Cyborg's attempt to quietly cough up the water that'd gotten into his lungs failed miserably. He was still amazed he had managed to suppress the reflex until he got out of the water, in the T-sub bay. Which was technically inside the Tower, even if it were more like an attachment to the main structure.
He took several deep breaths as he looked around. Oxygenator or not, having water in his lungs and fighting the instinct to breathe felt more than slightly insane. He certainly hadn't planned on the involuntary gasp when he heard and felt the series of booms through the water. Or the involuntary cough response that let more water in. By the time their pace slowed and he managed to mentally hold his windpipe closed, he had realized that what he felt were probably the giant pumpkins' vines hitting the ground near the island's edge, amplified through the water.
The main bay door to the water was closed, because he came in through the hidden door on the opposite end of the island, the one that faced the city. If any of the green pumpkins floating on the water had noticed when the sub-sized door opened just enough for him to fit through, or when he closed it afterwards, there wasn't any indication of it. It may have gone unnoticed amidst their terrestrial giant cousins stomping around, before the stomping ceased entirely minutes ago.
Other than himself, the bay was unoccupied. Which was very unsettling, since Jinx was supposed to be here, and by his estimate she should've arrived here and contacted him minutes ago. About the same time the stomping stopped...
The computer console, with the communication functions he'd told her to use, sat idle against the wall. The screen displayed the last login time in the corner, a security bonus he'd added after the "adventure" with Terra. Right now, it told him that the console hadn't been used since he added maintenance data about the T-Sub after the Brotherhood of Evil's last push; clearly Jinx hadn't attempted to use it tonight.
He took another deep breath and logged into the terminal himself. He couldn't stay here forever, and he was worried about Jinx showing up afterwards and thinking the login time of now would make her think security was compromised by the ursine invaders...But there were a lot of functions locked out from the wireless, and he needed them to peruse the security logs.
The current security camera feeds still showed no movement. Including the one in the sub bay, which showed empty space where Cyborg was standing. Frowning, he turned his head to look at the corresponding camera, on the corner of the ceiling to his right. The camera didn't appear damaged, not that he expected damage if the thing was sending an image at all. But he noticed some uneven coloration on the wall below the camera.
He activated his light amplification view mode, and saw a series of scratches etched into the wall. With the same general appearance as the runes Jinx identified earlier.
So they blocked the cameras with their illusion mojo, one at a time. He shook his head; that meant he didn't have nearly as much reliable intel on the Tower as he was expecting. At least that meant they weren't using the cameras themselves. And having to block them individually left a chance that some still worked, the camera that showed him the three giant pumpkins earlier—
His head snapped back towards the terminal, and he quickly navigated through the menus to the exterior cameras. Sure enough, a few of them had been overlooked; most of them didn't show any pumpkins on the island or in the water, but there were exceptions. The spot he had seen the three giant pumpkins in before still had the three of them, but the two relatively-smaller ones had adjusted their positions. So it was indeed them that he had heard when he was underwater.
He smiled as he pulled up that camera's video of the last several minutes. The Tower was his house, both figuratively and literally, and it put all sorts of capabilities at his disposal. The bears and the pumpkins might be able to work relatively unchallenged out in the city, but here? Here, he was the one who had the upper hand. If they wanted to beat him here, they'd have to work for it.
The archived video wasn't particularly useful in itself. It showed the two pumpkins rising off the ground and walking off, and coming back into view and settling down; but the camera's angle was fixed so he had no idea what they were doing in the interim. It did, however, give him some pretty specific times to check on other cameras to save him from spending as much time sifting through their recorded footage.
He spotted the glider approaching the Tower in exactly one of the other exterior cameras. Quickly closing the distance at high speed, veering slightly to the left, then...something fell off the glider, seconds before the glider zoomed past the camera. Cyborg had to rewind and check the images twice to be sure, but it looked like Jinx, bailing out.
To his dismay, he found that all of the cameras with a ground-level view had been neutralized and only showed a single still image; there was no way to tell whether Jinx had made it into the Tower or not. He instructed the security computers to run a delta-frame analysis on the footage of those cameras, and left it to run while he checked door access logs.
Those logs wouldn't tell him if Jinx came inside either, of course; he'd put in a specific block to prevent any logs triggered by Jinx or himself, while the two of them were gliding. He did, however, see a number of entries for Raven opening the main door...most recently, half an hour ago. He paused for a moment, then readied himself to see something horrible when he went to the recorded image for the main lobby camera at that time...
...and discovered that particular camera was blocked as well. Maybe they were already working for their victory. Still, he already knew the runes the bears used had to be close to the thing they were messing with. So he figured there should be footage from the runes being placed before their spell was cast.
A message on the bottom of the screen told him the analysis was done. He quickly glanced over the results; and as he suspected, most of the cameras hadn't recorded a change in their image over the past several hours. Two particular times dominated the list of "last recorded change"; one was at 5PM, when the Titans sans Raven left for the city...and 9:45PM, only fifteen or twenty minutes before his first encounter with the controlled kids.
He checked the lobby door log again, and sure enough it showed Raven opening the door at 9:44PM. It was unlike Raven to even use the door herself, since she'd only leave if there was an emergency and she'd teleport in that case; so he ran through that chunk of recorded footage.
Cyborg's heart tried to sink, and he felt his cybernetics refuse to let it, when he saw Raven slowly levitating across the width of the large entry room, in a standing posture. He'd seen her eyes glow white, or glow red, or even double themselves...But he didn't recall them ever glowing blue, same as the kids'. She set herself down next to the door, placed her hand against the biometric panel, and stood motionless as the door opened.
One by one by one, three ursine creatures came into the lobby, walking on all four limbs. The first two were the same general size as each other and the one he fought—or tried to fight—with Jinx where the one pumpkin had been impaled on the building. The third was smaller and lankier, just like the one Cyborg eliminated at the park.
The one that entered first nodded its head, then looked straight into the camera. The icy look in its gaze caused Cyborg to back up an inch, before he remembered this was a recording and the demon had no way of knowing Cyborg was watching it now. The other large bear plodded towards the camera, eventually ending up outside its field of view. A few seconds later, Raven and the other two bears suddenly disappeared from the image; right at the 9:45PM mark.
Cyborg shuddered at the implications. He'd been worried enough about fighting something that could handle Raven. But Raven's movements weren't jilted like all the kids', she retained fine motor control. They might have to fight Raven, too, and not as just a crude physical combatant.
The sound of the nearby door opening drew his attention instantly. He growled and deployed his sonic cannon, pointing it at the door. Before he could react, a gray blur with a pink highlight passed from the door to behind a support pillar in the room, and produced a purple light.
The purple light faded quickly. "I thought you said your cannon didn't work!"Jinx growled.
Cyborg sighed and lowered his arm. "I forgot, and I thought you might be dead!"
She scoffed as she stepped forward. "You can't get rid of me that easily; why did you tell me to call if you were going to be here first?"
"I thought you'd be here by now; what took you so long?"
She crossed her arms. "I got sidetracked; why didn't you tell me the corridors were overgrown with vines?"
He narrowed his eyebrow. "They tricked the cameras with their illusion runes; why are we half yelling at each other?"
"I don't know, maybe we should stop!"
Cyborg suppressed his instinct to respond, and forced himself to breathe through his nose.
Jinx snarled in disgust, and covered her eyes with her hand. "Sorry, I—"
"Look, don't worry about it," Cyborg interrupted. "You said there were vines inside?"
Jinx paused for only a second before lowering her hand and responding. "Yeah. They don't seem like the same kind as the pumpkins' though, they have very different widths. Some of them were big enough to block off hallways, that's why it took me so long to get here. You said they tricked the cameras?"
Cyborg turned to the console for a second, and switched the display back to the sub bay, which continued to appear empty. "The camera certainly isn't seeing us. I put in blocks to keep us from being in the access logs, but the cameras aren't something I can affect like that. The whole thing's weird, though; it's like they knew where the interior cameras were, but why would they block them if they knew how to use them?"
"Maybe they don't know how to use them. Like you said, these things are probably too old to be familiar with the technology. Why do you say they knew where the cameras are?"
"I was watching footage from the lobby camera. One of the bears looked right at the camera as soon as Raven let it in, and—"
"Raven let it in?!"
Cyborg sighed. "That's what worries me the most. She had the glowing blue eyes like the zombie kids, but she didn't have the same stilted movements; she was using her limbs and levitating. And she opened the front door half an hour ago, I think for the bear that told us it was going back to the Tower."
"So Raven's probably waiting in the lobby, under their control, and possibly with all her powers. That...could complicate things. But...you said she let bears in earlier? How many?"
"Three, why?"
"You beat one into thin air, and the one we fought was conversing with another one. That's three. So if all of them came in together...what took over Raven? We'd have been beaten by now if they could possess us through walls."
Cyborg grunted in pain and put a hand to his chest, as his heart seemed to think it was capable of performing Robin-level acrobatics and smacked into the rest of his body instead. While he was sure it was entirely psychological..."Y'know, for half of my body being robotic for so long, my heart sure seems to think it's still all flesh-and-blood."
"Better than being a callous machine, I'd say. But I know what you mean; my cardiovascular system isn't used to panic either. So something else snuck inside the Tower; whether it's a bear, a pumpkin, or something else entirely."
Cyborg took a deep breath. "What if that one huge pumpkin out there can work through walls?"
"Then we're screwed, obviously, and any sort of plan or tactic will be equally useful and useless. May as well assume a scenario we can influence."
Before Cyborg could agree, his attention was caught by a red light blinking on the screen. He checked the error message..."Two of the cameras just went out. They were watching the main corridor on the top of the Tower."
"The corridor just outside the ops room, that you said was 'thrashed'? Are they growing something up there? That could explain the vines, at least. Sort of."
"I guess so, but those two cameras aren't wired through ops, and we should've felt anything with enough force to break through the walls. I've got no idea what grows like that." He looked up towards the ceiling. "Well, no sense hanging around, we've got problems if those vines trap us down here."
"Right. Let's head up to ops, whatever's growing can't be good for us."
"First things first, though. I think we should swing by my room, I could use a working sonic cannon and most of my replacements are up there."
"Good idea. Are all your bedrooms still a short walk from ops?"
"...yeah, we'll able to break our hypothetical homewrecker in short order." It took him a second to remember that Jinx had given herself a self-guided tour years ago, back when she briefly occupied the Tower with Mammoth and Gizmo, before the Titans kicked them out. The team was less of a well-oiled machine and more of an oily machine in those early days...
"Well let's go!" Jinx insisted, turning towards the way she'd come in.
"Wait up," Cyborg said as he started following her. "We'll want to use one of the maintenance access tubes, if we can. If Raven's in the lobby I don't want to find out how much power she's packing the hard way."
She sighed softly. "Why does that sound like spending more time in a cramped space?"
"It's sized for me, so you shouldn't have any problem." Walking behind her, it was hard not to notice the pink coil that was Jinx's hair, and how it blended with her lithe body. "Besides, I kinda doubt you've ever had problems squeezing into places, even with the hair horn thing."
She looked over her shoulder long enough for Cyborg to notice the frown. "Don't even go there," she threatened.
"Fair enough," Cyborg responded.
Surprisingly, the two of them made their way up to Cyborg's room with ease. Other than needing to navigate through secondary hallways and Cyborg almost tripping when he tried to tiptoe between vines, Jinx's sense of dread was worse than anything they actually encountered.
Which only made her sense of dread worse, and standing around thinking about it while Cyborg was self-performing a limb transplant wasn't helping.
Tricking cameras was normally part of infiltration, here they'd done it after getting in. Which only made sense if they were anticipating someone trying to use the cameras. And even if there were some other unknown reason for that, it'd be hard for them not to notice that neither she nor Cyborg were on the glider or anywhere to be found. And there was no way they missed the glider ramming into one of their pumpkins. So why hadn't they seen any indication of patrols inside the Tower?
The whole thing felt like the scenario back when she and Cyborg were driving across the bridge. There were no pursuers there because something more dangerous was waiting for them. And the two giant pumpkins outside the Tower were plenty dangerous on their own individually, even without knowing what the third one was capable of.
She started looking around for something, anything, to keep her mind off pondering that fruitless topic. Eventually a section of wall adorned with photographs drew her attention, and she moved toward it. Certainly more interesting than the legion of electronics that comprised the rest of the room.
Many of them were...sporty, in some fashion. Cyborg with little kids playing...baseball, she was pretty sure. A fully-organic Cyborg running with a football, and looking far more like "Stone" than himself; although she figured he got that comment more often than he liked. Starfire and Raven shocked at Cyborg eating an oversized sandwich, which Jinx understood completely; at least Cyborg's sandwich looked freshly made, compared to some of the things Mammoth pulled that with. And—
And a picture of "Stone", in dress attire, dancing with a gray-skinned girl who looked really good with pink devil-horn hair. She tilted her head slightly to the side while she looked at it. She remembered that dance. She had assumed Cyborg forgot all about it or wrote it off, but...No, it didn't look like he had. Far from it, in fact, if he felt the need to keep the photo with the rest of the snapshots of his life.
"All set!" came Cyborg's voice from behind her. She turned around hurriedly, startled, then casually walked back to the center of the room. Cyborg hadn't yet turned to look in her direction, so she was unlikely to be questioned. She'd have time later to figure out exactly what that photograph meant to him...and to her.
"Now," Cyborg continued, "I've got a connection to the obstacle course in here, so how about we carve us a pumpkin?"
"Why not all three?" Jinx suggested.
"Hmm. We could, but don't you think taking out one of them is better than inconveniencing all three? We'll be relying on energy weapons to get through their shells; there's no armor piercing options out there, so we can't pull off the same trick with the rockets we did."
Jinx sighed. "Unless I go out there and try to wilt them, which isn't happening."
"Exactly. And I don't know how tough those things are, but they're not going to have a problem smashing the equipment once it starts shooting."
"So we only have one shot at this." She rolled her eyes. "So what's your plan: Do you try to take out the larger pumpkin, which is probably tougher; or do you go after one of the other two and leave the other unharmed? Either way, we're left with two pumpkins we'll still have to deal with even if the plan goes perfectly."
Cyborg rubbed his chin. "Good point. I had assumed the larger one was responsible for the jamming and we could call in backup when we cracked it...but you're right, we don't know anything about it and this'll all be a waste of time if it's too hard to hurt. But..."
"But what?"
He smiled. "I was just thinking, if they're going to smash up the course in a matter of seconds anyway, there's no reason to keep the output level low enough to keep the projectors in working order. If they're going to be broken, let them be broken in our favor, know what I'm saying?"
She smiled herself. "Now you're getting it. Push our advantage towards victory."
"Oh yeah! Now, the automated targeting system is probably as reliable as most of the cameras; but I can aim them manually, using one of the cameras they missed, so that's not a problem. What is a problem...is that they'll know we're in here—well, in the Tower—once the fireworks start."
Jinx shuddered, as her earlier dread came back to her. "Honestly, I can not believe that they don't already suspect we're here, not after the glider crash. It's not like they're going to look any harder than they already are."
"Unless they've got something else they need to be doing...But distracting them would still be interfering with their plans then."
She took a deep breath, and tried to hide her impatience. "So do we need to wait for something, or can we get this started? Gonna be ticked if they find us before we help them carve their pumpkins."
"No need to wait at all," Cyborg responded as he started hitting buttons on the computer terminal near him. "OK, setting them to spray between the centers of the pumpkins, each of the projectors starting at a different pumpkin...And done! Here, come see."
Jinx walked over to the screen Cyborg was at. The view showed all three pumpkins, in the middle of the display. Two grey turret-looking shapes rose out of the ground, on the lower corners of the screen, shortly before they started spraying white bolts at the giant gourds.
She could hear, even if barely, the nerve-wracking squealing as the projectiles impacted the skins of the two smaller pumpkins on the side, throwing out small clouds of brown smoke. The larger one in the middle, though, had some sort of transparent force field; it became briefly visible where it was hit, revealing an orange glowing pattern of hexagons on an otherwise translucent sphere.
The two pumpkins on the sides pushed themselves onto their feet, or the equivalent portion of their vines. They took a few hurried steps towards Cyborg's turrets, then each lifted a vine into the air and swatted the nearest turret.
She felt the impact and heard rattling all around her far more than she heard the impact itself. The sight of each turret being crushed by an oversized vine was unmistakable, though. The gourd section of the two "standing" pumpkins were marred with white and brown splotches. Which still managed to look better than the couple of impacts they'd taken on their vines themselves, those were brown puncture wounds and stained with red.
The larger pumpkin never moved, and showed no sign of damage whatsoever.
Cyborg exhaled sharply. "Good thing I didn't try to focus it all on the unhurtable one, we...wouldn't have hurt anything. Think we'll have a better shot at the other two now."
Jinx was inclined to agree, but something about how the camera framed both of the turrets evenly was suspicious. "What's that camera used for?" she asked.
"Let me see, it's...huh. The obstacle course camera. Those things have been laying in the middle of the course."
The sound of one of the weird bear barks put Jinx on the defensive, the one that belonged to a bear they hadn't seen yet. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Cyborg looking nervously around the room.
"My sonic analyzer picked that up," Cyborg said in a hushed tone, "bear's gotta be nearby."
Another bark, this one with the tone of their attacker back at the building...before it took that building down with an earthquake. "That one too?" she asked Cyborg in a similarly quiet tone.
"Yeah, but...I think it's in a different direction. They are the two that had the barking exchange earlier, aren't they?"
"Sounds like," she confirmed.
"Wait," Cyborg whispered. "The volume on that last one, it's strong. I think it's coming from the hall."
Jinx didn't have time to consider the implications, before she heard the sound of claws scraping on metal outside the door. Trusting her instincts, she dove away from the door, towards the empty area on the other side of Cyborg's room.
While she was in the air, a series of three barks rang out, followed by a strange crackling sound. When she landed, she turned to see the door was now encased in a thick sheet of ice.
A single paw smashed through the middle of it, and pieces of ice-coated metal fell to the floor, revealing a familiar-seeming ursine face.
It barked, as she readied a couple hexes and Cyborg deployed his freshly replaced sonic cannon. "Excellent, you've spared me the tedium of tracking you down. Are you prepared to serve the Green One?"