Teen Titans: Incarnate - Chapter Thirty

[Reaper of Despair]

Chapter Thirty: Crusade

False dawn hovered over the skyline of Jump City, haloing its metropolitan towers of steel and glass in faint colors of warmth. The city remained quiet in its slumber. A winter chill nipped the late fall wind as it blew litter through the empty streets.

Peace succumbed to a series of flashing lights that rose from the center of each street intersection. The yellow lights heralded the opening of one of the Titan’s transport tunnel entrances, and were meant to keep anyone from accidentally entering the tunnels, or worse, launching their car off the back of the street that ramped upward to open the downward slope of the tunnel’s entrance. Under normal circumstances, only one of these tunnels would open at a time for the Titans’ vehicles.

Today, they all opened.

Sections of street rose simultaneously within the flashing yellow light poles, opening the city to the pure blackness of the tunnel entrances. That blackness poured from the openings in the shape of men as each tunnel entrance released a stream of commando drones to the streets of Jump City. Monstrous giants marched among Slade’s commandos, the large, dome-headed drones that dwarfed their commando cousins. The ground rumbled with their onslaught, trembling as its citizens would when they awoke to an invasion that had come from beneath them without warning.

The commandos marched in formation, filling the streets in a matter of minutes with their ranks. Key points in Jump City—its police stations, City Hall, banks, utilities, and municipal facilities—were first to be surrounded. Hundreds more of the stiff, precise soldiers spread through the less vital portions of the city to pacify the populace that would soon try to take to the streets in panic.

But the real story lay below ground, split between the lairs of two men who were very much alike, and possessed radically different goals. In these lairs, the fate of seven extraordinary teenagers was being reshaped, even as they themselves underwent a startling transformation.

*****

How can you see into my eyes

Terra knelt in Slade’s darkened sanctum,

Like open doors

Alone.

Leading you down into my core

A two-toned uniform stared up at her,

Where I’ve become so numb

Rattling her black Titan shirt

Without a soul

With an excited pulse.

My spirit sleeping somewhere cold

Try though she might,

Until you find it there and

Something kept her from the new uniform:

Lead

A bevy of friends;

It

Faces twisted with betrayal;

Back

She could not escape.

Home

*****

Wake me up!

Robin climbed into new skin.

Wake me up inside

Taut black lines stretched over sculpted muscle.

I can’t wake up!

He sealed the suit and its red silhouette on his chest.

Wake me up inside

The stylized avian flexed its wings as he did.

Save me!

He donned an arsenal of tools and weapons around his waist.

Call my name and

He took up the mask

Save

And lifted it to his eyes.

Me

With one final gesture,

From

The new Robin came into being,

The

And smiled.

Dark

*****

Wake me up!

Starfire slid into silvery skin.

Bid my blood to run

Its lilac armor cupped her body.

I can’t wake up!

Gauntlets slid over trembling fists,

Before I come undone

Which cradled emerald fury,

Save me!

For the betrayal she had suffered.

Save me from the

She bowed her head into her helmet.

Nothing

Donning its visor, she masked her sorrow

I’ve

Behind the face of a warrior.

Become

*****

Now that I know

Beast Boy crouched on the command deck,

What I’m without

Waiting outside his alcove

You can’t just leave me.

With a tear-stained picture.

Breathe into me

Glaring at the golden-haired photograph,

And make

His tears grew hateful.

Me

His sunken chest swelled

Real.

As he twisted the picture,

Bring

Cracking its glass while he glared

Me

Through slitted pupils.

To life.

*****

Wake me up!

Cyborg stood in his alcove.

Wake me up inside

Armatures stole his implants away,

I can’t wake up!

And replaced them with brutal devices of war.

Wake me up inside

Massive forearms latched to his organics.

Save me!

Deadly weapons clutched his shoulders.

Call my name and

New armor slid over the old.

Save

A soulless plate descended on armature,

Me

Sealing to the implants of his face,

From

Masking him

The

In a metallic nightmare.

Dark

*****

Wake me up!

Clad in her gothic armor,

Bid my blood to run

Raven stood before four pedestals,

I can’t wake up!

Upon each of which a book of magic waited.

Before I come undone

Pushing aside the tempest within her,

Save me!

She opened her mind.

Save me from the

Glowing symbols flowed from the books.

Nothing

Knowledge poured into Raven’s chakra,

I’ve

Spilling from her eyes with unspeakable power.

Become

*****

Bring

Tek rubbed her arm

Me

In the shadow of more weapons

To

Meant for the beast inside her.

Life

She closed her eyes,

I’ve been living a lie,

But couldn’t fight the tears.

There’s nothing inside!

Her armor swallowed her whole.

Bring

Now a deadly leviathan,

Me

She backed into the augmentation pack,

To

And became only a weapon.

Life

*****

Frozen in time

Stone Titans littered Slade’s empty sanctum,

Without your touch

Crafted from the cement floor.

Without your love

Terra stood among them, hateful eyes golden.

Darling

Tentacles of stone rose from the floor,

Only you

Smashing Raven, Starfire, Robin, Cyborg, Tek,

Are the life

And stopped inches from the frozen face of Beast Boy.

Among the dead

*****

All of this, I,

One by one, the Titans’ alcoves opened.

I can’t believe I couldn’t see.

Robin strode toward the lift cage,

Kept in the dark,

Followed fast by Cyborg.

But you were there in front of me.

Starfire floated after them

I’ve been sleeping a thousand years it seems

As Tek lumbered across the deck.

Got to open my eyes to everything

Raven lingered, last to the cage.

Without a thought,

She turned to close them in.

Without a voice,

Beast Boy caught the sliding door.

Without a soul.

He stood before the cage in his armor,

Don’t let me die here

And scowled at Raven’s surprise.

There must be something more!

He pushed Raven back and turned away,

Bring

Sealing them in the rattling lift.

Me

Then the Titans ascended from their secret hell,

To

Rising back into the world.

Life

*****

Wake me up!

Terra stared into Beast Boy’s stone face,

Wake me up inside

Crying golden tears.

I can’t wake up!

Her heart wrenched,

Wake me up inside

Betrayed,

Save me!

As she lifted her hands.

Call my name and

Stone tendrils rose all about her

Save

And crashed down through the statue,

Me

Dashing Beast Boy’s smile

From

Into a thousand shards.

The

Only dust remained.

Dark

*****

Wake me up!

Atop their ruined Tower,

Bid my blood to run

Starfire with Cyborg, Robin with Tek,

I can’t wake up!

Raven alone,

Before I come undone

They took to the sky.

Save me!

Beast Boy remained, watching them.

Save me from the

He felt pressure in his gauntleted hand,

Nothing

And looked down to find

I’ve

The broken picture he’d carried with him.

Become


*****

Bring

The two-toned armor clung to Terra

Me

As she raised its helmet to her head,

To

And donned the face she had earned.

Life

The last of her old life lay in pieces.

I’ve been living a lie,

Her new life began.

There’s nothing inside!

*****

Bring

Beast Boy scowled with inhuman eyes,

Me

And threw her picture off the Tower.

To

As it tumbled, a dark beast took to the sky on enraged wings,

Life.

And chased his friends into battle.

*****

Chaos thundered through the streets of the city, raining red-hot death upon its brave few protectors. Laser fire burned the air over their heads and into the squad car barrier they crouched behind. Burning rubber and ozone choked their shouts as they braved the firefight to return fire. The bark of their rifles chased their bullets into the advancing line of black-clad soldiers. Though their shots did little to slow the enemy’s advance, the police refused to retreat, and took courage from the grizzled voice spurring them on from the center of their barricade.

“Tighten up that south line, mooks!” Lieutenant Smith bellowed, grasping his hat as he ducked back behind the wheel well of his squad car. Spread behind the line of cars, his Special Crimes Unit waged a war they weren’t prepared for, wearing riot armor that some of them had discovered firsthand would not stop a laser blast.

The cop’s wrinkled face soured as he thought of his family caught somewhere beyond the battalion of robots pinning their backs to their own precinct station. Ever since those idiot Titan tunnels had started spewing soldiers into his streets, his wife and daughter were the only things on his mind. It was all Smith could do to keep the orders and encouragement rumbling from his hoarse throat. He prayed for his family between bursts of his automatic rifle.

One of the towering, dome-headed behemoths disgorged a blue column of shrieking energy that engulfed an entire car of their barrier in sonic chaos. The blast transformed the squad car into a ball of expanding fire and shrapnel that consumed two of his men and blasted five more back. Before the ringing in Smith’s ears had faded, he bellowed, “Where the flying hell are my grenades, people?”

A new string of explosions shook the battlefield. Smith looked left and right along their curved barrier, looking past his ducking troops for the latest casualties in their losing fight. Pleasant surprised waited for him in the confused-but-intact faces of the SCU officers down the line. Curiosity overtook his sense, and so Smith lifted his hat and eyes over the hood of his car.

The robot line burst apart in a spray of fire and components, tearing a crater into the black pavement that opened into the sewer and sucked in a silvery behemoth too slow to escape. When more explosions ripped into their ranks from behind, the front-line commando drones turned and fell back, pouring their lasers into a single point far from the overwhelmed police force.
Smith leveled his rifles at the robots’ backs and refused to look into the mouth of this gift horse. “Something’s drawing their fire! Shred 'em!” he shouted, and mashed down on his rifle’s trigger.

The SCU line erupted with new vigor into their automaton foes, perforating the backs of the drones unopposed. Smith watched lightning leap from the ground behind and through the commandos. Another of the behemoths flew into the air, crashing into a squad of its own commandos. Smith had no time to wonder what was tearing through the robots from opposite their line, and continued firing until his clip ran dry.

Within minutes, the last robot fell, torn apart in a hail of rifle fire, lightning, and explosions. A cheer rang up from the SCU line. “Can it!” Smith bellowed as he hopped the hood of his car. His troops quieted at his scathing look. Smith marched toward the only thing left standing on the battlefield, his trench coat flapping behind him, and shouted, “O’Callaghan! You dead?”

His second-in-command, a redheaded man with more wrinkles than he deserved, jumped the barrier after him. As O’Callaghan caught up, Smith approached the six figures standing ankle-deep in the remains of the commando squad. The six colorful teenagers acted as the eye of the storm, a beacon of unnatural calm that Smith entered warily. “Well, isn’t this a pretty picture?” he grumped.

The lead teen wiped hydraulic fluid from his broadsword on the sleeve of his jacket. Unkempt brows descended over his dark eyes, which rested on Smith’s sour face without fear. “What’s your situation, Lieutenant?” asked Jason Hawke.

Smith eyed the team: their dirty blond leader, an urban knight with shouldered broadsword; a towering, elegant young woman of incredible muscle and stretched, tattered clothes; a pale, ghostly boy in a black bodysuit with copper lightning seams; a shorter boy, begoggled, with a glistening arm of silvery metal; a taller boy of similar complexion with trendy hair and whirling revolvers; a tiny boy, blue-skinned, trying to hid the terror evident on his face.

“You’re the little hoods operating out of Jump Central,” said Smith. “The church kids.”

Magnum holstered his revolvers with a snort and elbowed his little brother. “Hear that, Strip? We’re the Church Kids.” He tugged at the gratuitous Streetbeat 'S' tagged on his shirt and pants, and added, “Seriously, it’s all over us. Crack a newspaper or something, man.”

A curious tilt came into Stripwire’s examination of the annoyed police lieutenant. His goggles reflected Smith’s unpleasant expression. “Are you injured, Lieutenant?” he asked with preternatural calm.

“The city’s crawling with those things,” Jason said, and kicked a severed commando head. “We got swamped in Central, so we thought we’d come here looking for help.

Hovering high over Jason’s shoulder, Queenie’s face crinkled. “Could’ve told you the cops wouldn’t be any help,” she grumbled, and challenged Jason’s dirty look with one of her own.

Smith drew a fresh ammo clip from his vest and slammed it into his rifle. Behind him, O’Callaghan limped to their gathering, eyeballing the teens suspiciously. O’Callaghan’s eyes narrowed on Magnum. “I think that’s the kid that blew up that bookstore a couple of months back,” he said.

“We have to save them, Mag,” Magnum said in a cartoonish impersonation of Jason’s voice, rolling his eyes. “We need their help.”

Jason stepped up to Smith, who checked over his loaded rifle. “Any chance of help? We can’t get hold of the Teen Titans.” He held up his gunmetal communicator, a replica of the Titans’ devices with a graffiti 'S'. “Any word?” he asked.

“Their tower blew up,” Smith said. He watched the blunt news impact on their young faces. “We were just putting together rescue teams when their dopey tunnels opened up with these robots. If they haven’t shown for this fracas, chances are they’re already dead.”

The eyes of every cop and teen on the battlefield rose skyward at a shrill, mournful cry that filled the city from ocean to horizon. Glinting green in the first rays of dawn, an immense pterodactyl twisted from the clouds in a dive that swept it low over the police barricade. Higher above, a great bird of impossible darkness spread its wings and soared amidst the skyscrapers.

Two nimble sprites darted from the sky and tossed their armored payloads. The heavy metal duo dropped into the city several blocks away from Smith’s stand, quaking the ground as they landed. Then the sprites soared high, spreading their arms. Dazzling light leapt from their fingers and toes, burning half-crosses into the air a mile wide and long. The two sprites hovered over the city, holding their brilliant letters in the air for every last invader in the city to take notice.

Jason grinned at the red and green T’s burning in the morning sky. He didn’t know who was responsible for the attack on the city, but now that the Titans were calling them out, Jason didn’t envy them in the slightest. But nor was he about to take the invasion lying down.

“You might want to get those eyes checked, Smith,” he said. Then, sobering, he looked back at the rest of the Streetbeat. “Meanwhile, we’re gonna take the heat off of those glory hogs. Knowing them, they’ve got some stupid plan that’ll kill them unless we give 'em some help.”

**********

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpmSHb-aRB0

Bring Me To Life by Evanescence ©2003

[Reaper of Despair]

A click in Starfire’s helmet accompanied their collective communications’ end. She bobbed high above the north-side skyscrapers, gazing down at the lines of commandos and behemoths that winded through the city. Dawn’s colors glinted in her silvery under-armor and splashed across the lilac plates cupping her body, painting her trappings of war with a spectrum of warm tones. With a single breath to steel her nerves, she inverted and dove, pouring the entirety of her boundless joy into a deadly descent.

Already, there were bursts of bloody light in the street below, bursts that were each instantly followed by a blossoming explosion. Starfire followed the scarlet lights down, down, down into the very heart of the battle. She flipped and landed heavily on the shoulders of a white behemoth, driving its shattering frame into the pavement while she selected her next targets.

The inner curves of her armor pulled at the starwave energy she summoned, and guided it through her heavy bracers. Though unsettling to have her energy so readily redirected, it allowed her to form a pair of starbolts much faster than she could have without the armor. The emerald energy pooled in her hands. She drew back and hurled the bolts into a charging commando. Fire erupted from the robot’s back at the starbolts’ impact, and it toppled back, smoking in ruin.

Laser fire struck Starfire in the back. She jumped at the heat in her armor and spun, ready to counter the attack. Even as she drew two new shimmering starbolts, she watched scarlet heat slam into the trio of commandos, taking them apart the hard way. Starfire traced the scarlet’s trajectory back to its source, a glowing pair of gloves guided by a soulless glower. “I had them,” Starfire shot.

Robin responded with an animalistic howl as he plunged his fist into the chest of a commando. His hand exploded from the commando’s back and flared, pouring liquid scarlet into a white behemoth lumbering at him. The behemoth staggered, its optics smoldering and shattered, and was bowled over by the commando husk Robin threw into its chassis. Red-fisted, Robin spun into the air, unleashing a circle of bird bolts that felled a full dozen commandos who thought to overwhelm the Teen Wonder in numbers.

Starfire would not content herself to be a spectator. She plucked a street lamp from its moorings and swung hard, smashing its distant light against the hardened back of a behemoth. As her opponent stumbled, she shot up the length of her dropped lamp and dug her fingers into the robot’s cracked armor. Snarling, she tore the behemoth apart down the middle and swung its body like clubs, hammering those commands unfortunate enough to attack her.

As they fought, Starfire’s glowing eyes drifted to Robin more often than she would have liked. Terra’s betrayal had left her heart torn; looking upon the cold, detached rage behind Robin’s mask ripped that wound wide open. Starfire felt her flight falter just a second before she pulled her gaze from the scarlet carnage Robin had become, and channeled the ache pouring from her wounded heart into liquid anger, which she hurled through the automatons attacking her city.

In mere moments, the street was thick with a blanket of broken machines. Robin and Starfire settled atop the greasy, blackened debris, their breath quickened with excitement. The immediate area was quiet, but distant sounds of battle and distant flashes in the dawn sky assured the Titans that their work was far from done. “We’ll sweep along Second Avenue,” Robin said, glaring toward the sunrise. “Let’s move.”

His feet had hardly left the ground when one of the more intact commando drones stirred amongst the debris. Its haloed face ejected with a small snap, revealing a cracked screen in the commando’s cranium that crackled with static snow. As Robin swung around, bird bolts burning in his palms, the broken drone began speaking in a low, smooth transmitted voice. “You are a tenacious little metahuman, Robin. I must applaud you for surviving.”

The commando’s head erupted into flames, disintegrating under the force of Robin’s bolt. No sooner had the Teen Wonder hurled his bird bolt, another fallen commando’s face popped from its housing. “But surely you don’t believe you can destroy all my soldiers. Such naiveté is unbecom - ”

Another bird bolt silenced the transmission. Another commando threw out its face, revealing yet another screen to continue, “ - ing of my once-apprentice.”

Starfire watched in silent worry as Robin’s shoulders heaved. “I’m not about to take criticism from a general who’s too cowardly to lead his tin soldiers himself,” Robin spat, and blew apart the third commando.

When a new commando became Slade’s voice, Robin held his readied bird bolt. This commando’s intact screen held two lines of glowing numbers. They were coordinates, which Robin thumbed furiously into his communicator. “Then what say we discuss the terms of my surrender in person?” asked Slade.

The communicator took Slade’s coordinates and turned them into a glowing dot on a tiny city map. Robin took note of the address, and then snapped his communicator shut with such force as to crush it into yellow shards. “Keep to the plan, Starfire,” he said.

Starfire followed him into the air, surprised at the sudden speed of his flight. “I will not let you - ”

She almost slammed into Robin as he stopped abruptly, turning with such rage in his face as to startle her back. “Don’t question me,” he warned her in a dangerous calm. “Not on this. Not on anything. Ever.”

Robin flew off in a streak of black, leaving Starfire to burn in the memory of his empty scowl. Her face slowly straightened, and she soared in the opposite direction, her thoughts intent on the coordinates she had memorized from Slade’s message.

*****

Weathered girders stood together in a tall, boxy antenna almost big enough to be considered a building unto itself. A beacon blinked merrily atop its tip to warn foolhardy pilots to steer clear of the antenna and the squat skyscraper upon which it sat. One of the older structures of the relatively new metropolis, the antenna and its skyscraper base occupied the heart of Jump City, and even stacked were shorter than most of the gleaming towers of glass and steel surrounding them. Four luminous letters glowed on the side of the skyscraper, spelling out the ID of the station to which the antenna belonged: WJMP, The Jump, a radio station famous for its nationally syndicated morning show, Skip and the Hoppers.

Intense gloom sparked and spread between the struts of the antenna. When the gloom receded, it unveiled a mismatched and armored pair on the rooftop.

Raven closed the gateway with a thought while Beast Boy shivered behind her. The white plates of his armor rattled against one another, causing her brow to quirk as she glanced back at him. Beast Boy forced himself to straighten and shake off the lingering cold of Raven’s transport under her icy scrutiny.

“So,” he said, glancing up at the blinking tower of girders around them. “This is Slade’s transmitter.”

“Genius, in a simple way,” said Raven, joining in his examination of the radio tower. “All he had to do was pirate their airwave from the source, and suddenly he can transmit to the entire city at once.”

Beast Boy rolled his shoulders, once more rattling their oversized, paw-printed plates. “Guess he never counted on our ability to smash stuff that isn’t ours,” he quipped halfheartedly. “You wanna do it, or should I take - ”

There was no rumble, no quake, and no crackle. Hardly a whisper of grinding stone emerged as the brown masonry at Beast Boy’s feet flowed up into his jaw as a tight, clenched fist with a terrific crack. Beast Boy flipped high, landing on his back with a clamoring clatter of Kevlar and plate mail. His eyes lolled and glazed as his head fell back onto the roof.

Raven watched the stone arm recede smoothly into the roof with that same grinding whisper. Leery of the ground, she floated up on ethereal winds that flapped the hem of her black leather cloak. She glanced at Beast Boy, watching the shallow rise and fall of his chest, until a slow applause turned her eyes toward the nearest strut of the antenna.

A helmeted figure leaned against the girders, her outline curved with the promise of a puberty yet unfinished. Reminiscent of Slade’s armor, her own taut protection clung in alternating colors of midnight black and rusted earth. Her gauntleted hands pounded together mockingly as she stared Raven down through slitted gaps in her two-toned mask. “You actually survived the Tower raid,” she said, her haunting voice reverberating through the grille of her mask. “I’m a little impressed.”

Raven tensed. It was a struggle to keep her face blank as she glowered into the baby blue eyes set deep in that mask. “Hello, Tara,” she deadpanned. Her heavy, gothic boots skittered against the roof as she settled herself between the Apprentice and the insensate Beast Boy. Lowering her hood, Raven said, “I see you’ve got a new look to go with your career change.”

“Oh, there was never a change,” Terra said breezily, and rose from the girder to square off against the lone Titan. “I was always going to put you freaks in your place.”

“How tragically monotonous,” Raven said.

Tilting her helmet, Terra said, “I like your new duds, too. Discount armor meets goth whore. Bet it drives your girlfriend wild.”

Terra began to shuffle around Raven, trying to incite a dueling circle between them. But Raven stepped back and around, refusing to let Terra have a clear shot at Beast Boy. It might not have mattered; as her sneak attack on Beast Boy had demonstrated, Terra possessed a new, or perhaps merely unveiled control over her geokinesis that Raven scarcely believed.

Of course, Raven vowed to die before she would admit to being impressed.

A smirk bled into Terra’s mocking tone. “Well? Ain’t 'cha gonna ask me why, Blackbird?” Adopting a faux-tragic tone, she sobbed, “How could you betray us? Won’t you rejoin us, be a Titan again, and find redemption and love in our screwed-up little clique?”

Raven’s eyes narrowed. “No. You were never a Titan, and I couldn’t care less.” In a cruel moment of inspiration, she smirked, and added, “But I am curious about how many more times you can hurt Beast Boy before it gets boring.”

The eyes in the two-toned mask turned to ice. “Don’t you dare talk about Gar,” growled Terra.

“Betrayed and sucker-punched inside of twelve hours,” Raven said, forcing her smirk to grow. “Do you think anyone ever made a worse choice of girlfriend? Beast Boy must be a masochist. Or maybe he’s just dumber than I thought.”

The roof cracked and rolled in a wave, throwing Terra at Raven with alarming speed. Terra struck Raven in a full-body tackle that took both girls down. They rolled against one another, a mess of clawing hands and inarticulate curses. Hair yanking. Biting. Kneeing. Elbowing. The conflict, months in the making, exploded between the two powerful women in a hairball of fervent brawling. Were her teeth not occupied with Terra’s thumb, Raven might have sincerely laughed.

Terra ended the contest atop Raven, straddling the dark sorceress. Her hands crushed Raven’s pale, elegant throat as she snarled, “Don’t talk about Gar, witch! Just shut your ugly mouth!” Dusty sandstone rose up like liquid, encasing Raven’s hands and feet in immutable cuffs. “Don’t you ever talk about my Gar!” Terra screamed.

A genuine smirk came into Raven’s face as she lay prone and trapped beneath Terra. The spells in her armor kept Terra’s grasp a micron above her actual flesh, a fact that Terra’s gauntleted hands had yet to realize. The potent spells she’d absorbed from the tomes in her alcove buzzed in her thoughts like a hundred songs stuck in one’s head at the same time. She grasped one of the spells and thought it at Terra as hard as she could, and said, “Fine. Let’s not talk at all.”

Invisible force slammed into Terra with the grace and control of a runaway bus. Terra flew thirty feet into the air and struck the strut of the antenna with a resonant clang. Then she spun listlessly into the roof, which rippled like water as it caught her. Terra bobbed atop the liquid stone in a daze, stunned.

Pure midnight enveloped Raven’s bonds. They shattered as Raven levitated to her feet. The spells in her head sang in chaotic harmony. She lifted her hands, plucking another spell from the chaos. Electricity danced between her fingers a moment before they erupted into full lightning. The rooftop’s air crackled and popped, lifting Raven’s hair with static backwash while white heat flashed between them.

Terra yelped. A blanket of earth rolled over her reflexively. Raven’s conjured lightning splashed over the stone, dissipating into a scorch mark. When the onslaught ended, Terra tossed the blackened stone aside and stood. Raven could taste her cold fury all the way across the rooftop. “I’m gonna rip you apart with my bare hands, and shower this whole city block with your blood while I’m doing it,” said Terra.

“Oh, so you do want to talk,” said Raven.

The roof shook and flowed together, lifting Terra onto a column that barreled her toward Raven. More stone poured through Terra’s hands into jagged spears, which she threw. The spear tips struck Raven’s chest and shattered against the invisible buzz of her corset’s inlaid magic. Raven didn’t budge. Instead, she simply waved her hand, and the column carrying Terra came to a jarring halt. Had Terra’s feet not been mired in the malleable stone, she would have shot off the end of the column instead of freezing, wide-eyed, inches from Raven’s smugness.

“Fine. Let’s reminisce,” Raven said.

Raven slapped Terra across the grille. The impact thundered through Terra, quaking through her bones and shattering the stone column beneath her. A storm of pebbles rained down, dumping Terra into their gravelly midst. She struggled against the rocks a moment before she remembered herself, and pushed the gravel hard into an explosion of dust.

The cloudy air swirled around Raven, billowing through her cloak. “After you took off the first time, you must’ve fallen in with Slade. I’m guessing by the modicum of adequacy you came back with that he helped get you under control. And in return, you played the happy, helpful Judas.”

Invisible manacles clamped down around Terra’s wrists and yanked her from the ground. She struggled fruitlessly, hovering, her legs kicking a full foot off the roof.

“I’m not very good at lying or feelings,” Raven told her floating captive. “Was it hard? You had everybody else fooled. I can read minds, and you almost had me fooled. Almost.”

Practically choking on her own rage, Terra spat, “I learned a lot from Slade.”

Raven’s voice frosted over. “Did you learn how to fly?”

The cold grip around Terra’s wrists jerked her higher. She cried out as the manacles threw her over the edge of the roof. Separated from her precious earth, disoriented and spinning, Terra fell into gravity’s throes and plummeted.

*****

Piercing ringing stabbed through Tek’s ears and into her brain as she tumbled back in a rush of blue energy. Her armor vibrated, and then shook with impact when she plowed back-first into a parked SUV. The large vehicle puckered around her, shielding her from a follow-up beam of blue. Her eyes rolled behind her visor as she sat up out of the twisted car wreck. “So that’s what that feels like,” she slurred.

Cyborg growled and ducked as the line of behemoth drones marched forward. The drones’ arms were mechamorphed into short, squat cannons that spat shrieking streams of sound at the teenaged heroes, tearing apart the landscape around them. “Using my tunnels, using my sonic tech… When I see Slade, I’m gonna put my foot so far up his ass, he’ll taste it for the next week,” he snarled. Then he staggered at a sonic blast that clipped his shoulder.

Before Cyborg could right himself, a blocky, slate fist filled his vision. Stars replaced the fist as it hammered his faceplate, rocking him back. Cyborg struggled to stay on his feet as he shook his visor clear and glared up at a chortling Cinderblock. Cinderblock then brought his fists together in a double hammer blow that Cyborg barely caught.

Struggling under the weight of Cinderblock’s fists, Cyborg watched his comparatively tiny hands lose ground to the large slabs of stone with excruciating inevitability. All the while, he was forced to endure the tremendous stone thug’s rumbling laughter. “Yeah, you think it’s funny 'cause you’re stronger than me. Well, here’s a news update, Cindy,” he said to his foe.

Cyborg straightened his arms effortlessly, shocking Cinderblock back a step. Abundant power coursed through the Titan’s ugly, bulky cybernetics, and gathered behind a punch that burrowed into Cinderblock’s stomach. The mountainous cretin flew onto his backside, dragging a furrow into the pavement. Stunned, Cinderblock shifted his gaze to his bent stomach. There were long cracks running the width of his body, and oozing black ichor that crept down his dusty skin.

Flashbacks of his days as an athlete came to Cyborg while he ran forward and swept his foot into Cinderblock’s bowed head. His kick punted Cinderblock high. Grinning, Cyborg threw his arms up and imitated the cheer of a crowd. But a fresh barrage of lasers and sonic blasts stole back his joviality and forced him to duck anew.

He plunged his fingers into the pavement and lifted, peeling up a layer of blacktop. The cracked road curled in front of him to form a temporary barricade against the drones’ fire. Red light glowed through the blacktop, which shuddered against Cyborg’s hands with resonant sonics. Gritting his teeth, Cyborg bellowed, “Tek, I could use a little artillery over here!”

The crumpled SUV gave a metallic squeal and spit the hulking Tek from its pucker. She swayed a moment, taking in Cyborg’s dire situation behind his crumbling barricade and the approaching mass of drones marching on him. “Oh boy,” she breathed. “Uh...Uh...Oh! Multi-rocket Artillery Pack, auto-lock and fire!”

Dozens of targeting rectangles leapt into Tek’s vision, painting the line of drones with red boxes. Then Tek fell to her knees beneath the jarring force of two dozen rockets launching from the pack latched behind her armor. The rockets arced high, making Tek wonder if something had gone wrong. Her spent pack ejected from her back and crunched the ground as she stood, dismayed, watching the drone army dismantle Cyborg’s shield with wave after wave of energy blast.

“Cyborg,” she shrieked, “The rockets aren’t - ”

Six stories up, the red rockets inverted in tight loops and streaked back toward the ground. Halfway, the rockets split open, each disgorging a quartet of mini-rockets. Propellant lit the tails of the miniature missiles in succession, driving them into the drone line in a fast wave. The collected commandos and behemoths vanished in a string of impossibly bright bursts of white fire. Thunder clapped a hundred times in the space of a heartbeat, shaking the battlefield as the chain explosion consumed Slade’s forces. The fire died out as quickly as it had come, leaving a deaf and dazzled Tek to stare dumbly at the twenty-yard crater of char and robot corpse her rockets had left.

“Oh. Never mind,” Tek shouted over the ringing of her ears.

Then she screamed. A stream of burgundy sludge encircled Tek’s chest, lifting her from the street. Chemical flesh burned the paint from her armor with a hiss of smoke as the towering Plasmius swung her two and fro, joining her screams with its inhuman shriek. Tek clawed clumsily at the dripping grasp around her chest, plunging her cannons into the muck, but Plasmius’ slime congealed as quickly as she could pull it away. The sickening sizzle continued as its grasp ate away at her protection toward consuming the soft, tender center inside.

Cyborg shoved aside his barrier and ran forward. “Kid!” he shouted. Then he cried out and his body seized up, locked in the embrace of blue lightning. His vision snowed as he watched more of the lightning flow up from the street and collect itself into the amorphous villain, Overload.

A diskette face surfaced in the blue lightning to grin fearsomely. “Overload thinks not, half-flesh. Overload would like you to stay and die,” cackled the living lightning.

Electricity danced across Cyborg’s obsidian half-mask. His red optic burned with hate as he lifted his grotesquely swollen right arm, pointing its fist in Overload’s face. “Overload needs to think again,” he grunted.

Overload’s laugh came clumsily and artificially, though no less sincere. “Sonics do not affect Overload,” the construct reminded Cyborg.

Cyborg’s arm split and shifted, forming separated tines reminiscent of a tuning fork. The long tines curved inward in a channel that led back to his elbow. There, a small depression came alive with a ball of writhing, tight fire that smoked in the open air. The light of the miniature sun glinted in Overload’s square face.

“Didn’t you hear? Sonics are last season,” Cyborg quipped through his grimace. “Plasma is the new black.”

The plasma ball shot down its channel and off the end of Cyborg’s launcher, and careened through Overload’s face with hardly a sound. Overload’s body crackled and collapsed through its gaping wound, sucking the villain into itself. A contrail of blue lightning followed the plasma through its exit as it hurtled on toward Cyborg’s true target.

As Overload collapsed in a scream, the plasma ball struck Plasmius in the back and detonated. Plasmius burst apart with a shrieking explosion of sewage and yellow fire that briefly turned dawn into noon. Tek tumbled on the shockwave of plasma and bounced on the street like a stone across a pond, finally thumping to rest against a broken parking meter.

Tek lay on her back for a moment, glazed with purple stink, and fought to regain her breath. By the time Cyborg could offer his helping hand, she was ready to take it. He pulled Tek to her feet and wiped her visor clean of the slime with his once-more hand. “You okay, Kid?” he asked her, offering an encouraging smile she could not see.

She ignored the chemical burns on her armor in favor of the long scorch marks electrocuted into Cyborg’s body. “What about you?” she asked.

Her question became a startled gasp as Cyborg stepped back and curled up his arms. His arms opened down from the elbows, sprouting long-barreled machine cannons aimed right through Tek’s visor. Tek yelped and ducked just as Cyborg’s cannons erupted with high-pitched barks and muzzle flashes. His bullets whizzed over her helmet and tore dustily into Cinderblock, who had stood poised to snatch Tek in a constricting hold. Cinderblock staggered and cracked beneath the high-caliber onslaught. Dark ichor trickled from each chipping wound as he stumbled back and fell into a groaning mountain of cement.

The cannons retracted into Cyborg’s closing arms. “Well, I’m okay,” he said judiciously, and helped Tek up again.

Together, they watched the quivering and arcing remains of Plasmius and Overload begin to coalesce into larger pieces. Tek’s cannons whirled as she stared at the dual gatherings. “They’re reconstructing,” she said. “What should we do?”

Cyborg’s arm split and elongated back into a plasma launcher. “Can’t afford to screw around here any longer. We’ll just give ‘em another jolt and then be on our way,” he said.

Under Tek’s scrutiny, the larger pieces of either villain drifted together, forming a black bile that sparked with blue death. More of the mismatched pieces trickled into the whole as Tek moaned, “Uh, Vic?”

A new plasma charge glowed into Cyborg’s launcher. “I see it,” he said, and took aim at the incomplete central mass writhing lazily toward them. “Hit it now!”

Plasma and bullets ripped into the street where the electric bile had been. Cyborg and Tek were forced apart as the bile leapt between them in a stunning burst of speed. The bile landed atop an insensate Cinderblock and consumed him, seeping into his wounds and slurping over his slate skin. In seconds, the sparking muck had engulfed Cinderblock completely, and rose before the Titans with a rumbling groan.

“Oh, this is way too familiar,” Tek groaned.

The muck continued to rise and expand, crackling with blue lightning, and became an immense shape the size of a modest building. Slate skin surfaced in patches from the muck, and emerged from the ends of thick tendrils as great, stony fists. A half a dozen eyes blinked open in the oozing pus of the creature’s body, glaring red and blue down at the mecha duo.

Cyborg channeled more plasma into his launcher and prepared for another shot. “Damn, I hate it when bad guys do that,” he grumbled.

*****

Raven ducked as the rooftop around her tore itself apart and threw her after Terra’s tumbling trajectory. Clouds of brown stone peppered her bare legs as she yanked her hood over her head and concentrated. Invisible lift turned her fall into flight and carried her amidst a storm of crumbled masonry, over the edge of the building and down toward the distant street.

Terra, with her head start, fell several stories below Raven, glaring up at the sorceress. Her mask flashed golden as the side of the building began erupting in successive blasts of broken brick that sprayed over Raven’s protective spells. Raven’s eyes lit with arcane retribution, and her invisible force shattered each window Terra fell past. Razor shards bombarded Terra’s armor, confusing her in lieu of cutting her.

The women fell alongside the shredding building to the empty street. Bare sidewalk came to life and lifted, cradling Terra’s fall into a safe landing seconds before Raven touched down a short distance away. The liquid sidewalk lowered Terra back to ground level with dramatic deliberation, giving both combatants ample time to reestablish their stare down.

“Reminisce, huh?” said Terra, stepping out into the street amidst a hail of grated radio-station. “Okay.”

Raven followed her into the street. The torrent of magic pounding in Raven’s skull had lessened considerably, but there were still plenty of tricks left from which to choose. She plucked one and channeled it into her hands, sparking black fire in her palms. Without preamble, she pointed her cupped embers at Terra and willed them into columns of obsidian flame.

Pavement sat up at Terra’s whim and took the brunt of Raven’s magic fire, leaving Terra unharmed and haughty. “I bamboozled your other pals pretty easily,” she called from behind her barricade. “But you never completely trusted me. You never really liked me. Why was that?”

Sweating in the heat of her magic, Raven struggled to maintain the fire that ate through Terra’s barricade. “I know a rotten egg when I see one,” she snapped.

Terra kicked her barricade, breaking it from the street and sending it flying. The block of bad road careened at Raven, who dove to one side to avoid the crushing blow. “Nah. You would have done something if you’d suspected me,” Terra told the grounded Raven. Then she smiled, and gushed, “You know what I think? I think you were jealous.”

Prone, Raven made a gesture that brought opposing sections of street to flip up and sandwich Terra with a deafening clap and a spray of blacktop. Dust plumed from the seam as the sections met, ruffling Raven’s hood. She stood at once, never for a second believing that she’d done anything but buy a second to catch her breath. “Making jokes to distract me is Beast Boy’s thing. And I don’t laugh.”

The vertical street sandwich flew apart, revealing a divot on the inside of each half in which Terra had cocooned herself. Her black and brown armor remained pristine in the wake of her exit. “Punch lines never do,” she said. The ground tremored as the street sections crushed rows of parked cars and crumbled to rest.

Hot rage poured into Raven’s next spell, a wave of intense cold that made her breath steam on its way to Terra. Frost glistened in the wave’s wake, creating an icy carpet that led right to Terra’s feet. At the last second, Terra lifted her hand, calling up a mound of earth that swallowed her whole. The intense cold washed over Terra’s shell and froze the black pavement blue. Then the shell shattered, unveiling Terra’s charge at the frustrated spell slinger.

“Those twerps respected you,” Terra said, and called forth a quake that threw Raven off her feet. “They’re even a little afraid of you. But they liked me. They all liked me better than you, and I’m the one trying to kill them.”

Raven lashed out with a tendril of soul-self. The black bullwhip snapped beneath Terra’s jump and through a street lamp instead. The innocent lamp went dark as its pole separated in a neat cut and toppled, shattering its light against the pavement. Before Raven could swing her whip again, the earth beneath her reached up in a pseudopod that punched her temple, impacting on the buzz of her protective spells. Stars lit Raven’s eyes as she rolled with the spillover of the blow, landing at Terra’s feet.

Dirt streamed from the cracks in the street and engulfed Terra’s gauntlet in a tremendous fist, which she poised over Raven’s head. “Even Gar,” said Terra. “I remember how hard he used to try to get you out of that smelly room. But that stopped pretty quick after I came along.”

The brown fist crashed down, striking Raven’s protective spells just above her nose. Arcane light flickered against the impact as their powers struggled against one another. Beads of sweat trickled into Raven’s eyes. “And why...would I care...about that?” grunted Raven.

“Because even though we both hate them, it kills you that they like me better,” said Terra.

The earthen fist melted, pouring onto Raven’s face. Intended to stop blunt trauma, the armor’s spells didn’t recognize a handful of dirt as a threat, and did nothing to stop it. Raven gasped as the wet earth slapped her face. The startled breath only aided Terra as she willed the mud into Raven’s mouth and nose. Raven’s cry became garbled in mud. She arched against the ground, clawing at her throat, gagging on mud that crawled down and spread inside of her with inexorable force. Her concentration shattered in the blind, animal panic of suffocation. Writhing, wide-eyed, Raven lay helpless at Terra’s feet.

“We’re done talking,” Terra said coldly. Her eyes flashed with an enraged amber hue. “Choke and die, you frigid b*tch.”

*****

The last barrier crumbled beneath Robin’s fist, leading him through a gap in the six-inch ceiling of titanium down into a pitch-black expanse. Flotsam from the underground barrier, and from the abandoned tenement he had smashed through to reach it, rained beneath him as Robin descended into absolute dark. His eyes and fists burned red, casting Hell’s light upon a sea of hanging chains shored by stagnant gears.

Down he flew, through the endless chains, until at last his boots crushed a cold cement floor. Scowling, he touched a control on his monogrammed belt. His mask responded with a subtle shifting of technology that formed infrared lenses, recreating the expansive room in cool, metallic shades of blue. A single shape teased Robin from beyond the edge of the chain thicket. He strode through, heedless of the cold metal parting on his chest. The room remained ominously silent, save for the steady echoing of Robin’s boots on the concrete.

“I can’t decide if you’re crazy, stupid, or some unfortunate mix of both, Slade,” Robin called. He breached the thicket with deliberate steps. A throne took form from the obscured shape he had sought, and guided him to the center of the expansive room. Lingering heat clung to the chair in traces of red against the cool blues of his thermographic vision.

Reaching the throne, Robin stepped cautiously onto its platform. Dull electrical heat throbbed within the consoles at either side of the stark throne. “You can’t think that America is just going to let you keep one of its cities just because your little robot terrorists are here. They’ll burn you down and then snuff you out. Assuming you keep hiding from me like the pathetic little wretch you are,” called Robin.

One of the console screens lit with an image of Slade’s helmet. Robin disengaged his infrared lenses to glare back at the screen as Slade spoke. “You really do think small, don’t you, Robin.” After a thoughtful pause, Slade’s eye narrowed, and he purred, “Or do we know each other well enough for me to call you 'Tim'?”

The revelation of his name came as no surprise, considering Terra’s defection. Robin had given his first name to the team as a calculated risk. But then his gut clenched with terrified fury at Slade’s next words:

“Or would you prefer 'Mister Drake'? That sounds so formal, doesn’t it? I doubt that Batman...excuse me, 'Bruce', ever called you that. Or the Grayson boy. Alfred. Helena. Barbara. Poor, sweet Barbara. She’s had such a terrible time since her accident last spring. You really should call her. I imagine she misses you.”

“You won’t ever get near them, Slade,” Robin growled, choking with rage. “I will kill you before you even think about them.”

Slade’s tsking interrupted the threat. “Really, Timothy. Such talk is very unbecoming of a Teen Titan.”

Spinning, Robin searched for a sign, any sign, of the villain. “Show yourself!” he bellowed.

A single hydraulic hiss was all the warning Robin received before the platform beneath him jerked upward, carrying him into the air on a thick, pneumatic stalk. Robin fell to one knee under the sudden acceleration. He looked up on instinct, and spied a dark circle the equal of the platform rushing down at him from the pitch. Reacting, he threw his hands up and caught the opposing plate.

Overwhelming pressure filled his palms as he rose shakily against the plate. The pressure from the platform made his legs quake with effort. It took everything he had to keep the two surfaces from meeting and crushing him. Pneumatic whining screamed from behind the platform and the featureless plate as both did their best to smear Robin.

The darkness fled with an industrial snap, spilling illumination into the cavernous space. Through his gritted efforts, Robin saw a second level revealed in the new light, a narrow catwalk that ran the perimeter of the space and its chain thicket. His eyes fell hard upon the walkway’s lone occupant, who leaned against its railing in a mockingly casual manner.

“As you wish,” said Slade.

**********