Teen Titans #31: "Wickersham Isle" Pt. 3

Wonder Girl was slowly throttling Nightwing to death. It was only a matter of time. Already he was going limp in her iron grip.

Almost as one, Cyborg and Raven got up from where the Amazon’s last attack had put them. Cyborg rammed into Wonder Girl from behind, and Raven lashed out with her soul self. It didn’t hurt Wonder Girl much, but it was enough to make her let go of Nightwing, who fell to his knees, coughing and spluttering.

Wonder Girl whirled with a backhanded fist that caught Cyborg on the chin, and he stumbled back. Raven focused her soul-self on Wonder Girl once more, but the Amazon lunged forward and shoved her back so hard she flew back more than twenty feet before gaining control of her equilibrium.

Beast Boy shot up from the ground and took the form of an octopus, constraining all of Wonder Girl’s limbs. As she moved to free herself, Kid Flash came in again with another series of superspeed punches to the head. They were finally starting to wear her down....so she grabbed Kid Flash with one hand as she ripped Beast Boy off of herself with the other, and slammed them together. They dropped unconscious to the ground.

“Donna, babe,” Terra said with glaring eyes and gritted teeth, “You damn well better stop hurting my Beast Boy-toy.” She clenched both fists and raised them on high. A boulder-sized chunk of rock ripped itself from the ground and launched itself skyward. Terra’s fists unclenched and made stabbing, downward clawing gestures instead, and the boulder slammed into Wonder Girl with the speed and force of a falling meteor.

The ground shook and for a moment all was quiet.

Then Wonder Girl’s fist smashed through the rock, and then she blasted the rest of it apart. Rising to her knees, she shook the dust off and cracked her knuckles.

As she rose to her feet, Starfire was rising to hers, and unleashed a steady stream of starbolts, knocking Wonder Girl down. Slowly the Amazon began to rise, and then began deflecting the bolts off her bracelets.

Raven watched for a moment, then nodded to herself and floated over to where Dagon still lay by the house. “Wake up. Wake up, David.”

“Whuh?” The vampire’s eyes fluttered open. “How....how did you know my real name?”

“I know many things. And now I have a thought on Donna’s condition. Listen to me....”

She whispered in the vampire’s ear, and he stared at her in astonishment. “What? But I swore never to...”

“Hush. It need not be much. Only the tiniest amount. The point is to break the spell with as quickly as possible. Before someone dies. I am not certain that it will work, but we are running out of both options, and time.”

The vampire nodded slowly, then turned to face Wonder Girl, who was even now grappling once more with Cyborg. Nightwing was still on his knees, coughing. Terra was still trying to rouse Kid Flash and Beast Boy. He gritted his fangs and moved.

He moved faster than any of them could save Kid Flash. Not at super speeds, but still more than twice as fast as the finest athlete. As Cyborg and Starfire maintained pressure on the Amazon, he leapt for Wonder Girl’s back and sunk his fangs into her neck.

He avoided her veins, refusing to taste her blood even in this cause if it was not absolutely necessary.

And it wasn’t. Raven had guessed correctly. As his fangs pierced her flesh there was a sizzling burning sensation and a small, silver flash. The spell was broken.

Wonder Girl gasped and stopped fighting. Dagon leapt backwards, immediately putting his hands up. “Raven told me to!”

“Indeed I did,” Raven agreed, coming up behind him. “One supernatural force against another, and faster acting than my powers in this case.”

Wonder Girl folded to her knees, her eyes clear. “Great Hera, what have I....what have I done?!?”

“It wasn’t you, it was that damn wizard,” Terra said. “Sorry if I busted your chops with that boulder, hon.”

Wonder Girl shook her head. “No....it’s all right...Hera...poor Wally, Gar, Dick!” She turned to him, but Raven was already leading him to the others, draping her soul self over all three.

“I shall heal them,” Raven promised her. “None of their wounds are fatal.”

There was a mocking slow handclap behind them. “Well done, young ones. Well done indeed.”

They turned to face Wickersham. He was leaning against the staff in the doorframe again. “An Earth elementalist, and a vampire! Oh yes you are well skilled and powerful children, all!” Abruptly the mirth left the old man’s face as though a switch had been thrown in his ancient mind. “But I will have my prize. By any means necessary. Now, children....you shall die.”

He lifted his hands and they began to glow with silver and purple energies.

Starfire blasted him and Terra hurled rocks, but they burned away against his personal magical wards.

He snarled a word of power and made a sweeping gesture, and a wave of energy knocked them all down.

“You will suffer! You will all suffer!” He raged. “And then, I shall destroy you, one by one, save for the Amazonian and the Azarathian, whom I will use for my needs.”

Wonder Girl rose slowly, eyes blazing. “I shouldn’t be surprised that you are a filthy old pervert as well.” She flew at him, bashing against his shields, wish flashed and flared.

He shook his head, smiling as she hammered away at his defenses. “This old body doesn’t respond in that fashion anymore, sadly. Not that I’m against the idea. But at this point I need your power, not your flesh. Though, I must admit, you were quite a useful tool for a brief while there! Perhaps I will allow the wamphiris to live and use him as my enforcer in a similar way....” he broke off and refocused on her. “Ahh, my age is showing, isn’t it? Pity. In any event, you will not breach my defenses.” He spoke a word of power, and a fireball exploded right in her face. Inside his shields he was not harmed; but she was knocked back. Her own invulnerability enabled her to shrug off most of it, but her hair was suddenly afire! She shrieked, then dropped and rolled to put out the flames.

Cyborg was next to recover. He got to one knee and activated not just his white noise cannon, but also his cybernetic eye laser, a few missiles he had built into his legs, and his electricity blaster that he had recently perfected. All the other little technological tricks he’d been working on, he unleashed at the magician. There were flashes of light and blasts of technological might.

When the smoke finally cleared, the mage’s shields had held, but he had backed up a few steps, almost into his house again, and his face was not so calmly superior as it had been. “Well done, young Nubian, you have great skill at technocracy. That art has grown over the centuries.” He inclined his head as though in respect, then lashed out with a single gesture of crooked fingers. A bolt of lightning struck Cyborg, knocking him down and sending sizzling arcs through his trembling limbs, as his cybernetic parts fought against overloading. “However,” the old mage went on, “Such arts have always had their weakness.”

Starfire rose next, and blasted his shields with more starbolts. He smiled and opened his mouth to chide her, but his good humor faded as her eyes blazed with anger and she amped up the power of her attacks. More and more powerful the starbolts became, until the ground began to shake and the flashes of their starbolts’ impact against his shields became blinding. Beginning to grow nervous, he cried out and let fly with a scarlet bolt of power of his own. Starfire fell and writhed in pain.

Beast Boy was next to rise; no longer in any kind of good humor himself, he took the form of a Wooly Mammoth and charged, slamming hard against Wickersham’s shields.

“A changeling, yet not of fae kind,” Wickersham noted. “Interesting...” He made a sharp gesture, and suddenly Beast Boy was flying out to sea, once again unable to control his form, and splashed into the ocean.

At this point, Wonder Girl rose again and charged. Nightwing was also back on his feet. Together they raced towards him. Seeing Wonder Girl as the major threat, Wickersham ignored Nightwing. He mumbled a more complicated spell, and a portal flashed into existence beside him. Out of it came a glowing, winged shape that took on Wonder Girl with flaming sword, which she defended against with her bracelets. As he turned to Nightwing, suddenly he yelped and covered his ears. Nightwing held a thin slim pencil in his hand, the tip of which glowed bright yellow.

“Sonic lance,” Nightwing said, grinning unpleasantly. “Reverse engineered from captured alien technology. The sound is directional, so it only affects you, not Wonder Girl. And it can penetrate your shields, unlike Cyborg’s noise cannon. Of course I’ll help him modify his weapon for the future. So tell me, wizard, can you hear me now? Gooooood.”

Wickersham had both hands clapped to his ears. Nightwing was about to call to the others, to get them on their feet and on the attack, when Wickersham made a gesture. The sonic lance sparked, then burst into flame, and was silenced. As Nightwing dropped it, Wickersham made another sweeping gesture, and Nightwing flew through the open doorway of the house, which slammed and locked, trapping him.

Wonder Girl was still locked in combat with the summoned creature. The wizard smirked at her preoccupation, then moved to advance on her fellows. He began another chant as he went, clearly planning to summon something else.

Dagon shot up off the ground and came at him with his vampiric speed. His claws sparked against the old man’s shields. Then, remembering what Raven had said before, he tried sinking his fangs into the shields. Slowly but surely, it began to work; the purple shields flared as his fangs sunk through them.

But it was so slow that the wizard had time to get over his initial surprise and avoid actual physical contact. He aborted whatever summoning spell he had been planning and instead shouted a word of power. His right hand glowed golden and he made glowing fist, and punched Dagon under the chin with it. The vampire shot up straight into the air.

Wonder Girl was slowly beating town the summoned entity, so Wickersham threw a lightning bolt at her. Busy as she was deflecting the creature’s attacks, she couldn’t get her bracelets in the way in time, and so the bolt sizzled into her. Once again her own strength and relative invulnerability helped her shrug off most of it, but it gave the summoned creature time to recover and press it’s own attack once more.

Raven, Kid Flash and Terra got up more or less at the same moment. Kid Flash and Raven were awkwardly supporting eachother, while Terra sat massaging her temples.

Raven watched as Dagon fell out of the sky and landed hard. “The mage is more powerful than he lets on. He could have killed at least some of us by now,” she mused. “He could’ve teleported Dagon to somewhere where the sun was still high, or killed Richard with a simple twist of his will, turned Garfield inside out, or any number of things. So why is he simply battering us into submission like this?”

“Playing with us,” Terra said groggily.

Raven frowned thoughtfully. “That may be a part of it, but not all. Wallace, keep him busy for a moment, will you?”

Kid Flash nodded and blurred around at speed, distracting Wickersham. He made no attempt to strike the old man, but ran around him, slow enough to be seen, fast enough to avoid the lightning bolts the old man threw at him.

“You see, Tara?” Raven gestured. “He blasts at Wallace with lightning, when he could simply cast a spell to freeze him in his tracks. Why does he not finish us?”

“Didn’t he say something about needing WG?” Terra asked blearily.

“Yes....yes, he did, didn’t he? And myself as well, as an additional prize....not our bodies but our power.” She sucked in a thoughtful breath. “Of course...he wants to use the mystical power Donna contains to restore his own! He is not only old, he is dying; he needs our power both to restore his own, and keep himself alive.” She slowly rose to her full height. “He could destroy any one of us, yes. Perhaps two or three. But in so doing he would weaken himself to the point where the survivors could not only easily best him, the act might in fact kill him.”

“He was powerful enough to zap Donna out from under our nose, and bust through your shields to do it, Miss Spooky,” Terra pointed out. “I’m not raggin on ya, I’m just sayin, he’s got the juice.”

“We must talk about your penchant for unflattering nicknames some other time,” Raven muttered. “But yes, I see your point. But that is precisely it; he was prepared in advance for such a spell, and still it took a lot out of him. He only justified that expenditure because he knew Donna would restore him. But then we didn’t give him time to do that, and he had to charm her into attacking us...”

A lightning bolt finally exploded at Wally’s feet, and he went flying. Cyborg was slowly getting up, and Beast Boy was pulling himself, coughing and spluttering, out of the water. The mage blasted Wonder Girl as she was getting the upper hand on the summoned creature again.

Terra went to help Beast Boy, but Raven held her back. “He is all right. We must figure out a way to exploit Wickersham’s weakness...”



Nightwing had recovered quickly enough from Wickersham’s attack, but found he could neither force the door nor pick the lock. More magical defenses, no doubt.

In some ways, this trap was more fundamental than the one that minor-league villain Lock-Up had put him in, not so long ago. In others, it was much easier to tolerate. Unless the old man had some kind of traps or familiars in here.

Nightwing chuckled to himself; he had been watching too many old movies. He peeked out the window; it seemed his friends were holding their own. Nodding himself, he tried to break the glass, but of course the magical wards zapped his nightarang back at him.

“Perfect,” he muttered to himself.

He set out to explore the dark house, wary of traps every step of the way. But it seemed dark, empty, and silent.

Nevertheless he prowled on, seeking to find some key to the old man’s history or powers.

He was, after all, a detective, trained by the best. So he put his brain to work and began to search.



“You figure it out, Raven,” Terra said. “Me and the boys’ll keep him busy.”

“Be careful,” Raven said.

Terra flashed a nasty grin. “Never knew ya cared.” She summoned a rock, jumped on top of it, and shot off. Raven rolled her eyes and went to Kid Flash.

Beast Boy had taken the form of a bat and was thrashing his wings at Wickersham’s shields. Cyborg was actively punching them. Wickersham lashed out with a spell, but instead of it striking, the bolt of magical energy was deflected by a chunk of rock.

Wickersham scowled at Terra, who smiled sweetly back. Cyborg gave her a grim look, then just nodded. Beast Boy and Cyborg resumed their attacks, and Terra supplemented with the occasional rock from one side or the other.

Wonder Girl delivered a third consecutive blow to the summoned entity, then a fourth. Abruptly it vanished. She wasn’t sure wether she had truly defeated it, or Wickersham’s summoning spell had simply worn off. She shrugged, and joined the others fighting Wickersham.

“Wallace,” Raven murmured, helping Kid Flash sit upright. “Do you think you can vibrate through his magical shields?”

He shivered as her soul-self healed him. “I’m not supernatural like you or Dagon,” he pointed out, touching her chin with one trembling finger.

She smiled softly. “I know. Nevertheless, superspeed enables you to vibrate through most anything....”



The house of darkness didn’t provide Nightwing with much until he reached the back of the house. A small room’s door stood ajar. Within were a long, black table, and a wide, deep pool full of colorful liquid that flashed and changed. The table was empty, and looked as though it had been hastily dragged in from elsewhere. The pool, on the other hand, fascinated Nightwing. The slowly shifting colors of the viscous liquid obviously meant something, but he had not the arcane wherewithal to interpret it.

Clearly this magical pool meant something to the old man. He knew no magic; he wasn’t Raven or Dagon, able to know what to do with magical rites and arcane acts. He didn’t even have Wonder Girl’s comfortable familiarity with magic from those of the Amazonian/Themyscrian Pantheon. But surely he could do something to disrupt this sinister little arrangement.

He briefly considered just dumping the table into the pool, then shook his head. Both objects belonged to Wickersham, and for all he knew combining them might inadvertently help the mage somehow. So instead, he took a couple concussion grenades and sleeping pellets out of his utility belt, took a few careful steps back, and pitched them in.

The effect was immediate and dramatic. The pool began to boil and seethe, and Nightwing fell on his rump as the whole house trembled.



Wickersham had been forced into a purely defensive position, reinforcing his shields against the combined attacks of the “heroes”. Things would soon reach the crunch, and he would be forced to unleash some sort of devastating spell to kill several of them at once. That would severely drain him, as well. He would have to hope the survivors would be in no shape to challenge him. He would then take the Themyscrian with him into the house, kill the ordinary human warrior within, and then drain her power into himself. By the time any survivors recovered, the process would be well under way; and the house shields would keep them out until he had restored himself. He would like to take the Azarathian sorceress in the same way, but she might recover while he was draining the Themyscrian.

While he was thinking these things, two things happened at once. Kid Flash came directly at him at superspeed, and Nightwing disrupted his scrying pool. The whole house shivered behind him. Kid Flash began vibrating through his personal shields. He was faster at this than Dagon had been, and it was entire body rather than just a pair of vampire fangs, and on top of that it was somewhat painful for Kid Flash, but he was bulling through those shields with brutal efficiency, the shields flaring purple and silver around his body.

Wickersham could have simply dismissed him with an easy spell or other, but Nightwing’s actions, while not significantly hurting him, distracted and startled him long enough for Kid Flash to make it all the way through and start pummeling him. The old man cried in pain. With his concentration disrupted, his personal shield began to fail altogether.

Kid Flash might have ended it right there, certainly Wickersham was on the ropes. But in desperation, the old man lashed out with the only reserve of power he had left; his staff. It crackled nastily with purple energy and slammed Kid Flash aside.

As Kid Flash collapsed, Wickersham went down to one knee and tried to restore his shields. Wonder Girl got there first, and identifying his staff as part of his power, kicked it up into the air.

“No!” the old man croaked, and tried to catch it. Now that she was this close, the aura of evil from it was almost palpable to Wonder Girl. As it came back down, she knocked it aside with her left-hand bracelet, and it sailed into the sand.

Furious now, and certain of his own doom and failure, Wickersham wept bitter black tears and began to chant a longer, more devastating spell that would kill several of them, but also drain himself too much. He no longer cared; he had lost everything.

“No,” Wonder Girl said. “No more.” She interrupted his spell mid-syllable with a hard punch to the jaw. The old man flew backwards, smacked into the defensive shields of his own house, twitched and shivered in agony, and then sunk down into exhaustion.

“You have hurt me and my friends, tried to possess me, turn me against them.....be grateful I don’t kill you.” Wonder Girl stood over him, staring down. “Be grateful I am a better person than that. Than you.”

Wickersham coughed bitter laughter, blackened blood dribbling from the corner of his mouth. “Of course you’ve killed me, foolish child. My own survival was at stake in this. Not that I blame you for defending yourself....any creature will fight....to sur...vive....”

The old man’s head turned to one side and he coughed again.

“Wow, guess the old geezer’s finished,” Terra began.

But the old man spoke one more time. “The staff....take....the staff.....”

Then he heaved a huge sigh and died.

There was a frozen pause, and then his body simply withered and collapsed, turning into dust.



With the old man dead, it was easy enough for Nightwing to bust out of the house, the magic of the place slowly fading. He nodded when the others told him what happened, and he filled in his part for them.

Raven draped her soul self over Dagon, who had taken the worst of the fight, and healed him as best she could.

“I can’t help but wonder if we should feel guilt for his death,” Wonder Girl mused. “Not that he didn’t hurt us, and me especially, but....”

Nightwing shrugged. “He said himself that he was dying already. Trying for you was his last desperate attempt to save his own miserable life. He chose to try to take the life of another to sustain his own.”

Wonder Girl nodded. “I just don’t want to grow to callous.”

“A girl-next-door like you, callous?” Terra snorted. “I highly doubt it, WG. He didn’t leave us no choice, anyhow.”

“Death is not always something to be feared,” Starfire put in. “Especially if prolonging one’s own life can only be achieved by dishonorable means.”

Wonder Girl nodded. “Yes, I suppose so. I won’t forget this, not for a long time.”

The others chorused agreement.

“That leaves the question of what to do with his staff,” Raven said. “I advise against taking it, its evil is strong.”

“We can’t exactly leave it here for someone else to find, either,” Wonder Girl pointed out.

“Should we give it to the Justice League? Or Doctor Fate?” Cyborg wondered.

“I would advise against holding onto it for even that long,” Raven said, frowning at the staff, looking uncomfortable.

It lay where it had landed. Wonder Girl was mindful of the fact that neither her kick nor her bracelet deflection had broken it.

“All the same, I don’t like leaving it out where someone else could find it,” Wonder Girl pointed out. “So, let’s drop it in the sea, and spread the word about what we did.”

There were reluctant nods from Nigthwing, Raven, and Dagon. Terra and Cyborg just shrugged.

As Raven continued healing Dagon and Kid Flash, Wonder Girl used her lasso to pick up the staff. Raven and Kid Flash helped take the team back to the mainland one by one. Beast Boy was last, staring uneasily at the house.

After they were gone, taking the staff with them, the last of Wickersham’s evil drained form the island. Spy satellites could see it properly for the first time; soon, many new people would come here. And as it already was, the natives could feel the change in the air; they knew they were free.

When the sun rose several hours later, a new day truly dawned on Wickersham Isle.



Epilogue

The staff fell out of the sky, from the T-Jet, and splashed down into the Atlantic Ocean.

The Teen Titans would tell other magic-weavers what they had done and where to look for the staff, but that would be of no use. The staff would no longer be there when anyone came looking.

The staff had a will of its own.

It was not sentient in the proper sense of them term, but it was drawn to powerful people capable of evil. Old Man Wickersham had not been the first to wield it. It had not corrupted or influenced him; merely helped him along.

Now he was dead, and it would need to find a new ally.

It floated away from the place it had been dropped, away from any questing force of Light that might seek it, in the general direction of South America.

Sooner or later, it would find a new hand to unleash its power.



The End… for now…[/b]



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