A/N: Here's the new Chapter! Which also means the next four chapters are up on my Patreon for early access as well as the chance to vote on the direction of the story!

Lucien goes balls to the wall.

-x-X-x-

At the end of the day, he wasn’t ready. As he was right now, Lucien knew that he couldn’t hope to rock Death’s world the way he wanted to. But… if he could incorporate all of his gains from the Titans first and then go meet with her, maybe he would have an opportunity. Maybe he would have a chance.

Lucien’s mind is made up and with that he goes to work. Even with three sleeping women cuddling with him, he goes to work. It’s not like he needs to be able to move to use his powers after all. He doesn’t need to shift a single inch in order to change his body, so Kori, Komandr, and Tara will all be none the wiser to what he’s up to.

Closing his eyes, he focuses his attention inwards. First up, Beast Boy. He’d had the green-skinned shapeshifter’s DNA for the longest at this point and had already looked it over a handful of times since he and Blackfire started this little amnesiac scheme of theirs. But he’d never tried incorporating Beast Boy’s abilities into his own body before now.

And yet… having done all of his homework beforehand makes the actual incorporation bonehead easy. Though it’s not just that. As he fiddles with Beast Boy’s DNA, making sure to take the good without the bad, it’s almost like whatever is giving Beast Boy his powers… is aware. And more than that, enthusiastic about giving Lucien the same thing that Beast Boy has.

It’s not the sort of excitement that worries him though. It’s more the excitement of a newborn puppy… or like Spot when Lucien is getting ready to throw him another slab of meat. Hm, though in that last analogy Lucien was the meat, wasn’t he? So that wasn’t quite a happy feeling.

Even still, it all slots in pretty well among the changes he’s already made to himself. And unlike Beast Boy, he’s not limited… nor is he going to look so unusual. Opening his eyes, Lucien looks down and is pleased to see that he avoided Beast Boy’s little green problem. His body is exactly the same as it was before… but he can now shapeshift into any other form he wants to with ease. Not just animals like Beast Boy seems limited to… or perhaps limits himself to.

Lucien doesn’t know for sure how Beast Boy’s personal version of these powers work, but he knows how they work for him now that he has them. In a silent shift, his skin color goes from a tan beige to red. Then green. Then blue. Then back to beige again. That’s about as much as he can do without actually transforming in a way that might risk one of the girls waking up and seeing what he’s up to… but it’s more than enough to confirm everything is working as intended.

He can now become anyone or anything he puts his mind to. Although… he’s still limited to his base power. And one might argue that being limited to such a strong base power is no limitation at all, but there are still some issues. For instance, he could transform into a full male Tamaranean now with Beast Boy’s abilities. He would be a proper Tamaranean with all of their powers too thanks to his understanding of Blackfire and Starfire’s genetic makeup.

However… it would only be temporary. Unearned. Fleeting. More than that, he can’t transform into something he doesn’t already have the genetic makeup for. Beast Boy can become any animal he wants. Lucien can only really become a Snow Leopard, a human, or a Tamaranean at the moment. Of course, he can look like any human he’s ever seen, so that’s pretty cool.

Still, he would not be able to become Superman for instance. He could fake it by looking at Superman with a Tamaranean set of powers, but he wouldn’t be a true Kryptonian. He wouldn’t be nearly as strong or fast as durable. Pretending to be Superman in the wrong circumstances would likely get him killed, because Superman’s enemies never pulled their punches. They didn’t need to.

All of that doom and gloom aside, Lucien was glad he’d started with Beast Boy. Now that he had inherent shapeshifting, it actually synergized quite well with his biological manipulation. In fact, while he couldn’t rely purely on the shapeshifting for any permanent changes he wanted to make to his physiology, it took care of a lot of the heavy lifting even as he turned his attention towards incorporating Tara’s geokinesis into his powerset next.

Why go out of order and do that and not Raven’s demon biology next? Simple, Lucien was still a little nervous if he was being honest. But by the time he’s done making himself geokinetic, he’s not so worried anymore. Tara’s powers are… quite good. He doesn’t even have to move a muscle to know they’re online either. He can sense the earth all around them, just like Tara almost certainly can.

Eyes once again closed, Lucien reaches out with his newest sense. It’s quite amazing, this… seismic sort of sight. He can feel it down to the tiniest pebble and the uses for such a thing are practically limitless. He’s not sure if Tara just doesn’t understand her full potential… or if her full potential is locked away from her.

After all, Lucien has seen Tara fight more than once since beginning to hang around the Titans. If she had the power he now has at his fingertips, she would never be blindsided. It was like having eyes in the back of one’s head… no, more than that. He knew where everything around him was in a certain radius without any eye sight at all.

With the success of incorporating first Beast Boy’s and then Terra’s powers, Lucien is riding high as he turns his focus onto Raven’s demon physiology. He’s not an idiot. He’s well aware that there’s danger unlike anything he has faced so far here. He moves through the roadmap he gained of Raven’s DNA with a fine tooth comb, fully expecting booby traps and pitfalls and just… all sorts of nastiness buried within.

And he finds them too. Even more than Beast Boy, Raven’s powers come with a lot of downsides. But Lucien is able to separate the good from the bad, just as he did with Beast Boy. He wants magic. He wants superpowered empathy. And he wants demon durability added on top of his Tamaranean strength and toughness. He’s seen some of the hits Raven has taken but she’s never needed his healing or he would have had her genetic makeup even earlier. There was no denying it… half-demons were tough cookies.

He wanted that. And he would have it. Soon enough, he’s confident that he’s separated the good from the bad and taken only the things he wants while scraping away all the booby traps and pitfalls that would otherwise fuck him over. Things like making him more bloodthirsty and eviler, or things like leaving him open to being bound and subjugated by demonologists and warlocks in the world.

None of that now. None of that bullshit for Lucien Luthor, thank you very fucking much. As he slots in the modified demon physiology, Lucien can’t help the smile that grows across the face. He can feel himself growing more powerful. He’s honestly not quite sure whether it’s additive, multiplicative, or even exponential, but the Tamaranean and Demon physiologies don’t cancel one another out. They most definitely compliment each other, stacking on top of one another to make him even stronger, faster, and tougher than he was before.

More than that, he could now start learning magic and-

Curious.

The smile on Lucien’s face freezes and he barely has time to lock his body down before his back can arch. But while he keeps himself from seizing up and almost certainly waking the girls currently cuddling with him, there’s no stopping his eyes from turning red or a second set of them sprouting on his forehead.

Very curious.

Suddenly, Lucien is somewhere else. Or no… he’s probably in his own head. Either that, or his consciousness has been projected elsewhere. There’s no doubt that he’s still back in the room with Kori, Komandr, and Tara. But there’s also no doubt that he’s now standing on a barren rock in the middle of a hellish red landscape… before a massive throne.

“You are not one of mine. And yet… you are.”

Lucien has to tilt his head back and back to look up at the being addressing him now. He instinctively knows his name. Trigon the Terrible. Trigon the Ravager. Demon Lord. Also Raven’s father.

Just as quickly as Trigon peers down at him in curiosity… that curiosity vanishes, replaced with irritation and annoyance.

“Ah, I see now. Begone, thief.”

One of the massive demon’s clawed feet comes up and Lucien… Lucien can’t move in time. He can see it coming and knows in his heart of hearts that if it connects, he’s done for. He won’t just die; he’ll be wiped from existence by that foot. Only, before that can happen…

“No.”

Trigon is stopped in his tracks. And then, before Lucien can even register how or the Demon Lord can say another word… they’re elsewhere. Well, not him and Trigon. Trigon is left behind. But Lucien… Lucien finds himself in a familiar meadow with a certain unmistakable figure who stands there looking at him in bemused amusement, a brow arched and a small smile playing at the corner of her mouth.

“That seemed rather foolish of you, my dear Lucien.”

Death of the Endless follows up that admonishment with a shake of her head, one that has Lucien lowering his own head in shame for a moment as he rubs a hand through his hair somewhat sheepishly.

“I thought I’d found all of the traps. I guess I missed one.”

Death hums.

“To be fair, it wasn’t a trap in the conventional sense. More of a… connection. Trigon is connected to all of his children, as you should have already known from your future memories of this world. Raven is destined to potentially open the way for him… as are all his children across every dimension where he has spread his vile seed. It is up to them to fight that destiny or fail and give in.”

Fuck. Fucking fuck. Hadn’t he literally decided not to mess with Raven’s DNA back when he first got his hands on it, purely because he was afraid of what the side effects might be? Accidentally making himself a child of Trigon was LITERALLY a thought that had crossed his mind at the time. And yet here he was. Making a fool of himself in front of the one woman in the entirety of existence who’s opinion meant the most to him.

Though… something in the way she’s talking does draw at his attention, making his eyes narrow.

“You said… them.”

Death’s lips pull into a toothy grin at that and she steps up to him, running her hands along his chest. Lucien blinks, only realizing then and there that the both of them are naked. Or wait, were they not always naked? Were they only naked starting this moment? Fuck, she really knew how to mess with his head.

“Do you know what it means to be the End of All Life, Lucien? Do you know what it means to be everyone’s final breath?”

His own breath hitching as her voice turns husky and seductive, Lucien shakes his head. Death leans in closer, until their lips are mere centimeters apart.

“It means I’ve never really had anything of my own before. I suppose you could say that I have all of those final moments of life. Those are mine, sure. But they are only a fraction of each person’s entire existence. I’m their last moment, but what about all of the moments before me? In the grand scheme of things, for all that everyone spends so much time worrying about meeting me… I’m nothing much at all.”

Lucien growls and grabs Death by the hips.

“Don’t say that. You’re everythi-mmph!”

In turn, she wraps her arms around his neck and finally kisses him, cutting him off mid-word. Not that Lucien is complaining. He kisses her right back, the two of them engaging in a long, drawn out makeout session right there in the meadow. Death had said this was something her brother had made for her. A Dream for just the two of them.

Lucien is all too ready to enjoy it again just the same as last time, but before that can happen Death pulls back and stares at him with a possessive gaze.

“To put a bow on everything I just said… you are mine, Lucien Luthor. My own personal impossibility. I’m not going to give you up. Not for anything or anyone. You. Are. Mine.”

Well damn. Alright then. Death’s intensity dials back after a moment though and she gives him a dry look instead.

“That said, if you had come to me beforehand, we could have incorporated your new toys together without you ever landing on Trigon’s radar. Now you’ve drawn his attention and he WILL find out where you came from. I hope you’re ready for the trouble you’ve brought to your world. Unless you want to move dimensions entirely, you’re going to have to stop him.”

Ah. Shit. Still… Lucien nods his head solemnly before flashing a grin of his own.

“Well, the Titans beat him back before. So I’ll just stick around until he tries to get in through Raven and help them do it again.”

Death huffs in amusement but doesn’t exactly say it’s a bad idea so Lucien files that away as Plan A. That said, after a moment she peers at him curiously again.

“I’ve been watching you, Lucien. I know when you gained access to the half-demon girl’s DNA. I watched you decide to hold off for the time being. What changed your mind, exactly? Why did you do something so foolish practically right after deciding not to?”

Lucien swallows thickly at that. The truth was obvious at least to him. He wanted to impress her. But telling her that sounded like it would have the exact opposite effect. Still, did he really want to lie to her instead?

He could. He could tell her that he was worried about Blackfire and how she would react when he finally had to give back her memories or the possibility of the Titans finding out the truth of his and her scheme, so he was aiming to get as powerful beforehand as possible.

Or he could go with a half-truth and tell her that he’d simply gotten over-confident. Because he had. He really, really had. After fucking Starfire, Blackfire, and Terra all in one night, he’d felt like he was on top of the world and could take on anything… even her with a few upgrades.

… But he should probably just swallow his pride and tell her the truth at the end of the day. That he wanted to impress her. And that he’d undeniably failed.

[X] Tell the truth - 96%