Teen Titans #45: "True Heroism"

And I believe we need heroes, I believe we need certain people who we can measure our own shortcomings by.
Richard Attenborough

I also try very hard to create characters - both heroes and villains - with psychological depth.
Jeffery Deaver

You mean you killed of real heroes so you could...PRETEND to be one?
The Incredibles


-1-

Carl Franklin had been somebody, once.

He had been a US Army MP. And he had been good....very good.

But no one had appreciated the work he had done. How many bad apples had he busted, personally seen on their way to Leavenworth? And what thanks had he ever got? No promotions, no raises, not even a pat on the back for a job well done. Nothing.

But that wasn't the worst of it. Not nearly.

The worst of it was that no matter how many bad soldiers he arrested, no matter how much work he did he just......didn't seem to be making any headway. The amount of military crime (and corruption!) never decreased.

And even those that knew he was right didn't have the courage to back him or finance him. They only looked the other way....and even that they did more and more grudgingly.

What was the difference between him and the spandex-clad so-called 'heroes'? He did more good than they ever did!

But of course, he knew the reason that he was either hated or ignored, and the 'heroes' celebrated.

He killed his targets instead of sending them to the revolving door of prison. In that, at least, his anonymity was a blessing rather than a curse. Only a few in the Army knew who he was, and so long as he killed the guilty, they didn't care. They wouldn't help him, either, but at least they wouldn't expose him. And so, the local cops had no idea who he was. They knew when a sniper-style executioner passed through their jurisdiction, but by the time they mobilized, he was long gone.

They might catch him eventually. Yes, the might.

But not today.

He grinned to himself, consoled by that thought, as the subway car brought him into Grand Central Station.

Today he would hit a deserving target. and not only would no one know about it until he was gone, no one would mourn the target, either.

-2-

Raven and Kid Flash were alone in Titans Tower.

The others were on patrol, save Terra who had taken a day off. It was one of the few times that she wasn't all over Beast Boy, and vice versa.

Not that Raven and Kid Flash were even thinking about criticizing them at the moment. Indeed they felt a certain understanding.

They were slower and more cautious than Gar and Tara, or Dick and Kory. But this moment had been slowly building since that strange alien meteorite had struck, and once Kid Flash had been injured, it had become inevitable. Their shared moments on the beach during the battle with Circe had only confirmed that.

At this moment, they were not Kid Flash and Raven. They were Wally and Rachel. And that was all right. That was better than all right.

Each of them was, in their own way, still awkward, still nervous. But Wally knew he wanted to be with her, and she had had, gradually, becoming convinced of this over the course of the months and the events that occurred.

So it was that they found themselves in her room, looking out the windows at a bright sunlit day.

Rachel turned and looked at him.

Wally held her hands just a little too tightly and looked into her eyes.

Rachel gave him a sad smile. "All right, Wallace, we'll try."

-3-

His name was Bart Brucewood.

He had always had anger management issues. Always they had picked on him at school, and always he had tried to fight back. But no matter how much he exercised, trained, or learned martial arts, they always beat him.

He knew why; while he did all the right exercises--sometimes too many of them--and learned all the right fighting moves, he couldn't bring himself to "eat right", to give up junk food. Especially burgers and fries. He had no real stamina, and his body was an odd, awkward compilation of muscle and fat.

The fact that his father had abused him as a child and his utter inability to ever get a girlfriend had nothing to do with it, of course.

But now he had found help. A Doctor Rudolf Klein-Rogge, formerly of Cornell University, had agreed to help him out.

He was currently strapped to the good Doctor's lab table, only it was canted at a forty-five degree angle, and he was staring up into a bright light.

The lab was cluttered and dirty.

"Um, Doc?" he asked. "Are you sure this is going to work?"

"Kindly refrain from addressing me as 'doc'," the scientist countered, who despite his name had a typical New York accent. "And yes, rest assured my young friend, that both of us will get what we want out of this endeavor. You will be able to defend yourself against any enemy, and I will finally prove my findings to those fools who rejected me."

"I don't just want to defend myself," he countered. "I want to hurt them! I want to make them feel the pain they made me feel! I. Want. REVENGE!"

While Doctor Klein-Rogge seemed somewhat surprised by this outburst, he didn't seem at all bothered by it. Instead, he grinned approvingly. "A proper attitude, boy. Be assured, I will give you that power, and gain my own revenge in turn."

Okay, Bart reckoned, this guys a little creepy, but he gets it. And that's something. That's a lot, in fact.

Time to hit back.

-4-

Nightwing leapt from rooftop to rooftop, Dagon and Cyborg to either side. Beast Boy had taken the form of an oriental dragon, a sky serpent, and was fluttering past above. Starfire and Troia sailed on above them.

Theoretically, this was a patrol. But really, Nightwing felt alive again. Happy again. Doing handstands and leaps from roof to roof. Being the hero he was meant to be.

He still wanted to find Rose, but he had an inkling...a notion....a theory on where she might have gone.

If they found crime today, they would stop it. So far there had been no significant attacks, today. That didn't mean there wouldn't be any, of course. But if so he felt more than ready for it.

It was, for a change, a good day to be one of the good guys. Ever since the Black Sun crisis had passed and Donna had become Troia, in fact.

He welcomed it. A day in the light such as he had not enjoyed since his early days as Robin, when the pain of his parent's death had begun to fade but the motivation to do right had not.

Today was a good day.

-5-

It had taken Carl Frankin a few minutes to reach the appropriate rooftop. He had scouted his target out carefully; he was no simple random shooter or a disgruntled employee who went to a restaurant or place of work and shot at random. No, he would kill a truly deserving man. A man even the police and those that pretended to be heroes would not miss.

In his heart he knew that he was the real hero. And today's actions would prove it.

Normally he preferred night for shooting, but justice waited for neither night nor day. And besides, the madman's home was a maze of booby traps, while ironically he felt safer at 'work'. If you could call what the maniac did as work.

His target was one Doctor Rudolf Klein-Rogge, who had been kicked out of Cornell for his unethical practices and experiments. And today would be the last day of his life. Certain of his former associates at the university had let it be known what, exactly, he had been kicked out for. It wasn't every day that tenure was revoked. But this man, a mad scientist in every sense of the word, was truly deserving of his fate.

Carl felt better about this particular shooting than he did about your normal run of the mill mob family hit or corrupt official killing. This was the sort of man who, if left unchecked, would wreak havoc on a super-human level. In the end, he was truly making the job of those costumed hypocrites easier, though they would never thank him for it.

As he looked down through the lab's skylight, he saw, with anger and shock, that he was almost too late. The mad scientist already had a subject strapped to a lab table for some horrible test!

Cool. He had to remain cool. Not to panic, not to let anger or urgency shake his aim. He breathed in and out several times, lifted his rifle and looked through the scope at his target.

As the crosshairs settled on Klein-Rogge, his finger slipped gently around the trigger of his rifle, almost a caress.

-6-

"Ready, boy?" Klein-Rogge asked.

"You know it," Bart answered. "Do it!"

Klein-Rogge threw the switch.

A brilliant red light entered Bart's eyes. "Ahhhhhhhh...."

"Excellent, excellent. Be calm, a few moments only and you will be empowered--" Klein-Rogge began.

He never finished.

There was a sound of breaking glass, and then the scientist fell dead from a bullet to the brain. The sniper's bullet, though, had carried on through his head, and slammed into the instrument bank beyond, which sparked and fizzled

Bart couldn't see that, forced to stare into the red light as he was. But he heard the crack of the glass, and the sparking fizzle of the computers. "Doc?!" he shouted, uncertainly.

The red light grew brighter, and hotter, and Bart began to scream.

-7-

Carl cursed; he had left it too late, the scientist had already thrown the switch, and now his subject was screaming!

He froze in paralysis and frustration, not knowing what to do. He had been an MP, dammit; he should do something! But he couldn't fly; and while he did know how to rappel down a building; he didn't know how to get from one to another, and in any case hadn't brought the gear. And if he scrambled down from his hiding place now, he would be caught.

But he was a real hero; there must be something he could do!

The scream from the lab started deepening into an angry roar.

-8-

Bart was still afraid, yes, and in great pain; but mostly he was angry.

Angry that the Doctor had failed him and left him to die in his torture ray. Angry at the bullies at school, the girls that had rejected him, his mother, his father--oh, especially his father--and everyone else he had ever known.

Everyone.

Everything.

And the anger was just, was righteous, was empowering....

Bart started to become something else.

The crimson rays reached deep into his body, his soul, his DNA, and began to change him, twist him, strengthen him in ways no one, not even the now-deceased Doctor Klein-Rogge, could have intended.

His body grew; his muscles bulged; his skin turned scarlet; his eyes turned into sulfur orbs of hate.

The thing that had once been Bart Brucewood roared, and broke free of the table, smashing it.

Then it smashed the equipment.

Then it stamped on the body of its creator.

Then it looked up, saw the light, hated it as it did everything else, and leapt through the skylight, smashing it and quite a bit of the ceiling as well.

-9-

Carl stared and gaped as the thing came busting up through the roof of the lab. His pity and fear and frustration drained away. There was nothing else for it; he would kill the monster, and at least there would be no more suffering from this particular tragedy.

He was cool and calm now; a cloak of emotionless coldness dropped over him, a sensation he'd felt many times' as he reloaded, sited the roaring beast's head and pulled the trigger.

Its head jerked back, and then it glared right at him.

The cold precision left him as he quickly reloaded and fired again. The next shot buried itself in the monster's right shoulder. It roared and leapt for him.

Leapt for him. Covering the intervening space, the street-wide gap, in seconds.

He didn't scream, would not scream; but he did now scramble desperately towards the stairwell he had used to get up here.

-10-

It was Dagon that noted the commotion first; even in his helmet to protect himself from the sun, he could sense things. He slowed and pointed. "That way," he intoned.

They saw a flash of something red, moving. It was a being, so much was clear; not a bolt of energy. Without discussion, they turned and moved towards it.

Starfire was the first to close; and she saw the hulking red best tearing open a rooftop access to a stairwell. She saw a frightened man inside. "X'hal!" she breathed, and put a starbolt into the creature.

It responded by turning and glaring at her, then leaping for her. She kicked it away, but as it landed on the rooftop again, it only roared, further enraged....and was it getting bigger?

Seconds later, Cyborg was there, blasting it with his white noise cannon, then slamming into it with his shoulder. It rocked back on it's heels, but not much. It was simply taking more punishment then they had so far dished out.

Dagon clawed and scratched at it, but it knocked him away.

Nightwing landed, thinking that maybe he had been fortunate to miss out on big monsters like this when he had been filling in for Batman, and hurled sleeping gas pellets at its face. But again, while it was shaken, it did not fall.

Troia smashed into the beast, finally knocking it over, but instantly it was back up, grabbing her hands and testing her strength.

Beast Boy took a huge ape form and began battering it on its left flank. It kicked at him, but he dodged the strike.

-11-

Carl was scared to death, though he would never have admitted it. He was pleased to see, however, that the damn fool 'heroes' had finally arrived and, for a change, were actually pulling their own weight; and, he had to reluctantly admit, saving his own skin.

He knew they would not understand, but he couldn't just stand idly by and let them do all the heavy lifting, either. So he took his secondary weapon, a fine revolver, from his belt holster and fired three closely spaced shots into the creature's muscular back.

It didn't even notice. His heart sank, but he fired the rest of his rounds into the thing and began to reload.

"Hey, Sergeant Pepper!" Beast Boy shouted to him. "Stop wasting time with the pea-shooter and get out of here!"

Carl ignored him, finished reloading, and began firing again.

-12-

"Dimwatt bulb in the stairwell isn't running," reported Beast Boy as Donna kept the thing busy. "Thinks he's Rambo."

"I'll take care of him," Nightwing promised. "Get big red away from the doorway."

Beast Boy shifted back to ape form and helped Donna force the creature away from the doorway. Nightwing landed on his heels and looked in to see Carl, weapon raised, eyes squinted. Even in the dim light, he could also see the sniper rifle with scope at his feet. "Sir, you have to get out of here!" he shouted.

"You do your part, spandex boy," Carl sneered, "And I'll do mine."

"Your 'part' is to get out of here and leave it to the professionals," Nightwing countered, rapidly losing patience with the man as he heard his team mates fighting the monster at his back.

"I'm more professional than you'll ever be!" Carl shouted. "Now get out of my line of fire before I decide to wound you."

Realizing he had no more time to waste on this paramilitary idiot, Nightwing kicked him in the head, knocking him out." Shaking his head, he returned to the more important battle.

-13-

With their combined strength, Troia, Cyborg, Beast Boy and Dagon had finally got the thing pinned on the roof, but every time they did, it would kick one of them off. Once it had even knocked Beast Boy off the building proper, and he had to change into a flying form so as not to fall. Dagon might have a cracked rib. Starfire had kept up pressure with her starbolts. For a brief moment, Nightwing even wondered if he could have let the moron keep shooting it.

Nightwing had also noticed, as Starfire had earlier, that the thing was slowly growing larger. And, presumably, stronger. If they weren't in the middle of the city, Troia could have probably taken it on, strength against strength alone, if it didn't get too much bigger. But that was a big if, and unlike that fool, they needed to watch out for collateral damage, as well as not getting overconfident.

So he had momentarily drawn Cyborg and Starfire to him, leaving the others to contain the beast as best they could, and explained the idea in his mind. Cyborg had nodded agreement; Starfire smiled, kissed him, and praised his warrior tactics. Coming from her that meant a lot.

Cyborg had moved in from the side, and scanned the creature; nodding to himself. "The ears are the easiest way to access the nervous system," he said.

"Right," Nightwing said. "Starfire, focus on its head. When I give the word, everybody but Cyborg and Starfire back off."

Troia shot him a brief, surprised look; but nobody questioned him. Their cohesiveness as a unit was seamless.

The beast was powerful, and probably becoming more so, but it was mindless in its rage. But it was its physiology, not its mindlessness, that was its ultimate weakness.

Troia caught a blow to the head, but was only somewhat shaken, and brought both hands down in a devastating hammer blow. Dagon scratched away at it's ribcage.

"NOW!" Nightwing shouted.

Dagon, Troia and Beast Boy leapt away, leaving Starfire to focus on the creature's head with her bolts. Cyborg darted in from the side, pressed his white noise cannon into the creature's ear, and blasted it with his white noise cannon at a very specific frequency above the normal auditory range. Higher than even dogs could hear. Into the creature's ear drum, and from thence into it's brain, and from there all throughout it's nervous system.

The creature's roar turned into a howl of pain, and it twitched and writhed....then slumped into unconsciousness.

"All right," Nightwing breathed a sigh of relief, as Cyborg and Beast Boy gave a high five in the background. "We'll call STAR Labs to contain--"

He broke off in astonishment as the beast shifted and faded into a fat, yet oddly muscled young boy.

"X'hal," Starfire breathed in wonder and sadness, and Dagon swore somewhat creatively.

"Dagon, with me," Nightwing said when he got over the surprise. "We'll study the crime scene. The rest of you, take this poor kid to STAR and see what they can do for him. Restraints may," he reluctantly admitted, "Be necessary."

-14-

Carl had woken in an interrogation room. There were no policemen present, which puzzled him. Nor feds either. There was nobody. But this did not reassure him; he was cuffed at wrist and ankle, and it was clear that nobody was going to bail him out or even look the other way. Not this time.

He was not entirely surprised when Nightwing slipped in the room.

"What, no fuzz or feds with you?" Carl sneered.

Nightwing didn't say anything, not yet. He just sat and looked at him.

"I was an MP, kid," Carl said. "You're gonna have to do better than that to scare me."

"Yes, I know. Your military friends gave you up, I have your complete file, and a reasonable projection of what hits since your dishonorable discharge were yours."

Carl shrugged awkwardly in his cuffs, not easy to do. "I figured."

"You realize that by shooting Klein-Rogge, you only made the situation worse?"

"My timing was bad, I admit. It had to be a total FUBAR by me if I needed you incompetent boy scouts to handle the evac and damage control."

Nightwing stared at him again, but this time it was a stare of incredulity. "I read your file," he said finally. "That included your psychological profile. I know what you think of us, and that you think that you're the 'real' hero. Do yourself a favor and shut up."

"I want my lawyer," Carl said.

"Oh I know you do. And you'll get one."

"You can't make me talk."

"I don't expect to, but then I don't need to. The case against you is pretty open and shut, anyway. Now shut up and let me talk."

"Oh," Carl rolled his eyes. "This is the part where you tell me that you're the 'real' hero and--"

Abruptly he found himself hoisted in the air.

By one hand.

A hand that was around his neck.

"Shut," Nightwing snarled in his best Batman voice, "Up."

Carl, suddenly dragged back to his boot camp days despite Nightwing's relative youth, did indeed shut his mouth.

Nightiwng dropped him unceremoniously back in his chair, which tipped back. Where it not for the soundproof wall, Carl would have fallen all the way over. As it was, he winced when he hit his head against the wall.

Nightwing paced back to the other chair and sat down heavily. "With the help of one of my team mates, who has fine-tuned senses, I went over Klein-Rogge's lab. We took our findings to another team member, who has first hand experience of scientific experiments. Teamwork, that's one of the many things you don't understand, though I've known many solo crime-fighters in costume and out, in uniform and out, who do solo work better than you do. And I was originally trained as such. Anyway, we determined that had you not fired, or at least not fired until Klein-Rogge had completed his experiment, the resulting empowerment to the boy would have been much less, and much more manageable. You might--just might--have been able to handle it. In your bloody, unimaginative sort of way. As you yourself admit, if you had fired sooner, you would have prevented the experiment from happening at all. But you chose the worst possible moment."

"I did screw the pooch on that one," Carl admitted.

"I didn't say you could talk," Nightwing snapped. "Amazingly, probably because of his transformation, the boy survived. But he's in a coma now at STAR Labs. They're not sure he'll ever wake up."

"That's as much your fault as mine then," Carl couldn't resist saying, biting his tongue a second later.

Nightwing half got up, then sat down again with an effort and drummed his fingers on the phone book sitting innocuously the middle of the table.

At that, Carl finally did shut up for good.

"It is not our fault at all, we were left to clean up your mess. As others have had to clean up all other messes. Just as you fail as a solo crime-fighter, you also fail as a killer vigilante. There are a fair number of those around, too. You," Nightwing got up again and started shouting "HAVE NO IDEA what it means to be a hero. NONE. AT ALL. What's the military saying? Oh yes, you would need six promotions to be a--" he cut himself off. "No. I take it back. You'd need twelve. You're no Reacher, or Bolan, or even that guy in the comics. Not that he's much better than you. But at least he's competent."

He sat back down again. "But in a way this is almost good news for you. Almost. Because of all this, at least one organization now considers you to be 'for real'. That organization is Checkmate."

Now Carl could say nothing. But his eyes bulged.

"Ah, I see you know them. Good. Due to the meta-human involvement of your latest crime, and some of the previous ones, after your conviction--and no lawyer will get you out of this, trust me on that--Checkmate has jurisdiction. The cops and the military can recommend sentences, but Checkmate is the one who will imprison you. If you’re lucky."

"If you're not....." Nightwing got up and actually smiled, a little. It was not a pleasant smile. "They may use you in one of their black ops. Or perhaps they'll put you on their pet squad of villains, the Suicide Squad. How'd you like that, eh? Forced to work with the very people you were trying to cleanse the world of? But you see... that's the point; you're one of them."

Carl wanted to say a whole lot of things at that moment, about how if the heroes did their jobs most of those villains would be dead, about how it wasn't time for half measures....but he couldn't bring himself to say any of them.

Nightwing, for his part, wanted to say more too, about the possibilities of redemption and rehabilitation. But he knew it would fall on deaf ears.

So instead, he said, "Your lawyer will be along shortly. I advise you to plead guilty, if only to make it easier on yourself and save the taxpayers some money."

He left.

Carl hung his head and slumped in his chair.

He didn't cry, exactly. Hadn't cried in years.

But he did feel more alone than he ever had in his life.

-15-

"Sorry we missed the party," a genuinely sorry Kid Flash said to Nightwing later that evening, in the Tower. "Maybe we could have saved the kid."

"I could perhaps at least visit him at STAR and attempt to heal some of his pain," Raven added.

"If you want, Rachel," Nightwing said from where he sat. "But don't blame yourselves, either of you. I know you needed...time alone together."

They both smiled somewhat awkwardly, and held hands.

"And besides," Nightwing went on. "Sometimes we need to be reminded, about what being a hero really means."

For a moment there was a solemn, thoughtful silence.

Broken moments later by a returning Tara Markov shouting an incredulous. "I missed WHAT?!?"