Hello, readers! In this story, Raven and Starfire have to make a break from the mall and end up in quite a mess. This should be fun...
Also, I promise I'm not a robot. I'm saying this cause all my introductions sound the SAME. Believe me, that's not intentional, I'm just very repetitive. Oops.
Anyways, I don't own the Teen Titans, and happy reading!
"Oh, Raven, look at this neck jewelry!" Starfire plucked the silver chain from its perch on the metal hook and delicately took the necklace in between her index finger and thumb. "It is very beautiful, is it not?"
Raven glanced up from her position on the wall, foot propped up against the wall and slouching. "Yeah, sure, Starfire."
The two Titans were at the Jump City Mall again per Starfire's wishes after the alien had voluntarily meditated with Raven back at the Tower, and Raven had offered to go shopping with her. Now the two girls were in a small, brightly colored shop in the back of the mall.
Starfire gently set the jewelry back into its place and flew back over toward the apathetic Raven. "Alright, I believe that is all I wish to look at," she informed Raven brightly.
"Great," Raven muttered, eyeing the dangly gold earrings and the glittery tubes of lip gloss on the perfectly pink shelves with disgust. The metallic glow burned her eyes.
Raven had never been into makeup with the exception of intimidating black eyeliner every once in a while- but this stuff seemed like it was for seven-year-old girls. It made her nauseous- she was glad to be departing.
The two weaved their way through aisles of fluffy feather boas, pastel nail polish tubes, and shiny earrings to the front exit of the store- where three boys were blocking the girls.
Raven cocked her head to the side quizzically, while Starfire greeted the guys with her usual cheery smile. "Hello, friends!"
The boys looked to be around eighteen to twenty years old and wore condescending yet sultry grins on their faces. They stood in height order: the one on the left looking to be around 5'11, while the boy on the right was easily at least 6'5. They all wore similar outfits- lengthy necklace chains around their necks and weirdly bulky coats for the middle of summer, as well as jeans with awkwardly placed holes and tears. They certainly didn't seem like people Raven and Starfire would want to get involved with.
Raven, unlike Starfire, was a little less welcoming towards the group, and folded her arms across her chest with a frown. "What is it?"
The boy in the center flashed a toothy smile and slipped his hands into his pockets. "You the Teen Titans?"
Raven remained stoic and icy while Starfire replied brightly, "Yes, we are!"
The teenagers exchanged looks- looks that Raven didn't like in the slightest.
"I've always wanted to do one of them," she heard a boy hiss under his breath to his partners, who snickered in agreement. Throughly disgusted, the corners of Raven's lips turned down and her jaw tightened.
Raven regarded the boys one by one with contempt, eyes narrowed in suspicion, and she took Starfire by the elbow. "Anyway. Nice to meet you, but we have to go." She started to pull Starfire along with her outside of the store, but the boy to the right shifted in the girls' direction, blocking their way out.
Raven glared at all of the boys one by one, temper rising. "What's your deal?" she snarled. Starfire glanced at each of the boys apprehensively, finally catching on that something was weird here.
The boys exchanged another look, which made Starfire a little nervous and pissed off Raven even more than she already was. "Relax, baby," the tallest one comforted Raven. "I promise we're real nice." His tone was taunting, and Raven bit down on her tongue to avoid saying something she'd regret, releasing Starfire's arm to avoid splintering the bone to bits in her anger.
The guy on the left's eyes ran up and down Starfire's exposed body, which Raven quickly adjusted herself to cover, and he said with a low, raspy voice, "How about we give you a ride home? Just to make up for our blocking your way out. We just want to help."
Starfire moved her long magenta hair to the front of her body, in front of her stomach and chest, and bent down slightly to pull up her boots to cover a little more of her thigh area, feeling uncomfortable and exposed in front of the guys- which was when one of the boys bent down in sync with Starfire to get a peek under her skirt.
Raven, upon seeing the gesture, finally snapped. "All right, we're done here," she growled, and motioning for the bewildered alien to follow her, she pushed straight through the group and walked briskly out of the store, Star on her heels.
A few minutes later, Raven stopped behind a gumball machine in front of a Hot Topic store, briefly surveying her surroundings, and then finally releasing her breath. "I think we lost them."
Starfire lowered herself down to the ground from her previous hovering position with a wary expression. "That was a very...strange encounter," she admitted, edging closer to Raven. "I do not wish to be rude, but I did not like those boys very much."
"Yeah," Raven absentmindedly agreed, still searching the area. "Crap."
Starfire looked up abruptly. "They are back?"
"Yes," Raven groaned.
The boys lingered in front of a nail salon, propped up on the wall, pointing at the two girls and wearing nasty smiles.
"They're following us, the sick freaks," Raven muttered, rubbing her eyes for a minute and then turning to Starfire, who watched the boys with narrowed eyes. "We're leaving. Come on, let's just go get the T-car and head back to the Tower."
"That is a good idea," Starfire approved, and the two girls rushed off to the back of the mall's exit.
Once Starfire and Raven were buckled into the car, Starfire in the driver's seat, they managed to pull out of the parking lot and merge into traffic.
Starfire focused intently on the road ahead of her while Raven peered out of the windows, reporting, "We should probably be good now."
Both girls heaved sighs of relief.
"That was a very tense experience," Starfire exhaled, falling back into her seat.
"Yeah- um, might wanna move a little further away from this car next to us," Raven cut herself off and indicated a rusty vehicle in the lane beside them that was so close to the T-Car that the two cars almost touched- which was definitely unsafe.
Starfire leaned slightly forward to get a better view of the road- and glimpsed the last people she wanted to see in the car.
The boys were back.
"Raven..." Starfire trailed off, pushing her body back into her seat.
Raven followed Starfire's gaze and rolled her eyes, unsurprised but not pleased. "Typical."
In the dingy old car the same dudes from the mall sat, making crude gestures and leering maniacally at the girls through their tinted windows. One held up two fingers, spread them apart, and flicked his tongue rapidly in between them, laughing tauntingly.
"Oh, my-" Raven's face reddened in anger, and the window beside her cracked with the temporary loss of control of her powers. "Any chance we could speed up some?"
Starfire, eager to escape the boys as well, obliged and stepped harder on the gas. She made a sharp, sudden turn to the right, hoping to throw the boys off their trail, but instead they cut across the lane and tailed the girls anyway.
That's when things started getting really crazy.
"Okay, just keep going strai-" Raven instructed, but was swiftly cut off when Starfire made another jolting swerve to the left. It was increasingly apparent Starfire did not have as much driving experience as Raven had thought.
The two girls were thrown to the right of the car, Raven's body slamming up against the window and Starfire nearly falling into Raven's lap despite their seatbelts being on, a screeching noise emitting loudly from the tires. The boys, now seeing this as some sort of chase for their amusement, imitated the motions of the T-Car and pulled up beside them again, cackling with wide, gaping mouths, and eventually drove directly in front of them, preventing the girls from going any faster or they'd run right into the boys.
"Okay, okay- slow down!" Raven ordered, seeing the car in front of them.
"Why do we not simply hit them?" Starfire queried innocently, tilting her head to the side like a confused puppy.
"Wha- never mind," Raven groaned, clutching on to her seat tightly so that she wouldn't fly straight through the windshield. There was no time to explain to the genuinely perplexed alien why they just couldn't smash into the guys if they were bothering them.
As the car sped up even more, the sorceress yelled over the noise of other cars honking, the wind howling, and the T-Car jerking, "How much experience do you have driving?!"
The T-Car hit a speed bump- and they both hit the ceiling with a bang, coming down hard back onto the seats.
"I am still new to the use of the earthly transportation!" Starfire screamed in response. Seeing the Titans Tower in the distance, she proceeded to step on the gas even harder. Outside the window, the boys stayed on their heels (or more like tires) while buildings and other vehicles blew by them at such speeds that they were all just a blur.
"Great- how new, exactly?!"
"Cyborg has only begun giving me the formula driving lessons around a month ago!"
"A mon- oh, screw this," Raven muttered. "Take your hands off of the wheel- let me handle this."
"But Raven-"
"Just do it!" Raven harnessed the steering wheel with a cloud of black energy and began to telepathically drive the T-Car. Starfire took her hands off of the wheel and instead held on to the arm rests as the car bumped and jumped down the road at speeds Cyborg would definitely not appreciate.
"Raven-" Starfire whirled around in her seat nervously to glance at the still leering, persistent boys, faced back toward the road, and then back toward the boys again.
"Let me focus!" Raven pressed her fingertips on her temples amid her hair and her pupils vanished, leaving only a glowing white sclera, signaling that her powers were in use.
Starfire was staring straight ahead, a look of panic in her eyes. "It seems you are unaware that we are about to collide with the abandoned to-"
At this, Raven jerked toward Starfire, eyes flickering slightly. "Wha-"
Before either of the girls could finish, there was a horrible smashing sound, and suddenly debris, wood, rocks, and more residue was falling around and onto the T-Car like a hailstorm. The girls had just crashed into an abandoned toy store.
Starfire and Raven both screamed as the car blasted straight through the mess, making loud abrasive noises as the wood split, the rocks clattered, the bricks crumbled, and metal shattered as the building fell to its knees just around their ears. To make matters worse, the guys were still following them, blasting right through the crumbling building with them. But it was clear they were having trouble keeping up- especially with the old and unsteady building collapsing in front of them.
Starfire let out a shriek again when a falling piece of wood shattered her window of the T-car- which meant all of the ruins were now making their way into the car. Glass shards rained around her head, just barely missing her face, and gusts of dirt were blowing into the car, causing the girls to launch into coughing fits and rubbing their eyes to get the flying dirt out. The T-car bounced and clanged with every fragment of wreckage that hit it, making Raven and Starfire bounce around a lot more than what was safe, now that the window was broken. The headlights of the car behind them flashed in the mirror, making Raven a lot more tense than she already was.
It took every ounce of concentration the empath had to keep driving the car and not blow something up with her unstable emotions right then- but, somehow, she pulled it off. The T-Car just barely outran the toppling building before it all came smashing down on the cement to bits with a huge, obscuring cloud of dust and debris and an earsplitting crash as the whole structure came down- with the guys still in the building.
Raven pulled the T-car to a squealing halt safely away from the destruction of the toy store as bypassing civilians stopped to stare at the disaster and a few whooping police cars pulled up to the scene- although not close enough to see Raven and Starfire, completely out of breath, throats sore, and throughly relieved to be alive. Dazed, they pushed open the scuffed-up doors of the T-car and stumbled out of their seats, legs wobbly and chests heaving. Their clothes were covered in dirt and remains- and they both smelled of mud and sweat.
They both exchanged looks, both deciding to say nothing, and simply sat down on the ground with their backs propped up on the T-car, breathing hard.
"What happened?" they heard a familiar voice demand.
Wearily, the girls picked up their heads to see Robin, Beast Boy, and Cyborg standing a distance away from them, bewildered expressions on their faces. They had come upon hearing the explosive racket of the ordeal.
"And what have y'all done to my car?" Cyborg hollered, throwing his arms up and rushing toward the mangled vehicle, frantically examining the damage.
Starfire and Raven glanced at each other again. Finally, Raven said, "It's a long story."