6/19/20

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Change For The Better

Chapter Eight: Truth Had Gone

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May 21, 2014

Raven tapped her nails against a hot metallic park bench, the burning heat searing her fingertips as they made contact. The Titans had chosen a nearby park to regroup at once they finished investigating Star City, and the large open space provided little shelter from the searing afternoon sun. Her hood provided protection from the threat of sunburn, at least.

Unfortunately, Raven's trip to the news station hadn't proven as useful as she hoped it would. The reporters had roughly as much information on Chemo as the Titans did, which wasn't that much to begin with. Robin was the only one who hadn't returned yet, and the rest of the Titans had the same bad luck as she did. It would've been easy to lose hope in such a situation, but Raven found herself too preoccupied to think about their current circumstances too much. Instead, her thoughts had once again returned to Terra.

Terra had been far from Raven's best friend, but the friendship was there nonetheless. She had felt the sting of her assumed death just as much as the other Titans had, losing many nights of sleep searching for the right spell to bring their departed friend back to them. Although at the time she believed none of the spells had worked, perhaps their effect had only been delayed? What if the spells had worked after all, and they just didn't know it yet? What if Terra really had been freed from her stony prison?

After a moment of hesitation, Raven decided to voice these thoughts.

"Did anyone actually check Terra's statue?"

This caught her teammates' attention.

"What do you mean?" Starfire asked.

Raven frowned, ignoring the stinging pain that came from drumming her fingers against the top of the park bench.

"Beast Boy said her statue was gone. Do you really think she could be alive out there?"

A guilty silence fell over the Titans. Admittedly, the rest of the group hadn't been as committed to visiting Terra as Beast Boy had been. It was likely that the last time any of them checked on her was before they left to fight the Brotherhood of Evil. Perhaps if they had, they would've been able to find her.

"So that's a no, huh?" Cyborg asked.

"Perhaps Beast Boy was correct about our friend being alive," Starfire admitted, picking aimlessly at a blade of grass. "Although if he truly believe she had been awoken, why would Beast Boy run away? Would he not focus on searching for her?"

It was a good question. Raven was pretty sure Beast Boy had mentioned a Terra look-alike at some point. If that was the case, why was he gallivanting across the continent with a perfect stranger instead of investigating? In fact, if memory served, he had been doing just that before M'yri'ah showed up. What could've possibly happened to change his priorities so quickly? Did M'yri'ah promise to give him information in exchange for his help? It would certainly explain some of his behavior, but not all of it.

Raven didn't have time to think about it before Robin returned. Aquagirl, who claimed she needed some alone time, rejoined the group as well. Raven lowered her hand from the park bench and let it rest at her side. She forced herself to stay calm, but secretly she wondered if they even had a chance at finding Beast Boy.

"They saw Beast Boy," Robin began. A bit of the tension in the group began to ebb away, but Robin wasn't quite finished with his statement. "The staff at the police station says there was a woman waiting with him outside. He's headed to Gotham."

Aquagirl smiled warily. "It's a good thing we've got friends there, huh?"

Robin tried to copy her, but his smile didn't seem genuine. "Right. We'll have to hurry though. There's a good chance he's already there."

"Then perhaps we should-"

Starfire didn't get the chance to finish her suggestion. A loud crash sounded in the distance, followed by a cacophony of screaming citizens. Raven shoved any emotions to the back of her mind and focused on looking for the source of the chaos. In the distance, a small explosion caused a building to topple over, followed by more screaming.

"It's gotta be Chemo," Aquagirl growled, summoning a steady stream of water around her wrists.

"Even if it isn't, we need to help. Titans, go!"

At Robin's command, Raven flew towards the direction of the chaos as quickly as she could. Starfire flew ahead of her, with the rest of the team following behind them. In the back of her mind, Raven knew this had to be a distraction. Someone must have orchestrated this to keep them away from Gotham City. It was the only explanation. Whoever was behind this knew that they were on their trail, and was now doing anything in their power to stop them. Raven could only hope that defeating this diversion could give them some clue as to what was really going on.

Grabbing a nearby traffic sign with her powers, Raven quickly slammed it into the city's attacker. She forced herself to stop moving forward, pausing briefly to get a glimpse of their opponent- or rather, opponents. In front of her stood a collection of robot soldiers. They appeared to be dressed in black, with rings of gray accents and orange faces. Raven had seen them before, and never wished to again, but here they were anyways.

They were Slade's robots.

…...

Beast Boy sighed deeply, staring forlornly out of the bus window. An eerie, uncharacteristic silence had fallen upon the nearly empty bus, though Beast Boy found that he didn't have the energy to wonder where all the other passengers had gone. At this point, perhaps it was better not to question it. He found that the only thing he could think about was his previous conversation with Superboy, as well as the implications that came with it.

"Garfield? Is something troubling you?"

Beast Boy closed his eyes, leaning his cheek against the warm glass window pane. "It's fine. Don't worry about it, M'yri'ah."

M'yri'ah frowned, laying a hand on his shoulder. "No, it isn't fine. You no longer trust me."

At her words, a chill shivered down his spine. Was she reading his mind? No, that was a silly question. Of course she was reading his mind. She wasn't like M'gann. She hadn't had the time to learn about humanity's boundaries when it came to telepathy. Which begged the question… what had M'yri'ah been doing for all of these years? She acted as though she was new to Earth and it's culture, but Mars was completely destroyed six years ago. Surely six years would have been long enough for the shapeshifter to learn some telepathic boundaries.

"I suppose I should confess my lies then, shouldn't I?"

Beast Boy's eyes snapped open. The bus hit a pothole, jolting him out of his thoughts (which yes, he was in fact capable of having, thank you very much Raven).

"Wait! You mean-"

His companion sighed, crossing her arms. "Perhaps I should start from the beginning. I am not the real M'yri'ah J'onzz. She was… an acquaintance of mine, although I'm sure you already knew that. When we first met I thought you might recognize her name from your time spent with the other martians, so I borrowed it in order to gain your trust. My real name is D'kay D'razz, ex-girlfriend of the one you call Martian Manhunter."

Beast Boy felt his eyes widen. He bit his lip, trying to sort through the mess of emotions that were jumbled up in his brain. He had heard her name before, he knew he had, but where?

D'kay took his silence as her cue to continue. "The real reason why I wanted the file wasn't because I was looking for someone. Rather, I need to find the locations of the escape pods themselves. When Mars was destroyed, the one who was responsible implanted a bomb on one of the pods. The bomb was set to project from the pod and explode 10 years after we landed on Earth. I've spent the past six years searching tirelessly for the other pods, but until I learned about that file I didn't have any luck with my search."

Beast Boy was quiet for a moment. His thoughts were consumed by questions and doubts, and he had no doubt that D'kay was listening to all of them.

"You could've told me the truth."

D'kay frowned. "Could I? After all, there's a reason I couldn't just go to my ex about this. I was terrible when he knew me. Ultimately it was my own fault that he chose M'yri'ah instead of me. If I told him my plan, he would never believe me about the bombs. I had no way of knowing how close the two of you were. For all I knew, you could've known everything about me."

Her explanation did make sense, but Beast Boy couldn't help but feel a familiar sting of betrayal. He sighed, his shoulders slumped in defeat.

"D'kay, I would've helped you no matter what. It's just who I am. But please… no more secrets, okay?"

D'kay nodded, but said nothing. A sharp sense of worry and paranoia settled in Beast Boy's stomach, and he felt his throat physically tighten. Every instinct he had was screaming for him to get off the bus and flee to Jump City, back to the safety of his friends, yet he remained glued to his seat.

So what if D'kay had lied? She had her reasons. The bomb, for instance. It wasn't because she was a bad person who enjoyed hurting others, she did it because she had to. It wasn't a reason to stop trusting her, right?

Then why was it that no matter how many times he told himself this, Beast Boy couldn't shake the feeling that D'kay still wasn't who she claimed to be?

…

Robin felt tired.

Well, tired wasn't really the word, per say. Then again, there wasn't a word powerful enough to properly convey the deep, stinging exhaustion he felt in that moment. Of course it was Slade. Who else would it be?

Previously, the sight of Slade's robots would've filled him with excitement and adrenaline. The opportunity to finally defeat Slade was one that he never would've passed up, and he wanted nothing more than to finally see his old nemesis behind bars. However, after the incident with Trigon, he was getting tired of Slade being involved in literally everything. His disappearance during the Brotherhood of Evil fiasco had been a welcome breath of fresh air, and Robin was secretly hoping that it would last. No such luck, apparently.

With a heavy sigh, Robin whipped out his bo staff and struck a nearby Slade bot. It acted unaffected, picking him up via the staff and throwing him against a wall. He screamed in pain, forcing himself off the ground. Okay, enough of that. Time to focus. Just how many of these things were there?

There were too many to count. They moved swiftly across the urban battlefield, attacking his team and avoiding their attacks in turn. They outnumbered his team for sure, at least by a four-to-one ratio if not by more. It wasn't an issue, though. The Titans had faced worse odds before, and they could face them again.

He retrieved his bo staff and returned to the fray. This time, he managed to remember the weak point between the shoulder blades of the robots, and defeated one in a matter of minutes. Robin sighed in relief, taking a moment to catch his breath. One down, countless more to go. Still, they would manage. So long as he could hit the weak point on the other robots, and his teammates could do the same, the battle would be over soon. He glanced up to see how his fellow Titans were faring, but his hopes were instantly shattered.

Starfire was facing off against a few of the robots, hovering above their reach, but the other Titans weren't so lucky. A few feet away, Raven lay unconscious. Aquagirl appeared to have succumbed to the same fate. Cyborg was still fighting, but not for long. Two of Slade's robots had him pinned down, and a third was approaching him and holding a syringe.

"Cyborg!" he cried, sprinting towards his friend.

Robin tried not to think about Raven and Aquagirl. The robots must have used the contents of the syringe to knock them out, and if this was the case there was nothing more he could do for them until the anesthetic wore off. Cyborg could still be saved, which meant one more ally in the fight. The sooner they could knock out the remaining robots, the sooner Cyborg and Starfire could help him move their unconscious allies to safety.

Suddenly, Robin felt a cold, metallic hand grasp his forearm. He continued running in an attempt to break free from his opponent's grasp, but the robot's hand remained clamped to his arm. It's grip tightened as he tried to squirm away. Robin gritted his teeth to avoid screaming in pain and attempted to roundhouse kick the robot in the head. Before his boot could make contact, another robot grabbed hold of his leg in anunyieldinggrip.

Panic clouded his thoughts, made worse by the sound of Starfire screaming. Robin hyperventilated, struggling to escape from the grasp of his captors. This couldn't be happening, it just couldn't! There had to be some way to escape! Another robot approached, syringe in hand. He felt a slight pinch in his arm, and his vision began to fade.

The fuzzy outline of Starfire falling from the sky was the last thing Robin saw before drifting away.

…..

Hi again! Sorry for the small delay. I was fully intending to update this earlier, but this chapter ended up being a lot longer than I originally thought it would be. Anyways, if all goes to plan, the next update should be in a couple of weeks. Maybe sooner if I get writers block for one of the fics I'm planning to update before then. We'll see.

Admittedly, D'kay is a pretty minor character so idk if anyone will recognize her. If someone does though, they may have a slight idea where this is going. She's from the Brightest Day comics, hence the title of one of the earlier chapters. Sorry to disappoint any Martian Manhunter fans who were excited to see M'yri'ah, since she doesn't get near as much love as she deserves, but a false identity for D'kay was necessary to build up the plot twist.

Anyways, thank you to everyone who has followed and added this story to your favorites. Talk With Your Hands, I'm glad you're liking the story so far! I've been meaning to check out your fics too for a while, I just keep forgetting about them when I have time (oops). Maybe sometime this summer, lol. Yeah, it was the last episode where Terra/"Terra" came back. This originally started out as a fix it fic, but somewhere in the planning stage I decided that I needed to make things worse before they could get better (they will get better though!).

Quote of the day!

"I love how whenever I sell Timmy bugs and trash, you can see Tom Nook lose a little bit of his soul." -my sister while playing Animal Crossing

May the odds be ever in your favor,

Spectrobes Princess