'You must trust and believe in people of life becomes impossible'

-Anton Chekhov

Titans

Part One: Genesis

Chapter Six: Go Team!

With their brand-new 'T' embossed communication devices in their ears, which had once again, (unknowingly), been donated to them courtesy of Mister Terrific's free time and idle hands, which was made all the more obvious by the way the design matched that of their new phones - the team made their way back towards the heart of Jump City.

Impulse led the way, using the bright yellow lightning that he generated as he ran to help light the way for the rest of them; made all the more necessary by the fact that most of the outer city's lights and power seemed to have been taken down in the initial attack.

Arsenal was right behind him on the lead motorcycle, his bow stored on the holster in front of him; he was far enough behind Impulse that he wouldn't be affected by the lightning trailing from him, but was still close enough to be able to use it to see with; with Speedy on his right and Artemis on his left, the three of them moved as fast as they could, pushing their bikes to their limits, as they fought to get into the city centre as quickly as possible, with the team's resident speedster running just slowly enough to let them keep up with him.

Weaving in between bits of debris and buildings, their bikes slid to a stop as they hit the innermost part of the city, where the roads were damaged in more visible ways and the explosions had started to cause small fires to burn aimlessly, until they sputtered out and died.

The four of them watched on as a group of soldiers attempting to fight against the outraged civilians, who were seriously outgunned, but fighting back nonetheless, allowing the team to get their first look at those responsible for the carnage.

The armour they wore reminded Speedy of the ancient statues they'd seen at museums over the years, designed to look like ancient Roman soldiers, with golden boots and greaves that covered their legs up to their knees. They wore solid black trousers underneath, which no doubt contained extra armour, matched with a solid black tunic that blended almost seamlessly into their trousers; her eye for clothes being all that gave them away. The two pieces had been tied together at the waist with a dark red belt. Over their tunics, they each wore a golden armour plate, which covered their chest and the sides of their stomachs, protecting their ribs. More golden pieces of armour ran down the top of their arms, reaching their wrists, and covering the top of their black-gloved hands, coating their fingers and knuckles, which meant that not only were their hands lightly protected from damage, but any hits they managed would be weighted, and hurt like hell.

Finishing the look was a bright red cape, the same colour as the belt, which hung from their shoulders, reaching down to the back of their knees, and a solid gold face mask combination, which actually resembled more of a helmet. It was also made of what looked like solid gold, and each one had an unadorned faceplate attached to it, with holes for eyes, nose, and a slit for a mouth.

It made them all look robotic, unfeeling, and for a brief moment, both Arsenal and Speedy were harshly reminded of the lifelessness that Deathstroke's Mirakuru-enhanced soldiers had given off.

At their waists hung a golden-handled short sword, sheathed in a black leather scabbard, while they each held a long golden staff, the same length as the wooden ones they were used to training with, and the tip of which cackled with yellow sparks of electricity.

"Alright guys! We need to-"

Impulse shot forward, ignoring Arsenal completely, before slamming one of his reinforced shoulder-pads into the nearest pseudo-soldier, sending him crashing into the wall, and then, unconscious, he slid down to the floor.

His attack worked in allowing the civilians that were being attacked time to escape, but it also succeeded in drawing everyone's attention to the four of them. Arsenal swore under his breath, already drawing back his bow alongside Artemis, while Speedy had already moved off to the side and disappeared from his view.

Impulse moved quicker than the rest of them could see, taking the fight to another with a flurry of punches at a speed the others couldn't keep up with, before he was struck from behind with the bottom of one of the staffs, the force of the blow sent him down to one knee, before a second shot collided with the side of his head, sending him sprawling across the floor.

Artemis and Arsenal loosed their bows, each of them firing off an arrow that hit one of his attackers in their shoulders; the one Arsenal had hit span into the wall, his helmet colliding with it, while Artemis hit only armour, her arrow bouncing off. The two of them leapt forwards, moving to meet the archer, as Arsenal rushed them, leaving Artemis to help get Impulse back on his feet. She pulled him up and away while Arsenal fended off their two attackers, having hung his bow over his body and replaced it with his escrima sticks.

He ducked under one staff, using the momentum to spin into a side kick that sent his opponent backwards, before he brought his hands back up to block the blow the second staff aimed at his head. He tried pushing back, even as he dug his feet in, but his stronger opponent managed to force him backwards.

They held each other their for a moment, grunting, as neither one dared give an inch.

"HYAH!"

With a roar, Speedy dropped down from above, wielding her sword in both hands, as she brought it downwards with all her might, striking the staff directly in the middle of his grip, slicing through it and cutting it cleanly in half.

The soldier looked at his weapon in sheer disbelief, as the two ends began to pulse in the same shade of yellow as the electricity they generated, before the staff begin to whine.

Eyes widening behind his mask, he dropped it, diving to the ground, while Speedy stood still, surprised that she had shattered the weapon, even as Arsenal reached for her.

A flash of yellow had Impulse pulling all of them around the nearest corner, before dashing back for a brief second to grab their unconscious opponents. They heard the electricity in the staff build up, reaching its breaking point and exploding violently, scorching the ground and walls of the alley they had been in just a few seconds earlier.

Impulse dropped the soldiers to the ground and Artemis fired off a corded arrow, which wrapped around the three of them, tying them tightly together around their torsos, and binding their arms to their sides, while Speedy removed their swords and hidden daggers, leaving them with no chance of escaping their bonds.

They were the police's problem now.

With a nod of his head, Arsenal indicated the roof of the block of flats above them, and they all moved off, the archers firing off grappling arrows, while Impulse simply ran straight up the side of it, with one thought on the violet vigilante's mind.

We need to talk.

Despite what the movies seemed to say, he decided that pain was decidedly overrated.

His mind woke up in stages, slowly creeping towards alertness more and more with each passing second, until he had enough sense of mind to be able to open his eyes, wincing at the bright yellows and oranges of the flames that were still flickering above him.

Touching a hand to his head, he swiped gently at it, grateful to see that it only came away covered in dust and sweat, and none of his blood, before he began to pull himself slowly to his feet.

He staggered slightly, swaying on the spot, as he took a moment to regain his balance - there was no point in him getting up just to fall down again - before he repeated his check for blood with his back, which was the only part of himself that was in any real pain.

It felt hotter than the rest of him, rougher too, but he was still too confused to really care. All he wanted to do was get of there, and get back to his place, to get back to his place and check on Paco. He was worried that his hermanito had been caught in the explosions too, and he needed to see that he was safe.

Checking his hands to see that there was no blood coming from his back, and as he felt fine to walk, he began to make his way back to their shelter, leaving the burning Kord Industries building behind him.

"So", Artemis got straight to the point when they landed, "what's the plan?"

"That's a good question", irritation laced Arsenal's voice as he looked at the others, "what the hell just happened?"

"What are you talking about? We just won, didn't we?"

The original protégé rounded on the team speedster, "Won what? We beat three guys out of the hundreds or so that are probably terrorising the city-"

"It still counts"

"Yes, but it doesn't matter if we get ourselves killed before we stop them. What were you thinking, you didn't even stop to take a look at what was going on around you, and all it took was one of them, that with all your speed you somehow managed not to notice, hitting you to put you on the floor", the slightly older teen huffed, "are you aware that when you're on the ground, you're just as slow as the rest of us?"

"I'm sorry I didn't see him-", the speedster started sarcastically, only to be cut off once more.

"You should have. With your speed you probably could've scoped out the entire area before we manage to fire off a single arrow. Instead you just rushed in, and rushing in head first is how people get killed doing this Impulse"

The younger man looked downcast, staring at his feet, "Sorry", he muttered, "I'll do better"

Huffing once more, the violet clad vigilante turned to face his ex-girlfriend, "And where did you go? We had no idea where you were until you dropped down from outta nowhere"

"Uhh, I blended in with our surroundings, the way we were taught to-"

"You mean the same way the girl with a month's experience and the boy with less than a single day's were taught to? Remember, we haven't all trained under the Green Arrow and the Dark Archer the way you have - I trained with your brother far longer than you did, and I sure as hell didn't know where you were - you can't just disappear and expect us all to follow you, working as part of some plan that we don't know about. This team isn't ready for that, we can't just follow your lead like that"

"Why the hell not?" She stepped up to him, until they were practically nose to nose, her brown eyes burned with the fire that had always drawn him in, except now, he was just as angry as she was, "Every team needs a leader. Star City has the Green Arrow, Central City has The Flash, The Legends have the White Canary"

"And what? We have you?"

Speedy turned to face the other girl, "Why not me? Like you said, training under both the Green Arrow and the Dark Archer, both of whom were also Ra's al Ghul for a time, master combatants, leader of the League of Assassins-"

"Not so sure I'd advertise that part", Impulse muttered, earning him a glare from both girls, before Speedy returned to her reasoning.

"I've had all of their tactical training, giving me the biggest advantage here, I can handle the most weapons, speak the most languages - I am the obvious choice", she finished, Artemis nodding along with her as she spoke, while Impulse was frowning lightly, upset at being silently chastised.

"I think she's right"

"Well I don't"

"Seriously? You three want to do this now? We can table this discussion for later, but right now, this city needs saving", Arsenal left the three of them stood together, as he looked for where the majority of the fires were coming from - that's where the main source of the problem would be, "You can either come with me to do that, or you can stay here and argue over who you think should be in charge, but me? I'm going to help"

He fired off a grappling arrow, the others paused for a moment, watching him swing down towards the ground, before they did the same.

Their discussion, it seemed, would be able to wait.

City Hall was a mess.

That was the only word Artemis could think of to describe the situation.

The destruction in the area was worse than everywhere else in the city, the large fires were extinguished, but smaller fires still littered the area, though they were slowly dwindling down and dying out, as the chaos from the confusion of the attack was replaced with a sense of law and order.

Only it was law and order provided by the golden soldiers walking the streets, marching in small square groups, three by five, with their staffs held over their shoulders.

It seemed that they were already in command of the city, the men working in the outer areas were the ones responsible for making sure that their control was absolute. Their authority in the centre of town was uncontested, even the fire crews and paramedics working to treat the wounded were doing so under their directions, too afraid to even try and do anything other than exactly what they were told.

From their vantage point on the roof of an apartment block, the quartet of young heroes took in their opposition. Counting the amount they had seen on their way in towards the city centre, as well as those that were active outside, Arsenal's best guess was that there were approximately three hundred soldiers acting inside of the city limits.

Those weren't odds he liked facing, even if they weren't covered in protective armour and carrying electricity-discharging weaponry.

And swords too¸ his mind supplied, don't forget the super-sharp swords.

Looking down at the stage some of them were constructing, a part of him wished that he could just call Oliver for help, to be able get the Green Arrow stood back by his side, the two of them working as a team once more would definitely make him feel better about taking on suicidal odds.

But he couldn't.

Oliver had come to him with his idea, an idea of preparing the next generation to take over from him and his team, and he was determined to prove that not only was it was possible, but that he could be the one to make it happen.

And that meant they had to be capable of standing on their own two feet when shit got difficult.

Even if it was only day one.

"So", he spoke up for the first time since they'd left their argument on the roof behind, "Any idea what we're dealing with?"

"Soldiers", Speedy supplied, "with some kind of lightweight golden armour, matching face coverings and some kind of electronic weaponry I'm guessing"

Artemis piped up, "Where d'you think they get their weapons from?"

"It's definitely advanced stuff like", Impulse added, "a staff capable of storing and using that amount of electricity would be hard to make, never mind making this many of them. It'd take a genius to pull of something like that"

"So whoever's outfitting them has to be a genius then", Speedy smiled lightly underneath her hood, "that has to narrow the field down somewhat"

"They could just be rich… or simply being funded from elsewhere", Arsenal screwed his face up in confusion, "but then why electricity? Why not just go and buy a ton of automatics with some new age armour piecing rounds?"

"So, what? You think it's some kind of theme? Like what Captain Cold had?"

Arsenal turned to face the team speedster, "Yeah actually, but that was a little different"

"How?"

"Well, Leonard Snart, or Captain Cold, as you lot call him", Wally grinned at that, "all he wanted was a weapon that would let him slow down The Flash long enough for him to get a win - there was an actual purpose to the gun; it wasn't just because he liked the look of it. Why does the guy-"

"-or girl", Artemis piped up again.

"Or girl", he amended, "in charge want to use electricity-based weapons and swords? There has to be a reason for it, you don't just go around thinking, you know what? I think electricity looks better than bullets, we should use that, and I know that some of us", he indicated Speedy with a nod of his head, "make swords look easy, but they take either years or prodigies to master; there's no way that everyone in this army knows what they're doing with one"

"Speaking of which", Speedy moved next to Arsenal, the two of them watching as soldiers continued to build a stage, "where did the army come from anyway?"

"There's definitely a few mercs in there - they're the ones walking differently, the ones that still have a bit of attitude left in 'em"

"Yeah, but what about the others though?"

"What about Darhk?"

Speedy turned to Artemis, scrutinising her under her green face mask, "Damien Darhk? What about him?"

"Well he had those ghosts right? They were meant to be brainwashed and shit-"

"You think that happened here? Say he did, where d'you find about three hundred people to make disappear and turn them into tin men?"

"I think they're supposed to be made of gold"

"Impulse! That is so not the point"

"Sorry"

"The homeless", when everyone turned to look at Arsenal he explained, "you wouldn't notice if the homeless went missing. The homeless, prostitutes, gang bangers - if people like that go missing you'd just chalk it up to normal stuff, people move on, or get ganked or shot, bodies go missing. Go slowly, grab only two or three at a time, from enough cities, and with enough time-"

"You'd have enough for an army", Speedy finished, as she looked down at the ramrod stiff men that walked in perfect synchronicity, not missing a beat between them, "so how in the hell do we beat an army?"

Artemis twisted an arrow around her fingertips, "We do what the Green Arrow did with Darhk"

Impulse sounded nervous, rocking backwards and forwards on the soles of his bright red boots, "Yeah, what did he do exactly?"

Speedy smiled, "He cut off the head of the snake-"

"Oh"

"-and then he watched, looking on, as the body died"

He stumbled back into alley they were using to house their shelter, struggling to stay on his feet as he stumbled inside. The pain was gone for the most part, relegated until it had just become a dull throbbing sensation at his back.

His big problem now was that he was exhausted.

Each step felt like it needed a Herculean effort to make it, fighting gravity itself just to stay on his feet.

His body hit one of the steel posts they were using as a support column, and he bounced off it slightly, before rolling to the ground, determined to stay there.

Recommendation: You require immediate rest.

That thought - a few hours of rest - sounded like a good idea, a great one even; and he even went as far as to shut his eyes.

"Hermano…"

His eyes snapped open at the sound of Paco's voice. It was faint, barely there, but he had definitely heard it.

"…ayudame hermano"

He forced himself back to his feet, stumbling through their home of tin and wood, until he saw him.

Paco was slumped against the wall with a gaping hole in his chest.

For what felt like the longest of moments, he was stunned; there was no debris, no pieces of wood or rebar there to have caused the damage - Paco didn't even look like he had been out in the explosions.

And then he moaned.

He was at his friend's side in less than a second, grabbing an old towel, and using it to try and stop the flow of blood that was just leaking out of his friend's torso. His injuries looked bad - he had to get him to a hospital, and fast - but there was no way that he was going to get an ambulance to come to him now, not with all the damage that was out there.

Assessment: His injury is life-threatening.

Estimated time until death: Forty-seven seconds.

"Paco, Paco, you need to stay with me man", he tapped him on the cheeks, determined to get something from him, "PACO!"

"-ck… ack…"

"Ese, what are you saying man?"

Using what little he had left, Paco inched his lips closer to his friend's ear, shuddering with the effort, as he gasped for breath, "He said… his name… was… Black…"

He let go, his body's strength failing him; Paco's hands falling limply to the side, as his breathing become strained, his chest rattling, mocking him, as his friend gave up, his torso no longer moving.

He wasn't breathing.

Assessment: This 'Paco' is deceased.

He wasn't sure when he had started crying, but all he knew now was that his best friend had a giant hole in his chest, and there was nothing he could do about it.

Muttering a small prayer, he folded his hands in his lap, before carefully closing his eyes, gently pushing the eyelids down, until they covered his hermanito's eyes.

He took a moment to take it in: the stillness of his chest, the blank look in his eyes; even as he absently traced the wound on his chest.

They were meant to go to Detroit together; to find real jobs, but now they never would.

He focused on that, something hot and heavy hanging in his chest as his brother's last words rang through his head.

"He said he was Black…"

It didn't matter who or what 'Black' was.

'Black' had placed his hands on Paco, and regardless of anything else tonight, there was no sin more unforgivable in his mind, and whoever committed it would pay dearly.

They were his thoughts, even as he realised that his world had become bathed in a harsh, orange light, which only made him want to find this 'Black' more.

Recommendation: Discover the source of the damage.

Recommendation: Take revenge on the involved parties.

Now that sounded like a good idea.

"Yeah", he spoke out, his voice sounding strange even to his own ears, "let's go and do that"