Kevin Curry
patreon
Devil's Consultancy 41
🕑 Added 2025-09-08 14:00:11 +0000 UTCWith the matter of Ace and Jason’s magical education handled for now, and Raven handling her duties as the teaching assistant, Tanya set about educating Raven on the practicalities of vigilantism.
“Ninety percent of the time, the spells you will be asked to cast will fall into five categories: Divination, battlefield control, transportation, healing, and augmentation.” Tanya said, back in the Witch Girl outfit at Titan’s tower. Nightwing and Starfire were sparring on the other side of the training room, with Cyborg and Beast Boy watching. The latter was paying more attention to the magic lesson, or possibly just staring at Raven’s new hero outfit: for some reason, Raven had decided to copy the fashion sense of a lot of female members of the Justice League and use a black leotard with an artfully askew enchanted belt (a protective one) under her cloak. It technically did assist with freedom of movement, but she could already fly... “Given your teammates, we can probably skip the augmentation spells for now.”
Raven looked serious as she got tutored, even taking notes on her words. She crossed out the word ‘augmentation’. “I can go through walls pretty easily.” She volunteered.
“But can you move your entire team?” Tanya asked rhetorically. “A vehicle? Could you, hypothetically, take the T-Car-” An excellent name for branding, “-into your soul for a few minutes and fly across the city to convey your team through heavy traffic? Can you teleport across the city if you know where the trouble is?”
Raven looked rather nervous. “...You do all that?” She asked.
“I can.” Tanya said, “That said, this team is new: I’ve only teleported the team into battle once. Ideally, the team will develop sufficient teamwork that deployment will be typically smooth; things like a group teleport would only be required in exceptionally urgent situations.”
Raven nodded along. “I see…”
“Moving on, while divination has been of the highest utility for assisting Batman,” Tanya continued, “the Titans initiative acts as a S.W.A.T. team, which is an acronym meaning Special Weapons and Tactics. As such, you will likely not be doing much investigation and detective work. So we can put Divination on the backburner as well. That leaves Battlefield Control, Healing, and the previously discussed Transportation.”
“I can heal already.” Raven said, although she didn’t look too comfortable saying it. “But… how do you do it?” She added.
“Back when I was starting, I had to work with some rather painful options.” Tanya admitted, staying vague on exactly how painful it was, and for who. “Nowadays, I usually use these to get around my entropic affinity.” She said, pulling out a fistful of wands. “So your first major lesson from me would be how to use these to convert your demonic power into something less destructive using these foci. Once that has been mastered, we can further refine your abilities.”
Fortunately, Raven didn’t need much help with combat magic. She was a bit inexperienced, but she was capable enough at barriers and telekinesis that all she really needed was drills, and Richard can handle that just fine without her. It would be better for that part to be combined with teamwork drills anyway.
-----------------------
After the first week of orientation and training was complete, the mayor’s office informed the local police departments and S.T.A.R. labs that the Jump City Titans were now ready for deployment.
This did not take long to occur; they were only hanging around, fully equipped, for about an hour before the first call came in: one of the local supervillains, a mad scientist by the name of Killer Moth, had decided that his funding was insufficient for his needs, and the best way to do this was to use his mutated moth monsters (which may or may not be some kind of alien moth-like creature) to help him rob a bank.
Normally, this would be responded to by the San Francisco Titans. But because this was no longer their jurisdiction… “Titans!” Nightwing shouted, the bright grin that characterized his early days as Robin gracing his face as he pointed to the elevator, “Go!”
With that simple order, Tanya slipped into Nightwing’s shadow, Raven followed suit with Cyborg’s immense silhouette, and everyone else piled into the elevator. “Hold onto your butts!” Cyborg bragged as his finger opened up into an interface device, which he inserted into a slot on the elevator. “Booyah!” He shouted as the elevator descended at practically-freefall speeds into the garage, where the T-Car awaited.
Beast Boy handled the fall by virtue of turning into a squirrel, Nightwing’s costume helped him land safely at even terminal velocity, and Cyborg’s mechanical legs allowed him to absorb a mere hundred meter drop without any issue. Starfire just flew down in time with the elevator.
While they didn’t, as Tanya had suggested, practice entering the T-Car efficiently, they did all have assigned seating: Nightwing held the coveted ‘shotgun’ position, Starfire took the seat behind him, Raven (who wasn’t nearly as comfortable riding in someone’s shadow as Tanya was) the seat behind Cyborg, and Beast Boy was to sit in the middle seat, shifting into a snake to enter the already-secured harness and shifting back human.
“Twelve seconds from elevator exit to vehicle movement.” Tanya said, tutting as she stuck her head out of a pool of darkness between Cyborg and Nightwing. “The fire department would laugh at that time. You probably could have done it in only four seconds if you had practiced.”
“We’ll make it up on the road!” Cyborg insisted, accelerating through the undersea tunnel that led to the city proper.
“Raven, pay attention to what I’m doing.” Tanya instructed, “You have lesser amounts of power to myself,” more, actually, but most of it was locked up because her meditative technique literally cuts her power into a fraction of what she’s capable of in aid of her control. “-so I will be keeping my effects simple and inexpensive.”
Raven, hiding her nerves quite ably, took a deep breath and let her eyes flash with magic.
“Hitting the siren!” Cyborg announced, flipping a switch on the dashboard. The top of the T-Car revealed flashing blue lights, while the headlights shined red as they entered traffic, a loud wailing echoing in front of them. For the first minute, traffic was light enough that Cyborg’s expert driving was able to maintain their incredibly unsafe speed of one hundred and twenty miles per hour.
“Woah!” Beast Boy said, watching the streets pass by. “What if we run into a red light?”
Nightwing scoffed. “We’re city-sanctioned.” He explained, “One of the Tower’s systems gives us a hard override on the traffic, they’ll turn green and wait for us.”
“Turn’s coming up, Witch Girl!” Cyborg announced.
“Watch this.” Tanya said, “Rhine. Berechnung. Mahou!” She incanted, twisting the space in the intersection, creating a shadowy tunnel. She could see through the warp clearly, though: open road ahead. “Hit it!”
The T-Car went into the shadowy tunnel, and in an unnaturally smooth transition, they were now driving ninety degrees from where they had initially been traveling, and it felt like they had been going straight the whole time. “Booyah!” Cyborg shouted as he saw the magic at work. He really liked saying that, didn’t he?.
“Outstanding!” Starfire said, “It is just like the video games!” Where did she think Tanya got the idea?
Still, they weren’t so lucky as to have a completely unobstructed path, even with their control over traffic. “Stop the car!” Beast Boy shouted, panicked.
“Witch Girl?” Nightwing said calmly.
“Hit the gap on our left.” Tanya said, “Rhine, Berechnung, Mahou!” At the words, yet another shadowy corridor of warped space appeared between the two cars that were already trying to eke enough space for the incoming police lights by widening the gap between them. Trusting entirely in Tanya’s magic, Cyborg shifted left half a lane, running right into the shadow lane and breezing through.
“We’re almost there Cyborg, start slowing down.” Nightwing instructed.
“On it.” Cyborg replied, finally letting up his less-metaphorical-than-standard lead foot from the gas pedal. Wait, had they been going two hundred miles an hour? This car was incredibly well built…
In less than fifteen minutes from receiving the call, the Titans burst out of the T-Car. Tanya stayed behind, not being an official member. “Stop right there, Killer Moth!” Nightwing announced, unleashing a flying kick onto one of the mutated moths and sending it flying into a decorative statue of Alexander Hamilton.
Starfire’s hands became wrathed in green auras of power as she punched out another one of the mutated moth creatures. “You will surrender or be subject to our wrath!” She said, stumbling a bit over the language still as she enunciated her words relatively slowly.
“Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos!” Raven incanted to announce her presence, seizing the duffel bags full of cash that were being loaded onto some landed moths by terrified bank workers.
Beast Boy, instead of trying for a badass one-liner, turned into a T-Rex and roared.
Slowly getting out of the vehicle, Cyborg transformed his arm into his sonic cannon and let it glow ominously. “You don’t want any of this.” He said smugly, “Just call off the moths and you don’t need to get hurt.”
Killer Moth, as he was a bit of a veteran supervillain, gritted his teeth at being foiled. “Kids? I’m faced with mere children?”
“We’re the Titans!” Nightwing announced, “This is your last chance to surrender to the police before we subdue you by force!”
Needless to say, Killer Moth did not surrender. It did not end well. For him, anyway.
-----------------------
“That ended pretty well!” Tanya said after everyone had returned to the Tower for the debriefing. “Initial collateral damage estimate is just some damage to the bank’s facade, plus some additional damage that is entirely attributed to Killer Moth’s actions before we even got there. Good job everyone!”
Cyborg and Beast Boy high fived, while Starfire nearly broke Nightwing’s ribs with a hug. Raven quietly smiled from her seated position floating to the side of the couch.
“In further good news, the amount seized by Killer Moth not only exceeded the damage done, but also the cost to the city to call you in!” Not that it mattered if it did; the thing about law enforcement is that it takes a truly dire situation for the direct money spent to be worthwhile. “So the bank’s metahuman insurance picked up the tab!”
To this news, Tanya received blank stares.
Sighing, she realized that she really didn’t go over this with them. “Okay. So: Metahuman insurance is like any other theft, property, or health insurance in most ways, but it works a little differently.” Tanya explained, “First, it’s in addition to the previous insurances: the only metahuman insurance providers that only cover metahuman damages are scam artists.” While Batman does work to curtail white collar crime, it usually tends to be the kind of crime that gets left by the wayside whenever he undergoes a time crunch. At least, it’s what gets left behind after Tanya and Diana prevent him from instead abandoning personal/family time. “Second, because the industry began in Metropolis, the norms and standards-” that Tanya absolutely expects to break down sooner rather than later in favor of more cutthroat policies,”-of the policies execution generally include some kind of payment to the local government to cover collateral damage from the incident that, when metahumans are not involved, would otherwise not be covered.” This was one hundred percent because of Superman. He won goodwill towards costumed vigilante activities in enough ways that you could earn a doctorate studying it. Bruce having Wayne Financial follow suit cemented that particular norm.
Cyborg understood what she was getting at. “So wait, because we kept damage down, we get paid extra?”
Tanya laughed. “Ah, well, no. Basically, the local government, in addition to paying your salaries, pays us an additional fee per deployment. Hazard pay.” Starfire looked offended, so Tanya held up a hand to forestall her objection: “Combat Pay is a military term. We are law enforcement, not military. So it gets called Hazard pay instead.” Satisfied, Starfire settled back down. “Now, in a metahuman incident, the norm for insurance companies, for now, is that if they can fix all damage without exceeding policy limits, they do. Originally, they got a little bit of advertising from Superman if they did this, because if Superman offhandedly says in an interview that the insurance companies were prompt and generous when the incident in question was discussed…” Tanya trailed off. “Anyway, Bruce Wayne did something similar, talking about how this insurance company or whatever worked well with the Wayne Foundation in covering damages or what have you, and now it’s just how things are done. Particularly after Superman complained, on air in a live interview, that a particular insurance company was being tightwads-” the actual word he used, “-about paying for clearly covered damages, and that company promptly lost thirty million dollars nationwide over the next quarter.” They have been bought out by another company since then.
“How does this lead to us?” Raven asked, having lost the thread somewhere.
“One of the things the Titans Initiative does is keep detailed records, your uniforms all have cameras and we have excellent programs that sift useful information out of the footage.” Tanya explained, “As a result, we have a handshake deal with all major insurance companies where we make their lives easier, training our metahumans to minimize how much they have to pay-” implicitly threatening them with the alternative of cultivating a ‘they’re insured, it’s fine’ culture instead, “-and save them payroll on sending adjusters to the scene and such, and in return they cover the Hazard Pay that we bill the city for every time we get called in, as part of the damages.” Which currently, for the Jump City Titans, was about five thousand dollars for a short sortie with the full team like that. This was substantially cheaper than a properly equipped fire team of SWAT officers. “That pay covers maintenance and fuel for the T-car, equipment expenses like the wing dings,” Beast Boy chuckled at Nightwing’s silly name for his Batarang alternative. “-any medical expenses… Plus a few hundred dollars for each of you.”
“Sweet!” Beast Boy said, “I’m gonna go to that fancy vegan place on 6th, anyone want to go? My treat!” Tanya knew the place from when she searched for vegetarian restaurants on Garfield’s behalf back when he and Cyborg were first working out cohabitation issues and she was called to mediate. She was briefly thrown at the idea that a place where you could get a full meal for less than thirty dollars constituted ‘fancy’. Sure, it was no fast food place, but still, there was a much nicer place she’d rather go to, it had a fantastic mushroom dish that Nightwing just loved. Ah, Garfield probably just didn’t want to blow all of his new windfall on the meal and was talking it up to the girls who don’t know better. That made sense.
“Hold on, we’re still on the clock.” Nightwing pointed out, “But we can go there for lunch in another few hours.”
What would Starfire’s opinion be on aged vinegarettes? She’d likely prefer the sharper tartness of the fresher stuff over the sweeter, more mellow flavor… “There’s a budget for team meals.” Tanya added absentmindedly. Two hundred dollars per sortie was added to that budget, plus the same amount per week. Plenty for, say, pizzas for everyone, but if they ate as well as Tanya liked to, it would go quickly… She’ll just have to pay for such meals. Incognito, though: it would be bad optics for the superhero team to be at a too-expensive restaurant.
“Anyway,” Tanya coughed, bringing everyone back on topic. “We need to go over the individual debriefs. This will be a form you fill out electronically, with voice to text transcription that the software will translate into a coherent report.” She picked up a stack of tablets, and passed them out. “Rhine. Berechnung. Mahou.” Tanya said, creating zones of silence. “None of you can hear each other, but you can hear me and I can hear you. Go through it, and if you have any questions, I’ll help you. Once you get the hang of it, it’ll be easy.”
While among the boys, Cyborg and Nightwing’s competency was without question, despite his general anti-academic attitude, even Beast Boy was familiar enough with technology that he deftly handled the touch screens, and even shifted his diction to a more formal, direct tone in his verbal report. The idioms and other slang that normally peppered his speech was completely absent, which made the software’s job turning it into a fully usable report simple. At least the Doom Patrol managed to instill that much.
Cyborg did give the algorithm more work, but his report was simple enough. A few tips to optimize for later and he was fine.
The girls, on the other hand, had zero experience with this kind of thing. Starfire gave too many extraneous interpersonal details about the team instead of the incident and had to be instructed on which details were and were not relevant, while Raven had the opposite problem, being excessively terse and saying basically nothing.
Fortunately, as it was a very open and shut case, even those issues were simple to resolve and they were back to playing videogames within twenty minutes.
Until the next incident: A trio of unknown teenage supervillains (presumed metahumans) had taken over a manufacturing facility and had been directing the hostage workers and machines into creating something all day, and as they had some kind of electromagnetic interference, it took until now for the police to learn about the problem, deploy, decide to call in the Titans, and manage to actually get the message out.
A hero’s work is never done.
-----------------------
On average, the Jump City Titans were called in twice a day, although about half of that of those were for the areas of San Francisco that were close to Jump City but not technically within their jurisdiction; one of the advantages of being a technically-independent paramilitary SWAT team is that they can take jobs from the larger city for whatever amount gets negotiated; in this case they charged double; still cheaper than the Power Company.
In what Tanya was unsurprised to hear when she compared the numbers, the Jump City Titans had, by far, the most successful metrics, measured by response times, injury statistics, and collateral damage, in the first week of any branch of the Titans initiative. While Tanya would like to take full credit as she had personally mentored and walked them through that week… it really had more to do with a combination of Nightwing’s experience, the sheer power possessed by the girls, and the fact that they benefited from the institutional experience of the over one hundred teams that had preceded them.
Of course, the reason why they could take full advantage of that experience was because of her direct instruction, so she felt comfortable claiming at least half of the credit for herself.
But that was enough of that, she had a yacht to enjoy! “You know,” Richard said as he drove the luxury car towards the dock. “-you make it surprisingly easy to ignore the fact that you’re ten when you’re working.” He glanced at her again, chuckling. “Then Bruce agrees to hang up the cowl for a few days-” To be more precise, he assented to a test run of the Batman robot that Clark provided, with Kara setting up a learning algorithm to allow it to adequately impersonate Batman when Gotham was relatively quiet, after a week of thoroughly recording the man at work. Batgirl was on duty to keep the Batman robot on task. “-and you act exactly like a kid again.”
“Richard, you do not appreciate the majesty of the ocean.” Tanya said seriously, “Yachts are not just expressions of wealth, they are… boats!” Tanya pointed at the older boy accusingly. “Are you an American or not? Know your history! The reason this country got involved in both World Wars… was because the enemy touched our boats!” Pizza squeaked, matching her dramatic pose.
Despite himself, Richard laughed at Tanya’s declaration. “Well, we’re here.” He said, gesturing in the distance where the Pacific Yacht was visible.
“That’ll be all, Grayson.” Tanya said in a vaguely-aristocratic tone. She patted him on the shoulder and stuffed a hundred dollar bill into his collar. “Go get yourself something nice.”
Still chuckling, Richard shooed her away. “You know Alfred’d tan your hide if you did that to him, right?” Alfred had frequently threatened to do this, but had never actually followed through. This was not because they had ever called his bluff. They hadn’t.
“Of course I wouldn’t, I’m not suicidal, Dick.” Tanya said, face twisting at the idea. Mocking Richard was one thing, but Alfred was basically their grandfather, there was respect due!
“Off with you!” Richard said, “Maybe I can get some work done without you looking over my shoulder all the time.”
“I gave Raven the catalyst you threw away.” Tanya said, adding an edge of seriousness. “If you get into trouble…”
“You’ll kill them dead, I know.” Richard said, without nearly as much animosity as he used to say it with. “I’ll tell her the risks.”
“The fact that you’re doing this properly, as a career, changes things.” Tanya said, “I’ll only kill if I have no choice. You’ve earned that.” She glanced back at the yacht. “Bruce hasn’t. Not yet.”
Richard patted Tanya’s head, carefully so as to not mess up her hair. “Thanks, munchkin.” He said, before shifting the car into reverse and starting to leave.
Tapping her heels together, Tanya’s enchanted shoes allowed her to skate across the dock, waving at the people who were stocking the yacht with what appeared to be a box full of shrink-wrapped Kobe beef. Her favorite!
She was dressed in her beach clothing: A modest lavender one piece with a white sarong and a floppy sun hat decorated with matching lavender flowers. By the time she reached the ramp, the workers had gotten out of the way and she shot up the ramp, flipping in mid-air as she flew over the deck, subtly adjusting her trajectory with magic so she landed right on top of a relaxing Bruce Wayne.
Or, at least, she tried. Diana plucked Tanya from mid-air, juggling her body to bleed momentum, then keeping the tricks going as Tanya giggled from the handling. “Hi!” Tanya said, grinning widely from the adrenaline coursing through her body.
“How did the Titans do?” Diana asked politely.
“They’re going to be big.” Tanya said, “Nightwing has what it takes to lead; he probably would have been fine even without my help.” She wiggled out of Diana’s grip, ditched the sarong and skates, then settled into the hot tub, where Ace was relaxing. “Enjoying your first yacht trip?” She asked.
“It still doesn’t feel real.” Ace said softly.
“I know that feeling.” Tanya said, chuckling. “You know what made being rich feel real to me?” She asked.
“What?” Ace asked, curious.
Jason, who was doing bicep curls with a dumbbell he had brought on board, grunted. “I’d like to know too.”
Tanya brought her hands forward, as if highlighting a sign. “Two words: Money bed. We can order a pallet of freshly minted bills, and party with Benjamin Franklin like it’s 1777.”
Jason, who knew enough history to get the joke, burst out laughing.
Comments
Layout
Titans Go!!! shudder...
