The Experiment
It was a long time coming, this night. It was a perfect night, Richard realized. He knew that tonight, his one true love Kori would confess her love for him. He knew that once he got to the little café on the west side of Jump City, Kori would be there waiting for him, and that his long-time foe, Xavier Red, would be utterly repudiated.
The thought consumed him as he strode through the streets, staring at the starless sky above. Xavier and Richard had always been rivals. It was almost as though Xavier was Richard's evil doppelganger, the id to Richard's superego or some other psychiatric mumbo-jumbo.
Richard had never really paid much attention in school.
It didn't take long before Richard reached the little café and began weaving through pedestrians until he found their table. He and Kori had shared so many marvelous dinners there. He had no doubts the dinner this night would be any less smashing than the previous ones.
He sat down at the table across from Kori while she was looking out at Jump City Harbor, and her brilliant green eyes and red hair seemed to light up when she turned and saw that he had arrived. "I'm so glad you could make it!" she beamed.
"Anything for you, my love." Richard pulled a pair of sunglasses down over his eyes. He was so freaking cool, he could wear sunglasses at night, and all the other things Corey Hart sang about."
Though he suddenly noticed that Kori looked sad. "What's the matter?" he asked her.
The beautiful woman in front of him looked away. "I'm really glad to see you, but I'm afraid I wasn't totally honest. You see I also invited—"
"Hey there, Dick."
An all too familiar voice caused Richard's blood to boil. He didn't even turn and look at the guy. He knew who it was. "Xavier Red."
"In the flesh," said the bad-boy. "I'm here to steal your girl, if she'll let me."
Kori slammed a fist down on the table. It shook because she was quite strong. "I invited you both here because I have to choose between you. My love will never be enough for two men! Therefore, I shall now pick. You have both been great friends to me over these past few years, and now I shall chose one of you to be my boyfriend for all eternity!"
"I love you too, Kori," Richard said.
"Just go ahead and let him down easy, babe," Xavier Red said with a sadistic smirk…
BUMMMM
Kori arched an eyebrow. "Do you guys hear something?"
BUMMMMMM came the sound effect again, this time much louder.
"I don't care!" blurted Richard. "Get one with it! Who do you choose!?"
"Oh yes," Kori said cheerfully. "I chose to give my heart and all my affections too…"
KRAKA-SMASH!!!!!!
The world exploded all around them, debris and rock falling about, Kori's final word—'Richard' or 'Xavier' drowned out in the chaos of the explosion. And when the café came crashing down on them, Richard, Xavier, and Kori all breathed their last.
"RAAAAGGHHH!" roared their murderer.
If only they had been superheroes.
Pedestrians cried out, screaming in fear. The attacker was no stranger. Massive stone hands and massive stone feet attached to a torso of hardest granite, punctuated by a glowing red gaze that terrified everyone who saw it.
Cinderblock.
Answering the pedestrians' cries, a flurry of green energy beams lanced out, slamming into the gigantic monster, staggering him.
Blue sonic energy lanced out, catching the beast in the legs and sending him flailing onto his massive stone rear end.
A pair of motorcycles coated in dark energy slammed into Cinderblock as he tried to regain his feet, and then he was ferociously attacked by a green tyrannosaurus rex, the dino slamming into Cinderblock with his tail.
And in the middle of it all, a young man with a bo-staff wearing the colors of a traffic light—a mere mortal in all the chaos around him, charged forward.
Robin. The scion of the Batman, leader of the Teen Titans.
"Cinderblock is gettin' away!" Cyborg yelled. "But there are casualties here. What should we do?"
Robin ran forward and hurled a tracking device at the fleeing Cinderblock, then pulled his communicator from his belt. "Raven, Starfire, follow him. Don't engage him in combat unless he enters an area where the signal is nullified."
"Understood," came the pleasant voice of the Tamaranian princess over Robin's receiver.
"We'll report back if anything goes wrong," came a second voice, that of the dark half-demon Raven.
The dinosaur from earlier, now a small velociraptor, reached Robin and Cyborg where he promptly transformed back into the black-and-magenta-clad superhero Beast Boy. "Ugh, you put us on clean up crew. I hate handling bodies."
"Suck it up, Beast Boy," Robin ordered. "A criminal too ignorant to ever face real justice just got away with multiple homicide, but I'm willing to bet there are still survivors in that building. If we don't help them we'll only be making things worse." Robin ran off towards the collapsed café, already dreading the carnage he'd find inside. "Come on!" he shouted back at his comrades.
The princess of Tamaran had always enjoyed a good fight. Not in the sense that she liked conflict—in fact she suspected that she enjoyed conflict least of anyone on the roster of the Teen Titans, except for perhaps Raven. Rather, her people—the warrior's blood that ran in her veins, had a natural attraction to the challenge of battle. Of standing up for what they believed in and fighting for it with all their hearts.
With a simple lock-pick, Robin had convinced her that his cause was worth fighting for—that this strange planet with its heroes could somehow mean something more to her than her home planet where she had known so little kindness.
Simply because one teenager believed in fighting for a better world.
Cinderblock was not a part of that better world.
"Are we nearing our enemy?" Starfire asked her teammate.
The blue-clad sorceress nodded. "He's slowed down." Suddenly the blinking dot on Raven's communicator screen vanished, the light beeping turning to silence. "We lost him. He must have entered a lead structure or some sort of disruption field. We might want to get ready to call for back up."
"You expect that we may have to begin kicking the butt?" Starfire's glowing green eyes narrowed.
"Not unless we're attacked." Raven closed her eyes and reached out with her senses. "Remember, the last time Cinderblock was up and about, Slade was controlling him. And even if it's not Slade himself, we'll need all the Titans to take down a foe of that caliber."
Starfire nodded and the two hovered down into the woods below them and sat on a couple of rocks. "Shall we play a game to occupy our time?" Starfire asked. "I am quite partial to the degrees of Kevin Bacon."
Raven stared at her. "Uh.."
"You do not know of the degrees of Kevin Bacon? It is a game in which one of us suggests the name of a left-wing Hollywood elitist—then the other attempts to link him to—"
"I know how to play," Raven said. "I'm just… surprised that you do. It's not—"
"It's not what?" Starfire asked. Raven had cut off abruptly and began looking around, her eyes darting to and fro across the forest, as if she'd been startled by a noise.
"We're not alone, Star. There's someone out here with us—and he feels familiar."
Twenty minutes after Cinderblock's initial attack, Robin, Cyborg, and Beast Boy were finished with their task. Ambulances had arrived for the injured, and the police and fire department made showings as well. Cleanup would begin soon. In all, twenty people had been injured, three killed. Preppy high-schoolers, by the looks of them. Robin muttered a curse at whoever had sent Cinderblock, and only became angrier when he realized that Cinderblock had only been sent to get the Titans' attention.
"It could have been worse," Beast Boy said sadly.
"We should have done better. Been here faster."
"Quit blaming yourself, man." Cyborg put a large mechanical hand on Robin's shoulder. "You're not Batman, and even he's not perfect. Now are we going to go take down whoever sent Cinderblock or not?"
"We are. The paramedics can handle everything from here." Robin's eyes narrowed to thin slits behind his mask as they made their way towards the T-Car.
"Should we call in— " Beast Boy began to ask. Robin cut him off, knowing who he'd suggest for reinforcements. Probably Kid Flash, Yin, and Ragnarok. But the three of them were busy on the other side of the globe. And even though Kid Flash could run the distance in half a second, it would put civilians on that end of the world in danger.
"No. This is my—our—fight. If Slade is behind this, we bring him down, hard."
"So much for learning his lessons," Cyborg muttered to Beast Boy as if Robin weren't even there. The Boy Wonder shrugged it off as he took his seat in the T-Car.
The T-Car's recent hover conversion made getting to the spot where Raven and Starfire had lost Cinderblock's trail a bit easier, but that didn't resolve the tension in Beast Boy's gut. Here they were, possibly going after they guy who had done all that horrible stuff he'd done to Terra. And if it wasn't Slade, it was someone just as bad. Beast Boy's worst fear was that his childhood enemies, the Doom Patrol's arch nemeses, the Brotherhood of Evil, were about to make a move. Some of the things Mento had mentioned the last time he and Beast Boy had spoken made the young Garfield Logan anxious. He felt his palms get sweaty inside his gloves. It was about time for a fight.
"It will be okay," came a familiar voice. Beast Boy looked up to see Raven, looking solemn as ever. "Slade is yesterday's news. He was killed once. Now he's living on borrowed time."
"Slade isn't who I'm worried about," Gar sighed. "Can't you feel it, Rae? Ever since we beat your dad, the world feels—darker, somehow. I get the sense we're careening out of control like the world hit a banana peel in Mega Monkey Racing and we're about to crash into some sort of major Crisis. I mean when was the last time Cinderblock actually killed someone?"
"I think like 1995," Cyborg answered.
Raven just placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. "And if a crisis happens, we deal with it. Just like we deal with whoever sent Cinderblock."
"Robin…" Starfire scanned the trees in front of her, her glowing eyes providing an extra level of vision in the darkness compared to her nearest companion, Robin. "I fear that we are not alone. Raven claimed to have sensed someone earlier, a familiar presence."
"Red X," Robin said. "He's been following us since we got here. Probably since you and Raven got here."
"But why? What does he want?"
"My best guess is that he has reason to believe whoever sent Cinderblock has Zynothium." Robin used a birdarang to hack down some overgrowth and slipped between two trees. "And he figures that we'll lead him right to it."
Robin took a few more steps forward when he felt his foot press down on something that definitely wasn't earth. He looked down and saw a mechanical sensor, his foot depressing the switch. "Crap."
"Raven, we need assistance," Starfire called. "I believe Robin has flattened the switch of a mine!"
"It's not a mine," Robin barked, removing his foot from the device and drawing his bo-staff and began scanning the area. "Proximity sensor. They're scattered all over the place sporadically to make them hard to avoid."
Cyborg approached and scanned the ground with is mechanical eye. "Fearless is right. Expect trouble."
Almost immediately, trouble came; mechanical arms and legs began bursting through the ground. A nearby cliff face opened up releasing a troupe or robots, surrounding the Teen Titans with clockwork precision. The pitch-black faces with dark orange ovals in the middle were all too familiar to the quintet of young heroes.
Slade-bots. Ninja-esque fighting machines employed by the Titans' arch-foe to do menial jobs such as stealing things or, in this case, security.
"Titans—GO!" Robin cried.
The heroes complied, rushing into battle, tearing through the familiar machines with ease; Starfire riddled the first wave with a flurry of starbolts, and Raven tore those flanking them from behind to pieces with her telekinesis.
Robin ran into the chaos of Starfire's blasts, trusting the princess not to hit him, and began wreaking havoc on the robots she missed, beating them down with his bo-staff and taking the ones with lasers out from a distance with skillful birdarang throws.
A section of the ground exploded upward revealing a hiding place for several 'Dots'—the larger robots in Slade's employ encased in white metal with a single red dot for an eye on their stark black face plates.
They began firing lasers from their claws and rockets from their shoulders, and Starfire was driven back, forced to weave in and out of the assault—until a wide beam of sound energy slammed into the side of the flurry of rockets, detonating some and sending others wildly off course. More concentrated sound lashed out, slamming into the robots as Cyborg charged at them. The remaining few were finished off when a great green Ankylosaurus slammed into them, breaking the last few against the jagged rocks of the cliff face with its barbed tail.
When the threat seemed over, the Titans regrouped around the dinosaur, which transformed back into Beast Boy. "Is that the best Slade has to throw at us?"
"This isn't over," Robin spat, darting over to the hidden bunker that had housed the Dots. "Not until we bring Slade to justice."
"Justice for Cinderblock's stupidity?" Cyborg arched his biological eyebrow.
Robin glared at him. "For what he tried to do to me. For what he did to Terra." Robin looked pointedly at Beast Boy. "For being an assassin and attempting to take over the city. What hasn't Slade done?
"Well he did pay the ultimate price," Cyborg said with a mechanical shrug. "He died and apparently went to hell before Trigon got a hold of him.. A good lawyer is going to argue that that absolves him of his guilt for past crimes."
"Then we get better lawyers," Robin growled with enough finality to silence the other Titans. Just then, the bunker that had lifted the Dots up began sinking back into the ground, carrying the Titans into a place that might be where they finally defeated their greatest enemy.
Or it might be their tomb.
The lift led the Titans into a long metal-lined hallway, lit by glowing panels on the wall, that seemed manufactured to lead them straight down the path Slade wanted them to go. And it wasn't long before the Titans realized that there was only one direction; the other robots had been there to bait them into the trap, and this particular lift had been the hook.
"If Slade is really Deathstroke the Terminator," Beast Boy began, "What's stopping him from just unloading on us with a chain gun when we reach the end of this hallway?"
"Slade may be ruthless to some extent," Robin said, "But there's more to him than hatred, more than just the desire for what he wants. He wants the battle won or lost on his own terms. That's why he didn't kill me with the nanomachines when he had all of us in his lair. It's why he didn't attack us in our sleep the night Terra betrayed us."
Cyborg looked skeptical. "You can't seriously be suggesting that Slade has honor."
"In his own twisted way," Robin responded, "he does. At least in his own mind."
Robin's words abruptly cut off when he saw the surprise on the other Titans' faces, and he looked forward to see that the hallway had ended. The path had opened onto a massive underground room with metallic support beams arching high above the floor supporting a large portion of the weight of the mountain above them.
And at the far end of this huge circular room stood a large onyx throne, a black and sliver-clad man sitting atop it, his face adorned with a mask that was one half black, one half orange.
"Slade!" Robin growled from across the room.
The Titans' arch foe leaned forward in his chair, looking up from some menial task and drawing a large metallic staff from a pedestal beside the chair.
"Ah, Titans. I've been anticipating your arrival." Slade stood, his towering form seeming all the more imposing considering that his throne was on an elevated platform. The Titans rushed to the center of the room and then approached the throne, weapons and powers ready to strike.
"This ends tonight, Slade," Raven hissed. "Three people are dead thanks to your lackey Cinderblock."
"You're not getting away this time," Beast Boy growled, becoming a massive gorilla.
"I'm afraid, dear Titans, that your quarrel this evening is not with me. I'd like to introduce you to someone—my newest apprentice." Slade extended his left hand, in which he held small black remote. His thumb depressed a button, and a platform on the floor in front of his throne slid away, a lift rising into the room where the Titans stood, between Slade and the heroes.
But all eyes were on not the platform, but the figure on the platform. No older than eighteen, there stood a young woman, two katana swords clasped tightly in her hands, her head bowed as if in prayer or meditation, or perhaps in respect for her opponents. Either way, the most striking feature was her colors.
They were Slade's colors. The right half of her costume was jet black, the left half the same orange as the left half of Slade's mask. The skintight fabric that comprised the costume did little to hide the girl's muscles, which while not overly large were clearly defined even through the suit.
Her relatively small size didn't hide the fierce warrior that lurked inside her. Robin could see it in the tenseness of her body, the grimace on her face. He had no idea how good she was, but if Slade called her an apprentice—Robin could only assume this tiny girl had the skills to back up Slade's confidence in her.
"Is this some kind of joke!?" Cyborg blurted.
"What have you done to her!?" Starfire demanded. "Release this girl at once."
"I do not want to be released."
The Titans' eyes all turned to the source of the new voice; the girl herself, glaring out through the red lenses of her dual-colored mask. Her voice was low and raspy.
Slade stepped down from his throne and rested his hand on the girl's metallic shoulder guard. "Titans, I'd like to introduce you to The Ravager—my daughter."
Robin felt his own face contort with the shock that ran through his body. "Your—daughter?!"
Slade simply stared down at them, seemingly amused by the Titans' surprise.
"This is nuts!" Beast Boy cried, "You're sending in your daughter as the first line of defense against us?"
"Defense?" Slade tilted his head back and seemed to laugh behind his mask, though no noise was heard. "Far from it. She is my perfect weapon. Her family—the family I gave her to when I deemed myself an unsuitable father—was murdered. I found her and picked up the pieces. I trained her, tempered her fury and forged it into a weapon."
Slade's single eye glared down and seemed to bore directly into Robin's soul. "You failed as my apprentice—and Terra's power proved too much for me to handle in the end. Ultimately, this girl is my last chance at a legacy. But first, a demonstration. Rose—" he addressed her—"Destroy the Titans."
Rose Wilson shuddered as her father's command reached her ears. Finally, after nearly a year of training, she'd be able to unleash everything he'd taught her, to prove her worth to her dad, and to repay him for the kindness he's shown her. The sensation was intoxicating; she wanted nothing more than to finish the fight her father had begun.
Perspiration was already collecting inside her mask and gloves, and her heart began to race. She began mentally running through the process that would shut out everything but her goal—the mental exercises to make herself hate the Titans—her enemies—and unlock her abilities…
Rose Wilson, the white-haired teenager, vanished into a maelstrom of blades known as the Ravager.
She darted forward, punching at Robin, then leaping straight up as he dodged, a sonic cannon strike hitting exactly where she had been. Ravager twisted in the air, landing next to Cyborg. driving her tempered blade into his shoulder. Electricity crackled from the hole she made in the transparent blue plaiting, and she gave the mechanical teen a satisfied smirk as she kicked him hard in the stomach.
But the kick didn't damage the half-robot hero, nor was it meant to. Ravager used the force to propel her body into the air, the Starbolts that would have just hit her now slamming into Cyborg and sending the Titan sprawling across the ground. Starfire gasped and apologized to her companion, but she quickly realized that she was now the Ravager's target.
She had to give credit where credit was due; Starfire was no idiot. She fired more starbolts at the Ravager, but a flurry of blades slashed out at the energy, sending it careening off in the wrong directions. Ravager slammed into Starfire in the air and both went tumbling to the ground, the alien not anticipating the sudden added weight.
Ravager rolled off the princess and tossed a small canister… Which exploded above the alien's face.
"STARFIRE!" shouted Beast Boy, rushing over to the alien's aid.
Starfire flew out of the cloud of dust the bomb had unleashed, her skin red with irritation and her eyes streaming tears. She slammed into the ceiling hard, then fell back towards the floor, coughing and sputtering. Massive sneezes sent her careening across the room.
Ravager hissed, taking a step back into a defensive position. "Metallic chromium powder. Not enough to kill her, but it will make her wish it did, at least for a while."
Birdarangs lashed out and Ravager rolled out of the way, the projectile's passing millimeters above her back as she moved. "You'll pay for that!" Robin's voice wasn't loud or full of indignation—there was something much deeper, a burning hatred that Ravager knew she could exploit—but not yet.
She had to make sure Robin had no help.
"Azarath—"
Ravager heard the mantra and rushed towards Raven…
"..Metrion…"
Ravager threw her swords down and struck, her hand coming out and smacking Raven across the mouth, then quickly shifting behind her. She pulled Raven's arm into a joint lock with her left hand and covered the witch's mouth with her right—then twisted sideways as Beast Boy lunged at the two as a Grizzly Bear.
Beast Boy's momentum snapped back, cutting him off mid strike; Ravager heard his vertebrae snap from the strain of a super-fast morph as he transformed into a garter snake to stop from slamming into Raven with all his mass. Then Ravager gave a shout and spun around forcing Raven to take the brunt of an incoming sonic canon blast while simultaneously kicking Beast Boy's snake form…
But she hadn't anticipated the force of the sonic cannon, and both she and Raven went hurtling across the room, Raven's mass knocking her across the room like a cue ball.
Ravager landed on her hands and forearms and performed a strenuous handspring to land on her feet, letting Raven go and watching as the half-demon rolled to a halt and did not move.
"Two down, three to go." Ravager gave the male Titans a sadistic smirk. She'd just disabled their two most powerful members and wasn't even breathing hard yet. The easy part was over, though, because now that they knew what she was capable of, Ravager would have one more fight on her hands.
Her only mandate: Robin had to be the last to fall.
Half the distance of the room separated Robin, Cyborg, and Beast Boy from the pair of swords in the middle, and another half separated the swords from their owner. But just because she didn't have the weapons she'd started out with didn't mean that the Ravager was unarmed. Robin drew his own bo-staff even as he saw Ravager pull a pair of daggers from her belt.
"How is she doing that!?" Beast Boy said, inching closer to Robin and Cyborg. The half-mechanical teen shrugged.
"It's like she can anticipate our moves before we make them." Robin's eyes narrowed, and he stepped into a defensive stance with his bo even as Ravager turned into a similar stance, baring the sharp ends of her daggers towards the Titans.
"That's impossible, isn't it?" Beast Boy said.
Robin didn't respond verbally, at least not at first. He began walking towards the pair of swords in the center of the room, Ravager matching him step-for-step. At that distance, it was unlikely she heard his and Beast Boy's conversation, but there was that possibility. She was smirking as though she knew something Robin didn't, and Robin briefly wondered if the girl was insane.
If she was working for Slade…
"What's the matter, Robin?" Slade intoned from his massive metal throne. "Are you indeed this frightened of a mere girl?"
"Anything with your fingerprints on it is deadly," Robin retorted. "I don't know what you did to this girl you call your daughter, but you will pay for it."
Slade exhaled sharply. "Now, Ravager."
For a split second, the young woman seemed to hesitate, but then her eyes narrowed and she darted forward, twin daggers at the ready. Robin ran too, hoping he got to the swords before their owner did.
Unfortunately, this wasn't the case, and Ravager and Robin clashed as they reached the weapons, Ravager's daggers going high and low simultaneously and Robin's bo twisting vertical to block them. Unfortunately it left him open to a spin kick that slammed into his back. Robin rolled with the force and hurled a birdarang as soon as he saw the girl's feet. The razor-sharp blades of his projectile would have sliced into Ravager's hands if she had reached for the sword, and she reacted with seemingly super-natural speed, withdrawing her hand.
It wasn't much, but it was enough time for Robin to strike, smashing his staff down against the back of Ravager's head. The girl let out a cry of pain and fell, almost landing on her swords before she tucked her body in and rolled on through, right into the welcoming arms of Beast Boy's gorilla form.
"Beast Boy, restrain her!" Robin cried, darting towards the two. But before he could take two steps, the girl tapped a button on the side of her belt, sending a jolt of electricity through her captor. Beast Boy reeled back and let out a roar; he didn't let go, but his grip loosened just enough for Ravager to slip through and stab him in the stomach with one of her daggers.
The green ape roared even louder, smashing Ravager with his fist and sending her careening backwards into Robin's flying kick. She muttered something as she landed and then dived out of the way just in time to avoid another blast from Cyborg's sonic cannon. Her remaining dagger flew towards him, slamming into the tip of his cannon arm just as he was about to fire a second shot, causing the weapon to short out.
Robin covered his ears as a burst of incredibly high-pitched sound shot out in all directions instead of just one, deafening him for a split second.
Ravager seemed unaffected, possibly due to the mask she wore; it covered her ears much the same way Slade's did, and probably had noise-filtering mechanisms inside it that would lessen the pain from such attacks.
"Oh, that's it," Cyborg shouted. "Now I'm mad!"
He jerked the dagger out of his cannon arm and crushed it in his left hand, then transformed his right back to normal and charged at Ravager, his fists flailing wildly at the daughter of Deathstroke. Ravager anticipated his every attack—and in all fairness, Cyborg was telegraphing them badly. Yet the precision with which she weaved in and out of his attacks was uncanny.
Robin glanced over at Beast Boy, who had become a starfish, knowing that that form would allow him to tolerate the stab wound better. Robin muttered, knowing that Bruce—and Robin himself for that matter—had received similar stabs and kept on fighting, not having the luxury of transforming into an animal. Granted they'd typically ended up passing out in the Batmobile and having to use the automated driving mechanism to get home in time for Alfred to stitch them up.
Robin left Beast Boy and ran at Ravager and Cyborg, drawing a pair of birdarangs and slamming them together; the pair immediately transformed into Robin's sword, and he slashed it at Ravager as she landed from dodging one of Cyborg's punches. Ravager snapped to the side, bringing her arm up and blocking the blade with the metal on her glove. Robin took a step back, as Ravager hit the ground and picked up one of her swords, then came up striking at Robin as she did a back hand-spring on one arm.
"Argh!" Cyborg blurted, blasting with his sonic canon. Ravager dodged it.
"There's more to her than meets the eye," Robin hissed, drawing his sword and waiting for Ravager to make her next move. Slade's daughter simply stepped back, gripping her sword with two hands and breathing heavily. Robin narrowed his eyes to thin white slits behind his mask. To an untrained observer, it might have looked as though Ravager was winded. Robin could tell that she was simply pretending to be. Not that she didn't need the breather, but she wasn't at the brink of exhaustion. It was a calculated pause in the battle for her to catch her breath, to bring herself back to a hundred percent before she faced Robin and Cyborg.
Robin would have called her bluff, but he needed the break himself—probably more than Ravager did.
"There is no way that was humanly possible," Cyborg complained next to him.
Robin responded, "There's more to this than meets the eye. Slade got this start in the Vietnam War; the military tested a top-secret super-soldier serum on him, but it changed him for the worse. He began shooting dead anyone he suspected of being a Vietcong. Usually he was right; sometimes he wasn't. The military dishonorably discharged him and that's when he began taking contracts as Deathstroke the Terminator."
"You think he gave this girl that stuff?" Cyborg gritted his teeth, his eyes widening in shock and disgust. "Would Slade do that to his own daughter?"
Robin gave Cyborg a slight nod. "I wouldn't put it past him. You know what he did to Terra; what he tried to do to me."
"In that case…" Cyborg growled, "He's next!" The massive half-metal behemoth charged forward towards the Ravager, swinging his robotic limbs with superhuman speed, whirling around on every point of articulation his metallic body possessed.
Unfortunately, his Inspector Gadget impersonation didn't serve him well, as the young girl was easily able to bob and weave in and out of the attacks. Robin watched her closely, noting that she dodged attacks that couldn't have possibly registered in her field of vision, coming from almost behind her with the way Cyborg was working his body. By the time Cyborg slowed down to allow his gears to cool, Slade's daughter was in motion, bouncing off one of his mobile legs and onto his shoulder… And then over his head as he aimed his sonic cannon directly at her. In a flash of motion that seemed as though she slipped out of sync with time briefly, her blade slammed down and right through the transparent blue covering on the left side of Cyborg's head, shattering it as though it were mere glass. Electricity sparked across her blade and the Million Dollar Titan let out a dull groan, staggering forward.
The lights in his shoulders and arms went out, and Cyborg collapsed to the ground lifeless, even as Ravager landed next to him, her sword leveled at her side.
"CYBORG!" Robin cried, raising his own sword high as he slammed it down at the girl with all his might, anger flaring in the pit of his stomach and filling his body. He felt as though he were on fire, rage pouring through him. She'd disabled his team in minutes and then, to Robin's closest friend among the Titans… she had done the unthinkable.
"Four down, one to go," Ravager said evenly. She was strained more than she tried to let on, but Robin could see it. He knew he was fairing little better after the earlier exertion He let the rage of Cyborg's demise flood out all other internal sensation. He couldn't give into fatigue, he wouldn't let his team down.
He couldn't let Cyborg down.
A flurry of blades followed, Robin deflecting and parrying everything Ravager threw at him; he did the same to her in turn. She thrust forward in a fencing maneuver, and he deflected it and stepped inside her guard smashing her across the face with his fist.
But she anticipated that, and used the opportunity to drag her sword along the back of Robin's arm. The armor of his sleeve saved him a deep wound, but the sword still found its mark. Pain shoot through his body and Robin stepped back into a defensive stance. He gritted his teeth and felt the sweat running down his face. He wanted to tear his mask off and fight with his vision unrestricted, but such an action would get him killed. Instead he shot a glance at Cyborg and let the sight of his motionless corpse blot out the pain.
He pressed on, striking at Ravager with his blade, blood dripping off his elbow as he swung. She deflected and struck back, her sword barely passing in front of his face. Faster and faster they fought, no regards to their own safety or to anything else in the world.
Atop his throne, Slade Wilson observed the flurry of blades and kicks and punches with satisfaction. He had faith in his daughter; the battle would soon be over.
Neither the combatants or even Slade himself were aware of another presence in the underground bunker…
Red X made his way through the darkened corridor before him, rats and other beasts scurrying out of his way. He had to hand it to Slade, the guy sure knew how to pull off the evil lair thing. Not that Red X was ever interested in evil lairs. He was in it for the kicks and the cash. Saving the world? If he had to. But he'd never liked playing the hero, and if all went well, he wouldn't have to.
Just grab the Zynothium ore Slade used to run his little operation and exit stage left. He'd almost reached his goal, too, when he passed by a monitor in a control room. "That's one heck of a fight," he whispered to himself, watching Robin and the girl dressed like Slade go at it. "Mental note: stay out of her way."
Ravager jerked back, the force of Robin's strike clashing against the metal of her sword with enough power to stagger her. Her muscles were on fire, though for an entirely different reason than Robin's. Ravager's energy reserves were burning out; she needed more rest than she'd gotten, and it was beginning to affect her form. She stepped back and tried to parry, but Robin changed the direction of his pressure and put some distance between them. Ravager leapt over a low slash and kicked Robin in the face—or at least, she tried to. Robin jerked his head fast enough to make her miss, and Ravager fell back, hitting the ground hard and rolling backwards. She got to her feet just as Robin regained his stance and came at her again. He threw a massive downward slash at her, and she thrust her sword upwards, catching the blade inches from her face. She hadn't thought fast enough to dodge or parry, so her right hand went up and braced against her blade, the thick armored glove protecting Ravager from cutting herself with her own weapon. But could she win a strength contest against him, in this state?
She tried to clear her mind, to see—to predict what Robin would do next, but found she couldn't. The muscles in her arms burned fiercely as she tried to push Robin's attack back. Sweat pooled inside her mask, dripping down her brow and into her eyes and stinging; it poured off her neck, the sensation distracting her. It ran between her breasts, cooling her burning torso but not helping her win the struggle against Robin. She would give out soon, and, probably, so would he. But who would fall first…?
Then the vision came, furiously and unexpectedly, like the shock scene of a horror film, and she knew what Robin was going to do. Her precognitive sense had never been so crisp and clear, and she stepped backward, waiting for Robin to whirl around into his strike aimed for her helmet. And he struck, the blade passing millimeters in front of its garget and leaving Robin wide open for attack.
Attack Ravager did, smashing the Boy Wonder across the temple with the handle of her blade. He grunted in pain and staggered a bit, clearly rattled. She stepped forward and kicked him in the side, and Robin went sailing back and rolled across the floor till he landed on Beast Boy, still in starfish form.
Ravager had taken him down—now to finish him off.
Robin tried to stand up, but a metallic shuriken lanced across the room that sliced into Robin's right cheek. He hissed as the pain flashed through his nervous system, and recoiled. By the time he'd fought back the pain enough to try again, Ravager was on him, her heavy, metal-adorned boot pressed against his chest.
Robin glared up at her through his mask-covered eyes, his vision blurring from fatigue and the blow to the head. Ravager smiled down at him, and for a moment, Robin had a strange thought. She's beautiful...
It was simply a statement of fact.. he certainly felt no affection for her, no attraction. It simply was… He quickly dismissed the thought, though only because he was claimed by unconsciousness.
Ravager knelt by Robin as he passed out, the adrenaline rush beginning to fade as her body returned to normal, muscles protesting the stress she'd put them through. Her heart didn't return to normal, though. It was racing at the prospect of finally having defeated Robin. She removed both gloves—they'd only get in the way of her task—and pulled Robin up by his tunic, his sweat making the fabric moist and cool to the touch. She reached for his mask, hearing her father approaching from behind, and began to pull on the mask.
And found that it wouldn't budge. "Some sort of adhesive," she posited out loud.
"Yes," Slade said. "No doubt. Perhaps try something a bit… sharper."
Ravager smirked at the suggestion, and reached into her boot. She pulled out a small kunai—a ninja's throwing knife. She'd never learned how to use one for throwing; it's weight made it different than aiming a shuriken. But Ravager could still use it as a knife. She set the knife under the edge of his tiny domino mask, trying to avoid cutting into his face if possible.
The knife began to move, and she brought it out to try and get a better angle…
And suddenly lost it, red flashing across her vision. She glanced back and saw the knife, now glued to Robin's boot by a red goop… In the shape of an X.
"Nothing personal, kid--" came a digitally altered voice from above her. Ravager immediately stood, picking up her sword and putting herself between the new threat and her father. Red X leapt down from a platform that circled the high ceiling of the room, his cape falling behind him. "—But I really wouldn't go there."
"Red X," Slade said. "I've been following your career with some interest, given who that costume of yours used to belong to."
"Eh, fair's fair. I figure if I'm good enough to get into the vault at Titans Tower, I'm good enough for the suit."
"Why are you here?" Rose demanded. "Tell me or I'll kill you."
"No need to be rude, Rose," Slade said, stepping forward. "Allow me to handle this one." Slade reached to his belt and withdrew a massive iron rod that no normal man could effectively use in combat.
Red X's eyes narrowed behind his mask and he backflipped, teleporting away and appearing behind Slade. His foot smashed into Slade's back and staggered the mercenary forward.
X chuckled. "If you're wondering why I'm here, I figured you had some Zynothium to rip off. I figured right."
Slade's lone eye narrowed. "How much did you take!?"
"Just enough to keep my suit running another six months or so. Maybe a kilogram, give or take."
"Then let's make a deal," Slade said. "You leave us to our designs, and you keep what you have."
"Forgive me for being so forward," Red X said, his voice thick with sarcasm, "But I heard you double crossed the devil. I'm not about to make a deal with you. Besides, after I took what I took, I kind of tore the reactor to shreds. I'd say it'll blow in another, ten, twelve minutes."
Klaxons began blaring and a mechanical voice chimed: WARNING, REACTOR CRITICALLY DAMAGED. OVERLOAD ESTIMATED IN FIVE MINUTES.
Red X goggled. "Of course, I could be wrong about that."
"You insolent child!" Slade barked, darting forward and striking at Red X with his weapon. Red X dove sideways and blasted Slade with a duo of explosive Xs that staggered the armored supervillain backwards against his throne. Red X tried to charge but Ravager leapt in between them, her sword a flurry of motion.
"You piece of crap!" she shrieked. "You had to go and ruin everything. Daddy was going to own this town again! The Titans are defeated; everything is how it should be! Why do you care anyway!? You're just a thief!"
"Sticks and stones, kid," X answered diving in and out of the flurry of slashes Rose Wilson—no, the Ravager—was attacking him with. He pulled two more X's from his belt, one end of each growing until the Xs formed a pair of swords almost as long as Ravagers. Of course he barely had any idea of how to use them properly, but…
He teleported behind her, and she whirled around, slashing at him with her blade. "I thought so," he said. "You can sense things before they happen."
Ravager cursed him, attacking again, only for Red X to vanish and appear several feet away. "But Robin was better than you. His form was perfect; yours looked sloppy, even to this rookie." He blocked a strike from Ravager's sword and smashed his fist across her face. "And worse, you're getting tired. And without your powers, you're nothing more than a rookie yourself! It takes years to be proficient with a sword. I've only been training a few months myself."
"Stop taunting me!" Ravager hissed, her fatigue becoming more and more noticeable.
"I will—when it stops being true." Red X's voice came from above her, and Ravager looked up in time to see him drop on her, smashing her in the back of the head with a knee strike.
"Any time you're ready to leave, I'll quit," Red X said. "The Titans die in the blast, it's no skin off my bones. If they survive, good for them."
"Why are you playing the hero?" Ravager asked, glaring daggers through her opponent.
Red X shrugged, and Rose thought he might have been smiling under his mask. "Because if I don't play the hero now, I'll have to be the hero when the Titans are gone. And that's one future I'd rather avoid."
Ravager stood up, and Slade stepped right behind her, towering over his daughter. "This isn't over," Slade said. He pressed a button on a small device on his belt. A flash of light and both Ravager and Slade vanished, a teleportation beam carrying them away to a save distance.
Red X smirked in the hall, picking up his case of Zynothium. Right. Like I'd take only one kilogram when I could get ten.
He tapped a button on his belt and the—entirely fabricated he thought proudly—reactor overload sequences aborted, all functions going back on line with reserve power, until whenever that ran out.
"I'd say that little stunt covers my good deed's quota for the next few months," X said to himself. And with that, he used his own teleporter, vanishing from Slade's lair and leaving the Titans to themselves.
Raven was the first to recover from the battle, and immediately began healing Starfire and Robin as best she could. She briefly grew worried about Beast Boy, until realizing that he was underneath Robin, having been practically flattened after Robin came crashing down on him.
He seemed well enough upon resuming human form, but his abdomen still ached from the sword wound Ravager had given him.
Robin frowned deeply as he glanced over at Cyborg. "Why did they leave the rest of us alive?" Beast Boy asked solemnly. "Why kill Cy and run off?"
Raven's mind, addled with the pain she'd absorbed from everyone else, couldn't produce an easy answer. Finally, she settled on something. "Perhaps Cyborg was just unlucky. Maybe Slade let his daughter beat us up and leave us here just to prove that she could…"
Robin then glanced down and noticed the red substance and the kunai dagger stuck to his boot. How everyone else had missed something like that was unknowable, yet vaguely understandable with all the confusion.
He pulled the familiar sticky red substance closer to his face and examined it. "Maybe," he said in response to Raven. "Or maybe we had some unexpected help."
Suddenly, motion on the other side of the room stirred; something began moving Cyborg's corpse. Robin drew a birdarang and glared daggers… Then his jaw dropped as Cyborg stood up on two legs, his electronic eye flashing back to life even as his biological eye opened…
"No way!" Beast Boy gasped. "No frickin' way!"
"Cyborg!" Robin blurted, and the other Titans made similar exclamations as they gathered around the cybernetic Titan.
"Please!" said Starfire. "Explain to me how you are still among the living with only half your brain… operational?"
Cyborg rubbed the skin portion of his head as he stared off into space for a minute.
"Wanna run that by me again, Star?" he said, blinking.
"You had a sword run through your head, dude!" Beast Boy cried. "But you're alive—"
Cy reached up and felt the destroyed machine half of his head, and shuddered. "Whoa, that's a bad sense of déjà vu, there. It's okay guys, I'm fine. All my digital memory is stored deep inside me in a black box," he explained. "The brain in my head is just a really fast processor. I have a duplicate of it in my leg that kicks in if the main one gets smashed."
"We thought we had lost you," Starfire said sadly, wrapping Cyborg in a massive hug. "It is good to have you back, friend."
The hug broke off and Cyborg glanced around the room. "What happened here?"
Robin shook his head. "We were all unconscious for it, but I think we might have had some help from our pal Red X." Robin showed him the goop and the kunai he'd found.
"Some things just aren't meant to be explained," Raven said. "Red X saved our lives—why he did it we might never know."
"And Slade's new never-before-mentioned daughter?" Beast Boy asked.
"We find her and bring her to justice," Robin said. "Just like always. Just like we do with Slade." He held the dagger up to his eyes, wondering if an analysis would yield any clues. Perhaps fingerprints or DNA? But it was a question for another time. "For now, though, we rest, recover—and then we find Cinderblock and make him pay for what he did tonight."
High in the hills north of Jump City, a small vehicle pulled into an innocuous, if rather large, log cabin up in the hills, and a teenage girl with silver hair slipped out of the passenger seat. In the opposite seat, a man of at least sixty, white hair and beard defining a rugged face. The face of a hardened mercenary. The man adjusted the patch over his right eye.
"It was all for nothing," the girl said.
"Was it?" her father asked as the two walked into the cabin where their butler Wintergreen awaited with a large roast on the table. "The Titans know one thing without a doubt—they can't defeat us. You managed to take them all out, all by yourself, Rose. Imagine what we could do if we fought together."
The girl's eyes widened at the prospect. "Whoa.."
"Exactly," said the man. "Every battle, won or lost, is really an experiment. We learn what works, what doesn't. We figure out how to win the next time. It took losing to Robin to teach me that."
"Next time, we'll win," Rose said. "I promise." She brushed her silver hair out of her face and smiled up at her father, then embraced him. "I love you, Daddy."
Slade Wilson returned his offspring's embrace, and for a brief moment, his lips twisted into a smile, his eye reflecting the cruelty that his decisions in life had rendered him capable of. And heaven help her if that cruelty ever turned on his own flesh and blood.
He softly whispered, "Good girl."
Author's Note: Okay, I'm sure you're probably moderately confused right now about why the first page and summary have nothing to do with the rest of this story.
You see, like the battles Slade fights, this story was a bit of an experiment. Namely, what happens if I put the kind of summary that tends to get the most hits from teenage girls? Will they click thinking it's the kind of fic they like? Or will I get the same number of hits that I usually get? Will they flame me? Just stop reading? Tell me they thought it was funny? Who knows! That's what this is here to figure out.
If I got your expectations for an epic romance up and dashed them, I apologize. I'm not much of a romance person and probably couldn't make it good if I tried. This wasn't meant as a personal insult, just a little fun for myself. Regardless, thanks for reading if you made it this far! I'd love to see you check out the rest of my stories, as this story will eventually tie in to my other fic Colors. If you liked what you saw of Rose Wilson, AKA the Ravager, here, keep reading. I've got more in store for her!