Teen Titans: Incarnate - Chapter Thirty One

[Reaper of Despair]

Chapter Thirty-One: Attrition

“Everything you see now is of your own doing.”

Robin trembled as every ounce of superhuman strength he possessed went into keeping his arms and legs a healthy distance apart. He stood suspended in the air on the same platform upon which Slade’s command throne sat. The platform had risen on an enormous pneumatic stalk. A second plate of ceiling had descended on a similar stalk, sandwiching Robin and the throne.

Try as he might, Robin could not overpower the plates. He was forced to stand and quiver with effort as his hated enemy, the enigmatic Slade, watched his slow demise from a catwalk hugging the far wall. Slade leaned against the railing of the catwalk casually. Here in his lair, a thicket of chains strung from the ceiling that disappeared into the floor, Slade was in control.

The villain’s split-colored mask tilted at Robin’s resistance. Perhaps he thought Robin would be dead in an instant. In that case, Robin was too happy to disappoint. But listening to Slade drone on made the last, sarcastic piece of defiance in Robin consider giving in: death had to be better than listening to another of Slade’s speeches.

Slade aimed his gauntlet at the wall above him. Five stadium-sized screens lit in the blank wall with images of Jump City that chilled Robin’s blood.

On one screen, Slade’s two-toned, shadowy soldiers marched through the streets of the city—Slade’s city, now—with no signs of slowing. The citizenry of Jump City was nowhere to be found; they cowered in their homes, terrified to face this faceless threat.

The second screen depicted a police precinct. There, six familiar teenagers fought alongside the grizzled police lieutenant Smith and his Special Crimes Unit. Low on ammo or out of their element, the endless numbers of the drones was slowly overrunning the precinct’s defenders.

On the third screen, a figure dressed as Slade crouched over a dark shape, drawing earth up from around her to pour into the shape. Behind the pair, the business building, which bore the radio tower Slade had hijacked for his robots’ control signal, stood relatively intact. Robin recognized the silvery glint wrought into the dark shape, and felt his stomach plummet. Raven had failed in her mission, and now she was dying.

Two metallic figures danced in the fourth screen. They poured red, glowing rounds into an enormous figure of purple bile, whose stone scales reflected their efforts. The creature whipped long tendrils of slime and lightning at the metallic pair, forcing them apart.

But the fifth screen…

“Starfire,” Robin whispered. He watched the sprite of silver and lilac dance through the air, hurling bolts of emerald into wave after wave of drones. Behemoths lashed out at her with billowing columns of sonic. She spun and struck the ground at incredible speed, wearing a furrow into the concrete with her harsh landing. But the foes around her kept coming, kept clawing, kept shooting, with no regard for how many she destroyed. They would win in the end, if only through sheer number and persistence.

“You had only to submit to my reign, Timothy,” Slade announced smoothly to the transfixed Titan. “I would have taken my fill and gladly left your precious city relatively intact. I only asked that you acknowledge my superiority. I only asked that you acknowledge the fact that you had been beaten. But time and again, you prove the need for your elimination. And now your friends must suffer the same fate. Once more, your defiance becomes their death.”

The plates closed another inch. Robin dipped his head. Sweat beaded at his brow, dripping down his chin and onto the smooth black material of his armored uniform. The stylized avian silhouette on his chest stretched with effort. “I’ve heard this all before, Slade,” Robin grunted. “What makes you think this time will be any different?”

Slade pressed another control on his gauntlet. The pressure squeezing Robin increased dramatically, forcing him to dip another three inches. He cried out, half-crouched against the unyielding plates. His muscles screamed and quivered with effort.

“And to think, I once considered you as a worthy successor,” Slade said with a shake of his head.

“I swear, Slade,” Robin growled. “I’m going to make you pay for this.”

A soft chuckle echoed through the lair, audible still over the whine of the stalks that drove the plates ever closer toward crushing Robin. Slade slung himself over the catwalk rail and watched the fruits of his planning. “You’ve made such promises before, Timothy,” he said. Mockingly, he added, “What makes you think this time will be any different?”

Robin grit his teeth and strained, searching for an answer in the anger and desperation flooding his thoughts.

*****

Raven wanted to kiss a boy.

Her mortal heritage offered Raven the benefit of a humanoid appearance, something that other demons had to play tricks or make deals to get. Taking after her mother, and not her absentee anger-issues father, meant she could walk down the street without evoking terror in all of the mundane people she wished she could be like. But as she’d discovered upon entering teenagerdom, a human form came with human hormones, which demanded human needs that took inhuman concentration to deny. Much of her constant meditation was spent curbing her baser desires for companionship.

Harder still was dealing with the absence and bombardment of emotion. Every feeling Raven had, every feeling she did not keep wrapped in the tightest of chokeholds, was subject to the baleful whims of her extradimensional father. He could take those feelings and twist them into a rage that poisoned her tenuous soul. And when she did purge herself of emotion, when she did take from him all his opportunity to corrupt her, he twisted the emotion she empathed in those around her.

Oh, Raven had friends. Their camaraderie and support gave her the strength to continue her fight against the inevitability of her descent. Because of their friendship, she could weather the worst of her forced isolation. But through the confusion and emptiness, one thing remained painfully evident to Raven.

Oh, God, she wanted to kiss a boy.

As Raven lay on the street, with animate earth pooling into her lungs, she questioned her mind’s final thought. Kissing boys? Was that really the best her sharply honed mind could do? She stared up into the two-toned face of the former Titan forcibly feeding asphalt down her throat, and was utterly disappointed in herself.

Her mind flashed back to Dominic, the peaceful presence she’d encountered in the bookstore. She recalled his smile and wondered how it would feel pressed against hers.

So maybe it was stupid. But it didn’t feel that way.

…

Stupid humanity.

*****

Terra grinned in her helmet as she watched Raven’s wide eyes glaze. She felt a thready pulse through the dirt trail snaking down the Titan’s throat. The faint beating of Raven’s heart grew fainter still, making Terra shiver gleefully. The Titan’s struggles weakened, leaving only a clammy grip resting gently on the liquid dirt.

Terra had pictured this moment dozens of times throughout her undercover days. Prefabricated one-liners welled in her lips, but she remained silent. Some moments were too good for words.

But a voice from behind disagreed, and piped up, “Why are the cute ones always crazy?”

Turning, Terra caught sight of a green shape ballooning behind her. The shape became a towering impossibility that dropped Terra’s jaw. An elephant decked in full plate armor shadowed her, glaring down at her from around its tusks. His trunk whipped around Terra’s waist and yanked her, screaming, from Raven. Terra flew helplessly from his trunk and crashed through the passenger side of a parked van as the armored elephant deflated into an armored boy.

Raven felt strong hands shove her armor below her breastbone. She coughed up a pie’s worth of mud as her eyes snapped open to look into cold green concern. She managed to gargle, “Beast Boy,” before her stuttering gasp made her gag. Beast Boy rolled her onto her side as she heaved out her insides. Yellowed dirt pooled under her cheek as she spasmed her airway clean. A gloved hand pulled the hair from her face until she only coughed up the stale air in her lungs.

“Easy,” Beast Boy said, helping her sit up. “You’ve been breathing the wrong stuff.”

Wracked with coughing, Raven tried to reassure Beast Boy that she was capable of taking care of herself. A stuttered rendition of his name made it between coughs before she gave up and leaned begrudgingly into his arm. Her chest throbbed from the inside out. Her throat felt raw and hot against her short, semi-desperate gasps.

A stirring in the passenger van across the street stole Beast Boy’s notice. “Sit tight,” he said, giving her shoulder a pat. “I gotta go have a heart-to-heart with Tara.”

“You shouldn’t…” Raven gagged and cringed. The effort to speak tore her throat. “You shouldn’t have to…”

Sadness spread in a smile on Beast Boy’s lips. “Yeah,” he murmured. “I shouldn’t. But I will, anyway.” Then, with another reassuring pat on her back, he rose and began walking across the street.

Beast Boy made it halfway to the van when the earth reached up and tore its side open. Terra lay among the van’s jumbled innards, glaring balefully from behind the split color of her mask. She slid through the torn side and strode forward with the confidence of a girl who had not just been tossed by an elephant. “Hello, Gar,” she greeted him plainly. “The armor looks good on you. Paw prints are a little on-the-nose, but it works.”

Glancing down at the purple prints on his chest plates, Beast Boy shrugged. “Thanks,” he said, looking up. “Wish I could say the same. So why didn’t you squish me while I was conked out?”

“I wanted to talk to you,” Terra said. They stopped several strides apart, shoulders squared and tensed, fists curled, eyes hard and locked. “I wanted to convince you that I’m not your enemy.”

His fingers grazed the purpling bruise at his hairline. “You have a funny way of showing it,” he muttered.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” insisted Terra. “Gar, don’t make me…”

Uncharacteristic cold steeped Beast Boy’s words. “What makes you think you could?” he asked.

The ground trembled as Terra lifted her fists. Waves rolled through the street, cracking its blacktop. Car alarms howled up and down the block. Buildings shook, vomiting their windows in a hail of shredded glass. Fire hydrants broke and erupted with impromptu fountains. “I was always stronger than you, Gar,” Terra told him. “And this suit only makes me stronger. You can’t beat me.”

Beast Boy kept his footing with effortless grace. His glimmering, cat-like eyes never wavered from Terra. “We’ll see about that.”

*****

A glowing, oozing, stony foot swung up into Cyborg’s cross block. Even with his new prosthetics, he couldn’t escape the laws of physics; the combined foot of Cinderblock, Plasmus, and Overload was easily as big as a car, and possessed more than enough momentum to launch Cyborg through the air. He flew forty yards and three stories high, and sunk with hardware-rattling force into the brickwork of an old building.

The triple threat monster screeched in triumph. Yellow eyes sunken into its black, slimy skin swiveled collectively to rest on the remaining Titan across the street. Quakes rattled the world with each of its steps as it lumbered toward Tek. Another screech bit the air and sent the tinny Titan’s heart into her throat.

“Okay, alley girl,” she said to herself in a shaky tone, backing away from the Triple Threat’s advance. “You’ve got this. You’ve done the combo-monster thing before.”

The cannons strapped to her arms and shoulders revolved into blurred columns, each one lighting at its end with the metallic bark of bullets being thrown with blinding speed. Tek lost her own scream in the noise of her cannons as she watched her attack fail utterly to slow Triple Threat’s advance. Those bullets that did hit would glance off the creature’s stone skin plates, or sink into its viscous pitch, or evaporate in the blue energy that arced across its skin. Tek’s panicked breath wheezed in and out her grille as the bark of her guns fell silent one cannon at a time, until Triple Threat stood over her, unafraid of the empty cannons spinning and clicking at him.

Cyborg watched helplessly from his crater in the building as Triple Threat reached down and plucked Tek from the ground. She screamed in its oozing grasp, arms pinned to her sides, armor hissing beneath the chemical hunger of the creature’s slime. Knowing he had to save her, Cyborg braced himself for the coming fall, and willed commands to his new body.

The oversized devices layered on Cyborg’s shoulders jettisoned apart as they launched a wave of tiny missiles, each one no bigger than his little finger. Flying fast, the missiles converged on Triple Threat’s arm just above the fist that clutched Tek on her way to the creature’s mouth. Fire and force blossomed in a hundred-part harmony to consume the creature’s arm. Triple Threat yowled and stumbled back, waving its empty stump, as Tek and its fist struck the ground and splattered into a mound of stony slime.

The missile launch jarred Cyborg from the wall. He fell, and managed to get a single leg beneath him before he caught up with the street. It did no good, for his leg pierced the abused pavement, staking it while the rest of him slammed face-first onto the ground. Everything went dark.

Moments or years later, Cyborg pulled his plated face from the pavement. His vision swam together to find Triple Threat reaching with its remaining hand toward its dismembered fist. Cyborg’s arm split into a pronged plasma launcher as he extracted himself from his second crater. The cannon belched a ball of plasma the size of his head, kicking him back a step. Glowing golden brilliance struck Triple Threat in the shoulder and vaporized a spherical chunk of the creature in a flash. Triple Threat screamed, teetered, and toppled.

Cyborg loped to the mound of slime left by Triple Threat’s fist. He plunged a hand into the mire, ignorant of the warning messages in his vision as acidic chemicals burned away his tactile sensors. Something clanked into his grasp. He yanked and stepped back, pulling Tek from the slime. Her armor, stripped and warped by the acid, clattered on the blacktop while she gasped.

“I can’t…I can’t…I can’t…” Tek repeated the phrase over and over, clutching her helmet as she curled into a ball. Her repetitions quickened at Cyborg’s touch, which she shrank from in a fit of primal fear. “No…No! I can’t…”

“Tek, calm down…” Cyborg began, but stopped at a long, inhuman hiss that turned him from the terrified armor. Triple Threat was back on its feet and glaring down at them. The missing parts of its anatomy finished regenerating, leaving no evidence that they’d hurt it at all. “Aw, hell,” muttered Cyborg.

He lifted his launcher, but was far too slow in doing so. Triple Threat’s hand engulfed his arm and lifted him bodily. Stinking muck clogged the cannon, making any liberating blasts impossible. Cyborg had no time to brace himself for the backhand that rattled his entire body. He swung like a windsock, dangling from Triple Threat’s fist as its other hand slapped him. Each blow struck with dynamite force. By the third blow, he felt his consciousness leaking out of his ears.

“No!” he heard Tek whimper between the gonging blows. “No…no…no…no…no. NOOOOOOOOOO!” Her whimper became a howl, which then became a snarl. Somewhere deep in Cyborg’s brain, his memory clicked, and he realized that they now had two problems.

A tinny roar ripped from Tek’s grille. She pounced upon Triple Threat’s bulbous torso and sank her feet into its viscous skin. Stuck, she began to claw Triple Threat, tearing the great stone fragments in its body free with swipes of her cannons. Blue lightning arced from the creature’s gushing wounds into her armor. The cannons, ill-suited for such physical stress, bent and snapped.

Cyborg fell limp from Triple Threat’s grasp and clattered to the ground. He watched Triple Threat scrape the frenzied armor from its chest and hurl her away. Tek landed in a crouch and leapt back in one smooth motion. She tore the cannons from her shoulders in mid-flight and used them as clubs. Triple Threat’s body splashed beneath Tek’s shape-rending blows. Both Tek and her prey howled as she beat the creature apart. She struck without mercy or pause, gouging its eyes and shattering its chitinous stone scales.

Given her craze, Cyborg doubted that she would stop even after she demolished what was left of Triple Threat. He also doubted he could calm her down once she started tearing him apart. His arm became a launcher once more as he drew a bead on the brawling pair. “Reroute all available power to the plasma launcher,” he instructed his systems. “Direct all energy into a single charge and prepare to fire.”

OPERATION NOT RECOMMENDED. MOTOR AND TACTICAL FUNCTIONS WILL BE REDUCED BY 100 PERCENT. RECOMMEND -

“Override.” The single word set off a massive fusion reaction in the launcher, pouring liquid fire down the tines of its barrel. Cyborg could feel the cannon’s magnetic fields straining to contain the charge. Strength ebbed from every extremity as he hurried to aim his shot at the fervor that was Tek’s fight with Triple Threat. “Hope this doesn’t hurt too much, Kid,” he muttered.

The plasma launcher flew apart as its oversized charge poured forth. Cyborg staggered as the blowback consumed his entire arm, and he watched his impeccable aim at work. Plasma poured into Triple Threat’s chest just as Tek had leapt up for a renewed mauling.

An instant of alarming calm followed the impact. Tek, Cyborg, and Triple Threat all stared at the plasma through crawling time as the fire slithered into the creature’s sickening skin. Then time resumed as normal, and Triple Threat became no threat at all.

Viscous pitch flew in all directions from an expanding sphere of fire. Thunder roared with the lightning that dissipated from the departing remnants of Triple Threat. Tek’s limbs fluttered, rag-dolled, as she hurtled from the explosion wearing a sizable portion of Triple Threat’s face. Smoke trailed after her, following her into the bottom floor of a business building, where she disappeared into the glass atrium.

Cyborg stood in the stinking acidic rain with a funny smile beneath his faceplate. “Stone, one. Two birds, zero,” he crowed.

He pumped his fist in victory. Or rather, he tried. His remaining arm fell to his side and refused all impulses to the contrary. His kneecaps clapped on the street as his legs failed him. The power he needed to move simply wasn’t there.

“Oh,” he said, as he fell forward onto the pavement. Blacktop filled his fuzzy vision. “Okay. This is awkward.”

*****

“You lied to me!” screamed Terra.

The street rumbled apart, breaking into rough cubes that dwarfed the cars tumbling from their tops. Cubic tons of the street circled overhead like carrion birds, casting hard-edged shadows that swept over the tattered landscape. Terra stood upon one of the blocks, her arms raised as she conducted the airborne earth. Darkness spilled all around as the sidewalks holding street lamps tore free of the earth.

Terra’s eyes flashed down upon the lone figure left at the edge of the torn street. “You said you loved me,” she said. “You were my first. But it was never true. You were just using me, like the rest of them!”

Stone rattled up around Beast Boy. His armor pinged against a rain of pebbles from the bottoms of the blocks. He held his place, stoic and hard against the threat of being crushed by any one of the house-sized blocks. “Yeah,” he said with a roll of his eyes. “I’m the liar here.”

“Slade told me you Titans were all like that,” Terra shot. “I didn’t want to believe him about you, but he was right. All you did was use me! You all did!”

Shadow swallowed Beast Boy beneath the tumultuous crash of a street block. The city trembled as Terra drove the cube hard into the ground and twisted it, grinding everything beneath the block into rubble. Terra sneered at the block, beneath which a paste of her ex-boyfriend surely dripped.

Then a small, white shape fluttering toward another block caught her amber eye. A green sparrow trilled and struggled with the weight of his tiny armor, finally fluttering to rest atop a block and growing into a crouched Beast Boy. Enraged, Terra hurled the block he was on into the side of a building.

“I wasn’t good enough for any of you until I could control this,” Terra snarled. Her block dove into the glass façade of a business complex, tearing its towering reflection of the fight into a million dancing shards. The building shrieked with the sound of grinding glass. As the block crumbled into the building, she shouted, “Well, Slade wanted me! And he made me good enough for the Titans so I could put you in your places.”

The last of the glass fell to ground, leaving in its wake a silence that set Terra on edge. She pulled twin spikes from the cube beneath her boots and waited. Her patience paid off a moment later, and she hurled a wave of spikes at a chain mail kangaroo that bounded from the shattered building. The stone spikes speared the dust trailing his tail, and the kangaroo ricocheted between the whirling blocks. Terra’s aim proved maddeningly close, but in the end, Beast Boy landed before her in human shape and stood tall and unmoving, staring her down through the gaps in her mask.

Terra pulled fists of rock over her hands and boots of rock onto her feet with a single thought. The block they stood upon cracked with the strain as Terra leapt at Beast Boy, fossilized fists swinging to cleave his head off his shoulders.

“You never loved me!” she screamed, landing on the next block a breath behind Beast Boy. “You used me! And I hate you for it!”

Her stone fist shattered against the armored stomach of a gorilla. Terra clutched her throbbing actual hand and looked up into his empty glare and flaring nostrils. The gorilla shrank back into Beast Boy, startling her back. She tripped over her own feet and fell onto the block.

“I love you,” Beast Boy said.

Beast Boy’s gauntlet crossed Terra’s mask. The matte black half of her visor caved in, blinding her to the boot that buried its steel toe in her stomach. Doubled over, she heaved breath in greedily, helpless to react until she filled her chest.

He grasped the sides of her helmet and hauled it to eye level. “Robin figured out that you couldn’t control your powers on his own. I didn’t tell him squat.”

The gorilla in him returned with a seamless shift, still clutching her head. He brought their foreheads together with a resounding clang that bent her mask further, blinding her completely. She staggered back, and then wrapped around the tail of a velociraptor that swept her off the block. She had to scramble to call another floating block beneath her. She struck the block hard, bouncing on impact.

As she lay prone, something heavy landed next to her. A vicious kick dissipated against her black suit, with her armor turning what would have been massive internal trauma into simple cracked ribs. “Everyone loves you, Tara. You’re just too scared to see it,” she heard Beast Boy say calmly. “You don’t believe anybody can love anybody without wanting something back. You couldn’t believe we could love you if we knew you. You didn’t think we could give you all of this for free. So you ran away from us and you found Slade, who gave you exactly that kind of selfish love.”

“I’ll kill you!” she screamed blindly, and thrust a stream of stone at the voice.

Beast Boy sidestepped the lethal stone shaft. He looked down at the scrambling girl through narrow, inhuman eyes, and spoke in a cold tone. “And when you came back, you were sure that our love was the lie. It had to be, or else that screwed up mentor/daddy complex you’ve got with Slade would be the lie. And you can’t handle that.”

Terra ripped her helmet off. A blonde banner of war billowed behind her hateful glare. “Shut the hell up!” she screamed.

The block they stood upon geomorphed into tremendous hands that closed around Beast Boy. He strained his noodle arms uselessly, and then gasped one last time. With a rumble, the giant hands constricted around Beast Boy, turning his green face purple, grating and bending his armor, stressing his slender frame to the point of agony.

Terra stood atop her stone hands, looking down. Tears streamed from her hateful eyes as she bent into his purpling face and sprayed him with laughter. “This is what you deserve, you worthless b*stard!” she told him.

Rage welled in Beast Boy’s chest. He used the last of his breath to utter, “I love you.”

The stone hands exploded with a shape too grand to contain. Bits of dead pavement fell around Terra as she plummeted onto a new block pulled from the ground. As soon as she landed, she glared back up at whatever animal Beast Boy had become. Then she turned ghastly pale.

Beast Boy’s armor stretched and strained across a tremendous, chitinous chest of green-black scales. He loomed above her, a reptilian nightmare of fantasy, and spread black, bat-like wings across the width of the street. An angular head dipped on his long, flexible neck, splitting with jaws filled with sword-like teeth. Flames glowed at the back of his throat as he blew Terra down with a roar she felt more than she heard.

Terra screamed as the Beast Boy dragon roared again. She yanked her stone block up around her in a bubble to shield herself from the fire that spilled from the emerald dragon’s maw. Flames poured around the edge of her bubble, which began to crack under the intense heat. Terra sweated and knelt, pulling up more and more of the block she floated upon to shore up her crumbling defense. Smoldering char nipped at the end of her hair. Enamel peeled from her armor, leaving it a dull and barren gray.

So intent was Terra on keeping her barrier against the flames that she did not see the dragon’s spiked tail sweeping at her. The tail smashed through her block, throwing her into a spray of boulders. Terra fell with a long scream to the rough-hewn ground, calling reflexively on her gifts to keep the airborne rockslide from crushing her as it fell into a heaping crypt around her.

Dusty, crushing darkness collapsed over Terra. The air rushed from her lungs as she grinded and rumbled under her own avalanche. She felt the delicate control of her suit snap away as it broke, like being gagged and blinded after only hours of sight. Panicked, breathless, she threw her power in all directions, blasting away her rock crypt. Then she lay in a crater, heaving and exhausted.

Then she screamed and recoiled at a tremendous claw descending upon her. Knees to her chest, arms over her face, she felt her world quake as the claw crashed into the ground. One last draconic bellow tore through the air. Then, silence.

Terra cracked a single eye, glancing around. She lay amidst five deep scars punched around the crater. The sky above her was empty. Rocks were strewn between the dropped and sunken fleet of her blocks. And standing before her, an almost-human Beast Boy glared with wholly inhuman eyes.

“I loved you,” he told her. “I never wanted anything but love from you. Now, I want you to go, and I never, ever want to see your face again.” His brow dropped, hooding his eyes in shadow. His scowl glimmered with animal hate. Then he turned on his heel and began a long, deliberate trek back to the transmitter’s building.

“Why…” Terra stared after him, still sprawled on the ground. “W-why couldn’t you just love me like this?” she whimpered.

Beast Boy didn’t slow his gait. “Because you’re eight different flavors of screwed up, Sladette. Don’t ever come back.”

As he reached the foot of the building, Beast Boy felt a new tremor underfoot an instant before the sidewalk broke into rough tentacles around him. He whipped around, fists clenched, and glared back at Terra. She stood on a skewed pedestal of asphalt. Kinesis whipped through her hair and burned in her eyes as she leveled her fingers at him. “No!” she screamed. “I won’t let you - ”

She stopped short. So did her sidewalk tentacles. Beast Boy un-cringed to see Terra clutching at her throat. Several inches of empty air separated her soles from her pedestal. Looking past Terra, Beast Boy spied a glimmer of arcane light held within the folds of a shadowed hood. Raven leaned on a blue lump that used to be a mailbox as she glowered at the gagging girl.

“We’re done talking,” she said hoarsely. “Choke and fly, you pathetic b*tch.”

Terra shivered in pure black soul-self. The ethereal substance flung her high above the city skyline. She faded into a mote in the clouds, her scream dwindling into a squeak in the space of a breath.

Beast Boy watched Terra disappear into the sunrise with a fading sense of bitterness amidst the other thousands of emotions boiling in his chest. Then he jogged to Raven and helped her off the battered mailbox in spite of her weak protest. “Choke and fly?” he asked skeptically.

“Inside joke. You had to be there.” Raven eyeballed him, careful to keep her bare skin from touching his. The walls around her mind were reinforced with trepidation and the maddening plethora of magic she had culled from the borrowed tomes.

Both hobbled toward the radio building, but stopped shortly after starting. Dual legions of the red and black drones marched upon the pair, spilling into their slice of the city from either direction of the street. Behemoth reinforcements marched behind them with cannons raised at the ready. The hum of laser pre-fire blared in stereo, forcing Beast Boy and Raven back-to-back.

She had to lean on him harder than she would have liked, and gritted her teeth at the heartless army pouring around them. “It seems Terra had reinforcements,” she said.

Beast Boy’s skin buzzed, aching to cast off the shackles of his skinny human form. “Let’s cancel their favorite radio show. I think we should - ”

Raven cast up a hand. The lofty radio antenna rattled as creeping blackness consumed it from bottom to top. Raven’s hand curled. The antenna collapsed upon itself, wailing in death with the metallic shriek and bark of breaking girders. Within seconds, all that remained of the antenna was a jagged stack of metal on the rooftop. Slade’s robots felt its signal’s absence at once, and jerked to a stop, quivering en masse.

Raven’s legs jellied with the effort. Only Beast Boy’s quick catch kept her from falling, a kindness that galled her. To save face, she returned his concern with a smug look and asked, “What was all that 'we' business?”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Beast Boy. He examined Slade’s frozen army while Raven reasserted her legs. “Well, what do you think the return is on recycled robots? If you can get a nickel for a pop can, I bet these guys are, like, a buck-fifty each, easy.”

The robots cut short Raven’s scathing retort with unified chaos. Each drone and behemoth awakened with weapons lit and empty eyes wide in simulated madness. Lasers and sonic blasts filled the air with resonant heat. Masonry, glass, plaster—the bevy of buildings rained bodily onto the street, crushing indiscriminately. Even as the robots’ efforts killed them secondhand beneath the debris, their crazed, undirected attack continued.

Soul-self rippled around the Titans into a bubble that deflected the torrent of energies. Beast Boy tensed with feral fear at Raven’s side. “They aren’t retreating. Robin said - ”

“Robin was wrong,” snapped Raven. Through her bubble, past the immediate chaos, she watched similar explosions of drone weaponry blossom in distant blocks. The thought of this much destruction in every part of their city cracked even her grim demeanor. “He was dead wrong.”

*****

[Reaper of Despair]

The live feed on Slade’s stadium monitors blinked into static, obscured the moment Robin watched the destruction of the radio tower. A second later, the image was replaced with an extreme satellite view of the city. As Robin strained in the pressure of the plates, he watched the live map of Jump City begin to glow with pinpricks of red and blue. The colorful lights expanded between the larger buildings of the city into a purplish haze.

Robin’s hot blood ran cold as the muted colors danced through the city. Fire kindled atop the grand skyscrapers in the midst of the glow. The flickering points of orange amidst the reds and blues blurred in the sweat that trickled over Robin’s mask. “What have you done, Slade?” he growled.

The infuriatingly smug serenity remained in Slade’s voice as he watched the city’s destruction. “I wash my hands of this carnage, Timothy. My invasion was a calm, calculated affair. The drones were not to offer any force whatsoever unless directly confronted by resistance. But without a command signal to control them, the drones have reverted to their default purpose.” He hissed the word, half-disgusted, half-delighted. “Chaos.”

The alien might in Robin’s arms dulled. He locked his elbows, forcing his body to compress. Pain screamed in his joints as the plates closed another inch closer toward crushing him. It felt as though his blood had been replaced with battery acid. Sweat dribbled down his lips, dipped the ends of his hair, and washed his vision of Slade into a hateful smear. “You…you can’t!” he wheezed.

“I’m not,” Slade said, opening his hands in a helpless gesture. “As I said, my invasion was to be orderly and temporary. You were the one who negated my ability to control them.” His eye glimmered as he leaned over the catwalk railing, glaring at Robin in bemusement. “Did you actually believe my drones would simply desist if you took away my reins? What on Earth gave you that insipid notion?”

“I…”

“This is why you no longer interest me, Timothy. Since your acquisition of these extraordinary gifts, you’ve done nothing but squander them.” Slade’s rational tone sharpened. He gripped the railing hard, as though enraged by Robin’s failure. “Worse, you let these abominations supplant your real gifts. You are devoid of strategy, of foresight. You blindly bash your way through problems, never thinking of their consequences.”

Robin drew upon Slade’s speech, letting the hate it sparked in his chest flow into his limbs. “I won’t let…won’t let you…”

Slade drew back. He lifted his gauntlet, poising his finger above its smooth, black surface. “You showed such promise in the beginning. Now, you’re just one more metahuman in my way.”

He tapped his gauntlet. The thicket of chains surrounding them jerked and tightened. Rusty cogs in the walls and ceiling began to turn, raining flakes of rust as they moved for the first time in years. And with the chains stretched taut, Robin felt the pressure he stood between double, and then double again. He howled as his legs gave out. His knees slammed into the plate below. The plate above bent his elbows by force, stopping only once it pressed tightly to his shoulders.

Robin had to duck his head or lose it. His arms trembled and his knees screamed. He bent little by little as the plates inched together, spurred on by the incremental crawl of each chain in the thicket.

“Witness the highest compliment I have ever paid an adversary, Timothy,” said Slade. “Every chain and every gear is connected to an engine. There are legions of them throughout this complex. Their only purpose is to drive the trap you find yourself in now. A thin layer of promethium covers each plate, preventing you from simply breaking out, or destroying the plates with your precious energy blasts. An entire lair, whose sole purpose is to crush you.”

The plates pushed harder. For the first time in months, Robin felt fear slither up his spine. He didn’t have the strength to fight the pressure forever. Eventually it would overwhelm him, and the unbreakable plates would crush him. His unnatural fortitude would make death a slow process. He would lie between the plates, feeing each rib fail one by one, cracking like gunshots before his vital organs ballooned and burst. For the first time in months, he felt mortal again. He felt afraid.

But, no. Something in his chest stirred, swallowing that fear. In its place came an overwhelming rage, a fury that literally painted his vision red. He felt his sweat bubble and steam on his skin, evaporating clear of his eyes, which bore into Slade. This madman had made a fool of Robin through childish trickery. Now this waste of a man meant to crush him in a paltry machine, like a rodent in a trap.

“No,” Robin growled. The rage in his chest spread, rushing into his arms. Creaking, the plate above halted. Then it relinquished a precious inch. Robin’s scarlet glare flared at Slade. “No,” he said again, louder.

One by one, the trembling chains in Slade’s thicket broke and fell. They clattered uselessly to the floor, whipping into one another. Squealing gears sprayed sparks and smoke from the walls. The lair rumbled as Robin pushed back against its collective efforts.

Slade grasped the railing to steady himself. “Don’t fight this, Timothy,” he said. He had to shout to be heard over the snap-clatter of the chains and the whine of the gears. “I’ve studied you. I know what you’re capable of. Whatever temporary front you muster will only delay the inevitable.”

Robin growled and pushed. And pushed. And pushed. Each word Slade spoke stoked the fire in his chest, pouring more strength into his limbs. He rose, half-crouched, trembling between the opposing plates. The chains driving Slade’s trap broke in waves, clear-cutting the lair. Rusted cogs tore free from the ceiling and cracked the floor. Long breaches leapt across the ceiling in their place, revealing the complex of machinery Robin fought against. Even as Robin’s strength grew, the pressure in the plates waned.

“No.” Slade pulled an electro-disc from his belt and cupped it in the curve of his arm. He had worked too hard. He would not lose now. “No, Timothy!”

The electro-disc spun through the air as Robin’s rage found its apogee. Roaring, he released the last leash on his anger, and let it run rampant into his vision. The lenses of his mask vaporized to make way for two beams of deep crimson light. His glare found the disc in flight and bisected it, destroying it in a flash of red lightning.

Robin’s roar shook the lair. He straightened. The hydraulic stalks driving the plates crinkled. Chains yet unbroken fell limp as the engines pulling them died, their final breath spilling smoke throughout the lair.

Freed, Robin flexed his arms, and then ripped away the remainder of his mask. His glare pierced the haze to find Slade stumbling on his bucking catwalk.

Smoggy air wracked Slade’s chest and stung his eye. He fell back against the wall in the quake’s decline and pawed at his belt for a new weapon. His fingers tugged at the electro-lariat coiled at his back when he heard a new screech of torn metal. Then the curtain of smoke before him parted, and his throne flew at him with deadly speed.

Slade leapt and rolled, and felt the catwalk cry as the throne plowed through it behind him. His knees struck hard on his landing. He fell upon his hands and coughed. His lariat skittered away from him, falling over the edge into the scattered chains below.

Something grabbed his armor harness from behind and yanked the floor out from beneath him. Slade hung limp and spun to face Robin’s unmasked face. Red death roiled in Robin’s eyes. The teen’s grip crushed through Slade’s harness like putty. “Little man,” uttered Robin. “You really piss me off.”

Robin’s backhand struck Slade like a sledgehammer. Slade spun over the rail of the catwalk and fell. His scream lost its wind at the burning blow of a bird bolt that bent his back and drove him hard into the floor. Chipping stone splashed up around him. He felt something in his chest give out with a gunshot crack. Sticky heat pooled against his lips inside his mask.

That steel grip returned to his harness and rolled him. Robin loomed over him, black and blurred by the smoke. “Get up, Slade,” he said. “Give me another excuse to break your legs.”

Slade tried to comply, but the slightest twitch set his chest ablaze. So Robin launched him with a kick that crushed his stomach. Prickling cold spread through Slade’s body as he bounced across the floor. He felt bolts of fire hammer him, knocking him farther, consuming his armor in flashes of intense heat. He tried to run, but could not. He tried to protect himself, but there was nothing left.

Robin caught up to Slade’s skittering with a burst of flight. He pulled Slade from the floor and swung him overhead, returning him to the floor hard. “Tricks and lies won’t save you now, Slade. You’ve got nothing left,” he snarled. Robin reached down and grasped Slade’s mask, bending its steel in his palm. “Nothing but this.”

One swift tug tore the mask. The rest of Slade’s helmet fell away as his head jerked forward. Then he fell back, gasping, blood pooling in his lips. Robin stood for a moment with the mask and stared down into the face of his would-be killer.

A single, dark eye stared back, wrapped in pale skin that was just starting to wrinkle, like fresh paper recently uncrumpled. A black patch rested opposite Slade’s eye, held in place by a black band that disappeared into the neat, trim crop of snowy hair that framed his head. Slade’s lips parted for a ragged cough. Blood stained his teeth.

Robin chuckled. His glowing eyes crinkled in a smile. He threw back his head and laughed. “That is rich,” he said. “That is…it’s just so sad. It’s hilarious.”

“Laugh while you may, Timothy,” coughed Slade. Without the mask, his voice sounded weak and soft. “In time, you’ll pay for this. I’ll make you pay.”

The laughter in Robin’s throat died. “What makes you think you’ll be around to make me pay for anything?”

“Bruises heal. Bones mend. But this hurt you have given me…revealing me in this manner…” Slade coughed again, as though his lungs were squirming up his throat. A dark look in his eye matched Robin’s red glare. “I will return this hurt a thousand fold. I will live to have my revenge.”

Rage swelled into Robin’s hand, compacting into a bolt of deep crimson. His glove burned away trying to contain the power. Wisps of armor rose from his trembling fingers as he brought them to Slade’s face. “You won’t live to have anything, Slade,” he uttered, rage cracking his voice into an animalistic snarl. “I’m going to burn you away, like the cancer that you are!”

“No.”

The word turned Robin to a lilac ghost hovering in the smoke. The ghost floated forward, growing clearer as it came closer. “Starfire?” His voice hardened. “You shouldn’t be here.”

Starfire landed at arms’ length. She appeared serene, with sadness in her gaze that made Robin hesitate. “Nor should you be here,” she stated. “Grave turmoil has seized the city. We are in need of your assistance. I followed your communicator signal when you did not respond.” When his bolt did not waver from Slade’s face, she took a small step forward. “Robin…”

“Just get out of here, Starfire!” he bellowed, startling her back. His glare flashed back to Slade. His bolt grew hotter, vaporizing his suit’s sleeve to his wrist. Slade’s beard began to smolder away, leaving his skin raw red. “I have to do this,” said Robin.

Starfire stepped forward again. “You cannot,” she told him. “You once told me that a Titan must not kill. I now remind you of this.”

Trembling, Robin grasped his wrist to steady the bolt. “This is Slade, Kory! Do you have any idea what he’s done? The things he did to me - ”

“ - make him a horrible person,” said Starfire. “But they could not lessen you, because you are stronger than he is. You are better.” Another step brought her to his side. She gently rested her hand on his shoulder, speaking in a soft tone. “You are my Robin. And my Robin could never kill.”

The scarlet faded from Robin’s eyes, leaving them tired and blue. He turned. Apology surfaced on his dark features.

Then Slade gave a small laugh.

At once, the rage blossomed in Robin’s glare, masking him behind twin stars of red. “No! This is the only way!” he snapped.

Starfire shoved his arm. Had she been a second slower, it would have been Slade’s head, and not the broken carpet of chains, that exploded with bloody heat. She flinched at the flare of the bolt, but kept her grip on Robin’s wrist.
Starfire stared back into Robin’s shocked anger. She struggled to smooth the cracks in her voice as she told him, “I cannot allow this, Robin.”

The lair spun dizzyingly. Starfire spiraled, catching herself in the air a full dozen feet away from Robin and Slade. Her jaw throbbed and her eyes spun. It took a second for her senses to return, and a second more to blink the stars out of her eyes.

Robin’s fist trembled. Blood streamed from his knuckles where they had struck her. “I told you not to question me,” he said with alarming calm flooding his growl. “You don’t ever question me, Starfire.”

He turned back to Slade, gathering another killing bolt in his palm. Before he could finish, Starfire descended into his line of fire, arms crossed beneath her chest. She stared into Robin’s glare with a hard, calm look. A dark bruise blossomed on her jaw. “I will not let you do this,” she told him.

The fire in his eyes became blinding. With a snarl, he lifted his hand and held the burning bolt to her face. Rage made the bolt tremble, rage for the arrogance that stood between him and his mission, the broken old man on the floor who was too dangerous to let live. Robin held that arrogance to the fire of his rage, watching, waiting for her to back down. The light from the bolt turned her eyes pure red. The hair loosed from her helmet burned away. But she did not budge. Nor did she look away.

His bolt fizzled and died. He lowered his hand, glaring hard at the sprightly hindrance. “Fine,” he snapped. “I don’t have time to argue. I have a city to save.” His eyes narrowed as he added, “You’ll be sorry for this.” Looking down at Slade, he said, “I swear you’ll be sorry.”

“I already am,” she whispered.

Robin shot into the ceiling with force enough to stir the air into a frenzy. Starfire cringed against the tempest, losing sight of him in the puckered metal overhead. She continued staring at the hole long after he had gone, until a weak laugh returned her eyes to Slade’s wracked amusement.

“Robin was right,” she told him. “You deserve to die.”

That only made him laugh harder. Blood bubbled from his lips as he said, “I may still. But look at him. Even if you save the city and stop my robots, I’ve won.”

His stuttered laugh haunted Starfire’s flight from the lair.

*****

Tek stepped drunkenly through the shattered face of the building and back onto the street. Scorched robot crunched underfoot as she surveyed the empty battleground. Dawn had come and gone, leaving a morning sun to begin its rounds for the day. Fearsome reds and blues erupted in the urban distance to overshadow the sunlight.

Tek’s head tilted with confusion at the light show. It wasn’t until she spied Cyborg, lying face down on the street, that her hesitant steps found purpose. Even then, she moved slowly, feeling the roar of the beast that lived in her thoughts. Her head pounded with the effort of caging the beast.

“Cyborg!” Tek rolled him over and examined him through her cracked visor. His arm was missing, and his chassis was scarred, but he appeared otherwise unharmed. She heard muffled sounds coming from inside the blank faceplate attached over his head. With no notion of delicacy, Tek tore the faceplate away. “Cyborg!” she cried again.

Cyborg gritted his teeth against the painful feedback of the faceplate’s removal. He sucked in a greedy breath, and then said, “Thanks, Kid. It was getting stuffy in there.”

She pulled him up in a desperate, clanking hug. “You’re okay!” she sobbed. Then she paused. “You’re not moving. You’re not okay?”

“Power loss. I’m in power-save mode.” His eyelid felt heavy as he drew upon the feeble remainder of his reserves. “I’ll probably shut down in a minute. Stash me somewhere safe, and then get moving.”

“Why?” Tek slung him underarm and started down the street at a clumsy pace. “It’s gotta be over by now.” The beast within her snarled, forcing her to stop. She rubbed at her temple, uselessly grinding metal fingers against her helmet.

“Tek, look at that light,” Cyborg said exasperatedly. Debris strewn about began to rumble, faintly at first, but with growing intensity. “Feel that? They’re coming. Drop me. You’ll need both your hands free.”

“No,” Tek insisted. “My…my battle gear got damaged. My armor is busted. I can’t fight.” The beast in her yowled, making her stumble and nearly drop Cyborg.

Cyborg eyed the scorched armor as best he could from his odd angle. “Get real. All that accessory crap just slowed you down. Your armor’s barely scratched.”

“No!” she snapped, answering the beast more than Cyborg. She could feel the creature tearing at her consciousness, stronger than it had been in months. The sluggish tranquilizers in her blood did nothing to dull its fury. Her control began to slip, and so she dropped Cyborg and leaned on her knees. Her heavy breath wheezed tinnily through her grille.

The debris danced to the tune of an approaching stampede. Cyborg lay on his side and watched the quake. “Tek,” he said quickly. “I appreciate that you’re scared, or angry, or hormonal, or whatever’s screwing you up right now, but you could not pick a worse time to flake out. So cowgirl up and make with the bot-kicking!”

“Nngh…” The beast’s roar deafened her. She clapped her hands to her helmet, but it did no good. So she flipped Cyborg through the side of a parked bus with her foot. The bus, long abandoned by its driver, rocked as she jumped in after him. The side of the bus screamed as she grasped its edges and clasped it shut.

Cyborg lay upside-down against a broken bus bench. He watched Tek’s armor disappear into a closing blue-white aperture on her back. Her face was a mixture of terror and rage as she clawed at the back of her jumpsuit. “Are you crazy?” he snapped.

Tek didn’t answer. She produced a small, black plastic tube from the belt of her jumpsuit and cracked it open with trembling hands. A hypodermic needle fell out of the case, its vial shimmering with clear liquid. “I can’t do this,” she said, tearing at her sleeve. Tears slid from the corners of her eyes. “I can’t fight it. I can’t.”

“Tek, no!” cried Cyborg.

But the needle was already in her arm. She thumbed its plunger with a gasp. Her eyes fluttered, streaming tears as she stumbled toward Cyborg. She mumbled incoherently, losing her footing and falling against his chest hard. Her head thudded onto the filthy floor next to his. Her eyes were glazed, half-open and seeing nothing. Saliva pooled beneath her parted lips.

Cyborg stared up at the ceiling as he listened to her labored breathing. His own eyelid grew too heavy to fight as the last of his reserves ran dry. Systems in his body slowed to standby. His consciousness faded to black. The final sound he heard was the bus around them shuddering with the approach of the mechanized army’s rampage.

**********