Panting, Robin sprinted down the street. The sound of loud explosions was leading him deeper and deeper into the shipping docks. There were no people around to hinder his path, thankfully; nowadays civilians tended to flee when the titans came onto the scene. The boy wonder leaped onto a fallen crate, which allowed him to get onto the higher boxes, giving him a bird's eye view of the area. Starfire dropped down beside him.
"Anything yet?" Robin asked, eyes searching for the remaining members of his team. Starfire nodded.
"Raven and Beast Boy are following him; I doubt he knows."
They had gotten an alarm on Mumbo Jumbo just an hour before. He was apparently trying to get his hands on some old Egyptian relic, one that had just came in for the Jump City Museum, and the Titans had to stop him. The only problem was that they didn't know where the relic was at the moment. Which left them in this position. Cyborg and he were on the ground, searching for the relic, while Raven and Beast Boy were tailing Mumbo. Well, more like Beast Boy was, since he could be very small when spotted, which hadn't happened.
The bad part about all of this was that no one really knew why Mumbo was after the relic in the first place. They had gotten an anonymous tip off that Mumbo was planning a robbery, and his target was the newly imported relic. All Robin could do was hope it wasn't so valuable that the city could be in danger if it fell into the wrong hands.
Which is precisely what Robin and his team were going to prevent.
From his belt, his communicator chimed. Robin pulled it out with ease, and opened it to see Raven's face staring back.
"Beast Boy has a visual on him, what do we do?" Raven reported. Robin nodded.
"Tell him to keep it," Robin ordered. "Set yourself up with and wait till Mumbo moves. If he starts towards the relic, then go after him, but if nothing happens yet just watch him."
Raven nodded and the screen cut out. Robin turned to Starfire.
"Find Cyborg and head towards where they are. If Mumbo is speeding up, he may know where the relic is."
Starfire nodded. Before jumping off the ledge to fly, the red head turned around to face her boyfriend.
"Robin, be careful," Starfire said. Robin smiled.
"I'll be ok, Star, let's just finish this and head home."
With that, Starfire left. Letting a grappling hook fly to a secure spot, Robin moved after his teammate. It took a few minutes before he saw Cyborg. Dropping silently down next to him, Robin looked around the wharf. If he listened quickly he could hear the tinkling laugh of Mumbo, but amidst that sound there were the annoyed mumbling at the fact that he hadn't found what he was searching for yet. That made Robin feel a little better; it meant they had more time to find the relic, and get it safely stored away before Mumbo could use it. No mess, or fuss.
Robin's communicator chimed again. When he opened it, Raven's face was pinched.
"Robin, he's found it," Raven hissed. Robin tensed. Using his other hand, he drifted toward his belt to select a weapon.
"Move in on him, we can't let him leave this place with the relic," Robin ordered.
With a sense of urgency, he and Cyborg moved towards the center of the area where Raven's signal was coming from. When they got there they could see everything.
Mumbo was in the center, surrounded by boxes, opened and closed, muttering to himself as he held a type of brown tablet.
"Now, what to do with you? It certainly is the right one, but how to use it? Tricky, tricky thing you are," Mumbo mused as he turned the tablet over and over in his hands. Robin scanned the area, looking for his teammates. He spotted Raven lurking in the shadows of a row of boxes behind Mumbo; a short jerk of her head alerted him to Beast Boy's presence a few feet across from her. Starfire was across from Mumbo, hidden by a tower of boxes and construction beams. Robin quickly formed a plan in his head, mind thinking quickly.
"We need to do a blitz attack. You and me are going to surprise him; Star, Raven, or Beast Boy need to get the hat away from him. We aren't going to be having another one of those incidents again." Robin said to metal friend. Cyborg nodded, as Robin got Raven's attention and made a motion with his hands. The empath nodded in response, before disappearing into the shadows to tell the other two.
Rolling his shoulders, and taking a deep breath through his nose, Robin counted to ten in his head before giving the signal to move on Mumbo. In seconds the quiet wharf was ablaze in commotion. Mumbo, who pivoted on his feet when Robin threw a smoke bomb to confuse him, spun quickly while maintaining his grip on the tablet.
"Well, looks like the Titans have come to the show," Mumbo said, waving his hand to clear the smoke. Robin, body in a tight defensive pose, snorted.
"Trust me, we aren't staying," Robin said. A wave of black magic shot out, and within seconds Raven had taken the hat and passed it off to Starfire who moved to stand near Cyborg. Mumbo coughed, but didn't seem worried.
"Give us the relic Mumbo, and we may consider not destroying your hat," Cyborg said. Mumbo chuckled.
"Oh, trust me, kiddies, my hat can work a special kind of magic, but that relic is unique," Mumbo replied with a grin. "Also, you should remember that I don't need my hat to cause you trouble."
With a flourish of his arms, a wave of razor edged cards came flying out of his sleeves. Robin made a move to duck, and suddenly found himself being flattened to the ground as three of the cards flew over his head. Beast Boy sprung up after him, extending his hand so the boy wonder could get up.
"I really didn't miss this," Beast Boy remarked as the two of them dodged another wave of cards. Robin snorted beside him as he used his battle stick to deflect some of the cards.
"No kidding, but as long as we don't end up in that hat again, I'm fine with this," Robin grunted. Around them, Mumbo's magic was picking up. The cards may have died down, but the magician clearly had time to learn some new tricks. The few stray weeds in the wharf had started to grow, and grow uncontrollably.
Some of them began to tangle around Cyborg's legs and the android had to alternate between dodging Mumbo and keeping the plants from cementing his legs to the floor. Raven tried to help, cutting through the air and using her powers to cut large amounts of the weed from her teammate.
"We need to contain him!" Robin shouted. He motioned to Starfire and Beast Boy.
"I need you two to pin him long enough for Raven to contain him with her magic. Wait until his back is turned, then move." Robin ordered. The two nodded and scattered. All around him, the wharf was quickly descending into chaos. The vines were slowly spanning out, and oddly enough the wind was picking up. Robin bit back a curse when he looked at the sky.
The sky was almost pitch black, the wind was picking up, and if Robin didn't know any better he felt that lightening could strike at any moment.
Mumbo was laughing in the center of the wharf, spinning while throwing killer cards, controlling the vines to grow faster, and, in an ironic Monty Phython way, allowing attack bunnies to appear randomly where they were fighting.
With a grunt, Robin dodged several cards thrown his way and with his foot he kicked a killer rabbit away with him. As the animal came in contact with him, it fell apart into a pile of sand. With urgency he shouted out.
"The bunnies are made of sand, once you hit them they fall apart!" Robin yelled. Cyborg dodged behind a tower of crates.
"I swear, this is so going in our top ten weirdest battles ever. I don't think B is going to appreciate your nickname for him any time soon, man," Cyborg said as he shot his sonic cannon at a group of the bunnies.
Robin gave a dry laugh, knowing full well that the younger boy would probably kick him if he did.
Mumbo started to sing in the middle of the chaos.
"Look at you, titans. Can even keep up with the show, how rude. You do know that it's bad manners to not engage in the act, or pay attention to the director. Tsk, tsk, I expected better from you."
Suddenly, the skies opened up, letting a heavy rain fall come over the wharf. Robin heard Raven curse and saw Starfire and Beast Boy make a dive for the tablet in Mumbo's hands. As the two collided with the magician, thunder roared across the sky.
"We need to get out of here, Robin!" Raven shouted as she covered Beast Boy's back. The changeling and Tameranian were so close to the tablet. Banking on luck, Robin took a smoke bomb from his belt and threw it. Instantly the center of the wharf was clouded with a gray film. When the smoke cleared, Mumbo was standing there, sans his hat…and the tablet.
Several yards away from him, Beast Boy and Starfire were standing, both of them shivering but attentive to the situation.
Robin moved towards them, keeping his eyes on the villain, as did Cyborg and Raven. He reached the two and motioned his head to Raven. Within seconds the criminal was enveloped with Raven's signature black magic. But something was nagging the boy wonder. Mumbo had been captured, and while he did put up a fight, he wasn't trying hard now to get away or get the tablet or his hat back. After being a hero, and fighting for more than several years, this seemed extremely odd.
Beast Boy passed him the tablet and Robin was surprised at its weight. The tablet was a bronze color, and had several strange markings, none of which looked like any symbols he had seen before. The tablet had three boxes at the top of it, a circle wheel in the middle, and a bunch of weird markings on the bottom. Robin hoped that it was some sort of dead language, nothing that wouldn't take too long to translate.
Robin turned to Mumbo, who was surprisingly still calm.
"Alright, Mumbo, time to talk. What's your plan?" Robin asked. The magician, who had been calm moments before, began to laugh. Around them, the weather picked up, causing some rain to come down and another roll of thunder to crash over their heads. Robin knew that the lightening wouldn't be far off.
"Oh, Robin, I would tell you, but that wouldn't be fair. It's a game, you see. And it isn't any fun if people know the rules before the game begins." Mumbo chuckled.
As he said this, the weather went ballistic. Rain began to pound down, the winds howled, and the tablet began to glow and burn. Robin hissed and let go, only for Beast Boy to move and grab it before it could crash to the ground. Before Robin could issue out another order, a rod of lightening came hurling down, and the tablet light up like a spot light.
The wharf was awash in the blinding light, and the storm blocked out any chance of hearing each other. When the light vanished, Cyborg, Starfire, and Raven looked around and noticed two things.
This first was that Mumbo had escaped.
The second was that, in the place where their two teammates were previously standing, were instead two small children, drowning in the clothes that they were in.
Cyborg took in the scene with something akin to terror.
"Oh, you've got to be kidding me."
Author's Note: First off, this is something that I've been wanting to try my hand at forever. The plot will fall more into place as it goes, and I'm not sure who the main villain will be, perhaps someone new. But read and review and tell me what you think! Also this story isn't going to be updated on a weekly basis like Truths, since it takes me longer to write this out.
