A/N: Let's see how long it takes for you to figure out what's going on, if the song's line doesn't give it away.
And thanks to everyone who reviewed: Tsukikage1213, TheSamurai, Comicbookfan, Geojas378 and Shadow Crystal Mage
Also, my thanks in advance to any latecomers who take the time to review the first chapter before reading this one. (Yes, I know. I'm a shameless--er, what's the wiord? I think it's plug, when you go asking for more reviews.)
DISCLAIMER: See chapter one
On the 2nd day of Christmas, Jump City brought to me: 2 weathered brothers.
"Beast Boy, wake up. Get up you lazy, flea-bitten stray!"He woke with a scream. Becoming a cat, he jumped onto the nearest available surface, which happened to be Cyborg's head. However, Cyborg did not take kindly to getting clawed on the still-human part. "Yeow! Yo, Beast Boy, get off!" He tore the crazed green cat off and threw him to the floor, handed Raven something, then left with a rather disgruntled expression on his face.
Though once again a human, standing on two feet instead of four, Beast Boy still had a fearful expression on his face. "Whatever it was, I didn't do it!" He cringed, as if expecting to get hit.
"Whatever. I don't really care. But Robin's ordered you and me to go buy food, and Cyborg just gave me the list." Her hand came out from underneath the cloak, holding a piece of paper.
"But we have plenty of tofu!"
She stared at him until he glanced down and started muttering. "OK! OK, I admit I'm the only one who eats it. Fine, I'll go with you. Just don't make me buy any meat!"
She handed him the paper. "What?" She gestured at it. He looked. And did a double take. "No meat! Sweet! I always knew someone would agree with me eventually!"
She grabbed the list back with a glare. "Cyborg's getting it. Robin and Starfire went with him."
His ears drooped slightly, like an unhappy dog. "I don't understand what the tin man sees in those dead animals! It's like he's eating me, for—"
She cut him off. "Shut up. I witness your meat vs. tofu battle enough at breakfast. DON'T bring me into it." She stared pointedly at him.
"Aw, come on, Rae—"
"And don't call me Rae! My name is Raven. Now come on. I'd like to get this done so I can get back to my book." And before he could protest, she wrapped both herself and Beast Boy in black energy and teleported them both to the store.
Three hours later, two mountains of groceries lumbered out.
"Please don't teleport me again! That gives me the creeps." One mountain of bags shivered violently, as if it were shuddering in an earthquake, but didn't stop moving down the sidewalk.
Raven's voice came from behind the other. "How else do you suggest we get all this stuff and ourselves home?" The ice in her tone was palpable—possibly due in part to the fact that she had to walk at all under the load she was carrying.
"Um, um, you could teleport the stuff, and we—I could fly home." A strong gust of wind followed his words, as if mocking that idea. A loose paper fluttered by.
"Really? In this weather? Go ahead. If you die, I can't be blamed for it." Her words were punctuated by an even stronger gust of wind, a few drops of rain, and a distant rumbling. The paper blowing in the wind blew up out of sight.
"OK." There was a pause. "Hey! I'm not that annoying. Admit it. You like me, even if it's just a little."
Her only response was to teleport them both (and their respective burdens) back to the tower.
After he recovered from his reaction to her chosen method of transportation, and Raven had levitated the groceries into the cupboard, a thought occurred to him. "That's weird weather. I thought the weatherman said there'd be sun today!"
"You do know he's not a seer, right? He's not always right."
He continued on his rant as if he hadn't heard a word she said. "He said there was NO chance of showers! As in zero rain! Zilch! Maybe some fluffy clouds!"
"Face it, Beast Boy. Not everything you see on TV is true." That statement penetrated, but it didn't get the expected reaction.
"It's not?" He looked at her incredulously. "You expect me to believe that?"
A vein throbbed on her temple, but whatever cutting remark she might have made was drowned out by a crash of thunder that reverberated throughout the tower.
Beast Boy became a small kitten and leapt onto her shoulder, trembling furiously and displaying wide eyes before he tucked himself into her hood. Even Raven started (causing a nearby light bulb to explode), caught off guard by the suddenness of the sound that hadn't been heralded by a warning flash of lightning.
"Aw, man!" protested Cyborg, holding out his hand and gazing at the sky as the first few drops fell. "I just washed the T-car! Why does it have to rain now?" he asked, shaking a clenched fist at the uncaring sky.
"Oh, quit complaining, Cyborg. You know how much you love polishing it anyway. This is just one more excuse." Robin finished placing their shopping bags in the trunk and closed it. Starfire giggled at his comment.
"Whatever." But Cyborg did cheer up a little at the idea of spending a little more time with his "baby," as he too often put it. He got behind the wheel, and as soon as the other two had gotten in and buckled their seat belts, he took off.
Soon, however, visibility became poor, even with the lights on at the most powerful setting and the windshield wipers going full throttle, and Cyborg was forced to slow down their speed to no more than a crawl to avoid an accident.
As Starfire stared out her window, she could swear that she saw a flash of lightning nearby, and waited to hear the thunder—but it didn't come. She shook her head and tried to convince herself that she'd only seen a faulty light post.
In Jinx's room, the enchantress was just stirring, having not yet fully adjusted to the coastal time zone. She was brought to full consciousness by a loud BOOM, which also had the effect of causing her to shoot bolt upright.
Cautiously, she stood up and walked toward the door. Upon obtaining that location, she peeked out, checking for intruders—but saw no one, and breathed a sigh of relief.
But immediately, there was another loud sound—the growling of a stomach that has gone too long without nourishment of some kind. Her stomach, specifically. She left for the kitchen that adjoined the common room.
On the way there, she passed by a window to the outside. She saw a flash of lightning, and heard the accompanying thunder.
Just as she reached the kitchen and was about to open the refrigerator, a nearby light bulb exploded a split second after another loud crash of thunder vibrated the entire tower.
In her fright, a small burst of pink energy was channeled into the refrigerator, and the door fell off. "Oops." As she clumsily tried to put it back, she noticed two things. One, there was absolutely nothing in the refrigerator except a small, bluish something (which seemed to move before her very eyes), and two, someone was quietly muttering in the background.
"All right, Beast Boy, you can get out of my hood now." She managed to get the door to stay, trapping that—whatever-it-was inside, and turned around to see Raven with her back facing the kitchen. There was movement inside her hood, and the green head of kitten Beast Boy popped out.
He leaped to the ground, changed, and was about to answer, when he saw "Jinx?" Raven whirled. "Please tell me you didn't see that," pleaded Beast Boy.
"See what?"
"Nothing," interjected Raven. "Nothing happened. Absolutely nothing."
"Right." Jinx cleared her throat, and in an attempt to break the uncomfortable silence following her statement, asked "Do you guys have any food around here? I'm practically starving, and there's nothing in the fridge." She winced as the door fell off again, hitting the kitchen floor with a thud. "Sorry," she said quickly. "That last crash of thunder startled me."
"Don't worry! We don't use it much anyway. We leave it to the blue slime." He shuddered, then pointed to the cupboards. "We put our real food in there." He marched over to the one next to the sink, pulled it open, and grabbed several bananas.
Raven brewed some herbal tea, and sat down next to Jinx, who was munching on some apple slices with peanut butter spread on them. But just as Raven took her first sip, the lights went out.
They didn't come back on. "Looks like the backup generator our resident robot was talking about doesn't work. But I have something that will." Shuffling feet could be heard going from the table, and a moment later coming back to it. There was a spark, and their faces were illuminated dimly by the flickering flame of a single candle, which became two. Both were set on the table, and Beast Boy sat back down.
Silence reigned for a few more seconds, but he couldn't help but try and make a joke out of their situation. "Well, I never thought I'd be sitting down to a candlelight dinner with two beautiful ladies!" He waggled his eyebrows suggestively.
After a bit of shocked silence, Jinx turned to Raven and asked, "Can I hex him?"
"Be my guest." Beast Boy's smug look disappeared as he shot up from the table, backed up a few steps, then turned tail and ran from the room. A few seconds later the other two heard him run headlong into a wall. The two girls glanced each other, shrugged, and resumed their impromptu meal.
Back in the T-car, Starfire clung tightly to Robin, her eyes widened in fear as blast after blast of thunder made itself heard. The aforementioned Boy Wonder had originally gotten into the car with a knowing smirk, but did not now appear even remotely amused at his predicament. He struggled to remove his right arm from her inhuman grip, first freeing his elbow, then inch by inch until his wrist came loose, then very carefully each of his fingers in turn.
Once his arm was completely free, he wiggled his fingers, just make sure they still worked. Satisfied that indeed, no lasting damage had been done, he grabbed the communicator from his utility belt, and asked Cyborg to park the car.
"Fine," grumbled Cyborg, his blue metal fingers turning the steering wheel. "Can't see anything in this storm anyway." He turned off the car.
Robin flipped open his communicator. "All right you two, knock it off. Do you want to destroy the city?"
And just like that, the blinding flashes of lightning and the deafening thunderclaps ceased. Robin's two companions stared at him with questioning looks pasted on their faces, while the unending torrent of rain continued to beat a staccato rhythm on the roof of the car.
(If you fans haven't figured out who it is by now, you're hopeless!)
Later, once again back at the tower, Beast Boy was just recovering from his concussion. He blinked several times, then slowly lifted himself off the floor and onto his feet, swaying dizzily. As he leaned against the wall for support (incidentally, the same wall that had knocked him unconscious), the lights flickered, then came back on—to full brightness. "Ow! Too bright! Too bright!" he shouted, using an arm to shield his dilated pupils from the glare.
"So, you're awake." Raven's voice sounded—amused?
"Raven? Could you help me? It hurts!" He removed his arm from in front of his face, revealing his watering eyes, now narrow slits rather like a cat's, and a livid, throbbing bruise on his forehead.
She winced, despite herself, but responded only with "Maybe."
"Maybe? But it hurts!" His tears weren't faked, either; he truly was in pain.
"If you tell us you're sorry, I might heal you." She remained impassive.
"Huh…?" He broke off whatever else he might have said, and whimpered.
Jinx, who'd walked up next to Raven, understood his question, and answered. "For the comment you made while we were eating."
"Oh, that? I was making a joke! I didn't mean it! Not one bit!"
A flicker of some emotion crossed Raven's face at that comment, but it was gone a fraction of a second later. Jinx had been giving her full attention to Beast Boy, and missed it, and the changeling was too wrapped up in his pain to notice such minute details.
However, whatever the mysterious emotion might have been, it seemed she considered his words to be an adequate apology; she moved her hands over the bruise. The obsidian energy she was known for surrounded those hands, and wove its way into Beast Boy's forehead. Slowly, the bruise disappeared.
Once it was gone, she removed her hand, and Beast Boy gave her a grateful smile. "Heh, thanks."
"Don't mention it."
His look became apologetic, and his ears drooped. "I'm sorry about what I said. Can you forgive me?"
Raven's jaw dropped. An outright apology? From Beast Boy? However, Jinx was not as familiar with his normal attitude, and accepted the apology at face value. "Yes."
Jinx's answer brought Raven back to reality. She wrapped her cloak more tightly around herself, bringing up the hood, and answered herself. "I suppose…" She was saved from having to answer further by the entrance of the rest of the team—who had two more teens in tow.
Beast Boy commented on these two. "So THIS is what you meant by 'old friends.'" Jinx raised an eyebrow in a silent question.
"I've got you now!" exclaimed Cyborg, as his car on the TV overtook another, causing it to crash in an explosive simulated fireball. But his pronouncement was premature, as another car came up from behind and did the same to his. "What? Hey, you can't do that! Nobody beats me at Ultra Demolition Derby 3! I demand a rematch!"
"Lightning wins! Only my brother Thunder is a match for me!" This high-pitched voice came from the skinny guy in red samurai armor, armor with a yellow bolt of lightning emblazoned on the chest. He also had long, spiky white hair and nearly white skin that possessed a yellow tint. He jumped up and did a little celebratory dance, grabbing a handful of chips when he finished.
Beast Boy, whose simulated vehicle had been the one demolished first, commented to Cyborg. "Who'da thought Lightning would rule at video games, huh?" He got up to grab a slice of pizza from the kitchen counter.
"You're telling me," muttered Cyborg, sipping a can of soda. "I lost to a pointy-haired punk."
Robin glared at him, but nobody noticed.
"What did you call my brother? No one insults Lightning, except Thunder." Standing behind the couch was the source of this deep, almost bass voice: another figure in samurai armor. However, this one was totally different from the other. The armor was black, complete with a blue helmet and a white, puffy representation of a cloud on the chest. And the gray-skinned teen was anything but small. Rather, he was large, built like a lineman on a football team. He currently wore a scowl on his face. And the cookie he'd been munching on was crumbling in his clenched fist.
Cyborg hastily apologized. "Sorry, man, I didn't meant anything by it." This seemed to satisfy Thunder, who grabbed another cookie.
"Hey, brother," Lightning said, "didn't you have loser's spot? I want a REAL challenge."
It was Beast Boy's turn to scowl, but remarkably, he didn't say a word, instead sullenly handed the control to Thunder, who sat his bulk on the couch and restarted the game.
But Robin paused it and stood up to stretch. "Well, guys, I've got to go organize some files. See you tomorrow! You want to play?" Jinx, who'd just entered, shook her head. "I just came to grab a snack" She snagged a slice of pie and once again left.
Robin shrugged. "Then here, you can have it." He handed the control over to an ecstatic Beast Boy and exited the common room, stopping only to finish his scoop of ice cream and drop his bowl and spoon in the sink.
Starfire, who'd been watching from the other end of the couch, also stood up, a half-empty gallon container of mustard in her hand. Quite loudly, she called, "Friends, I believe I must also depart. I…I require sleep." She hurried out after Robin.
The rest of them paid no notice, and continued playing mind-rotting games and gorging themselves on assorted junk foods until the early hours of the next day. They were all zonked out and snoring by the time an incredulous Raven entered the kitchen for her usual morning cup of herbal tea.
Paris, France: the location of the Brotherhood of Evil's final base of operations
Blackness swallowed the farthest reaches of the floor and walls. The ceiling was beyond sight altogether. But even if there had been enough light, no observer would have been able to detect a single motion throughout the vast, cavernous room. The only sound that disturbed the otherwise unbroken silence was the occasional whirring of some mechanical device that was loyally waiting on standby for its defeated masters, or the beeping of the monitors that stood faithful guard over the statue-like, ice-covered figures along one wall.
All of a sudden, the silence was broken by a new sound. It wasn't particularly loud, but it did not belong, and for that reason alone called attention to itself. It was the sound of footsteps; someone had arrived. But the shadows that obscured the room also served to hide this person's features, so the hypothetical observer would not have been able to identify the intruder. They would only have been able to tell that it came from what would have been the left if one were facing the cryogenically frozen beings.
Slowly, the unknown person made their way to the first in the line, what looked like a giant human brain, and on past it. It passed three more, which included a wizened old man, a massive gorilla with an almost human sarl of rage, and a darkly beautiful woman. Once beyond these, it stopped to glance briefly back at them, and shook its head. It finally spoke. The voice was chilling; the evil contained within it palpable enough to send shivers down the spine of any listener. "What a waste. They could have accomplished great things, but they grew overconfident. Too many followers led them think they were invincible. They cannot be used."
His analysis apparently finished, the figure moved on to several more figures: a short, obese man with what appeared to be a remote control in his hand; a scrawny young adult who looked like he would be snoring away even if he wasn't frozen; a humanoid who looked like several giant slabs of concrete; and a group of male teens with slightly shocked expressions on their faces. A small, seemingly insignificant computer chip, however, is what received the most attention of all. "You. You will be the key to unlocking what I need."
With that cryptic statement, he took a device from a pouch at his waist, and began unfreezing those he had decided would be helpful in achieving his goals…
END A/N: Whew! I almost stalled, writing this chapter. The engine of inspiration spluttered and nearly died for a few days. But I managed to coax it back to life to finish the second half! So long, writer's block! Of course, by the time any of you read this, I should have written the next six or seven chapters, so I'll be able to update fairly regularly. I don't even know why I'm bothering to tell you I had writer's block…
Again, if you want the full song for a chance to guess at the lines, I would be happy to oblige.