Teen Titans #22 "GodStorm" Pt 2

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Issue #22: “GodStorm”
Pt. 2-“Of Fire and Steel”
Written by: Robert Harding
Cover by: Ramon Villalobos
Edited by: Brian Burchette[/center]

His nostrils filled with the foul odour swirling through the air. All he could see as he sat their on that stiff cold hard chair was the pale green hue of the walls. And there were so many noises; the screeching of cart wheels, gossiping, sobbing, laughter, and thousands of machines talking to him all at once. Vic hated hospitals.

Starfire opened a door next to where Vic was and emerged next to him.
“Are you sure you won’t come in, Cyborg.”

“Don’t call me that. Not here.”

“I am sorry.”

“You didn’t know….How is he?” He asked, changing subject.

“Maybe you should come and see.” With that Starfire reached out her left hand.

Wrong one, thought Vic. He grabbed it with his left hand but couldn’t feel hers. He didn’t feel the softness of her skin or the warmth of her touch through his metal ‘skin’. They entered the room and saw the other Titans sitting around a bed in which lay a green unconscious boy, plugged up to several machines that hummed and bleeped.

“What happened, Vic?” asked Richard Grayson.

“We’ve been over this, Dick.” Answered Vic almost defensively.

“There was an attacker, presumably the same one who attacked Roy, outside. Beast Boy and I managed to get out before we died, however, we crashed on another skyscraper’s roof and I managed to keep the debris off of Gar by protecting him with my body since he was unconscious.”

“It just doesn’t make sense, Vic.”

“What?! What doesn’t make sense, Dick!?” Vic began shouting. “It doesn’t make sense that I would save Gar’s life?! What, you think I'm a fake to like the rest of the new Titans?!”

“I just want to know how he got past the building’s security system.”

“If I knew don’t you think I would tell you?”

“Seems to me Vic either the attacker knew how to work the system incredibly well or someone shut it down for him.”

“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU SAYING?! ARE YOU SAYING I HELPED THIS GUY ATTACK US?!” Vic had begun shouting at the top of his lungs.

“If the boot fits, Vic…” Nightwing said standing up to face Vic eye-to-eye and let the sentence hang in the air. Before Vic could punch him Starfire stood in between the two of them with her palms against both of their chests.

“That was unfair, Nightwing.” She said to the teen detective and then turning to Vic she asked. “Vic, would there be anyone who would know how to work the system.”

“No. Just me and my Dad.”

“Are you sure there is no-one else.” Nightwing asked this time.

Vic fell silent for a minute in thought then his eyes opened widely with an epiphany.

“My Dad’s old partner from S.T.A.R Labs.”

“Name, Vic. We need a name.”

“Nat. Irons. Natasha Irons.”

Her fingers delicately extended the thin blue wire and with her other hand she slowly peeled off a strip of plastic casing from one end and began to twist the now revealed metal fibres around a second red wire. When the final wire was attached she snapped the new panel onto the metal construction she had created. Looking at it she smiled with glee.

“Beat that, Uncle John.” She said to no one in particular, and sat back admiring her creation.

A sudden buzzing from the external intercom however caused her to jump and for the creation to clatter onto the floor breaking off the new panel she had just attached. Releasing a very uncharacteristic expletive she sighed heavily and threw an old blanket over the new toy just in case the person at the door had wish to enter and should possibly see her secret project. Running across the room to the small panel mounted on the wall she pressed the single large button and spoke into the machine.

“Who is it?”

“Nat?”

“Vic Stone?! No, way! I’ve not seen you in, like, forever. Hang on a minute I’ll open up the door for ya.”

Racing across the room Natasha Irons couldn’t wait to once again speak to the young man she used to consider her younger brother. She stood directly in front of the large sliding metal garage style door that happened to be the main entrance into her little renovated warehouse and pressed the large red button on the wall. Slowly the door started to recede into the roof and from the feet up the figure of Victor Stone began to appear. She gasped with fright and nearly fell over backwards at what stood before her. This wasn’t the man she knew. He was barley a man in any sense of the term.

Over half of his body seemed to be made of metal and computer gadgetry. It shouldn’t really have surprised her of all people but it did. What he must have gone through.

“Vic I…I knew your Dad had operated on you but…Vic I…” she tried to think of anything that would vaguely sound non-patronising.

“Don’t worry, Nat. It’s fine. I'm used to it by now.” After a slightly long and awkward silence he added “Can I come in?”

“Oh, yeah, of course, sorry. Do you want a drink or something?” She said turning around, but Vic, still in the doorway, stopped her with a simple sentence.

“Is it okay that I bought some friends?”

Several minutes later Natasha Irons, S.T.A.R Labs youngest researcher, played host to a myriad of colourfully garbed super-teens in a makeshift living room which consisted of three old sofas in a sort of workshop space, surrounded by various breakthrough metallic compounds and newly made alloys in various states of construction and creation. The former boy-wonder, Dick Grayson, had just finished giving Natasha a full run down of the situation they found themselves in while Vic wandered around the various cavernous, steely clean rooms.

After sighing heavily Natasha asked, “Is there anyway I can help?”

“For now we need a place to stay but…see the thing is, whoever attacked us had an understanding of the technology Vic’s Dad created. So we were wondering if you knew anyone else attached to the project who would understand the technology enough to bypass it.”

“Only Silas and I were attached to the project. It was commissioned by the U.S government but they had no idea we had begun work on it or how far we had come. See I helped to create the new alloys and compound structures as well as working out how to link the various units together, admittedly, I got some help from my Uncle to understand some of it, and Silas was in charge of controlling the circuitry and programming and stuff. We worked on it secretly originally as a side project that eventually became our favourite project.”

“What was it precisely that the government wanted you to create?” asked Dick.

“It was meant to be a way of creating a robotic infantry that could be controlled by thought commands far from the battle field; however, Silas and I were more interested in the potential of the commercial and surgical side: the chance to replace lost limbs with full mobility and feeling and senses. When Silas…when Silas repaired Vic we hadn’t ironed out all the creases and from what you can see with Vic, Silas was not, lets say, a natural at the construction side.”

“Vic looks pretty solid to me.” Pointed out Donna.

“Yes, but that’s only down to him choosing to reform the nanites, I would imagine. I saw the newspaper photos from before he joined the Titans and his form was very much uneven. But that’s not the point. What I was trying to say before was that only me and Silas knew about the project, and trust me…there is no way the government could have gotten a hold of our research.”

“We know it wasn’t the government. We found out that whoever formed the team paid the government to adopt them and make it look like a government initiative.” Wally reminded everyone.

“I think an easier question would be, who would want to attack you that fits into the profile. From what I can see your enemy is replicating the original Titans team, right?” they all nodded in response “But they still have access to the Towers technology and thus Vic’s. However they have made no attempt to copy Vic or even your friend Beast Boy, who you said joined just before Vic. Now if they went to all this trouble to re-create the team which is now drastically different why didn’t they change their line up?”

“Are you saying this plan was in motion from the team we first formed?”

“Or at least early on in your career as a team, and if they merely updated themselves with Silas’ technology, why didn’t they create a new Vic and Beast Boy while they were are it? It seems to me the people your up against don’t really know too much about your current incarnation but more about the original line up as well as Vic. Someone who knew Vic was going to join the team but never actually followed your career after that; presumably because they were to busy forming this ‘Godhead’.”

“But the only people who knew Vic had ever met the Titans were his Dad and that Romeo guy and their both dead now.” Nightwing explained again. “There’s no one who…” Dick was cut short as Vic hurriedly opened the glass door of the glass and steel room they all sat in and rushed in.

“Nat have you used my Dad’s diary blog?”

“What are you on about, Vic?”

“Everything my Dad worked on he recorded on a blog, or if he didn’t have time he’d do a write-up when he had finished a project. He also linked the programme to the home computer so he could update it where ever he was.”

“Vic, I know what the blog was. I meant why do you think I updated it? I’ve not been in your Dad’s lab since…well you know.”

“There’s a new entry in it.”

“When? What did it say?”

“September 14th. It read: ‘they’re ready.’”

And with that the side of the warehouse exploded and glass and steel and rubble erupted into the air in a brilliant flash of green light. The Titans and Natasha now found themselves lying on a pile of rubble, fully exposed to the hot, midday sun. And to the glowing green figure who hovered above them. His skin was copper coloured
and he has bright auburn hair and his eyes glowed with the same green energy that encircled his body. His clothes were various shades of purples and pinks, much like Starfire’s costumes only his appeared to be redesigned for a man and to look like some kind of modern armour.

“What the matter?” He cooed softly, “Don’t remember me, sister?”

And with that Starfire’s eyes opened wide and horror struck her face and she whispered a single word: “Ryand’r?”

Elsewhere:

The room was small and pitch black until the thick column of white smoke cut the cloudy atmosphere and in doing so revealed the form of a pale, young girl garbed from head to in deep purple. From the cloud emerged the girl known as Rook.

“Hello, Rachel.” Said the newcomer.

“You don’t know me.” Responded the dark daughter.

“Sure I do. But of course you don’t remember me do you. Well let me jog your memory. Who do you think told the Church of Blood were they could find you all that time ago?” Suddenly something snapped. A metaphorical fire lit in Raven’s eyes and a great shadowy bird enveloped her and as it lashed out at Rook a large white bird retaliated as it protected the second woman. And their fight began.

Nightwing and Raptor had done the least actual fighting thus far. Instead they were circling each other, looking for an opening, calculating every move to make sure no energy was wasting on a miss. Currently Dick was armed with a single Escrima stick and he didn’t yet have the chance to dive to the left and collect the other. Raptor held in his hands two objects that looked somewhat like Bruce’s larger batarangs, only they had small bird head extensions on them. Almost a cross between a large batarangs and a birdarang. Whatever they were they hurt like hell, Dick thought, as the speed of one of them caught him off guard and hit him in the shoulder, bringing him to the floor. He pulled it out with a trail of blood and began to rise to feet when a boot caught him square in the jaw. Raptor then pinned Dick to the floor and placed most of his weight on his knees which he used to pin down Dick’s arms. With one hand Raptor held Dick’s face still and the other he carefully placed the edge of one of his ‘raptorangs’ against Dick’s Adam’s apple.

“Well seeing as how all of my associates have revealed themselves to your fellow Titans I think its only fit that I follow suite.”

“What are…?”

“I am surprised though. It’s not like it should have been hard to deduce. They say it’s all in the eyes, don’t they. And look at me. I’ve got eye holes cut out. I though you were trained by the world’s greatest detective.”

“How do you…”

“Oh, don’t worry, little bird. I'm not gonna say ‘don’t you remember me?’ because I know for a fact that you do.” With that they reached to his face and pulled back the customised executioner’s mask. Vic was nearly sick with fear. ‘Raptor’ was right, he should have seen it. Before Vic was a face that haunted his dreams every time he closed his eyes. A face that made Dick bolt up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat. A face more frightening then the Joker, or Two-Face, or Deathstroke or Brother Blood or any costumed psycho. The face of a man known simply as the crime boss ‘Zucco’. The face of the man who killed his family. In a raging frenzy Dick Grayson summoned all his strength and threw the man from the top of him and began beating him across the head and chest with a single Escrima stick, not giving him chance to attack. Tears streamed down his face blurring his vision. But it didn’t matter because all Dick could see was his family lying in the middle of a Big Top below a broken trapeze wire.

The Next Day:

The rest of the Titans stood in the doorway to the large communications room of the Tower staring at him. He was totally absorbed in work. Staring at a thousand computers and only he had the vaguest inkling of what he was doing. If they had ever met their latest attacker they would see the terrible irony that right now Victor Stone looked exactly like his Dad. After a few seconds he rose from his chair and said softly.

“I’ve totally repaired the Tower and removed all traces of my father’s influence including the sensor’s that he used to read your emotions and recreate your deepest fears as androids. Now this is nothing more than a hi-tech skyscraper. Like it should be. It still will respond but its got no real personality or emotion. It doesn’t care and never will. Its just a metal shell. The way it should be” The last few sentences were bitterly morbid. Vic scanned the solemn faces of those in the doorway and changing the subject asked.

“Where’s Speedy?”

“He went back to his new friends.” Replied Wally West with more than a hint of disappointment.

“Oh. And Raven.” Dick Grayson just shook his head in reply. Wally West turned and left the room.

“I…I think I need to get some fresh air too.” Said Vic.
“Victor.” Began the Tamaranian Princess Starfire “As you know the Tower filters external weather to recreate the atmosphere outside of the…” she was cut short by the hand of Dick Grayson softly pressed on her arm.

She looking into his grave eyes and understood. She muttered in whispered realisation, “Oh.”