Teen Titans
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Issue #38: “The White Rose” Pt. 2
Written by: Jay McIntyre
Cover by: Jamie Rimmer
Edited by: Brian Burchette[/center]
“Love is much like a wild rose, beautiful and calm, but willing to draw blood in its defense.” Mark Overby
“But friendship is the breathing rose, with sweets in every fold.” Oliver Wendell Holmes
This story takes place immediately after the events of The Flash # 32-1-
It had been three weeks since Rose joined the Titans. She had had several training sessions, and helped fight some low-level street crime, even a couple super-powered thugs, but not proper action as a Titan.
They had discussed a costume for her—her white hair was a rather distinctive giveaway, after all. But she had been less than thrilled with the complete headpiece cowl they had suggested for her. Terra had backed her on that one, saying it would have been too much like her old costume. Also, anyone who wanted to come after her through her family if they did figure out her identity....would come up against Deathstroke. Good luck to any who would try, right?
But she did want something to signify her membership, so eventually they gave her a set of blue T-shirts with the Titans T logo on it. She rather liked that. She also liked the name they came up with for her; The White Rose.
The Amulet of Sutekh protected her from Raven and Wonder Girl, as expected. And much to her surprise, Terra had taken a real liking to her, seeing a similarity in their experiences.
The irony was amusing. The “friendship” would be useful in bringing Terra to her senses. And if she didn't come around, well...then it would be worth it to see the look on her face when it was too late.
Last night, “The Girls”, minus Raven, which was apparently typical, had taken her out with them on one of their nights on the town. They hadn't let her drink anything, but that didn't concern Rose overly much. What amazed her was that they kept up this “were a happy bunch of friends who don't fight” garbage. When was this silly sitcom nonsense gonna end, seriously?
-2-
Rose gazed up at the golden statue.
“His name was Woodchucker,” Cyborg said.
“He died?” Rose stared into the eyes, ever unmoving, ever unchanging. She knew the essentials of the story; her father had told her the parts of it he knew.
“Yeah.....” Cyborg hung his head.
Abruptly there was a blur of motion past them and into the Tower. Rose and Cyborg stared at each other, and dashed in after it.
Jay Garrick, the original Flash from the 40s and early 50s, was holding a battered and bloody Wally West in his arms. The man himself wasn't in much better shape.
Rose stared at this tableau in utter disbelief. What enemy besides her father could bring Kid Flash so low?
“Azar, no!” Raven was rushing towards the two Flashes, horror etched in her face.
“Ah, Raven.” Garrick's eyes were streaming with tears and he looked exhausted. “I was hoping I would find you. Where's your med bay?” His voice was hoarse with worry and the obvious suppressed anger.
“This way,” Raven pointed, and Garrick carried Wally in the indicated direction at his best speed.
-3-
“He will live,” Raven said, hovering over Wally like an anxious shadow, “But I cannot tell you how long it will take him to heal.”
“Do what you can. I've got to get back....” and with that, the elder Flash was gone, back to the greatest trial in the long history of the Flash legacy, even as the other Titans began to fill into the room.
“Is there no way we can help?” Nightwing asked.
Raven shook her head sadly. “From what Mister Garrick told me, there's some sort of shield over the twin cities. Only speedsters can get in or out. I received the impression that this is one of those occasions on which they gladly would've accepted our help, if we could have given any.”
Rose winced, watching the honest concern of those around her. She kicked herself inwardly. Had she seriously wondered, mere minutes ago, who besides her dad could've done this? There were many dangers in the world, and that was one of the reasons he had given her the amulet.
Beside her, Terra swore quietly, and nobody bothered to chastise her for it; the cause was indeed sufficient.
“What we can do,” Raven went on, “Is take care of him. I'm sure Mister Garrick had my healing powers in mind.”
“Um....can't he heal himself?” Gar pointed out.
“Normally, yes. But remember, while he heals quickly, it is without direction or guidance; bones can grow back the wrong way, and so forth. Also, this time the injuries seem so severe that his normal healing rate seems to be...either slowed or not kicking in right away.”
“But he will recover?” Nightwing asked.
“Eventually, yes. If I am allowed to stay with him and heal him. And if he is not harmed further. I cannot tell you how long it will be. A week, a month? I cannot say. Only that neither of us will be ready for active duty for whatever period of time it takes for him to recover.”
“Can't we take him to STAR Labs, like when Gar was injured?” Cyborg put in.
“Perhaps eventually. At this time I am very reluctant to move him.” Raven's eyes were full of worry.
The others crowded around in morbid silence, Cyborg offering whatever technical assistance was required, Starfire taking Kid Flash's hand, gingerly. The speedster's eyes fluttered, but he was still out of it.
“Well,” Nightwing said after an awkward pause, “There's nothing else we can do for the moment; and because of this we will lose both Kid Flash and Raven, until he's recovered.” He took a deep breath, blew it out in a heavy sigh, and turned to leave.
Rose was the last to depart, staring curiously at Raven's soothing gestures over Wally's battered and bruised form. Her soul self was draped over him like a dark blanket. He murmured and shifted under it, making softer, quieter noises. Almost as though it was familiar to him.
Rose frowned. Why did they pretend to care? Almost immediately she could hear her father's answer in her mind;
They tell themselves they do. They pretend they are protecting people, instead of merely stroking their own egos. Unable accept the truth about themselves, they lie about their true natures to friend and foe alike, so they can sleep at night.
Unable to sense her true thoughts due to the amulet, Raven looked at her and smiled one of her rare smiles. “I will heal him, Rose. Given time.”
“Yeah.....I'm sure...that's part of what ya do, after all.” Shaken and unnerved for reasons she couldn't fathom, Rose turned and left her there.
-4-
A visibly disappointed Nightwing decided on another practice session which they would follow up with street patrol. Mainly he was concerned, not surprisingly, with finding Rose's father. But he was nowhere to be seen at the moment. Rose had told them he was a mercenary who took on whatever contract he had been given, which they already knew; what they did not know was that his highly functional brain allowed him to take on multiple challenges at once. *
Rose smiled inwardly, knowing that daddy was taking care of other financially rewarding cases right now, and that the Titans had not the slightest idea of this. Then she seethed inwardly at the fact that they were wasting time on a practice session again.
Knowing that it was not purely for her benefit, as she had first thought, but rather to keep all members in top form and fighting as a unit only puzzled her further. Surely they would be better served taking out small-time criminals in the field for that purpose? That was, after all, what “super heroes” pretended to do, wasn't it? Fight the “good” fight?
But no doubt, Nightwing would answer by pointing out that they were two members short and everyone needed to stay ready at all times and blah blah blah. She had made the mistake of asking these questions the second time she had been in a training session with them, and would not do so again.
Sure, her dad had put her through lots of training, but that was not the same thing; and he had been much more interested in her putting on a ninja-style black bodysuit and helping him fight, and using her to infiltrate enemy bases to sabotage their defenses.. The Titans, of course, didn't know that, either.
There were many things they didn't know.
The training session lasted a little under twenty minutes. By now Rose was used to this game; Terra and Beast Boy would avoid fighting eachother if at all possible (what did she see in him, anyhow?), because the others would accuse them of being too soft on eachother. Nightwing and Starfire, she noticed, did not have that problem; he was backflipping away from her starbolts quite often, counterattacking with concussion and smoke grenades.
It was Wonder Girl and Dagon that Rose was most afraid of in combat. Dagon on a psychological level, as his creepy vampire movements were enough to unsettle anyone, even though he seemed fond of her personally. Wonder Girl, because she, more than any of the others, seemed to buy into this heroic ideal nonsense. That confused Rose on several levels. And her recent trials had made her more powerful than ever, it seemed.
But then, it was also confusing that a vampire would work for the heroes in the first place. Rose hadn't worked up the nerve to ask Dagon why he was working for the sanctimonious hypocrite side. Maybe he'd tell her someday.
What happened in this training session, as had happened before, was that Rose found herself teamed up with Terra, floating on one of her rocks while spinning her quarterstaff defensively. (Another thing that bothered her: Why, Rose wanted to know, couldn't they hold these sparring sessions
outdoors? Nightwing said he'd think about it.)
Rose, of course, used this opportunity to go after Beast Boy. He, not surprised, changed into a lion and swatted at her. Her precog easily enabled her to parry the claws and strike with a kick under his feline chin. She reflected that these training sessions did help her in one way....they enabled her to beat on the Titans “honestly.”
Abruptly she spun away from Beast Boy as her gift warned her of starbolts coming in from Starfire. She landed on her feet to face Terra. Nominally, they were team mates in this battle, but those weren't hard and firm rules.
She launched herself into a pole vaulting kick. Terra was only mildly surprised; she smirked and blocked with a medium sized rock. Using precog, Rose danced up the hill of rocks Terra used and then went for a kick in the head. She barely missed; Terra blinked in more honest shock and formed a defensive shell of rock around herself.
Rose knew which combination and placement of strikes with her staff would break that shell, but had to leap away before she could use them, because this time it was Dagon zeroing in. She blocked five strikes from the vampire before the buzzer sounded, ending the training session.
*As seen in Checkmate # 2-5-
After that, the sun still indicating early afternoon, they went out on patrol. This was the part Rose enjoyed the most; when they might actually fight someone she could properly go after, and watch the team in action as a unit, studying their vulnerabilities. Granted, her father had done that many times, and shown her the tapes, but it wasn't the same thing as personal experience, which she would need when the time came to strike.
They picked a route that Nightwing chose at random from a number of pre set patterns, and they actually took out two small instances of street crime, when they all heard it.
A weird, pulsing electronic beat. Flashes of multicolored light; the occasional arc of a rotating laser.
Nightwing frowned, “A rave party?”
“Outside, in broad daylight?” Terra shook her head.
Then came an amplified, booming voice. “Welcome my friends, to the show that never ends!”
Wonder Girl groaned. “Oh Gods, not him again!”
“Who?” Rose asked.
They looked around the corner, and there stood a man in a dazzlingly white suit over a black shirt and white tie. He danced to the beat of the music, and around him the crowd was full of people of all ages, races, creeds and economic backgrounds, who had stopped what they were doing (some of them had dropped briefcases, groceries, cell phones) and begun to dance with him.
He stood on a short, elevated platform, on which was a sound machine, several lasers and other light displays. On the outer fringes were several cops who had pulled up in their cars and gotten out to stop the commotion, only they now were also trapped in the dance.
“The Mad Mod,” Starfire shook her head. “What is he doing here?”
“Who?” Terra and Rose chorused.
“Before your time,” Nightwing said. “I guess he's not using a retrovirus this time, or we'd be affected too, by now. This seems to have a limited radius. Probably something hypnotic in his sound system. Notice, no DJs. It's all automatic.”
“So why isn't he off robbing people, then?” Cyborg asked. “Or did he get caught up in his own trap?”
“Doubt it,” Beast Boy said. “Probably gonna rob all the people in range. Or hold em hostage, maybe.”
“So how do we take it out without getting close enough to fall victim?” Rose asked.
“Starfire?” Nightwing asked with a smile.
Three seconds later, a starbolt ripped into the nearest speaker, letting off a squeal of feedback. The music went on, though it was muted. But control was not broken; the massed crowed continued to dance.
Mad Mod's head whipped this way and that, then focused on them, and glared. “This is not entirely unexpected!” He shouted. “My loyal fans, deal with this intrusion!”
The crowd turned and began to move on the Titans like a horde of zombies. The police at the rear drew their revolvers and took aim.
“I guess just because you need to be in range to be hypnotized doesn't mean you break free once you leave that range,” Nightwing said grimly. “Nor did damaging his equipment shake his control.”
Wonder Girl almost casually blocked the first few pistol shots with her bracelets. “The only reason the police aren't shooting into the crowd is because that means they can't see us to aim,” she said, “Not out of consideration for the crowd. This mind-lock might be stronger than the retrovirus was.”
Nightwing grimaced. “Kid Flash could have all these people down in nothing flat, and Raven could free their minds without much trouble. But, of course, neither one of them is here.”
“I could provide a nice song tribute of my own,” Terra said, “And make the earth...move....under their feet.”
Everybody groaned. “Beast Boy is rubbing off on you,” Nightwing said.
“And what's wrong with that?” Beast Boy said in mock outrage.
“Plenty,” Rose supplied.
“Okay cut the chatter,” said Nightwing. “Terra, your idea is sound but we don't want to do that much damage to the city infrastructure, and risk that many injuries. We'll have to do this the hard way. Let them come to us, and we'll take 'em out one by one. Starfire, Dagon, make your way around the perimeter, don't get too close. Mod is many things, but one thing he isn't is stupid. He's using this attack as cover for his escape. See if you can cut him off, or at least follow him.”
The Tamaranean and the vampire nodded, and then they were gone, leaving the rest of them to defend against the oncoming waves.
Under Nightwing's directive, they formed a skirmish line, not daring to move too far forward, lest they come into the range of the damaged-yet-still-playing sound system.
Wonder Girl was blocking shots with marvelous dexterity, but the sad truth was she could only block those bullets that were aimed at her. Fortunately, Nightwing had long experience in dodging hostile fire, and Rose's precog enabled her to duck before the triggers had even been pulled. Beast Boy and Terra ducked and dodges as best they could (Terra having already been shot once in her life, she had told Rose, and not ever wanting to experience it again.) Cyborg, of course, could counter a lot of hostile fire with the technological parts of his body.
Terra smashed the sound machine into silence with a rock, but while that took care of the annoying noise (and presumably the chances of them being controlled by it themselves), it did not break the conditioning of the hypnotized New Yorkers. Nor did it stop the police from emptying their clips at them.
Cyborg tried various harmonic wavelengths on his white noise cannon, but that didn't break the mind control either. Clearly, Mad Mod had done his homework before facing them again.
It came down, as Nightwing had predicted it would, to being an old fashioned skirmish like something out of an 18th century war; the hypnotized mob as besiegers and the Titans as defenders, holding the line.
Rose's precognitive skills served her well here, enabling her to know when to jump, when to kick, when to dodge, when to strike with her quarterstaff. Nightwing was the next most prepared, having fought people on the personal/martial arts level since his childhood. Wonder Girl and Cyborg had to temper their blows so as not to seriously injure these ordinary people. Terra took them out with calculated light blows to the head with small pebbles and stones. Beast Boy took the forms of a snake to trip them up, then of a cat to make them trip over him, then of a monkey to knock them out with quick blows, then an ape with more powerful blows.
Rose's precog made it so that she was the first to know that the cops had run out of bullets and were now joining the crowd surging against them, wielding their guns as clubs, planning to pistol whip the Titans. This was as much tactical good sense as precog, as Rose couldn't see more than a few seconds into the future. She shouted a warning to Nightwing, who nodded, unsurprised.
Only one of the cops as a real problem; the youngest, fastest, healthiest, and most importantly, martial arts trained. He went for Rose with all kinds of spinning, looping kicks. Rose's precog gift showed her that she would not gain an opportunity to counterattack any time soon, only to parry his strikes, but that was fine, as it gave Nightwing more than enough time to close in from behind. The cop was well-trained and possibly experienced in street combat with his hand-to-hand skills too; but he couldn't take both of them at once.
After that it was a simple matter to mop up the handful of remaining hypnotized New Yorkers. A quick call through to STAR to get them all rounded up and examined, so they could be healed and Mod's mental domination over them broken.
Starfire came back alone. “He slipped into the subway. But Dagon is still following him in mist form.”
“Hard for him to do in sunlight, but easy underground,” Nightwing said. “Hopefully he can stay on him”
After talking to the STAR Labs personnel for a few moments, they slipped away as the media was arriving. Rose would have no problem being introduced to the media as “The White Rose,” but the Titans weren't overeager to expose her, and besides they needed to be ready to help Dagon at a moment's notice.
Back at the tower, they had a relatively short period of uneasy waiting while Rose collected her thoughts. While some of the others went to check on Wally, she sat and brooded on the ground floor lounge. Instead of the flash and glamour posing she had expected, the Titan's actions today were more like a police action; keeping the peace. She wasn't sure what to make of that.
They didn't hear from Dagon until shortly before sunset. Mod had exited the subway in Woodlawn, but Dagon had lost him there. However, it was a safe bet he hoped to lay low somewhere in that area, especially if he wasn't aware that Dagon was still following him. Nightwing seemed confident it wouldn't be too great of a challenge to his detective skills to find him.
-6-
Neil Richards, better known as the costumed criminal The Mad Mod, considered himself lucky. He was hiding out in a small, dirty apartment not far from where he'd got off the subway.
He couldn't count this as a victory over the Titans, but he could, at least, call it a draw. He had actually gotten away clean, and with some money, though not nearly as much as he had hoped to gain.
After his last encounter with the Titans, some time ago now, he had faced off against a group of foolish children in a strange haunted house, run by an even stranger proprietor. * He had been trapped there several weeks, and he couldn't truly say if his host had let him go, or if he had truly escaped by wit. His memory of the details were fuzzy....hadn't the man said he'd spent some time in a coma, or something?
But no matter now. When he escaped, he still had enough of his stolen STAR Labs equipment to set up this particular scheme. True, it wasn't the massive heist he'd planned, but at least he'd gotten away with over four thousand dollars. Not a great haul, but not a bad one.
He didn't consider the Titans to be his enemies, really. They were just the ones he kept running into. They were amusing enough, in their way. But he'd no desire to face them again. Perhaps he should relocate to Gotham; the city was in a proper shambles these days. Or maybe the west coast. Or perhaps even back home to the mother country....
His thoughts froze as the door creaked. Before he could make a move towards the device on his ratty little bedside table, a strange mist started to pour in from the window. It turned into a vampire.
“Boo,” the vampire said, fangs extended.
Then the door was kicked in by Nightwing, the other Titans following in his wake, including a white-haired girl that the Mod didn't recognize.
“Not a bad try, Mod,” Nightwing said, honest respect in his voice. “But not good enough.”
“How did you find—never mind,” Mod shook himself and lunged for the device. It would flash the room with brilliant strobe light, confusing them long enough to make good his escape. Not even the vampire was close enough to stop him in time--
--but somehow the white-haired girl anticipated the move, and smashed her staff into his arm, almost breaking it.
“Aarrrgh!” the Mod hissed in pain. The girl stared into his eyes, and he was unsettled; it was as though she knew what he was going to do, before he did it.
He saw that Kid Flash was not with them, though. Perhaps he could still make a run for it.
“Don't try it,” the girl warned, still looking at him with those knowing eyes.
He tried it anyway, but hadn't even made it off the bed before her staff struck him in the groin.
*House of Mystery # 3.-7-
Two nights later, after another night out with “the girls”, Rose and Tara stumbled into Tara and Gar's shared bedroom in the Tower.
Beast Boy had been reading a book, sitting on the big green beanbag chair. He raised an eyebrow at them. “I'll just excuse myself, shall I?”
“Give us a few minutes, honey,” Tara said, kissing him on the nose.
Gar knew better than to say anything else, he just smirked and excused himself.
After the door closed, Rose and Tara looked at eachother and burst into a new round of giggles.
“What do you see in him?” Rose asked, honestly wondering.
For a minute Tara looked annoyed, then when she realized Rose was serious, she blew out a sigh. “At first it was just that he was a bit of fun, and had a nice secure super hero team attached to him,” she said. “But as time went on, I found him sweet, and funny....and that we were more alike under the surface than I thought. And most of all, he knows all my dirty little secrets...and loves me anyway.”
“Do you love him?” Rose asked.
Tara thought about it. “I tell you what, I dunno if it's true love or not. But if it isn't, it's as close to it as a bad girl like me is ever gonna get. I won't lose him.”
Rose absorbed that for a moment, still marveling that Tara would let herself become so weak. But at the same time it presented its own opening. “Yeah.....speaking of that....do you ever regret it? Being a....a....”
“Tart?” Tara suggested, grinning. “Not at all. Some of the details of
who with, maybe. But the lifestyle itself? Never.”
“Well...good...that's good. Cuz I wanted to ask you...um...” Rose hung her head and actually, honestly blushed.
Tara raised an eyebrow. “What is it, sis?”
Sis. That meant a lot. More than Rose wanted to let on. “Would you um....give me pointers on that?”
Tara blinked and sat back, looking thoughtful. “You really wanna do it?”
“Sure, of course I do!”
“I only ask, because you have to be sure,” Tara said. “Don't do it just because I do it. And don't do it to be 'grown up'...and don't do it to get back at your dad.”
Rose twitched.
“Yeah,” Tara said, misinterpreting Rose's reaction, “That's what I thought. Rose....I'm all in favor of being wild. As Gar can testify. But you have to really want it. If you don't....and you talk yourself into it....and you wind up with a guy...and you realize too late that you did it for the wrong reasons....and you panic.....” Tara let the sentence trailed off and spread her hands, face sad.
Rose got the picture. And it unnerved her. “Is that what happened to you?”
“No....I was a villain then, already, and the guy I was running with....he seduced me. I enjoyed it. I just wish....I wish it had been with somebody other than him. And I wish I had a roadmap of what was ahead of me. But what I just described to you? I've seen it happen. Couple times. It's not pretty.”
Rose sagged back, felt tears forming behind her eyes. “So you think I shouldn't?”
“I think you should be sure—
really sure—that it's what you want. Think about it for a while. And please, don't just do it to get back at your dad.”
Rose nodded. “Okay...yeah, I'll think about it. Thanks....sis.”
They hugged, briefly and awkwardly, then Rose let herself out. Gar gave her a worried frown as he went past, but she waved him off.
She trudged down the hallway towards her own room, mind and heart in turmoil, tears beginning to fall.
A twinge from her precognition made her look up, startled.
Nightwing was standing there, worry on his face. “Rose, you okay?”
“Not really.”
“Want to talk about it?”
“Not right now....maybe later.” she hunched her shoulders and went past.
“If you ever want to talk, we're all here for you. You do know that, right?” Nightwing called after her.
She nodded, and then slipped into her own room, locking the door behind her.
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