Disclaimer: Noodles!
Chapter forty-two! Yay! I'd say as far as the plot goes, this is a pretty important chapter. So, enjoy! The battle scene seems pointless, but really, it's there for a reason.
Poor Cy. I feel bad for him. He's filling in the lighthearted bits of the conversations for BB and acting as the voice of impartial reason for Rae. He must be exhausted.
Note to Kazzers: Yep, it was a little bit of a reference to suicide in chapter 41, and you got it! Good for you!
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Beast Boy had not left his room in three days.
It had been nearly three weeks since Raven's departure, and Beast Boy had finally lost all desire to act like a normal human being.
"BB, come outta there!" Cyborg called, beating a large mechanical fist against the door.
"No. There's no reason for me to, so why should I bother?" Beast Boy asked, his voice emotionless, from inside his room.
"Because we're worried about you, man! How long are you gonna stay in there? You haven't left that room in three days! Are you turning into Rae or what?" Cyborg asked, crossing his arms impatiently.
"No, I just want to be left, alone, that's all!" Beast Boy informed his friend, his tone leaving no room for argument.
"Sounds like Rae to me," Cyborg said. "Come on, at least humor Robin for a while and eat one of these fake meat things Star keeps making, won't you?"
"I don't want any tofu," the voice droned from inside the room. "Just go away, Cy."
"BB, you are not gonna turn into one of those reclusive zombie-Goths. Not on my watch," Cy said. "Just let me in, will you? I just wanna talk."
There were sounds of movement from inside the room, and the door slid open. Beast Boy looked up at Cy through weary eyes. "What?" he asked.
Beast Boy had a strange, underfed look to him, seeming almost sunken in, and he seemed a lot paler from lack of sun and food. Cyborg gave an overly-exaggerated 'eek' noise.
"God lord, BB. You lost 300 pounds in there! And I'm guessing you haven't been under a sun lamp in a while? You look like a seasick Rae."
"Very funny," Beast Boy commented with a slight twitch of his mouth that might have concealed a smile.
"Jesus, what are they doing to you in there? Sucking your soul out through your mouth?" Cyborg asked, raising his eyebrow.
"Are you gonna sit here making jokes, or is there something you wanna talk about?" Beast Boy asked.
"Come on BB, what happened? Where's the guy I know?" Cyborg asked.
Beast Boy smiled slightly. "Maybe he's hiding behind the emotionless mask so you'll stop bothering him?" he offered.
Cyborg allowed himself a smile at that. "So, what's going on lately?" he asked.
"I have a lot on my mind," Beast Boy explained, looking at the floor.
Cyborg sighed, dropping a hand onto Beast Boy's shoulder. "Look, I know Rae hurt you, but that's no reason to sit in here punishing yourself."
"I'm not punishing myself."
"Look me in the eye and say that," Cyborg said.
Beast Boy sighed. "OK, so maybe I am a little bit. But what else am I supposed to do?"
"Try to move on with your life. You will love again, BB. She's not the last girl in the world."
"She's the last girl for me," Beast Boy muttered. "She is the only one."
"Come on, don't you think you're being a little melodramatic?" Cy asked.
"No! I could never love anyone else like this!" Beast Boy said with a sigh.
"I know," Cyborg sighed. "Come on, maybe some tofu will make you feel better."
Beast Boy moaned. "Again with the tofu?"
"Hey, it could work," Cyborg argued.
"Oh, OK," Beast Boy gave in with a small smile. "Just because you say so."
"Somehow I thought you wouldn't be able to pass up that stuff," Cyborg grinned, heading in the direction of the living room. Beast Boy followed him halfheartedly.
"Hello, Friend Beast Boy!" Starfire said happily, jumping up from the sofa as her two fellow Titans entered the room. She threw her arms around him and squeezed until his eyes literally bulged out of his head.
"Hi," Beast Boy choked with what oxygen he had left in his lungs. He walked slowly over to the sofa and took a seat.
"Wow, Cyborg. You got him out of his room," Robin said. "Who would have thought it was possible?"
"It wasn't easy. Our BB put up quite a fight," Cyborg said with a wink, hopping onto the sofa beside him and putting his feet on the coffee table.
"Want some of this tofu-filled culinary delight?" Robin asked, holding a plate burdened with a soy dog up in front of Beast Boy.
"I'm not hungry," Beast Boy said as his stomach have a terribly exaggerated growl of starvation.
"You haven't eaten in three days. Don't give me that bullshit," Robin said, handing the plate to the changeling. "Eat."
Beast Boy sighed and took the soy dog from the plate, tearing a bite off with his teeth. When the food touched his tongue, he found it impossible to stop. The natural drive to fill himself took over and he devoured the soy dog like a crazy man, barely pausing for breath in between bites.
"Not hungry, huh?" Robin asked with a slight smirk on his face, passing Beast Boy another soy dog. Having gone without food for three days, Beast Boy literally couldn't stop. It wasn't until he was halfway through his fourth soy dog that he found the willpower to stop eating long enough to speak.
"Thanks," he said, the satisfaction of a full stomach pulsing throughout his body.
"It's good to see you doing something human again," Cyborg said good-naturedly, rubbing Beast Boy's hair into even greater disarray than normal.
The room was suddenly filled with the louder, ear-splintering sound of the alarm. A Titan Alert. Once more, Jump City was in trouble. With a sigh, Beast Boy placed the plate with his half-eaten soy dog on the coffee table.
"It seems like there's an Alert whenever we try to have a discussion. Fate must despise us or something," Cyborg joked, standing up.
"Let's just go," Robin said with a shake of his head.
XXX
"What is he doing?" Beast Boy asked, raising an eyebrow at the sight before them. Plasmus was standing a few yards in front of the four Titans, seizing cans of strange, unknown chemicals and smashing them against the floor of the warehouse. Their contents were spreading farther and farther, and the Titans backed up to avoid being drenched.
"I don't know, but he certainly does seem to adore toxic waste," Robin said with a half-smile, pulling a few disks from his utility belt and holding them ready in his hand.
"Watch out for those chemicals, BB. Remember what happened last time," Cyborg warned him, the end of his cannon glowing blue, ready for fire. Starfire's eyes and hands glowed green with power and she drifted several feet from the ground, and Beast Boy morphed into a bull. The three stood silent in anticipation, waiting for the two words that would begin the next battle in the relentless pursuit of justice.
"Titans, go!" Robin called out, voice echoing through the hollow reaches of the old warehouse. This alerted Plasmus to their presence, and he whipped around with a loud, unintelligible grunt. The four flew forward, eager to bring Plasmus to his knees. Robin hit his glob-like, shapeless head with three disks in a row, freezing it. Cyborg blasted the frozen head with a shot from his sonic boom, and the frozen mass shattered, giving Starfire time to fire several starbolts into his massive red stomach before the head regenerated. Beast Boy lunged forward in his bull form, slamming into the enormous left leg of the monster and splattering it everywhere. Plamus fell for a moment, and the three attacked him with relentless fury until the leg restored itself and he rose up, carelessly striking the changeling with the back of his hand. Cyborg caught his friend in midair and placed him safely back on the ground.
Plasmus reared up with a roar of fury at the attacks on him and slowly began to rip himself apart, hunks of red goo falling to the floor with loud, sloppy thuds and coming to life as more and more smaller versions of Plasmus. When the entire body had become around 60 smaller forms, they struck, flying forward, ten or more assaulting each Titan.
"This isn't working!" Cyborg shouted as he hit the Plasmuses around him with a series of blasts from his cannon. They regenerated even quicker than the original Plasmus, and they were on him in no less than five seconds.
"I know. Just…keep at it!" Robin instructed, hitting the Plasmuses with his bo staff. One of them grabbed it and wrenched it away from him, engulfing it with its gooey neck. Robin whipped out a few birdarangs and threw them at the monsters, but they only sunk into the slimy bodies and fell out of sight.
Beast Boy stood in the center of the ring they had made around him, transforming into assorted animals but none of them could seem to get any control over the gooey red force. An emerald gorilla slammed a fist into one's chest, creating a dip that soon refilled, and then was knocked back against another Plasmus. It began attempting to engulf him. With a squeak, he leaped away and into the center of the ring once more, transforming into Beast Boy and staying as far away from them as he could.
Starfire rose up above her Plasmuses, blasting them with her starbolts and attempting to knock them to the ground. One gave a strange gurgling noise and then reeled back, spitting a glob of red slime at her. It hit her and she was knocked to the ground, struggling to her feet and blasting herself clean of the disgusting mess. She rose up above them once more, flying off to the left. She retrieved Beast Boy from the center of the ring he was in and dropped him to a clear place, then rescuing Cyborg, and then Robin, who was the farthest away.
"Thanks, Star," Robin said and the other two nodded in agreement to his words.
"You are welcome," Starfire said with a smile. The four were distracted only for a few seconds, but when attention turned back to the battle, they saw exactly the consequences of this mistake. Surrounding the four in an almost solid wall of small, separate Plasmuses, the 60 stood, already advancing slowly on the Titans.
"We need to retreat! There's no way we can do this!" Beast Boy said hopelessly, staring around in worry as the huge crowd advanced on them.
"Yes we can! Titans, stand your ground!" Robin shouted. The Plasmuses grew nearer and nearer, and then suddenly, before the Titans had a moment to react, they pressed in on them, engulfing them, pulling them into the depths of the crimson glop, each sinking into a lucky Plasmus as the other 56 or so stood and watched.
"You still want us to stand our ground now, Robin?" Cyborg asked sarcastically as they sunk farther in.
"Yes. We'll think of something," Robin said, willing himself not to struggle and make himself sink faster.
"You don't get it, do you? We're finished! This is it! It's over!" Cyborg said bleakly, throwing his hands in the air as best he could.
"Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos!" came a voice from somewhere out of their range of vision. The four Titans were surrounded by a warm, black force and lifted seemingly effortlessly out of the creatures and raised high in the air, placed on a stack of crates out of the range of danger. Raven then turned her attention to the Plasmuses, black cloak billowing out into the air behind her as she raised her hands once more. With another blast of her energy, several Plasmuses were knocked back, but it was not enough. Three at once hit her with jets of red slop, and she smacked into the ground hard, splintering a section of floor.
"Maybe we should-" Robin began to the other Titans, whose looks of shock were as pronounced as his own at her sudden appearance, but then Raven wrestled herself to her feet, her psychic energy slowly lifting the red mess from her body and dropping it to the floor. Her pain was obvious, but she held control over it.
Raven rose above the heads of her foes once more, intense concentration pulling her facial features into a look of focus. Several deep breaths, and Raven raised her hands gracefully into the air. "Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos!" a white light issued from her hands, knocking her back a few feet with its power. The white force flew forward, engulfing all of the Plasmuses at once. Straining slightly, sweat cascading down her forehead, she lifted them all up nearly into the rafters. With a wave of her hands, the Plasmuses collided with each other, becoming one, slowly developing into the normal Plasmus. When this was done, Raven slowly lowered him to the floor, still in his white cloud. As he touched the ground, the energy surrounding him turned from white to a bright red, and he began to writhe in frustration, but was immobilized completely in seconds, body temporarily paralyzed by her power.
With this finished, Raven released him from her energy and lifted one hand. In a few seconds, several lamp posts surrounded by black sped in through the large door of the warehouse. Raven expertly bent the metal posts around Plasmus' motionless body with her powers to prevent escape as he shouted incoherent grunts of resentment at her, obviously trying to move but to no avail.
As soon as he was secured, the red energy around him returned, and this time when it left him, he began to squirm as he regained the ability to move. He still threw his murmurs of hatred at Raven, but they did not phase her in the least. She moved down to stand with her feet on the ground.
Raven stood still, staring at Plasmus for a moment, a look of relief flooding her features. She stood motionless, cloak and hair blowing in the slight breeze that entered through the warehouse doors, and then she toppled backwards and fell with a soft thud to the floor, eyes rolling back as she lost consciousness.
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More soon. I am horrible, because I think that could be considered a cliffy.