A/N: WOOSH! The last chapter where a Titan goes weird! This is not the end of the fic, however. We still have to cover on how the Titans get rid of the curse! And I still haven't decided on how to do that, yet . . . But an idea will hit me sooner or later!
Reviews! Yay!
To izzy6392: Aw! I'm so happy when I make people do that! I'm just glad I didn't make you break your neck or something . . . Then the smell of lawsuit would probably be wafting in the air . . . And I'm so glad you don't like Robin! I absolutely hate him!
To disappearer/Syani: Actually, the only reason why people thought I was gothic was because I would draw pictures of people getting blown up or something . . . But they had failed to realize they were getting blown up in a comical way! Some people are just too serious. And what do you mean when you say I write worse than one? Are you saying that I just totally suck, or that I can write depressing because of the mood of the story? And no, I am not a prep, and absolutely do not intend to ever be one. From what I've experienced, preps do not listen to Led Zeppelin and Nirvana and AC/DC and Pink Floyd and all the other stuff like that. And no, Cyborg does not fall in love with Aqualad, and I have really don't want to know how you came up with that. Did I do something to just totally piss you off, or what?
To YRProcks66: I'm so glad you think it's great! And I've just gotta know . . . what does YRP stand for? I'm just curious.
To wolfboy1988: Yay! You Reviewed! Good for you!
To sarasparrow1: Oh . . . That's who that is! OK! And I'm glad you like random. Random is good. And yes, they'll all return to normal. I just don't know how, yet, but I have a pretty strong idea.
To endor glorshe ne dinder, yo!: Yes! The Robin loving people must perish!
To fireflamesinferno: Oh yay. That's kind of what I was aiming for. And I have a reason for the clothes attacking Robin. You can read about it in the response to afterdark!
To CreatorOfKitty: I sent you the words by email. Did you get them? Just for you, though, I'll put them somewhere in this chapter! And you don't know who Lord Voldemort is? (gasp) He's the bad guy from Harry Potter! And nobody (but Harry, of course, since he's so cool gag) says his name, so they say "You know who" instead. And if they do hear Voldemort, they spaz out. Strange, yes. (looks at your picture in different angles) Is that a bunny? It looks like one . . . I am no good at deciphering these Internet pictures. How unfortunate for me. (frown)
To afterdark: Yes! I did get that from Calvin and Hobbes! I'm practically obsessed with them! I have two of the treasuries, and I have a tenth anniversary collection thing. What do you have?
To Ra-Cho: Aw! You don't know how happy that makes me! And new Reviewers are always welcome here! And no, you Reviewed just fine. I'm guessing . . . (laughs) Anyway, thanks for that long Review! Long Reviews make me feel special! And I think this chapter is my worst one . . . But thanks for that thoughtful wish at the end of your Review! You're awesome!
To RavenOnline: That would be kind of predictable, wouldn't it? (ponders) Rhyming is cool, so stay in school! Woah . . . that was just cheesy!
To Kryptic teh Foxie: Yay! You actually Reviewed! I'm so happy! And a lot of times, too! You boosted my Review count! (pats head)
Here's the chapter!
Raven opened her eyes sleepily, still exhausted from the previous adventure. It was more than a teenage girl could take . . . It was not everyday that she tried to disband nudists and had to drive around underwater.
She slowly got out of her bed and made her way to the bathroom. She was never really like this since she had been cursed . . . Maybe the curse was wearing off?
"Who knows?" thought Raven to herself. Maybe if she just took a hot shower like she did every morning, she would feel a lot perkier and act like she had for the past few days.
She turned on the water and set the temperature just between cold and hot (but slanted a little more towards hot). She removed her PJs, stepped inside the tub, and allowed her body to suck up the steam and hot water. She closed her eyes and smiled drunkenly, as if not aware of anything going on outside of the shower curtains.
Suddenly bored, she began to recite the poem that she had read on a website called fictionpress dot com. A poem called "Goth in a Box: The Poem" by a person that went by AmbrMerlinus. The poem had made her laugh so much, it was impossible to recite it with a straight face.
" I . . . am a tortured soul
A soul that is tortured.
. . . Tortured soul.
A METEOR WILL CRASH INTO THE EARTH AND DESTROY US ALL!!!
Oh the pineapples.
Defrag, I say!
The pineapples.
The mock me.
The pineapples.
With their mockingness.
A papercut!
I BLEED!
. . . Bleeding soul . . .
(A/N: I am allowed to put this in the chapter, just as long as I give credit to AmbrMerlinus. Thank you, Ambr, for writing, in my opinion, the funniest poem I've ever seen!)
She smiled and snickered as she finished the poem. She then stopped, though, when the water went up her nose.
After about five minutes, she made the water a little colder and splashed it on her face. This way, her pores would close up. The last thing she needed was acne all over her face.
She turned the water off after her face was nice and cold, but then she heard shuffling around in her bathroom. Someone was in there with her . . .
Raven slowly peeked her head outside of the shower curtain, looking for what might be causing the noise. What she saw was Cyborg, staring at the mirror with interested eyes.
"ACK!" screamed Raven. "DON'T LOOK AT ME!"
"I'm not looking at you," said Cyborg, not taking his eyes off the mirror. "Have you ever noticed how interesting water vapor is?"
"GET AWAY! GO! NOW!"
"It's like little clouds . . . But they're hot, and they float up instead of stay in one place." Cyborg slowly put his finger on the mirror, poking the steamed up glass. "And when I touch it . . . All the stuff that I touched goes away. Isn't that neat?"
"GET OUT OF HERE! NOW!" Raven picked up her shampoo bottle and chucked it at Cyborg, who was hit the head. Cyborg took this as his cue to leave and quickly did so.
"And look . . . When I make the switch go down, the lights turn off . . ."
Cyborg turned off the lights, clearly fascinated at the power a light switch had. Robin and Starfire just sat there, bored, not paying any attention to what Cyborg was saying.
"And look at this . . ." said Cyborg, walking over to the refrigerator. "In this room, it's not warm, but it's not hot . . ." He slowly and gently opened the refrigerator door. "But inside the refrigerator, it's cold . . . Isn't that amazing? How does it work?"
"Yes . . . That's fascinating, Cyborg," said Robin, trying to rub the sleepiness out of his eyes. "But really, we don't care that much."
"And I can just move my finger up and down, whenever I want too . . ." Cyborg bent his index finger up and down, up and down. "Isn't that amazing how simple you think it is, but it's really some complex equation for your brain to figure out instantly?"
Raven walked into the room, still traumatized by the incident earlier. Beast Boy also walked in the room, happy and relieved that the Tower was almost Yoko free. It was now the time to relax and relive his normal life.
Raven sat at the kitchen table, ready to get breakfast over with. Beast Boy, Robin, and Starfire made their way to the kitchen as well, getting and fixing what they might have wanted. Cyborg, however, was staring at Raven from across the room.
Raven noticed this in the corner of her mind, then slowly turned her head so she could see Cyborg without having to turn her eye anymore. "Yes?" she asked, almost nervous.
"I've been thinking, and . . ." Cyborg then stopped, as if he were looking over his own statement. "Thinking . . . How do we think?"
"Uh . . ." Raven looked at the Titans for help, but they only just shrugged and went back to what they were doing.
"Is there a little TV in our brain that plays for all of our nerves to watch? Or is it just some kind of complex chemical reaction? Yet it seems so easy . . . And what about the people reading this? How are they able to read in their heads?"
Starfire glanced at Beast Boy, who glanced at Robin, who stood there wide-eyed.
"How do we think?" asked Robin, now also caught up in Cyborg's curiosity.
"Or . . ." began Cyborg, once again. "Is the idea there all the time, and we never think about it until the right time, or until it's too late in life?"
"Oof . . ." said Starfire, clutching her forehead. "Now I've got a migraine just thinking about it."
"A migraine . . . What is a migraine? Is our brain taking physical abuse, or is it just some reaction with nerves? Or, is it even real, and we just want ourselves to think it's real?"
Raven got up and walked over to a phone.
"Who are you calling?" asked Beast Boy, preparing tofu eggs.
"A psychiatrist . . . This isn't right."
"Is it right?" asked Cyborg. "Or is it wrong? That is the question."
Raven walked into the waiting room, Cyborg in tow. She was very busy just trying to keep him from wandering off to the elevator, where he surely would have stared at the closing and opening doors.
Raven threw him into a chair, where he looked up at her with confused eyes.
"You stay here," said Raven, motioning to the chair he was sitting in. "I'm signing us in."
Raven walked away, leaving Cyborg there to look around the room. He noticed the bright colors in different paintings, and noticed a certain painting that had a woman wearing a bright red dress.
Was red even real? Was his brain just telling him that the dress was red? How does a person describe red, anyway?
What else was red? Fire was sort of red. It was also hot. Why was it hot? Why was it bright? Cyborg needed to know.
Just at that moment, a girl around the age of fourteen walked in. She said something to the lady at the desk, who said something back, and the girl turned around and took a seat next to Cyborg. She was about 5'5" with dirty blonde hair, a slim figure ("Obviously a dancer's figure" thought Cyborg), and bright eyes.
Cyborg took interest in the eyes and stared at them admirably. The girl apparently noticed, as she turned her head slowly towards Cyborg.
" . . . Hello," she said, trying her best to sound normal despite the circumstance.
"Hi," said Cyborg. "Your eyes are bright."
"Uh . . ." The girl looked around, obviously unaware of what to say. "Thank you."
"Why are you here?"
"Oh . . . I'm waiting for my aunt."
"Why?"
" . . . Because she had an appointment."
"Why?"
"Because . . . she did?"
"Why?"
The girl sighed. "I don't know! Just stop asking me!"
"OK. Do you have a match?"
"What?"
"A match."
"Uh . . . I think so . . ." The girl grabbed her purse and rummaged through it. Cyborg was able to see a name written on the inside.
CARA
"Ah! Here you go!"
"Thank you, Cara."
"Uh . . . sure."
Cyborg smiled as he lit the match, then watched as the fire burned brightly.
"Have you ever really, really looked at fire before?" he asked, getting Cara's attention as he put the match right in front of her face. "It's beautiful! And it's so amazing to think of the damage it could do if it fell in the wrong hands . . ."
(A/N: If you can tell me what sitcom that's from, you get a Triforce90 Cookie!)
The girl looked at Cyborg, then stood up. "Uh . . . lady? How long did you say it would be again?"
At that moment, the door to the psychiatrist opened, showing Cara's aunt and the psychiatrist herself. She was about 5'5 ½" with pale white skin, black hair, and a thin figure. She looked down at a clipboard.
"Uh . . . Cyborg?"
Raven, who appeared as if from nowhere, grabbed Cyborg's arm and dragged him to the office. The psychiatrist just watched as the two walked past her, then joined them in her office after shutting the door.
"I'm Dr. Keara, and I'll be your shrink today," said the doctor as she made her way to her desk. She grabbed a handful of papers, sorted through them, then pulled out a steno pad and a pen. "So . . . What seems to be the problem?"
"An interesting question," said Cyborg. "What is the problem? Are we just assuming that there is one? Is there a problem?"
"He's been asking questions like this all morning," said Raven, who was looking like she was about to explode. "It's driving us all crazy . . ."
"Why are you asking these questions, Cyborg?" asked Dr. Keara, who began writing on the steno pad.
"Why? Why do we do anything?"
"Um . . ." Dr. Keara looked at her clock. He still had forty-five minutes left. "Any . . . events that may have led to this? An X-factor?"
Raven thought hard. Cyborg thought hard, also, but not about what Raven was thinking hard about.
"Could it be part of the curse?" asked Raven, quietly and to herself. "Or is he just crazy?" She tried to remember anything they might have done yesterday that could have led up to this.
"Uh . . . Heat exhaustion?" asked Raven outloud.
"Heat exhaustion?" repeated Dr. Keara. "I'm a shrink, lady! Not a doctor! Like I know what heat exhaustion is!"
"Heat exhaustion . . ." asked Cyborg. "Is the heat exhausted, or are we assuming that the heat is just exhausting us? Is heat even real? Is it just something that our brain wants our body to believe? Or is it just another meaning for a high temperature?"
Dr. Keara stood up and headed to a water jug in the corner of her room. There was a digital clock on a filing cabinet next to it . . . Maybe she could change the time without them noticing?
"So, Raven," began Dr. Keara as she secretly began punching buttons on the clock while filling a paper cup with water at the same time. "Any ideas on what you could do to avoid this?"
"Well," began Raven, "I guess we could lock him up in his room or something. He'd have lots of fun in there."
"But do you really want to do that? I mean, he is your friend, regardless of what he is doing right now."
Dr. Keara put the clock back on the filing cabinet just as water was about to flow over the cup. Dr. Keara made a slight look at the clock and gasped.
"Oh! My, how time flies! You guys have to leave!"
"But we just got here!" protested Raven.
"Sorry, but you really have to leave! I have a busy schedule to keep to, and according to my schedule, I must eat something." She shoved Raven and Cyborg out of the office and into the waiting room. "Goodbye!" She shut the door. She leaned on it, the sighed. "I get paid too little for this job . . ."
Outside the Office
"Well!" said Raven as she crossed her arms. But she had better things to do than this. Tonight, she was going to dance and sing double-time.
At twelve o'clock that night (or should it be "that morning"?), Robin woke up. Something from downstairs was making noise.
He got up slowly and headed to the room below his . . . the kitchen. He soon reached it, and there he saw Cyborg staring at the microwave.
"Have you ever wondered how a microwave works?" asked Cyborg, watching a bag of popcorn spin around and around and around.
"No," said Robin. "And I don't intend to. Why are you still up?"
"Because I am not asleep."
Robin rolled his eyes. "Don't look at the microwave too much, Cyborg. You could get dyslexia . . . I think."
"Is dyslexia real? Do we just think we have dyslexia? Is anything real?"
"Nothing . . . is . . . real," said Robin, imitating the narrator from the theatrical trailer of "Yellow Submarine". Robin took a seat at the kitchen table.
(A/N: Buy that movie on DVD! It is the coolest movie EVER! Of course, you have to know a lot of Beatles lyrics to understand half of the jokes, but it's still good!)
"Cyborg, you have got to quit thinking like this! You're hurting your brain, and you're hurting our brains! Now stop it!"
"Or?" asked Cyborg, reaching into the microwave to get his now finished popcorn.
"Or . . . uh . . . we'll kill you."
"Are not we already dead inside?"
"I am very much not dead. If I was dead, I would not be able to feel this." Robin grabbed a fork that had been left on the kitchen table and quickly jabbed his left eye. He realized his mistake too late, however, and quickly grabbed his eye and screamed in pain.
"AH! AH! AAAAAAH!"
"Is your pain even real, Robin?" asked Cyborg, munching quietly on his popcorn. "Is it even necessary that I eat?"
Robin fell to the ground, still screaming, and now squirming and kicking his legs about.
"Apparently, your pain is real. But is my pain real?"
"GET ME A GAUZE! AAAAGH!"
"A gauze . . . Would a gauze really help? Does it only stop bleeding, and not actually heal the wound? Is there a point to the gauze?"
"YES! IT KEEPS BLOOD FROM GETTING ALL OVER THE FLOOR!"
Cyborg harrumphed, grabbed his popcorn, and left the room, leaving Robin to find the gauze himself.
"OK team!" shouted Robin, wearing a general's hat and a pirate patch over his left eye. "Here's the plan!"
The other three Titans were sitting on the floor in front of him, eager to learn on what to do.
"Apparently, Cyborg has taken an interest in surrealism and all of that artsy-fartsy crap! It is our duty to stop him from driving us insane! So, what are we gonna do?"
"OH! OH! I KNOW!" shouted Raven, waving her hand spastically in the air.
"Anybody?"
"ME! ME!"
"Anyone at all?"
"ME, YOU FREAK!"
"Just . . . raise your hand!"
"ME! ME, DAMMIT!"
"OK then! I'll tell you what we're going to do."
Raven sighed and put her hand down.
"We're going to make sure that Cyborg can never ask these questions again! We need to do something, anything, to make him quit. A few of our choices are brainwashing, putting him in a coma, or killing him."
Raven sighed in frustration as she heard her own plan come out of Robin's mouth.
"Beast Boy! Any suggestions on what we should do?"
"Uh . . . I say we should kill him!"
"No. Too easy. We need a challenge. How about we slip him a sedative or something?"
"That's way too easy," said Starfire. "We could just put it in his drink or something."
"But would he even bother to drink it?" asked Raven. "From what I've seen, he'll just stare at it and think of how fascinating it is or something."
"We could just . . . play along," said Robin, wonder in his voice.
"What?" asked all three Titans, apparently confused at their leader's outcome.
"Well, we've gotten this far, haven't we?" asked Robin, pacing back and forth. "We could just deal with it until the curse ends."
"But what if it never ends?" asked Beast Boy. "What if we have to live like this forever?"
"I don't think we'll have to," said Raven. "There has to be an end, somewhere."
"So it's settled?" asked Robin, once again. "We'll just wait for the curse to end. All in favor say 'Aye!'"
"Aye!"
"AYE!"
"Aye."
"Great," Robin clasped his hands together and put a big, stupid smile on his face. "Oh, Raven. I believe you had a question earlier?"
Raven smacked her forehead in disbelief.
"Come on, Starfire!" shouted Raven, who was doing aerobics in front of the TV with Jane Fonda as Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" playing along. "We need to stay fit if we're going to dance!"
" I don't dance," said Starfire, sitting on the couch and reading a paperback.
"But . . . I thought you said you'd dance with me." Raven looked at Starfire with sadness in her eyes.
"To get you to shut up, yes. I didn't actually mean it."
Raven sighed. "Fine. Just sit there and let me finish."
She turned around to look back at the TV, but instead of seeing Jane Fonda, she saw Cyborg, eyes glued to the TV.
"Uh . . . Cyborg? Could you move?"
"It's so amazing, isn't it?" he asked. "How a little box can display images with three different colored lights . . ."
"Yeah . . . Go away now, please."
Raven gave him a gentle shove, sending Cyborg over to Starfire's direction. He looked onto the book and read several of the words, then said,
"Isn't it amazing how people came up with a language? We could all just be sitting here, mumbling and not able to understand each other."
Starfire sighed, got up, and left the room.
Cyborg noticed Beast Boy and Robin, sitting at a table playing cards. Cyborg walked over to them, but the two quickly got up and walked away.
"GIRLS! THEY WANNA HAVE FUN!" sang Raven to the Jane Fonda tape. "GIRLS JUST WANNA HAVE FU-UN!"
"Please stop singing for a minute, Rae," said Beast Boy as he stared at his hand of cards. "I need to concentrate."
Raven obediently stopped, but Cyborg interrupted with another question.
"Are we really listening to a voice, or are we just pretending that we are? And must we really concentrate? Is life all one big puzzle, waiting for us to make a false move and mess up forever?"
Beast Boy threw his hand down on the table, clearly frustrated.
"That's it!" he shouted, getting up and heading for the front door. "I'm going outside! I am not going to stay in the same room as this pest!"
Beast Boy opened the door, only to be blown away by wind that seemed to be blowing at 100 MPH. Raven's Jane Fonda tape was cut off, along with the electricity, leaving the Titans in darkness.
"Must be a storm," said Robin, looking at out the windows. Sure enough, black clouds were forming over the city.
"A storm . . ." said Cyborg as he stared out the window. "How interesting. Nature's force of destruction coming towards us . . . Will we survive? Hath mankind not survived before?"
Raven, Beast Boy, and Robin all rolled their eyes. It was going to be one looong storm . . .
Raven, Beast Boy, Robin, and Starfire sat in the living room, each having extremely bloodshot eyes. A pondering Cyborg sat in the middle of them, thinking outloud to himself.
"And who went up to a cow and said 'I'm going to squeeze this dangly things and drink whatever comes out'?"
Starfire rocked back and forth, staring at nothing in particular. Raven tried to concentrate on her portable CD player, but to no avail. Beast Boy tried to pass the time by finding shapes on the ceiling, but to no avail as well. Robin just sat there, too stressed to even try to do something.
"And just how many chucks would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?"
Starfire stood up and screamed. She began pulling on her hair and did so for about five second, then lunged at Cyborg. He was tossed to the ground as Starfire sat on him, delivering blows to the face. The other Titans, too stressed to do anything about it, just watched silently.
Starfire apparently got tired of doing this and got up, returning to her seat. Cyborg lay on the ground, staring up at the ceiling. He appeared to be still alive, despite the many hard blows, but was certainly dazed.
"Pain . . ." he began. "It's the body's way of telling you you're doing something wrong. But what if it's not you who's doing the wrong thing?"
"It's telling you to get up and run away as fast as you can," said Robin. "This way, you can attempt to escape any more people who might want to beat you up."
"Meaning?"
The rest of the Titans stood up and made their way towards Cyborg, who just sat there, wondering what Robin meant. Little did intrigued Cyborg know that this would be his last moment before he became unconscious.
Cyborg was placed on his bed and was to remain locked in his room for a time. The rest of the four returned to the living room, where the waited out the hurricane in peace. Robin, Raven, and Beast Boy all started a game of Twister, and Starfire even reluctantly joined in (being the person who spun the wheel, of course). It was certainly a happy time, now that Cyborg had been shut up.
But the time would come when they would have to let him out of his room. Robin would need him, anyway, for he had a plan on how to relieve the curse. If it was a good plan, he didn't know, but it would certainly work if they could all work together.
Well, that was probably the worst chapter! I don't know how many chapters there will be until the end, but I assure you, it's not that far off. Maybe one or two more! . . . Or three. Something along those lines.
I'm getting a feeling that there won't be that many Reviews since all of the Titans have changed. And so, I would like to thank all of the Reviewers for making a small fic like this have such a high Review count! I hope to see your Reviews in the final chapters, where they get rid of the curse!
Until then, see you!