Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fiction ❯ The Crow: Armageddon ❯ Lament of Innocence ( Chapter 6 )
[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]
By: The Wolf Demon 
Anime/Manga: Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Action / Horror / Adventure | Type: Crossover | Uploaded On: 04.14.2007 | Pages: 10 | Words: 8.1K | Visits: 182 | Status: Completed
Anime/Manga: Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Action / Horror / Adventure | Type: Crossover | Uploaded On: 04.14.2007 | Pages: 10 | Words: 8.1K | Visits: 182 | Status: Completed
“The Crow: Armageddon”
By Kokuryu and The Wolf God
Disclaimer: Teen Titans, Batman, Yu-Gi-Oh, and The Crow do not belong to either of us by any chance. Teen Titans and Batman are both owned by DC Comics, although Marv Wolfman and George Perez can be credited with the version of Teen Titans that was the basis for the show and Bill Finger and Bob Kane can be credited with Batman. Warner Brothers and Cartoon Network own the animated versions of Teen Titans and Batman. Yu-Gi-Oh is the creation of Kazuki Takahashi and belongs to him, Shonen Jump, and 4Kids Entertainment. The Crow belongs to James O’Barr . . . God bless his soul.
Author’s note: Sorry about taking so long to write this; I just wasn’t in the mood to write for a while. However, the creative juices keep flowing, so look out for upcoming chapters of this story on a semi-regular basis (Wolf God and I do have lives outside of fanfiction) and future stories by us, both respectively and together.
Rundown of events so far: Téa has been kidnapped by the evil, evil Marik and Yami Yugi has traveled to Gotham City, home of the legendary Batman, in order to find her. The Titans and Robin have been summoned to Gotham by Batman in order to battle what appears to be a revitalized order of Skrios, worshippers of a demon that they and Yami first teamed up to battle. However, events have taken a toll on Yami’s sanity and he has gone over the edge, forcing the Titans to battle him. Can Yugi Muto be saved from himself . . . or is he beyond hope?
“I waited for you
I died inside my own head
And I’d die again for you
I’m faded and tired
Completely uninspired
And I’d die again for you.
“So kill me with the love
That you won’t give to me, give to me
And pack the wound with salt
I wanna feel it bleed, feel it bleed
Ooh.
“I’m searching for reasons
To keep away the demons
And I’d die again for you
I wish you were near me
Could feel it when you hear me say
I’d die again for you.
“So kill me with the love
That you won’t give to me, give to me
And pack the wound with salt
I wanna feel it bleed, feel it bleed
You wanted me to crawl
So now I’m on my knees, on my knees.
“Why’s it always have to be me
That’s always left out to burn and
I’ll never learn
Why’s it always have to be me
That’s always left out to burn and
I’ll never learn.
“So kill me with the love
That you won’t give to me, give to me
And pack the wound with salt
I wanna feel it bleed, feel it bleed
You wanted me to crawl
So now I’m on my knees, on my knees.”
Smile Empty Soul – “Finding Myself”
Chapter 6:
“Lament of Innocence”
The GCPD had just arrived at the scene of the slaughter of the Wolf Dragons and Death Tigers. What they saw made them want to throw up. Even Detectives Harvey Bullock and Renee Montoya could barely hold down what they’d eaten before coming to the crime scene.
“Who the hell could have done this?” Commissioner James Gordon asked.
“Sure as hell ain’t Batman,” Bullock replied. “As much of a fruitcake as I think he is, this ain’t his style. And besides . . .” He pointed out to something in the center of the mutilated bodies. “Wrong flying animal.”
Gordon, Bullock, and Montoya looked at the shape of a crow painted in blood, most likely that of the Death Tigers and Wolf Dragons.
“Who the hell marks the scene of his killings with a bird painting?” Montoya asked.
“A vigilante named Yugi Muto,” a voice answered.
The trio turned around to face an African-American man dressed in the garments of a plainclothes officer. “Sorry I didn’t introduce myself immediately. I’m Detective Daryl Albrecht from Domino City and I’ve been tailing this guy for a while. I just didn’t expect him to go totally psycho.”
“Yugi Muto?” Montoya asked.
“A vigilante who likes to dress in black and paint himself up like some kind of demon clown,” Albrecht replied. “He usually marks the places he’s visited with a crow painted in blood. I was sent here when the brass in Domino found out that he’d come here.”
“Glad to see that some cities have a zero tolerance policy when it comes to vigilantes,” Bullock remarked.
“Oh, you’re referring to the so-called Dark Knight who runs around at night smacking criminals around for you?” Albrecht commented.
“He helps us,” Gordon amended. “If you knew what this city used to be before he showed up, you’d know that Batman’s needed here.”
“Perhaps, but if you start tolerating vigilantes, you get a bunch of copycats who are gonna end up dead sooner or later,” Albrecht said. “Never mind, we don’t have the time for this argument right now. Right now, we’ve got to find Yugi and put him behind bars.”
“How difficult can a guy who paints himself up like a demon clown be to find?” Montoya asked.
“Very,” Albrecht replied. “I don’t know how he does it, but he keeps getting away from me. Not this time. This has gone on long enough and I’m going to put a stop to him. You feel like helping?”
“We’ll do everything we can,” Gordon answered before briefly looking up at the blood-red night sky and seeing a pointy-eared shadow staring at him with blank white eyes. The Police Commissioner looked away for a moment and when he looked up again, the shadow was gone. He shook his head slowly. ‘Just like him.’
Meanwhile, the Titans, Robin, and Joey congregated in the apartment Raven had shared with Yugi before his mad rampage, trying to make sense of what had transpired. As for Tristan, he had been taken to the hotel room that Mai and Serenity shared, as Joey trusted them to watch over him as he recovered.
“We have to stop him,” Superboy stated.
“Uh, how do we do that?” Beast Boy asked. “In case you don’t remember, he kicked your ass, not to mention ours.”
“So?” Superboy answered. “I could still take him.”
“Then do a better job of it next time,” Robin stated, blue eyes staring at him from behind a ghoulish mask of white paint and black eye shadow. “He didn’t hesitate to attack any of us . . . except for Raven.” He turned to the purple-haired empath. “Raven, what did you sense from him?”
“Madness,” Raven replied. “His thoughts were a whirlwind of madness, confusion, and torment.”
“Boo fucking hoo,” Superboy sneered. “He’s tormented. We get that. What we don’t get is why he went psycho and tried to kill us . . . and at this point, I don’t think I care that much.”
“So what are you saying, Conner?” Wonder Girl asked. “For Zeus’s sake, he’s our friend. We owe it to him to snap him out of whatever it is that’s got him acting so crazy.”
“Krisnahyit,” Robin murmured. Upon catching the odd looks everyone else gave him, the Dead Boy Wonder went on. “A word in Starfire’s language for ‘split soul.’ The basic explanation is that Yugi’s mind has split into two halves: the half that’s the guy we all know and consider a friend and the half that’s full of all the dark, twisted aspects of his nature.”
“And the dark half is winning,” Cyborg said.
“So what do we do?” Joey asked. “I mean, if this krisnahyit is screwing with Yugi’s head and turning him into a monster, we’ve gotta save him!”
“He can only save himself,” Raven replied gravely.
“What the hell do you mean?” Joey asked heatedly.
“What I mean is that we can only do so much to help him,” Raven answered evenly. “In the end, it has to be Yugi who stops himself from going completely over the edge.”
“He may not be able to,” a deep voice full of dark power stated, causing everyone to turn to its source, a man-shaped figure dressed in dark gray with a pointy-eared black cowl concealing his identity and a scalloped black cape draped around his shoulders.
“You’re Batman!” Joey exclaimed. “Holy shit, you’re Batman! You’re real! I knew it!”
The Dark Knight waited for Joey to calm down before speaking. “Yugi,” he stated.
“What about him?” Robin asked tonelessly.
“I know he’s The Crow,” Batman replied. “It wasn’t that hard to figure out, in retrospect. A sixteen-year-old boy named Yugi Muto and his grandfather Solomon were murdered about five years ago. When The Crow first appeared, he was killing everyone connected to those murders. His last victim was a young industrialist named Seto Kaiba.”
“So you know,” Robin said. “That changes nothing. We’ll take care of Yugi ourselves.”
“You’re too close to this,” Batman said. “Your feelings of friendship will get in the way. I’ll do this myself.”
“You don’t have the right –” Robin started to say, but Batman cut him off harshly.
“I called you and your friends here to my city,” the Caped Crusader snarled, “so as far as I’m concerned, I call the shots.”
“You haven’t changed one fucking bit,” Robin spat, his eyes full of fury and contempt. “When the hell will you learn that the Titans and I are perfectly capable of handling ourselves? We’re not children.”
“As far as I’m concerned, you still are a child,” Batman stated.
“As arrogant as ever,” Robin remarked with a chuckle. “I stopped being a child a long time ago . . so do not talk to me as though I still was a child.”
“Both of you cool it,” a young man’s firm voice admonished. “We won’t get any closer to finding The Crow by lashing out at each other.”
Everyone turned to the source of that voice with mixed expressions of astonishment. Not surprisingly, that expression was missing on what one could see of Batman’s face, since the Dark Knight had sensed the newcomer’s arrival almost from the start.
The newcomer was dressed in form-fitting black with a blue bird emblazoned on his chest and a birdlike black mask covering his eyes.
“Nightwing,” Batman greeted neutrally. “What did you find?”
“Nothing good,” Nightwing replied sadly. “He ripped up another gang. They were barely recognizable by the time I got there.” Even though he was good at keeping his face impassive, no one could miss the horror in his voice. “So much blood . . ”
“Say it ain’t so, man,” Joey pleaded.
“It is so,” Nightwing confirmed regretfully.
“We have to stop him,” Batman stated. “He gets his power from the same source as you, Robin, so the only way we’ll stand a chance against him is if we wound or kill his guardian crow. Otherwise, there’s no telling what damage he’ll do.”
“You’re not going to hurt Yugi,” Raven stated firmly.
“Give me one good reason not to,” Batman growled.
“Because he’s my brother,” Raven replied.
Batman paused, but only for a brief moment. “It doesn’t matter. He’s out of control and needs to be stopped before he turns his madness on innocent people.”
“What do you mean?” Superboy asked. “I thought he was just killing criminals!”
“For now,” Batman answered. “But what if he gets it into his head that the existence of humanity itself is a crime? What do you think he’ll do then?”
“He isn’t beyond saving,” Raven insisted.
“How?” Nightwing asked.
“When the other Titans and Robin fought him, he refused to hurt me,” Raven replied. “In fact, he seemed to revert to his old self when I confronted him. He ran away just to keep himself from hurting me.”
“He’s still going down,” Batman insisted. “I can’t tolerate vigilantes who kill in my city, especially when they’re completely out of their minds.”
“You won’t find him without me,” Raven said. “We’re linked, Yugi and I. When we battled my father Trigon, we had to merge bodies and powers in order to beat him. When we separated, a little bit of me was left in him and a little bit of him was left in me.”
“Holy shit,” Joey uttered. “Can you believe that, Beast Boy? Yugi with boobs!”
Beast Boy tried to imagine what a more feminine version of Yami Yugi would look like and a strange expression appeared over his face. “I don’t know whether to be freaked out or turned on.”
“You two ain’t right,” Cyborg said. “That’s just . . not right.”
“Yeah, quit it, you two perverts,” Wonder Girl added.
Superboy wisely decided against admitting that he’d been having similar thoughts.
“I can help you find Yugi,” Raven said to Batman and Nightwing, “but only if you swear to let me try to get through to him.”
Batman had to fight the urge to smile, as he found himself rather impressed by Raven’s determination to help her brother back to sanity.
“Fine,” he conceded, “but he’s probably not going to listen easily. Nightwing and I will have to subdue him, but other than that, I can promise that we won’t use any more force than necessary.” The Caped Crusader turned to leap out the window, only to be stopped by Joey’s voice.
“I’m coming with you.”
“No,” Batman stated. “You’re a civilian. I can’t risk you getting hurt.”
“Civilian, nothing!” Joey yelled. “Yugi’s my friend and I owe it to him to be there for him, psycho killer or not!”
Again, Batman found himself fighting the urge to smile. “You can come, too, but I leave your safety to you and Raven. While I’m fighting Yugi, assuming it comes to that, I won’t have the time to look out for you.”
“I can live with that,” Joey answered.
“By the way, how’s your friend doing?” Batman asked.
“Tristan?” Joey deduced. “He’s all right. Robin used his blood to heal him. The worst he’s got now is a sore throat. He’s currently hanging with Mai and Serenity . . .” He mumbled the last part under his breath. “. . . and probably using his injury to score sympathy sex with Serenity.”
In a rundown loft somewhere in the nastier part of Gotham City, an eight-year-old girl lay on a ratty bed, her wrists and ankles tied to the bedposts by rope. Her wide blue-green eyes were even wider with fear of what the man before her would do to her.
The man in question examined his prey. Such a delightful little girl she was, dressed in a pink jacket over a white dress shirt, black tie, and pleated blue skirt. The glasses he currently held in his hand had been hers before and she had looked so adorable in them. He licked his lips in sick anticipation and withdrew his switchblade from his pocket, flicking the blade out in preparation to slice her shirt open.
Unfortunately for him, he would never get that chance, as something made him turn around and he found himself face to face with a pair of malevolent red eyes.
“You make me sick,” the owner of the crimson eyes snarled.
“Wh-who are you?” the man asked.
“Someone who’ll send you to the bowels of hell, you miserable pedophile,” the crimson-eyed shadow snarled.
“Not if you go there first, motherfucker,” the pedophile retorted and threw his switchblade at the crimson-eyed shadow, who caught the knife in his hand – literally in his hand. The knife embedded in the shadow’s hand didn’t seem to trouble him, as he just pulled it out without any noises indicative of pain.
“She doesn’t need to see this,” the shadow said and dragged the pedophile out of the bedroom, leading him to another room. In the meager light, the pedophile could see hints of magenta and gold for the shadow’s hair and chilling white and black for the shadow’s face.
“What the hell are you?” the pedophile asked.
“Like I said before, someone who’ll send you to the bowels of hell,” the shadow replied before slicing the pedophile’s shirt open with his own switchblade. Before the perverted man could do anything about it, he was stuck to the wall by a shiv in his shoulder, causing him to scream in pain. Another shiv found its way into his other shoulder, securing him to the wall. “Now let’s begin the pain, shall we?”
For a full hour, all that could be heard in the immediate vicinity of that loft was the pedophile’s screams. Nobody actually thought to call the police, as they all thought it was some particularly sadistic mob enforcer’s work.
Rebecca remained tied to the bed, though, shivering at hearing the pedophile’s tormented screams. She sighed with relief when the screams finally stopped. Then that relief turned to apprehension when she saw someone enter the room.
He wasn’t very tall, perhaps five feet six inches. What stood out about him was his hair, which was spiked in almost every direction and tipped with red. In the meager light, Rebecca could see spiky blond bangs and violet eyes. Upon looking more closely, she saw that his face was covered in white foundation and his eyelids and lips were colored black with lines extending from them.
He looks like a clown . . . if clowns were supposed to be scary, Rebecca mused to herself.
“Are you all right?” the clownish-looking male asked in a smooth, deep voice.
“Yeah . . .” Rebecca replied nervously.
“That scum won’t touch you ever again,” the male stated as he walked over to her and untied the knots of the ropes that kept her bound to the bed.
“Did you kill him?” Rebecca asked in a small voice.
The male looked taken aback by the question. His eyes refused to meet Rebecca’s.
“Don’t lie,” Rebecca stated, her voice firmer and slightly petulant.
“I did kill him,” the male admitted softly.
Rebecca said nothing for a few minutes. Then she looked up at the male that had saved her life.
“You look sad,” she commented.
“I hurt people,” the male answered.
“The bad people, right?” Rebecca surmised. “Like that man who tried to hurt me.”
“Yes, but . . . I hurt my friends, too,” the male answered.
“I’m sure you didn’t mean to hurt your friends,” Rebecca observed.
“How did that man get to you?” the male asked.
“I was walking down the street on my way back to my grandpa’s place,” Rebecca replied. “A man came up to me and offered to give me a ride home. I said no and then he grabbed me and covered my mouth and nose with a wet rag to keep me quiet. I passed out and when I woke up . . I was here.”
The male paused for a moment before asking, “What does your grandpa do?”
“He’s an archaeologist,” Rebecca replied. “Specializes in the legends of ancient civilizations.”
“My grandfather had a friend who was an archaeologist,” the male said. “His name was Arthur Hawkins.”
“That’s my grandfather’s name,” Rebecca said. “Would you be Solomon Muto’s grandson Yugi?”
“Yes,” the male admitted.
“Wait, didn’t Solomon and Yugi get killed by Seto Kaiba and his goons years ago?” Rebecca asked.
“Yes,” Yugi replied. “I came back, though.”
“How?” Rebecca asked.
Just then, a crow flew into the room and cawed at Yugi, who nodded at it.
“I have to go,” he said as he walked toward the window. “Stay here. The people that are coming won’t hurt you.”
“Wai –” Rebecca uttered, but before she could reach the window, Yugi had already jumped out and vanished into the night with his crow.
A black car akin to a sleek, stylized tank prowled the streets of Gotham City, driven by Batman. Joey sat beside him, looking as though he was on the verge of an orgasm.
“Oh, shit, this is the coolest car I’ve ever been in!” Joey exclaimed. A dark look from Batman stopped him from rambling any further.
Next to the Batmobile, Nightwing rode his customized street bike with Raven holding onto him from behind.
Unbeknownst to them all, a dark motorcycle driven by an even darker rider followed them, the engine on silent so as not to draw their attention. However, the rider was not immune to Raven’s empathic abilities.
Should have known you wouldn’t leave it alone, she thought.
As the three vehicles continued into the night, Batman saw someone standing in the middle of the street and began to slow down. To his surprise, the person in the middle of the street spoke.
“Don’t slow down on my account,” he said in a Southern accent as he tipped his hat to Batman, revealing a head completely without hair. Of course, it wasn’t as though a skull could have hair.
“Skull Cowboy?” Joey had just enough time to utter before he disappeared and Skull Cowboy appeared in his place.
“Who are you and what have you done with Joey?” Batman asked, not pausing in his driving for one second.
“Nothing,” Skull Cowboy replied. “He’s still here. I haven’t possessed him, just shifted spaces with him. He is still in the same timeline, but in a different space than us.”
“You didn’t answer my first question,” Batman stated.
“I’m the Skull Cowboy. Consider me Yugi’s guide,” the skeletal cowboy replied.
“Some job you did,” Batman said. “Yugi’s running loose and killing criminals in my city. I have to stop him.”
“That much is true,” Skull Cowboy admitted. “But there are forces far greater at work. The reason Yugi is here is that the cult you’re investigating kidnapped a girl named Téa Gardner. He was trying to save her before he went mad. And this cult . . . its leader wants her as a witness to the suffering he will unleash when he is able to summon the Great Demon Gods.”
“I’ve heard of those gods,” Batman answered. “I’ll deal with the cult after I stop Yugi.”
“And how will you do that?” Skull Cowboy asked. “He can’t feel any pain that you could inflict on him. He can’t be killed . . . and he heals too fast for any injury you could inflict on him to have an effect.”
“I take out his crow, he won’t be so tough,” Batman replied.
“Sure,” Skull Cowboy conceded. “But in all honesty, only he can stop himself. All you can do is help him do that.”
Then he was gone, and Joey was back in the passenger seat of the Batmobile.
“Are you all right?” Batman asked.
“Yeah,” Joey replied. “That was some weird shit he did, though. Really fucking weird.”
Batman didn’t say anything after that; he just kept driving.
Back in the old Arkham Asylum, Téa and Starfire rested in their prison cell. However, their rest was interrupted by a loud, crude voice.
“Hey!” Zygore shouted. “How about some HLA?”
“What is this HLA?” Starfire asked.
“He wants us to do live lesbian porn for him,” Téa replied. “Sick pervert.”
“As long as we have to sit here watching you two hotties, we oughtta get somethin’ out of it,” Sid remarked.
“You despicable man!” Starfire exclaimed in outrage. However, she was so caught up in her outrage that she tried to shoot a starbolt at him, forgetting that the special bracelets on her wrists would shock her for attempting to use her powers. However, she remembered very quickly . . . and very painfully.
“Starfire!” Téa shouted, kneeling beside her red-haired friend, who was currently convulsing on the ground from the shocks, which stopped after a minute.
“This is rather touching,” Sid remarked. “Reminds me of what lesbian porn would be like if they actually made it for women.”
“Enough, you two,” Odion growled from the doorway. “Since you seem incapable of thinking with the head on your shoulders instead of the head between your legs, you’ll have to end your shift early. I’ll guard these two from this point on.”
There were some grumbles, but Sid and Zygore complied; they didn’t want to mess with Marik’s right-hand man.
“I am sorry for their behavior,” Odion said. “Men should not behave so crudely in the presence of ladies.”
“Glad to see at least somebody in Marik’s gang is a gentleman,” Téa remarked.
“You do not seem like a bad person,” Starfire said. “Why would you work for someone like Marik?”
“I have no choice,” Odion replied, sadness lacing his tone. “I must protect Master Marik.”
Elsewhere in Gotham, Batman, Nightwing, Joey, Raven, and the incognito rider found themselves in front of a warehouse in one of the worse areas of the city. Batman and Joey got out of the Batmobile and Nightwing, Raven, and the incognito rider got off their motorcycles, the latter three removing their helmets. When the incognito rider removed his helmet, he exposed a face painted in ghoulish white and black with ice-indigo eyes staring out into the darkness.
“I thought I made it abundantly clear that you were supposed to stay with your friends,” Batman rasped out.
The incognito rider, now revealed as Robin, did not answer, instead walking into the warehouse. “He was here,” he stated. “Emphasis on ‘was.’”
“I sense someone else in here,” Raven added as she, Batman, Joey, and Nightwing followed Robin into the warehouse. Following Raven and her empathic senses, the five walked up to a loft and saw a young blonde girl, no older than ten by their estimates, sitting on a ratty bed. When she saw Robin, her eyes widened in recognition.
“You look just like that boy who came here and saved me from that creepy man,” the girl blurted out.
“You mean The Crow,” Batman deduced.
“Yeah, he had a crow with him,” the girl said, “but his name is Yugi.”
“That we know already,” Nightwing answered. “But are you all right?”
“Yeah,” the girl replied. “But I’d like to get back home to my grandfather. His name’s Arthur Hawkins.”
“Wait . . . Hawkins . . ” Nightwing murmured. Then a light seemed to snap on in his mind. “That’s the archaeologist! But if you’re his granddaughter . . wait . . you’re Rebecca Hawkins.”
Joey stared at the young masked man as though he was not quite right in the head.
“I’ve heard of you,” Batman told Rebecca. “From what I hear, you’re quite the child prodigy, both in computer technology and in that Duel Monsters game.”
“Thanks, but could somebody please take me back to my grandpa?” Rebecca asked in a tone that suggested she was getting rather annoyed. “It’s late and he’s probably worried sick about me.”
“I’ll take you home,” Nightwing said. Turning to Batman, Robin, Raven, and Joey, he added. “You four can keep searching for Yugi.”
“You’re not going to hurt him, are you?” Rebecca asked before adding, “Because if you do, I’ll never forgive you!”
“We won’t hurt him,” Robin stated. “You have my word on that.”
“All right,” Rebecca conceded.
Nightwing took Rebecca to his motorcycle and handed her a helmet, then proceeding to put his own helmet on. He straddled the motorcycle with Rebecca holding him by the waist and started the engine. He revved the throttle and then took off into the night like a black bullet.
Meanwhile, Batman and Joey rode down the mean streets of Gotham City in the Batmobile and Robin and Raven followed on Robin’s R-Cycle.
Once, not so long ago, I would have given anything to be this close to him, Raven thought. But now that I am . . . it just doesn’t feel like I’d expect it to. He’s not the one for me, I know. I also know there is someone for me . . . someone who could accept me as I am and not try to change me. She sighed briefly. Enough of this, I have to find Yugi right now.
Raven extended her empathic abilities, tapping into the part of her that was Yami Yugi to connect to the part of him that was her. Soon enough, they connected.
“I know where he is,” she said.
“Show me the way,” Robin answered, riding beside the Batmobile before accelerating ahead of it.
“Looks like we found him,” Joey remarked as Batman kept right on the R-Cycle’s tail.
They finally stopped at a church.
“A church?” Joey asked. “Didn’t know Yugi found religion.”
Batman didn’t respond to that, simply opening the Batmobile so that he and Joey could climb out. Before them, Robin and Raven got off the R-Cycle and removed their helmets. The group of four walked into the church, silently dreading what they would find.
“Yugi,” Raven spoke. “I know you’re here. Come out. We just want to help you.”
“Help?” a dark, raspy voice asked sinisterly. “You seem to be forgetting . . . dear sister . . . that I do not need anyone’s help.”
“Yuge?” Joey asked. “Ya gotta snap out of this, man! You ain’t acting like yourself!”
“Or perhaps . . . I’m more myself than I’ve ever been,” Yami Yugi’s voice answered.
“Come out, Yugi,” Batman ordered.
“Ah, the legendary Dark Knight Detective himself,” Yami Yugi hissed. “All right, then . . . if you’re all so insistent . . ”
Yami Yugi walked out of the shadows, looking quite different from when Robin, Raven, and Joey had last seen him. This time, his eyes were the color of freshly spilled blood. His skin was a ghastly white, matching the paint on his face, and the cold smirk on his face bared vampire-like fangs.
“Yugi . . ” Robin uttered. “What’s happened to you?”
“A lot of things,” Yami replied. He chuckled coldly. “You shouldn’t have come looking for me. Bad things happen to people who get in my way, as you know.”
Batman didn’t waste time with further talking; he whipped out two bat-shaped boomerangs and threw them at Yami. Unfortunately for him, Yami plucked the boomerangs out of the air with his bare hands.
“What the fuck!” Joey exclaimed. “Those things were going at a hundred miles an hour and he just caught them like Nerf balls!”
“Good attempt, Batman,” The Crow complimented. “But not good enough.”
Batman rushed at The Crow, delivering a swift kick to his chest that knocked him back a few feet.
“I definitely felt that one,” he remarked. “Not like it hurt, though. Nothing hurts me.” He withdrew his bloodstained shivs. “Can the same be said for you, though?”
Batman threw bolas at The Crow, intending to trap him within the weighted ropes. Unfortunately, he caught the bolas and threw them back at Batman, who ducked and rushed him again. The Crow parried Batman’s punch with a spiked bracelet on his wrist, although the spikes on that bracelet didn’t pierce the Kevlar triple-weave glove and he ended up falling victim to a low sweeping kick. Despite that, he simply flipped back into a standing position and kicked Batman in the stomach, nearly sending him crashing into a pew.
'He’s even stronger than Bane,' Batman thought before getting up and throwing a flash-bang pellet at Yami Yugi, the aforementioned pellet exploding in the mad avenger’s face and momentarily blinding him.
“Do you think I need my eyes to tear your throat out!” he roared as he lunged at Batman with . . . claws extended.
Joey, Robin, and Raven gasped in horror when they saw the wicked claws that used to be their friend’s – brother’s in Raven’s case – nails.
Fortunately, Batman caught Yami Yugi’s wrists and fell backwards, swinging his legs up to kick the insane avatar of the crow into a wall. Unfortunately, Yami flipped in the air and landed in an animal-like crouch, then spun around to face the Dark Knight again.
“When I was a child, I idolized you,” he mused out loud. “I wanted to be like you, the great Dark Knight, bringing justice to the scum of the streets.”
“If you wanted to be like me, you wouldn’t be killing,” Batman answered. “Especially not so indiscriminately.”
“What’s wrong?” Yugi asked with a chilling smirk. “Jealous that I’m willing to do what your outmoded morals prevent you from doing?”
Batman pulled out two more bat-shaped boomerangs, each one blinking red in the center.
“Oh, shit,” Joey uttered when he saw the blinking lights.
Batman threw both boomerangs at Yugi, who simply ducked and rolled out of the way of the subsequent dual explosion. “Good effort,” Yugi complimented mockingly. “But not quite good enough.”
The Crow charged at Batman once again, delivering fast and vicious punches and kicks at the taller dark warrior, who was parrying and countering to the best of his ability. Batman may have had the edge in terms of experience and martial artistry, but The Crow was even stronger and faster and had the added edge of unpredictability due to his insanity.
The mad avatar of vengeance pulled out his shivs once again and slashed at Batman with them, who knocked both weapons out of his hands and kicked him with such force as to send him flying into a wall. However, Yami just got up again and dusted himself off.
“Do you really think you can kill me?” he asked condescendingly.
“I don’t have to,” Batman replied before pulling out another bat-shaped boomerang.
Raven read the Caped Crusader’s emotions and realized what he was going to do. He was going to kill Yami’s crow and thus rob him of his power in the hopes that once the power left him, so would his madness.
“This has gone on long enough,” Raven murmured. Tapping into the part of her that she had left in Yugi after their merging to defeat Trigon, she entered her brother’s mind, causing his limbs to lock in place and thus stopping any further attacks.
When Raven entered Yugi’s mind, she found herself immersed in a world of dark corridors.
“Yugi!” she shouted. “Where are you!”
“Raven . . .” she heard a faint voice calling. “Raven . . .”
“Yugi!” Raven shouted. “Is that you?”
“Yes . . .” the voice answered.
Raven ran down the corridor in search of Yugi, going through a virtual maze of hallways before finally reaching a steel door. She opened the door and looked inside, seeing nothing but shadows.
“Yugi?” she asked. “Are you in there?”
“Yes . . .” Yugi’s voice answered.
Raven stepped inside and squinted into the darkness to get a better look. She saw Yugi, but not as she was used to seeing him. The Yugi she saw was considerably smaller than the Yugi she knew and the spikes of his hair weren’t quite as sharp. In addition, his eyes were bigger, softer, and more innocent. He was dressed in a blue jacket over a white collared shirt and blue pants with black-and-gray sneakers.
The real kicker . . . he was chained to the wall.
“Yugi?” Raven asked.
“Hi, sis,” Yugi replied.
“How did you get like this?” Raven asked.
“I’m the Yugi that once was,” Yugi replied. “Before Seto Kaiba and his thugs murdered me and my grandfather and replaced the light and joy in my soul with rage and darkness . . . the same rage that is now consuming my other self.”
“How do I stop it?” Raven asked.
“Set me free,” Yugi replied. “I can help him.”
Raven telekinetically broke the chains that kept Yugi bound to the wall. “Let’s go,” she said.
Raven and the innocent Yugi traversed the corridors of Yugi’s mind until they heard what sounded like a vicious struggle.
“What’s that?” Raven asked.
“My other self,” the innocent Yugi replied. “He is battling the darkness . . . and he is losing. That is the reason you found me in chains. The darkness is slowly taking over everything and Marik’s suggestions haven’t helped at all.”
The duo stopped in front of a massive double door. Raven moved before one door and the innocent Yugi took his position before the other door. They pushed the doors together and they parted in the face of their combined strength, allowing them to walk into the arena ahead.
Once in the arena, Raven’s clothes changed. Where before they were a white cloak and leotard, now they were a white cloak, corset, leather pants, and open-front skirt.
“What is this?” she asked.
“In this arena, a person’s mental projection becomes an idealized version of him- or herself,” the innocent Yugi replied.
“Then how come you haven’t changed?” Raven asked.
“What makes you think that this isn’t my idealized form?” the innocent Yugi asked.
Both of them looked out into the arena itself and saw the “dark” Yugi, wearing a red-lined black cape over a black leather shirt with a harness and leather pants with twin belts wrapped around the left thigh. They also saw the dark Yugi battling a mirror image of himself that very closely resembled the maniacal Crow Raven and the others had had the unpleasant experience of battling.
“How is this happening?” Raven asked.
“The power of the crow is rooted in darkness and darkness is the fate of all the crow’s avatars,” the innocent Yugi replied gravely. “Darkness is their weapon and also their bane. Téa’s presence kept the darkness at bay, gave us a reason to hold onto the light, but without her . . . you see.”
Dark Yugi slashed at The Crow with his katana, but The Crow parried the slash and viciously kicked him in the side, knocking him down on the ground.
“You’re nothing without me, do you realize that?” The Crow asked his counterpart cruelly, pointing his own sword at his throat.
“And you are nothing without me,” Dark Yugi retorted. “Were it not for me, you wouldn’t exist.”
“We’ll see about that,” The Crow snarled as he brought his sword down on Dark Yugi, ready to kill him. However, he didn’t get to kill his better half . .
. . . because Raven had taken the blow in his place.
“RAVEN!” the innocent and dark Yugis shouted at the same time.
“I couldn’t . . . let him . . . hurt you . . .” Raven struggled to say through a mouthful of blood.
Dark Yugi was speechless as he held his seemingly dying sister in his arms.
“He . . . he . . . YOU’VE GONE TOO FAR!” the innocent Yugi screamed.
“And what are you going to do about it, you pale shadow of me?” The Crow asked.
The innocent Yugi’s eyes glowed bright white before he exploded into a sphere of pure light that flew into his darker counterpart, causing his clothes to change into a suit of black-and-silver armor. The sword itself became a weapon of pure light energy.
“Are you ready to die?” The Crow asked, apparently unperturbed by the change in his slightly lighter counterpart.
“That depends,” Dark Yugi asked as he gently placed his fading sister on the floor of the arena. “We’re already dead, technically.”
That was the only warning The Crow got before he was quickly and viciously slashed by the pure light blade. And to his surprise . . . it actually hurt.
“You son of a bitch!” The Crow roared angrily.
Dark Yugi didn’t answer, but vanished from sight instead. When he reappeared, it was with his light blade through The Crow’s heart. The aforementioned avatar of darkness screamed in agony as he sensed his end.
“For Raven,” Dark Yugi hissed, holding the light blade inside The Crow’s heart as its energy spread throughout his astral form, making the “veins” glow with white light.
“AAAAHHHHH!” The Crow screamed as his astral form shattered into a million pieces that scattered themselves throughout Yugi’s mind.
“Raven . . .” Dark Yugi murmured sadly.
“Brother . . . I’m still alive,” Raven’s voice stated.
Dark Yugi turned around to see Raven standing before him, healed of her fatal wound. Immediately, he hugged her tightly.
“Don’t scare me like that, sister,” he whispered softly.
“Had to,” Raven responded. “It was the only way I knew to give you the impetus you needed to stop the evil side of yourself.”
“It worked,” Dark Yugi stated as he pulled away to look at Raven. “Now let’s go back home.”
In the real world, Yami Yugi’s eyes returned to their normal violet color, his skin took back its normal pale peach color, and his claws shortened back into nails.
“Yuge?” Joey asked. “Is that you?”
“Yes, Joey, it’s me,” Yami Yugi replied. “And I can sense that I have much to apologize for.”
“We’ll worry about that later,” Joey answered. “Right now, we’re just glad you’re back.”
“Yeah,” Robin agreed. Then he turned to Raven. “You all right?”
“Yeah,” Raven replied, “but Yugi’s mind is a really confusing place to be.”
Outside of the church, the three mysterious bikers watched as Raven, Yugi, Joey, Robin, and Batman walked out of the church.
“Looks like Dead Boy’s back to himself again,” the Australian-accented biker remarked.
“Yes, which means we can continue with the plan,” the tall, muscular blond biker added.
The third biker smiled cruelly. “Look out, kiddies.”
“I’m thinking of
Thanking all the fucked people
Thanking all the shit I love
They are all the things I’ve made
Straight from my heart
Begging all the same people
Burning is the same evil
Somehow making me feel sane.
“Waiting all this time
I’ve got nothing to hold on
But the faces of my life
I can see before I’m gone.
“Sometimes I feel it chasing me
All the hate that’s breaking free
I realize I’m taking everything
And the kids seem to follow.
“This time I feel it taking me
To a place I need to be
All along I seem to make believe
And the shit seems to follow.
“I’m thinking of
Making all the fucked people
Making all the bitches I love
Make them die and go away
Pain from the start
All my dreams are ripped apart
Thanking all the fucked people
They are all the things I’ve saved.
“Waiting all this time
I’ve got nothing to hold on
But the faces of my life
I can see before I’m gone.
“Sometimes I feel it chasing me
All the hate that’s breaking free
I realize I’m taking everything
And the kids seem to follow.
“This time I feel it taking me
To a place I need to be
All along I seem to make believe
And the shit seems to follow.
“Your life, I hate it
Oh God, can I reclaim?
Stop and help me.
“Sometimes I feel it chasing me
All the hate that’s breaking free
I realize I’m taking everything
And the kids seem to follow.
“This time I feel it taking me
To a place I need to be
All along I seem to make believe
And the shit seems to follow.
“The shit seems to follow.”
Korn – “Make Believe”
End Notes: Sorry I took so long. Wolf God, today’s your birthday and this finished piece of art (feel free to edit it if you like) is your present from me. Happy birthday, man.
By Kokuryu and The Wolf God
Disclaimer: Teen Titans, Batman, Yu-Gi-Oh, and The Crow do not belong to either of us by any chance. Teen Titans and Batman are both owned by DC Comics, although Marv Wolfman and George Perez can be credited with the version of Teen Titans that was the basis for the show and Bill Finger and Bob Kane can be credited with Batman. Warner Brothers and Cartoon Network own the animated versions of Teen Titans and Batman. Yu-Gi-Oh is the creation of Kazuki Takahashi and belongs to him, Shonen Jump, and 4Kids Entertainment. The Crow belongs to James O’Barr . . . God bless his soul.
Author’s note: Sorry about taking so long to write this; I just wasn’t in the mood to write for a while. However, the creative juices keep flowing, so look out for upcoming chapters of this story on a semi-regular basis (Wolf God and I do have lives outside of fanfiction) and future stories by us, both respectively and together.
Rundown of events so far: Téa has been kidnapped by the evil, evil Marik and Yami Yugi has traveled to Gotham City, home of the legendary Batman, in order to find her. The Titans and Robin have been summoned to Gotham by Batman in order to battle what appears to be a revitalized order of Skrios, worshippers of a demon that they and Yami first teamed up to battle. However, events have taken a toll on Yami’s sanity and he has gone over the edge, forcing the Titans to battle him. Can Yugi Muto be saved from himself . . . or is he beyond hope?
“I waited for you
I died inside my own head
And I’d die again for you
I’m faded and tired
Completely uninspired
And I’d die again for you.
“So kill me with the love
That you won’t give to me, give to me
And pack the wound with salt
I wanna feel it bleed, feel it bleed
Ooh.
“I’m searching for reasons
To keep away the demons
And I’d die again for you
I wish you were near me
Could feel it when you hear me say
I’d die again for you.
“So kill me with the love
That you won’t give to me, give to me
And pack the wound with salt
I wanna feel it bleed, feel it bleed
You wanted me to crawl
So now I’m on my knees, on my knees.
“Why’s it always have to be me
That’s always left out to burn and
I’ll never learn
Why’s it always have to be me
That’s always left out to burn and
I’ll never learn.
“So kill me with the love
That you won’t give to me, give to me
And pack the wound with salt
I wanna feel it bleed, feel it bleed
You wanted me to crawl
So now I’m on my knees, on my knees.”
Smile Empty Soul – “Finding Myself”
Chapter 6:
“Lament of Innocence”
The GCPD had just arrived at the scene of the slaughter of the Wolf Dragons and Death Tigers. What they saw made them want to throw up. Even Detectives Harvey Bullock and Renee Montoya could barely hold down what they’d eaten before coming to the crime scene.
“Who the hell could have done this?” Commissioner James Gordon asked.
“Sure as hell ain’t Batman,” Bullock replied. “As much of a fruitcake as I think he is, this ain’t his style. And besides . . .” He pointed out to something in the center of the mutilated bodies. “Wrong flying animal.”
Gordon, Bullock, and Montoya looked at the shape of a crow painted in blood, most likely that of the Death Tigers and Wolf Dragons.
“Who the hell marks the scene of his killings with a bird painting?” Montoya asked.
“A vigilante named Yugi Muto,” a voice answered.
The trio turned around to face an African-American man dressed in the garments of a plainclothes officer. “Sorry I didn’t introduce myself immediately. I’m Detective Daryl Albrecht from Domino City and I’ve been tailing this guy for a while. I just didn’t expect him to go totally psycho.”
“Yugi Muto?” Montoya asked.
“A vigilante who likes to dress in black and paint himself up like some kind of demon clown,” Albrecht replied. “He usually marks the places he’s visited with a crow painted in blood. I was sent here when the brass in Domino found out that he’d come here.”
“Glad to see that some cities have a zero tolerance policy when it comes to vigilantes,” Bullock remarked.
“Oh, you’re referring to the so-called Dark Knight who runs around at night smacking criminals around for you?” Albrecht commented.
“He helps us,” Gordon amended. “If you knew what this city used to be before he showed up, you’d know that Batman’s needed here.”
“Perhaps, but if you start tolerating vigilantes, you get a bunch of copycats who are gonna end up dead sooner or later,” Albrecht said. “Never mind, we don’t have the time for this argument right now. Right now, we’ve got to find Yugi and put him behind bars.”
“How difficult can a guy who paints himself up like a demon clown be to find?” Montoya asked.
“Very,” Albrecht replied. “I don’t know how he does it, but he keeps getting away from me. Not this time. This has gone on long enough and I’m going to put a stop to him. You feel like helping?”
“We’ll do everything we can,” Gordon answered before briefly looking up at the blood-red night sky and seeing a pointy-eared shadow staring at him with blank white eyes. The Police Commissioner looked away for a moment and when he looked up again, the shadow was gone. He shook his head slowly. ‘Just like him.’
Meanwhile, the Titans, Robin, and Joey congregated in the apartment Raven had shared with Yugi before his mad rampage, trying to make sense of what had transpired. As for Tristan, he had been taken to the hotel room that Mai and Serenity shared, as Joey trusted them to watch over him as he recovered.
“We have to stop him,” Superboy stated.
“Uh, how do we do that?” Beast Boy asked. “In case you don’t remember, he kicked your ass, not to mention ours.”
“So?” Superboy answered. “I could still take him.”
“Then do a better job of it next time,” Robin stated, blue eyes staring at him from behind a ghoulish mask of white paint and black eye shadow. “He didn’t hesitate to attack any of us . . . except for Raven.” He turned to the purple-haired empath. “Raven, what did you sense from him?”
“Madness,” Raven replied. “His thoughts were a whirlwind of madness, confusion, and torment.”
“Boo fucking hoo,” Superboy sneered. “He’s tormented. We get that. What we don’t get is why he went psycho and tried to kill us . . . and at this point, I don’t think I care that much.”
“So what are you saying, Conner?” Wonder Girl asked. “For Zeus’s sake, he’s our friend. We owe it to him to snap him out of whatever it is that’s got him acting so crazy.”
“Krisnahyit,” Robin murmured. Upon catching the odd looks everyone else gave him, the Dead Boy Wonder went on. “A word in Starfire’s language for ‘split soul.’ The basic explanation is that Yugi’s mind has split into two halves: the half that’s the guy we all know and consider a friend and the half that’s full of all the dark, twisted aspects of his nature.”
“And the dark half is winning,” Cyborg said.
“So what do we do?” Joey asked. “I mean, if this krisnahyit is screwing with Yugi’s head and turning him into a monster, we’ve gotta save him!”
“He can only save himself,” Raven replied gravely.
“What the hell do you mean?” Joey asked heatedly.
“What I mean is that we can only do so much to help him,” Raven answered evenly. “In the end, it has to be Yugi who stops himself from going completely over the edge.”
“He may not be able to,” a deep voice full of dark power stated, causing everyone to turn to its source, a man-shaped figure dressed in dark gray with a pointy-eared black cowl concealing his identity and a scalloped black cape draped around his shoulders.
“You’re Batman!” Joey exclaimed. “Holy shit, you’re Batman! You’re real! I knew it!”
The Dark Knight waited for Joey to calm down before speaking. “Yugi,” he stated.
“What about him?” Robin asked tonelessly.
“I know he’s The Crow,” Batman replied. “It wasn’t that hard to figure out, in retrospect. A sixteen-year-old boy named Yugi Muto and his grandfather Solomon were murdered about five years ago. When The Crow first appeared, he was killing everyone connected to those murders. His last victim was a young industrialist named Seto Kaiba.”
“So you know,” Robin said. “That changes nothing. We’ll take care of Yugi ourselves.”
“You’re too close to this,” Batman said. “Your feelings of friendship will get in the way. I’ll do this myself.”
“You don’t have the right –” Robin started to say, but Batman cut him off harshly.
“I called you and your friends here to my city,” the Caped Crusader snarled, “so as far as I’m concerned, I call the shots.”
“You haven’t changed one fucking bit,” Robin spat, his eyes full of fury and contempt. “When the hell will you learn that the Titans and I are perfectly capable of handling ourselves? We’re not children.”
“As far as I’m concerned, you still are a child,” Batman stated.
“As arrogant as ever,” Robin remarked with a chuckle. “I stopped being a child a long time ago . . so do not talk to me as though I still was a child.”
“Both of you cool it,” a young man’s firm voice admonished. “We won’t get any closer to finding The Crow by lashing out at each other.”
Everyone turned to the source of that voice with mixed expressions of astonishment. Not surprisingly, that expression was missing on what one could see of Batman’s face, since the Dark Knight had sensed the newcomer’s arrival almost from the start.
The newcomer was dressed in form-fitting black with a blue bird emblazoned on his chest and a birdlike black mask covering his eyes.
“Nightwing,” Batman greeted neutrally. “What did you find?”
“Nothing good,” Nightwing replied sadly. “He ripped up another gang. They were barely recognizable by the time I got there.” Even though he was good at keeping his face impassive, no one could miss the horror in his voice. “So much blood . . ”
“Say it ain’t so, man,” Joey pleaded.
“It is so,” Nightwing confirmed regretfully.
“We have to stop him,” Batman stated. “He gets his power from the same source as you, Robin, so the only way we’ll stand a chance against him is if we wound or kill his guardian crow. Otherwise, there’s no telling what damage he’ll do.”
“You’re not going to hurt Yugi,” Raven stated firmly.
“Give me one good reason not to,” Batman growled.
“Because he’s my brother,” Raven replied.
Batman paused, but only for a brief moment. “It doesn’t matter. He’s out of control and needs to be stopped before he turns his madness on innocent people.”
“What do you mean?” Superboy asked. “I thought he was just killing criminals!”
“For now,” Batman answered. “But what if he gets it into his head that the existence of humanity itself is a crime? What do you think he’ll do then?”
“He isn’t beyond saving,” Raven insisted.
“How?” Nightwing asked.
“When the other Titans and Robin fought him, he refused to hurt me,” Raven replied. “In fact, he seemed to revert to his old self when I confronted him. He ran away just to keep himself from hurting me.”
“He’s still going down,” Batman insisted. “I can’t tolerate vigilantes who kill in my city, especially when they’re completely out of their minds.”
“You won’t find him without me,” Raven said. “We’re linked, Yugi and I. When we battled my father Trigon, we had to merge bodies and powers in order to beat him. When we separated, a little bit of me was left in him and a little bit of him was left in me.”
“Holy shit,” Joey uttered. “Can you believe that, Beast Boy? Yugi with boobs!”
Beast Boy tried to imagine what a more feminine version of Yami Yugi would look like and a strange expression appeared over his face. “I don’t know whether to be freaked out or turned on.”
“You two ain’t right,” Cyborg said. “That’s just . . not right.”
“Yeah, quit it, you two perverts,” Wonder Girl added.
Superboy wisely decided against admitting that he’d been having similar thoughts.
“I can help you find Yugi,” Raven said to Batman and Nightwing, “but only if you swear to let me try to get through to him.”
Batman had to fight the urge to smile, as he found himself rather impressed by Raven’s determination to help her brother back to sanity.
“Fine,” he conceded, “but he’s probably not going to listen easily. Nightwing and I will have to subdue him, but other than that, I can promise that we won’t use any more force than necessary.” The Caped Crusader turned to leap out the window, only to be stopped by Joey’s voice.
“I’m coming with you.”
“No,” Batman stated. “You’re a civilian. I can’t risk you getting hurt.”
“Civilian, nothing!” Joey yelled. “Yugi’s my friend and I owe it to him to be there for him, psycho killer or not!”
Again, Batman found himself fighting the urge to smile. “You can come, too, but I leave your safety to you and Raven. While I’m fighting Yugi, assuming it comes to that, I won’t have the time to look out for you.”
“I can live with that,” Joey answered.
“By the way, how’s your friend doing?” Batman asked.
“Tristan?” Joey deduced. “He’s all right. Robin used his blood to heal him. The worst he’s got now is a sore throat. He’s currently hanging with Mai and Serenity . . .” He mumbled the last part under his breath. “. . . and probably using his injury to score sympathy sex with Serenity.”
In a rundown loft somewhere in the nastier part of Gotham City, an eight-year-old girl lay on a ratty bed, her wrists and ankles tied to the bedposts by rope. Her wide blue-green eyes were even wider with fear of what the man before her would do to her.
The man in question examined his prey. Such a delightful little girl she was, dressed in a pink jacket over a white dress shirt, black tie, and pleated blue skirt. The glasses he currently held in his hand had been hers before and she had looked so adorable in them. He licked his lips in sick anticipation and withdrew his switchblade from his pocket, flicking the blade out in preparation to slice her shirt open.
Unfortunately for him, he would never get that chance, as something made him turn around and he found himself face to face with a pair of malevolent red eyes.
“You make me sick,” the owner of the crimson eyes snarled.
“Wh-who are you?” the man asked.
“Someone who’ll send you to the bowels of hell, you miserable pedophile,” the crimson-eyed shadow snarled.
“Not if you go there first, motherfucker,” the pedophile retorted and threw his switchblade at the crimson-eyed shadow, who caught the knife in his hand – literally in his hand. The knife embedded in the shadow’s hand didn’t seem to trouble him, as he just pulled it out without any noises indicative of pain.
“She doesn’t need to see this,” the shadow said and dragged the pedophile out of the bedroom, leading him to another room. In the meager light, the pedophile could see hints of magenta and gold for the shadow’s hair and chilling white and black for the shadow’s face.
“What the hell are you?” the pedophile asked.
“Like I said before, someone who’ll send you to the bowels of hell,” the shadow replied before slicing the pedophile’s shirt open with his own switchblade. Before the perverted man could do anything about it, he was stuck to the wall by a shiv in his shoulder, causing him to scream in pain. Another shiv found its way into his other shoulder, securing him to the wall. “Now let’s begin the pain, shall we?”
For a full hour, all that could be heard in the immediate vicinity of that loft was the pedophile’s screams. Nobody actually thought to call the police, as they all thought it was some particularly sadistic mob enforcer’s work.
Rebecca remained tied to the bed, though, shivering at hearing the pedophile’s tormented screams. She sighed with relief when the screams finally stopped. Then that relief turned to apprehension when she saw someone enter the room.
He wasn’t very tall, perhaps five feet six inches. What stood out about him was his hair, which was spiked in almost every direction and tipped with red. In the meager light, Rebecca could see spiky blond bangs and violet eyes. Upon looking more closely, she saw that his face was covered in white foundation and his eyelids and lips were colored black with lines extending from them.
He looks like a clown . . . if clowns were supposed to be scary, Rebecca mused to herself.
“Are you all right?” the clownish-looking male asked in a smooth, deep voice.
“Yeah . . .” Rebecca replied nervously.
“That scum won’t touch you ever again,” the male stated as he walked over to her and untied the knots of the ropes that kept her bound to the bed.
“Did you kill him?” Rebecca asked in a small voice.
The male looked taken aback by the question. His eyes refused to meet Rebecca’s.
“Don’t lie,” Rebecca stated, her voice firmer and slightly petulant.
“I did kill him,” the male admitted softly.
Rebecca said nothing for a few minutes. Then she looked up at the male that had saved her life.
“You look sad,” she commented.
“I hurt people,” the male answered.
“The bad people, right?” Rebecca surmised. “Like that man who tried to hurt me.”
“Yes, but . . . I hurt my friends, too,” the male answered.
“I’m sure you didn’t mean to hurt your friends,” Rebecca observed.
“How did that man get to you?” the male asked.
“I was walking down the street on my way back to my grandpa’s place,” Rebecca replied. “A man came up to me and offered to give me a ride home. I said no and then he grabbed me and covered my mouth and nose with a wet rag to keep me quiet. I passed out and when I woke up . . I was here.”
The male paused for a moment before asking, “What does your grandpa do?”
“He’s an archaeologist,” Rebecca replied. “Specializes in the legends of ancient civilizations.”
“My grandfather had a friend who was an archaeologist,” the male said. “His name was Arthur Hawkins.”
“That’s my grandfather’s name,” Rebecca said. “Would you be Solomon Muto’s grandson Yugi?”
“Yes,” the male admitted.
“Wait, didn’t Solomon and Yugi get killed by Seto Kaiba and his goons years ago?” Rebecca asked.
“Yes,” Yugi replied. “I came back, though.”
“How?” Rebecca asked.
Just then, a crow flew into the room and cawed at Yugi, who nodded at it.
“I have to go,” he said as he walked toward the window. “Stay here. The people that are coming won’t hurt you.”
“Wai –” Rebecca uttered, but before she could reach the window, Yugi had already jumped out and vanished into the night with his crow.
A black car akin to a sleek, stylized tank prowled the streets of Gotham City, driven by Batman. Joey sat beside him, looking as though he was on the verge of an orgasm.
“Oh, shit, this is the coolest car I’ve ever been in!” Joey exclaimed. A dark look from Batman stopped him from rambling any further.
Next to the Batmobile, Nightwing rode his customized street bike with Raven holding onto him from behind.
Unbeknownst to them all, a dark motorcycle driven by an even darker rider followed them, the engine on silent so as not to draw their attention. However, the rider was not immune to Raven’s empathic abilities.
Should have known you wouldn’t leave it alone, she thought.
As the three vehicles continued into the night, Batman saw someone standing in the middle of the street and began to slow down. To his surprise, the person in the middle of the street spoke.
“Don’t slow down on my account,” he said in a Southern accent as he tipped his hat to Batman, revealing a head completely without hair. Of course, it wasn’t as though a skull could have hair.
“Skull Cowboy?” Joey had just enough time to utter before he disappeared and Skull Cowboy appeared in his place.
“Who are you and what have you done with Joey?” Batman asked, not pausing in his driving for one second.
“Nothing,” Skull Cowboy replied. “He’s still here. I haven’t possessed him, just shifted spaces with him. He is still in the same timeline, but in a different space than us.”
“You didn’t answer my first question,” Batman stated.
“I’m the Skull Cowboy. Consider me Yugi’s guide,” the skeletal cowboy replied.
“Some job you did,” Batman said. “Yugi’s running loose and killing criminals in my city. I have to stop him.”
“That much is true,” Skull Cowboy admitted. “But there are forces far greater at work. The reason Yugi is here is that the cult you’re investigating kidnapped a girl named Téa Gardner. He was trying to save her before he went mad. And this cult . . . its leader wants her as a witness to the suffering he will unleash when he is able to summon the Great Demon Gods.”
“I’ve heard of those gods,” Batman answered. “I’ll deal with the cult after I stop Yugi.”
“And how will you do that?” Skull Cowboy asked. “He can’t feel any pain that you could inflict on him. He can’t be killed . . . and he heals too fast for any injury you could inflict on him to have an effect.”
“I take out his crow, he won’t be so tough,” Batman replied.
“Sure,” Skull Cowboy conceded. “But in all honesty, only he can stop himself. All you can do is help him do that.”
Then he was gone, and Joey was back in the passenger seat of the Batmobile.
“Are you all right?” Batman asked.
“Yeah,” Joey replied. “That was some weird shit he did, though. Really fucking weird.”
Batman didn’t say anything after that; he just kept driving.
Back in the old Arkham Asylum, Téa and Starfire rested in their prison cell. However, their rest was interrupted by a loud, crude voice.
“Hey!” Zygore shouted. “How about some HLA?”
“What is this HLA?” Starfire asked.
“He wants us to do live lesbian porn for him,” Téa replied. “Sick pervert.”
“As long as we have to sit here watching you two hotties, we oughtta get somethin’ out of it,” Sid remarked.
“You despicable man!” Starfire exclaimed in outrage. However, she was so caught up in her outrage that she tried to shoot a starbolt at him, forgetting that the special bracelets on her wrists would shock her for attempting to use her powers. However, she remembered very quickly . . . and very painfully.
“Starfire!” Téa shouted, kneeling beside her red-haired friend, who was currently convulsing on the ground from the shocks, which stopped after a minute.
“This is rather touching,” Sid remarked. “Reminds me of what lesbian porn would be like if they actually made it for women.”
“Enough, you two,” Odion growled from the doorway. “Since you seem incapable of thinking with the head on your shoulders instead of the head between your legs, you’ll have to end your shift early. I’ll guard these two from this point on.”
There were some grumbles, but Sid and Zygore complied; they didn’t want to mess with Marik’s right-hand man.
“I am sorry for their behavior,” Odion said. “Men should not behave so crudely in the presence of ladies.”
“Glad to see at least somebody in Marik’s gang is a gentleman,” Téa remarked.
“You do not seem like a bad person,” Starfire said. “Why would you work for someone like Marik?”
“I have no choice,” Odion replied, sadness lacing his tone. “I must protect Master Marik.”
Elsewhere in Gotham, Batman, Nightwing, Joey, Raven, and the incognito rider found themselves in front of a warehouse in one of the worse areas of the city. Batman and Joey got out of the Batmobile and Nightwing, Raven, and the incognito rider got off their motorcycles, the latter three removing their helmets. When the incognito rider removed his helmet, he exposed a face painted in ghoulish white and black with ice-indigo eyes staring out into the darkness.
“I thought I made it abundantly clear that you were supposed to stay with your friends,” Batman rasped out.
The incognito rider, now revealed as Robin, did not answer, instead walking into the warehouse. “He was here,” he stated. “Emphasis on ‘was.’”
“I sense someone else in here,” Raven added as she, Batman, Joey, and Nightwing followed Robin into the warehouse. Following Raven and her empathic senses, the five walked up to a loft and saw a young blonde girl, no older than ten by their estimates, sitting on a ratty bed. When she saw Robin, her eyes widened in recognition.
“You look just like that boy who came here and saved me from that creepy man,” the girl blurted out.
“You mean The Crow,” Batman deduced.
“Yeah, he had a crow with him,” the girl said, “but his name is Yugi.”
“That we know already,” Nightwing answered. “But are you all right?”
“Yeah,” the girl replied. “But I’d like to get back home to my grandfather. His name’s Arthur Hawkins.”
“Wait . . . Hawkins . . ” Nightwing murmured. Then a light seemed to snap on in his mind. “That’s the archaeologist! But if you’re his granddaughter . . wait . . you’re Rebecca Hawkins.”
Joey stared at the young masked man as though he was not quite right in the head.
“I’ve heard of you,” Batman told Rebecca. “From what I hear, you’re quite the child prodigy, both in computer technology and in that Duel Monsters game.”
“Thanks, but could somebody please take me back to my grandpa?” Rebecca asked in a tone that suggested she was getting rather annoyed. “It’s late and he’s probably worried sick about me.”
“I’ll take you home,” Nightwing said. Turning to Batman, Robin, Raven, and Joey, he added. “You four can keep searching for Yugi.”
“You’re not going to hurt him, are you?” Rebecca asked before adding, “Because if you do, I’ll never forgive you!”
“We won’t hurt him,” Robin stated. “You have my word on that.”
“All right,” Rebecca conceded.
Nightwing took Rebecca to his motorcycle and handed her a helmet, then proceeding to put his own helmet on. He straddled the motorcycle with Rebecca holding him by the waist and started the engine. He revved the throttle and then took off into the night like a black bullet.
Meanwhile, Batman and Joey rode down the mean streets of Gotham City in the Batmobile and Robin and Raven followed on Robin’s R-Cycle.
Once, not so long ago, I would have given anything to be this close to him, Raven thought. But now that I am . . . it just doesn’t feel like I’d expect it to. He’s not the one for me, I know. I also know there is someone for me . . . someone who could accept me as I am and not try to change me. She sighed briefly. Enough of this, I have to find Yugi right now.
Raven extended her empathic abilities, tapping into the part of her that was Yami Yugi to connect to the part of him that was her. Soon enough, they connected.
“I know where he is,” she said.
“Show me the way,” Robin answered, riding beside the Batmobile before accelerating ahead of it.
“Looks like we found him,” Joey remarked as Batman kept right on the R-Cycle’s tail.
They finally stopped at a church.
“A church?” Joey asked. “Didn’t know Yugi found religion.”
Batman didn’t respond to that, simply opening the Batmobile so that he and Joey could climb out. Before them, Robin and Raven got off the R-Cycle and removed their helmets. The group of four walked into the church, silently dreading what they would find.
“Yugi,” Raven spoke. “I know you’re here. Come out. We just want to help you.”
“Help?” a dark, raspy voice asked sinisterly. “You seem to be forgetting . . . dear sister . . . that I do not need anyone’s help.”
“Yuge?” Joey asked. “Ya gotta snap out of this, man! You ain’t acting like yourself!”
“Or perhaps . . . I’m more myself than I’ve ever been,” Yami Yugi’s voice answered.
“Come out, Yugi,” Batman ordered.
“Ah, the legendary Dark Knight Detective himself,” Yami Yugi hissed. “All right, then . . . if you’re all so insistent . . ”
Yami Yugi walked out of the shadows, looking quite different from when Robin, Raven, and Joey had last seen him. This time, his eyes were the color of freshly spilled blood. His skin was a ghastly white, matching the paint on his face, and the cold smirk on his face bared vampire-like fangs.
“Yugi . . ” Robin uttered. “What’s happened to you?”
“A lot of things,” Yami replied. He chuckled coldly. “You shouldn’t have come looking for me. Bad things happen to people who get in my way, as you know.”
Batman didn’t waste time with further talking; he whipped out two bat-shaped boomerangs and threw them at Yami. Unfortunately for him, Yami plucked the boomerangs out of the air with his bare hands.
“What the fuck!” Joey exclaimed. “Those things were going at a hundred miles an hour and he just caught them like Nerf balls!”
“Good attempt, Batman,” The Crow complimented. “But not good enough.”
Batman rushed at The Crow, delivering a swift kick to his chest that knocked him back a few feet.
“I definitely felt that one,” he remarked. “Not like it hurt, though. Nothing hurts me.” He withdrew his bloodstained shivs. “Can the same be said for you, though?”
Batman threw bolas at The Crow, intending to trap him within the weighted ropes. Unfortunately, he caught the bolas and threw them back at Batman, who ducked and rushed him again. The Crow parried Batman’s punch with a spiked bracelet on his wrist, although the spikes on that bracelet didn’t pierce the Kevlar triple-weave glove and he ended up falling victim to a low sweeping kick. Despite that, he simply flipped back into a standing position and kicked Batman in the stomach, nearly sending him crashing into a pew.
'He’s even stronger than Bane,' Batman thought before getting up and throwing a flash-bang pellet at Yami Yugi, the aforementioned pellet exploding in the mad avenger’s face and momentarily blinding him.
“Do you think I need my eyes to tear your throat out!” he roared as he lunged at Batman with . . . claws extended.
Joey, Robin, and Raven gasped in horror when they saw the wicked claws that used to be their friend’s – brother’s in Raven’s case – nails.
Fortunately, Batman caught Yami Yugi’s wrists and fell backwards, swinging his legs up to kick the insane avatar of the crow into a wall. Unfortunately, Yami flipped in the air and landed in an animal-like crouch, then spun around to face the Dark Knight again.
“When I was a child, I idolized you,” he mused out loud. “I wanted to be like you, the great Dark Knight, bringing justice to the scum of the streets.”
“If you wanted to be like me, you wouldn’t be killing,” Batman answered. “Especially not so indiscriminately.”
“What’s wrong?” Yugi asked with a chilling smirk. “Jealous that I’m willing to do what your outmoded morals prevent you from doing?”
Batman pulled out two more bat-shaped boomerangs, each one blinking red in the center.
“Oh, shit,” Joey uttered when he saw the blinking lights.
Batman threw both boomerangs at Yugi, who simply ducked and rolled out of the way of the subsequent dual explosion. “Good effort,” Yugi complimented mockingly. “But not quite good enough.”
The Crow charged at Batman once again, delivering fast and vicious punches and kicks at the taller dark warrior, who was parrying and countering to the best of his ability. Batman may have had the edge in terms of experience and martial artistry, but The Crow was even stronger and faster and had the added edge of unpredictability due to his insanity.
The mad avatar of vengeance pulled out his shivs once again and slashed at Batman with them, who knocked both weapons out of his hands and kicked him with such force as to send him flying into a wall. However, Yami just got up again and dusted himself off.
“Do you really think you can kill me?” he asked condescendingly.
“I don’t have to,” Batman replied before pulling out another bat-shaped boomerang.
Raven read the Caped Crusader’s emotions and realized what he was going to do. He was going to kill Yami’s crow and thus rob him of his power in the hopes that once the power left him, so would his madness.
“This has gone on long enough,” Raven murmured. Tapping into the part of her that she had left in Yugi after their merging to defeat Trigon, she entered her brother’s mind, causing his limbs to lock in place and thus stopping any further attacks.
When Raven entered Yugi’s mind, she found herself immersed in a world of dark corridors.
“Yugi!” she shouted. “Where are you!”
“Raven . . .” she heard a faint voice calling. “Raven . . .”
“Yugi!” Raven shouted. “Is that you?”
“Yes . . .” the voice answered.
Raven ran down the corridor in search of Yugi, going through a virtual maze of hallways before finally reaching a steel door. She opened the door and looked inside, seeing nothing but shadows.
“Yugi?” she asked. “Are you in there?”
“Yes . . .” Yugi’s voice answered.
Raven stepped inside and squinted into the darkness to get a better look. She saw Yugi, but not as she was used to seeing him. The Yugi she saw was considerably smaller than the Yugi she knew and the spikes of his hair weren’t quite as sharp. In addition, his eyes were bigger, softer, and more innocent. He was dressed in a blue jacket over a white collared shirt and blue pants with black-and-gray sneakers.
The real kicker . . . he was chained to the wall.
“Yugi?” Raven asked.
“Hi, sis,” Yugi replied.
“How did you get like this?” Raven asked.
“I’m the Yugi that once was,” Yugi replied. “Before Seto Kaiba and his thugs murdered me and my grandfather and replaced the light and joy in my soul with rage and darkness . . . the same rage that is now consuming my other self.”
“How do I stop it?” Raven asked.
“Set me free,” Yugi replied. “I can help him.”
Raven telekinetically broke the chains that kept Yugi bound to the wall. “Let’s go,” she said.
Raven and the innocent Yugi traversed the corridors of Yugi’s mind until they heard what sounded like a vicious struggle.
“What’s that?” Raven asked.
“My other self,” the innocent Yugi replied. “He is battling the darkness . . . and he is losing. That is the reason you found me in chains. The darkness is slowly taking over everything and Marik’s suggestions haven’t helped at all.”
The duo stopped in front of a massive double door. Raven moved before one door and the innocent Yugi took his position before the other door. They pushed the doors together and they parted in the face of their combined strength, allowing them to walk into the arena ahead.
Once in the arena, Raven’s clothes changed. Where before they were a white cloak and leotard, now they were a white cloak, corset, leather pants, and open-front skirt.
“What is this?” she asked.
“In this arena, a person’s mental projection becomes an idealized version of him- or herself,” the innocent Yugi replied.
“Then how come you haven’t changed?” Raven asked.
“What makes you think that this isn’t my idealized form?” the innocent Yugi asked.
Both of them looked out into the arena itself and saw the “dark” Yugi, wearing a red-lined black cape over a black leather shirt with a harness and leather pants with twin belts wrapped around the left thigh. They also saw the dark Yugi battling a mirror image of himself that very closely resembled the maniacal Crow Raven and the others had had the unpleasant experience of battling.
“How is this happening?” Raven asked.
“The power of the crow is rooted in darkness and darkness is the fate of all the crow’s avatars,” the innocent Yugi replied gravely. “Darkness is their weapon and also their bane. Téa’s presence kept the darkness at bay, gave us a reason to hold onto the light, but without her . . . you see.”
Dark Yugi slashed at The Crow with his katana, but The Crow parried the slash and viciously kicked him in the side, knocking him down on the ground.
“You’re nothing without me, do you realize that?” The Crow asked his counterpart cruelly, pointing his own sword at his throat.
“And you are nothing without me,” Dark Yugi retorted. “Were it not for me, you wouldn’t exist.”
“We’ll see about that,” The Crow snarled as he brought his sword down on Dark Yugi, ready to kill him. However, he didn’t get to kill his better half . .
. . . because Raven had taken the blow in his place.
“RAVEN!” the innocent and dark Yugis shouted at the same time.
“I couldn’t . . . let him . . . hurt you . . .” Raven struggled to say through a mouthful of blood.
Dark Yugi was speechless as he held his seemingly dying sister in his arms.
“He . . . he . . . YOU’VE GONE TOO FAR!” the innocent Yugi screamed.
“And what are you going to do about it, you pale shadow of me?” The Crow asked.
The innocent Yugi’s eyes glowed bright white before he exploded into a sphere of pure light that flew into his darker counterpart, causing his clothes to change into a suit of black-and-silver armor. The sword itself became a weapon of pure light energy.
“Are you ready to die?” The Crow asked, apparently unperturbed by the change in his slightly lighter counterpart.
“That depends,” Dark Yugi asked as he gently placed his fading sister on the floor of the arena. “We’re already dead, technically.”
That was the only warning The Crow got before he was quickly and viciously slashed by the pure light blade. And to his surprise . . . it actually hurt.
“You son of a bitch!” The Crow roared angrily.
Dark Yugi didn’t answer, but vanished from sight instead. When he reappeared, it was with his light blade through The Crow’s heart. The aforementioned avatar of darkness screamed in agony as he sensed his end.
“For Raven,” Dark Yugi hissed, holding the light blade inside The Crow’s heart as its energy spread throughout his astral form, making the “veins” glow with white light.
“AAAAHHHHH!” The Crow screamed as his astral form shattered into a million pieces that scattered themselves throughout Yugi’s mind.
“Raven . . .” Dark Yugi murmured sadly.
“Brother . . . I’m still alive,” Raven’s voice stated.
Dark Yugi turned around to see Raven standing before him, healed of her fatal wound. Immediately, he hugged her tightly.
“Don’t scare me like that, sister,” he whispered softly.
“Had to,” Raven responded. “It was the only way I knew to give you the impetus you needed to stop the evil side of yourself.”
“It worked,” Dark Yugi stated as he pulled away to look at Raven. “Now let’s go back home.”
In the real world, Yami Yugi’s eyes returned to their normal violet color, his skin took back its normal pale peach color, and his claws shortened back into nails.
“Yuge?” Joey asked. “Is that you?”
“Yes, Joey, it’s me,” Yami Yugi replied. “And I can sense that I have much to apologize for.”
“We’ll worry about that later,” Joey answered. “Right now, we’re just glad you’re back.”
“Yeah,” Robin agreed. Then he turned to Raven. “You all right?”
“Yeah,” Raven replied, “but Yugi’s mind is a really confusing place to be.”
Outside of the church, the three mysterious bikers watched as Raven, Yugi, Joey, Robin, and Batman walked out of the church.
“Looks like Dead Boy’s back to himself again,” the Australian-accented biker remarked.
“Yes, which means we can continue with the plan,” the tall, muscular blond biker added.
The third biker smiled cruelly. “Look out, kiddies.”
“I’m thinking of
Thanking all the fucked people
Thanking all the shit I love
They are all the things I’ve made
Straight from my heart
Begging all the same people
Burning is the same evil
Somehow making me feel sane.
“Waiting all this time
I’ve got nothing to hold on
But the faces of my life
I can see before I’m gone.
“Sometimes I feel it chasing me
All the hate that’s breaking free
I realize I’m taking everything
And the kids seem to follow.
“This time I feel it taking me
To a place I need to be
All along I seem to make believe
And the shit seems to follow.
“I’m thinking of
Making all the fucked people
Making all the bitches I love
Make them die and go away
Pain from the start
All my dreams are ripped apart
Thanking all the fucked people
They are all the things I’ve saved.
“Waiting all this time
I’ve got nothing to hold on
But the faces of my life
I can see before I’m gone.
“Sometimes I feel it chasing me
All the hate that’s breaking free
I realize I’m taking everything
And the kids seem to follow.
“This time I feel it taking me
To a place I need to be
All along I seem to make believe
And the shit seems to follow.
“Your life, I hate it
Oh God, can I reclaim?
Stop and help me.
“Sometimes I feel it chasing me
All the hate that’s breaking free
I realize I’m taking everything
And the kids seem to follow.
“This time I feel it taking me
To a place I need to be
All along I seem to make believe
And the shit seems to follow.
“The shit seems to follow.”
Korn – “Make Believe”
End Notes: Sorry I took so long. Wolf God, today’s your birthday and this finished piece of art (feel free to edit it if you like) is your present from me. Happy birthday, man.