Chapter 17
Saya was having a hard time believing she'd survived, never mind that she was still conscious. Frankly she was having a hard thinking to begin with, thanks to her newly impaired vision and the high-pitched whining sound that filled her ears. She heard herself calling for her young student, and attempted to crawl over to her slumped form, slipping on a puddle of her own blood.
Then she heard steps as a lithe figure limped out of the fire.
Death lives.
Saya's eyes grew wide as she attempted to crawl faster, ignoring the protests of her own broken body, urging her to rest as glowing red blood poured out of a hole under her left breast. Elbow over elbow, each meter was harder to gain than the last. Death would beat her, she knew. Yuu could do nothing.
Even if they'd been untouched by the fire, the blast had thrown them against the wall and shredded their skin with shrapnel, particularly a large piece of rebar that had pinned Yuu to the wall behind her.
Her vision blurred for a moment, and death was there.
Standing over Yuu's barely conscious body.
With a glowing red eye and an empty socket, Mato glared at the broken form of her best friend. Uncaring that the few clothes she had left did nothing to hide burns, muscle tissue, and the occasional bone.
All that mattered was the Core and the False Life.
"Yuu," she growled, bringing down her foot on her wrist.
The smaller girl cried in pain as she came to full consciousness, immediately looking at her torturer.
Wrong. She thought. Something's wrong.
She cried again as Mato ground her heel into her wrist, purposely kneeling into it as she brought her face closer to her own.
"Your pain."
She grabbed the piece of rebar.
"Shall never."
Yuu's eyes sprang clear tears.
"End."
The small girl cried out as the piece of rebar was forcibly ripped out of her shoulder.
That was the last thing Saya saw before the loss of blood forced her into unconsciousness.
"Can we cut the crap?"
Her eyes shot open. She was sitting in a chair in front of a tea set, clawed hands free from any bindings or chains.
"Over here."
She looked up and saw Black Gold Saw, smugly holding a teacup. She looked at her own spartanly manicured hands and reached for her own tea.
"You know what we're willing to do."
She shakily scooped a sugar cube into her tea, a difficult task with claws. Saya Irino did not look impressed.
"Anything." Admitted Saya as she sipped her tea.
"If it's for her." Confirmed Black Gold Saw as she refilled her cup.
Robin squared off against Mato once more as soon as he confirmed that the entirety of his team was alive, albeit wounded and exhausted. Although Starfire insisted she could keep fighting, he decided to face her himself after she flew right into a wall.
He tackled the deranged otherself to the ground, allowing Yuu to nurse her broken hand.
"Mato! Snap out of it!" he yelled, hoping against hope that she'd finally listen.
Predictably, she responded by lunging with the Black Blade once more. Robin could only dodge this time. He was out of weapons and out of gadgets. As he rolled away, he grasped a makeshift weapon, the piece of rebar that was still slick with Yuu's blood.
He used it to parry Mato's strikes as best as he could in his wounded state, wounds Mato had no trouble capitalizing on as demonstrated when she landed a punch right into his wounded thigh.
The pain startled him into creating an opening Mato was quick to take advantage of, knocking him back and to the ground. She lunged once more, keen on ending the Boy Teen Wonder's life, only for him to guard with the rebar.
As the two struggled on the ground, neither noticed what was going on not ten feet from them.
Saya Irino stared at Black Gold Saw.
"So, what now?"
Black Gold Saw stared at Saya Irino.
"Should we become One?"
Saya Irino stared at Saya Irino.
"You fool."
Black Gold Saw stared at Black Gold Saw.
"We were never Two."
She stared at an empty chair.
"I am, and have always been-."
"Black Gold Saw."
Fire began to catch, not in her eye like Mato, but across her body. Blood became molten metal as her clothes burned away, replacing them with the admittedly skimpy garments of her true self. She placed her hands into the molten metal, allowing it to burn away the flesh and bone to form her bladed gauntlets. A stream of red hot metal ran from the gauntlets up her arms and neck, settling on her head to forge a set of horns. Finally, she plunged her gauntlet into the blood metal and pulled, forging her signature weapon.
Mato flinched as she felt her greatest foe build strength, releasing the leader of the Titans to meet her head on, holding Black Blade across her body before she was swatted across the street by King Saw.
She rolled back onto her feet and held Black Blade defensively.
It was pointless.
Black Gold Saw closed the distance in seconds and, after having been cracked, chipped, and beaten for two hours straight, the Black Blade finally gave.
Black Gold Saw's could have whispered into Mato's ear as King Saw ran through flesh and bone to meet air once more. The weapon tilted and its wielder used it as a vaulting pole, ripping the blade out of Mato's belly.
She landed in a crouch, and turned to see Mato writhing in pain whilst ignoring the halves of the Black Blade.
She calmly walked towards her, only to be stopped by Robin.
"This is just my luck," he grumbled, tightening his grip on the piece of broken rebar, "Stop right where you are!"
She simply lunged and kicked him out of the way of Mato's broken sword. She caught the metal slab and dug her knuckles into the gaping wound on her belly.
Mato grimaced in pain but did not scream, even as Black Gold Saw pulled out and sank her claws through her lower jaw. She used this new leverage to stretch out the smaller girl, before snapping her femur with a stomp of her right boot. A long needle extended out of her right claw before she lowered Mato just enough to sink it into the corner of her remaining eye.
The small girl convulsed for a few seconds before she went limp.
Gold Saw had just enough time to breathe a sigh of relief before releasing the needle and turning to block a piece of rebar.
"Calm down slick," she snapped at Robin, "I'm in control."
"Wha-How!?"
"I'm not sure," she admitted, "but I had to control both mes at the same time during meddling, so this is probably a side effect of that."
"Meddling," growled Raven behind them, whose healing trance had run its course, "I should have known."
"We can talk about that later," she sighed, "I have some karma coming my way and am willing to accept it, but we need to calm her down and get the others."
"The blood's not stopping," noticed Robin as he pressed down on Mato's new wound, "Can you guys die of blood loss?"
"If we could, she'd be dead thrice over," pointed out Saya as she pulled a needle out of her gauntlet, "Raven, think you could go heal Yuu? I can take care of Mato. Even she shouldn't recover from a lobotomy too quickly."
"Sure," she replied, before walking towards Yuu, "what do you need to do?"
"Just a few stitches," she replied as she yanked out one of her long hairs, "I don't think your spell will do much good with us."
"Why haven't those wounds closed?" asked Robin.
"Probably because her transformations incomplete," she replied as the needle sank into her student's skin, "the wounds made by your sword already closed and even the broken bones are healing. The issue right now is that the wounds made by King Saw and Chariot's sword are still bleeding."
The wounds were stitched shut and the blood finally stopped.
Fifteen minutes later, Beast Boy, Terra, Chariot, and Black Rock Shooter were all strapped down on hospital gurneys and were being healed by Raven. If she was surprised by Terra's sudden appearance, she certainly didn't show it. Robin, Yuu, and Starfire had been the first to be healed, since they were the ones that had been physically harmed the most and she didn't know how to fix Cyborg, who'd gone ahead for repairs.
Yuu was busy letting Black Gold Saw check her over when she noticed a familiar face.
"Strength!" she called out with a smile on her face.
The construct, however, only scowled and shook her head, much to the short girl's confusion.
"Strength?"
Strength, for her part, merely pressed the index finger of her remaining hand, and sent a bullet through her own skull. Everyone nearby jumped at the noise and turned just in time to see the broken porcelain body dissipate into motes of light.
"The hell was that?" asked Robin.
"Just Strength going home," said Saya, "they can't survive in our world on their own, remember?"
"Did she seriously just shoot herself?" asked Terra groggily.
"It's not like she died," said Saya with a wave of her hand, "she just went back to the Otherworld."
"Seriously?" she scoffed before lying back on her gurney, "I should've run when she told me to."
She noticed the younger girl in Gold Saw's arms.
"Um, are you Yuu?" She asked. "Well, obviously you're you. I mean-. Ugh! Has anyone told you your name is confusing?"
"Um, BB mentioned it," she admitted, "why?"
"Um the girl with the metal hands, Strength I think, had a message for you."
"What!? What is it!?" Yuu leapt off Saya's arms, almost twisting her ankle again in the process.
"She said-."
Author's Notes: Well, I certainly dragged that on. I can't honestly say that I'm satisfied with the way this ended, but in the end I needed this to move on and I figured BRS was sufficiently weakened for BGS to take her down easily. I'm just glad I managed to publish this in less than a year, unlike last time.
The next chapter will reveal exactly why I've been taking so long. I'm making this one gigantic crossover, so I need to make sure everything flows properly. I actually think the next chapter is one of my better ones, particularly when I noticed a huge similarity in the BRS anime and a certain DC superhero franchise. I wonder if anyone can figure it out before the next release.