II.
Disclaimer: I don't even own 100 bananas.
Thanks to my reviewers.
January 11th.
"…and so Raven," Beast Boy said, flipping the blackboard over for a sixth time, "brought a computer into her room. What does Raven need with a computer in her room?"
"No idea," said Cyborg. The two were holding a council of war in Beast Boy's Secret Closet Lair. It was dusty and uncomfortable, but Beast Boy had initiated the old Secret Agent Protocols.
"How do you get that blackboard to work?" Cyborg asked. "You should only be able to flip it over once before you get back to the same image."
Beast Boy brushed aside the magic blackboard and continued.
"So I say we initiate Investigation Rwanda, Cyborg."
"Rwanda? We're already at Wattlebird or something crazy. And I had no clue you knew geography at all," said Cyborg.
"…standing for Raven's Weird Acquisition of New Data Arranger."
"You know the word acquisition?"
"We will aggressively seek out the truth. The truth is out there, Cy."
Cyborg yawned. "All right, BB, we'll look into it. I've got class tomorrow. I'm off to bed now. We'll start tomorrow night."
"Absolutely not," Robin said, scowling. "It's patrolling time."
Raven had awoken distressed; it had taken her the whole morning to calm down and now, Robin was summoning her to go on her sweep of the city.
"Robin, you don't understand," said Raven.
"Absolutely not."
"Well, I'm glad we're agreed on that," she muttered.
"It's patrolling time," he said, and stomped away. Raven glared after him.
"Jerk," she muttered. "No, you can't write your paper, absolutely not. It's patrolling time."
She swept her cloak back and flew out the door, thinking black thoughts about Robin.
When Raven got back, she immediately phased into her room and started typing.
11. They can be rather rotten sometimes.
Today, for example, I had to meditate all morning long so as to stop the end of the world from coming about. Presumably Robin doesn't want that. But nooo, "absolutely not, it's patrol time," and so now it's six and I'm tired and dirty. He's the one who insisted I do all of this stuff. What a mindless goon. On the banana hand, well, leave one out too long and you'll see how rather rotten they get.
12. Sometimes I want to slice them into a million pieces.
Sliced bananas aren't usually my cup of tea (that's usually some obnoxious tofu mixture with my herbal tea.) Still, sometimes I get the urge to chop up a banana and eat it, and why not? It's not particularly unhealthy, and even if it were, well, that's one of the few perks to being what I am. On the Robin end of this, just see above for why I might want to slice him into a million pieces. Some leader. Cretinous scumbag.
13. Did I mention they're bright and fruity?
This bears repeating. A banana is very fruity. This is by nature of being a fruit. Robin, by Azar, is he fruity. At least he took the hint about wearing some pants. Not everyone wants to see those legs, you know.
"Though maybe I shouldn't talk about not wearing pants," she admitted to herself.
Those enraged entries had taken some of the torrential hatred away. Maybe this project could be useful. If not entirely suitable for public viewing.
Beast Boy took the controller with him upstairs.
"Mission accomplished, Commander X," he whispered. "Is this channel safe?"
"Absolutely," said Cyborg. "I've debugged it thoroughly, Agent Y. Full report in code just in case."
"Y's operation of the Dark Caricature has successfully caused Teletubby to return to the Chaos Sanctuary," Beast Boy said.
"Excellent, Agent Y," said Cyborg. "Transfer the Gimmick Viewers into the Chaos Sanctuary and report back to the Pandemonium Fortress."
It's a good thing, Beast Boy reflected, ants can lift so many times their weight.
He struggled with the camera into the crack under Raven's door, and wondered how on Earth he would get it up the wall into the place where Cyborg's laser headset was telling him he had to put it.
He tapped out a message in Morse code on his microphone and listened carefully; a response came back to him.
T…r…y… h…a…r…d…e…r.
Beast Boy scowled as best as an ant could and climbed up the wall laboriously. Step by step he was sure it was going to collapse and squash him, and his cover would be utterly blown. And if the camera didn't kill him, Raven certainly would.
No, wait, she wouldn't. He'd be roasted over a fire and fed to Cyborg. He felt his knees buckle and his will sap.
Do something! he furiously tapped onto his communicator.
O…k…a…y, Beast Boy heard. Our father who art in heaven…
Something more productive! Beast Boy tapped back.
Unexpectedly, the power suddenly died. Raven gasped. Beast Boy seized his opportunity and climbed up, his vigor renewed. The laser pointer had gone out but he'd been staring at the right spot to mount the camera, and carefully applied glue.
Then, he panicked. Raven was lighting candles in her room. Just to his left, he saw one of the fatal, evil candelabras.
What's a candelabra? Beast Boy tapped.
Beats me, Cyborg replied.
Beast Boy turned his (admittedly limited) attention back to Raven. He scrambled down from the wall; even in the dim light of the candle, Raven would notice him if she came that close. Green ants tended to stick out from the crowd. And there wasn't even a crowd of ants to stick out of.
Luckily, he suspected Raven was used to things crawling around her room, so if he could just get out of the light… there! Now he'd be just another figure in the darkness, and…
Something in front of him growled.
Beast Boy gulped.
Cy, he tapped. I've got a bad feeling about this.
Raven frowned.
"Cyborg," she called, flipping open her communicator. But then, she realized that was unpowered as well. She flipped on the battery.
"…Raven and Beast Boy?" Robin was demanding. Starfire and Cyborg were already hooked up on the battery network. "Oh, wait, there you are, Raven. Are you all right?"
"I'm fine," she said, wondering why he was suddenly solicitous after his 'go patrol' stance. Talk about your mood swings.
"You know where BB is?" asked Robin.
"No," said Raven. Cyborg seemed to breathe out.
"Well," he said, "I'm sure he'll turn up."
"Right," said Raven. "Could you fix this, Cyborg?"
"I'm down by the power lines," Robin said.
"You're what?" Cyborg asked. There was a commotion on his end of the network.
"Friend Robin and I are investigating," said Starfire.
"Hold on, don't touch a thing! Not in my Tower!" yelled Cyborg. Raven rolled her eyes.
"Call my comm when it's fixed," she said, and closed it. Well, looked like she'd have some time to read books the old-fashioned way.
Cyborg dashed down to the power generators, hoping against hope that they wouldn't recognize the signs of his sabotage. He'd planned to cut it by remote and then fix the place up later, but Robin and Starfire had beaten him to the punch.
Arriving, he skidded to a halt. Robin was standing well back, but he had that stupid analyzer from his utility belt out.
"Cyborg," he called. "Looks like someone did this deliberately. Remote-control activated guillotine blade."
"A most vicious trick," said Starfire.
"Uh, yeah," Cyborg said. He picked up the end of the wire. "Cleanly cut, by someone who knew what wire to cut."
"It won't need much to fix it, right?" asked Robin.
"Nah, man. You and Star can go back; you better find BB. Knowing him, he probably saw a flash from a broken conduit and liked the shininess and touched it."
"I do not think Beast Boy would do such a thing," Starfire said. "Though I understand a compulsion for the shiny things is a common feature of infants?"
"We can talk about childhood developmental psychology later, Star," said Robin. "All right, let's go."
He and Starfire disappeared up the stairs. Cyborg sighed with relief and set about quickly repairing the wires. Wherever Agent Y was, he'd have to fend for himself until he had the power repaired.
Suddenly, he heard a tapping. His microprocessor immediately translated it.
Cy, I've got a bad feeling about this.
Cyborg stared down and quickly replied About what?
There's a giant spider in front of me, Beast Boy said.
Cyborg was sure that if Morse code could show emotion, there would be several more exclamation points.
Beautiful pose he's got, though, Beast Boy tapped out.
Pose? What're you talking about, man? Cyborg asked.
That Animal Art class has been getting to me.
How do you have time to tap all this out?
How do you? Beast Boy retorted.
I have a multi-petahertz microprocessor.
Oh. Well. The spider is being nice. I guess it must recognize Beast Boy, Friend of All Things Living...
Cyborg groaned. "I was almost worried about you, too," he typed in. "Report back to the Pandemonium Fortress when you finish."
The power in Raven's room snapped back on, and Raven was very glad that she'd saved before anything terrible could happen to her data. She didn't particularly feel like typing at the moment, though, so she left her room to check on the other Titans.
Robin and Starfire were the only ones in the ops room when she arrived.
"Where's Cyborg and Beast Boy?" she asked.
"I think Cyborg's still fixing the power," Robin said.
The two other male Titans walked in, looking somewhat rumpled and worse for wear.
"Cyborg, Beast Boy! You are unharmed!" said Starfire.
"Yeah, I just had a ruin with one of my more adoring fans," said Beast Boy.
"He met a spider," Cyborg said. "And then... disgusting things."
Raven blanched. "You don't mean…"
Cyborg paled. "No! Just insect-disgusting, not… not that."
"'That'? Please, what is 'that'?" asked Starfire.
"Um… nothing, if it's what I think it is," said Robin.
Beast Boy mightily waved away the comments, saying, "Dudes, you are disgusting."
"Anyway," said Raven. "Any idea what caused the power outage?"
"No," the others chorused.
"Just that somebody did it on purpose," Robin said.
"And it was one of us? No way, dude!" said Beast Boy.
Cyborg felt a sweat drop forming.
"Not necessarily, Beast Boy," Robin said. "I think someone with a remote control did it, since they didn't clean up after they did the job."
"Yeah," said Cyborg. "Yeah, I'll bet that's exactly what it is."
He laughed nervously. No one else noticed.
"Well, as long as it's back up," Raven said, and left the room.
Raven checked her email again. She deleted the various junk (" , you could get one of thousands of scholarships today!").
Oh, wait, here was a message.
From: Megatherium
To: Raven
Subject: ya rite
hey u $&^! (apparently Jumpmail censored words, Raven thought amusedly) i bet u dont no a thing abuot the titans so y dont u go $&^! yourself and $&#! a #$%! with a reeely big cabage you !&$
raven wuld so totally want to go out wtih muirehtagem hes everything he would want so my stroy makes prfect sense, its U who dont make sense
Raven almost smiled. Megatherium had posted a story on Titansfans about her—her—falling in love with some guy suspiciously called "Muirehtagem." If you're going to name a character after yourself, she thought, you might as well not reverse it.
She had disgustedly replied that just because she was reputedly dark, brooding, and sarcastic, she wouldn't therefore fall for someone who was, paradoxically enough, arrogant, exuberant, and generally overconfident. Also, this 'Muirehtagem' seemed to be far too powerful. He had sixteen swords and could use them all at once.
Megatherium had not taken kindly to this, apparently. Raven idly wondered what the censored words were. Her vernacular knowledge, while filled with phrases that were frankly the bee's knees, was a little out of date. She dashed off a reply:
From: Raven
To: Megatherium
Bcc: TitansFans Admin
Subject: Re: ya rite
Megatherium,
I have no objections to your writing—except, of course, that it sucks. I daresay I know just a smidgen more about how Raven would react to this Megath, er, Muirehtagem character. Now, in the interests of your continued—or just restarted after the tenth failure—education, I pointed out the unlikelihood of Raven suddenly falling in love with a brooding, prideful 'dark hero' (here). Unfortunately, I suppose your education on writing will have to wait until you're done with potty-training.
Lord knows Beast Boy has work to do in that regard.
Raven
Raven rolled her eyes and sent the message. She glanced out the window. It was…
Uh-oh. She mentally waited for the eruption that was sure to occur momenta…
"Snowing! Snowing snow! Like, real snow, dude!" Beast Boy shouted.
It carried through the whole Tower. Raven thought she saw a few small objects shake on the table. She heard Robin's earthquake warning system go off with an annoying ring and a prerecorded message of "Earthquake, 4.2 on the Richter scale."
Raven glanced outside the window again and had to fight to hold back her laughter. A curse floated past her window and she burst out laughing.
When she recovered, she looked outside again and nearly laughed again. More assorted curses drifted up to her, and she dashed to the computer, opening up her comparison list:
14. Occasionally, they fall out of trees.
Robin was in a tree just now. Beast Boy shouted "it's snowing"—which it was—and a localized earthquake formed from the shouting; Robin's got his utility belt wirelessly connected to his alarm systems. That guy loves his gadgets. Anyway, he tried to twist into his "Titans, go" position as soon as he heard the earthquake. Unfortunately, see sentence one of this description.
The "Titans, go" pose doesn't work too well twenty feet up in a tree. He fell off and probably would've broken his back if he hadn't swung one of his grappling hooks up. Instead, he just rammed through sixty or so branches, scratching him up the whole way. He cursed like a sailor. I'll probably have to heal him, too.
Bananas are a fruit. I hear that, in "the real word", they sometimes fall down (see the encyclopedia article for Apple, Isaac Newton, etc.)
15. Robin does the splits. Bananas become banana splits.
So after Robin's ill-fated tree experience, he kept swinging on that hook. It was only attached to one of those upper branches, the weak kind. I was laughing at him falling off the tree and evidently my powers flared up and snapped most of those upper branches. As he swung around the tree, the one his hook was attached to snapped. So he fell in the middle of his flashy acrobatics.
Robin never knew what hit him. He's still cursing at present.
She considered, then added one more.
16. They both belong in citrus groves. At least with that color scheme.
See numbers one, two, three, and thirteen for further elaboration. Bananas naturally occur in citrus groves. So do things with the coloration of Robin. The only thing dark about him is his hair, and the amount of gel he uses makes me suspect he's trying to go for permanent chemical discoloration.
After all, you can't go wrong with a fashion statement like mine.
Raven saved it and teleported out to the tree.
As she'd seen from the window, Robin was prone, cursing weakly. But up close, he really did look bad, and any mirth in her was suddenly quelled. She knelt next to him.
"Robin," she said. "Are you all rig…"
"I saw that energy!" he shouted, suddenly springing up despite all the little cuts on his face. But he was grinning, at least. Raven felt herself thrown into the ground and winced. Her cloak was going to need cleaning.
"Think you're the cat's pajamas, huh? I'm about to make you scram your patootie-" Robin was saying in his best mob boss accent. (It was terrible, Raven thought.)
"Patooty schmabooty!" shouted Beast Boy from behind her. Vaguely Raven saw a snowball hit Robin right in the hair gel. Robin whipped up and threw a disk from his utility belt at Beast Boy.
"Whoa, dude! I…" Beast Boy didn't get to finish his sentence; Raven heard the freezing disk activate. While Robin was distracted, though, she'd gathered her powers and…
Whack.
She pummeled him all over, gathering all the falling snow and slamming it straight towards Robin. He raised his hands in a futile gesture to block it away, but soon he was buried under a mound of snow.
"How do you like them apples?" Raven said to the mound. Or bananas, maybe, she thought.
"Say you're sorry and I'll let you go," she continued.
Suddenly, there was an explosion behind Raven. She turned, and in that instant knew it had been a fatal mistake. Before she could try anything else, Robin was already leaping at her, his bo staff warding off the snow still chasing him. He landed right on top of her, and they tumbled to the ground.
There was a moment of stillness.
An odd feeling hovered in the air; she felt as if she could hear the snow quietly patting off the branches and into piles around her, as she stared into his brooding, dark eyes-
Wait, those phrases are from Megatherium's stupid story, Raven thought disconnectedly.
She heard his breath, his heartbeat, even the snow falling off of him.
Lucky, she thought again, Beast Boy's frozen and has a terrible view of what's going on…otherwise I'd never hear the end of it.
What was he doing?
Getting off, apparently.
Er, getting off of her, that was to say. Raven breathed again, shook her head and the blurring faded, and she saw he was dashing off. Belatedly, she realized the alarm had rung.
"Titans, pose!" Robin shouted. Cyborg and Starfire burst out of the Tower. Raven got up and flew over, ripping Beast Boy's ice prison away as she flew past.
The Titans posed dramatically and sped off.
"I'll prove it to her," Control Freak growled. "Oh, I'll prove it."
He took the statue of the warrior and pressed a few buttons on his remote, grumbling anxiously. It never crossed his mind how Stockholm Syndrome-y he was being; instead, he powered up the statue and sat in his favorite couch position—number 64—waiting for results to come.