Outsiders/Teen Titans #1 of 5

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Ultimate
Outsiders/
Teen Titans

#1 of 5: Fearsome

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Written and Plotted by
Don Walsh and James Steel
Cover by
Daelan[/center]

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Keystone City
It was dark out, clouds skittering across the cold partial moon as it gazed down on the scene below. The street was old and tired, rows of industrial buildings sagging against each other as they clung protectively to their cracked, littered street.

It was down this gray, dilapidated block that the three youths walked briskly. Their bodies twitched with nerves and excitement as they approached their destination. The squat, wide two-story building sat back from the street, behind its empty lot and beneath the golden star logo and the name S.T.A.R. Labs emblazoned across its tattered brow. It looked well-worn and heavily used, but there was more care to its facade then in the many other surrounding buildings.

The three teens crossed the open lot that led to the main doors of the offices and labs of the Scientific and Technological Advanced Research Laboratories. They hunkered into their jackets as the tallest of the three slipped out several small metal tools. At just over six feet tall, the dark-skinned youth was powerfully built, with short black curly hair and dark eyes. Victor Stone bent down before the doors and took careful stock of the locks.

His two partners turned back to stare at the way they had arrived, keeping close watch as their friend did his part. The classic Hispanic features marked their descent, and the nearly identical faces marked them as twins, and not just brother and sister. They were wiry, but athletic looking, just short of six feet by a handful of inches, and both were bundles of nervous energy. The sister opened and closed repeatedly the pocket knife in her hand, while her brother toyed with the zipper of his jacket.

“C’mon, Stone!” hissed the sister. “What’s keepin’ ya?”

“Chill, girl,” Victor shot back as he continued to methodically work at the lock. “Unless you think you can do better?”

“Leave him be, Carla,” the brother said as he put his arm on her forearm.

“I just don’t want this screwed up, Juan,” Carla replied. She jammed her hands into the pockets of her jacket and started to pace the area.

“Almost there,” Victor mumbled as he licked his lips.

At that, Juan hefted up the backpack at his side, hearing the rattle of the spray cans and supplies they needed.

“Hey, you hear something?” Carla muttered as she pulled out her knife. Juan looked around and shrugged.

“There!” Victor said in triumph as the door swung open. He stood up and added, “Let’s get goin’ okay? We tag the lobby, get home, and then we’re in!”

“I hear…a skateboard?” Carla looked curiously towards the entrance to the lot as she started to step away from the front door.

“Hey, I think I hear it too,” Juan agreed as he gripped the satchel tightly.

And they were right, for around the corner, passing the empty, boarded security shack rolled a skateboard bearing a young lady in a scarlet costume. A golden arrow symbol adorned her shapely chest, and a golden hood and mantle draped over her shoulders, tugged by the breeze her movement generated. She gazed out from behind the shadowy, domino mask and grinned as she trained her bow on the three youths, an arrow nocked in position. She pressed down on the rear of the board and stopped short.

“Well, well, well,” she said in a voice huskier than her apparent age would indicate. “The Redondo twins and Vic Stone. I heard something about you wanting into the Demon E Gang. Want some advice? Don’t.”

“Hey, ain’t that that Speedy chica that’s been hittin’ E Street?” Carla said as she grinned. “Man, would we be set if we put a hurtin’ on her.”

“Carla!” Juan was shocked to hear her, as he glanced over the lovely heroine.

“Man, this is so not happenin’!” Vic swore as he took an unintentional step backwards into the lobby.

“Come on, you three. Just go home,” Speedy tried to convince them. “You’re not putting a hurt on me, and I’m not letting you vandalize the building. So either way…you’re not getting into the E. Count your blessings and go home!”

Carla started to run towards Speedy as Juan chased after his sister. Speedy shook her head sadly and opened her mouth to speak again, only to have a thunderous roar cry out instead.

The entire brick wall to the right of the lot started to shake and rattle, and then give way as the warehouse shuddered hard and debris began to fall hard to the ground. There were no flames, and few flashes as the building seem to shatter like glass, cries of distressed mortar and steel shrieking over the landscape.

Without a thought, Speedy had tucked away from the destruction, into a roll behind the unused guard shack. The Redondos were not as fortunate as the wall cascaded to the lot, a rippling wave of air rolling over the area and flooding over the twins. Juan had pushed Carla to the ground to cover her, but the ferocious, unnatural rippling plowed into both siblings, leaving them unmoving in the aftermath.

Victor watched as the monstrous phenomenon flowed by and over the building he took refuge in. Slowly the lobby started to tear apart, glass exploding in ferocious showers of shards as he tried to hurl himself further into the building. The lobby was torn away and smashed into pieces as the rippling battered into the concrete structure on the far side of the lot. It broke apart against the new obstruction, though all the glass there was also now raining over the darkened lot.

Victor Stone scrabbled towards the rear of the STAR Labs building as the terrifying wall of destruction rolled over the parking lot. He watched as glass and steel framework was torn from their moorings in the lobby, as he battered desperately at the security door to the rear of the building. Somehow, maybe from the explosion, maybe from adrenaline, he crashed through and stumbled deeper to look for refuge from the blast. The building was shaking, the ground beneath him trembling and he found himself hurled through a glass enclosure. Thousands of shards of glass tore through his body, neatly slicing muscle and tendons, lacerations all over his body opening up and spilling blood over the sterile room he found himself in. He tried to get to his feet, vision blurry, head dizzy from blood loss. That’s when the aftershock from the other side of the lot made the room tilt the other way, and overloaded circuits caused a secure vault-like box to blow open. Silvery fluid cascaded over the room, splashing onto Victor, among other things. Weakened already, it didn’t take much to knock the big, burly jock over and he crashed to the ground and lay still, as the silvery fluid leaked into his open wounds, his gaping mouth and his very pores.

After a breathless eternity, all was still again as smoke drifted up from the ruined warehouse and sparks from shredded cables lit up the torn S.T.A.R. building. Speedy stood and looked over the devastation with stunned silence, before finally croaking out, “Holy…crap.”

Five figures now stood in the cavity of the half-collapsed warehouse. They were all rattled as well, disheveled and stunned by the wreckage, all save the largest of the group. A truly huge man, he stood just over seven feet in height and almost four feet across at the shoulders, and he looked completely unaffected by the destruction.

“Whooo-eeee!” the behemoth cried out in delight. “That was frickin’ awesome!”

“Glad you enjoyed it, Baran,” mumbled a slim, red-haired girl in tight black leather. She was wet as water pooled around her, brick and mortar colored water. “Dammit!” she cursed as she looked at the carnage. “Gizmo! Is it a total loss?”

A metallic dome folded in on itself as a dwarf in a green jumpsuit stood up. He adjusted his goggles and nodded. “It’s gone, Shimmer.”

Two other women stepped forward, one in swathed entirely in a charcoal gray bodysuit, her face obscured by a hood in the same colors. The other was an Indian woman adorned in loose white cloth that bared as much as it hid. Golden bracers and slippers clung to her limbs, and a ruby was set in on her brow by a platinum circlet that sat on her bald head.

“Double damn!” Shimmer swore as the woman in white moved to the huge man and stroked an arm. In response, the leather-clad redhead glared at her.

“You seem well, Mammoth,” she asked in clipped, stilted English.

“That was a blast, Jinx,” he smiled back at her. “Though it’s upset Selinda, so I guess it wasn’t a good thing.”

“No. Not a good thing at all,” Shimmer confirmed icily.

“Gizmo, how could this have happened?” Jinx asked.

“The vibro-cage was fifty frickin’ years old!” he snapped. “I’m betting your portal did something to upset its balance, Jinx!”

“Who cares? Our boss is gonna kill us unless we find something of value in this rubble, so everyone fan out and look!” Shimmer ordered her group.

Speedy listened to the group and her eyes bugged out as she heard the names and saw the faces. “Damn!” she cursed softly as she started to creep away. “The Fearsome Five! They’d squash me and not even notice! I need to get some help! I wonder if there’s a
Flash around?”

As the quintet split up, the woman in gray focused her silent attention on movement in the lot. She remained in the center of the exploring quintet, and took a fighting stance, ready to launch an attack while she watched the twins start to stir. Then Shimmer heard them groaning, and her lip curled into a sneer.

“Like we need witnesses,” she muttered angrily. She waved dismissively towards the twins and said, “Someone go enjoy themselves, okay?”

Mammoth grinned wickedly and smacked a thick, meaty fist into the palm of his hand as he marched towards his impending victims. The silent woman stared from behind her mask as Speedy felt a lump stick in her throat.

Carla gave a short cry of fear as she saw the red-headed powerhouse bearing down on them, then she pushed Juan behind her.

The silent, fifth member reached out and clutched Shimmer’s bicep, her eyes looking up as her other hand made some desperate gestures. Wide and concerned, the fifth partner seemed to mutely plead for the twins.

“Let me go, Kasumi! Baran needs his fun, and you’re supposed to be an assassin. So shut up and work,” Shimmer retorted.

“They might not be able to do anything, but I sure can see to crimping your plans!” Speedy cried out as she ran fast and felt her heart pounding in her chest. She released an arrow before anyone could register she was present, and the shaft sunk deep into Mammoth’s huge chest. It stayed there, poking grotesquely out of him.

“Who the hell are you?” Shimmer asked with a sneer as the five criminals glared at her.

Speedy drew another arrow as she continued to pound across the lot, her brow sweating in fear. The shaft ended in a heavily duct-taped Nerf ball, and she released it in a single draw and fire arc. The shaft flew unsteady but the aim was true as it punched Mammoth’s left eye. He stopped suddenly, and rubbed his eye.

“Who cares who she is, whack her already!” Gizmo called out as his jetpack lifted him into the air while he drew a slim, futuristic looking firearm. He fired a beam of light toward the archer, who continued to run and saw the beam arc over her shoulder.

Speedy fired several more arrows a she raced a half-circle towards the ruined lobby, but a fierce wind erupted out of nowhere and scattered the shafts.

”Five to one,” Jinx chuckled as she held up her glowing hands. “You are so going to hurt before you die, little red riding hood.”

Suddenly, the mounds of brick rumbled and flowed away sharply in a large wave, scattering the three criminals still inside. At the epicenter of the sudden assault, amid the ruined and twisted panels of fifty year old metal, cables and transistors stood a young man. His lean chest was bare, his brown hair askew and his blue pants were torn, but he held his hands out and stood firm and determined in his red boots.

“Five to two, amigos,” the newcomer declared.

Shimmer glowered at the new arrival and snapped, “Are we crapping out metas now? Fine you, five to two! Kill ‘em all!”

Juan and Carla looked at Mammoth as the brute turned to check on the sudden action behind him, and they nodded to each other. Grasping each other’s hands tightly, they charged at the powerhouse, aiming low to take out his knees. Before they took another breath, sparkling bolts of electricity coursed within their grip and they found themselves crashing over the rubble of the warehouse, debris and dust churned up in their wake. Though they were no longer touching, silvery, sparkling lightning continued to cast occasional arcs between their outstretched arms. Arms that were seriously throbbing, but the speed, surprise and unstable ground combined to do the job and Mammoth was on his back.

“Five to four!” the twins said breathlessly as they grinned at each other.

“We know our powers, each other and no one here can touch Mammoth, so screw you all!” Shimmer swore as Mammoth picked himself up and grabbed a large steel beam. “You want to make a final stand, then fine!”

“I know my powers too,” came a soft, almost ethereal voice. A teen in shimmering white, with a broad red sash around his waist, peered over his rounded crimson sunglasses. He leaned against the security shack, his leather jacket abyssal black over the nearly celestial white underneath.

“You little slip of a pussy-boy,” Mammoth growled as he turned and prepared to bat the cocky youth like a baseball. “I’ll crush you to powder!”

“And I’m betting you could if I let you,” he replied without moving. “But I have two words for you and your buddies that say otherwise.”

“What’s that?” Gizmo shot back as he zipped through the air over the lot, trying to get a bead on the female archer, who was trying to return the favor with her bow.

“My name,” the newcomer answered with a sly grin. “Kid…ETERNITY!” Suddenly, a wisp of smoke rushed from behind the teen and whirled into the shape of the legendary Hercules, standing between his summoner and Mammoth with a cocky smile.

“Hot damn!” the twins said at the same time, watching the cavalry appear, and the glimmer of a chance in their eyes at last.

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Join us next month for Teen Titans/Outsiders #2, discover the fate of the Birds of Prey and watch mysterious tendrils snare another group of heroes!

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