"You?"
Jinx came through the shattered window just in time to see Cyborg thrust an accusing finger at what appeared, for a split second, to be a misshapen mass of disheveled flesh.
"You!...and you?" Control Freak responded in kind, indicating both Cyborg and Jinx.
She quickly glanced around. Control Freak, who for practical purposes could be considered a misshapen mass of disheveled flesh, was between two metal store shelves, behind an empty coffee canister that was connected to the shelves with a total of four thick elastic bands. At present the bands were holding the loose container a couple feet off the floor. Surrounding him was a pile of red produce...
"You were catapulting tomatoes at the kids walking by?" That wasn't a particularly sensical conclusion, but it did combine all the visible elements and nonsensical was his shtick.
"Well...yeah," he stammered.
The sounds of the car alarms weren't as loud inside the building, but they were still noticeable. It was enough to remind her that company could be walking by any moment. "First things first, we need to get away from here."
"Alright," Cyborg said with some glee as he cracked his knuckles, "Time to take the 'professor' here and plug him into the back."
Control Freak's eyes widened at the sight of a charging Cyborg. "Now wait just AAAAH!"
Cyborg was carrying him as easily as Private H.I.V.E. carted his own shield around. Jinx kept pace behind them. At the back wall, on the opposite end of the store as the windows, Cyborg dropped Control Freak unceremoniously.
Control Freak hit the floor with a grunt. "So where's the hyperdrive, Wookie?" he sarcastically demanded as he rubbed his head.
"Don't we have something better to do?" Jinx cut in, addressing Cyborg.
"Hmm...well Wookies are known for tearing people's arms out of their sockets..."
"Ha!" Control Freak exclaimed, jumping to his feet. "You expect me to let the Wookie win? I'll have you know that Wookie arm removal is temporary, Pekt for example was only—"
"I think you're missing something," Cyborg interrupted with raised voice. "By 'Wookie' I mean me, and by 'people's arms' I mean yours."
Jinx rolled her eyes, and creased an eyebrow. "Nerds," she muttered under her breath and made a fist with her right hand, rubbing the length of her curled forefinger with her thumb.
Control Freak apparently hadn't been paying attention. "I guess I'd have to be a Trandoshan to rely on growing a new set of arms. Guess I'll have to pull out the old standby!" he exclaimed as he brandished a remote control, drawn from some disgusting recess in his coat.
Having expected the device to appear ever since she first identified Control Freak, she wasted no time throwing a hex at it. Scraps of sparking electronics fell out of his hand and disintegrated. He gasped in shock.
"My remote!" he yelled, before kneeling and scooping up two handfuls of dust and metal fragments off the floor. "My...precious," he sobbed.
Jinx readied herself for throwing another hex, just in case Control Freak carted around spare remotes. Cyborg, meanwhile, worked something or other on his arm. "Huh," he said, "jamming hasn't stopped."
"DUH!" Control Freak shouted angrily as he jumped to his feet. "My remote didn't create those radio-jamming pumpkins or whatever else is out there!" He then pointed an accusatory finger and Jinx. "Premeditated killing of an innocent is murder, you know!"
While she was positive that murder charges wouldn't apply to the destruction of inanimate objects, that wasn't the part of his complaint she was thinking about. It didn't escape Cyborg's notice, either.
"Radio-jamming pumpkins?" they said at the same time, quickly followed by giving each other skeptical glances in unison.
"Huh?" Control Freak uttered, as turned his head towards the two of them with a worried look.
She took the opportunity to use one of the smug smiles she'd spent years perfecting. "Now why do you suppose he'd know something like that?" she menaced, dropping the smile to an angry stare on the last word.
"Wait!" he pleaded. "What do you want?"
Cyborg folded his arms. "How about turning off the Halloween zombie flick?"
"You think I directed this? Why would you automatically cast me as the playwright?"
"Halloween? Zombie flick?"
"With pumpkins? Are you accusing me of producing some kind of remake? Besides, if I wrote this I'd be hanging out at the Tower after Robin and Beast Boy were—"
His sentence cut off as Cyborg lunged forward, pinning Control Freak's neck to the wall with his forearm. "How would you know what happened to them unless you did it," Cyborg yelled.
Control Freak's eyes were on the verge of popping out of their sockets as he frantically responded. "I was trailing Robin and he was here and I heard him call Beast Boy and then he started yelling for Beast Boy to answer more then this green tentacle thing dragged him off and I thought it was Beast Boy pulling a prank 'cause I didn't see anything out there when I looked and Robin would still be fighting after a few seconds alright?"
Cyborg glared for a couple seconds, then stepped back. Control Freak slid to the floor, trying to catch his breath, as Jinx tried to remember if 'Stone' had taken any interrogation classes back at the H.I.V.E. Academy.
A few seconds of deep breathing on Control Freak's part later, and she was no closer to a recollection. But having decided not to let his stress subside entirely... "Radio-jamming pumpkins. Talk," she commanded.
"My prototype was stolen, OK? I was gonna sneak it around Radar Shed to jam their door and merchandise, their 'in-store credit only' return policy sucks...But back in August someone grabbed the gourd, hydroponic pod and all."
Cyborg raised an eyebrow. "And you couldn't have made another one because...?"
"I'd started growing that one in March so it'd be ready this month, I didn't have time to start over! Can't just make it with special effects; if it gets a wild fiber up its core it'd jam itself into a regular pumpkin."
"Who took it?" Cyborg asked.
Control Freak scoffed. "If I knew that we would be in an alternate ending right now."
"Know anything about the bears?"
Control Freak furled an eyebrow, puzzled. "Bears? What bears?"
Jinx sighed. "Guess they're very scarce. What about the kids?"
"The zombies? They haven't even tried to get in here, they're staying on the streets. Don't know who's pulling the strings, but that's scripted behavior; that script had to be written."
Cyborg coughed. "So why are you here?" he asked.
"And what's with the tomatoes?" Jinx added.
"After Robin disappeared, I fell back to reassess the situation, devise and enact a brilliant plan the likes of which the universe would never—"
He stopped, as Cyborg and Jinx stared at him with skeptical frowns.
"OK so I was in the bathroom," he admitted with some frustration. "All that candy was very low in fiber and—"
"TOMATOES," Jinx hissed with a scowl, hoping to avoid a tale of intestinal woe.
"ALRIGHT!" he yelled in response. "I heard glass breaking and someone yelling about zombies while I was in the bathroom, and when I got out the lights were off, the aisles abandoned and there was that hole in the window. My remote was hampered by the jamming—though it was working better than it is now—so I couldn't teleport out, and walking right into the middle of things seemed like a bad idea, so...I set up a makeshift catapult using a giant can of spaghetti sauce and a lot of tomatoes from the produce section."
"That was your plan?" Jinx incredulously asked. It sounded like something Billy Numerous would've come up with.
He frowned at her. "Well I was gonna back it up with avocados or salt or something when they came in, hoping to knock them over and I'd get out while they were down...but they never did. Not even when I forgot to fire a salvo, they just kept walking past. Then it was just passing time."
She sighed. "Well this was a waste of time." She turned her head to address Cyborg. "If they're really after you, leaving him behind will be safest," she said as she turned to walk away.
"WAIT!"Control Freak yelled, as he fell forward and grabbed Cyborg's left leg, wobbling slightly as his sizable belly vibrated from landing on the floor. "You can't leave me here!"
Jinx looked back. If he wasn't interested in his own safety, the least she could do was oblige him and hopefully find some way to use it to her advantage. "Well if you insist on coming along—"
"No," he countered, "You can go get eaten or whatever. But he has to stay here."
Cyborg blinked. "I'm sure I'll regret asking this, but...why?"
Control Freak looked up with an incredulous stare. "Because of the most important rule of zombie movies!"
"Which is...?" Jinx cut in impatiently.
He cleared his throat and closed his eyes, and attempted to sound dignified. "To survive a zombie outbreak, keep a big black guy close at all times."
Jinx silently lowered a disapproving eyebrow, deciding that Control Freak's self-proclaimed title of "ruler of reality" was firmly rooted in his less-than-firm grasp of the concept of reality.
Cyborg's response was lacking in silence. "Say what?" he yelled indignantly.
"Hey," Control Freak responded in kind, "I didn't make the rule! That's just how it is, it's been that way in every Romero classic dating all the way back to the original Night of the Living Dead in 1968!"
"Why you—" Cyborg started, before his irateness paused as he contemplated the claim. "...Huh. I never looked at it like that before, but come to think of it...you're actually right. Didn't see that coming."
Jinx groaned and rolled her eyes. "I'm thinking about writing a screenplay myself after this, about the two of you. I think I'll call it...Cult of the Damned Imbeciles," she growled.
"Ooh, nice title play," was Control Freak's somewhat impressed reply.
Her response was preempted by a loud crash and a flood of drywall clouding the air. She instinctively hopped away from the source of the noise; while Cyborg took a couple steps back, dragging Control Freak with him.
The dust settled, revealing a new hole in the exterior wall and an exceptionally tall, highly muscled man now on the inside. A man Jinx knew all too well, although the blue glowing eyes would be a new feature for Mammoth.
"Cyborg," he uttered with the same monotone as the kids who'd chased Cyborg to that warehouse, though Mammoth's gruff voice was quite a bit louder. If the reinforcements weren't already here, they'd be coming for sure now.
Cyborg took another couple steps back. "Wait a minute," he said with what sounded like dawning comprehension. "This isn't a remake...It's a deconstruction!"
Control Freak's shrill cry further punctured the already broken silence, as he jumped to his feet and ran away at his top speed, flailing his arms wildly.
There was no time for Jinx to either derive amusement from the spectacle or guess where he thought he was going to go; Mammoth stepped forward and effortlessly backhanded Cyborg away to the side, then raised his arms above his head and executed a vicious two-fisted smash to the floor she occupied.
She dodged out of the way of the overt move, but the force hitting the floor produced a circular eruption that threw her and several large chunks of tile into the air. Her quickly improvised plan to land on her feet was just as quickly thwarted, as she slammed into the top of a multi-level shelf. The shelf itself toppled shortly thereafter; if the clinking was any indication, the now-ground-facing shelves primarily held glass jars.
"Shit," she muttered to herself as she extricated herself from several shelves. Zombie Mammoth had proven stronger than normal Mammoth, and Mammoth already had rather prodigious strength. Worse, she couldn't fight him. Not so much because he'd been a friend of sorts for a long time, but because defeating Mammoth would be a battle of attrition, and she didn't have any time to spare with gigantic pumpkins possibly showing up any second now.
She jumped off of the overturned stack of shelves just before the entire assembly was yanked out of the way by Mammoth's overdeveloped musculature. She immediately pounced to the top of another shelf, a task made more difficult as his failed attempt to plow her over with his new handheld implement smashed through the base of her destination, tearing a chunk out of its support.
Her landing was accompanied with the creak of metal straining under the weight it was intended to support, and the horrid squeak of the top shelf bending to absorb the inertia of her landing. A lesser acrobat would have immediately fallen off a landing on a collapsing platform; Jinx managed to maintain her balance on the shifting surface for the split second it took to take a straight leap across the aisle.
The yielding of the shelf platform mitigated the jumping height, and Jinx found herself careening directly towards the edge of top shelf, rather than arcing to the clear spot she'd intended to land on. Gritting her teeth, she raised her right leg up to shoulder height. A split second later she rammed it down against the inside edge of the top shelf, pivoting her entire body around the back edge of her heel as she bent her knee. As the rotary motion started taking her over the top of the shelf, she lifted her left leg to clear the edge, arched her back and stretched her arms behind her.
Trying not to be distracted by the inverted view behind her, specifically the sight of Mammoth wielding that mangled multi-level shelf as easily as she might hold a painting, she adjusted to the slowing momentum by bringing her arms back to her side. She put her left foot out in front of her, not far in front of her right foot at the edge, and finished an otherwise inelegant landing with her preferred display of grace.
If there was any sort of lingering effect from whatever that bear's ability was, there certainly wasn't any sign of it.
This was no time to feel relieved, though. She glanced back at Mammoth, who was hoisting the now-empty shelf assembly over his head. No sooner had she turned her eyes in his direction, than a burst of blue beams from behind her hit him, and he lost his grip on his oversized weapon. The empty assembly of shelves didn't have enough weight to do much other than fall off his head, but he stepped back and slipped on some unseen fluid. Not even attempting to balance himself with his arms, he fell backwards, the shelves still over him, and crashed into a giant stack of soda cans.
Carbonated foam sprayed away from the impact site in haphazard streams, settling into a slowly spreading sea of bubbly brown beverage. The fizzing noise masked the sound of the cans falling down; she couldn't tell how many were hitting shelf, tile or flesh. Not that she'd expect Mammoth to stay down for long in any case.
Meanwhile, Cyborg was slowly approaching, sonic cannon at the ready for when Mammoth inevitably recovered. "Uh...Hope you don't mind me shooting your friend there," he said a little sheepishly.
"I didn't choose the fight, so better him than me," she answered dismissively, trying to convince her conscience. "And it's not like that'll keep him down. What took you so long to recover with the sewer pumpkin, anyway?"
He threw her a disdainful look. "Sliding to a halt against a tile floor is a lot easier to take than being thrown into a rock-backed wall. Not that I'd expect Miss Can't-Take-A-Hit to know that," he added sarcastically, while the improvised soda fountain quieted.
She groaned in annoyance. "Sorry. How about we get out of here, and save the name calling for later?"
"Fine by me," he answered, "got a preference for the exit?"
The exchange was interrupted by a piece of the fallen shelf assembly rising into the air, eventually revealing each side to be held by one of Mammoth's hands and the center balanced on his head. He leaned back slightly, vocally straining as his arms moved back as far as his impromptu headpiece would allow.
Over the course of the next second, Mammoth hurled the tortured chunk of metal with all his enhanced might, sending it careening down the clear path between the outer wall and where the sideways aisles started; Jinx flipped out of the way of being flattened, landing in one of those aisles, and Cyborg, too far to reach the aisle as Jinx had, took his readied shot at Mammoth as he moved to press against the wall and hope the thing missed.
With barely a foot of clearance on either side of the oversized projectile, Cyborg's attempt to squeeze out its way would've been fruitless; but it turned out not to matter: Cyborg's instinctive response was just too much for the wall to take, and he accidentally plowed straight through it before he could be hit. The loud crash of his impact melded into the similar crash against the far wall.
"Works for me," Jinx muttered as she sprinted across the intervening distance and through the newly available exit.
The store apparently spanned the entire width of the block, as she was greeted by the sight of a different street than before. Other than Cyborg picking himself up off the ground, it appeared to be unoccupied. Mammoth was sure to occupy it any second, though.
"Come on, we don't have time," she told Cyborg as she ran across the finally fogless street, before stopping on the pavement, looking at the handful of cars on that side of the street.
"What're we stoppin' for?" Cyborg asked, only a second behind her.
"Can you hotwire this convertible?" she asked, pointing at an orange car.
He paused, caught off-guard for a second, then sighed as he climbed into the driver's seat. "Not how I like to work on cars, but yeah."
A crunch on the other side of the street introduced Mammoth, shambling towards the edge of the street.
"Another hole?" Cyborg said with mock disbelief as he got to work. "Sure loves breaking walls."
"Nothing new," she answered. "Hurry up!"
"What does it look like I'm doin'?"
"Too busy watching what he's doing!"
As Cyborg fiddled with electronics, it became apparent that Mammoth's immediate destination was not the two of them, but rather a blue compact car on that side of the street. With some trepidation, she walked to the side a couple feet, to get a clear view.
As she watched his giant fists crunch into either side of the car, she discovered that she wasn't as detached as she wanted to think she was. She had thought it'd be easy to fight Mammoth when she was at severe risk, and even easier when Mammoth so clearly wasn't in control of himself; but now that she was faced with the thought of making a proactive strike, she was sick to her stomach to even consider it. It felt abhorrent, unnatural...immoral. She'd stabbed him in the back once, could she really stab him in the face for something he wasn't even responsible for?
"Please tell me you're done!" she half-yelled at Cyborg, sounded more stressed than she wanted to sound, but sounding less stressed than she felt. Mammoth's slow lifting of the car was about to force an unhappy choice on her if they couldn't get out of here now.
"Not yet, almost!"
If it were just a random stranger, it'd be easy. That did run against the whole "hero" thing she was supposed to be doing these days, but it wasn't as though this was a casual scenario; it'd be hard to save a city as a corpse. And in any case, being a random stranger meant she'd lose no sleep over who she didn't know. But Mammoth? Blowing up a car, while he was holding it, directly over his head? He'd already shown a lack of self-preservation in this state, the explosions could cripple or kill him, and that she would lose sleep over.
Her own self-preservation kicked in, flooding her with a nauseating brew of determination and resignation. "Sorry," she squeaked under her breath, as she hurled a wide hex at the exposed underside of the car over Mammoth's head.
The car being slightly behind Mammoth when it detonated, the explosion did an excellent job of silhouetting him being blown flat against the concrete. The sound of the impact was overwhelmed by the same blast, but the brief shaking of the ground was impossible to miss.
The echo of the explosion faded, leaving the cacophony of overlapping car alarms in its wake. Momentarily unable to move herself, she watched Mammoth for any sign of movement, simultaneously hoping he was alright and dreading what she'd have to do if he was alright...and still in condition to fight.
In the back of her mind she was aware of the sound of slightly reduced noise from a nearby car's alarm ceasing. Followed by low grumbling from Cyborg. Itself followed by a car's engine starting, then revving.
"Alright," Cyborg hollered, "Let's go!"
She found herself unwilling to move, despite knowing it was her idea in the first place. Unwilling to move her gaze away from Mammoth's potentially lifeless body. Potentially lifeless by her own hands.
"What are you waiting for?" Cyborg asked, his words falling on preoccupied ears.
Truth be told, she'd always suspected she'd get someone she knew killed some day, but this wasn't quite how she'd ever imagined it happening. She'd always assumed it'd the end result of a mistake on her part, or some of her bad luck rubbing off. Never that she'd be directly responsible.
"Look, he's fine! Unconscious, but fine."
That got her attention. "Really?" she asked, before she realized how excited her voice was.
"Yeah, though I don't envy the headache he'll have when he awakens. Now come on, before his conscripted 'friends' show up!"
She decided she'd allow herself to feel relieved later. She hopped, literally, into the front passenger seat. "Alright, change of plans: Let's head straight for the Tower. I think we're past the point when we can safely stop anywhere; We've got to get to the bottom of this, before the bottom of this gets a hold of us."
"As you wish," he agreed as he predictably tested the full capabilities of the car's accelerator. "What about all the kids?"
She shrugged. "We're out of options. Best hope is that they're all around here and we can leave them safely behind us."
"I hear ya. Let's burn some dust here."
Jinx glanced over at Cyborg. "Thanks," she said quietly. A remark apparently missed in favor of maniacal driving.
That suited her just fine.