Teen Titans Fan Fiction ❯ Teen Titans: Future Storm ❯ Trance Motion ( Chapter 16 )

 

“Teen Titans: Future Storm”

Arc 3: “Quicksilver”

Chapter 6: “Trance Motion”

Disclaimer: The concept of Teen Titans does not belong to me. The characters of Nightstar and (Dark) Mercury do not belong to me; the former is the property of DC Comics and the latter belongs jointly to DC and Marvel via Amalgam Comics. Anything or anyone you don't recognize from either the show or the comics belongs to me.

Author's note: This is a milestone for this series, the first arc to go past five chapters. I promise I'll either tie everything up in this chapter or the next. Even then, it won't be entirely over because whichever Mercury remains, he'll have some new powers to learn to control and I'll write that in a one-shot epilogue.

Those of you who guessed at Dark Mercury's motivations may find yourselves being proven right.

Beast Girl wasn't sleeping very well. Of course, who would sleep well with a nightmare plaguing their mind?

“Mercury,” she moaned in her sleep. “Don't go . . . don't leave me . . .” She gripped her pillow tightly. “Please don't go . . . please stay . . . stay with me . . .”

She felt a hand gently touching her shoulder. “Terri,” a voice whispered. “Terri, wake up . . .” The hand shook her gently yet insistently. “Please. For me?”

Beast Girl opened her eyes partly, not fully awake but not really asleep.

“Mercury?” she asked.

“Yeah,” the owner of the voice, Dark Mercury, lied . . . or half-lied, anyway.

“I'm still dreaming, aren't I?” Beast Girl murmured.

“Yeah,” Dark Mercury lied again, this time a full untruth. He stroked her hair gently. “Go to sleep. I'll still be there in your dreams. I love you, Terri. Always.”

“I love you, too,” Beast Girl answered.

Dark Mercury kissed her gently on the forehead and vibrated his molecules so fast he became both invisible and intangible, seeming to disappear before Beast Girl's eyes. He passed through her door and sped out of Titans Tower. The others could sleep if they needed it so badly.

He had work to do.

When the sun rose, so did Nightstar and Bladefire. They opened their respective windows and flew outside to greet the sun, spending a full thirty minutes performing aerobatics in front of the bright orb of plasma. They practiced maneuvers that they had spent most of their lives perfecting, perfectly in sync with each other. It was almost like a personal language that only they knew.

Once it was over, the Titan leaders returned to the Tower, Nightstar getting into the shower first. A mere fifteen minutes later - it would have been shorter, but Nightstar was a sensualist at heart, much like her mother had been - the dark-haired girl was out of the shower and drying herself while her red-haired twin used the shower. He was out in barely a minute less than her.

The two went to their rooms and dressed themselves, going down to the kitchen-slash-dining area for breakfast. One by one, the other Titans joined them, Dark Mercury being the last one.

“You seem better than you were last night, Terri,” Samara observed.

“Yeah,” Beast Girl confirmed with a hesitant smile.

“What are we gonna do with him?” Inferno asked, jerking a thumb at Dark Mercury.

“Good question,” Cipher answered. “Peter Allen is dead as far as the world knows and I don't think the alternate reality clause works.”

“What the hell do you mean it doesn't work?” Beast Girl asked. “Just twenty years ago, the Crime Syndicate tried to impersonate the Justice League and when the League knocked those posers out of this universe, they explained it.”

“The Justice League consists of the Earth's greatest heroes, or at least that's how the tagline goes,” Cipher responded. “They get more credibility than a bunch of hormonal teenagers. I don't think anyone will believe that Dark Mercury is another version of Mercury from a parallel universe if he shows up to school with us.”

“So I don't go,” Dark Mercury said.

“But what're you gonna do all day?” Bladefire asked.

“I'll find something,” Dark Mercury replied. “Maybe I'll take a trip to Paris.”

“Do you even speak French?” Nightstar asked.

“I learn fast,” Dark Mercury answered.

Nightstar was in the main room watching the morning news feed on the Titans Tower mainframe. The latest news item disturbed her greatly.

“And here we see the remains of what can only be described as the worst kind of devastation,” the news anchor spoke, pointing behind him to show the destroyed remnants of a run-down old building. “Sources say that this building was a headquarters for the manufacture and sale of the super-speed drug Velocity 11. Captain Wilder has this to say.”

The camera cut to a bald man in plainclothes. “There was only one survivor. The others were . . . I'd rather not say, what I saw was too horrible to be repeated. He said that someone, or something, rushed in and generally raised hell, doing it faster than the eye could see. The guy says that he and his guys were shooting at whatever it was but the bullets never made it. I know this is gonna sound crazy, but it was like the bullets were being redirected so that they never hit whoever or whatever attacked them.”

“You said whoever the attacker was, they moved faster than the eye could see,” the anchor said. “Would you conjecture that this was the work of a speedster?”

“I definitely wouldn't rule it out,” Wilder replied.

“And there you have it,” the anchor said. “This is not the first such incident. Keystone City and Central City, home to speedster crime-fighters for decades, suffered a week of such vigilante rampages. Just last night, the Titans held a funeral for their teammate Mercury and on that same night, someone else similar in appearance and powers to him joined their ranks, also calling himself Mercury. However, according to police reports, this new Mercury is a less merciful crime-fighter than his predecessor or teammates, so it begs the question. Is he responsible for this savage attack? Connie Roberts, for NewsNet 6.”

Nightstar swore under her breath and logged out, striding to the table where the other Titans sat with a supremely disturbed expression on her face.

“Pietro.”

“What?”

“I just saw a news feed about a Velocity 11 manufacturing house that was torn apart. Everyone except for one guy was killed and it was horrible enough that they wouldn't mention how on the feed. Here's the kicker: Whoever did it was too fast to be hit by bullets and there's even talk that those bullets were somehow redirected. Now I don't know everything you're capable of, but I have to ask . . . where were you?”

“Out.”

“Don't you sleep?”

“Don't need to. The Speed Force gives me all the energy I need.”

“So that's why you weren't eating anything,” Beast Girl remarked.

“We'll have to go to school soon,” Nightstar said. “Hurry up.”

“Again, what are we going to do with Pietro?” Inferno asked. “He's older than we are, so I doubt anyone's going to buy him as a high school sophomore.”

“I don't go, remember?” Dark Mercury answered. “I stay here and find something to occupy myself with.”

“It looks like we have no other choice,” Bladefire said. “Besides, are we going to get him a babysitter?”

“There's an idea,” Samara drawled.

“I don't need a babysitter,” Dark Mercury sneered. “Just because you can't handle how I do things doesn't mean I'm out of control.”

“Really?” Nightstar asked. “It takes more discipline not to put people in the hospital or the morgue. You apparently don't have that kind of discipline.”

“Criminals,” Dark Mercury amended. “That's the problem. The criminal justice system is utterly shot to hell, what with all the psychologists making excuses for their behavior. People who prey on others have no excuse, no justification. The grave is actually too good for them, in a sense.”

“Is that an admission?” Nightstar asked.

Dark Mercury merely glared. “Don't you have school to attend?”

“This isn't over,” Nightstar stated. “Not by a long shot, Pietro.”

The Titans, sans Dark Mercury, went to school. As for the dark speedster, he sat in front of the Tower mainframe and began monitoring the city. Even though he'd taken care of that manufacturing house, the Hell's Blitzkriegs, the gang that had gotten its hands on Velocity 11, was still on the loose and they still had enough left to be a threat.

They don't deserve their speed, he thought.

For hours, there was nothing . . . then movement.

During the day? Dark Mercury wondered. Idiots. Fragging idiots.

A translucent metallic sheen covered his body and part of his face, solidifying into his costume. A split second later, he was out of the Tower and on his way to the sector of the city where the crime was being committed.

He found the Hell's Blitzkriegs robbing the diamond district. They were fast, but it was only about twice the speed of sound, not nearly enough to be a real threat to him.

He snuck up on one of the Blitzkriegs and chopped him in the back of the neck, causing him to drop his bag of diamonds and collapse. He'd heard a slight crack and figured he might have broken a vertebra or two. That was one of the drawbacks of the metabolic acceleration that Velocity 11 triggered in its users: loss of bone mass, which made bones considerably weaker than normal.

Another Blitzkrieg looked for his comrade, only to get grabbed and dealt compound fractures in his arms and legs by Dark Mercury.

The third Blitzkrieg was smarter and deduced something foul was happening to his fellows.

“Holy frag!” he shouted. “Look the frag out! Someone's gunning for us!”

“Who?” a fourth asked.

“Me,” Dark Mercury snarled before bashing their heads together and thus knocking them unconscious. He figured that would crack their skulls a bit thanks to their weak bones.

Three other Blitzkriegs came, having heard their compatriot's warning, only to find Dark Mercury waiting.

“Back the hell off, fool!” one of them shouted. “We got super-speed, too!”

“Only a pathetic, drug-induced shadow of speed,” Dark Mercury countered contemptuously. He was about to dispatch the three gangsters, but someone else took care of them - a black-gloved fist embedding itself in one's stomach, a silver-booted foot striking the chest of another, and a red-streaked black head smashing into the third's head. “They were mine.”

“I'm sure,” the other speedster spoke and Dark Mercury could see him clearly this time. He wore a costume parts black and silver, the colors divided by a diagonal lightning line. His right glove and boot were silver and his left glove and boot were black. His eyes were concealed by opaque black visor-like goggles affixed to his face.

“Jace Lawrence,” Dark Mercury spoke, recognizing the other speedster's aura.

“Call me Windrunner,” Jace said. “It's my working name.”

“That was Max's old name,” Dark Mercury said. “What are you doing with it?”

“He's letting me use it,” Jace replied.

“What do you and Max have to do with each other?” Dark Mercury inquired.

“He's training me,” Jace answered. “Turns out the Demon left me with a fraction of his powers. I can still run, but I'm not as fast as I used to be. When Max measured my speed, he told me I topped out at Mach 8, but I'm not always able to go that fast. Sometimes, I'm slower, way slower.”

“What brings you here?” Dark Mercury asked.

“I have bad news,” Windrunner responded. “Remember those guys who tried to rob Central Banking? The ones you beat the unholy crap out of? The guy who was in critical condition? He's no longer in any condition.”

“He's dead,” Dark Mercury concluded coldly.

“Yeah,” Windrunner confirmed, “which means Nova Blue has decided that you're a threat. They can't confirm the other stuff you've done, but this is one thing they can definitely tie you to, which means they're gonna try to connect you to the other stuff.”

“So what?” Dark Mercury asked. “They won't catch me. I'm too fast for them.”

“Hell, Pietro!” Windrunner exclaimed. “Do you not understand the magnitude of what you've done? They'll hang you in the press and the anti-meta activists out there will use you to make all metas look bad!”

“That's their problem,” Dark Mercury said. “The only reason they're going to take me down is that I shame them. I am a living example of their inadequacy against the threats that plague innocent people daily.”

“You still don't get it,” Windrunner sighed. “Nova Blue will come for you. They will pull out as many stops as they need to in order to bring you down. These are highly trained, highly disciplined operatives armed with enough firepower for a small nation's army. You think you're ready to go up against that?”

“I've gone up against worse,” Dark Mercury answered.

Windrunner shook his head sadly. “Turn yourself in. They might be inclined to go easy on you.”

“No, they won't,” Dark Mercury contradicted. “I do what they can't. They won't let that stand. They're after me because they don't appreciate true justice.”

He disappeared in a trail of crackling blue-white.

No sooner had Dark Mercury gotten within sight of Titans Tower that he found himself before a barricade of police vans and Nova Blue operatives. Not quite to his surprise, he found the Titans standing there with them.

“Oh, you fools,” he said. “You miserable, miserable fools.”

“Surrender now, Mercury!” the Nova Blue squad leader shouted.

“And what if I say, `Screw you'?” Dark Mercury asked.

“Then you leave us no choice,” the Nova Blue squad leader answered.

“Damn it, Pietro, don't do this to yourself!” Beast Girl pleaded.

“Sorry, my dear, but there are things a man has to do in this world,” Dark Mercury said. “This, unfortunately, is one of them.”

The Nova Blue operatives trained their rifles on Dark Mercury.

“You and your guns,” Dark Mercury sneered. His fist vibrated and he punched the ground, detonating it below the feet of Nova Blue and the Titans. The ground collapsed into the sewers and Nova Blue and the Titans began to fall. In a split second, he grabbed Beast Girl just as she was about to shift into a harpy to save herself. “You're coming with me.”

He made a run for it, carrying Beast Girl in his wake. Since he was controlling her motion, she really had no hope of escaping from him.

“Let me go!” Beast Girl exclaimed.

“No,” Dark Mercury hissed. “You're mine and I'm not letting you go again.”

“Again?” Beast Girl asked. “What are you talking about?”

Meanwhile, Nightstar, Bladefire, Inferno, and Samara halted themselves in midair, Samara telekinetically catching Cipher. She also created an umbrakinetic platform for the Nova Blue operatives to fall on.

“Thanks,” the Nova Blue squad leader said.

“You're welcome,” Samara replied before levitating them all onto the undamaged portion of the street.

Nightstar, Bladefire, and Inferno joined them. “Crap,” Inferno said, summarizing how they all felt. “I had no idea he was that out of control.”

“Where's Beast Girl?” Cipher asked.

“Dark Mercury must have taken her,” Nightstar replied. “With his speed, he could be anywhere in the world. Anywhere.”

“What do you think he'll do with her?” Bladefire asked.

“He won't hurt her,” Samara answered. “He loves her, as much as our Mercury did. His pain, his rage - whatever happened in his world to make him like that, it had something to do with her.”

“It doesn't matter,” Nightstar said. “He's a killer. A dangerous, fast-as-lightning killer. Wherever he is, Terri's not safe with him.”

“We should contact the Bureau of Metahuman Affairs,” Inferno suggested. “They might be able to send operatives to find them.”

“Good idea, but we don't want to send them to their deaths,” Cipher interjected. “If Dark Mercury's viciousness centers on something happening to Beast Girl in his world, we have no idea how far he'll go to make sure he is not parted from her. I read his soul. He's a twisted, angry creature, but also a creature in extreme pain.”

“I don't care how much pain he's in,” the Nova Blue squad leader said. “He's cut a bloody swath through Jump, Keystone, and Central. I don't want that whack job running loose, especially with a hostage.”

Nightstar flipped open her communicator. “If Beast Girl still has her communicator, we can track her and Dark Mercury down.” She looked at the readout in the screen of her communicator and swore. “He's smarter than we expected.”

“We can still contact the BMA,” Bladefire said. “They have tracking software designed to lock onto a particular metahuman's bioelectric signature.”

“Give it a try,” Nightstar replied. “But we go ourselves.”

Elsewhere, Beast Girl was bound to a chair by an elastic substance that would hold her no matter what shape she took.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked.

“Because I need you,” Dark Mercury replied.

“The other Titans and Nova Blue will find us,” Beast Girl said. “Then they'll lock you away!”

“No, they won't,” Dark Mercury snarled. “They won't lock me away because I won't be parted from you again. Not even if I have to take them all out.”

“`Take them all out'?” Beast Girl asked. “Pietro, those are our friends you're talking about!”

“They're fools!” Dark Mercury exploded. “Fools who don't understand a single damned thing! This is war! I didn't get that before, not until it was too late, not until you were a casualty of that war!” Calming down somewhat, he continued, “That was when I understood . . . that there are people who are without compassion and must be fought mercilessly, pitilessly, and relentlessly. If you don't understand that, then you are a fool, too.”

“If I'm such a fool, why don't you get rid of me?” Beast Girl asked bitterly.

Dark Mercury chuckled sadly. “I'd never harm you, Terri. I love you too much.”

“If you love me so much, why did you kidnap me?” Beast Girl asked sardonically.

Dark Mercury just stared.

“Fine, I'll give you your answer,” Beast Girl went on. “You're obsessed with someone who's dead and obsessed with me because I look like her.”

“You are her,” Dark Mercury insisted. “Just dimensions apart.”

“If she's anything like me, do you think she'd be pleased with what you've turned yourself into?” Beast Girl asked softly.

Dark Mercury's posture sagged noticeably. “No . . . she wouldn't.” His lips twisted into a ruined smile. “But it's too late for me now.”

Suddenly, the air between him and Beast Girl warped. A crackling current of blue energy emerged within the warp, forming into a vaguely humanoid shape. The shape became more defined, taking a concrete form. It eventually became visible as a blue energy replica of Mercury, lightning dancing around him.

“What the hell?” Dark Mercury murmured in surprise.

Beast Girl gasped in shock and awe. “Mercury?”

“Yeah, Terri, it's me,” Mercury confirmed as the blue aura faded to reveal his true appearance - a short-sleeved blue-and-white costume with elbow pads and fingerless gloves, platinum hair, and peach skin.

Dark Mercury snarled furiously, “You won't take her from me!”

The darker Mercury suddenly accelerated into a vicious inertia-fueled punch that sent his counterpart soaring out the window and toward the ground below. He jumped out the window, directing all his inertia into his descent so that he could strike Mercury with tremendous force, hastening the other speedster's descent.

Mercury rose to his feet and wiped the blood from his lip. “You hit pretty hard.”

“You haven't seen how hard I can hit yet,” Dark Mercury retorted threateningly, staring down his other self.

“And you haven't seen all my moves yet, either,” Mercury countered.

The twin speedsters charged at each other, colliding with superhumanly fast and brutal punches and kicks. Mercury threw a punch at Dark Mercury's face, only for his doppelganger to tilt his head to the side, evading the punch even as he dropped to deliver a low sweeping kick. Mercury jumped over his doppelganger's leg and spun into a kick that would have done some damage . . . had it connected. Instead, he had to bear the humiliation of having his leg caught and being spun into a throw that sent him flying a considerable distance away.

Dark Mercury followed his twin's uncontrolled flight, his speed creating a sonic boom in his path. Normally, a speedster could control this, but Dark Mercury didn't care about controlling it. He just wanted to erase his alternate self from existence.

He soon caught up to his counterpart, assaulting him with inertia-charged blows that would have killed someone without the protection of a speed aura. As it was, Mercury would be nursing bruises later.

Mercury finally landed on the ground, tumbling backward and entering a crouch. Dark Mercury launched himself into a running jump, swinging his leg out in a brutal kick. Mercury caught his leg and flipped into his own kick, landing it on his doppelganger's shoulder.

Dark Mercury pulled back, his counterpart's kick having dislocated his shoulder. He forced his shoulder back into place and speed-healed it before redoubling his attack on Mercury, who ran away. He ran in the opposite direction.

The twin speedsters met halfway, having built up enough momentum to strike each other with the kind of force that would kill more vulnerable beings. Dark Mercury milked it for all it was worth, channeling his inertia into crushing blows. Mercury blocked the best he could, retaliating with powerful blows in their own right.

“Why are you doing this?” Mercury asked.

“I lost Terri once,” Dark Mercury answered with cold determination in his voice. “I won't lose her again.”

The twin speedsters raced around the world, colliding again and again. Both of them were moving at supersonic speeds, which left sonic booms in their wake. Every window they passed shattered and Dark Mercury took control of the falling shards' motion, redirecting them so that they would fly at his counterpart, who dodged every one to the best of his ability.

How the hell do I beat this guy? Mercury asked, gritting his teeth. He's got better tricks than I do, but I can still stop him.

As they fought, Mercury felt his speed draining away.

Aw, crap, he thought. That's Speed Demon's tactic: sucking the speed out of his opponents in the middle of a fight. How did he learn it?

Dark Mercury channeled the stolen speed into a hyperkinetic orb, punching it at his counterpart. Upon being struck by his fist, the orb split into twenty-five smaller speed bullets, flying at Mercury.

Mercury dodged the bullets, but they wouldn't stop coming after him.

“I may have learned from Speed Demon, but at least I know how to improve on his tricks,” the darker Mercury remarked.

“Now I know you're not me!” Mercury exclaimed. “I'd never join forces with that monster!”

“You'd be surprised what you'd do if you wanted to avenge someone you love,” Dark Mercury answered.

Mercury threw up a molecular field around himself, deflecting the speed bullets.

“I see you've learned a few new tricks of your own,” Dark Mercury commented, “but that won't save you.”

Mercury was about to answer, only to get a horrible, chilling feeling down his spine.

“Terri,” he murmured. “She's in danger.”

Dark Mercury's eyes widened behind the lenses of his mask and he began running, his alternate self tailing him.

When the twin speedsters made it back to where Dark Mercury had imprisoned Beast Girl, they found her with the Zookeeper.

“Zookeeper,” Dark Mercury snarled. “Nice seeing you again. I get to kill you a second time.”

“Ah, two Mercuries,” the Zookeeper remarked. “I know of you quite well, `Dark Mercury.' The little murderer who imagines that he is actually doing good, ridding the world of `criminal filth.' You've broken sweet Theresa's heart, haven't you?”

“Get away from her, Register!” Mercury shouted.

“Or you'll do what?” the Zookeeper asked. In a more conversational tone, “I've improved my shape-shifting powers. Would you like to see?”

Before the twin speedsters could react, the Zookeeper had morphed into a swarm of purple bats, all of them assaulting both Mercuries. Dark Mercury set off a sonic boom that knocked the bats off him and his counterpart. The bats simply re-formed into deadly hawks, talons outstretched as they dove at both speedsters. Dark Mercury grabbed one of the purple hawks and detonated it, accelerating its molecular activity to the point it exploded.

The other remaining hawks flew away and combined back into the Zookeeper.

“You are quite the vicious little speed freak, aren't you?” he remarked.

Dark Mercury's answer was to charge at him with a vibrating fist cocked. However, Zookeeper morphed into a nest of vipers, which attacked the dark speedster as one, wrapping around his body. Dark Mercury vibrated into insubstantiality to escape being bitten by them, regrouping with Mercury, who had freed Beast Girl by vibrating her out of her restraints.

The vipers re-formed into a pack of snarling wolves, attacking the trio. Beast Girl morphed into a hybrid wolf-girl shape to battle them, as the twin speedsters merely attempted to avoid them. Unfortunately, the wolves soon managed to corner them.

“Any suggestions?” Dark Mercury asked. “Because sonic-booming this bastard hasn't worked.”

“I've got one,” Mercury replied. “We synchronize our vibrations.”

“Synchronize our vibrations?” Dark Mercury echoed.

“Yeah,” Mercury confirmed. “If we do that, we can merge into one badass speedster with all the powers and skills of both of us and take this Zookeeper freak out.”

“Are you sure?” Dark Mercury asked.

“I wouldn't try this with anyone else, but since you and I are the same person, just dimensions apart, it could work,” Mercury answered. “Now let's get to work. Terri, hold them off.”

“All right,” Beast Girl said, battling the wolf pack.

Both Mercuries began to vibrate at the same time, fine-tuning their vibration patterns to match each other. Once a perfect match was achieved, they vibrated into each other and something . . . awe-inspiring . . . happened.

A single Mercury stood where two had stood before. He wore the costume of Dark Mercury, but the blue was much lighter and the tarnished silver was white as snow.

The separate personalities of the two Mercuries remained, but they could see into each other's memories and thoughts.

Beast Girl being viciously murdered by Gemini.

Pietro Allen betraying the Titans and joining Speed Demon.

Pietro learning every trick Speed Demon possessed, amplifying his own speed powers until he was strong enough to kill him.

Pietro donning the tarnished silver and blue-black of his new costume.

Pietro brutally dismantling Tartarus, killing every member and saving Gemini for last. Hers was the most vicious of his kills that night. It didn't come without its costs, though; the wounds he suffered were so extensive that he had to accelerate his metabolism to heal them, which pushed his physical age to 19.

Pietro waging a one-man war on the criminal underworld, crippling or murdering criminals.

I . . . I could never be like that, Mercury thought. I could never do those things! Never!

Don't be so sure, Dark Mercury answered grimly.

In the real world, the fused Mercury charged the wolf pack the Zookeeper had become and began fighting them all off.

I'll protect you, Terri, both Mercuries thought. With my life.

The wolves slashed at him, but he quickly metabolized the injuries, making them disappear in mere seconds. He set off a sonic boom, knocking them away from him. The wolves merely regrouped as one Zookeeper and that was when the fused Mercury attacked him. The Zookeeper may have been gifted with animal reflexes, but the combined speed of Peter and Pietro Allen proved to be too much for him and he collapsed into unconsciousness.

“He's done,” the fused Mercury said.

It was at that moment that the other Titans showed up, along with several agents from the Bureau of Metahuman Affairs.

“What's going on?” Samara asked. “There were two identical metahuman signals clashing all over the world and now . . .”

“There's only one of them,” Inferno filled in. “But which one is he?”

The fused Mercury turned to the Titans and separated into Peter and Pietro Allen.

“So . . . which one do we bring in?” one of the BMA agents asked.

“Actually, you won't have to worry about that,” a female voice spoke, just after a portal opened in the middle of the room.

The Titans and BMA agents turned to see a man and a woman step out of the portal, both dressed in black uniforms. The uniforms consisted of close-fitting jackets and pants, with thick boots and red trim on the jacket zippers. The man was moderately tall and tan with close-cropped dark hair, while the woman was slightly smaller with dusky skin and dark brown hair.

“Who are you people?” Nightstar asked.

“We're from the Hypertime Agency,” the man replied. “I'm Agent Troy and this is Agent Harris.”

“What the hell is the Hypertime Agency?” Beast Girl asked.

“There is no such thing as one true timeline,” Agent Troy replied. “There is a main timeline, though, one from which all the other timelines branch off. No two timelines are identical and even the two timelines that most closely resemble each other have some key differences.”

“Ah, so this is the theory of the multiverse I've heard so much about,” Cipher remarked.

“You'd be right, only we call it Hypertime,” Agent Harris said. “To continue where my partner left off, sometimes timelines blend into each other and they either stay blended, with minor, subtle changes occurring, or they separate again later. Sometimes, extreme occurrences, such as someone from one timeline crossing over into another, cause the two timelines to merge in particularly dangerous ways, ultimately destroying both of them. Peter and Pietro Allen are an example of this.”

“Because they're the same person,” Inferno said. “Different realities, but they answer to the same - or rather, similar - names. The two of them together in one dimension is causing their respective dimensions to blend into each other.”

“There is only one solution,” Agent Troy said. “We have to remove Pietro from this world. It is not his world and his presence is endangering it and his own. He will have to be returned to his proper place in the timestream if we want to prevent it from collapsing on itself.”

Dark Mercury sighed and looked at Beast Girl. “I guess this means good-bye.”

He reached out and kissed her, his lips pressing against hers with a desperate need that broke her heart. The kiss may have lasted only five seconds in normal time, but in the subjective time that all speedsters lived in, it might as well have been twenty minutes.

He pulled away with a sad expression in his eyes. “I'm sorry.”

The dark speedster held out his arms to the two Hypertime Agents, who bound his wrists with a flexible black cord.

“Don't worry,” Agent Harris said. “He won't be vibrating out of these.” She removed an object resembling a cell phone from her pocket and flipped it open, pressing a button. A portal opened and she, Agent Troy, and Pietro Allen stepped into it, vanishing from this dimension.

“Let's go home,” Mercury said.

The Zookeeper had been sent back to prison and returned to his regimen of heavy sedation.

The Titans had returned to the Tower.

“If you weren't dead, where were you?” Samara asked Mercury.

“In the Speed Force,” Mercury replied. “I felt myself going, going into that darkness that waits at the end of this world's line, but something pulled me back at the last millisecond. The next thing I knew, I was engulfed by this light and I saw the speedsters that had come before me, before my father, before Jay, even. They taught me so much . . . I was tempted to stay in there forever, but . . .” He turned to Beast Girl. “I had to come back, for you.”

“For me?” Beast Girl asked in confusion and astonishment.

“For you,” Mercury repeated emphatically. “Now if you guys don't mind, I've had a long week. I need to sleep.”

As hard as Mercury tried to sleep, he couldn't. His doppelganger's memories floated through his head, keeping him awake. He kept seeing Beast Girl's death again and again, as well as what it had done to Pietro.

I couldn't be like that, he thought. I couldn't.

His self-reassurances were hollow, though, and he knew it. The truth was that Pietro Allen hadn't been so different from Peter Allen before Pietro's Beast Girl had been murdered by Gemini.

That begged the question: Would losing Beast Girl push him that far over the edge?

His brooding was interrupted when Beast Girl entered his room. He quickly turned on the light, but kept it dim so that his eyes wouldn't have to go through the burden of adjusting to it.

“Terri?” he asked.

“I couldn't sleep,” Beast Girl replied. “I haven't been able to sleep ever since you vanished.” She climbed onto the bed and that was when Mercury noticed that she was dressed in the green negligee and panties he'd gotten her for Christmas. “He - the other you - he scared me. He was cold, cruel, and downright frightening. That couldn't ever be you, could it?”

“I'm not so sure of that,” Mercury admitted darkly. “The whole reason he became like that was he couldn't save you from Gemini. Before that happened, he and I weren't so different. And even when we were fighting, the moment I told him you were in danger, he broke off the fight and came for you. He still loved you . . . and I still love you.”

Beast Girl kissed him deeply, her lips pressed against his with the ache in her heart. Mercury returned the kiss fully, feeling an ache to match hers. Her hands found their way to his chest and began undoing the buttons of his pajama shirt.

Mercury didn't stop her.

End Notes: A bittersweet ending right there. The proper Mercury is restored to his place with the Titans and the dark Mercury is on his back to his own world. I have an idea as to what to do with him after this, but I'd like to see if anyone's interested, so if you are, FF-dot-net users can PM me on that.

This chapter was the most Dark Flash-inspired of this arc, with the battle between the twin Mercuries and the later fusion. The fused Mercury most closely resembles his Amalgam Comics inspiration, with the white-and-blue costume and all.

Velocity 11, if you must know, is a spin-off of Velocity 9, a super-drug in the earlier issues of Wally West's Flash title that could grant its users temporary super-speed but at the price of instant addiction and debilitating effects on the users' metabolisms.

So that's it. There's the end, for the time being, but the aftermath has to be seen. You'll get that in the following side story.

Until next time.