The 12 Labors of Cyborg

Disclaimer: I own something, but I don't want you to take it from me, so I won't tell you what it is. But Teen Titans- that I can honestly say I don't own.

A/N: So sue me, THIS is the chapter that I'm writing the entire story for. I guess Raven doesn't like rats! Cliff hangers fun. I realize there's a discrepancy between the 'funny' of one chapter and the 'funny' of the next. Action Adventure/Humor category doesn't mean they both have to be at ONCE ya know… Natch.

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The Augean Stables

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At long last, Cyborg had gotten the photograph into the hands of the Photo Shop clerk.

The clerk stared at the nearly ruined picture with a look of disbelief. "What did you do to it?"

Cyborg sighed. "Threw it up against a wall, mauled it with a lion, chased it through traffic, buried it in a building, retrieved it from a walking tinker tot, and brought it to you," he recited.

The clerk was silent for a very long time. "Okay…"

"Can you fix it? Please?" Cyborg pleaded.

"Of course I can, sir, but the damage is fairly extensive. Business has been slow recently, though, and I think I can make you a new and… er… not lion-mauled photograph in about three hours."

"Three hours!" Cyborg yelped.

The clerk stared steadily at Cyborg. "Perhaps, sir, the next time you have a picture you wish to keep, you should keep the negative. Or perhaps store it in a frame so it won't get so extensively damaged."

Cyborg resisted the urge to reach across the counter and strangle the man. After all, the Photo Shop clerk was the only one who could save him, now. He was the only one who could keep Starfire from killing him. The clerk took on a saintly glow. Cyborg feebly nodded, "Okay, I'll remember that. Thank you. So… three hours then?"

The clerk nodded, a cross look on his face. Cyborg backed out the door and out onto the street.

Three hours… not bad. In three hours, he could easily make it to a craft store, or somewhere else that had picture frames. The way things had been going lately, maybe three hours wouldn't be quite enough time.

"Stop thinking like that, Cyborg, the last time you thought like that…"

A crowd of people ran past, screaming.

"…something like that happened. DAMMIT!" Cyborg tore up the street in the direction that the panicked crowd had come from.

The grocery store was under siege.

Dozens, hundreds, thousands of rats… sewer rats… were crawling all over the building, through the building, turning it into a writhing mass of slimy black and brown fur. Cyborg nodded, and lowered his sonic cannon towards the building. Recently, vaporizing things had worked out pretty well for him, and he was hoping not to see an end to the trend.

Before he could fire, though, a wave of rats, enshrouded in a black light, came flying out of the building, mangled beyond repair. As soon as they were thrown clear, though, more swarmed in.

Raven was in there. Battling rats.

Of course.

Raven hated rats. At first Cyborg had been a little suspicious that anything so tiny and insignificant could rattle Raven's emotionless façade, but of course, something happened to prove him utterly wrong. Once she had seen a rat in the dining room, and screamed and screamed. And then she had blown up the entire floor. Everyone had laughed then, because the only other person on the floor was Beast Boy, and Raven couldn't seem to blow him up no matter how hard she tried.

But Cyborg wasn't laughing now; mainly because he didn't want to end up a mangled carcass in a bloody soup of rat death.

He considered walking on and leaving Raven to annihilate the city block in peace. After all, Raven could certainly destroy all the rats herself, eventually, and the emotional scarring and rat-bite scars would fade after time.

Somehow, that didn't convince Cyborg that his Quest for the Picture Frame was more important than saving half the city from becoming a Raven-made crater. "God damn… Don't worry, Raven, I'm coming!" He exclaimed, and barreled towards the door. The automatic door, confused by all of the rats, didn't open of course, so Cyborg blasted it away. And was covered in rats.

Little claws, little teeth, all furry and scratchy and… "AAUUUGGGHHH! GET THEM OFF ME!"

Cyborg did a funny little dance in the street to throw all of the rats off of him. And then he vaporized them all.

Once Cyborg was certainly he was totally rat free, he ran back into the grocery store. He spotted Raven floating between what was left of the Pet food and dish soap aisle- she was using her telekinesis to basically lay waste to the rats, but there were too many of them for her to handle without leveling the entire store. They crawled up the shelves and leapt at her, only to be twisted into three different pieces in midair… but with so many of them…

"Hold on, Raven!" Cyborg exclaimed. He pointed his sonic cannon at the ground, and fired, clearing the floor beneath her entirely of rats, linoleum, and dirt. Instantly, thousands of rats came pouring out of the hole that Cyborg had just made. "Oops…"

"FUCKING RATS! FUCKING DIE!" Raven screamed. A large number of them imploded.

If Raven had noticed his presence, she was doing a very good job of pretending not to. She tipped over an emptied display rack (apparently the rats had eaten everything) and crushed a few more. Cyborg began stomping. After what had happened with the floor just a moment before, he was suddenly not so sure that his sonic cannon would be of any use here.

The rats had caught on to his presence, and were now trying to clamber up him. Luckily, his metal armor prevented them from eating him in half, but as soon as they got to part of him that wasn't coated in impenetrable steel, he was going to be in some serious trouble.

Cyborg clambered up on top of a display case to get away from the rats. That was when Raven finally noticed him. She looked a little shocked for a moment, probably wondering just how much of her emotional, quite unbalanced rage her teammate had seen. "Cyborg… what are you doing here?"

"I'd have to ask you the same question," Cyborg said. He stomped a rat that started up the display case. Instantly a doze more followed.

"I came for Cheesy Poufs," Raven said in quiet resignation, before screaming "DIE FURRY SCUM!" and sending a few hundred more rats to the cheese factory in the sky.

"This ISN'T WORKING," Cyborg shouted, in case Raven hadn't already figured that out for herself. He stomped on a few more rats that clambered up the display case- and shattered the case underneath him. Cyborg landed on his back- instantly the sewer rats were on top of him, biting and clawing with their disgusting little mouths and nails…

Raven shouted an expletive that Cyborg hadn't even known existed. The rats on top of him shriveled up and died instantly, and Cyborg leapt up to his feet. "Thanks, Ra-" he began, but Raven was too busy laughing maniacally and killing every rat in sight. He was quite surprised that she hadn't blown up at least the building by now… she looked rather unstable.

"Cyborg, you have to get out of here. I'll take out the rats… all of the rats. ALL OF THEM!" She screamed. A display case rocketed up into the air and began beating against the ground, crushing rats left and right. This continued until the display case was shattered into tiny slivers of wood.

"Raven, you will NOT blow up the city. There's got to be a better way…" he paused, and then brightened. "Of course!"

"Of course what?" Raven asked dryly.

"Gather them all up into one huge ball of rats, Raven, and I'll vaporize every last one of them!" Cyborg exclaimed, his arm turning into a sonic cannon. All this time, of course, he had been stomping.

Raven brightened somewhat. "Good idea…" she hissed, her eyes inexplicably glowing an insane red. Cyborg retreated out of the grocery store as Raven began to channel all of her telekinesis into one act- lifting every squirming, squeaking rat off of the ground.

The rose in hordes- thousands upon thousands of rats all gathered up into a massive rat ball that obscured the sun. Raven lifted it well above them- as far away as she could, to avoid listening to their squeaking. Cyborg took careful aim, adjusting the power levels of his sonic cannon. "Hurry up the hurting!" Raven roared. Yes, she had come pretty close to flipping out.

Cyborg fired, and the mass of rats exploded. What rats didn't vaporize instead started plummeting towards earth. "BWAHAHAHAHAHA!" Raven roared, and commenced hitting the still living, though imminently doomed, plummeting rats with their already dead comrades.

Cyborg put one hand on Raven's shoulder. "Maybe… we should get under cover…" He began.

And then the rain of bloody rat death struck the city. Raven threw up a shield around herself and Cyborg, and watched in inhuman glee as pieces of rats bounced off the shield. Once it was done, the entire city block was covered in rat remains. The buildings were even soaked in rat blood. "I always wonder how the city recovers from how we save it…" Cyborg muttered musingly.

Raven seemed to have gotten control over herself. She drifted back over to the grocery store, through the vaporized door. Cyborg diligently followed her.

Everything had been eaten or gnawed through- even household cleaning products. Everything, that was, except the Cheesy Poufs. Raven's eyes widened slightly in surprise before she recovered. "You've got to be kidding me…"

"The rats didn't eat the Cheesy Poufs! How lucky for you!" Cyborg exclaimed cheerfully.

Raven cautiously picked up a bag. "The rats ate everything else. Why would they not eat Cheesy Poufs?"

"It's snack food from heaven and they wouldn't dare touch it with their grimy claws?" Cyborg suggested gamely.

"Well… that's almost what I was thinking, except for it's the exact opposite…" Raven turned the bag upside down in her hands, watching as the fluorescent orange snack foods tumbled through the bag. Some of them stuck to the wrapper. "What sort of self-hatred must you people suffer from to put this in your body? Why do you eat them?"

"Its snack food from heaven," repeated the half-robot adamantly.

"That RATS won't eat."

Cyborg shook his head. "Sorry, Raven, but I have little time to puzzle over this… I have to get myself a picture frame!"

"You have to w-" Raven began, but Cyborg was already running down the street. Raven watched him go, shook her head, and floated out the door and back towards the Titans Tower, where she planned to kill Robin slowly and painfully for making her go back to the grocery store.

"Just from here to the craft store. Here to the craft store! That can't be too hard, that can't be too hard… just a few more blocks, two more blocks and I'm there…" He turned and the corner, and there the craft store was… in all of its muted, earth-tone glory. Cyborg let out a whoop of glee, and powered forward… "Wait a second… CLOSED?!?" He screamed in disbelief.

Standing there, drenched in rat blood and exhausted after saving the city at least twice, Cyborg could think of nothing more fantastic nor unlikely than the one place he needed to go being shut down for the night.

…and that was when the origami swans attacked.