"Welcome Titans," a massive orange face appeared on the theater screen. It peered down at the assembled heroes, a smile on the disgustingly oily face, and zoomed in as the eyes moved to peer down at the Titans. Robin skidded to a stop besides Cyborg, scowling up at the massive screen. Just what did Control Freak think he was doing? "to the Hunger Games!"
Oh. That.
"Dude, did you even watch the movies? They don't attack people with actual food!" Cyborg shouted as though offended. Beast Boy raced past screaming as he was assaulted by animated tubs of popcorn that continued to barrage him with their content even after he turned into a bright green chicken and fluttered under one of the movie theater seats. Control Freak looked offended for a moment, but then smirked and pushed a button on the remote control as he twirled across the screen.
"Maybe you should rewatch it," the villain taunted as the seat Beast Boy had been hiding under suddenly stood up. The rows around it seemed to also gain sentience, stretching to life before joining the popcorn to attack the Titans. "These seats are comfy enough for a double feature. Or forever! Ahahahaha!"
"I am so done with this," Raven said in her classic monotone. She floated to the ground behind Cyborg, watching as the robotic teen blasted an aisle of the chairs out of the way with his sonic canon. Robin wasn't too busy smashing an errant chair with his bostaff to notice Raven disappear.
He didn't think much of it as a scream brought him back to the fight. Starfire whirled past him, shrieking as she was followed by flying candy wrappers. He watched as the alien twisted, shooting green energy at her assailants, but unfortunately inanimate objects were not often dissuaded from attack. They had to be destroyed. Which was exactly what the green hippopotamus was doing as it danced in the middle of the theater like a badly colored scene from Fantasia. It didn't take Robin long to realize that Beast Boy was actually trying to keep the chairs from wrapping around his enormous bulk like disturbing tentacles. These chairs had to be taken out. Fast.
"Cyborg!" the Boy Wonder shouted to his friend. They locked eyes and exchanged a nod. Robin ran through the middle of the writhing theater while chairs groaned to life at a flick of Control Freak's switch as they turned to follow him in a massive pack like attack dogs. The Titan's Leader kept running. He jolted left, flipping to bounce off the wall, and run back the way he'd come. He had to dodge a sudden burst of green that left the ground to his right smoldering, but it didn't deter him from his course of action. Robin and Cyborg met in the middle of the the theater with a heroic first bump that left their fanboy villain squealing. The pair raced forward Robin activating an exploding disk at the exact same time Cyborg unleashed his sonic canon. A SONIC BOOM of epic proportions rattled the little movie theater.
"Awww yeah!" the former hippo shouted as he bounced back to his natural shape with a massive grin. He thrust out his hips and danced around the now decimated chairs. "Go Cyborg! Go Robin! It's your bir-"
The moment of celebration was cut short when Raven crashed through the projector booth with glowing eyes and wrapped in writhing projection film. The device itself, glowing like an evil furnace, stormed in after her and caused Beast Boy to halt as his eyes widened and his pointed ears flopped down in dismay. He squeaked pathetically before turning into a ram and running at the projector that had Raven in it's clutches.
Beast Boy was just about to run headlong into the thing when it suddenly cracked and fell to pieces before him. He raced past as someone else stepped forward to catch Raven before she could hit the ground and crashed unceremoniously into a wall. Raven offered a rare smile to her savior, mumbling a soft thanks as the other girl helped pull the projection film that had wrapped itself around her like a second cloak.
"Wonder Girl!" Robin shouted in greeting, glad to see her, especially when they could use the help.
"EIIIIIIIIIIEEE! FRIEND DONNA!" a purple blur whizzed past Robin, pulling his cape into it's wind and nearly causing him to tumble. Starfire smashed into Wonder Girl excitedly and crushed her friend in a gigantic hug. "I have missed you so!" the alien princess lamented. The little Amazon hugged her friend back, and the rest of the team gathered around the cheerful reunion.
The green changeling had managed to stumbled back to the group, shaking his head free of any loose stars and swirls that were possibly a concussion. "Duuuuuuude," the green bean managed as he unsteadily got to his feet to wander over to their friend. He made it back to the group with a smile on his face when their "arch nemesis" started to get annoyed that he was being ignored.
"TITANS!" the voice of Control Freak boomed through the theater and caught the attention of the small group of superheroes. "You have not yet defeated- OMG IS THAT WONDER GIRL!?" obviously the not-so-terrifying villain was having a fanboy moment. "Wait, why aren't you attacking her? Didn't she betray you guys for the JL? Hey, hey, this is my fight, so come back later because I'm their number one nemesis. The lord of darkness! The defender of evil!"
The Titans shared awkward glances.
"This is a villain?" Donna asked, gesturing towards Control Freak with a flip of her dark ponytail.
"So he says," Raven affirmed.
"Alright. You guys need to get out of here. I came ahead to warn you my sister's in town, along with some of the other JL members. They're looking for you guys." Wonder Girl informed the team. "I'll take out TV guy."
"WONDER WOMAN?" there was a gasp and a squeal behind them, but Robin's masked eyes narrowed as he focused instead on his friend.
"Thanks for the warning," the young leader said with a nod, gesturing for his team to go.
Starfire hesitated reaching out her hand towards her dear friend. "You must visit more," she pleaded with Donna, her bright green eyes sparkling.
"I will! Go!"
"Starfire we have to go."
Too late.
The ceiling of the theater crashed in above them. Wonder Girl grabbed Robin, pulling him away from the rubble, and shielding him from the worst of the blast. He was able to mumble a thank you when the rumbling stopped and some of the debris had settled.
"So this is where you children are hiding," Wonder Woman's imposing form hovered in the middle of the rubble. She was flanked on both sides by Martian Manhunter and Green Lantern. "Well done little sister!" the Amazon said to Wonder Girl with obvious pride in her eyes.
Robin swallowed thickly as he reached into his utility belt meeting Raven's dark eyes. "Sorry, but we were just leaving." the Boy Wonder quipped and set off a trio of smoke bombs.
He'd become accustomed to the feeling of Raven's energy transporting them from danger and into safety. Robin relaxed as they appeared in their common room, the cold energy ebbing from his body and back towards Raven, frowning as Beast Boy shuddered and then had a coughing fit from the smoke that had teleported with them.
"You okay man?" Cyborg asked his friend, whacking the Green Bean on the back. His coughing stopped abruptly as his eyes popped out of his skull.
"Guuuhhhh," Beast Boy shuddered before making a face as he stuck his tongue out. "Ooo shoo geh behher hasing smoe," the boy complained as he scrubbed at his tongue. Cyborg made a noise that said he was clearly amused, but trying to be mature. Raven rolled her eyes. Starfire stuck out her tongue in return clearly misreading this for some strange Earth ritual. At a glare from Raven she retracted her long alien tongue with a giggle.
"I'll add it to the list," Robin replied sarcastically as he narrowed his masked eyes on his teammates. "That was close." he said, switching to more important topics than the way his smoke bombs tasted. "Too close."
"Dude! Wonder Woman was going rodeo us in!" Beast Boy exclaimed as he turned into a bull and trotted in a small circle.
"That's not a good thing," Cyborg reminded his friends. "We lost contact with Wildebeast and Pantha last week. I'd rather not add to our list of missing Titans."
"This League of the Justice is not nice," Starfire voiced, her bright eyes instantly glancing towards their leader for confirmation. She frowned as he seemed to slouch with all the weight of the world on his young shoulders.
"We'll get through this," the Boy Wonder reassured. He turned towards the computer, "Wonder Girl and Kid Flash have been looking for our friends that the Justice League have taken. So far they haven't found anything yet."
"Smart move," Cyborg observed. "They know we're still in contact with them."
"If they want us to give ourselves up voluntarily then why aren't they parading around the ones they've taken?" Raven asked. "Why don't they make working with the Justice League look good?"
"Maybe they never wanted to work with us in the first place," Cyborg suggested.
"Batman's true to his word." the team all looked over in surprise. It wasn't often Robin ever mentioned Batman. Rarer still he almost never said anything good about the man.
"Maybe it's not the Justice League! Maybe it's-"
"If you say mind controlling zombie plants again I'm done with this conversation," Raven interrupted the changeling. Beast Boy had put forth a vast quantity of ideas speculating the reason the Justice League had come up with their new age rules. Those that actually made a speck of sense were the mythical 1%.
"Uhhhhhhh..." Beast Boy tried to come up with something better on the spot. His brain farted. Loudly.
"Have you heard from Titans East?" Robin asked, locking his masked gaze on Cyborg, and ignoring Beast Boy's cartoonishly deflating head. The second in command nodded.
"Bee said she'd call in around lunchtime for a virtual pizza party," the cybernetic teen informed his friends with a grin that quickly faded. "Still no word from Aqualad."
Aqualad, like Wonder Girl and Kid Flash, had opted to go back to his mentor in the Justice League. No one could blame them for siding with their family, or their king, but Aqualad had been pretty insistent he could get Aquaman to see reason. The king of Atlantis, after all, was a fair and just ruler. None of the Titans had heard back from their friend since he'd gone back to Atlantis. A month with no contact was a reason to worry. Especially since their team had been steadily declining in numbers from the day they had decided to go off the radar.
It hadn't taken them long to build a new base. Jump City already had a fairly diverse underground network, and booting out a few villains to make room for the team had been kind of fun. Cyborg had gone to work right away securing their communications with Robin's help while the others worked cleanup. They'd had to be careful not to alert the Justice League to their plans, but the teenagers had managed to build an underground base in Jump City before the rest of the Titans went off to help build the base in Steel.
Their new base was clean, but more cramped, and less homey than the tower had ever been. There was more they missed about the tower, though, than just a place to sleep, train, and hang out. The teens had worked so hard on developing a relationship with the citizens of Jump. The Titans had been a new generation of superheroes. They had operated openly. Their tower was a city landmark, and the community held a Townsville level appreciation for the group of teenage superheroes keeping their city safe. Their sudden vanish from the spotlight had turned more than a few heads. Speculation ran rampant across the television channels. The Justice League kept to themselves, not releasing the real reason the Titans had to go underground. Robin liked to think that if they had Jump would have rallied around their superheroes and forced the Justice League to listen to reason but he would never really know for certain.
Steel City was on the other side of the country, and so they didn't have long to wait until they got the call from Bee. Lunch, like the sunrise and crime, arrived earlier on the east coast. Robin was sitting at their kitchen table with Cyborg, helping him put together their new untraceable communicators, when the Titans East called in for a video chat. Cyborg connected their AV feed and the four cheerful faces of their friends appeared on their main screen.
"Hey Sparky!" Bee greeted Cyborg with a smirk before turning to their leader. "Hey Rob!"
Robin opened his mouth to respond but was interrupted when a voice behind him shouted.
"FRIENDS!" Starfire cried as she flew back into the room with a smile on her face. Raven and Beast Boy were hot on her heels. The twins greeted Starfire back instantly, with little hearts floating from their eyes, but there wasn't too much time for pleasantries.
"How're things in Steel?" Cyborg asked the Titans East.
"Good as they can be," Bumble Bee admitted, honest as ever. "We've lost contact with Jericho. He said he was headed your way before moving north again. Did he...?" she let the question drop, and the teens were silent for a tense moment.
"No," Robin admitted, stepping forward. "We haven't heard from Jericho." and everyone assembled knew exactly what that meant. "We'll keep an eye out," he promised. The rest of his teammates both around him and on the screen nodded in solidarity.
"I never thought our mentors would be so freaking persistent," Speedy admitted with a scowl that reminded everyone why he was so often mistaken for Robin. Of the five Titans with core Justice League mentors only Robin and the archer hadn't gone crawling back. But neither of them could really blame Kid Flash, Wonder Girl, or Aqualad. "What are they even doing with our friends when they catch them?"
"We don't know," Robin replied. "We ran into Donna earlier, but we didn't exactly have much time to chat."
"Her sister, the Woman of Wonders, interrupted us," Starfire added her lips curling into a pout at not being able to hang out with her friend. "But would Donna not have said something? If she knew our friends were in the danger?"
"Point," Cyborg agreed.
"She might not even know," Robin offered up as explanation. "Wonder Girl and Kid Flash have been searching for months, and have found nothing."
"Not much point in a rescue mission if we can't even figure out where they're at," Bumble Bee said. Cyborg and Robin nodded in agreement at the same time. "We've been trying to reach Aqualad, but..." she trailed off with a worried frown mirrored by Speedy.
"I'm sure the dude's just too deep in the water for the comm to work," Beast Boy suggested, a plausible theory for once, that had the others nodding in agreement. Of course, his moment of brilliance couldn't get too much screentime, as the alarm in Steel City suddenly went off.
"Mas, Menos, see if you can find out what the trouble is," Bee ordered her tiny teammates and they shot to attention before grabbing hands and racing off. "It's probably nothing," she reassured the team on the other side of the country. "We've been having a lot of false alarms lately."
"I should go out there and check your systems," Cyborg offered.
"That's sweet of you, Sparky, but we can han-" the video feed cut off abruptly leaving the team in Jump staring at a sullenly black screen. Awkward silence reigned for a few moments before Cyborg abruptly turned away from the group.
"Hey!" Beast Boy protested with a whine as his gaze flicked from the broken connection to his leaving friend. "Cyborg!"
"I need to get over there, BB," the cybernetic teen replied with a shake of his head.
"We haven't even finished the new communicators yet," Robin pointed out. "Going over there without them is a waste of time."
Cyborg's human eye narrowed at their leader, but it made an unfortunate amount of sense. The taller boy nodded. "Okay, let's finish the comms, and then go see our friends."
Robin gave his friend a weak grin in agreement as he followed the cybernetic teen back to the table where they'd been working on the communicators earlier. He stretched his back before settling down in one of the chairs. It was going to be a long day.
The plot thickens. Slowly. As always, lemme know what you think. ;)