World Trip (Teen Titans: Future Storm)
In which the Teen Titans meet the Titans East and the leaders of both get thrown in another dimension and meet that dimension's Titans, many of whom are very familiar.
Title: Teen Titans: Future Storm
Arc: N/A
Chapter: World Trip
Fandom: Teen Titans (TV/comic hybrid)
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Only slight for the comics
High in a blue sky dotted with fluffy white clouds, a jet soared at supersonic speeds. The jet was colored a silvery white with blue circuit panels. In terms of design, it was long and sleek, tapering to a sharp point at the front, with a pair of forward-swept wings protruding from the back and a pair of sharp triangular fins at the top. Inside the jet was state-of-the-art piloting and navigation equipment, which was being manned by Nightstar and Bladefire while Beast Girl, Mercury, Inferno, and Samara sat behind them.
“Are we there yet?” Beast Girl asked.
“We will be,” Nightstar replied. “I wonder how Lian’s doing. I haven’t seen her since her high school graduation.”
“Don’t you two IM each other constantly?” Bladefire asked.
“Not the same as seeing her face,” Nightstar answered. “Not the same as hearing her voice.”
“And you wonder why people think you have lesbian tendencies,” Mercury remarked, earning him a slap upside the head from Beast Girl and another from Samara, the latter harder. “Ow! I never said that was a bad thing!”
“You’re an ass sometimes, you know that?” Inferno observed dryly. “Of course, that could be remedied if your mouth didn’t operate faster than your brain.”
“I get it, I get it,” Mercury whined. “I was being a jackass. Sorry, Mar’i.”
“No harm done,” Nightstar answered, spotting Steel City’s Titans Tower in the distance. She immediately flew closer, aiming for the landing strip on top of the Tower. As she descended, she saw Lian, dressed in her Red Hood garb, waving at her with glowing signal sabers. She landed on the strip and then opened the stepping hatch, letting the hydraulics push it into a slanting position against the ground so that she and the other Titans could exit the jet.
“Hey,” Red Hood greeted. “I see you’re one short. Where’s Raziel?”
“He left,” Nightstar answered.
“You mean he broke up with you?” Red Hood asked.
“No, nothing like that,” Nightstar contradicted. “He just . . . had to get his head back on straight. We’re not broken up. I don’t know what we are exactly.”
“Anyway, why don’t you come inside?” Red Hood asked. “The rest of the Titans East is dying to see you guys and that includes Uncle Vic.”
The seven teens walked into the Tower via the roof access and descended the stairway. As they walked, Mercury tried to make conversation. “How’s Iris doing?” he asked.
“I’ll let her tell you that herself,” Red Hood replied. She opened the door at the end of the stairway and stepped through, the others following. She walked into the main room of the Tower, where Darkstar was playing chess with Lilim, Kid Flash was playing Mystics & Dragons with Cerdian, and Micron was reading a scientific journal while Cyborg read it over his shoulder.
Cyborg took notice of Red Hood and the Titans West and waved. “Long time no see.”
“It’s definitely been a while, Uncle Vic,” Nightstar answered. “It’s good to see you.”
Mercury sped by Kid Flash and looked over her shoulder. “Good cards,” he whispered.
“Thanks,” she whispered back.
Inferno wandered by Micron and gently placed a hand on his shoulder. “I heard about what happened to your mom,” the pyromancer spoke, his tone apologetic and cheerless. “I know this is a pointless question to ask, but how are you holding up?”
“Pretty good,” Micron replied. “I’m still sane, the thing that murdered my mom is no longer in this dimension, so everything’s good. Plus, I’m living with the Titans. They’re pretty good company.”
Samara observed Darkstar and Lilim’s chess game. From her vantage point, Darkstar seemed to have all the advantages except for one small gap in his defenses. If Lilim saw that gap, he was finished, very, very finished. She continued to watch their game, which ironically seemed more like a flirtation than a contest of wills, or perhaps it was both.
“Where’s Flamebird?” Bladefire asked.
“In the combat simulation room,” Cyborg replied.
“Thanks,” Bladefire said, disappearing to find her.
“Do you even know where the combat simulation room is?” Cyborg shouted after him.
Bladefire pulled out his Titans communicator and flipped it open. After pressing some buttons, the communicator locked onto the signal emitted by Flamebird’s communicator. He followed that signal all the way to the combat simulation room, where he found himself on its observation deck. He watched her, dressed in skintight red with a flaming birdlike V design on her chest and a birdlike mask with goggle-style lenses, as she battled hard-light holograms of gangs. He had to admit, she was good, a lot better than the reputation inherited from her mother would suggest.
He waited until she was finished and then contacted her by communicator. “If you’re not too tired, would you like to try me?” he asked.
“Bladefire,” she answered. “You never call. You never write. What’s the occasion?”
“We wanted to see the new Titans for ourselves,” Bladefire answered simply, exiting the observation deck and coming down to the combat simulation room. His indigo eyes narrowed as he shifted into a combat stance, Flamebird assuming a stance of her own. He invited her to make the first move, an invitation she took up by aiming a high kick for his head that he batted aside. Unfazed by this, she pirouetted into a kick to his side, which he dodged by simply shooting straight into the air, throwing her off.
He came back down with a powerful kick that Flamebird blocked with her forearm, relying on the armor-like weave of her suit to absorb most of the impact. Undeterred, he jumped off her forearm and spun into a kick that was also blocked by her. He flipped backward and flew right into Flamebird, who gripped him as his momentum propelled her toward the far wall. She turned said momentum on him, using it to spin into a throw that sent him soaring.
Bladefire righted himself in midair and came back at Flamebird with swift and strong kicks while staying in the air. She blocked as many as she could, but the Fireheart did not do much to augment her physical abilities. She could take a hit better than she used to and she could heal faster than a normal person, but she wasn’t super-strong or super-fast or super-agile. Unfortunately for her, she was fighting someone who did possess super-strength and whose physiology granted him a degree of enhanced speed and agility. Plus, he could fly and incorporating flight made him even faster and more agile than he was to begin with.
Finally, he landed a kick and sent her crashing to the ground. She turned her fall into a roll and was immediately back on her feet. She reached into her utility belt and pulled out three bird-styled shuriken, throwing them all at Bladefire. With insane reflexes, he caught all of them.
“Nice try,” he commented, “but you still have to work on your aim.”
Flamebird pulled out two shuriken and threw both at Bladefire, who half-flew, half-dived out of the way. He landed in a crouch, skidding to a stop and summoning three energy knives between his fingers. He fired them all at Flamebird, who managed to dodge two of them and the third was deflected by a projection of flame.
“Since when did you have pyrokinesis?” he asked.
“It’s a long story,” Flamebird replied.
Before she could elaborate (assuming she wanted to elaborate), she and Bladefire felt Titans Tower shake. “What’s going on?” she asked.
Bladefire’s answer was to immediately grab her hand and fly her up to the main room of the Tower. Once there, he found the other Titans already assembled. Cyborg was mentally interfacing with the Tower’s computer systems, scanning for whatever could have caused the disturbance. He “unplugged” himself and looked at the assembled teens.
“Someone or something just plugged itself into Earth’s core,” he said.
“From where?” Flamebird asked, having let go of Bladefire’s hand.
“Smallville, Kansas,” Cyborg replied.
Nobody had to be asked what the significance of Smallville was. Everyone present knew it was where the craft that had carried an infant Kal-El away from the destruction of his homeworld Krypton had landed. Everyone present who was privy to the Earth identity of Kal-El knew that was where a young Kal-El had been inculcated with the morality that had given an alien with the powers of a virtual god the wisdom to use them to help humanity rather than to conquer it. If someone wanted to cause trouble there, it was by all means bad.
Cerdian created a spell-portal. “It’ll save us time,” he stated.
“Then you know what to do,” Cyborg said. “I’ll stay here and coordinate you through your communicator network.”
Smallville, Kansas was a simple rural town, a simple rural town with simple ideals and values. Ironically, that was the very reason why Kal-El, the first Superman, wasn’t some kind of tyrant. The very people who had raised him were pinnacles of those simple rural ideals and values, chief among them compassion for those that were not as blessed as he. This was the place that had served, in many ways, as the birthplace of Earth’s greatest hero . . . and now a giant slate-colored tubular apparatus was embedded deep within the farmland that was Kal-El’s spiritual home, doing only a higher power knew what.
The Titans, West and East, arrived just in time to see the apparatus, which appeared to have purple circuit panels ringing it. The panels seemed to be glowing, dully at first but soon becoming brighter.
“What is that thing?” Lilim asked.
Micron and Inferno both went to examine it, only to be shocked away by a force field. “Whatever it is,” Inferno answered, “they don’t want us touching it.”
“What do you think it is?” Red Hood asked.
“Some kind of siphoning device, most likely,” Micron replied. “By the way, you might want to look up.”
The Titans did exactly that and spotted something hovering above their heads. That something was a giant dome-like construct with a long “tail” that extended from its back. The “tail” sprouted wing-like protrusions at the end, protrusions that appeared to be engines of some sort.
“That thing looks kind of like a Coalition starship from Warp Trek,” Mercury commented idly.
“Unfortunately, it probably isn’t as friendly as a Coalition starship,” Micron added.
Suddenly, crystalline energy swirled around the Titans. The energy resembled snowflakes and its motion resembled a blizzard, obscuring the Titans’ ability to see outside their immediate area. After thirty seconds, the energy began to dissipate, revealing humanoid figures in the glow of the crystalline energy. As the energy continued to dissipate, the figures became more visible, revealed as beings clad in black armor. The armor covered the shoulders, torso, and legs, with matching chain mail making up the rest of their suits. Their faces were concealed by black helmets with opaque visors. They all exuded a threatening aura, made more threatening by the fact that there were five of them for each one of the Titans.
One figure stepped forward and the Titans could see that he was armored differently from the others. His torso armor was ridged in the upper chest area and the rest of his armor was somewhat more ornate than that of his companions. His helmet was marked by a symbol above the visor, a symbol that resembled a double helix that was partially scratched out.
“Who the hell are you?” Nightstar asked.
“The Scryed,” the armored being replied. “You may personally address me as Vypr.”
“What do you want?” Flamebird questioned. “What is that thing you’ve put in the ground? What is it doing?”
“We, the Scryed, intend to harness the energy of multiple realities,” Vypr explained. “The energy of those worlds will be redistributed across the remaining realities, strengthening them. Eventually, there will be only one universe, only one reality . . . and in that reality, the Scryed will be supreme, for we will have the energy of all realities within us.”
“And to do that, you’re willing to commit multidimensional genocide?” Samara asked. “Obliterate countless billions of lives, stamp out entire worlds?”
Vypr chuckled. “Thank the white-haired one. Without him, we would not have become aware of this universe for quite some time.”
Mercury gaped at him in open horror. “What the hell do you mean, you bastard?”
“You don’t always vibrate on the same wavelength of your dimension,” Vypr explained. “Sometimes, your vibration matches the wavelength of another universe and you are momentarily dragged into it. It is always random and you never stay for an extended period of time. We spotted you while you were in one of the universes which energy we were going to harness. When you vibrated back into your reality, we followed your wavelength . . . and that was how we found your world.”
An aura of speed lightning formed around Mercury, pooling at his feet and gathering into his outstretched hand. The lightning concentrated itself as a vaguely spherical shape, although trails of electricity continued to emanate from the sphere. Mercury pulled the lightning-holding hand back and charged Vypr, only for his wrist to be grabbed by Vypr in a supremely swift motion and twisted. The white-haired speedster swung himself upward to kick Vypr in the head in a super-fast motion which energy he channeled into a super-strong kick. Vypr was forced to let go of Mercury’s wrist by the kick and Mercury twisted again to elbow him in the spine before flipping off him.
Vypr rose to his feet and even through the helmet concealing his face, his rage was evident. “You’re going to pay for that,” he snarled, drawing a large black sword decorated with a skull between the hilt and the blade.
“Who wants to say it?” Nightstar asked.
“How about we say it together?” Red Hood suggested.
“Sounds good to me,” Nightstar answered.
“Titans Together!” Nightstar and Red Hood shouted, launching their respective Titans teams into combat. Strands of purple light extended from Nightstar’s fingers and she extended them into energy wire that cut through the armored beings. Red Hood somersaulted into the air and drew her bow, extending it to its full size and firing explosive arrows at the armored beings.
All around the two girls, the other Titans began to fight. Samara transformed into an astral form of herself and jumped inside Inferno, combining their powers as orange-red fire edged with black struck down several armored beings. Beast Girl shifted into her preferred combat form, a feline hybrid, and battled the armored beings with the strength and agility of the feline whose features she had melded with her human body. Mercury battled the armored beings at speeds swifter than anyone normal could follow. Bladefire materialized twin energy swords to fight the armored beings.
Cerdian shot optic force beams at the armored beings and cut through them with his lightning blade. Kid Flash fought the armored beings with super-speed, similar to her cousin Mercury. Darkstar alternated between maser blasts and hand-to-hand combat in dealing with the armored beings. Flamebird flung shuriken enhanced by celestial fire at the armored beings, piercing their armor. Micron shifted his atoms around the armored beings’ attacks to avoid being struck by them. Lilim began fighting the armored beings with superhuman strength.
As the Titans battled Vypr and his warriors, Red Hood moved over to Cerdian, covering his back as she took down some armored beings. “You think you can transport Nightstar and me into that ship?” she asked him.
“Probably,” Cerdian replied, opening a portal above their heads.
“How do you expect me to jump that high?” Red Hood questioned.
“Me,” Nightstar replied, grabbing Red Hood from behind and flying up into the portal with her. The two girls emerged into the bridge of the ship, where they encountered even more armored beings. Red Hood fired more arrows - these being the armor-piercing variety - to disable them. Once the arrows pierced the armor, they sent a two-hundred-thousand-volt shock through them, knocking them down. The ones that didn’t go down after those arrows were brought down by Nightstar’s optic blasts and energy whip.
The two girls looked around, seeing the sort of technology that would be more fitting in a Warp Trek series. Flat-panel consoles were everywhere on the ship, most likely being scanning equipment. The floors and walls and ceiling were very polished, reflecting the light inside in such a way that it hurt Nightstar’s sensitive eyes. Despite that, she looked around with Red Hood, trying to find anything that might resemble a dimensional portal to send Vypr and his troops back to whence they came.
Nightstar sat in front of a console and busily pressed the “buttons” that were actually smaller panels activated by simple touch. Information began to appear on the screen, but it was all in a code she could not begin to decipher. Still, she pressed on; Tamaraneans were a highly advanced people technologically, so there wouldn’t be too much strain in figuring out how this technology worked.
Meanwhile, Red Hood looked over Nightstar’s shoulder, not understanding a thing about what the half-alien girl was doing. Nevertheless, she kept up a guard for any other troops that might show up. As she looked around, she saw an almost egg-shaped silvery object. Curiously, she picked it up.
“Hey, you think this might help?” she asked.
“Don’t play with it, Hood,” Nightstar advised.
“Please,” Red Hood answered, tossing the object between her hands. Whatever else she might have said was swallowed by the door sliding open and more armored troops arriving. She threw the object into the air and fired more armor-piercing shock arrows at them, taking them out of commission. She caught the egg-shaped object just in time, only for her thumb to brush it. Instantly, the object glowed and fragmented into a gate of luminescent energy.
“What did you do?” Nightstar asked.
“Nothing!” Red Hood replied, just before she was ripped into her component atoms and yanked through the portal. Nightstar barely managed to grab her hand before she, too, was ripped into her component atoms and yanked through the portal. The portal closed behind them, leaving no trace of either the girls or the thing that had spawned it behind.
Nightstar and Red Hood recomposed in what looked like the main room of Titans Tower. However, it was vastly different from the main room in either the Jump City Tower or the Steel City Tower. Flat-panel computer displays covered the walls. There were couches and sofas, but they seemed to be an afterthought, swiveling chairs taking up the majority of the furniture in the main room.
“You’re here,” a deep, raspy voice spoke, causing the two girls to turn around to see who was speaking to them. The speaker turned out to be Batman, or more accurately, someone dressed similarly to him. His costume was predominantly black, with a blood-red bat emblazoned on the chest. A silver utility belt with curved, vaguely claw-like compartments and an oval buckle wrapped around his waist. Three sharp fins extended from his forearms and a gray-lined black cape with tattered scallops covered his shoulders. His cowl left his mouth and jaw exposed, much like the cowl of the original Batman’s costume, but twin fangs protruded from it at either side of his mouth. Those, along with the smaller fangs decorating the end of the cowl, gave him a greater resemblance to the creature that was his inspiration than either Bruce Wayne’s or Tim Drake’s Batsuits did.
Nightstar looked at “Batman,” noting a certain familiar tone to his voice. “Ibn?” she asked. “Is that you?”
“You know my former title,” “Batman” answered, his voice still so achingly familiar to the half-Tamaranean girl.
Just then, five others arrived. The first was a partly Asian young woman with lime green eyes, dark hair, and dressed in skintight red leather with twin crisscrossing belts around her hips and a small red arrowhead tattoo beneath her left eye. The second was a dark-haired, violet-eyed boy in a blue-and-black wetsuit distinguished by wave patterns dividing the blue from the black. The third appeared to be a female Flash with long red hair sticking out of her mask. The fourth was an Asian young woman dressed in a black leather jacket over a black combination bustier-leotard and boots with fishnet stockings. The fifth was a young man with sandy brown hair dressed in a skintight blue suit with red boots, belt, and cape - along with a very familiar S-shield.
Red Hood’s eyes widened in shock behind her sunglasses upon seeing the red-clad Asian girl. Aside from the black hair, they could have almost been twins, notwithstanding the fact that the leather-clad one seemed older than Red Hood. It seemed that Nightstar realized this, too, as her eyes rapidly moved between the two, silently analyzing their apparent similarities and differences.
“Batman,” “Superboy” asked. “What do you want us to do about them?”
“We knew this was going to happen, Superboy,” Batman answered. “The dimensional barriers have been in flux. Other realities have been bleeding into ours.”
“Way to state the obvious,” the “Flash” remarked sarcastically, and her voice made both Red Hood and Nightstar gape at her.
“Iris?” Nightstar asked.
“You must know me in your universe,” the Flash concluded.
“Way to state the obvious,” Nightstar repeated with the same sarcastic tone Alt-Iris-slash-Flash had used on this universe’s Batman.
“How many of us have counterparts in your universe?” Batman asked sharply.
“In my universe, I knew you as Ibn al Xu’ffasch, or Terry McGinnis,” Nightstar replied. “Your Lian and my Lian have already met. The boy in the wetsuit looks and dresses a lot like Cerdian in my universe, but I can’t be sure he answers to that name here.”
“I do,” Alt-Cerdian stated.
“The Iris in my universe is Kid Flash, but your Iris seems to have taken the identity of the Flash,” Nightstar continued. “Your universe’s Black Canary and Superboy are the only ones I don’t know.”
“Call me Sin,” Black Canary replied, with a hint of an Asian accent. “Superboy here is Chris.”
“Sin, huh?” Red Hood remarked. “Sounds like you and I might get along.”
“It was the name I was given,” Sin answered simply, although there appeared to be a mischievous twinkle in her eyes.
“And what do you call yourself, sis?” Red Hood asked Alt-Lian.
“Dart,” Alt-Lian replied. “Want to see why?”
“If you two are here, we don’t have much time left,” Batman interrupted, cutting off any answer Red Hood might have given. “The multiple universes are hemorrhaging and the consequences may be irreversible if it isn’t stopped.” He stared at Nightstar and Red Hood long and hard, the cold whiteness of his lenses proving quite intimidating. “Who are you?”
“I’m Nightstar and this is Red Hood,” Nightstar introduced.
“We came here with this,” Red Hood asked, holding up the egg-shaped object that had turned out to be a dimensional portal.
“Hand it over,” Batman ordered. “I’m going to have Superboy analyze it to determine if we can use it to send you back to your universe.”
“Sure,” Red Hood replied, tossing the portal generator to Batman, who handed it to Superboy, who began intently gazing at it. Nightstar had been around Kryptonians long enough to know that when they began intently gazing at something, they were using their X-ray vision.
“It’s amazing,” Superboy spoke. “The circuitry is incredibly small, yet extremely intricate. If I did it at super-speed, I might have a chance of figuring it out before Hypertime collapses on itself.”
“How much do you know about what’s happening?” Nightstar asked.
“Enough to know that this isn’t natural,” Batman replied. “Someone is behind this. Someone reckless enough or uncaring enough to sacrifice the stability of time and reality itself to accomplish whatever objective they have in mind.”
“Damn good detective work,” Red Hood commented. “That’s exactly what’s happening. There’s an army called the Scryed that’s been going around stealing the energy sustaining various universes. Without that energy, those universes die out and the energy that once kept them going is redistributed among the remaining universes, making them all stronger. The Scryed intend to do this until their universe is the only one remaining and they can become gods or something like that.”
“They won’t live long enough to see their objective come true,” Batman snarled. “Hypertime will fall apart long before that happens.”
“What do we do while Superboy is busy reverse-engineering the Scryed’s tech?” Red Hood asked.
“We try to keep this universe from falling apart worse than it already has,” Dart answered. “That means we keep the peace.”
“Falling apart?” Red Hood asked.
“You’ll see,” Batman replied grimly.
The Titans, sans Superboy, entered the city, finding downtown to be a scene out of a nightmare. The city square was a place of chaos. Cars were on fire, plate-glass windows of shops stood broken, and gangs rampaged through the streets on motorcycles terrorizing any hapless person just trying to escape and fighting each other. One of the gangs was dressed like punk clowns, wearing greasepaint and twisted versions of clown or jester outfits. The other gang was marked by pale makeup and red T’s over their faces.
“What the hell is this?” Nightstar asked, horrified. She had never seen such unabashed and naked violence in her life, not even when she had been patrolling Blüdhaven. Then again, her father had reformed Blüdhaven to the point that it was a safer place to live than it had been when he first arrived, safe enough to raise a family.
“Hell,” Dart replied bluntly. “That’s what it’s been since the other realities began to bleed into ours. When people think the world is going to end, they decide nothing’s worth anything and become no better than animals.”
“Canary,” Batman ordered, “introduce us.”
Black Canary reached into her jacket and pulled out several tiny spheres, pressing the tops of all of them in quick succession. Faint lights glimmered on each one, signaling that they were primed. She threw them into the midst of the warring motorcycle gangs and they emitted a loud sonic pulse set to the A flat frequency. The gangsters cried out in agony, covering their ears to protect them from the sound.
Batman descended from the rooftop, his cape spread out like great demonic wings. He landed in between the scattered gangsters and a savage beating followed, with steel-reinforced fists and feet smashing bones and knocking out teeth. He was a flurry of terrible and awesome violence, showing no mercy to those who were on the receiving end.
“Aren’t you going to stop him?” Nightstar asked the Alt-Titans.
“No,” Dart replied. “We’re going to help.” She jumped into the fray, a flurry of darts and other thrown weapons embedding themselves in the vulnerable flesh of various gangsters. The gangsters collapsed, entering convulsions or regurgitating or even clawing at their own flesh.
Red Hood looked upon what her other self had done with horror. “You poisoned those things, didn’t you?” she concluded.
“Nonfatal toxins,” Dart clarified. “We don’t want to kill anybody. We want them incapacitated. Toxins are a good way of doing that.”
At this point, Black Canary, Alt-Cerdian, and the Flash had also entered the fray. Black Canary, like Batman, was a flurry of violence, but it was more graceful, flowing, and controlled. Alt-Cerdian burst a fire hydrant and manipulated the water into dousing the flames, while the Flash sped as many innocent people as she could out of harm’s way.
“Who are these people?” Nightstar asked as she battled the gangsters, energy wire slicing through their weapons like a regular wire through wet clay.
“The clowns are the Jokerz,” Batman explained as he threw a punch into a clown-styled gangster’s throat. “The Joker’s death somehow spawned a legion of death-worshipping piles of garbage just like him - marauders, rapists, and killers of the worst variety. The T-faced ones are the T’s, just as bad as the Jokerz, but more organized and not as much into killing and terror for its own sake. Doesn’t matter; they’re both scum and they’re both going down hard.” He emphasized the last word by spinning and slashing a T with the scallops on his cape. The T fell down bleeding and screaming.
“What was that?” Nightstar asked.
“Justice,” Batman answered coldly, delivering a roundhouse kick to a Joker’s solar plexus. The kick was hard enough to make him crumple into an agonized heap.
Eventually, the Jokerz and T’s were all lying on the street in heaps of various kinds. Some were still conscious but in a great deal of agony. Others were passed out from the convulsions inflicted on them by Dart’s poisoned weapons. There were those who were covered in bloody scratches from the hallucinogens that had been included in those poisons. The T that had been slashed by the scallops of Batman’s cape was still bleeding and it didn’t look like he was going to stop anytime soon.
“We have to help him,” Nightstar said.
“Why should we?” Batman questioned.
“Are you a killer, Ibn?” Nightstar asked. “Is that what Grandpa Bruce wanted the Batman to become?”
“That is no longer my title,” Batman snarled, his white lenses almost lurid with the fury in the eyes behind them. “Do not call me that ever again, Nightstar.”
“Then what do I call you?” Nightstar questioned. “You certainly aren’t acting like any Batman I’d recognize.”
The Alt-Titans and Red Hood looked at Batman and Nightstar, their eyes warily moving between one and the other. Unlike Nightstar and Red Hood, the Alt-Titans knew all too well that this Batman was quite the dangerous man when angered. Of course, Batman was a dangerous man all the time, but his anger upped the danger level considerably. He would not actually explode, but he would seethe and a seething Batman was not a Batman any of them wanted to be around.
“We’re going back to the Tower,” the Dark Knight declared.
The Titans filed into the Tower somberly. Once inside, Batman called for Superboy. “Superboy! Have you figured that thing out yet?”
The Boy of Steel materialized in front of the other Titans, having moved at super-speed. He ran a hand through his sandy brown hair and answered, “I’m very close.”
“Not good enough,” Batman spoke brusquely. “It’s getting worse out there.”
“I’m doing the best I can, Damien,” Superboy said. “I may have ‘super’-intelligence, but that doesn’t mean I’m a miracle worker.”
“Just keep working on it,” Batman answered. “I’ll send Nightstar to help. Her mother’s people - if I’m right on whose daughter she is in her universe - are advanced enough that she should know enough to assist you.”
“I could use the fresh mind,” Superboy answered with a sigh of relief. He departed back into the Titans Tower laboratory, Nightstar following with a last backwards look that told Batman that their little tiff was by no means over. Batman merely stared at her with a carefully crafted look of cold indifference.
As Nightstar and Superboy worked on solving the mystery of the dimensional portal generator, the Tamaranean hybrid turned to the Boy of Steel. “Superboy?” she asked.
“What is it, Nightstar?” Superboy inquired.
“What’s wrong with Bat - Damien?” Nightstar asked. “What made him this way?”
“What do you mean?” Superboy questioned.
“When I saw him in battle, he was vicious,” Nightstar explained. “Merciless. Brutal. For X’Hal’s sake, he sliced someone with his cape.”
“Damien . . . is really messed up,” Superboy replied. “Blame his mother. She raised him for the first six years of his life and molded him into a vicious killer. His father, the original Batman, tried to retrain him and he eventually took to it, but every minute of his life, he walks a tightrope between what his father taught him and what his mother raised him to be. Sometimes, he falls a little closer to the other side, but what keeps me following him - what keeps us all following him - is that deep down, no matter what he thinks of himself, he’s a good man.”
Nightstar sighed and returned to working on the portal generator. After ten minutes, she spoke again, this time asking, “Do I exist in this reality?”
“No,” Superboy replied sadly. “This world’s version of your parents didn’t stay together long enough to have you. The Dick Grayson I know eventually settled down with Donna Troy. They have a ten-year-old girl, spitting image of Dick, but she’s got Donna’s eyes. Her name’s Hayley Diana Grayson.” He turned to Nightstar with a gentle smile. “A little help, please?”
In the meantime, Red Hood and Dart were talking in the main room of Titans Tower. “Since when did you use poisons in your weapons?” Red Hood asked. “And why don’t you use a bow?”
“A bow is difficult to carry around,” Dart replied, “even if it’s a collapsible one. I find thrown weapons much easier to use, since I can carry a lot of them without them weighing me down too much. As for the poisons, that was an influence from our dear mother.”
“Those guys that were clawing at themselves . . . that was some kind of hallucinogen, wasn’t it?” Red Hood concluded.
“Yeah,” Dart replied.
Red Hood looked at the tattoo below Dart’s left eye. “That must have hurt when you got it,” she remarked.
“I’m good at taking pain,” Dart answered. The remark was probably intended to be lighthearted and casual, but there was something dark in the alternate Lian’s eyes that wrecked the effect. Changing the subject, she asked, “Does Cerdian exist in your world?”
“Yeah,” Red Hood replied. “Why do you ask?”
“I just wanted to know if you were involved with him,” Dart responded idly, her lime green eyes twinkling with mischief.
“He’s a stone wall when it comes to romance,” Red Hood said, “although he seemed to like it when I was playing with him with my foot.”
“That’s funny, because my Cerdian is usually so . . . receptive,” Dart whispered sultrily. At that moment, Black Canary sidled up behind Red Hood, a hand on the archer’s hip.
“You intrigue me,” the inheritor of Black Canary’s mantle spoke. “You are so much like Dart and yet so much unlike her. Your hair . . . your idealism . . . your innocence, for lack of a better term.”
“Innocence,” Red Hood chuckled, trying to cover up her hesitance at Black Canary’s nearness. “I haven’t been innocent in a long while.”
At that moment, Nightstar and Superboy returned from the laboratory. “I think we can send them back now, Damien,” the Boy of Steel told the Dark Knight.
“Good,” Batman answered. “Do it now.”
“So soon?” Red Hood asked. “Gee, I’m hurt. You showed me a good time, got what you wanted, and now you don’t want me anymore. I think I might cry.”
“Cry on Nightstar’s shoulder, then,” Batman retorted.
Nightstar took the portal generator from Superboy and thumbed it. Instantly, the generator glowed and burst into a bright gateway, swirling with purplish energy. Red Hood walked up to Nightstar and the two of them stood by the gateway, ready to leave.
“You don’t have to become a monster to fight monsters,” Nightstar spoke to Batman. Then the gateway sucked her and Red Hood into it and closed, the portal generator vanishing with it. The two girls reemerged into the very dimension they left, only to be surrounded by their fellow Titans in a giant group hug.
“What happened to you two?” Beast Girl asked.
“Yeah, you were gone for . . . well, it felt like forever!” Mercury added.
“It’s a long story,” Nightstar replied. “What happened to the Scryed?”
“While you two were gallivanting around wherever it was you were, we were kicking ass,” Flamebird answered. “We managed to stop that siphoning machine, but I don’t think we’ve seen the last of those guys.”
When the Titans returned to the Steel City Titans Tower, they found a surprise waiting for them. It looked like a very high-tech karaoke machine. Cyborg stood beside it, sheathed in golden liquid metal and smiling widely, looking as though he were the cat that caught the canary.
“A karaoke machine?” Mercury asked, sounding excited. “Sweet!” He sped to the machine, picked up the microphone, and began manipulating the screen. He started by adjusting the search engine to use genre as a filter. Upon selecting his chosen genre, he scrolled through various songs until he found the one he wanted. Immediately, the music started and he tapped his foot to the beat, shifting his uniform into a black suit jacket over a halfway unbuttoned white dress shirt and black pants.
Inferno groaned. “Good God, is this gonna make me want to drive railroad spikes into my ears.” His answer from Mercury was a smirk as the platinum-haired speedster began to sing.
“You don’t know how you took it,
You just know what you got
Oh Lordy, you’ve been stealing from the thieves
And you got caught
In the headlights
Of a stretch car
You’re a star.”
Inferno blinked once, twice, and thrice. He was shocked. He was in disbelief. Beside him, Samara was in a similar state, but she had enough composure to jibe to him, “Looks like he took those singing lessons.”
“Dressing like your sister,
Living like a tart
They don’t know what you’re doing
Babe, it must be art
You’re a headache
In a suitcase
You’re a star.”
He sauntered over to Beast Girl with a slow, measured grace in his motions. His amber eyes seemed to be alight with embers as he looked upon her, his orbs locking onto hers. She found herself spellbound by the look in his eyes.
“Oh no, don’t be shy
You don’t have to go by
Hold me, thrill me, kiss me, kill me.”
Leaving his elfin lover utterly nonplussed, he strolled away from her and continued his song. There was an almost clear smirk in his eyes, the kind that came only from knowing he had his audience in the palm of his hand.
“You don’t know how you got here
You just know you want out
Believing in yourself
Almost as much as you doubt
You’re a big smash
You wear it like a rash
Star.”
“It looks like the Steel Angels are going to have some competition,” Nightstar whispered to Red Hood.
“Yeah,” Red Hood whispered. “I think he’s compensating for the lack of a sex god on your team.”
“Oh no, don’t be shy
It takes a crowd to cry
Hold me, thrill me, kiss me, kill me.
“They want you to be Jesus
They’ll go down on one knee
But they’ll want their money back
If you’re alive at thirty-three
And you’re turning tricks
With your crucifix
You’re a star.
“(Oh child.)”
Mercury walked toward Beast Girl again, weaving a sonic web of allure as he did. “Of course you’re not shy/You don’t have to deny love/Hold me, thrill me, kiss me -” He surprised her by ghosting his lips across hers for a single moment “- kill me. . . .”
As the song’s melody continued on, the female Titans were all looking at Mercury in a new light. Never would any of them have suspected - except for Beast Girl - that the hyperactive, somewhat immature and childish speedster would be capable of such sexual magnetism with only his voice. Lilim began to lick her lips, wondering if she’d ever have the chance to test a speedster’s stamina.
It didn’t seem like the succubus would get that opportunity, as Beast Girl grabbed Mercury by the arm, a fierce glimmer in her eyes, and said, “You’re coming with me.” That would be the last any of the Titans saw of the platinum-haired speedster and the emerald elf for a while.
Later, Red Hood observed Nightstar looking out the window in deep thought. She walked up to her and asked, “What are you thinking about?”
“Damien,” Nightstar replied somberly. “He seemed so . . . lost, like somebody just took away his anchor.”
“He’ll be all right,” Red Hood said. “He’s got his team.” She suddenly grinned. “You have a crush on him, don’t you?”
“I do not!” Nightstar contradicted indignantly.
“Oh yes, you do,” Red Hood insisted. “Always the dark and brooding kind with you, but then a lot of girls are attracted to men who resemble their fathers.”
“Yeah, yeah, Miss Freud,” Nightstar grumbled, just before bursting out into laughter with Red Hood, clinging to the archer for support. After the laughter died down, she looked into Red Hood’s eyes despite the sunglasses blocking them from her vision. “Don’t ever change.”
“Me, change?” Red Hood asked. “I’m static, baby.”
Title: Teen Titans: Future Storm
Arc: N/A
Chapter: World Trip
Fandom: Teen Titans (TV/comic hybrid)
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Only slight for the comics
High in a blue sky dotted with fluffy white clouds, a jet soared at supersonic speeds. The jet was colored a silvery white with blue circuit panels. In terms of design, it was long and sleek, tapering to a sharp point at the front, with a pair of forward-swept wings protruding from the back and a pair of sharp triangular fins at the top. Inside the jet was state-of-the-art piloting and navigation equipment, which was being manned by Nightstar and Bladefire while Beast Girl, Mercury, Inferno, and Samara sat behind them.
“Are we there yet?” Beast Girl asked.
“We will be,” Nightstar replied. “I wonder how Lian’s doing. I haven’t seen her since her high school graduation.”
“Don’t you two IM each other constantly?” Bladefire asked.
“Not the same as seeing her face,” Nightstar answered. “Not the same as hearing her voice.”
“And you wonder why people think you have lesbian tendencies,” Mercury remarked, earning him a slap upside the head from Beast Girl and another from Samara, the latter harder. “Ow! I never said that was a bad thing!”
“You’re an ass sometimes, you know that?” Inferno observed dryly. “Of course, that could be remedied if your mouth didn’t operate faster than your brain.”
“I get it, I get it,” Mercury whined. “I was being a jackass. Sorry, Mar’i.”
“No harm done,” Nightstar answered, spotting Steel City’s Titans Tower in the distance. She immediately flew closer, aiming for the landing strip on top of the Tower. As she descended, she saw Lian, dressed in her Red Hood garb, waving at her with glowing signal sabers. She landed on the strip and then opened the stepping hatch, letting the hydraulics push it into a slanting position against the ground so that she and the other Titans could exit the jet.
“Hey,” Red Hood greeted. “I see you’re one short. Where’s Raziel?”
“He left,” Nightstar answered.
“You mean he broke up with you?” Red Hood asked.
“No, nothing like that,” Nightstar contradicted. “He just . . . had to get his head back on straight. We’re not broken up. I don’t know what we are exactly.”
“Anyway, why don’t you come inside?” Red Hood asked. “The rest of the Titans East is dying to see you guys and that includes Uncle Vic.”
The seven teens walked into the Tower via the roof access and descended the stairway. As they walked, Mercury tried to make conversation. “How’s Iris doing?” he asked.
“I’ll let her tell you that herself,” Red Hood replied. She opened the door at the end of the stairway and stepped through, the others following. She walked into the main room of the Tower, where Darkstar was playing chess with Lilim, Kid Flash was playing Mystics & Dragons with Cerdian, and Micron was reading a scientific journal while Cyborg read it over his shoulder.
Cyborg took notice of Red Hood and the Titans West and waved. “Long time no see.”
“It’s definitely been a while, Uncle Vic,” Nightstar answered. “It’s good to see you.”
Mercury sped by Kid Flash and looked over her shoulder. “Good cards,” he whispered.
“Thanks,” she whispered back.
Inferno wandered by Micron and gently placed a hand on his shoulder. “I heard about what happened to your mom,” the pyromancer spoke, his tone apologetic and cheerless. “I know this is a pointless question to ask, but how are you holding up?”
“Pretty good,” Micron replied. “I’m still sane, the thing that murdered my mom is no longer in this dimension, so everything’s good. Plus, I’m living with the Titans. They’re pretty good company.”
Samara observed Darkstar and Lilim’s chess game. From her vantage point, Darkstar seemed to have all the advantages except for one small gap in his defenses. If Lilim saw that gap, he was finished, very, very finished. She continued to watch their game, which ironically seemed more like a flirtation than a contest of wills, or perhaps it was both.
“Where’s Flamebird?” Bladefire asked.
“In the combat simulation room,” Cyborg replied.
“Thanks,” Bladefire said, disappearing to find her.
“Do you even know where the combat simulation room is?” Cyborg shouted after him.
Bladefire pulled out his Titans communicator and flipped it open. After pressing some buttons, the communicator locked onto the signal emitted by Flamebird’s communicator. He followed that signal all the way to the combat simulation room, where he found himself on its observation deck. He watched her, dressed in skintight red with a flaming birdlike V design on her chest and a birdlike mask with goggle-style lenses, as she battled hard-light holograms of gangs. He had to admit, she was good, a lot better than the reputation inherited from her mother would suggest.
He waited until she was finished and then contacted her by communicator. “If you’re not too tired, would you like to try me?” he asked.
“Bladefire,” she answered. “You never call. You never write. What’s the occasion?”
“We wanted to see the new Titans for ourselves,” Bladefire answered simply, exiting the observation deck and coming down to the combat simulation room. His indigo eyes narrowed as he shifted into a combat stance, Flamebird assuming a stance of her own. He invited her to make the first move, an invitation she took up by aiming a high kick for his head that he batted aside. Unfazed by this, she pirouetted into a kick to his side, which he dodged by simply shooting straight into the air, throwing her off.
He came back down with a powerful kick that Flamebird blocked with her forearm, relying on the armor-like weave of her suit to absorb most of the impact. Undeterred, he jumped off her forearm and spun into a kick that was also blocked by her. He flipped backward and flew right into Flamebird, who gripped him as his momentum propelled her toward the far wall. She turned said momentum on him, using it to spin into a throw that sent him soaring.
Bladefire righted himself in midair and came back at Flamebird with swift and strong kicks while staying in the air. She blocked as many as she could, but the Fireheart did not do much to augment her physical abilities. She could take a hit better than she used to and she could heal faster than a normal person, but she wasn’t super-strong or super-fast or super-agile. Unfortunately for her, she was fighting someone who did possess super-strength and whose physiology granted him a degree of enhanced speed and agility. Plus, he could fly and incorporating flight made him even faster and more agile than he was to begin with.
Finally, he landed a kick and sent her crashing to the ground. She turned her fall into a roll and was immediately back on her feet. She reached into her utility belt and pulled out three bird-styled shuriken, throwing them all at Bladefire. With insane reflexes, he caught all of them.
“Nice try,” he commented, “but you still have to work on your aim.”
Flamebird pulled out two shuriken and threw both at Bladefire, who half-flew, half-dived out of the way. He landed in a crouch, skidding to a stop and summoning three energy knives between his fingers. He fired them all at Flamebird, who managed to dodge two of them and the third was deflected by a projection of flame.
“Since when did you have pyrokinesis?” he asked.
“It’s a long story,” Flamebird replied.
Before she could elaborate (assuming she wanted to elaborate), she and Bladefire felt Titans Tower shake. “What’s going on?” she asked.
Bladefire’s answer was to immediately grab her hand and fly her up to the main room of the Tower. Once there, he found the other Titans already assembled. Cyborg was mentally interfacing with the Tower’s computer systems, scanning for whatever could have caused the disturbance. He “unplugged” himself and looked at the assembled teens.
“Someone or something just plugged itself into Earth’s core,” he said.
“From where?” Flamebird asked, having let go of Bladefire’s hand.
“Smallville, Kansas,” Cyborg replied.
Nobody had to be asked what the significance of Smallville was. Everyone present knew it was where the craft that had carried an infant Kal-El away from the destruction of his homeworld Krypton had landed. Everyone present who was privy to the Earth identity of Kal-El knew that was where a young Kal-El had been inculcated with the morality that had given an alien with the powers of a virtual god the wisdom to use them to help humanity rather than to conquer it. If someone wanted to cause trouble there, it was by all means bad.
Cerdian created a spell-portal. “It’ll save us time,” he stated.
“Then you know what to do,” Cyborg said. “I’ll stay here and coordinate you through your communicator network.”
Smallville, Kansas was a simple rural town, a simple rural town with simple ideals and values. Ironically, that was the very reason why Kal-El, the first Superman, wasn’t some kind of tyrant. The very people who had raised him were pinnacles of those simple rural ideals and values, chief among them compassion for those that were not as blessed as he. This was the place that had served, in many ways, as the birthplace of Earth’s greatest hero . . . and now a giant slate-colored tubular apparatus was embedded deep within the farmland that was Kal-El’s spiritual home, doing only a higher power knew what.
The Titans, West and East, arrived just in time to see the apparatus, which appeared to have purple circuit panels ringing it. The panels seemed to be glowing, dully at first but soon becoming brighter.
“What is that thing?” Lilim asked.
Micron and Inferno both went to examine it, only to be shocked away by a force field. “Whatever it is,” Inferno answered, “they don’t want us touching it.”
“What do you think it is?” Red Hood asked.
“Some kind of siphoning device, most likely,” Micron replied. “By the way, you might want to look up.”
The Titans did exactly that and spotted something hovering above their heads. That something was a giant dome-like construct with a long “tail” that extended from its back. The “tail” sprouted wing-like protrusions at the end, protrusions that appeared to be engines of some sort.
“That thing looks kind of like a Coalition starship from Warp Trek,” Mercury commented idly.
“Unfortunately, it probably isn’t as friendly as a Coalition starship,” Micron added.
Suddenly, crystalline energy swirled around the Titans. The energy resembled snowflakes and its motion resembled a blizzard, obscuring the Titans’ ability to see outside their immediate area. After thirty seconds, the energy began to dissipate, revealing humanoid figures in the glow of the crystalline energy. As the energy continued to dissipate, the figures became more visible, revealed as beings clad in black armor. The armor covered the shoulders, torso, and legs, with matching chain mail making up the rest of their suits. Their faces were concealed by black helmets with opaque visors. They all exuded a threatening aura, made more threatening by the fact that there were five of them for each one of the Titans.
One figure stepped forward and the Titans could see that he was armored differently from the others. His torso armor was ridged in the upper chest area and the rest of his armor was somewhat more ornate than that of his companions. His helmet was marked by a symbol above the visor, a symbol that resembled a double helix that was partially scratched out.
“Who the hell are you?” Nightstar asked.
“The Scryed,” the armored being replied. “You may personally address me as Vypr.”
“What do you want?” Flamebird questioned. “What is that thing you’ve put in the ground? What is it doing?”
“We, the Scryed, intend to harness the energy of multiple realities,” Vypr explained. “The energy of those worlds will be redistributed across the remaining realities, strengthening them. Eventually, there will be only one universe, only one reality . . . and in that reality, the Scryed will be supreme, for we will have the energy of all realities within us.”
“And to do that, you’re willing to commit multidimensional genocide?” Samara asked. “Obliterate countless billions of lives, stamp out entire worlds?”
Vypr chuckled. “Thank the white-haired one. Without him, we would not have become aware of this universe for quite some time.”
Mercury gaped at him in open horror. “What the hell do you mean, you bastard?”
“You don’t always vibrate on the same wavelength of your dimension,” Vypr explained. “Sometimes, your vibration matches the wavelength of another universe and you are momentarily dragged into it. It is always random and you never stay for an extended period of time. We spotted you while you were in one of the universes which energy we were going to harness. When you vibrated back into your reality, we followed your wavelength . . . and that was how we found your world.”
An aura of speed lightning formed around Mercury, pooling at his feet and gathering into his outstretched hand. The lightning concentrated itself as a vaguely spherical shape, although trails of electricity continued to emanate from the sphere. Mercury pulled the lightning-holding hand back and charged Vypr, only for his wrist to be grabbed by Vypr in a supremely swift motion and twisted. The white-haired speedster swung himself upward to kick Vypr in the head in a super-fast motion which energy he channeled into a super-strong kick. Vypr was forced to let go of Mercury’s wrist by the kick and Mercury twisted again to elbow him in the spine before flipping off him.
Vypr rose to his feet and even through the helmet concealing his face, his rage was evident. “You’re going to pay for that,” he snarled, drawing a large black sword decorated with a skull between the hilt and the blade.
“Who wants to say it?” Nightstar asked.
“How about we say it together?” Red Hood suggested.
“Sounds good to me,” Nightstar answered.
“Titans Together!” Nightstar and Red Hood shouted, launching their respective Titans teams into combat. Strands of purple light extended from Nightstar’s fingers and she extended them into energy wire that cut through the armored beings. Red Hood somersaulted into the air and drew her bow, extending it to its full size and firing explosive arrows at the armored beings.
All around the two girls, the other Titans began to fight. Samara transformed into an astral form of herself and jumped inside Inferno, combining their powers as orange-red fire edged with black struck down several armored beings. Beast Girl shifted into her preferred combat form, a feline hybrid, and battled the armored beings with the strength and agility of the feline whose features she had melded with her human body. Mercury battled the armored beings at speeds swifter than anyone normal could follow. Bladefire materialized twin energy swords to fight the armored beings.
Cerdian shot optic force beams at the armored beings and cut through them with his lightning blade. Kid Flash fought the armored beings with super-speed, similar to her cousin Mercury. Darkstar alternated between maser blasts and hand-to-hand combat in dealing with the armored beings. Flamebird flung shuriken enhanced by celestial fire at the armored beings, piercing their armor. Micron shifted his atoms around the armored beings’ attacks to avoid being struck by them. Lilim began fighting the armored beings with superhuman strength.
As the Titans battled Vypr and his warriors, Red Hood moved over to Cerdian, covering his back as she took down some armored beings. “You think you can transport Nightstar and me into that ship?” she asked him.
“Probably,” Cerdian replied, opening a portal above their heads.
“How do you expect me to jump that high?” Red Hood questioned.
“Me,” Nightstar replied, grabbing Red Hood from behind and flying up into the portal with her. The two girls emerged into the bridge of the ship, where they encountered even more armored beings. Red Hood fired more arrows - these being the armor-piercing variety - to disable them. Once the arrows pierced the armor, they sent a two-hundred-thousand-volt shock through them, knocking them down. The ones that didn’t go down after those arrows were brought down by Nightstar’s optic blasts and energy whip.
The two girls looked around, seeing the sort of technology that would be more fitting in a Warp Trek series. Flat-panel consoles were everywhere on the ship, most likely being scanning equipment. The floors and walls and ceiling were very polished, reflecting the light inside in such a way that it hurt Nightstar’s sensitive eyes. Despite that, she looked around with Red Hood, trying to find anything that might resemble a dimensional portal to send Vypr and his troops back to whence they came.
Nightstar sat in front of a console and busily pressed the “buttons” that were actually smaller panels activated by simple touch. Information began to appear on the screen, but it was all in a code she could not begin to decipher. Still, she pressed on; Tamaraneans were a highly advanced people technologically, so there wouldn’t be too much strain in figuring out how this technology worked.
Meanwhile, Red Hood looked over Nightstar’s shoulder, not understanding a thing about what the half-alien girl was doing. Nevertheless, she kept up a guard for any other troops that might show up. As she looked around, she saw an almost egg-shaped silvery object. Curiously, she picked it up.
“Hey, you think this might help?” she asked.
“Don’t play with it, Hood,” Nightstar advised.
“Please,” Red Hood answered, tossing the object between her hands. Whatever else she might have said was swallowed by the door sliding open and more armored troops arriving. She threw the object into the air and fired more armor-piercing shock arrows at them, taking them out of commission. She caught the egg-shaped object just in time, only for her thumb to brush it. Instantly, the object glowed and fragmented into a gate of luminescent energy.
“What did you do?” Nightstar asked.
“Nothing!” Red Hood replied, just before she was ripped into her component atoms and yanked through the portal. Nightstar barely managed to grab her hand before she, too, was ripped into her component atoms and yanked through the portal. The portal closed behind them, leaving no trace of either the girls or the thing that had spawned it behind.
Nightstar and Red Hood recomposed in what looked like the main room of Titans Tower. However, it was vastly different from the main room in either the Jump City Tower or the Steel City Tower. Flat-panel computer displays covered the walls. There were couches and sofas, but they seemed to be an afterthought, swiveling chairs taking up the majority of the furniture in the main room.
“You’re here,” a deep, raspy voice spoke, causing the two girls to turn around to see who was speaking to them. The speaker turned out to be Batman, or more accurately, someone dressed similarly to him. His costume was predominantly black, with a blood-red bat emblazoned on the chest. A silver utility belt with curved, vaguely claw-like compartments and an oval buckle wrapped around his waist. Three sharp fins extended from his forearms and a gray-lined black cape with tattered scallops covered his shoulders. His cowl left his mouth and jaw exposed, much like the cowl of the original Batman’s costume, but twin fangs protruded from it at either side of his mouth. Those, along with the smaller fangs decorating the end of the cowl, gave him a greater resemblance to the creature that was his inspiration than either Bruce Wayne’s or Tim Drake’s Batsuits did.
Nightstar looked at “Batman,” noting a certain familiar tone to his voice. “Ibn?” she asked. “Is that you?”
“You know my former title,” “Batman” answered, his voice still so achingly familiar to the half-Tamaranean girl.
Just then, five others arrived. The first was a partly Asian young woman with lime green eyes, dark hair, and dressed in skintight red leather with twin crisscrossing belts around her hips and a small red arrowhead tattoo beneath her left eye. The second was a dark-haired, violet-eyed boy in a blue-and-black wetsuit distinguished by wave patterns dividing the blue from the black. The third appeared to be a female Flash with long red hair sticking out of her mask. The fourth was an Asian young woman dressed in a black leather jacket over a black combination bustier-leotard and boots with fishnet stockings. The fifth was a young man with sandy brown hair dressed in a skintight blue suit with red boots, belt, and cape - along with a very familiar S-shield.
Red Hood’s eyes widened in shock behind her sunglasses upon seeing the red-clad Asian girl. Aside from the black hair, they could have almost been twins, notwithstanding the fact that the leather-clad one seemed older than Red Hood. It seemed that Nightstar realized this, too, as her eyes rapidly moved between the two, silently analyzing their apparent similarities and differences.
“Batman,” “Superboy” asked. “What do you want us to do about them?”
“We knew this was going to happen, Superboy,” Batman answered. “The dimensional barriers have been in flux. Other realities have been bleeding into ours.”
“Way to state the obvious,” the “Flash” remarked sarcastically, and her voice made both Red Hood and Nightstar gape at her.
“Iris?” Nightstar asked.
“You must know me in your universe,” the Flash concluded.
“Way to state the obvious,” Nightstar repeated with the same sarcastic tone Alt-Iris-slash-Flash had used on this universe’s Batman.
“How many of us have counterparts in your universe?” Batman asked sharply.
“In my universe, I knew you as Ibn al Xu’ffasch, or Terry McGinnis,” Nightstar replied. “Your Lian and my Lian have already met. The boy in the wetsuit looks and dresses a lot like Cerdian in my universe, but I can’t be sure he answers to that name here.”
“I do,” Alt-Cerdian stated.
“The Iris in my universe is Kid Flash, but your Iris seems to have taken the identity of the Flash,” Nightstar continued. “Your universe’s Black Canary and Superboy are the only ones I don’t know.”
“Call me Sin,” Black Canary replied, with a hint of an Asian accent. “Superboy here is Chris.”
“Sin, huh?” Red Hood remarked. “Sounds like you and I might get along.”
“It was the name I was given,” Sin answered simply, although there appeared to be a mischievous twinkle in her eyes.
“And what do you call yourself, sis?” Red Hood asked Alt-Lian.
“Dart,” Alt-Lian replied. “Want to see why?”
“If you two are here, we don’t have much time left,” Batman interrupted, cutting off any answer Red Hood might have given. “The multiple universes are hemorrhaging and the consequences may be irreversible if it isn’t stopped.” He stared at Nightstar and Red Hood long and hard, the cold whiteness of his lenses proving quite intimidating. “Who are you?”
“I’m Nightstar and this is Red Hood,” Nightstar introduced.
“We came here with this,” Red Hood asked, holding up the egg-shaped object that had turned out to be a dimensional portal.
“Hand it over,” Batman ordered. “I’m going to have Superboy analyze it to determine if we can use it to send you back to your universe.”
“Sure,” Red Hood replied, tossing the portal generator to Batman, who handed it to Superboy, who began intently gazing at it. Nightstar had been around Kryptonians long enough to know that when they began intently gazing at something, they were using their X-ray vision.
“It’s amazing,” Superboy spoke. “The circuitry is incredibly small, yet extremely intricate. If I did it at super-speed, I might have a chance of figuring it out before Hypertime collapses on itself.”
“How much do you know about what’s happening?” Nightstar asked.
“Enough to know that this isn’t natural,” Batman replied. “Someone is behind this. Someone reckless enough or uncaring enough to sacrifice the stability of time and reality itself to accomplish whatever objective they have in mind.”
“Damn good detective work,” Red Hood commented. “That’s exactly what’s happening. There’s an army called the Scryed that’s been going around stealing the energy sustaining various universes. Without that energy, those universes die out and the energy that once kept them going is redistributed among the remaining universes, making them all stronger. The Scryed intend to do this until their universe is the only one remaining and they can become gods or something like that.”
“They won’t live long enough to see their objective come true,” Batman snarled. “Hypertime will fall apart long before that happens.”
“What do we do while Superboy is busy reverse-engineering the Scryed’s tech?” Red Hood asked.
“We try to keep this universe from falling apart worse than it already has,” Dart answered. “That means we keep the peace.”
“Falling apart?” Red Hood asked.
“You’ll see,” Batman replied grimly.
The Titans, sans Superboy, entered the city, finding downtown to be a scene out of a nightmare. The city square was a place of chaos. Cars were on fire, plate-glass windows of shops stood broken, and gangs rampaged through the streets on motorcycles terrorizing any hapless person just trying to escape and fighting each other. One of the gangs was dressed like punk clowns, wearing greasepaint and twisted versions of clown or jester outfits. The other gang was marked by pale makeup and red T’s over their faces.
“What the hell is this?” Nightstar asked, horrified. She had never seen such unabashed and naked violence in her life, not even when she had been patrolling Blüdhaven. Then again, her father had reformed Blüdhaven to the point that it was a safer place to live than it had been when he first arrived, safe enough to raise a family.
“Hell,” Dart replied bluntly. “That’s what it’s been since the other realities began to bleed into ours. When people think the world is going to end, they decide nothing’s worth anything and become no better than animals.”
“Canary,” Batman ordered, “introduce us.”
Black Canary reached into her jacket and pulled out several tiny spheres, pressing the tops of all of them in quick succession. Faint lights glimmered on each one, signaling that they were primed. She threw them into the midst of the warring motorcycle gangs and they emitted a loud sonic pulse set to the A flat frequency. The gangsters cried out in agony, covering their ears to protect them from the sound.
Batman descended from the rooftop, his cape spread out like great demonic wings. He landed in between the scattered gangsters and a savage beating followed, with steel-reinforced fists and feet smashing bones and knocking out teeth. He was a flurry of terrible and awesome violence, showing no mercy to those who were on the receiving end.
“Aren’t you going to stop him?” Nightstar asked the Alt-Titans.
“No,” Dart replied. “We’re going to help.” She jumped into the fray, a flurry of darts and other thrown weapons embedding themselves in the vulnerable flesh of various gangsters. The gangsters collapsed, entering convulsions or regurgitating or even clawing at their own flesh.
Red Hood looked upon what her other self had done with horror. “You poisoned those things, didn’t you?” she concluded.
“Nonfatal toxins,” Dart clarified. “We don’t want to kill anybody. We want them incapacitated. Toxins are a good way of doing that.”
At this point, Black Canary, Alt-Cerdian, and the Flash had also entered the fray. Black Canary, like Batman, was a flurry of violence, but it was more graceful, flowing, and controlled. Alt-Cerdian burst a fire hydrant and manipulated the water into dousing the flames, while the Flash sped as many innocent people as she could out of harm’s way.
“Who are these people?” Nightstar asked as she battled the gangsters, energy wire slicing through their weapons like a regular wire through wet clay.
“The clowns are the Jokerz,” Batman explained as he threw a punch into a clown-styled gangster’s throat. “The Joker’s death somehow spawned a legion of death-worshipping piles of garbage just like him - marauders, rapists, and killers of the worst variety. The T-faced ones are the T’s, just as bad as the Jokerz, but more organized and not as much into killing and terror for its own sake. Doesn’t matter; they’re both scum and they’re both going down hard.” He emphasized the last word by spinning and slashing a T with the scallops on his cape. The T fell down bleeding and screaming.
“What was that?” Nightstar asked.
“Justice,” Batman answered coldly, delivering a roundhouse kick to a Joker’s solar plexus. The kick was hard enough to make him crumple into an agonized heap.
Eventually, the Jokerz and T’s were all lying on the street in heaps of various kinds. Some were still conscious but in a great deal of agony. Others were passed out from the convulsions inflicted on them by Dart’s poisoned weapons. There were those who were covered in bloody scratches from the hallucinogens that had been included in those poisons. The T that had been slashed by the scallops of Batman’s cape was still bleeding and it didn’t look like he was going to stop anytime soon.
“We have to help him,” Nightstar said.
“Why should we?” Batman questioned.
“Are you a killer, Ibn?” Nightstar asked. “Is that what Grandpa Bruce wanted the Batman to become?”
“That is no longer my title,” Batman snarled, his white lenses almost lurid with the fury in the eyes behind them. “Do not call me that ever again, Nightstar.”
“Then what do I call you?” Nightstar questioned. “You certainly aren’t acting like any Batman I’d recognize.”
The Alt-Titans and Red Hood looked at Batman and Nightstar, their eyes warily moving between one and the other. Unlike Nightstar and Red Hood, the Alt-Titans knew all too well that this Batman was quite the dangerous man when angered. Of course, Batman was a dangerous man all the time, but his anger upped the danger level considerably. He would not actually explode, but he would seethe and a seething Batman was not a Batman any of them wanted to be around.
“We’re going back to the Tower,” the Dark Knight declared.
The Titans filed into the Tower somberly. Once inside, Batman called for Superboy. “Superboy! Have you figured that thing out yet?”
The Boy of Steel materialized in front of the other Titans, having moved at super-speed. He ran a hand through his sandy brown hair and answered, “I’m very close.”
“Not good enough,” Batman spoke brusquely. “It’s getting worse out there.”
“I’m doing the best I can, Damien,” Superboy said. “I may have ‘super’-intelligence, but that doesn’t mean I’m a miracle worker.”
“Just keep working on it,” Batman answered. “I’ll send Nightstar to help. Her mother’s people - if I’m right on whose daughter she is in her universe - are advanced enough that she should know enough to assist you.”
“I could use the fresh mind,” Superboy answered with a sigh of relief. He departed back into the Titans Tower laboratory, Nightstar following with a last backwards look that told Batman that their little tiff was by no means over. Batman merely stared at her with a carefully crafted look of cold indifference.
As Nightstar and Superboy worked on solving the mystery of the dimensional portal generator, the Tamaranean hybrid turned to the Boy of Steel. “Superboy?” she asked.
“What is it, Nightstar?” Superboy inquired.
“What’s wrong with Bat - Damien?” Nightstar asked. “What made him this way?”
“What do you mean?” Superboy questioned.
“When I saw him in battle, he was vicious,” Nightstar explained. “Merciless. Brutal. For X’Hal’s sake, he sliced someone with his cape.”
“Damien . . . is really messed up,” Superboy replied. “Blame his mother. She raised him for the first six years of his life and molded him into a vicious killer. His father, the original Batman, tried to retrain him and he eventually took to it, but every minute of his life, he walks a tightrope between what his father taught him and what his mother raised him to be. Sometimes, he falls a little closer to the other side, but what keeps me following him - what keeps us all following him - is that deep down, no matter what he thinks of himself, he’s a good man.”
Nightstar sighed and returned to working on the portal generator. After ten minutes, she spoke again, this time asking, “Do I exist in this reality?”
“No,” Superboy replied sadly. “This world’s version of your parents didn’t stay together long enough to have you. The Dick Grayson I know eventually settled down with Donna Troy. They have a ten-year-old girl, spitting image of Dick, but she’s got Donna’s eyes. Her name’s Hayley Diana Grayson.” He turned to Nightstar with a gentle smile. “A little help, please?”
In the meantime, Red Hood and Dart were talking in the main room of Titans Tower. “Since when did you use poisons in your weapons?” Red Hood asked. “And why don’t you use a bow?”
“A bow is difficult to carry around,” Dart replied, “even if it’s a collapsible one. I find thrown weapons much easier to use, since I can carry a lot of them without them weighing me down too much. As for the poisons, that was an influence from our dear mother.”
“Those guys that were clawing at themselves . . . that was some kind of hallucinogen, wasn’t it?” Red Hood concluded.
“Yeah,” Dart replied.
Red Hood looked at the tattoo below Dart’s left eye. “That must have hurt when you got it,” she remarked.
“I’m good at taking pain,” Dart answered. The remark was probably intended to be lighthearted and casual, but there was something dark in the alternate Lian’s eyes that wrecked the effect. Changing the subject, she asked, “Does Cerdian exist in your world?”
“Yeah,” Red Hood replied. “Why do you ask?”
“I just wanted to know if you were involved with him,” Dart responded idly, her lime green eyes twinkling with mischief.
“He’s a stone wall when it comes to romance,” Red Hood said, “although he seemed to like it when I was playing with him with my foot.”
“That’s funny, because my Cerdian is usually so . . . receptive,” Dart whispered sultrily. At that moment, Black Canary sidled up behind Red Hood, a hand on the archer’s hip.
“You intrigue me,” the inheritor of Black Canary’s mantle spoke. “You are so much like Dart and yet so much unlike her. Your hair . . . your idealism . . . your innocence, for lack of a better term.”
“Innocence,” Red Hood chuckled, trying to cover up her hesitance at Black Canary’s nearness. “I haven’t been innocent in a long while.”
At that moment, Nightstar and Superboy returned from the laboratory. “I think we can send them back now, Damien,” the Boy of Steel told the Dark Knight.
“Good,” Batman answered. “Do it now.”
“So soon?” Red Hood asked. “Gee, I’m hurt. You showed me a good time, got what you wanted, and now you don’t want me anymore. I think I might cry.”
“Cry on Nightstar’s shoulder, then,” Batman retorted.
Nightstar took the portal generator from Superboy and thumbed it. Instantly, the generator glowed and burst into a bright gateway, swirling with purplish energy. Red Hood walked up to Nightstar and the two of them stood by the gateway, ready to leave.
“You don’t have to become a monster to fight monsters,” Nightstar spoke to Batman. Then the gateway sucked her and Red Hood into it and closed, the portal generator vanishing with it. The two girls reemerged into the very dimension they left, only to be surrounded by their fellow Titans in a giant group hug.
“What happened to you two?” Beast Girl asked.
“Yeah, you were gone for . . . well, it felt like forever!” Mercury added.
“It’s a long story,” Nightstar replied. “What happened to the Scryed?”
“While you two were gallivanting around wherever it was you were, we were kicking ass,” Flamebird answered. “We managed to stop that siphoning machine, but I don’t think we’ve seen the last of those guys.”
When the Titans returned to the Steel City Titans Tower, they found a surprise waiting for them. It looked like a very high-tech karaoke machine. Cyborg stood beside it, sheathed in golden liquid metal and smiling widely, looking as though he were the cat that caught the canary.
“A karaoke machine?” Mercury asked, sounding excited. “Sweet!” He sped to the machine, picked up the microphone, and began manipulating the screen. He started by adjusting the search engine to use genre as a filter. Upon selecting his chosen genre, he scrolled through various songs until he found the one he wanted. Immediately, the music started and he tapped his foot to the beat, shifting his uniform into a black suit jacket over a halfway unbuttoned white dress shirt and black pants.
Inferno groaned. “Good God, is this gonna make me want to drive railroad spikes into my ears.” His answer from Mercury was a smirk as the platinum-haired speedster began to sing.
“You don’t know how you took it,
You just know what you got
Oh Lordy, you’ve been stealing from the thieves
And you got caught
In the headlights
Of a stretch car
You’re a star.”
Inferno blinked once, twice, and thrice. He was shocked. He was in disbelief. Beside him, Samara was in a similar state, but she had enough composure to jibe to him, “Looks like he took those singing lessons.”
“Dressing like your sister,
Living like a tart
They don’t know what you’re doing
Babe, it must be art
You’re a headache
In a suitcase
You’re a star.”
He sauntered over to Beast Girl with a slow, measured grace in his motions. His amber eyes seemed to be alight with embers as he looked upon her, his orbs locking onto hers. She found herself spellbound by the look in his eyes.
“Oh no, don’t be shy
You don’t have to go by
Hold me, thrill me, kiss me, kill me.”
Leaving his elfin lover utterly nonplussed, he strolled away from her and continued his song. There was an almost clear smirk in his eyes, the kind that came only from knowing he had his audience in the palm of his hand.
“You don’t know how you got here
You just know you want out
Believing in yourself
Almost as much as you doubt
You’re a big smash
You wear it like a rash
Star.”
“It looks like the Steel Angels are going to have some competition,” Nightstar whispered to Red Hood.
“Yeah,” Red Hood whispered. “I think he’s compensating for the lack of a sex god on your team.”
“Oh no, don’t be shy
It takes a crowd to cry
Hold me, thrill me, kiss me, kill me.
“They want you to be Jesus
They’ll go down on one knee
But they’ll want their money back
If you’re alive at thirty-three
And you’re turning tricks
With your crucifix
You’re a star.
“(Oh child.)”
Mercury walked toward Beast Girl again, weaving a sonic web of allure as he did. “Of course you’re not shy/You don’t have to deny love/Hold me, thrill me, kiss me -” He surprised her by ghosting his lips across hers for a single moment “- kill me. . . .”
As the song’s melody continued on, the female Titans were all looking at Mercury in a new light. Never would any of them have suspected - except for Beast Girl - that the hyperactive, somewhat immature and childish speedster would be capable of such sexual magnetism with only his voice. Lilim began to lick her lips, wondering if she’d ever have the chance to test a speedster’s stamina.
It didn’t seem like the succubus would get that opportunity, as Beast Girl grabbed Mercury by the arm, a fierce glimmer in her eyes, and said, “You’re coming with me.” That would be the last any of the Titans saw of the platinum-haired speedster and the emerald elf for a while.
Later, Red Hood observed Nightstar looking out the window in deep thought. She walked up to her and asked, “What are you thinking about?”
“Damien,” Nightstar replied somberly. “He seemed so . . . lost, like somebody just took away his anchor.”
“He’ll be all right,” Red Hood said. “He’s got his team.” She suddenly grinned. “You have a crush on him, don’t you?”
“I do not!” Nightstar contradicted indignantly.
“Oh yes, you do,” Red Hood insisted. “Always the dark and brooding kind with you, but then a lot of girls are attracted to men who resemble their fathers.”
“Yeah, yeah, Miss Freud,” Nightstar grumbled, just before bursting out into laughter with Red Hood, clinging to the archer for support. After the laughter died down, she looked into Red Hood’s eyes despite the sunglasses blocking them from her vision. “Don’t ever change.”
“Me, change?” Red Hood asked. “I’m static, baby.”