Disclaimer: I do not own Teen Titans.
Eight Dollars Can Buy Two!
By Redios
Beast Boy yawned as he entered the common room. It was nearly noon, and all his friends were there already. They watched with mild interest as he stretched and morphed into a python, musk ox, and toucan in quick succession to shake off the soreness of sleep.
He walked over to the refrigerator and was about to open it when he realized that no one had spoken since he had come in. "Dudes, what's up with the silence? Cat got your tongues?" He quickly transformed into a tabby cat and stuck out his tongue for emphasis.
Raven clearly wasn't amused. "The problem, Beast Boy, is that we're out of food."
Beast Boy gaped. "Wha-? That's not true!" He quickly opened the fridge, reached in, and pulled out the first object he laid his fingers on. "See, we totally have food!"
Raven's face remained emotionless. "Riiight. I'm sure we'd all love to eat a frisbee covered in blue hair."
Beast Boy laughed sheepishly when he saw what he had presented the Titans with. It was a plate of… of something. Being left in the refrigerator too long had indeed turned whatever it was into a furry blue frisbee.
At this point, Robin interjected, "So, we need groceries. And it looks like it's your turn to get them, Beast Boy!"
Before Beast Boy could protest, Robin held up a hand to silence him. He walked out of the room and promptly returned with a calendar. "Let's see… I did it last time. Before me was Starfire, before her was Raven, and before Raven was Cyborg. Like I said, it looks like it's your turn, Beast Boy." Robin glanced up from the calendar and towards the refrigerator, but Beast Boy wasn't there. "Beast Bo—"
"PUH-LEEZE Robin, can't somebody else go?" Beast Boy was on the ground in front of Robin and had wrapped his arms around Robin's legs in a position of desperation.
Raven shook her head when she saw that Beast Boy had resorted to groveling in front of Robin, then said, "Beast Boy, we're all humans here."
She paused and glanced at Starfire, who had been feasting the entire time on a jello-like substance that looked like it had been injected with purple food coloring and stuffed with assorted marine invertebrates. Starfire looked up momentarily, smiled, then plunged her face back into her latest culinary creation, making noises that would be considered normal only in a poorly executed elementary school dissection.
"Well, almost all humans. The point is that we need to eat, and we need to eat something other than furry frisbees and jellyfish jello." Raven paused again, then added, "Also, I'm out of herbal tea. There's no more tofu either."
Beast Boy flinched at Raven's last sentence, but nonetheless restated his plea to Robin. "Robin, you know how I am near meat! And Cyborg will definitely—"
But Cyborg finished his sentence for him. "…Make you buy meat? I need protein to survive, BB! T-bone steaks and baby back ribs, now that's what I'm talking about! Get me the works!" As he said these words, Cyborg began to salivate, looking disturbingly like a Control Freak who had just discovered that he was to be cast as the main character in the sequel to "Clash of the Planets."
Beast Boy, on the other hand, turned pale, which gave his already green face an odd appearance.
Robin shrugged. "Aw, come on Beast Boy, it's just a single trip to the deli. You're in, you're out, it's that simple. And it is your turn, after all." He reached in his back pocket for his wallet, pulled out three twenty dollar bills, and gave them to his friend. "The first two are for the groceries, the last one's for you. Buy something for yourself, and hurry up, okay? We're all pretty hungry." As if on cue, his stomach grumbled.
This seemed to calm the changeling a little. As he took the bills, the loud yet familiar "cha-CHING!" of a cash register could be heard clearly, although nobody could quite figure out where it came from. With his pupils distorted into the dollar symbol, Beast Boy turned for the exit, ignoring the queasiness that was beginning to form in his gut. "Any special requests?" he asked.
Raven replied simply, "…Tea."
Starfire looked up again from her Tamaranian dish. "Please, friend Beast Boy, I would be most grateful if you would buy several bottles of the delightful yellow beverage you call the 'mustard.' "
It was Robin's turn to blanch. "You sure you want that much mustard, Star? Ah well… Beast Boy, just get some frozen pizzas, chips, soda, you know, stuff that we can eat on the go."
Cyborg grinned. "You know what I want, little man."
Beast Boy groaned and walked out.
Beast Boy was feeling sick to his stomach as he walked along the streets of Jump City, laden with several large plastic bags. It was to be expected; he always experienced strong feelings of nausea whenever he had to make a trip to the local supermarket, specifically to the deli, on grocery duty for the Titans, specifically for Cyborg. Unfortunately, much like a child who receives an "F" on a test but who already knew beforehand that he failed it, having the knowledge that he would get sick didn't make Beast Boy feel any better when he actually did.
He groaned, clutching his midsection with his hands and squeezing his eyes shut as if to force the pain out of his body. He felt as if his stomach was doing somersaults inside him. There was no way he'd be able to fly home like this, much less carry three heavy grocery bags with him.
Pushing all thoughts of his stomach to the back of his mind, Beast Boy reflected on his trip so far. He had successfully found Raven's tea, Starfire's mustard, and Robin's various general foods easily enough. He had somehow managed to pick up Cyborg's meats. And finally, he had picked up several packages of tofu from Dan's Tofu Farm. But regardless of how he carried Cyborg's bag, the stench caused him to feel dizzy. Either way, his only objective now was to decide how to spend the extra money Robin had given him. Maybe I should spend the extra money Robin gave me on aspirin, he thought.
Then he arrived at Jump City's electronics superstore.
Completely forgetting about his nausea now, Beast Boy eagerly walked into the store, bags and all, and emerged five minutes later with a copy of the Super Monkey Showdown 6 Deluxe Expansion Pack. He giggled senselessly as he read the back of the game case. "Totally awesome! With this, now we can all play as ourselves in Super Monkey Showdown 6! There's no way Cyborg will be able to beat me when I'm playing as myself! And the best part is, it only cost twelve dollars. I still have eight left," he said to nobody in particular.
"Eight dollars can buy two!" said a voice, startling Beast Boy. He looked down to see a small girl peering at him expectantly; she appeared to be about eight years old. Upon inspecting her more closely, he saw that she was wearing a bright teal vest with numerous patches sewed onto it.
"Eight dollars can buy two!" the girl repeated, slightly louder than before.
"Wait, what?" Beast Boy scratched his head in confusion, then looked around for a reason why this girl might be talking to him, his eyes finally settling on a portable table that was piled high with boxes of various colors. A man and woman were seated behind the table, and when the man saw Beast Boy staring, he got up and walked towards him.
"Welcome to our cookie shop, sir. What seems to be the problem?" the man inquired politely. Beast Boy noticed that the man was balding near the top of his head, and that his shirt had several wrinkles and stains on it as if it had been a while since it had been last ironed or washed.
"Um… cookie shop? Is that what you're selling? Cookies?" Beast Boy asked.
"Why, of course! How else do you think girl scouts are supposed to earn money and develop leadership and communication skills?" The man chuckled richly, although something about his laugh sounded artificial. Suddenly realizing that the girl had stopped talking, the man stooped down to the girl's level, and whispered to her, "Come on now, introduce yourself."
The girl nodded, then said to Beast Boy, "Hello, my name is Alyssa from Troop 1134 and I was wondering if you would like to buy some Girl Scout cookies." She smiled, as if satisfied with her recitation, then added as an afterthought, "Eight dollars can buy two!"
Ah, Girl Scouts… I've read about them before in the newspaper. Didn't know there were any in Jump City, though.
Beast Boy smiled gently before replying, "Thanks, but I really shouldn't be eating cookies, and I have to—"
"Y-you don't want to b-buy cookies from m-me?" Alyssa sniffled, wiping a tear from her eye. Beast Boy couldn't be sure, but he thought he heard the man snicker.
Beast Boy nervously waved his hands in front of himself in defense. "No, that's not it Alyssa, it's just that I'm… well, see, I'm kinda carrying a lot of… no, I really can't afford to…" He hung his head in defeat. He hated it when children cried. "Fine. Two boxes."
But Alyssa wasn't done. She perked up, and said, with all traces of sadness completely gone from her voice, "You know, you can also buy four boxes, and pay us the rest later, with 100% interest of course, if you pay us eight dollars now and pay us two dollars over each of the next eight days, sixteen dollars total. Eight dollars can buy four!"
Never being one who was good with numbers, Beast Boy understood nothing of what Alyssa said; he wondered how the small girl could understand it herself. He vaguely recalled a saying that Raven had once told him: "When in doubt, throw it out." She had been referring to food at the time, but it could apply to ideas too, right? And he certainly doubted the authenticity of this offer. He was about to decline when he suddenly noticed that several other girl scouts had appeared, slowly inching closer to him from all sides like a pack of lions would approach a wounded zebra. Gulping, he nodded his consent. Oh man, Robin's gonna kill me when he finds out I need more money…
Immediately the other girls retreated, moving towards other shoppers, but Alyssa erupted into chatter. "Four boxes, that comes to eight dollars. Thank you for buying girl scout cookies! What kind do you want? We have eight flavors here with us right now, my favorites are the Thin Mints! Remember to pay us back two dollars over each of the next eight days, sixteen dollars total. Did you know that—"
"That's enough, Alyssa," the man cut her off smoothly. He turned to Beast Boy. "So, I take it that you want four of the Thin Mints?"
Beast Boy nodded wordlessly, took the boxes, put them into the bag with Raven's tea, and walked briskly away from the electronics store, glad to be on his way again. The smell of raw meat was still present, but now it was mingled with that of minty-fresh cookies. Beast Boy transformed into a pterodactyl, grabbed all the bags with his claws, and flew off towards Titans Tower.
Robin was in a bad mood.
Not only was he hungry, but for the last two hours, ever since Beast Boy had left, he had been playing Super Monkey Showdown 6 with Cyborg. And he had been losing.
Badly.
They were currently playing a two-player mode called "Pirates vs. Ninjas" in which one person was a pirate monkey and the other was a ninja monkey, and dueled in 1-on-1 death matches under the pretext of determining which group was the superior. Robin had of course picked the ninja, and Cyborg had good-naturedly gone with the pirate, joking that he was somewhat similar to a pirate himself, what with his synthetic limbs and fake eye.
They had played dozens of matches, and Cyborg had easily won all of them. A sore loser by nature, Robin had demanded rematch after rematch, trying as many attack combos and special moves as he could, but Cyborg always seemed to know exactly how to make his pirate come out on top.
It defied logic. How could a drunken, bearded, one-legged sea-monkey with no accessories but a sword and a parrot defeat a stealthy, agile, wall-climbing ninja decked out with more gadgets than even he, Robin, possessed? Robin came to the conclusion that the game was simply made so that the clearly inferior pirates would actually stand a fighting chance against the clearly superior ninjas. Yes, that made sense. Cyborg wasn't beating him because he was better at the game; he was winning because he was using a better character.
"BOO-YEAH!" Cyborg pumped his fist as his monkey performed a victory dance and a congratulatory message declaring him the winner flashed across the screen. "Get outta my house, Robin! You got nothin' on me!"
Raven, who was sitting on the couch as far away from the two as possible, raised an eyebrow. This had been going on for two hours now. Where was Beast Boy with her tea, anyways?
Meanwhile, Starfire was watching Robin uneasily. As the Boy Wonder's frustration mounted, he clenched his teeth harder and harder, his lips in a straight line. Worried, Starfire said, "Robin, perhaps it would be best if you were to—"
"Rematch, Cyborg." Robin interrupted, not even glancing at Starfire.
"Sure thing, man, whatever you say."
Five minutes later, the match was almost over; both Cyborg and Robin had whittled the other's health into the red zone. Robin had skillfully maneuvered his ninja around Cyborg's pirate, and had thrown a shuriken at the monkey's skull. Thinking the match was over, Robin turned towards Cyborg with a huge smirk on his face, only to notice that his cybernetic friend was mashing the controller in an intricate series of button presses and was staring at the screen expectantly. Suddenly afraid to look, Robin nonetheless turned his head slowly. Nothing happened. There was no movement other than that of his monkey's shuriken inching closer to the back of Cyborg's monkey's head.
Suddenly, the pirate monkey ducked, Robin's shuriken flying over him and out of the screen harmlessly. He performed a backwards handspring (how that was even possible with one hand consisting of little more than a metal hook, Robin had no idea), landed next to Robin's ninja, and chopped off the rest of his health with a well-placed slice to the torso. Robin's mouth dropped and he let out a breath he hadn't realized he had been holding as he disbelievingly watched Cyborg's monkey dance across the screen again.
"Wha— But how—?" Robin sputtered.
Cyborg laughed loudly. "Sorry Rob-in, but it looks like you've been robbed of yet another victory! The bird boy loses to the guy with a bird on his shoulder! The R can't stand up to the ARRRRRR! That's what happens when you play a game with the King of Maim!"
Robin looked as if each of Cyborg's sentences had punched him in the face, one by one. He was about to stutter out his weak response when he heard the familiar ring of Titans Tower's doorbell. Glad for the distraction, he immediately got up and ran to the elevator, muttering something about having to go see who it was.
Raven was the first to speak. "O…kay. What was that all about?"
Controller still in hand, it was Cyborg who answered her. "Dunno. We do have an intercom, you know. And it's definitely Beast Boy at the door anyways."
Starfire said nothing, but the concern in her eyes was evident. She swiftly flew after Robin, the door hissing shut behind her. Raven and Cyborg looked at each other, then followed Starfire.
By the time Robin reached the bottom of Titans Tower and was standing in front of the front door, most of his frustration had vanished. All he needed now to fully raise his spirits was one of those frozen mini-pizzas Beast Boy should have gotten.
As he pressed the button to open the large door, he reminded himself to tell Cyborg to put a peephole in it sometime. "Hey Beast Boy, what took you so—" He started to speak, but stopped abruptly as he realized that the person standing in front of him was decidedly not his green teammate.
"Hello, my name is Mandy from Troop 1134 and I was wondering if you would like to buy some Girl Scout cookies."
Robin's dissipated frustration immediately returned. He reminded himself again to tell Cyborg to install the peephole, and while he was doing so, to place around the tower a "No Soliciting" sign or two. Preferably two.
He quickly ducked back behind the door, and, hoping that the girl hadn't had a chance to get a full view of him, did his best imitation of an elderly woman, changing his voice to a wavering falsetto. "No thank you, l-little girl. I c-can't eat cookies, sorry!" Never did it occur to him that an old lady would probably not be quite the type of person who would normally live in a flashy superhero lair.
Behind him, Starfire giggled. She had reached the ground level of the tower just in time to hear Robin's sorry attempt at altering his voice. Robin reddened slightly, then quickly put a finger to his lips, motioning for Starfire to stay silent.
He moved to the wall and pressed the button to close the door, expecting it to slide right into place with its usual hydraulic hiss. However, much to his surprise, it didn't budge. He clicked the button several more times. Nothing. Perplexed, he chanced a peek around the door, and saw only Mandy standing there, her hand resting against the door. There was no way that she was the one holding the door open, was there?
…Was there?
Despite the fact that the door was slightly ajar, Mandy knocked. "Ma'am? You can always donate a box of cookies, you don't have to eat them! Ma'am?"
Robin froze; only one word registered in his mind, and he repeated it over and over to himself. Ma'am. This girl was calling him a woman! Ma'am. Where did she get away with pulling a stunt like that? Ma'am. The nerve! Ma'am.
A sudden squeal from Starfire brought Robin back to reality. He turned around and realized that Raven and Cyborg had joined them. Then he saw that Starfire was pointing to the shadows, shadows that he was quite sure hadn't been there when he had first entered the room.
He looked to where Starfire was pointing, and saw a pair of glowing eyes. Two more pairs of eyes joined it, then two more; it seemed to him there nearly a dozen such pairs of eyes. The four Titans involuntarily inched closer together, their backs eventually touching as they stood in a battle-ready stance in the middle of the room.
Robin narrowed his eyes. "Titans, G— huh?" Just as he was about to complete his battle cry, Mandy herself emerged from the shadows.
"I asked, do you want to buy Girl Scout cookies?" said Mandy, her voice sickeningly sweet. Immediately her sentence repeated by ten other high-pitched voices, and the Titans soon saw that they were completely surrounded; more Girl Scouts emerged from the shadows, giving each voice a body to match.
As he took out his bo staff, Robin grimly reminded himself one last time to tell Cyborg to install the peephole and put up the "No Soliciting" signs, and in addition to doing both those things, to also to research a way to develop a spray that would repel certain vest-wearing door-holding cookie-selling children.
Robin sagged against the wall of the common room, exhausted. Around him in various places lay Raven, Cyborg, and Starfire. They were all hungry, tired, and sweaty, qualities that would only be favorable if they were to attempt to earn the world record for the amount of time spent sitting in an easy chair in an air-conditioned room filled with an endless supply of pizza, mocha frappuchinos, and Pocky.
Which they weren't, although Robin still wanted one of those pizzas.
Speaking of Robin, he can be somewhat pitied in this situation, since he had of course been the one to demand that the Girl Scouts, as civilians, were to be left unharmed and untouched. Unfortunately, the girls had proved harder to catch than he had thought, their stubby legs belying dizzying speed and their portly bodies belying stunning agility. One moment, they were in front of him, the next, they were inside Raven's cloak, the next, they were clinging onto Starfire's legs as she flew, the entire time uttering the same demanding phrase over and over again.
"Buy Girl Scout Cookies!"
Robin reflexively put his hands to his ears as the mantra rang through his head again. He turned his head and glared at a lone cardboard box that now stood on the kitchen counter.
Indeed, after several infuriating minutes of playing cat-and-mouse with the Girl Scouts, Robin had about reached the limit of his patience, and was about to lift the ban on inflicting bodily harm to the girls that he had placed on his friends, when Cyborg had had the brilliant idea of simply buying a box.
Not really caring about anything else, Robin had hastily shoved a bill (of what denomination, he wasn't sure) into Mandy's grubby hands. In return, she had produced an orange box from nowhere, and had placed it in his hands. And with a single eerie giggle, she and the other Girl Scouts had seemingly disappeared, and the four Titans were left in the foyer of Titans Tower confused, and, as mentioned before, exhausted.
And now they were lounging in the common room, deflated and weak, still waiting for Beast Boy to return with their food.
As if on cue, the door hissed open, revealing a jolly Beast Boy. Or, at least, the jolly feet of Beast Boy. His arms were full with the various bags of groceries, concealing most of his body from the view of his teammates.
Nevertheless, they all heard his voice clearly when he spoke.
"Hey dudes, sorry I'm late. But guess what? I got… Girl Scout cookies!"
"..."
"...What?"
A few citizens walking along the docks of Jump City at that time thought for a moment that they saw something green fly out of a top-story window in Titans Tower, but they couldn't be sure.
Finis
Author's Notes: Ah yes, Girl Scouts. Immortalized forever in movies like "Dodgeball" and "The Pacifier" as people who are entirely underestimated in terms of physical strength. My sister is a girl scout, so that sort of inspired this story. (By the way, for anybody who lives outside the United States, the Girls Scouts of America is an organization that promotes character, outdoor activities, good citizenship, and service among its members (the girl scouts). They are often stereotyped as "good girls" who are gentle, prudent, and obedient to a fault, and it is somewhat upon that stereotype that the humor in this story builds. Girl Scouts annually sell cookies as a fundraiser, since their organization is nonprofit.) Also, if anybody can guess why I chose 1134 in particular for the troop number, then you get a free cookie. (Don't worry; it's not a Girl Scout cookie.)
Anyways, this was an attempt at humor, although there's something about this story that I just don't like. I'm not quite sure what it is, though; that's what you, the reader, are for. I have to admit, however, that I do like my portrayal of the video game that Robin and Cyborg are playing. If I had to choose one part in this story that I am proud of at all, it would be that.
Enough chatter; as always, reviews are greatly appreciated, whether kind, honest, or both. In any case, thank you for taking the time to read this. Until next time!