The Epic of Gauntlet
Part 2
"It's all Geek to me…"
By BobCat
Disclaimers: It ain't mine, that's for sure. Except for Gauntlet. THAT is mine.
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And in the tradition of Black and White, I shall now present for you a parody of the Teen Titans Theme. Enjoy.
Deedle deedle deedle deedle… you get the idea.
Gauntlet: What's with the organ music? It makes the song feel all… trippy…
When there's trouble you know who to call!
GHOST BUSTERS!
From their tower they can see it all!
TEEN TITANS!
They're the team on which you can bet!
Gauntlet: I didn't know X-Men was on yet…
Cause when the world needs heroes on patrol…
Teen Titans, GO!
They get powers when their rings combine!
WONDER TWINS!
Never met a villain that they liked!
'CEPT GAUNTLET!
They always save the day in time!
Savior: I'm in the background pictures this time!
Cuz when the world is losing all control…
Teen Titans, GO!
Gauntlet: When there's no evil, we like to slack,
Our truancy has caught us no flack,
I wonder how the Tower stays stable…
Singers: NO QUESTIONS! GO!
If your heart is black you had better watch out!
You can't escape the team!
When they catch you there won't be any doubt,
That you've been beaten by the teens!
Teen Titans, GO!
**********************
Robert sighed in a vaguely nostalgic way. "Ah, hazing. Man's favorite sport. Brought on by the desire to impede those who would replace you, one of the first examples in known history comes from the Greek polis, or city state, of Sparta. Here, warriors as young as 7 would be forced to engage in horrible and often deadly shows of strength and cruelty simply to survive to see 8. Over time, however, these brutal and often fatal rituals have been replaced by less fatal, although no less brutal, modern traditions, such as stripping naked, the so called Pig Day, over consumption and other fraternal activities."
As the other Titans observed Robert on the screen in the main security room, Robin could only smirk. "Who'd have thought that putting that guy in the isolation chamber for an hour would get him to wax academic?"
Starfire was somewhat concerned. "I do not know if this is such a good idea. I saw on the television that humans do not respond well to sensory deprivation. It tends to make them crazy."
Savior rubbed his still sore right arm. He had rarely had the experience of the Shimmer being fully perforated. He did not like it. Six hours past and he still felt like he had gone another round with Robin. "An hour isn't going to make him crazy… or at least, crazier."
Raven sighed. "I do not see the point of this. He is already a member. Why should we do this childish and pointless ritual?"
Robin typed a few keys on the terminal, bringing up a few scenes cut from their earlier fight with Gauntlet. "He is already a member, but it's vital that we get some idea of how he ticks. I mean, even though he did catch us off guard, he did manage to outfight most of us. If he goes rogue, I want to be able to beat him."
Cyborg said, "Hey now, you wouldn't have had that much trouble if someone hadn't made my Savior's whipping boy."
Raven gave her metallic comrade a sideways glare. "Stop mentioning that. I have already told you, I am sorry. I can't offer anything else to console you. However, the guilty party has been punished."
Savior grumbled. For missing the chance to reject Gauntlet's membership, Raven had cut him off from any physical contact for a week.
Beast Boy, having taken the form of a monkey, was hanging from the ceiling with his tail. He laughed aloud. "Noel, you are so whipped!"
Savior growled, "Shut up, or else I'll whip you."
The monkey cowered behind a heating duct. "I'll be good."
Robert, having taken a pause to gather his thoughts, launched his unending monologue in a new direction. "I shall now recite for you the whole of Homer's The Iliad, as translated from the original Greek by Robert Fagles." He cleared his throat.
"Rage… Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus' son Achilles, murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses, hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls, great fighters' souls, but made their bodies carrion, feasts for the dogs and birds, and the will of Zeus was moving toward its end. Begin, Muse, when the first two broke and clashed, Agamemnon lord of men and brilliant Achilles."
As he continued on with the tale of the battle of Troy, the other Titans could only blink in surprise.
Cyborg was the first to speak. "What the heck is he talking about!?"
Raven smirked. "This boy gets more interesting all the time. He is obviously well educated, yet his hyperactivity gets in the way of his logical thinking."
Robin shuddered. "I remember that book. Read it in school before we founded this team. It was not a fun read. How did he memorize it?"
Savior ventured a guess. "You remember everything you see, but you can't always recall it. I'm betting that cutting him off from the outside world is forcing him to look inward and he's seeing stuff that he didn't know that he forgot."
"So he isn't so much smart as bored."
Savior nodded. "Right, Cyborg."
Starfire was still worried. Of course, now that her fears about his sanity had been assuaged, she was more worried about that kiss he had stolen. She loved Robin. She was very glad that Robin did not know about her unintended lip lock. But what made her nervous was that she didn't know how Robert felt. She had observed humans in action long enough to know that they took couplings at least as seriously as Tamaranians. If Gauntlet wanted to court her affections, it would have serious effects upon team unity.
It didn't help that he had been so ambiguous.
*******************
Starfire suddenly stopped in mid air, holding the battered Gauntlet with her right hand. She prepared a Starbolt with the other. "I shall give you one final chance to surrender, villain."
Gauntlet looked down fearfully. "OK, OK. Just one thing."
Starfire dissipated the energy. "What?"
Before she could react, Gauntlet leaned over and kissed her full on the mouth.
Her eyes bugged out. "Why…"
Gauntlet shrugged. "Who knows. It could be that I like you, it could be fate. But most likely, it's the concussion going through four walls like that would give anyone. Now, if you will excuse me, I will now faint." And so he did.
******************
Starfire needed to find out his feelings, but could not risk doing so with Robin or any of the others around. That ruled out any action until the hazing ritual was over.
Beast Boy yawned. "OK, this is getting old. Can we get out the paddles now?"
Robin rubbed his hands together in an evil manner. "Oh yeah."
*****************
Twenty Minutes Later…
All the Titans stood in two rows, three on either side. Each one held a long, wooden paddle. A blindfolded Gauntlet walked back and forth between them. Savior was the spokesman. Having been in Gauntlet's shoes a few months before, he was more than willing to continue the tradition.
"And this is the Wreck of Hesperus." Sounds of whacking followed.
Gauntlet yawned. "Oh, I'm sorry. I thought I was being hazed, not massaged. My mistake."
Savior growled, "About face, go through again, for the Unblinking Eye!"
Gauntlet reached the other end. "Oh dear. Say, if anyone sees the hazers, could you tell them that there's a fly loose in here?"
"Crossing the Desert!"
"What, over already?"
"No! Now for the Paddling of the Swollen Ass with Paddles!"
"Hey, someone close that door. I distinctly felt a draft in here."
Raven, who disliked the whole exercise, was in the rare state of fighting back laughter as she saw Savior's reaction.
Savior cried out, "How the hell!? Six of us, all with paddles, whacking you for ten minutes! How could that NOT hurt!?"
Gauntlet gestured to his right arm. "Oh, this thing gives me a nigh impenetrable force field. You didn't know?"
Much cursing followed.
**********************
The Leap of Faith had been a miserable failure (it doesn't work when the leaper uses his force field to cling to the side of the tower before he fell more than ten feet). Also, Wonder Woman had installed a security system this time, making the Twenty Questions ritual less effective. Also, now having six members, there were arguments on who should get how many questions, so after ten minutes they just dropped it. Finally, they moved onto the one ritual that Savior had missed out on.
"Chug-a-lug! Chug-a-lug! Chug-a-lug! Chug-a-lug!" Robin, Beast Boy and Cyborg chanted as Robert slurped down the last bottle of the twelve pack of soy sauce.
"DONE!"
"HOORAY!"
As Gauntlet began to do a very undignified victory dance, Savior and Raven wept for the human race.
Gauntlet, of course, could not have been happier with his useless accomplishment. "Yes! Huzzah! I am the best! I AM SPARTICUS! I…" he stopped as his stomach made some very unpleasant noises. "am going to be going to the bathroom for the next hour or so. Hold my calls!"
As Gauntlet ran off, Cyborg commented, "I didn't know he had super speed."
Robin chuckled. "He doesn't. It's good to pay him back for that headache. I guess we have a new Titan."
Noel, who had been sticking to the shadows in his best Batman impression, revealed himself. "Robin, we need to talk. Now."
Robin queried, "About what?"
"This needs to be private." Noel nodded toward a stairway to the top of the tower. Robin nodded in agreement and the two left.
Cyborg swigged down some soda. "What do you think they're talking about?"
Beast Boy grinned. "Girl talk."
Noel roared, "I HEARD THAT!"
Beast Boy cowered. "How does he DO that?"
********************
Gauntlet bit back tears. "Wow. I am now an official super hero. This is the happiest day of my life! I mean, I did some super stuff before, but being on a team like this makes it more like a club and less like some guy punching out street punks. A little insanity and diarrhea is a small price to pay."
"Hey, you playin' the game or givin' expository banter?" After the hazing had been complete, things had kind of petered out (because of constant villainy, they had never actually finished a full hazing before, and thus had no ceremony for ending it), and Cyborg and Beast Boy were happy to find themselves another gamer. Gauntlet, while not the best, was random enough to constantly throw the other players off guard. Not enough to win very often, but it certainly kept them on their toes.
"Oh, I'm playin, Victor." Hitting the boost on his hover-racer, Gauntlet slammed into the rear of Cyborg's vehicle. Cyborg was catapulted forward by the maneuver. He couldn't steer at that speed and crashed into a wall, exploding in a brilliant display of digital graphics. "In fact, I'm winnin'." With that, his racer crossed the finish line.
Cyborg griped a bit, but since he had won the last four games he was at least a little graceful about his loss.
As victory music blared from the TV, Robert said, "Y'know, my Great Great Grandfather, Hiram Candide, invented the first video game platform during the 1890's. He called it the "Happy Whizz-bang Home Entertainment System." He died penniless because there weren't any TV's to play them on. He was just too ahead of his time. Nintendo stole his design to make their NES systems. By then, his patent was expired."
Beast Boy blinked. "You're kidding… right?"
Robert scoffed. "I don't make up stuff like that. It's all in the Candide Family Bible."
Before Beast Boy could tell Robert that he was full of it, the alarm blared.
Robin swooped in out of nowhere, giving the three a start. "Quick, let's go! There's been an attack at the Museum of Natural History!"
"AVENGERS, ASSEMBLE!" This earned Gauntlet some very odd looks. "Oops, sorry, wrong team."
Savior, Starfire and Raven were already en route, the former swinging about in his daredevil style, confident that the Shimmer would always catch him, the latter flying. As the ground bound Titans began leaping across the rooftops, Robin was reminded of his earlier conversation with Noel.
*********************
Robin finished ascending the stairs and instantly wished that Noel had picked a warmer spot for their meeting. At this height, the winds whipped across his naked arms, drawing goose pimples. Noel didn't seem to be affected. "This is your party, Noel. What's up?"
Noel paused for a moment, weighing his words carefully. "Robin, even though Gauntlet may seem like a total nimrod, we should be very careful before we trust him too much. If we ever should."
Robin nodded. "Besides his criminal record, we don't know him at all. Good advice, but it goes without saying. Why bring me up here?"
Noel reached into a pocket. "It's more than that. I went over the footage from the battle." Finding a sheet of paper, he handed it to his team leader. "I almost missed it myself, until I went frame by frame over the part where I entered the fight."
Robin took the paper and studied it. "It looks like he's panicking. Not surprising, considering that you were strangling him at the time. We decided that is was just luck that he punctured the Shimmer, remember?"
Noel nodded. "Yes, that's what we decided. But we were wrong. He got me by supposedly panicking and getting the right shape with that force field of his. But I looked at every other shape in detail. The one he got me with was the only one sharp enough to hurt anything. I had the Shimmer at maybe a millimeter in width, and he managed to hit it. Considering the size of his surface area, the odds are slim."
"So what are you saying?"
"What I'm saying is that he knows more than he lets on. That isn't saying much, but still." Noel pulled out a stack of smaller pictures. "He told us about his super strength, right? He whacked you in the head with just enough force to avoid a concussion. If he was really as inexperienced as he lets on, he would have probably snapped your neck as fast as he was going."
Robin shuddered, although not visibly. "True, but he did miss Starfire. Unless that was intentional…"
"Exactly. To have enough control to hit you that precisely, but miss a non-moving target like Starfire? It doesn't add up. There's something off about him, but until we can prove it, we'll just have to be on watch." Noel turned around, heading for the stairs. He stopped for a moment. "And Tim? Watch out for yourself. He gave you the most vicious attack, even though you presented no clear threat to him. He may have a particular vendetta against you."
*************************
After a few moments of awkward silence, Beast Boy, Robin and Gauntlet arrived on the scene. The others were already there (Cyborg drawing the ride with Starfire), and they were doing battle with the last thing any of them had expected…
End Part Two
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Cliffhanger. Take THAT!