Chapter 1: A prelude
December 24th
Times were changing.
It was a dim evening, as one might expect in winter, though it was neither particularly stormy nor dismal; it was, as one might expect, an almost idyllic and calm. The sound of laughter echoed throughout the letter shaped tower as the crackle of a roaring fire was washed out by men and women ranging from their early to mid-twenties telling stories and swapping tales.
The mirth was mixed, between carefully controlled chuckles echoing out of the faintest of smiles to the full throat belly laughs that caused its owner to tear up, unable to breathe normally.
The room itself was decorated in all manner of bunting flags and tinsel, tastefully tacked across the room to show spirit and willing. The tree—which hadn't been decorated using some ingenious device—was upright and almost glittered with the amount of decorations that seemed to casually hang from it. Under the tree sat many gifts, large, small and in between.
And in the centre of the room, sat on a large U shaped black leather sofa, were thirteen men and women who were usually in a series of gaudy uniforms, doing impossible things. But today, they were here not as what they were in public but as who they were in private; a family. There were arguments; there had been nigh-bloody and near-murderous disagreements. Tempers had flared but they always bounced back, stronger, better, and more ready than ever.
And so they sat, in normal clothes, snacking on treats from the table, laughing and joking about the things they had done together. It had been so many years, and they had all changed so very much, but they were still here, still friends. That might never change, but times were changing.
"Man, you should have seen her face!" Victor Stone roared, one hand on his stomach and the other resting upon his head, his voice carrying over the laughs of the other twelve people in the room. "We're both stood there, looking at each other, waiting for the other to make the first move. So, for lack of a better idea I just turn around and say; Ladies first!"
"Oh god, you didn't...!" Noel Collins covered his mouth, trying his best not to show how much he was laughing. Despite the usual problems that he had with this time of year, it had progressively gotten better the past few years. This year specially had been pretty good, all things considered, so even he couldn't hide behind a bad mood forever.
"It was the politest fight in history!" Llareness Morath chimed in at this point, putting her bottle of beer on the table and holding up her own hand for emphasis. "I felt like I was missing some sort of etiquette training! Punches before kicks, except after headlocks or something!"
"I'm totally setting that up as a thing!" Robert Candide called, pointing at the pink-haired woman with a grin splitting his face. "I am head-master Candide and today we shall learn the etiquette of the street fight!" He said, grabbing at his t-shirt as if it were the lapels of a suit jacket and standing upon the sofa. "Lesson one; in a street fight you need not have a street! A bar, a club, a school room, a funeral, such a thing need not be on the street to be a street fight!" He mocked, throwing a finger into the air and forcing his voice in to the stuffiest of high-brow accents he could muster, occasionally blowing out his cheeks to make himself sound more like a University of Oxford lecturer rather than a man of twenty four.
"Permission to be excused from class!" Sophie Mathews, her bright red lips curling in to a laugh as she raised a hand. Her other hand rested on her stomach, which sat rather uncomfortably distended in front of her. Then again, she was expecting her firstborn.
"Permission granted on grounds of chocolate cake! I shall be needing an extra slice at dinner tomorrow." Rob responded, before being dragged back down in to his seat by the one that had to put up with the fact Rob was doing an oxford accent. This was Tim Drake, a young man of equal physical age but the rough cynical age of forty two.
"Isn't that bribery?" Tim asked, not even bothering to hide the smirk that came across his lips.
"In my current state I'd rather lose the cake than have to take a class sold as Kidney Punches 101. They get enough of a pounding as it is." She laughed, though a groan escaped her lips as she adjusted her seating a little; her passenger had woken up. A blonde woman looked out from next to Llareness and raised an eyebrow at the young brunette.
"...I don't think you would," Tara Markov said with a slight mock in her voice but a warm and genuine smile in her face. One or two of the others in the room paused and looked between the two to see if there was a reaction or not, perhaps something more violent, or-
"...No, you're right, I'd take the cake and be damned to the corrupt system!" Sophie responded, shaking her fist in the air. "Revolution! Save the cake from the fat cats in education!"
"Revolution!" Tara joined her, promptly by about five others of the group that sat around in the U shaped sofa. A strange looking man looked between Sophie and Tara for a moment, before prodding a sharp finger in to the mother-to-be's arm as delicately as he could.
"Ow! What was that for?" She demanded, rubbing her arm. Doctor Nigel Hastings shrugged and looked back and forth.
"What did you do with the real Tara?" He asked, his voice like listening Christopher Lee in gravel polisher, but he had lost most of his accent a while ago. He was smiling, but he couldn't help but ask either considering their history.
"This is Most Unorthodox! Rubarb-rubarb-rubarb!" Rob's muffled sounding words cut the doctor off as he stood up, grabbing his make-shift lapels again, only to be promptly have generic foodstuffs be thrown at him.
"SHHHH! Pipe down, will ya? You'll wake 'im."
Rob cringed apologetically, glancing at the couple next to him. It had been the blonde with thick-rimmed glasses who spoke, all English-accents and hisses, but the man next to her, with dark hair and blonde highlights, was the one that continued:
"Learn from this, Soph," Adam Mathews, no blood relation to Sophie surprisingly, smiled, "That tone, her expression and the eyes that promise agony to those that defy her commands. Mimic it enough and you can probably order those kidney punches to stop."
"Forgive me, friend, but I don't think that that would carry over to Sophie's situation." Kory Anders smiled, pulling a lock of hair behind her ear. Half the women in that room would kill for Kory's hair, which was waist length and a glossy red, but all of them would want her smile which seemed to illuminate the room.
"If anything, I think it's a fine example of abuse of totally-unfair-female power. Isn't that Ryce?" Rob smirked, turning to the young blond next to Adam.
"Hm?" Alaryce Fionnabhair McBride Gallagher muttered distractedly, looking up from the compartment in her cybernetic arm. "D'you say sumthing?"
"Case in point," Rob replied.
"Objection! I move that calling on her like that should be considered cruel and highly unusual!" Garfield Logan laughed, pointing at Gauntlet.
"I move that you don't know which direction we're moving in!" Rob piped up, pointing at Gar with the same joking, accusatory, tone.
"I move that Noel should move out of his chair and give it to me!" Nigel shouted in triumph, pointing a rather sharp finger at the white haired young man, who promptly yelled in frustration. Vic, Sophie, Rob, Gar and Tara all raised their hands in hushed cheer as if they had just won a prize.
"That bloody trial! Talk about a miscarriage of justice!" He groused, folding his arms and slouching on the sofa. "I should have veto'd remembering that night." He grumbled, muttering under his breath.
"And tonight we're playing Six Degrees of Noel's sanity." Llareness said, with a cruel, but mirth-filled, smirk on her dark lips.
"All we needed to do was pick a punishment! It wasn't like I was going to get you to build the targ-ma-freakin'-hall! I mean I was just going to make you go and explain it to Wally or something." He said, rather weakly, before folding his arms and seemingly sulking again; unfortunately he as gaining sympathy from exactly no-one around that table. "Leaders are never appreciated in their time." He muttered.
"Yes dear, you were in the right. Now stop sulking." The last person who was sat at the table commented, looking rather disinterested by the whole situation as she raised a steaming cup of herbal tea to her lips. Raven, also known as Rachael Roth on her driving licence, offered a grin was a ghost in comparison to the others, but it was still there.
"Yes dear." Noel replied, shuffling his body up the sofa, but still with arms folded. He looked paternally ridiculous, but this was the first time in, well, ever when it was the season for giving and he wasn't actually annoyed.
"…No, seriously, I look away for five minutes and suddenly we're in an episode of Judge Judy?" Ryce asked her significant other, blinking.
"Eh, politics," Adam replied. "At least they're keeping it down now."
"Damn right they are," Ryce nodded with a bit of a growl, her eyes falling on her arm again with a fond smile.
About eight years ago the first five arrived at the tower and had teamed to fight crime and enjoy their lives as Metahuman heroes, calling themselves the Teen Titans. As time went on, their problems got bigger, as did their roster of teammates and friends. There were close to possibly sixty superheroes across the United States that held the rank of a Titan, and held it proudly with good reason. They did what they could, defended those that needed it, and lived as much of their lives as they could manage but never compromised their principles.
As the group lost the Teen but kept the Titans they had gained worldwide recognition; they had defeated foes that sported the powers of the old gods, men and women that were some of the best soldiers and assassins in their respective fields, had strengthened relations with other countries and alien cultures and, more than once, saved their city from being wiped off the map.
Out of the legion that held the round, T-emblazoned communicators, only the thirteen that sat at the table had ever called the tower their Home. Other states had towers, with heroes. There were two main towers, one in Jump City, Florida and the other in Steel City, California but there were rumoured to be so many more; Arkham Massachusetts, Winterfield North Dakota, Fort Hope Texas, were all rumoured to have a tower but they were more low-key. There was also a group just off the coast of America in an old aircraft Carrier where they've converted the bridge in to a T shape. There were so many now...
But these few here, the five that started it and the eight that had joined them in their home, they were the big names. Admittedly one started as a live-in and became a Titan before promptly retiring for very good reasons, another's status was always shrouded in ambiguity, and yet another wasn't a Titan at all; she just helped around the tower, and for her efforts was considered a big help.
But after all they had done, and after every hero they helped, every villain they had stopped and every wrong they had righted, more came for them...and then, after they finally defeated a thorn that had been in their side for six years, at least, the problems started to ebb away. Criminals knew not to come to the cities that had the T shaped towers. They left "Vil-Signs", urban villain code, for other super-criminals. If they walked in to town and there was a T scrawled somewhere at the bus terminal or the gas station, they knew to gas up or get the next ticket out of town. Oh sure, there would always be the phony tough and the crazy brave that would give it a go; some up-and-comer that would step up to the plate and try to take on the might of the Titans, only for them to be shown why those signs were in place.
Still, things had been rather quiet, but that wasn't a bad thing, it meant they could have lives beyond the mask, it meant they could be human…the aliens not included, of course.
Cyborg rubbed his human eye with a thumb as he pushed a tear from it, his laughter dying down as he leant back. As funny as watching Noel follow the instructions of his significant other was, he knew that only a handful of the people around the table could actually point and laugh at it; most of those that could were devoted to their girlfriends.
"Whooo-Man, our luck never changed did it?" He said, ending his sentence with a chuckle.
"Oh yeah, December was great!" Morgue said, adjusting her seat to accommodate her passenger. "I had a great time, I don't know about you." Her voice was filled with sarcasm, but there was still a light hearted tone to it. Starfire looked over to her, raising a brow. "I'm fine, Kory, really. I'm just glad you guys were okay; I was worried sick about what was going to you guys." She laughed, before offering an oof from where she sat.
"Sophie?" Scalpel asked, looking at his very expectant significant other with a little bit of concern. "Is...er..."
"I'm fine." She said, patting the back of his metallic hand. "And no, it's not. She's just woken up, is all, and kicked me straight in the kidney." She looked very disapproving at her own stomach for a moment, placing her hands on her hips.
"Tone and expression. Just sayin'," Met piped in.
"No," Sophie replied flatly.
The boy paused and tilted his head at her, blinking. "That was a perfect first attempt. Astounding."
"Success," Gauntlet grinned, holding up a hand. Nothing happened for several seconds, and then Metatron rolled his eyes good-naturedly, slapping it in a classic high five.
Ignoring them, Kory knelt in front of Sophie, wagging a finger at her pregnant bump.
"V'sal! Don't attack your mother! That is not nice!"
"I don't think she can hear you in there." Jinx hazarded, raising her beer bottle to her lips and taking a generous pull. The stuff she was drinking might as well have been water, but it was better to get a friendly buzz than be roaring drunk. You might have a night to remember on roaring drunk, but more likely than not you either didn't remember it the next day or didn't want to remember it.
"The point of the exercise is that we do not know if we do not try!" Kory said, trying to contrive to look offended and failing, miserably. She folded her arms and pouted in a rather comedic fashion and was, as Noel was, given as little sympathy as possible.
"Didn't work before," Ryce pointed out to Star with a rueful chuckle, while staring at the former-villainess and grumbling, "do you have to do that in front of me?" she asked, sipping her apple juice.
Llareness spared her a wicked leer, but tipped the beer back, looking to Sophie, "When are you actually due, anyway? You seem to have been pregnant forever."
"You weren't here before," Noel said with a shudder. "It was twice as bad."
Sophie looked a little shy about the topic turning her in to the centre of attention. It was a strange phenomenon that a pregnant woman commanded the attention of a room, just by their mere presence, but she still didn't like it.
"Well, I'm not sure. I've been a little distracted and haven't kept count as readily. Somewhen soon I think." She said, patting her stomach and nodding. Nigel seemed to raise a brow in confusion as she looked at her, though no-one brought it up. "It'll happen when it happens." Her face glowed with a blush. Llareness felt her teeth start to get cavities from how sweet the situation seemed, but she shook it out of her mind. As long as she was happy, that's all fine.
Ryce coughed delicately, which instantly sent massive alarms in the heads of anyone that knew her.
"She's technically overdue by this point, actually." She said. Nigel's expression was a mask of absolute bewilderment.
"No, she's not," he said, matter-of-factly, as disbelief entered his voice. Sophie's glances looked between Ryce and Scalpel, her eyes narrowing, as her big brain started to work over the issue.
Ryce raised an amused eyebrow, her faded eye glimmering quietly. "Really? You're going to doubt my word on matters of life cycles?"
"Hey…she is…It's been nine months! Over, in fact…" Sophie said, tapping her chin as her one cloudy eye seemed to focus on the air for a moment as she concentrated. "If the, er, V'sal…?" She looked to Kory who gave a thumbs-up on the pronunciation. "If the V'sal was conceived before…well…then that means her nine months are up, and she has an extra week and…" She counted down in her head, tilting it to one side. "Two days to her name."
The room fell silent as they all turned to Sophie, their eyes as wide as saucers as they all realised she could give birth any day, any time, now. The only ones that weren't like that were Nigel and Kory, who both sat confused and turned to one another, offering a shrug of confusion, Ryce, who just chuckled, and Met, who was annoyingly unconcerned by most things.
Sophie blinked, her eyes matching the rest of the room, before they narrowed and she turned slowly, menacingly, towards Nigel. Nigel seemed to blink in confusion and offered a minor gulp. Her voice, when she spoke, might as well have been syrup with how smooth and sweet it seemed to be. Raven, however, knew that it was as hollow as an empty wine cask.
"Nigel, Sweetie…" She started, sounding soft and demure as she offered a, somewhat forced, smile on to her blood red lips. "…Be a dear and tell me, in your own lovely, almost melodic, words; how LONG a Blacktrinian woman is pregnant for?"
The alien's eyes now went wide as he seemed to look away from the love of his life. While attention was on them, Kory decided now might be a decent time to slip away unnoticed. Sophie's pale hand, unblemished by the sun, grabbed at the belt around Star's hour-glass middle and pulled her back over while she still stared at the alien doctor. Sometimes it was strange how she could just look at a person and watch them fold under her inquisitive look…
"Oh, well, it's…" He cleared his throat in to a clawed hand. "Difficult to say, I mean translating months there and here, well there's some difficulty and the fact you've complicated it with the phases of the moon and…"
"HAW!" Ryce snorted in a very unlady-like fashion, leaning against her beloved. "This conversation seems painfully familiar."
"At least no one's water broke this time," Met replied, holding her hand and leaning against her back.
"Nigel, my darling, light of my life-" The mortician started, not quite able to contain the shrill tone of panic that crept into her voice at her friend's words. Victor started to edge away from his friend. Survival instincts were apparently sparking off around the group as they started to move away. "-Humans are pregnant for Nine months, if that. Most of the time they give birth between the eighth and ninth marker." She smiled, reaching forward and patting him on his chest with her free hand; Starfire's hemline still caught in her rigid hand so she only had one. Star started to work at the belt as subtly as one could when they're currently held in a vice-grip. "Humans, generally, are not known for going over Nine-Months, it's why we call it Over-Due." Her voice was a singsong, wafting from delicate cord to simple notes.
"…It's more fun to be on this side," Ryce decided.
And then, Sophie's hand gripped the alien's shirt and yanked him forward. "To put it in your terms, that's four and a half Relka!"
"R'elkia…" Nigel corrected, meekly, about two inches from a face that was baring a pair of fangs nearly as big as his own. A few stifled laughs came from around the table, as well as more than one person covering their eyes as this was going to be messy; the same sort of messy when you respond rather too truthfully to the question of if a dress makes a person look fat.
"What. Ever. How long. Does your species. Gestate for?" She asked, her voice becoming a growl at the end of it.
The room went quiet, the crackling of the fire being forever pervasive. The squeak of leather echoed from under the occupants, as they shifted position.
"Er…Six…R'elkia."
Sophie let him go. She blinked a few times, her mind wrapping around the numbers as, one by one, the room's eyes collectively opened wider as they worked out the numbers in their heads.
"Six R'elkia." She said, her voice flat and it broke the silence.
"Yyeess." He replied, slipping off the sofa now that he was free of the grip and taking a few steps back.
"…Twelve months." She continued, sitting back in her chair and looking at her rather distended midsection as her daughter realized that Mommy was going to have an aneurism, and therefore should probably not kick her kidney again because Mommy already had a lot on her mind. She did stretch out, though, as despite the heavy dinner she was still very hungry. This caused Sophie to breath in slight discomfort and be brought back in to the real world.
"Nigel, give us the odds please." Noel said, his face becoming a serious mask as he turned to the doctor, who had managed to reach one of the doors and was being followed by the other Alien of their group. Her hands were up in the traditional sneaking pose, while her legs were coiled under her, flight aiding her in moving quietly.
"We got all the medicine on our trip; she'll be fine as far as we can tell." He waved his hands franticly at Noel while he spoke in a hushed whisper, though one finger reached for his lips to try and indicate that Noel should stay quiet and let them leave. "It's just I may have not…realised the timescale difference!" He said, the expression on his face being one of abject terror.
"Then why is Kory running?"
"I may have, also, not mentioned it to Sister Sophie, and…I may have, er, known of the difference in the time scale." She said, offering a shrug and a nervous laugh, her hand rubbing the back of her head.
Most people expected shouting at this point, though it wasn't the case.
"Noel, my dear friend, you are my friend aren't you?" She asked, her sweet, soft, singsong voice echoed again. She scooted closer to him and reached in to his jacket, pulling out a black box with one fluid motion and smiled, broadly. "Can I borrow this? Thanks, you are such a sweetheart." She continued to smile as she shifted to the front of the sofa cushion and, with a considered effort, stood up from the soft padding.
She turned to them her smile starting to look more manic as her day went on. "Oooohh Nigel? My darling Nigel and my dear, sweet, adopted Sister Kory!" Her voice slipped in to pure, red, malice as she held up the box and pressed a button on the side, which caused two prongs to spark and throw lightning from metallic spike to spike. That was because the box itself was a tazer, a working one designed to take down super criminals. "Let's go have a talk."
She stalked after them, at a slow but steady pace as the two aliens fled the room, shouting something akin to "RUN AWAY" in unison, Nigel's claws clanged down the corridor as Starfire just few to escape the mother-to-be, letting out a high pitched "Eek".
"No fair running! I can't run very well!" She called after them, picking up the pace a little and power-walking after them and out of sight.
Silence followed.
"…Well," Metatron finally said, sounding deeply impressed. "She learns so quickly."
Then Llareness failed to hold back a laugh, attempting to remain serious and only looking as if she were trying to get some toffee from the back of her mouth. This was followed closely by Gar as Terra bent over double silently. This then started a small wave of people all trying not to crack up laughing filling the empty space.
"This isn't funny, you know." Noel said; his expression rather frosty as he turned from one person to the next and offered them a look. It was the same look he offered to most when he was displeased, to the point that most just referred to it as The Look. As usual, he seemed to have a problem with them finding the lighter side to the situation, but it wasn't because they were laughing; a fundamental issue with Noel was that he had a problem with surprises. He didn't like surprises, and this was one was potentially a big one.
"Oh, no, no. We know, we-" Llareness tried not to laugh as she nodded towards Savior, her eyes closing and her face trying to take on a rather wooden, serious, expression. She had failed utterly, but she was trying at the very least. "-We are well aware. Yes."
"This is a serious situation, involving her health." Noel continued, sternly, as he turned away from her and to the next person in the line, who was bobbing his head like some sort of bobble-head toy.
"Oh, yes. No, I think we all get that." Cyborg nodded, placing his chin in-between thumb and forefinger as he nodded, gravely, still not quite managing to run the smirk off his face. His lips pursed as he fought the laugh inside.
"She's emotionally unstable at the moment due to her hormones and other alien hormones that are flowing through her system." Noel said, starting to lose ground as he slowly realised that once again he was in the minority. "This could damage her quite severally, or worse."
"Ugh...you are not lecturin' me on this particular subject, Noel. Her...well they aren't married but-" Ryce started, rubbing at her dead eye with a finger as her face screwed up to find the right words. Even as she found them she was glancing back to her left arm and the tiny green light there. "Her might-as-well-be Husband s'an alien doctor! He said that he got the medicine and he's got it all in hand."
"Except that he didn't take in to account the difference-" Noel started, before Robert stepped up and interrupted, raising a finger in to the air.
"Superheroes deal with a situation changing every single day! A bank robbery turned in to a high-speed chase, a cat being pulled out of a tree only for you to find that Mittens is a four hundred pound Bengal tiger, you being caught with your hand in the bank vault, all that." He smirked and placed a hand to his chest in a heartfelt, patriotic, manner. "And they both are, or were, heroes so they'll deal with it as it comes! And we'll be there to point and laugh all along the way, er, I mean be supportive! Yeah..."
"Perhaps we should go after them?" Noel turned away, almost blanking Gauntlet's mad ramblings, as he looked to the door that they had disappeared through.
"Don't worry, Noel, she isn't going to harm them. Just put the fear of god in to them." Raven said, patting Noel on shoulder as she raised a tea to her lips. He could feel him starting to return to a sulk; she had to reassure him…but considering what she had learned about herself recently she had to wonder how much she had to carry.
"She better do it quietly," Ryce grumbled, straightening up suddenly to check her arm.
"Nigel will be fine…even if he's more scared of her than most of the things we've faced." Tara commented, hooking her legs up under her as she leant back on the sofa, resting her elbow on the black leather and her head in her palm.
"Dude, I've never see him so scared! Who knew he had a scared face?" Garfield laughed, reaching forward to the table and refilling a glass of wine from a bottle, ignoring the pained look of longing their maid was giving his glass. "I feel like I just watched something that went down in to myth!"
"I've seen it before." Noel said as he, too, leant forward and took up a mini-yule log from a packet. His tone was not joyful, but at least he was starting to lighten up; much to Raven's relief.
"Same; it was during the first run-in we had Halloween." Cyborg commented, shaking his head despondently. The group, on cue and en-masse, shuddered and looked at one another. Each and every one of them had lived through the monstrous Halloweens that had plagued them for the last few years.
The room was brought low by the collective memories of the horror and the problems that had plagued them over the years, the scars that they had obtained, the issues that they had gone through. They had been through so much for so many, and they had mostly gained scars for their troubles. Llareness ran a hand down her thick thigh, where the girls knew there was a scar. Even Ryce raised a hand to her dead eye, rubbing it, glancing across the room where they hadn't ever been completely able to remove a faint burn mark on the floor.
This needed to stop.
"I saw his expression when he was told he was going to be a father." Raven spoke, cutting the silence that had been growing from mentioning Halloween. Her tone was, considering who she was, cheerful and contemplative. "That's the most scared I've ever seen him; he became as white as one of Noel's jackets."
"No one can go that white." Vic said, nudging Noel in the arm and laughing a rich, deep, baritone laugh as if on cue. It was almost as if he was picking up the subtle hint that the others were slowly grasping; they didn't need to think of the horror; they were having fun and enjoying themselves.
"I'm not surprised Nigel freaked a little!" Llareness replied with a healthy laugh of her own. "I'd be petrified if someone told me I'd be a parent!" Raven nodded, as did nearly all the other girls and most of the guys, in total agreement with the hex wielder.
"It'd never happen." Noel said, crossing one leg over the other, resting his ankle on his other knee, as he turned to her. "You'd have to give up beer for nine months." Llareness looked at the bottle in her hand, then raised a brow and looked to Noel.
"Screw that." She simply said with a shrug and took a swig from the bottle. A few chuckles escaped the others as the general level of jocularity raised itself back up to their fun little stories. They continued to tell tales, for a while; recounting encounters with other heroes, their various attempts to obtain the lasso of truth from under Wonder Woman's nose, one of the few, and very brief, encounters with Superman and Batman.
Despite the fact they had saved the world countless times, and their city more times than they could count, for some reason the Justice League still looked at them as if they were bush-league heroes. There was just no pleasing some people.
Sophie re-entered the room, her face crimson as small beads of sweat roll down from her temple and around her soft cheek. In one hand she had Nigel, being pulled by the collar of his shirt, and in the other she had Kory by the hem-line of her top. It might have been indecent if Kory had not worn a rather modest sports-style bra under it. The tazer had been dropped somewhere along the way, but that wasn't so much of an issue as Noel was pretty sure he'd be able to find it…so long as it hadn't landed in Gauntlet's room. If that had happened there was no hope; it was worse than Beast Boy's used to be.
"We kept it quiet," Sophie assured Ryce before she could even open her mouth.
Sophie sat, heavily, upon the sofa and took one final breath as both the aliens stood behind her, nervously playing with their claws and long hair respectively. The, somewhat justified, annoyance had settled and she was back to her calm, loving, exterior…mostly.
"They've agreed…" Sophie took another breath, mopping her forehead with her sleeve arm. "To make up for their lack of communication…" She shot a glare from one to the other, who both laughed nervously and disappeared off in to the kitchen. "That they'll get me anything I need over the next three months, regardless of what actually happens. After all, we have no idea what'll happen at this point." The last part was said through gritted teeth as a fresh mug of hot chocolate was placed in to her hands by slender orange fingers.
She paused and looked at the hot chocolate, expectantly; before another orange hand reached out and placed a few marshmallows into the broth and finished it all off with a healthy helping of whipped cream. Sophie smiled in approval and took a sip. There was a slight crash from the kitchen and two people, speaking alien languages, said sorry.
"So you think it'll take another three months?" Adam asked with a healthy smile. He cared deeply for Sophie, not in a romantic way but a platonic way; he had watched her grow from a shy, retiring mouse in to a woman of confidence. She was always self-reliant, and now she was able to believe in herself and was calm, collected, and used her great intellect to even greater use without the worries and panics of others.
"No; as far as we can work out the V'sal will arrive when it does, but it'll be between now and then. It could be tomorrow, because I'm human, or it could be in another…" She gulped a little, resetting her confident expression. "…Three…months, of this because of Nigel." A small look was cast to the alien who was stood in the kitchen. "We will just have to wait and see."
"So, as we're telling stories, what did everyone actually get up to this December?" Tim asked, reaching forward and grabbing at the table snacks. He wanted to move the topic away from the rather hormonally-unbalanced woman, a degree, not just for the group's sake but for hers as well. He was more than familiar that she had gained in confidence; still she wasn't one to be placed at the centre of a group, yet. By now at least he had a lot of practice with topic changes of this sort.
"Well, you know where me and Kory went." Nigel said, after fetching his significant other a bowl of ice cream; as far as most people could tell it was the chocolate Neapolitan that Llareness had brought for her midnight ice-cream sessions. The pink witch would have argued, but decided against courting with the wrath of Sophie. Besides, she needed it more; the dull ache still present in Llareness' thighs told her that much, and all that nonsense was a week ago!
"Kory and I." Savior corrected, his sense of grammar hurting sometimes when either of the aliens spoke. It had been something he had put up with for years, and he would continue to do so, to try and at least teach them the correct sentence structure. He had made it his mission to make them speak fluent English, and while both had lost their respective accents, there were still the finer points to consider.
"No, it was I and Nigel that went to space, friend Noel." Kory responded. Noel rested his fingers lightly against his brow, before breathing out a deep, rumbling sigh. That's the problem when you use some shortcuts or learned a language from a completely alien syntax; grammar was the victim, and shortcuts rarely taught you things with cultural meaning. He heard someone mutter 'grammar nazi' and chose to ignore it.
He looked back up at them. "Never mind, so…anyway…" He groused, getting a sharp look from his other half, to whom he was grateful enough for the prod that told him he was being a grump.
"Actually, a few of us don't know where you went." Terra said, raising a hand in confusion as she looked around for some unity in the other faces of the group. Llareness nodded in agreement, as did Gar and Gauntlet. Cyborg shrugged, rather indifferently as his thumb flicked the cap off of a bottle with a familiar hiss.
"Could only have been one of two places." He said, taking another pull from a beer bottle he had in hand. It'd be his only one, for the most part; with only limited organic components left he had very little in the way of, for lack of a better description, space for the alcohol to go to. It would filter in to his blood stream, but as his cardiovascular system was severely limited in comparison to most people, the alcohol to blood ratio was much higher. This one bottle probably would mean he couldn't drive for a good few hours.
"We went to Space." Nigel supplied, checking to see if he could sit down. Given a nod from Sophie, though her expression wore a sentence as he finally scooted back a bit; yes you can, for now.
Those in the room that were ignorant of the Aliens' destination, which was most of them come to think on it, had a myriad of reactions.
"Dude! You went to space and didn't take me?!" Gauntlet asked as he pointed to the two aliens, his voice carrying an edge of slighted honour that would make most want to apologise and do what they could to make recompense.
"HE JUST WANTED TO GO INTO SPACCCCCEEEE...!" Gar, Tara and Adam all shouted at the same time, raising their hands into the air and catching more than a few of the rest of the group off guard. From where she was sitting next to Adam, Ryce began to hiss a silencing gesture at them all, eyes darting back to her arm once more. This promptly fell in to fits of giggles, guilty ones in Met's case. While the reference wasn't that funny, tonight had been a silly enough night for everyone else to just join in.
"...I don't get it." Noel commented, under his breath. Cyborg leant a little closer and placed a hand to cover his mouth in a conspiratorial way.
"It's a video-game reference; an old one." He whispered. Noel nodded in...not so much understanding but in less ignorance than he had been in before. It was going to be one of those nights, he knew that much.
"Well, yes; we couldn't take any humans." Nigel replied, scratching at the side of his face as he looked around the group. "Regardless of actual appearance." The slightly weirder looking humans in the group grumbled, making rather disapproving noises as Gar turned in to an actual grouse and started making a rather unpleasant noise from his perch next to his Geokenetic girlfriend.
"What part of 'shhhhh' aren't you gettin', Gar." Ryce hissed again and made to throw a couch pillow at the shifter.
"My family, please." Kory interceded, raising both of her hands in the defence of the other star-born entity in the room. "He is completely correct, we could not take any of you with us because there were no humans in that part of space; besides considering who we were dealing with it would not have looked good to have you with us Rob."
"Okay, maybe my hair made me infertile to Tamaranians, but Blacktrinians and other races won't have that problem so I might have been able to make it with an awesome alien chick!" He said, standing up and placing his hands on his hips, posing as if he was on the cover of some form of pulp-era space comic.
Ryce rolled her eyes, and raised a brow at him, "Don't you already have one of those?"
"I'm still half convinced I made her up to stop me going mad." Rob joked, offering a blushing smile.
"And here I thought his species were considered ugly here." Noel said under his breath as he raised a glass to his lips, taking in a little bit of Christmas cheer to offset his lack of general Christmas cheer.
"I'm kinda going on the hopes of the Klingon thing; their women are hot because of their slightly rough nature." Rob said, raising a finger to emphasise his point. "Besides, I saw a picture of Nigel's cousin! She's got a figure I wouldn't kick out of bed!" Gauntlet said, miming a curvaceous figure of what you would get if you put Jinx's hips on Starfire's body.
"In my culture, blondes are considered bad luck and people wouldn't want to go near you." Nigel said, rather more bluntly than perhaps he had needed to, but the comments about his cousin had rubbed him the wrong way.
A cricket seemed to chirp in the distance.
"...Dude, you've got to be kidding me." Gauntlet deflated, almost visibly. Terra looked a little surprised and curled her hair around her fingers, looking at the bright blonde locks in comparison to Rob's darker shade of blonde. "Is it just some sort of cruel, cosmic, joke that I happen to be the punch line of?" He asked.
"Jus' ignore me. M'not recordin' this for M'gann…tha's jus' silly," Ryce nodded before Met reached over and gently shut the panel on her arm.
"No blackmail at Christmas, Dear Wife," he said amusedly, before turning to Nigel, "and this doesn't bother you, I take it?" Ryce tugged at her own blonde hair, looking at it with an inspecting gaze through her good eye, before mentally conceding that his species might actually have a point. Nigel shrugged, rather lackadaisically.
"I don't believe in that sort of stuff; but then again considering my luck..." He narrowed his eyes and smirked, one hand absently scratching one of the innumerable scars on his chest.
"All of our luck!" Vic commented, pointing an accusatory finger at Tara, who turned away from the larger man and folded her arms, throwing her nose in to the air. "So we have YOU to blame! What do you have to say to that, Markov? If that's your real name!"
"You'll have to take it up with my attorney." She said, putting on a haughty voice and raising on hand to her chest in a rather superior manner.
"My client has no comment, at this time." Beastboy commented, leaning around her and pointing at his best friend with a finger. "We'll see you in Court." Terra nodded, making a satisfactory humph in her throat as her nose tried to almost touch the ceiling.
"Again with Judge Judy?" Adam blinked, miming that he was holding a microphone and placing a hand to his ear. "Alright then, I'll play: You heard it here first, folks. Back to the studio."
"Thank-you Adam." Gauntlet said, turning away from Metatron and to the rest of the group, waving his index finger around as if he was addressing a live studio audience on a Saturday Morning news and social topics show. "A potential word shortage, well if that happens then this show is in major trouble. More on this topic and more about our earlier stories, including the bishop and the midget of old Oxford town, the adjustable Torso boy of Maine and Tim's receding hairline; all after these messages."
Ryce, during all this, had found a sign that had been discarded a few years previous and held it above her head at this point. The sign simply read "Applause." The rest of the group, save Noel due to his overly serious point of view, applauded as Gauntlet and Metatron turned to one another and each mimed saying something and pretending to shuffle papers and such. Garfield had made his way to the dimmer switch and the lights lowered, before coming back on at their normal, dim, winter brightness.
Noel rolled his eyes and stood up, heading to the kitchen that was just to one side of the sofas. If he was going to deal with all of this he really needed to get some more coffee as he couldn't believe that most of these people, ranging from their late teens to their mid-twenties, were still playing around as if they were children. Tim just felt at his scalp, which still felt as full of hair today as it had in any part of his life. He knew it, but he couldn't help but check at all the same.
"But the butt of the celestial joke aside..." Terra said, turning back to Nigel and Kory. "...What were you doing in space?"
"Hm..." Nigel paused as he mulled over the memories of the previous few weeks, wondering if what happened in space should stay in space, much like what had happened when some of the Titans went to Vegas.
What happened at Vegas? No one knew; because it stayed in Vegas.
...Unless you were Ryce and Adam that is...but that was another story...
A thought did cross his mind though; he hadn't done anything wrong in space. He might have done one or two things that were almost, just about... by a very thin margin, technically illegal, but then again, that was the flimsiest sort of illegal. "Alright, we'll tell you the story as long as you all pass on what happened to you all as well." He said, his clawed finger pointing from each Titan in turn. This should have been his get out of jail card.
It wasn't.
"Well, yeah, we never really got the full story of what happened with anyone this December; we've been all so busy we never did a full debrief." Robin commented, leaning back and relaxing. The group groaned; when it was said like that, it always sounded as if they were going to meet up around a table, open rather dull dossiers and give great, almost painful, details all the information that would be tactically relevant. Or at least it had when the super group ever actually debriefed, as it had been lead by Noel and he had wanted to do things correctly.
And correct, by Noel's standards, often meant boring.
So the team had refused to do so in the future, opting instead for telling rough details and the occasional tall-tale of them having defeated Bizzaro or Doomsday intermixed with stopping the smaller criminals that kicked around the city. No one was ever sure WHY Catwoman was supposedly helping the Amazing Mumbo, but then again most of Rob's reports ended in that way.
In one of them Gauntlet supposedly challenged God to an arm wrestling contest that finished after the end of the world in a draw. So yes; a pinch of salt the size of Montana would be needed to be employed upon occasion…And a few antacids for Noel to prevent him from having an ulcer.
"I think they're disagreeing with you, Fearless." Noel said, from the kitchen as he finished brewing his coffee. Even the smell of it allowed him to focus on something else other than some of the inanity that was being presented around him, even by the more competent men and women that filled the team. It was strange, to him that as soon as the heat was off they all fell out of the mindset that they needed to prep and train and prepare. This wasn't the case, but Noel wanted more sessions, harder lessons and just…more.
But then again the logical part of his brain countered this; after all they had given up their teen years so that the city would be safe. Isn't it time the city gave something back?
"Let's not call it a debriefing then;" Tim started, offering a smirk. "Let's call it a story telling challenge. Whoever has the best or the most interesting story is immune to the chores of the tower for two days of their choosing."
"Oh, you mean the chores none of you ever do and leave post its on my door 'bout? Those chores?" Ryce asked grumpily as her hand tried to subtly creep up the table towards the wine glass resting just right th-
"No." Noel said without even glancing her way, a shimmer strand flicking her sharply on the knuckle.
"Well you've all lost! We had the greatest adventure to date!" Rob stood, placing his foot on the table and thumbing to himself, Met and Ryce. "It had men, women, gods, Ryce locking herself in the car for an hour and a half, monsters, nihilists, drug lords, the Boson Higgs particle and a copy of our own DVD!"
"Yeah, or rather no-" Ryce held up a small hand in clarification as she looked to Gauntlet over the top of her glasses. "-It might not actually contain some, if any, of those elements."
"...You're sure?" Rob asked, somewhat dropped from his pedestal. "I'm pretty sure I punched Satan in the face."
"Well you were dreaming very vigorously on the trip." She replied, diplomatically with a chuckle as she leant over and patted the crestfallen hero on the shoulder. Her own other half, the half-demon Metatron, smirked and did likewise.
"Don't worry, buddy, if you want we can always go and try to punch-"
"No, no you don't." Raven said, leaning forward in her seat and placing a supportive hand on her knee. "No one, I mean NO ONE, can just randomly walks up to the Morning Star and punch him in the face. Even Etrigan doesn't do that, and you know what a, so called, character he is." She commented. If Met felt he wasn't half crazy, he might have picked up on the slight acid in her tone.
"What about Michael?" He asked. Metatron had placed a hand to his chin, rubbing it lightly as his eyes seemed to swivel upwards as if on some form of pivot "Pretty sure he laid it to the Morning Star good and proper when they last tussled."
"Uncle Michael kicked Aunt Lucy's ever lovin' arse," Ryce acknowledged.
"…The Arch-Angels?" Raven clarified. He nodded enthusiastically, as if he was trying to remember something. "Well…yes, I'll concede he does wander up and punch people in the face, but it's never random and he generally would win any encounter he involves himself in." She nodded, resting back against the chair. "He is the Arch-Angel of war, it's kind of his job to fight and generally win. There was a lot of celestial magic to make that so, I'd bet…" then she paused as if just processing something and glanced to Met's right, "…Aunt?"
Ryce…just gave her a decidedly unnerving smile and sipped her juice.
"…B-Besides, I wasn't talking about the Morning Star, I was talking about Satan; you know the Jewish angel of trickery that was used to test the faith of others?" He said, leaning a little closer to Raven.
"Oh yes, you're quite right." Raven sighed and rubbed her forehead as she attempted to clear her thoughts. The emotions and feelings coming from the group fell from them in waves as they banded around ideas and thoughts. She, like Noel and Tim, felt like she was an adult in a room full of children, sometimes doubly so with the generalised insanity of Met and his mate, the jovial nature of Beast Boy and Gauntlet and Sophie's unfortunate mood-swings making her act like she's having a tantrum every so often.
She felt like a mother and part of her, a deep down part that she didn't want to pay attention to, said she might actually like it. Her time with the three super-powered tots had warmed some of the more icy parts of her heart to the idea of it, but still…She reminded herself to crush her own hormones like the vile, treacherous, beasts that they were at a later date. She had far too much on her mind at the moment.
"So; who wants to start?" Cyborg's words cut through the disorder of Raven's thoughts as she looked up. She didn't want to tell her story, she didn't want to tell the end of it but she doubted that she and Robin, two of the most prominent members of the entire group, would be able to get away with saying nothing.
"Well, I say we start with whoever left first!" Rob jumped up and posed, again, thumbing at his own chest as if he was introducing himself to a new villain. Gauntlet's snappy jokes and devil-may-care attitude had actually made him a slight media darling over the years, as people enjoyed his happy-go-lucky attitude. Even the Titans had been happy with this as he had a distinct talent for saying nothing for hours and hours, and it allowed Titans such as Noel and Nigel to avoid the camera as much as possible.
"Chronologically?" Tim said, as Kory reached down and hugged him tightly from behind. "That seems pretty fair, as we're telling a timeline." He said, almost trailing off, as he could smell Kory's hair from where he sat. He felt his cheeks warm, but he couldn't help it.
"…The Pheromone increase s'a lil creepy, Tim."
"…So is COMMENTING on it, Alaryce."
"Alright! SO there we were; travelling through space and time, when suddenly-" Gauntlet began, placing a foot on the table with a heavy thud, accompanied by the slight jump of glasses, bottles and plates. A myriad of hands rushed forward and grabbed at some of the bottles and glasses to make sure their content didn't end up on the floor and, more importantly, not in their stomachs.
"I will go eldritch on your scrawny arse if don't be quiet, Robbie" Ryce hissed, her humour all but gone as her tail slashed the air behind her.
"Hold on, Rob." Cyborg held up a hand, his inner calendar clicking over in his head. "When did you guys leave?"
"The fifth, I think." He turned and looked at the angelic/demonic couple, who both nodded in unison as if they were some sort of creepy marionette show, albeit one much more angrily than the other. He felt himself shudder a little but resisted the urge to point at them and scream something about living dead dolls. Mostly because he really half-believed his close friend would make good on her threat of going a touch Lovecrafty on him if he woke him up.
"Kory and Nigel left on the first." He said, turning his red optic on to them with a smirk. Both suddenly looked a little uncertain of themselves.
"I'm pretty sure you don't want to hear our-" Kory started, waving it away with mock-confidence and humility as she almost tried to hide behind her long term boyfriend.
"I mean it was not really anything, it was a milk-run, if that." Nigel almost mimicked her actions, but unlike her he had no one to hide behind so he just sat with a false face, trying to make the entire situation as boring as possible.
"Ahuh." The group said, almost on mass, with accompaniments of "Yeah right" and "Of course it was". All in all, Kory and Nigel got the distinct impression that they didn't believe them.
"You'll be bored." Nigel tried, once more attempting the blunt approach that he had used on Gauntlet, though unlike before his cold and quite malevolent self-assurance was ebbing away from him like a small boat on a fast river.
"It's in space. Everything in space is about seventeen times bigger than on earth, so even the dull bits will seem like an adventure." Noel said as even he joined in with the collective group activity of needling the two alien warriors. Raven noted this with a smile, as it seemed that even he had started to improve.
Tim stood up from Kory's grasp and took her hands. She was still floating, still flying, and so lifting her up and over the sofa to sit next to Nigel was no great feat. The pair gulped as they looked at one another, the collective eyes of the group fell upon them.
"We're not getting out of this are we?" The doctor asked.
"Nope." Tim responded, tugging up the sleeves on his red turtleneck sweater.
"And we can not get away with just the fact we were successful?" The princess enquired, looking at them all in turn.
"No." Tim said again, sitting himself down next to Kory, having waved at the rest of the group next to her to budge up a little and make space; there was plenty of it.
The two aliens sighed as they picked up their respective drinks and took a sip that was so in time you would have thought they might have practiced it. Placing them back down on the table with a thud, they took another sigh.
"Our story begins on December First…" Star started, her soft tones wafting over the group as they all leaned in to listen, intently.
This was going to be a good day, indeed.