Robin slammed his fist on the table. "Damn it! This is the fifth time that they've gotten away. We can't keep slipping up like this. I want leads. I want information. I want intelligence!" he said, repeating the slamming motion for emphasis. Raven simply glanced at Beast Boy as if to say "slim chance of that."
Cyborg got a smug grin, and walked up to the center of the room. "It just so happens that I've been doing a little research. I've put together a little slide show of some of our criminals." He pulled down a white screen, turned out the lights, and began to project an image from his red robot eye.

The first image showed a short muscular man with messy hair and bloodshot feral eyes. "This is Toby Ranquez. He used to be a high school rival of mine before he got expelled for hitting the vice principle over the head with a chair which happened to be occupied by another student at the time." He contrasted this with an image of him in a football uniform apparently used by the crime ring, red with a black fanged skull on the back. This picture showed his face focused and unexpressive, like a recently tamed wild dog tracking a scent.

The next picture featured a boy around the age of seventeen. He was lean but muscular, blond, and wearing a baseball uniform. "This is Troy Millenti. Aside from an underage drinking citation and a few accounts of minor vandalism, he was going straight. He disappears for about a week, and then shows up in a heist with our friend Toby. There are some unconfirmed reports that he was hanging around with some strange girls before the disappearance, but they come from local stoners to wasted to provide any more clear or useful description than that the supposed girls were 'typical air-headed preppies'."
The slide switched to show the image taken from the scene of the crime showed the previous boy in the same red and black football uniform. He was thinner, his face fixed in a cold hawk-like shape, and his eyes were narrow and held all the benevolence and compassion of a semi-automatic weapon.

"Here we have Greg Brentston: 7 charges of armed robbery, 9 charges of assault, 2 charges of cattle rustling, and one charge of lewd conduct with stolen cows. He had some special genetic modifications and plastic surgery, resulting in enhanced strength, physical endurance, heightened aggressive behavior, and horns."

The next picture showed two boys playing basketball. On the left was a short, compact green-eyed boy in a blue shirt and black jeans probably in his late teens. The one on the right was tall with long bleached-white hair and yellow contact eyes, wearing a red kimono. "Meet Richard Cox and Larry Conner. Richard had only one incident of aggravated assault that was the response to a long series of verbal harassments involving phallic interpretations of his name, and Larry had a spotless record. They were reported missing by their families and then two days later were spotted at a jewelry store robbery wearing football helmets and black-and-red uniforms."

"Finally, here we have a familiar face: Percival Thompson, better known to us as Mammoth."

Cyborg flicked the lights on and rolled up the screen. "I haven't been able to identify all of them yet, but that should cover a good third of the group we're up against. Any questions that aren't from Beast Boy?" he said preemptively.

"Just one," Robin asked, "where's the connection? Half of them were common criminals, half normal teenagers, and then they all go off and become part of the same organized crime ring?"

"That's the part I've been trying to figure out myself. I cross-referenced locations, time of year, everything, and all I could find was that they were all in their late teens or early twenties, and all of a generally athletic build."

"Well…" Robin said thoughtfully, "I'll have to speed up the investigation."

He motioned for Cyborg to sit down.

"In light of recent incompetence, I've taken the liberty of an additional motivation measure." He allowed himself a very thin, very slight smile as a he paused for dramatic effect. "Until you come up with some information about this crime ring, you will not eat."

Everybody stared at him. "You're kidding," Raven said. Robin ignored her.
"The refrigerator and pantry have been sealed off, any food on your personage has been hidden, and your Titan Account Cards have all been frozen. Now go out and earn your meal."

Terra collapsed in tears.

Cyborg went out to search with a relaxed attitude, whistling a tune. He had earned a meal with his slide show presentation. Furthermore, even though he enjoyed it, he didn't have a biological need to eat more than a few times a month. If it came down to a survival situation he probably could have lived off of three boxes of cereal and a vitamin pill.

Raven was similarly calm. Thanks to her half-demon blood she didn't need to eat as often, and because she levitated everywhere she didn't expend much energy. Come to think of it, she couldn't remember the last time she had a decent meal.

Beast Boy gave Robin a surly glare muttering something uncomplimentary.

Starfire sighed and flew out, determined to do her best.

Terra, mouth watering, stabbed a fork into Robin's thigh, causing him to, without looking, grab her by the head and toss her out the door.

The search had begun.

Beast Boy was walking through the city streets with a look on his face like a kid who had been sent to his room. "Why does Robin have to be such a jerk?" he thought aloud. So far all his inquiries had either turned up nothing or gotten him a smack to the face due to an unintended choice of words with a perverse misinterpretation. "Why does everything always go wrong for me?" he said with a self-pitying sniffle. As he spoke these words, he tripped over a rock and landed flat on the ground. He got up and brushed the gravel from his face, spitting candy bar wrappers and dandelions. "Man, if I only I could eat things like grass and tin can labels like a goat…" he said with a sigh. He whapped his head, causing the two electrodes inside to connect and a small bulb to light up. "DUH! I can just transform into a grazer!" With that he polymorphed into a goat and happily began munching away in the Jump City Park, blissfully unaware of the malevolent eyes watching him hungrily from the shadows.

A dark figure peered about from under a wide-brimmed hat. The figure was on the edge of town, concealed by an overcoat, long boots, and leather gloves. Quietly it crept into a small diner, careful to keep out of any clear view. It walked up to the cashier and whispered an order. The figure then reached into its pockets, pulled out a wallet, and opened it to find a note.
Terra: Nice try. Did you really think I'd leave the cash so you could buy food after freezing your debit card?
-Sincerely, Robin
Terra ripped off her overcoat and screamed. "NOOOOOOOO!"

Starfire soared overhead, scanning the ground for clues. Robin was clearly unaware of how much delicious food could be found for free in Jump City. Just glancing as she flew by made her mouth water. Below her was a veritable feast. Free samples of grey poupon mustard, a jug of antifreeze, a rotten apple crawling with worms, some biohazard containers of amputated gangrene limbs, chemical waste from the nearest power plant, the rotting body of a deceased homeless person, and a sub sandwich that somebody had thrown out just because it was half eaten and covered in mold. Starfire's stomach rumbled loudly, and she gave a moan of hunger. She then winced, shutting her mandibles, and gave herself a punch to the gut. "Be quiet gurgling organ, I will not betray the trust of Robin, no matter how much I crave sustenance."

Gizmo quietly tinkered away on some electronic device of unknown function, unaware that Jinx was creeping into his lab. Carefully she tiptoed, weaving back and forth as she went. She leaned in close to him, carefully, positioning her mouth right by his ear, and then shouted in the loudest, most high-pitched voice she could manage "HI GIZMO!" The irate midget gave a small squeal and leapt into the air from surprise like a helium balloon let go after being submerged. He fell back down scraping his leg and smashing his device when he landed. He turned around and gave her a hard punch in the shins. "What the hell did you DO?! You nearly gave me a HEART ATTACK!"

"What did I do? You just HIT me you mutant hobbit!" She reached out and grabbed him by the neck, lifting him into the air as she throttled him. He quickly reached into his pocket and pulled out a small stun gun and stuck it into her chest. As the electric charge went through her body, she tensed up, and her muscles contracted. She felt her lungs seizing up, her hands held in a strangling position. Paralyzed by the current, he couldn't release the trigger. Both of them struggled, gasping for air, trying to break free. Just as they felt like their lungs were about to explode, the device shorted out, and they both collapsed gasping in a heap.

After she had gotten back her breath, Jinx said "I think we need mammoth. Without him to keep us both in check, we're literally at each other's throats."
Gizmo continued resting for a while before he could speak. "Yeah. Where is he? All he said was he was going out."
Jinx frowned thoughtfully. "I don't know, but I'm going to look for him."
Gizmo looked around, opened his mouth as if to object, then shrugged and went after her.

After grazing his fill, Beast Boy returned to his human form and resumed his investigation feeling refreshed. As he strode along, he happened to hear the sound of somebody crying. He followed the noise into a dark alleyway to find a girl crying. She looked to be about sixteen years of age, average height, somewhat plump at around 200 pounds with an even fat distribution. Her skin looked deathly pail, her hair was died purple, and she was wearing what looked like a dusty and stained cheerleader outfit. "What's wrong?" Beast Boy asked, drawn to her by an equal mix of compassion and the thought that she was pretty cute. She paused, and turned up to look at him sadly. "Nothing…well, something." Beast Boy leaned closer, a look of pity on his face. "Do you want to talk about it?" he asked. He felt a tapping on his shoulder and turned to see a muscular man in a football uniform. The man sparked a sense of familiarity in his mind, and then Beast Boy realized he was one of the faces he'd seen in Cyborg's slide show. He gave a small meeping noise when he noticed two others. He turned back to the girl, and she looked up with an evil, predatory grin on her face. "…this was a trap, wasn't it?" Beast Boy asked. She grinned wider, showing her protruding canines, and gave a nod. "And now something bad is going to happen to me, isn't it?" he asked. The girl licked her lips hungrily.

Terra was stumbling through the streets, dazed and gripped with hunger. She was so out of it that she bumped right into a certain grey biker. He paused to stare at the T emblazoned on her belt, and snickered. "Well well well, if it isn't a little Titan girl all alone. Little girl, you wandered into the wrong alley. You're gonna learn to fear the name of JONNY RANCID!" he yelled, swinging his chain over his head and laughing. He paused, and a look of disappointment came upon his face. His speech didn't have the intimidating effect he hoped it would have. In fact, Terra seemed totally unaware of his presence, eyes unfocused and vaguely forward, drooling. She licked her lips, leaned forward, and gave his shoulder a big CHOMP.

Johnny Rancid gave a shriek like a 5 year old girl, and then ran for his life, his legs a mere blur, his arms waving frantically. "WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?!" he screamed as he fled. Terra chased after with equal vigor and speed. "Come back talking sausages!"

Starfire had just been contemplating an appetizing-looking bicycle when she spotted two familiar villains weaving through the streets. She carefully ducked behind a cloud, and then silently dove down towards the diabolic duo.

"We're lost," Gizmo said bitterly.
"We are not lost," Jinx said in her subtle but threatening no-arguments tone. "This is a shortcut," she explained with a kind of accurate certainty that refused to be hindered or gainsaid by facts and reality.
"Alright, here's a question," Gizmo said, knowing better than to directly contradict Jinx in this mood, "Why is it that I'm a guy, and you're a girl, but you're the one who won't ask for directions?"
"Maybe because you get lost just trying to get out of bed unless you have a map?" she suggested lightly.
"Hey, that only happened twice, and it was a pretty big bed! Anyway, I don't care what you say, I'm pretty sure that the kingdom of the mole people isn't part of any short cut through jump city."
"Who cares? We made good time, avoided some of the busier streets, and those 'Children of Ishtar' guys were total pushovers. Just so much as throw a rock at them or shine a flashlight and they go running and screaming and probably wetting their togas."

She looked up to examine a street-sign, when the upper portion of it was suddenly melted in a flash of green light. Gizmo just had time to realize his backpack was now on fire and attempt to extinguish it, when Jinx was forced to leap into the air narrowly missing another blast of verdant flame. The form of Starfire descended upon them, and she looked as though she had been transformed. Her eyes glowed with a fierce green menace, the same energy seeming to pulsate and crackle, eager to escape her body. Her movements were jerky and her joints seemed to twist in a way that reminded one of a praying mantis striking, an insectoid analogy that was reinforced as she floated over to them, eerily motionless and patient. She picked each of them up between a thumb and forefinger, lifting them with as much distaste and effort as somebody picking up a used tissue. She began in a deep, rhythmic, octivated tone of voice, as if a swarm of hell-wasps possessed by cold rage were all buzzing sounds of fury that happened to converge into recognizable words.

"Those were warning shots. Tell me were mammoth is and what he is doing." Jinx gasped, seemingly to scared too speak. Gizmo, sweating and squirming like a worm being forced on a fishing hook, reflexively lied

"He's…uh…doing work for the HIVE. B-b-bank robbery, out in, uh, east." Starfire focused her eyes on her, and it seemed that they were not to eyes, but a thousand tiny facets of malice, each a singularity leading to a cosmos of menace, all converging suspiciously upon him.

"I don't think you're telling the truth.," she said icily, as she leaned in towards him. "A, uh, ALRIGHT! The truth is we don't even know where he is! We just know he left a few days ago saying he needed some space! We're out here looking for him!" Starfire opened her jaw wide, and carefully retracted her lips to reveal her second row of teeth, little more than interlocking chitinous serrations. Two large pinching mandibles reached forward from behind her cheeks, her tongue undulated unnaturally, and flecks of glowing green saliva splashed onto Gizmo. He continued with rapidly mounting desperation and anxiety.

"It's the truth, I really don't know where he is, ask Jinx, ask blood, I'm not lying!" he made a funny little whimpering noise as she leaned even closer, and he blurted out "PLEASE DON'T EAT ME!" Starfire paused, and bent her head, putting her hand over her mouth to stifle a giggle. When she lifted her head it seemed as if all the harsh, merciless wrath and alien menace had vanished from her face, and once again the innocent, friendly, and fairly amused girl was before them. She gently plopped them down.

"Thank you Gizmo. Friend Robin will be most pleased with this information." And with that she soared off, humming merrily as she went back to the tower, Gizmo and Jinx staring at her, their eyes reduced to white circles, mouths contorted into wavy squiggles, thinking that they would never be able to look at her quite the same way again.

After returning to Robin with the information, Starfire wasted no time in eagerly gorging herself on things better left unmentioned. Robin summoned the other Titans for another meeting to discuss this information. "So, what do we learn from this? Mammoth isn't out on HIVE business. But why would he be freelancing and risking recriminations from the HIVE leader?"

"He could be not acting on another will. Maybe Brother Blood sent him out on a special mission he didn't want the rest of the student body to know about, or maybe somebody else is using him and the rest of the evil football squad?"

"Well," Raven pondered, "usually mind control works better if you don't make the subject do anything against their nature. So it's easier to use villains for acts of crime."

"But then why the random decent people? Where's the connection?" Robin asked, pulling at his hair.

"Maybe we should ask Beast Boy," Terra suggested, shifting uncomfortably and giving some visible effort to stave off boredom.

"...where is he anyway?"

At that point, the signal sounded.

When the titans burst into the museum, all was quiet. It was all dark and peaceful, the glass unbroken, exhibits undisturbed. If it wasn't for the alarm, they wouldn't have known there was a break-in. They were just about to split up and search when they were alerted by a sound. Two sounds actually. There was a low, reverberating sound, echoing along the marble floor, and some hoarse noise. As it came closer, the former was identified as a rumbling sound, the latter as some voice. Soon they could recognize it as the hurried tramping of many feet, and the words became clear. "HUT HUT HUT HUT HUT!" as soon as they were discernable, a human wall of football players came driving at them. They were clad in red uniforms bearing black skulls, with similarly marked football helmets. Some had glowing red eyes and mouths retracted in feral grins to reveal sharp teeth, some were simply bland and emotionless as if in a trance. Most of them were instantly recognizable from the mug shots in Cyborg's slide show.

Robin barely had time to bark "Titans, go!" before the advancing force met them head-on, scattering the teenage superheroes like so many bowling pins. By the time they had recovered their wits, the bulky enemies had regrouped into a new formation. It was no longer dark, a dull red light was now focused on the group with just the right subtle inclines so as to visually transform the museum into a small stadium. A vague murmur as of a distant crowd filled the building, and the glinting artifacts around them seemed like eager fans writhing in anticipation of the action to come. Each titan was met by about three to five of the antagonistic football players, crouched, waiting, eager to go into action. A whistle blew, and they charged.

Robin was the first to respond. As the five goons surrounding him closed in, he crouched and executed a rapid spin of his pole, ensuring that each oncoming opponent was met by several blows. Normally this would succeed in driving them back, or at least incapacitating them for a bit while they recovered from the sharp strikes, but these enemies had massive enough girth to prevent from being thrown back and seemed either apathetic to the pain or unharmed. Only one of them lost his balance, and of the three lacerations he succeeded in making none bled. He barely dodged two slams and was lightly grazed by a slashing, almost claw-like attack before he managed to release a small smoke bomb and silently leap out of the fray and hurl a low-grade explosive at them.
Terra was next. For a moment it seemed the hulking adversaries would crush her into a thin slime as her frail body was assaulted by the steroid-abusing bulks, but she managed to raise a wail of slate around her in the nick of time. She then sharply shifted the ground beneath them in a quick ripple, knocking the behemoths off balance and landing them against the floor with a resounding thud. She rolled them violently with another ripple, a shower of gravel, and then slammed them each with a large rock on the chest to ensure they would not get up soon.

When Starfire was pressed from four sides, she held back each of the powerful figures with one limb in an impressive split. Before the strain could be come to great she soared upwards allowing them to collide with their inertia before coming down at them. With great difficulty she wrapped around them all, heaved them to a considerable height, and let go, slamming them as they hit the ground with the force of their own great weights.
Cyborg was having a hard time with his opponents. Strong as he was, his rigid metal form lacked the flexibility needed to grapple three opponents simultaneously. With all the violent twisting and jerking of limbs, he couldn't properly aim or charge his sonic cannon. As his cybernetic joints began to whine with protest, he realized he had to do something quickly before he was outright snapped apart. Opting for a surprise tactic and seeing little other way, he quickly lifted his foot into an assailant's groin, then twisted it slightly to send him flying with a blast of blue energy. He then used newly increased freedom of movement to knock the other two football players apart and slam them together repeatedly before letting them slump to the ground, allowing himself a "BOOYAH!" of triumph.

At the first sign of trouble, raven had formed a small barrier around herself. As her opponents mindlessly charged at it, she quickly expanded and strengthened it, so they found themselves caught halfway in a sphere of telekinetic energy. She began rotating it, faster and faster, while it rose into the air until it was too much to maintain and simply dissolved it to let centrifugal force fling her adversaries against the walls.

As the team enjoyed a short celebratory whooping and trash-talk slinging, several shapes emerged from the shadows. Their skin was deathly pale, their mouths all curved into condescending, malicious preppy smiles, their eyes were half-closed in an expression of bored contempt. Most of them were blond, and all but one were skinny as prisoners of war, but the single unifying feature was their clothing: A cheerleader's outfit of color scheme similar to that of the football player's but with a dash of chalky purple thrown in, complete with red and black pom-poms.

They all turned to the assembled combatants, raised their arms, and began chanting. "Go team go! GO team GO!" the shouted rhythmically, punctuating each "go" with a thrust of the chest and each "team" with a wiggle of the rear. The then each swirled their pom-poms in the air as if to dispel a cloud of flies and assembled into a human pyramid.
Something subtly and suddenly shifted in the area. It was as if the air had shuddered, as if the earth had cringed, as if life itself was reacting allergically to the entry of some unclean presence. On cue, half the unholy football players rose with renewed strength, giving inhuman shrieks of delight. Their eyes glowed with rekindled crimson blaze, their canine teeth glinted with harsh glare, and they surged forward with a fury of heightened blows.

This time Terra acted first. With a sweeping movement, she brought up a huge circle of earth blocking off the assailants from the titans. The football players simply careened through it as if it was cheap paper mache. Raven then acted, using a massive burst of power to yank them all of their feet, hoisting them into the air. Robin then unleashed a carefully dispensed array of cryo-grenades, flash bombs, and charge packs, freezing, blinding, and stunning them in that order. The enemies all screamed with inhuman rage and agony, ignorant of their fractured bones and frostbite, frantically clawing at their faces and shielding their eyes.

The cheerleaders gasped, shocked by this rapid defeat. One of the lower ones even lost her balance, and the entire pyramid collapsed in a heap.

When they all recovered an upright position, the huddled together for a quick conference. The only intelligible words in it were "star player" and "new". They then gave a loud whistle, and the unseen light sources refocused their crimson luminescence to form a spotlight on nearby tile of floor. Steam filled the area, and the vague outlines of a cage appeared.

The cheerleaders all gathered together and repeated their mantra of "Go team, GO!", but instead of the pyramid, the all turned to address the titans.

"Gimme a B!" they shouted. Starfire squealed in answer "B!"

"Gimme an E!" Terra called out "E", and then clapped her hand over her mouth, blushing.

"Gimme an A!" the cheerleaders, commanded. Cyborg's face twisted with a violent spasm, and he called at in a shrill voice "A!"

"Gimme an S!" they said, and Robin, clenching his teeth and wrinkling his brow with effort, reluctantly whimpered "S!"

"Gimme a T!" they commanded. For a moment there was nothing. Then Raven jerked. Her mouth was clamped shut, and she had both hands over it. She jerked violently, and was overwhelmed with a sharp pain and bulging-cheeked face creating the strong impression of somebody about to vomit. Finally, unable to hold back no longer, she exclaimed in a child-like, high-pitched, unnaturally perky squeal "T".

Each of the cheerleaders repeated the letters in turn, rounding them off with a 'B', an 'O', and a 'Y'. The leader addressed the group.

"What does that spell?!"

The steam cleared, and a single figure emerged from the open cage. His eyes were a steady neon red. His mouth was bared, showing two sharp fangs. His body was frail and arched, his hands twisted into wicked claws. The titans, speaking as one, let loose a combination gasp and scream.

"BEAST BOY!"
Beast Boy moved his head back and forth, sizing up his former comrades. He rolled back his head, gave an anticipatory his, and ran at them.

Before he realized what was happening, robin was tripped and pinned by a ferocious green wolf. As the sharp teeth tore at his back, he cried out in frenzy. "Beast boy, it's me! Snap out of it! Fart! Underpants! Aw fck!" swearing as a searing jolt of pain told him that his former friend had just hit a nerve.

The shout seemed to jar the other titans to life. Cyborg ran forward and pried beast boy off, but before he could get a firm hold the wolf vanished and a dark-green bat went fluttering into the air. It circled around in a wild, erratic pattern before diving at Raven and turning into a bird of the same name. Raven tried to use her powers, but it was pecking and clawing at her eyes, and between the pain, the noisy flutter of wings, the smell of carrion, defending herself, and its harsh shrieks she could barely concentrate enough for a few feeble sparks of darkness.

Just as Raven covered her eye and let loose a scream of pain, a bright flash of green shot at the thing that was Beast Boy. It dodged, but turned away to face this new adversary leaving raven to recover. Starfire blasted at it repeatedly, but it had shrunken to some flying insect, and in the weak light it was nearly invisible. It flew straight under her, and she found herself struggling to reach a lobster, fixed to her lower back, clinging and cutting with its claws cruelly but just out of reach. She flew towards the ground, intending to slam it, when it fell off and a bat swirled up threw the air. She fired wildly, but then it vanished, a diversion created by some unknown method.

Terra screamed. Beast Boy was wrapped around her, in human form. The embrace and movement resembled that of an affectionate lover, but any hint of tenderness was banished by a closer glance. As he held her tightly to him, her feeble body unable to wriggle free of the passionate grip, he was fiercely biting her neck, fangs cutting against the artery, while greedily slurping up the blood that gushed forth.

The two were intertwined so closely that any ranged attack was impossible. Robin futilely tried to pull them apart, but he was only knocked back by a fierce kick. Terra's already delicate body was looking paler and frailer by the moment, the color draining from her face, her struggling limbs going limp, her eyelids drooping. Dizzy and weak, Terra felt a powerful steel arm wrench her free, and then everything went black.

Terra came to with feeling with a sharp pain in her neck and a light headache. She groaned and looks around. She stared up at a brownish blur. She closed her eyes again. She reached over to rub the soar spot on her neck, and felt something wet. She carefully withdrew her hand, and waited. Then she opened her eyes again. This time she saw above her a bright light, with four colored blurs around it. There was a red blur, a grey blur, an orange blur, and a blue blur, all whispering. Just as she started to get a fix on them, the blurs divided into eight overlapping pairs of blurs. She tried to get these to resolve back into four blurs, but instead they began whirling around. "Don't try to sit up," one of the blurs said. She sat up and felt a rushing sensation in her head as the blurs spun out of control in wild spiraling patterns. She felt dizzy, and weak. Her head hurt, her neck hurt, her back hurt, her eyes hurt, and her stomach hurt. She leaned over and let loose a blast of projectile vomit that would put Linda Blaire to shame, then slumped back down, coughing and retching.
"I told you not to sit up," said the voice she now recognized as belonging to Robin.

After a few minutes, the violent retching had subsided to a mild nausea, and the blurry miasma resentfully settled back into recognizable shapes and colors. "What happened?" Terra asked groggily.

"We had to retreat back to the tower," Robin said unhappily. "You lost a lot of blood, and we had to do some transfusions. Fortunately it turns out your AB negative," Cyborg said. "Unfortunately you survived," Raven said, with a tone and expression that made it impossible to tell whether she was being sarcastic or not.

Starfire smiled at Terra. "I am glad to see that your single heart is still beating." She handed her a water-cooler full of purple liquid. "Please, drink this. It is nutritious and will help replenish your blood faster." Terra obediently put the top to her lips and drank. The stuff was a bit sour, thick, and strong-tasting, but a good strong, like the strong flavor of unsweetened tea or coffee. Mixed in were several hints of something she couldn't recognize. With her stomach uncomfortably empty from the vomiting, she eagerly gulped it down to the last drop. Terra licked her lips and tossed the bottle aside. "Thanks, that was good. What is it?" she inquired. "Oh, just a little Tamaranian folk remedy. I took several live poisonous snakes with their venom sacks squeezed dry, fly agric mushrooms, giant centipedes, blood scorpions, and earthworms. Then I swallowed them and regurgitated them several times, digesting them through my first, second, and third stomachs to work out the toxins, regurgitated and swallowed them into my crop where I distilled them for several hours to increase their potency, before finally spewing them into a container and mixing them with two pints of grape soda," she said, smiling proudly.

Terra sat there for a minute. She turned pale, twitched, then went green and shuddered with disgust, choking back bile. "Eeeuck! That had grape soda in it?!" Raven, Robin and Cyborg gave her a weird look and shook their heads.

"Alright," Robin said in a business-like tone, "We need to figure out what to do. First, what are we up against? Second, how can we beat them. Third, what's wrong with beast boy, and is their any way to fix him?"

There was a long pause. After a few awkward minutes, Robin was forced to answer his own question. "Well...the cheerleaders seemed to be the brains of the outfit. We could have taken out the football players without any problem if they didn't revive them with that...thing," he ended lamely. "Yeah..." Cyborg added. "So I suppose we should go after them," Robin returned. There was another pause.

"So...Beast Boy," Robin said with difficulty. "Yeah..." Terra contributed. "Mind control?" Robin suggested. Everybody looked at Raven. "I don't know. I didn't get a chance to focus on him long enough. If it is mind control, there must be something else going on too." Starfire nodded. "I am not well versed in human anatomy, but I believe that normally Beast Boy does not have two-inch fangs, claws, and luminescent eyes," she contemplated. "And why would he be mind controlled to...er...that..." Terra stammered and broke off, wincing and rubbing her neck. There was another pause.

"You know, without Beast Boy really helped to add energy...to...conversations," Raven speculated. "It is kind of...quiet and awkward without him," Robin said. The new pause was shattered by the sound of Terra screaming and slamming her head against the table. "I CAN'T bonk TAKE IT ANYMORE!" she yelled out. "TOO MUCH bonk TENSION, TOO bonk MUCH WAITING. LET'S JUST bonk DO SOMETHING ALREADY!" Everybody stared and edged away from Terra a bit. "Perhaps we should try the thinking like Beast Boy in order to find what is wrong with him?" Starfire suggested. "But Beast Boy's a TV-brainwashed moron," Robin said, "I mean, he'd probably say he was turned into a vampire."

Robin, Raven, Terra, Starfire, and Cyborg in turn froze up as recent events flashed through their memory, a dunce cap materializing on each of their heads, and they all let loose a collective "DUH!"

This time the break-in was at a classic poorly-guarded jewelry store. The shop owner was closing up for the night when a burly figure aimed a gun at him through the window. "Invite the Lady in," he said, and a throbbing monotone.

"What?" the old confused man asked. His hearing was failing him, and what he thought he heard just didn't make any sense.

The burly figure, clad in a football uniform, gestured towards what appeared to be a cheerleader standing outside. "I said, invite the lady in." he said, gripping the gun firmer, the tone more commanding.

"Come in?" the befuddled senior citizen said. There was barely a whoosh of air and a puff of smoke when an entire cheerleading squad stood before them. One of them unlocked the door, and a full fledged football squad came "Hut Hut Hut"-ing in. They set at work stuffing the diamonds and other valuables into bags. As he watched several thousand dollars worth of valuables going away seconds at a time, he paused to wonder just why the hell he had set up a jewelry shop in a neighborhood with record-crime, monsters, aliens, and super-powered psychos anyway, especially at his age. He felt the pang of regret for ever leaving Ohio. Or maybe he should have gone to retire in Florida. Sure there was crime, gang wars, diseases, mosquitoes the size of Toyotas, and alligators, but at least the criminals were decent muggers, mobsters, drug traffickers, and politicians. There was none of these tights-wearing theme obsessed wackos with goals of world domination.

"Titans, GO!" a voice called out as Robin, Starfire, Raven, Cyborg, and Terra came bursting in. Ah, that was why. Any other place teenagers perform acts of vandalism, steal things, and get on your lawn, and here they fight crime. The old man gave a sigh of relief and retreated to his storage closet to avoid crossfire from the inevitable showdown.

Starfire, Robin, and Cyborg started charging at the mass of football players. At the last minute, Robin shouted "NOW!". Starfire grabbed the two of them and lifted them into the air, with a quick spin, and hurled the human missiles at the chalky cheerleaders. At the same time terra brought forth a geyser of mud and rock that quickly mired the team, good to incapacitate them for a few minutes. Robin set off a flash bomb to disorient his opponents and, eyes closed, swung a series of quick hard blows. Lacking the necessary posterior padding to regain their balance, the cheerleaders flopped face-down with a most amusing movement.

Cyborg immediately grabbed the nearest cheerleader tightly around the elbow. He twisted her arm backward and pulled her close to him with one viper-like movement. As he grappled with her he was surprised at the amount of resistance he met with. After all, he had cybernetic enhancements to provide an iron grip and super-human strength, and he wasn't exactly a wimp to begin with. Yet this scrawny cheerleader who probably ate nothing more than two light meals a day and was almost devoid of muscle or fat was putting up a decent fight. Already he heard his steel-neofuturisticsoundingmetal alloy body beginning to squeal and groan in protest, the scrawny arms and slender fingers leaving dents in his armor and threatening to pull his limbs from their sockets.

Raven was watching, sunken into the shadows, keeping her mundane senses on the alert for possible attacks while her inner eye probed the area. With the cheerleaders and football players here, Beast Boy was bound to be nearby.

When Robin opened his eyes, he found himself staring straight into those of a cheerleader. She looked to be about seventeen, her long hair mostly blond but bearing the telltale signs of having been orange once. Her skin was pale as bone, but all these details were not taken in. His full attention was violently abducted by those eyes. The eyes were red, a throbbing, almost glowing crimson. Worse yet where the pupils. They seemed to be not merely holes that took in light, but portals, windows into some massive, shadowy consciousness, radiating hunger and malevolence, a dark force which he was not meant to see. He tried to look away, to close his eyes, to shield them, but he was as helpless as a vole riveted by the hypnotic glare of a python. She rose slowly, the double-weight on her chest causing her to sway, snake-like. She did not blink once as she reached her full height, and Robin was filled with a sense of unbearable bigness. By some optical illusion or mental trick, she seemed to be bigger, towering over him, taller than him, taller than the room, taller than the world. At an unspoken command, he rose to meet her, face-to face, and still the staggering sense of tallness and size persisted. She drew her arm back, and hit him hard with a black pom-pom.

Robin felt his knees buckle as if under a great weight. His heart slowed. His blood seemed to be composed of a semi-frozen soft drink dispensed from machines in 7-11 stores. Superficial as the blow was, Robin had the sensation that a portion of his life had been sucked away from him, a little chunk of his soul. His every movement, every breath, seemed subtly weakened.

At this point Starfire once more took her place in the fray. Her volley of starbolts effectively dealt with the wide range of attackers, and it seemed to sear them with exceptional force and pain. She uttered a trilling Tamaranian battle cry of triumph.

Meanwhile, with one sweep of earth and stone, Terra yanked down all the football players and held them there.

Raven finally got a foothold. She began to focus her powers on Beast Boy and pull him down from his hiding spot in a ceiling corner.

Cyborg was definitely losing. As a rivet burst from his thigh, he gave one good long swing at the cheerleader's midsection. His fist sunk into her flat stomach, and kept on going in. It was like punching through jelly or loose sand. It gave a strange, amorphous sort of resistance as the momentum carried his hand straight through out the other side. They both let go.

Cyborg pulled back, horrified. The girl seemed dazed. Eyeing the goop on his fist, she looked down and saw the gaping whole were her innards had been. She screamed and staggered backwards.

At that point a black bird with red eyes soared through the room. Raven signaled that she had got a lock on Beast Boy. Robin hit a button on his belt, and 8 smoke bombs, 14 flash bombs, and 27 noisemakers went off. In the resulting cacophony, all but Cyborg and the girl. Both remained frozen with horror. Then there was a sound. A slow, sucking sound, like flour being vacuumed into a tub of strawberry jelly. Slowly the girl's wound closed up, as if she was nothing more than a depression in the sand, a chunk of which having been scooped away was now filling up again. She shook her head with a slight rattling noise, clearing out its contents, and literally evaporated into the night. Cyborg, in a mildly cationic state, wandered back to Titan Tower.

All of the titans stood still, watching. Beast Boy reached up at the borders of his airtight cage, after hours of shape-shifting attempts to escape, and gave an inhuman shriek of rage and despair before sinking into a moody, hungry, wary heap.

"Are you sure there is sufficient air in that container for Beast Boy to continue respiration?" Starfire asked with concern.

"Beast Boy doesn't need to breathe anywhere," Raven said, managing to keep the sadness and despair from her voice. "Medically speaking he's already deceased. The supernatural backwash from draining his blood put him in this animate state."

Terra scratched the scar on her neck nervously. "Since he...is there any danger that...will I...?" she shuddered, unable to finish her sentence.

"Not likely. He seems to be a spawn, the least of vampires. He's functioning on the mental level of a wild animal and lacks any supernatural powers independent of his masters other than a mild connection to bats and a magical equivalent of his shape-shifting abilities from live. Nothing in there but obedience and thirst." She let the room sink into silence, not trusting herself to speak calmly again.

Robin stared at the undead form glaring out like a caged wolf. "So, if he's a spawn, then there must be a master somewhere." Robin said. "I think we all know who they are," Cyborg contributed. "Living cheerleaders don't warp buildings with dark energies when they do a human pyramid, hypnotize people, or get a hole punched in their midsection and walk away with nothing worse than a slight shiver."

"If we kill the masters, the servant will turn back to normal, right?" Robin asked Raven. She nodded, deciding that it would be wisest and in the end amount to the same course of action if she did not share the fact that sometimes when a master vampire is destroyed, the minions simply crumble to dust.

The abandoned high school gymnasium loomed menacingly, a black hulk against the night sky, casting its inky shadow to darken the rusting bleachers in the nearby field. Naturally, this gymnasium was not truly abandoned. Decent, god-fearing abandoned buildings simply sit around decaying and lowering nearby property values, waiting to be bulldozed and built over with a parking lot or a Starbucks. The only reason for a building to loom in such a menacing manner and darken innocent goose-poop laden football fields with its shadow is because it is inhabited by something evil, something undead, or something that fits in both categories.

A wisp of dark smoke drifted lazily towards the building. It slipped lazily through the numerous cracks and cavities in the aged walls until it emerged in a dark and dusty room. On the far side, two female figures sat opposite each other, trying different styles on one another's hair in the ritualistic grooming common among people of their demographic. "I wish I could be like you. I mean, you can like drain an entire blood bank without worrying, and I just like look at some twig-boy's neck and gain weight," one of them said while concentrating on a particular hair strand that was a few micrometers out of line. She was tall, but not enough to be towering or awkward. Her flesh was deathly pale, her red eyes perpetually glittered with a carefully cultivated mixture of condescension and apathy. Her slender arms ended in nails grown out to one inch, each festooned with a shade of neon pink capable of penetrating most concrete bunkers. Her halter-top of a "shirt" displayed a more than ample amount of chest that yelled in an almost-audible whine "Pay attention to me!". Her bottom and legs displayed the minimum amount of fat acceptable to keep them the bones from being prominent, and if her stomach had been any flatter it would be reduced to a two-dimensional plane.

The figure opposite her physically was identical save slightly darker hair and marginally wider hipbones. "As IF!" she said, giving a soulless giggle and rolling her eyes. "Face it, I'm a whale! Look at this!" she said, pinching a small amount of fleshless skin on her waist. The first girl frowned. "I'm serious Jenny! Yesterday I drained like two guys to the last drop. I just know their going straight to my thighs!" She frowned and shook her head, staring at the 0.7 inch-deep flesh on her upper legs. Jenny waved away the complaint airily and retorted, "So? I got really hungry and half-drained a fat-ass 30-something guy who was walking home from a McDonald's before I knew what I was doing! He must have been, like, loaded with cholesterol."

The first girl gave an over-exaggerated sigh of exasperation. "So what? Cholesterol is like -nothing- compared to carbs. These two must have had blood sugar through the roof it was so sweet!" she lamented, a brief flicker of guilty pleasure at the memory of such a blatant calorie-ingestion crossing her catty face.

At that point, the nearby wisp of smoke angrily coalesced into the plump and greatly annoyed cheerleader who had earlier lured Beast Boy into a trap. "Will you two please just SHUT UP?! You're both totally undead! You can't gain a fucking ounce! Anyway how do you think I feel when I hear you complaining about your non-existent blubber when my left ass cheek weighs more than both of you put together?!" she roared, voicing the opinion of fat girls everywhere. The pair gave a token apologetic look, let out a little "alright just calm down" sigh, and resumed their mutual grooming. The chubby girl briefly seared with anger and resentment, then turned away and walked through the door.

In the next room a girl was laying face-down on a cushioned table, quietly moaning with pleasure while a pair of muscular hands massaged her back. "A little to the left. Up. Up more. No, too far. Go down. Ahhhhhhh. That's the spot," she said. Her body was thin and narrow, the chalky skin tone adding to the already-present skeleton-like appearance. This skinny form was pushed up slightly, supported by mammaries with enough artificial enhancements to set off a metal detector from 30 feet away. Her frame looked almost frail, yet it was not a vulnerable, tender frailness. It was a malevolent narrowness, its smallness like the menacing tinyness of a poisonous insect, strongly suggesting some unseen method of lethal compensation. The muscular figure massaging her grated his teeth with defiant force, as if his jaw was starting a rebellion and hoped the hands would be inspired by its actions.

"I...hate...you" he managed in a choked tone of voice. The girl stretched a little and yawned lazily.

"I know Mammoth. That's what makes it fun." She smiled at him bemusedly. "You want to tear me apart, grind me to a pulp, and burn what's left. But you can't. You're hopelessly caught under my power, answering to my every beck and whim." She licked her lips. "I'm thirsty," she said impatiently. Mammoth knelt down as if being pulled into position by a winch. The girl reached her head over and bit into his neck, drinking slowly, savoring every drop. She withdrew her fangs, licked up what little had escaped, and instantly placed a thick bandage on the spot.

"Why...d...don't you...just...get...it...ov...er...with," he asked, with a mingling of despair and hope in his voice.

"Oh, I wouldn't do that. Your so tangy, so rich, I'm going to make you laaaaaast. And what fun would you be if you were just another pasty stupid spawn? I like you just the way you are." She said, gently but irritatingly wrapping her fingers on his head.

After waiting in silence for a while, the chubby cheerleader cautiously approached the girl. "Vee?" Vee pretended not to hear. "Vee?" the chubby girl called again, a little louder. Very slowly Vee lifted her head from the massage table, turning to face this intruder upon her relaxation, and gave her a blink of acknowledgement. "There's something I need to tell you," the cheerleader said nervously, adding "it's urgent." Vee gave a small irritated flick of her head to indicate that, in her view, nothing could be more urgent than the task with which she was currently occupied, and then acquiesced to talk.

"Yes?" The chubby cheerleader bent over, whispering something into her ear. She frowned and nodded in response. She snapped her fingers, and with a brief puff of smoke she was fully clothed and upright. She blew a small whistle and called "Vampire Cheerleading Squad, assemble!" in an irritated tone. There was a brief whooshing and a puff of smoke, and a row of nearly-identical undead females was assembled before her. "Alright. Apparently the titans found out about us being, well, vampire-ish and such after SOMEBODY freaked out when she got her middle torn out," this was punctuated with an accusatory glare at the short-haired blond girl Cyborg had fought. "They've got the spawn Beast Boy captured, and their probably planning some way to get rid of us or something. We need to take them by surprise. Any ideas?" She scanned the row.

One short and energetic girl spoke up. "I've got an idea. Anybody seen 'Salem's Lot'?" This was met with blank stares. She continued in her child-like eager voice. "Well, there's this one scene where..."

A rather shady-looking plume of smoke drifted its way into Cyborg's room were it manifested itself as a pallid, medically dead, busty, blond. The corporealized smoke quickly unplugged the charger and lifted the dense metallic bulk of a man with only moderate effort, then opened the window and lazily drifted out with him. In a similar manner, two more of the vampire cheerleaders snagged the unconscious forms of Terra and Robin. They stopped short at Raven's room. Even without setting foot inside, the sinister figures could feel the palpable aura of protective magic guarding it. But this abjurative barrier was nothing compared to what they saw within.

The pair of vampire cheerleaders attempting entry both stared, transfixed with horror but unable to turn away. They felt every fiber of their body and character writhe and convulse in disgust. Acting as quickly as they could the undead females shut the door and literally flew from the hallway, quivering. "Too...g-g-goth!" they both gagged out.

At Starfire's room, Jenny encountered a different kind of resistance. As she opened the door and made to step in, she froze. She couldn't move further towards her. Some strange symbol dangling on a chain lay over her bed. Even though the whole room was dark, when Jenny looked at it the strange amulet seemed to shine with the reflected brightness of noon sun. She tore away from it, frustrated with her failure, briefly wondering what it was before the thought sped from her brain like any other idea she had not directly related to her personal appearance, the opposite sex, or gossip.

Terra, Cyborg, and Robin awoke on the cold uncomfortable surface of gymnasium bleachers. They stirred and made an attempt to stand up but were halted half-way by a powerful weight and forced back on to the cruel, impersonal seating devoid of a backrest. Each of them had a set of pink furry handcuffs on them. Cyborg tried to break them, but despite the fact that they were clearly made of nothing more than cheap plastic they failed to yield in any way to his efforts. Terra tried to squeeze out of them, her scrawny arms were less than half the diameter of the restraints, and was dumbfounded when she saw them simply hang there as if some invisible cache prevented them from sliding past her wrists. Robin tried to pick the lock, but he received a minor shock and the pick sprung straight out of the lock 10ft into the air.

Just as they began to pause struggling against the irrational restraints and take in their surroundings the lights went out. They strained their eyes, trying to make out shapes in the blackness. Just as they began to adjust, with a soft "click" the light was restored, temporarily blinding them and causing them to shield their face. A peal of cruel, girlish predatory laughter darted about gymnasium, attempting to shake off any pursuers, and then violently assaulted their eardrums. When they recovered from the sensory barrage, the three titans found themselves staring at the full cheerleading squad assembled before them with a large stereo at their side.

Starfire and Raven soared through the night sky, a streak of luminous orange-tinged green and a barely recognizable violet shadow plowing through the stream of scattered light. It hadn't taken long to figure out what had happened at the tower, particularly with the bloodstains in Terra's room. Starfire was clutching her talisman of the tameranian sun god in her hand, taking strength from the psychological comfort and supernatural warmth it radiated. Raven clutched a book of spells designed to combat the living dead, and a bag containing a few objects suited to the task such as pressed garlic and a vial of sand. Neither of them fully knew what the Vampire Cheerleaders had in store for their friends, but they knew it did not have their best interests at heart.

In an H.I.V.E. dormitory, Gizmo stared intensely at a computer screen while Jinx tried to make out the monitor's image over his shoulder. The video feed from his eye-spy showed the titans snared and lifted off by some invisible force, slowly carried away into the night. The eyespy followed them towards an abandoned high school gymnasium with increasing interference, until the entire image dissolved into static and was supplemented with the text message "connection lost." It didn't matter. He had seen enough to work out where they had gone. Something unholy was happening tonight, and he wanted a piece of the action.

(Note: The lyrics in the following segment are copyrighted by their respective owners and can were found URL )

Robin, Cyborg, and Terra looked up at the small staged, not knowing what devilry to expect next. The head cheerleader reached over and began stretching while the other ones turned on the boom box and cart wheeled away. The head cheerleader stood up with a combination stretch-jump movement, and the opening notes of a familiar tune began to play.

Oh Mickey you're so fine, you're so fine you blow my mind
Hey Mickey
Hey Mickey

The lead cheerleader was swaying rhythmically, her skirt-laden hips swishing back and forth like a metronome. As the music reached the second "Hey", it underwent a sudden transformation. The lyrics and tune were the same, but some throbbing undertone had entered it, an oppressive wave of subversive innuendo that seemed to distort the entire song into something terrifying and ominous.

Oh Mickey your so fine, you're so fine you blow my mind
Hey Mickey
Hey Mickey

It was a change reminiscent of playing a partridge family record backwards in mid-song and hearing messages about the Black Goat of the Forest with a Thousand Young coming to eviscerate you.

Oh Mickey your so fine, you're so fine you blow my mind
Hey Mickey

The dull throbbing in the background was the rumbling footsteps of some gargantuan malformed creature. The cheerleader's dance...they had been watching it attentively all this time without realizing. She had been joined by two others. They were all thrusting their pom-poms in uncanny synchronization with the music and each other, a harmony that was by the very nature of its perfection terrible.

You've been around all night
and that's a little long,
You think you've got the right,
But I think you've got it wrong.
Why can't you say goodnight
So you can take me home Mickey,

It was at this point that Robin felt a violent tugging sensation. He tried to look around, but found his gaze fixed on the thrusting torsos and swiveling hips before him. He suddenly felt inexplicably afraid.

It was...strange. He seemed to be riveted there, yet at the same point coming closer and closer. He had the undeniable sensation that he was being drawn into the performance, no, the performers. The smile and glint of the lead cheerleader's eyes confirmed that.

Cause when You say you will
It always means you won't
Youre givin me the chills
baby, please baby don't
Every night you still leave me alone
Mickey.

Robin sat, staring with stupid attention, his eyes glazed over, jaws slack. His arms and legs rested in uncomfortable positions as if held there by transparent steel girders. Cyborg then began to feel a similar tug.

Cyborg felt more. As a part-machine he had come to experience physical and mental sensations alien to human flesh, and this closely replicated one of them. He was uploading and powering down at the same time. The uploading feeling began in the glowing blue chrome on his head and made its way to the secondary sonic cannon on the bottom of his foot. But it didn't stop there. It extended to the weak field of static charge radiated by his body, and then began creeping into his flesh. His flesh was uploading, his living brain, his active nerve, and his beating heart was beginning to power down. The words am I dying? wandered clumsily through his mind, but somehow he felt that he wasn't. He wasn't getting any relief, any floating feeling or bright light. Rather he just felt more tired, and somehow horribly aware. He ran inside his head to his optic nerves and gaped at the sight he was watching. The cheerleaders. Something about the dancing, swiveling, somehow it was...no, no it couldn't. His brain was half-robotic, and anyway that part did not have a mechanical replacement.
A little trill of mocking laughter echoed through the increasingly vacant cavern of his skull. No, he thought. It isn't, you can't-

Oh Mickey what a pity you don't understand
You take me by the heart
You take me by the hand
Oh Mickey You're so pretty
Cant you understand?
Its guys like you Mickey
Oh what you do Mickey
Do Mickey
Don't break my heart Mickey.

Terra found herself riveted, eyes locked onto the exposed skin and skimpy outfits like a laser guidance system. She blinked in surprise and alarm. Hey, this can't...what?! I'm not, I mean...they're girls! Hey, you down there, stop that. Stop it! STOP-

Three bodies swayed happily and hummed along, clapping in time with the beat.

Starfire and Raven swung low by the gymnasium to view the uncanny proceedings. The visual elements without the musical accompaniment somehow seemed even more eerie. Raven closed her eyes to scope out the magical nature of the bizarre ritual with her mental senses. When she formulated a plan, she turned to Starfire and-
But Starfire was not there.

A bolt of emerald lighting crashed into the gymnasium, scattering the cheerleaders like pygmy shrews before a rabid wombat. One blast of eye-beam reduced the radio to a molten piece of scrap, and two more stopped the music. Robin, Terra, and Cyborg slowly recovered from the trance, and seemed to illuminate with some undetectable tint, as if hue or essence in their vitality had just slowly been poured back in.

The head cheerleader blew a whistle around her neck to call her forces to order. "Football team, attack!" she shrieked out. She paused, expectantly, but no figures came. All her command produced was a faint "thwf" of smoke, comparable to a squirrel breaking wind. "What's the matter," Robin jeered, "afraid to fight us without your undead flunkies?" Vee responded by meeting him straight in the eyes, and he felt his confidence melt into a small pool of subdued panic. She commanded him with a reverberating voice at once higher than a scream and deeper than a growl, "KISS…MY…ASS!" His entire body went rigid and half-stumbled half flew at her, violently slamming his face into her boney rump. Her legs shot up, free to act with her torso supported the eldritch powers that propelled her unhallowed form, and clamped the boy wonder's torso in an asphyxiating vice-grip while jerking his head sideways. There was a crack and the pressure of bone against bone, and with a jolt of familiar pain Robin felt his nose break against her jutting hip. With effort, he cried through the pain "Didans, go!"
Go they did.

Less than an hour ago, Gizmo and Jinx had reached the abandoned gymnasium. After catching a brief glimpse of the proceedings with Robin, Cyborg, Terra, and the cheerleaders, they decided to leave their enemies engaged with each other. The nefarious pair proceeded to sneak about the grounds. They both silently agreed not to "split up and cover more ground", on the basis that any amount of time it would reduce the search for mammoth by was offset by the dramatically increased likelihood that one of them would wind up in small bloody pieces. Aside from the occasional pair of doomed teenagers making out and the Kentucky Fried Chicken bucket filled with eyeballs, they didn't encounter anything noteworthy until they found their way into the locker room.

Gizmo didn't know what he had expected, but this certainly wasn't it. Before him was a row of cages, each occupied by a young adult or adolescent in a football uniform. Some of them stared on with glazed expressions or wrestled with mental restraints. Others were squatting doglike, glaring hungrily at the new figure entering the room, eyes glowing red and fangs bared. One of the figures inside the cages was his friend Mammoth.
Gizmo stared, jaw agape, standing there. As a result when Jinx kept on walking she tripped over the diminutive desperado, and the two of them collapsed in a confused and awkward heap. When they managed to reorganize themselves, the two hurried over to the captive Mammoth.
"How did you get here?"
"What happened to you?"
"Are you okay?"
Mammoth twitched, inhaled, and with obvious effort said "Help…me".
"Could you be a little more specific?"
"Vampire…mind…control. Must…speak…in…sentence…fragments."
The two paused to contemplate this quandary.
"Break the spell," Gizmo said.
"Huh?" Jinx turned to him.
"Well, you're a witch, right? I mean, you have magic powers?"
Jinx paused. "Well…yeah, sort of."
"Okay then, do some magic thing! Break the mind control!"
"Well, I usually only use my bad luck powers."
"Don't you have a book of spells or something?" Gizmo asked incredulously.
"Well, I think I have an old dusty spellbook somewhere, but I don't carry it with me."
"You don't have any idea how to break this mind control thing?"
"Well…in TV shows they usually remind the person how what they're doing is wrong and tell them to fight it, but I don't think that will work on Mammoth since he normally does evil things."

Jinx turned and started to leave. Gizmo looked back and uttered a frustrated string of nonsensical substitute-swears before following after Jinx.
Mammoth stared. A vein throbbed on his forehead, and with a roar of rage he ripped open the cage door and charged into Jinx and Gizmo. "DON'T EVEN THINK OF LEAVING ME HERE LIKE THIS!"

He then paused and blinked. "Hey, I guess that broke it. Thanks."
"Don't mention it" gasped Gizmo as he struggled to breathe under the pressure of mammoth's grip. As Mammoth relaxed his grip, he turned toward the cheerleader tryout's poster on the wall. He lunged at it and rammed his fist into it, then tore at it with his fingernails.
"Why are you going psycho on that poster?" Jinx asked with mild curiosity.
"This thing lets the blood-sucking bitch summon anybody in here at her whim. It's no good being free if she just locks me with a hypno-glare again."
Despite all his pounding and scratching, the slightly faded poster remained intact.
Gizmo tried setting it on fire, spraying it with acid, and using CLR, but all conventional methods of destruction seemed ineffective. In the end Jinx turned it to dust with a single hex-blast, and allowed a very slight but smug smile to appear on her face.
"Alright, let's get the hell out of here," Mammoth said.

Starfire was the first to strike, diving after a cluster of vampiric vixens, searing their undead flesh very effectively with starbolts and eye beams. Raven telekinetically tore off chunks of bleacher and hurled them at her opponents, aiming for the heart, but all the blasts missed their mark. Most scraped across visible ribs or slashed breasts, producing a squirt of silicon and an unpleasant popping sound but no permanent damage. Cyborg charged at two of the taunting temptresses, but at the last moment they flickered out of the way and he found himself crashing straight through the wall and into the tool shed on the other side. Terra launched a barrage of rocks with little effect. A swarm of bats assaulted Raven, shrieking and tearing and fluttering, making it impossible for her to maintain focus. Pairs of fuzzy pink handcuffs flew, and soon the remaining titans within the room were captured and bound. So from the jaws of victory was snatched the enemies' defeat.

With a heavy grunt of exertion, Cyborg managed to extricate his head from the wall and take stock of his surroundings. The moonlight played across the field, flickering with the rapidly passing clouds. Working together with the howling wind and subcontracting some remote wolf howls and amorphous patches of darkness, this moonlight succeeded in creating a powerfully disturbing atmosphere. Ever dark patch seemed a creeping vapor ready to resolve itself into a supernatural foe, ever waving tree or abandoned lacrosse stick a lurking enemy. The maple sapling just six yards away from him looked uncannily like a thin buxom girl, the hanging lower branches rustling like a skirt, clumps of leaves like pom-poms, coconuts like a bouncing chest, stem like-

Wait. Coconuts didn't grow on maple trees. And what was that long tuft of stuff bouncing at the back, and…yes, it was getting closer. The moonlight shone on a face split by maniacal glee, fangs glistening, eyes reduced to embers of dark ruby, lunging for him. There was no time for thought, only action. Cyborg grabbed the nearest thing he could find and threw it at her. Unfortunately that thing turned out to be a shovel. Fortunately, it landed a perfect blow, and cleaved her head clear off her shoulders. She stumbled backwards as her head continued, carried on by its forward momentum so that it landed and chomped onto Cyborg's upper arm, one of the few patches of exposed flesh on his body. He yelled in pain as the severed head bit harder and lapped greedily at the scant 4 pints that were the only real blood in his body. He purposefully strode over to one of those clamp-thingies used to hold wood in place, placed the head inside, twisted it so it firmly squeezed the head, and yanked his arm free. She stared up at him, laughing insanely. "WHahahahahh! You are doomed! We will feast on your blood! Your friend Beast Boy SUFFFERS!" Cyborg ignored the shrieking head and calmly began sorting through the toolbox, whistling some half-remembered country tune. The head lost its insane glazed look and its eyes shrunk as it glanced nervously at him. "We…will… feast on…er…Hey, what's that in your hand?"

Cyborg paused, as if unsure who was being addressed. "This? It's a hammer." The head shook a little, its loose ponytail bouncing uncertainly. Cyborg then put it back. "Naaah, too small." He rifled in again and pulled out a large hand-drill. The head's eyes shrunk to red sparks.

"You…you're really not going to use that are you?" it addressed anxiously. Cyborg grinned and began putting on the attachments. He stopped. "Dang, I can't seem to find a power outlet."

The head breathed a heavy sigh of relief.

"Oh wait, here's one," he said in a tone of pleasant surprise, hooking up the chord to a three-prong outlet situated just above his left knee. He revved the drill and turned towards the head. The head closed its eyes, bracing itself, when Cyborg heard a sound. It was a buzzing noise, strangely familiar yet impossible to place. As it came nearer he turned around and saw the headless body staggering towards him with a chainsaw.

"YEEEEHAH!" the triumphant head yelled. "The cavalry has arrived!" Cyborg was unable to block it, but the chainsaw made a horrible screech as it broke against his powerful metal body. He swung back and drove the drill straight through the thing's heart. Head and body crumbled to dust. Cyborg yelled a triumphant "BOOYAH!" in defiance of all the horrors of the night. So engrossed was he in his reveling that he did not notice a smoky wisp of vapor resolve itself until it slapped a pair of fuzzy handcuffs on his wrists.

Four titans were assembled on the gymnasium floor, bound by fuzzy handcuffs. Terra was whimpering and sniffling, trying not to look at her enemies so as to avoid hypnosis and a repeat of the previous surge of uncomfortable and strange emotions. Cyborg was banging his head against the ground, berating himself for being so stupid as to get caught again and making a substantial dent in the floor. Raven was fuming, struggling to control her anger, unable to speak due to a fairly lewd item duct-taped halfway into her mouth. Robin glared hatefully at the skirts flicking before him as he bent into uncomfortable positions in a vague attempt to wipe away some of the blood pouring out of his nose. The long-haired former red-head bent over and licked his face clean, her tongue painfully misaligning and pushing his broken nose in the process, but he refused to give her the satisfaction of hearing him scream.

"Well well well. The gang is almost all here." Vee pulled out what appeared to be a dog whistle and blew it hard (Vee had a lot of experience in that area). A green, red-eyed rhinoceros charged in through the wall and transformed back into the vampire spawn Beast Boy. "Starfire," the head cheerleader called out in a sickeningly sweet yet sublimely menacing voice. "All your friends are here. But you have-"
"CRACK!" said the floor.

Terra grinned as a spiral of jagged slate rose out of the ground and aimed itself toward the token fat cheerleader. "Hey tubby, I bet I can guess your weight and where these rocks will be in ten seconds. The answers are three hundred pounds and your heart, retrospectively."

The b'mourned maiden rolled her eyes and angrily corrected Terra. "For your information, I'm only 234 pounds, and the word you're looking for is respectively , not retrospectively. Furthermore, you flat-chested stick insect, I am very safe." She snapped her fingers and beast boy clambered over in front of her, shielding her body as a massive mastodon.

Vee sighed laboriously. "May I continue?"
She called out again. "As I was saying, before I was rudely interrupted, you have some very special powers, Starfire. Even if we tied you up and bound you with the fluff cuffs, you'd still have those nasty eye beams of yours, and that ugly necklace to protect you. We're at a stalemate. Come down. I have a peaceful proposition to make."

"Dobe do id!" Robin yelled. "Idz probably a drab!" The cheerleader nearest him pinched his nose and wiggled it affectionately, and the pain was enough to silence him.

"Alright," a voice called down. Everybody looked up. Starfire was hanging from the rafters as if glued their. She calmly grabbed the shoes and the tennis ball she had found up their, stored them in her third stomach for safe keeping, and gracefully descended to the ground.

"What is this 'peaceful proposition' of which you speak?" Starfire asked warily.

"If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. I'm offering you the chance to, like, become one of us, complete with all the perks. Not just anybody can join. We're like, really exclusive, and you have almost everything. The chest, the energy, the lack of a central nervous system," Starfire stepped back a bit. "I do not wish to be bitten on the neck and have my bodily fluids sucked out."

"Oh don't worry," she said with a little infuriating giggle, "that's not how we make full, like, 'members.' All you have to do is drink this." She held out a chilled vial of obsidian liquid coursing with globules of glowing red. "Don't ask what's in it, you're better off not knowing. Don't worry though, it's low fat and low carb." Starfire looked at it, then hesitated. "What about my friends?"

She gave another irritating laugh. "Oh don't worry about them. You can make them be your friends. And I don't mean just total mind control or spawning." She signaled for the plump girl to demonstrate. The girl looked at Terra, eyes briefly flashing with a glow of red. "Terra, do you think I look fat?" she asked in an earnest tone of voice.

"You?" Terra asked incredulously. "Of course not. You're just healthy that's all. I wish I had your chest."

The girl snapped her fingers again, and Terra glowered. "I hate you…you…you bloated bitch."
Starfire looked at her friends, and then at the cheerleaders. "Alright. I will join your 'group' in order to save my friends." She said. She took a deep breath and reached out, grasping the vial.

Three things happened very suddenly. First, Starfire tossed the vial aside. At the same time, she reached with her other hand and straight into the girl's shirt and under it, smacking hard against a very sensitive female area. Thirdly, she stretched her mouth open wider than was humanly possible, opened her oral pincers, and took off two thirds of the girl's upper body in a single bite. Even as blood bubbled forth and began to reform the lost flesh, she yanked out her hand, holding in it a heart as shriveled and black as a burnt raisin. The reformed head, still wet with blood, gaped in horror at her own heart, before Starfire coughed up a desert fork she had swallowed a week ago and stabbed it into the loathsome organ.

The girl screamed as her body fell backwards. When she hit the ground, the whole body burst like a balloon of blood with no trace of flesh or skin, leaving only dry bones, a skimpy outfit, and a massive scarlet stain. The cuffs on the other titans burst off and clattered to the floor.

Robin leapt up and knocked the long-haired girl down with a double-kick before staking her with his pole. Terra launched a barrage of sharp rock-shard indiscriminately at all the bloodsucking babes she could see. Cyborg hurtled the vampire Sam to the ground, then swung her upward, aiding the motion with a sonic blast that managed to impale her on a light fixture. Raven focused on the doorknob and pulled out a chunk of wood perfectly sharpened to a fine point. She hurtled it and impaled the plump girl, who stared incredulously. Her last words were "I got stabbed with a door?!"

After the frenzy of battle had subsided, the titans surveyed the area to confirm that they were the victors. Amongst the skeletal forms, Beast Boy lay still. All of them ran over to him. "Beast Boy, are you alllREORP?" Starfire asked, her question distorted by a large burp. The unconscious green adolescent snickered, "nice one," and fell back into an exhausted sleep. "He'll be fine," Raven said, with the faintest ghost of a smile.

THE END