Diclaimer: I do not own the Teen Titans.
Here it is, Chapter 11. Even more will be explained in this chapter. I hope it's not too boring, but just in case, please bear with me. The action's really going to start in the next chapter.
Chapter 11: More Explanations
"They're gone!" Cyborg exclaimed, running into the main room. Robin glanced up from the pancakes he was eating and looked at him questioningly.
Cyborg had a shocked expression on his face and Starfire was standing behind him nervously twisting her hands together.
"What do you mean?" Robin asked cautiously.
"BB- Beast Boy and Raven… they- they're gone!" Cyborg spluttered.
"Are you serious?" asked Robin, his eyes widening behind his mask. The two upset Titans nodded their heads in confirmation.
"Can't you track their communicators?" asked Robin reasonably.
"No, I tried, but I'm not receiving a signal," explained Cyborg, lifting his arm to try once more. He still didn't get a signal from their communicators. "It's like the communicators have been completely destroyed!"
Robin stood up suddenly.
"We need to go look for them. We'll go look for them in Raven and Beast Boy's usual hangouts outside of the tower," He told them.
"I do not think they will be in their 'usual hangouts'," replied Starfire nervously.
"Yeah, if they were than we would probably be able to get a signal. They wouldn't destroy their own communicators," agreed Cyborg.
"Good point… then we'll split up and look in different parts of the city," Robin decided.
The other two nodded and they went outside to look for Beast Boy and Raven.
Cyborg looked around the parks, Robin looked downtown and Starfire took the docks. They searched for hours, looking for anything suspicious. They searched every empty warehouse, every cave and every one of their usual hangouts.
"Have you found them yet?" Robin's voice drifted out of Cyborg's communicator that was built into his arm. Robin's face flickered onto the screen.
"I have not," Starfire's voice joined into the conversation, the screen split so Cyborg could see them both at the same time.
"Me neither," replied Cyborg.
"I am worried for our friends," said Starfire. Her voice was on the edge of tears.
Robin sighed, "Meet me back at the tower. We'll look for clues."
Starfire and Cyborg nodded in agreement. The screen went black.
Cyborg let his arm drop and sighed. He was worried; he wouldn't deny it. Two of his best friends had gone missing without a trace.
As he made his way slowly through the park, Cyborg got lost in thoughts of his friends. He turned reached the park entrance. The T-car was just a few blocks over. He was so lost in his thoughts that he didn't notice the girl running around the corner until it was too late.
Cyborg stopped when he felt a small body run into him. The girl fell the ground, but Cyborg only stumbled back a bit. The girl looked up from the ground and her eyes widened in recognition.
"Cyborg!" she cried excitedly, standing up.
"Do I know you?" he asked, raising his human eyebrow.
She looked slightly hurt by his reaction, and Cyborg felt a pang of guilt. He ignored the guilt though; he was too busy worrying about his friends to feel guilty about some random fan girl.
"No, but I've been looking for you all day. You weren't at the tower," she told him, her face turning from hurt to serious. Cyborg looked at her incredulously. She rolled her eyes.
"I know you're thinking I'm just some crazy fan, but I'm not. I can help you, Robin and Starfire," she explained.
Cyborg looked at her in disbelief.
"No offense, but we don't really need another team member at the moment, and we've got bigger things on our minds right now."
The girl looked a little annoyed now.
"Just hear me out, Tin Man!" she exclaimed.
"Fine," he replied, hoping to humor her so he could leave.
"I know where Beast Boy and Raven are," she told him.
His eyes widened.
Robin and Starfire stood in the garage, waiting impatiently for Cyborg to return. Finally the T-car pulled in. Cyborg stepped put, followed by a girl who appeared to be around their age.
She had shiny brunette locks and was dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt. Her skin was pale and you could just tell that she didn't spend much time outside. Still, she was quite pretty and when Robin saw her, he immediately jumped to conclusions.
"Cyborg! Now isn't the time to be picking up girls!" Robin scolded. Starfire also looked quite shocked by the girl, so shocked in fact, that she didn't point out to Robin that Cyborg wasn't picking her up… in fact he wasn't even touching her.
The girl blushed and Cyborg slightly glared at Robin.
"I haven't been picking up girls! She says that she knows where Beast Boy and Raven are," Cyborg explained, his voice raising slightly.
Robin looked slightly guilty and didn't reply. Instead he just ushered everyone inside the tower. He led them into the main room and made the girl sit down on the couch. Starfire and Cyborg took seats on either side of the girl, but Robin remained standing in front of her. He looked a bit intimidating.
"First of all, who are you?" he questioned her.
"My name is Alice," she replied. "I don't have a last name, so don't bother asking."
"Why don't you have a last name?" Robin continued to interrogate.
"My parents abandoned me when I was a baby. I don't know who they were, so I don't know my last name," she explained, rolling her eyes at the seemingly pointless question.
Robin looked her over. She was dressed in normal clothes, not expensive looking, but too nice for her to be from an orphanage or homeless.
She noticed his gaze and explained further,
"I was left on a doorstep. Frank Carson took me in, but I refuse to use his last name."
Robin nodded, storing this information in the back of his mind in case it was helpful later.
"How do you know where our friends are?" he asked, jumping to the point of the interrogation.
"Frank was the one who took them," she replied. They looked at her suspiciously.
"Why are you telling us this?" asked Robin.
"Because I know that what he's doing is wrong and I want to help you take him down," she replied confidently. They could tell she wasn't lying.
"Please, Alice, tell us the entire story," pleaded Starfire.
Alice nodded and took a deep breath.
"Like I told you before, Frank took me in when I was just a baby. I've always known that he wasn't my father… he told me the story of how he found me every night. As I grew up, he made me his personal assistant. He wasn't a slave-driver," she explained, seeing their shocked faces, "I just helped him by putting his books away, keeping the lab clean and sometimes getting groceries.He didn't let me leave the house much though. I didn't complain, because it's how I grew up… I didn't know any other life-style. I was 8 when he started wearing a black mask all the time. It reminded me of the one from Zoro, so I thought it was pretty cool," the Titans looked at each other, recognizing her description as the masked man. She continued,
"When I turned 15 he still didn't let me go outside much, but he did start letting me read magazines and watch t.v when I wasn't working. That's how I learned about the Teen Titans. I was watching the news and I saw some footage of one of your battles. Frank was watching with me.
"After that he started spending more time in his laboratory. He didn't let me come in anymore, either. He wouldn't even let me clean it. I started to get suspicious. One day when he was out doing something… I don't know what… I snuck into his lab and looked around. I was surprise when I saw the machine. It was huge, and I had never seen it before. He used to have a machine that looked a bit similar, but it was smaller and I had never seen him use it. Other than the machine nothing was different, but I was sure there was something I was missing, so I went into his office.
"You'd never believe what I saw! The walls were covered in pictures and articles about you guys! Mostly Beast Boy and Raven though. I looked through some of the articles and I noticed that some parts were highlighted. Mostly parts about when Beast Boy was the Beast and when Raven saved the world from her father. But the parts that were highlighted were never good… they were the ones talking about how Beast Boy lost control and about how Raven's a half-demon." The others looked at each other, they remembered how angry Raven and Beast Boy were when they found out that those things had leaked out to the media. Alice continued,
"I had to leave then, because he had come back. He almost caught me. For the next few days he started going out more often. Whenever he left I went back. I found things. Monster-type things. There were small ones, but the big ones were what scared me the most. There was one that looked like a bear and a wolf, one that was like a cougar with wings, and one that looked like a snake and a scorpion. I looked through his files on the monsters. He had named them Charlie, Fluffy and Cleopatra. I was a bit disturbed, but I kept reading anyway.
"As I looked through his research, I learned that he had somehow managed to… combine different animals with his machine. When they were combined they became stronger and usually bigger. He had even fine tuned it enough that their genetic structures were mostly stable."
The three Titans looked at the girl in horror. This was crazy. This man had supposedly learned to combine different animals that were stronger than their original forms? It couldn't be possible. But they could tell from Alice's face that she was completely serious, and it did answer their questions about the monsters.
"So why didn't you come to us then?" asked Robin incredulously. She looked down, ashamed.
"I still wasn't sure what he planned to do with the monsters. And besides that, he grounded me! He found me in the lab. I told him I was just cleaning, and he believed me, but he wanted to be careful. He didn't even let me watch t.v."
"What does this have to do with our friends?" asked Starfire, growing more worried by the second.
"He wants to combine their powers to make an unbeatable monster. He wants to take over the world with them."
"Why didn't you come to us sooner?" yelled Robin, standing up from the coffee table, where he had sat down during her story.
"I didn't know until just recently!" she defended herself, standing as well.
"Give her a break Robin!" added Cyborg standing up for the girl.
Robin looked a little shocked to be stood up to by Cyborg, and took a deep breath to calm himself.
"You're right. The important thing is where they are… and how he got into the tower to kidnap Raven and Beast Boy." Robin said.
"I think I can answer that one," said Cyborg. "He must have already been in the tower when I turned on the security system. The computers would have automatically assumed that he was just a guest."
Robin nodded.
"I guess the only thing to do now is to go get Beast Boy and Raven. How long do you think we have until they're turned into the monster?" he asked Alice. She glanced down at her watch and thought for a moment.
"He was still gloating when I left two hours ago, but that probably didn't last long. To get them hooked up to the machine he'd need to knock them out again, that would have been instantaneous, but he'd need to wait a couple hours until they wake up again. He can't fuse them until they're completely conscious. It would take them a couple hours to wake up, depending on how much of the sedative he injected into them, so if we leave now we should be able to make it before he merges them," she told them.
"Perfect. Everyone into the T-car!" ordered Robin.
They piled into the car, with Robin and Starfire sitting in the back and Alice in the front to give directions. Cyborg, or course, was driving.
She guided them to the docks. They stopped in front of an empty warehouse, next to it was a small house. Starfire looked up.
"They cannot be here, I have already searched all the empty warehouses. I remember searching this one as well," she told the girl.
"The lab is under ground," was Alice's only explanation. She got out of the car and led them all towards the small house. She hesitated a bit before turning the door handle. It was open and she stepped in, holding her hand to stop them from coming in.
"Frank? You up here?" she called into the house. She received no reply, so she waved for them to come in.
The inside of the house was small, but impeccably clean. They were standing in what seemed to be the main room of the house. A television and couch sat in one corner of the room, and they were in the middle of a small kitchen, that had only the most basic appliances. There were four doors. The closest one was small and most likely held cleaning supplies. Another door was open, showing them a small room with a mattress and blankets on the floor, surrounded by magazines. That was Alice's room. The other two doors were closed. She led them to the closed door on the far side of the room. She opened it to reveal a set of stairs that went down and turned to the left.
They all crept down the small stairway without talking. Eventually they reached the bottom. They were standing in an underground warehouse. On the far-left wall, there was a large metal cage. It was empty. On the right wall stood a large machine. Strapped onto two metal tables next to the machine, were Raven and Beast Boy. Their eyes were closed and they looked like they were writhing in pain, but they couldn't move because of the straps. They ran towards their friends, but were stopped by a large cat-like monster jumping in their path.
"Fluffy!" exclaimed Starfire, recognizing the monster.
"I thought we captured Fluffy?" said Robin, confused.
"Fluffy escaped," replied a calm voice. They looked towards the door they had just come from. Standing in the shadowy corner was Frank Carson.
The Titans immediately took a battle stance, and Alice gave Frank a Raven-worthy glare.
"Alice, don't make that face or it will get stuck like that," chided Frank.
"What are you playing at, Carson?" cut in Robin.
"My name is not Carson. I'm the Frightful Combiner!" he replied darkly.
"Frankly, I don't care," replied Robin snidely. "We're here and we're going to stop you and save our friends."
The Combiner laughed.
"You're too late. Any minute now they'll be turning into my monster, and then I'll be unstoppable!"
So, review if you liked it... or if you didn't... or even if you think it was just kind of 'eh'. Lol, I know it was pretty boring, but don't worry, the next chapter is better... I think. I'll try to update soon.