Me while still hiding in the panic room: We need more stuff to barricade the doors. Let's move it people. The monsters are coming! The monsters are coming!
Beastboy: Can't you use your powers?!
Me: If I could wouldn't think I would have by now?! Wait a minute I got it! *Starts to glow as bright as the sun* Charge! *Crashes through the barricade and gets rid of problem* Finally! They're gone!
Jasiri: Well at least we can relax and enjoy the chapter. Big thanks to SkysFireLady15 for reviewing and you were right! Never trust anything that cute!
Me: Well put and I only own Jasiri.
-Line Break-
The next morning, Raven woke up to find her room completely infested with tiny maniacal green scaly monsters.
"I knew anything that cute had to be pure evil," she said calmly into one cackling hideous face. "I knew it."
Never mind that she had been lulled into relaxation the previous day, just like everyone else. Never mind that there was not, as of yet, a concrete connection between the monsters and the creature. Never mind that Starfire had been more of a force for keeping that thing than Beast Boy and Jasiri had been. Never mind that Kid Flash had given Jasiri the creature, and never mind that Jinx had been the one with the idea to give them the creature in the first place. No, all this was irrelevant to Raven, because she took great comfort in the familiar old foundation fact: this was all Beast Boy and Jasiri's fault. And knowing that was the only reason she wasn't completely freaking out right now, because those monsters were eating her books!
"You have until the count of three," she told them coldly because even book-destroying monsters deserved a little warning before being annihilated by darkest magic. "One."
One of the monsters turned and raspberried its tongue at her, bits of shredded Byron wafting through the air.
She shrugged. Fine. If they wanted to be rude about it….
"Three."
And then she telekinetically opened her door and launched the half dozen midget reptiles through it with such force that some of them left a few scales and a pale green paste on the frame. Their shrieks were something between a human scream and a piggish squeal.
She slammed the door shut behind them and reached for her communicator, only to find it wasn't in its usual resting place. It took her a moment of searching to notice all the bits of metal and yellow plastic scattered around the floor, reduced to tiny warped shards and splinters.
Great. Oh well, there was always telepathy….
"Azarath, Metrion… OW!"
Reeling in half-blind pain, she caught herself on the edge of her bed before she fell, skull throbbing. Trying to reach through the tower into the mind of Robin had been like walking into the middle of the loudest rock concert ever from a dead-silent room. There were so many minds... all chaotic and savagely emotional, worse than Beast Boy and Jasiri's combined, like a spoiled child with the instincts of a large predator.
Beyond that, they just felt different in a way no other mind had felt other than Tobi's… a peculiar flavouring tinge that had been mildly unpleasant, like vertigo, in Tobi but was amplified by the quantity and lack of discipline she was now sensing.
They didn't belong here, any more than Tobi did… not in this tower, not in this city, not in this universe. All her mental senses were screaming at her at the sheer wrongness of it, the out of placeness of it, and she couldn't focus past it all to get to Robin.
This was bad. If there were so many of those tiny humanoid reptiles all around the tower, then it was a serious threat. Any one of them was hardly dangerous, but in large numbers… she had seen those sharp claws, the pointy teeth, the muscles rippling beneath black, green and tan skin. They weren't harmless like Tobi. And was even Tobi harmless? There was so much they didn't know!
There was a loud THUD, followed by a multitude of tiny demonic giggling.
Raven blinked and looked over at the door.
THUD. Giggle, giggle, giggle.
The door was denting inwards. Alarmed, she shielded herself with dark energy, wishing she had some proper projectiles… there was no way she was damaging more of her books! Her poor, poor sweet mutilated books.
THUD. Giggle, giggle….
Smirking, she opened the door with a flick of her hand, and watched as nine of the monsters charged inwards full force, falling all over each other in confusion. She wondered where they had found a Medieval style wooden battering ram, scaled down precisely to their size. It was uncanny.
"I don't care what you are or what you can do. You're not eating the rest of my books," she told them grimly, ready to make a first and last stand with her room as her Sparta.
With a grin creasing its wrinkled, pointy face, the monster furthest back slowly deliberately stretched a viciously-curved claw towards a book fallen askew on the floor. Its orange-red eyes seemed to dare her to do something about it as the claw inched closer and closer.
"If you touch that you're going to be in big trouble," she warned it.
Like a child mocking a parent, it only tapped the cover of the book quickly. Seeing that she wasn't causing him to burst into flames or anything from the offense, he cackled and tapped it again, and again, in quick succession.
"Why you little…" she snarled, floating closer, hands raised and charged with magic to teach it a lesson.
As soon as she got close, though, the others darted off and spread out around the room. Whirling frantically, she watched in bibliophilic agony as some of the monsters started ripping out pages and making origami. Sexually explicit origami.
"JUST BECAUSE CHARLES DICKENS WROTE THAT DOESN'T MEAN YOU CAN TURN IT INTO A… WHAT YOU'RE TURNING IT INTO!" she snarled, outraged, grabbing one of the nearest offenders by the neck with a band of telekinesis and squeezing until it coughed, gasped and drooled. Then she flung it aside heartlessly and made a grab for another one.
But whenever she targeted a single monster, the rest busied themselves messing with her things! They got bored with the books eventually, but that was bad, because that meant they started getting interested in poking around her magical reagents and tools and priceless artefacts. One of them looked into her mirror and somehow the reflection cracked it! The monster only laughed merrily.
So thoroughly enraged by the destruction of her haven was Raven that it was quite some time before she thought to check on the others….
-Line Break-
Starfire was more concerned about her friends than her possessions, and floated the hallways close to the ceiling, throwing starbolts at anything small and cackly that moved. Unfortunately they were good at dodging, and also, she soon learned, at leading her around in circles. Precious minutes were wasted chasing after the strange unpleasant green creatures before she realized that they were small, quick, and destructive enough to hide pretty much anywhere and then pop out from somewhere else.
They used the interior walling as much as the actual hallways, and she heard the skitter of scaly clawed little feet all around, left and right, front and behind, above and below. There were so many of them! Why had the alarm not gone off? What had happened to their defences Cyborg spent so much effort on?
That was another thing she learned not quite as quickly as she would have liked. Nothing mechanical seemed to stay unharmed around the beasts for more than a few seconds. They found ways to rewire, jam, gunk up, and otherwise hinder both the sturdiest and largest, and most delicate and tiny of machinery and electronics, always to destructive and generally explosive ends.
Her one comfort was that for all their mischief and wicked laughter, they could not harm her; Tameranian endurance vastly outclassed their ability to cause injury. They realized this themselves, of course, which led to the diversionary, time-wasting, aggravating tactics they employed against her. She was reduced to watching them destroy her home around her, and forcing them to flee… only so that they would renew their efforts in another section of the tower. She couldn't be everywhere at once!
After traversing several floors, she came across two monsters who were not familiar enough with her to run. They seemed to be very… occupied with what they were doing. Staring with initial confusion turning rapidly into horror, she noted the tiny but familiar costumes on them… a tiny Robin costume and a tiny her costume, sized just right for the two monsters!
And though their attempts at speech with each other were all but unintelligible to her, the tones and especially the gestures used were familiar enough. They appeared to be… courting one another! Their ears perked and red eyes turned in her direction once they realized she was watching, and then they renewed their efforts, even more dramatic and passionate. Only their actions were extremely impolite, almost insulting, Starfire felt!
"That is not how a Tameranian princess woos her friend who is a boy," she objected angrily as the Starfire-monster started licking around the edges of Robin-monster's mask suggestively, tongue wiggling like a snake. It only got worse from there, and Starfire's cheeks went red.
"I would never do that with Robin! ...unless there was a great deal of the chocolate and perhaps a non-synthetic diamond involved," she added thoughtfully after a moment.
Then she cringed at how it progressed further, into vulgarity so low… she had never even thought of such things before! How dare they! She floated down to the floor just to stomp a foot in anger, unintentionally leaving a small hole in the metal.
"I demand you cease this inaccurate and dishonourable display of physical affection between myself and my friend who is a boy immediately, little green monster creature people!"
The two stopped, peering at her contemplatively. Then the Starfire-monster shrugged with a quacking croak, and with the most casual gestures, tore the mask off of Robin-monster… along with about half the Robin-monster's face and its eyes. Robin-monster screamed in agony, and Starfire screamed in sympathy, and Starfire-monster just laughed and triumphantly held up the mask dripping with green gunk, eyes glued to the eyeholes by gore. Starfire-monster handed her the obscene trophy and then trotted off, jumping over its former partner and skipping off into the distance, giggling shrilly.
Horrified and feeling awful for the mutilated thing, Starfire gently tried to put the mask and the accompanying half-face back onto the Robin-monster, not knowing what else to do, but the monster writhed and shrieked too much.
"Please hold still, fake monster Robin!" she cried desperately, trying not to hyperventilate. The green stuff was getting all over her. "You must let me help you so we can put your face back and then friend Cyborg will stitch you together again, I do hope!"
Suddenly, a long metal pole smashed through the ceiling and directly onto the maimed monster's head, crushed it thoroughly. With a shriek, Starfire jumped back, flinging a starbolt instinctively as a small dark shape slid down the pole. The shape whirled, dodging the bolt easily, landing just in front of the now dead Robin-monster in a dramatic pose.
It was another one of the monsters, this one in a monster-sized Slade outfit. Starfire gawked.
"Dun dun DUN dun dun dunnnnnn," the monster said, the sound muffled through the mask but still intelligible. Then it tried to scratch its head, realized the mask was in the way, and half-pulled the mask off to scratch properly with one arched claw.
Starfire used that moment of distraction to shoot dual beams of energy from her eyes straight into the thing's chest, and watched it fly howling down the hallway with a warrior's grim satisfaction. Then a little monster dressed like Terra scampered by, following after the Slade-monster and making exaggerated sobbing sounds that were interrupted constantly by its poorly restrained giggles.
Then a monster dressed just like Jasiri, with her ears and everything, ran after her waving it's fist in the air while shouted what could only be assumed to be swear words.
She stared after the scene in dismay and bemusement. Never before had she encountered an enemy like this. What manner of strange abominations were these creatures?
-Line Break-
As fate would have it, the member of the team most affected by the invaders was the one to come into contact with Beast Boy and Jasiri first. Little monsters clinging to him from every possible inch of metal and skin didn't keep Cyborg from yelling at Beast Boy and Jasiri while they helped him get uninfested.
"You tofu brains, you were talking about gremlins, not kremlins! From the movie Gremlins!" Cyborg yelled extremely loudly.
"It was an honest mistake dude! Now hold still, I'm gonna bite the one on your butt off with saber tooth tiger fangs." Beastboy said as Jasiri battled the gremlins around them.
Wincing, Cyborg held still and trusted Beast Boy, something he would ordinarily never do, but desperate times called for desperate measures. One chomp later he only had five gremlins left clinging to him and doing their level best to mess with every piece of circuitry and wiring he had going on.
"And you're not s'posed t'let mogwai eat after midnight 'cause they turn into gremlins, or let mogwai or gremlins get wet ever 'cause they multiply that way, or let them get into bright light 'cause it kills 'em!" Cyborg continued to yell, venting frustration.
Everywhere he turned, some personal piece of work of his very own two manly metal man hands was being destroyed now.
"We could've prevented all this if you two had the memory of a green bean casserole!" Cyborg yelled in frustration.
"That was cold even for you." Jasiri said as she swiped at the gremlins with her tiger claws.
"I'm sorry, dude, please forgive me! How did you find out all that stuff, anyway?!" Beast Boy went orang-utan to grapple with the gremlin clinging to Cyborg's neck. The gremlin lost, and went flying with a scream that sounded suspiciously like 'Have mercyyyyyy!'
"I spent ten minutes on the Internet Movie Database site while fighting for my life, that's how!" It had been the most frantic internet surfing of Cyborg's whole life. Thank God he'd had the site bookmarked or he might not even be here right now!
"Dude, dude! I've got it! If light kills 'em, why don't we just undo the defensive lockdown thingy and let light come in from all the windows?! Or turn all the lights on inside really high?!" Beastboy suggested as the hallway was almost cleared of gremlins.
"They ate the lighting system and its three backup systems," Cyborg grumbled, plucking a shin-gnawing gremlin off him and blasting it away with his sonic cannon. "Along with all the other stuff of mine they've ruined! I guess I could override the lockdown, but I'd need Robin's authorization at the console!"
"So let's go find Rob!" Beast Boy grunted before turning into an armadillo, curling into a ball, and rolling himself around, knocking gremlins all over like bowling pins in moon gravity.
Finally, the area was more or less clear, although there was still a lot of creepy reptilian giggling in the distance.
Beast Boy wiped his sweaty forehead fur, panting. "I hope the others're okay. And Silkie. And Tobi."
Cyborg gazed at his best but not entirely sane friend incredulously. "Are you crazy, man? Tobi's one a' them!"
"Even I know that." Jasiri said as she wiped her forehead.
"No way! Tobi's nothing like them! He's polite and cuddly and nice!" Beastboy protested.
"He was fooling us, man, face it." Cyborg said as Jasiri nodded in agreement.
"No way," Beast Boy insisted stubbornly. "I won't believe it till I see it."
Cyborg hoped his buddy wouldn't be let down in the rudest way possible, but given the sense of humour the gremlins seemed to have, it seemed pretty likely.
And then a screaming Robin ran past them, and Cyborg, for one, was not at all surprised. He charged up his cannon, and waited patiently for a horde of monstrosities to roll into view for target practice. There had to be a ton of them, if Rob was fleeing, but fortunately the sonic cannon had a wide dispersal setting for just such target rich environmental occasions. But Jasiri wasn't taking any chances, since she could hear explosions in the distance, so she ran as fast as she could while forgetting about her powers in her fear.
"Retreat! They have all my explosives!" Robin's voice drifted urgently to them from further along the hall.
Cyborg paused and thought it over. "Did he say all his explosives?" he asked Beast Boy, wanting to make sure he'd heard that right.
"Yeah. How many does he have, anyway?" Beastboy asked as he slowly got the feeling his girlfriend had the right idea to run.
And then they got to find out first-hand, as dozens of gremlins swarmed into view, cackling and throwing lots and lots of ominously beeping devices.
"Oh fudgesicles," Cyborg said, and then decided that Robin and Jasiri had had the right idea.
Noisy explosions followed behind them, along with the demonic giggling of reptilian midgets, but they didn't stop, they didn't slow, and above all else they didn't look back. Every explosion made Cyborg wince in sympathy with the sound of crumpling architecture. But buildings could be rebuilt. Beast Boy, Jasiri and Rob couldn't, and if the explosions took off the wrong half of his head he was as much a goner as any fleshy person would be.
Without warning, a hand yanked him into a cubicle. Startled, he almost fired, but relaxed when he realized it was just Robin, hiding with Beast Boy and Jasiri in a shady spot. It seemed to work; the smoke from the constantly applied explosives was enough to distract the gremlins from seeing that their prey had stopped, and the mob of green just swept past them.
"So what's the plan?" Cyborg whispered to their tactical foundation while patting himself all over to make sure everything was still there.
"We need Raven to get my weapons away from them," Robin said grimly. "It's either that, or just wait until the they use it all up. I've tried contacting her but they stole everything electronic in sight. Do either of you have intact communicators?"
Three glum headshakes answered that question.
"Man, you're lucky I'm even here right now, Rob. These things're gremlins... you know, like the kind that supposedly messed with planes in World War II? These guys'll mess with anything with a spark in it. But I think I know how we can get rid of 'em." Cyborg said as he planned his revenge.
"I'm totally open to suggestions right now," said Robin, who was looking almost naked without his utility belt or staff.
"These're the gremlins from that movie BB and Jas got all wrong-" Cyborg started.
"We said we were sorry!" Beastboy and Jasiri said in unison.
"-and they're highly allergic to sunlight. As in, it melts them into goo. Now, the tower's on lockdown status right now, but if you can give your authorization for overriding it at the terminal, we'll be able to let sunlight stream in from all the windows. There'll still prolly be a few hiding in dark places, like the basement, but they'll be contained that way, so we can squish 'em." Personally Cyborg hoped there wouldn't be many in the basement. It was scary down there.
Robin frowned. "Should we be seriously considering killing them all? I know it looks like an out of control epidemic from inside the tower, but they are contained inside the building as far as the rest of the world's concerned. And I'm not sure if massacring them all is really a humane solution, even if they are horrible little creatures that don't belong in this universe."
"Killing monsters doesn't count as killing, dude," Beast Boy said like it was an obvious fact of life, the same as gravity.
"They're monsters. What would you do with Dracula if you didn't wanna pound a slice of nasty meat through his heart?" Jasiri asked as she continued on Beastboy's train of thought.
"Not that kind of steak, little guys," Cyborg corrected his buddies absentmindedly. "But you've got a point. I mean, what else are we s'posed to do with 'em? Raven wasn't even sure she could send one furry little helpless puffball home. I think askin' her to teleport a whole army of uncooperative hostiles is a bit outta her league."
"I know, but still-" Robin went on.
A gremlin dressed, weirdly enough, in a gremlin-sized Starfire costume peeked in, smooched Robin on the lips (leaving a cartoonishly huge lipstick stain), and then ran off, teeheeing in a grotesquely effeminate way. Robin froze, mouth and eyes both wide with horror.
"Did... did that one just..." he stuttered.
Beast Boy, Jasiri and Cyborg all nodded silently, equally disturbed. Jasiri was even looking a little green.
"And... and in Starfire's..."
They nodded some more.
As if to serve as a final reminder so the horrible event could never, ever be burned from their memories, the Starfire-gremlin ran back, somehow ripped off its underwear without taking the shorts off or destroying the underwear itself, and tossed it on Robin's face, where it draped itself crookedly. And that was how they all learned about the Tameranian equivalent of a thong. That time Jasiri actually did throw up.
This time, the gremlin exited by ripping a hole in the wall and skittering inwards along the interior and out of sight, sounding like it was causing more damage as it went along.
Cyborg was pretty sure of what was going to happen next, as dictated by the laws of comedy, which were in some ways stronger even than the laws of physics. So when they were enveloped in a familiar green illumination and Starfire's voice called out to them from behind, he was prepared enough to stifle his smirk. Mostly.
"Friends, I am joyous to find that you are all unharmed! But friend Robin... why is it that you are wearing my underwear?" Starfire asked slipping back into her old speaking patterns in her fear of the gremlins.
Robin, of course, an awkward kind of guy with male-female relations at the best of times, was completely paralyzed in mortification. Cyborg took the opportunity to snap a picture for posterity.
"We Earthicans do that sometimes as a gesture of trust and stuff!" Beastboy rescued their poor leader with unexpected quick-thinking. "Remember that time Cy put my boxers on his head?" That situation had, in fact, been completely due to an accidental dirty clothing avalanche and Cyborg simply hadn't noticed the boxers till five minutes later, but Starfire had her own way of interpreting things, and they didn't always have the time to explain every little thing to her.
It also wasn't the only instance. Another accidental dirty clothing avalanche caused Raven to walk around with Jasiri's dirty underwear on her head for about 10 minutes.
Confusion melted into 'understanding' and goodwill on that cheery orange face. "Oh, well then, perhaps I should acquire some of your boxers in turn, Robin! I do not think I would wish to wear Beast Boy's... they are a little of the smelly."
Beastboy started sniffing himself, looking wounded, while Robin took charge of the situation. Robin and Cyborg were to head to the main computer, while Starfire, Jasiri and Beast Boy would find Raven and together work on minimizing the damage the gremlins caused before they were all melted into a fine paste, a concept Robin suddenly no longer appeared to have any objections to. Beastboy and Jasiri lingered a second after Starfire's departure, though, grinning at Robin.
"So, did we just earn forgivingness for all this kremlin stuff, or what?" Beastboy asked.
"Totally," Robin replied without an instant's hesitation. "No extra chores or training once this is all over."
"Sweet." Beast Boy and Jasiri said in unison as they went 'blue' jay and blue jay hybrid and fluttered off.
"They're getting smarter," Cyborg commented thoughtfully as they started to sidle towards the nearest stairwell. No way in heck were they risking the elevator.
"Why does that make me feel nervous?" Robin asked absently, eyes scanning shadow after shadow.
The nearest computer with access to security was in the main room, so that was where they went. They crept through hallways and down stairs, and for some reason were less troubled by gremlin mischief the closer to their destination they got. Within one floor of the main room, the only 'attack' there was, was a gremlin surfing dangerously down the stairs on a cookie sheet, shrieking and swaying and generally not posing much of a threat to anything but itself. A few seconds after that, they had an especially loud scream and a painful clang-thud. Neither of them winced, as they were both good at holding grudges when they wanted to be. And they sure wanted to be now.
When they got to the room, they learned why the gremlins had been bothering them less and less: the little monsters were busy watching TV.
They had raided the fridge and were busy eating or food fighting with everything from inside it, including the containers and other non-edibles. The room was a mess of stains, grease, blue fuzzy mould, and squished foodstuffs. On the large monitor that served for both television and central computer, Scrubs was playing (instantly identified in a whisper by Cyborg, who was a fan). Whenever a character the gremlins didn't like showed up on screen, they booed and jeered and threw things. When a character they liked showed up, they cheered and waved their little claws in the air.
There were at least a hundred of them that could be clearly seen.
"Do you have anything that, you know, explodes or freezes a large area or any of that? Even just one" Cyborg whispered at Robin.
Robin shook his head. "They stole it all," he whispered back. "Even if we had the others here with us, I'm not sure we could clear all this out without damaging the computer or the screen."
He took a moment to wonder where one of the gremlins had gotten a red and white striped popcorn bucket, which it was currently using for a helmet. For all he knew it was a sign of dominance and respect in gremlin society. And then he started wondering about the other little details… they had all kinds of little accessories, just like the Starfire-gremlin, that should not have technically existed as far as he knew.
The size of any particular item appeared to be related to whether it would be funnier as a gremlin-sized item being used by a gremlin or a human-sized item being used by a gremlin. Likewise, their ability to withstand physical violence was astonishingly inconsistent. As they mauled and abused each other good-naturedly and seemingly without any speck of a conscience about it, sometimes they would be able to take ludicrous amounts of mutilation and still stumble around, croaking and cackling, and other times they'd just fall over with startling immediacy.
He even noticed that sometimes they had bones inside, a proper skeleton, and other times… not! And there wasn't much time when they weren't hurting each other, because every new scene and commercial was seemingly a cue for the gremlins to mimic and act out what they saw, only with great exaggeration and very bad acting ability. The lawnmower commercial was particularly… messy.
And a scene in the Scrubs episode where the white protagonist fantasized about his black friend Turk being made of living chocolate resulted in a form of audience participation that was purely and simply unspeakable.
"They're creating their own props," he breathed in realization. "And… and warping the fabric of reality around them!"
"I'm not sure now's the time t'go all Raven on me, Rob. I dunno if you'd survive the resultin' psychological stress." Cyborg joked.
Robin smirked, for the first time feeling like he had a real, solid handle on the enemy. "Listen, Cy… I think these things function by the rules of drama and comedy. Look at them… not only do they love watching TV, they love acting it out, too! And if physics don't accommodate that, they just mess with physics!"
Cyborg nodded slowly. "Okay. I get you. Like Roger Rabbit, right? Stuff just works different for them. How does that help us, though?"
"It helps us," Robin explained patiently with an ever-growing smirk, "because I have a Plan." He paused. "A Plan that you are not to mention to any of the other Titans. Ever."
"So I can only assume this is gonna be either suicidal or humiliating, right?"
"Both, Cyborg. Both." Robin said.
"Well, alright, what're we waitin' for?" Cyborg asked him.
-Line Break-
Me: Man I hate those little suckers.
Jasiri: Me too! Also I can't believe you're giving me and the audience a front row seat to Robin and Cyborg's ultimate humiliation!
Me: Please they're initiation was way funnier than anything I could do. I even have the tape. Well we better go there's still some gremlins lurking about and I have to take care of them. Chavonnie26 GO! *Slips in some slime on my way to the basement* I meant to do that.