Hello for hi. Welcome to Mindscape: the Redux.
It goes without saying that I really dislike how Mindscape went down. Not the plot itself, that was all good, IMHO. But the writing was terrible on the technical scale, especially in the early chapters.
So I'm doing it over. Things will change. There will be retcons. And I hope I can actually get it out on time.
Note that virtually all of the major plot points will be the same, and the fight scenes may even be mostly to entirely copied verbatim. In general, this story and Mindscape will correspond almost exactly concerning the content covered, So if you don't need to have read Mindscape. I'd honestly prefer you didn't.
Of all the banks in all of Jump City, it was the Bay Street branch that was the unluckiest. The H.I.V.E. 5 had chosen it as their victim this morning.
Mammoth was busy breaking open the safe at the back, while Billy Numerous and See-More filled up bags of money from what the tellers provided.
"Why! Won't! This! Thing! Budge!?" yelled Mammoth, delivering a punch to the thick metal safe door with each word.
The door buckled and bent, but would not yield. He was frustrated, and angry, and ready to bring the whole building down if need be, but luckily for the few civilians inside the bank, a portal opened beside the giant, and a mountain of gold bricks came through it, followed by Kyd Wykkyd.
"Nice work," said Mammoth, placing the gold into his own sack. "We made a decent haul today."
"What say you save us the trouble and haul it back for us?" came a voice at the door. Robin stood there, with the other titans behind him in usual formation.
"Crud!" said Gizmo. "How'd you find us so fast?"
"You could try robbing a bank that's not in plain view of the Tower." suggested Beast Boy. He pointed out the window to the giant 'T' in the middle of the lake.
Gizmo fumed, turning his attention- and thankfully, his laser cannon- away from the terrified patrons and toward Robin. "Hive Five! Eat 'em alive!"
"Titans, Go!" came Robin's standard battle cry.
Mammoth bulled forward to be stopped dead in his tracks by Cyborg. They struggled for position while Gizmo went after Robin with his cybernetic wings spread wide, firing off a storm of bullets and laser blasts. He was stopped by a green ball of energy from Starfire. With Gizmo off his tail, Robin went after Billy Numerous, who immediately split into seven to take him on.
Meanwhile, Beast Boy was preoccupied with See-More. Our verdant hero was unable to get close enough to strike, until he morphed into a cheetah to get by the eye beams. He was blocked by a force field shaped like a pupil and blown toward the wall.
Raven, after porting off the twenty or so unarmed civilians, did her best to get a hold of Kyd Wykkyd. He never made a sound, and jumping in and out of shadow portals made him hard to catch, much less hit. She was surprised when a fist emerged from her own shadow and clocked her in the back of her head. Turning, she was tripped by a hand from the floor, before a fist rose to meet her, blackening her eye.
As much as the Titans hated to admit it, the Hive Five were almost an even match. The tide of battle turned, however, with one stupid move. Tossing Cyborg over his head, Mammoth bulled forward. Raven, still seeing stars from Kyd Wykkyd's punch, was the closest. He ran straight toward her, about to put his shoulder to her back, when Beast boy yelled out.
"Raven! Look out!"
Mammoth had already leapt, and Raven ducked just in time. Unfortunately, As he sailed over her head, Mammoth crashed into a support beam. Part of the ceiling crumbled away, most of it landing on Raven before she could put up a shield.
"Raven!"
Beast Boy's eyes widened. He was already running toward her when the rubble fell. He didn't reach her in time.
He was too late.
It was his fault.
He fell to his hands and knees, at the pile, digging frantically and attempting to remove the huge pile of rocks and concrete and free his teammate. His friend.
His... mate?
Where'd that one come from?
The villains saw his distraction and went for him, converging at a point to take him out before he could transform. Mammoth's fist connected with the wiry back, and Beast Boy was flying through the air before Gizmo launched bombs and lasers at the green target.
Beast Boy shifted into a turtle to take the blows, and then back to human, springing off the wall and directly at Mammoth.
Make him pay.
He didn't question the voice. he didn't want to. With a sound somewhere between a yell and a roar, Beast Boy's form rippled, and Mammoth never even got a chance to see what form he'd chosen. The green blur hit him straight on, launching him out through the bulletproof glass windows and across the street to knock headfirst into a streetlamp.
What landed amidst the four teenaged supervillains was not something anyone expected.
It was tall, taller even than Mammoth or Cyborg. It was muscular, with razor-sharp teeth and wolf-like features.
And it was righteously pissed off.
Before anyone, Titan or Hiver, could blink, Gizmo was flying through the air, smashing headfirst through the bank's glass doors, bouncing along the tarmac and coming to rest a few feet before Mammoth.
That seemed to snap the villains out of whatever shock the Beast's appearance had caused, because a portal opened underneath the beast to upend it onto the floor, before a icy blue ray from See-More left the creature frozen along the ground.
It didn't stay that way.
Shards of ice flew in all directions as the Beast broke out of its container, barreling toward the cyclopean teen, who was quickly pulled into a black portal, lest he get his head removed. No sooner had See-More been pulled in, than Billy jumped out, splitting into twenty, then thirty, then a hundred, to pin the creature down. The Beast's strength was formidable, however, and the entire pile of bodies was thrown off. It caught a Billy in mid-flight and upon landing, shoved the entire length of its hand through his abdomen.
The clone didn't bleed; it simply vanished, along with the other hundred, leaving the original clutching his stomach and crying out in agony before he was thrown into a wall and silenced.
A portal opened in the wall to the Beast's left, only for a lanky arm to reach in, almost nonchalantly, grab Kyd Wykkyd's head, and give it a mighty skull bash.
See-More stood the only challenger left. He gulped and stared into the wolf-like face, praying that some vestige of the human inside would spare him. The beast, in a manner that suggested he was amused, growled softly, and the small teen fainted away.
Its enemies defeated, the beast rushed to the pile of rubble that was on top of Raven, paying no heed to the other Titans assisting it. However, once a pale arm was visible, the green leviathan turned on them, circling about Raven and growling at each Titan in turn as they tried to get closer.
Robin gave Cyborg and Starfire a hand signal to back off, and they gave the Beast space. It was the work of a few seconds to uncover the rest of Raven, who was bloody and bruised, but breathing, however lightly.
The Beast scooped her up in its gaping maw and slung her onto its back, then in a flash, was gone. Robin moved to follow, but Starfire held him back.
"Do not be troubled. Friend Beast Boy will not allow Raven to come to harm."
"Starfire, a building fell on her. She needs medical attention."
Cyborg interrupted, showing Robin the screen on his arm.
"It's cool, man. He's takin' her back to the Tower, see? Faster than the T-Car, too."
He pointed to a red blip on an overhead map of the city, rapidly approaching the bay.
"In any of the ways, " Starfire continued, "Raven will most assuredly enter a trance of healing, where there will be little that we can do. I suggest that we commence with the 'cleaning up.'"
She gestured to the marble floor, littered with rubble and money and the occasional broken teenage body.
Robin sighed and brought his hand to his face.
They arrived hours later, after reports had been filed, damages had been assessed, and, with Cyborg's help, construction plans had been drawn out. As Cyborg had predicted, one of the ground-floor windows had been broken out. After all, it wasn't as if The Beast would be recognized by a palm-print scanner, or it had the presence of mind to use such a device anyway.
Raven was not in the medical Bay, and not in her room, but Beast Boy's. Before he could step foot into the room, a guttural growl sounded, and he wisely took a step back.
The Beast was curled up at Raven's feet, seemingly content, while she levitated above a pile- or was it a nest?- of Beast Boy's clothes, with the cleaner ones (for a certain value of "clean") near the top of it.
Cyborg chuckled to himself and set up a small surveillance system to keep an eye on the two. And maybe to get some prime teasing material.
Raven awoke with to a hot wind on her nose. She opened her eyes and found herself fact-to-snout with a giant green monstrosity. She screamed and leapt up, and the Beast jumped back as well, landing hard on the floor and rolling onto its back in submission.
Cyborg burst in almost immediately, Sonic cannon already charged. "What happened?!"
The Beast jumped up immediately, placing itself between Cyborg and Raven, and growling menacingly at him.
"I could ask the same thing." Raven replied. "I take it Beast Boy isn't all there?"
At hearing the moniker, the Beast rushed to her side, wagging its tail like in anticipation. Raven eyed it suspiciously.
"What?" Raven demanded.
A long, thick, slimy tongue ran up her cheek. She grumbled, contemptuously wiping her head against one of the Beast's hairy arms, before she spoke again.
"Okay. You've had your fun. Now change back."
It stared at her, cocking its head to one side in the way Beast Boy would when she used a big word. Then it sauntered over to Cyborg and began sniffing and snuffling, ultimately deciding that he wasn't a threat either. And then and pouncing on him.
"Okay, Beast Boy, enough with the games." Raven commanded.
"I don't think this is a game," Cyborg strained, struggling with the green mass. "He should have changed back after he fell asleep."
"He slept here?" Raven asked.
"You're in his room."
"I am?"
She looked around as the sleep-haze finally wore off, and then her eyes widened.
"Beast Boy, come here."
Once again, the Beast rushed over to her, slinking its body around her and rubbing against her legs.
"Stop that."
It obeyed, seating itself in front of Raven, tongue hanging out in a pant. She placed her hands on the Beast's forehead, and was assaulted by cacophony.
Elephants trumpeted. Lions roared. Puppies barked. Kittens purred. All sorts of animals gave off all sorts of noises, and with great difficulty, she moved past them, one by one, an agonizingly slow process, to find any kind of emotional reading.
There was none.
"Houston, we have a problem."
"You sure this is safe?" asked Robin.
"No," Raven replied. "It's highly dangerous. But we can't get him back without it."
The Beast was trapped in pink rubber netting in the medical bay, compliments of Mad Mod's section of the Evidence room. Robin looked out at the severely brutalized hallway, thanks of BB's hatred of doctors multiplied by natural animal panic. Cleaning this up will be fun.
Raven finally completed the green pentagram on the floor. The Beast was in the center, and She and Cyborg on opposite ends. With in her hand was the violet mirror, the portal into her mind, and- assuming she'd drawn the sigils right- one that could be used to enter Beast Boy's. She could have done without the sweaty sock on the handle, but a personal effect could only help her chances of getting it right.
"Ready, Cyborg?"
"As I'll ever be," Cyborg responded, placing his hands where the runes indicated.
"Azarath..."
"Metrion..."
"Zinthos!" They yelled together.
The chalk drawings glowed with an unearthly light, and Raven's portal floated from her grip to alight above the Beast's head. It then ate Beast Boy's sock before literally belching out a flash of green light that enveloped Raven and Cyborg.
Then all was silent.
And that's the first chapter.