A/N: And we're back with another update. The last one got a few REALLY favorable comments and reviews so I hope that this chapter doesn't torpedo all of that positive mojo.
I remember black skies, the lightning all around me
I remember each flash, as time began to blur. Linkin Park
As they had marched, Slade had given Raziel the operating instructions for his suit over the com-link and Raziel now felt confident in its use. For the time being, he would only need the grapple gun and possibly the immobilization foam, a knock off of the red substance he had invented for the Red-X suit. The plan was simple since Blackfire was still raining starbolts on the decimated facility while guards still patrolled the outer perimeter.
But Slade had said it was Starfire.
As he looked through his mask the image of Blackfire began to get blurry and soon the metal portion of her costume was replaced by deceptively soft looking flesh, and her black hair and blue-purple eyes faded into the crimson red hair and emerald green eyes of Starfire.
He shook his head, sure that is mind was playing tricks on him, but when he looked back, it was still Starfire that was peppering balls of solar energy onto the remaining pockets of resistance. It didn't matter to him if Starfire was there instead of her sister; in his mind, that explained a fair bit. Now, not only would Kori be made to pay for transgressions against his allies, but she would also pay for abandoning him in his hour of need those long months ago and not trying to find him since he'd been gone.
He and the other men had just burst free of the last of the tall grass that perpetually grew between the forest and the town but they hadn't been spotted yet in the near pitch darkness of the threatening storm. Thunder cracked overhead and rain began to fall as he picked up his pace and easily outdistanced the other men as they made their way to the fortified wall, both from this side and others. Suddenly lightning illuminated the whole area and revealed the waiting form of Madame Rouge up ahead. She was standing roughly between himself and where he had to be if he wanted a shot at reaching Starfire amidst the clouds. His blood boiled as he thought of how far that alien bitch had fallen to now be siding with such low class trash as Madame Rouge.
With a deft movement from Raziel, a small disk was sent twirling through the air. Rouge saw it and tried to dodge but it was too late. The disk had impacted her out stretched arm as she tried to move and it instantly burst into frigid liquid, cold enough to almost instantly freeze most of the villains upper body. She fell to the ground with only the sound of ice impacting the soft earth. Not bothering to waste another moment on the incapacitated villain, or perhaps wanting to take his emotions out on his former love, he simply leapt over the ice-encased villain and raised his arm from beneath his black robes to prepare to fire the grapple line.
Several images suddenly appeared overlaid atop what he was seeing. A tiny cursor fell onto Starfire floating in the air and another traced its path along where he was aiming at the high wall. The advanced software in his helmet read what he was trying to do, mapped out a flight path and adjusted the grapple line's tension and retraction speed. The slightly red tinted overlay turned green and he launched the grapple line to imbed in the wall between two still unaware sentries. He ran for a moment more, allowing the line to gain some slack to catapult him farther and then retracted the line.
Because of his suit's reinforced structure he hardly felt the pull in his shoulder as his body was picked off the ground and accelerated with ever increasing speed towards the edge of the wall. Lightning flashed and the expressions on the guard's faces indicated that they had seen him coming but it didn't matter. As soon as he had registered their notice, the line was disconnected and he was soaring through the air towards the still and floating form of Koriand'r as she launched Starbolt after Starbolt into the ruined fortification. As he came within a hundred feet he felt comfortable enough to yell for her attention and simultaneously launched a small disk from the launcher on his left wrist.
At the sound of a yell, Blackfire turned and was hit in the face by an exploding disk. Seconds later something much bigger impacted her body and she felt something metallic wrap her in a bear hug before she was tumbling towards the ground and trying to regain her bearings enough to stop her decent and dislodge this surprise visitor. The grip on her body changed as she regained her composure and she felt like she was being grabbed by the neck. A foot buried itself in her abdomen and used her skeletal structure as leverage to remain upright as they tumbled through the air.
She opened her eyes in time to see a figure bring back its fist and send a powerful haymaker into her face. The power of the blow surprised her and sent her reeling through the air as she tried to regain her bearings and shake off her attacker.
Raziel flew right through the remains of the explosion and impacted Starfire in mid air, sending the already dazed young woman tumbling through the air as he fought against centripetal force to gain some leverage. Eventually he was able to get both arms around her head to use her neck as a hand hold, then he planted a foot into her stomach and hauled himself upwards, putting immense pressure directly onto her pelvic bone, probably enough to even hurt a Tamaranean. When he was comfortable with his grip he hauled back his right fist and punched as hard as he could.
Because of the awkward way he was gripping her neck and the force of the punch, he felt her body go almost completely limp. Probably twisted her neck and tweaked her spine, messing with her body's ability to move freely. She swung at him with her right fist but he easily caught the weakened appendage and used it to gain more leverage and change her position so that he was behind her. After a little reaching, made more difficult by the motion of tumbling through the sky, he had both of her arms twisted uncomfortably behind her back. Silently blessing his acrobatic childhood, he manoeuvred the alien princess so that she was beneath him and first in line to hit the ground.
The impact was bone-rattling and the consciousness left him. When he came to he could feel Starfire wriggling weakly beneath him but strangely there was no pained groans only an odd gurgling sound, like air leaking through water. And he was lying in a fairly deep puddle. He pushed his aching body off of the fallen princess and blessed Slade's magic serum as the pain began to recede to the very edge of his consciousness. Starfire gasped and began taking in great draughts of air.
Hmm. Starfire was pinned beneath me in the puddle, should have just stayed on top of her; that would have evened the score.
"Fucking traitor!" he said aloud in time with his thoughts before winding up and sending a powerful kick into her stomach. The force of the blow physically lifted her smaller form off the ground and sent her sailing a short distance through the air.
"Fucking traitor!"
The kick that followed had forced the breath from her and sent her sailing through the air. Who was this human? She had noticed right off that he bore similarities to her sisters friend Robin but so far as she knew Robin was a normal human, there's no way he could be this strong, at least not compared to a Tamaranean.
She rolled to a stop and slowly forced herself to her feet. He was standing there almost motionless with the dark color of his uniform, now visible from beneath the tattered cloak that hung about his shoulders, making him almost invisible through the sheets of pouring rain. Behind him, far more visible due to his slightly brighter uniform and glowing eye, was her temporary partner; some human mercenary that had robotics implanted into him. The armoured red and green figure reached behind his back and pulled a short metal pole into his hand, with a deft flick of his wrist the pole burst to full length at a little over six feet long.
"I may be a traitor," she said with more confidence than she felt, "but you won't be alive long enough for it to matter."
Raziel watched her rise to her feet, one arm clutching her side as the other massaged her shoulder. He drew his staff and snapped it to full length.
"I may be a traitor, but you won't be alive long enough for it to matter," she reached both hands up and cracked her neck, relieving the pain and obviously undoing whatever he had done to debilitate her so severely. She broke into a run towards him, staggering a bit at first, and then picking up speed; he did likewise. Before they would have collided, he dove forward and placed his staff between her feet, causing her to trip over it. He completed his dive with a simple one handed hand spring and landed lightly on his feet. He could hear the sounds of a fierce engagement all around him but pushed it out of his mind.
Instinct forced him to dive sideways as something whizzed by him, impacting a crumbling structure behind him and sending it up in flames. His mask illuminated the form of KGBeast crouching with a shocked look on his face that Raziel had dodged the projectile. Before he could fire another, Raziel threw a shuriken that embedded in the man's cybernetic forearm. As the Russian mercenary cursed, he brought his staff around his body to knock Starfire's fist off course and loosed his own across her jaw. He heard the squelch of mud behind him and thrust the tip of his staff to meet the approaching threat, the feel of impact and the sound of splashing told him that he had scored a direct hit. Something hit his back and the resulting explosion sent him flying through the air and again, he thanked Slade's serum for allowing him to survive a starbolt before landing in a roll and flipping lightly onto his feet.
He dodged to the side and ran an ever shrinking circle around the alien as she launched a succession of starbolts after him. When he was within range, he swung his staff like a club and drew a pained groan and string of alien curses from her lips as his staff connected a solid blow with her hand. He swung the staff around and down on her other hand to the same oddly satisfying result. He knew that with her Tamaranean durability, it wouldn't break her hands but it would probably take her starbolts out of play for a while. As though to prove him right, her hands lit up with a green aura before she clenched her teeth and hissed in a pained breathe.
They closed the distance and then he ducked under a punch and drove his knee into her stomach. She grabbed his leg and he balanced on his staff and kicked her in the side of the head. She went tumbling with the blow and he landed just in time to see KGBeast charging him. They collided head on and Raziel went with the hit and kicked the Beast off of him, allowing the momentum to carry him onto his feet. He landed hard on the cybernetic man's chest and then leapt into a back flip, landing lightly, he left KGBeast to gasp for air while he went to battle Starfire.
The two locked in combat throwing, blocking, dodging and countering all manner of attacks with the skill and precision of seasoned veterans. It began looking like a stalemate was inevitable, and worse, he could feel himself slowly losing steam, so he changed it up a bit but using the various attacks and combinations that Blackfire had shown him while she was trying to con the Titans. To his surprise she kept up flawlessly.
Bitch was holding out on me!
Reinvigorated by his anger, he changed it up again; losing the graceful stylized motions common to most martial arts and began using the more brutal style he'd learned during basic training. Knocking a punch aside he drove his palm into her chin, her head snapped back and he grabbed the collar of her breast plate and used it to pull her closer so that he could throw punch after punch into her unprotected face.
Once again, instinct forced him into action and he spun sideways, grabbing KGBeast's arm and spinning the man around. Keeping a hold of the man's cybernetic arm he kept the spin for a few more seconds before kicking the man's feet out from under him and guiding him face first into the mud. He twisted the man's arm and then with a powerful thrust he severed the cybernetic appendage and threw it aside. The mercenary tried getting up on his remaining natural arm but Raziel snapped his staff into action and swept the limb out from under the mercenary before extending the blade from the end of the pole and driving it into the man's shoulder. He screamed in pain, cursing in his native language, before being silenced by a hard boot to the head. Raziel left the staff embedded in his arm, pinning him to the ground, just in case he woke up anytime soon.
His attention was drawn to Kori as she staggered to her feet. He was somewhat surprised to see that she bleeding rather heavily from her mouth and nose.
"You're obviously outmatched Starfire," he growled. "Why don't you stay down before I have to take more drastic action?"
"I'm not Starfire, Slorgob," she hissed. "Why don't you get your eyes checked, the differences are pretty big." She raised her hand to launch a starbolt but a sticky goo impacted her hand and hardened. She tried her other hand but to the same result. She tried launching more starbolts but the goo just seemed to absorb them.
"Interesting substance, isn't it, Kori? Specifically engineered to absorb your starbolts and then explode after saturation point has been reached. I'd stop trying to use them unless you think you could survive the explosion."
"I'm. Not. Koriand'r," she hissed through gritted teeth.
"Oh, please," he scoffed, "Who do you think you're talking to!?" He opened the helmet and tore it of his head. Her eyes widened.
"What, surprised?" he hissed, "After leaving me to the Brotherhood and Slade and then abandoning me when I called for help. Are you surprised I'm still alive bitch!?"
She was a capable combatant, raised in a warrior race and schooled in several styles of combat, including a few from here on earth, but her opponent had her completely outclassed. She would have taken flight and simply rained starbolts down on him, if he hadn't already flown up and gotten her once. And now he was calling her by her sister's name. He was ranting like a madman and she had some crystalline substance encasing her hands, neutralizing her starbolts. Then he ripped his mask off revealing the handsome face of her sister's friend Robin.
She had no problem recognising the face without his mask, when she had stayed with the Titans briefly she had sweet talked him into taking it off. It was definitely Robin, even though his face looked more mature and more drawn and angular, there was no mistaking those eyes. In all her travels she could honestly say that they were the bluest eyes she had ever seen, and now they shone on her with a lethal intensity that made her doubt she would want to know more about his recent past.
She channelled her emotions and she could feel the energy building in her eyes. Just a few more seconds and twin lances of power would cut this human down. She couldn't turn her head in time and that same goo splashed across her eyes and hardened.
"Is that any way to treat an old friend, Starfire?" he asked with venom in his voice, causing her to tremble slightly.
She was going to protest his use of her name but his hands wrapped around her throat. She tried struggling but he was too strong. As a last ditch effort she tried using her starbolts. She reasoned that she was Tamaranean, far more resilient than a human, she could probably survive the explosion. And right now, maybe surviving the explosion was a lot better than definitely not surviving strangulation. She poured energy into her hands and after a few seconds she could feel the crystalline substance beginning to hum and vibrate.
He had lost his cool briefly but had come back to his senses in time to hit Starfire with another shot of that goo so that she wouldn't shoot him with her eye beams. Now he was strangling her.
"You left me to die, Kori. Just thought I would return the favour." he whispered softly into her ear.
"B-but I'm not, not Kori-" her strained voice turned to silence as the consciousness left her.
Not Kori, yeah right. The nerve of her, trying to lie to me.
He punched her hard in the face, chipping off a few small pieces of the hardened goo and pushed her into the puddle, just before she disappeared beneath the surface he thought he saw her crimson red hair darken into a raven black. She bobbed to the surface and lying there before him was Blackfire, the hard rain was distorting any ripples that would denote whether or not she was breathing.
Beginning to feel tired now that the adrenaline rush had retreated, he turned his back and took in his surroundings. With the arrival of his men and the defeat of the three super-villains the enemy was in retreat, and it just so happened that his air born battle with whichever the hell shape-shifting Tamaranean lay behind him had put him between the enemy and where they were going. He picked his staff from where it lay embedded in the KGBeasts arm and prepared to take on the brunt of the enemy advance, but to his surprise they just ran right by him.
He could hear the sounds of gunfire slowly overtaking the enemies shouts as they ran headlong for their own base. His mind screamed at him and suddenly there was a blinding light followed by searing pain and then a huge force hit him and everything went dark.
Slade sat watching the battle through the use of his mask's visual enhancers and was thrown backwards by the force of the explosion that rocked the facility. He tumbled through the trees bouncing like a pin ball for several moments before coming to a stop face down in an elderberry bush. He tried to push his body into action but he knew the darkness would soon overtake him, his last thought was that he should have tested the crystallized substance against impact once it had reached saturation.
A/N2: All kinds of villains, a huge fight, Robin goes crazy, and things explode!? Weird huh?
As always I hope you guys like it, a big thanks to all my reviewers and readers, and a bigger thanks to TheDarkPrinceOfSaiyans for his monumental efforts as Beta, especially since he still has his own fic series in the works (check 'em out, they rock!)
Peace, health and happiness.
-Kobez-