Travelogues (in E flat)

Chapter One: A Series of Unfortunate Events

Disclaimer: I don't own these characters. Luckily, no one gets hurt by fanfiction except its readers.


It was five days before Thanksgiving, and all through the Tower, not a creature was stirring. The reasons varied, from meditation, to stashing, to cooking, to being exuberant, to starving.

Cyborg's reason was the last. He lay on the couch hoping for a ham sandwich.

Through bad luck, procrastination, and laziness, no one had gone shopping for three weeks. Raven had retired to her room with herbal tea, cakes, and pastries. She left instructions that she shouldn't be disturbed unless someone was on fire. Massive quantities of food had also vanished when Robin was around. When Beast Boy had asked about it, Robin simply said, "Be prepared."

By that morning, the other Titans were finally aware of the food situation, but a hurricane had sprung up and showed no signs of leaving. Robin claimed to be busy looking at evidence and didn't come down for lunch. No one was one fire, so the other three Titans left Raven alone and went to the kitchen.

Cyborg was mystified. There wasn't anything in the refrigerator except tofu and blue, fur-covered mud. Starfire and Beast Boy didn't seem troubled by this.

"Hey!" Cyborg said. Beast Boy turned around.

"What's up, Cy?"

"Where's the ham?"

Beast Boy shrugged. "I don't think there's any left, dude."

Starfire nodded. "You consumed a great deal yesterday. But I would be glad to share my green ham and eggs with you, Cyborg."

Beast Boy's eyes widened. "Green ham? Insensitive, Starfire!"

"Oh—I am sorry!" She looked quite upset, and Beast Boy hastened to reassure her.

"Hey, hey! It's okay, Star! You can eat whatever you want." He started humming a horrendously off-tune cereal jingle. Suddenly, he stopped. Cyborg breathed a sigh of relief.

"You could try a tofu sandwich," Beast Boy said. Cyborg's sigh turned into a choke.

"What? Nah, man. Just the thought of it makes me sick." Cyborg shuddered.

"Suit yourself." Beast Boy shrugged and went back to his sandwiches. Cyborg groaned and left.


A heated argument was occurring on a different plane of existence (known to some as the White Space). This argument was between a ball of twinkling energy and a man in an odd suit gesticulating wildly.

"Of course I exist! I was a baby! It's you that doesn't exist. That fish I saw is a dead giveaway. It could not have evolved by chance, proving that you exist. Proof denies faith, and without faith, you're nothing! Nothing… right?"

"Oh dear. I hadn't thought of that."

"As I suspected! Anyway, you can't prove that I'm supposed to be dead! Maybe I'm fulfilling my destiny! Maybe I was fated to turn into a baby there, and that's really how I was born!"

"Of a time loop? That doesn't sound possible. And please, don't shout."

"I'm not shouting!"

Silence.

"All right, I am! I'm shouting, I'm shouting, I'm shou…"

A candlestick fell onto the man in the odd suit, and he fell down. The light darkened despairingly.

"I work in local radio," it said. "What am I doing here?"

A black swirl appeared.

"To be my silly plot device," it said. "By which I mean you will help me fulfill my plot. Now shoo."


That night, Cyborg was still searching the kitchen, hoping against hope he'd overlooked something. A can of spaghetti and meatballs, maybe, or a can of Spam, or a pizza…

He noticed he was drooling and stopped thinking about pizza. "Why'd you leave me, Oscar Mayer?" he said. "What did I ever do to you?"

"Is that your new boyfriend, Cyborg?" Robin said from the stairs. Cyborg jerked up, hit his head, muttered something, and hit his head again. Reeling, he managed to find his way to a chair, listening to his leader's incredibly irritating laughter… and a crunching sound. He frowned and looked up at Robin, now lounging on the sofa… eating… chips… and salsa?

"Where did you get that?" Cyborg yelled desperately, preparing to make a lunge for the Boy Wonder's chips. Robin, realizing his miscalculation, slowly stood up.

"Oh, they're tofu chips. And, uh, tofu salsa," he said.

Cyborg did a double-take. Robin grabbed his food and dashed upstairs before Cyborg could even think about anything besides salsa made out of tofu. When he'd recovered, he heard a door locking in the distance. Sighing, he walked off.


"All right. Is everything ready?" the black swirl asked.

"Yes, yes. Could I have a cup of tea?" the twinkle of light said.

"No. Send him through, damn it, light. We don't need him here. And your stupid dimensional laws may open up new universes if he goes."

"Oh, all right. No need to be so irritable." The twinkle of light flashed red and the man in the odd suit—Warp, the temporal criminal—awoke.

"Right, you're going back now," said the light.

"Back to where?" asked Warp.

"Anywhere," said the black swirl. "Do as you like."

Warp thought about the convenience of this setup, but then felt a strong compulsion to think instead about where he wanted to go. Immediately a single image popped up, that of an innocent-looking, pretty, green-eyed Tamaranean. Damn her.

He would go to Jump City. Time for revenge. No pun intended! Ah, he cracked himself up.


This was the last straw. Cyborg had struggled through another day. He had watched Robin make turkey sandwiches—turkey —and eventually had fallen asleep pondering the world's injustice.

The next day, Cyborg had seen a giant pizza against the wall of his room. He'd nearly taken a bite out of his recharging unit before he came to his senses. The day only got worse from there, and still the hurricane wouldn't let up.

On the fourth day—the fourth afternoon, really—the rain was worse than ever, and Cyborg looked miserably out at the island. The thunder outside rumbled—or was that his stomach? No… it was both. He went over to the kitchen in yet another futile hope that somehow food had gotten through to the island and…

There! A steak, lying on the table, glistening appetizingly, lying on a plate, drizzled with barbeque sauce, begging to be eaten, its aroma wafting over to the staring Titan. Cyborg ran over and took humongous bites of the luscious, tender… bland… gooey…

When he dared to look down, Cyborg discovered he was holding a tofu sandwich. He was mortified. At least no one…

Robin came in and saw Cyborg. He stared.

Cyborg gulped. This caused the tofu to go down his throat.

It was unforgettable. The tofu tasted like sweat mixed with cardboard. Beast Boy returned from his trip to the bathroom to find Cyborg, eyes popping out, sitting next to a tofu sandwich that had a giant bite in it.

"Cyborg? Did you…"

Meanwhile, Raven was walking down to the kitchen to get some more hot water for her tea. As she arrived, she saw the scene and her jaw dropped.

"This has got to be one of the signs of the apocalypse," she said, starting for the kettle. Cyborg's brain was whirring. He hadn't eaten solid food in four days, hadn't so much as walked outside in just as long, had started hallucinating, and had just eaten tofu.

He snapped. Screaming, he ran out, dragging everything in his way along with him. Much to Raven's dismay, this included her. In fact, it was so much to Raven's dismay that about half of the nearby objects exploded.

Robin posed. This didn't look like a good situation, but at least he could yell his favorite words.

"Titans!"

Beast Boy interrupted. "Is it 'go' or 'trouble' this time?"

Robin opened his mouth, frowning, but Beast Boy forestalled him.

"Or maybe 'move!' or something new?"

Robin glared at him. Deprived of even that small pleasure, he thought. This wasn't shaping up to be the best day.

Then, Cyborg swept through Robin, too. He landed on top of Raven. She controlled the pain while internally swearing bloody vengeance on them all.


A time portal opened. Warp strode out and up to Titans Tower, sure that he cut a dashing figure in his suit, and that it was even more imposing in the torrential rain.

Ah, what a dramatic day to return to wreak havoc on those fools. Especially the girl, Starfire. He brashly posed, with a malicious grin.

"I've been waiting a long time for this…" he said.

He knocked on the door.

Unexpectedly, the door blasted itself to pieces.

The mechanical man burst out, dragging the empath and the annoying multi-colored one along with him. They barreled towards Warp, and before he had time to react, they rammed full force into him. He cried out in frustration. His suit went haywire and opened a portal, then began short-circuiting from the rain.

"Not again…" he thought, until he degenerated into an amoeba.


Raven looked around as Cyborg ran about like a maniac, carrying her, Robin, and about three hundred pounds of debris. She tried to struggle loose, but Cyborg's grip was too strong, and she decided that reassessing the situation would be more productive.

I'm in close proximity to a Boy Wonder dressed up like a gaudy traffic light, a time-traveling idiot who seems incapacitated, as well as a mechanical moron who won't let me go, and is running through everything fragile in the Tower. In fact… one of his circuits is flashing overload and is about to blow us towards…

She extrapolated the trajectory.

The collapsing time portal.

Deep, deep sigh.

"At least I have a good excuse not to do dish duties this week," she muttered, and braced herself for a shock.


The phrase 'not shaping up to be the best day' ran through Robin's mind. He felt a fuse in his brain threatening to blow, and forced himself to think cheerful, Starfire-like thoughts. He succeeded only in recapping the events of the morning. Cyborg had gone nuts, Beast Boy had interrupted his catchphrase, and now he'd landed on Raven and would have to think of the best way to beg for his life. And why was she stiffening under him? What had she said? Dish duties?


Beast Boy spat out ketchup from an exploded bottle, cursing Raven's powers, then ran to the door. Cyborg was running around, but not so much in a blur anymore—and then he froze and locked up. The overloaded circuit pulsed. A zap sounded.

The explosion tossed Raven, Robin, and debris into the time portal, and blew Cyborg and other debris back, into the door. The two standing Titans caught a last glimpse of Robin looking surprised and Raven looking sourly resigned as they fell through the rapidly-collapsing time portal.

"Oh, boy," Beast Boy groaned. Every week some kind of ridiculous danger seemed to pop up, with clockwork regularity. Still, two Titans were stuck who-knows-when, and another was incapacitated through… uh, not his tofu. Through a mechanical failure. Tofu wouldn't do such a thing. But how could things get worse?