whatever it was, it made the horde look slow by comparison, and ran in the opposite direction.
"Joyriders? My tin butt…" Cyborg muttered.
He threw his senses at the cloud, stretching sight and hearing to pierce its rolling dust. A blunted nose made from armor plating jutted from the front of the dust cloud. Probing deeper, Cyborg saw the whole picture, which only raised more questions.
What drove inside the cloud could loosely be called a tank. Giant all-terrain tires carried its enormous, sloped chassis. An excessively large cannon extended from a dome atop the tank. Smaller, pronged weapons jutted from its armor shell. In whole, the vehicle dwarfed the Titans' CUTTER, which was enough to set Cyborg on edge. But the tank's course was far more incriminating, and set Cyborg running at top speed.
"So, you found the signal too, huh? Question is, who are you, and what're you gonna do when you get to the source?" He huffed, sprinting at a rate that would get him ticketed in the city. Still, he was nowhere near as fast as the tank, which is why he steeled himself, and then barked, "Jump jets: maximum over-burn."
COMMAND NOT RECOMMENDED.
"Override."
Cyborg whooped as the soles of his feet blasted the ground with a mixture of sonic projection and rocketry. The burning combination flung him high and far and fast enough to overtake the mysterious tank. His jets exhausted themselves just as he reached the tail end of the tank.
He grabbed wildly for the back of the tank, and sank his hand into its thick plating. His chest clanged against the back, and then he dangled behind the speeding tank like a flag. Gouging handholds into the alloy, he pulled himself atop the tank onto his hands and knees. He grasped the shaft of its cannon and caught his breath through a grin. "Not a tall building, but not bad for one bound," he said.
The massive cannon came to life, swinging at him and braying a pneumatic howl. Cyborg yelped and wrapped his hands around the cannon's shaft as it swept him off the top of the tank. He dangled from the cannon, which continued to swing until he came to rest next to the tank's narrow windshield.
"What are you doing here, Robo-Boob?" a familiar voice boomed over external speakers. The windshield depolarized, un-tinting until Cyborg could see Gizmo sitting at the tank's controls. "Get off! I don't pick up hitchhikers!" the little villain yowled into a handset wired to his dash.
Several pronged weapons on the tank's side swiveled around to point at Cyborg. Green death sparked between their tines. Then the prongs burst apart beneath a stream of concentrated sonic energy that scored the side of the tank.
Swinging from one arm, Cyborg pulled back his sonic cannon. "That's okay," he shouted back, "I don't ride in crap like this. Pull over."
Gismo pounded on the inside of the windshield and screamed into his handset. "Lousy gear grunge! You take that back! The SLICER is way better than any garbage you could crank out!"
A hand appeared from behind Gizmo to take away his handset. Seconds later, Cyborg scowled at the new voice booming over the speakers. "You would be wise not to get in our way, Titan. You aren't our quarry today, but that can change quickly."
"Ravager," Cyborg snarled. His cannon became a hand, which he jabbed vehemently at the windshield. "If this robot mess is your idea of—"
"Let me spare you the need for idle threats. The robots aren't acting of my accord. Rest assured, I plan on finding out whoever's pulling their strings and teaching him epic new definitions of pain. In the meantime, get off our tank."
"Why don't you make me, Bucket Head?" shot Cyborg.
Mechanical hissing broke the top of Gizmo's SLICER. Cyborg saw Ravager's two-toned helmet rise up from the tank. The Tyrant climbed out and stood at its edge, watching Cyborg dangle from the cannon.
"Why not?" Ravager shot back in a reverberating growl.
Cyborg cursed himself for not thinking his taunts through. He kicked his legs, swinging back far enough to narrowly avoid the disc that Ravager flung at him. The embossed "R" on the disc brushed the tip of Cyborg's nose before streaking past him. It struck the ground with explosive results, kicking up a blast of Doldrums that flung Cyborg off the cannon.
The shockwave threw Cyborg to the top of the tank rocking on its shocks. He bellowed as he tackled Ravager, pinning the Tyrant under a quarter-ton of metal muscle. Ravager grunted in pain as Cyborg grabbed the chin of his helmet and slammed it back against the tank.
"You expect me to believe that you have nothing to do with these Slade-bots, Ravvy?" Cyborg yelled into the face in his grasp.
"No, Cyborg," Ravager grunted, his words straining to escape Cyborg's grip. "I expect you to die."
Cyborg's face twisted. "Dude, that was just terrible."
Ravager slapped Cyborg's chest. A palm-sized disc remained as he pulled his hand away. "So's this."
Power poured into Cyborg, surging his circuits. His fuses popped painfully. He arched back and cried out, letting Ravager slip from his grasp. Ravager planted both his feet on Cyborg's chest and kicked hard, knocking Cyborg to the back of the tank. Stumbling out of control, Cyborg fell from the SLICER with a yelp, and vanished into the rolling dust.
Ravager squinted into the cloud kicked up by the SLICER's wheels. He saw no sign of Cyborg in the dust. Crawling to the back of the tank, he drew another disc, and peered over the edge. Aside from his molded handprints, no sign of Cyborg remained.
The hatch behind him slid open again. Jinx's head emerged, half-hidden in a banner of her own hair, which the wind whipped into her face. "Everything okay? You need a hand?" she yelled.
Slowly, Ravager lowered his disc. "No," he yelled back, still staring over the side. "He's gone." He backed away, crawling to the hatch.
Jinx shifted aside to give him room to enter. "Gizmo says we're closing in on the control signal. It'll be another few minutes."
His glare narrowed upon the rear of the tank one last time. "Good. Let's end this farce," he said, and closed the hatch behind them.
The suburbs encroached on the Doldrums as a rabbit might upon a wolf's hunting territory: slowly, carefully, and with full knowledge that it was a middling notion at best.
Generic houses lined streets that had been cut into the desolation almost arbitrarily. Each yard was landscaped with more rock than sod because of the useless soil, giving the neighborhood a rustic, Southwestern aesthetic that was lost upon the four teenagers being dumped out of a hasty portal and into the back yard of a model home.
Raven reoriented herself as she pinched her portal shut. Beyond the first row of bland houses, she could sense confusion and panic from nearly six blocks away. Distant engine rumblings told her that the evacuation was still in progress. Her boots crunched on the gravel yard as she ran to the back fence and peered over.
The robots were mere minutes away. Their stampede speared straight for the yard in which the Titans stood, giving credit to Raven's ethereal aim, and promising imminent destruction. "We're right at ground zero for the robot invasion," she said. Lowering herself from the fence, she added, "And I never thought that sentence would come out of my mouth. As good news."
Tek's hands scraped the sides of her helmet. "This is all my fault," she moaned.
"Tek, Beast Boy, shut up," Raven said.
"Hey, I didn't—"
"You would have."
Beast Boy raised a finger to argue the accusation. When nothing cogent found its way to his open mouth, he closed it, and admitted, "Okay, I'll give you that one."
Raven tested the tall wooden fence. It swayed at her touch. "We need some kind of barrier. Something that will hold the robots back long enough for us to take them apart." Given enough time, she could build a decent wall out of the landscape itself, or even conjure a wall of magic. But s he had neither the resources nor the spells to do either quickly.
Beast Boy's ears pricked at the sound of approaching motors. He fine-tuned his senses, sifting through the mountains of background excess using techniques taught to him by Raven. It took him a few seconds. "How about some cars?" he asked. "We've got three coming up the street."
"Police?" Bushido asked, and was shushed by Raven's and Beast Boy's scowls.
"Humvees, from the sound of it. Military models, not those civilian monstrosities. Running on…" Beast Boy sniffed. "…premium unleaded. Swanky."
The urge to roll her eyes nearly overwhelmed Raven's restraint. "They're probably part of the evacuation," she said brusquely.
Three black Humvees circled the model house with a chorus of roars that startled the Titans. Gravel sprayed as the vehicles skidded past them and careened through the fence, which toppled into scrap wood. The Humvees braked in unison, forming a line behind the broken fence and the baffled Titans.
Unfurling his arms from his head, Beast Boy quipped, "They might not be."
The doors of the Humvees flew open. Red cloaks flowed out, carrying assault rifles and decked with bandoleers of ammunition. The cloaks spread throughout the yard, ignoring the Titans as they secured the area with sweeps of their hooded eyes. When they were satisfied with the area's relative safety, they lowered their weapons.
"Area secure!" one of them shouted.
More cloaks emerged from the Humvees. These men were unarmed, and moved without the zeal of their honor guard. Raven recognized the darker cloaks of the high priests of the Church of Blood. They exited the two closer vehicles to converge around the door of the third.
All of the cloaks in the yard knelt in reverence as Brother Blood and the Mother Méhymn stepped from the last Humvee. Both wore their ceremonial, ornate red robes draped bulkily over them, with their hoods drawn and their hands hidden. Blood wore his horned golden helmet and silver skull mask, behind which his eyes skimmed the scene. Mother Méhymn regarded everything, particularly the Titans, with her familiar frown of disapproval.
Raven felt a chill run up her spine as Brother Blood's gaze fell upon her from behind his skulled façade. She and the others must have looked as unsettled by his arrival as she felt, for Brother Blood lifted his hands and spoke in a reverberating voice, "Peace, please. We're here to help. How may the Church be of assistance to you in this crisis?"
Astonishment ballooned in Beast Boy's eyes. "What the hell is with the commando routine?" he asked. He reached to touch a nearby red cloak's rifle, and received a scathing look that made him think twice.
"These are my personal retainers," Blood explained, and gestured to the small task force surrounding them. "They are all expert tacticians with military experience. And their firearms are legally licensed," he added at Raven's suspicious glare.
Unimpressed, Raven stepped forward. "This situation is extremely dangerous," she said tersely. "It's 'nice' that you want to help, but the last thing this situation needs is a bunch of civilians throwing themselves in harm's—"
Upon stepping within arm's length of Brother Blood, every gun in the yard trained on Raven. Ste stopped cold beneath the touch of a dozen laser sights, and glared into the semiautomatic pistol that she hadn't even seen Mother Méhymn draw. The Mother held Raven at gunpoint with a murderous glare. "None may approach the Brother Blood," she uttered.
"—way," Raven finished in deadpan.
An inhuman growl rolled behind Beast Boy's bared fangs. His claws sank into the gravel as he crouched down, and growled, "You should really rethink who you point guns at, lady." Behind him, the soft whisper of steel and a whirr of armored pneumatics told him that Bushido and Tek were poised to join the imminent thrashing.
Brother Blood sighed impatiently as he shoved Mother Méhymn's pistol down. "Mother Méhymn, please! All of you lower your weapons this instant!" As the cloaks complied at once, Brother Blood bowed his head to Raven, earning him a contemptuous look from the Mother. "Forgive them. My retainers are very…zealous in matters of protection and decorum. Inappropriately so, at times. But they are experts at combat. I believe we can be of help," he said earnestly.
Even as he spoke, the high priests glided past the Titans and out of the yard. They stopped several feet beyond the broken fence to form a line opposing the imminent stampede. Each priest raised his arms, interlocking hands with the priest next to him. Their hooded faces bowed in concentration. Speaking as one, they began to chant in hushed tones.
Raven didn't recognize the guttural language whispered by the priests. But she did recognize a bad situation becoming worse. The robot horde was less than a minute away. She had to speak up to be heard above their thunderous footsteps. "With all due respect," Raven said with anything but, "we need to keep the robots out of the city. I don't think prayer—"
Her otherworldly senses alerted Raven to the immense power building around the high priests several seconds before it became visible to the other Titans. Motes of red light began appearing around each priest, swirling in eddies unfelt by the rest of them. The motes converged into vortices, glimmering against the deep crimson of the priests' fluttering cloaks.
The priests' chanting grew louder as if to fight the wind that only they felt. Daylight dimmed against the tempest glowing around them. Their light flared. Their voices reached crescendo. Acting as one, they threw their arms wide.
The red light rushed from the priests, growing and stretching, shooting along the edge of the desolate expanse. It loomed above their heads and reached a staggering distance to either side of their line. As the priests' chant quieted back to a whisper, their energy solidified into a translucent wall nearly twenty feet high and easily a mile long in either direction.
And none too soon. The robot horde crashed upon the wall at full speed. Those robots in the lead were crushed against the wall by the force of their brethren behind them, who pounded and clawed the red light without leaving a mark. Their eyes burned into the wall with deadly rays that did nothing. They jumped and climbed, only to slide back to the ground, and were trampled by the maddened robots still clamoring for passage.
Tek's visor hid her gape. "Holy crap," she whispered tinnily, marveling at the magic barrier.
Brother Blood's voice chimed with muted amusement at the flabbergasted look on Raven's face. "'Prayer' wasn't what I had in mind," he said. "It never hurts, though."
Raven tried to keep her composure. It wasn't easy in the face of such impressive magic. "So your plan is to keep them out long enough for your hit squad to shoot them to pieces?" she asked, and nodded to the cloaked brigade surrounding them.
"My retainers are here for the protection of the high priests," Brother Blood said, and redirected her nod to the chanting line at the barrier. The statement earned him another disapproving glare from the Mother as she accepted a rifle from one of the cloaks.
"Then why are you here?" Bushido asked politely, earning him his own dirty look from Raven and Beast Boy.
Brother Blood opened his ornate cloak with a sweep of his arms. Tactical body armor was cinched around his chest, and festooned with grenades. A long scabbard hung from his belt. He rested a hand atop its hilt, and said, "I am here for the protection of the city."
He crouched low and then vaulted over the shimmering barrier, his cloak fluttering behind him. At the apex of his leap, he drew the long sword at his hip. Its blade gleamed bone white in the sun. Then he dropped behind the wall, falling into the robots' midst. His kick knocked a wave of robots back, giving him room to land and space to fight.
Raven watched him join the battle with many questions and more than a little admiration for the man she had denounced less than an hour ago. Next to her, Mother Méhymn shook her head. "Such a showoff. He used to need a running start," she noted. Then she demonstrated, sprinting at the wall and jumping over, nearly equaling Blood's vertical prowess. Her rifle barked as she fell into the robots and jointed Blood in battle.
The Titans stood in stunned surprise at the cloaked pair wreaking destruction on the other side of the barrier. Mechanical components sprayed in lieu of gore as the robots swarmed the pious pair. Neither of them showed the slightest bit of self-concern, and stood their oil-soaked ground, chopping and shooting everything that moved.
Shaking her head lucid, Raven took to the air. "Titans, go," she said, uncomfortable with the unfamiliar words. A green buzzard flew beside her, followed quickly by Tek, who carried Bushido in her leap over the barrier.
Ravager stood in front of the SLICER and tried mightily to control his temper. It was a losing battle, which he hid behind the mask of his helmet. His gloves creaked with the tension of his fists at his sides as he glared down at Gizmo and uttered, "If this is your idea of a joke, you would be better off running right now. Not that I would miss, but you'd live slightly longer than if I just stabbed you right here, which is a growing probability."
The Tyrants and their tank were parked in the middle of the Doldrums, miles away from anything remotely resembling a geographic feature. Heat boiled out of the crusty ground in ripples, baking the few stubborn patches of brown sage still clinging to life. A lone cactus kept them company from a safe distance.
But the object of Ravager's ire was nothing natural. He fumed at the presence of a rusting mobile home that was parked nose to nose with their looming tank. The old Winnebago had been there for some time, notable by the lack of tire tracks behind it. An oversized satellite dish sat on its top. There were no signs of life, no indications that anyone was inside.
A rapier blade appeared in Ravager's hand, lightning-drawn from the sheathes on his back. The other Tyrants stepped away as Gizmo nervously waved off the attack. "Hey, cool it, Big R. This is where the signal came from, I swear!"
"Place don't look like a command center to me," Shimmer quipped, and wiped a curtain of sweat from her brow. Her bushy copper hair hung limp in the heat.
"Look at that dish! That's the only thing inside of fifty miles that could put out that kind of signal strength," Gizmo insisted.
The little imp gulped against the tip of Ravager's sword. After a moment's intimidation, Ravager lowered his blade. He stalked toward the side door of the motor home. "You had better hope there's someone in there for me to kill," he growled, "or I'll start looking for candidates out here. Guess who's topping my list?"
Tentatively, the other Tyrants followed. Mammoth bent low to flick the back of Gizmo's head. His finger knocked Gizmo to his knees. "Would've got here sooner if you hadn't swerved all over to hit every cactus patch along the way," the giant pointed out.
Rubbing the back of his neck, Gizmo snapped, "I wanted to have a little fun. So sue me."
As they stalked upon their forty foot, luxury-capable quarry, the Tyrants did not notice a stowaway drop out from underneath the SLICER's undercarriage. He fell as softly as he could, and bit his lip to muffle his cry as the cactus needles jutting from his head struck the ground. His only exposed skin was that of half his head, and it was thick with needles and brambles from the drive.
Cyborg crouched behind one of the all-terrain wheels, out of sight from the Tyrants. He used one hand to pluck the needles from his skin, wincing at each one, as his ocular scan confirmed the mobile home to be the source of the robots' control signal.
His other hand detached from his arm with a soft clack and dropped to the ground. Its middle finger produced a lens while the other four worked together as impromptu legs. As the hand spider-crawled around to the front of the mobile home, Cyborg monitored its progress by remote, and continued to pluck his skin clear.
The hand-camera projected its climb up the hood of the mobile home directly into Cyborg's brain. It was as if he were sitting on the hood himself, staring in through the windshield like a disembodied voyeur.
Inside the mobile home, curtains were drawn across tiny windows, keeping it in cool darkness. The interior had been gutted and refurbished into a narrow chamber filled with computer equipment. Three enormous servers fed into a single workstation with four monitors, two keyboards, and a small mountain of emptied energy drinks. A small, unused cot was shoved up against the wall, ignored by the person sitting at the work station.
The light from the monitors made a silhouette of the robots' master. But when the side door of the mobile home shuddered under a pounding fist, Cyborg caught sight of a wave of long hair that followed the startled jerk of her head. She stood up and scrambled for a gun on the table as the door burst inward.
Mammoth pulled his fist out of the empty door frame. Light spilled in as he moved aside. In the glimpse of daylight, Cyborg studied their mystery foe.
Her long hair was platinum white, stunningly so, like a drift of new-fallen snow. She possessed a lithe body that rippled with subtle strength beneath a simple tank top and khaki shorts. Under different circumstances, Cyborg would have thought her beautiful. But the compact Forty-Five she swung toward the door made her dangerous instead.
Ravager stormed in, weapon disc cocked and ready to fly. He found her in an instant. His whole body stiffened.
Through his shotgun microphone, Cyborg heard Ravager exclaim, "You?"
The girl seemed confused. She half-lowered her pistol. Her crystal blue eyes widened and welled. "Dad?" she asked.
"Dad?" Jinx exclaimed from outside the Winnebago. Cyborg echoed the sentiment, and zoomed his spy camera upon the stunning teen. She was no younger than sixteen, and certainly no daughter of Ravager's, if Cyborg's guesses about the Tyrant were true.
Ravager half-lowered his disc. His voice lost its anger in favor of bitter annoyance. "What the hell are you doing here, Rose?" he demanded.
At the utterance of her name, Rose's eyes narrowed with recognition. "Oh, it's you. Hello, Grant."
Pale, crackling hands shoved Ravager aside. Jinx stormed into the Winnebago with a trail of hex following her stormy eyes. She sized up the beautiful blonde, and then turned her glare upon Ravager. "And just who is this, 'Grant?'" she asked in a dangerous tone.
With unparalleled annoyance, Ravager said, "Her name is Rose Worth."
"My name is Rose Wilson," Rose snapped, bristling. She lifted her gun again, prompting Ravager and Jinx to re-arm their respective idioms as she declared, "And I'm Slade's true heir. So where is he, brother dearest?"
Cyborg stared by proxy at the family-reunion-slash-Mexican-standoff, growing more confused by the second. Facing two heirs-apparent to the Titans' worst enemy and the army that—by his calculations—had just reached the edge of the city, Cyborg had only moments to take down seven armed and exceedingly pissed off villains and shut down the control signal.
"I am so screwed," Cyborg muttered.
To Be Continued