(Disclaimer: Close your eyes and imagine that I said that I don't own the Teen Titans, but in a witty and amusing way. Keep them closed for a little while…a little longer…no, I'm not just trying to distract you while I go through your wallet—why do you ask?)
Preliminary Author's Note: Okay, some of the stuff in this chapter might be a bit risqué (you'll know it when you see it). While it may be pushing the boundaries of PG-13 a bit, I certainly do not think it deserves to be rated R (see my ending note for why). If you think it should be rated R, then please let me know and I will change it.
-CHAPTER FIVE: MORE DISTURBING DEVELOPMENTS-
"Hey, guys! I just thought of a great new game!" Beast Boy cried, inciting a chorus of groans from the other Titans.
"It's not anything like your snake tossing idea, is it?" Cyborg asked.
"You mean 'Dodgeviper'? No, no, this one is way better!" Beast Boy said.
"Wow. That's saying a lot," Raven said, not even bothering to look up from her book. Beast Boy glared at her, but continued anyway.
"So you get a donkey, right, and the goal is hit it with a stick just hard enough for there to be decent contact, but not so hard that the donkey makes a noise in protest," Beast Boy said. "And guess what it's called!"
"Oh, dear God, no…" Raven muttered—as usual, she had been the first to work it out. It was one of her greatest shames that she seemed to understand Beast Boy's sicker jokes.
"I call it 'Tap That Ass!'" Beast Boy cried triumphantly. "Isn't that the greatest idea you've ever heard?"
"Beast Boy, I think that I can say, with the utmost certainty, that no, it is most definitely not the greatest idea I have ever heard," Robin said. Beast Boy sagged a little.
"Oh, come on, guys!" he said. "I put a lot of thought into that!"
"Well, you seem to be back to normal," Cyborg said. "You've been kind of jumpy for the last few days."
"Yes, I had thought that Acquaintance Evelyn had permanently damaged you with her nudity," Starfire chimed in from the kitchen, where she was steadfastly ruining yet another perfectly good pot. Raven glared at Beast Boy, remembering the incident, and he chuckled nervously and rubbed the back of his head.
"Yeah, what can I say?" he said. "Her being locked up in her room these past few days has worked wonders for me."
"Oh, Beast Boy, that reminds me," Robin said, a small evil smile working its way onto his face. "It's your turn to bring Evelyn her lunch today." Beast Boy paled.
"What? No!" Beast Boy said, waving his hands in a vague display of denial. "Do you have any idea what she'll do to me if she catches me?"
"What, will she flash you or something?" Cyborg said. "'Cause, you know, most guys wouldn't think of that as a bad thing. Ow!" Raven had used her powers to hit him over the head with a potted plant.
"Well, Beast Boy, we all agreed to take turns bringing Evelyn her meals and stuff, and today is your turn," Robin said. "She didn't do anything to Cyborg, Starfire, or me, so I don't think you'll have anything to worry about."
"Oh, fine," Beast Boy muttered. "But you're paying for my funeral."
"You mean your wedding? Ow!" Cyborg said—a glowing black ceiling tile had fallen on his head. Raven didn't even look up from her book.
"Quit it, you guys," Robin said. "Beast Boy, her sandwich is in the fridge. Get going."
Beast Boy retrieved the sandwich and made his way to what he knew to be his certain doom, grumbling the whole time about crazy clones, overbearing masked doofuses, and, oddly enough, what sounded like the square root of pi if you plugged your ears a little bit and really used your imagination. It was probably just muted swear words, though. Once he was gone, Cyborg turned to the others, a thoughtful expression on his face.
"Have you ever noticed that his ideas for games usually involve minor cruelty to animals?" he asked. "What do you think that means?"
"I don't know, Cyborg, but I have a funny feeling Freud would have a field day with Beast Boy," Robin replied.
Raven snorted as she stifled a laugh, rapidly turning a page in an attempt to hide her amusement. Starfire hadn't been listening, and only cursed mildly in Tamaranian as her recipe ate through the bottom of her sixth pot in two days.
OOO
Beast Boy stepped gingerly into Evelyn's lair, being careful to close the door behind him, since he knew that Robin would go ballistic if he let her escape. The lights were dimmed, but not turned completely off, casting odd-looking half-shadows that seemed to flow and merge into each other. The only major source of light was a full-size standing lamp, set so that it illuminated the end of Evelyn's bed, where a neatly arranged row of rather stale Peeps sat, staring lifelessly at the door.
"Uhhh…Evelyn? Are you in here?" Beast Boy said, his voice quavering a little.
"Guys, now!" hissed Evelyn's voice from behind him, and he turned to see her standing several feet away with a broken piece of curtain rod held above her head as a makeshift club. She grinned and quickly tried to hide the curtain rod behind her back.
"What are you doing?" Beast Boy asked.
"Um, you weren't supposed to see that…" Evelyn said, then turned and began to berate the unfortunate Peeps on her bed. "You assholes! You didn't stick to the plan! You were supposed to distract him! Idiots!"
"Uhh…I'm standing right here, you know," Beast Boy said, but Evelyn ignored him.
"Dammit! Now I'll have to move on to Plan B!" she cried, tossing aside her curtain rod.
"I don't think Peeps really make very good henchmen…" Beast Boy began, but then paused and narrowed his eyes. "Hey, wait a minute! Plan B…?"
"Don't worry about it," Evelyn said with a dismissive wave of her hand. "Just stay right there for a sec, would you?"
Beast Boy looked down at his feet. He was standing in a large red circle with an X through it drawn in red paint on the carpet. It was labelled "Beast Boy stands here", accompanied by a smiley face with four eyes that was sticking its tongue out at him.
"Ohhhh no," Beast Boy said, carefully stepping outside of the circle. "I'll stand over here, thank you very much. I don't feel like falling into this Plan B of yours." Evelyn just grinned, holding what looked like a string that hung down from the ceiling.
"Oh, okay then," she said. "Plan C it is, then."
Evelyn yanked on the string as hard as she could, and before Beast Boy could say anything, he felt pressure on the back of his head and everything went black.
OOO
"Beeeaaaassst Boooooyy! Heeeeeyyy, Beeeeeeeaaaaassssst Boooooooyyyy!"
Beast Boy groaned and opened his eyes. His head ached, and everything seemed out of focus. Ghostly lights danced around the edges of his vision, too, and that didn't help matters any.
Ooog, he thought. What happened? I was bringing Evelyn her lunch and then…oh, no…
Beast Boy's eyes snapped fully open and he jerked his head up—he immediately regretted it. The dull ache bloomed into full-fledged pain, and his vision swam for a moment. As his eyes began to clear, he could make out a fuzzy but unmistakeably feminine blur standing in front of him.
"I wouldn't suggest doing that again. Your head might fall off or something," the blur said in Evelyn's voice. Sarcasm was apparent in her tone, but then her voice softened. "I'm sorry about that, I didn't mean for my little trap to hit you quite that hard. Heh, heh. I'll have to make a mental note about that."
Beast Boy tried to say something, but found that he couldn't—his mouth was covered up with a strip of what felt suspiciously like duct tape. Beast Boy tried to move his arms and legs, and found that they were similarly restrained. Evelyn had taped him to a chair. He tried to transform, but his head just throbbed, and he only got part-way through the transformation before he reverted back to his human form. The blur that was Evelyn, which was steadily becoming less hazy, grinned.
"Can't transform, huh?" she said. "That's an added bonus. That was the only real hole in my scheme, to be honest, but I guess things worked out nicely."
Great, so I'm stuck here, held captive in my own damn tower by a crazy evil clone of one of my teammates, Beast Boy thought. What does she want me for?
Even before Beast Boy's hazy, slightly concussed curiosity could fully develop, Evelyn revealed her plans for him, although not through a typical villain exposition speech. Rather, she revealed her plans by enacting them.
"Right! Phase one of Operation Green Jeans complete, so now on to phase two!" she cried. "Mood music! To the CD player!"
Evelyn rushed over to the boombox-style CD player sitting in the corner of her room and frantically began pressing buttons, muttering under her breath the whole time.
"Come on, come on…which track was it again? Oh, right…here we go!"
Evelyn hit the play button with as much drama as possible, and the room was filled with a heavy drum beat, alternating between the bass and the snare.
"Now everybody, have you heard? If you're in the game, then the stroke's the word…"
Short bursts of heavily distorted electric guitar started next, and Evelyn grinned. She began walking back towards Beast Boy, letting her hips swing to the beat. When she reached him, she leaned down to look him directly in the eye, still moving a little in time to the music. Beast Boy noticed that her otherwise plain black T-shirt said "Come on, you know you want to" on the front.
"Put your right hand out, give a firm handshake. Talk to me about that one big break…"
Beast Boy gulped nervously and Evelyn's grin widened. She straightened up and gripped the hem of her T-shirt, slowly working it up her body, always in time to the music. Soon she had lifted it to just under her breasts, holding it there for a second to tease him, but she quickly got tired of that and whipped the T-shirt off in one smooth motion, revealing her black bra.
"Keep your contributions by your side, and…"
Evelyn leaned down again to whisper in Beast Boy's ear.
"See? Female supervillains and cleavage—they just work together so well," she said, then straightened up again and turned around. Still moving in time to the music, she slipped her skirt off, leaving her wearing nothing but her black underwear. She turned back to face Beast Boy, a huge grin still on her face, and moved around to kneel behind him. He could feel her body pressing against him through the open back of the chair, and gulped nervously again.
"Put your left foot out, keep it all in place, work your way right into my case…"
Evelyn nibbled a little on his earlobe, but Beast Boy just stared straight ahead. He had lost track of when he had stopped breathing, but it was beginning to become a problem. His mind was filled with conflicting images of Evelyn in her underwear, then Raven hitting him with something, then Raven in her underwear…
OhshitohshitohSHITohshitohshit, Beast Boy thought.
"But when you find you bled me, skip on by…"
"Come on, Beebs, relax," Evelyn whispered in his ear, barely audible over the music. "Why are you only ever so uptight around me?"
"Stroke me, stroke me…"
"You are attracted to me, right?" Evelyn said. "I know you are, because I look just like Raven and you're attracted to her—she doesn't acknowledge it, but deep down she knows that, and since I'm from deep down inside her too, well…"
"Give me the business all night long…"
Evelyn changed positions again, so now she was sitting in front of Beast Boy staring directly into his eyes.
"Is it the eyes?" she asked, batting her four eyelids for demonstration. "That's it, isn't it?"
Beast Boy gulped but said nothing.
"You're so together, boy…"
"They make me look inhuman, don't they?" Evelyn continued, with a rueful grin. "Then, because I look like Rae, they kind of make her look inhuman."
Evelyn leaned closer to Beast Boy to whisper directly into his ear again. He couldn't see it, but a wolfish smile spread across her face.
"Well guess what, kiddo—she is inhuman," she hissed. "She's a half-demon. Get used to it!"
"…man, you're just a sinner now…"
Evelyn pulled away from Beast Boy for a moment, letting him process her words, and then suddenly tore off the tape covering his mouth. Before Beast Boy could yelp in pain she leaned back in, planting a kiss firmly on his lips. He whimpered a little, the images of Raven hurting him that were running through his head abruptly becoming more graphic, but Evelyn ignored him, letting her tongue play across his bottom lip.
"Stop that NOW!" said a voice, cutting through the loud music like it was nothing.
Evelyn's eyes widened in surprise and she turned her head to look towards the source of the voice. Raven was standing in the doorway, a look of pure, unadulterated fury on her face. An aura of glowing black energy jumped and crackled around her, discharging randomly and destroying whatever it touched—a particularly large discharge caused a visible crack in the doorframe, which had been made out of the same specially-designed steel alloy as the rest of the tower.
"Oh, hi Rae, how are…" Evelyn began, but Raven cut her off, using her powers to slam her against the nearest wall and hold her there, two feet off the ground.
"Better listen now, said it ain't no joke, let your conscience fail ya, just do the…"
With a snarl, Raven whirled and sent an almost completely uncontrolled surge of power towards the CD player, blasting it apart like it had been struck by an atomic bomb and cutting off the music in mid-verse. She turned back to glare at Evelyn.
"Um…" Beast Boy said, lamely, but Raven didn't look at him. Instead, a tendril of black energy extended from her body and severed his duct tape bonds like they were tissue paper.
"Beast Boy, go back downstairs," Raven said, still not turning to look at him. "Evelyn and I need to have a little chat."
"Uhhh…just so you know, I didn't…" Beast Boy began, but when Raven finally did turn to look at him he was stopped instantly by the expression on her face.
"I said GO!" she shouted, and Beast Boy scrambled for the door. Once he was gone, Raven turned back to Evelyn, who she still held firmly against the wall, hanging about two feet off the ground. Raven had expected her to struggle, or at least be angry, but Evelyn showed no signs of resistance—rather, she just smirked silently at her. This was the last straw for Raven.
"What the hell were you doing? Taping Beast Boy up so you could, what, seduce him?" she yelled. "What is wrong with you? Now everyone is going to think that I…uurgh!"
"Gee, Rae, you seem pretty angry," Evelyn said with a smug smile. "Isn't that my job?"
This stopped Raven in mid-rant, and she stared at Evelyn in surprise.
"What are you talking about?" Raven asked cautiously.
"Your anger, Raven," Evelyn said, as sweetly and innocently as she could manage. "Didn't you transfer it into me?" Raven was speechless, and Evelyn continued.
"But if it's in me, you shouldn't be getting angry anymore, right?" she said.
"The…the spell didn't work?" Raven asked, her uncertainty showing clearly. "No, no, I was sure that it…"
"Oh, the spell did work, Rae," Evelyn said. "It transferred all of the representations of your dark emotions, your dark avatars if you will, into me perfectly. It's just that you don't understand how those avatars, or any of your other emotion representations really work."
"What? But my meditation…"
"Oh, yes, you go through your head every now and then to make sure they aren't getting into trouble, but have you ever really stopped to figure out how they work?" Evelyn said, with a small chuckle. "No, of course not. I'm essentially made out of a bunch of them, so I know how they work, but you just recite your spells, do your meditation, and satisfy yourself with the fact that everything seems to be working okay."
"So, are you going to tell me how they work, know-it-all?" Raven said, glaring at her. Evelyn chuckled again before continuing.
"Of course. Your avatars are splinter personalities created in your mind from the raw psychic energy, in the Freudian sense, that is created by each of your emotions. The stronger emotions, like anger, get their own avatar, while the secondary emotions like laziness and rudeness aren't strong enough, so they have to combine together to form mixed avatars."
"Yes, I know all that," Raven said, irritably. "Get to your point already."
"As I said, these avatars are made up of the raw psychic energy created by your emotions, and they exist as harmless abstract outlets for those emotions," Evelyn said. "Basically, they get to act out in your head so that you don't have to in the real world, since that would cause your powers to go berserk. But, are your avatars the source of your emotions?"
Raven opened her mouth to say something sarcastic, but paused and furrowed her brow in thought. Evelyn smiled knowingly.
"Yes, you see it now, don't you?" she said. "That spell of yours transferred all the psychic energy stored up in your dark avatars to me, but it didn't transfer your ability to feel those emotions. You've spent the last week or so restocking your supplies of anger, so to speak, and I bet that now, if you were to go into your head, you'd see the beginnings of a totally new anger avatar, as well as ones for your other dark emotions. In a few more days, you'll be right back at square one."
"But the spell can still purge my system, right?" Raven asked dazedly. She was in a bit of a state of shock.
"Well, yeah, but it will just create more evil clones of you to make your life difficult," Evelyn said. "Unless you kill us, of course, but that would violate your precious moral code, wouldn't it?"
"I suggested killing you when you first came into existence, remember?" Raven said, but she didn't sound certain. Evelyn snorted derisively.
"Sure, but you didn't mean it," she said. "You act all dark and stuff, but you're still one of the good guys at heart. You can't kill me."
"So then the spell only…" Raven began, but Evelyn interrupted her.
"It only made a completely evil version of yourself, and left you with no benefit in the long run," she said, and smiled. "Things did work out nicely, didn't they? Can you put me down now?"
Raven sagged and began to release her telekinetic hold on Evelyn, but then a thought struck her. She straightened back up and pointed an accusatory finger at her evil twin.
"Aha! But you're going after Beast Boy!" Raven said. "Love is not a dark emotion, so you can't be completely evil! If I'm becoming darker again, then it looks like you're getting lighter!" Raven grinned triumphantly, but Evelyn only laughed, causing Raven to frown perplexedly.
"Oh, Rae, you silly girl! First off, you're not becoming darker again, you never were any less dark than usual since your ability to feel your dark emotions was never gone," Evelyn said. "Second, the reason I'm going after Beast Boy is not love, it's lust. I did say that that particular emotion was a part of me. Now let me down already. Your telekinesis is chafing me."
Raven sagged again, for good this time, and let go of Evelyn. As she dropped to the floor, Evelyn gave a small chuckle.
"By the way, nice admission to loving Beast Boy," she said with a smirk. Raven's eyes widened.
"What? No! I never…I just said that you loving Beast Boy wasn't…" Raven stammered, but Evelyn interrupted her.
"Yeah, yeah," she said, waving her hand dismissively. "I know it's just a mild attraction. I was a part of you, remember? Geez, you're easy to mess with, you know that? Now get out of my room—I still have to eat my sandwich and I'd like a little peace and quiet."
Raven glared at Evelyn for a moment before turning to leave the room. She stopped in the doorway and glanced back over her shoulder.
"I'm going to make sure you get at least another week added on to your confinement for this," Raven said with obvious malice.
"Shoo! Eating now!" Evelyn said from around a mouthful of sandwich. Raven glared at her for another moment and then left the room, closing the door behind her and leaving Evelyn chewing in the gloomy darkness of her room.
"Mmmm…turkey…"
-END CHAPTER FIVE-
Author's Note: Oh, so that's what it meant that the Whipped soundtrack gave Evelyn an idea (note: The Stroke by Billy Squier, which is the song that Evelyn plays, is on the Whipped soundtrack).
Anyway, I think it's pretty obvious what parts are the ones that might push this chapter a little closer to being rated R (Evelyn's parts, actually—ooh, bad joke). However, as I said before, while this chapter is definitely deeper into the jungle that is PG-13 than some of my past chapters, I do not think that it goes so far that it needs to be rated R. There are no particularly vulgar swear words, there is very little violence and absolutely no blood, and while there is a bit of a semi-striptease, there is no nudity (where I said Evelyn was just in her underwear, I am classing bras as "underwear"—for comparison, I would also class boys' undershirts as underwear). Some people might say that Evelyn's suggestive behaviour is enough to make it R rated, but I would call those people prudes.
That said, this is not my website, and if the FanFiction admins (or whatever they might call themselves) think that this should be rated R, I will be more than happy to submit to that. It's not like it actually means anything anyway, since there are no barriers keeping kids away from stories rated R—a bright five-year-old (or even a dumb one) could find his way onto a rated R story. I feel that it must also be noted that a bright five-year-old can also find his way onto sites that would warrant a much higher rating, the internet being what it is. Viewed in that light, this chapter doesn't seem so bad, does it?
This was actually one of the scenes that I had planned out in my head long before I started writing Split. Some of the details like trying to distract Beast Boy with Peeps are new, added at the spur of the moment to connect this chapter with past ones, but the basic idea of Evelyn "kidnapping" Beast Boy and doing the little striptease to The Stroke was around before I started writing this chapter. Actually, I've always kind of connected the song to some kind of strip club scene—maybe I've heard it in that context in a movie somewhere along the line. I just kind of applied that to the basic idea of Split, and voila!
Right, so there was quite a bit less of the funny and more of the drama this time around (as well as some rather unfortunate exposition—sorry folks, but I could see no way around it). That's kind of where this will be headed from now on. Next chapter, for instance, everything will go to hell. So, yeah, tune in next time!
To My Reviewers:
Ultimate R-Man: I never got into DBZ, since there's only so much screaming-while-building-up-power-for-the-super-mega-death-attack-for-five-episodes that I can handle before I have to hunt down Akira Toriyama and end the madness. That reminds me—did anyone else notice the Akira (the movie, not Mr. Toriyama) reference in "Employee of the Month"?
ravenrocs4eva: Well, Raven still hasn't fully dealt with Evelyn, but next chapter might see the end of things. I don't want to give away the story, though. And as for your evil monkeys, can they defeat my cadre of snow-hating ninjas? As much as I hate to perpetuate the myth that Canada is just a frozen wasteland where it snows all the time, I do kind of live in the snow belt (which includes some of the northern States, too, actually), and I do kind of get tired of the white shit. Thus, the snow-hating ninjas. Evil monkeys beware!
CrAzY aUtHoR pErSoN: Yes, I think Peeps might be in league with the devil or something. Yet, for all their evil, they still make crappy henchmen. Ronald McDonald might do better, but there's only one of him, so you'd have to make clones or something, and that's just a pain in the ass.
palekel: Did you want to be Beast Boy in this chapter, too? Aside from the getting hit on the head from behind, of course.
Soni2: I'm glad you like this story so far. I hope that going for the drama doesn't kill it for you. You're right on about the spells not doing what Raven intended, as you can see from this chapter. Next chapter, things will go even more wrong. (Oh, suspense! Eeee!)
Gespenst: How's this for Evelyn annoying and manipulating Beast Boy?
Blackbird: Evelyn's evil will be showing up next chapter, for sure. I had thought it might make it into this one, but she still just looks crazy. And horny. Oh, well. And I completely get the linguistics stuff. I've even seen stuff online with maps of the States showing which regions used what words for things (from an American study, of course, so it didn't show Canada—I feel so neglected).