GOOD NEWS: I am now the proud owner of Teen Titans: Complete 1st Season on DVD! BAD NEWS: The Titans game for the PS2 had been delayed till 4/4/2006 :-( Oh well.
"Have you heard of this 'Harveyville' before?" Starfire asked while soaring next to Raven. "I do hope the people there are rather friendly."
"I'm sure they are, Starfire." Raven said reassuringly as the two Titans passed the "NOW ENTERING HARVEYVILLE CITY LIMITS" sign. Raven had assumed Harveyville was merely going to be a smaller, more quaint version of Jump City. She was partially right, but with heavy emphasis on "smaller" and "more quaint."
Harveyville was a throw back to simpler times, to say the least. A small town with maybe two traffic lights, decaying brick buildings and pickup trucks everywhere. "This is Harveyville?" a slightly puzzled Starfire asked. The Tammaranian had only been used to the hustle and bustle of a thriving metropolis like Jump City, so a backwoods town like Harveyville was a bit of a shock to her.
"We're either in Harveyville or Hell." Raven replied dryly, as she landed with ease on a nearby sidewalk, followed by a still confused Starfire.
"I do not see any phones of paying." Starfire noticed, observing the almost empty sidewalks. "Perhaps we have come at a bad time?"
Raven surveyed the small town only to confirm Starfire's fears, there didn't seem to be any pay phones anywhere. There was, however, a building across the street on a nearby corner. It was all brick, no more than two stories tall and had a dimly lit neon sign that read "PA'S GENERAL STORE", with the P flashing off and on.
"I'm willing to bet there's a phone there." she said, as they crossed the street for the general store.
"CLOSED – WENT TO GET A DRINK – PA" the sign hanging on the locked doors of the general store read.
"Oh this is not good..." Starfire moaned "The store of general is closed! Now we shall never find the telephone from which to call!"
As always, Raven was the voice of reason. "Starfire, calm down. The sign just says he closed early and went to the bar to get something to drink. We'll just find him and ask to use his phone, assuming of course the bar doesn't have one."
Starfire gasped as if Raven had somehow suggested some unspeakable horror of horrors. "Friend Raven, surely you jest! We are not of the legal age to venture into such an establishment!"
"We're just going in there to see if we can't use a phone, it's not like we'll be doing jello shots." Raven countered. Starfire nodded slightly, her mind puzzled at why anyone would wish to be shot with jello, but decided that Raven knew what she was doing. "Very well friend. I will follow."Starfire said simply, still unsure of the idea of venturing into the bar.
Robin sighed as he leaned up against the hulk of twisted metal that was once considered the T-Car. A quick glance of his watch showed that Starfire had Raven had been gone for about twenty minutes now, leaving him stuck on this deserted country road with Beast Boy, who was now in the form of a cow.
Indeed, Beast Boy had morphed into a cow and was in the middle of a field quietly mooing with another cow, conversing with it on whatever cows feel comfortable talking about these days. "I need a vacation..." Robin muttered quietly to himself.
It didn't take long for Raven and Starfire to find the bar, a place named 'UNCLE JED'S WATERING HOLE'about half a block away from the general store. Even from standing outside the place, Raven could already smell thick cigarette smoke and loud country music being played live at ear shattering volumes.
Taking one last breath of clean oxygen, Raven pushed open the door to the bar and instantly felt all eyes in the place zero in on her and Starfire. The empathic girl grit her teeth as she sat down on a nearby bar stool, Starfire nervously sitting next to her.
"Well hey there pretty lady! What can I get ya?" the bartender asked. He was a rather tall man, with salt and pepper hair, a barrel chest and sported a bit of a Southern accent. This struck Raven as odd considering Jump City is on the West Coast.
"First, you can stop calling me 'pretty lady', my name is Raven. Second, I need to use your phone." she said, her voice dripping with ice. The bartender just chuckled at Raven's assertiveness, putting down the shot glass he had been toweling off. "Need to call home, eh? Don't worry your pretty lil' head over it...I'll getcha the phone." and disappeared into the back room.
"Raven...I am finding it most difficult to breathe in here and people seem to be whistling randomly in my direction." Starfire whispered. Raven clenched her fist, resisting the urge to have one of the whistling hick's beer bottles explode in his face. The urge became even more tempting when she felt a rough callused hand on her shoulder.
"Touch me and that hand will never touch anything again."
The hand suddenly left her shoulder, whoever was behind her deciding it would be best not to push his luck. Almost immediately afterwards the bartender returned from the back empty handed, slowly shaking his head. "Sorry ladies, but our phone is busted. Only two other phones in this here town and that's over yonder at Pa's General Store and I believe Pa himself has one back at his residence..."
"You only have three phones in the entire town?" the pale girl asked incredulously. The bartender merely shrugged. "We're just simple folk here. If we want something, we just go over to their house and ask, I reckon."
"Please friend, do you know where we might be able to find the Pa?" Starfire asked, sensing Raven's irritation. "Sure do pretty lady! He's over there in the corner playing darts. He's the gentleman in the PRO-BASS hat." Starfire nodded, smiling at being called a pretty lady.
Raven slid off her bar stool and glanced around the thick haze of cigarette and cigar smoke, the noxious cloud stinging her amethyst hued eyes, as she tried to pick out and locate Pa. Most of the men in the bar had returned their focus on whatever they were doing, though a few would catch quick glimpses out of the corner of their eyes at the two girls.
Pa was in the corner of the room drunkingly tossing darts at the game board, laughing at random jokes with his drinking buddies.
"Perhaps I should talk to him." Starfire offered. "You seem to be having the bad mood."
"That obvious?" Raven replied sarcastically. Though Starfire was right, she's much better at meeting people for the first time.
"Umm..excuse me, sir. Are you perhaps the Pa?"
Pa turned around and sized up Starfire and her outfit, his eyes getting slightly larger. When he spoke, his voice was slurred with a drunken lisp.
"Sweet statutory! Who..wh-who are you?" he slurred.
"Hello friend! My name is Starfire and this is my dear acquittance Raven. We were curious if we could use the phone from your store?"
Pa merely stared back at them as he let this information soak into his brain. He had heard her words perfectly, but his Budweiser induced inebriation was causing him to process information a bit slower this particular night.
"Uhh...my phone?" he finally spit out. "Yes, sir. Your phone. We would be most grateful if we could use it." Starfire replied sweetly.
Scratching his head, Pa looked at his friends for advice who merely shrugged in their own drunken stupors, unsure of what to do. "Well...I suppose." he said finally. "Though I don't have my keys anymore..."
Raven felt like a vein was going burst in her temple. "But you locked the doors to your store. You had to have the keys on you to do that." she said.
"I did?" Pa said to himself. "Oh yeah...that's right...I did...but uhhh...my wife stopped by to take them from me. So I wouldn't be drivin' home drunk or nuthin...she left my truck here though."
Raven sighed deeply as she knew there was only course of action left to take.
"How far away do you live?" she asked
"Dude! Cows tell the greatest jokes.." Beast Boy said laughing, returning from the field. Robin didn't reply, just kept staring straight forward withhis arms crossed over his chest.
"You're not still mad at me are you?" the green changeling asked.
"No." Robin replied sternly.
"Duuudddee! I told you I'm sorry! So I read the map wrong..it's a simple mistake."
Robin was unmoved. "If you say so." he retorted, just as stern. Beast Boy's ears sagged as he sat down in the grass on the side of the road, using a stick to trace "GL + R" on the gravel in front of him. The two Titans sat like this in complete silence, till a large van pulled up next to them.
"Greetings fellow travelers!" the man in the passenger seat spoke from his rolled down window. He had brown, shoulder length, unkempt, stringy hair with a green bandanna tied around his forehead. "What brings you to our corner of the universe?"
His face still set in stone, Robin just replied "Waiting for some friends."
"Well fear not brother, for me and my colleagues here are on our way back to our place and we have a phone you can use to call for help." the stringy hair man said. At this point, Beast Boy stood up from his crouched position, making himself visible to the stringy haired man for the first time. "No, it's cool, dude. Our girlfriends are getting help in Harveyville."
The stringy haired man's jaw dropped, his eyes widened with surprise at the sight of Beast Boy.
"Uhh...dude, you ok?" Beast Boy asked nervously.
Stringy haired man didn't reply, just slowly made his way out of the van and approached the jade skinned prankster, running his fingers over his skin to make sure it really was green and not painted.
"Your skin...it's green...and your ears..." stringy haired man said in awe.
"Ok dude, you're waaaay creeping me out..."
Stringy haired man didn't reply, instead he instantly fell to his knees and with his arms outstretched begin to worship Beast Boy, causing the confused changeling to take a step back. "Uhh...Robin? A little help here?"
Robin stepped in between Beast Boy and stringy haired man, intending to get the bottom of this. "Just what exactly are you doing?" the Boy Wonder asked. Stringy haired man looked up, his eyes wide with amazement.
"It's just like the prophecy foretold! The Mighty Green Emperor has come from outer space with his loyal servant, The One with No Eyes...and they have come to take us back to our home planet of Squiddly Spooch in the Nebula Prime system!"