Hey all! Hope ya'll enjoy this next chapter. Thanks for the favorites, I hope not to disappoint :) Thank you Jason and Cleo for your reviews! I have said that if I can get one person to like my stories, than I have accomplished my objective, and it seems I have not only just 2 good reviews, but some favorites and follows as well. Thank you all, this is for you. With that said, on with the show!
The trip back to the tower was uneventful, save for Cyborg trying to explain basic geography to the shape-shifter.
The first thing they had to do was prepare for winter weather. The Urals were a hostile place in the winter, and that meant extra measures were needed. Cyborg had taken and upgraded some of their uniforms with temperature control units after their fight with the Brotherhood of evil, so as to keep them warm, but they had to have some fail-safes in case they stopped working.
As they got their gear together, Cyborg sent a transmission calling for the Titans Defense Action(TDA). This was a system designed that, in the event of a team leaving their post, one Titan from each of three titans outposts would take residence and keep the fort down until they returned. This gave them an enormous amount of flexibility, and allowed all outposts to remain well defended. Due to a need for unit cohesion, this meant that Titans teams would often cross-train with other Titans from various out posts at least twice a year, as to be sure that they could work smoothly in the event they were called on.
The cybernetic decided on Speedy, Argent, and Hotspot. While there were many good candidates to choose from, these three in particular showed a remarkable team cohesiveness. Once the call was made, they'd be at the tower within a twelve to sixteen hour timeframe.
As for the matter at hand, Cy' still had to prep the T-ship, a process that could take another few hours. Seeing that they had packed their equipment and clothing, Ravager and Beast Boy took some down time, knowing it could be the last they would get for a while.
Ravager went off to the combat simulator, knowing a good brawl would help her get in her zone. The combat simulator was the only time she was allowed to use her twin katanas' unhindered, as when she fought real people she had to keep them sheathed.
Not that it wasn't understandable, really. She couldn't exactly go around chopping people to bits; it's not exactly a heroic gesture, now is it? However, it was no less frustrating that the weapons she had been trained to use were too dangerous to use on people. Were it not for Cyborg creating specialized bokken's, made from a mold injected synthetic material that was nearly indestructible, she would have found it unbearable.
She stepped into the simulator, and when the door had closed behind her, the scenario began. Androids began to appear, carrying an assortment of weapons ranging from swords and pistols loaded with stun rounds, to stun rifles that would act in place of assault rifles, and rocket launchers. The scenario environment was a simulated rocky, snow covered out crop, closely resembling her next mission area. It provided a lot of cover, for both her and the bots.
And in the face of it all, Rose just kept on wolfs' grin. "Game time." In one fluid motion, she unsheathed her swords at her sides and, crossing her swords in a X, removed the droids head from his shoulders.
Still grinning, she looked to the other droids coming across the rocky outcrop." Who's next?"
_
Beast Boy, for his part, chose relaxing before a mission as opposed to getting into his "zone". That was usually reserved for the fight itself, not prepping for it. He took training seriously enough, but never more seriously than he had to. He had always been that way.
He grinned to himself, Okay, maybe not always, he thought to himself. True, he had been raised by the doom patrol, a very strict group of heroes who pushed him to his limits whenever they could.
But the Titans were different. Robin had always set the bar high, but even still he was much more relaxed than Mento had been, and thus the changeling would goof off more often; sometimes at very inopportune moments.
Over time, he had developed a sense of what needed to be done and what could be done acceptably, if only to himself. The truth was, if he had taken everything as seriously as Robin wanted him to, than he would have gone insane. His jokes and his antics were a way of keeping his head clear.
Raven was the first to notice that.
His smile disappeared.
What happened? What had caused all this? Why it he was still here and one of his best friends was not? What could he have done to change the course of fate?
At that moment, he began to wonder if he had been wrong. Maybe he had not taken the situation seriously enough, and that played into how things unraveled. Maybe he could have saved her had he just quit goofing off and actually dropped his façade. But that was the cruel twist, wasn't it? That the clown he painted on just would not go, and he never would.
Maybe that was why Raven was dead.
Before he knew it, he found himself in her room. He had not been in here since the day it happened, when a light of his life had been snuffed out.
As if to add insult to injury, he still knew nothing of who the killer was. He hadn't the slightest clue where he went off to, or even where he was during the event. All he knew was emptiness.
Like this room, now. A room could be filled with stuff, but without a person to give it life, it was just a room.
Her collection of books, on a shelf to his left, was extensive to say the least. Everything from historical narratives to suspense/mystery novels to spell books was here in this room.
The mystical artifacts, ranging from masks to ornate hanging lamps, were still in their place. Everything in the room seemed to leer at the green intruder, having dared stepped into this domain.
He took a careful look around, as each part of the room revealed a memory to him. He finally made it to the bed, where he sat down and looked out the window.
Jump city in the wintertime could get surprisingly cold, despite the coastal region and usually sunny weather. Now, it was just slightly above freezing, maybe forty degrees outside.
" You would have loved it today," He stated in a squeak, his cracking voice and watery eyes belied the small smile he wore.
It does seem… nice outside, That familiar voice said in reply. Over time, where he and Raven spent so much time together, they would subconsciously say something to the other while they weren't even there and would actually hear the reply in their head; very close to, if not exactly, what they would have replied had it been said in person. This actually led to occasions where the two would argue with each other over words that were never even said.
It was all he had left of her, now.
" I guess you know about the whole Russian dude calling," His smile started to fade a little, the sadness sweeping back through." I'm on a case again, but I don't know how to start."
You're not even over there yet, of course you don't know where to start, that voice replied, and he could imagine the small half smile that would have been on her face as she said it.
" You know what I mean," He croaked, a slight hiccup escaping his lips." Robin was always the detective, and when he was gone you were the one who helped spot everything. You were the one who made the pieces fit."
And then the voice stopped, and that was when B' finally lost his composure. He buried his face in his hands, and sobbed. That voice was not Raven, he knew that. There would never be another Raven, not his Raven. All he had left was a memory; nothing more than that, he realized.
He lifted his head and turned to her dresser, and then gave a puzzled expression. Something on the dresser caught his eye. With a sniffle, he rose and walked towards the dresser and saw what it was that had caught his eye.
Ravens mirror, the one that had sucked him and Cyborg into her mind all those years ago. That was when they really became friends.
The mirror was actually something Raven used for meditation, a place she could go to for peace. Now, it was just a mirror. A very ornate mirror, but a mirror none the less. Still…
" So what do you do now?" He asked, holding it delicately in his hands. Naturally, it did nothing, just showed his reflection, surrounding parts of the room, a weird light on his fore head and-
Wait, weird light on his forehead? He took a closer look and realized that the light was not on his fore head: It was in the mirror.
Before he could react, a white beam of energy shot out like a lightning bolt, arching directly on to his forehead.
An aching chill washed over his whole body, starting at his head and working it's way throughout the rest of his body. He head felt as if it were going to completely freeze over, and incase the rest of his body in ice. He opened his mouth to scream, but all that escaped was a croak.
He couldn't do anything, he realized. All he could do was stand there in agonizing pain, hoping the tower alert system would trigger.
Then as suddenly as it had begun, it stopped.
Dazed and confused, Beast Boy tried to take a step forward when he heard the towers alarm go off." Be right there." He said in a slur, trying to take a step forward. The only thing he succeeded at in that process was falling forward and hitting face first against the floor, completely unconscious.
_
Ravager looked around to survey her work. All around, robotic limbs and bodies littered the ground, some twitching and emitting bursts of electricity. She rested on her katana much like a cane; well, a cane that buried itself in a droids severed head, anyway.
Sometimes, it just felt good to cut loose and have a go at non-sentient forms and cut them to ribbons.
She was pondering whether she had beat her previous record, fifty droids in one hundred and twelve seconds, when Cyborg opened up the door and walked in.
"Okay, the ship is about prepa-" He stopped mid-sentence, looking around at the carnage that Rose had caused." Whoa, someone had a bad day." He said, lifting up one of the robotic limbs. It had been cut cleanly, which unnerved the robotic man. He knew she maintained her blades, and always honed them to a razors edge, but cutting through steel this cleanly always gave him chills.
She nodded at him." Yep, decided to have another go at beating my record." With a sharp yank, she tore the sword free from the severed droids head and sheathed it.
Cyborg laughed lightly." Any luck with that?" He asked.
Rose shrugged." I had a little trouble with the boss bot, but I think I may have shaved a hair or two off my record." She paused." Why do we even have a boss bot? That kind of thing only makes sense in a video game."
Cyborg laughed lightly." Or with our luck, a fan fiction."
Rose snorted, rolling her eyes and placing her hands on her hips." Nerds, they're everywhere."
As it had turned out, she had completed the course in one hundred and four seconds flat; a total of eight seconds off of her previous record.
What Cyborg was about to say upon entering, was that the ship was nearly prepared, but they had to run some diagnostics on their equipment. Over time, the Titans uniforms had been modified and upgraded to better protect themselves against various dangers faced.
Cyborg, for example, had upgraded himself with an EMP resistant hardware and software, along with a few new upgrades to the sonic cannon to better focus more power with less energy usage.
Beast Boy had upgraded his own suit to better protect himself against gun fire and blunt force trauma. Cyborg had taken his old doom patrol uniforms and remade them all with a nano-composite material. It had greater flexibility than his old material, despite being slightly bulkier. The material would remain so unless it face sudden trauma, then it would harden at the point of impact, and an inner gel-layer would further cushion whatever blow might have struck.
This gave considerable protection against almost any attack, from punches and knives, all the way up to stopping most pistol caliber bullets
Rose had similar material, although it was slightly more heavy duty, considering she stayed in her form whilst Beast Boy changed from one creature into another as the fight demanded. What made hers' different was that there were hardened nano-composite plates at her knees, shins, chest, shoulders and forearms. The plates were an olive-drab color, and she had armored gauntlets around her hands.
One little added feature of this armor was that, because it ran off of EGMs' in an individuals body, it could read what her body was about to do and add extra power to whatever she was doing. For example, for every pound of force she put into something, the suit would put in three pounds. That meant she was effectively three times stronger, faster, and deadlier with the suit.
Quite a scary thing, especially if you knew just how fast, strong, and deadly she was without that armor.
The only downside to all this tech they had was the power source. Because it ran off of the electrical pulses the human body emitted, he had to regularly maintain it and make sure it was all in prime working order, other wise it could turn into horrific hindrance as well. They could all of a sudden stiffen up, the nano bots hardening for no apparent reason; or it could completely go slack, giving little more protection than a t-shirt would.
" Soon as we get those done, we should be on our way." He stated, logging onto his diagnostic computer built into his arm.
" Alright, where's the jolly green midget, then?" She asked, looking around as she did.
Cyborg shrugged." Dunno, maybe he's in his ro-" He was cut off by an alarm that went off for the tower. He quickly exited his diagnostics screen and accessed the titans security mainframe, while Rose unsheathed both her swords.
" Looks like we got a problem in the tower," The cybernetic said, simultaneously walking toward the door out into the hallway." We have a massive energy spike in…"
" Where?" Rose asked, quickly following behind him, her swords at the ready. Cyborg said nothing, quickly getting off his arm computer and started running, Rose picking up the pace to keep up. She had no idea where it was that Cyborg had seen the energy spike, just that it seemed to have spooked him. As they went along the corridors, she knew of only a few rooms that they could be heading to; the main back-up generator housing, which she now saw they were passing. That left only one room…
As they approached it, Cyborg quickly punched in an over-ride code to open the door. In the case of an emergency, all doors would lock down and seal themselves in, and would require an over-ride code to re open. All the titans had memorized these codes, even Beast Boy, and thus could access all the doors like usual, giving them an advantage and a chance that a intruder would be stuck and isolated in a single room.
However, when the door opened, they didn't see an intruder; they saw an unconscious green changeling, laying face down in the floor.
" B'!" The cybernetic called, running and sliding to the floor beside his friend, while Rose stood guard. He ran a quick diagnostic over him, checking vitals and organs for damage. Elevated blood pressure and heart rate, but other than that he seemed to be un hurt.
Quickly, he picked him up and carried him fireman style out of the room, making his way to the medical bay.
" What happened in there?" Rose asked, still on alert.
Cyborg didn't answer, as he was still trying to figure that out himself. There was not an intruder, and Beast Boy did not have a concussion, so that ruled out a knockout blow. There weren't any signs of electrical problems, so it wasn't electrocution.
As far as it seemed, Beast Boy had been painfully put into sleep.