9
While Beast Boy's victory dance at a last successful 'HADOOOOKEN!' was loud, the emergency beeps from his and Cyborg's communicators were even louder. Game controllers were abandoned, a brief argument was had as they raced down the stairwell as to the fastest mode of transportation, and Beast Boy was, as he so often was, made into a green pterodactyl taxi despite Cyborg's assurances that the T-Car was faster than any dino that had ever become extincted on the Good Lord's green earth.
Neither of them were happy that the signal was pinpointing the Church building. Unlike Robin, they hadn't kept up with twenty different news feeds to be immediately notified of any changes in the Church's situation, and so, as far as they knew, it was still a Church with stuffy old people holding their pot luck dinners and whatever else it was stuffy old people did. Arguing outside about a clandestine or a bold approach, they went for a two-pronged deal: Beast Boy would infiltrate as a fly, while Cyborg crashed in the front door as a distraction. It was strange, how completely normal the outside of the area seemed. No smoke, no sign of fires or other emergencies, no one running, no panic or yells. Inside, though, they knew something had to be dreadfully wrong. The tonal code used for the alert that had been sent out was only designated for use for three enemies so far - Slade, Brother Blood, or (God forbid) Trigon. Cyborg was personally expecting Slade, based on the subtlety so far. The place was probably crawling with dozens of robot minions.
What skin Cyborg had left crawled as soon as he stepped inside into the crisp air-conditioned building, feet denting the carpet into a darker shade of mauve. Two things greeted him right away, just to let him know that yes, things were really screwed up.
The first was the smell of blood.
The second was someone humming Beethoven's 'Ode to Joy.'
Cyborg knew enough about creepy villains to brace himself to see something highly unpleasant, but even so, he wasn't ready for the sight that awaited him.
Robin had been tied to the central cross hung behind the pulpit with small floodlights centered on it. Everything above the waist save for his mask had been peeled off; the gloves, cape and shirt were all piled on the floor nearby. Along his small but highly muscular body, cuts had been made - not, Cyborg saw with immense relief, very deep cuts, and therefore not the source of that nasty smell. Shallow cuts that just barely bled at all, red lines that formed a complex symmetrical pattern that he didn't recognize. It made him think of blueprints.
Then he focused with his human eye instead of the computer eye that focused on so much exacting detail rather than on the overall shape, and then he recognized it. If you let your eye blur a little so that all the detail faded and it turned into a rough blob, it looked exactly like...
Like the Mark of Scath.
"Why Cyborg, what a pleasure to see you again!" Brother Blood's voice came out at him from horribly close by. Blood stepped out from behind a small pillar, looking every bit the happy host. "You're a bit early. I'm almost done reconsecrating this ground. Unfortunately, while Robin's a highly suitable sacrifice (I assume he is a virgin, I would hope?), his arrival's also delayed some of my other plans a trifle. Why, I haven't even hypnotized the rest of this block for a proper... congregation."
Feeling sick, Cyborg's eyes roamed until he saw the green speck he was looking for. He made a little motion with his head towards the back. Beast Boy took the hint, buzzing off after the blood smell to do what he could while Blood was busy hamming it up with good ol' arch-nemesis Cyborg.
"You're really sick, you know that, man?" he spat with genuine disgust. "What, was the evil schoolteacher gig not workin' out so well so you decided you had to play fake preacher instead?"
"Play, goodness me, no! While my criminal profession is largely composed of secular functions, I do believe wholeheartedly in the power of faith, you see. I would think you would feel the same way, considering," Blood paused to grimace in remembrance, "considering that you bested me in our last meeting solely due to your faith in the human spirit. I intend for things to go differently this time around."
Cyborg did his best to keep the villain talking. Beast Boy needed all the time he could get until they were ready to deal with this freak, and Robin didn't look like he was seriously injured, just KOed. "Man, if you believe in the power of faith so much, why don't you acknowledge it when it works? Heck, if I'm lookin' at that scribble you scratched on my buddy right, not only should you not be wastin' our time stirring up trouble, you should be worshipin' my team mate!"
Blood blinked, looking taken aback for a change. His fingers curled and tapped together repeatedly. "I beg your pardon, Cyborg? Perhaps you're unfamiliar with my 'belief system,' as the kids are wont to call it nowadays. you see, I am in fact a worshiper of the great and terrible demon Trigon-"
"Yeah, that's what I'm talkin' about! That's the Mark of Scath, right?"
Blood's jaw hung open as he stared in frank astonishment. In a less gruesome situation, Cyborg would have felt a fair bit of triumph over getting the man to do that.
"Thing is, Brother Blood," Cyborg went on, realizing some of the import of the name for the first time, "Trigon had himself a little girl who just so happened to kick his butt. A little girl by the name of Raven, you mighta heard of her. So not only are you ignorin' the power of faith as I've shown it to you personally, you're all mixed up in a stupid religion that doesn't have any validity anymore since its object of worship got his butt kicked six ways from Sunday!"
"D-don't be ridiculous," Blood stammered, clenching fists in anger and smashing part of a chair into splintery fragments with an offhanded, frustrated blow. "Do you take me for a fool, to blindly accept any blasphemy spilling out of the mouth of a known deceiver like yourself? Even supposing that your Raven has been needlessly blessed with some faint bloodline connection to Lord Trigon, if He had entered into this world, all would have become stone and fire! And, of course, blood. Heh." He grinned, but it was the unhappy grin of someone who felt pressured into attack, rather than the expression he wore when he was really enjoying himself. Cyborg had had ample time to get acquainted with both expressions.
"Well, it kinda did," Cyborg admitted. "The world ended and stuff."
"Really." Blood raised an eyebrow.
"But then it got better." Okay, even he knew that sounded dumb. Now he wished he'd recorded the event or something.
"Interesting if true," Blood rejoined dryly. Behind him, Beast Boy peeked out from a doorway, looking unhealthily pale, his eyes shrunk to pinpricks in seas of white. The changeling, mouth slightly open and eyes shining with unshed moisture, made a throat slicing gesture and shook his head slowly.
So. No hostages other than Robin to save. How many had Blood killed? Poor old churchgoing folks who needed canes just to walk around and couldn't defend themselves from so much as a stray poodle. Cyborg felt what little mercy and good will he'd cultivated for Brother Blood throughout the conversation abruptly terminate into icy-cold desire for retribution.
"Home run slam," he told Beast Boy grimly while bringing up his cannon.
It was a simple but effective procedure they'd worked out not too long ago. Beast Boy, still fully unnoticed by Blood, turned into a ram and charged the villain from behind. Spiral horns smashed into the man's back and sent him flying. Cyborg pivoted and snapped into a kneeling position to get the right angle to send a laser into Blood, furthering the already considerable force involved in the villain's flight. To his credit, Blood retained enough presence of mind to twist in midair and land feet-first in the wall instead of head-first, but he still sunk up to his kneecaps in plaster with a painful-sounding crunch.
With a no-nonsense attitude, Cyborg calmly kept up the application of sonic blasts, opting for staggered bursts rather than a continuous stream, all the better to keep Blood off-balance. Beast Boy slithered up the Robin-cross as a snake, nibbled through his bonds as mice, and then deftly hopped down and switched to donkey in time to catch their unconscious leader on his back.
With an immense display of robotic strength that left the wall in shambles, Blood managed to extricate himself from the hole, using his hands to deflect the blasts enough that his body took minimal damage even as his limbs were smoked and looked substantially the worse for wear. He did one of those effeminate little spinning hops that Cyborg always found so hard to aim through and landed next to a counter full of communion wafers. A sweep from a normal human hand would have just knocked them all to the floor, but the motorized power behind Blood's motion made the little white wafers scatter all over, briefly making aiming right impossible.
"Hey! That's the body of Christ you're makin' me fry here!" he hollered in instinctive indignation, turning his cannon back into a fist and charging forward.
Beast Boy got to Blood before him, roaring in leonine fury with teeth barred and claws extended through a full-on pounce. Blood took a few deep slashes to his steel body with the unexpected attack, claw-marks marring the skull on his chest, before he recovered and deflected the next few swipes and kicked Beast Boy right in the middle of that big green lion face.
Cyborg swung at Blood's smug face only to miss the annoyingly agile pansy by a mile. Grabbing a silvery communion grape juice holder and swung it at Beast Boy with the deftly-curled fingers of one hand while his other hand slammed into Cyborg's chest, sending the hero back half a dozen feet. Beast Boy's forepaws went to his face instinctively, like anyone would when blinded by an acidic substance, and Blood followed that up by stomping on the green lion's head, sending it down to the floor with an extremely loud crack. Beast Boy slumped in a way that Cyborg knew meant he was out of the fight for now, and he groaned, wishing Raven or Starfire had been here.
"Ah, much better," Blood said with another one of his superior chuckles, actually taking the time to brush himself off. "Now it's back to just the two of us and debates on the inherent strength of mind over matter. Steel over flesh. Ambition over sentiment. As it was meant to be, Cyborg."
"I guess it's a prerequisite to bein' a supervillain that you have to be full of yourself," Cyborg growled, looking over Beast Boy and not seeing any serious injuries like broken bones. But it was hard to tell, he wasn't an expert on lions, after all. "I guess I shouldn't expect you to have any respect, worshipin' Raven's big red daddy and all, but this is pretty low even for you. Defiling a place of worship where people come to get close to God."
"Oh, Cyborg, ever so charming in your naiveté!" Blood waggled a finger. "The divine isn't found in escaping the world, but in relishing it. We live to grow, to improve, to evolve by destroying those who are less than ourselves. Life is full of predation, and perfection requires, heh, sacrifices."
"Sacrifices. Right." Cyborg's good eye narrowed. "Is that why you tried to flood the city way back when? Giving souls up for Trigon?"
"One of many reasons. The Great Trigon is ever-hungry for new souls. Much like the Christian God. 'All who would not seek the Lord, the God of Israel, were to be put to death, whether small or great, man or woman.' Second Chronicles, chapter fifteen."
"Don't give me that BULLSHIT!" Cyborg snarled with a sudden fury he'd been unaware had been lurking underneath his outer demeanor until it spurted up like lava forcing its way through the earth's crust. "Anyone can pick verses to suit their own selfish purposes, but 'Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love!' Don't you DARE stand here in a sacred house full of the congregation you slaughtered and the heroes you hurt to give them up to a big red ogre!"
"Oh, very good, Cyborg," Blood said condescendingly, one eyebrow quirked, his teeth showing in his smile.
He made a job with stiffened fingers, and Cyborg blocked it with his forearm, the attack scraping off an outer layer of metal from both his arms and Blood's sonic cannon-weakened digits. The two of them jostled for a better position, but with all the haphazard furniture in the way, nothing more happened for a few moments as each tried to circle the other.
"Touched a nerve, did I? I see this location has more relevance to your weaker human half than I thought. I told you, sacrifices are required. All gods want them, red or otherwise. 'You must certainly put to the sword all who live in that town. You must destroy it completely, both its people and its livestock. You are to gather all the plunder of the town into the middle of the public square and completely burn the town and all its plunder as a whole burnt offering to the Lord your God.' That one's Deuteronomy. You know that one, don't you? The one with Moses? I do so love to imagine what it must have looked like, ahhhh, and smelled like!" Blood's nostrils inhaled air in a hissing whiff. "The cattle and the people and the furniture and the money and all the food together, burning for God. Forgive me if, hahah, I don't think yours morally superior to the strength in cruelty offered by Trigon the Terrible! At least mine gives strength back and with great consistency! What does yours offer you, besides false hope and arguably a one-time regenerating aura fluke?"
Missing Raven's presence just about more than he ever had, knowing she would have had a theologically appropriate response that would work better than the only words that came to Cyborg's mind, (which were to tell Blood to go to Hell), Cyborg gave up on the furniture and just crashed through it with his more than ample weight and bulk, mixing anger-wild haymakers with a few quick blasts from his feet. Blood saw it all coming, and used the environment to his advantage; even though his limbs were getting too damaged to really block everything perfectly, he still managed to avoid any serious hits by ducking behind pillars, hopping over downed chairs and other detritus that Cyborg had to barrel through more clumsily. This continued on for long enough that even in the middle of the action Cyborg's brain caught up with the rest of him and figured out a suitable response, finally.
"'Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall... to the ground!... apart from the will of your Father! And even the very hairs of your head are all... NUMBERED!'"
"Pretty cocky from a bald man," Blood put in mockingly, lifting one hand to preen his remaining horn-like projection of gray hair.
With an enraged sound somewhere between a grunt and a yell fit for a football game tied at the last ten seconds, Cyborg dove forward and slammed both fists into Blood's stomach while the man was busy posing. To finish it he let his hands off their wrists by rocket power, propelling Brother Blood into the same front wall he'd plunged into at the start of the fight, making a twin hole to the first one.
"You didn't... let me... finish," Cyborg said lowly, panting and moping sweat from his forehead. "'So don't be afraid. You are worth more than many... freaking... sparrows.'" The fists returned to his wrists, causing Blood to slump down, only just managing to catch himself and stand with a pained groan.
Blood, still hunched, looked up with a wild, almost demoniacally maniacal expression, simultaneously pained and pleased. "Sparrows burnt at altars, Cyborg. Sparrows killed for your God. Because even a loving God knows that blood debts require blood to pay." He straightened to his usual semi-regal posture, visage only hampered by the plaster still stuck to his hair and shoulders. "Yes, let's all live like the sparrows, content in their worthless little lives, without great men like you and I to provide leadership! A foolish people requires harsh Gods through harsh priests. Tough love, if you will. 'I will pour out my wrath on you and breathe out my fiery anger against you; I will deliver you into the hands of brutal men, men skilled in destruction.' So remember that one the next time you wonder why a loving God would let men like me do what we want."
Cyborg charged again, intent on finishing it before Blood could get into a better position and get his wind back. Blood surprised him with sudden gymnastic-like energy, actually hopping onto the middle of the wall and using it to jump behind Cyborg. Cyborg whirled, but too slow; already a quick kick to the knee had him off-balance, and Blood finished it off with an uncharacteristically uncouth head slam that floored him.
For all that he was much smaller than Cyborg, Blood still had a fair amount of weight that was evident when his foot slammed onto Cyborg's chest.
"You've been slacking in your studies lately, if this is the best you have to offer. Where's your God now, hmm?"
"Right here!" Robin shouted just before braining Blood with the heavy cross that had previously served as part of the Boy Wonder's restraints.
The villain went flying the length of the room and crashed just in front of the pulpit, out cold.
Cyborg and Robin shared a look that sent a number of sentiments back and forth between them. Gratitude, chagrin, anxiety, worry, relief, all mixed up together.
"Thanks for saving me," Cyborg managed, getting up.
"Thanks for saving me too." They shared a very small smile.
"I liked him better when he was just an evil teacher," Cyborg mourned glumly, wiping more sweat from his face.
"Me too, Cy. Me too."