Madame Rouge: Absolution (Prologue)

Paris, France, 100 hours after the defeat of the Brotherhood of Evil



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"We can transport most of the villains by unfreezing them..." Robin had started. Jinx jumped in.



"-Except Rouge!" The other original five Titans said nothing audible through Cyborg's ears, so Rouge had assumed they had turned to stare at him. Eventually the silence was broken by Raven.



"Jinx, I know your history with Rouge, but she deserves to be put in prison." Raven spoke factually, not particularly trying to reason with him.



"She is in prison; she's in the only safe prison we'll ever find for her. I've looked up the research. That ice will never melt, and she'll never be able to use her powers to imitate a guard, and kill innocent people on her road to killing us! You really think she's going to try to capture us now?! Dudes, trust me; We have to seal this place, for good. She's too dangerous and crafty to just let her live among us. She has to stay here, at the heart of what she built for the Brain, forever."



Robin grimly refused. "You sound like Rouge, Jinx..."



"I admired her for a long time. She was the one to smack the sense into me. With that I realized something else. Sometimes the extra step needs to be taken. Sometimes you have to take a good look at your enemies and wonder: are they right, in any way. I will never say I want to kill Rouge; she'd have won over me then. We can just leave her here, in that prison."



"She'll starve!" Starfire interjected, uncomfortable with this, but not openly against it.



"No, she won't. Her body doesn't consume food. She's been transformed by the Brain and his ape. She's just misguided putty..."



Raven shook her head. "I'm normally the dark one here. I've seen what happen when you take a card from your enemy; all it does is make you more similar to them, and I...we don't need that!"



"Rouge is just going to escape from prison, this time with blood lust. Her body adapts, too."



"What does that mean? How do you know so much about her?"



Jinx paused and looked at the ground.



"I broke into their base once; it's how I was able to show Walley-"



"Who?" Cyborg queried.



"...Kid Flash I mean. I came here once to try to show Madame Rouge I could be as stealthy as her. I got lost and found myself in the Brains office. They were still setting up, so the cameras didn't work and no one was here. I found the Brain's files on Rouge's surgery: the one that gave her her powers. In it there was also the Brain's list of unexpected development. Rouge's body adapts to weaknesses. Robin told me how's Rouge's been frozen before. If we let her out, she might grow immunity to being frozen, and then we'll never be able to properly hold her!"



She walked up to Beast Boy, who was looking away the whole time. "Beast Boy, you've been fighting her longer than all of us; you know what she's like better than any of us."



Beast Boy didn't meet her eyes and walked back towards the T-Ship, and didn't look back.



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Two Hours Later...



Jinx knelt in front of the frozen vixen before him. The lights were gone, and only the night moonlight kept the area partially lit. She noticed she had been in the motion of returning to her feet when she was frozen. She never stopped...



She sighed.



"The most ironic thing about this isn't you being frozen by your own machine...It's that I think you were the one to help me grow up the most though all this I hated you so much at the end. I wanted to defeat you. You made me grow out of being the runt I was. I'm sorry this is your reward. It wasn't too long ago you asked us when we would learn. Well, Madame Rouge, I have learned...the hard choices that I have to make to be a hero. Leaving you here is one of them. The other-"



"Jinx," Jinx's communicator destroyed the silence. "The explosives are ready. Get out when you're done." Robin sounded matter-of-fact. Jinx held the communicator to her face and sighed.



"Roger Robin. I'll be topside in a few." "The other choice is that if I have to do this...even to you...to save others, is that I'm done being a Teen Titan. I don't know what happened to you to make you as you are...were, but I wish I did. I wish that I could have done something to stop it because I know you weren't always like this. I wish I knew so it doesn't happen to me, and that's where I see this going if I stay with the Titans. I guess I'm trying to say I'm sorry...because if I had joined you...I know we would have defeated the Titans. We would-"



"Jinx, the authorities are getting restless, get up here now." Robin sounded annoyed. Jinx responded, saying she was on her way up.



She took one last look at the defeated woman, and didn't think of her as a villain. She was a mentor, one of them. She had taught Jinx some hard things about life, and for that she was grateful. The gratitude ended there.



She walked up close to the living stature and placed her Titans communicator at the base or her defeated form. "No matter what happens next, please don't think you could have still joined us, been a better person. I'd still like that, but..."



Jinx sighed again, and hugged the ice-coated being. single tear welled in her eye, and she walked away., and didn't look back. The Titan communicator remained on the ground in front of the frozen Madame Rouge.



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Ten minutes later and explosion rocked the lair. It had originated topside and rubble began to fill the destabilized chamber. The shelf Rouge's frozen body lay on gave way beneath her. She fell into the pile of crushing debris; her ice prison was not even scratched by the tons of rock and metal burying her.





Up above the Teen Titans and some of the unfrozen villains watched the base collapse and fill with debris. Some Titans cheered; most just stared.



In the back of the crowd, Jinx stared and heard the events unfolding. She sighed and turned away. She began walking, knowing Kid Flash would be more than capable of catching up to her in a second.



The explosions rang out for several more minutes before the area stabilized, the air returning to normal.



At the bottom of the abyss of rubble, dust, and metal, lay the unfazed statue of Madame Rouge, whose beating heart was still audible.

MADAME ROUGE: ABSOLUTION

CHAPTTER 1:http://www.writing.com/main/view_item/item_id/1952410-Madame-Rouge-Absolution-Chapter-1