(Disclaimer: Meh, the usual.)
-CHAPTER NINE-
"Come on, come on…"
Robin was busily trying to pick the lock to Principal Baker's office. It was finicky work, and doing the flashy out-in-the-open superhero thing for the last two years had left him a bit out of practice, but it soon came back to him, and he had the door open in just under a minute.
Like riding a bike, Robin thought to himself with a grin. Now, let's see what we have here…
He slipped into the office, closing the door behind him, and cast his eyes over the room. He took note of a filing cabinet in the corner, but decided to start with the computer. He sat down in the wheeled chair behind the desk, and switched the computer on. After a moment, he was faced with his first obstacle—the system was password protected. Robin smiled grimly and took a small device from his belt. He plugged it into one of the USB ports on the front of the computer, hit a series of buttons, and in a matter of seconds the password barrier was overridden.
Well, I'm glad that worked, Robin thought. I'll have to thank Cyborg for that thing later.
He quickly began searching through the many files on the computer, but was soon overwhelmed by the sheer number of them. They mostly seemed to be soft copies of various forms and other paperwork associated with the running of Marsdale, but then Robin hadn't been expecting to find a file labelled 'Demon Summoning Project, Feb. 05' or anything as obvious as that. He sighed and resigned himself to what would probably be a long search.
OOO
Elsewhere, in a shadow-filled hallway deep within Marsdale College, one of the many security cameras went about its business, whirring softly as it tracked back and forth. Suddenly, a shadow that was significantly darker than the rest appeared next to where the camera was mounted, and grew until it was just large enough for someone to fit their head through. That person was, of course, Raven. As she poked her hooded head out of the small portal, she quickly looked around to make sure that nobody was there, and then turned her attention to the camera.
It looks normal enough, she thought. But it definitely feels odd. It's like some part of me is being pulled into it.
As Raven stared at the camera, she noticed that there were three wires extending off the back and into a hole in the mounting.
Hmmm…that's one for the power source, and probably only one for the video feed, so what's the third one for? she thought.
Still puzzled, she pulled herself back into the portal and disappeared, leaving the camera alone to whirr in the darkness.
OOO
38…39…40…41… Beast Boy counted to himself as he flew along a dimly-lit hallway beneath the main body of the Marsdale campus in his fly form. 42…43…44…45…okay, so that's forty-five cameras I've counted so far, time for the next level down.
Beast Boy was mapping out the lower levels of the school, finding as many security cameras as he could. He would never remember their exact locations, of course, but fortunately they were all set up in a very repetitive pattern, so all he had to do was remember that pattern. This was still something of a risk, considering that it was Beast Boy who had to do the remembering, but after seeing the same pattern repeated over and over so many times it was probably safe to expect him to remember it.
Down through the ducts, and 46…47…48…big security room thing… he thought. Hold on! Big security room thing?
He buzzed into the room to investigate. So far all the rooms he had come across were just regular storage rooms filled with normal school stuff, but this one contained row upon row of monitors, showing what were obviously video feeds from the various security cameras. The security guard on shift was fast asleep at his post, but Beast Boy was still careful as he explored the security room—he had noticed a camera mounted on the ceiling, and didn't want to blow all his hard work now. There was also some sort of weird machine sitting in the corner that Beast Boy could not identify. However, saying that Beast Boy could not identify it wasn't saying too much, and he realized this, so he decided to just take note of it and carry on in his scouting mission, leaving the more thorough investigation to Robin and Raven. Further down the hall, and several cameras later, he noticed another large room that didn't seem to be used for storage, and then another, and another. The third one had its door closed and locked, and Beast Boy was unable to crawl underneath, even in his fly form—the doors on these last few rooms were heavy-duty security doors that sealed up tight when closed and could probably take a blast from a grenade without suffering any major damage.
Huh, I guess that if an evil spell was being cast around here, this would be the place for it, Beast Boy thought. I wonder what's going on behind that door, though.
He tried once again to get in under the heavy door, but his efforts proved futile. Even the ducts leading to the room were blocked off with a fine wire mesh. He decided to move on, and passed another few rooms like the last, except that they were open and empty. Finally he came to a large, impressive looking door that was undoubtedly even tougher than the security doors on the last few rooms. It looked like it could stand up to not only a grenade, but probably a tank as well. If Beast Boy's fly form had had lips, he would have whistled in amazement.
Whoa. This door looks important, he thought. It also breaks the pattern for these lower levels—none of the other floors have a door here. It must be for something special.
Beast Boy tried the ducts again, but again his passage was blocked my wire mesh. There also didn't seem to be any further floors for him to explore.
Huh. End of the road, I guess, Beast Boy thought. Oh, well. Looks like I'll just have to go back upstairs. Robin and Raven will probably be waiting for me, anyway.
With that thought, he buzzed off through the ducts, up towards the surface and away from those mysterious rooms.
OOO
"Right, so I didn't find anything," Robin said. After a few hours of scouting around the school, the three Titans had reconvened on the roof, away from the security cameras, to meet and share information before heading back to their rooms.
"Me neither," said Raven. "I couldn't find any major source of magical disturbance, even when I'm looking for shields or other interference. The cameras were a dead end, too, although I did find that they all feel weird, and also that they all have an extra wire coming out of them that I can't place."
"Hey, maybe that has something to do with that weird machine I saw in the security room downstairs," said Beast Boy.
"Security room? Weird machine?" asked Robin.
"Oh, yeah, I found a bunch of stuff we should probably look into later in the lowest level of the basement," Beast Boy said. "There were a bunch of rooms with lockable doors, one really big, important looking locked door, and a security room thing that had some kind of weird machine in it."
"Hmmm…it's definitely worth a look," Robin mused aloud. "Okay, that'll be what we do tomorrow night—you got the security camera layout, right?" Beast Boy nodded.
"Excellent. So, for our next little scouting session, Raven, you check that machine in the security room in case it sheds some light on those cameras, I'll check those rooms to see if there's anything that might help us, and Beast Boy, you'll be trying to get into that big door," Robin said, and Raven and Beast Boy nodded in assent. "Right, so let's get some more sleep before we have to go to class. See you in the morning."
With that, the three Titans separated, Raven heading back to the girls' dorm, and Robin and Beast Boy heading to the boys' dorm. All three of them hurried, since they only had a few more hours to sleep before class started, and they wanted to make the most of that time.
OOO
"And then to enter Rome, Caesar crossed…anyone? Anyone? The Rubicon. So with that move, the Roman Triumvirate completely disintegrated, and then in the year…"
Raven was bored. There was no way around it. Boredom permeated her every cell, penetrating to the very core of her being. It was unavoidable—it was as much a part of her now as her right arm. She had long ago given up trying to amuse herself. She was not an experienced fidgeter, like Beast Boy, who was busily drawing what looked like poorly-rendered two-dimensional tanks blowing up an irregular square that was labelled 'school'. Even Robin had resorted to doodling, although his drawings looked much more technical, and he used his ruler a lot. Raven, on the other hand, had spent most of her life trying to suppress the desire to fidget while she spent long hours meditating. Speaking of meditating, she had tried that, of course, but the constant drone of the teacher's voice was too much of a distraction. She was used to short periods of relative peace punctuated by loud noises, usually caused by the other Titans, not a continuous irritant.
Part of her boredom was due to the fact that she already knew all this stuff, or at least a version of it. She knew the interesting version, too, not this boring crap with nothing but dates and singular events, as detached from reality as…well, Raven couldn't think of anything more detached from reality than this drivel that was currently substituting for history. It was like trying to think of the world without colour, and shape, and solidity, and…
Ugh! Raven thought. This is a story filled with drama, political intrigue, battles, betrayal, and murder! How is even possible to make this uninteresting?
"Miss Roth? Do you know the answer?" the teacher asked, breaking through Raven's thoughts. Raven looked up in shock.
Wait, he's asking particular students now? she thought. When did that start?
"Um…Brutus?" Raven said, lamely.
"Very good. Now, moving on…" the teacher said, and Raven tuned him out again.
Whew. That was close, she thought. Good thing this is so predictable.
Raven's thoughts were interrupted by the welcome sound of the bell, signifying the end of the period. She met up with Robin and Beast Boy as they left the room.
"Okay, okay, I can do this!" Beast Boy said. "I've made it through English and History already, and now it's lunch! Awesome! The day is half over!"
"Yeah, but after lunch is Phys. Ed. and calculus," Robin said, and Beast Boy shuddered.
"Oh, man, I hope we're not playing murderball or anything," he said. Raven cocked an eyebrow at him.
"What, no particular requests for Calculus?" she asked.
"Only that it not happen," Beast Boy replied.
OOO
The three Titans had finally gotten their lunch at the cafeteria, and now faced the inevitable difficulty of finding a place to sit. They eventually happened across the Holy Grail of high school lunch hours—a free table. They sat and ate in silence, although Raven had to stare Beast Boy down a few times when he looked like he was going to start talking.
Suddenly, Robin felt something cold and wet hit him in the back of the head and slide down his back. He turned to look and saw what seemed to be the remains of a ball of ice cream melting on the floor behind him. Raucous laughter came from across the room, and Robin looked up to see Garrett and his goons almost doubled over in amusement. Garrett had a bowl of ice cream in front of him, and was holding a spoon backwards, catapult style.
"You like that, you commie bitch?" Garrett shouted. "You're dead in gym!"
"Making friends already, I see," Raven asked. Robin groaned.
"Yeah, right," he said.
Raven smirked, and then caught sight of her shy neighbour, Catharine, walking along the aisle between the cafeteria tables holding her tray of food. Something about her seemed odd, though—the nervous look that Raven had seen yesterday was gone, replaced by a confident, even superior air. Raven frowned, but shrugged it off and pointed Catharine out to the boys.
"So that's your high-strung neighbour, eh?" Robin said. "Call her over. We might be able to find out what she meant when she told you there was something strange about this school."
"Don't rush her, though—she's pretty skittish," Raven said, and called out to Catherine.
Catherine just seemed to ignore her, until Raven tapped her shoulder as she passed their table.
"Hey, Catharine, remember me? Grace? Come on, why don't you sit here with us?" Raven said. Catharine made a disgusted noise in the back of her throat, and looked at Raven like she had just asked her to sit and eat lunch with slugs or something.
"Yeah, right. Who'd want to sit with you losers?" she said. She turned her back to Raven and walked off, eventually sitting with who Raven still referred to as the pop bitches. Raven stared after the girl for a moment, lost in complete confusion.
"She didn't seem all that skittish to me," said Robin, one eyebrow raised. "Are you sure that was the right girl?"
"Yeah, that was her," Raven said, still confused. "She was acting totally different from the way she was yesterday…"
"Maybe she has an evil twin!" Beast Boy piped up.
"Yeah, and only the evil twin goes to class, right?" Raven said, snapped out of her confusion by the chance to pick Beast Boy apart.
"Sure, why not?" Beast Boy said. "If I had an evil twin, I'd make him go to class for me!"
"I'm not even going to begin mentioning the holes in that explanation," Robin said. "Besides, it might just be that puts up a front during school so she doesn't attract attention, or maybe her behaviour last night was an exception, and this is what she's really like."
Raven wasn't convinced, though. She stared a little longer at Catharine's back where she sat with the pop bitches, who, surprisingly, seemed to have accepted her, but then shook her head and turned back to her lunch.
OOO
Dear merciful Azar, why did it have to be aerobics? And to shitty upbeat music, no less, Raven thought. The girls' gym teacher was trying to convince her to take part, but Raven had said that she would rather just run laps, if she had to do something at all.
"But all the other girls are doing it!" the teacher said. She was in her late twenties, although she would most likely continue telling people that until she was well into her thirties. She was a little on the short side, and was fairly muscular, although she still remained quite feminine. Her outfit, consisting of sweatpants, a hoodie, and a whistle on a string around her neck completed her image as virtually the stereotypical girls' gym teacher.
"That's true. However, most of the other girls here smoke, drink, and have underage sex. Should I do that, too?" Raven said. Flustered, and unused to having to deal with someone as intelligent (not to mention sarcastic) as Raven, the teacher just sputtered for a moment.
"Look, what I really need to work on is my stamina," Raven continued. "Therefore, I think that just running laps would be better for me right now."
"But…" the teacher began, but Raven interrupted her.
"Or, you could force me to do aerobics and I could take every opportunity to make your life as difficult as possible," she said. "Which will it be?"
The teacher's shoulders slumped as she realized that she had been defeated.
"Fine, run some laps," the teacher said. "But I'll be coming out to the track to check on you every once in a while."
"Yeah, yeah," Raven said, and took off for the outdoor track.
On the other side of the large gymnasium, the boys' class was engaging in various activities. It was basically free exercise time, so they were all engaging in their specialties. Beast Boy had found one of those little wheeled board things that are so popular with elementary school kids despite the necessary learning curve involved in order to stop running over their own fingers. After only a few minutes of whizzing around the gym riding the thing like a skateboard and bouncing off of anything or anyone who happened to get in his way, the boys' gym teacher had taken it away from him, and Beast Boy was now standing in line waiting for his turn on the springboard.
Robin, on the other hand, had immediately homed in on the gymnastics equipment, and had been on the rings for the last ten minutes straight. There was nobody else who wanted to use them, most of the boys being too busy playing basketball or screwing around on the springboard, so Robin had been free to defy as many laws of physics and biomechanics as he wanted. He was up to two minutes of holding himself straight upside down with his arms stretched completely perpendicular to his body when Garrett took notice of him.
"Hey, commie boy, why don't you try a real man's sport?" Garrett sneered from around his mouth guard. He was on the wrestling mat, currently holding a smaller boy in a full Nelson. Robin ignored him, and calmly launched himself upwards and let go of the rings, only to grab onto them again after performing a full back flip. The boys' gym teacher, who had been watching Robin intently, nearly swallowed his whistle. Garrett, however, did not appreciate this display of skill, and continued to taunt Robin.
"Maybe you should join the girls' class, if you like gymnastics so much," Garrett called, ignoring the boy he was wrestling, who was desperately trying to tap out. "You're like some kind of circus freak!"
At this, Robin paused for a moment, and then let himself drop to the mat below. He turned to glare at Garrett.
"You want to wrestle? Fine," Robin growled, and picked up a mouth guard and padded helmet.
Garrett grinned wolfishly, and let go of his victim. The relieved boy quickly dashed off the mat, threw off his safety equipment, and ran to get in line at the springboard. Robin stepped onto the mat, taking note of the large white circle drawn on it.
"So, what rules are we using?" he asked. "Five second pin or driven out of the circle?"
"Yeah, sure," said Garrett with a grin. "Just to warn you, I'm the varsity wrestling team captain."
"Whatever," Robin said, standing at ease a few feet away from Garrett.
Angered by Robin's casual tone, Garrett charged. Robin sidestepped easily, and Garrett had to stop himself quickly to keep from running out of the circle. He turned and charged at Robin again. Again, Robin sidestepped, but this time he caught Garrett's wrist as he passed, turning his motion into a deft aikido throw. Garrett flipped over and landed hard on his back, only a few feet from the edge of the circle. He got back to his feet with a growl.
"Hmph," Garrett snorted. "Trying to throw me out, eh? Well, you can do that, if you want to win like a pansy. Why don't you try actually grappling?" Robin shrugged.
"Okay," he said, and dropped into a loose ready stance.
Garrett snarled and charged again at Robin. Expecting him to dodge again, Garrett was surprised when Robin actually moved into his attack, shattering his forward momentum with his shoulder and hip before Garrett could bring his own attack to bear on him. Robin grabbed his arm and moved to throw him judo style over his hip. Garrett prepared to turn the throw to his advantage, but was surprised again when Robin actually spun him a full three-sixty so he landed on his stomach, knocking the wind out of him. Robin dropped onto Garrett's back, and casually counted to five as Garrett struggled to break free, but Robin only let him go after completing the count.
"Well, it looks like I won," Robin said with a satisfied smile as he stood up. Garrett growled as he got to his feet.
"You got lucky," Garrett said.
"What, all three times?" Robin asked innocently. Garrett growled again.
"How about some boxing? You won't be so cocky after I beat the shit out of you, commie boy," he said, and went to get two pairs of boxing gloves. Robin glanced questioningly at the gym teacher, but he just shrugged.
Right. He's a rich kid, so he can do whatever he wants, Robin thought. The teacher won't dare break it up if Garrett really gets violent, so I'll have to take care of him myself.
Garrett threw one pair of the boxing gloves at Robin and put his own on.
"Just on the wrestling mat?" Robin asked, and Garrett gave an affirmative grunt. "Are we treating the edges of the mat as the boundary of the ring?" Another grunt.
"Okay, then," Robin said as he stepped back onto the mat. "Let's get this started."
Garrett once again charged at Robin, but this time he came in swinging. Robin ducked under a right hook and planted a light jab on Garrett's ribs. This only enraged Garrett even further, and he turned and charged again. Robin dodged several wild swings, and then landed another jab, harder than the first one, on Garrett's chin—Garrett had a slight advantage in reach, but Robin's sense of timing and distance was honed by years of crimefighting, as well as extensive combat training under Batman. Garrett threw a hard right, but Robin spun away from it, planting a neat backhand across Garrett's face that spun the taller boy around.
Garrett shook his head to clear the spots floating in front of his eyes, and decided that it would be wiser to let Robin come to him. He assumed a defensive stance, his fists held up to cover his face, his elbows kept tight to his ribs. Robin grinned, and launched his own attack.
Time to show this jackass how it's done…
Robin threw a quick feint at Garrett's face, hitting his upheld fists lightly. Garrett immediately threw another of his hard rights for Robin's face, which he had left exposed, but Robin was no longer where Garrett thought he was. Robin had dropped into a low kung fu stance, letting Garrett's punch pass only an inch over his head, brushing his spiky hair, before rising up into a hard uppercut that snapped Garrett's head back and threw him backwards several feet. Garrett landed on his back and lay still—he had been knocked unconscious.
The gym teacher picked this time to intervene, and told Robin to go hit the showers while he tried to bring Garrett around. Robin shrugged and headed for the locker room, feeling the stares of the other boys on his back as he went. Then he heard Beast Boy's voice and smiled.
"Whoohoo! Who da man?"
OOO
"Cyborg, can you hear me?" Robin whispered into his communicator. The three infiltrating Titans were in the deserted library again, but he thought that it would be better to be too safe than to be caught.
"Cyborg, this is Robin, checking in," Robin said, and finally Cyborg's face appeared on the communicator screen.
"Aww, man, couldn't you have waited until a commercial was on?" Cyborg complained. Robin groaned.
"Please try to take this seriously, Cyborg," he said. "I took your undercover mission seriously."
"Yeah, but you take everything seriously!" Cyborg said.
"He's got you there," Beast Boy said, and Robin glared at him.
"Anyway, how are things going at the tower?" Robin asked. "Any more possessions?"
"Actually, no," Cyborg said. "It's been really quiet."
"What?" Robin said, surprised. "Not even one possession? They were happening two or three times a day when we left!"
"Yeah, I know. They just stopped all of a sudden, almost as soon as you left," Cyborg said. "It's really weird."
"Hmmmm…that is weird…" Robin mused.
"So, anyways, Starfire and I are really, really bored right now," Cyborg said. "There's some good TV on now, but we resorted to playing Scrabble earlier. Man, Star kicks ass at that game. I think she might just be making up words, though."
"Oooh! Ooooh!" cried Beast Boy. "If you're looking for something to do, can you do my calculus homework?" Raven smacked him on the back of the head.
"Don't be stupid," she said.
"Actually, some nice easy high school calculus would make for an interesting change right now," Cyborg said.
"See?" Beast Boy said, but then frowned. "Wait, what do you mean 'easy'? This stuff is hard, man!" Robin sighed.
"Okay, getting back to business, we're going to go scout out the lower levels of the school tonight," he said. "We'll check in again tomorrow night. See you then."
"Copy that," Cyborg said, half-jokingly, and they cut off the transmission.
OOO
Later that night, the three Titans were exploring the mysterious bottom level that Beast Boy had found. Raven had teleported them all down there, and they had gone their separate ways, Robin to check on the locked doors down the hall, Beast Boy to try to get behind the big door, and Raven to see what she could find out about the weird security equipment that Beast Boy had seen during his reconnaissance.
Raven teleported herself into the security room in astral form, and seeing that there were no guards around, she blocked off the single security camera in the room and allowed herself to fully materialize. She stared for a moment at the wall of security monitors, but found herself drawn over to the odd piece of machinery in the corner of the room.
This must be what Beast Boy was talking about, Raven thought. It certainly doesn't look like standard issue equipment.
She reached out and gently touched the machine's casing, and got a blast of raw emotion for her trouble. She doubled over in pain, trying desperately to steady her mind. After a few seconds of concentration and chanting, Raven had succeeded in calming herself sufficiently to continue.
It's like there's just pure emotion stored up in that thing, like it's a battery of some kind, she thought. But where is it coming from?
Raven steeled herself to probe the piece of machinery again, and dove back in. Fighting the initial disorientation, she sent her mind along the pathways that were pouring the raw emotion into the machine. She followed one in particular, and ended up with what seemed to be a view of one of the hallways in the school. Her eyes widened in shock, and she pulled her mind back out of the machine and looked at the security monitors. Sure enough, the exact same view that she had just seen was displayed on one of the monitors.
That must be what the extra wires on the video cameras are for, she thought. They're collecting emotions through those cameras somehow, but why would they…
Raven's thoughts were interrupted by voices coming from outside of the room. She quickly slipped back into astral form and phased into the wall as a pair of guards stepped into the room. She watched from inside the wall as they chatted with each other, casually watching the monitors. One made his way over to the emotion battery, apparently to check that it was working properly. He began to turn to go back to watching the monitors with the other guard, but he paused and stared at the wall where Raven was hiding.
He can't see me, can he? Raven thought.
Yes, I can, little one, said a voice in her head, and her eyes widened in shock.
The guard grinned nastily, and his eyes turned blood red. He reached out, moving faster than Raven could follow, and put his hand through the wall, catching her by the throat.
OOO
After being dropped off by Raven, Robin had used everything he knew about gymnastics and stealth techniques to either avoid or disable the security cameras in the halls as he checked the locked rooms that Beast Boy had seen earlier. Most of them were completely empty, a few of them contained some tables and chairs, and even fewer contained piles of boxes, none of which held anything particularly interesting or helpful.
Robin was just about to leave one of the box-filled rooms when he heard voices outside the door. He dove behind a stack of large boxes just as the door opened and two men entered the room. They didn't look like security guards—they both wore long robes, with hoods that hid most of their faces in shadow. Robin kept quiet and listened to their conversation.
"…causing disruptions over the whole city," one was saying. "The boss figured that if we didn't clamp down on these unregulated possessions we'd attract attention. We couldn't outright stop them, so we just performed a spell to direct them in a way that could be controlled."
"That's pretty smart," the other said. "The boss really knows what he's doing."
"Yeah, no kidding," the first one said. "So anyways, we started out with some 'enhancements' to the security force.."
"Possessed guards? Very cool," the other interrupted.
"Heh, yeah. We've also been able to shut up a few of the more nosy students," the first one continued. "There was this one girl, she wasn't real mouthy or anything, she was a bit of a nerd, actually, but she was starting to catch on. So anyway, we grabbed her, stuck a demon in her, and voila! We have ourselves our very own spy in the student body."
"Nice," said the second. "And speaking of spies…"
The second robed man threw up his hand in Robin's general direction, and Robin suddenly felt like he was being gripped in a giant invisible fist. Somehow he was thrown forward, knocking over the stack of boxes he had been hiding behind, and sliding to a halt at the feet of the two robed men. The second man's grin was just barely visible in the shadows cast by his hood.
"I thought I felt someone else in here with us…"
Robin swore under his breath and reached for his communicator.
OOO
Beast Boy was crawling through the ducts in the form of a rat, nursing his mouth a little.
Okay, so gnawing through the wire mesh blocking off the ducts leading behind that big door might not have been the best idea, he thought. I hope the team has a dental plan.
He had been following the duct for a few minutes when he finally came to the end. It was blocked off with yet more wire mesh, and Beast Boy groaned.
Crap. Well, there's no way I'm gnawing through again, so…
The wire screen burst into the room, landing with a clatter on the stone floor, followed closely by the small, rolled up green armadillo that had smashed its way through. Beast Boy morphed into a fly halfway to the floor, and began buzzing around the room, exploring. It was an immense room, with a very high ceiling, and a few strategically placed candles and torches providing ample, if slightly flickering, light. It looked like the whole room had been carved out of the bedrock. A huge pentagram was drawn in the centre of the room, with a big rock at the centre, with what looked like chains bolted into it. A platform, carved out of the rock like the rest of the room, overlooked the pentagram, and was adorned with various arcane looking artefacts and symbols.
Whoa. This place looks like Raven's dream vacation or something, Beast Boy thought.
Just as he was heading back to the ducts to make his way out into the halls again to rejoin the other Titans, he heard his communicator go off. Beast Boy quickly looked around for any cameras, but he didn't see any, so he morphed back into human form to answer the call. Robin's face appeared on the small screen, looking anxious.
"Oh, hey, Robin, what's up?" Beast Boy asked.
"No time to explain, Beast Boy!" Robin shouted at him. "Go get Cyborg and Starfire! I can't get in touch with Raven—I think they already have her."
"Wait, who?" Beast Boy cried.
"No time! Get the others! Go!" Robin yelled through the communicator. Beast Boy heard Robin swear, and then the communicator went blank. It had lost the connection.
"Robin? Robin! Crap!" Beast Boy said, but his attempts to reach Robin were cut short when the door to the big room burst open, and half a dozen robed figures swarmed into the room.
Beast Boy leapt into the air, turned into a sparrow, and dodged a few fireballs thrown by the robed men.
Oh, great, they just had to know magic, he thought as he avoided another salvo of alarmingly accurate magical projectiles and dived head first into the ducts at full speed.
-END CHAPTER NINE-
Author's Note: Here's an extra long one to make up for all the time I left in between updates. Sorry about that, but as you'll see in what I have to say in this author's note, I've been hitting some major snags.
Well, I've seen a few little tidbits of information about the fourth season of Teen Titans, although none of the episodes themselves. All I have to say about them, with regards to Stalker, and indeed all of what I call Da Plan, is this: balls. I actually have a string of expletives on hand that, while they certainly express my actual sentiments more accurately, would probably be inappropriate to post. Some of them are even in another language (one of the benefits of having a Dutch father who insists on fixing the plumbing around the house by himself—other cultures are great, aren't they?).
Apparently, season four will have some heavy Raven stuff happening, and most of it will most likely contradict my ideas in this story, as well as Da Plan as a whole. This kind of thing always seems to happen to me: I come up with some neat stuff on my own about something I like, put some effort into it, and then get all those neat ideas deftly undercut by new developments in that something within, at most, a month or two. Perhaps what irks me the most is that since I haven't seen any of the new episodes, I don't even know exactly how I'm being undercut in this case, nor can I creatively change stuff around to make it fit together better. I don't even know enough to make any half-assed predictions about the way things will go in the cartoon—I only know that there will be some Raven-centred stuff involving Slade.
All this, along with some problems I've run into with the long term planning of Da Plan (specifically, the fact that I can't seem to see my way clear to giving Raven, or even most of the other characters, a happy ending, which is what I want to do), means that my desire to continue with Stalker and the rest of Da Plan has been waning considerably over the last few weeks. The thing about Stalker is that the whole thing is set up to lead into future stories that are part of Da Plan, and would leave a definite sense of incompleteness if left on its own, like leaving the last note out when playing a musical scale. I know I said that I hated leaving things incomplete (and I do), and I know that I don't necessarily have to stay in total agreement with the cartoon, fan fiction being what it is, but I am still sorely tempted to have the very next chapter consist entirely of "And then Trigon showed up and killed them all, the end." A cop-out, to be sure, but when my dislike for leaving things unfinished is rapidly being matched and even overtaken by my frustration with the story I'm writing, well, that's not the best of situations anyways, and a cop-out might be the best way for me to come out of this with my sanity relatively intact. Besides, even if I finish off Stalker, there will probably be the greater sense of incompleteness I mentioned earlier. I probably will finish off Stalker, though.
So, to recap:
1) Da Plan is my general scheme for a few linked Teen Titans stories, including Duplomatic and Stalker, eventually leading up to Raven's final conflict with Trigon, and then skipping ahead five years after Trigon's defeat to the next time Raven sees the other Titans (part of which is shown in my little preview thingy that was a temporary chapter 8).
2) I have the funny feeling that season four of the Teen Titans cartoon is going to brutally maul all my carefully thought out ideas for Da Plan.
3) I am an anal-retentive bastard who wants to try to stay as close to the cartoon as possible.
4) I'm starting to get discouraged with Da Plan anyway, and would actually much rather get started on a couple of new ideas I have that don't go into such a pivotal conflict as Raven vs. Trigon.
5) I will try to find a way to end Stalker satisfactorily without needing to go further on into Da Plan—I already have a few ideas. However, I will not go any further on into Da Plan. Please note: when I say 'end Stalker satisfactorily', I mean satisfactorily to me. You might not like the way I end it, but if that's the case you can always write your own version that ends the way you want. This is, after all, a fan fiction site, so you can do whatever you want, really.
6) Finally, cursing in Dutch is fun.
Right, so enough of that. On to respond to some reviews. (Oh, and yes, I am doing a bit of an "Another Brick in the Wall" theme with the titles of these past two chapters.)
To My Reviewers: First, just in general: I am so sorry about all this going back on Da Plan crap. I know I promised a lot of you some stuff later on in Da Plan, but I'd much rather give you guys some decent stories that I can really get behind. So, yeah, treat pretty much everything I've said until now about how great Da Plan was going to be as damn dirty lies. Lies, I say!
Blackbird: Well, it looks like a response to the preview won't really be necessary, at least on the level of content (although comments on the stylistic stuff will always be appreciated). What Robin ended up doing to Garrett is pretty much what I had wanted to do to all the jerks and idiots I knew all through high school, but never had the skill (or the cahones) to actually do. I'm the kind of person who always, always gets caught if I do something bad, since I'm not used to it, and even if I didn't get caught, I would actually make myself sick with guilt. Needless to say my mom had no problems with me as a kid. Hey, I actually like some of Billy Joel's stuff! Although he is a bit of a jerk…cough, cough, concert in Russia, cough. Celebrity tantrums just aren't cool. And it isn't a Hellmouth per se, but I guess you could say it's a do-it-yourself Hellmouth. Ah, hell, you'll see.