Chapter Eleven: Skeletons in the Closet

Chapter Eleven: Skeletons in the Closet.

Beast Boy didn't respond, and Jinx wasn't sure he'd heard her, or registered what she said. As the skeletal figures rose smoothly to their feet, Jinx charged her hand with glowing energy and blasted the nearest one without hesitation. The bandaged figure staggered for half a moment, then righted itself, as if it were a puppet being pulled back upright. Desperately, Jinx hammered hex after hex into the approaching figures, to no avail.

The four, in spite of their decayed physiques, moved with all the sure-footed strength they had in life, and Jinx found herself boxed in, backed up against a still raving Beast Boy.

"Beast Boy, get up," she hissed over her shoulder. "I could really use a – haguh!" Before she could finish her sentence, an elastic hand was around her throat. Desperately, she grabbed at Beast Boy's arm as she was dragged backwards, and he turned his head to look at her. Oddly, he seemed as serene as she had ever seen him.

Then he blinked, and when his eyes opened again, they were pure white.

Black material bulged then split as wiry muscles ballooned. Silver gloves were ripped by razor claws and shoes were split by huge paws. Flesh became coarse hair, teeth lengthened, and the Beast emerged.

With a booming howl, the creature dived upon a shocked Jinx, barrelling her to the ground. Before she could do so much as gasp the creature was standing over her, with something in its jaws, and Jinx could suddenly breathe again.

Lying down, a wall of green hair less than a foot above her, she felt her throat, which still had something attached to it.

It was a gloved hand.

Gross.

The elastic woman reeled the stump of her arm back in, yanking it from the jaws of the beast. The creature chased after it, leaping upon her and barrelling into the ground. Jinx could see nothing but the frenzied worrying of the thing's back, but the noises she heard were not ones she ever wanted to hear again. Next, the beast span and leapt upon the bandaged man, ripping through his cloth bindings and reducing him to scraps and bone fragments in less than three seconds.

Jinx wanted desperately to look away, but she couldn't. She couldn't deny the feeling that this was something fundamentally important, and so she forced herself to watch as the monster that had been Beast Boy (and she knew, just knew, that he wasn't in the driver's seat at the moment) traded hammer blows with the metal man, claws raking up sparks and pounding fists crumpling the bronze torso.

Finally, with a tortured shriek of metal, the beast tore the robots arms off, and lethal talons gutted the machine. There was a beat of silence, and Jinx dared to hope that it was over.

Then shards of metal, torn from the robotic man, began hurling themselves at the monster, digging into his flesh. With a deep, booming howl, the creature leapt, pouncing upon the final grisly enemy. In one leap, the beast pinned the cadaver to the floor and a single blow reduced the figure's skull to powder.

As Jinx sat up, keeping a wary eye on the beast, it padded towards her. This in itself helped calm Jinx a little, as she was certain that if it meant to kill her, it would have already. As it got closer, it suddenly spasmed, and the creature buckled and contorted until it was Beast Boy again, wearing the remains of a tattered costume.

"Uhh...what happened?"

Jinx wasn't sure how to answer that, so she just stared. Beast Boy suddenly noticed the state of his apparel, and started.

"What? Are my pants gone? Please don't tell me pants are gone again." He quickly checked, and to his relief, the lower half of his costume was largely undamaged, although his torso was almost completely uncovered, and his shoes were ruined. "Okay. It's not the pants. What is it?"

Jinx coughed. "You just turned into that...thing and fought zombies, alright? I'm a little freaked out right about now."

"Oh," Beast Boy replied, and Jinx noticed he was swaying slightly as he stood. "So, what now?"

Jinx was about to shrug when she saw movement on the gangway.

"Up there?"

--

He was coming. Finally, he had returned to the scene of his crime. He would pay for what he did.

--

Beast Boy was still unsteady, so he leant heavily on Jinx as the two made their way up the stairs. It didn't help that he was treating the climb like the walk to the scaffold. Eventually, the two made it up to the top, and were confronted by a strange figure, even by the standards of their surroundings.

An enormous gorilla. Jinx almost laughed, but was stopped by two things.

Beast Boy had tensed up, his muscles locking until he was a statue.

The gorilla was brandishing some kind of device. Jinx peered through the gloom, trying to pick it out, and noted two pertinent details. It had a barrel. It had a trigger. She didn't need to see the schematics.

"You," Beast Boy hissed through fanged teeth.

"Oui, little one," the gorilla replied, and Jinx wasn't sure whether or not to be surprised that the monkey could talk, or amused that it had a French accent. "Ze hour has come."

"What are you talking about?"

"Your reckoning is at hand, child. It is time to pay for what you did." The creature's gun arm was wobbling now, as he became more manic. "Do you know what you did? You took him away! You took my life from me; you left me a shell, a walking corpse! He was my everything, and you killed him. You cannot know what that is like."

"You think I don't know?" Beast Boy shouted, his voice cracked with emotion. "I lost my family! I was left with nothing, no one! Don't you talk to me about loss!"

Jinx looked back and forth between the two arguing figures with growing dread. It was clear that she wasn't supposed to be here; that this was something intensely personal that she was intruding on. Suddenly, she gasped as she saw all the fight suddenly drain from Beast Boy, leaving, as she saw for perhaps the first time, a scared young boy, lost and alone.

"Look, Mallah", he sighed, his voice sounding weary with age. "You could kill me now, and I wouldn't blame you for wanting to. It was an accident, a stupid accident that was really no one's fault, but it was an accident I caused. If you want to take your revenge, then fine."

Jinx gaped at the boy, and could see Mallah similarly flabbergasted. But Beast Boy wasn't finished.

"But please, if you're gonna kill me, just do this one thing. Ask yourself, what's it gonna change?"

Mallah faltered, and his gun arm dropped.

"Nothing's gonna change. This", and here he waved his arm to encompass the aged battlefield "was never our fight. It was the Brain and the Chief that had the vendetta; we were just roped in to it. So sure, you could shoot me, and I could rip your throat out with my teeth, but in the end it wouldn't be for anything." He looked up into Mallah's dark eyes. "And for what it's worth, I'm sorry."

Mallah was silent for a while, but eventually he spoke.

"Thank you, child." He seemed to gain a measure of solace from Beast Boy's speech, and he relaxed. Suddenly everything changed. He began glaring into the middle distance, his weapon trained on enemies only he could see, his left arm crooked around something invisible, and he began to howl.

"Hah! Come on then, Gendarmes. You think you can stop me? You are welcome to try!"

Words expended, he unloaded his weapon into the walls, howling manically all the while, when his head jerked back, his fur matted with blood, and he fell to the ground, dead.

--

I know this is a lot later than usual, but I do have a couple of good reasons. Firstly, I realised that the original concept for this chapter was a little thin, and I had to juggle the schedule around a bit to accommodate the changes I made.

Secondly, "Avatar: The Last Airbender" has ruled my imagination for the past week or so, ever since I bought season 1. Seriously, it's utterly kickass, and I will probably write for it at some point.

Incidentally, I think I am the only person (at least, the only one I've found) that has played the Brain/Mallah romance entirely straight. Odd.