Legacy of the Tamaranian

[Chaltab]

Author's Note: The events of this story deviate a bit from the series timeline, so any inconsistencies with the series you see are either creative decisions on my part, or things I did my own way because the series hadn't said one way or another yet. For example, the Titans not knowing that Beast Boy's first name was Garfield. I started this fanfic months before Homecoming II aired. It was deleted recently, but it's now back, and will be free of any offenses this time. Anyways, I hope you enjoy.

Please note that my original character may seem a bit like a Gary Stu at first, but if you'll read to the end you'll see that there is more to his past than he lets on early on, and that it isn't all flattering or pleasant.

A oooo or 0000 indicate a scene break.
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In the United States, on the coast of California, there is a City called Jump. It is a nice town, mostly, sunny, but with suitably snowy winters. Unfortunately, this nice town was often plagued by metahumans and mad scientists with dark desires, and at the moment, the five teens that defended the city from these things were terribly busy.

Big Sister had returned.

A series of explosions broke pre-rush-hour calm. A feminine figure with jet-black hair streaked through the sky, followed closely by five pursuers. The dark female, the Tamaranian Warrior Blackfire, was intent on only one thing. She had to avenge the humiliation of defeat. Starfire had to die. And when she was gone, and the humiliation avenged, then Komand'r of Tamaran could finally achieve ultimate power.

All she had to do was finish off her sister.

When there's trouble, you know who to call (TEEN TITANS!)
From their tower, they can see it all (TEEN TITANS!)
When there's evil on the attack
You can rest knowing they got your back
'Cause when the world needs heroes on patrol
TEEN TITANS, GO!
TEEN TITANS, GO!
With their super powers, they unite (TEEN TITANS!)
Never met a villain that they liked (TEEN TITANS!)
They got the bad guys on the run
They never stop until the job gets done
'Cause when the world is losing all control
TEEN TITANS, GO!
One-Two-Thee-Four-Go!
Teen Titans!

Convinced the chase had sufficiently tired the others, Blackfire reached for her belt. She had to activate the pods containing her surprises: seven Loblaxdon pods strategically placed around the city that would spawn enormous deadly creatures. Creatures the Teen Titans would be forced to fight. Creatures that could kill them.

But not Starfire. Her little sister would be far too busy driving Blackfire off her adopted homeworld to worry about some worms. And then, when Starfire was alone, she would strike. Starfire wouldn’t stand a chance this time. A distant speck grew into a figure: Starfire was here.

“You shouldn’t have come back, big sister,” said Star firmly “I will now be forced to do what is called the 'whoop' to your butt.”

“Just try me, sister dear,” replied Blackfire. “Just try me.”

Starfire, determined to thwart whatever evil plot her sister had planned, launched herself at Blackfire, making contact, fist to face. Blackfire returned with a set of quick jabs and spinning kick. The kick impacted on Starfire’s abdomen, sending her off course. She flew back, and charged again, letting loose a flurry of eye-beams. But Blackfire skillfully dodged the projectiles and countered with a pair of deadly starbolts.

Starfire flew low to avoid them and drop-kicked at Blackfire, but hit only air. Suddenly, Blackfire was right next to her, and fired a starbolt at point-blank, knocking Starfire to the ground. Star struggled to her feet, just as Blackfire's fist drove a hole into the ground where she had lain seconds earlier. Blackfire was out for blood.

“Surrender, Sister,” insisted Starfire.

Blackfire just scoffed and flew up high, blasting eye-beams at the pursuing Starfire. Starfire skillfully dodged the flurry and countered with her own eye-beams. Blackfire blocked them with her gauntlets, but couldn’t defend against her sister’s haymaker. The punch sent sharp agonies through Blackfire’s face, knocking her back towards the stars.

Suddenly, the ground below the Tamaranians began to rumble.

"I think you underestimate us,” Starfire said, expecting the surprise guest to arrive at any minute. But instead, what appeared to be giant worms made of stone burst out of the ground.

Starfire gasped! “Loblaxdonese Vordlaxian Wyrms!”

”Of course, sister,” Blackfire screamed. “You think that I would come unprepared for this fight?”

Then the wyrms opened their mouths to reveal Starfire’s friends.
Loblaxdon Wyrms were known for two things: a hunger for stone, and the ability to turn organic matter into said stone to be ingested. So when Starfire saw Beast Boy, Raven, Cyborg, and Robin in the mouths of the four leviathans, she panicked!

”RELEASE THEM!” she yelled at her sister.

”Only if you surrender, my dear Koriand’r. You know that only the last of the Tamaranians can enter the sacred temples and retrieve the artifacts!”

“Last?” Normally peppy or angry—or just plain confused—Starfire was shocked to find herself in such abject horror at her sister’s words. “What do you mean last, Sister?”

”You don’t know?” Komand’r’s eyes narrowed and her lips twisted into a disgusted frown.

”What have you done to our planet!?” Starfire demanded.

”I did nothing,” Blackfire said. She betrayed no glee or sadness. Just intensity.


“Five of this planet's Lunar-cycles ago, a meteor made of pure Zynothium crashed into the planet. Nobody survived."

”I don’t believe you!” Starfire lied.

“Like it or not, Sister, it is the truth. And I am claiming the Catalysts for myself!” She charged at Starfire…

Right into a huge wall of rock! No, she wasn’t that stupid or uncoordinated; the wall had jutted up from the ground at the last minute, and she couldn’t avoid it.

But where had it come from? Was Terra not still a statue?

Well, yes. The effects of the petrification might have eventually worn off... in another place, another timeline. But here, Trigon still lived. The Brotherhood of Evil had not attacked. Slade was still an undead minion of Raven's father...

And really, who says Terra has to be the only earth-mover on the planet?

A new figure burst from the ground now, sporting what appeared to be a suit of green body armor. His hair was black, laid back on top but spiked on the back of his head. Over his face he wore what looked like sunglasses, but where really threat-assessment goggles. This guy is called Ragnarök. And obviously, he posesses a similar power to Terra. He moves earth, albeit with less power and more fine control.

Or more accurately, his armor responds to whatever is powering it and reacts accordingly, and since it had an artifact that moved earth in it when its owner found it, it moved earth.

”Acquaintance Ragnarök!” Starfire yelled as she flew down to the guy who had defeated her sister. “Were you successful in your attempts to revive our comrade Terra?”

”Sorry,” he sighed. “Whatever she did to herself, I think she’s stuck that way. Nothing I can do anyway.”

Kori's face became sad upon hearing that.

”Not so fast!” a voice came from above. Komand’r stood on a nearby knoll, pointing her right arm at the two Titans. “You know you’re no match for… me!” Blackfire let loose a flurry of her violet energy blasts, and Starfire and Ragnarök scattered.

Star used her laser vision and sent a twin beam at her evil sister, while Rag used his ability to move earth to launch a chunk of ground at Komand’r. As expected, she dodged the rock into the path of Star’s blast, but then suddenly she flipped over it as it came, with speed Starfire didn’t think she could match, and lashed out with more red starbolts.

”Sister, cease this assault! I wish to know more about our home world's demise!” Koriand'r pleaded.

”You know enough! HAAH!” a huge magenta ball of light appeared in Blackfire’s hands, and she hurled it at Starfire.

It slammed into Kori’s chest, knocking her backwards into a statue of former president Lex Luthor. “Ouch.”

Ragnarök took his cue and hurled stone fragments at Komand’r, which she dodged or destroyed, But he mixed in a sharp metal shard or two, and those cut the angry Tamaranian, making her even angrier... if that were possible.

”You cut me! Dare you defile the body of the heir to the grand Tamaranian powers?” Blackfire wiped the orange flud from her face... and then she screamed.

As Starfire had driven a starbolt-enhanced fist into her spinal column, and detonated the blast. “I did not want to hurt you, sister. But I will if I must.” Kori’s right hook caught the older sibling in the face and sent her plummeting towards the ground… right towards Ragnarök!

”Aahh!” screamed the young man, erecting a hastily made barrier of rock and metal. A jagged pipe from below the street, probably a sewer line or drainage pipe, was part of the assembly. As Komand’r crashed into the structure,

Ragnarök leapt backwards as to not get crushed…

In the end, the point was just too sharp. Blackfire was impaled on the end of his shield. “Holy crap!” he exclaimed. “I killed her!”

Starfire gasped in horror! “No! Sister! I did not mean it!” She flew down to the dying Tamaranian. “Forgive me Komand’r!”

Oddly, the expression on Blackfire’s face wasn’t really sad, or angry. More like a resigned expression of one who has accepted her fate. She handed Starfire a small lavender object.

”Take it, little sister. Only a Tamaranian can find it. Only you can open the doors…”

And then Komand’r of Tamaran was gone. And Starfire began to cry. True, her sister was evil and wanted to kill her. But… Starfire had never wanted this…
Her eyes flared green with anger. She flew over to their new potential ally, who was nursing a cut on his leg. She said nothing, but the look in her eyes and face said it all—a terrible, painful mix of fury and sadness. Ragnarök's heart broke for her...

But he couldn't let her see that! Not yet.

So he put on an air of defensiveness.

”It was an accident! And besides, I think you need to worry about saving your friends up there.” Rag pointed to the giant Wyrms. And the stone Titans who would soon be digested.

Starfire buried her sadness and anger and lifted off. She had friends to rescue.

[Chaltab]

Legacy of the Tamaranian
Chapter Two
Starfire cursed in her native tongue as she flew at the duo of worms to her left. Her new ally apparent Ragnarök ran towards the other two—those holding Cyborg and Raven—with a large rock sword in one hand. But that was unimportant. She had to save Robin and Beast Boy, and she had to put the other thoughts out of her mind. She rushed the worm containing Robin and hurled a pair of Starbolts at it, and then dodged away as it swiped at her.


”Swiper—NO SWIPING!” she yelled as she let loose a flurry of eye lasers at the base of the worm. It crumbled under her angry assault and Starfire swooped down as the dying worm regurgitated her leader and caught him. He was barely conscious; there was no way he could help her fight.


Kori turned her attention to the other Vordlaxian Wyrm and attempted the same attack. But the one holding Beast Boy must have been smarter, because it moved it’s stony carapace downward to block her assault. Starfire tried to fire at an exposed section of the creature, but it its tail out from under the streets of Jump City and slammed into the warrior princess, knocking her backwards…


…right into the worm holding Cyborg. She smashed through the rocky shell of the worm’s armor and found herself trapped inside its putrid innards! She couldn’t see much, and she couldn’t breath. Panicking, she struggled to escape but found no way to free herself from the belly of the beast… Starfire hurled a starbolt straight up, (or at least her best guess at up) and must have hit something important because the Wyrm began writhing. Its violent death throes shook Starfire out of the monster and she took a well-needed breath of air.


Ragnarök landed beside her. “Are you alright, Starfire?”
”I am fine,” she replied, standing up. The Wyrm holding Raven was impaled by many shards of rock and metal from the ground nearby. It was clearly dead or dying. Same for the one Koriand’r had toasted from the inside out. So all that remained was the Wyrm holding Beast Boy.


”Hey Star,” Rag said, stepping in front of the person he was addressing, “Two and two, right? This one’s mine!” Ragnarök couldn’t ride flying earth like Terra had been able to. So to launch, he just made the ground explode up beneath his feet and launch him skyward at the towering Vordlaxian Wyrm.
To Starfire’s surprise, he landed on the monster’s head and formed a rock sword and cut Beast Boy loose. Then he used his powers to turn the rock carapace on the worms against it, constricting the creature with its own natural armor.


”I find your lack of challenge disturbing!” Rag quipped as he squeezed the life out of the Wyrm. It fell to the ground, dead, though the effort appeared to tire Ragnarök severely. “Well… Maybe the challenge... wasn’t entirely lacking…”


“Very well done,” Starfire, still covered in worm guts, told Ragnarök.


”Tell me that again when I wake up…” Rag said. Then he passed out.


oooo


A few hours later, the Titans were together in Tower, recovering from their earlier ordeal. Ragnarök had strained some muscles and needed a very long nap, but Robin, (who had sustained very little injury due to the fact he was asleep for most of the battle and that Starfire had been very careful not to hurt him) wanted to question (that is to say, violently interrogate) their new hopeful member.


Raven did her best to heal Starfire’s minor wounds, but her empathetic healing powers could only hold so much of Starfire’s distracting emotion, and that was more powerful than the pain of her injuries. There was little Raven could do but wait as well. And Beast Boy had been trying to shrug off the traumatic experience by engrossing himself in the new Mangler Brothers video game.


Starfire herself had retreated to the roof of the tower to think after Raven had declared she had done all she could in the way of healing. What had Blackfire meant about their home world being destroyed? How could a planet simply cease to exist? What had destroyed it? And what was Koriand’r, Princess of Tamaran to do now if her sister was indeed truthful and her people really were gone.


”Galfore,” Starfire whispered to herself. He had been her K’norfger as a child. Was he really gone? Would she never see her people again? She began scratching the belly of her pet, Silkie


“Hey, Star, what’s up?” Victor Stone, AKA Cyborg asked as he approached her.


”Oh, it is nothing,” Starfire lied, rubbing her pet giant bug with short, nervous, and probably painful strokes


“Doesn’t look like nothing’,” Victor said. “Is this about us almost getting eaten by those crazy stone snakes? 'Least they weren't on a plane.”


Star laughed at his joke. “No, Cyborg… My sister told me things today. Terrible, horrible things that I hope to X'hal aren’t true.”


”What things?” Cyborg asked her.


“I do not wish to discuss them further, Victor. Shall we go inside?”


“Yeah. I came out here to tell you that your friend is awake. You know Robin isn’t too happy about you randomly accepting help from a total stranger. And the fact that he showed up and had us distracted no more than 30 minutes before Blackfire attacked has Robin more than a little suspicious.”


“Robin does not like Acquaintance Ragnarök?”


“Star… You know he’s been uptight about new members since Terra betrayed us. There’s no way he’ll trust him. I don’t trust him. And I’m surprised you do. From now on knew members will have to earn our trust. We can’t make another Judas Contract, Kori.”


The Biblical reference eluded the alien girl, but she asked no questions. The two simply went inside and prepared for Robin and the rookie from nowhere to come to blows.


“OK,” Robin was saying. “You call yourself Ragnarök.”


”Didn’t we establish this five hours ago?”


“That meeting was sort of rushed with, I don’t know, your insistence on leading us to the caves under the city so you could revive Terra!”


“Well… I thought it would help you trust me more. I’m sorry I couldn’t do it. I’ve un-petrified tree’s before, but whatever Terra did to herself, I can’t undo with my current powers.”


“Current powers? That reminds me: how did you get your current powers?” Robin studied young earthmover. He looked to be about 15 years old. He still hadn’t given them his real name yet. And Robin just didn’t trust him something about him seemed... false. He would ask Raven to read his mind later.


“Would you lay off the questions if I told you? Don’t you have some sort of database for metahumans?”


”It could be more thorough,” Robin sighed in consternation. In this time line, there was no Oracle.


“Fair enough. My name is Collin Roberts. My grandfather was a dealer in various rare antiquities and ancient artifacts. I’d tell you his name but it’s mostly black market stuff and I don’t want to get him in trouble. You’ve probably heard of him. Anyway. I was searching in his basement one night and found some sort of green orb with a pattern. I thought it looked cool. Grampa said I could have any one thing I wanted for my birthday; I liked the design on the orb, so I took it with me and kept looking. I eventually found another artifact that looked like it fit into the design on the green orb. So I put them together…”


“Let me guess,” Raven interjected. “They flew into the air with magical swirly lines and bright flashing lights and colors and you passed out. When you awoke, you had that suit on and the ability to control the ground.” Raven’s tone was sarcastic, but not incredulous.


“Pretty much,” replied Collin. “But I didn’t black out… for a while. I blacked out that night and didn’t actually have the ability to move earth until a few days later. Or at least… I didn’t notice it until a few days later. I was always a bit of a klutz when it came to bodily functions.”


Garfield Logan, AKA Beast Boy, sweatdropped. “You mean you wet the bed? Dude that is so gross and way too much information!” He randomly started gagging in place in exaggerated anime motions.


Collin followed Gar in his sweatdropping, and then turned red with embarrassment. “Well that didn’t come out right… I just meant that… I'm a bit clumsy. I tend to break things and not notice what I've done until someone screams about it in my ear. Stuff like that.”


Beast Boy visibly exhaled steam. “Phew. That’s a relief.”


“May I be the one who vouches for Friend Collin?” Starfire asked the group. Robin nodded in consent, so Kori continued, “as you know, Ragnarök fought with me against my sister’s devious Wyrms of death while the rest of you, my friends, were trapped in their mouths awaiting digestion. He fought with bravery and valor unbecoming of a villain. I know the sting of Tara Markov’s betrayal makes us weary of trusting new members too quickly, but given the benefit of the doubt, I believe Collin will prove himself a champion of justice!”


“Thanks for the props, Starfire,” Collin said. He moved closer to speak more personally. "I thought you'd be a bit angrier after me... killing your sister and all."


"I have accepted that it was not your fault, Collin, but mine. I should have been more careful. I must live with this--you did your job quite well."
Just then, an alarm klaxon began to wail. Cyborg got to the computer first.



“Trouble. Someone’s knocking over a bank. Metahuman by the reports. Flamethrower type.”


Robin shook his head. “Hasn't this city seen enough for one day? The initiations will have to wait. Move out, Titans."
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Author's Note: I'm sorry again if it seems as though Ragnarok is a Gary Stu. This will be remedied by the end of the next chapter, I promise.

[Chaltab]

This chapter has a Static Shock Crossover.
_________________________


Robin doubted if it would work. Not because of arrogance, no. Well. Not his own arrogance. Collin “Ragnarök” Roberts had been altogether far too self-assured. And if Starfire’s description of the battle against the Wyrms held any merit then, there was no way that he was the newbie he claimed to be. He had most certainly had training; either self-training… or he had learned from someone else.


What upset Robin the most, though, was that he interacted with the Titans with an eerie air of familiarity. It was as if he knew them, as if he had met them before, and yet Robin was sure he hadn’t, and nobody else knew who he was. Robin had sent a message asking his mentor Batman to search the Watchtower's enormous database of metahumans and super powered artifact-wielding heroes, aliens…


But there was nothing. As far as Batman, supposedly the world’s greatest detective (Besides Robin himself, of course) could tell, this specific Collin Roberts didn’t exist in any of the 50 States.


“Cyborg,” Robin said, using Victor’s personal frequency, “Is it just me or is there something about that guy that doesn’t seem right?”


”He seemed alright to me, Tim,” replied Cyborg. “Are you sure you’re just not a bit jealous of Starfire’s taking to him?”


”Of course not.” But part of him wondered if that was the truth.


”If you say so, man.”


Meanwhile, high above the T-Car and R-Cycle, Starfire flew, holding on Collin. His ability to launch himself with rocks was pretty ineffectual over Jump City’s bay.


”Are you sure this isn’t too much trouble, Ko..Starfire?”


“Of course not, Friend Collin,” she replied. “I am glad to be of assistance.” And that was the truth. Sure, a sudden addition to the team would create a bit of a logistics problem, but leaving a new member alone at the Tower would be an act of the utmost stupidity, especially someone who possessed earth-shattering powers as Ragnarök did. But it was more than helping out. There was something about him… or perhaps not Collin himself, but something... surrounding him. She certainly did not feel the same way about this stranger as she did about Robin; three years and something more was a gap that Collin didn’t begin to cross.


It was more of an aura, something that flared when he used his powers, as if her home world of Tamaran was calling her, and as if he possessed some of it. Later, she would confide in the original five what she suspected. But for now, she would focus. They had criminals to foil.


”There, up ahead,” Raven said as she hovered closer to Kori. “I feel a lot of fear in that bank. They must have taken hostages…”


In another universe, with a different history, long before events destroyed worlds and worlds fused into one, there had been a precursor to the Justice League, and a lair before the Watchtower. It had been called the Hall of Justice.
Jump City Federal Bank faintly resembled this structure, but something like five extra stories, with walls of red brick, jutted from the top of this base. It was, an altogether fairly ugly structure, Starfire thought as she landed.
Beside her, the changeling Beast Boy transformed from a crow back into his humanoid form and landed. Raven hovered in beside them, and Robin and Cyborg soon followed in their respective vehicles.


“Report?” Robin asked Raven as he jumped off his bike and ran over, quickly lodging himself in the middle of the group as closely as he could to Starfire.


”Panic,” Raven replied. “They have taken hostages.”


”They?” Robin asked.


”There are two… people in the bank that aren’t in state of mild-to extreme panic.”


”Think I could sneak in there as a Spider and bite ‘em?” Beast Boy asked.


”Venom will take too long to be effective.” Robin replied. “And if they feel you bite, they might start shooting.”


Gar Logan looked rather discouraged. But typically, he shrugged it off.
Cyborg soon joined them, after fulfilling his standard role as police-relations. He did this because his T-Car more closely resembled the myriad law enforcement vehicles than anything else in the Titan’s collective arsenal. And something about his computerized ability to store hundreds of criminal profiles in the hard drive his right thigh made him very useful to the cops.


“According to the cops, they have about 5 tellers and 15 clients trapped in there, and have threatened to start burning them if anyone comes inside.”


”They’re both walking flame-throwers?” Collin’s gestures seemed almost comical. “This is just great.”


”I have an ID on one of them,” Cyborg continued. “Name is Hideo Kawabe, calls himself Flare. He thinks he is the son of the Japanese thunder god Raiden. Clinically insane. Not the type we want to be dealing with.”


”Ooh… All this standing around is giving me the triggering itchy finger.” Starfire complained. “I wish to stop them now, please.”


Robin was more focused on knowing who he was facing. “What about the other one?”


”Hotstreak." The voice was not one of the Titans, but it was familiar to Robin. “Real name is Francis Stone, calls himself F-Stop.”


The Titans looked up and had to squint as a brightly glowing circle blinded them. Crackling with electricity, it hovered by manipulating Earth’s magnetic field.


“Static.” Robin smiled. It had been a while.


”The one and only.” Replied Static Shock, a black teen superhero also known as Virgil Hawkins. “Nice to see your voice has finally broken, Robin. And nice pants.”



Indeed, Robin realized, the last time they had met in Dakota City four years ago, he had been merely Batman’s child sidekick, and had worn red pants to differentiate himself from the first Robin, Dick Grayson, and to confuse The Joker into thinking he was the second Robin, Jason Todd… who had tragically died in an explosion some years back. (The Joker did NOT like it when his murdered victims continued to thwart his evil plots.)


”Right,” replied Robin. “You’ve gotten a new outfit yourself. Actually, I like the old one better.”


Virgil just glanced dangerously at Robin.


”Please, Tim, I am confused…” Starfire said. “You know this purple and black one here?”


“He saved mine and Batman’s life, actually,” returned Robin.


”Your name is Tim?” asked Static. “Funny. I always figured you more of a Richard or Justin.”


“Forget it. We can catch up later. We have criminals to catch. You know this guy, Hotspit?”


”Hotstreak,” Static corrected. “He’s one of the local villains up in Dakota. Surely you remember the flaming hair guy? We got in a meta-scuffle a few days ago, and a bystander got killed. He’s been on the run ever since, and I’ve been after him.”


”Hm... That day is a bit vague, what with the Joker almost killing me and all. I sort of shut it out. You said his name was Stone?” Robin glanced at Cyborg “Any relation of yours?”


Cyborg shrugged.


"I doubt it,” Virgil said. “He’s a cracker, if you know what I mean. By the way, who is this guy?” He said, thumbing towards Ragnarök.


”New recruit,” Robin answered, as Raven stepped forward and Ragnarök fumed. “Raven?”


”I have a plan,” she said.


A few moments later, the daughter of Trigon was on the roof of the bank. Beast Boy fluttered over to her and regained his human shape. “They seem to be arguing, Rae, so you should be good to go. You sure you can pull this off?”


”I’ve learned a lot since I did this to Jinx,” she replied.
Summoning her dark powers, she transformed into the form of a giant raven and swooped down into the bank, phasing through the walls and floors and ceilings. The two pyrokenetics ceased their argument when they saw Raven appear, and began to run. But there wasn’t much they could do as the two massive talons grabbed them and dragged them out of the bank and threw them on the concrete. Raven emerged from the dark energy and fell to the ground, tired by the technique.


“Titans, GO!” Robin yelled.


“I told you we were taking too long,” Hotstreak yelled at the Japanese teen that Raven had evicted along side him.


“Not at all,” replied Flare. “I wanted this confrontation!”
Beast Boy swooped down as a Pterodactyl at the two, but Flare leapt up and threw a huge ball of fire. “DENZETZU NO GAIZEN!” he yelled.
The ball of fire consumed Beast Boy, and the green superhero crashed into one of the cop-cars.


”Oh crap!” Cyborg yelled. He activated his Sonic canon and fired once at Flare, and then once at Hotstreak. Both shots missed, and the duo of pyrokenetics launched a barrage of fireballs and Cyborg dodged a couple and broke into a dead run to get away.


“Azarath, metrion…” Several empty police cars hovered off the ground, coated in black energy.


“Um.. Flare…” Hotstreak nudged his ally. Or boss. Or whatever their relationship was.


“ZINTHOS!” Raven yelled, hurling the quartet of cars at the duo of criminals. They shot fire at the vehicles in defense, and Robin gasped out loud as the two directed at Flare melted away in the heat. This guy was powerful…
Hotstreak, on the other hand, tried to burn the cars, failed, and decided to run all in the space of about 2.324 seconds. And run he did, right into Static’s fist.



“Hey, Francis. Where’s the fire?”


Hotstreak responded by forcing streams of said fire into Virgil’s chest, and Static went flying across the bank’s courtyard.



“If that’s the way you want it.” Static used his electrokenesis to tear the doors off several cop-cars and then threw them at Hotstreak.


Using magnetic fields, he wrapped a nearby light pole around the fire-based criminal and then piled the car doors on top of him. “See. If you burn your way out of this one, you get third degree burns from the metal. How’s that?”
Satisfied by the terror and hate in F-Stop’s eyes, Static returned his attention to the other pyromaniac, Flare. Apparently Raven’s car throwing had distracted him long enough for Robin to get in close, because Robin was beating the crap out of him with his metal staff by the time Static turned around.


Robin smashed his staff downward toward Flare’s feet, and then reversed upward smashing him in the face. Flare backed off and hurled a fireball that Robin deflected and then thrust the staff forward into Flare’s gut, knocking him back.


Fire exploded around Flare, and Robin used his cape to shield himself. When it came off Flare flashed in front of him and planted a double-footed kick into his chest, and sent Robin flying into a nearby hot dog stand, a spork from which flew threw the air and hit a young woman named Mary Sue, who screamed, dropped her Aquafina bottle, and then accidentally stepped on it. This caused water to spray all over Static, shorting him out.


“Foolish mortals,” Flare taunted. “You are NO match for me!”


“I beg to differ,” Robin said, jumping to his feet. He grabbed a smoke bomb from his belt and threw it above Flare, and then signaled for Starfire. The Tamaranian girl blasted forward through the smoke, plowing into Flare and knocking him backwards into the wall of the bank, where Raven quickly appeared and hurled him away with her telekinesis right into a shot from Cyborg’s sonic cannon. Flare crashed into one of the few remaining police cars, which exploded around him, catching fire to nearby trees and bushes.
Indeed, Robin now noticed, much of the bank courtyard was alight. And much to the Titans’ dismay, Flare exploded from the ruins of the car and hovered in the air above the battle zone.


”Great. So he can fly, now too?” This came from the previously inactive Ragnarök. “This is getting old!” He summoned his power. He would rip rocks from the ground and hurl them at Flare…. As the ground began to shake, Rag could feel the power flowing through him. It would be all too easy to rip a huge rock out and smack him out of the sky, the bugger.
So focused he was, that he didn’t notice Robin closing in. And his threat-assessment goggles barely blipped before he felt an incredibly sharp pain smash into the side of his head.


”OUCH! What the snorkel was that for!”
Robin was a tad bit livid. “You can't treat this like a game, Collin. The ground was shaking from whatever you were doing! This has to be done without civilians getting hurt.”


“Right, well...” Rag replied, furious. Robin had no right to hit him! He rubbed his jaw from the pain. He formed a sword of stone. “How about this?”


Make it a club and we’ll talk,” Robin said, hurling a Birdarang full of knockout gas towards Flare, who was preoccupied by Starfire again. But it was vaporized before it got halfway to its target.


”Crud!” Robin bellowed as a fireball hit him.


“As I said,” Flare said, his voice audible throughout the block, “mortals are powerless against me.”


”Last time I checked,” Rag quipped, “I was mortal!” An enormous club made of rock came from 'off-screen' and smashed Flare on the head. Then he gasped in horror as Flare looked at him angrily.


”And you’re powerless.”


Rag fell towards the ground, as he had only launched himself and was still unable to fly. “This is just my luck.” And then a ball of fire blasted him in the chest and sent him hurtling towards the asphalt, where he was caught and quickly dropped by Cyborg.


”You alright?”


“Yeah, thanks for the save.” Rag wiped smoldering ashes from his costume.



“How do we beat this guy?”


”Already in the bag, Cyborg said.”


”Wha?” Rag asked looking back at Cyborg… And suddenly noticed a fire truck with a fire hose hooked to a fire hydrant… and that the said hose was hooked into Cyborg’s right arm, which was transformed into its Sonic Canon mode.


”It’s HOSING TIME!” Cyborg yelled.


”Man, that was lame, Chaltab,” Ragnarök sighed, looking at the ground and shaking his head in embarrassment. One of the bank’s four walls crumbled.


“What the…?” Flare yelled as he was doused with the high-pressure liquid. He fell to the ground, and began hacking and coughing.


”Where in the Negaverse did you get a fire truck, Cyborg?”


”Um… The firemen drove it here to put out the fires. What planet are you from?”


“P3X-229,” replied Ragnarök.

oooo


Meanwhile, Robin and Starfire were busy cuffing Flare and putting him in the back of an armored police vehicle, and making sure it was rather damp an devoid of anything flammable.


”Robin. I have something to say to you,” Starfire said, and the two went off to the far end of the courtyard.


”What are they saying?” Beast Boy asked as Cyborg adjusted his audio receiver. He had the look on his face of one who his learning something exciting he shouldn’t know about.


”Sometimes, secrets are best kept secrets,” Raven said. Black energy suddenly surrounded the receiver and broke it. “No eavesdropping.”

oooo


”Robin, I was hesitant to say this before, but I am sure of it now: The armored suit used by Ragnarok is of Tamaranian origin.”


”And you’re certain of this?” Robin asked.


“Very,” Star replied. “There is something important I must say when we get back to the Tower. It might be a hunt for untamed fowl, but I must leave this planet in search of something. You know of what my sister said. That my planet was destroyed. I believe her. And I must go to the Tamaran system and see for myself. I will explain the rest later, at the Tower…”


”Star…” Robin said. And then she leaned forward and hugged him, and he returned the embrace.


”My planet is dead, Tim,” she sobbed. He just held her.

oooo


“So, see ya later, Static?” Robin said as Virgil finally got his powers to reactivate.


”Sure thing, bro.” Returned Static. “Catch you if you’re ever up north. By the way, your mentor is helping establish a Titans North up in Dakota. You have support in the Yankee states now, so don’t hesitate to ask for anything.”


“This is news,” Robin said, surprised. “Who is on the team?”


”Oh, some locals. Mostly. Me, Gear, SheBang, Rubber Band Man, and that future kid Impulse.”


“From the future, huh?” Robin asked.


”Yeah. He’s the grandson of the second Flash, but he’s even faster. He’s cool and all, but it’s kind of annoying. He disses modern video games because they’re too primitive for him. He won’t play anything that’s not for X-box. Anyway, I’m gone.”


And with that, Static’s mag-board crackled to life and Virgil was gone, levitating the captured Hotstreak beside him.


Later that evening, the Titans five and a half gathered in the large room known as ops, which had a make shift speech-giving platform in an event such as the one tonight. (It had been installed after Cyborg and destroyed Brother Blood’s mechanical body and Robin felt the need to give “Teamwork” speeches.


“Friends and fellow Titans. There is something I must do, and I feel the need to explain why. It is told that when the Tamaranian race has been whittled down to it’s last, that a temple will reveal itself—one on each planet in the star-system. And the temples house the ancient artifacts of Tamaranian power. The Catalysts. My sister gave me the key to these temples, and it will only open for a Tamaranian. You see, friends, I must go and acquire this power to restore my planet to its former glory. That is the sole purpose of the ultimate catalyst. The others are for reestablishing Tamaranian society.


“Unfortunately, the ancients of my people never expected there to be a sole survivor, but anticipated a group, a group that could rebuild the planet. This can never be accomplished now, as I am alone, but I must go. I don’t expect you to understand why, but I must.”


“Kori,” Robin walked up and placed a hand on her shoulder. “We will help you bear this. We’re your friends. And if you want us too, we will go with you to Tamaran.”


Starfire just smiled….


Collin sat up. He knew what he had to do. This is one spaceflight I can’t afford to miss…

[Chaltab]

“Yes, Okay, Thank you,” Robin said as he placed the phone back on the receiver. The video phone in the Steel City Titan Tower’s was on the fritz.

(Though unknown to Robin, this was because of Mas and Menos fighting with Speedy (in super speed, of course) and accidentally bumping into Bumble Bee, causing her to spill her latté all over the device.)

“Well?” Raven asked her team leader. She scratched her arm as the skin-tight flight suits she and Robin were wearing had been a little underused.


”She seemed almost happy to get rid of Mas and Menos for a few days, though I can’t imagine why,” Robin said. “Are you sure you can handle command with just you, Collin, and Gar here alone?”


“I’ll manage.”


”What if Slade shows up again? We couldn’t beat him together with his new powers, so how could you and Best Boy, even with Ragnarok, expect to…?”
Raven cut him off.



“If Slade shows up, I’ll make him wish he’d stayed dead.” She made sure her voice was as intense as Robin had ever heard it. Raven glanced over at Cyborg, at a workbench adjusting his right arm and the sonic canon therein. He was busy; she would get no back up from him.


“Ok. Still, I would be more comfortable if there was someone else… And I have an idea.”


Raven rolled her eyes. Sure, he was giving her command of the Tower while he, Kori, and Cyborg were away, it was a bit condescending to think she needed more protection.


“Hey, Static, this is Robin.”
Murmuring came from the other end of the call.


”I didn’t use the video phone because this one was closer, now listen. Several of us west coast Titans are going away for a while, and I was wondering if perhaps Impulse could help out here until we get back.”
More murmuring


“No, it’s not a vacation! I’m going with Starfire to see her home planet. She thinks it’s been destroyed.”


The murmuring got serious.


”Thanks, Virgil,” Robin said.


Another voice murmured, and Raven thought she heard a brief argument.



Suddenly, a flash of orange and yellow blurred by.


”Fine, I’ll stay here for a few days,” Impulse, said into the phone… ROBIN’S end of the phone.


“You got here from Dakota City THAT fast?” Robin facevaulted.


“Well. V would not shut up until I did. So, let me introduce myself. The name is Bart, and I’m the Speed Force man.”


“Well…” Robin regained his composure. “Welcome to Jump City. We have plenty
of food in ops.”


”If you can call it that,” Raven joked.


“And I’m sure Beast Boy will show you the ins and outs of the Gamestation XL…”


Impulse goggled. “You have a GAME-STATION XL? That system isn’t supposed to be released for another 5 months!”


“Superheroes get dibs on prototypes.” Robin smiled.


“The GSXL is the ONLY system from the 00s still available in the future! I must play it!”


“Sure,” he said. “It’s in ops as well.”


The orange and yellow blur was gone.


Suddenly, a red and white blur rushed into the room as well.


”Mas y Menos, aqui y listo!” said the diminutive Titans in unison. And Robin goggled to see Speedy and his red armor, complete with bow and his absurdly large arsenal of arrows on top of them.


“Hi, Speedy.” Robin said.


“Hey, Bumble Bee was pretty quick to get rid of the three of us, huh?”


“She sent you up here too?” This from Raven. She wouldn’t say anything to his face, but she really did not like Speedy at all. Something about him rubbed her the wrong way. “How about we send him into space with you, Cy, and Star?”


“You all are going into space?”


“Raven,” Robin sighed, “That was supposed to be a secret."
Raven sweatdropped, then regained her composure. “Well, all the more reason to send him with you.”


“Can I come too?” Ragnarök stepped sheepishly into the room.


“I’m not certain that’s a good idea,” said Cyborg, who finally got a break from adjusting his sonic canon.


“I am.” Raven and Robin said simultaneously, loudly, and emphatically. Raven said so because she did not want the responsibility of a new recruit bungling things up for her. And Robin, she suspected wanted to keep an eye on him. A very close eye.


“I agree,” Starfire said, following him into the room, also wearing such a flight suit. Hers was a personalized purple. “I would be most honored if Friend Ragnarok would accompany ourselves on this voyage.”


A fly on the wall that nobody had noticed quickly became Beast Boy. Again, he visibly exhaled steam. “Glad that’s settled. I am so sick and tired of Collin out mangling me at Mangler Brothers!”


“Um…” Robin started at him. “How long have you been in here?”


“Er… Just a little while,” he visibly winced.


“Were you in here while I was changing into my flight suit,” Raven asked him, intently and with a trace of anger. This was too far! She was going to… do something… evil… to him.


”No, of course not,” Beast Boy insisted.


An orange and yellow blur flashed through the room, and flashed back in a split second later holding a glowing yellow lasso, the loop of which was wrapped around Beast Boy. “Were you?” Impulse smiled wickedly.


”Yes!” Gar began to cry. “I’m sorry Raven! Please don’t turn me into anything… unnatural.”


Raven arched an eyebrow, and with a flick of her wrist, Gar became a mouse. That wouldn’t have been a problem normally, since he could just change back. But he was a Pink Mouse. And when he morphed back, he was a pink Beast Boy.


”WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME? I can’t go out like this! I’m PINK!”


“Nothing you didn’t deserve.” Raven smiled.


Beast Boy turned into a large feline and growled at Raven.


“Raven,” Ragnarok asked, “why are you wearing a flight suit anyway? You’re not even going into space.”


“I was, but I changed my mind when I realized that leaving Cyborg and the pink panther here alone together would be an utter disaster. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be in my room, changing back. ALONE.”

oooo


Later that evening, the five were set to leave. Robin took his normal place at the center of the T-Ship, and Starfire and Cyborg sat in the middle two seats behind him. Speedy, the arrow-shooting strong-arm of the Titans East, took the right wing. Robin thought it was fitting that the left wing was occupied by Ragnarok, as he had seemed a rather liberal to even Robin’s centrist sensibilities.


“Ok, we have engine power,” Cyborg said. Robin checked his displays; all lights and indicators were green.


”Activating main thrusters,” Robin said. “Liftoff if three… two… one…”
The T-Ship rocked as Robin initiated the lift of sequence and guided the small vessel up through the earth’s atmosphere into orbit.


”Oh, is this exciting Friend Collin?” Starfire’s voice showed no trace of the somber mood of the trip. “You’re first space flight!”


“Oh. It’s awesome!” Ragnarök said enthusiastically. “So, what does this thing have, a warp nacelle or Hyperdrive?”


“Not quite either. I suppose it’s closer to what they have in Star Wars. Let Star or Cyborg explain it to you.” Robin switched off the comlink with Collin’s compartment and turned on the ship-to-ground communicator.


”Raven here,” came the even tone. She was back in her standard navy leotard and blue cloak.


“So, did you get a read on our new recruit’s mind?”


“Yes. I…” Raven seemed lost for what to say.


“What?”


”I sensed no malevolent intentions as I did in Terra. But there is something… deceptive. I don’t think he’s been fully honest with us, and yet nothing he’s told us has struck me as a lie. It’s more like he’s hiding something.” Robin detected Raven wince, as if she felt a pang of guilt. Raven had her secrets too, he thought.


”And that’s a perfect excuse for me to keep an eye on him,” Robin returned.


”Anyway, we’ve almost got a clear vector. Robin out.” The screen cut off, Raven’s image giving way to a black display. Robin touched a button and the faces of the other four passengers appeared on the screen.


“We’re getting ready to activate the Hyperdrive. Speedy, Collin: This will feel a bit weird, so be prepared.”
Robin saw the computer flash, and saw that the vector for Tamaran was clear.


”Three,” said Cyborg.


”Two,” picked up Koriand’r


“One,” finished Robin. The ship flickered and suddenly launched itself from our star system and began the seven-hour journey to the world of Tamaran.

oooo


“That was intense!” Speedy gasped as the gray blur outside the T-Ship faded to a dull gray due to the photo tropic shielding of the high-strength molybdenum polymer cockpits.


“I think I will be sick to my stomach,” Rag complained. Suddenly, he felt better.



“Unless of course I can play my music!”


“I guess that’s OK,” Cyborg said cautiously.
Suddenly, the opening cords of Sweet Home Alabama blared through the ship’s sound system.


“Skynyrd?” Robin asked, rather indifferent.


”Can’t a simple country boy have some- respect y’all?” Colling visibly leaned back in his seat and put his hands behind his head.


“I thought they said you were from Idaho,” Speedy interjected.


”He is,” said Robin.


Collin smirked. “Oh, technicalities.”


“So you just like the song?” Speedy asked.


”Yeah.”


“Funny. You struck me as one who wouldn’t care for such music. What with your politics and all.”


Robin sighed. The main reason Speedy wasn’t Green Arrow’s side kick anymore was because of their infamous disagreements over political matters. Oliver Queen was a hard core leftist; Speedy as staunch supporter of the Limbaugh crowd. And Robin DID NOT want a political argument on his T-Ship…


“You have a problem with my politics?” Collin chuckled. “Ok, so I am a bit left of center, but at least I can give some Reps their due. Luthor made a great president, right?” He referred to the past eight years, which, though while in our world saw Clinton in the White House, in the DC world were taken by the Luthor Administration.


The T-Ship went dead-silent. Everyone in the T-Ship but Starfire stared at his screen. Star just laughed lightly to herself.


”Um,” Cyborg said at length, “You do realize that Lex Luthor is an evil criminal who’s been trying to murder Superman for about fifteen years? Don’t you?”


Rag sweatdropped. “Really?” he asked.


Cyborg nodded.


“Oh.” Ragnarok gave a nervous chuckle. “Well, still he’s better than Bush.”


”What!” Speedy snapped?


”Warmongering redneck,” Collin snapped.


”Great Leader,” Speedy shot back.


“Economical disaster!” From Collin.


”TAX. RELIEF,” Speedy.


“Complete Moron!”


“Ivy League Graduate!”


“Who mumbles his speech!” Starfire interjected joyfully.
Robin and Speedy both facevaulted, while Ragnarok just laughed.


“Whose side are you on, Kori?” Robin asked.


Starfire’s face went from amused to perplexed. “Robin, we are both in the middle of the ship. I am on neither side.” She was dead serious. Which made Robin facevault again and caused Ragnarok to laugh even harder.


Robin killed his monitor and leaned the seat back. This was going to be a long seven hours.

oooo


Raven had retreated to her room. Command was new to her, and she was afraid of screwing up. So of course, she did exactly the wrong thing as her human half tended to, and hid from it. Surely the tower would stay together long enough for Robin and the rest to retrieve what they were after and get back. Then again, with Mas, Menos, and Impulse being all Speed Force users, and Beast Boy being… Beast Boy… No, it was best not think about it. Still, something was bothering her. She couldn’t read, and visions of Slade… and her father… still kept her from peaceful meditation. So, Raven took the opportunity to float around the Tower doing menial chores and such, anything to take her mind of her destiny. After all, when one is born to destroy the world, it might weigh a bit on her conscience.


To her surprise, Gar and Impulse were both in ops, calmly playing the Gamestation. But unfortunately Mas and Menos were nowhere to be seen.


”Where’s the dynamic duo?” Raven asked. The two seemed to ignore her, so she asked again.


”Oh, the midgets went out on patrol. I told them I’d take the late shift. I still need to make a run through Steel City as soon as I get the chance.”
One of the characters on screen whirled a combat knife into a zombie and blood sprayed all-over the digital playing field.


”Nice kill,” Impulse complimented.


”Thanks.”


Raven sighed heavily. “Please stay alert you two.” As she started to hover off, a pink Garfield Logan took notice.


“Where are you going?”


Raven glared back at him. “Out…”

[Chaltab]

Legacy of the Tamaranian
Voyage: Discovery


Raven made her way into the tech room of Titan’s Tower. If she was going to go out to try and take her mind off her destiny, she needed a very good disguise. The tech room contained what she needed; the image fakeifier rings like the one Cyborg had used to infiltrate Brother Blood’s hive.


Unfastening her cloak, she draped it over a nearby chair and put the two rings together to activate them. A flash of light filled the room, and when it was over, Raven, daughter of Trigon, had disappeared. She was replaced. The girl there had Raven’s face, but rather than blue, her hair was a very dark brown. Her skin was no longer gray, but normal: Caucasian skin with the appearance of a thorough tan, perhaps so far as to be called Hispanic. Her clothes became a normal-looking navy tee-shirt with the Latin word Flammadea—Flame Queen—across it in white letters. And the rings projected the image of beige khaki pants around her legs.


In short, she looked like a perfectly normal human. With a chakra. Raven decided to put on a headband to conceal it.


On her way out, Raven grabbed an old jacket that matched her holographic pants. It must have belonged to Terra, she thought.


Unsure of exactly what to do, Raven decided to satisfy her most basic of cravings: ice cream. It had been a while, but she eventually remembered the way to a nearby outdoor ice cream shop. The building that sold the ice cream was on a raised brick platform, and all the tables and benches were arranged on a walled patio beside it, so there was a small measure of privacy.


There were actually quite a few teenagers


Raven ordered what the woman who took her order suggested and sat down in a corner at the far end of the patio. It was September, and the place would be closing up for winter soon, but it was still warm tonight. The ice cream was good and comforting. But it still did not really ever manage to take her mind of Slade and her father. Even when it has seemed she succeeded, she had a random thought about the coldness of the ice cream and contrasted it with the flame’s of Slade’s new power and the hell her father would make of the earth.


”I’ll never escape him,” she sighed. And with her ice cream gone, she suddenly had the craving for some real food.


“Bad experience?” a male voice said from beside her. Raven hadn’t sensed anyone that close, but now she felt a warm mental presence close. She turned, and behind and to the right of her, was a young man. “Sorry, I just overheard. My name is Trevor. Nice to meet you…” he indicated to Raven.


“Um.” Raven blinked. The young man wasn’t dressed especial fancy, but he was by no means white trash, nor was he ugly. Raven noticed that there were other girls there, wearing more revealing sexier outfits than her holo-disguise, and in the young man who’d identified himself as Trevor, she sensed no deception or malevolent intentions.


”My name is Rae…” she stammered. “Rachel. I’m Rachel.”


“Nice to meet you, Rachel.” He smiled. “I like your shirt. Heh.”


Raven looked down. “Oh, this?” She smiled faintly. Her emotions MUST be kept under control. Especially now that the runes were in place on her body. She had no idea why she’d chosen that word as her disguise.


”I’m a bit of a Latin nerd,” Trevor joked. “So, it’s getting kind of cold out here. You interested in some warm food?”


“It depends. You know of any places nearby that serve good soup?” Raven had hoped she could get something to calm her nerves. And of course if she’d read Trevor wrong and he was up to no good, she could stand her own ground. After all, like it or not, she was Trigon’s daughter…

oooo


“Are we there yet?” Cyborg complained.


”No.” Robin shot back in annoyance.


“YES!” Ragnarok quipped. “I have sunk your battleship!”


Speedy smirked. “Yes, but you have only one hit left on your frigate. And there is only one square left where it can be. E5.”


”Aw crud. That’s ten games in a row.” Collin deactivated the computer Battleship program.



“How about something a little faster?" Speedy skimmed through the selection of games. “Samurai Chipmunk Ninja Combat IV?”


“Oh, you’re SO ON!” Collin said.


Starfire was herself getting rather annoyed. They were blasting ever closer to her homeworld, and there was no sign the general mood of the five lightening up. Collin continued to challenge Speedy to games, and Speedy continued to win. Cyborg and had gone in an out of mental standby mode. And there were still four more hours of spaceflight left before Tamaran.


”Robin,” she said over the communicator.


”Yeah, Kori?”


”
Tim… What do you think has happened to my planet? Do you believe what my sister said?”


“I don’t know, Star. She has proven herself a liar in the past. Perhaps she just told you this to unnerve you. I thought you were pretty sure.”


”I was, Robin. But… I don’t want to be. I wish it were not so. I wish us to go there, and find everything in order.”


“So do I,” Robin said. “For your sake.”

oooo


Two hours later the five were in a bit better spirits after they had stopped and stretched and a Thanagarian SpaceWay convenience store. Of course Thanagarian food wasn’t quite human safe, but Starfire had eaten it up. Ever since the Thanagarians had tried to destroy earth for a hyperspace express lane a few months back, they had decided to go out of their way to aid the earthers to make up for that terrible mistake, and had requested some Earth-food imported for the rest of the group post-haste.


“So, I’ve been thinking,” Speedy said, “That I really ought to change my alias. I mean, people constantly mistake me for a Speed Force user, or they think that Mas and Menos are me.”


”Hm…” Robin ventured, “Well. You have an arsenal of arrows and wear read armor. How about the Red Arrow?”


“No, I can’t. The Green Arrow would sue.”


“Hm.” Now Collin spoke. “You have an arsenal of arrows… and you keep them in a quiver. How about ‘Quiver’?”


“Sounds too much like I’m scared to death.”


Cyborg tried now, “Let’s see. You have an arsenal of arrows, and you shoot them accurately. How’ bout… ‘Marksman’?”


“I like it,” Speedy said. “But I think it’s taken… Wait a minute… Arsenal of arrows… why not just ARSENAL?”


“Friend Roy, That is a most marvelous new alias!” Starfire chimed in. “You shall now be Arsenal!”


“w00t!” Ragnarok said. “Thank you, man. Speedy is such a retarded name."
Cyborg sighed. "Are we there yet?"

oooo Back on Earth oooo


The Obstinate Nickel wasn’t an excessively high-class restaurant, but it wasn’t Ma and Pa’s Bean Barn either. So it surprised Raven a bit when Trevor led her there. After about five minutes, the two got a table. They passed that time with small talk, but by the time their food was there, they had moved on to more serious topics.


“So, who is this guy you’re trying to escape from? If you don’t want to tell me that’s OK.”


“I… I have some problems with my father,” she told him. “He wants me to do very bad things. Things I don’t want to do.” Why am I opening up to him? Shut up, Rae! Don’t tell him anything…

But he seems so… honest.


“Ah, I know how that feels,” he said sympathetically.
Raven smiled lightly. “I doubt it.”


”I have problems with my father too. Well, not like yours, I suppose. My father actually wants me to do great things. He wants me to become a doctor, save lives. But it just doesn’t interest me. You know. You have to be committed to be a doctor, and I’m not. I’d rather travel. That’s what brought me to Jump City. Well, that and my big sister’s spare bedroom.”


”Oh.”


Trevor laughed.


”What is it, Raven asked?”


“Oh, nothing… I just… I thought you were angsting over a boyfriend or something.”


“I… I’m not allowed to have boyfriends,” Raven said. She would not allow herself to have one. Too much baggage.


Trevor seemed hurt by this. “What about just friends?”


“I have friends,” she told him. The Titans. They were her friends. Her only friends. They were outcasts with strange powers, just like here. They understood her. So why did she still refuse to tell them about her father? Or was that too weird even for them?


“So, Rachel,” Trevor smiled. “It’s late, I need to get going. You have a last name?”


Raven felt like panicking, but refused. Panic was another emotion—something that could hurt people. Something that could trigger her powers. Or open the portal she was born to be. She glanced down, and around, looking for something to give her a clue..


Her soup was mostly gone, so she took a drink of the broth quickly, to stall for time…


Broth… No, that was stupid.


Roth... Perfect.


”Roth,” she said.


”Rachel Roth?” Trevor parroted. “That’s pretty.”


Raven stifled a facevault. Now she was sure of it: this guy was in love with her! That… couldn’t happen!


“Thanks,” she said nervously.


Trevor sat back down, “Bah, I have a key. My sister can wait. Actually, to be truthful, I am thinking about leaving the town altogether. All the costumed freaks in this town attracting more costumed freaks wanting to blow up the world. I heard some orphan girl who could move rocks with her mind attacked a while back and almost blew the place up before it was over. I just can't live in a place like that.”


Raven stared wide eyed at him in horror. “Trevor, we… I can’t believe…”


“I know, I get this reaction from everyone. ‘The Teen Titans are our heroes, they save the town!’” He rolled his eyes. “I even hear fanboys go on about how hot the alien babe is.”


Raven gave him the Glare™, “What about Raven?”


“He’s the one that can change into animals, right?” Trevor said. “I haven’t heard much from fangirls.”


Raven would have facevaulted if she weren’t in such a bad mood.


"Anyway, I need to be going. Here’s my number,” he said handing her a piece of paper. “I enjoyed this evening. If you want to meet again, and all.”


“Sure thing,” Raven said. It was all she could muster while still controlling. her conflicting emotions. This is why she never went out! She felt like kicking herself. Getting involved like this. A definite bad decision. And it was certainly not a sure thing…


Raven paid for the food with the money Trevor had left, and headed out. When her holo-guise abruptly vanished, at first Raven thought perhaps the ring’s battery died, but when she saw that the entire thing completely failed to function she got suspicious. Suddenly, a loud crash of thunder resounded through the area along with a bright flash. And when Raven could see again, Thunder and Lighting stood in front of her. “You guys.” Raven said.


”Ah. Raven, good evening,” Lightning’s grating voice chimed. He held his arm out towards a nearby building and fired a bolt. “Let’s have some fun, brother.”


And Thunder attacked a nearby car, decimating it.


“What are you two doing! I thought you both realized your fun was dangerous and wrong.”


“Oh, they did. Did they ever!” said a new voice. A voice all too similar to Slade’s. But still somehow different. More youthful, lighter “But then, I got a hold of them.”


“Who…?”


And suddenly a figured clad in blue armor that bore an eerie resemblance to Slade’s landed. Where he had jumped from, Raven knew not.


“Call me Ravager,” the figured in cerulean armor said. “And I’m here to avenge what you freaks did to my father…”


“You shorted out my disguise, didn’t you.” Raven said. She was really just stalling for time. She couldn’t read the mind of the man through his helmet—it must have been made of something pretty heavy-duty.


”Yes,” he answered in his so-Slade-like voice. "I'm sure the EMP also shorted out whatever form of communicator you may have been carrying."
Raven quickly decided to send out an empathic impression to Gar and Impulse, and tried to find Mas and Menos. Come quick guys, she thought at them. I need your help. If for no other reason than not knowing what she was up against.

oooo


Space returned to normal outside the cockpit of the T-Ship. They had arrived.


”Oh please, X’hal, no!” Starfire yelled as they came into orbit. Tamaran was there. With a huge smoldering crater near the equator.


Right where the capital had been.


“Are there any life readings?” Cyborg asked somberly.


“I can’t tell. Too much radiation interference. Perhaps the city was evacuated, Star.”


Starfire didn’t even hear him though. She was too busy crying.

[Chaltab]

The T-Ship hovered in space, slowly making its way through the Tamaran star system. Starfire did not like what she saw on her planet. A crater where the capital had once stood, and a maelstrom of radioactivity across the surface of the planet. It would be hard to land on Tamaran, but Star said that it wasn’t something they’d have to worry about yet.


”Why are you directing us to these other planets first?” Robin asked. He thought he knew, as his mentor Batman had taught him a lot of psychology in their time as partners in crime-fighting. He assumed that as long as Kori didn’t set foot on her planet, she could more easily cope with it being gone. Out of site out of mind. But she explained it a different way.


”The ancients of my people had developed technologies, machines that despite their small size harnessed an immense amount of power. They were called the Catalysts, and given names to correspond to what they did.


“The Red Catalyst on the icy world of Holoth controls fire. Its wielder becomes what we would call a pyrokinetic back on Earth.


“The Green Catalyst of the lush world of Verden manipulates plants to grow as the user wills.


“The Crimson Catalyst on Oela, the abandoned city world of the ancients allows the wielder to manipulate large amounts of earth with great precision. I was hoping I could give this one to Collin to perhaps make his rock-moving powers more effective.”
(At this, Collin perked up, but it wasn’t in delight. Robin couldn’t tell, but it seemed more like concern, or confusion… or even guilt.)


“The Prism Catalyst on the dessert world Olowa manipulates light and shadow," Kori continued.


”The Dark Catalyst on the perpetually-eclipsed nighttime world of Coris has the unique and dreadful ability to alter reality itself, and is reserved for the direst emergencies.


“And finally, the key to our so-called Ultimate power lies in the temple of X’hal on Tamaran itself, but even I do not know what it is capable of.”


Robin thought a moment. “Where should we head first?”


“If I remember the procedures passed down by my family correctly, we must gather all the others before opening the door on Tamaran in the sacred temple. Tim, you are my leader, and I will let you decide where we go first.”


“Well,” Robin sighed. “I’ve had my fill of pyrokinesis for one week,” he said, the battle against Hotstreak and Flare fresh in his mind.. It hadn't even been 48 hours since it had ended.



“I say we go after the Green one first.”


“That would be most agreeable,” Star said with her trademark cheeriness. Ever the optimist, despite losing her entire species. She certainly didn't deserve what had been her lot in life.

oooo


“Look, ‘Ravager’,” Raven said harshly, “I don’t know who you are and why you have targeted me...”


“Not just you, dear Raven,” came the sickeningly familiar voice, “I mean all of you. Everyone responsible for my father’s death will pay.”


”Your father?” Raven gasped to herself. Slade. He had children? The thought had never occurred to her. In fact, in any other circumstance, she would have found the idea ridiculous and made some sarcastic remark. But she betrayed none of it here and now. She had to control her emotions, and not trigger those of her enemy.


"I considered challenging the lot of you at once,” continued the blue-armored madman. “But it occurred to me that if you defeated my father, I was no match for you together. So I decided to pick you off one by one. Get her.” As he gave the last command, Ravager stepped back, and Thunder and Lighting landed in front of him, the smaller of the two still dripping water.


“Heyah!” yelled Thunder as he charged forward. He smashed at Raven multiple times as she dodged the blows and countered with a blast of dark energy. A bolt of lightining flashed towards her and she rolled away. Suddenly, Thunder was back on her, smashing at her with his massive fists, and hitting mostly concrete. And Raven finally noticed the control collars on their necks.


“Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos!” she yelled, sending a small wave of darkness at the metal ring on Thunder's neck, but it deflected off as if her magic was nothing… Then she got kicked in the face by Lightning, who started electrifying her with a steady stream in a very Palpatine-esque manner.


“Burn, child!” Ravager called out over his slave’s attack.


”Get off of me!” she yelled. But he kept on zapping her, and Thunder raised his hands up as if to smash them down, but waited as if to let his brother continue his torture. Raven tried to consume their anger and calm them, but they had none. There was nothing—no emotion. And that made Raven rather angry. “What have you done to them?”


And in a twisted version of an answer she’d heard before, in an eerily similar voice, “Nothing they'd really want me to. Don’t blame them for this, child.” The condescending tone became almost as infuriating as what was happening to Thunder and Lightning, and Raven snapped.


”OFF OF ME! AZARATH METRION ZINTHOS!” she bellowed. An enormous burst of dark emphatic power rang out from her body, and her eyes and chakra glowed in unison. The dark power grabbed the duo of elemental teens and hurled them both into the drink of Jump City Bay. She stopped the assault just short of unleashing her Soul Self, as she had on Doctor Light two years earlier, and she was glad of it, as the two hadn’t done anything deserving of such a horrible punishment.


”Most impressive, but I bet that was rather tiring.” Ravager said, drawing a sword from a scabbard on his back. “Can you press the attack? I’m good for another good hour as it stands.” Even with a blue cowl covering the top half of his face, his smile was decidedly wicked. He ran at Raven full force, and indeed, it was as he said. She was out of emotional power. And he was fast.


But there were some who were faster. “Patada del fuego!” yelled two high-pitched voices. Mas and Menos did a spinning drill kick into the back of Raven’s assailant causing him to stagger forward. Suddenly, Beast Boy also arrived, leaping out of the water as a pink dolphin and walloping Ravager as a pink gorilla. And Ravager reeled long enough for Raven to regain her footing and knock the sword from his hand with a well-placed kick.
The three new comers assumed positions to the left and right of Raven. The Titans, standing together as always. “Nobody messes with the Titans, and nobody plays divide and conquer with this team, jerk!” Beast boy yelled.


“How did you know!” Ravager exclaimed. “I disabled her communicator!”


“You forget that I’m an empath.” Raven said with a smirk. “Your father wouldn’t have.”


“Estas muerto! Asi te decimos Mas y Menos!” the Speed Force brothers said.


“Father?” BB asked Raven quietly.


”GRANT!”a new voice boomed in. But it was all too familiar—even more so than the Ravager. It was Slade himself.


”Father?” gasped the Ravager.


"What? That guy is Slade’s SON?” Gar realized.


“Father, I thought you were dead!”


”Grant, my son. I was. And if I were still among the dead, I’d be rolling in my grave. You let these Titans humiliate you, and three of them aren’t even there. You underestimated them, as I did. But you have no excuse. I was betrayed, whereas you just lost in a fair fight…”


“Where are you, father?” Ravager asked the disembodied voice.



Suddenly, the trademark black and brown helmet phased through the asphalt of the street the battle was happening on, and slowly did the rest of Slade as well. The same evil look in his eye, and the same Mark of Scath on his forehead.


“You will come with me. I serve a new master now. And I wish to introduce you to him…”


A burst of fire consumed both Slade and his son, and the two vanished without a trace, leaving the Titans confused and befuddled.


“Pink suits you in battle,” Raven said at length, getting and annoyed look from Gar. “Where’s Impulse?”


“He took off to Steel City right after you left, and I don’t know when he’ll be back.”


“Good. That means he’s doing his job.”


”Has done his job,” Bart said, suddenly standing beside Raven, where he wasn’t standing a second ago.


”What did I miss?”


“Well, apparently Slade has a son now, and the son is as psycho as the father.” Beast Boy said.


”That’s bad news, I take it. Who is Slade?”


The two Jump City Titans facevaulted. “I’ll explain when we get back to the tower,” Raven said. And they went.

oooo


The landing on Verden was smooth enough, and soon the five heroes who bore the name of those who had spawned the Greek gods were on their way to the ancient Tamaranian temple that concealed the first Catalyst.


“How much farther?” Robin asked as the quintet came over the top of a hill in the dense jungles of Verden.


“If my instruments are right, about half a mile.” Cyborg said.


“You want me to clear out some of the jungle for you?” Ragnarok asked.
Robin took a drink of water. “We’ll see. If the path gets much harder than this, you might have to.”


“Right,” Collin said, sounding a bit annoyed.


“Tim,” Kori said as she got close enough to Robin to have some privacy,



“Friend Collin only wishes to help, and he does not appreciate your distrust of him.”


Robin stopped and looked her in the eyes. “I’m sure he doesn’t, Star. But I can’t take chances. He almost caused an earthquake back on earth when we were fighting the fire metas, and even if he means well, he could screw up an injure one of us. He treats his powers too much like a cheat code and this job too much like a game.”


Kori sighed. He has been playing Cyborg in Robot Samurai a lot recently, and his mind was on the games of the Gamestation. Still, she understood his position. He did not want anyone, especially herself, to get hurt on this trip, and he still didn’t trust the new Titan Ragnarok. Perhaps part of him was made incapable of trusting by Terra’s betrayal. Or perhaps he sensed something in him that Starfire did not sense herself. Lacking anything else to say, the two and three walked on in silence for a while longer.


“We’re here.” Cyborg said suddenly.


”So we were closer than we thought?” Speedy said stepping up beside him and then gaping.


”Not exactly.” There was a huge canyon in front of them, and on the other side was a towering stone structure that resembled the grand hall on Tamaran where Starfire had once been set to marry Glergelslech—or whatever his name was. “The canyon is about half a mile wide according to my laser measurements, and that means that structure over there is HUGE.”


“I can fly across,” Starfire said, “but I can only carry one or two of you at a time. Who shall be first?”


“Wait a snorkel-breathing minute here!” Collin said. “I can handle this. I can make a bridge, right?”


“You sure you can handle such a strain on your powers?” Cyborg asked.


“I’m certain. But to be safe, you should back up a bit. If the ground starts shaking I might shake one of you off into the pit. Which would be a problem for any of us but K..Starfire.”


“It is OK, Friend Collin,” Starfire said, “You may call me Kori.”
Ragnarok smiled awkwardly. “Thanks.” He walked over to the edge of the canyon. At the far end there was a waterfall that created a river in the bottom below, and it was much deeper than it was wide. Even the Boy Wonder himself couldn’t survive such a fall. No, wait, he'd find away. He was freaking ROBIN.



Collin stretched out his hand, and suddenly rock and earth exploded out from both ends of the canyon, gradually getting longer and longer until the two met approximately in the middle. Then Collin crossed his hands and separated them quickly as if trying to make the bridge fall apart. But rather than doing that, the columns of rock smoothed out, and strips of metal jumped out of them as if to line the bridge and strengthen it. It was crude, but effective.


”You can manipulate metal too?” Speedy asked.


“To a degree. It isn’t like rock and dirt, that breaks easily.. It’s hard and malleable, and I have to get the earth to push it. I don’t think I can move metal unless rock or earth is touching it.”


Kori walked with Robin over to inspect the bridge. “It is not the straightest bridge I've seen,” she said.


Robin nodded. “Are you sure this is safe, Collin?”


“Nope,” he said. “I’ll cross first and use my power to iron out any faults. I can count on you to catch me if I fall, can’t I Star… Kori?”


“Of course,” Starfire said cheerfully.


A vein throbbed in Robin’s forehead. “What is wrong, Tim?” Kori asked.


“Nothing,” he lied. “I’m just…”
”Don’t be jealous,” Starfire said, and she kissed Robin lips. Just a peck, but it sent Robin through the roof nonetheless. He just stared at her, as did Cyborg and Speedy. And she returned the stare. She hadn't... expected that to happen... but it just felt right... and now she...


”AAAAHHH!” Collin screamed while Kori’s back was turned.

Oh darn you Tim, Starfire screamed at herself. He’s going to die now because you distracted me! It will be all my fault and... But when she turned, Collin stood about fifty feet out, snickering at them.


“Gotcha!” he said. He began to laugh, and Cyborg and Speedy shared his mirth.


“Why you, FLOGNARD!” Starfire yelled, and began to chase him down. The others followed her yelling at her to stop, while Collin took off in a dead run towards the temple. Caution be condemned, if the bridge were to fall, it would fall…

oooo


Meanwhile on another planet in the system, a cloaked figure stood in the world’s perpetual twilight. Coris, they called it. That did not matter. All that mattered to this person was getting the Dark Catalyst... and then using it to kill Collin Roberts.



The young man in the Tamaranian armor had to die.

[Chaltab]

There it was. The door of the temple. The cloaked figure examined the markings, and tried to decipher them. But somehow he, (or perhaps she, as we cannot tell beneath the cloak), could not. He had taken the time to learn the Tamaranian language... But this writing was in an ancient dialect.


No matter, though, as the cloaked figure recalled a rumor. That rumor was that only a Tamaranian would be allowed access to the temples. Oh well, it was worth a shot. Now, his best option would be to proceed to the race's home world of Tamaran and wait for the so-called “Titans” there...

0000


“Flog'nard b'len y'tro tis't all'gar!” Starfire jokingly cursed Collin in her native tongue as she tackled him and gave him a light tap in the gut. Of course considering Tamaranian strength, a light tap was to a human the equivalent of getting shot by a high-velocity paint ball.


“Ouch!” Collin yelled. “OK, that served me right.”
Robin arrived shortly after and helped Starfire to her feet. “That was low, man,” he growled at Collin.


“I know, I know. At least Cyborg thought it was funny.”


“Heh. That I did,” said Cyborg.


“Well. We're here now,” Robin announced craning his neck to look up at the massive temple in front of them. Chasing Ragnarök down had taken them all the way across the massive bridge, and now, the five stood in awe of the temple's height. “Star, you can get us in, right?”


Starfire nodded. “This way.”


Starfire lead them around the temple to a massive gate that must have been 50 feet high and perhaps 70 wide.


“How do we get in?” Cyborg asked.
Kori said nothing, but rather walked over to the gate and held up the device her sister had given her as she died: the key to the Temples of X'hal. She placed it in a small indention in the door and spoke. “Fas n'dar X'hal, T'kak Basta Koriand'r gaf Tamaran!”


Whatever Kori had said into the door, the key began to glow, and the markings on the door did likewise. Then a faint rumbling started and gradually grew more pronounced as the doors slid away. The path was opened.


The five Titans walked into the antechamber of the temple, with walls lined with what appeared to be silver, and floors of polished stone. It reminded Robin out of something from Indiana Jones, as though the walls were covered in shiny metal, there were vines growing through the cracks in the ceiling and floor, and the silver had tarnished after centuries of neglect. Perhaps it wasn't silver, then, but something like it.

0000


“Nice place. Roomy.” Arsenal said as he followed Cyborg in. The walls must have stretched over 200 feet up to the ceiling, and that was just the antechamber. Suddenly, a voice echoed throughout the room, and Cyborg understood it (as he had recently learned the Tamaranian language while under the influence of the Max-7...)


“Warning. The temple security has detected non-Tamaranian life-forms within the holy area. Activating temple security."
If the Titans had been outside, they would have noticed that an enormous power beam had been shot from the top of the temple, signaling the defenses in on the other planets of the solar system. But they were too busy fighting off the giant vines that attacked them, spewing forth from hidden doors throughout the temple walls.

0000


Starfire flew up and started blasting at a group of vines that had entangled Robin, and Arsenal let loose some tachyon arrows, shredding and burning others. The five Titans retreated from the tall but narrow antechamber into a much larger chamber ahead of them, where the vines continued to attack. Cyborg and Ragnarök stood back to back, blasting vines with their Earth Moving and Sonic Canon, while Kori and Robin took turns basting them and cutting them with Birdarangs. Robin chose to hack rather than throw, as he only had a limited number of them. Cyborg quickly found sonics pretty much worthless against the vines, and instead activated his buzz-saw.


“Speedy.. I mean Arsenal!” Robin yelled over his shoulder. A vine lashed at his face and Arsenal cut it down with a buzz saw arrow. “Do you have any fire-based arrows?”


Roy dived to the ground and came up with, of all things, a huge combat knife, standing next to Robin, who was still hacking. “Yeah, But we'll need to get out of here first. They're napalm.”


“Cyborg,” Robin yelled, “I need ideas!”

0000


Victor, who had been listening to Roy and Tim's conversation, stopped cutting long enough to look around, and it was a good thing he did, because a plant resembling a Venus Fly Trap lashed its “head” at him where his back had been a second ago. He grabbed it and crushed it with his left bionic arm. Then he surveyed the area. The door the Titans had entered through was now completely blocked with evil plants. They had taken some steps down from there, and were in a depression in the floor with stairs going up in a circle around the room, only three steps but about 6 feet higher than they were. And on the far from where they had entered, there were three doors, one facing north, one northeast and one northwest...


Starfire flew up, but was grabbed by a vine that hurled her to the northwest door, breaking it open. “I say we go through the door Star just made and let Roy use the burn arrow from that room," Cyborg said.
And so the five went, Collin last, as he was farthest, but before he could get to the door, a vine lashed out at him and he caused a spike of rock to shoot out of the ground and cut through it and some of it's friends, and then started pelting them with rocks until he could get close enough. He turned to go through the hole, when a vine grabbed him around the waist. “Argh!”


“Ragnarök!” Robin yelled.


“Collin!” said Starfire at the same time.


“Robin, get you grapple-gun out!” Suddenly, a missile shot forth from Cyborg's shoulder, exploding at the base of the vine cluster trying to rip Collin in two, and he quickly launched himself away, hacking with hastily-formed rock blades. “Booyah!”


Robin shot him with his Bat-Grapple, snapping around the collar of his armor and reeling him in. “Now, Roy!”


Arsenal grabbed an incineration arrow from his quiver and set it in his bow. Collin slammed into a jagged piece of door that Kori had not knocked off, removing it and probably leaving a painful bruise, but it left the room free of Titans, and Arsenal let the arrow loose. It flew into the center of the room, by some miracle not being stopped by a random vine and crashing into a vine cluster in the middle, spilling napalm everywhere, which immediately flared up, burning the vines..


“Get down!” Cyborg yelled, coving the door while everyone else dived. His molybdenum-steel body could take high temperatures, and he used himself to plug the room so the Titans would not be burned by backdraft.


After what sounded like a wail of agony from the vines, they stopped moving, all charred to a crisp.


Robin, Star, and Arsenal all stood up, and Cyborg stepped away from the door with a slight limp, caused by melting of certain wires. That could be repaired though. “You OK, Collin?” Robin asked.


“I think so,” he said, “but my ribcage feels like a watermelon after that guy from Mail Call gets done with it...”


“Right. Can you walk?” Robin asked.


“I think so.” Collin replied.
Cyborg looked around again, this time noticing they were in a small hallway with Tamaranian writings on the wall. He tried to translate them, but they made no sense. “Star, what's with these walls? They say 'You stopped choosing the correct highway.' And this one over here says 'Only the motherly may embrace.'”


“No, Vic,” Kori said as she walked over. “They are in an ancient dialect of my people's native language. This one says that we've chosen the right path, and this one says that only the righteous may enter.”


“Your language has changed a bit over the years, then,” said Arsenal.


“Yes. Much of our ancient culture was lost with the 25-Septar War.”


“Um, forgive me, Starfire,” Collin said, “but exactly how long is a 'septar'?”
Kori walked over to the door and examined it. “About two Earth-years,” she said absently. “It ended fifty years ago, and my people were forever changed.”


“Is that why there aren't many cities on Tamaran?” Robin asked.


“No, there were never many cities,” she answered, opening the door, which led to another hall, this more brightly lit than the last. “We're getting closer."
Cyborg took up the rear, so he saw when Collin walked up beside Kori, and he seemed nervous... So Cyborg took the liberty of listening in.


“S... Kori,” Collin started.”


“Yes?”


“I was wondering if there was any chance your big temple of X'hal on Tamaran could have perhaps been destroyed by the meteor. You think maybe...”


“Not a chance,” Kori cut him off. “My ancestors feared bombardment from space, and since that would likely hit the cities, they built the temple on the other side. It seems they were wise in the long run.”


Cyborg heard the most awful dread in Collin's voice when he replied, “Yeah, it seems that way...”

0000


“Man, Clash of the Planets was a total rip-off of Star Wars and you know it!” Impulse yelled at Beast Boy, whose skin had finally lost its pink shade after Raven had suggested a shower.


“C'mon, Bart,” Gar countered, “They were both released in '77... What if Clash came first and Lucas copied it!”


“Star Wars premiered in May, CotP didn't start until the new season of shows began in September. It's a rip-off.”


Gar felt a vein throb in his forehead. “Well, Star Wars totally copied CotP on the 'main villain being the hero's father' thing!”


“That 'revelation' didn't' happen until season four, episode one, and you know it. Season four premiered in September of 1980... four months after Empire Strikes Back!”


“Guys,” Raven said as she entered, “I can feel your tempers flaring from the rooftop, please calm down!”


“Sorry.” Bart and Gar said in unison.


“Did anyone get the mail today?” Raven asked, looking at Beast Boy.


“Um... I thought it was Robin's day.”


“But Robin isn't here now, so you need to go get it. I got it yesterday. And make sure you check for bombs or hostile puppets this time.”


“Right.”

0000


Gar returned shortly later with a hand full of letters.


“OK, here we go. For Robin. Robin. Robin. Three for Starfire too. Bills. Taxes. Junk mail...” Something caught his eye. “Hey!”


“What?” asked Bart.


“Someone from Viamount Brothers Studios sent me a rather hefty envelope! I bet they want me to be the macho male lead in their next blockbuster!”


“Not likely,” answered Raven.


“OK. Not a blockbuster--even better!” Gar said as he studied the letter. “They're offering me the part of 'Tork, the green alien dude' in the upcoming new series Space Trek 2022!”


“Oh, for the love of...!” Bart rolled his eyes. “You and your stupid, stupid rip off science fiction.”


“What do you mean?” Beast Boy shot back.


“Space Trek is an obvious rip off of Star Trek! They don't even hide it like Clash of the Planets tried... TREK is in the name for crying out!”


“That doesn't mean anything!”


“I hope Paramount sues. Plagiarism is...”


Beast boy cut him off, “Stealing from one person. If you steal from a bunch of people it's called research!”


“Fine. You win. But...”


“ENOUGH!” Yelled Raven. “I can't take this arguing. Calm down, or go outside.



It's still early.”


“Raven, it's three in the morning."


“Fine. I'm going to go check on Thunder and lighting. Can you please refrain from killing each other.”


And she left.

0000


“Killing each other? Dude, this was just a friendly argument, right?”
Bart looked over at the Gamestation. “Yup. Wanna mangle for a while?”


“Dude, I'm so tired of Mangler Brothers.”


“How bout Mech Racer?”


“You're so on!”

0000


“We, thank you for you hospitality, Raven.” Thunder said, looking up at her.


“Indeed.” Lightning felt his neck, where the collar had been. “You wouldn't believe how bad it was under that monster's control.”


“Actually, I think I can imagine,” Raven replied. “So, why were you back in town?”


“Truthfully, we were looking for our father. But that is not your concern. We will leave first thing tomorrow and continue our search.”


“Your father...” Raven said absently. What is it and fathers lately? Tim's father had recently been murdered. Galfore, who had practically been Kori's father since her parents had died, was recently turned into a pile of ash on Tamaran, or at least so indicated Robin's last transmission. And Grant's father Slade was working with Raven's own father, the demon Trigon... “Is there any way the Titans can help?”


“No, I don't think so. He was military. And metahumans and military have historically not mixed well.” Raven knew it was an excuse, and could tell there was another reason, but she decided not to pry. Thunder sat down on the bed that Raven had provided him.”It is best we get some rest, now. We leave at dawn.”

0000


“What is it?” Arsenal said in amazement, looking up at the big statue that dominated the room Kori had led them to.


“It's the guardian of the Catalyst. It is something like what we would call an angel on Earth.”


“Whoa.” Cyborg chimed in, “There is a massive energy reading coming from a point about 150 feet up on that thing. Could that bee where you Catalyst is?”
Starfire flew up, the room's musty smell growing as she ascended, until she found herself staring at the 'jewel' on the guardian's necklace. The green Catalyst. Carefully, she removed the ancient device and let herself fall back to the floor.


“Here it is, my friends. The first of the Tamaranian powers.” She held it out for the remaining five Titans to see.


“What? That's it? It's so... small.” Robin blurted.


“Yes, it is small, Tim, but it wields immense power, as do all the Catalysts.”


“She's right, Robin.” Cyborg leaned over to study it with his electronic eye. “It's generating twice as much per second as one of my power cells.”


“What powers it?” Collin asked.


“Huh?” Robin eyed him quizzically.


“Well, unless the Tamaranians have figured out perpetual energy, something has to be generating that power.”


“It takes it's power from all foliage, Collin. From the plant life of this world, it draws energy.”


“Oh. Good enough for me.”
The Titan's exit was pretty uneventful, except the room in which the plants had been burned stank so much that both Roy and Collin had thrown up. After leaving Verden, the team next went to Olowa and retrieved the Prism Catalysts, having to battle sand monsters that went down without much of a fight. Fearing the perpetual darkness of Coris, Starfire had decided to go to the outer reaches of the system and retrieve the red Catalyst from Holoth third. The planet was in the outer reaches of the system, and had required all the Titans to suit up in special thermal gear, except for Kori who could even survive in a vacuum.


“How can you stand wearing that miniskirt?” Robin asked as he shivered and staggered up beside Starfire.


“My species can survive even the cold of space, Robin. This is as nothing to me.”


“Then why don't you burn up on Earth?”


“We have a very high temperature range compared to humans.”


“Hey, guys, there it is!” Collin announced, pointing to a distant mount that appeared no different than the rest of the area in front of them.


“How can you tell?” asked Arsenal.
Collin pointed to his threat assessment goggles. “They're the only thing on this planet that has a readable power signature.”


“Cyborg?” Robin indicated to Victor.


“...He's right. How the heck do you think we got so far away? I thought I was landing right next to it.”


“It must have been those uber-gales that kept blowing the ship around,” Roy said.


“Should we turn back and get back to the ship and fly closer, or walk the distance in this cold.” Collin asked.


Robin thought a moment. C'mon, Tim, he thought to himself, you're the leader. You have to know what to do.


“Well?” someone asked.


“We press on. If we take off in the ship, we''ll just get blown around again. I can't believe this planet has such a turbulent atmosphere, but it does. We have to stay below those gales and walk.”


“I was afraid you'd say that,” complained Collin and Cyborg simultaneously.

0000


The walk didn't take nearly as long as they'd thought, or else the numbness of their bodies made them oblivious to the passage of time. Either way, the five eventually made it to the entrance, and again, Kori let them in the same way she had on the previous two worlds.


And like on Olowa, the defenses were active and waiting for them when the door opened. But instead of sand creatures, they were ice monsters, with some sort of metal endoskeleton encased in a jagged body of ice.


Robin stepped out in front, with Ragnarök and Starfire on his right, and Cyborg and Arsenal on his left, in a V formation.


“Titans, GO!” Robin leaped forward, basing some ice men with his bo staff. One ice being formed his own weapon, which vaguely resembled a sword, and began trading blows with Robin. He countered high and tried to strike low, but the ice being blocked and stabbed a him. Robin backed up and deflected the blow, and then thrust the weapon forward himself, smashing into it's face. But not far enough, as it kept coming. “Crap!”


The other titans were having a bit more luck, as they attacked with enough punch to get through the ice and break or damage the metal endoskeletons.



“Take their computer things out!” Cyborg yelled to Robin.


“Right.” Robin hurled an explosive disk into a group near the back, and then covered himself in his cape as steam and ice shards flew everywhere. “OK, Bad idea.”


“Hei-yah!” Starfire yelled, hurling starbolts into their heads, destroying their electronic brains. And in her own language she yelled, “I am a Tamaranian princess! You should not be attacking me.”


But in her tongue, the temple security computer replied “You should not have brought in the outsiders. You are a traitor to your people.”


Speedy found it easy enough to smash their faces and CPUs with his tachyon arrows, but found that his knife was pretty much useless against them since they were so durable. For that reason, Collin was acting as back up against the ones that got too close. The planet didn't have any dirt that wasn't frozen, but he had brought a knapsack full of clods, rocks, and sand from Verden and Olowa, so he was using that ammo to form blades and bullets to fight the rock creatures at close range while Roy handled the distant ones with his arrows.


“Back off, guys,” Robin said, and the quintet fell back into the antechamber that all the temples conveniently possessed.


“What now, fearless?” Cyborg yelled.


“Remember that attack we discussed last night?”


“Yeah.”


“Now's the time to bust it out!”


“You mean the Ragnarök Sonic-Boom Arrow-Bolt Special?” Collin yelled.


“We never agreed on that name, but yes.” Robin said.


Ragnarök formed a small spear out of the rocks and dirt he had brought, while Kori charged a starbolt and Roy primed a thermal arrow. Cyborg charged his Sonic Cannon as well, and Robin stuck an explosive disk on the back of Ragnarök's spear.


“RASBABS, GO!” Collin yelled, hurling the spear, which plowed into the center of the room the simultaneously hit with a Sonic Cannon blast, a starbolt, and Roy's arrow.

BOOM!


The room lit up, and when the flash was over, water leaked into the antechamber and the whole troupe of ice men lay melted on the floor of the second room.


“Quickly,” Robin ordered, “Bash all their CPUs before new ice freezes on them!”

0000


Back on Earth, Raven sat on the roof, trying to meditate. So far so good. “Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos. Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos...” Suddenly, fire's erupted all around her.

WHAT YOU HAVE CONCEALED, YOU SHALL BECOME!


“No!” Raven yelled back. “I am not going to help you!”
Just as suddenly, she was back in her room, sweat dripping off of her. It had been two days since she'd last heard from Robin, and she was beginning to be nervous. And then there was her father, constantly threatening to erupt forth from her, using her has a portal to Earth to “end” the world of mortals. No pressure, right?


Nobody understood her, here either. Gar... his father had saved his life. Bart had never met his, and she couldn't talk to Mas and Menos because they didn't speak Azarathian, Latin, or English... Only Spanish.


“Trevor,” she whispered to herself. And she didn't like where the train of thought was taking her.

[Chaltab]

Titans Tower, 10:30 AM

“You been up all night?” Beast Boy asked as he opened the fridge and pulled out some soy milk.

“I wasn't able to sleep,” Raven replied softly. She took a sip of her herbal tea.
“I'll be fine.” Of course that was a lie. She wouldn't be fine. She'd allow Trigon into the world, and then she would rule by his side, forever corrupted. It was inevitable. Or was it?

“More Slade nightmares?”

Raven nodded, omitting certain... demonic details. “Gar, what was your... father like?”

Beast Boy goggled at that. “My father? Um. Well... he died when I was young. But... he was cool, I guess. Really smart. He saved my life, you know. Made an antidote when I got a disease from a green monkey bite and WHAM! Took it right out of me...?” At that, he slammed his fist into his hand as if the cure for sakutia was a wrecking ball or artillery shell. He must have noticed Raven's annoyed glare—or perhaps the worry she was trying to hide—because he ceased his typical theatrics. “Why are you asking? What about yours? Didn't you say you had 'issues' with him that time we were in your head.?”

“I'd rather not talk about that, Gar.”

“Raven, if there's a problem you can't just keep ignoring it. Please tell me what's bothering you. Don't you trust me?”

“Beast Boy...” Raven put on a facade of annoyance. “I... I trust you. But there are some things I just don't want to share with the world just yet.”

“I'm only trying to help...”
Raven started to walk towards the Tower elevator. Beast Boy could not provide the help she needed. No one really could. But at least someone understood her. Of course he could never know the truth. The REAL truth.

“Hey, where are you goin' Rae?”

“I need to go out for a while. Contact me if anything comes up. I shouldn't be gone for more than two hours.” She said.


“So much for being fine,” Beast Boy remarked as she left.

0000

“I'm glad you could come,” Raven said. She wasn't exactly smiling, but she felt better than she had in a wile. The so-called “Lovers' Garden” in Jump City park was the closest thing to Azarath Raven had found on Earth, and that's where the two all too likely star-crossed teens were now standing.

“I'm surprised you actually called,” Trevor replied, reaching out to taker her hand.

“Um,” Raven stared stupidly at his extended hand. “I... uh... my hands are dirty.” She realized how pathetic that sounded.

“If you say so, Princess.” Trevor smirked.

“Princess?”

“Princess Leia? Star Wars?”

“Oh, right.” Raven sighed. “Sorry. I don't get out much. She ran her right hand through her hair, this time not tied by the headband, since she had reprogrammed the hologram ring to hide her chakra as well.

“So, Rachel,” Trevor started. “You look great.” Raven flexed her rather underused smiling muscles. “You want to go... grab lunch somewhere?”

“Sure.” Raven said. Ugh. She couldn't believer herself. WHY was she letting herself get so attached to this guy? What could he offer that the other Titans couldn't? But she already knew the answer to that question. Having always been Raven, she couldn't talk about her father without the question of who he was come up. But with Trevor, who didn't even like metahumans, who didn't know she was one, she could talk about anything she wanted, referring to it obliquely. To him, 'her father' was nothing more than a cruel manipulative human who wanted his daughter to follow in his footsteps.

WHAT YOU HAVE CONCEALED, YOU SHALL BECOME!

“Shut up!” Raven blurted.

“What?” Trevor asked.

“Nothing... just a bad thought. That's all.”

“OK...” She watched Trevor eye her quizzically for a moment and then shrug. “So, where to? Obstinate Nickel again?”

“No. Actually, I'm more in the mood for pizza,” Raven said.

“You eat pizza?” Trevor laughed. “Then you must work out, right?”

“Everyday,” she replied. Not that it was really an option. Robin made them all do it.

“Anyway, we should go before the lunch rush. C'mon.”

0000

The city-planet of Oela was both ancient and awe-inspiring. Ruins of buildings stretched high into the atmosphere, eerily similar to a bombed-out version of Coruscant. Enormous buttresses stretched into the sky, and the ground was more than a mile below the tops of the buildings. But all of it was lifeless and dead now.

“The Oelan temple of X'hal is over there,” Starfire said as the T-Ship fell farther into the planet's atmosphere.

“Starfire,” Robin said over the comm system, “This place is amazing. What happened to it?”

“Many centuries ago, the planet was under the control of the Citadel Empire. They attacked Tamaran, and that was a terrible mistake. In those days Tamaran was a lush world, much like the tropics of Earth, and the Citadel envied it, so they tried to conquer us. My people repelled the invasion, but our planet was irreparably scarred. Our people sought revenge for the destruction of our planet, and since we can travel through space unaided, the Tamaranians of that era invaded Oela in droves and fought the Citadel. Many died in that battle, but eventually the Citadel fled the world, and my ancestors built a temple to X'hal in gratitude for the victory.”

Arsenal switched his com so that only Cyborg could hear him. “Man, I never though I'd hear her talk like that. She always seemed so... naive.”

“Kori's sweet, and she's a bit naive of Earth's ways, but she isn't stupid. You know she's taken a lot of flak from idiot web-blogs and metahuman discussion forums on the net...”

“You read those?”

“Sometimes. Forget it, Roy. It's not important. Just remember not to underestimate Starfire, OK?”

“I won't.”

0000

After a about ten minutes, the ship came close to the Temple of X'hal, which, while architecturally similar to the rest of the planet's towering structures, showed little of the age or battle erosion the rest of the planet did.

The five Titans disembarked and braved a narrow bridge across from the landing platform—or makeshift landing platform, as it wasn't the most stable thing they'd ever seen—and reached the entrance of the temple.

Robin stayed unusually close to Kori the whole time, as well. “What's going on?” Arsenal asked Cyborg.

“Huh?”

“Robin normally isn't so open about his feelings for Starfire, but now he's practically hanging of of her.”

“Roy, don't you see it? Robin sees Collin as competition. Kori doesn't think of him that way, though. To her, he's just another friend. But Robin doesn't see it that way. You see the way he looks at her, don't you. I swear it's freakin' me out. And I'm the one who's half robot”

“Guys, keep up!” Collin shouted back. Victor and Roy sped up and reached the door shortly after Star, Robin, and Ragnarök.
Starfire recited the same chant she'd used to open the other doors, and they slid open. Revealing.
Rock monsters.

“Ugh. Why are all these temples so predictable?” Robin sighed, drawing his bo staff.

“All the defenses are designed to be powered by something you cannot possibly have the catalyst for already.” Kori replied.

“That... was rhetorical, Robin shot back, smashing his staff into one of the humanoid terra-androids.”

“Well, obviously they didn't count on me having the ability to do THIS!” Collin shouted, raising his hands as if to manipulated the earth that the monsters were composed of...
But nothing happened.

“Do what?” Cyborg quipped.

“OK... This is not good.” Collin complained. “Why do my powers not work?”

Starfire blasted some more of the first wave and landed between Tim and Collin, in front of Roy, ducking low enough for him to fire over her shoulder. “You only possess a low-class earth-moving artifact,” she said. “The Crimson Catalyst's power is greater than your own, and supersedes it.”

“That's just great,” said Colin, pulling out his bag of “ammo.”
And the struggle continued...

0000

Raven was rather miffed that Trevor's idea of a romantic pizza dinner for two was the same pizzeria the Titans normally ate at. He'd said he figured if it was good enough for superheroes, it was good enough for them. Of course, he'd said it in a demeaning manor, not concealing his mistrust of the metahuman population, which now numbered in the hundreds.

It was then Raven realized that the fact she could confide in Trevor about her father and his evil for her was precisely BECAUSE he hated superhumans so much. She could only tell him the truth as long as she continued to lie to him. The other Titans—they would be too inquisitive. They'd try to stop the unstoppable. Raven just wanted to enjoy their final days and weeks on the Earth. Soon, all would be Trigon's.

But enough of that train of thought. She had to focus on the here and now. And now, Trevor was passing her a slice of pizza. “Thank you.”

“Don't mention it.” He took a bite of his own, a MegaMeatyMeat special, which the owner had taken from the now defunct Nufu restaurant. (Defunct of course, because Cyborg had accidentally eaten the Source, the alien cube that ran the restaurant.)

“So, I don't mean to pry, but what exactly does you dad do that's so terrible?” Trevor asked. Oddly, Raven felt sincerity from him. How could such an otherwise nice guy hate metahumans so much?

“My Dad...?” Raven thought a moment. “He is... in the real estate business. He wants me to do things... that I'm sure are illegal in order to... bring the prices down... So he can buy them and sell them at higher prices.”

“OK...” Trevor's look showed her for sure that wasn't at all what he was expecting, but it was the closest she could get to her father without revealing his demonic nature. “Like what sorts of things?” Trevor was clearly confused.

“I'd rather not say.” Because she hadn't thought of anything yet. Now Trevor was getting concerned.

“It's that bad? Seriously, Rachel, if he's forcing you to do things you're not comfortable with, you should call the police or something... I mean..”

“The police can't do anything about it.” Raven sat back. Boy couldn't they! No one could stop Trigon the Terrible. “Trevor... Let's just say he wouldn't hesitate to take over the planet, given the chance.”

Trevor arched an eyebrow. “Sounds like a comic book villain.” He smirked at his sarcasm.

“Well, we live in a rather comic book-like town, don't we?” Raven shot back. “Have you... reconsidered moving away?”

“Well, something new has come up. My uncle, you see, he's owned this newspaper company out in Apex City for years. And he's offered me a job working for his new branch here in Jump—Geez, what a stupid name for a city. You ever get over that living here and all?—I guess I'll be staying here. He's agreed not to tell my father where I ran off to, but he said my dad's worried sick about me.” Trevor let out a sigh, then inhaled. “Is your dad local?”

Raven sweatdropped. “Not exactly.”

“Well, anyway. I have to get going. My uncle said I had to be at work by three, so I guess I'll be seeing you around.” Trevor got up and walked towards the stairs, almost bumping into a red haired young adult in a dark coat. Odd that he'd be wearing such a jacket in the weather, but to each his own.

Raven started to leave herself, when she noticed the red-haired stranger staring at her... and it made her rather uncomfortable. She looked up at him and arched an eyebrow. His yes... Geez his eyes... they... Something seemed familiar, almost knowing in them. She felt nothing malicious radiating from him, but at the same time, she couldn't read him at all. His mind was a stone wall, there, but concealing something. As if he knew how to block her out...


“Can I help you?” she asked, rather confused, hoping said confusion wouldn't cause a chair to shake apart or the building to collapse.

“It's funny, you know. How something that seems small can make a world of difference. What if Thaddeus Jump had settled in Florida instead of Cali? Makes you wonder.”

“Then I suppose Jump City would be in Florida,” Raven ventured. “What's you point?”

“Nothing. Just how little things that seem insignificant, times, conversations, dates, choices... How in the long run they might become something larger.”

“Do I know you?”

The stranger smiled. “Perhaps in another life.” And he turned and walked away.

Raven buried her mixed emotions. She had to get back to the Tower.

0000

The Titans burst into the room, finally glad to confirm it was indeed at long last the room that held the Crimson Catalyst. Cyborg dived into a prone position and began firing shots from his left sonic cannon, as his right arm had been removed during the fighting. Starfire launched some starbolts, and Robin, out of Birdarangs and explosive discs, and having had his bo staff broke in two, was fighting with the jagged ends of the staff halves. Roy was supplying a constant stream of arrows, and Collin was doing what he could with the rocks he was given—well, the rocks he had taken.

“Die you brother-glomping snorkel breathers!” Collin yelled, smashing a rock through the dirt and rock shells of his foes.

A Rock Monster leaped up high, assisted by it's brethren, and slammed into Starfire, knocking her to the ground.

“Star!” Robin yelled.

“Kori!” Ragnarök echoed.

Suddenly, the creatures surged forward, trampling the tough, but fatigued Tamaranian underfoot. “Starfire!” Cyborg growled, turning his Sonic Canon up to maximum and firing through the creatures, shattering scores of them. But they kept on coming.

Thankfully for Robin's peace of mind, Kori stood up, furious, and began blasting with all her might at the monsters.

“It's no use!” Roy warned. “You're just burning yourself out, Vic.”

“Arsenal,” Robin yelled. “Try and shoot the Catalyst out of the statue's ring.” (As in this particular room, the statue of the Guardian had an outstretched hand, bearing a ring, bearing the Crimson Catalyst.)

“Right.” Roy aimed his arrow and let it loose...
And it hit it's mark, but rather than low, as Roy had intended, it hit dead center, knocking the tiny device away from the Titans, towards the stampeding Rock Creatures the Titans could barely hold off.

“Crap!” Collin made a tornado of dust from the dust in the room., and then oddly, leaped to the top, using the swirling dust as a very haphazard set of stilts, and used it to hurl himself towards the falling Catalyst, catching it in one hand and grabbing hold of the statue's with the other, and then using the dust once more to give himself a boost onto the statue—and all this happened in about 12 seconds.

“What are you doing?” Cyborg yelled up at him.

“I have an idea. I saw this on Star Trek once!”

“Which means it isn't going to work,” Roy muttered. “Everybody knows that nearly all science on Star Trek is pseudo-science.”

Collin jammed the Catalyst into the insertion point on his Tamaranian armor's gloves, and held his hand up. “I HAVE THE POWEEERR!” he yelled.

“That was lame,” somebody muttered.

But sure enough, all the Rock Monsters stopped, and went flying away from the Titans, and Robin ran over to the injured Kori, trying to console her or whatever one is supposed to do when their significant other is trampled by semi-sentient rock beings on and from another planet.

“Become this shape!” Collin yelled, and kept repeating. The Rock Monsters began contorting and changing, but never assuming an actual shape, and the catalyst in Collin's glove went from Crimson to a glowing hot red, with bolts of lighting shooting out around it. “Become this shape!”

BOOM! Suddenly, Catalyst gave a burst of light, along with smoke rising from Collin's left hand.

And all the Rock Monsters collapsed to the ground, reverting into lifeless dust and rock.

“Um... What just happened?” Robin asked.

“I told the Rock Monsters to become a paradoxical shape that can't exist in a three dimensional world.” He held up the Catalyst. “I think I broke it.”

“BROKE IT?” Starfire yelled, quickly flying to Collin and nearly jerking his arm out of his socket trying to examine the device. “It CANNOT be broken!”

Cyborg walked over and scanned it with his mechanical eye. “I don't think it's broken, Star, just burnt out. He kept trying to make it do the impossible until he overloaded... whatever makes it tick.”

“Why then has it turned gray?” Starfire inquired. “It is the Crimson Catalyst! It is supposed to be crimson!”

“Hm... I'm reading an ingress of energy, put the energy output has fallen to almost zero. I think it just needs to recharge. I can't say how long that will take, though.”

“Oops.” Collin said.

Robin didn't open his mouth, but gave him a glare that spoke volumes. Nice job, it said.

0000

Back at the Tower, Raven sighed heavily and sat down in a chair in ops. Beast Boy was trying to teach Mas y Menos how to play Mech-Racer and Impulse was mixing a drink he said came from the 30th century and was all the craze.
That was the thing about people from 1000 years in the future: they were always trying to introduce us primitive hillbillies to their advance ways.

“It's almost done, Rae. I'm sure you'll like it.” He began shaking a thermos in his hands, his super speed more powerful than any blender could ever hope to be.

“By the way, why is it that I saw you in a hologuise at the pizzeria today with a pretty boy talking and, dare I say it, smiling?”
Raven's eyes were the size of saucers in about .0295 seconds.

“You can't offer an explanation?” Bart asked.

“He's just a friend.” Raven... lied. Or was it a lie? She didn't know. It felt like one, though.

“Oh, hey!” Beast Boy called from the couch. “Does Raven have a boyfriend?”

“Tiene un novio!” yelled Mas.

“Si, tiene un novio!”echoed Menos.

“Raven's got a boy friend!” From Gar.

“Tiene un novio!”

“Tiene un novio!”

Raven's got a boyfriend!

Tiene un novio!

Tiene un novio!

Raven clenched here fists, small sweat drops began to run down her face and the backs of her hands.

Tiene un novio!

Raven's got a boy friend!

A vein throbbed in her forehead... emotions... rising...

She began to change. Her cloak became alive, her body became a black shadow, taken an amorphous shape, with writhing tentacles, enormous enough that they could be seen from Jump City proper, jutting out of the T-Tower through the now-broken windows... And her eyes both split in two, and became glowing red pits of demonic fury. Her Soul Self, the monstrosity within her body, the manifestation of Trigon's evil power in her blood.

“SHUT UP! BE SILENT OR YOU SHALL FACE YOUR DARKEST FEARS AND SINS!” Raven bellowed... in a voice not her own.

Mas and Menos darted out of the room, and an astute observer might have noticed them heading East, running the 3000 miles to the safety of Steel City.
Lacking that ability Beast Boy leaped behind the couch, eyes full of fear. “Raven I'm sorry! Please calm down it was only a joke!”

Raven's red eyes went from anger to shock, and suddenly her body began to revert, reforming itself inside her cloak. Her four red eyes, blinked, then closed, and opened again has two normal ones. “I... I'm sorry,” she whispered.
Beast Boy said nothing, and ran out of the room, fearing what Raven had become.

Raven just vacantly stared forward, saying nothing. She felt a hand on her shoulder and glared back in anger, ready to tear it off. But it was just Bart, his mask removed and a somber expression on his face.

“I'm sorry. I didn't mean to put you on the spot like that. I just... don't want to see you hurt.”

....

And across the bay, the Red-Headed stranger from the pizzeria stood atop pier 41, looking out at the T-Shaped building, having just observed the spectacle of dark power raging forth from Titan's Tower.

“Ugh. This is just what I was afraid of,” he sighed.

[Chaltab]

Oops, Double post. Pay it no mind.

You can also see this fic on Fanfiction.net (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2675971/1/) if you prefer there.

[Chaltab]

Robin sat back on a rock, staring at the dark skies of Coris... er... coruscating over head, lit by random bursts of lightning. Judging by the terrain, he would have assumed that the catalyst of this world controlled darkness, or perhaps electricity. But Starfire had told the five space-faring Titans that it possessed the ability to alter reality itself. A scary thought to be sure.

“So, why exactly did Kori go in there alone?” Cyborg asked again, more pointedly than before. Probably because Robin had dismissed the question the first time, telling Vic that it was merely her request. Which was true, but Kori had confided in him the reason for this request.

“I told you, she wanted to go in alone.” Tim replied.

“But, why did she want that?” insisted Roy, the arrow slinging youth formerly known as Speedy.

“Think about it, Arsenal,” Collin said, more intense than Robin had seen him since... well, ever. “The power to alter reality itself? Heavy stuff, right? Even good people could abuse that power. What if Batman used it to remake the world into a picture of order—his idea of order, restricting freedoms and...”
Robin interrupted. “That wasn't Kori's reason, and Br.. Batman would never do that, Collin.”

“You say that,” he shot back. “But think about it. Do you really trust yourself with such power? I wouldn't.”

“Are you saying Kori doesn't trust us?” Cyborg asked.
Robin piped in. “No, Vic, she trusts us, but as much as I hate to admit it, Collin is right. Think about it. What would you do to have a normal body again? Or to have your mother back?”

“Keep my mom out of this!” Cyborg yelled.

“He's just saying...” Collin tried to intervene..

Everyone looked at Collin and he seemed to wilt under the collective gazes of the other three.

And then Tim arched an eyebrow, and looked at the ground on the rock's behind where Roy and Collin were standing. “What?” Cyborg asked.

Robin didn't answer but ran over to a spot on the ground and crouched over, pulling a small ocular enhancement device from his belt. “It's a footprint. Fairly fresh. Have any of you been walking around back here?” It was far enough away from where they had been standing, and Robin didn't think any of them had been that far away from the temple door yet.

“No.” The other three answered simultaneously, and Robin studied each of them. Cyborg and Arsenal looked rather confused... but Ragnarök ... The color left his skin, as if sucked into the vacuum of space, and he was suddenly white as a ghost. His “no” sounded truthful to Tim's Dark Knight-trained ears, but it was week, as if suppressing fear.

Cyborg walked over, careful not to step on any of the prints. The one Robin caught with the naked eye (indeed, even through his eye-color-protecting mask) was at least half a centimeter deep. But there were others, visible to Cyborg's electronic eye, and through the Wayne Enterprises high-tech magnifying glass Robin's mentor had given him.

“In that case, somebody has been here. Within the past day or so at that.” Robin stood up, but continued to study the ground through his lens. “The footprints continue this way...” He followed the trail, made visible by technology, back to the center of the circle of rocks the Titans had been resting on while Kori searched the temple...

“What?” Roy asked.

“They go all the way to the temple door,” Robin replied.

“Are you saying somebody. Has been trying to get in here?”

“Yes. And recently.”

“But they didn't have the key or know the incantation,” Collin insisted. “So there's nothing to worry about. Robin thought his voice indicated otherwise.
Cyborg examined the footprints of the rest of the Titans, and his best memories of Kori's.

“Nope. No matches,” Cyborg said.

“No matches to what?” Starfire's voice came from behind the four males.

“Nothing,” Robin lied, not wanting to upset her.

“Star.” Cyborg walked over to her. “Somebody... has been here. Someone was here, on this planet within the last day or so.”
Robin glared at Cyborg. That might upset her...

“I know.” Kori said.

“WHAT?” Robin goggled.

“I told you the reason I went in alone: if only I entered, the defenses might stand down. I was correct.”

“THAT'S the reason you let her go in alone?” Cyborg blurted. “What if they hadn't deactivated? She could have been killed!”

“It's OK, Friend Victor. I am unharmed. The security systems told me of an intruder on the temple grounds who left three ueivas ago.”

“Where did he... or she... go?” Collin asked.

“I do not know. The odd thing is, there were no reports of ships entering or

leaving the atmosphere.”

“How long is a ueiva?” Collin asked?

“Approximately ten earth-hours,” Kori replied.

“Thirty hours ago we had just broken orbit of Oela,” Cyborg stated, concern obvious. “If anything had left the world, we would have seen it.”

Cyborg's words hanged in the air for a minute, but lacking anything but speculation, the subject changed.

“We have the catalyst,” Roy reminded, “so we might as well... head on to Tamaran.”

“Agreed,” Robin said. “If this phantom intruder shows up, we'll deal with it then. Until then, we stay on mission.”
Cyborg, Robin, Arsenal, and Starfire began the short trek back to the T-Ship... And Robin looked back over his shoulder...

“Are you coming, Rag?”

“Yeah. Of course.” And he followed.

0000

“We're now entering Tamaran's atmosphere,” Robin announced some time later. “Make sure you're all strapped in.”

The T-Ship arced in, enduring the heat of reentry and leveling out above what had once been a great ocean. The crater that dug into the ground where the capital city of Hastionfarlock had once stood was some thirty kilometer's north, and still visible, so big it was. As was the hurricane-like storm that swirled around it, scattering harmful rays all over the planet.

“This is insane.” Cyborg double checked the readings that prompted that outburst. “I'm getting readings of massive epsilon radiation from the storm around the crater.”

“What does that mean?” Roy asked the genius jock-cum-Million Dollar Teenager.

“It means that a good chunk of whatever killed this planet was made of pure Zynothium.”

The mood of everyone in the ship sobered quickly. But nobody said anything, so Cyborg continued.

“In fact,” Cyborg said, taking into account the deadly instability of most Zynothium isotopes, “the rock was probably no bigger than the T-Tower.”

Roy swore. “Then it was... deliberate. If working with the Green Arrow taught me anything other than archery, it's chemistry--especially the kind useful to maniacs. Zynothium isn't a naturally occurring element. It has to be manufactured.”

Robin looked at Starfire's screen. She was on the verge of tears. Nevertheless, the horrible fact had to be stated: “Then someone intentionally killed Tamaran. Someone in the know, who probably wanted the Catalysts for themselves.”

“Oh, Tim.” Kori's emotions were on her figurative sleeves. Anger, fear, sadness.
“How could anyone be so cruel! I do not understand!”

Robin tried to think of something he could say—anything that would comfort the distressed Tamaranian girl... but nothing came. And soon it was a moot point when the T-Ship's proximity alarm began blaring.

“Oh crap!” Robin said. He looked down at the monitor and out the window... and gathered that whatever was coming at them was energy, spherical, and roughly 18 feet in diameter—the size of the T-Ship.” Evasive action! Separate the ship!”

But it was too late... the blast washed over them, and as best Robin could tell, he must have blacked out for a second. The attack was gone...
Instruments were scrambled, but coming back on... But his biggest alarm came from his... pants.

Yes. His pants. Which were now as red as his Kevlar shirt.

This alarmed him, because at first he thought he was soaked in so much blood that his green pants were died crimson, and his legs numb or cut off entirely.. But relief and confusion quickly washed over him when he felt them dry, and concealing perfectly intact legs. It was as if his original suit he had worn as Batman's young ward had been magically returned to him.

Quickly taking the attention off himself, he opened channels with the other Titans.

“Titans, report.”

“Um...” Cyborg's voice came over, and Robin studied his picture... and goggled. “I have hair now.” Sure enough, though his hair had, as one might think, stopped growing after Victor had been caught in the accident that made him a cyborg, was there on his head, close-shaved, just has he had once worn it when football season was on hiatus.

“My suit has gone green...” Arsenal said. “What the...”
Indeed, Roy's formerly read suit was now Green-Arrow green.

“Kori?” Robin asked.

“I have a problem, yes?” Robin goggled when he enlarged Starfire's picture on the small screen. Here skirt and top were gone, now replaced by something that can best be described as the result of a laser beam lawnmower mugging a purple one-piece swimsuit made of metal.

And oddly, Kori now possessed a belly button.

The obvious line of thought one would normally extract from the fact she used to not have one (that is, how are Tamaranians born without umbilical cords?) was lost on Robin, as he was too busy scolding himself for enjoying what Kori

was wearing a little too much for his conscience's sake.

He killed the com with her T-ship seat and opened a video channel between everyone and Collin. “What about you?”

“Um... guys...” the youth in the Tamaranian armor started. “My suit looks the same... Is there anything different about me? I don't have a mirror.”

“Um...”

Ragnarök had changed, yes. His hair, formerly jet black was now a very dirty blond, and where it had once been flat on top with spikes on the back of the head and neck, it was now a mess of spikes pointing every which direction.
He eyed all the Titans with a look of exaggerated curiosity. “What?”

0000

Meanwhile, on the surface of the planet the cloaked figure from Coris stood in the blazing heat of what had once been Tamaran's red deserts, turned to white sands by the epsilon waves pounding the planet.

The attack had been a direct hit, and yet the T-Ship flew on.

This didn't bode well at all.

He looked to the east, towards where the ship flew.

Many things had changed, but one thing remained: The man in the Tamaranian armor had to die.

0000

“My readings are totally normal,” Cyborg told the Titans as he deactivated his sensors. “Other than our changed appearances, nothin’ seems out of place.”
The Titans had finally landed shortly outside the temple’s defensive sphere, but Robin had thought it best to test all the possible side effects of both the Epsilon discharge and whatever it was that altered their suits, much to the chagrin of both Kori and Collin.

“Look, Robin,” Collin started, “we’re all fine. Now can we please get going? I’m mondo bored here!”
Vic arched an eyebrow. “Mondo?”

“I… uh…” Collin stammered.

”I know what mondo means, man. But that lingo went out with the Turtles, ya hear, dawg?”

”Um…” Collin went from defense to offense. “You know I hate to see people stereotype themselves. Southerners who talk like hillbillies and can’t even spell the word; when black people use ax instead of ask. Makes me mad!”

Collin’s rant caused everyone to experience some minor face-vaulting, but it subsided quickly.

”Typical liberal bull crap,” Roy commented. Collin just smirked. Robin wanted to punch that smirk off his face.

“Hm. My eye can’t see through your armor, Collin; How’s that bruise?”

”My bruise?” Collin shrugged, and then rubbed his side. “It’s feeling a lot better now. I swear I’m fine. Now let’s go!”

“I agree with Friend Collin,” Starfire said. “The sun will set soon, and this desert will become frigid.”

0000

The frigidity of the desert became noticeable just about the time the Titans five arrived at the door of the temple.

”Collin, I have need of the Crimson Catalyst.” Kori held out her and.

”Right. It’s grey right now.”

”But a key doesn’t need to be shiny to work.” Kori removed the Catalyst from Collin’s glove. It was odd, but his new-found scar made him look downright rugged, especially in conjunction with his change in hair style. Kori smiled, but it wasn’t a real one. It couldn’t be real, standing there on the lifeless rock that had once been her native world.

She sensed, perhaps perceived, that there was something else wrong, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. Nevertheless, Starfire placed the Crimson Catalyst in it’s slot, and then removed the other four from her travel bag and inserted them in their respective holes; Dark, Red, Prism, Green.

Lights matching the colors of all the catalyst ran up grooves in the massive doors—(The Dark Catalyst lights were purple, actually) and suddenly the door seemed to fade out of existence as the light around it faded and the door receded into another dimension, or perhaps went into the ceiling. All the bright lights made it hard for Kori to tell.

“Friends: The Grand Temple of Lord X’hal, Creator of the Universe.”
She looked back at her friends. Awe was on their faces—and Collin seemed rather overjoyed. The Temple’s interior was sandstone, with columns of pure platinum holding the distant ceiling up. Mosaics all over the walls and floors and ceiling were carved into golden plaques, colored by cobalts, coppers, emeralds, rubies, and sapphires.

”I’ve never seen anything… manufactured so… beautiful!” Robin blurted.

”Amazin’!” Cyborg’s real eye looked like it was going to bug out of his head.
Roy said nothing; he just stared.

”I can’t believe it!” Yelled Collin.

“Kori,” Robin asked, placing a hand on her shoulder, “did you know about his? I mean… this place.. it must have cost a fortune.”

Kori smiled as she looked around. “I had always heard of the legends of this Temple, but until now I had never seen it with my own eyes. It is truly everything I imagined it to be and more.”

“If we could auction this stuff off… we could fund the Titans for decades!” Roy said. This was the wrong thing to say in Star’s presence, though.

”YOU WILL NOT DEFILE THIS HOLY PLACE IN SUCH A WAY!” Her eyes were bright green, glaring daggers down at Roy, whom she towered over by nearly a foot.

”I didn’t mean we were really going to!” Roy insisted, shrinking away from Starfire’s fury. “I was just being hypothetical.”

“It is not polite to even joke about such things. This place is the only remnants of my civilization, Roy. I’m sorry if my fury scared you, but…” A tear fell from her eye. “I felt disrespected by your comment.”

0000

Roy tried to say he was sorry.. but the words felt hollow, and he was ashamed. He noticed Cyborg and Robin were rather somber about the outburst… But when he looked at Ragnarok… he saw mirth.

So typical of the lefties, he thought. They talk big about respecting other people’s beliefs, but they really only respect themselves.

0000

The walk was long, but not arduous, so soon the tired-but-not-exhausted Titans found themselves in the Grand Hall. And grand it was, though not much of a hall; It had no floor.

This wasn’t a problem for Tamaranians, who could naturally fly, but it did cause a bit of a problem for the males of the group.

”Collin,” Starfire said, “if you would, make us a bridge please.”

”But you took my Crimson Catalyst.”

”What about the artifact that originally powered your suit?” Robin asked.

”I.. er..” Collin gave a sheepish grin… “I left it on the ship.”
Robin scowled at that. “Then how are we going to get across?

”Hold on a moment,” Starfire said. Then she recited something in Tamaranian, and suddenly, a stone jutted from somewhere in the deep chasm that should have been a floor; and all five of the Catalysts were in it.

”I was wondering what happened to those,” remarked Cyborg.
Kori hovered off the ground, and suddenly, the stone glowed and the catalysts shot out from the stone, the Red and Prism Catalysts entering the circles on her gauntlets. The Crimson and Green went into the inserts in her boots, which had only appeared after she had been altered in what Cyborg had determined must have been a freak epsilon discharge that had somehow bent reality around them, perhaps using the Dark Catalyst itself in her bag, drawing power from it.

The Dark Catalyst itself fell into the insert on her chest, which had moved up about two inches to accommodate for her new costume.

Energy radiated out from Kori, making a bridge of Earth, tempered by fire, lined with foliage, and bright as day. The power of the catalysts.

”Now that was cool,” said Roy.

The Titans walked along the new bridge, elated that their long quest to save Tamaran’s legacy was finally over.

And the room in which the Final Guardian stood, was no different than the rest of the Temple: extravagant, beautiful, and generally awe-inspiring. And in the center was a statue of a Tamaranian woman in golden armor, holding onto a Golden Catalyst.

The Ultimate Catalyst.

”Oohhh… Pretty.”

”What does it do?” Collin asked.

”Kori read the symbols above the Catalyst. “It draws power from all of creation, and uses it to enhance whatever system it’s placed in.” Her face changed to one of confusion. “It says here that…”

But before she could finish, Collin snapped his hand out and grabbed the Catalyst from the hands of the statue.

”What are you doing, Collin?”

“Why’d you ask?” The tone of his voice changed drastically, and a bright light flared up from within the armor, which exploded off of him, revealing…

A very similar set of armor. But where as the first set had a bandoleer pair that came across in an X shape, the new armor was like an upside down Y, and in the center, Ragnarok inserted the Golden Catalyst.

”It’s about time I got my hands on this!” And Collin—if that was even his real name—held up his right hand. And in his right gauntlet was… A Dark Catalyst.

"Explain yourself!" demanded Starfire. "Why are you acting so strangely!?"

“All I had to do was earn your trust and follow you in here. Steal your toys. Now I’m gonna remake this universe as I see fit!”

”Collin, please! NO!” Starfire yelled. “This can’t be! You are not…”

”I’m not what? For real about this? Think again. This is dead serious. With the power of the Dark and Golden Catalysts together, I am invincible. I’m like… a god or something. Heh.”

”Ragnarok! Stop! Robin held out his bo staff. “I should NEVER have trusted you. Raven said you were hiding something.” He bit out a curse and lunged at Collin, but he just dodge, and kneed Robin in the gut.

”Aw, Timmy-Boy can’t hit me? I’ve absorbed Superboy with this Dark Catalyst. Not here, but in a world just like it. There’s no way you’ll out class me.” His face twisted into a sadistic smile, and he leapt up just as Cyborg’s sonic canon lashed by him, missing him by centimeters.

“You monster!” Roy yelled, firing off a rapid chain of arrows. Collin held up a hand and then something odd happened. It was as if space itself when two-dimensional around the arrows, and spun in place, pointing them back at Roy, who dodge two, only to receive his third and final through his right shoulder.

Then he lunged at Kori, grabbing both her hands with his and stomping his feet on her feet. And a flash of the DC energy, which looked like space-time itself was bulging, flashed around Koriand’r, and suddenly, her costume was back to normal… mostly.

The Dark Catalyst in her shirt’s receptacle was now an enormous spider, her gloves had been transmuted black, and her boots were now a white powder…
Starfire studied her hands more closely: Ants. Thousands of ants. She let out a squeal, the typical squeal of teen girls when afraid of bugs. With barely a thought, she blasted the Spider off her chest with eye beams, and started flailing her hands wildly till it occurred to her to use a starbolt to vaporize all the ants. “Ragnarok, please don’t do this!” She suddenly realized that in half a second he had destroyed all five Lesser Catalysts. Oh X’hal, she thought. He is like a god.

“Adios. Literally.”

And in a flash of Dark Catalyst energy, he was gone.
His voice echoed, however, throughout the temple. “By the way, my name isn’t Ragnarok. You can call me DELIRIUM.”
_____________

Well, it would seem the cat is now out of the bag, wouldn't it? But wait, I have one more surprise for you, and I'm sure those of you who LIKED Ragnarok will enjoy it.

[Chaltab]

"Mmm… Guys…” Roy said, clutching his bleeding shoulder. “What did he mean by literally?”

”Here.” Cyborg injected something into Roy’s shoulder below the wound. “It will numb the pain, at least. Well,” Cyborg started, being a genius, “Adios comes from the Spanish words a and Dios and literally means ‘to God…’ Which I suppose means he’s expecting us to meet our maker.”

Suddenly the temple began to rumble. “Oh X’hal no!” Starfire screamed. “He has used the power to bring the temple down on us!”

As if to accentuate her words, one of the Platinum columns holding up the ceiling bent and snapped in two, falling to the ground, almost smashing the injured Arsenal.

And as if that wasn’t enough trouble, the statue of the Tamaranian woman came alive, and drew swords, a white energy coruscating over it. But it wasn’t a living statue; It was truly a living being, perhaps petrified all these centuries by something. It drew swords of gold and swung down at the fleeing Titans.
The Titans continued to flee, gaining ground, but with the temple collapsing, alarms were going off, and doors slammed shut, trapping the Titans in the Catalyst Chamber. Robin looked up when he realized there was light coming in from outside, the faint glow of the lightning of the distant storm and what few stars could shine through. He would have seen it sooner, had it been day.

”Kori!” Robin yelled, “I’ve used all my Bat-Grapples. You have to fly us out of here!”

”I can’t…”
And Robin remembered; when she had been emotionally distressed on the planet where they had crash landed, she had been unable to fly. And now, she suffered the same distress from Delirium’s betrayal.

Cyborg glanced back at Roy, to check on him, and was surprised to see him aiming a crossbow with a grappling arrow at the ceiling. He pulled the trigger and the arrow went flying upwards, taking the rope with it.

A loud crash resounded and another of the platinum columns fell, and Robin jumped out of the way just in time. Robin leaped to his feet and grabbed Kori, placing her on his back and climbing up the rope. Cyborg followed, and at last, Roy. Robin was amazed he could do it with that shoulder wound—even with the numbing agent, it still must have caused him agony. I’ve heard you were good. Robin remembered his words to ‘Speedy’ when they first met.

The top of the temple was thankfully a slope, so the Titans could slide down it.

”Robin, no!” Starfire insisted. “We must go back…”

”Star, the temple is coming down. We have to get back to the ship and stop Delirium.” Cyborg took her from Robin and leaped from the top of the collapsing temple, sliding down, thankful his robotic body didn’t have nerve endings.

“But…” Starfire’s voice trailed off as she slid out of Robin’s earshot.

”Roy, you up to this?” he asked.
Rather than answering, Arsenal jumped out of the way of a falling sandstone tower and slid down, follow closely by Tim…

The two non-metahuman Titans hit the ground hard and rolled in the cold nighttime desert floor of the dead planet, and then Robin passed out.

0000

Raven sat back in her favorite chair and sipped some herbal tea. Impulse was back up north in Dakota City, Mas and Menos were patrolling, and Beast Boy was busy making sure they didn’t miss anything.

She was thankful for the alone time, though she felt a bit selfish for enjoying it so much. She knew it was a foolish feeling. She had offered to help the patrol, but Beast Boy had insisted that she would only slow them down. After all, they were two Speedsters and a guy who could run at the speed of a cheetah—as long as he was one.

It was also possible that Gar had kept her there for other reasons. Her insomnia from the Trigon-induced nightmares, and his own desire to prove himself based on the fact that she was in command and he wasn’t. She sensed he may have had a bit of resentment being the lowest ranking of the five, even though he had the most experience next to Robin from his days with the Doom Patrol…

It had been three days since she’d last seen Trevor, and a full week since she’d met him. Has it really only been one week? It seemed like much longer. And that scared her.

Suddenly, something didn’t seem right. She felt some small, barely perceptible

psychic vibration, something she wouldn’t have noticed at all over the noise that normally cluttered the tower. She set her tea down, levitated the book from her lap to a coffee table and hovered into ops. She didn’t see anything, but she still felt something…
She quickly turned around… Again, nothing. Perhaps it was just a side-effect of the nightmares or the bouts of sleeplessness. Perhaps…

”You know, this tower seriously needs better security,” a voice came from… above.

Suddenly, a figure in a dark jacket dropped from the ceiling into Raven’s peripheral vision. And before she caught the red hair, familiar face and knowing eyes, Raven gasped in fright, causing a nearby lamp to shatter, simultaneously grabbed the intruder, wrapping him in dark energy and hurling him through a nearby window, shattering the glass and sending him plummeting, most likely to his doom…
Then the face and hair clicked in her mind and she remembered the stranger from the pizza restaurant. Raven ran over to the window to look down, but before she got there, he hurled himself back up through the window, his jacket slightly tattered but not a scratch on his body…

”You!” Raven yelled, her hands raised and encased in black energy. “How did you get in here?”

”I just used your password. Honestly, you could have thought of something more creative than ‘Allera’—you’re mother’s name backwards is one of the first things hackers go for.”

”How do you know my mother’s name?” Raven was calmer now, mostly because he didn’t seem a threat... and because panicking would likely destroy the tower.

”I know a lot about you, Raven.”
She glared at him, trying to probe his thoughts, and still unable.

”Why did you come here? Who are you?”

“I’m a friend.” The stranger flicked his wrist and suddenly, a metallic object was in his hand was in his hand. Raven couldn’t make out exactly what it was. “I want you to have this. He is coming; the day draws near, Raven. I want you to be ready.”

He handed he the object, and Raven took it, reluctantly, fearing a trap. But she sensed no malevolence from him. So either he was as good at keeping things in as he was at blocking her out, or he was genuine. The metallic object in her hand was sharp, a shard of something broken—perhaps a sword, judging by what appeared to be a blood grove on the duller side.

“What is this?” she asked looking up, surprised to see him standing at the window she’d knocked him through. Only Batman moved that quietly—without metahuman talents, at least!

”It’s the only thing in this world—short of a miracle—capable of defeating your father.” He started to go out the window, but Raven stopped him.

”Wait? Why do I feel like I know you?”
He smiled. “Trade secret.”
Raven turned and started to walk away, and then she turned back and asked, “How did you survive me knocking you out the window?”

As he left, he said, “I’ve had a lot of experience in that department….”

0000

Starfire felt like her heart shed a dozen pounds when Robin’s eyes finally opened.

Ugh?” He groaned as he sat up. “Wh..”

”Welcome back, Tim.” Kori embraced him. “Thank you for rescuing me. But…” As grand as the implications were, she couldn’t wait to tell him, but again, Robin shrugged off her important info as he got down to businesses.

”You’re welcome. How is Roy?”

”Oh, me?” Came the voice of Arsenal. “I’m fine. You’ve been out for about half an hour.”

“And that’s a half hour head start that Delirium has on us.” Robin jumped down from his resting place on the T-ship. Robin glanced over at Roy and saw his shirt, dabbled with blood. But where there had once been a hole where the arrow had pieced his arm, there was now nothing. “What happened to your arm?”

”I don’t know. The wound just randomly healed up about the same time that statue came to life.”

“I couldn’t figure anything out either,” Cyborg said, standing up, holding a glass tube. “It’s just like it healed by magic. Anyway, Collin, or Delirium or whatever the expletive his real name is sabotaged the T-Ship, so until I can get it fixed, we’re stuck here.”

“How long will that take?”

Cyborg opened a panel on the outside and tore out a plastic tube and inserted the glass replacement.

”About five seconds—startin’ five seconds ago,” Victor said smugly.

0000

The temple that once towered above the dessert was now certifiably a ruin, mostly collapsed in on itself.

The cloaked figure moved through the now moonlit chamber of the Ultimate Catalyst, not sure what he was searching for. The poor guardian, whatever it was, never had a chance. An enormous sandstone brick had fallen from the ceiling, breaking into several sharp fragments on the way down. And the largest of those impaled it through the neck

The cloaked figure stepped over the growing pool of blue liquid that served as its life’s blood . And there, in a crevice in the wall behind the Guardian Statue was a smaller effigy, carved in the legendary likeness of X’hal.

Holding a glowing white sphere. A hand, Caucasian and masculine, reached out from the cloak that protected its wearer from the heat and cold of the dessert. He picked the device up, and immediately, the harsh burns the dessert had caused to his palms faded, the skin regenerating more rapidly than even the best metahuman regeneration talents.

A Catalyst of Regeneration.

The Tamaranian had told him of it. Not the Koriand’r who had just left, barely saved from death by her true love. No. It was another Tamaranian. Somewhere else. Far, far away. That Tamaranian; she had not known where it was located...

And the monster Delirium? He could have stopped him. He could have defeated him before, the last time they had met. If he hadn’t been such a coward.

But that was one mistake he wasn’t going to make again. Because this time, a planet died because of his cowardice, something he’d regret as long as he lived.

The only problem now was, how to get back to Earth?

0000

The Justice League, formerly of America and now bearing the more universal moniker of Unlimited, was perhaps the greatest assortment of metahumans and costumed vigilantes to ever bear the burden of justice.
And their headquarters reflected this assumption quite grandly. The Watchtower: an armored and armed space station orbiting the earth, accessible only by Javelin or through the teleportation unit manned mostly by J’onn J’onnz, the Martian Manhunter.

And it just so happened that pretty much every member was currently aboard this station for the tri-annual affairs meeting when a klaxon began to blare.
Superman was the first to react. “What is it, J’onn?” he asked the Martian, who was currently manning the scanners.

”I am uncertain. There is some sort of spatial anomaly developing outside the Watchtower. I am putting it on screen.”

The assortment of JLUers, as they had come to be known, gasped or arched curios eyebrows collectively when the screen activated to show what looked like reality itself bulging, a sphere of bent space sitting out side.
Thin it began to spin like a globe, slowly, until it turned an apparent 180 degrees, revealing..

Delirium.

The psychopathic teen gave an evil smirk, kept alive by the surreality field around him that allowed him to survive in space. “Hm. I can’t have these do-gooders attacking me before I remake the world my way, I suppose.”
He extended a hand and the Dark Catalysts energy, enhanced by the Golden Catalyst, bent around the Watchtower, causing it to seemingly bulge just as he had. And with a causal wave of his hand, it was gone, hurled billions of light-years away.

That would be sufficient. He didn’t hurl them into a star or turn the station inside out, because frankly, Delirium preferred his murder to be a bit more… personal.

And he couldn’t absorb them and their powers unless their bodies were mostly intact. So it was a pretty fair trade he supposed. The Titans and his rival were stuck on Tamaran, probably already dead, so that just left Raven and Beast Boy.

He descended towards the earth, laughing inside at the special things he had planned for them…

0000

Blaring through hyperspace in the T-Ship, the Titans began planning Delirium’s demise.

“Starfire, does the Dark Catalyst have any limits?”

“Only two; it must be aimed, like any other weapon. And it cannot bring the dead back to life. That is a power not granted to mortals.”

“Alright. That first one is definitely helpful. What about the Ultimate Catalyst, what can it do?” Robin inquired. “Aside from enhancing the others, of course.”

”Robin, I do not believe he has the Ultimate Catalyst.”

”What?” the other three blurted.

”When… Delirium betrayed us, I was reading the inscription above the Guardian. It said to look beyond the Guardian to the hands of X’hal if you seek the Ultimate Catalyst. I believe we overlooked something important.”

”Starfire, why…”
But she cut Robin off, “I tried to tell you we needed to go back, but all of you continued to interrupt me. Either way, the temple was destroyed, so it is unlikely we would have found anything.”

“What’s done is done,” Roy said. “We need to make a plan to beat him”

”Okay. Whether the device he has is the Ultimate Catalyst or not, it doesn’t matter,” Robin thought aloud. “He has the Gold one, and we need to strategize around that.”

”It can do nothing but enhance, Tim.” Kori said. “It is merely a decoy. And I believe that…”
Just then, a blur of light and metal blasted by and went right over the T-ship. A very familiar blur of light and metal.

”Um…” Cyborg began. “Was that the Watchtower!”

“Looked like it,” said Roy.

”BRUCE…! BANNER’S BONES!” Robin yelled. “Batman is on there!”

“OLLIE…! OLLIE OXEN FREE!” Roy echoed. "The Green Arrow was up there too!

“We have to go back for them,” Robin insisted.

”No, Tim,” Kori reprimanded. “Would Batman not want you to put the safety of earth above his own life? We must stop Delirium or we will all be ‘in the screw.’”

”That’s ‘screwed’, Star.” Cyborg corrected.
Yet again, Cyborg’s words seemed to hang in the air…

0000

Mas and Menos were just about to turn around and head back to the Tower, whensuddenly a figure in green armor landed in front of them, causing the ground to ripple out like water.

And he grabbed both of them by the throats. “Hi, boys.” He held them apart. “I don’t suppose you’re any threat when you’re separated, so I just have to keep you that way. He hurled them into the side of a nearby building, blasting them with Dark Catalyst energy, causing them to turn into a set of immobile trashcans.

”Well, that’s two down.” Delirium held his hands up and began focusing the power of the Dark Catalyst through the Golden one. The energy coursing through the armor manifested into a ball above his head; soon, he would be ruler of this planet.

0000

The T-Ship burst into our home solar system, near earth, and began angling towards the planet.

“How’d we get back so fast?” asked Roy.

”You know the trip back is always shorter than the trip to.” Cyborg shot back.

0000

By now, the giant ball of surreality energy was hard to miss, but the police wanted nothing to do with this fight.

”Where are Mas and Menos?” Raven demanded, to the figure with their back to them.

”And just who are you, anyway?” Beast Boy asked.
Delirium turned around, his energy apparently unaffected by his motion.

“COLLIN?” Beast Boy blurted.

”Why you…” And then the horrible realization struck her. “You’re a traitor. You… left them there to die, didn’t you?”

“I swear you won’t care soon enough. You’ll be dead too.”

”Monster!”

”I beg to differ. Try deity.” And suddenly, the energy flashed throughout the Universe.

And it was remade to fit the desires of one Collin Roberts…

[Chaltab]

The T-Ship angled in, slowly entering the Earth’s atmosphere.


”Oh man. No wonder we could find no trace of him,” Robin blurted as his computer search ended.


”Why not?” asked Cyborg.


“Because in our world, there IS no Collin Roberts. The only grandchild of black market antiquities dealer Alexander Roberts was a girl named Paula. Born three months after what Collin told us was his birthday.” Robin’s words generated confused looks from everyone.


”Don’t you remember a few years back when alternate versions of the Justice League came to this world? They called themselves the Justice LORDS and tried to enslave our planet and make it crime-free and freedom-free like their own, until their Batman betrayed them. And our Justice League stopped them.


”I um, seem to remember hearing something about that,” Cyborg said. “I was a bit new to the metahuman scene, then, ya’ know.”


”It’s the same thing,” Robin said. “Delirium is from an alternate universe, and he’s met us before. That’s how he took us out so easily on Tamaran, and why he seemed to know us so well. How do you think he knew that you were allergic to metallic chromium, Star?”


”No!” Kori’s voice was full of anguish. “That is why he befriended us… he must have killed me in the other world. He must have been unable to enter the temples! And for that reason, he came here, became our friend, and betrayed us to get the Catalyst… In fact, when we were preparing to fight the fire criminals at the bank… he almost called me Kori. I should have known…”


“You believe him?” Roy interjected. “About all these alternate worlds and nonsense?”


“Why would I not?” Starfire asked.


“So how do we go about beating someone who seems to have killed us before? He even said he’d ‘absorbed the powers of Superboy,’ didn’t he?” Cyborg said, trying to avert an argument between Star and Arsenal. And refocus the group on strategizing.


But they wouldn't really have that chance just yet...


”What the…?” Robin blurted, and all the Titans looked out their cockpits to see a flash of light consume the ship.


And the universe changed.

0000


A giant robot rampaged through the Pacific-Coast paradise known as Jump City. In its pilot seat was a deranged youth known as Collin Roberts, aka Delirium.
Nobody knew where the giant robot came from or how a teen could afford one.



And nobody asked; they just knew it had to be stopped.


And there were only five teens in California who could stop him: The TEEN TITANS.


“You fiend!” screamed the teen’s leader Robin. “Fiend? Holy bad dialog! I’m talking like a comic book character!”


“You’re not the only one, Boy Wonder!” Came the answer of Victor Stone, also known as the powerhouse Cyborg. “The entire world has been remade like a comic book!”


”And Delirium has become a COMIC BOOK VILLAIN, dude!” added Beast Boy, aka Garfield Logan.


“This is most terrible! I feel so two-dimensional!” yelled Starfire, alias Kory Anders.


”Enough. You’re emotions are paralyzing me!” Insisted Raven, the empath. “We must fight this Delirium. We must return our world to normal!”


“The witch is right!” Agreed Cyborg. “We have to stop him!”


“Titans, Together!” Yelled Robin. Robin leaped forward, and hurled some birdarangs at the giant Robot, but they bounced off.


Beast Boy transformed into a Brontosaurus and lashed his massive green tail at Delirium’s robot, knocking its legs out from under it and causing it to fall to the ground.


”Have a nice trip. See you next fall, Delirium!” Beast Boy quipped.
But the robot leapt to its feet, and through the speakers, Delirium spoke.


”Not so fast, Titans! I am Delirium the Almighty!” Laser beams began to fire out of the fingers of the robot, and the Titans scattered, dodging behind cars and buildings. “You will NEVER defeat me!”


“Holy sitting ducks!” Robin gasped as the car he was hiding behind was suddenly melted by a laser, somehow miraculously not injuring him. “I have to get into that cockpit!”


“I can help, Robin!” Beast Boy said, swooping down as a winged dinosaur and grabbing Robin by the shoulders.


Delirium responded by swatting at them with the robots hands, and blasting with some shoulder mounted laser canons…


”Dude! That almost hit me!”


”Holy Close Calls!” Robin agreed.


”Would you quit saying that, Boy Blunder?” Beast Boy chided. “Holy this—Holy that. Who do you think you are, Burt Ward?”


“Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos!” Raven yelled, as cars coated themselves in black energy and flew towards the legs of Delirium’s Robot.


“I hope you have DECIBEL INSURANCE!” quipped Cyborg as he activated his sonic canon and began directing sound towards the robot as well. When the cars Raven had thrown entered the sound waves from Cyborg’s canon, the windows in them shattered, but the cars moved faster, slamming into the robot’s right leg, and sending him staggering.


As the Robot fell, it swiped Beast Boy, causing him to drop Robin.


”Robin!” Yelled Gar.


”No problem,” Tim said. “I’ll just use my Bat-Grapple!” He continued to fall for an unrealistically long time, and finally removed it from his belt and shot it off screen.


The camera zoomed in on one of the shoulder mounted lasers of the robot, and the hook came in from screen and wrapped around the robot’s weapon, and Robin swung up and under the opposite arm, looped over and landed on the robot’s left shoulder behind the other gun.


Removing a Bat-Wrench from his utility belt, Robin stuck it in the barrel as it was about to fire. Amazingly, this plugged the barrel and somehow the shrapnel from the exploding laser canon didn’t injur Robin. “Hah!”


”Yea, man!” Cyborg hollered. “That sure threw a wrench in his plans!”


“You know it Tin-Man!” Beast Boy said.


“Boys and Raven! That was marvelous work!” Starfire said, taking off. She flew above the robot and hurled Starbolts down towards it, it’s armor somehow no longer impervious now that it was on the ground. She swooped down as the robot started to blow up and grabbed Robin, and took him back to a circle where the Titans had gathered.


Suddenly, a seat ejected from the exploding robot, and Delirium fell out of it, and landed on the ground, taking no damage from the fall “How did you beat this thing? It was supposed to be indestructible!”


“That’s one thing you should have considered before making the world like comic book,” said Raven.


”In all those old comics, the good guys always win, man.” Gar gave a thumbs-up.


“Thank X’hal!” Starfire smiled.


”Don’t thank X’hal, Kory,” Robin said. “Thank the Comics Code Authority!”
At the end of Robin’s bad joke, all the teenage heroes burst into a stupid fit of canned laughter.


”No! Curse you! Curse you all! This is not how it’s supposed to happen! I am Delirium! And I always get what I want!” Suddenly, in a burst of light, Delirium was back in his normal armor. “The world will be remade the way I say it will!” He raised his hands and the Dark Catalyst discharged.

FLASH


The world changed again. And thankfully for their sanity’s sake, nobody remembered what it had been for those fifteen minutes.

0000


Delirium was a fool, the cloaked figure decided as he finished climbing the fence. Whatever he had done to the world, it had some how allowed him to get to earth. He didn’t know what earth had been during the time it had taken to get him back; he had no memories of the trip. But here he was, in Idaho.
His hood fell off as he fell to the ground and landed hard on the other side of the large fence, but the darkness still managed to hide his face.


This was the home of Alexander Roberts, the infamous but seemingly untouchable buyer and seller of black market rarities. He wouldn’t touch weapons or drugs, however. His interests rested in antiquities. Artifacts, documents. Things of historic value, monetary value, but normally no practical purpose.


After all, they couldn’t hurt anyone, right?

Wrong. In another dimension, his grandson Collin had taken one artifact—a Tamaranian battle suit. And with it, he had caused the Tamarans of seven universes to die. Six worlds lost their Teen Titans. And it seemed the same was about to happen to this world.


Unless, that is, the cloaked figure could find this world’s version of what gave Delirium his powers…

0000


The Titans were back to normal.


Robin, Starfire, Cyborg Beast Boy, and Raven. What had happened to Arsenal, nobody knew, and it was really a moot point. Because now, all that mattered was stopping Delirium


What had been Jump City was a rocky, desolate place. No ocean, no bay. Just rocks and hills. And in the distance, a bombed out shell of what had might once been a town. A wasteland which he could lord over in a palace, forcing the masses to do his bidding. This is the world Delirium desired. And he always got what he wanted.


“This is where it goes down, then, Collin?” Robin asked, drawing his metallic bo staff. The other five lined up behind him.


Delirium smirked wickedly, just as he had done six times before. This time would be no different. Or so he thought. “Yeah. Right here. Just like before.”
Robin stepped into a wide stance, readying his bo. Delirium feigned, and Robin flinched.


”I’d be scared too," said Delirium.
In response, Robin’s bo snapped out faster than the eye could see, and slammed into Collin’s face, knocking him backwards, causing blood to run from his mouth.


”Titans, GO!” Robin charged forward, swinging with the bo, punching and kicking. Collin dodge. He launched himself into the air and brought the staff down at Delirium, but in a blur of DC energy, he was out of the way.
Next Cyborg charged, firing several shots from the canon on his right arm, all of which Delirium dodged. Cy jumped up and smashed his left fist at Delirium, but he blurred out of the way again, and reappeared several yards away. Cyborg, angered, charged his sonic canon to 70 percent and fired.


The shot was going to be a direct hit in Delirium’s face, which would probably destroy his eardrums.


But the Dark Catalyst saved him again, when he held up what looked like a photograph of what was behind him… Until the sonic canon shot went into it, fading into the distance and getting smaller until it curved around and came back around, erupting from the rectangular spatial impossibility and slamming into the attacking Starfire.


”You can’t win, you know.” Delirium launched a reality wave at Robin, but Robin dodged it and hurled a birdarang at Collin’s head... but the weapon had become a chocolate bar by the time it got there. Delirium caught it.
Just in time for Raven to leap behind him, lashing out with waves of Dark Power, “I should never have trusted you! I knew you were hiding something!”


”You’re just mad that such a handsome guy as me is so evil. Just like your old man!”


Raven made a noise halfway between a gasp and a gag, and stopped pressing her attack, long enough for Delirium to grab her by the throat and stuff the chocolate bar in her mouth, most of which Raven immediately spit out, before Delirium punched her and said, “By the way, I transmuted that little bit you swallowed into cyanide.” A wicked grin popped onto his face. “You don’t have long to liii…”

BLAM!

Beast Boy crashed into him as a Rhino, knocking him into Cyborg’s fist and then turned towards Raven, and ran at her. His heart almost broke; she was gagging, trying to get the poison out before it did any harm.
And without thinking Gar became a leaped at her mouth and became a tapeworm, diving into her throat to grab the poison…


Delirium had his own troubles, though, as an infuriated Starfire, her ears oozing orange Tamaranian blood from the shredded eardrums, launched herself at Delirium, punching and kicking him, bloodying him up.
And it just so happened that a cat wandered by.


”I wonder,” Delirium thought aloud. He extended his hand to block another punch from Starfire, and then surrounded her in a Dark Catalyst bubble, and used it to switch her place with a distant stoplight, which crashed to the asphalt of the road behind him.


This kept Kori away long enough for him to blast the scared-out-of-its-mind cat with a burst of DC energy… and suddenly, the wounds on his face and chest were gone… and now on the cat…


The calico creature keeled over in agony, suddenly the victim of an angry Tamaranian’s fury, simply wondering what it had done to deserve the terrible pain it was in.


“This could be quite useful indeed,” Delirium said to himself.


”What did you do to that poor cat?” Beast Boy demanded.
Delirium turned around, and was surprised to see all five Titans standing behind him, Raven apparently having been saved by Beast Boys quick thinking. And indeed, Gar was covered in something moist… Which was something that even Delirium didn’t really want to think about.


”Interesting you should ask.” The monster in Tamaranian armor said. Suddenly, two bursts of DC energy flew out, one to the cat, and one to Cyborg, and suddenly, the cat was once again fine, and wisely ran off…


Cyborg on the other hand, was torn all to pieces, now himself the victim of what had originally been Starfire’s wrath on Delirium.


Very useful indeed…

0000


There it was. The cloaked figure found it, just as it had been before.
The green orb; the brown artifact.
He put them together.


Nothing. Suddenly, the nothing became a something, as the orb glowed green, getting brighter and brighter until it was white. And it burst into a ball of energy, which circled around the room blazing through the air, but somehow miraculously not destroying the contents of this mansion’s basement.
And then it crashed into the chest of the young man in the cloak, causing the cloak to burn away.


And there stood Collin Roberts.


But not the yellow-haired, scar-faced lad the Titans have been facing. No. His hair was jet black, as it had been when the ordeal began. And there was no scar on his face. Just Collin, alone in the basement of this universe’s analogue of his grandfather’s house.


“I’ve made a lot of mistakes,” he whispered. “Thank you, grandpa, for helping me to rectify them.”


Collin reached into the pockets of his worn out threadbare clothes and retrieved two round spheres.


The White Catalyst and a Dark Catalyst. The Dark Catalyst of his own universe.



It still hadn’t finished charging up again from its previous use, but if it had protected him before, in the skies of Tamaran, it would protect him now.
Because Delirium, the evil monster in human skin, the perverter of Tamaran’s weapons that were meant for use in peace… the murderer who killed planets to get what he wanted…

Had. To. Die.


A flash of light, seemingly from within Collin’s body resonated through the basement; the X shaped bandolier came over his shoulders and around his waist and snapped into place in the middle, the threat assessment goggles materialized on his head, his hair was forced back into the style we first saw it in, and the Catalysts in his hands were transported to the inserts in his gauntlets…


It had worked. He had his armor back. The old one Delirium must have thrown halfway across the planet when he had switched places with him in the T-Ship in the skies above Tamaran...


But it didn't matter. He was back.

(Cue the opening cords to 'Meant To Live')


”It looks like Ragnarok lives again.” Collin whispered.

[Chaltab]

Ragnarok ran outside the house, the light show in the basement having attracted the attention of his grandfather’s guard dogs. Using the powers of the artifact powering his armor, he used the ground to hurl him over the fence and off the adjacent ridge, where he charged the earth going down.


Using the moon to indicate what direction southwest roughly was, he hurled himself into the air with the dirt and rocks. He had to get to Jump City.
He had to stop Delirium.

0000


While Raven tended to the mangled Cyborg, Robin lashed out at fist, smashing Delirium in the face, and then turned and followed it up with a kick from his steel-toed boots. Delirium reeled and blasted a reality wave at Robin, which the Boy Wonder dodged. But Beast Boy was there, picking up Robin’s slight slack. He had turned into a raptor, and now he lashed with his tail, smashing Delirium into Koriand’r’s fist.


Starfire flew up and blasted at Delirium with a series of eyebeams, but they missed and Delirium countered with a burst of rock from his suit’s base artifact, which Starfire barely dodged. Beast Boy continued to attack, smashing him as a gorilla.

He briefly resumed his human form to talk.

”You fooled us just like Tara did! But I’m THROUGH being fooled!” Beast Boy roared, again becoming a dinosaur, and attempting to bite the evil youth’s head off. But Delirium used the DC to blur out of the way and blasted Gar with a reality altering sphere.

”How would you like to be a fossil, Garfield?” Delirium flicked his wrist and with a flash of red, Beast Boy was gone, replaced by the skeleton of a dinosaur. Which Beast Boy had been when he was blasted… Delirium followed up with a spin kick that shattered the skull of the fossil.

All the Titans stopped dead in their tracks—or at least the ones that were moving.

”You didn’t!” Robin snarled.

”Friend Garfield!” Starfire yelled.

“No.” Raven’s eyes went moist.

“B-B?” Cyborg snarled through his pain. “That…” What Cyborg said of Delirium, I shall not reprint here.

Starfire snarled something Robin was glad he couldn’t understand and charged at Delirium, dodging his reality blasts with utmost precision, and finding her mark, smashing into his face and sending him flying through the air. “You monster!” Koriand'r hurled double-handed Starbolt at his stomach, catching him and knocking him off into the distant ruin of Jump City.

0000

Delirium quickly shot to his feet. How had that happened? The Tamaranian had dodged everything he had thrown at her, and blasted him at least a mile with a single starbolt… That didn’t sit well. Wasn’t he supposed to be a deity with these new powers? And yet it seemed like he was having a harder time in this universe than he had in the previous six.

He remembered back. It had only been five months since he started this journey, but it seemed like so much longer. The first time, he had attacked the Titans outright after learning of the Catalysts and the Ultimate Power.
But he couldn’t get in the temple, despite having heard of it in his own universe.

Time after time, he was shut out. Starfire would die fighting him before letting him in. And then that fool showed up, calling himself Ragnarok. Well, he had been there before Delirium had arrived. And he fought just like Delirium, so the Titans knew his every move already.

Back then, altering reality was so easy as it was now. He couldn’t alter the universe on a whim as he could now, with the Golden Catalyst enhancing his abilities, but somehow he always managed to defeat the Titans anyway.
Delirium sat up, and suddenly his threat assessment visor display registered a new power source. It wasn’t one of the Titans; it was Northeast of Jump City and closing fast. He turned around and ran around the bombed-out building he’d landed in to where he could get a clear view. And in the distance, his visor, translated into English by Starfire and Cyborg in one reality where he’d tried the betrayal route and failed, confirmed that whatever was coming at him was wearing a Tamaranian battle suit.

Ragnarok. The good Collin.

How Delirium despised him! But how had he gotten to earth? He had been left to die in the Tamaranian desert! Delirium had blasted the entire T-Ship with a reality beam, replacing Ragnarok with his own body, hurling the do-gooder into his dark robe in the harsh climate of the desert. He shouldn’t have survived…
But he still lived, it seemed.

Why was it that his best laid plans always failed? Delirium cursed, his visor indicating that the Titans were coming.

He was growing weary of this fight; it was time for the bodies to pile up.

0000

Cyborg, pieced back together as best as possible on the spot, made his way through the streets of the ruins of the city, staying close to Starfire and her protective alien strength.

Raven hovered close to Robin a street down, ready to shield him and herself if Delirium attacked.

”Raven, I just don’t get it. You said you didn’t sense anything evil in Collin. How could he have hidden it from you?”

”I don’t know. But I’m not perfect, Tim; people can hide intentions. But you’re right. An evil of this Delirium’s magnitude would be hard to hide even…”

BLAM!

Delirium burst forth from the ground, bending rock and blasting it and Robin and Raven. “The only magnitude problems you’ll need to be worrying about are earthquakes, my friends.”

But Raven shielded the two, and Robin back flipped away, drawing the sword he kept in his utility belt. Raven understood full well the implications of this action; Robin had subtly but officially just authorized the use of lethal force, but only as a last resort. If he wanted lethal force used, he would have said so.

“You’re not getting away with this!” Robin yelled, lunging forward and swinging his blade at Collin’s head. Delirium dodged away and blasted Robin with a DC burst that seemed to freeze him in place, and then he turned his attention to Raven.

”What, the chocolates weren’t good enough? What do I have to do to make it up to you?”

Raven wasn’t in the mood for banter. “Azarath, Metrion, ZINTHOS!” she bellowed, causing rubble and broken street signs to lift off the ground from around her and fly at Delirium. But he dodged some, and used DC energy to turn others around and send them flying back at Raven

A shield of black power came up and blocked the projectiles, and just as it fell, Cyborg and Starfire arrived behind Delirium. He glanced over his shoulder, acknowledging them, but saying nothing.

”Surrender, Collin. I do not wish to fight you!”

In a blur of energy, Collin was suddenly behind Starfire and Cyborg, his hands on their shoulders… And in a flash of energy, they were different.
Victor Stone, the orange-skinned, green eyed Tamaranian.
And Koriand’r the African American Cyborg.

”WAH?” Vic screamed. “What in the name of X’hal happened here?”

“This is most unpleasant!” Kori complained. “But it won’t stop me from fighting.”
Starfire extended her right hand towards Delirium and nothing happened. But before she could ask Vic how the sonic cannon worked, Delirium’s fist snapped out into Kori’s face knocking her on her back, unused to being unable to fly.

”Why you Vorblaging sack of T’norksn’ra!” Victor yelled, mixing Tamaranian and English curses, and hurling a pair of starbolts from his hands, which Delirium rolled under. He leaped up and kicked Victor in his bare chest, wielding the power of Superboy, and sending him flying into a brick wall.
Suddenly, a stabbing pain slammed into his back and Delirium fell to the ground, and rolled over to dodge a series of sharp projectiles coated in black energy.

”ZINTHOS!” Raven yelled, sending another volley. Delirium blurred out of the way, only to find Raven’s fist in his face followed by a knee to the groin, and uppercut to the abdomen, and a kick to the face.

Raven grabbed him in dark energy and hurled him into the metal post of a street lamp near where Robin remained frozen… “You continue to injure my friends. I cannot allow that!” Raven spoke a spell longer than her normal one, and when she finished, a stream of fire blasted out from her hands, at Delirium. Fighting back the pain she had caused him, Delirium staggered to his feet and rolled out of the way, and gasped when he saw where he had been was now a circle of melted asphalt and concrete.

”A bit testy aren’t we?” Delirium snarled. “I wonder if you’d mind letting me show you just how BAD it hurts us males to get struck there! And in a flash of Dark Catalyst power… Raven felt very different.

“She” looked down, and gasped to see a flat chest and full length pants and steel toed boots… Raven was now male!

”What did you do to me?” Raven demanded. “Turn me back!”
Delirium responded by returning the low blow he had received.
Suddenly, a birdarang hit him in the back of the head, and Delirium reeled forward, unblocking Raven’s vision of… Robin. Only now, his legs were bare as Raven’s costume had been, and he wore the same cloth boots rather than the steel-toed shoes he was famous for…

And “he” was now a she.

Delirium grabbed both Titans by the hair and banged their heads together. “Congratulations, you’re now Timantha Drake and Raven, son of Trigon.”

Delirium grabbed both Titans by the throat and began to choke them, pressing his thumb into their jugulars and tracheas…

Raven tried to bite out Azarath something… but he couldn’t. The wind to his pipes was cut off, and he had to fight the blackness out of his vision…
And suddenly that wasn’t a problem anymore, as a blur of sonic energy slammed into Delirium, causing him to lose his grip on Raven and Robin.

“Booya!” Kori imitated, blowing on her sonic canon as if it were a smoking gun.

”I don’t care how much you alter what we look like.” Victor smirked. “We’re still the Teen Titans. And we stick together.”

Raven and Robin lined up with Vic and Kori. Yeah, he could change their outsides. But the Catalyst couldn’t rearrange their souls.

”Titans, GO!” Robin commanded.

0000

Lighting crackled through the bubble around Jump City. Collin and Delirium faced each other down. Both were injured. Bleeding. Exhausted.

But Collin had been one thing Delirium hadn’t.

Terrified. Ragnarok was terrified. He leapt forward, throwing a bunch of half-hearted punches, all of them deflected by Delirium. Collin thought of the terrible death masks still plastered on the faces of Superboy, Robin, and Raven. They had died screaming.

But never begging. They knew the risks of Superhero life, and had given theirs trying to protect the world. Collin thought of Cyborg, his body torn apart, his power-cell overloaded.

He had been vaporized.

Delirium kicked Collin in the chest, sending him backwards, flying into a tree, burnt out by the reality altering energy of Deliriums Dark Catalyst. It only held sway over Jump City, but it held ABSOLUTE sway. He could alter the landscape however he wanted, but he couldn’t alter the human spirit. And for that reasons, the Titans continued to oppose him. To their deaths.

“Friend Collin!” Kori had yelled. “Let us avenge the Titans!”

Her voice had been a low growl, unlike anything Collin had heard her utter before or since. She had been fury.

”Right,” Collin had said shakily. Really, he just wanted it all to end. He had blasted with his own Dark Catalyst, and Kori had blasted with Starbolts. The bolts had missed, and he had dodged into a reality wave. But Collin hadn’t thought of anything to alter, so it had no lasting effect.

It had been another effect of his cowardice.

Kori blasted again, while Delirium was disabled, knocking him to the ground. But Delirium bounced off and struck back. Kori blocked his blows, then span around and kicked him towards Collin. He dove out of the way, and Delirium smashed into the tree. Collin opened his eyes.

And the hideous death mask of Superboy had greeted him, screaming in agony as Delirium had rearranged his internal organs with the power of the Catalyst, slowly killing the half-Kryptonian clone.

Collin rolled over and looked up, his heart having skipped many beats at the sight of what he had landed on. And suddenly, Delirium, wounded but not broken, entered his field of vision.

He had stretched out his hands to Superboy… And done the unthinkable.

A bubble of DC energy surrounded the murdered Kon-El, and suddenly, his entire substance seemed to shatter like glass, into millions of tiny shards. And these reality particles entered the energy field around Delirium.

Superboy’s power had become Delirium’s

With sudden haste, Delirium turned his head and prepared to fight. “Her first,” he said.

Kori shot through, smashing into Delirium’s chest with her fist, and the two exchanged blows, Delirium growing stronger due to his increasing adaptation to his new powers. And then his fist pistoned out… And it went right through Kori, his hand bursting from her back, causing the now-sitting Collin to almost hurl…

Her orange life’s blood dripped from Delirium’s gloves as he threw her to the side. “Satisfied now, Troquie?” he snapped. “Now I have to find a new reality.”

He had then turned and looked at Collin. No remorse, nothing. Just intent.

”You have a Dark Catalyst,” he said. “Give it to me, and I might just let you live.”
But Collin had refused, and had backed away, crawling backwards, stumbling to his feet and continuing to back away. But he had been too scared to even retreat effectively.

”Give me the Catalyst!”

”No!” Collin yelled back. And then he saw it, still in Robin’s hand, clutched by his death grip, and obscured from Delirium’s view by a shrub. If Delirium had seen it, he wouldn’t have been so close; it was Robin’s staff, broken in two and jagged. A perfect tool for him to grab and run through Delirium’s twisted brain.

But he had been too scared. He had been a coward. And he did what a coward would do.

He ran. Leaping to his feet, Collin blasted into the air with a rock burst and focused all the energy he could find into his Dark Catalyst. And he willed himself into another dimension, as far away as the weakened Tamaranian machine could muster…

But it had not been far enough. Delirium had followed him. And now, if he didn’t do anything, it was all over.

Again.

0000


Digging had finally paid off. Wherever Delirium had blasted Beast Boy to, it was a good thing he was a shape shifter, because Gar had been able to transform into an earthworm and slowly but surely dig his way out of what Collin had intended to be his tomb.

And found himself in another tomb. Terra’s tomb.

Off in the distance, on a platform above a rock bed that had once been a lake of lava, stood the teen, her body altered into the chemical make up of limestone. Beast Boy was thankful no water had seeped in to erode her, and that the whole cave had been sealed off to prevent vandalism. But even her statue left a hole in his heart; he wanted her back, her real, flesh and blood body.

Her smile. Her voice. Her sense of humor—she actually thought he was funny!
Raven was a friend, but she could never replace what Terra was. And that made him think of Slade, and how much he hated him for what he had done to her. And what she’d done to herself. But as much as he wanted to place all the blame on Slade, he couldn’t help but think that it had been mostly Terra’s fault.
It was a train of thought he wanted to jump. And speaking of Jump, he had to get back to the city and help fight Delirium. Move it Gar, haul your butt up there. But he collapsed, his body and digestive system exhausted from all the digging he had done…

He collapsed. He couldn’t even muster the will to turn into a gnat. Saving the world would have to wait, he thought, as he passed out.

0000

Robin had never been trained to fight as a woman. In all of Batman’s prudence, even he had never thought to train her for a sudden and unexpected alteration of gender. But she had been trained to move and fight with the weight of a small person on his back, and the sudden top heaviness Robin felt now was hardly the wait of a person, so she applied a lighter version the same principles in reverse, striking at Delirium with her bo staff, and mixing in kicks and punches where appropriate.

Her fist made contact with Delirium’s face, and he fell into a sonic cannon shot from Starfire, which knocked him into a massive punch from Victor…

”Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos!” Raven bellowed, letting loose the rubble from half a building at Delirium. He blurred out of the way, into a flurry of blows from Robin, a who then through a birdarang at him, cutting his sleeve and causing some blood to stain his shirt.

He basted rock from the ground at her, and Robin reeled in pain, clutching a cut in her left arm. Delirium proceeded to kick Robin in the stomach, which aroused Kori’s ire. She charged Delirium, and hit the ground to avoid his retaliatory reality blast. Delirium leaped into the air, and Kori opened up both Sonic Canons and a bunch of shoulder missiles at him.
She looked over at Robin. “I’m afraid this new look for you will put a strain on our relationship, yes?”

“No time, Star,” Robin ordered, pointing at the sky. Starfire looked up again, to see an unharmed Delirium, blazing down to stomp Kori’s head in the ground. The cyborg girl rolled out of the way, and Robin shot to her feet, smashing Delirium with her bo while it was still in collapsed form, causing him to once again spit up blood.

0000

And after a few more similar clashes, an exhausted Delirium tumbled away from an explosion, rolling to a halt, not moving.

Defeated. As always. He rolled over, cursing the Titans, his weak self, everything he could think of to curse for this defeat. But it was nobody’s fault. He had the powers of the Dark Catalyst and the Ultimate Catalyst now, so WHY didn’t he use them? Why was he still holding back?

And for a brief instant, a horrible thought struck him. He had never wanted to win. It was about the journey, not the destination, and he had fully expected to self-destruct on his quest and die in battle. But time after time, he had survived, living on to fight again. And the thought of completing his quest was too much to bear…

But he quickly dismissed that train of thought; he had Titans to kill. This was no time for epiphanies. And suddenly a thought occurred to him. Summoning the power of Superboy, he leapt up, bashing the first thing he saw, which happened to be Kori, then turning and punching Cyborg in the gut, and quickly disabling Robin and Raven before they could do anything.

And he began to remake reality again. But this time, he wasn’t going to alter the universe. That was too general. He would remake only the earth. And he would build it exactly how he wanted it…

With him as its potentate.

[Chaltab]

On the outskirts of what used to be Jump City, Collin landed, tired from his earth-moving exertions. But a sudden warmth urged him on, and he looked down at its source. The Dark Catalyst. Looking at it through his threat assessment goggles indicated it had recharged to fifty percent; more than enough for him to safely jump out of this universe.

Enough for him to leave this place behind and start over somewhere else. He pondered the thought. How easy it would be to run again. But…
No. He could not. Not this time. NEVER AGAIN! Delirium had what he wanted. Collin would not be followed if he up and left. But his conscience would not permit it. Not after he’s seen all the Titans die, except Beast Boy, at the hands of that monster.

The sounds of battle resounded again, and Collin dashed over to the edge of the ridge and looked down at what Delirium had made of Jump City. He could see the fight, figures clashing in the ruin of the city, but he couldn’t make out what was happening. It’s funny how much smaller Cyborg looks from up here, he thought.

And suddenly, he knew what was happening, because a red beam of Dark Catalyst energy shot from the figure in the center of the Titan’s circle into the atmosphere. And when it hit the sky, it spread out all over the planet, consuming it in the reality-bending will of Delirium.

He was no longer after the universe; he just wanted the planet. But Collin wouldn’t let him have that, if he had the choice. Flashes of red and blurs of DC energy burst through the sky, and in the blink of an eye, things changed…

0000

The crew of the International Space Station of this universe was used to peculiar phenomena on the Earth, but rarely was there something as odd as this. Light and shadow and red lightning flashed over the earth, and it began to changed shapes, the northern pole becoming like a giant field of spikes, a mountain, enormous in scale arose in the center of the world, and two huge basins above it and two the sides… and a giant cavity below…

Another series of flashes… And when the light show was over, Earth looked like a human head—Delirium’s head!

0000

It was suddenly rather cold and dark, so Collin made a cloak shape out of the dirt, and then used a small bit of his DC energy to morph the dirt into leather, and wrapped it around himself for warmth. The brief lighting that the burst had provided allowed Collin to ascertain that he was in a cave.

He used the Dark Catalyst again, to teleport some flashlights from the nearest Wal-Mart to his hands, and looking around, he found a passage. He followed it, and it eventually emptied into a large room, this one considerably brighter, lit by a source he couldn’t see. And in the center was something very familiar.

Terra. The girl he had been unable to revive from her self-made tomb. And on the other side of the room, a collapsed figure. Garfield Logan! He is breathing, Collin observed. So Beast Boy was alive. That was good. He ran over and tried to wake him, and got a response that sounded like a cross between a mumble and a snarl…

Then a thought occurred to him, and he began to walk over to the statue of Terra.

”You touch her, you die, traitor!” Gar said dangerously, standing up.

”No, wait, Beast Boy!” Collin tried. The lame cliché came next: “It’s not what you think! I’m not Delirium!”

“Yeah. Sure. Now GET AWAY FROM HER!” and when Collin didn’t obey immediately enough, Beast Boy transformed, snapping and becoming The Beast Within, and lunging at Collin, extremely quickly.

Collin used his rock powers to dodge, hurling himself away from the attack, and
hurling some rocks as a warning. “Stop it! Stand down! I can explain!

But Gar was in no mood for listening to words, and the only actions Collin could think of would just add injury to insult… And he was running out of time.

0000

The Titans, finally back to normal, staggered to their feet. And gazed upon the remade Delirium, who was now fully drawing on the powers of the Superboy he had absorbed. He looked little different, except increased muscle mass and the red glow around his body. But the look in his eyes made all the difference, and it scared them.

But Robin wasn’t one to let that show. “I don’t care what you make yourself look like, we’re still going to take you down!”
Kori stepped up beside Robin, her hands and eyes glowing, Starbolts aimed at Delirium.

Cyborg readied his sonic cannon.

Raven summoned the power of her demon’s blood. The final battle was about to begin. Robin, as always, struck first, smashing Delirium with his staff, and reversing into a kick from his steel-toed boots, but neither had any effect on the new Delirium.

THWACK!

Robin went flying, and Delirium pursued him through the air, smashing him in the stomach and then hauling fast to get below him and punch him in the back when he came down.

“Oh, now he can fly too?” Cyborg complained. “That’s just great.” Victor charged forward too, basting at the sadistic teen with his cannon, but Delirium dodge him every time, not even using the Catalyst, but doing so with only the Kryptonian super speed he’d stolen from Superboy.

SCRAAAN!

Went the crunch of twisting metal. His fist flashed forward faster than even Cy’s electronic eye could track and tore trough his chassis, and Cyborg felt his vision go blurry as he deactivated. And all became black. Starfire flew up and launched some starbolts, which hit their mark and knocked Delirium to the ground, where Raven, thankful to be the daughter of the eighth devil for the first time in her life—but only as opposed to the son—stood, her spell ready.

”Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos!” Dark energy flew out of her palms, but Delirium blocked her attack with his forearms, blowing through the power as if were nothing. He kicked Raven in the stomach, and then grabbed her in a loose bear hug from behind.

”I have something special planned for Trigon’s little girl,” he said. In a flash, they were gone.

”Where are we?” Raven asked, surveying the city they had teleported to.

”This is High Rise City, Texas.” Delirium said. He placed a hand on her head and Raven felt her brain being scrambled by DC energy, and then it was over.

”What did you do to me?” She demanded, her violet eyes fierce.

”I just replaced your Medulla-Oblongata with a crocodile,” Delirium said. “If you’ve seen Water Boy, you’ll know why that’s a bad thing.” And in a flash Delirium was gone.

And Rage began to take control of Raven…

0000

Meanwhile, Gar and Collin continued to clash in the cavern under Jump City, bloodying each other up. Well, Gar was doing most of the bloodying, as Collin wiped another rivulet from the scratch on his forehead. He placed his hand on the nearest rock and felt an odd shape… A boot. He looked to the side and saw the statue of Terra, and remembered what he had been trying when this scuffle started. He only hopped it was enough to calm Gar down.

Placing his hand on the stone girl’s shoulder, he sent White Catalyst energy coursing through her…

”No, Stop!” Beast Boy roared, charging at Collin, transforming into a Triceratops.

And suddenly the unbelievable happened.

Terra began to change, her stone skin and frozen blood becoming flesh and plasma and living tissue once again. The energy of Tamaran’s ultimate power coursed through her body, turning the stone back to organic.

And Beast Boy saw this and tried to stop. Collin shouted at him to stop, but Gar could not. His inertia was too great, and he collided with the base of Terra’s statue, knocking her off and into the pit below, her clothes, still stone, crumbling to dust under the impact and falling unprotected into the abyss.

”NO!” Collin and Gar both screamed. Gar tried to move and found a rock stabbing through is foot, sending shutters of pain, and he couldn’t save anyone. But Collin could, and he hurled himself into the abyss as well, hoping that he could reach the girl…

0000

Beast Boy couldn’t believe what had just happened. The traitor could have killed him or Terra at any time, but instead, he had held back… and saved Terra. Or had he been holding back? He hadn’t used a single reality blast the whole fight…

And why had he dived into the pit after Terra? Suddenly, his questions became elation when Collin came flying back up over the edge of Terra’s former tomb, cradling Terra’s body, having covered it with the leather cloak he’d been wearing.

He continued to carry the girl down the ramp to relative safety, and Beast Boy dashed over to join him. “What’s going on here? What gives? Tell me why you helped her, Delirium!”

”Gar,” Collin said, “Calm down. I’m not Delirium. It’s me, Ragnarok.”
Indeed, his suit was back to normal, an X in the middle of his chest plate instead of an upside down Y. His hair was back to normal, too, and the scar on his face was gone.

”Then… who is Delirium?”

Collin told a brief version of his story, and finished it out with an apology. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you all about this. I thought, I don’t know, that if I didn’t acknowledge my past, it would all go away. But I was wrong. Nothing but death will stop him. Get Terra to safety. I have to go confront Delirium.”

”Are you sure you don’t need my help?” Beast Boy said. As if Irony was sentient, it responded by sending a jolt of pain through his injured leg.

”Let me help you.” Collin held his hand over Gar’s wounded ankle and white energy pulsed out and repaired the gash.

”Thanks,” Gar said. And then, in a flash of DC energy, Collin was gone.
Beast Boy looked down at Terra, who groggily half-opened her left eye.

”Beast… Boy?” He held her all the more tightly.

”You’re safe now, Tara. You’re safe.”

0000

Starfire gasped in horror as Delirium reappeared below her. “I guess it’s just you and me left, Tamaranian. You always were the most fun to kill.”
Starfire’s eyes widened, and she felt that the man’s evil would make her sick. “What… What did you do to Raven?” Kori demanded.

”She’s out of the picture.” Delirium answered. “Shall we begin this fight?”
Starfire lashed out and punched him, knocking him back, he stuck too, but she blocked and span around, kicking him in the center of his armor, where the Golden Catalyst was, damaging it. But it still ran, so it only served to anger Delirium. “You’ll pay for that!”

The two collided, exchanging blows, blasts of solar and DC energy, and every time it seemed Starfire got the upper hand.

This made Delirium very angry. He blurred forward and grabbed her by the neck and started pounded her face with his right fist.

”WHY”

THWACK! He hit her again.

”WON’T”

TWHACK

”YOU”

THWACK

”DIE”

TWHACK

”TROQ?”

“I am not the Troq here!” Kori responded, spitting up some orange blood. Then, she surprised her enemy blasting Delirium’s visor with eyebeams. “You are the worthless one!” She shot again, shattering the visor and nearly burning Delirium’s eyes out.

And then, in a burst of DC energy, Delirium hurled her away, and landed, rubbing his wounded eyes.

“DELIRIUM!” A new voice came, though similar. And Ragnarok suddenly materialized on the ground behind him.

Delirium tuned around. “So, the coward finally shows himself, eh? I don’t know how you survived the desert, but I swear that won’t last much longer.” Suddenly, Delirium smirked, as if an epiphany had come to him. “Let’s get this over with.”

(Music! Linkin Park’s Somewhere I Belong starts playing in the background)

The two Collins stood each other down. One had been raised with family values; the other by a broken family. One was a decent human being; the other was pure evil. And now, they had to fight, to finish what they had started.

Or at least, these were the thoughts running through Ragnarök’s mind. Then the time for thinking was over. It was time to do or die. He dashed forward, rolled under a reality blast and blasted some rocks from the ground at Delirium, some of which actually made contact, cutting into his flesh. Delirium countered with blasts of rock himself, but Ragnarok moved them out of the way and hurled them back.

Delirium raised his hands and a giant sphere of DC energy formed. He hurled it and Ragnarok, and Rag made a wall of rock for protection. The DC blast turned it into a wall of scalding hot water, which fell to the dirt and became steam.

Delirium blurred out of existence and the burst forth from the steam, punching and kicking Ragnarok. Rag tried to block, and finding his efforts futile, tripped Delirium and launched himself away, cradling his aching arms.

”You think you’re a god, right?” he yelled at his evil counterpart.

“Of course. I can remake the world however I want it. What’s your point?”

”You know what Ragnarok means? The destruction of the gods and the end of your world!” It felt like the whole city was shaking as Ragnarok launched himself into the air and summoned a huge amount of his power. “This time I'm not running away, Delirium! RAGNAROK BLADE!”

And a gargantuan chunk of rock burst forth from the ground, and assumed the shape of a gigantic sword, which Ragnarok directed at Delirium. The latter brought his super-powered limbs up to shield, and the rock sword broke against them, stabbing the very tip in deep. Ragnarok took advantage of the breaking sword’s debris, and caused it to lash around Delirium in a tornado, cutting him and bruising him.

When it was over, Ragnarok stood. Delirium did not.

0000

Starfire blurred forward, wishing she had been able to follow up and finish Delirium off, but when she finally got back to where Delirium was… there were two figures clad in Tamaranian armor.

“There are now two Collins?” Starfire gasped as she approached Ragnarok.

Then the bloody broken youth in the dirt gasped. “Help me! He is the evil one!”

”I see what he’s done to you,” Kori said somberly. And she turned and blurred towards the standing Collin, her fist pistoning back to punch him.

”NO! KORI I’M…!” But before Ragnarok could finish, Starfire spun around and blasted some eyebeams at the prone figure on the ground, who barely rolled away to avoid getting cut.

”I am not stupid, Delirium!” Starfire stated emphatically.

”Oh,” He sighed, obviously in much pain, staggering to his feet. “I was—“ he coughed up some blood. “…Afraid of that.”

And suddenly, the stuff hit the fan. A blur of Dark Catalyst energy washed out over Kori and Ragnarok, and echoed back over Delirium.

Delirium stood up, not wounded in the least. Totally healed.

And Starfire collapsed, cut, bruised, and bleeding.

He had transferred his wounds to her body.

”You planned that you glomping snorkel-breather!” Ragnarok bellowed. “You sick twisted—“

”Victor.” Delirium cut him off. “You can call me whatever you want. It doesn’t matter. I’ve won. I knew I couldn’t beat the Tamaranian in a fist fight. So I improvised. And I am the victor.”

Ragnarok staggered backwards, tripping like he had before. But this time, he was not a coward. Afraid? Yeah. But it didn’t matter.

He snarled, lunging forward, coating his fist in rock before he punched Delirium in the jaw. Delirium’s faced snapped backwards. But when he looked around, his face looked like it hadn’t been hit at all. Even his scar was gone.

But before Ragnarok could ponder this fact, Delirium pistoned a fist out and punched him in the gut, and then back handed him, and dashed over and stomped his leg into the ground. It didn’t break, but it probably would have been less painful if it had.

A small rock lifted off the ground and formed into a dagger, which pointed at Ragnarök’s throat. “End game. All I have to do is kill… myself.” He smiled at his putrid joke. And Ragnarok prepared for the end.

It didn’t come.

Because in a roar and blur of green, Beast Boy’s inner beast lashed out a claw and destroyed the dagger, and then tackled Delirium, and while it seemed from what little Rag saw of the fight that Beast Boy was out classed, that didn’t matter, because like John F. Kerry, Ragnarok had a plan.

And his plan was 'the Tamaranian'…

0000

Gar and Delirium continued to clash. Gar swiped his claws down, so furious that even Delirium didn’t feel like quipping in this fight. Gar slammed him into a building, but he burst out at and punched him in the gut. Every wound he should have received wasn’t there.

Gar roared and curled into a ball, leaping at Delirium… but the evil youth treated the now-spherical Beast Boy as a play toy, kicking him around. And shortly, not even the inner Beast could stop Delirium, and a final well-placed kick to the solar plexus disabled Gar, forcing him to resume human shape.
Delirium, once again winning returned his attention to Ragnarok. This was getting tiresome…

0000

Collin stumbled over. He had to revive Kori. Only Starfire could win this battle… But he looked down at his hand and realized the White Catalyst was gone. That’s why Beast Boy couldn’t seem to hurt him!

Delirium had the Ultimate Catalyst! So Collin decided to do what Delirium would have done: cheat.

“DELIRIUM!”Collin bellowed, standing over the wounded Tamaranian’s supine form.

“What now?” he asked, not at all amused.

“I’ve been thinking. You never called Starfire by her name, did you? She was always ‘the Tamaranian’ to you, wasn’t she? Never ‘Kori', never 'Starfire'... To you she wasn’t even a person; just a tool, someone to be used to get what you wanted. Well guess what Delirium! ‘The Tamaranian’ was my friend—my best friend! And you murdered her right in front of me!” Collin sighed. He dreaded what he had to do next like a convict dreads the chair… But it had to be done, because only Kori could defeat this monster in human flesh. “She may have been just ‘the Tamaranian.’”

Collin took a deep breath.

“But she knew you could be beaten. And this is her legacy!” Collin showed his hand to Delirium—the one with his Dark Catalyst in it—“The legacy of ‘the Tamaranian’ is your defeat, Delirium!”

Collin held up his hand, the Dark Catalyst glowing, now charged to 60%--and extended his hand to Kori. In a flash of DC energy, he began to draw all her wounds, her cuts, and bruises and abrasions into himself. Pain shot through him as blood leaked out, her misfortune becoming his…

And Collin collapsed, the pain too much for a Tamaranian, and far, far too much for him. As his consciousness faded, he heard Starfire’s voice. But he couldn’t even make out what she said.

0000

Starfire stood up and gasped in horror as she saw all her wounds now afflicting
the body of Ragnarok. “Friend Collin,” she whispered. “I understand what you’re telling me. No more holding back.” Bending down, she quickly grabbed the Dark Catalyst from Collin’s gauntlet and inserted it into her own.

Starfire exploded forward, driving her fist into Delirium’s face, and he dashed back through the air and began launching reality blasts at her. Starfire dodged the attacks and countered with eye beams that smashed into Delirium, and he changed direction, blasting upwards. He formed more DC energy spheres and hurled them down at the pursuing Starfire.

One whizzed by her head and she almost lost her nerve. But she couldn’t. And a chain of eye beams lashed out from her corneas. Delirium dodged them, and sent a wave of reality energy towards Starfire.

Kori dodged, pulling her gut in, the wave passing mere millimeters from the orange skin of her midriff. But the positions they were in left Delirium wide open, and she blasted him with a starbolt and dived on him in the air, pounding him with punches and knees, and preventing him from countering. She raised both hands, cupped together, and preformed a hammer-smash down on his abdomen, right on the Golden Catalyst, damaging it.

She flipped over and followed him down.

Delirium, finally free of Kori’s restraint, hurled more reality blasts at her, but the Tamaranian was too fast, dodging them with seemingly minimal effort. She turned upright, and plummeted down, and slammed her foot again into the Golden Catalyst.

It shattered, a ring of energy escaping as the pieces fell to the earth, and their power died away.

”NO!” And the sudden loss of so much power threw Delirium off, causing him to slam hard into the ground. Kori even cringed at the bone crunching noise she heard from the impact.

But because the White Catalyst was still attached to his suit, he stood up, unharmed, instantly healed. And he raised his hands into the air.

”OH! You glomping troq! You just made the biggest mistake ever.” He raised his hands and a ball of surreality formed in his hand, and grew to an enormous size very quickly. Delirium held it high over his head. “This entire universe will collapse in on itself, and I’ll just go to another one and repeat this whole process… It’s all over, you hear me! OVER! If you had just died like I told you to, Tamaranian, you would have saved a lot of people! But you just had to fight, had to prevent me from getting what I wanted. How do you feel now?”

0000

Angry. That was the only way Robin could describe the look he saw in Kori’s eyes, which were glowing with a solid green light. She was full of rage, more so than he’d ever seen her before. He crawled over, and shrugged back the pain of the wounds that Delirium had inflicted on him.

Starfire stared the monster down. She walked, and then hovered when the terrain became too rough to walk, over towards him until she was right in front of the evil youth, and landed. Her eyes never left him, and she spoke not a word.

”Why don’t you say something?” Delirium blurted, clearly crazed and waiting for a response. “I’m going to destroy the universe! Doesn’t that bother you? That you could have stopped it by standing down? WHY DON’T YOU RESPOND?”

“Delirium,” Kori said. “You are a pathetic creature. You kill, and steal, and then blame your murder and theft on those who tried to stop you. If anyone was ever a troq, it is you.”

And her eyes flared; lasers lashed out from them, striking Delirium in the wrists, super-heating blood and bone and flesh. And Delirium screamed in agony as his hands were literally blasted off his arms by the Tamaranian.

Delirium howled in agony as he staggered back and fell over, the power of Superboy, the power of the Catalysts—all his power—leaving him. And he became nothing more than an ordinary—albeit psychotic and excessively evil—human.

Starfire crouched down and picked up his severed extremities, removing the Dark and White Catalysts from the inserts on the backs of them. She placed the White Catalyst in her own gauntlet and flew over to Collin, bleeding and dying from the wounds he’d absorbed. And with the White Catalyst, she healed him. The white energy coruscated over him, and the wounds disappeared.

”Welcome back, Friend Collin.” She hugged him.

”AIR, KORI!” He gasped.

”Starfire!” Robin yelled, and pointed to the giant ball of surreality Delirium had created.

It was falling to the Earth and getting dangerously close.
If Starfire had ever moved as fast as she did then, Robin hadn’t seen it. She was a blur, and skidded across the ground underneath the giant ball of DC energy, and using Ragnarök’s Dark Catalyst, she lifted the ball up.

”Oh, X’hal,” she whispered. “Make the universe the way it should be. Make it back to normal!” And with her Tamaranian might, she hurled the ball into space, infusing it with both Dark and White Catalyst energy. It hit the edge of the atmosphere and exploded, filling the world with light.

0000

Jump City, California was back to normal, its streets and buildings pristine, its population returned from wherever Delirium had sent them while the world had been his. And its protectors, the six youths known as the Teen Titans, were back on their small five-acre island in the middle of Jump City’s bay, as was the most recent victim of their justice seeking.

Delirium, an evil youth from another dimension, sat cradling the cauterized stumps where his hands had once been, cursing the universe for the turn of events that had taken place. Robin walked across the lawn where the other five were gathered around Delirium. No words were exchanged…

And then, Delirium spoke. “I suppose I always knew something like this would happen.” But his tone of voice was hardly resigned to his fate, and he leapt up with his feet and struck with his stumps at Robin, who blocked, parried, and twisted Delirium into a shoulder lock, forcing his arms behind his back.

”Get that armor off of him,” Robin said to Cyborg, and the million-dollar teen complied, tearing the suit off of his body.

Then Robin pistoned his hand out and punched Delirium in the gut, and removed a pair of restraints from his belt. As Delirium began to lose consciousness, Robin said something…

“Collin Roberts, or whatever your name is, you’re under arrest for the murder of Galfore, Emperor of Tamaran, and the attempted murder of the Teen Titans. You have the right to remain silent…”

And all went black for the evil teenager.
_______________________

Just the epilogue left.

[Chaltab]

Robin proceeded to restrain Delirium's legs and then dragged his unconscious body up against the side of the tower. “Raven,” he ordered, “get to work on finding Roy and Mas and Menos. Cyborg, call the police or S.T.A.R. Labs so we can get Delirium out of here.”


“Right,” the two Titans agreed.

Starfire walked over to Robin, and gently placed her hand on his shoulder. “I am glad it is over. Are you not as well?”
Robin turned as Starfire embraced him, “Of course I am,” he said. “Good job, Kori.”

“So...” Collin interjected. “Where did Beast Boy run off to?”
Robin and Starfire looked around. Sure enough, Beast Boy was gone. Robin shrugged it off. He'd been there when Starfire fixed the world; he'd get back eventually. Robin sighed. “Will somebody please explain to me why there are two Collins?”

Starfire and Collin both retold the portions of the story they knew. Unfortunately, Robin only heard the words.

“Where did you get that armor if Delirium took your copy?” he asked.

“Um...” Collin grinned nervously. “I took it from this universe's version of my grandfather's house.”

Robin had exactly what he was looking for. “Then you're a—" he started threateningly.

“Then I'm a what,” Collin shot back, his temper flaring, “a thief? A common criminal? Is that what you think of me, Boy Wonder?"

“Please, Robin. Ragnarök saved all of our lives and he—" Starfire's pleas went unheard.

“No, Kori,” Collin said. “Robin's right. I stole the suit. And I tried to use it to save all our butts from Delirium. If you want to take it away and throw me off the Titans, fine. At least know this: I could have jumped ship run off like a coward again. But I didn't.” Collin turned around and began to walk off, although it wasn't much more than a token gesture, considering that they were on the island.

Kori placed a hand on Robin's shoulder. “Please, calm down, Tim. Batman, or perhaps Cyborg's father can surely pay for the artifact.” Again, Robin wouldn't hear the reason in Starfire's words.

“That's not the way I heard it!” Robin said walking quickly to catch up with Collin. “The way you told it, Starfire was doing fine until you showed up and attacked Delirium. Then he put the wounds you inflicted on him into Starfire! You almost lost us the battle.”

Collin snapped, whirled around and jacked his fist right into Robin's face, knocking him back, more in surprise than pain. Not that it didn't hurt.

“If that's the way you feel, then I'm gone. I don't need to put up with this.” A bubble of Dark Catalyst energy began to surround Collin.

“Wait!” Kori yelled, flying over to meet him. “Where are you going?”

“I don't know.” Collin shrugged, obviously fighting back conflicting emotions.

“Please... Stay with us.”

“No, Kori,” Robin said. “Let him go.” Then he looked up at Collin. “You were right. You did risk your life, and almost lost it, for us. And I was just looking for something to fault in you. I was wrong.”

Collin smiled a bt and acted like he was going to say something. Nothing came out.

“But,” Robin cautioned, “you lied to us about where you were from. You hid the truth and because of that, Tamaran is gone. I don't know that we could have saved it, but we could have been prepared if you had just let us know something ahead of time. I know you had your reasons for hiding it from us, but sometimes we have to face our fears. Otherwise monsters like Delirium get their way.”

Now Collin's smile was genuine, but sad. “I know. It's something I had to learn the hard way, though.”

Robin inhaled. “Come back here in one week. By then, I'll decide whether you can stay with us, OK?”

“That sounds acceptable.” Collin said. “I suppose I'll take a week's vacation to Miami while you're deciding." And then he blurred out of existence, the reality waves of the Dark Catalyst displacing him.

“Are you alright Robin?” Starfire asked.

“Yeah. I'll be fine."

0000

Fifteen minutes later, Raven and Cyborg had finished, and the Jump City PD was loading Delirium onto an armored police car.

“Both Roy and the speed twins said that they randomly reappeared in Steel City after Delirium changed the world,” Raven told them. “No injuries.”

“Good. What about Impulse?” Robin asked.

“Bart is back in Dakota. He left before you even got back to Earth.”

“So,” Cyborg sighed, “That just leaves one question: Where is Beast Boy?”
As if on cue, Gar's voice blurted. “Hey! Dudes and dudettes! Have I got a surprise for you!”

The Titans looked to the side, to a nearby rock on the Tower Island. “Where you been, B.B.?” Cyborg asked.

“Down at the amusement park. Retrieving someone who I know you all want to see.”

Gar stepped to the side. And there stood Tara Markov, wrapped tightly in a leather cloak.

“Terra!” Robin blurted. “How in the...?”

“Collin did it. He touched her with this glowly thingy on his hand, and then white stuff went all over her and she went back to normal.”

“Friend Terra!” Starfire blurted, zipping over to give the former traitor a hug.

“This is a most marvelous development!”

“That's one way of putting it,” Raven monotoned.

The Titans greeted Tara, though some were a bit slower to trust her than others. And Terra was distant.

“Guys, I'm sorry. I,” she choked back tears. “I wanted to die. I could never live with what had happened and I just wanted to end it all in a blaze of self sacrifice. And now... Now I'm back. So much for my shot at redemption.”

“It's OK, Terra. Slade manipulated you,” Beast Boy comforted. “We forgive you.”

“Maybe you do,” Terra blurted, “but will they?” She pointed out to the city and it's thousands of inhabitants.

"I cannot speak for them,” Starfire said. “But we are willing to give you a second chance.”

“Speak for yourself,” Raven said quietly so that only Cyborg could hear it. He glared at her. Perhaps all of them really had never truly forgiven Terra for what had happened. After all, it was easy to 'forgive' the dead. But to trust the living? Much harder.

“Say,” Beast Boy thought aloud. “Where did Collin go, anyway?”

“He went to the 'My Ammie',” Starfire told him.
“Miami?” Gar parroted. “Ah, why does he get all the luck? They're having the Uber-Scifi Convention there right now!” With the exception of Robin and Raven, the Titans shared a laugh.

0000

Three days later, Terra willingly checked in to the S.T.A.R. Lab's Jump City branch, the medical wing. Whether it was in her final rebellion against Slade's corruption or a result of Ragnarök's restoration, her ability to move earth and rock had completely vanished, it seemed.

“Are you sure about this, Tara?” Beast Boy asked her.

She was wearing a simple black T-shirt and beige shorts. “I'm sure. I don't think I can stand living in the tower with you guys until I make peace with what I've done. You can still visit me, you know. We're still friends, Gar.”

“I know. We... will be no matter what, right?”

“You didn't keep that promise before.” A tear fell from Terra's left eye and her hair fell down an covered her right.

“I will this time,” he said. “I mean it.”

And Terra hugged him. “Come on, Markov,” she said aloud to herself. “Don't give in to all these gushy emotions.”
The two teens shared a chuckle.

“You think your powers will ever come back?” Gar asked, changing the subject.

“I don't know,” she said. “In a way, I don't really want them to. I'd just like a chance to be... NORMAL for a change.”

“Believe me,” Gar joked. “Being normal is highly overrated."

0000

A week after Delirium had been carted away, Robin stepped out on to the roof of the Tower to get a breath of fresh air, when a familiar sound echoed behind him: the energy of a Dark Catalyst.

“Hey, Tim,” Collin said. Tim saw that Collin was wearing baggy khakis and a long sleeve grey T-shirt, which were both much too warm for the current weather. Well. He had been in Miami, so perhaps Jump City seemed cold by comparison.

“Collin,” Tim greeted.

“So. Any word about what happened to Delirium?”

“He was raving like a lunatic. Because his crimes involved another planet and since he's technically not a citizen of this United States, they took the case all the way to the Supreme Court.”

“And?”

“They are keeping him at Arkham. In Gotham City.”

“Shame. Nothing better than death is suited for him.” Collin looked down as he said this.

“You support the death penalty?”

“Only for him,” Collin became defensive. The two teens walked over to one of the Tower's AC unites and sat down on adjacent sides, leaning against it.

“You think maybe you say that because, in a way, he is, you.”

The look on Collin's face told Robin he'd struck a nerve.

“You know, for the longest time I wrestled with that. He's not me. But he shows what I could become. He shows what my genetics could make me. And that inspires me to be as different as I can from that monster. Still, sometimes I find myself thinking things. Wishing things. And I think I sound just like Delirium.”

“I...” Robin tried again. “I'm sorry.”

“You are? For what?”

“I judged you unfairly. You saved all of us. Star told me that what you did gave her the courage to do what she had to do. Until you got there, she thought she was fighting you. And she was holding back. You did save the universe, Collin. Just not in the way you meant to.”

“Thanks. So... What is your decision? My Dark Catalyst is fully charged. Just say the word and you'll never see me again. If that's what you want."

Robin stood up and sighed. “Despite what I've come to realize in the past seven days, I knew I couldn't make an objective decision. So we voted on it. And Kori cast the deciding vote. You're in. Cyborg's dad has quietly covered the cost of the artifact you took.”

"Thanks." Collin stood up, Robin offering him a hand. The two teens shook, and Robin handed Collin a Titan's Communicator.

“Welcome to the team, Ragnarök.”

(Music! Ending theme: Holiday by Green Day, but without all the political overtones)

Teen Titans
in
LEGACY OF THE TAMARANIAN

Written by Benjamin “Chaltab” English

Characters and Locals Owned and Trademarked to

DC Comics and Warner Brothers Animation

Starring:

Scott Menville as Robin
Greg Cipes as Beast Boy
Tara Strong as Raven
Khary Payton as Cyborg
Hynden Walch as Starfire/Blackfire
Mike Erwin as Speedy/Arsenal
Micheal Rosenbaum as Impulse
Billy West as Trevor
Justin Cook as Ragnarök/Delirium
Ashley Johnson as Terra

Kevin Michael Richardson as Trigon
and
Kevin Cline as The Stranger

No profit was made of the writing of this fan fiction. The author claims no ownership of Teen Titans or any DC comics properties. No actual cats were actually harmed in the writing of this story.

Feel free to use Collin “Ragnarök” Roberts or Delirium in your stories, but make sure you credit them as my characters. And telling me first would be nice too. Thank you and have a nice day.


http://tn3-1.deviantart.com/fs8/300W/i/2005/334/c/9/Ragnarok_and_Delirium_by_Darth_Chaltab.jpg
Go say 'hi' to Ragnarok and Delirium (http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/25872147/) for me.

[Chaltab]

Wow... Nobody at all?

:lol: