Disclaimer: I own nothing. Not even these stupid clothes I'm wearing. They're all gifts… dang, I'm poor.
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She screamed.
Dick immediately shot out of his comfy chair in his living room. His cape billowed behind him, and Dick became increasingly aware of how irritable these tights were. Dashing over to the door, he reached for the doorknob and thrust it open.
"Star!"
A tall figure hurried in through the open door, bulldozing Dick over in their haste. He hit his luxurious carpet with a loud thud, the breath being quite forcefully knocked out of him. When he opened his eyes, his vision was muddled with ten of the same thing, but a mass of bright red hair stood prominent from everything else.
"Oh, Robin, truly your house is most frightening! It was an excellent choice for our 'Horror of the Halloween'!"
"Thanks," Dick gasped. "Star, could you please… get off?"
Kori suddenly realized her situation. "Oh, Robin, I am most aggrieved! I hope I have not hurt you."
"No," Dick said, both grateful and disappointed as she stood up. "I'm fine." He paused as he, too, stood, but was suddenly unsure of what to say. "Well, I'd tell you to come in, but I guess you already are."
"You could invite me in," said a voice beside them.
Dick and Kori jumped.
"Raven!" Kori greeted, embracing her friend in one of her infamous hugs. "I am enthralled at your arrival!"
Raven was the only one in their odd group of five that had not been given a nickname. She had flat-out rejected the idea, though agreed to call the others by their desired names if it pleased them.
"Star…" Raven gasped, "air…"
"Star, where's Black and Ryan?" Dick asked in an effort to help distract the girl. Kori was the only one among them with siblings.
"Robin," Kori chided, releasing her friend. She didn't like it when her friends called her sister "Black", a nickname they had invented due to their dislike of Kori's older sister. "Her name is Amanda, and it was her turn to care for Ryan this Halloween. They are treat-or-tricking together."
"Trick-or-treating," Robin corrected instantly, used to mistakes like this in her speech. Everyone understood that Kori was a little slower than most, and very polite. She was always worried that she would accidentally offend someone without realizing it because she was mentally impaired, so she tried to be as nice to everyone as she could.
Amanda, however, was the polar opposite of her sister. Because Kori had never been quite with it, Kori gained much of the attention in the Tamaran household. Amanda's attention—craving personality couldn't handle this, and she had developed a deep dislike of her younger sister because of it.
Ryan was the youngest in the family. He was more like Kori than Amanda, perhaps because they were closer in years. Kori's kid brother hung out with them sometimes, and he had really become everyone's little brother. This is why when Kori announced that Ryan was with Amanda, Raven and Dick were not thrilled.
"You should've brought him, Star," Dick said. "We wouldn't've minded Ry joining us."
"I'm not sure it's wise to keep letting him spend time with your sister." Raven never called Amanda "Black", but never called her by her formal name either.
Screaming prevented Kori's response—high-pitched, feminine screaming.
"The boys are here," Raven said with a roll of her eyes.
There was more screaming. A pause. More screaming. A pause. More screaming. A pause. Viktor and Garfield came in sight, and the five made eye contact.
More screaming.
"Guys, c'mon, we get the point," Robin said.
"Dude, that was awesome!" Garfield said as he and Viktor joined the rest of them.
"Rob, you sure know how to make a haunted house! Bet you got Kori real good," Viktor said.
"It was most frightening!" Kori agreed.
"Bet you got Rae better!" Garfield said, nudging his dark-haired friend.
"It was lame," Raven said shortly.
Garfield scorned. "That's only because you normally live in a haunted house." He turned to Dick. "Don't worry, dude, it was awesome."
"Thanks, but don't tell me. Bruce did the outside." Bruce was Dick's adopted father; he hadn't told anyone what happened to his real parents, not even Kori. She had asked once, but he froze for a moment and then walked away. The others didn't even bother trying; if he wouldn't tell Kori; they would never know. Kori and Dick had been "best friends" since middle school. Back then, Dick had been less open than Raven was. He was an emotionless box who didn't talk to anyone. Then Kori transferred and began talking to him. At first he didn't talk back, just looked at her like he'd never seen anything like her. Then his gaze softened, and he started listening to her. In time, he actually spoke back. No one could forget the elated look on Kori's face the day Dick finally spoke. Her eyes sparkled like only Dick could make them, and she walked with a skip in her step for the rest of the day. Since then, things had only moved up. No one could remember any serious argument between them; there had always been the little things like Amanda's nickname, but nothing of real note.
"So let's review," Viktor said as he walked in and shut the door behind them. "Robin is, surprisingly, Robin." Dick had obsessed over Batman and Robin secretly for years, and they only recently discovered his addiction. Since he resembled the sidekick to a great extent, they had nicknamed him Robin. "Star is… some alien chick." Kori had been dubbed the light in everyone's life; they had all had some kind of problem when they first met her, and she brought everyone together and helped them smile again. They were not, however, going to call her "Light", so "Star" was born. "Raven is… Death, I guess? Or something of the sort." Raven shrugged. "BB is a dinosaur… and that is one kiddie costume, by the way." Garfield had always been obsessive with animals. He was the president of the animal rights movement at school, a dedicated vegetarian, and the self-proclaimed king of tofu. He had easily been dubbed "Beast Boy", though even his nickname had a nickname because they felt "Beast Boy" to be too long. Hence, most of them referred to him as "BB". "And I'm a robot." Because of his infamous mechanical father, Viktor was raised amongst machines. He learned everything about them, and was now affectionately labeled a freak because of his drifting between the jocks and the geeks. His constant group of friends, however, were those before him, and they had taken his mechanical fondness into the affectionate nickname of "Cyborg", though "Cy" was their usual reference towards him.
"Please forgive my interruption, but the snacks are ready if you are hungry," said a wearied voice from the door leading deeper into the eerie mansion.
"Alfred," Robin greeted his butler. "Yeah, lead the way."
The five teenagers followed Alfred through the doors he had appeared through, and down the darkened hallway that was lit solely by a ghostly candlelight. The shadows flickered around them, the eyes of those in the portraits boring down upon them. The walls, ceiling, and floor were stained with blood, and the smell of something dead drifted lazily throughout the corridor. Cobwebs lined the candles and corners of every nook and cranny they passed, and a faint screaming penetrated through the walls as the mansion's first trick-or-treaters dared approach the forbidden mansion. Garfield and Viktor stayed particularly close to the group, looking with distinctive awe at the decorations which spelled their unmistakable death. Kori stayed particularly close to Dick, grasping onto his arm whenever she heard the screams. Raven seemed to be perfectly comfortable, and she followed Alfred through the hallway as though nothing was in the slightest way wrong.
"Here you are, Master Dick," Alfred said, taking a right, opening the door, and bowing them inside. "Please enjoy yourself."
"Thanks, Alfred," Robin said.
"Yeah, thanks, Alfy!" Garfield said, rushing by to get to the table littered with food.
"Please, Beast Boy, do not eat so much! We shall be doing the treat-or-tricking tonight, and you shall be sick!" Kori warned.
"Trick-or-treat," Robin correctly instantly.
The doorbell rang.
"Excuse me," Alfred said, leaving the room.
Raven leaned against the wall, watching as Garfield and Viktor quickly began demolishing the food laid out for them. Garfield buried his hand deep into a bowl of chocolate snacks, but then suddenly froze. There was an unintelligible cry, and Garfield shrieked, snatching his hand back.
"IT HAD ME! IT HAD ME!"
A hand protruded from inside the candy bowl, growled again, and then retreated.
"Yeah, BB, it had you," Raven said with a smirk. "A fake, child's toy had you."
Garfield murmured something inarticulate, giving Raven a deadly look.
"Rob, these cookies are delicious!" Viktor credited. "Taste just like old-style home cooking!"
"Good," Dick said, "because I made them."
"You did?" Kori asked in surprise, hurrying over to her robot-dressed friend. "Please, Cyborg, might I try some?"
"'Course," Viktor said, handing her one.
Kori took a bite of the cookie, and the sparkle only could Dick could bring flared. "Robin, they are most enjoyable! Please, might I have the recipe?"
"'Course," Robin said, smiling, only the faintest tint of pink on his cheeks.
The doorbell rang again, and moments later, they could faintly here the famous Halloween words. It must have been a large group, for the five to hear them so far away from the door.
"When can we go?" Raven asked.
"Yeah, I want candy!" Garfield's attention was immediately diverted from the food before him to the treasury outside. "And we are so toilet-papering some houses. Can we borrow some toilet paper, Rob?"
Robin looked skeptical. "I'm not sure Bruce would approve of us using it to—"
The lights went out. Kori, Garfield, and Viktor screamed. A hand grasped painfully onto Dick's arm, and he recognized the sharp nails as belonging to Kori. The room had gone pitch black, though Dick didn't have to see Kori's face to know she was panicking.
"What is this, Robin?" Raven asked in her usual monotone. "Some kind of amateur scare tactic?"
"I wasn't aware of any pranks on us while we're here," Dick said. "Maybe Bruce did something without telling me?"
"Robin, please, I am frightened," Kori said, her grip now so tight that all circulation was being cut off from Dick's arm.
"Don't worry, Star, I'll protect you," Dick said, gently removing her nails from his skin.
There was another scream.
"More trick-or-treaters," Raven said.
"No, that was much clearer," Dick said. "It was in the mansion, not outside."
"Robin, that sounded like—!" Kori began.
There was another scream.
"Oh, no," Dick said, the horror rising on his face, though none could see it. He left Kori's side and dashed to the door by memory, flinging it open and racing down the hall. This couldn't be good.
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A/N:
Hello everyone! I was suddenly inspired on Halloween night to write a Teen Titans Halloween story, so here it is.
The bad news is that I have done absolutely nothing since my last update of TLT. Yeah… I'll get around to it. But this has reminded me just how much I enjoy writing, so perhaps I shall get started on that soon… yes, that would be wise….
I haven't edited this, just so you know. I wanted to get the first chapter out as soon as possible. Please alert me to any grammatical errors you noticed, and that includes putting Robin where I should've put Dick and vise-versa. (For reference, if it's not in a quote, their real name should be used.)
Where should I go with this story? I have absolutely no clue. I had an idea in my head, but now I'm playing with the idea of another mystery. What do my reviewers want me to try? Please tell me some kind of preference, because I'm anxious to continue writing as soon as possible!
Thanks for reading, and review on your way out!
Riles