Teen Titans
Adaptation
By Cyberwraith9
The Low Road: Trading Out
In matters of high super-science, any fool with at least one eye or ear knows there is no finer source than S.T.A.R. Labs. There are over two dozen of their research facilities in the Continental US alone. Each facility is renowned for possessing, developing, discovering, containing, or unlocking a wealth of miracles in almost every discipline of study one can imagine.
From weaponry to medicine to extraterrestrial botany, S.T.A.R. Labs is the place to be, and the facility at Jump City is among the best of their best. It sits just outside the city limits, a veritable fortress of knowledge and equipment, a treasure trove of technology.
But in a pinch, Kord Industries is almost as good. And they're located downtown on the bus line, too.
The doors of Kord's Jump Laboratories burst apart with an explosion that made neither sound nor heat. Pure luminescence pushed the opulent double doors into a barrage of broken glass that peppered the police barricade outside. The half-circle of police cruisers rang with shards, forcing the officers crouched behind the cruisers to take cover.
Lieutenant Smith of the JCPD SCU swept the hat from his head and beat the glass dusting off his clothes. The old fedora sparkled with the remnants of Kord's doors as he seated it back atop his snowy hair. "There are cops out there that go their entire lives without discharging a firearm. How is it the same eight idiots wander through my town and make me shoot at them every time?" he blustered.
Crouched behind the wheel well next to Smith, O'Callaghan risked a peek over the hood. "We lead charmed lives, Lieutenant," he quipped. Then he yelped and ducked, saving the part in his hair from a ray of light that melted a hole in the boutique across the street. "Any ideas?"
"Yeah. Keep your fool head down," Smith grunted. He leaned back on his hands and, with a swift kick, broke the side mirror off the cruiser, making O'Callaghan wince. Picking up the mirror, he poked it up over the hood, using its reflection to watch the light show emerging from the doors.
O'Callaghan clutched his pistol and scowled. "Every time we send this idiot to prison, he just shows back up packing more than the last time. What does it take to keep him down?"
The light in the door began to fade. "Quiet," Smith growled, and angled his mirror. "Looks like it's time for his speech. Spread word to hold off until my say-so. Maybe we'll get a chance to hit him while he's jawing."
Before the half-circle of cruisers appeared a nimbus of dancing lights. As it left the building, it coalesced into the shape of a man, and then faded into black armor trimmed in white. Features grew from the light, twisting into a hooked nose and a cruel sneer set beneath a haughty glare.
"Fools!" crowed Doctor Light, master of the photon and three-time public enemy of Jump City. "You come before me with bullets and cars, with flashing lights, with sirens and badges? You are but moths trailing after the moon! You seek to snuff the very sun itself!"
"Is it just me, or is he a few bulbs shier than he was the last time?" O'Callaghan muttered, and tapped his skull. Smith hissed him silent.
Light unveiled from his belt a small device, which he flourished in his hand. The ovoid lens he held glistened in the sunlight, shimmering with a thousand shades of blue at once. "Behold," he announced, "what these fools have created in unwitting tribute to my luminence! The Superior Solar Collector, a cell of unparalleled collective capability! With the power of this Collector, I shall—"
As he brandished the scarab-shaped Collector over his head, a single shot barked from the cruiser barricade. The Collector shattered between Light's fingers. Its priceless fragments swirled in the vortex of the bullet, showering the air behind Light with dancing motes that caught the sun.
Light gaped at the shards, and then down at the barricade, where a fedora and a pistol vanished behind the hood of a cruiser. Apoplexy flared around the effulgent villain. "You dare?" he bellowed.
"Nice shot!" O'Callaghan said, bracing his back against the cruiser as Smith ducked next to him.
Smith kept his feet beneath him as he crouched, clutching his hat in anticipation. Experience had taught him all too well of what happened next. "Quit yapping and break for the rest of the squad," he snapped. "When that idiot hits me, you open up with—"
The cruiser next to them rocked on its rusty shocks in the grasp of a glowing white claw. Tentacles of light wrapped around the car to pluck it from the ground. O'Callaghan scrambled into a sprint for the remaining cruisers while Smith backed away from his rising car.
Shadows vanished from the street beneath a flood of Light. The villain smiled against a barrage of low-caliber annoyance ricocheting off his aura. He gestured, willing his tentacles of light to raise the cruiser high above the old cop glaring at him in defiance. "Now you see what happens to mortals who stand against the divine Light!" he decreed, and threw the car.
A wall of night manifested between Smith and the hurled cruiser. Smith flinched beneath the cold shadow barrier as it trembled against the shattering blow of the car. Metal howled and crashed to the street in ruinous slabs of wreckage, sliding down the shimmering barrier.
Light snarled at the barrier, gathering his aura into a blast that would hole it and the nuisance it protected. Then a shout down the street turned his head. His gathering blast dissipated in a wave of fury that flared him blindingly. "You!" he snarled.
Cyborg stood at the edge of the scene, backed by five heroic teens in the air and at his side. He raised his fist to Light, and said, "What happens to those mortals? They turn the Light out."
Unarmored, Tek stood beside him. Embarrassment creased her brow. "What the hell was that?" she asked Cyborg.
"I don't know," Cyborg drawled, lowering his fist. "It just…slipped out. Sorry."
Bushido shook his head. "That was plum awful, Boss. Just plum awful."
Light's eyes blazed with six shades of hatred. His hate spilled into his aura, where it spread and lifted him from the pavement. From his maelstrom seat, he bellowed, "You dare oppose me? You miserable children! You haven't an inkling of what you face. The Collector was to be a mere symbol of my power. I am more than enough to overcome six petty infants!"
Cyborg's arm reassembled itself to face Light's glow with brimming sound. Squaring, his shoulders, Cyborg rallied his Titans with a wave of his cannon. "I'll grant you that the quips need work. Let's practice together, shall we?"
Anticipation shone green in Starfire's hands. "Dibs on the head," she purred through wry lips.
"Titans, take him!" Cyborg bellowed.
The smell of blood lingered still in Ops. It clung to the air, where it would refuse any attempt at purging it from the room. It clambered up Kid Wykkid's nose, insistent, nauseating, and too familiar for his liking. He wished he weren't so comfortable with the smell. It appealed to a side of him that he loathed.
He knelt in Ops upon a brown, crusted circle inscribed with a star. The drizzled circle flaked to the touch, but its stain would never leave the carpet. Likewise permanent was the unseen effect of the circle. A light chill persisted in the sunny room, one that bypassed Wykkid's skin entirely. This circle had done terrible things. Were the carpet to be removed and replaced, the circle would always remain a dark stain upon the room itself.
Hands folded, head bowed, Wykkid meditated on the pentagram beneath him. Gossamer strands of the circle's considerable magic stretched into the ether around him. There were six strands, all intertwined. When Wykkid tugged on the twist of strands, he felt something inside of him tug in response.
Plates clattered in the kitchen behind him. He jarred from his trance annoyed, and turned his red glare upon the back of Ops.
"Hey, Wykkid," Shimmer said. Her head and chest were submerged in the fridge, rummaging through its leftover bounty. Behind her wriggling hips, a pair of bare plates and glasses sat on the counter. "How's it coming?" she asked, sight unseen.
"Poorly, at the moment," hissed Wykkid. He rose and drifted toward the kitchen. "It turns out that magical analysis doesn't work so well with distractions. I told everyone to stay out of Ops while I tried to figure this out."
Shimmer left the fridge with every item of food that hadn't grown a white coat. It was a small pile, which she dumped onto the countertop. "You've been at it for hours. None of us have eaten all day. In fact, I don't know if this skank has ever eaten," he lamented, and rubbed his stomach. "Five minutes. Then I'm gone. I'll make you a sandwich."
The shadowy edge of Wykkid's cloak bristled. "You can't be serious. After what I said last night, and after this fiasco, you're still doing this? I told you, I don't—"
Bristling back, Shimmer slapped a loaf of bread on the counter. "Fine," she snapped, and divided the remainder of the loaf between the plates. "I'm making two sandwiches on two plates, both for me. And if I forget to take one of the plates with me when I leave, no big deal. What do you think? Should I make both of my sandwiches with mayo?"
Wykkid whetted his glare on Shimmer's stony face as she poised her butter knife over an open jar of mayo. The smell of food wrested control of Wykkid through his hidden nose. Deep beneath his cloak, a rumble teamed up with Shimmer to win the day. "…sure," Wykkid hissed.
Shimmer spread victory across her face and mayo across her bread. "Sounds good. So how's the hoo doo going? Before the obnoxious distraction, I mean. Any chance you can reunite me with my rod and reels?"
"You need help. Serious, blunt, concussive help," Wykkid hissed. "And no. Whatever they did, they did over in that pentagram, and whatever it was, it tied us and them to that spot. Something powerful is maintaining the spell, but it isn't here."
Finishing the sandwiches, Shimmer picked one, and filled her face with half of it. "They scooped our personal parts out of our meaty parts and swapped them from here?" she asked in a spray of food. "I thought the Compound had protection against that sort of thing. I saw you putting creepy symbols on a bunch of the struts while it was going up."
Wykkid shook his head. "The wards in the Compound prevent physical entry. I never anticipated an attack like this. It's…" His gaze wandered across the floor to the magnificent bay windows that walled the room from the ocean. Calm waters rippled outside, peaceful in more ways than one.
Out here, the empathic noise of the city was all but nothing. Whoever Wykkid was, he had a demonic essence, and an awakened third eye that gave him marked appreciation for the island's isolation. He had missed this place more than he knew.
Shimmer finished her sandwich. She belched bits of lettuce from her teeth, and rubbed the flat expanse of her stomach. "Man, that was probably years overdue," she said.
The silent foghorn behind him made Wykkid look back. He felt a world of turmoil behind Shimmer's plastic smile, which Wykkid knew she wore for his benefit. Her coddling drove him mad, but more, he felt tepid concern. "What…what about you? Are you…okay?"
She smacked her lips in thought. "I don't think so," she said. Her chin dropped to her chest as she ran her hands between the leather straps binding her. "I mean, once the shock wore off, it wasn't as bad. All-access pass to Boobtown, right?"
"You understand the feminine experience so well," Wykkid hissed, feeling his concern vanish.
"But…" Shimmer's voice dropped to her feet in a murmur. Her hands came to rest at her taut leather leggings. "This isn't what I'm supposed to be. And I don't like it. I wanna be me again."
Wykkid's red gaze fell into his own cloak. An eternal darkness writhed beneath. Whatever he had been was corrupted beyond recognition, eaten from the inside by forces both repellant and familiar. But even still, Wykkid wasn't quite so longing for the body he had lost.
"It isn't easy, being trapped in someone you hate," he hissed.
Shimmer glanced up. The worry left his face, replaced by a smile so bright, so fake, that it hurt Wykkid to look at. "Hey, it's not all bad. While you were up here playing CSI: Hogwarts, I was practicing with my new schtick. Watch this."
She gestured to the empty glasses on the counter. Her fingers swirled above one of the glasses. Jutting her tongue from her tight lips, Shimmer focused on the empty contents of one glass. The air inside began to churn in time with her finger.
"Witness the amazing Skankini," Shimmer muttered. "Able to conjure from an empty glass…one drink of pure, mountain-fresh water!"
His fingers flared out. The glass melted from its rim down, trickling into a puddle of clear water. The puddle spread over the counter and dribbled off the edge, splattering the floor with Shimmer's chagrinned efforts.
Wykkid watched the water fall. "You astound us once again, Skankini," he hissed in deadpan.
"Right. Well, making simpler stuff from harder stuff has been easier," Shimmer said, scratching her head. "I'd better go practice more." She left for the door, abandoning the wet mess.
"You do that. I should give counter-spelling another try," Wykkid hissed.
"So eager to ditch your new tackle box?" Shimmer called back.
"Some of us are happier with a net," Wykkid hissed in retort.
Shimmer cringed through the closing doors of Ops. "You're gross, K-Dub."
"Your metaphor." Wykkid watched the closed doors in contemplation. He leaned against the counter, and then lifted a dripping arm from the mess. Looking down, he spied the second sandwich, marooned on a plate in the middle of the puddle.
He rescued the sandwich, and bit into its corner with begrudging gratitude.
Jinx kept her hands folded in her armpits as she paced the halls of the Tower. Her elbow brushed against the wall. She stayed a healthy distance from the window and its panoramic city vista for fear of shattering it with an errant thought.
Her surroundings mocked her with its familiarity. Its soft gray colors and soothing surf's assonance tried to convince her that she had returned to her first home. Physically, this was in every way the place she remembered. But it was not the same, and her body was proof of that. Every time she looked at the glass and saw her distraught reflection, she was reminded that this place was Tyrants Tower now. This was no home of hers.
A ghost of silver and gold haunted the hallway ahead of her. It stood draped in a silken black pall that cascaded down its back. Its eyes dissected the distant city, unwavering, searching for something with such intensity that Jinx thought it would break the glass.
"Blackfire?" Jinx intoned. Neither her presence, nor her hush voice, stirred Blackfire's stare. "Blackfire, are you okay?"
Blackfire's gaze shortened to the inside of the glass. There she found hateful violet eyes staring back at her. It churned her stomach to see those eyes watching her, judging her, as they had not so long ago on a remote island. "How am I to be 'okay' with this, Jinx?" uttered Blackfire.
Wincing, Jinx said, "Right. Stupid question." She kept her hands folded underarm as she approached. "I don't think any of us are taking this well. Except maybe Billy. But Ravager says—"
"I do not care," Blackfire said brusquely.
Jinx recoiled from Blackfire's biting tone. Her lip vanished under her teeth with worry as she watched Blackfire glare at her own reflection. The alien beauty's face was drawn taut, clenched at the sight of itself. Tension enough to bend steel quivered between the muscles sculpting her silver bodysuit.
"This, uh… This isn't just about the freaky switch thing, is it?" Jinx asked meekly. "What's wrong? Do you want to talk?"
Blackfire turned slowly, impaling Jinx with misplaced hate. "My sister kidnapped me and tortured me under some ruse of rehabilitation. Only now can I see such actions were not even remotely, misguidedly altruistic! She only wished to fix me so that she might steal me!" Her dagger eyes narrowed, and rounded back on the window and its reflection. "Is that talking enough?"
Jinx's rubber lips flapped for an answer. It took three tries for them to voice a coherent thought. "I…I'm sorry. I don't exactly know what happened between you two, but—"
"No," Blackfire snapped. "You do not. You have no idea what it means to be betrayed by blood. To have someone you lov..." She choked. "…someone you loved take everything from you. So do not pretend to understand or sympathize. You can do neither, and I have no need for both."
Her scowl ran back to the city, far away from Jinx and the Tower. Jinx stepped from the wall, trailing pink sparks from behind her armpits. She mashed her hands deeper underarm as she watched Blackfire leave without moving from her vigil. The distance between them grew with each passing second.
"Yeah. Good talk," Jinx murmured, and slunk from the hallway, her head bowed so Blackfire wouldn't see her cry. A monster stalked her, stepping nimbly through her thoughts. It rumbled with a ravenous growl.
"Well, screw you too," Ravager snarled at the blank monitor wall of the Mainframe. He kicked the base of the massive computer bank, rolling his chair backward until it struck and stopped against the massive cooling towers behind him.
No matter what he tried, the Tower's computer systems refused to activate. They appeared to be in some form of a slow-cycle reboot, trapped between functionality and stasis. Any attempt at a hard restart would mean disconnecting the computer's secondary and tertiary power supplies, which could take hours that Ravager couldn't spare.
He glared at the darkened monitors. The monitors glared back with a handsome face he was quickly growing to loathe. Hunger pulled hard on the insides of his armor, a far cry from the power readout that used to occupy the corner of his vision. As he pushed out of his chair, he felt tendons creak against the aching muscles in his legs. He felt the tiny rush from standing up too fast that would never happen with a dedicated internal management system.
And the worst, absolutely worst part of this was that a small, secret part of him was relishing this nightmare experience.
Billy Numerous stood waiting for him in the hall. His visor left the ground when Ravager stormed out of the Mainframe room. He read Ravager's face, and remarked, "I take it your investigation yielded no good news."
"The computers are down. All the way. And they aren't getting back up for at least another twelve hours. Sons of bitches made sure we couldn't access anything once we got here," he said. His frustration focused at Billy, and he added, "Why are you still here? I thought you were going to check out the lower floors."
A second Billy rounded the corner. "I did," he said. Three more Billys followed behind him. The red band mingled around the first Billy, trading nods as they formed a quintet that wreathed Ravager in irritation.
"We have searched each portion of the Tower," another Billy reported.
Ravager waited expectantly while the Billy fivesome brought their hands together in a huddle. Their heads bowed in concentration. Seconds crawled by, dragging with them Ravager's brittle patience. He tapped his foot, crossing and uncrossing his arms. His brows sank deeper into his eyes, until at last he burst, "Well?"
"A moment," the first Billy said.
Another Billy chimed in, "Splitting ourselves is a simple matter."
"Like making a copy," a third Billy added.
"But merging multiple memories and perspectives is—"
Their huddle poured together into a red blur. Five gasps became one set of twisted lips. A unified Billy emerged from the blur and braced himself against the wall, his breathing ragged.
"My…" He clutched his stomach, and then emptied it against the wall with a heave. Wiping his mouth, he said hoarsely, "My apologies. I do not like…that. And…"
Ravager inched back from the pooling vomit. "…yeah. Uh, find anything?"
Billy clutched his temple. "Mnh, no. None of my selves appears to have found anything noteworthy in the Tower." The color trickled back into his features, which relaxed with the subsiding nausea. He straightened with a deep breath, and said, "It appears they removed or secured anything of particular use before our arrival."
"Damn," Ravager mused through his teeth. He had expected the answer, but felt no less irritated by it. "But still, they didn't lock 'us' here. And I've got a wall full of weapons waiting for me in Ravager's room. We could walk out the front door, fully armed, right now. It doesn't make sense."
"Perhaps we should wait until the computers restart," Billy said. "There could be some clue as to their true intentions—"
Ravager shook his head. "With a full crew of renegade Titans running loose in the city? Not an option."
Rage choked his voice and drove his legs. He marched from the spot, forcing Billy to jog to keep up. A wall of weapons waited for him upstairs, weapons Ravager intended to put to use against the thief who had carelessly left them behind.
"Round everybody up and meet in Ops. If Wykkid can't fix this right now, he's gonna teleport us back to the city," Ravager said over his shoulder.
Eight Billys stepped out of the original. After a moment's disorientation, they dispersed down different branches of the hall through which Ravager and the original Billy marched. "It seems as though they want us to find…'us.' What if this is a trap?" Billy asked.
"Then we trip the trap, draw them out, and make them damn sorry they pulled this stunt," Ravager snapped. "We're taking back our city and our bodies before those idiots wreck either one."
Pure phosphorescence roiled against Cyborg's chest, washing him off his feet. He plowed through the Plexiglas shelter of a bus stop. Its clear walls crashed on top of him, melting in the intensity of Doctor Light's blast, and molded into an impromptu prison.
Hovering above, Light hardly had time to laugh at Cyborg's plight before he had to sweep a light-screen in front of him. Waves of packed plasma hammered the screen. The flashing bolts drove him steadily back until he struck the wall, where the force of the bolts pinned him behind his own shield.
Tek squinted past the flash of her repeating cannons. Her visor zoomed upon Light to guide her aim. Amusement rang from her grille. "Now I know why they call you 'Light.' Would you like to call a time-out and catch your breath, or should I just cook you now?"
Sweat dribbled from Light's scowl, sizzling against the screen shoved in his face. "Arrogant child!" he bellowed, as the reserves of his suit emptied into his aura. The air shimmered to either side of his shield, stretching with a brilliance that Tek's visor could not filter fast enough.
Tek flinched, ceasing fire. She shielded her eyes with a smoking arm from the afternoon light coalescing into a massive, muscled pair of appendages that floated beside Light, each one the size of a bus and dexterous as the hands that orchestrated them. Before she could yelp, the giant hands framed Tek and clapped, slamming her at either side with light and force that rattled her to the core.
Light's construct hands cupped the dazed armor, lifting it from the ground. "Which one of us is the lightweight now, child?" he boomed, and juggled her between the enormous pair of palms.
As Light lifted Tek higher, he saw a ball of shadow launch from the ground. The ebony comet boiled, its surface glistening, broken only by a luminous scowl meant for him. Sneering, Light bid his constructs to hurl Tek into the comet.
Tendrils lashed from the comet, batting aside the troublesome armor. Tek crashed through the third story of an office building as the comet continued unperturbed. Rising equal to Light, the comet slowed. Its surface rippled away from its luminous scowl, revealing a blue cloak fluttering within the darkness. That darkness condensed into twisted sickles grasped in pale fists.
Light remembered this one. His innards trembled with the memory of a terrible cold, a cold that glistened hungrily in her blades. For just a moment, his voice faltered, forgetting his mastery over all things brilliant. "Y-You stay away from me!" he screamed.
Raven dove at him, soul-sickles raised to cleave through his shield and his body in the same stroke. Panicking, Light drew his constructs into himself, draining their glow into his. The total of his power burst from him in a radiance that painted the entire block impossibly white. Raven staggered in the air, hissing wordlessly at his flare. Her sickles collapsed into lost thought. She was helpless against the concentrated blast he planted in her chest.
He drew back his smoldering fist, smirking at Raven's fluttering shape trailing through the roof of a police cruiser. The car warbled as it ate Raven with a metallic crunch. Cackling, Light felt his confidence surge. He drank the day around him to replenish his stores, and cried, "So must darkness yield to Light!"
Flickering motion pulled his attention to the ground. Four stories below, he saw a white shape waving silver at the sky, and beside it, a green shape that could not decide on its size. Light descended upon them both as he gathered the day into an impregnable skin.
Bushido stood at the bottom of a streetlight, his foot braced atop its base. He reached up at the glowing figure overhead wit his outstretched sword. "Consarn it!" he cursed, "I can't reach the bugger! C'mon down, Bulb-face, and I'll show you some real action!" Throwing daggers sputtered out his flapping sleeve, jangling on the street as he swung uselessly through the twenty feet of air separating him from his target.
Beside him, Beast Boy crouched and glowered. His outline blurred as he morphed back and forth between a menagerie of tiny birds and his disgruntled, elfish self. "C'mon! C'mon! Get big!" he muttered whenever he had the vocal cords to do so. His feathered counterparts squawked with frustration, but refused to become anything bigger than a pigeon. "Big! Big! Big!" he cried between morphs.
A luminous mallet crushed the shapeshifter into the pavement, leaving a circle of cratered earth surrounding a dazed green parakeet. The mallet's impact threw Bushido from the streetlight. He fell to the sidewalk, his sword skittering out of reach, as Light bore down upon him.
"Y'all think you're pretty tough? Try this!" Bushido threw out his hand hard enough to dislodge the waist of his keikogi from the teal sash around his waist. Tiny pellets ran underneath the white cloth and dribbled out his untucked top, and burst at his feet into a cloud of smog that consumed him whole. The sound of his coughing escaped the expanding edge of the cloud. The rest of him did not.
Light raised his hand, summoning a storm of motes from his aura that could shred the cloud and anything unfortunate enough to be caught within it. But his world reeled at a tremendous blow that strained the aura at his back. He tumbled through the air, shoring the broken aura over his bruised spine. When he righted himself, he saw his golden attacker, and scowled.
Starfire floated above him. She drew back her boot and smirked through his glare. "This bunch isn't the brightest," she said, "but there are some perks to working with them. Like letting them flail around until they finally make an opening."
Pain gnawed at Light's back. He traced the dent in his armor with his fingertips. "It will take more than one underhanded blow to beat me," he growled.
She sniffed. "Then again, with some people, you don't really need an opening. Just your own special brand of overwhelming superiority." Emerald arrogance flooded her eyes and hands. She thrust both at Light, filling the air with a vibrant stream. Light vanished into the vibrancy, which poured around him to strike and scar the row of buildings behind him.
Her laughter drowned out the sizzling heat of her starwave. She clutched the beam from her fists and cooled her eyes, expecting to find some crinkled remains of bone melted into the building across the street. Instead, Light hung in the wake of her wave, brilliantly green.
His white smile resonated from his green aura. "Hmm. A different flavor. A bit hard to digest. But still light. Thank you for the recharge, my dear."
A serpentine beast emerged from Light's aura, stretching to fill the sky with its emerald bulk. Its jaws split wide, shrieking white light. Its eyes shone for Starfire, leading the rest of its winding body in a rush at her.
"Oh, f—" Starfire bucked in the jaws of the starwave beast. It drove her back through the brick side of Kord Industries, diving through floors and rooms, pounding her with the building's innards until at last the creature dissipated. Shambles fell through its fading body, entombing Starfire.
Light bayed laughter at the line of police huddled beside their cruisers. With a wave of his hand, he molded the daylight into a ramp, on which he strode down to face them. The glowing ramp eroded behind him as he stepped upon the ruins of the bus stop at the corner. A metal arm stirred from the melted Plexiglas.
"Do you see?" Light said to the police, standing over the struggling metal arm. "Do you see what your resistance buys you? Pain! Suffering!" He drew his aura into a great construct once more, one tremendous hand, which he plunged through the Plexiglas.
The hand emerged in a spray with Cyborg caught in its grasp. The Titan's waist groaned beneath Light's phantom grip. Sonic blasts from his cannon did nothing to the hand around him.
As the helpless police gathered behind their grizzled, glaring lieutenant, Light held aloft the Titan for them to bear witness. "Stand against me, and I shall crush you as easily as I do this cretinous child," Light announced. "Let his death serve as a warning to—"
"Excuse me," Cyborg grunted suddenly.
Anger flared in Light's face. His construct tightened, straining the metal struts beneath Cyborg's plating. "What?" demanded Light.
Cyborg pointed his sonic cannon at Light. Its aperture widened until its tip was a glowing beacon of blue. "I just realized," Cyborg said, "you can hear me."
Two hundred agonizing decibels poured over Light in a wash of blue that blared from the cannon. The pure noise pierced Light's aura, which could stop the cannon's normal compression waves, but not simple sound. Any living person within half a mile could do nothing but clap their hands over their ears and pray that the damage would not be permanent.
Light dropped to his knees with a scream no one heard. His aura faltered. His construct faded, dropping Cyborg at once. The Titan ceased his sonic shriek and launched his foot through Light's jaw, lobbing the villain high and away.
Cyborg watched Light bounce to a stop against the bumper of a police cruiser. The officers beside it still had their hands over their ears with pained faces. "Thank God for filtered audio," Cyborg muttered to himself, and tapped his aural implant.
The ground shook behind him at Tek's crouched landing from her third-story leap. Bits of building shook loose from her dusty armor. She straightened, giving his mechamorphing arm a nod. "Quick thinking, Metal Face. I'm just glad this tin hat of mine does more than cover my bad haircut," she quipped.
"What?" Bushido shouted at them. "What'd y'all say?"
He staggered toward them, coughing hard and blinking away tears. One hand remained clamped to the side of his head. His other hand dangled behind him, dragging Beast Boy by the collar. The shapeshifter sat curled in a ball, protecting his pointed ears with his whole body, seemingly oblivious to Bushido's manhandling.
Bushido grimaced. "Would somebody give me a hand with Booger Head here?" he shouted.
The ruined front of Kord Industries rustled. From the wreckage climbed Starfire, who wore a coat of drywall dust and splinters throughout her hair. She floated toward the team, trailing bits of building behind her disgusted look. Her shadow surged, growing luminous eyes and a cloak that fluttered out of the street to become an aching Raven in Starfire's wake.
"Well," Cyborg said to the ragged bunch. "That was certainly bracing, don't you think? I believe we all learned something valuable from this experience."
Four dirty looks burnished his smile. He ignored them for his own hands, which he inspected with growing amazement. In all his travels, through strict discipline, he had mastered a thousand different means of combat. He had honed his body into a weapon. But the sensation of actually being a weapon left him breathless. He wasn't sure if he even needed to breathe anymore, or if his body simply did so out of old habit. He found it ludicrous that anyone would bemoan such power.
"Hey."
Lieutenant Smith's blunt voice broke his reverie. Cyborg turned on instinct, willing his hand into a cannon. Its aperture burgeoned with compression waves that would tear Smith's smiling face from his body.
"Easy, kid," the old cop said, lifting his hands in mock surrender. "The fight's over. You won."
Tension in Cyborg's face eased. He relaxed his cannon back into a hand and watched Smith wade fearlessly into their midst. "Yes. We won," he echoed.
Wriggling a finger in his ear, Smith said, "Next time, though, you might want to try taking him down a little more quietly. I'm going to be hearing that for a week. Which is probably how long it'll take to run the paperwork for this mess of yours. Have you kids ever managed to end a fight without lowering property values?"
"Yes, well…" Cyborg glanced between the other Titans. Starfire stood behind Smith with murder dancing in her eyes. Beast Boy looked the same, albeit through a twisted expression as he clutched his ears. Quickly, Cyborg stepped to block them from the old cop, and said, "Er, you know me, Lieutenant. 'Booyah,' and all that. Do we… I mean, would you like, uh, some help containing Light?"
Smith snorted. "Why don't I just skip to the end and pin my badge on you while I'm at it? SCU has things under control here. You kids scram before I decide to take this mess out of your allowance."
"But of course," Cyborg said, oozing graciousness. "Titans…?"
As he ushered his team from the scene, Smith's voice stopped him. "Oh, and kid?" Cyborg turned around, and was jolted by the sight of Smith's hand hovering between them. "Thanks for the save," Smith said.
Slowly, Cyborg reached for the hand. Try as he might, he could not wrap his head around the handshake and the smile Smith offered him. No one, for any reason, had ever thanked him for tearing a part a street, or for hurting another human being.
"Try not to make pulling my ass out of the fire a habit. I'm saving the last of my dignity for my next divorce," he told Cyborg, and then left the Titan standing stunned in the middle of the street. To his recovering officers, he bellowed, "Okay, you mooks. Break's over. Get back to work before I find some more kids to remind me how much I overpay this sorry zoo dressed up like cops!"
Cyborg lingered between the Titans and SCU leaving the battlefield. Staring at his hand, he tried to pin down the torpor inside his chest, if only to identify what it was. Pride? Satisfaction? He didn't know.
The shadows receded into Kid Wykkid's cloak, returning sunlight to the back alley behind the pizzeria. His fellow Tyrants staggered from him wearing the chill of teleportation. Wykkid tilted his hood against the scathing sun, and hissed, "This is as close as I can take us. Any closer and I risk setting off the Compound's wards."
Rubbing his arms, Billy chattered, "How bad would that be?" He stumbled back against a dumpster, which smelled wrongly of cheese and tomato and killed any remaining hunger lingering in the Tyrants.
"Bad," Wykkid hissed archly. "Particularly if you're the one doing the magic. We'll have to walk the rest of the way."
Derision steamed from Shimmer's nose. "Oh, that'll be awesome. Let's all stroll down Main Street. It's not like they won't try and lynch us for all the crap these bodies have pulled in the past, what with all the murder and mayhem. Heck, let's stop along the way for some lip gloss. I'm feeling chapped."
Jinx massaged the last of the cold out of her limbs. She raised an eyebrow at Shimmer's snarky expression, and said, "Wow. You make kind of a bitchy girl."
Shimmer rubbed her stomach and frowned. "I know, right? I hope this is PMS or something. Otherwise it means the only thing keeping me happy are my b—"
"Shut up," Ravager hissed from the mouth of the alley. He clung to the shadows, skirting the edge of the sidewalk. Cautiously, he peered outside. The edge of the Compound came into view as he tilted his eye around the corner. But between him and it lay dozens of obstacles all going about their early afternoon business.
The foot traffic on the sidewalk hadn't noticed them yet, but wouldn't last. The street outside showed early symptoms of rush hour. Too soon, the traffic would consume every inch of pavement and sidewalk between them and the Compound. It would matter if it was one block or one inch.
Ravager slunk back from the alley mouth. "The place looks quiet. At least they didn't trash it. Yet," he said.
Blackfire crossed her arms. "We should infiltrate the premises as stealthily as we can. Perhaps Wykkid can airlift us across the rooftops so that we might enter from above."
"A sound plan," Billy said, earning him Blackfire's disgust. "We could slip through the skylight above Sector Prime."
"The second you touch that roof, about ten different overlapping multi-stage countermeasures will trigger," Ravager told him. "You'll be stunned, blasted, gassed, zapped, and locked in a stasis bubble before all five of your little piggies settle down."
"Oh." Billy's expression dropped. "Not so sound, then."
Jinx hugged herself. "Remember the good old days? Back on the island, when every jerk with a super power would just bust into our home whenever they wanted? We're the jerks with super powers now. Why can't we do it? It shouldn't be that hard?"
Some small modicum of good humor returned to Billy's face. "Ah, yes," he said, reminiscing.
Ravager scowled. "Well, excuse me! Jerks like 'us' is the reason I stepped up security. Wearing mugs like these, pretty much the only place we could walk up to without getting shredded would be...the lobby," he trailed off.
Shimmer bounced up and down, pointing at Ravager's furrowed brow. "Oh, I know that look. That's a light bulb look right there. Roll with it, Big R."
"The lobby won't blast us right off the bat. If we go in through there, I can reprogram the security measures," Ravager mused. "That way we could enter the rest of the Compound—"
"—without being turned into chunky salsa!" Shimmer finished. "Ha! I like it. Let's do it!"
Irritation burned red in Wykkid's hood. "Aren't you two forgetting our original problem? 'Lobby' means 'front door.' 'Front door' means all kinds of people are going to see us waltzing into Titans Central. People who aren't exactly going to be glad to see us."
Shimmer soured. "Out come the pitchforks and torches. I've seen the end of that movie."
"The lobby is not an ideal location for a twelve-person metahuman brawl," Billy added. "Such a fight could likely spill out onto the street, where said people would be likely caught in the fray."
The mounting obstacles piled into Ravager's teeth, where he gnashed them. "I'm not saying it's not a gamble. It's not like we can evacuate the area, and if the 'Titans' are inside, I might not have enough time to fix the computer."
"There's no way we make it to the lobby without drawing attention," Jinx said.
"Perhaps…" Billy cupped his chin in thought. "Perhaps that would be best."
No one spoke for a moment. The idea fell from Billy's thoughts and bounced between them, rebounding off their shared, hesitant glances.
"Dude…" Shimmer said, squirming.
Wykkid bristled with cold. "This is asinine."
"This is outrageous!" declared Blackfire. "Would you truly have us—"
Ravager silenced them all with a shout. "Hey! I'm not exactly loving this idea, y'all. But I don't see a whole lot of choice." He drew a long, wicked saber from its scabbard on his back, swinging it down, gauging its heft.
Worrisome sparks drifted from Jinx's wringing hands. "This is… I can't…" she muttered.
She stiffened under Billy's encouraging hand on her shoulder. "It is not so bad. I promise. And you don't actually have to hurt anyone."
"Right!" Shimmer said, and pounded her open palm. Her enthusiasm dwindled when no one else made a move for the street. Hesitating, she said, "Uh, so…how are we gonna do this? Like, is it 'laugh and smash,' or 'smash, then laugh?'"
Ravager sighed, massaging his eyes. "Just shut up and go," he said.
Shadows receded into Raven's cloak, bathing Ops in the skylight's shining smile. Raven staggered back from the rest of her freshly-teleported teammates and clutched her stomach. Her luminous eyes squeezed shut as she groaned.
"I hear ya, pal," Bushido said, and slapped Raven on the back. "I'm getting' pretty sick of being stuck in this greasy wonton, myself."
Raven clapped a hand across her mouth at Bushido's slap. A burp laced with bile escaped her fingers. She elbowed him out of the way and ran, doubled over, from Ops.
Cyborg's smirk followed her to the corner, where she disappeared. He spread his arms entreatingly to the grumble that undercut the rest of his Titans. "Come on, everyone. Getting bored with your new toys already?"
"I'm going to go find a mirror for some intelligent conversation," Starfire sneered, and floated off the balcony. Her fingers combed through the tangled mess of her hair, which ran to her feet with bits of glass and chips of wood. "You mouth-breathers can call me when something actually worth my time comes up."
"Toys," Bushido muttered under his breath, and stalked out of Ops. He scratched his sore back, accidentally dislodging a pair of kama strapped underneath his clothes. They clattered out the back of his keikogi. "S'all I got is toys, y' rotten, ro-bottin' sorry-sorry excuse for…"
The resentment in Beast Boy's glare scalded the smile off of Cyborg's face. "Not all of us got cool robot powers, ass. Some of us just got a bunch of dangling issues." He grasped his belt, hoisting his pants as he stalked after Bushido.
Shaking his head, Cyborg turned back, and stopped short at the sight of Tek splayed atop the central Ops console. She traced the lines of her skin suit, eyeing him through a fringe of black hair.
Hunger lurked in her smile, which purred, "I'm not bored with my new toy. In fact, I was wondering if you wanted to play with me."
Excitement pulled him into the console's seat. Caution kept his hands clutched at the armrests. "Really? You've been awfully short with me today," he said as he watched her arch toward him.
Tek slunk into the seat with him. She poured into his lap and curled her arms around his neck. It took her a moment to settle comfortably against his chassis. "Well, you've been a real blowhard lately," she cooed, and teased his chest plate with her fingertip. "But seeing you out there, with all your little accessories, saving the day…" Her finger traced his lips.
He ran his hands down Tek's smooth second skin. Tactile sensors painted her outline in delicious detail. She was soft and strong, sculpted with subtle curves. She was new, but familiar in ways that made them both tremble. "I like you without the metal," he murmured into her ear.
"I like you with all the metal," she purred, and ran her tongue along the armor of his chin.
They writhed together, a giggling pool of hormones creaking in one chair. Days' worth of disagreement evaporated in the heat of their lips. Hands roamed across bodies that were fresh and excited. Soft gasps hissed from their fervent kiss.
Then a hollow thunk rang beneath Tek's hand. She froze, her lip caught in Cyborg's teeth, her hand cupping a seamless expanse between his legs. Their widening eyes locked as she patted down his armored groin. Embarrassed, she pulled her lip from his, and asked, "Uh, how do I…"
"I…" Cyborg buzzed, desperately diagnostic. His excitement faded as his exoskeleton's features poured through his vision. None of the functions he wanted were listed in his catalogue. "Oh. I, um…I don't… Oh."
Tek slid back, her face burning, her voice cooling. A gulf yawned between them in the cramped chair. "…oh. Wow," she said.
He coughed.
A small miracle answered both their silent prayers. The air above them flashed with Ops' holo-screen, displaying a map of the Compound's grounds and the surrounding neighborhood. The Teen TroubAlert beeped at them, demanding attention. Cyborg silenced it with a quick keystroke.
Tek watched the screen highlight a nearby section of street on its map. A live video emerged next to the highlight, captured by one of the Compound's diligent cameras. She squinted, forgetting her embarrassment for confusion. "What the hell is that?" she asked.
Cyborg found his smile again in the video feed. He watched the chaos on the street outside from the comfort of his seat in Ops. "That would be Stage Two. Right on schedule," he said.
She half-rose from his chest, aching for a reason to leave his cold lap. "Should we…?"
He leaned back, no longer concerned with the lost moment. Lacing his hands behind his head, he said, "Let's just enjoy the show."
To Be Continued