Teen Titans Fan Fiction ❯ Teen Titans: Future Storm ❯ Petals ( Chapter 2 )

 

“Teen Titans: Future Storm”

Arc 1: “Ravaged”

Chapter 2: “Petals”

Disclaimer: The concept of Teen Titans does not belong to me. The characters Nightstar and Ravager are owned by DC Comics and Mercury is jointly owned by DC Comics and Marvel Comics; I simply altered him for the purposes of this story. The new Nightwing that appears in this story is also a character owned by DC Comics, although in DC canon, Nightwing hasn't been replaced yet. The original Nightwing and Oracle are also owned by DC Comics. Everyone else is my creation, for the most part.

Author's note: So far, it seems that people like this story. For those of you who are pairing-obsessed, the seeds of certain pairings between the new Titans were planted in the first chapter. While I can't give shout-outs to my reviewers anymore, not that I ever did, I can say that the reviewer who deduced Ravager's identity is right on the money. However, I will not say who she is in the context of this story until I'm ready.

Also, as this arc progresses, you will see just how much Nightstar and Bladefire take after their father.

The Teen Titans returned to Titans Tower and not in the best of spirits.

“She kicked our asses,” Mercury deadpanned. In his arms, Beast Girl began to stir. Finally, she opened her catlike golden eyes. “You all right?”

“Yeah,” Beast Girl replied as she shifted back into her human form from her “cat-girl” form. “This is . . . kinda romantic, actually.”

Mercury blushed.

Beast Girl's golden eyes suddenly snapped wide open and she leaped out of Mercury's arms. The platinum-haired speedster wasn't extremely surprised, as she'd been skittish when it came to being touched by another person for the past several years. He just wondered where it came from.

Samara finally woke up, only to find herself in Inferno's arms. “What happened?”

“Ravager slapped something on your head,” Inferno replied. “Judging from what it did to you, I suspect it was some kind of anti-psi weapon. You ok?”

“Yeah, I am,” Samara answered. “I just have a huge headache.”

“I'll take you to the infirmary,” Inferno offered.

Samara shifted onto her feet. “Thanks, Jeremiah, but I can walk myself to the infirmary.”

“There'll be tablets waiting in there to ease the headache,” Inferno said.

Samara looked at him, her violet eyes meeting his dark gray eyes. A soft smile came to her pale lips. “Thank you,” she said before turning around and walking out of the main room and to the infirmary.

“You're welcome,” Inferno whispered.

Nightstar and Bladefire went to the computer, slipping on black headsets and connecting those headsets through wires to the computer.

“What are you going to do?” Raziel asked.

“Dive,” Nightstar replied and no more was spoken; she and Bladefire were now completely immersed in cyberspace. The duo surfed through cyberspace, searching for information on the mysterious masked warrior that called herself The Ravager.

“You think Interpol would know about her?” Bladefire asked.

“Most likely,” Nightstar replied.

The twins entered the Interpol database and glided through it. Finally, they found a file titled “The Ravager.”

“Let's take a look,” Nightstar said.

The twins accessed the file. There was a picture of The Ravager in action, but it was slightly blurry. They looked below the picture and read the text.

The Ravager

Real name: Unknown

Date of birth: Unknown

Height: 5'6” to 5'9”

Weight: Unknown

Eyes: Unknown

Hair: Unknown

Sex: Female

Occupation: Assassin

Status: At large

Notes: The Ravager's first known kill was approximately three years ago. She seems to be in her early twenties, but the method with which she kills suggests a level of skill and talent beyond her years. She is an assassin of the highest caliber, maybe even the Deathstroke of her generation. She certainly seems to have borrowed his look.

“We've seen enough,” Bladefire stated.

“For now,” Nightstar added. “I know there's more out there. I know there is.”

“Yeah, but for now, we should return to the real world,” Bladefire suggested.

“Sure,” Nightstar conceded as she and Bladefire rose back to the “surface,” the real world in other words.

“So what did you find?” Raziel asked as Nightstar and Bladefire pulled their headsets off.

“Not much,” Nightstar replied. “But we do know why she came after us.”

“Why's that?” Raziel asked.

“She's an assassin,” Bladefire answered. “Someone hired her to kill us. The question is who.”

“The Interpol file on her said that she borrowed her look from an assassin called Deathstroke,” Nightstar added.

“Deathstroke?” Mercury asked. “As in Slade?”

“Yeah,” Nightstar confirmed. She sighed heavily. “I'm going to see my dad.”

“Didn't you once say that you weren't going to have anything to do with him ever again once you became a Titan?” Inferno asked.

“He and Slade were archenemies,” Nightstar replied. “If this Ravager is connected to Slade, then my dad would be the go-to guy . . . no matter how much I hate having to turn to him.”

With that statement made, Nightstar and Bladefire flew to their onetime home of Bludhaven.

“The good old `Haven,” Nightstar remarked.

“Yeah,” Bladefire added grimly.

“Wanna kick some ass while we're here?” Nightstar asked. “It'd be a good tension reliever.”

“Sure,” Bladefire replied grimly.

Nightstar and Bladefire tapped their ears, activating the sound amplifiers in them. The sounds of the city came flooding in, particularly the sounds of crime being committed.

“You don't remember me, huh?” a rough voice shouted before the twins heard the sounds of a beating. “Yeah, well, maybe you remember the Head!”

The twin Tamaranean terrors silently leaped from the rooftop of the skyscraper on which they had been crouching, swooping down on the criminal in question. He was a man in a worn leather jacket over a red shirt and torn jeans with a ski cap covering his head. The man he had been beating up was a slightly shorter dark-haired man with frightened eyes and dressed much the same as the man beating him up.

“Hey,” Nightstar greeted. “Enforcer, huh? Does that pay a lot?”

“Keeps me in my house,” the leather-jacketed man replied as he pulled his gun out of his pocket. “Now you two punks better get lost before I slag you both!”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Bladefire drawled. “Nothing we haven't heard before.”

“Fine, tough guy, let's see you survive a bullet to the head!” the enforcer shouted, firing a single shot at Bladefire, who dove to the side and rolled.

“You asked for this,” the red-haired half-Tamaranean said as he summoned his energy sword. He half-flew, half-lunged at the enforcer and sliced his gun out of his hand with the energy blade.

“Crap!” the enforcer exclaimed. “A freaking meta! I didn't think there were metas in this city!”

“We don't hang around here often,” Nightstar remarked.

The enforcer turned to run and Nightstar and Bladefire flew after him. The enforcer ran into an alley and climbed up a fire escape. Just as the twins were about to pursue him, he was knocked off by a dark shadow.

“Ahhh!” the enforcer yelled as he impacted against the pavement.

“Stay out of this place,” the shadow growled, gazing at him with blank white eyes that seemed to glow in the darkness.

“This ain't your neighborhood, bitch,” the enforcer snarled. “Belongs to the Head now!”

The shadow simply punched the enforcer in the face, knocking him out. She rose to her feet, revealing herself to the twins as a woman in skintight black with compartmentalized cuffs around her forearms and calves. An electric blue bird was emblazoned on her chest and a black cloak with the hood up covered her shoulders. A dark blue mask with white lenses concealed her face.

“Nightwing,” Nightstar greeted.

“Nightstar,” Nightwing greeted back. She turned to Bladefire. “Bladefire. Long time no see.”

Richard Grayson had realized that when he retired as Nightwing that Bludhaven might sink back into the mire of corruption out of which he'd worked so hard to pull it. Therefore, he'd entrusted the name Nightwing and the safety of Bludhaven to Stephanie Brown, alias the hooded vigilante then known as the Spoiler.

“What's going on, Nightwing?” Bladefire asked. “Who's this `Head' guy?”

“The Devil's Head, you mean,” Nightwing amended. “And he's a new crime boss that's been rising to power here in Bludhaven. Protection rackets, drug rackets, human trafficking - the sick bastard's got his fingers in nearly every pie in existence and he's been putting cops and politicians in his pocket. It's not nearly as bad as when your dad first came here, but it's not a pretty sight.”

“Any way we can help?” Nightstar asked.

“Thanks for the offer, but I don't think you came here just to help out here,” Nightwing answered.

“You're right,” Nightstar said. “We came to see our father, but we thought we'd take a detour and mop the floor with the criminal element.”

“Truly your father's children,” Nightwing remarked, only to catch a glare from the twins. “Sheesh, what did I say?”

“Nothing,” Bladefire replied darkly as he flew away with Nightstar, leaving behind a very puzzled Nightwing.

“Mar'i, Joh'n, it's good to see you again,” Richard Grayson, formerly known as Robin and Nightwing, stated.

“Yeah,” Nightstar uttered neutrally.

“So what's going on right now?” Richard asked.

“Someone tried to kill us,” Bladefire replied. “Dressed in black with chain mail and armor and a bisected mask that was completely black on one side and orange on the other. Called herself The Ravager.”

“I know that design scheme very well,” Richard said. He went to his computer and typed something on the keyboard, resulting in the image of a man dressed in black with gray chain mail and armor and a mask just like The Ravager's but with the colors switched. “Slade Wilson. Also known as Deathstroke the Terminator during his mercenary days, before he started amassing power in the criminal underworld.”

”We know,” Bladefire stated. “What does this have to do with Ravager?”

“Maybe nothing, maybe everything,” Richard replied. He typed again and this time, Slade's image shifted to occupy the left half of the screen as Ravager's image emerged in the right half of the screen.

“So alike,” Nightstar murmured.

“Yeah,” Richard replied. “Look at their masks. Slade's is orange on the left side, but Ravager's is orange on the right side . . . like a mirror.”

“It's symbolism,” Nightstar deduced. “Whoever this Ravager is, she wants us to look at her as a reflection of Slade . . . or that is what she wants to become. But why?”

“You think it could be one of his old apprentices?” Bladefire asked.

“Slade disappeared about twenty years ago,” Richard answered.

“Yeah, but if he's still alive today . . . he could be,” Bladefire surmised. “Didn't you say that that serum the military gave him not only enhanced his mind and physical abilities but also gave him regenerative abilities so powerful he could even come back from death?”

“Yes,” Richard admitted.

“So wouldn't it be plausible that Slade spent the past twenty years training a successor?” Bladefire continued. “Someone who'd have the ability and skill required to take us on?”

“The question is who,” Nightstar remarked.

Richard sighed. “You two should visit more. And for stuff other than crime-fighting.”

Nightstar stared impassively, the tension between her and her father so palpable that Ravager could have cut through it with her katana.

“You're still angry over me marrying Barbara, aren't you?” Richard deduced.

“Sorry if we don't take kindly to having our mother replaced,” Nightstar answered with an iciness that would have scared Raven and Samara.

“I keep telling you, I'm not trying to replace your mother,” Richard stated as calmly as he could. “I don't see why you two hate Barbara so much. She's a good woman.”

“We don't doubt that,” Bladefire answered.

“Yet you treat her like a criminal just for being my wife!” Richard shouted.

“She reminds us too much of Mom,” Nightstar admitted. “They're both redheads. They both have beautiful green eyes. They're both full of life and spirit and . . .” She rubbed her eyes, as if trying to erase demons. “How can we think that you're not trying to replace Mom when you marry someone who's almost exactly like her?”

Richard exhaled sadly. “You should go. You have school in the morning.”

“It is morning,” Nightstar remarked. “Like, three in the morning.”

“Here it is,” Richard stated. “You two fly back to Jump right now, you might still get in a few hours of sleep before school starts.”

“Sure,” Bladefire said. “Night, Dad.”

“Night, Dad,” Nightstar echoed and laid a daughterly kiss on his cheek.

“Good night, Mar'i,” Richard said. “Good night, Joh'n.”

The twins left the same way they'd entered: through the window. About fifteen minutes after they'd left, Barbara Gordon-Grayson entered her and Richard's room in her wheelchair.

“Hi, Barb,” Richard greeted with a warm smile. “Finished networking with the League?”

“Yeah,” Barbara replied. “Tim is as grim as always.”

“I think that cape and cowl is possessed,” Richard remarked. “Everyone who puts it on ends up unsmiling, obsessive, and paranoid. Hell, even I wasn't as pleasant as I normally am when I filled in for Bruce.”

“Tim's not nearly as bad as Bruce was,” Barbara remarked. “And was that Mar'i and Joh'n I heard fifteen minutes ago?”

“Yeah,” Richard confirmed. “An assassin modeling herself after Slade came after them and the other Titans.”

“They'll be all right, Richard,” Barbara said. “You trained them too well for them not to be.”

“I know, Barbara, but . . . I'm their father,” Richard said. “The part of me that's purely Nightwing knows I trained them well enough but the part of me that's a father is scared to death for them.”

Barbara reached up and Richard leaned down into her embrace.

“Trust them, Richard,” she whispered. “Trust them.”

The next morning, the Teen Titans were on their way to Jump City High School. The reason was that all their parents had unanimously insisted that being superheroes didn't automatically preclude them from being in the company of ordinary people their age . . . except for Changeling, who'd objected on the grounds that, “No kid should have to suffer through the hell that is school!” He'd gotten a sharp whack on the head from Terra for that remark and if they'd been in a court of law, one would say that the motion had been passed without much opposition.

Since the Titans were going to school and not to combat, they were dressed in normal clothes. Nightstar wore a black tank top and purple skirt with black boots. Bladefire wore a red T-shirt and blue jeans. Beast Girl wore a loose shoulder-baring azure top and blue jeans with brown leather sandals. Samara wore a black sleeveless top and knee-length black jean skirt with a slit in the middle, complemented by black knee-high boots and fingerless gloves. Inferno wore a black-and-red shirt, khaki pants, and tan boots. Mercury wore a white shirt with blue shoulders and sleeves and baggy black pants. Raziel wore a white vest over a black shirt and white pants with white boots.

“Everyone ready?” Nightstar asked.

“Mar'i, you act like we're on our way to a fight,” Beast Girl remarked. “It's a little irritating.”

“We gotta be ready,” Nightstar stated unrepentantly.

“Can we just go in already?” Mercury asked. “The sooner we're in, the sooner we're out.”

“It doesn't work like that, Peter,” Inferno replied patiently. “We get out at a predetermined time. Earlier if we're lucky, later if we're not.”

“Let's get this over with,” Bladefire said as he and Nightstar walked into the high school with the other Titans following. It didn't take long for their fans to notice that they'd arrived and begin hounding them for autographs.

“We'd like to sign autographs, but we've gotta prepare for class just like you do,” Nightstar said. “And while we're here, you could try to address us by our real names.”

“Uh, ok, Ni - Mar'i,” her lovesick fan answered. “God, even your real name is beautiful.”

A low rumble of irritation came forth from Raziel.

“Is somebody jealous?” Samara whispered to Raziel.

“No,” Raziel whispered back.

Just then, loud squeals could be heard. That meant one thing.

Fangirls.

“We'd better bail,” Mercury said. “The fangirls are coming.”

“I'm not letting them touch you!” Beast Girl declared with a feral gleam in her golden eyes. “They'll have to get past me first!”

“Sure, just don't hurt or kill them,” Mercury advised. As an aside, he added, “Although I wouldn't mind if you slapped them around a bit.”

“I heard that, Peter Allen,” Nightstar growled.

A sea of pastel colors and blonde and highlighted hair came down on the Titans and converged on the male members, inexorably crowding out the female members.

“Sign my autograph, Bladefire!”

“You can sign my bra, Mercury!” This was followed by the lifting of a shirt and a horrified scream.

“Damn, woman, you'll poke somebody's eyes out with those!”

“Peter!” Beast Girl exclaimed as she fought past the crazed fangirls to get to Mercury. “Keep your surgically enhanced goodies away from him!”

“Sign my ass, Inferno!”

“Oh, dammit, that is enough,” Samara growled, summoning a wave of dark energy to separate the fangirl from Inferno. “Keep your sluttish ass away from him. Got that?”

“You're not supposed to use your creepy powers here, goth-witch!” the fangirl yelled.

“You were harassing him,” Samara answered. “Therefore, I was perfectly justified in utilizing whatever means available to me to stop the harassment. The principal will understand.”

“Will you please get away from me?” Raziel asked his fans. “I'll sign your autographs, but first I require space.”

“You can sign my panties!” one fangirl suggested, beginning to reach under her miniskirt.

“Thank you, but I'll settle for paper,” Raziel answered calmly.

At that moment, the assistant principal Mrs. Stowe, a stern woman in her late forties with her mousy brown hair tied back in a severe bun, stormed up to the Titans and their fans.

“That is enough,” she declared. “You are all to get to class before the tardy bell rings.”

The Titans let out a sigh of relief as they went to their respective classes. Nightstar, Bladefire, and Inferno shared a trigonometry class with Mr. Ridgeway, a bespectacled thirty-something. Mercury and Beast Girl had Mr. Jimenez, a pleasant man in his early forties, as their chemistry teacher. Raziel and Samara were in AP Literature with Ms. McCaffrey, a severely dressed twenty-something who was perhaps a little too eager to prove that she had brains behind her attractive features.

“I. Freaking. Hate. Trig,” Inferno growled under his breath.

Nightstar and Bladefire, on the other hand, loved trigonometry. After all, their best trick shots with their optic blasts were made based on trigonometric principles.

“Trigonometry,” Inferno muttered in repulsed tones. “Trigon.” He snickered silently. “I found out the secret to the evil of trigonometry. It's named after Samara's bastard grandfather.”

“Ok, now quit distracting me,” Nightstar whispered. “I'm working here.”

Bladefire was completely oblivious to the exchange, but that was the price of being as deeply focused as he was.

In Jimenez's chemistry class, Mercury was mixing chemicals and looking at Beast Girl from the corner of his eye. Silent as a breeze, he moved to her.

“You know, you look very cute in that lab coat,” he whispered.

Beast Girl blushed. “Thanks, but don't you have chemicals to mix?”

“Sure,” Mercury whispered, “but we can always mix our own chemicals later.” He breezed back to his table.

“Peter, may I advise you not to use your powers to chat up your classmates?” Jimenez asked.

Mercury had a sheepish expression on his face. “Sorry, Mr. Jimenez.”

“I'll let it slide this time,” Jimenez said. “After all, I remember all too well what it was like to be a lovesick teenager.”

“I do this all the time,” Mercury mumbled in embarrassment. “Doesn't mean I'm in love.”

In all his embarrassment and petulance, the platinum-haired speedster failed to notice that the contents he had mixed into his beaker were ready to explode. A closer look revealed this information to him. He cursed under his breath, capped the beaker, and threw it out the window just before it exploded.

“Damn, Pete, that's one impressive bomb you made,” a student named Schuyler remarked.

“Yes, but you're not supposed to mix those particular chemicals together,” Jimenez said. “And since that explosion destroyed the beaker, you'll have to pay for its replacement.”

Mercury hung his head sadly.

In McCaffrey's AP Literature class, the students were discussing the novel The Jungle, prompted by the question, “What can be said about the socioeconomic conditions depicted in this novel?”

“That corporations are soulless machines run by equally soulless men who lack moral compasses,” Samara replied.

“True, but does anyone care to expand on that?” McCaffrey asked.

“The Jungle was Upton Sinclair's attempt to expose the crimes of the political-industrial complex,” a bespectacled, plaid-skirted brunette named Willow answered. “When I say `political-industrial complex,' I mean that the government was in the pocket of the corporations. A lot of the people that held government offices at the time passed laws that allowed the corporations to deny their workers any sense of human dignity. Socialism was presented as a way out of that, as a way of defying a corrupt capitalist system.”

“What does this have to do with the practices of corporate America today?” McCaffrey asked.

“Not much has changed, honestly,” Raziel stated. “With the exception of corporations like Wayne Enterprises, corporate America as a whole still has a `profit first, human lives second' mentality. Since we have laws here that bar child labor and compel companies to pay their workers a minimum wage, many companies just move jobs overseas, where they don't have to follow those laws. Also, the government issues tax incentives for corporations that outsource their jobs. It's a sick state of affairs, honestly.”

“In light of what you've read, do you think a capitalist system is a fair economic system?” McCaffrey asked.

“I think that a lot of people are only looking at the bad aspects of capitalism,” a shaggy-haired boy named Dante interjected. “They're not paying attention to the ways that capitalism has helped people or the ways that socialism has harmed people.”

“The reason capitalism doesn't work that well in practice is that it's based on competition and not everyone has the tools to compete,” Samara stated.

“It's called survival of the fittest,” Dante cut in. “If you have the intelligence and the skills, you can survive. If you don't, you can't. What do you expect us to do, mollycoddle the people that won't get off their ass and work?”

“That's a rather cruel thing to say,” Willow commented. “Not to mention that people aren't always incapable of competing simply because they're lazy, as I think you're trying to say. Many of them can't because they're born into a situation that doesn't allow them the opportunity to acquire the tools to compete in a capitalist society.”

“And whose fault is that?” Dante asked.

“The system's,” Willow replied. “To expand on Samara's statement that not everyone has the tools to compete, we live in a hierarchical, class-based society. The higher you are on the socioeconomic ladder, the better you're able to compete. Certain people are born with all the advantages, while everyone else has to compete for whatever's left and a lot of them don't even know the rules.”

“While a good number of European democracies practice capitalism, they also have the sense to realize that some people need more of a helping hand than others,” Raziel interjected, “which is why they have national healthcare.”

“And that's why Europe sucks,” a smart aleck by the name of Frank declared.

“No, Europe doesn't suck,” Samara stated. “They're just not as paranoid about `big government' as we are here in the States.”

“In The Jungle, Sinclair condemned both parties as `grafters,'” McCaffrey stated. “Would anyone like to offer their take on that?”

“He called them grafters because they were both corrupt, both in the pockets of corporate America, much like now,” Willow explained.

“What's that supposed to mean?” Frank asked.

“Despite sundry attempts at reform throughout the past twenty years, the campaign finance laws still create a symbiotic relationship between corporations and the government,” Willow elucidated. “The corporation gives a political candidate large sums of money to finance his or her campaign with the expectation that that candidate will make life easier for it once elected, an expectation that is often fulfilled. Say Ms. McCaffrey is running for mayor. I, a lobbyist for a corporation, give her x amount of dollars, bearing in mind that x is a hefty sum. Say the rest of you vote for her and she wins the election. Who do you think she really answers to?”

“Us!” Frank exclaimed. “It's because of our votes that she's in office right now and therefore she ought to listen to our concerns!”

“That's the viewpoint of a naïve twit who thinks the world is fair and just,” Samara sneered. “The truth is that since Willow gave Ms. McCaffrey all that money to support her campaign, Ms. McCaffrey would be indebted to Willow and thus bound to repay that debt, usually by pushing forth policies that would favor corporations.”

“You didn't have to call Mr. Goode `a naïve twit,' Miss Roth-Wilson,” McCaffrey reprimanded.

Samara just planted her chin on her palm.

Several periods later, the Titans congregated at the cafeteria for lunch.

“Boys are perverts,” Beast Girl stated irritably.

“Tell me about it,” Samara growled. “I swear whoever made the female gym uniforms for this school had a whole bunch of dirty schoolgirl fantasies. The shorts are so tiny that they might as well be panties . . . and the shirts are a little too tight for comfort.”

“I don't mind,” Nightstar remarked. “The uniforms, that is. I just wish boys didn't ogle my ass so much.”

“Kinda hard not to when it looks so nice,” a harsh rasping voice remarked lecherously.

Nightstar reached out and whacked the person who'd spoken upside the head. “Memnoch, you are the worst sort of lecher I've ever met.”

The murderous second persona of Raziel just stared at her with a wicked gleam in his eyes.

“Memnoch, you say what I think you're going to say and I'll kill you,” Bladefire declared. “I swear to X'Hal that I'll kill you.”

“No, you won't,” Memnoch drawled, gazing at Bladefire through mussed silver bangs. “You're too much of a softy for that.”

“I'll just beat you half to death, then,” Bladefire remarked nonchalantly.

Memnoch moved his bangs aside and looked at the other Titans with a softer expression. “Sorry about that.”

“Raziel, you mind keeping Memnoch in his cage more often?” Samara asked.

“Yeah, he's one scary guy,” Mercury added.

“I try,” Raziel replied. “That's why Uriel exists, to check his impulses.”

“You explained it to me once, but I don't think I get it,” Beast Girl said. “Memnoch's the id and Uriel's the superego?”

“If you want to get Freudian, then yes,” Raziel confirmed.

“How was AP Lit, Sam?” Inferno asked.

“Fine until I called Frank Goode a naïve twit,” Samara replied.

“What for?” Inferno asked.

“Because he was stupid enough to think that the world is fair and just,” Samara replied.

“You're right that the world isn't fair and just, but that doesn't mean you have to call him a twit,” Inferno said.

“Bet she didn't apologize,” Mercury mumbled.

“Shut up, Peter,” Inferno spoke. To Samara, “Did you apologize?”

“Like I had to,” Samara answered.

“Sam, I like you and all, but that arrogance of yours is kind of a turn-off,” Inferno stated.

“And what about me turns you on?” Samara asked in a deadpan but with a smirk in her eyes.

Inferno blushed. “Don't change the subject!”

The other Titans had a good laugh at Inferno's expense.

End Notes: Ok, you're probably wondering why the new Titans are attending high school when their parents didn't. I'll explain. First, I didn't want to do a rehash of the animated Titans. Second, the comic Titans (the ones that are high school age) go to high school and a lot of this story was inspired by the comics. Three, the same reason the teenaged X-Men in X-Men: Evolution went to high school: so they wouldn't lose their connection to normal humanity.

Will you see The Ravager again? Yes. In the next chapter you will see her.

By the way, for those of you that are confused about Mercury referring to himself in the first chapter as the “Shinobi of Speed,” shinobi is another word for ninja. The reason he calls himself that is that he incorporates ninja techniques, particularly the ones dealing with stealth and combat, into the use of his speed powers.

For those of you wondering about Raziel's alternate personas, they will be explained in greater detail in the second arc. For now, all three of them (counting Raziel) are basically the id, ego, and superego of Freud's psychoanalytic theory.

Now you're free to tell me how much you liked or disliked this story.