Titans Resistance #20

Green Lantern's ring was good for many things. One of them was communicating over a distance.

Of course they had to wait while they were fed; uninspiring dinners of bread and cheese and grapes None of them complained; and Terra, Robin and Ravager at least were surprised they were fed at all.

But eventually they were left alone, each to their own small chamber. Green Lantern willed a small green holographic council into existence. He often talked to his mentor, Alan Scott, in this way; doing it without a ring bearer on the other end was harder; but not impossible. It simply required intense concentration. But Eric Gardner certainly had willpower enough to achieve this and maintain it.

“This is nice, and all, and a testament to the Lantern,” the emerald silhouette of Anarky said, “But what are we going to do, exactly? We can't really challenge their wishes.”

“We will do what they want, of course,” Robin agreed. “But we will watch each other's back and stick together as much as possible, as well. I think Green Lantern's powers will be well suited to that.”

Lantern grinned.

“They're probably gonna put at least some of us girls into trials of strength or something equally berzerko,” Ravager muttered. “Seems like about their speed.”

“You are right,” Terra agreed. “With myself the most likely target.”

“Supergirl will probably do well,” Argent pointed out.

Supergirl's green representation shrugged. “If they choose me.”

“Oh, I rather think they will,” Terra said, and Ravager nodded agreement.

“Because they respect female strength?” Argent asked.

“Also I think they are rather fascinated by her,” Terra said.

Robin shrugged.

They discussed strategies and plans for perhaps another three quarters of an hour, then Lantern withdrew his power. All of them lay down, but not all of them got sleep. And even those that did, got not nearly enough. Only Supergirl was relatively untroubled on her own account, and she was certainly worried for the others, in her clinical sort of way.



The next morning, it turned out they had been both right and wrong. They had thought that the Amazons would have their more powerful members fight some of the Amazons; or perhaps some of their pet beasts of war; but it turned out that Queen Hippolyta had a different plan.

“Two of your non-powered members, man and woman, will face each other,” Hippolyta said. “The pirate shall face the one you call 'Robin'. You will be given back your own weapons to fight this duel.”

This was a puzzling move; not exactly worrisome, but confusing. The Amazons would not say whether or not they wanted the fight to be to the death.

The battle was not held in a public arena; which given the constant attacks of the Markovians only made sense. But in a sparring room below the Queen's palace, warriors and Themyscrians citizens alike gathered in small groups to witness the battle.

The Titans watched from the sidelines, forbidden to interfere. Anarky was torn; on the one hand he was relieved he wasn't the one who had to fight Ravager, on the other he didn't want her to get hurt. He didn't care for Robin's well being per se, but the implications of the battle were certainly not lost on him, no matter who triumphed.

Ravager stood with both blades out to the said, saying nothing, merely waiting.

Robin began spinning his staff, remaining motionless.

For three minutes Ravager did nothing but stare at him, waiting for him to attack; but he continued merely to spin his staff, and stare right back at her.

Finally, she shouted in rage and spun in, blades twirling like helicopter blades. His spinning staff deflected her attacks once, twice, three times; then he swept low and slammed his staff into her leg. She stumbled back but refused to fall, and came in high, stabbing for his face with both weapons. He blocked the strike and shoved her blades high, trying to disarm her; but she responded by kneeing him in the gut. His body armor mitigated the blow somewhat, but it did a fine job of enabling her to keep her blades.

She stepped back for only a moment, then came in from both sides with her katanas. He spun his staff again, blocking both shots, then kicked her away.

Their styles were at odds; she instinctively wanted to go for the quick kill, while he wanted to batter an opponent into unconsciousness. On the field of battle, against Markovians, Robin had killed reluctantly and unhappily. He was even more reluctant to try a lethal move against Ravager.

For her part, Ravager certainly did not want to score a lethal blow against Robin, but some sort of incapacitating strike to a hamstring, some mid-range injury that could be healed later, was certainly within her range of possibilities.

All of which is to say that while both of them were handicapped in their combat styles against each other, Ravager was rather less so than Robin. On counterbalance, though, Robin was used to fighting people who were trying to kill him all the time, and had been fighting side by side against Ravager long enough to know what she was capable of.

She leapt high and came in with her blades held ready, feigning a double-overhand chop; but at the last moment lashed out with her boot instead. The blow connected, but didn't affect him much; and the staff he had held high to block her blades he instead brought down hard on her leg, causing her to shout in pain and frustration as she landed hard.

He jumped away as she made sweeping slashes with both katanas as she rose from the ground. Then they began to duel in earnest; he came in with a hard over hand strike, which she caught on her blades in a defensive X. She tried sliding her blades down to his hands, but he reversed and spun his staff until it thwacked her in the left shin. She slashed with the left hand blade; he ducked, but lost some of his hair. His eyes widened, then he smacked the staff into her face, nearly breaking her nose. She responded with savage chops that overwhelmed his defenses and sent his staff spinning away into the dirt.

He kept his head and didn't panic, as he had been trained; he caught her two stabbing thrusts, forcing the blades down and squeezing her wrists at the same time.

She grinned into his face from point blank range. “Do you really think I don't know how to stop myself from being disarmed?”

His answer was a tactic she would have used herself; he head-butted her. This time, her nose did break and she cried out in pain. He brought his left knee up and slammed it into her hand until she finally did give up the katana. Taking it himself he stepped back and held it in guard position.

Now her eye blazed anger and she came in screaming and slashing. Conventional wisdom holds that fighting angry is a bad idea; that it makes you clumsy and unfocused. The purveyors of such wisdom had never experienced berserkers in battle, and certainly had never met Ravager.

Robin, however, knew her quite well, and therefore was unsurprised at the whirlwind maelstrom of her attack. He parried and blocked. Now she tried to disarm him, as he had known she would, but when he tried to counter and take a second blade from her, she resisted, and the blades hovered uneasily in the stalemate.

She knew the katanas better than he though, so he found himself weaponless once more. She lunged in, stabbing; he barely sidestepped and then did something strange - bordering on suicidal. He slapped the blade to his side and held it there. Then he lunged and grabbed her hand on the blade.

She screamed and thrashed and kicked because she would not....would not, be disarmed twice in the same battle, yet the blade clattered to the ground nonetheless.

Robin made no effort to pick the katana up though. Because now they were both unarmed, and unarmed combat was his forte.

She came in with three hard kicks which he blocked, then flipped her, trying to slam her into the ground. She rolled with it, though, and came back up on her feet.

The thought had crossed his mind to lose to Rose on purpose, thus validating the Themyscrian's view of female superiority. But if he threw the match, they would certainly be able to tell; and above all he already knew they despised what they would perceive as weakness.

Besides, he had already provoked Ravager to the point where she would beat him to a bloody pulp if he let up for a moment.

She threw three more punches in rapid succession, feinted a fourth, then kicked him in the gut. He doubled over, and she started beating him on the back of the head, screaming.

While she was still beating him down, he grabbed her by the legs, picked her up, and slammed her on the floor.

He backed off, panting, but she took the opportunity to grab one of her katanas from the ground and charge at him again.

She slashed, slashed, slashed, tearing holes in his body armor and scratching his skin. He knew he wouldn't get away with disarming her again, so he had no choice but to go for the knockout blow. He punched her square in the face.

She went down, but as she fell her foot came up and connected where it would do most good. Even through his body armor he felt it. He went down right beside her, wheezing in pain.

Ravager got up first, nose bleeding, eye blazing with fury.

“Will you kill him?” Hippolyta asked mildly.

Ravager kicked Robin twice, hard. Then she looked at the Queen and, breathing heavily, answered, “No.”

“And if I insist?” the Queen went on in that same mild tone.

“Then I'll go down fighting you and yours. Which strikes me as rather foolish on your part,” Ravager said.

The Queen nodded. “Spoken like a true tactician. Tend to their wounds.”



“I understand why you did what you did,” Ravager said later as the Theymscrian healers, mostly men, tended to them.

“But?” Robin prompted.

“But,” Ravager said, eye gleaming, “Never even try to disarm me again. The last time that happened to me was when I lost my eye. It's something I take VERY seriously.”

Robin stared into her glaring eye. “You have my promise,” he said. And he meant it, too.

Next time she needed to be disarmed, he'd get one of the other Titans to do it.



Wisely, none of the Titans, not even Lantern or Anarky, made any fuss about the bloody battle. Nor did they ask either Robin or Ravager about it, though Terra planned to when they were safely away from Themyscria and both of them had calmed down.

If they got away from Themyscria, that was. For it was clear that the Markovians had responded to the Titans presence, in a way; not with Geo-Force or Rocket Men, but with the largest single concentration of ships ever. A true armada. Some of these ships, Terra suspected, were new out of the shipyards since their Resistance had begun.

“Some of us might die here,” she said softly.

“All of us might die here,” Ravager snapped. “All of us might die every time we go out there and do our thing. But none of us would step down, would we?”

All of them cried NO, impressing the Themyscrian warriors around them.

“Then let's do it!” Ravager shouted.

“On my mark,” Wonder Woman said icily.

“Err, yes, of course. So it shall be,” Terra agreed.



On orders form Hyppolyta, Wonder Woman and the Titans stood uneasily and waited, while her Themyscrian sisters went and fought on the front line.

“May I ask why we're not going out there with them?” Terra asked mildly.

“When they get through—and with their numbers, they certainly will—we will smash them here.

“I'd have thought they'd want you on the front line,” Ravager said.

“Yes, I feel the same,” Wonder Woman sighed. “But they already know they can reach our shores. We need to show them that even with their greater numbers, they cannot succeed here.”

“So we wait for them to come in sight, or....?” Ravager began.

“No, we wait for them to land the troops. Then we tear them apart.”

“Um, if they try to shell us--” Lantern began.

“They will,” Wonder Woman said.

“Err, yes. When they shell us, I'm gonna have to shield.”

She turned and stared at him. “I would hope so,” she said dryly. “Our homes could do with protection from any more damage.” She turned to Argent. “Yourself, also.”

Nobody felt like saying much after that, so they stood and waited with her.

Artemis was leading the charge against the enemy, and they saw her and more than twenty other Amazon warriors fly off. Behind them floated a pair of male mages; they were pulling out all the stops. And no wonder.

They began to see the enemy fleet in the distance. Of all of them, only Ravager had any personal experience going up against the Markovian fleets. She had radioed Wintergreen to warn him, and of course they would fight back as best they could. But how many ships would the pirate queen lose today? She shuddered to think.

Then again, they might lose everything.

They watched as the dim gray shapes of the Markovian and pirate fleets clashed near the horizon. The pirates did the best they could, but they were vastly outnumbered; and besides they were used to hit and run tactics, not open engagement.

“I'm sorry,” Terra said to Ravager.

“Don't worry, they'll pay dearly for each kill,” Ravager said.

“I'm sorry anyway.”

“I know.”

“Save the sentiments for when the battle is over,” Wonder Woman said, “There will be plenty of time for it then.” Her words were not unkind; merely the sound advice of a veteran warrior of the battlefield, and all of them knew it.

One more Themyscrian joined them. She had shoulder length black hair and glittering star earrings, and her warrior's armor was mostly red. She was younger, about Rose's age. “The Queen told me to report to you,” she said to Wonder Woman, almost shyly.

Wonder Woman smiled. “Of course she did, Don-Na. Ready your lance and stand with me.”

Robin raised an eyebrow at Terra, who shrugged back.

They stood in the heavy silence, and waited.

Only it wasn't really silent; the noise of battle was drifting from that great distance over the water. Even from this distance, it was clear how heavily outnumbered the pirates were. Ravager said nothing, but bit her lip.

But it was also clear that the Markovians had delegated a relatively small number of ships to deal with the pirates, and had turned inland.....and they were promptly met by the Themyscrians, who met them before they had even gotten halfway.

Now it was Wonder Woman's turn to bite her lip, despite her earlier stoic warrior pronouncements. Behind her, Don-Na sucked in a breath. And why not? They had lost plenty of sisters already.

They could see the Theymiscrians attacking; hear their battle cries; see ships exploding, see the pair of male mages unleashing their power.

They saw ships sink. Saw Markovians stumble and fall off the decks into the Ocean.

And thew saw first one, then another, and then another Themyscrian drop under direct cannon fire.

Seven ships broke past the Themyscrians and began to fire on the island. Green Lantern put his shield up and blocked them easily, but didn't complain when Argent reinforced his with hers. It couldn't hurt, and it would only look good to Wonder Woman.

“They might not be able to get around the shield,” Ravager said. “With their troops, I mean.”

“Unless your two defenders are omniscient and never tire, they will eventually,” Wonder Woman said. “And we know they will keep coming.”

“Yes,” Terra agreed quietly. “They will.”



Finally, the Markovians came.

Terra was familiar with the modus operandi, even if she hadn't seen it live; at home, she had seen propaganda films like these, thousands upon thousands of times.

The ships launched troop carriers, which moved towards the beach with dreadful inevitability. On Wonder Woman's advice (perhaps they were truly orders, nobody argued the point), Green Lantern and Argent dropped shields long enough to smash the ships themselves at range as best they could.

Then they began to pick off the troop carriers. Argent felt she ought to feel at least some measure of guilt for this as the men screamed and drowned, or died in more unpleasant ways. But after what she had gone through in the mines, she just couldn't be motivated to feel such. Lantern, for his part, felt no such compunction, and allowed his rage to flow freely.

As Wonder Woman had quietly suspected, the Markovian Navy stopped shelling when their troops got close enough. She was also right that there were more of them than either of the energy manipulators could take out before they reached the beach.

This enabled Terra, Robin, Ravager and the others to charge in. Don-Na and Wonder Woman joined them, screaming the Themyscrian battle cries of old....




Artemis and the surviving warriors under her command had regrouped with the pirate fleet, and each was doing their best to protect the other. Unfortunately, they were both horribly outnumbered and outgunned.

Wintergreen was shouting for his gunners to give it everything they had. The crack and thunder of their cannons and missile launchers was thunderous, but the Markovian answering fire was even more terrible. They had lost six ships already.

A blast knocked fourteen sailors overboard. The Themyscrians made no effort to rescue them, nor did Wintergreen expect them to; instead they tore into the enemy craft, screaming in rage.

“Well,” he shouted at his crew, “What are you waiting for? Lay down cover fire! Take advantage of every strike they make!”

Wintergreen had no thoughts of winning this battle, as he ducked another explosion just above the ship.

But as a Markovian jet fighter came straight at them and Artemis tore it apart with a single strike, he thought that maybe, just maybe, they might survive it.



Don-Na hurled her javelin, which caught a Markovian soldier in the throat. He went down, gurgling in his own blood.

Wonder Woman almost casually deflected numerous shots with her golden bracelets, sometimes reflecting the bullets back into the shooters. Then she waded in, punching, kicking and pouncing. Almost all the strikes were lethal, and those that weren't certainly totally incapacitated their targets.

Don-Na made no attempt to retrieve her javelin, instead she snatched a Markovian's weapon from him and beat him to death with it.

Ravager lunged and swirled, her blades unleashing death and dismemberment to the Markovians.

This beach siege was unlike anything Robin had experienced before, even when they had attacked that Markovian coastal fortress at Gibraltar when they first formed. That made him no less determined, of course. But as he parried one Markovian's bayonet and then beat him down. It seemed to him that the Markovian soldiers were no less vast in their numbers than the sea itself was in depth and breadth.

Green Lantern and Argent helped with that, though, cutting down swaths of soldiers with their powers.

Terra caused the soldiers to sink into the ground as though it were quicksand; a slow and unpleasant death. Then she ripped a huge chunk of rock out of the sea bed, formed it into a rough round shape, and dropped it amongst the heaviest concentration of troopers, crushing them into paste.

Supergirl blasted one soldier with her heat vision, and then flew forward, smashing down three of them who would never rise again. Then she yanked one off his feet and threw him into his fellows.

Anarky leapt and whirled and kicked, and shocked Markovians into unconsciousness with his cattle prod. Those he could take the time to finish, he did; but more often he was force to simply go on fighting the next wave of soldiers.

They were cleaning house, and no doubt; but eventually they would grow tired.

They could only hope that all the Markovians would be down by then.



Wintergreen could hardly believe it, but the tide was turning.

The Markovian ships that had launched troops towards the island were returning to join the battle, and that should have worked against them, but by then half the Markovian fleet was sinking and the other half were running out of ammunition.

The pirates were running low on shells too, but that was no hindrance to the Themyscrians, who were still tearing ships apart. Some of them had fallen too, but more than two thirds of them remained, and they kept ripping into Markovian ships as they came in.

“Helmsman Giordano!” he called.

“Yes sir?” Giordano returned.

“Turn us towards that Markovian ship, there,” he pointed to the looming gray warhulk off the port bow.

“You don't mean....?”

“I most certainly do,” Wintergreen promised. “Ramming speed!”



At last, they began to see the end of the Markovian invaders.

Robin, Ravager and Anarky were all-bone tired, but the others were still going strong, and the Markovians were still falling, and fewer and fewer of them remained.

You could see it in their eyes, they were beginning to panic. But they did not run; could not run. Had no where to go but into the water, which was already red from the blood of their own dead..

Ravager helped one do just that, forcing him below the bloody tide and choking him. There was a cut in her armor, and the skin beneath it; and Anarky's mask had cracked and fallen, revealing his bleeding face. But they did not waver. Not even for a moment.

Even Wonder Woman and Don-Na stood amazed as Supergirl advanced on a surviving wedge of soldiers, absorbing their bullets seemingly without effect. She lifted one in each hand, holding them by their throats, and broke their necks.

Without waiting for a further cue, Wonder Woman and Don-Na flew into the troopers, decimating them.

Green Lantern and Argent were still mopping up, but clearly the siege of the shores was over.
“Come Don-Na, and you Supergirl,” Wonder Woman said, “Let us aid our sisters in battle against their Navy!”

“Take me with you,” Ravager said, despite her weariness. “My pirate ships, my sailors, my responsibility.”

There was no argument. Don-Na picked her up and flew off with Wonder Woman and Supergirl towards the enemy.

Though she was tired too, Terra summoned a rock and flew after. Green Lantern and Argent followed as soon as they were finished.

Robin and Anarky just stared after them in exhausted amazement.

Anarky slumped down on the blood-stained beach. “We'd probably be extraneous out there anyway,” he offered feebly.

Robin nodded and blew out a sigh, but spoke no words.



When all was said and done, the Themyscrians had lost seven, and Ravager's pirate fleet had lost four ships and two others were badly damaged. One of the damaged ships was Ravager's own flagship, Sweet Lili, which had rammed an enemy craft.

But the Markovians had lost almost everything; only three ships of their mighty armada escaped the shrieking vengeance of the Themyscrians.

The Titans were gathered in Queen Hippolyta's throne room once more.

“You have done well,” Hippolyta said, albeit grudgingly. “Thanks to your assistance, the Markovians will not be able to blockade us for some time. We can have contact with the outside world again.”

“My own ships will come to you soon with supplies,” Ravager promised. “As soon as we have completed our own fleet repairs.”

“I rather think the Markovians will be hunting you after this,” Hippolyta said.

Ravager showed teeth in a bloodthirsty grin. “Nothing new there.”

“Yes, well, in any event, we shall have more contact with the outside world. Even before the Markovians came, we isolated ourselves far too much. Perhaps that was an error. Rest yourselves here as long as you need. You have our thanks.”

“And perhaps,” Wonder Woman added thoughtfully, “The day may come when Don-Na may fight by your side once more.”

Both the Titans and Don-Na were pleased by that.



The next day, Robin came to Ravager and tried to apologize once more.

“Forget about it,” she said. “Just don't try to disarm me ever again.”

Robin nodded. Perhaps one day she would tell that story

They stayed a little while longer, then Ravagers ships took them away.

But they left behind an island free from oppression for the first time in more than fifty years.

Another cog in the Markovian war machine devastated.