Authors: Lovely White Violets and Snaptdragon
Title: A Series of Unfortunate Events
Genre: Humor/Romance
Pairings: Starfire/Robin, Raven/Beast Boy, Cyborg/Jinx
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Starfire and Raven fall into a trap. With their luck changing from bad to worse, will the girls ever get out? Raven and Starfire friendship fanfic. Starfire/Robin. Raven/Beast Boy. Cyborg/Jinx.
Disclaimer: The Teen Titans are not owned by us even if "Third Invasion of the Vengeance of Wrath" is.
Author Notes: Yeay!
A Series of Unfortunate Events
Session 5: Star-Crosssed
Jinx walked into the local Starbucks and ordered a venti chai tea. While she waited for her drink, she surveyed the room, immediately spotting a figure holding a large newspaper that obviously had a hole cut into it so as to watch passers-by.
Jinx sighed.
Red X certainly had a flair for dramatics.
Grabbing her drink, she waltzed over and sat down across from him.
"So, you got my note," he said from behind the newspaper.
"Yes... and for future reference, you don't need to attach your 'note' to a dagger and hurl it into my door. An email will do just fine."
"I thought it would be romantic."
"Sorry, I'm taken," she said, deliberately ignoring the fact that he seemed to flirt with every girl in a five-mile radius and giving him a sympathetic look. Not that she could see him from behind the newspaper. "And I'm fairly certain that no normal person would think a note saying "Meet me at Starbucks" is romantic."
"I thought it was well-written. To the point. Concise..."
"You concluded it with, 'or else'," she reminded him.
"Would you have preferred 'sincerely'? Anyway, what happened with the cake?"
"From what I can tell," Jinx paused dramatically. "It didn't work. At least, not yet."
"What went wrong?'
"I think Raven might have interfered with the curse."
"How do you know?"
"Just a lucky guess," Jinx said, recalling Raven's appearance in Starfire's costume. "At any rate, she interrupted a very complex hex. It was supposed to give you control over whoever touched the cake, but somehow Raven must have messed it up."
Red X stared at her blankly. "So you don't really know what happened, do you?"
Jinx smiled. "No."
Red X sighed. Obviously working with a partner had its drawbacks, and in this case, incompetence seemed to be one of them. Maybe working alone hadn't been such a bad idea. "Will the spell still work?"
"The spell's a little confused right now-"
"Confused?!"
"Hey, hexes have feelings too. The spell is trying to adjust itself right now. It could be manifesting itself as a negative-emotions spell, a bad-luck hex, or a sublimation curse until it figures out what's going on and devises a way to complete its original task."
"I didn't know jinxes were so complicated."
"We are," she said, smiling.
Red X added 'bad puns' to his mental list of compelling reasons to work alone. "You're plural now, are you?"
Jinx waved her hand dismissively. "Anyway. I can't really tell what's happening because the nature of my magic is imprecise. I've been thoroughly trained, but there's still some degree of luck involved."
Red X did not look reassured in the slightest. "What's going to happen to me, then?"
"You'll probably get control over Starfire's body, as planned..." Jinx paused thoughtfully. "...or maybe Raven's. We'll find out eventually."
"It had better happen soon... or else Cyborg will 'eventually' find out who sent him that anonymous valentine."
Jinx blushed as pink as her hair and hurled the remainder of her chai tea at Red X, but by the time it hit the newspaper, he was already gone.
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"Can't you try to control it?" Raven snapped, irritably. Starfire shot her teammate a glare.
The Titans had known too little of Tamaran biology to predict that after the fifth application of calamine lotion, Starfire would start sneezing.
Explosively.
"I am sorry, Friend Raven," and here, Starfire's voice was straining to be polite, "But I am afraid I cannot control the strength of my—"
Starfire sneezed...
...and four things happened at once: Beast Boy hid under the couch in the form of a mouse, Robin rolled out of predicted ground zero, Cyborg scrambled out of the way, and Raven held an orb around Starfire's face, hoping to quell the explosion.
Starfire's sneeze backfired into her own face...but Raven and a good portion of the furniture were also thrown back in the blast.
The boys winced. It had been like this for about two hours. The itching and swelling of Starfire's skin had gone down, but her sneezes had been coming every few minutes. Raven's shields could only do so much. While it protected the rest of the tower (and probably a good portion of the city, Robin reflected), Raven couldn't be expected to walk around with Starfire every minute (last night's Red X incident had seen to that).
Not only that, but the alien's sneezes, as well as coming more frequently, were also getting more powerful. The first time, Raven easily controlled the explosions. The second time an hour later, Raven's shield cracked, and both Starfire and Raven's identical haircuts became disarrayed. The fourth time, about forty-five minutes later, the shield filtered the sneeze enough, but all the lights in the living room flickered and some light bulbs burst.
And, the fifth time...well...
Raven crawled back into the living room from being flung through the doorway, scowling as she tossed the rug off her head and the lamp shade from her foot.
"What are we to do, Robin?" Starfire asked miserably, as she suffered another acerbic look from Raven. She flopped onto the sofa—after looking for any evil looking pieces of bubblegum—and sighed.
"I'm not sure, Star. Weather it out?"
"Right, weather it out. I'd hate to see what happens after the sixth time she sneezes." Raven muttered. She was about to say something more bitter to Robin, but the alarm blared...again.
"This is the third time today." Beast Boy whined. "Is everything against us right now?"
Raven and Starfire chose not to say anything.
"All right, Titans." Robin said, clapping his hands together. "Let's go."
Cyborg stood up, "Let's rock this joint."
After Beast Boy and Cyborg had gone, Raven rose to head for the doorway, but Robin clamped a hand on her shoulder. It only took one look from him for Raven to understand what he wanted. From the concern she could barely discern in his features and the anxiety he was radiating, he wanted her to stay behind. For Starfire's sake.
"I will." Raven sighed, before Robin could even say anything. Robin felt relieved, and dashed off after the other boys.
"Are you not coming, Raven?" Starfire asked. Raven shook her head.
"I think you and I should stay behind for this fight."
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The three boys arrived on the scene, just as all hell was breaking loose in the movie theater concession stand.
"Why are you destroying the theater anyway?" Cyborg asked, as the boys dodged past the flow of people running from Control Freak.
"It's February 6th," Control Freak stated as he pointed his remote at a vending machine and sent it scrambling to life. "Doesn't that mean anything to you?"
Cyborg and Robin stared blankly, but Beast Boy nearly screamed.
"No way, it's here already?" he exclaimed happily.
Robin and Cyborg shot him an inquisitive look.
"Come on you guys, 'Third Invasion of the Vengeance of the Wrath' comes out today!" Beast Boy said in awe. "Let's go see it!"
"You can't see it," Control Freak replied, before Robin could veto Beast Boy's suggestion. Said villain pointed to the theater billboard: 'Third Invasion of the Vengeance of the Wrath' was clearly not listed among the series of movies showing. "This is an outrage! A crime against humanity!"
"It's NOT playing here!?" Beast Boy shrieked in dismay.
Control Freak nodded glumly, pausing in his assault on the theater to share the moment with the Titan. Robin saw an opportunity.
"Titans, GO!"
Robin and Cyborg were about to jump immediately into the villain before realizing that Beast Boy had clearly made no move to start moving into action. They sent him questioning looks, and he returned their stares with an incredulous look.
"No." Beast Boy stated. "I'm with him on this one. This is a crime against humanity!"
"Beast Boy, Valentine's Day coming up. Do you really think they're going to show a horror movie right before the biggest romantic day of the year?"
"That's still a week away!" Beast Boy protested. "Today's "Vengeance of the Wrath" day!"
Robin shook his head as Cyborg dragged the protesting shapeshifter into the fray.
"Besides, Beast Boy." Cyborg said with a knowing smirk right before they started fighting. "Raven would kill you if you took her to a horror movie on Valentine's Day."
Beast Boy's face didn't have enough time to turn a dull red before he was hit with a cardboard cut-out.
Meanwhile, Robin was in the middle of dodging various projectiles the concession stand's machines were throwing at him. He artfully nailed ten buckets of popcorn with projectiles of his own while dodging most of the streams of soda that were heading his way, as well.
"You're not getting away with this—" Robin realized his communicator had begun to ring. Starfire. "—uh...yes?"
"Robin, I have called to see how the vanquishing of the criminals is--."
"It's going fine, Starfire." Robin replied, as something exploded quite near him. Hearing the explosion on his side of the communicator made her wince. "But I'm a little busy right now."
"Do you require any assistance?" She asked, anxious.
"No, I think we're fine." He said, with a grin. Robin's smile, however, was disrupted by screams of movie-goers running away from Control Freak's possessed movie posters.
Starfire looked concerned. "It seems you are in trouble. I shall come to help."
Robin didn't get a chance to reply before Starfire's plans were interrupted by a sneeze. An explosion rang from his communicator, and the video feed went fuzzy for a moment. Robin could still make out enough sounds to tell that Raven was having a hell of a time keeping the Tower in one piece, however.
Starfire's face came into focus a second later, and she smiled brightly, even though her hair was tangled and out of place.
"No, no! You stay right there," said Robin as an idea suddenly occurred to him. "What you could do, instead of coming here is to go to the evidence room and see if the controller is still there..."
"Why?"
Robin gulped because, though he was good at it, he hated lying. Especially to Starfire.
"I'm thinking maybe there's a way we can stop him if we had it." Robin crossed his fingers behind his back.
Starfire frowned slightly, then smiled. "And this would be helpful, yes?"
"Yes!" Robin assured her, mentally justifying the lie by the fact that keeping Starfire away from populated areas would indeed be helpful.
Starfire nodded. "Then I will go find it!"
Robin sighed with relief as the communicator clicked off.
Robin's relief that Starfire was distracted was only slightly dampened as a wave of popcorn threw him across the room.
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"Are you sure Robin said it was in here?" Raven asked, as the girls wandered down the halls of the tower. Starfire nodded, mutely while gazing at the floor unhappily.
Starfire was certainly not happy with her, Raven mused as the red-haired girl behind her sighed heavily.
When the alien girl had asked why she and Raven should stay behind, Raven had opted to tell her that her sneezing would affect the way the team fought. Raven would be too distracted to fight if she had to be aware of containing Starfire's sneezes, and while Starfire's rather potent new power could possibly destroy their enemies, her next sneeze could also be fatal to the team, if not the entire city.
Needless to say, Raven's explanation had left the alien girl rather down. This was the third time in the last two days that neither of the girls had contributed to the team, and it left both of them feeling rather useless. Not to mention that for both of them, having to deal with such an unusual bad luck streak over the past twenty-four hours had left both of them in a relatively bad mood.
Raven sighed.
Oh well. At least Robin, sensing that both girls were not feeling up to par, had sent them on a mission to hunt for something in the evidence room.
"What was it that we were looking for, Star?" Raven asked, as she pushed the button opening the door to said room.
"It is the control of remote that Control Freak had last time. Robin says it is vitally important we find it. They are unable to figure out if Control Freak is using the same or a different instrument." Starfire replied, almost mimicking Raven's monotone. Raven would have been impressed if she had been in a better mood. As it was, though, she just nodded in response to Starfire.
It was a trick, of course. Robin must have felt bad at having left both of them at home, and so, to make up for it, he was asking them to find something to make them feel as if they were helping in the battle. Nice try on his part.
Raven and Starfire weaved between the display cases, looking for that particular item. They found it in a corner in the way back right next to an object that looked identical to a video game console controller. Raven took one look at it and shuddered at the object.
The puppetmaster's soul-stealer.
Raven remembered what it was like for her and Starfire to switch bodies. They had managed to pull it off last time just in time to save the boys, but, even though Raven had adjusted to using Starfire's body, Raven surely would never want to experience that again. She turned to the remote control, and started to lift it off the column on which it lay.
It was at that moment that Starfire started to sneeze.
Caught off guard, Raven turned in time surround the girls' head with a black orb, but doing so made her knock both the remote control and the puppetmaster's controller to the floor in a clatter. As Starfire sneezed, several things in the Tower seemed to shake at once, and Raven felt her shield slip and the energy from the sneeze escaped.
The lights, as well as every piece of glass in the room, exploded. Starfire, caught in the blast of her sneeze, landed on the floor a few feet away on top of the remote control. Raven landed with a hard thump on top of Starfire, and the girls' weight sent the control skidding towards the puppetmaster's own controller with such energy that the two collided and exploded, blanketing both of the girls with an eerie, blue light for a split second.
The explosion had been so instantaneous, Raven could hardly believe it happened, but it seemed that she and Starfire were unharmed so she didn't think much of the matter. Luckily, Raven thought ironically, where they landed felt devoid of glass.
About time our luck changed. It would be no small task to clean up this mess, but at least they hadn't been hurt.
Now if only Starfire would get off her.