--Prologue: Slade Wilson--
There were days, despite his regenerative powers, when Slade felt as old as he looked. This was one of those days. Old and tired.
Keeping tabs on the Titans was not as easy as it sounded, at least not when they were away from their Tower. But he was a skilled investigator, and had learned they had fought an old wizard on an island off the Carolina coast some time ago. Going there was a fruitless chase as he found nothing he could use. The old wizard’s house was cold and empty, and if there had ever been any magical talismans in it for the purpose that he wanted, they were long gone.
It chafed him to ask a favor of his employers, but the supernatural was not his strong point. The HIVE probably had a better idea where to find what he was looking for.
--One: Tim Drake--
Tim had been through this before, but as Dick had warned him, it got no easier with repetition. At least he knew not to eat beforehand now.
There was a blur of red and gold and then Kid Flash was there, in the cave. “Hey kid,” he said smiling.
“Sure I shouldn’t suit up first?” Tim asked uncertainly.
Kid Flash shook his head. “Plenty of time for civilian stuff in New York, first.”
That’s not why I’m coming Tim wanted to say, then bit it back. The last thing he wanted to do was be rude to Dick’s friends. And it wasn’t as though he wouldn’t enjoy being in New York with them; he had before. It was just that, ever since Bruce had….died….he had taken being Robin very, very seriously.
Perhaps Kid Flash read some of this in his eyes, for he said, “Relax, kid. Everything will be fine.”
Tim just nodded as Wally picked him up. This part was always awkward.
And then they were moving, blurring at speeds faster than the fastest car, faster than the most high performance fighter jet. Faster than the space shuttle on takeoff. Tim wanted to close his eyes and not look; but moving at this speed blind only made it worse.
He tried not to think about the fact that doing this broke the laws of physics. Granted, they lived in an amazing world where super powered things happened all the time, but most of those things worked a certain way according to the rules of reality. He understood there was something called a “Speed Force” involved, but he hadn’t had a chance to study the theory. Of course, he had been busy studying other things, from criminology to martial arts to the exact angle at which to throw a batarang.
But he didn’t want to seem too ungrateful. And it was still true, even now, even after that high pressure insanity of that sick, twisted Cornelius Stirk….even now….there was a joy and a wonder to this life. A sense of amazement, of... what was the French term?
Joie de vivre. Come what may, Tim was determined to hold on to that.
… And hanging out with the Titans, with their amazing abilities, certainly qualified.
They blurred through the walls of Titans Tower and stopped, Kid Flash settling Tim back on his feet.
This was the fifth time Tim had been here, but only the second time without Dick. Kid Flash had dropped him off in the lounge. Starfire was sitting on one end of the couch, quietly supping at some Won Ton soup she had evidently got from Chinese takeout. Raven sat quietly next to her. Over in the corner, Beast Boy was telling one of his usual bad jokes to Cyborg, who was enduring his friend’s “wit” patiently.
Beast Boy looked over at him. “Hey, kiddo! Good to see ya!”
Tim smiled. “Thanks man, good to be here. Anything happening?”
Beast Boy shook his head. “Not at the moment, but you know how fast stuff turns up in this business!”
Tim nodded. “Oh yeah.”
“We’ll take you down to the training room if nothing else happens tonight, and go out on patrol tomorrow,” Cyborg said.
Tim nodded. “Sounds good.” And he meant it, too. They accepted him so readily. It was…comforting.
--Two: Roy Harper--
It had been a while.
Roy stepped through the front doors after the Tower identified him. For a change, he was in relatively good spirits. For once, his Titans loyalties and his Checkmate obligations were actually on the same page. He was glad to be able to bring something to the table that his friends would be perfectly happy to help with.
Dagon, the vampire, was in the monitor room, eyes flickering over status reports from the general area.
“Hey, is Dick around?”
Dagon didn’t look up. He waved a clawed hand absently at the archer. “He’s in Gotham, dealing with Batman stuff. Kid Flash just brought the new boy wonder in, though.”
“Oh. Where’s Donna then?”
“Dunno. Lounge, probably.”
“Thanks.” Roy had never been close to Dagon, but that wasn’t the foremost thought in his mind. Somehow he didn’t think Dick would want him to take the kid on this mission. Well, it would be the boy’s own choice, after all. And he had to get Donna to agree to the mission, first.
--Three: Tim Drake--
Tim looked up as Speedy came into the lounge. He knew the archer, of course; and the one time he had been here previously without Dick, it was Speedy who had taken point on a mission against a criminal overlord. But Wonder Girl was in charge, and well Speedy knew it.
He knew all of their real names—some of them even before he had come here. Some of them Dick had told them directly, some he had come across their personal information in the Bat-computer, and some of them had come out and told him. (Even now, such a fundamental invasion of privacy still bothered him. He said nothing about it, of course, not even to Dick; it was part of what they did. That didn’t mean he wasn’t occasionally disturbed by it).
Dick himself, of course, was a trusted friend and in some ways a mentor. He wasn’t, of course, any kind of big brother, but sometimes Tim caught himself thinking of Dick that way. He felt for him, burning himself out between the Batman identity, the Nightwing identity, And that whole business with Cornelius Stirk hadn’t helped matters, either. But somehow Dick pulled through. He always did. Just like....Bruce had.
Then there was Starfire, the alien princess. Tim knew that she and Dick were romantically involved. She came to Gotham occasionally, quietly. Usually Kid Flash brought her to the cave, so no one would see her come in. She did not come often; usually they liaisoned in New York. But they did share the odd tender moment in the cave.
Seeing her quietly sup the won ton soup brought a momentary smile to Tim’s face, as he remembered Dick telling him about the first time that he and Starfire had eaten Chinese. Starfire had done the ordering that time too, with....interesting results. She had obviously learned since then.
He didn’t know what to make of her, really; she was exotic, alien, naive in some ways but tactically brilliant in others. But he felt he would never really understand her. That was not to say he was against her in any way; certainly he knew Dick needed all the comfort and support he could get.
Raven, on the other hand, seriously creeped him out. She didn’t talk much, and her eyes....her eyes were scary.
If Raven was disturbing, then Dagon was even more so. Yes, Dick had told him all about how he fed on blood packs provided by STAR labs, and how he had fed on animals before that. It didn’t make it any easier to be in his presence.
Then there was Beast Boy. What a riot! And fun to be around too, always ready to make you laugh. Yet also he could still obviously kick major butt! Talking and laughing with him sometimes almost made Tim forget about Bruce and his father.
Cyborg seemed a quiet, sometimes bitter man, except when having back and forth moments of banter with Beast Boy. But he was also very technically sound, which of course wasn’t surprising. He seemed to Tim to be a quiet, stable, solid type.
Kid Flash, the one who had brought him here. He seemed at turns happy and sad. Happy when the team was on the move, doing something, quiet and introspectively brooding in others. And, of course, he was in some kind of relationship with Raven. Tim hadn’t worked up the courage to ask him about that.
What he did want to ask him, though, was about Dick, and about himself. Because he was in the same boat Tim was now in, and that Dick had been in before; that is, the sidekick of an adult hero. He knew what it was like to be in that situation. Tim wanted to compare notes; perhaps this time he would get to do that.
Then there was Wonder Girl, who was also in that situation; she was the calm and competent leader when Dick wasn’t around. She had learned at the feet of Wonder Woman; that was enough to make Tim stop and pause for thought right there. She seemed iconic, the most truly heroic of the entire team. Tim was always a little bit in awe of her.
Then there was Terra. Tim knew what she was about, all right; he had seen girl’s like that in school. She was very nasty, in several senses of the word. She was most assuredly in a relationship with Beast Boy, and Tim had no illusions about what sort of relationship it was. He wasn’t sure whether he wanted to envy Beast Boy on that point, or feel a little worried for him… probably both. She wasn’t in the lounge right now, and Tim was quietly grateful for that. Not that she was in any way mean, nor did she come on to him; but just being around her made Tim nervous.
Lastly, this Speedy guy. He was the former sidekick of Green Arrow. Apparently they had had a falling out. Now, here was a guy Tim did not want to compare notes with. Not even to figure out what went wrong. He knew Dick and Bruce had had their own differences, too; but not like this, or so it seemed to Tim. He got along with Speedy well enough, when he was around.
“Hey kiddo,” Speedy said.
Tim nodded. “What’s up?”
“Seen Donna?”
Tim shook his head. “Just got here myself, actually.”
“What you got, archer-man?” Beast Boy inquired, coming up behind Tim.
Speedy shrugged. “Something Donna might be interested in.”
“Oh really,” said Donna, as she came down the stairs and into the lounge. “What’s that?”
--Four: Roy Harper--
Roy stood in front of the HD widescreen TV. The Titans didn’t really have a briefing room; that wasn’t the way they operated. Roy, of course, had anticipated this, and brought the info on DVD.
Gar had coaxed Tara down from upstairs, and Donna had called Dagon in from the monitors. The kid, Tim his name was, was sitting uneasily on an ottoman.
All of them were bathed in the sinister red light from the TV screen.
“The Church of Blood...” Raven said softly. She didn’t finish. For her this was more personal than any. Nor did Roy blame her; he remembered that misadventure very, very well.
“Well, the good news is, the Church seems to be stunned and broken, laying low. The Outsiders pounded em pretty good. Which means that for the first time in a very long time, Zandia isn’t under their control.”
The picture on the TV screen switched to a satellite map of Zandia. “It started when Brother Blood began his latest operations here in the States,” Roy went on. “Some of the, eh, less then fanatical citizens back at home started quietly contesting the home guard of the Church. Then word got back to them about the Outsiders’ victory, and there was a somewhat bloody coup. It didn’t take long. As most of you know, the faith of Blood’s followers is heavily dependent on his....influence, outside of his most fiercely loyal cadre.”
“And now?” Donna prompted.
“Now a civilian government has taken over,” Roy said. “But civilian in the loosest sense of the word.” The image on the screen changed again, showing the rather chaotic life on the streets of Zandia as it now stood. “The island has become a haven for bad guys of every shape and hue, from the ordinary thug, to serial killers, all the way through super villains. There was even a rumor that Lex Luthor visited there.”
“A real hive of scum and villainy, eh?” Beast Boy chimed in.
Roy grinned. ”Exactly. Checkmate is interested in hitting the place, and well...I figured....
“You figured you could get us to do Checkmate’s dirty work for them?” Donna asked. Her voice was mild, one eyebrow raised, a thin smile on her lips. But Roy understood the unspoken threat.
He shrugged and put on his best ladies’ man smile. “They’d get to it sooner or later. Or we could handle it, and it’s something we’d wanna do anyway, huh?”
Donna looked thoughtful and unhappy.
“Why don’t they fob it off onto the Suicide Squad?” Tara put in.
“Aside from the fact that their plate’s already full anyway? C’mon Tara, you remember what it was like. Checkmate wants to smash the new emerging criminal power structure, not kill half the country.”
Tara grimaced. “Yah, see your point.”
Roy looked back to Donna. “It is, of course, your call.”
Donna thought about it for a moment. Roy knew that with Dick away in Gotham, Donna was in charge. He also knew that while Donna was perfectly capable, she didn’t like it much. She preferred to be on the front lines, pounding the enemy.
Especially after that business on Wickersham Isle that they’d told him about, not to mention recent stuff with Wonder Woman.
“On the one hand, I don’t want to help Checkmate,” she sighed. “On the other, this
is our sort of thing.....so....”
Roy smiled. She was going to do what Dick had done in the early days when the group first formed.
She turned to the others. “Vote.”
Victor grimaced, cybernetic eye reflecting the TV monitor. “He’s got a point. We might catch some of the Church while we were at it.” He raised his hand. “Yes.”
Tara put her hand up. “Any excuse to kick some butt.”
Gar didn’t put his hand up; he shrugged. “I’m good either way.”
Dagon grinned, showing his fangs. “Church of Blood, huh? Count me in.”
Raven sighed. “If we do not face them now when they are weak, we shall have to face them while they are strong.”
“We might not face them at all,” Roy said, “But it’s a good point.”
Wally stepped to Raven and hugged her. “Yes,” he said simply.
Kory said nothing; she just put her hand up.
Donna looked at the kid. “Timothy?”
He shrugged uncomfortably. “I don’t think I really deserve a vote.”
Donna let that slide. “Well, the majority seems to want to go. But whether you come with us or not is your own decision.”
Tim thought about it. “Dick would probably tell me not to. But Bruce probably told him not to in similar situations, and he did anyway, right?”
Wally and Roy both grinned. “You got it,” Roy said.
“Um,” Gar said.
Everyone looked at him.
“Maybe it would be mature and responsible of us to tell him to stay home....but I’ve never been good with mature and responsible...”
“We know,” Vic put in, and Tara chuckled.
“Yeah. And I was gonna say....we all gotta start somewhere.”
Tim nodded. “Yeah, ok.”
Donna nodded. “We’ll leave in the morning.”
Roy was glad and relieved that they had agreed to help, but he knew that things had only begun.
--Five: Tim Drake--
Tim slept reasonably well in the Tower that night; there were a fair number of spare rooms for new members, and one of them was nominally “his” from previous visits.
The Church of Blood, though....they didn’t disturb his dreams much, but he had read about them in the database even before Roy’s briefing. He kept telling himself, they probably wouldn’t even run into the Church at all, just regular mercenaries and villains. Those were more than bad enough.
After a quick but hot breakfast the next morning, they got on the T-Jet. Tim had never ridden on it before, and of course it was nowhere near as fast as Kid Flash, but all the same the take off pushed him back in his seat the way no jet ride ever had before.
“Much faster than the Squad jet,” Terra breathed in satisfaction three chairs over. Tim looked at her. She had changed into a new costume; more browns, and a matching short jacket. She saw him looking and winked. “Betcha your boss bat-boy paid for it,” she said. Then her face shifted. “Um, I mean.....the old boss. Um... sorry...” She looked away.
“It’s okay,” Tim sighed. “And as for the plane....I don’t know,” he admitted. “The supply side of the, uh, business is something Dick hasn’t told me about.” He frowned for a moment, wondering if he should ask Dick about that.
The thought faded away as they soared onwards.
The trip was long, but not nearly as long as it would have been in any other jet that wasn’t supersonic. He heard, dimly, Wonder Girl and Speedy arguing over the radio with Zandia ground control up front. He frowned, thinking that they probably should have landed in a nearby country and snuck in, but apparently the fact that Zandia was an island made the problematic.
Speedy had come prepared with some sort of cover story, but it was impossible to tell, at this distance, whether it had worked or not.
But finally, they were cleared to land. He had been dressed as Robin the whole flight; now he put his mask on.
Showtime.
--Six: Roy Harper--
“See?” Roy said to Donna as they taxied in. “No problem.”
Donna shot him a look but didn’t say anything.
A reception committee formed up by the plane, and it didn’t look like a diplomatic, welcoming one. Soldiers in ragged black and red uniforms; though their weapons weren’t drawn.
“Maybe a problem after all,” Donna said. “I’ll go first.”
“You’re the chief,” Roy agreed.
The soldiers held their silence, staring at them as they filed out one by one. At Donna’s urging, the kid had gone last, and Roy agreed. He was starting to wonder if maybe they should have left the new boy wonder behind.
Roy wondered if the soldiers meant to arrest them; evidently his cover story hadn’t gone over too well. But at last, he realized they had simply been waiting for all of them to come out of the plane, so they couldn’t use it for cover.
Roy didn’t know Zandian, but the order to fire, screamed in rage by an officer, was unmistakable in any language.
“Scatter!” Donna shouted, and started deflecting bullets with her bracelets, as Titans dodged and rolled every which way....
To Be Continued…
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