Author's Note:
Just a quick drabble I thought of last night and wrote up today. Have fun reading it and let me know if you liked it.
Disclaimer: I don't own the Teen Titans.
Update 2/15/17: I just became aware that there's a Teen Titans Go! episode (actually a two-parter) that's very similar to this story. I seldom watch the much-hated show, so I did not know. Sorry. However, I won't be removing it. I think it is good enough to stay, even if it looks like a rip-off.
Angry Girls
Robin paced restlessly the Level Five Containment Unit where they were imprisoned.
Boron carbide bars, thick as his forearm and reinforced with internal cylindrical force fields kept them inside. Behind the bars a restraining plasma field hummed, ready to burn and bounce back anything made from baryonic matter. The walls were armored bulkheads, strengthened with force-mesh. Not even Wally could vibrate his way out of this place. All piping was plastic. All materials were diamagnetic. There was no furniture, no beds, just three mattresses. The toilet and washbasin were plastic, hard enough to function but too soft to use as a weapon or cutting tool.
There was no way to escape, not from inside.
"Willya stop pacing like an angry lion, dude?" Changeling complained for the umpteenth time. Robin ignored him and continued to measure the width of the small cell with his steps.
The green morpher sighed in exasperation and looked at his half-robotic friend with concern. "How much time left, bro?"
Cyborg opened his human eye and whispered back. "Just 'bout fourteen hours."
Changeling frowned. The huge man-machine's power units were burnt out. Right now he was running on emergency life-support batteries. They lasted twenty-four hours and only kept basic life functions working. Cyborg was unable even to stand, let alone walk or fight. His half-ton bulk was currently, for all intents and purposes, just a heavy pile of junk.
He tried to scratch the back of his head, but as soon as he began lifting his arm he was reminded of the fact that his hands and forearms were encased in power-disabling handcuffs. He sighed again and slid down the wall to sit on the floor.
"D'you think the girls will try to break us out?" he asked Robin, a trace of hopefulness in his voice.
"No," came the curt reply. "We told them to wait. By the time they realize something is wrong, the Brotherhood will have us dead already. Even if they don't…"
Changeling understood. Even if the Brotherhood of Evil did not execute them soon, Cyborg's life support would eventually run out. And when it did… He shuddered.
He sighed again, then closed his eyes and waited. There was not much else he could do.
Two familiar female figures walked briskly down the bottom of the fifty-feet-wide canyon at the end of which the entrance to the Brotherhood base was located. The fact that they were walking and not flying should've sent shivers down the spines of every human Brotherhood goon. But their briefing did not include psychological profiles on half-demons and alien warrior princesses.
"I am angry, Starfire!" Raven snarled as she waved her hand contemptuously. A half-dozen human Brotherhood of Evil soldiers were swept away to slam into the walls of the canyon. They slumped, the lucky ones unconscious, the others moaning and cradling broken limbs. She lifted her arm again and a tendril of black magic erupted, coiling around several robotic soldiers and squeezing until they were cut in half.
"I, too, am most distressed, friend Raven!" the Tamaranian responded. Starbeams shot from her eyes, slicing up several robotic soldiers. Starbolts erupted from her hands, blasting a dozen human goons and leaving them unconscious, in varying degrees of hurt.
They walked on.
More soldiers were sent to intercept them. They were dealt with just as ruthlessly, efficiently and contemptuously as the previous ones.
Several armored Humvees bore down on them, chainguns on their roofs blazing, missiles leaving the rails and streaking towards the two girls.
The missiles and autocannon rounds exploded without effect on a black shield. A Humvee was enveloped in black mist and sent crashing into another, both bursting into flame, both crews slithering out of the doomed vehicles as fast as they could. A starbeam cut another armored vehicle in half. Starbolts reduced yet another one to burning, twisted metal. The crews turned tails and vanished.
The two girls walked past the blazing hulks, not sparing them a second glance.
"I am very angry, Star!"
"Yes, friend Raven. I am also in the highly agitated state!"
The ground first started trembling, then shook. A roar could be heard from behind a bend in the canyon. Soon a pair of one-hundred-ton Main Battle Tanks appeared, their turrets swiveling to zero in on the two females, the 120 mm guns barking out high-explosive shells at each of them.
The shells struck the black shield and exploded harmlessly. Raven's eyes blazed white and she made a downwards gesture with her hand.
It was difficult to say which sensation was more chilling, the sight of the huge armored behemoth slowly being flattened like a soda can stepped on by an invisible elephant, or the screams of tortured metal coming from it as it turned into a steel pancake. The crew scurried out in time and ran away in panic.
Starbeams stabbed towards the lead tank, right into the frontal turret armor, where it was strongest. It did not matter. The beam went through the foot-thick composite steel like a red-hot arrow through a paper napkin. It continued on its path, barely reduced in strength, to ignite the ammunition stowage in the back of the turret.
It was a testimony to the skill of the designers that the whole vehicle was not ripped to shreds by the detonation of the forty or so shells and their high-explosive propellant. The blast panels on top of the turret were blown up and the force of the explosion was vented through them, just as the engineers predicted – and hoped for. But the entire hundred-ton vehicle jumped up a foot in the air and crashed back on the ground, all of its electronic and most of its mechanical components completely busted. It would not do any more fighting, ever. The vented explosion did not kill the crew; but the concussion and the feeling of being trapped in a huge steel cocktail shaker left them shocked, dazed and considering that death might have been more merciful.
A strike force of a few dozen troops, several more armored Humvees and a platoon of tanks appeared. To make a long story short, they were soon transformed into burning hulks spewing oily, black smoke, the crackle of fires mingling with the pop of cooked-off ammunition and the moans and cries of "Medic!"
The two angry girls walked through it all, the wounded Brotherhood goons trying to slither out of their way, several playing possum, the rest attempting to be as inconspicuous as possible.
The large entrance to the base hove into view.
"Oh, they will pay for this!" Raven growled, her teeth grinding against each other. "They will regret the day they made such a mistake!"
Starfire's eyes were burning with a vicious green flame. "They shall, indeed! I am most desirous to get the hands on them!"
"We will, Kori, we will. And when we do…" The white blaze in Raven's eyes tinted red.
Automated turrets popped out of the ground, spewing 20 mm Vulcan rounds, missiles and laser beams towards the two approaching girls.
It took less than a minute for all turrets to be ripped out of their mountings, carved up by starbeams, crushed into unrecognizable shapes of turned into smoking craters.
The girls approached the door.
It was an imposing sight. Ten feet tall, twenty feet wide, two feet thick. Solid tungsten steel reinforced with depleted uranium, with encased boron carbide balls to defeat armor-piercing ammunition, strengthened with bars of adamantium and plated with unobtanium. And just to be on the safe side, two interlacing force-meshes were active deep inside the steel.
The door could withstand a direct point-blank shot from an eighteen-inch battleship gun. If for some reason the entire planet blew up suddenly, this door would remain unscratched.
Raven studied it carefully, then turned to Starfire.
"We'll do this together, Kori."
Starfire nodded. The two girls levitated up, grasped each other's wrists and started spinning. A three feet wide spiraling beam of green and black shot from them and bored into the door, blowing a huge hole in it.
The girls parted and floated through the hole. Raven created a black dome above them to protect them from the molten metal that was still dripping from the blasted edges. Once inside they followed the cylindrical path of the beam that had obliterated everything it touched as it raved through the Brotherhood of Evil base.
It made things easier. The few turrets and robotic soldiers that were not in the path of the beam were dealt with almost as an afterthought. They followed the cylinder of annihilation left by the beam until they reached its end, just at a charred, airlock-like door.
A starbeam bit into the door, slicing a large, elliptical hole in it. The cut section was enveloped in black mist and wrenched out. The girls stepped through and into the Command Center of the base.
"You power is surprising, young heroines," the Brain droned in his flat, electronic voice. "But this is as far as you will go. Monsieur Mallah, release the black hole."
The gorilla grunted and pushed a button. A sphere of eye-searing violet-blue, impossible to visualize properly because of the gravitational bending of light around it sped on its way towards them. Starfire stepped in front of Raven, protecting her from the burst of gamma rays that the black hole was emitting.
A black portal appeared in front of the monstrous weapon. It sailed into it and disappeared. The portal vanished. Incredulous electronic gurgling came from the Brain.
"I shall take the caring of Madame Rouge, friend Raven," Starfire said in a cool, matter-of-fact voice. "Please make the dealing with Monsieur Mallah."
"I'm on it, Star!" Raven said and a black raven's claw grasped the still-surprised gorilla in an unbreakable grip, lifting him up and slamming him into the wall.
Madame Rouge's arm extended like a tentacle, the fist going straight for Starfire's head. She simply moved aside, dodging the punch, a deceptively calm expression on her face. Rouge grinned maliciously. Her arm coiled around Starfire like a strangling python and she stepped closer.
"Stupid girl. Did you think you could cause any harm to me?"
"Of course I did," came the calm reply. Starfire's arm lifted, ripping up Rouge's enveloping tentacle-arm almost effortlessly. She bent and picked up a steel bar from the floor. A weak starbeam played over the bar, heating its tip to white-hot in less than a second. Rouge's eyes widened in sudden fear.
Starfire lifted the glowing bar and stabbed it through Rouge and into the concrete wall. A stench of burnt rubber rose and Rouge screamed.
Starfire repeated the procedure twice more, leaving Rouge pinned to the wall with three burning metal spikes. Madame Rouge could eventually free herself by molding her body away, but that would mean leaving behind charred chunks of her rubbery flesh around the spikes. If you ever cut off one of your fingers you could imagine what it would feel like.
"You shall remain there for the near future, or I shall be forced to use the more painful methods," Starfire told Rouge, her voice still cool and matter-of-fact. Madame Rouge glared at her, hatred and defeat smoldering in her eyes.
Starfire turned to Raven. "Have you finished with the Monsieur Mallah?"
"A while ago. Let's get moving."
Raven's power brushed aside the Brain and Immortus as the girls reached the door at the far end. Black energy encased the door and it was torn from its mountings with an ear-hurting screech of abused steel. The door clanged on the floor.
"Let's go," Raven prompted.
Starfire nodded, then turned around towards the Brotherhood of Evil, whose members were extricating themselves and preparing to consider the better part of valor.
"Friend Raven, should we not…"
"Leave them, Star. We didn't come here for them!" she snarled as her eyes became fully red and two red slits appeared above her brows, burning with hellfire.
Starfire's eyes lit up with a savage green glow, small green sparks flying out of them.
"You are in the right. I am following."
They reached the Containment Unit. Starfire's hands glowed green as she plunged them into the plasma barrier. The plasma field churned, wavered and was gone in a shower of green sparks.
"My turn!" Raven said, her voice resonating in several intonations, slightly out of sync. Her demonic aspect was making itself felt.
The boron carbide bars were enveloped in black mist. The red fire in Raven's eyes intensified. The bars broke, bent and were ripped out.
Two very angry girls walked into the Containment Unit and faced their boyfriends.
Dark mist covered Garfield's power-dampening handcuffs and they burst apart, none too gently.
"OW! That hurt, mamma! You could've been more caref – UGH!" he squealed as a black tentacle coiled around him, dragging him closer to her. Garfield paled, his face turning lime green. Her four red eyes were blazing with all the fires of the Pits of Hell, glaring at him mercilessly.
"We are going back to the Tower, Garfield Mark Logan. Start thinking carefully about what you are going to say, because you owe me an explanation!"
Raven turned around and stormed out, pulling a still-wrapped Garfield behind her.
Robin glanced at what was happening to his green teammate, but his attention was quickly turned to his girlfriend as her powerful hand gripped the front of his uniform, lifted him up in the air as effortlessly as if he was a toy, and slammed him into the armored bulkhead of the restraining cell.
"You shall now come with me," Starfire hissed at him, her eyes glowing a vicious green and her voice as sharp and cold as the Arctic wind. "I wish to have the discussion with you about those most hateful words that you uttered." She also turned around and left, carrying her unresisting boyfriend along.
"Hey, what about me?" Cyborg managed to say in a hoarse whisper, the loudest voice he could muster under emergency life-support power. The two girls turned as one and glared at him. He gulped and his face turned ashen.
"Um... yeah, dontcha worry 'bout me, I'll be fine!" he croaked and sighed in relief as the two enraged superheroines turned away and left, dragging their hapless boyfriends to what probably was a horrible fate.
An insect buzzed around his head.
"Great. Now I have bugs flying around, no doubt looking to suck what little blood I have!" he whispered grumpily. The bug hovered in front of him, then landed and grew in size.
"Bee? Oh, man, it's good to see y'all!"
"Don't be so sure, Sparky!" she said coldly, removed her pack and rummaged through it, coming up with a spare power unit. It was a small one, but it would give him full power for a couple of hours, long enough to get back to the T-ship and plug himself into its reactor to recharge fully. "Right now I'm having a hard time deciding if I should give you this or just leave you here to rust!"
"Whatcha sayin', Bee? I didn't do nuthin' –"
"That's exactly the problem, you fool!" Bumblebee shouted. "You allowed those two idiots to play the machos! And you went right along with them!"
Cyborg blinked. At least he could still do that.
"Are you really so clueless? Do I have to play it back to you?" Bumblebee asked, her face getting darker as she got angrier. Seeing the absolute lack of comprehension on Cyborg's face, she sighed and removed the Titans' communicator from her pocket, fiddling with it for a few seconds, then turning it towards Cyborg as the playback started.
'Starfire, Raven,' Robin's face said from the small screen. 'We had a report about the Brotherhood of Evil being up to something and we're going to investigate. Stay in the Tower and wait for us. This is too dangerous for you.'
Cyborg winced.
Changeling's green, grinning face appeared beside Robin's. 'Yeah, this is a man's job. You girls just make sure you have dinner ready when we get back!'
Cyborg cringed.
'Have fun shopping and keep Bumblebee company,' Robin continued. 'We'll be back in no time.'
Cyborg closed his eye. "Oh, man. That was really outta line. Sorry…"
"You'd better be!" Bumblebee exploded, then bent and opened a panel on Cyborgs chest, removing the burnt-out power unit and placing in the new one. "I'm taking you to the Tower, and I'll defer your punishment to Rae and Star. Let's hope they'll leave you in shape to attend the funeral of your two macho buddies!"
Cyborg felt his systems power up. After they finished booting he ran a quick diagnostic and stood up.
"I don't think there's gonna be a funeral," he said dryly.
"If you think they'll get away with it that easy –"
"Nah. That's not what I mean. Problem is, for a funeral you need some kind of remains. I don't think there will be any."
Bumblebee's glare softened, a spark of concern appearing in her dark eyes. "Let's go. Maybe we can still save their sorry, testosterone-filled butts."
Cyborg grinned maliciously at her. "Y'all sure we want to?"