Thin, saccharine music slunk out of the speakers over the walls, playing bubble-gum pop as if nothing were wrong. The mall was kept clean and inviting, with small plants lining a decorative fountain and cool white tile as far as the eye could see. But the stores were all empty now; the displays of perfumes and books and toys all left unattended. The shoppers and cashiers were gathered near the fountain, in the wide space in the center of the building.
Ravager watched them from the upper floor, pacing along the railing over the space. The camera crews were outside still, with the police.. Between the hostages and the mall’s own security systems sealing access to the mall until it was reset from within, the police were unable to get to him.
He knew the Teen Titans would show up, and he wouldn’t be disappointed. They couldn’t pass up a chance to catch him again. He was ready. In his mind, he had played out an ideal fight a thousand times. He was strong, fast, resourceful. Ravager couldn’t lose.
A loud crash echoed through the mall, drawing every eye up to the shattered skylight that Cyborg had dropped through. The T-Jet passed over the roof and the other Titans followed, landing on the top floor across from where Ravager stood. Black Canary led them, looking over the situation and giving her orders “Spoiler, get those doors open! Raven, with me. The rest of you, get him!”
“'Get him!' So professional,” Ravager laughed. He climbed up over the railing, standing still with his arms open on the edge. “Come on then, get me!” A quick hop, and he fell straight down into the crowd, hiding among them when he landed.
The Teen Titans were off like a shot in pursuit. Raven and Canary leaped down, trying to grab the attention of the crowd. Mas y Menos zipped down the stairs, Cyborg behind them, and Beast Boy’s eagle eyes scanning from above.
“Everyone, please, remain calm!” Dinah’s voice carried over the crowd, amplified by her Canary Cry. She turned to Raven as she climbed up onto the rim of the fountain. “We need to get these people organized and out of here.
Raven nodded, closing her eyes and beginning to focus her energy. It was difficult at first to find her center among the screaming, whirling emotions all around her. But the calm, bright spot was there in her mind, and Raven focused that feeling. She visualized a sphere of light in the spinning darkness. She felt the light spill into her body, through her arms and legs, the sphere extending past her body and into the air. It took a long few minutes, but finally Dinah saw the crowd start to calm and respond to her orders. She, too, could feel the sense of tranquility that Raven was projecting, all of the negative energy in the room morphed into positive emotion.
Black Canary took over again, now that the crowd would cooperate. “Alright. Everyone follow us to the west entrance. We’re going to get you all out!”
***
Meanwhile, Mas y Menos were on the chase, and Ravager was on the run. He’d made a head start, but it barely mattered where the twins were concerned. With a helping shout from Beast Boy, they knew what direction he had gone in, and from there it was the work of a moment to track him down. Ravager slowed to a stop as the twins zipped in front of him.
“So that’s real brave of you, running off,” Mas folded her arms over her chest.
“Just smart, sweetheart.” Ravager grabbed his sword out of its sheath. “I look suicidal to you? A team that size is a threat…two of you aren’t.”
“You’re going to take that back,
muy rapido!” Menos shot forward like an arrow with a punch ready for Ravager’s face. With his speed, it was easy for Menos to bend his blow around the sword before Ravager could strike, and the first blow went to the speedster. Mas joined her brother quickly, and the three combatants were a blur of fists and metal.
The point of Ravager’s sword missed the twins again and again, and he finally changed tactics after a few minutes that felt like an hour to him. He swung the flat of his blade in a wide sweep, still missing as Mas y Menos wore him down. Every second they could throw another punch drove him back inch by inch to the rest of their teammates. But finally, one blow sent Menos flying backward, his own momentum betraying him. He crashed hard into a display of perfume samples, skidding out with a shout on the newly-wet floor. He slid down the hall and tumbled, ramming back-first into a wall and finally coming to a stop.
Mas gritted her teeth and gave a shout, “The bastard’s over here!” She glanced up to see Beast Boy’s bird form catching Ravager’s location, and then she ran to her brother’s side.
***
While the fight built up steam on the ground floor, Spoiler made a beeline for the secured offices on the top level. The door here was part of the lock-down, but she was prepared for that. A few moments with her netbook, and she hacked the security code, punching it into the keypad next to the door and letting herself in. The room was dark and empty, dim lights supplemented with the flickering of black-and-white television screens. Most showed empty hallways and storefronts; she thought they just needed a tumbleweed to complete the picture. One monitor covered the west entrance, where Black Canary and Raven had managed to herd the crowd. A few were still pushing and shoving, but Raven’s magic was keeping the majority calm and collected.
One screen showed Ravager, racing through one of the empty hallways alone, and Spoiler quickly noted which one.
Her communicator crackled to life, and Spoiler could see Canary lift her own wrist up to her mouth on the screen. “Spoiler, got those doors?”
“Any minute now!” She tossed her purple cape to the side, moving faster and freer without it as she searched through the buttons and controls in the security room. She found a microphone, and paused as she got the mall speakers on. “Ravager headed west!” she announced, and continued her search. The civilians were crowding the door now, the more panicked few banging on the metal, and Steph made an announcement again, “Everyone back away from the door, that thing’s gonna open real fast!”
She grinned to see the crowd backing away, and noticed the strain on Raven’s face from holding back all of their fear. There wasn’t any time left to waste. She knew what controls to use, and it was just a matter of working out the pattern.
“Come on…come on babe, we can do this!” She coaxed the machines, entering key codes and finally pressing the big button. She looked up with a bright smile to see the thick security doors receding back into the walls, and the crowd of people flooded out into the evening air. “Yes! Good girl,” she praised the computer with a pat on the console.
It still took a few minutes for the crowd to filter out, and Spoiler turned her attention to the other screens now. She could see Beast Boy and Cyborg in different halls, both headed west but not quite in the right place. When she looked back to the monitors, she had lost sight of Ravager. She cursed quietly and dragged her fingers over the screens, searching with the microphone ready in hand.
She couldn’t find him until the crowd thinned out enough at the door. He had gotten there too quickly, hidden himself again in the throng, and now while Black Canary waved the last hostages through the door, Ravager was moving silently behind her. He held the hilt of his sword up, a blunt weapon, aiming a strike.
Spoiler shouted, “Canary, look out!”
Black Canary leapt into the air at Spoiler’s warning, just in time. Behind her, Ravager swing his weapon, a brutal arc through the air where Canary’s head had been a second before. Thanks to Spoiler, her head was safe—but her leg twisted and cracked under the impact. She cried out, her sonic blast aiming at her assailant through her pain. The wave knocked Ravager several feet back, even as Canary fell back to the ground.
The sharp sound threw Raven out of her concentration. The empath’s eyes snapped open, feeling an echo of Dinah’s pain course through her own leg. She paused long enough to be sure that all of the civilians had escaped, and then Raven flew. She lifted off the ground with the powerful shadow at her back, racing toward Ravager.
Thrown back by Canary’s shout, Ravager scrambled back to his feet, snarling. He ducked away from Raven’s attack just before she landed. Behind her, the security doors slammed shut again, and Spoiler’s voice blared out of the intercom.
“Guess what, Ravager? We’ve got you now! Those doors won’t open up again until I say so. So you just try to stop us all together! Didn’t think you’d have to, did you? Planned on splitting us up again? Well bad plan, buster, and you are so going down now!”
“Shut up, shut up!” Ravager muttered under his breath; Spoiler’s plan was working. He was distracted, irritated, making the wrong moves as Raven drove him backward in the hall. He wasn’t thinking clearly, just lashing out, just reacting.
Raven’s soul-self held her aloft, tendrils of blackness chasing and leading her foe. Raven’s power was great, but she did not want to use it to harm others, no matter how vile. Knowing this, the Titans had found strategies to work around her dislikes, and let those more willing take the victories.
Raven launched a long, thin rope of her soul-self that caught Ravager’s leg, sending him flying and pinned him to the ground. As soon as he hit the floor, Spoiler called out over the microphone, “Ravager down in front of the Build-a-Bear, get him, boys!”
The floor trembled as the trumpet shouted, and Beast Boy rounded the corner, gaining momentum as a massive green elephant, with Cyborg whooping on his back. Together, they ran down the hall to give Cyborg enough velocity when he jumped down to land on Ravager’s back.
“Yeah! Think you’re tough now, punk?” Cyborg called, throwing a punch to the space between Ravager’s shoulder blades.
Ravager lifted his head and weighed the scene. Mas y Menos were back, madder than ever as they stood to either side of him. Beast Boy was in the air again, flapping excitedly. Raven’s soul-self was sliding up his legs, dark and cold and captivating. Cyborg had him pinned the rest of the way, and he was more than ready to strike again. Coming down the hall more slowly, Ravager could just make out Black Canary, with her arm around Spoiler’s shoulder for support.
“Fine…I give,” Ravager lowered his head. “Got some of what I wanted anyway…bet that hurt,” he looked back up at Canary. “Little payback for what you did to my family.”
Canary limped forward, motioning to Raven and Cyborg to let the boy stand up. She studied his face for a long moment beyond the mask. “You’re Grant Wilson, aren’t you?”
“Damn right!” he said proudly.
“We wondered what happened to you,” Canary said quietly, holding her arm out to stave off questions from the rest of her team. They could see her trying hard to ignore the pain in her broken leg. “Your mother was worried sick when you vanished.”
“Like she cared!” Grant spat. “I’m so sure she was watching that foster home like a hawk, right? That explains why she left us there to rot without our father!”
Ravager’s bitter tirade fell into silence when the police finally arrived through the doors that Spoiler had re-opened. The Teen Titans backed away to let the cops take Grant Wilson in, and they went back toward the fountain to let Dinah sit again.
“Wish you’d knocked him out,” Beast Boy joked to Cyborg, glancing back at the store, “We could have put a little hat on him while he was out, there were a million options!”
Raven knelt and worked her hand slowly over the break, and Canary sighed in relief. “It’s not good,” Raven finally said to the rest of the team. “I can take some of the pain away for now, but I can’t fix the break. You need a doctor, Canary.”
“I’ll get one,” she nodded, leaning again on Steph’s arm to stand. “We can talk back at the Tower. Cyborg, call Zinda and tell her to land. I just want to get out of here now.”
*****
A few hours later, most of the dust had settled. The Teen Titans were back in their sanctuary, recovering from the night’s events in their lounge. Dinah’s absence was a telling blow to the team; she had been taken to the closest hospital as soon as she’d been able to change out of her costume. Vic, Carla and Gar had challenged each other to their video games, trying to keep their spirits up; the rest simply watched and tried to make themselves relax.
“I still can’t believe I sucked so bad,” Juan muttered, sunken into the couch. “We had him, we shoulda stopped him right in the first place.”
Garfield turned his head to look at him, though distracted by his game. “You don’t need to beat yourself up about it. Your ankle got all twisted, none of us would have expected you to keep on going.”
Juan rubbed his ankle, still sore but already returning to normal. “I guess. But man, I got beat by
perfume.”
“Aw, just stop complaining,” Carla chuckled, keeping her eyes on the screen. “We got him in the end. Any luck and he’ll stay put this time.”
Steph was curled on the other end of the couch, having been lost in thought since their return. “So…I guess no one else knows what he was talking about? About Dinah breaking up his family?” She asked, looking all around for her friends’ responses. All of the other Titans shook their heads or shrugged. “As long as it’s not just me,” she added.
“I don’t think it matters,” Raven said from behind the couch, where she was standing. “I wasn’t even looking for it and I could feel Ravager’s pain… confusion… anger… whatever happened must be past. I trust that Canary would not have hurt him purposefully.”
“Now if he could have just returned the favor,” Carla muttered darkly, before jerking her controller to the side.
More time crawled by, and most of the teens had retired to their rooms to try to sleep. Steph was still awake, alternately perched on the roof or settled on the sofa, determined that Dinah would return to someone’s help. But even she had slipped into a doze by the time the door opened far below, and had to scramble to make her way down the stairs.
Dinah had a crutch and a large white cast, but she was walking on her own power, and gave Steph a smile when they met. Steph, for her part, refrained from the bowling-over hug that she wanted to give her friend. “You’re okay? You’re all good, everything’s good?”
A wince passed over Dinah’s face, but she replaced it with a smile. “Yeah, I’ll be fine. Gonna be a very annoying few months though.” She checked her watch and yawned. “Nothing worth waking anyone up for. We can talk in the morning.”
“Okay! So let me help.” Steph offered her arm, and Dinah refused it.
“I’m fine. You go get some sleep. You earned it, after a performance like that tonight,” she added with another smile. When Steph left, she made her way slowly to her office on the ground floor, rather than climbing. Dinah passed out in her small, comfortable chair, and eventually the morning came.
When the sun had risen again and the Titans had woken up, Dinah called them all together around the same comfortable couch. Her cast was stretched out over the cushions, already collecting signatures and doodles from Steph and Gar as they sat near her.
The activity drew an odd look from Raven when she walked in. “What are you letting them do to your wound?” She asked Dinah.
Steph spoke up, “They’re well-wishes! You’ve never signed a cast before?” She continued when Raven shook her head. “it’s just good vibes, good energy. You know how that works, right?”
“Well, yes, but not with a marker,” Raven replied.
“At least this time I’ve thought of something better then last time,” Steph said.
“Last time?” Raven asked, leaning forward to look at Steph’s purple flowers and hearts, and Garfield’s green puppies and bunnies.
“About a year ago I got my leg broken fighting Lady Shiva.Yeah, that one. That’s why it broke so easily this time, doctor’s said it hadn’t fully healed,” Dinah explained.
“Ah,” Raven responded in understanding.
Gar held his marker out for Raven to take. “You add something. It just means ‘we’re thinking of you’. So she gets to smile when she’s wrapping her leg up in a garbage bag to take a bath.”
“That part right there isn’t helping, Gar,” Dinah gave a tired chuckle.
“Go on, you do something,” he continued, and scooted aside to give Raven room.
After a moment’s thought, Raven took the marker and began to sketch. By the time Vic and the twins made it into the room for the meeting, a beautifully-rendered raven stood with her wings open on Dinah’s cast, clutching a strange collection of looping swirls in her talons. “For my people, it’s a symbol of strength and healing,” she explained.
Juan bent his head over from behind the couch to look, and whistled low. “
Dios, and I was just gonna put my name down.”
“I’d still like that,” Dinah assured him, and motioned for Carla and Vic to sit down. “Come on, I’ve got some stuff to talk about.”
Vic took his seat. “You’re not looking too bad,” he told Dinah.
“Well, I got some lovely painkillers from the nice men in the white coats,’ She said, breathing deep to start her meeting. “I had a lot of thinking to do last night, and I came to a couple decisions. First, it’s pretty clear that Black Canary is going to have to go away for a little while,” she said sadly. “I’m not gonna be anything but a liability in the field in this shape. So you guys are going to need a new field leader.
Steph piped up when Dinah paused, “But you could still lead us! Just over the comms like Oracle does, right? That could work,” she offered.”
“Not if I’m not out there with you to see what’s happening,” Dinah countered with a sigh. “The whole point is to mentor you guys, and you can't do that over the radio. Believe me, Steph, I’d rather stay. But it’s just not practical for me to go out there when I’m trying to heal.”
“So who’s leader?” Carla asked, glancing at her teammates.
“I wanted to hear your opinions first,” Dinah answered. “Floor’s open for comments.”
For a minute, nobody spoke, each Titan looking over the others. Juan and Carla gave each other glances with identical thoughts; they moved too fast in battle, and loved it too much, for either of them to stop and give orders. Raven only knew that she needed too much focus for her own powers for her to be able to watch the rest of the team.
Finally, Steph raised a timid hand. “I think I could handle it…maybe, if no one else wants,” she offered. “I mean, I can face it, I’m not the world’s best fighter. But maybe.”
Vic spoke up next. “Y’know… I think you should do it,” he said, pointing to Garfield, who had to do a double-take.
“What? Me, really?”
“Hey, yeah…you been doing this the longest of any of us,” Carla nodded. “Might be weird gettin’ orders from green-genes.”
“But we’d get used to it,” Juan finished his sister’s thought. “It’s not even like it’s hard for you to keep look-out, si?”
“I guess…” Gar started to smile more humbly than they were used to. “I guess I just never thought about it.”
Steph relaxed into her seat, somewhat relieved. “And you know we can still help you out if you needed. Doesn’t make you in charge of us, just means you’re the one who does the shouting.”
“And I get the feeling you like that part,” Vic added with a soft punch to Gar’s arm.
Garfield laughed a little, and looked back to Dinah. “Well, what do you think?”
“I think you guys are going to be just fine without me,” she answered, practically beaming. “That’s exactly the decision I was going to make.”
“So…when you say ‘without you’, you really mean you’re gonna be all the way gone?” Steph asked, still drooping at the idea.
“I have to be,” Dinah explained gently. “Dinah Lance has a business, a family, a whole life in Gotham City that I’ve got to be there for. It was painful enough on the jet on the way home last night—I just can’t keep flying back and forth to be here like I have been until I heal. And if I need to pick one place to stay, it’s got to be home.”
“We all understand that,” Gar spoke for the team,” But if you’re gone, how are we going to deal with training? I can’t exactly fill in for you there, too.”
“I know, Gar. Unfortunately, I don’t have such an inspired idea for that problem,” Dinah admitted. “You might just have to teach each other. Help each other out with what you’re good at. You’ll still be learning that way.” She sighed, “I’d rather leave you with someone to help, but them’s the breaks.”
“Wait!” Steph bounced up to sit straighter. “What about Red Hood?”
“What about him?” Gar asked.
“He’s been hanging around anyway, and we know he knows his stuff. So why not ask him for help?”
“Well…hm…it’s an idea,” Dinah tapped her fingers on her cast. “Opinions?”
“I like ‘im,” Juan said right away. “Could do us some good to learn from one of
lo major.”
“One of the best who wouldn’t be tellin’ us what to do, even,” Carla nodded her agreement.
Gar looked like he was thinking hard. “Yeah, but we don’t even know what this guy looks like. You two really wanna take lessons from someone like that?”
“He’s a superhero, how many of us DO show off our faces outside teams?” Vic asked.
“I’m not convinced I want to give Red Hood full access to the Tower,” Dinah said finally. “He might just be extra-careful, but I’ve been having a lot of trouble finding any info on him. It’s a pretty big chance to be taking.”
“Then he doesn’t have to come in, we do all our workouts outside anyway,” Steph pointed out.
“I don’t know him well,” Raven said quietly, “But there’s something about him that I wasn’t sure I trusted, either.”
“Come on, Dinah, please? I’ve been learning so much,” Steph begged. “I don’t want that to just grind to a halt and neither does anyone else. Could it be that harmful to ask him? It’s not like we’d be all alone with him, not if Oracle’s still checking up on us, and if she’s in touch with you, too. We’d be on guard,” she finally finished, looking around for support. “We would be, right?”
“You bet,” Vic nodded. “Between the six of us keeping eyes out, we’d pretty much have to be okay.”
Dinah took a long breath to think the matter over. “Alright. I’ll give him a call and see what comes out of it. I think that takes care of everything, unless there’s something I haven’t thought of?”
“You just get better,” Juan told her with a gentle smile. “Don’t forget that part.”
Dinah nodded and chuckled. “It’s hard to forget. Things are going to be different for a while, but thank you all for making me this proud. I don’t think I’ll have anything to worry about while I’m gone.”
“We’re gonna be just fine,” Gar stood up excitedly. “No, we’re gonna be better than fine. We’re gonna be great! All us Titans all together!” He paused a second and grinned. “Hey, I like that. Titans Together!”
He held one hand out toward the rest of the team. One by one, they stood and shifted to reach their own hands into the middle of the circle, stacking them and silently counting the bounces that Gar led; one, two three, before shouting as one:
“Titans Together!”
