Chapter 14
Footsteps hit the ground.
The parents yelled for her to return.
Saya was running.
She didn't really know why at first, she just knew she had to leave.
The adults had managed to trap Chariot in one of the Titans' room for a whooping ten seconds before she'd managed to break out of the crystalized aluminum windows via giant spider-doll-carriage thing, trashing the gothic décor in the process.
Boy was Raven gonna be pissed.
It was shortly after the wheeled wonder had broken out that Saya had felt the compulsion to hotwire one of Robin's spare R-Cycles and ride into the city.
It was around the time that she launched out of the island via the bike's jump jets (no matter what anyone said, Saya did NOT shriek like a little girl) that she realized why she had to leave.
The girls needed her.
When she opened her eyes again, Strength was fairly surprised by two things.
For starters, she was still there. An oddity by itself.
To add to her confusion, a massive pillar of rock had smashed its way through the asphalt and knocked Mato back several blocks, effectively saving her from getting a long piece of metal in her chest.
A third, previously unnoticed source of confusion came from the girl she'd spent the day saving.
She'd known of "Tara's" real name thanks to the corpse of her otherself. She'd also learned from Beast Machine that its host had a serious crush on Terra. What she hadn't been able to gleam off Stone Hammer's corpse was that Terra was also a Teen Titan at some point.
This meant that the glowing eyes and the boulder cyclone of death were completely unexpected, although she also suspected that they were unintentional if the screaming was any indication.
"What's going on!?" yelled a familiar voice, "TERRA!?"
"Hey, Beast Boy right?"
"Uh, yeah," he replied, "Strength? What's going on? How'd Terra get her powers back?"
"She had powers?"
"Yeah, it's a long story but she used to be a Titan," he replied, "now she can't even remember her old name."
"Stone Hammer is still dead," noted Strength, "so this and that are not related."
"Stone Hammer?"
"Her otherself."
"She has an otherself too?"
"Everyone does," she replied, "So what do we do about her?"
"Well, it looks like it's a small attack this time, so we can probably just wait it out."
A massive wave shook the earth beneath them and cracked the pavement. Buildings rumbled ominously as their windows shattered.
"Is it still a small attack!?"
"Nope!"
Beast Boy ran to his amnesiac friend and turned into a hummingbird, dodging pebbles and boulders to reach her. Muttering a quick apology, he shifted to the form of a massive anaconda and clamped down on her shoulder, wrapping as many coils around her chest as possible since a full body wrap would have killed her. Stones of various sizes pelted his scales as the small girl instinctively struggled against the suffocating grip. Just when Beast Boy thought he couldn't take another hit to the head, Terra slowly went limp as she lost consciousness.
As he turned back to his human form, Beast Boy uttered a quick prayer to every deity known to man (and a few that dolphins had told him of) that he hadn't squeezed hard enough to give her an aneurism like he'd done to that one thief.
"Um, is it safe?" asked Strength.
"Yeah, I had to knock her out. I think I broke her rib though," he said before he began spitting Tara's blood out of his mouth, "ugh, I'm a vegetarian for crying out loud!"
"So that's the famous Terra," noted the smaller girl as Beast Boy propped her head up, "I figured she'd be taller."
"You know her?"
"I'm sorta like Saya-chan," she explained, "she knows the names of the other by looking at the one, and I can find out things about the one by looking at the other."
"Huh, weird," said Beast Boy, "where'd everyone else go by the way?"
"No idea," she replied, "I'm pretty sure they're fine."
Mammoth was most certainly NOT fine.
The heist had been a bust and that a-wipe (the academy did not tolerate cursing and the habit had stuck) Billy Numerous had run off with the cash. Most of the hive had either run off or had been captured, leaving him alone to deal with a certain boy teen pest.
"Had enough?" taunted the masked runt, staff held behind him in a half crouch.
"That all you got?" retorted the seven-foot-tall villain, spitting out a molar.
"You really need to learn when to quit," replied Robin as he launched another hit to the gut of his taller opponent.
"Mammoth was just about tell you the same thing!"
Mammoth blocked the staff and made to grasp it, only to be thwarted by Robin's superior reflexes and speed. He received a sharp jab to the forehead from the other end as a reward and two hits to both legs that brought him to his knees.
At this point he needed a miracle to win, not to mention a doctor to take care of his ribs.
What he got was decidedly not a miracle.
It was unfortunate that he didn't realize that at first.
Just as Robin was breaking out the cuffs, a massive earthquake forced his to stumble and he was seemingly tackled by a blue and black blur that came from his left. After rolling back into a battle stance, he couldn't help but notice how familiar his assailant looked.
"Rock?"
"Who?" asked Mammoth as he stood back up, "You twerps got a new pet? And what's this blue stuff?"
Robin took one look at the pool of blue fluid that was rapidly growing under the unconscious girl and immediately reached for his first aid kit.
"She's bleeding out!"
"That's blood!?" yelped the giant upon noticing the blue stains on his clothes, "Getitoffgetitoffgetitoffgetitoff!"
Robin's eye twitched as he turned her over, he did NOT have time for this.
Mammoth gagged at the sight of the long gash across the girl's abdomen that poured the blue fluid across the ground as a sharp rock fell out.
Robin, for his part, was nonplused and set on applying QuickClot into Mato's wounds. Mammoth saw it fit to approach as Robin wrapped the girl's barely-covered abdomen in bandages. An action he found to be a mistake once the wounded girl coughed blue blood into his face.
A loud thump startled the makeshift medic, who looked back to see his former opponent passed out on the ground with blue blood dripping off his face.
"Okay, I did not see that coming," he admitted. Who'd have thought Mammoth was squeamish?
A low moan from his patient caught his attention.
"Easy there," he said soothingly, "you took a nasty hit. I'll call an-."
The blade nicked his mask.
He'd have lost his right eye had he not seen the motion coming at the last second.
"WHOA! Are you crazy!?"
"…pain," she moaned as she slowly rose to her feet, Black Blade in hand.
"What?" he replied bemusedly as he fused two birdarangs into a sword as a precaution.
"The pain… will end… soon."
She lunged.
"I thought you guys healed quickly," said Cyborg as he wrapped Yuu's leg. The short girl had managed to dislocate her knee when Beast Machine dropped her and the recent earthquake had aggravated the injury.
"Well with Strength out and about, I really don't have a way to heal," noted Yuu, "how long till I can walk again doc?"
"Well, it's just a dislocation," he noted, "give it a week or two and you'll be fine. Faster if Strength merges with you soon."
"Gotcha."
"Shouldn't you be feeling that more though?"
"I'm pretty used to it," she replied as she pointed at the plaster on her left arm, "I got used to healing quickly on the Otherworld so I got a bit reckless. Not to mention that this body's pretty clumsy."
"Well, that body's also pretty delicate," he noted as he picked the smaller girl up in a bridal carry, "I suggest you get back in the habit of watching where you're going."
"Hey, this only happened 'cuz Beast Machine dropped me," she pointed out.
"Yeah, well- wazzat?"
He looked around as a familiar sound approached, announcing the arrival of a familiar motorcycle.
"Robin?"
"Robin?"
"That's the R-Cycle," noted Cyborg as he noticed it coming, "Yo Robin!"
The rider hit the brakes once she was close enough, surprising Cyborg with her identity.
"Gold Saw?" he gaped before noticing the number two on the handlebars, "Robin's gonna kill you!"
"I only scratched it once!"
"Then he'll kill you twice!"
"Hey Saya!" Called out Yuu.
"Hey Yuu, am I interrupting?"
"Jealous?" asked the smaller girl with a teasing tone, making sure to cling closer to Cyborg at the same time.
"Ha! You wish!" chortled the teacher, earning a pout from Yuu.
"Can you lovebirds get a room?" groaned Cyborg.
"Lovebirds!?" they cried.
"We aren't really-!" started Yuu.
"That's right! She's my student-!"
"And she's like a century older than me!"
"I can't be dating some half-pint toddler so- Century!?"
"Half-pint!?"
"Guys, I have a pheromone detector installed," he noted, "so either it's mating season, or you're into each other."
"Did you have to put it like that!?" they yelled red-faced.
"Sorry, the pheromone detector crosses wires with the part of my brain that handles inhibition."
"…isn't that… bad?" asked Saya, stupefied.
"Meh, you get uuuuUUUuu-uuuuu-uuuse-e-e-e-d to it," he replied.
The two blinked twice before Yuu wisely opted to crawl out of Cyborgs grip and into Saya's arms lest something else glitch.
"How'd you hurt your leg?"
"I fell."
A beeping sound caught their ears and Cyborg pressed his finger to his head.
"Yo. Cyborg here."
"Cyborg! Raven and I have captured the Kyd Wykyd and the Gizmo!"
"Starfire?" said Cyborg as he turned, having noticed that her voice was coming from two sources, "Where's Raven?"
"She is teleporting them to the police," she replied as she landed, "but I cannot find Robin and Beast Boy."
"Star?"
"Yes friend Cyborg?"
He pointed at the communicator in her hand. She looked at it and sheepishly put it away.
"I don't know where Robin is," cut in Saya, her hand over her right eye, "but Strength and Beast Boy managed to fend off Beast Machine and Kuroi-kun with the help of some skinny blonde."
"How-?"
"You can see the otherselves," Raven said, cutting Starfire off as she approached, "Why?"
Saya allowed herself a pained smirk as she put her hand back down.
"Because I'm life."
Raven raised her eyebrow at the cryptic response but decided not to push.
That could wait until they were back at the tower.
"Can you find Black Rock Shooter?" asked Yuu.
"No. I might be able to see her if one of the others is nearby, but I won't be able to track her down alone until her change is complete."
"In that case we'll do this the old fashioned way," said Cyborg from his new spot at a stoplight terminal, "all of the city's security and transit systems are synced up to the same network. By logging in at one of these, I should be able to find them through the security cameras."
Although Robin was not happy to admit it under the current circumstances, Mato certainly knew her way around a sword.
The two had been crossing blades for several minutes already, and despite the fact that Mato was beginning to give, it had been a hard-earned victory.
By then he sported a shallow cut across his chest and was bleeding freely form a jab on his left calf right under the knee. Mato had it worse, however, as she'd added several nicks across her arms, stomach, and thighs, plus a large wound across her forehead to her earlier injuries.
While he was at it, Robin had to admit that he was impressed at her ability to keep fighting with a broken arm.
The two pushed off each other, leaving Robin with a slice on his forearm and his opponent with a deep cut on her cheek that threatened to expose the bone underneath.
At the time he was trying to approach Beast Boy whilst simultaneously fighting the blue-eyed swordswoman.
"Beast Boy! Strength! Little help!?"
The two looked up sharply and Strength moved to help, only to collapse as her left arm fell apart.
"Stay with her," said Beast Boy before he turned into a deinonychus (not to be confused with velociraptor) and ran the ten blocks at full sprint.
Mato earned another slice to the arm by pushing Robin off herself, and turned the blade towards the dinosaur to run him through. Having gathered too much momentum to stop, Beast Boy opted to leap and turn into a Galapagos tortoise, effectively blocking the sword with his shell and tackling Mato in a single motion. He rapidly turned back into a python and coiled around her to immobilize her.
"Good job Beast Boy," groaned Robin once he was finally allowed to lower his weapons.
"How does she taste!?" called Strength.
Beast Boy really wanted to tell her off, but his mouth was full.
Beast Machine was having a bad day. Apart from the crappy beginning of its day, it had to suffer the pain of having HER ripped away from it when it had been so close to finding her. It had sought her out for so long, that having her dangled in front of it and snatched away at the last second was nothing short of torture.
Therefore, seeing her practically by chance after following the sound of battle was like the first drink of water after a week in a desert.
It couldn't begin to comprehend why it had to have her, or even how it had to have her. Regardless, she must belong to it.
"Terra," it growled, alerting Strength to its presence.
Just as it was about to come down upon them from its position on the roof, the sound of multiple legs hitting the ground announced the presence of a new opponent coming in from the left
It turned to the right and saw Death bound by the serpentine form of its host. He turned towards the sound and saw an all too familiar face as a massive mechanical spider rounded the corner.
Pulled by her transportation of choice, Chariot had decided that this was the time to join the battle.
Author's Note: Welp, that took longer than was necessary. I'm not quite sure I got Mammoth's character right, but I'm fairly confident it's close. Terra's early knock out became a necessity when I realized that I had strayed too far from the primary battle. There's more action coming up, so I'm hoping you'll stick around.