Chapter 6
After a half hour of training, Predator headed into the lobby with his new friends. He listened for about 25 minutes to the story of how the Titans first met each other.
"So you guys still became friends and formed a team, even after all that mess?" Predator asked.
"Yes, and we have been the best of friends." Starfire answered.
"Sheesh, couldnt've been me." Predator commented. "I've always flew solo; how do you guys deal with each other when things are...y'know, bad?"
"We've always had our ups and downs but we always pull through in the end." Robin said.
"Hey, dude, I've noticed something, lately." Beast Boy spoke up as they all sat on the couch.
"I'm listenin'." Predator asked, raising an eyebrow.
"You seem very fond of turning into land animals, like wild cats and dogs. But what about birds?"
"What about 'em?"
"I mean you can turn into birds too, right?" Beast Boy asked.
"If you're thinkin' eagles, hawks and vultures, then yeah. Why d'ya ask?"
"Well, can't you fly?"
"Yeah...I just don't want to."
"Why? Is it because the wings make you itchy?" A pair of bird wings grew on Beast Boy's back and he scratched at them.
"I'm not really comfortable with the vibration in the air." Predator answered self-consciously. "It makes my head spin like crazy."
"I fly by thinking positive thoughts." Starfire said. "Perhaps if you tried this, you would no longer experience the vertigo?"
"That's not really the case, Star. I had a crazy experience last time I tried to fly; haven't flown ever since." Predator explained. "I move a lot faster on foot, anyway."
"A shape-shifter who hates flying?" Raven said. "That's interesting."
"To each their own, right?" Predator shrugged his shoulders.
"That reminds me..." Cyborg said, thinking backwards. "You never got the chance to tell us your backstory, man. Can you tell us now?"
"Yes, please tell us." Starfire agreed, pressing her hands together. "We would like to hear the story of how you became you."
Predator stared at them in silence for a bit. He sighed as he stared at the floor.
"I, uh...I dunno, you guys. I really don't like talkin' about it." He said. "I'm not a fan of bringin' up the past. I even try to force myself to forget about it...but it's like a boomerang; ya throw it away and it comes back at you pretty hard. It's a real bug on my shoulder."
They stared at him and the look on his face clearly indicated how troubled he seemed. The four other Titans redirected their attention to Raven and she nodded out of consent for his wishes since she already knew what Predator's past consisted of and the impact it's had on him.
"If it really bothers you..." Robin spoke up, calmly. "You don't have to tell us everything. Would you at least be willing to tell us how you got your powers?"
Predator stared at all of them, lost in thought. He normally didn't like to talk about his past but after all they'd done for him the past few days, he guessed it would only be fair to tell them a little bit about him. He looked down and sighed, then looked back up to them.
"Alright...I mean it's only fair, right? You guys took me in so, I guess I owe you that much." Predator said, looking down as he brought back the memory of how he obtained his powers. "So...I was just a normal kid with a normal life back then. I went to school, I went home - hardly played with any of my friends. But more importantly, I had my parents. My mom's name was Carrie. She was...she was the best mom in the world. 'Course any kid would say that about their mom, though. She was beautiful, energetic and youthful even though she worked as a waitress at some fancy restaurant - I don't remember the name of it. My dad's name was Logan; guy was a stud even though he never hit the gym. He was a Genetic Scientist for Wayne Enterprises."
"Wait, you mean your dad worked for the largest company in Gotham City?" Cyborg asked in shock. "That's a pretty big deal."
"Yeah. Heh, actually now that I think about it, it was kinda dynamic that they ended up together; they made it sound so easy when I asked. But uh, despite the long hours they worked and just about everything else, they always made sure I was their first priority. They cared for me more than I could imagine; you hear that alot but...you'd have to be there. I guess I had what you call 'the good life'. Then at some point, when I was ten, my mom caught some kinda disease."
7 years ago
A 10-year old, non-vigilant Predator - then known as Zachary - stared down at his sick mother, who peacefully rested in the hospital bed in front of them. Like Predator said, she was a beautiful woman with long, shoulder length red hair and hazel eyes. A homemade bracelet made out of candy rested on her wrist. A bracelet made from round candy in which her son had made for her at the age of 6 and kept as her little trinket ever since.
Predator's hair was a little bit shorter than it was now and his skin was regular brown. He wore a black, medium youth jacket with the design of a guitar - a green t-shirt underneath. The next were blue jeans, a blue wristband on his wrist and a pair of red and white Nike shoes.
Next to him was his father, Logan who was a pretty muscular individual. His hair was brown and short, his eyes were brown with a pair of glasses around them, and a dark-brown goatee. His hand was wrapped around his son's as he too stared at his wife, the look on his face filled with nothing but concern.
"The doctors didn't know much…" Predator monologued to his friends. "All they said was that it was a similar variant to lung cancer... and that it was fatal. I was a kid so I didn't know what that meant; now I do. My mom was dying. When we left the hospital, I looked at my dad and he had a look that I never saw in my entire life. He looked lost, broken - like the world was suddenly crumblin' before him. That's when I realized my mom was his world; both of ours."
"Dad..." The young Zachary called, the tone in his voice a little lighter. His father looked at him, shaking out of his own thoughts. "Is Mom going to be okay?"
Logan looked down at him with a look that seemed very undecipherable. It was melancholy, anger and frustration mixed into one. But then all of a sudden, all those emotions were mixed with courage and determination. A reassuring smile shined on his face as he knelt down and wrapped his son into a hug.
"I still remember when he looked me in the eye and told me she was going to be 'just fine'. But deep down, I knew he was lying but at the same time... I felt like he was tellin' the truth. Nothin' ever made sense to me on that day...nothin'. The day after, my dad started lookin' for a cure; a cure that would make my mom better and destroy whatever that virus was inside her."
Logan, now wearing his laboratory gear—a white lab coat, goggles and black pants—lifted a test tube filled with some sort of blue substance. On the table in front of him was a watch glass with a small, contaminated blood sample—which he had obtained from his wife—on it. He opened his drawer and grabbed a dropper pipet from inside. He slowly inserted the pipet into the test tube and filled it with the blue liquid.
Placing the substance back into the test tube rack, Logan carefully placed the pipet above the blood sample and squeezed a tiny drop of the blue substance into it. Logan picked up the glass and carefully placed it onto a magnifier. He looked into it and analyzed the contaminated blood cells now mixed with the blue substance. He watched as the blue particles approached the red blood cells, veiled in a white particle, indicated to be the virus. Once the blue particles connected with the blood cells, they were literally consumed by the virus and caused it to increase in size. This affect continued until every last blue particle completely vanished and the virus grew more and more after every one.
Logan glared at the blood sample and sighed in disappointment. The experiment was not only a complete failure, but instead made the virus worse.
"He failed so many times - day-after-day - but he kept goin'. My old man was stubborn like that. But every failure made him even more determined and devoted to makin' a cure. He wouldn't stop for anything, no matter how bad any of us wanted him to. He worked days, nights, overtime - he worked weekends and he didn't even have to work those days. All that effort and yet at the end, he failed to see the effect it was having on me. With my mom in the hospital and him working so much, I started to feel…I was alone. It ended up gettin' to the point where my aunt Christine had to babysit me every day."
He sat next to his aunt on the couch, his head rested on her lap as they both watched the TV across from them. His aunt was also a beautiful young woman with black hair, and gray eyes. She wore a light blue sweater, a silver necklace and a pair of blue jeans. A wedding ring rested on her ring finger. Her arm was wrapped around her nephew as she noticed his eyes starting to get heavy. She smiled and caressed her hand on his back as he slowly fell into a deep sleep.
"Being with my aunt wasn't bad at all; she made so much effort to keep me happy - to be there for me - but I was a selfish kid! I wanted to be with my parents! I wanted things to go back to the way they were, but the more time spent away from them, the more I started to feel detached from everything. It felt like we weren't much of a family anymore. I was a wreck…"
The small boy lied down in his bed as the rain patted against his window. His room was a small red-wall painted room with animated posters on one part of it. There was also a toy box, a little desk and a TV. The room however had a small number of toys sprawled on the floor as well as a few papers; all drawn on by crayons. The red blankets covered him up to his neck as a waterfall of tears fell from his eyes. He rolled over, his body now facing the wall while Christine sympathetically stood at the doorway watching her sad little nephew as she heard him sniffling quietly.
"For four freakin' months, my dad only focused on the cure; he was obsessed. But then the craziest thing happened: he got what he wanted…he made the cure."
Following the same strategy from before, Logan looked into the magnifier and was shocked to see the dark brown particles instantly consume the virus in just a few seconds. The virus had been eradicated, completely. Pretty soon the brown substance itself evaporated, revealing nothing but a healthy blood sample. A victorious smile spread on his cheeks.
"Turns out he used the DNA from every carnivore known to man, even the extinct ones. I dunno how he got those samples but he got 'em. There was somethin' about their DNA mixed together made the experiment hostile and ravenous towards the virus. Since the virus was like cancer, my dad and some others ran some tests on other people diagnosed with it. And then, well...I guess you can say it worked."
Present Day
"Whoa, wait a minute." Cyborg interrupted. "I remember reading something about this." Cyborg pressed a few buttons on his arm and a holographic news article appeared on the screen at the front of the room. It was a rather old news article which dated back to the year 2009. On the side was a picture of Predator's father. The heading on the paper read:
"Scientist for Wayne Enterprises Develops Cure for Cancer"
"Your dad was Logan Paxton?" Cyborg asked as he scrolled down reading more of the article. "Then that means you're..."
"Yeah..." Predator mumbled, glumly looking at the picture.
"So your dad was pretty much a legend." Beast Boy said. "Did he get a Nobel or something?"
"Don't think so." Cyborg replied, scrolling over to the page from a few days later. This time there was a picture of a burned-up laboratory, similar to Logan's and the heading read:
"Lab Explosion at Wayne Enterprises; Higher-Ups Forced to Condemn Cure"
"It says here there was a huge explosion in his lab a few days before the cure went public. They thought Logan was driven mad by his wife's condition and tried to release a dangerous drug. After the incident, they erased all of his data and research from the archives to prevent it from being replicated."
"How were you able to get your powers if they destroyed the cure?" Robin asked. "As a matter-of-fact, how can a canister of animal DNA turn out combustible in the first place?"
"Because it WASN'T!" Predator slammed his fist into the table. The Titans looked at him in shock. "There was nothing wrong with that cure. It was safe since the day my dad made it. Not a drop of it was combustible, it was sabotaged!"
"But how do you know that?" Cyborg asked.
"I was there that day; I know exactly what happened…" Predator took a breath, thoroughly calming himself. "When word about the cure got leaked before it was announced, everyone went crazy. People were ready for it, ready for change, to save their loved ones...for a difference. Everyone except for me...I was still depressed. When things calmed down, my dad finally started to realize how abandoned I felt."
7 years ago
Logan entered his home and was greeted by his son and Christine watching TV in the living room. His sister got up from the couch and approached him, shooting him a serious glare. She nudged her head towards Zachary.
Logan walked over to his son and knelt down in front of him. The child simply gave him a blank stare as his father gave an apologetic expression and wrapped his arms around him. His son however, did not hug him back.
"He said he was sorry with how caught up he was and how he 'never wanted to hurt me.' He said he wanted to make things right, so he told me to come by his job after school. I pretty much already despised him, so to me, it wasn't the best way to fix things, but…I humored him just for the sake of it. So the next day after school, I took the bus to his job and there he was, waiting for me at the bus stop."
Zachary stepped out of the bus, but the look on his face showed nothing but depression. Logan greeted his son with a forced-cheerful smile. He held his hand out and the boy slowly reached up and grabbed hold of it. Logan led him into the tall skyscraper and Zachary was immediately in awe from all the high tech machinery around him. Shortly after they arrived at Logan's laboratory, where Zachary quickly noticed a container filled with some sort of brown substance. But before he could go near it, his dad lead him into an Observer Room located next door to the lab. Logan opened the door, revealing a small box of toys inside. The small child stared at the box for a moment but the look on his face clearly indicated he wasn't satisfied.
"Y'know, I might've been just a kid, but even I knew it would take more than a bunch of action figures to fix anything. I spent four months of my life, practically depressed outta my mind, hardly eating and sleeping every day because my old man only cared about that stupid cure. My mom couldn't do a thing because she was literally dyin'. My aunt almost got fired from her job because of how often she clocked out early, just to come take care of me. I never wanted to forgive him...I almost wanted nothin' to do with him anymore...but then again, there's always that one part of ya that wants to put in the effort; to see if there really was a light at the end of the tunnel...so I played along."
Zachary looked up at his father with a small smile and made his way towards the toys. There was so much stuff in the box that it was hard for him to pick out what to play with first. Logan started to follow until a voice had called for him via intercom.
"Dr. Paxton, you're needed at Lab 43." The female voice had called. The two looked up at the intercom, then at each other. Zachary blankly stared at him some more but that didn't stop his father from giving him a reassured look and hugging him once more.
"I'll be right back." Logan said before standing up and heading out of the Observer Room, then through the exit, leaving Zachary alone.
Zachary scowled in anger and disappointment and went back to playing with his toys. The sound of the door sliding back open made him turn around. He hoped that his father had changed his mind and came back to be with him…but it wasn't him.
Entering the lab was a rather muscular figure, wearing a lab coat similar to the other employees. Facial features consisted of long black and gray hair, a trimmed, black goatee and one blue eye. In his hand was a small test tube filled with some sort of black liquid. Zachary felt his heart skip a beat as the man briefly glanced at him, before turning his attention to something else in the room. He walked past Zachary and towards a glass vile resting in a stand on a table. The child watched as the man opened the vile and poured the black liquid into it, causing it to fizz a little in the process. The black liquid changed to match the color of the original fluid. Without a single word, the man calmly exited the laboratory, turning back and giving a small wave and smirk to the boy. Tranquility slowly took its place in Zachary's body as he started to play with his action figures.
A few minutes went by until Logan returned and waved at him. Unfortunately for Zachary, he walked past him and headed towards the cure. Zachary narrowed his eyebrows and continued with what he was doing. Logan lifted the container and placed it on the Bunsen burner.
"They needed one more test before the cure could be released...but when my dad started the burner..."
The cure suddenly started to fizz uncontrollably and steam started to shoot out of it. Logan stared at it in stunned shock when…
"My whole life was gone just like that..."
"KABOOOOOM!" The mixture churned and exploded violently, shaking the entire room. The explosion was wide enough to spread through the entire laboratory, all the way towards the Observer Room.
The child looked up as the glass shattered right in front of him and the fire started to spread into the room. The child was blown back onto the floor as a piece of the glass slashed across his right eye, leaving a vicious scar. The impact instantly caused a few bruises and scratches against his skin, a number of them where blood was drawn. He was slammed hard against the wall and was knocked unconscious in an instant.
Shortly later, the paramedics and the fire department arrived and put out the fire. They quickly located the unconscious boy and transported him via ambulance to the hospital. But what they were very unaware of was some sort of drastic change taking place in his blood.
Present Day
"My dad was killed in the explosion and I was in a coma for six months." Predator continued. "The radiation found its way inside me through my wounds. My blood was mixed with the carnivore DNA and it changed me into somethin'...different. I was a new breed of half-human, half-animal. My skin never got normal when I was comatose; guess my injuries prior to the explosion were permanent...it's true what they say: scars never heal." Predator rubbed against the scar on his eye. "People who got the cure before the disaster only had a couple side effects like aggression or extreme hunger. Me...I got the whole package."
"And your mother…?" Starfire asked.
"She never got the cure...and she died two weeks after the explosion." Predator answered unsteadily.
The Titans stared at him sympathetically as his look became more stern. He shot up from the couch and took a few steps forward. He swiftly turned to them and said:
"My father wasn't a failure—he was a genius." He growled in anger. "He created somethin' that would've saved countless lives...and I hated him for it. His success got him killed by some random freak and I just sat there and watched! I didn't do not ONE THING to stop it!"
"There was nothing you could've done, Predator." Robin said. "You were just a little boy."
"But I was still smart enough to know somethin' was wrong! I could've told that guy to stop, that I was gonna call the cops - SOMETHING!" His lip started to quiver as tears started to form in his mask. His fists were clenched tight. "But I didn't do anything...nothing. And now my dad's dead...my mom's dead. The life I had - the best years of my life - just gone...and now look at me. That guy took everything from me and now I'm...I'm different; I'm dangerous. I'd probably be a monster if I didn't learn to cope with my powers."
Predator sniffled as he wiped his tears away, the look on his face completely distressed.
"But dude, that's exactly what makes you different from an animal." Beast Boy said. "I mean, look at me: I can turn into literally any animal, but that doesn't make me any less human." He lifted his leg up and scratched the back of his head.
"Right…" Predator said, dejectedly.
"What he means is that you're still a person, no matter how much of an animal you might act like." Raven said.
"And an animal wouldn't have tried so hard to keep his powers in check." Robin said, standing up and approaching him. "It shows a lot of integrity that you worked to become a hero. I think if your parents could see you now, they'd tell you exactly how proud they are."
"I beg to differ." Predator mumbled. "If they saw me, they wouldn't even know who I am anymore. I try to do some good, but mainly because it keeps me from feelin' like a monster."
"But dude...you're missing the best part of - well, everything that's happened lately." Beast Boy added.
"What're you talkin' about, kid?" Predator asked, meekly.
"You met some pretty cool new friends and became a Teen Titan along the way. Look at the progress you've made so far: you survived a fall off a building, you broke a record in the gym and you took down an eight-hundred pound monster in less than a few days."
"And if that's not the nature of a true hero, then I don't know what is." Cyborg said. Predator stared at them all. Although their words were hitting where they needed, he still found it hard to smile as the self-doubt was a heavy weight on his shoulders. "We may not know what you've done back then, but I'm pretty sure you'll be able to make a change for yourself and forget all about it. All it takes is some time, man. You just gotta be patient."
"Be patient, huh?" Predator looked down in thought and sighed. "Okay...you guys're right and I really appreciate it. Meeting you guys has made things a little easier. If all this means feelin' better in the end, that's really all I care about."
"We are your friends, Predator." Starfire smiled. "We will always be here to help you."
"No matter what you've done or how bad things may seem." Raven finished.
"Thanks." Predator thanked with a small smile, receiving smiles and nods from all of them. "Whew, emotional trauma: it's a real pain. I need somethin' to—what the heck is that!?"
Predator pointed with wide eyes at a small, slimy creature on the floor slithering its way towards Starfire.
"Silkie. Have you come to meet our new friend?" Starfire said, picking it up and cradling it in her arms. Predator trembled, disgusted by the fact that she would even touch the thing.
"Uhh, what?"
"Predator, please say hello to Silkie. He has been a part of our family for some time now." Starfire said, rubbing her head against him.
"So, let me get this straight: you guys carry a giant maggot for a pet?" He asked in disbelief.
"It's a kind of a long story actually." Robin answered. "You see he was once a giant, mutated moth controlled by Killer Moth a while back. Eventually we defeated him and he and the other moths morphed back into larvae."
"We weren't planning on keeping him as a pet but then Beast Boy deliberately snuck him into the tower and now he more or less belongs to Starfire now."
Predator raised an eyebrow at Beast Boy, who grinned nervously with a drop of sweat falling from his forehead.
"You do know, I'm still mad that he almost ate my leg, right?" Cyborg snapped, glaring at Beast Boy.
"Hey I'm not the one who fed him alien berries." He argued, innocently.
"You know what, I really don't wanna know." Predator sighed as he and Robin sat back on the couch. "I'm just gonna have to get used to 'im."
"Do not worry, Predator." Starfire smiled. "I guarantee you two will be the best of friends. Do you not notice how adorable he is?" She pointed Silkie real close to his face causing him to lean back in disgust, his right eyes squinted a bit.
Silkie screeched loudly at him as a wave of slimy mucus dripped down from his body and landed on Predator's boot.
"Yeah...cute." Predator groaned, fighting the urge to gag. The others couldn't help but giggle at him.
To Be Continued...