Chain 223: Teen Titans

Chain 223: Teen Titans

Location: Jump City
Age: 15
Identity: Mystery
Drawbacks: None

[300/1000]  Probability Manipulation
[900/1000]  Self Duplication
[1000/1000] Xenothium

Ah, a land of almost limitless potential. Most of what the Titans seemed to be handling early on was low-grade compared to what would be coming, but they still had to deal with quite a bit of craziness. Mostly courtesy of that... Slade fellow. He's quite disagreeable, it would seem.

Most of what I did was a matter of laying low. Demona went off and did her thing - apparently had a brief scuffle with the local heroes at one point, but it all turned out to be a misunderstanding there. The fact that there were a few cults worshipping me pinged on Raven's radar, but they seemed largely harmless. And throughout it all, the Conspiracy watched, waiting for the opportune moment for me to act. And it didn't really take as long as I expected to come: Robin went undercover, pretending to be a villain in order to get closer to the Titans' nemesis in order to gain more information and find a way to catch him.

Of course, any fool could tell you this was doomed to failure, but the last thing anyone expected while Slade was going on about how Robin's plan had been obvious from the beginning... was for Robin himself to enter from the shadows behind the villain, launching a furious attack at Slade. Despite his confusion, the Robin in the Red X costume joined the attack, and together the two of them won the day, forced his retreat, and all seemed well afterward.

Which left an interesting conundrum: who the heck is the guy dressed up as Robin? When everyone had a chance to look at him, clearly his suit was sub-par quality, but he had a similar build and he sounded remarkably similar. And so he was detained at weapon-point and Robin lunged forward to unmask him. Except the domino mask was a part of the rubber mask covering his head, and peeling it away it was Red X's hood.

"You were expecting maybe The Flying Graysons? You've got terrible taste - I'd sooner team up with the Joker than that creep," commented the future would-be villain, before tackling Robin, stealing the xenothium power supply of his suit, and making an improbable and dramatic escape.

After that, Red X kept showing up and occasionally trolling the Titans, though he seemed to pop up when Slade did and throw a wrench in his plans and dropping hints to the heroes, because if trolling the heroes is fun, trolling the villains is absolutely mandatory. He did what he could to get Terra onto his side, only for "that persistent little troll" to snag her from right under his nose, explain a number of facts about the world to her, and then unceremoniously dump her in the living room of Titans Tower as a sobbing wreck while she promised the Titans to make up for her mistakes.

>"Wait a minute. How did she get here?"
"Hey, Beast Boy. Truce for the moment?"
>"But... how did YOU get here?"
"Mostly Xenothium. I doubt I'd ever be able to pull that off a second time."
>"That doesn't make any sense at all!"
"And that's my cue to leave. Can't give away all my secrets!"
>"Dude! Open the window before jumping through! Not cool!"

Slade's takeover of the city was rather less complete than he intended, months after that. He still ended up falling to his doom after a pitched battle with Robin and Red X, though it was a little less ambiguous than falling into lava, and the fault was strictly on him choosing a potential death rather than capture.

After Slade had been resurrected by Trigon in order to bring him to Earth, well, things got rather more intense. The Titans were more than just the five of them - with Terra staying, some of their other "honorary" Titans got a similar idea and their roster grew. So when the invasion happened... well, there was just one small problem. Along with the core Titans not being petrified, Red X found them and showed that he was still intact as well. And so was his Aunt Demona.

>"Wait, did you just say, AUNT Demona?"

At which point a redheaded gargoyle swooped down from the sky and crashed into Trigon's face at roughly the speed of sound, sending him staggering.

>"...yeah, he said Aunt Demona."
"Pff, if you think she's something, wait 'til you meet my boss."
>"You... have a boss?"
"Yeah. He's a pretty cool guy, eh has a huge cult and doesn't afraid of anything."
>"Wait. He has a cult? This sounds... Raven? Rae? Does that sound familiar to you?"
"Oh, here he comes now."

And then a fourteen foot tall man, clad in gold and crimson armor and on fire, walked through the streets. He waved cheerfully to the costumed kids who boggled at him, and began growing with every step he took toward the massive demon, until he was the same size as him. Trigon was decidedly not happy with this but it seemed to accomplish particularly little.

"Didn't know he could do that. I feel a little... superfluous."
>"Should we help?"
"He's a thousand feet tall, but... your call."
>"We should help."
>"Rae's looking herself again. Let's do this."

And so the heroes, the part-time-villain-part-time-troll, and the supersonic gargoyle kept harrying Trigon with attacks while the demon fought with his apparent rival. The fight was surprisingly not as one-sided as anyone might have expected, and it was seemingly only due to Raven's intervention that Trigon was put on the back foot. At which point Trigon's opponent grabbed him by the throat and pinned him against the ground.

Whatever was said between the two wasn't in a human tongue and Raven refused to repeat what it was, but in the end the demon lost the conflict and was... absorbed.

"Oh, that ain't pretty," observed Cyborg.

Raven, however, had a different reaction. "He lost... I can't feel him anymore. I... I think I'm free."

The titanic brute shrank down after Trigon was subsumed, standing at about fourteen feet tall. Demona and Red X went to him, Red X ditching his mask, and he ruffled the kid's black hair while praising him for the good work. The other heroes went to them, as the world began to return to normal; he extinguished his flames and shrank to the size of a normal adult. He removed his helmet as well, holding it under an arm, before the trio turned toward the heroes.

"Impossible," breathed Robin, as he saw the spitting images of himself and Bruce Wayne looking back to him.

"Well, that was quite an experience! I don't think that Trigon will be able to bothering anyone again," he commented. "Huh, you look a lot like..." He paused, looking between Red X and Robin. Then shrugged. "Well, that explains some things. It's been fun, but if your world's safe, I think we should be moving on."

"What a twist!" exclaimed a pink-haired bystander, before she ran away. The heroes stared after her for a moment, before turning back to the trio, but in that brief span of time two of the three had disappeared.

Red X shrugged and commented, "I figured I'd stick around a little longer. See you around, heroes." And with the firing of a grapnel, he shot off into the skyline.

Fostering that kid for a few years and teaching him the art of trolling was as hilarious and ideal a result as one could hope.