Hey ya'll! I hope you're all ready for some more Teen Titanic awesomeness, because here's a new chapter! In this chapter, with all the excitement of getting home from Tokyo and battling Johnny Rancid out of the way, our five favorite teenage heroes have a very relaxing night at the tower. But the question is, will the night continue to remain peaceful after they've all gone to bed? Well anyway, I hope you read, review, and enjoy!
A/N: In case any of you didn't know already, I most certainly do not own Teen Titans. And to further clarify on a small detail in this chapter, I do not own the Mortal Instruments book series either.
Now, onward with the fic!
Chapter 3:
A Quiet Evening at Titans Tower
At 6:00 pm that night, the titans were gathered around in the kitchen area of the Tower heartily feasting on their favorite hometown dish, pizza. Having very recently gotten home from Tokyo that very day, Robin had decided that a pizza dinner would be a good way to unofficially celebrate their return home.
Beast Boy, as usual, was hungrily laying his fangs into his usual vegetarian pizza. Starfire was slowly consuming each slice of her anchovy pizza one by one, and also drowning each slice with a generous serving of mustard. Cyborg, of course, was devouring his hefty meat lovers' pizza so hungrily and quickly that he made Beast Boy look like a finishing school graduate. Raven, in stark contrast, was slowly and calmly eating her small cheese pizza, trying her best not to openly show her disgust at Cyborg's horrendous table manners. Even Robin was digging into a pizza of his own, a medium sized pepperoni pizza. And to make things even better, for the sake of not spoiling the mood for everyone, Beast Boy and Cyborg even chose to forgo their usual pizza dinner traditions that involved Beast Boy trying to get his teammates to try a bite of his vegetarian pizza and Cyborg going into a long-winded rant at Beast Boy about the joys of eating meat.
However, there was one tradition of Teen Titans pizza dinners that, just getting back from vacation or no, could not be ignored. The tradition in question, was the 'who gets to eat the last slice of pizza' moment. The slice in question for this night just happened to come from Raven's cheese pizza. And so, Raven was the first to stretch out her hand; but nevertheless, the hands of all five of the titans slammed down on the pizza slice at the same time.
As one, the titans glared at each other, and then lifted their hands off of the pizza slice.
"Come on," Cyborg yelled. "I totally deserve that last slice! I almost got squashed to death!"
"Dude," yelled Beast Boy. "For the third time, that was an accident! And besides, I'm the one who ended up finally trashing that stupid robot! If anyone deserves that slice, it's me!" Immediately after shouting this, Beast Boy snatched up the slice of pizza into his hand. However, before the green shape shifter could eat it, Cyborg reached over and tried to snatch it from his verdant green friend.
"Dude," Beast Boy yelled. "Hands off!"
"No way!" Cyborg shouted. "There's only one person in this tower who's gonna eat that slice of pizza, and it aint you!"
This brief squabble lasted for all of three minutes, with Starfire and Robin clearly itching to butt in with their own reasons for wanting to eat the slice of pizza before Raven abruptly roared, "ENOUGH!"
The other four titans turned their heads to gaze at Raven. The gray-skinned girl glared at them, and stated slowly, yet venomously, "Perhaps over the course of our little vacation, you guys all forgot that we only do this little tradition when we have one pizza shared between the five of us. If we each have our own individual pizza, each of us gets to eat the last slice of his or her respective pizza. Therefore, would it kill you or permanently damage your thick heads in any way to even consider that since the pizza involved in this equation is my pizza, I should have the right to eat the last slice?"
The other four titans were stunned silent for a few seconds. Then Robin and Starfire looked at each other guiltily before sitting back with their hands raised up in 'surrender' gestures. Cyborg gulped, drew his hands back to his own personal space and turned away with an embarrassed look on his face. Beast Boy, meanwhile, hung his head, his ears drooping and his face showing a look of very clear guilt and regret.
With his saddened look still on his face, Beast Boy looked back up to face Raven, slowly handed the pizza slice towards her, and said, "Here. Go ahead. It's yours to eat, and I . . . we should've respected that. I'm sorry."
Raven momentarily gaped uncomprehendingly at Beast Boy, only to then have a slightly chastened look of her own come on her face as she realized through her empathic abilities how the green boy sitting before her handing her pizza slice back was genuinely sorry and feeling guilty about the whole mess. She gingerly reached forward, grabbed onto her pizza slice, and said, "Thanks; um, apology accepted."
"It's ok," said Beast Boy, a slight nervous grin coming up on his face. "What are friends for?"
After an awkward silence of two minutes or so, Robin decided to change the subject and let Raven eat her last slice of pizza in peace. He turned to Beast Boy and said, "You know Beast Boy, I happened to look through the drawers where we keep our video games and video game technology, and I noticed that there was a small box in there with a note on it."
Beast Boy turned his head to face Robin. "There was?"
"Yeah, hold on," said Robin as he proceeded to get up from his chair and head over to the drawers in question. When Robin came back, he was holding a cardboard box with a post-it note on top that said 'Do not open this unless you are Beast Boy or one of the other members of the local Jump City Teen Titans.'
Beast Boy directed a look of curiosity at the box, and proceeded to grab onto it when Robin handed it to him. Beast Boy opened it up, looked inside, and smiled happily as he proceeded to reach inside and pull out none other than what appeared to be a video game designed for their Play Station System.
"I forgot that this was set to be released for sale in stores here the day we left for Tokyo," Beast Boy squealed happily as he looked joyously at the video game that he now clutched in his hands.
"What is it?" Cyborg asked.
Beast Boy gaped at Cyborg in shock. "Dude!" He yelled. "It's Mutant Madness! The very first game in the brand new franchise of the same name now being produced by the company that produced the Mega Monkeys and Super Ninja Fury franchises!"
Beast Boy looked back at the game, his ecstatic toothy grin back on his face, and proceeded to explain, "The premise; five teenagers have been subjected to illegal genetic testing involving combining their DNA with that of wild animals. The results of the mixtures caused the teens to mutate into humanoid versions of each respective animal that they had their blood mixed with the DNA of. And now, after later learning while being kept in the facilities of the lab that turned them that the lab people plan to use this genetic experimentation and all the resulting mutants that could be created as weapons, they now have to escape from the lab and then try to put a stop to the people in charge of the project."
Robin thought to himself, and then said, "I'll definitely admit, that sounds actually kind of fun. How many players does it allow for?"
"Maximum of five," said Beast Boy.
"Hmm," said Robin. "Well in that case, it probably wouldn't be too bad for you, me, and Cy to play this."
"I'm definitely game," said Beast Boy. He looked at Cyborg and asked, "What about you? Wanna play?"
Cyborg pointed his finger at Beast Boy and said, "Yes, but first, when did you first hear about this new video game series being in development?"
"Couple months ago," said Beast Boy.
"And how come I was not made aware of this?"
Beast Boy chuckled nervously, ran his left hand through his spiky chartreuse hair, and said, "Um, well, I . . ."
"I'm sure he just wanted to keep it a surprise for you all," Raven stated.
"Well yeah," Beast Boy stated. "That was one of the reasons I didn't mention this to Cy."
"One of the reasons?" Cyborg asked.
"Please," said Starfire. "Must we fight each other so soon after getting home from our glorious vacation?"
Cyborg gulped, and looked at Starfire with a guilty grimace. "Er, no," said Cyborg. "I'm good, just surprised is all." Robin and Beast Boy smirked as they watched Cyborg's reaction.
"Leave it to Star to smooth things over before they erupted," Robin thought admiringly to himself.
Cyborg then turned his head to face the other two boys, clasped his hands together, and then said, "Well then, who's ready to play?"
. . . . .
"I've gotta admit," said Robin as he furiously mashed on the controls about an hour or so later, "this is actually pretty fun."
The three boys had spent the last hour or so after dinner playing their brand new video game. And as Robin had now admitted, they were having quite a lot of fun. At the moment, Robin's character, a humanoid lion with pyrokinetic abilities and an ultrasonic roar, was knee deep in combat against armed lab security guards in the first chapter of the game's storyline and had just now used the ultrasonic roar to defeat at least ten or so enemies surrounding it all at once. Beast Boy's character, a humanoid crocodile with geokinetic abilities, the ability to summon poisonous gas, and a corrosive slime breath attack was hard at work in destroying a series of power generators keeping a force field barring the game characters' progress active. As for Cyborg, he currently had his character, a humanoid rhinoceros with cryokinetic abilities, super strength, and an ultra-fast charging attack fighting the lab security guards alongside Robin's character.
Cyborg smiled as he proceeded to cause his character to fully deplete the HP of three of the game enemies with well-aimed icicle blasts fired from its hands. "I gotta hand it to you BB," the half-robot teenager stated. "You sure have good taste in video games."
"Thanks dude," said Beast Boy as he proceeded to have his character blast the final power generator to smithereens with its acidic breath attack, triggering a cut scene. "I'll bet your glad Aqualad remembered that this game was released for sale in stores here while we were gone huh?"
"You've got that right," Cyborg replied before proceeding to redirect his attention to watching the cut scene.
Meanwhile, from within the kitchen area, Starfire was leaning on the counter top where the stools were located, intently watching the boys and what was unfolding on the screen. She couldn't help but smile as she watched Robin enjoying himself with the Earth activity that he seemed to enjoy taking part in alongside Cyborg and Beast Boy so much. She always liked how happy he seemed to be when he was playing these games with the other boys. In her opinion, this happy version of Robin that was present whenever he played video games was much better than the aloof, guarded, and antisocial Robin that was often present whenever involved with investigations, or one of his, she shuddered at even thinking of the name, personal Slade obsession modes.
On the other side of the counter, Raven was hovering a foot or so away over the ground, reading a book. At the moment, she was currently rereading Cassandra Clare's The Mortal Instruments series, and was now on the sixth book, City of Heavenly Fire. She felt a small smile coming on her face as she read a particularly exciting part. Out of all the books in the considerable number she'd read and reread in her life time, she'd always enjoyed books that involved supernatural elements. She'd always felt a bit of a kinship for the characters and worlds within such stories due to her own rather supernatural heritage. And of course, as she read her book, she paid barely any attention whatsoever to the boys and the events unfolding on the TV screen.
Beast Boy, however, somehow was now finding himself capable of stealing slight glances towards Raven out of the corner of his eyes every now and then, and still maintain near perfect focus on the video game at the same time. And while the gazes he'd direct at Raven every now and then only ever lasted for at least five seconds or so, he couldn't help but remember the surprisingly large number of things about her that he'd come to make a note of.
In recent times, heck perhaps maybe even since the day they'd first met, he'd always found himself rather enjoying how pale and pristine her pale grayish skin seemed to make her look when illuminated just right under the light of the moon. He also thought that her amethyst purple eyes were surprisingly easy to get lost into if he were to ever somehow stare at them long enough. Also, and this was something he was really embarrassed about, the musty smell of lavender and tea that wafted off of her was enough to get all the animal minds inside him yammering and rambling in a way that made them sound as if they were in heat, something that not even the mountain pine tree scent he remembered to always be lingering on Terra had managed to achieve. Finally, he couldn't help but admit that her short deep violet purple hair, with its very much characteristic short style, made her look surprisingly pretty to him in a rather mysterious and enchanting way that he guiltily found himself thinking put even Terra in all her drop dead gorgeous glory to shame.
Growling silently in annoyance, Beast Boy shoved these thoughts about Raven back into the back of his mind and resumed his full attention on the game. "I'll think more about this stuff later," he thought to himself. "I've already done a good job at handling this long enough to reach this point, and I can continue to handle it for another few days or so. And I'm certainly not going to dwell on it right now, especially since I'm pretty sure a boss battle will soon be occurring if I remember what I read in the online strategy guide I read about this game correctly." And so, Beast Boy, Cyborg, and Robin continued to play the game, Starfire continued to watch, and Raven continued to read her book. At that moment, it seemed as if nothing could possibly ruin the relaxing night the titans were currently enjoying in their tower.
Eventually, at exactly 8:00 pm, the three boys finally reached a good stopping point in their game, and they saved it before turning off the TV and video game system. Cyborg yawned, stretched his hands upward, and then said, "That was fun. I daresay I'll be looking forward to playing that game some more tomorrow."
"I hear you man," said Beast Boy before letting out a yawn of his own that sounded very surprisingly like that of a lion. "But right now," he then said. "I'm so in need of a long good night's sleep."
Raven closed her book, yawned, and said, "For once, I agree with Beast Boy, I could certainly use some sleep."
"Agreed," said Starfire before she herself let out a yawn.
"Good idea," said Robin. "Come on everybody, let's get to bed. Hopefully we'll all be able to wake up at 8:00 am at the earliest."
The other titans were so tired that not even Beast Boy had the energy to groan and complain about the fact that Robin had set a deadline for them to wake up by.
Cyborg was the first to exit the common room, and he proceeded to make his way to his room where his inviting sleep-mode/recharging table was waiting. Raven was next to leave, and she made no hesitation to head straight to her dark and gothic themed bedroom that she still hoped that the Titans East members had had the sense to stay out of while she'd been away. Beast Boy followed close behind Raven, looking very eager indeed to curl up and sleep on the top bunk of his ever so familiar and cozy bunk bed.
For a few more seconds, Robin and Starfire remained standing where they were. Robin then turned his head to face Starfire with a smile on his face. "Good day?" he asked.
Starfire smiled back at her boyfriend, and responded, "Indeed it was Robin."
"That's good," said Robin with his smile still on his face. He stretched his arms and hands upward, yawning as he did so. "It's so nice to be home."
"Indeed," said Starfire. "As was said in that intriguing movie you once had us watch involving a wizard of some strange place called Oz, 'there's no place like home.'"
Robin chuckled, and said, "That's certainly true." He then looked back at Starfire, gestured for her to go ahead and walk alongside him out of the room before saying, "Come on Star. Let's get to bed. I have a good feeling that we'll have a pretty good day ahead of us tomorrow as well. Heck, maybe things will be relatively peaceful in Jump City for once."
Starfire smiled at the thought, linked her arm with Robin's, and smiled as she and her fearless leader and boyfriend proceeded to exit the common room of the tower, arm-in-arm, and feeling very happy at the close contact. They didn't unlink their arms until they reached Starfire's room; and as soon as Starfire entered her room and the doors to it closed behind her, Robin made his way calmly over to his room, feeling very giddy and happy with himself on the inside.
. . . . .
However, what none of the titans knew at that particular moment, was that they'd been watched for the last few hours. If either of the five teenagers had happened to look at the uppermost right corner of the window located the furthest to the right from the one that doubled as a TV screen in the time between their dinner and heading off to bed, they would have noticed what appeared to be a sea gull with unnaturally black eyes leaning its head down from where it was perched on the tower roof to look inside.
When the five teenagers had finally stopped their activities and headed off to bed one by one, the apparent sea gull waited for another few minutes or so just to make sure that no one came back into the room, appeared to let out a sigh of relief after that, and then lifted its head back up away from view from anyone who could have looked through the windows at it.
Seconds later, an unnaturally human-like and malicious grin came on the sea gull's face, and it spoke in a hollow voice, "Things are going exactly as planned . . . perfect." No sooner had the sea gull said this, when its beak suddenly snapped open and what appeared to be a powerful jet of pitch black smoke erupted from out of its mouth and into the open air before zooming off towards the forest located on a coast a few miles or so south of Jump City. The instant the last of the smoke exited the sea gull's mouth, the bird let out a croaking groan, closed its now naturally colored eyes, and plummeted over the edge of the tower roof before landing on the ground with a sickening thud.
Meanwhile, for the next few minutes, the ominous black smoke continued to rocket through the air as it made its way to its destination. It was now time for it to report to its comrades that the targets they'd been assigned to go after that very night were now ready for them to deal with.
And there you have it everyone! I hope you guys enjoyed this (admittedly rather short) chapter, and that you leave a nice healthy bunch of reviews! And better yet, for the sake of reducing the chances of my Teen Titans fanfiction career becoming dead in the water before it can really truly begin, I've decided to stop my original policy of waiting until I receive 5 reviews before posting new chapters. But still, do not hesitate to review. I want to still at least have one review before my currently appointed day of posting a new chapter. Well anyway, again, I hope you guys enjoyed this, and that you are looking forward to the next chapter, particularly after the rather suspenseful note (in my opinion anyway) that I have left this chapter off on. ^_^
Coming up next: The titans get rudely awakened when they end up having to do battle with 5 very much unwelcome guests that invade the tower and turn the teenage heroes' relaxing night into a literal living nightmare from Hell.