Ghost (Teen Titans: Future Storm)
This time, we have a full-blown crossover for all of one chapter. Teen Titans: Future Storm and Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. What is Ghost in the Shell? A cyberpunk (or postcyberpunk, depending on your reckoning) manga/anime franchise set in a mid-21st-century Japan that takes a look at the ethical and social ramifications of the blurring line between human and machine. Figured I could do this because Future Storm and GITS take place in roughly the same timeframe. Hopefully, you like it.
Title: Teen Titans: Future Storm
Arc: N/A
Chapter: Ghost
Fandom: Teen Titans (TV/comic hybrid)/Ghost in the Shell
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Barely any
It had been a week since the demonic invasion of Jump City and the city was still being rebuilt. The rebuilding was going faster than expected, and mainly because the Titans were assisting in the reconstruction. Inferno’s increasingly refined fire control abilities had enabled him to weld beams with ease, while the other Titans’ abilities had suited them for the more physical aspects of the reconstruction. After the day was over, the Titans observed their handiwork.
“It’s looking better than it was yesterday,” Inferno commented.
“I still can’t help but feel that this was my fault,” Samara murmured ruefully. “If I hadn’t -”
Inferno wrapped an arm around Samara. “You don’t need to feel guilty. It wasn’t your fault that a bunch of bloodthirsty monsters saw fit to hack through anything in their way trying to get to you.”
“Besides, if you look at the glass half full, the construction companies can make a lot of money,” Mercury remarked.
“Let’s go home and get some rest before patrol,” Nightstar said.
The Titans did exactly that, only to receive an unpleasant surprise once they stepped inside the Tower. A loud clang alerted them to their situation, specifically, the loud clang of the Tower being sealed off. “Quarantine protocol!” Bladefire exclaimed in shock. “Who’s doing this?”
“I don’t know, but we’re getting out of here,” Nightstar answered, attempting to slice through the barrier with her energy whip. Unfortunately, the barrier proved extremely resistant to her efforts. Mercury charged the barrier and attempted to vibrate through, only to be electrocuted.
Panels in the walls peeled back to release silver spheres into the main room, spheres that split open to reveal miniature gun barrels. Those same spheres began shooting lasers at the Titans, who proceeded to either dodge or shield themselves in some way. Nightstar and Bladefire attempted to use their bracers to block the lasers, only for their forearms to be painfully burned. Samara raised a telekinetic force field to block the lasers, but the lasers burned through the shield and struck her in the midriff.
“Samara!” Inferno shouted, racing to her as he evaded the lasers.
Mercury was in complete overdrive, dodging the lasers to the best of his ability - but light was hard to dodge even for a speedster. Beast Girl was making herself as small a target as possible, shifting into small, quick animals to evade the lasers, but the lasers kept following her. Nightstar made her way to one of the computer sets that accessed the mainframe and tried to use it. To her shock, she couldn’t, eliciting a Tamaranean curse from her.
“We’re locked out!” she yelled over the laser fire.
“Who’s doing this?” Inferno asked.
“Gotta be a hacker, but who’d be able to break into our computers?” Mercury asked.
“Ravager got past our security once; she could do it again,” Bladefire replied.
“Yeah, but I don’t think she’d attack us like this,” Beast Girl said.
“She’s working for Slade,” Nightstar spoke tersely. “Whatever he wants, she’d do.”
Bladefire schooled his face into an expressionless demeanor, as Nightstar slipped on the headset, using her mind to “dive” into the mainframe. She “saw” glowing electrical worms all over the gateway into the mainframe. She materialized her energy whip and sliced at the worms, knocking them off the gateway and cutting them into pieces.
“Emergency override password requested,” a computerized female voice spoke.
“Coriander,” Nightstar answered.
“Access granted,” the voice stated and Nightstar dove completely into the mainframe. She quickly began marshalling her computer skills - such as they were - into restoring the firewalls that the mystery hacker had torn down to get into the Titans Tower mainframe. Once she was certain the hacker was locked out, she rose back into the real world.
“Thanks,” Inferno said, “but some of us will need medical help.”
Nightstar looked around and saw Samara with tears in the mesh midriff of her costume and burn marks caused by the laser blasts, as well as Beast Girl with similar marks in the parts of her body left exposed by her uniform. The others didn’t look so bad, having been protected by their clothes, their powers, or their unique physiologies. Samara went to Beast Girl and placed her hands on the wounds left by the laser blasts, channeling her energy into the wounds to heal them.
“Thanks,” Beast Girl said.
“You’re welcome,” Samara answered, proceeding to concentrate her healing energies on herself.
“Or maybe we won’t be needing medical help,” Inferno mused to himself. Aloud, “Who was it that tried to kill us with our own mainframe?”
“I’m looking,” Bladefire replied. “On the one hand, it could be Slade and Ravager. On the other hand, it could be someone else. Someone smart enough to get into our mainframe . . .”
“. . . and dumb enough to try to waste us with it,” Beast Girl finished.
Just then, a message came for the Titans. Bladefire answered it and the image of Barbara Gordon-Grayson appeared on the screen. “Oracle,” Bladefire spoke.
“I wanted to see if you were all right,” Oracle said. “Someone broke into my computer network.”
“What a coincidence,” Nightstar drawled. “Someone broke into our mainframe.”
“We’re not the only ones who’ve been hit,” Oracle went on. “Bruce’s network was also hit, and so was the Justice League Watchtower network. Even Olivia got hit.”
“How’s that possible?” Mercury asked.
“It wasn’t just Olivia’s body that was cyberized; part of her brain was also cyberized and that was how she was attacked,” Oracle explained.
“Do you have any idea who’s doing this?” Samara asked.
“We’ve managed to trace the hacker to Niihama,” Oracle replied. “That was as far as we got before we were blocked. There’s something else you need to know about this person. Whoever it is, the hacker community has been saying that the person may not even be human.”
“You mean a robot is doing this?” Beast Girl asked.
“No,” Oracle answered. “More like a cyberpathic ghost.”
“An AI gone rogue and rampaging through cyberspace as nothing but binary given sentience?” Inferno surmised. “Sounds dangerous.”
“You have no idea,” Oracle stated. “The Steel Angels are already on their way to Niihama.”
“Then that’s where we’re going,” Nightstar said. “See you around, Barbara. Tell Dad Joh’n and I say hi.” She closed the communication link.
“We can’t all go to Niihama,” Samara said. “We still have to aid the reconstruction of the city.”
“I know,” Nightstar said. “That’s why we’re splitting up. Bladefire, you stay with Samara and Inferno to continue the reconstruction. Beast Girl, Mercury, you two are coming to Niihama with me.”
Nightstar, Beast Girl, and Mercury packed their bags and boarded the T-Jet, Nightstar piloting. “Niihama,” Mercury said. “Isn’t that the center of political and economic power for Japan ever since World War III?”
“You’ve been studying up, haven’t you?” Nightstar commented.
“Speed reading,” Mercury answered.
The T-Jet could travel at hypersonic speeds, so the trip from Jump City to Niihama only took minutes as opposed to hours. Granted, either Nightstar flying or Mercury running could have made it to Niihama at the same rate, but none of Beast Girl’s animals - even in hybrid state - could move that fast, hence the T-Jet. Nightstar landed the T-Jet in an abandoned airport and stepped out of it, Beast Girl and Mercury following. Nightstar pulled out a tiny remote and pressed a button on it, activating the cloak option of the T-Jet and thus rendering it invisible.
“Good thing this place is abandoned,” Beast Girl said.
“Now we just have to rendezvous with the Steel Angels,” Nightstar added.
“Where did they say for us to meet them?” Mercury asked.
“The headquarters of Public Security Section 9,” Nightstar replied. “They’ve been assembled specifically to fight cyber-crime and cyber-terrorism. I guess that’s why the Steel Angels chose to have us meet there.”
“Do we get to take a break at some point?” Beast Girl asked. “Because I wanna check out the manga they’ve got here.”
“Same,” Mercury agreed.
“We’ll check out manga after we find this hacker and put a stop to him,” Nightstar answered.
“Wait, how do we find Section 9’s headquarters?” Mercury questioned.
Nightstar pulled out her communicator and flipped it open, revealing a GPS map. “If we go west, we should be able to find it,” she replied, rising into the air and beginning to fly.
“Wait for me!” Beast Girl shouted, transforming into a harpy and flying after Nightstar. Mercury ran west, a blur to any who saw him. Below the two girls, the citizens of Niihama looked up in stunned awe, metahumans being a somewhat rare thing in Japan.
The three Titans made their way to the towering complex that housed Public Security Section 9. Once they reached it, they were greeted by four girls. One was blonde and dressed in a black leather jacket over a black sleeveless leotard and fishnet stockings with black boots and gloves, a mini-quiver strapped to her right thigh and a mini-bow mounted on her right wrist. The second was an Amazonian girl clad in armor that was mainly red but with some dashes of bluish silver and black. The third was an African-American girl with her hair tied in two wavy ponytails and multifaceted eyes, dressed in a sleeveless full-body suit that was striped yellow and black down to below her bosom and completely black from below said bosom. The fourth was a red-haired girl dressed in a red armored tunic and skirt over a skintight black suit and red visor-like glasses.
“Hi, Nightstar,” Black Canary, the leather-clad blonde, greeted. “It’s been a while. And you said you’d try to visit more.”
“Sorry, Canary,” Nightstar answered. “Things have been crazy lately.”
“So I’ve heard,” Black Canary commented.
Nightstar turned to the red-haired girl. “What are you doing here, Robin?”
“Oracle sent me,” Robin replied.
“We’d better go inside,” the armored girl, Avia, spoke. “The Major is getting impatient.”
The Steel Angels, the Titans, and Robin entered the complex, taking the elevator up to the level where Section 9 met. Once they arrived, they stepped out of the elevator and went into Section 9’s main room.
“The Teen Titans,” a distinguished older male voice greeted. “It’s a pleasure to finally make your acquaintance.”
The Titans, Steel Angels, and Robin found themselves looking at a man whose hair was gone from the top of his head but remained in almost a puffy halo below. “Greetings,” he spoke. “My name is Aramaki Daisuke, head of Public Security Section 9.”
“Hello, Aramaki-san,” Nightstar greeted. “My name is Nightstar and these are my fellow Titans Beast Girl and Mercury.”
Beast Girl looked around. “This is an awesome place you have here, Mr. Aramaki.”
“Yeah, not bad,” Mercury agreed.
“I’d like to introduce the three of you to my operatives,” Aramaki said.
At that moment, the Titans became aware of several individuals in the room with them. One was a tall, broad-shouldered white-haired man with gray optical implants. Another was a bearded man with dark hair. A third was a man similar in appearance to the first, only he was bald and his optical implants were a burnt red color. The fourth was a thin man with eyes that seemed perpetually narrowed. The fifth was a man with a patch over his left eye. The sixth was a man with a light brown mullet and dressed in a tan jacket and slacks. And the seventh was . . . Mercury felt his mouth go dry at the sight of the seventh.
Ohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygod! the Titan speedster thought. Dontstareatherboobsdontstareatherboobsdontstareather - ohmygodohmygodohmygodImstaringImstaringstopmestopmestopme! That stream of panicked consciousness occurred in less than a second.
The seventh was a woman, seemingly 25 years old, with short purple hair and eyes like burnt sienna. She wore a black jacket over a low-cut lavender bustier and low-riding blue jeans. An amused grin made its way onto her face.
Beast Girl reached behind Mercury and pinched his rear, startling him out of the panicked state in which his mind had been frozen. The speedster let out a relieved breath. “Thanks,” he whispered.
“I’m Kusanagi Motoko,” the woman introduced herself. “And these men are Batou, Ishikawa, Boma, Pazu, Saito, and Togusa.”
“What brings you rookies here?” Batou asked gruffly.
“A cyberpath,” Nightstar replied. “Whoever it was broke into our mainframe and tried to kill us with our own systems. The same person broke into Oracle’s setup.”
“Oracle?” Aramaki asked. “And here I thought Oracle was invincible.” The sarcasm in his voice was not missed, although it was more of a joke than an actual insult.
“We came here because we believed we could combine our resources,” Hornet, the bumblebee-styled girl, stated.
“Cyberpaths,” Robin muttered. “I freaking hate cyberpaths.”
“Understandable enough,” Kusanagi acceded. “Cyberpaths make particularly dangerous cyber-criminals and terrorists. After all, a brain doesn’t have an IP address.”
“Do cyberbrains have IP addresses?” Mercury asked. His answer came in the form of a grunt from Batou, although it didn’t sound discontented as much as it sounded like a very brief chuckle.
“That would be going slightly overboard,” Togusa replied. “Not to mention that it could be a step down a very dangerous path, at least ethically speaking.”
“Whoever this hacker is, he’s a ghost,” Aramaki continued. “At least that’s what the hacker community is saying about him. He has no substantiality in the real world; he’s just haunting the Web like a wraith, infiltrating computer systems and networks at will.”
“Is this bastard up to something or does he just like ripping up other people’s networks?” Beast Girl asked.
“It seems like the latter,” Aramaki answered. “At any rate, hackers - cyberpathic or not - usually leave behind digital breadcrumbs. Granted, it will be harder to use them to track a literal ghost in the machine, but he will eventually invade another system and that will be the time to strike.”
“It could be an AI gone rogue,” Hornet suggested.
“We’ve been looking into that angle,” Kusanagi answered. “So far, we’re turning up nothing.”
“How about hitting some underground cyber-bars?” Robin suggested.
“A good plan,” Aramaki admitted. “The underground cyber-bars are a mecca for hackers, both experienced and inexperienced. You may find someone who knows something.”
Kusanagi looked at the seven young heroes. “You’re not going out of here looking like that, are you?”
“Why not?” Robin asked.
“You’re too conspicuous dressed like that,” Kusanagi replied.
Later on, Nightstar, Black Canary, Robin, and Kusanagi were investigating in an underground cyber-bar. Kusanagi was in her standard attire, while the three heroines had changed into normal clothes. Nightstar was dressed in a black button-up bodice and miniskirt with knee-high boots. Black Canary had simply detached her wrist-crossbow and mini-quiver and put on a miniskirt over her leotard. Robin wore a black jean jacket over a red T-shirt and black jeans.
All over the bar, patrons were sitting at the tables surfing the Internet via the bar’s wireless network. Those that weren’t in the mood to go online were either shooting pool or drinking. Noise music played from the overhead speakers. Black Canary strode up to the two young men playing and grinned flirtatiously at them.
“Hello, boys,” she greeted in near-perfect Japanese. “Mind if I play the winner?”
“No problem,” one of the young men answered, sinking the winning ball. The other young man handed his cue stick to Black Canary and smiled at her.
“I have a proposition for you,” she spoke to the previous winner. “If I beat you, you answer any question I ask. If you beat me, I’ll do whatever you ask.”
“Whatever?” the young man asked.
“Whatever,” Black Canary replied, her voice heavy with promise.
“You’re on,” the young man said, setting up the balls. He grinned at her once he was finished. “First move is yours.”
Black Canary bent forward, setting herself up for a break. To her mild surprise, she felt someone behind her, pressed to her back and adjusting the position of her arms. “Your position was a little off,” Kusanagi whispered in her ear. “Try it now.”
Black Canary broke with her pool cue and the cue ball rolled into the other balls, causing them to ricochet all around the pool table, sinking balls in all four corners.
“You’re . . . incredible!” the young man exclaimed.
Black Canary smiled. “Your turn.”
The young man lined himself up for a break. “Red ball, middle right pocket.”
He made his move and the balls ricocheted off each other before the red ball sank into the middle right pocket. The game ended rather quickly, with Black Canary claiming victory.
“What’s your question?” the young man asked.
“Have you heard of a hacker who can infiltrate computer systems with just his thoughts?” Black Canary asked.
“Just his thoughts?” the young man echoed. “No cyberbrain or nothing, just his thoughts?”
“Exactly,” Kusanagi confirmed. “A cyberpath. Do you know anything?”
“What I do know is that whoever it is, he’s got insane skills,” the young man replied. “He can break into any system at will and no matter what security they’ve got, it’s nothing to him. He’s too good to be human, so what some of my friends were thinking was that he’s some kind of AI or somebody’s ghost that got stuck in cyberspace and is just causing trouble ‘cause he’s mad he don’t got a body anymore.”
“Anything else?” Black Canary asked.
The young man pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and unfolded it, revealing a drawing that resembled a cybernetic eye. “It’s from a friend of mine,” he replied. “He got ghost-hacked two nights ago and when he came out of it, he drew this, said it was the bastard’s calling card.” Seeing the drawing triggered a memory for Nightstar, of seeing a similar cybernetic eye just before she had managed to lock out the hacker that had infiltrated the Titans Tower mainframe.
“Thank you,” Kusanagi said, taking the paper. “You’ve been more of a help than you realize.”
As the four walked out, Nightstar turned to Robin and asked, “What’s ghost-hacking? Hell, what’s a ghost?”
“A ghost is the consciousness, the mind, possibly the ‘soul’ of a person that exists in a cybernetically enhanced body or brain,” Robin explained. “A ghost-hack is hacking done to cyberbrains, like what happened to Canary.”
“The eye . . .” Black Canary murmured. “I saw it, too, when that hacker was in my brain.” She shuddered, remembering how she had nearly killed her fellow Steel Angels.
“So did I,” Nightstar interjected, “when I was repelling the hacker.”
The Tamaranean-human hybrid looked at her longtime friend. “Are you . . . all right?”
“No,” Black Canary whispered. “I nearly killed my friends . . . under that bastard’s control.” She shuddered again. “God . . . what am I that I can be controlled like that?”
“You know, mind control happens regardless of whether you’re fully organic or not,” Nightstar whispered back. She reached out and held Black Canary’s hand. “And you’ll always be human to me, remember?”
Black Canary smiled at the ensuing memory.
Two years ago, Olivia Queen sat in her bed, morbidly pondering what had happened to her. Her then-boyfriend had been driving too recklessly, despite her repeated warnings. He’d swerved to avoid an oncoming car . . . and wrapped his around a tree. He’d died instantly. She’d been doomed to a slow, comatose death.
Her parents - Oliver “Ollie” Queen and Dinah Lance - had been desperate enough to save her that they’d allowed doctors to replace the damaged portions of her body and brain with cybernetic material, wrapped in imitation flesh and muscle. As a result, she was alive and well, but with abilities nobody human could possess. She was stronger, faster, and more agile, not to mention that her memory and computational skills were sharper. There had been just one cost: She was no longer human. She could tell just by looking at herself in the mirror; she was too perfect to be human.
Her gloomy musings were interrupted by a knock on the door. “I told you to go away, Dad!” she yelled.
“It’s Mar’i,” a different voice, feminine and soft in timbre, answered. “May I come in?”
“Yes,” Olivia answered more softly.
The door opened and Mar’i Grayson entered the room. “How are you?” she asked.
“How do you think?” Olivia retorted acidly, recoiling at the glimmer of hurt in Mar’i’s eyes although the half-Tamaranean girl’s face was still. “I’m sorry.”
“They only wanted to save you,” Mar’i whispered.
“Look at me,” Olivia answered harshly. “Do I look human to you?”
“You are human,” Mar’i responded.
“No, I’m a facsimile of one,” Olivia amended. “This is just a shell. A perfect, hollow shell.”
Mar’i walked to the bed and got on it, straddling Olivia. “What are you doing?” Olivia asked.
“Your body may be cybernetic, but this -” Mar’i placed her hand on Olivia’s chest, right over her heart - “is still human. This will always be human.”
Mar’i leaned forward and kissed Olivia on the lips, pulling away only ten seconds later. “Did you feel something?” she asked the blonde.
“Yes,” Olivia replied softly.
“Then you’re still human,” Mar’i said. “Remember that, Olivia.”
The foursome had returned to Section 9 headquarters. “Any progress on your end?” Kusanagi asked.
“We’ve been monitoring the chat rooms,” Ishikawa replied. “People are talking about this hacker, but nobody’s saying anything that indicates they know who he is.”
“We also got interrupted,” Togusa added.
“Who interrupted?” Kusanagi asked.
“The digital anarchist herself,” Batou replied. “Intrigue.”
“Intrigue?” Nightstar echoed.
“You know her?” Kusanagi asked.
“We’re loose acquaintances,” Nightstar replied.
“Another of her one-minute broadcasts detailing the crimes of the American Empire,” Ishikawa contributed. “Wonder how she’s managed to avoid being taken out.”
“She’s a woman without a face,” Aramaki answered. “That makes her very hard to identify.”
“We found something,” Robin interjected. “A clue to the hacker’s identity.”
Kusanagi pulled out the paper the young man at the cyber-bar had given her and handed it to Ishikawa. “See if you can use this to track him down.”
“Good work, Major,” Aramaki said. “As soon as we find out who this hacker is, be prepared to move in on him.”
Ishikawa began the search, the computer operating at incomprehensible speed to find a match. Within minutes, a match was found. “I can’t believe it,” he muttered.
“What is it?” Hornet asked.
“It’s one of your American super-criminals,” Ishikawa replied. “Specifically, this one.”
The Titans and Steel Angels gathered around Ishikawa, looking at the screen. “Overload?” Mercury uttered in stunned surprise.
“Slade’s lackey?” Beast Girl added in similar surprise. “That Overload?”
“It appears that you’ll have to take him more seriously now,” Aramaki remarked wryly.
“It all makes sense now,” Nightstar murmured. “Overload was a creature of electricity. He could have easily infiltrated an electronic device and used it to escape into cyberspace. Then he spent all that time refining his power until he could infiltrate anything electronic, particularly computer-based devices, at will.”
“How do we stop him?” Avia asked. “Not like we can punch out an electronic being.”
“How about we pull him out of cyberspace and fight him here?” Mercury suggested.
“No!” Aramaki answered firmly. More softly, “That would not be a good idea. The destruction a creature like Overload could cause outside of cyberspace would be catastrophic, as would the destruction you yourselves would cause battling him. The only other way is to fight him in his arena.”
“You’re going to upload their brains into cyberspace?” Togusa surmised.
“Yes,” Aramaki confirmed. “They can confront him there.” He looked at the Titans and Steel Angels. “Be careful. If you die in cyberspace, your body will be nothing more than a hollow shell.”
“Overload’s making his move,” Ishikawa said. “He’s attacking a military computer network.”
“Which one?” Kusanagi asked.
“Ours,” Ishikawa answered. “If he gets at our missiles, he could start World War V.”
“We’re not letting that happen,” Nightstar declared.
The Titans, Steel Angels, and Robin reclined in pods with headsets over their eyes, their minds uploaded into the Japanese military’s network. Inside cyberspace, they looked considerably different from their real-world appearances.
Nightstar was dressed in what looked like a translucent lavender mini-dress with matching boots, translucent silver bracers, and a tiara with a black star emblazoned on it. Beast Girl wore a pink-and-white corset and skintight black pants. Mercury wore a suit that was red from the neck but black from the chest down, the black part marked in the center with tire tread-style ridging and the red part marked by a silver lightning bolt. Black Canary wore a black leather half-shirt and pants with a white scarf tied around her neck, a mini-quiver strapped to her thigh, and a mini-bow attached to her wrist. Avia wore what looked like a one-piece red metal bathing suit, her long black hair, blue eyes, and strong yet beautiful features exposed. Hornet wore a black suit with a design on the chest that looked a lot like the wings of a hornet. Robin wore a black short-sleeved suit with a red stripe down the middle and a gold bird emblem on the chest and a black bird-shaped mask.
“Why do we look different?” Beast Girl asked.
“These are our cyber-avatars,” Robin replied.
“Never mind that,” Black Canary said. “Right now, we gotta take down Overload.”
Nightstar’s eyes glowed purple and she fired an optic blast, getting Overload’s attention. The electrical beast turned to her and the others. “Won’t stop me,” he snarled.
“You think so?” Black Canary asked, nocking an arrow into her mini-bow. She pressed the trigger in her glove and fired the arrow at Overload, said arrow embedding itself in Overload’s electronic body and exploding. Overload’s binary makeup broke into pieces of data and scattered. Hornet fired electrical bolts at the pieces of Overload, attempting to prevent them from coming together again.
“We can’t kill him,” Robin said. “He’s electronic and electronic information can exist infinitely in one form or another. The only way to stop him would be to quarantine him.”
“Like a virus?” Mercury deduced.
“Yeah,” Robin confirmed.
“Then let’s go,” Avia said.
“Why are you doing this?” Beast Girl asked as Overload managed to bring himself back together.
“Information is power,” Overload replied. “As a creature of digital information, I can acquire more power than anyone in the physical world. Here, I can be a true super-being. In fact, I can be the ultimate.”
“Ultimate or not, you’re going down!” Mercury shouted, charging Overload at hyper-speed. Unfortunately, Overload reacted faster and lashed at Mercury, knocking the speedster back.
“You may be a Titan of speed in the physical world, but here - I am the fastest,” Overload declared.
Hornet fired bursts of electricity at Overload in conjunction with Black Canary’s explosive arrows. The combined assault managed to burst him apart, but the pieces of data that comprised him began to come back together. Nightstar extended her energy strand as a lance, stabbing one of the Overload pieces. Robin drew an energy staff and brought one end down on another piece of Overload. Avia pulled out her Mega-Rod, passed down to her from her mother, and used it to blast other pieces of Overload. Mercury plunged his hand into an Overload piece and vibrated until it exploded into bits.
From out of nowhere, a crossbow bolt struck another piece of Overload and exploded, causing it to disintegrate. Nightstar turned and saw a girl dressed in a black trench coat over dark clothes and whose face was covered by a white-and-black mask designed to be similar to a Rorschach test, flowing black hair adorning her head. “Intrigue?” she asked.
“He broke into my systems, too,” Intrigue replied. “And I’m going to make sure he doesn’t break into anything ever again.”
“Don’t look now, but I think he’s starting to respawn,” Beast Girl said.
Indeed, Overload was coming together again.
“Now, while he’s still weak,” Nightstar ordered.
Hornet created an electrical net around Overload’s re-forming self, trapping him. Robin closed her eyes underneath the mask. “What are you doing?” Beast Girl asked.
“Writing a quarantine program for this creep,” Robin replied.
Overload began to vanish. “What are you doing?” he roared.
“Imprisoning you in the lowest depths of cyberspace,” Robin answered with a smirk.
Overload let out one last enraged scream before he vanished into the dregs of the Web. Robin positioned her fingers to imitate a gun and blew on her index finger. “Am I good or what?”
“Yeah, you are,” Nightstar answered dryly.
The Titans, Steel Angels, and Robin were downloaded back into their bodies, while Intrigue had gone back to her own body, wherever it was. “You’re not at all bad,” Aramaki said to Robin. “If you should ever give up running around in tights, you may have a future here.”
“Thanks,” Robin answered. “But I think I’ll be in the tights for a long time, so you might be dead before I come here again.”
Aramaki allowed himself a brief smile.
“Um, Nightstar, now that we’ve got Overload contained . . .” Mercury whispered.
“Yeah, I know,” Nightstar whispered back. “The manga. We’ll get to that very, very soon.” Aloud, “It’s been nice, but we’ve got responsibilities back in the States. A city to rebuild, people to protect from dangerous criminals, that sort of thing.”
“We understand,” Aramaki said. “Good luck.”
“Thanks,” Nightstar answered. “Good luck to you, too.”