Teen Titans Fan Fiction ❯ Teen Titans: Future Storm ❯ Initiate ( Chapter 26 )

 

“Teen Titans: Future Storm”

Arc 6: “Justice”

Chapter 1: “Initiate”

Disclaimer: Teen Titans belongs to DC Comics and Warner Brothers, not me. Aside from Nightstar, Mercury, Ravager, and Slade, a lot of the various other characters that will appear here do not belong to me. The ones that do belong to me . . . well, you're going to have a hard time telling the difference between canon (actually published by DC or appearing on-screen in a DC property) and non-canon (not published by DC or appearing on-screen in a DC property) unless you're a comic geek like me who likes looking up comic book characters and organizations on Wikipedia.

Author's note: This arc borrows a lot of elements from a lot of comics, mostly DC. The principal elements come from Villains United and The OMAC Project, but there are elements from 52, Kingdom Come, and Marvel's Civil War. DC fans, don't knock Marvel; they actually came up with an interesting crossover idea. Besides, this is the last arc I'm doing for this series, so it's best I end big. If you want to see how those elements come together, just read.

A streak of light zapped across the Western Hemisphere as it was pursued by a similar streak of light, only colored green. A blue blur tore across the sky after the light, followed by a red blur on the ground. Another flying blur accompanied the blue blur and a streak of electrical light followed along. Beyond them, a bluish-gray jet followed them, piloted by two people, one garbed like a demonic bat and the other garbed in crimson with a yellow cloak and red domino mask.

“Archer, can you track her?” Batman asked.

“Yeah,” Scarlet Archer replied, “but it's tough keeping up when this thing can only go so fast.”

“That's why we have the other five,” Batman stated.

The green light, upon closer examination, was simply a girl ensconced in an emerald glow. The girl was garbed in skintight black with a white spot covering her chest and spreading to cover her sides, the symbol of the Green Lantern Corps shining proudly on that white spot. Black gloves with green studded bracelets covered her hands and white boots adorned her feet. A studded green collar covered her neck. The interesting thing about her was that her skin itself was green and her otherwise dark hair was streaked with it. She was none other than Jade Rayner, the Green Lantern of Earth after her recently late father.

The Green Lantern materialized a lasso and projected it at the streak of light she was pursuing at the speed of thought. The lasso managed to catch the streak of light just over Opal City, revealing it to be a dark-haired woman dressed in a black suit with an eight-pointed white star stretched over her chest. Another lasso, this one golden, joined the Lantern's emerald lasso, holding the woman fast.

“All right, Bright, time to talk,” the holder of the golden lasso spoke. She was a woman with long blonde hair dressed in a red bustier with golden double bars designed to look simultaneously like a W and a flying eagle, a golden girdle, and a blue star-spangled miniskirt with red-and-white boots and golden bracelets. She was Cassandra Sandsmark, the inheritor of the Wonder Woman mantle after Diana had ascended to Olympus to become the Goddess of Truth.

“Please,” Bright answered derisively. “Do you take me for the fool that my father was?”

“You might be able to travel at the speed of light, but don't think there's no one fast enough to keep up with you,” Wonder Woman replied.

“And besides,” another voice spoke up, “you're not invincible just because you control light.” The person to whom the voice belonged appeared, an African-American man with long dreadlocks and garbed in a hooded blue jacket over a darker blue uniform with a yellow lightning bolt in a circle on his chest. He was Virgil Hawkins, but better known to both his heroic allies and his villainous foes as Static, and he was currently standing on a silver disk. Static caught Bright in an electromagnetic prison field and, along with Green Lantern and Wonder Woman, landed with her.

“You can talk now,” Batman stated as he and Scarlet Archer emerged from the jet, “or you can talk five minutes later.” The Flash halted his run and Superman landed before them.

“What's the difference?” Bright asked. “Five minutes doesn't leave time for much.”

Batman smiled grimly underneath his mask. “You'd be surprised just how much can change in five minutes.”

“Wanna demonstrate to her?” a female voice asked, silky and deadly. The Justice League turned their attention to the owner of that voice, a willowy woman garbed in black leather and gray chain mail-like mesh. The mesh covered her shoulders, arms, and sides, with a gray belt hanging loosely on her hips. Light armor covered her legs from the knees down and a burnt orange-and-black bisected mask covered her face up to her nose, leaving her lips and jaw exposed.

“Ravager,” Batman snarled.

“Ravager,” Superman echoed. “You usually tangle with the Titans. Bored with them now?”

Ravager smiled wickedly and reached under her mask, popping out a hidden lens in the black side of her mask. A black eye with a purple triplicate spiral surrounding the pupil opened. She spread her arms in a welcoming gesture.

Batman reached into his utility belt and pulled out six Batarangs, holding them between his fingers. He threw all of them at Ravager, whose visible eye widened insanely before she caught all six Batarangs, her arms moving with inhuman speed. She threw all of them back at Batman with superhuman force, barely allowing him to evade them. Then she seemed to vanish from the sights of the League, except the Flash.

“Green Lantern, look out!” he yelled, but for naught; Ravager had just tagged the emerald gladiatrix with a sonic weapon, disrupting the Lantern's focus so that she couldn't create a construct.

Scarlet Archer gritted her teeth in rage and fired her crossbow at Ravager, who ran straight at her while dodging the archer's bolts. She flipped into the air and Scarlet Archer drew her bow, extending it to its full size, nocking an arrow, and firing right at an aerial Ravager. The mercenary sliced the arrow in half with her sword and plummeted downward, slicing with her motion. Scarlet Archer moved out of the way, only to sacrifice her arrows as Ravager cut through her quiver. The archer discarded her broken quiver and slipped knuckles with blades extending from the sides onto her hands.

“Trench knives,” Ravager observed. “Didn't think you heroes went for that kind of thing.”

Scarlet Archer's only response was to attack Ravager with her trench knives. Ravager simply dodged every one of the archer's slashes, moving as though she knew exactly where the archer was going to be and taking care to stay just out of range. Scarlet Archer punched Ravager, who moved her head out of the way of both the punch and the slash that would have followed.

“Don't you get tired of being outmatched?” Ravager asked mockingly.

“All I see you doing is running from me,” Scarlet Archer retorted, “which makes me think you're not nearly as badass as you like to think you are.”

Ravager smiled. “Just remember, you did ask for this.”

Scarlet Archer didn't have time to ask what that meant before a vicious strike to the gut knocked her unconscious. “Who's next?” Ravager asked.

A burst of heat vision provided the mercenary with her answer, which she dodged. She launched herself into the air and sheathed her sword, replacing it with a Kryptonite-radiation “lightsaber.” Just as she was starting to come down, Superman fired another blast of heat vision, which she deflected with the K-sword, the same sword that would have sliced him if Wonder Woman hadn't ensnared Ravager with her lasso. Zeus's lightning channeled itself through the lasso, which would have severely hurt Ravager if her suit hadn't been insulated.

“Nice try, Wonder Bitch,” Ravager sneered. “Suit's insulated.”

“All insulators eventually get overloaded,” Wonder Woman answered. “I'll just need a stronger charge.”

Ravager just smiled before flicking her wrist and the K-sword, which was now a simple knife, flew at Superman, impaling him in the stomach with it. The Man of Steel gasped and choked in pain, collapsing on the ground.

“Kon!” Wonder Woman and Batman cried out in horror. In her horror, Wonder Woman had lost her focus on Ravager, who slipped out of the lasso and slashed the Amazon's throat with her sword.

“Wonder Woman!” Batman yelled.

The Flash sped toward Ravager and assaulted her with a veritable wall of punches delivered at super-speed. She managed to block many of those punches and the ones she took she showed no sign of being slowed down or seriously injured by. The Flash was so bent on making Ravager pay for what she'd done to his two friends that he didn't notice her pulling a pistol on him . . . until he heard the shot go off. He vibrated to evade the bullet, which turned out to be a serious mistake, as the bullet was a vibrating one. The end result was that he was having epileptic seizures at super-speed.

Static fired off a series of electrostatic bursts at Ravager, who dodged them as she rushed closer to the electrokinetic. A series of Batarangs flew at her from behind, but she was evading them with inhuman speed. She flipped backwards and landed on Batman, sitting on his shoulders with her legs wrapped around his throat. He set off a two-hundred-thousand-volt taser in his suit, throwing her off him. She quickly rose to her feet and crouched into a fighting pose.

“I'm ready to go if you are, but you might want to remember your poor Kryptonian friend,” Ravager advised.

“She's right,” Static said. “Kon's dying from that K-rad blade in him and if we don't get it out of him, he's finished.”

Batman hissed angrily. “We're not through yet, Ravager. I'll be back for you.” Before he could elaborate on that threat, assuming he wanted to, everything suddenly went dark. “What the -?”

“Oh, no,” Static uttered. “We have to get out of here. Bright's absorbing all the light in the area!”

He and Batman gathered the rest of the Justice League into the jet, including a protesting Wonder Woman. As soon as they were inside, Batman ordered the jet to take off. However, it hadn't even gotten a foot off the ground when there was a sudden flash of bright light. When it was gone, so were Bright and Ravager, and the jet was taking off.

As the jet flew on autopilot, Batman turned his attentions to Superman. He pressed a button on the K-blade embedded in the Man of Steel's stomach and the blade retracted into the hilt. “You're going to be ok, Kon,” he whispered. “You're going to be ok.”

A little blood had escaped from Superman's wound before it closed. “Thanks,” Superman answered. “I had no idea Ravager was that tough.”

Wonder Woman, whose neck wound had healed, went to Superman and pulled him up. The Amazon moved over to the other felled members of the Justice League. The Flash was still in super-speed seizures, so she grabbed him and forced him still long enough to pull the vibrating bullet out. Green Lantern and Scarlet Archer awakened and both went to him.

“Are you all right?” Green Lantern asked.

“I'll be ok,” the Flash replied. “Ravager came prepared for us, didn't she?”

“But what interest would she have in Bright?” Static asked.

“We'll have to figure that out later,” Batman replied. “The more pressing issue is that someone like Ravager came to Bright's rescue. Something stinks here and I'm going to find out what it is.” He paused before going on. “And we have to do better. We've been at this for almost two decades and we get defeated like rank amateurs.”

“We underestimated her, that was the problem,” Wonder Woman admitted. “We assumed that because she was an enemy primarily of the Titans, we didn't need to take her so seriously.” She snickered bitterly. “Fifteen years ago, we'd have been very pissed off if our mentors decided the foes we faced as Titans weren't anything to worry about. What does that say about how we regard the Titans we have now?”

“And she took advantage of that,” Batman stated harshly. “What's done is done. What's important is that we find out what she wanted with Bright that was so important that she was willing to cut through us to get to her and put a stop to it.”

“Where are we going?” Bright asked as Ravager piloted their two-person jet.

Ravager turned to Bright and replied sweetly, “It's a surprise.”

Bright sat back and folded her arms beneath her bosom. “It better be a good surprise. Not that I'm ungrateful for my rescue, but I'm curious as to what you want with me.”

Ravager continued to pilot the jet through the sky. It was a stealth jet, designed primarily for speed. Since it was a stealth jet, it also had anti-radar equipment that rendered it undetectable by anything conventional or unconventional authorities had. This proved especially valuable when she sighted an aerial base. The base was essentially an aerial platform with a dome-like outgrowth in the center and smaller outgrowths arranged around it. She brought the jet down through an opening in the platform and into what appeared to be a bay for aerial vehicles.

Ravager and Bright got out of the jet and exited the aerial vehicle bay. They began walking through the base, Bright following Ravager, who had taken the opportunity to replace the lens hiding her left eye. As they walked, Bright grew increasingly anxious, although she kept her face rather stoic. Finally, Ravager opened a door and stepped through it, Bright following.

Inside were four other people. One was a young redheaded woman dressed in a sharp business suit, green eyes glittering with intellect and malice. Another was a middle-aged bespectacled brown-haired man dressed in a blazer and tie. A third was a tall, imperious dark-haired man dressed in a cape-less black version of Captain Marvel's costume. The fourth was a man in black with gray armor and chain mail-like mesh whose face was fully concealed by a bisected black-and-burnt orange mask similar to Ravager's but with the colors flipped. These four were Lena Luthor, the Calculator, Black Adam, and Deathstroke.

“Good work, Ravager,” Deathstroke spoke.

“Thank you, Father,” Ravager answered.

“You must be wondering what we want with you, Bright,” Lena said. “It's very simple what we want. We want you to join us. We want you to become part of the Society.”

“Society of what?” Bright asked sarcastically.

“A society of people who want to prove to the world that the so-called heroes who oppose us aren't the saints they'd have humanity think they are,” the Calculator replied. “Do note that if it hadn't been for my information, Ravager wouldn't have been able to rescue you and the League would have had you imprisoned in Alcatraz. Again.”

“Yeah,” Bright grumbled. “So why do you need me?”

“For what you bring to the table,” Lena replied, “which is raw power. Raw power and an intellect to go along with it, an intellect you obviously didn't inherit from your late father. Plus, your hatred, your hatred for the heroes that made a fool of him, a hatred that can be very useful when directed at the children of those heroes.”

“And what do I get out of this?” Bright questioned.

“Vengeance,” Slade responded. “You get to teach those worthless brats a lesson about how costly their arrogance will be.”

“And what is our ultimate plan?” Bright asked.

“You ask a lot of questions,” Lena observed with a hint of irritability. “However, that's a good thing; anybody with a functioning brain should know that sometimes it's the better part of valor to look a gift horse in the mouth. Our ultimate plan is relatively simple; the difference between `superheroes' and `super-villains' is a matter of perspective. We intend to invert the perspectives of the public, to make those who have made our lives a hell see what it's like to be regarded as no better than we are.”

“And how are we going to do that?” Bright asked. “Not that it isn't a rather ingenious plan, but I'd like details.”

Lena smiled. “Inquisitive woman, aren't you? I trust you, as you see our plan unfold, you'll have very few complaints.”

In Jump City, Mercury was battling the Hell's Blitzkriegs. Despite his doppelganger's attempts at dismantling the Velocity 11-manufacturing ring, the ring had resurfaced with the even more potent Velocity 12. The Hell's Blitzkriegs had seized the opportunity and were now even faster than before, but not by much. Still, their numbers, combined with their speed, made them a challenge for the platinum-haired speedster.

It had started when he spotted something moving faster than any normal human could, knocking over a woman and taking her purse. He'd quickly taken off after it, shifting into his costume as he did so. As he'd gotten closer, he'd realized it'd been a Hell's Blitzkrieg and he was ready to apprehend the speed thief when he'd been blitzed by several other Blitzkriegs.

“You're going to pay for what you did to us, you freak,” one of them had said to him. Mercury didn't bother explaining that it'd been another version of him that had so brutalized them; the explanation would be lost on them. Instead, he'd opted to begin kicking ass and kick ass he did.

At the present moment, Mercury ran up the wall of a building and turned in mid-run, launching himself off the wall and into a kick that caught a Blitzkrieg in the jaw. Several more Blitzkriegs attempted to gang up on him from all sides, only for him to fight them off as well. He socked one in the jaw and turned to kick another one before moving to a third and kneeing him in the stomach. The fourth was caught in the nose by Mercury's elbow and the fifth was ready to keep fighting when a silver blur suddenly began defeating the Blitzkriegs with ease.

Mercury narrowed his eyes in irritation. “I had them!” he protested.

“Sure you did, Mercury,” a voice answered with friendly mocking. The blur stopped to reveal a strawberry blond teenage boy dressed in a skintight silver suit with a golden lightning-like stripe over the left shoulder and extending to the right side. The right sleeve and side of his torso were colored dark blue, as were the left side of his torso and the outsides of his legs. On his legs, the blue took on a lightning-like design. His face was boyishly handsome, his eyes concealed only by a pair of silvery goggle-glasses with lightning-styled stems.

“Hermes,” Mercury groaned. “You mind not jumping in when I have a situation handled?”

“I don't get what your problem is,” Hermes said. “I'm only trying to help.”

“Maybe if your team wasn't badmouthing mine so much, we might get along better,” Mercury retorted sarcastically.

“They're just calling it like they see it,” Hermes commented. “You guys do tend to keep your distance from the civilian population.”

“And how do you figure we do that?” Mercury questioned. “Our identities are known to the public and we go to school with normal humans. That doesn't make what you say we do easy.”

“It's possible to surround yourself with people and never have genuine contact with them,” Hermes replied calmly. “But I think the problem is that you just don't understand normal people. I've done my research on you new Titans; you were born with your powers and even if you didn't manifest them at birth, most of you had at least one parent who was in the hero life. You never had a chance to be normal, to see things through our eyes.”

“You're not so normal yourself,” Mercury rejoined.

“I was, once,” Hermes said. “My powers were a freak accident, but I spent most of my life a normal human, so I can understand them a hell of a lot better than you can.”

Mercury didn't have an answer for him. Instead, he said, “I've got better ways to waste my time than debate with you. See ya.” He sped away, leaving Hermes to shake his head bemusedly.

The platinum speedster returned to Titans Tower with a scowl on his face, something Beast Girl noticed. “You only look like that when you run into Hermes,” she commented. “Was that what happened?”

“Sanctimonious prick,” Mercury spat. “He's only been at this for what, a month? And he and those Infinity, Inc. kids think they know how to fight crime better than we do.”

“They're just doing it for notoriety's sake,” Samara said. “A lot of the younger new heroes try to `prove' themselves by clashing with the more established heroes. It's not a big deal, not in and of itself . . .”

“But what?” Inferno prodded softly.

“There's something about this Infinity, Inc., something I don't like,” Samara went on. “There's just . . . something foul about them.”

“Think it has something to do with Lena Luthor actually supporting their right to fight crime?” Bladefire asked. “That's enough to make me suspicious; Lena hates metas about as much as her father did. The fact that she'd support Infinity, Inc. and even give them that name herself makes me think something's up with them.”

“You know who's got to be pissed off about that name?” Mercury asked. “The original Infinity, Inc., what's left of them, anyway.”

Nightstar removed her interface headset and joined her fellow Titans. “I've been monitoring the news and it doesn't sound good for us,” she said.

“What do you mean?” Beast Girl asked.

“They were debating new legislation that would allow the government to basically outlaw metahuman vigilantism,” Nightstar replied. “For any metahumans not affiliated with the government.”

“To hell with that,” Mercury spat. “How are we supposed to fight crime if we have to wait for them to tell us what crimes we're supposed to be fighting?”

“It makes sense if you look at it from a normal person's point of view,” Nightstar said. “Over the past fifteen or twenty years, people have started to think that we might be just as bad as the people we fight in our own way.”

“How the hell are they going to think that?” Beast Girl asked. “We protect people!”

“Nova Blue was partly created to fight us,” Bladefire replied. “And I hope you haven't forgotten what happened when Peter was in the Speed Force.”

Nobody was going to forget so easily what happened when Mercury was in the Speed Force. During that time, his place in this dimension had been supplanted by a psychotic doppelganger from a darker universe, a universe where Beast Girl had been killed and a vengeful Mercury had become a superhuman killer of criminals. The darker Mercury had continued his activities in this dimension, only to be stopped by this dimension's Mercury when he returned from the Speed Force. A lot of damage control had followed, with the Titans emphatically explaining to the public that the killer Mercury was by no means the same Mercury that had been fighting alongside them since they'd come together. Of course, some people - even if they were convinced that there really had been two Mercuries - took this incident as a point in favor of their belief that metahuman heroes were dangerous.

“Right now, it's just tension,” Nightstar said. “Nobody's made a definite decision either way, but it'll take only one incident - just one - to convince the American people that we can't be trusted. Once that happens, the government will pass that piece of legislation and we'll have to make some pretty hard decisions.”

“Do you think some heroes will be in favor of this legislation?” Inferno asked.

“What makes you ask that?” Mercury asked.

“Not everyone has our resources,” Inferno answered. “Not everyone has a headquarters equipped with the finest technology known to man and augmented with extraterrestrial tech. Not everyone has our connections. Those people would be quite tempted by what government affiliations could offer.”

“We've been fine without the help or interference of the government for decades,” Samara stated. “This is more about controlling us than about protecting the public.”

“You may be right, but we don't have to worry about it just yet, do we?” Beast Girl asked.

In the Society's hovering headquarters, invisible to radar and high enough in the air to evade the sight of people on the ground, Slade and Ravager walked down the halls. The mastermind and his daughter said nothing to each other as they walked. Both had their minds only on their destination. Slade anticipated what he was going to show his daughter, apprentice, and partner with a dark smile underneath his mask. Ravager curiously wondered what her father, teacher, and partner had to show her.

Finally, they came before a door and Slade opened it. He stepped in first and Ravager followed, Slade moving aside to let her pass. Once she stepped in, she noticed some very familiar people looking at her and two she didn't quite recognize. The three were a pink-haired girl, a dark-haired young woman, and a dark-haired young man. The other two were a woman dressed in a red-highlighted black version of the Flash costume and a white-haired teenage boy dressed in skintight black with a wire-slash-circuit pattern on his costume.

“You,” the pink-haired girl hissed. She wore a black-and-purple corset with a black leather sleeve large enough to partly obscure her right hand and a mesh sleeve on the left arm with a black leather bracer. Her pants were leather as well and laced up at the sides, a half-cape extending from her waistline. She wore a leather collar that covered almost her entire neck and styled her hair in the same messy twin pom-poms style for which she'd been known back in the H.I.V.E. Academy.

“Hex,” Ravager sneered. “Still bitter?”

A look from Slade silenced Hex and cowed the other four into not saying anything against Ravager. “Ravager, I'd like you to meet the new Tartarus. Hex, Gemini, and Dr. Blaze you already know. The Black Flash and Fray have yet to make your acquaintance, but you'll get to know them. You'll have to, since you'll be leading them.”

“Leading them?” Ravager echoed. “For what?”

“Against the Titans,” Slade replied. “I put you all together because you can counter the Titans. Ravager, you can match Nightstar in physical combat. Hex, you're a sorceress like Samara and you have an edge that she does not: your speed bursts. Gemini, you're a polymorph, whereas Beast Girl can only take animal and animal-like shapes. Dr. Blaze, you and Inferno are perfect enemies. Black Flash, your time control makes you faster than even a speedster on the order of the Flash, so Mercury shouldn't be a problem for you. Fray, Bladefire will be dealt with by you.”

Gemini stretched her fingers into deadly blades. “I'll enjoy cutting the little green bitch to pieces . . . and mailing each one to her bastard father.”

Fray shook his head in silent derision, derision that didn't remain silent when he said, “Obsession isn't healthy.”

Gemini glared at the white-haired boy. “Screw you.”

“I know you want to,” Fray taunted.

“Enough,” Slade declared, locking his one-eyed glare on the bickering duo. “Such childishness is unbecoming of you. Your frustrations are better directed at your foes than at each other. Now . . . it's time to plan our first move.”

End Notes: Well, there's the setup for this arc. It's going to be a pretty wide-spanning arc and there'll be a lot of turmoil for the Teen Titans and the Justice League, what with the machinations of both the Society and the government. Yes, there will be government machinations in this arc and those machinations will intertwine with the Society's machinations. No, they're not going to be working together; one will provoke the other, but they will not have a direct connection.

To identify the Leaguers that appear in this future, the Batman here you already know as Tim Drake from his previous cameos in Future Storm. Superman here is Kon-El, a.k.a. Conner Kent, a.k.a. the modern Superboy of Teen Titans and the earlier Young Justice. Wonder Woman I already identified as Cassie Sandsmark, a.k.a. Wonder Girl in Young Justice and Teen Titans. The Flash here is Bart Allen, who is currently filling that role in the new Flash comics but was better known as Impulse and the second Kid Flash from Young Justice and Teen Titans, and whom you should already remember from his previous appearances in Future Storm. Scarlet Archer is Mia Dearden, a.k.a. the new Speedy in the Green Arrow comics and briefly in Teen Titans. Static here is borrowed from Bruce Timm and Paul Dini's animated DCU, the future of which sees him as a member of the Justice League. The Green Lantern here is an original character.

Black Adam, for those of you who don't know who he is, is essentially the evil/anti-heroic version of Captain Marvel: same powers, darker attitude. The Calculator is basically an evil Oracle. You should have some memory of Lena Luthor from her previous appearance in “Gehenna” and I don't even need to tell you who Slade is.

There, enough of my explanations. Time for you guys to let me know what you think of this beginning chapter of my final arc for this series.