Shadows

Blank hallways endless flash over Julius's annoyed and aggravated dark eyes, his mind racing with thoughts of frustration and bitter rage. "Who does that bald headed smart mouth thinks he is anyway?" Julius snarled. The vivid memory of Gizmo and Mammoth assaulting the boy's relationship with Jinx flashed brightly in his enraged mind. Julius smirked "Wait till my science fair project arrives, then he'll see, I'll blow that techno twit out of".

A darting figure danced across Julius's purple eyes, the shadowy figure appeared and vanished in a matter of seconds. "What the hell?" the boy gasped. For a split second Julius could have sworn he saw a ghost running across the walls. Red eyes appeared and Julius screamed, he jumped back and quickly reached into his lab coat. WHOOSH! The dark red eyes vanished and along with the shadowy figure, darted down the hallways.

Julius raced after the shadow and pumped his young legs into a maddening rush, desperate to find out who and what that was. Gizmo snickered from behind "Perfect, the scuzz muncher is falling for it hook, line, and stinker. Okay, Mammoth, you're on next". A few floors up above, another dark little plan was beginning. The young sorceress, Jinx continued to angrily storm through out the academy in anger. Jinx was still mad at Gizmo's sneaking.

"Jinx, Jinx, hey Jinx wait up" Mammoth called. Jinx growled and turned around "What do YOU want? You got some nerve showing your mangy hide here after what you and that little garden gnome just pulled". Mammoth shook his furry face "No, no, really I wasn't trying to spy on you guys, honest. Gizmo just sort of dragged me along". Crossing her purple arms together, Jinx turned her face away with disgust scoffing "HA, yeah right".

The hulking brute bellowed like a blubbering baby. Mammoth cried loudly and smashed his massive fists into the ground, "You don't believe me, WAH you don't believe me" Mammoth wailed. Jinx gasped and shook her friend wildly "STOP IT, stop it, okay, okay I believe you sheesh. Was that really necessary?". Mammoth shrugged "Probably not, but it sure was fun". Jinx sighed "Look Mammoth, I'm dating Julius, get over it and move on already.

Whatever stupid reason you and Gizmo have issues with him, drop it. I'm dating him and there's not a thing you or anyone else can say that's going to change my mind. I don't expect you to love him like I do, but I don't think it's too much to ask you to just like him?". Getting up from off the ground, Mammoth hanged his head and shook it "no". Jinx smiled and patted Mammoth's shoulder lightly. "Thanks big guy, appreciate it" Jinx said.

Returning the pat as he placed his massive knuckles over Jinx's dark dress shoulder, Mammoth nodded as his female friend started to walk off. Mammoth grinned "It's all set Gizmo, I planted that little toy of yours on her just like you asked". The mechanical micro spider bot twitched on Jinx's black shoulder, before slipping its thin steel spider legs and slowly crawling. The spider bot was sneaking inside Jinx's pocket, searching for something.

A few moments of silent sounding rustling passed and eventually the micro mechanical critter had found what it was searching for. Without Jinx even noticing, the small spider robot hopped off her dress carrying the special key card Julius gave Jinx. The only means of entering Julius's high security student pad. Mammoth smirked as the robot spider crawled into his massive hands, and gave him the key. "This is going to be real good" Mammoth said.

Meanwhile……

Julius was running frantically after that dark, demented looking shadow, it terrified him in ways his mind didn't even want to know. But as much as he hated to admit it, Julius DID want to know about this shadow. "Hey, why else would I be following it?" the boy asked himself. The red eyed shadow creature slipped through the cracks of a large steel door, and entered the room. Julius frowned and removed his scatter blaster and blasted the door.

"DAMMIT" Julius cursed; the door was too thick to be blasted down. Scratching his dark blue and silvery hair, Julius thought up a plan, he removed his purple electro tazor gloves and used them to zap the door handle. The door's lock mechanism was fried and it automatically opened the door. Julius entered the room and quickly reached for the light switch, only to find that the power had been shut off. The boy reached for his gun.

PSST! A voice whispered, Julius panicked and fired his scatter blaster at the voice, destroying something in the dark. The whole room was completely blanketed in blinding darkness without any lights. The twisted shadow revealed himself, it was Kid Wicked. Julius gulped "Whatever you are, you're not coming near me you hear that? I'm not going to let you spook the living daylights out of me".

Kid Wicked zoomed forward and Julius screamed, firing another blast off. More silent destruction echoed around the room. Julius fired each time he saw Kid Wicked, and each time the shadowy student vanished and reappeared somewhere else. Julius started to sweat.

Every area the dark young boy had fired at ended up being destroyed, but it was so dark Julius didn't know who or what he hit. "Get out here right now so I can BLAST YOU" Julius screamed. The scientist spun around and wildly fired the gun. Kid Wicked darted left to right, up and down, around every angle and every area to dodge the blasts. Hundreds of small explosions and items bursting into splinters and broken glass was heard everywhere.

"What in blazes in going on in here?" a familiar voice said. Suddenly the lights beamed on and when Julius looked around, he discovered that Kid Wicked had disappeared. But further more, Julius discovered what room he was in. The room was Brother Blood's personal chambers. The white haired teacher gasped with eyes wide open, staring baffled at Julius and his scatter blaster. Blood angrily screamed "Julius, what the hell are you doing?

You've completely destroyed my room. My files, my robes, my private blueprints, well, what do you have to say for yourself?". Julius's face was totally white, paler and whiter then a ghost. Kid Wicked had lured and tricked Julius into entering this room so he could destroy it and upset Brother Blood. The diminutive genius Gizmo laughed from his room "Sucker, I can't believe that gunk eater actually fell for my little decoy.

Hacking into the school's main power supply and turning off the lights to Blood's chambers wasn't easy, but it was so worth it. I only wish I could see the look on that barf brained brat's face". Gizmo hopped off his bed and quickly grabbed a HIVE communicator off of his workbench. The little villain called into it "Mammoth, it's time for phase 2. Use Jinx's keycard and sneak into Julius's room and find his weapons, you know what to do".

Mammoth and Gizmo signed off the communicators, suddenly a massive force crashed into the HQ. Students screamed as they stumbled on their feet, feeling like the bedrock below them was shifting. Brother Blood snarled "Now what?", a HIVE soldier appeared "Sir, it's the Teen Titans, they've arrived. They are attacking our defense systems with an aquatic vehicle". The psychic teacher grinned "Well now, Cyborg has finally returned to us".

Julius gulped and put his blaster away, looking down in terror of his enraged master. Blood groaned "Forget about this debacle for now Julius, we've got Titans to trample. I want you to go to your room and grab every scatter blaster you can find. I'm going to equip all my HIVE soldiers with your weapons, that way we can give Cyborg and his friends a proper greeting. I want you to supervise this while head back to the central command center.

Bumblebee and have a special surprise for our young adversaries, now go". Nodding frantically at his furious master, Julius ran out and quickly headed towards his room. The boy gulped "Thank god for that, I thought I was a dead man for sure. Soon as I equip the troops with my guns and deal with the Titans, I'll check in on Jinx. Boy, she is going to be so proud of me once she finds out I helped destroy them". Julius smiled and increased his speed.

The hulking Mammoth quickly exited Julius's room just as he rushed past the hall, he smiled as he spotted his door. "There it is, oh hold onto your boots Titans cause your all in for a very big surprise" Julius smirked. The student grabbed every blaster he could get and quickly rushed them outside and down the hallway. If only Julius knew that his guns had been tampered with. Meanwhile, Brother Blood was introducing Bumblebee to Cyborg.

"You were my 2 top students at HIVE academy. But of course……Bumblebee wasn't a spy!"

"We never had a class together, you don't know what I can do"

"I was gonna say "The Sadie Hawkins Dance" but yeah, that too."

"Aqualad told you there was a double agent inside the HIVE, right? Well, you're looking at her."

Hundreds of golden suited, HIVE soldiers awaited behind closed steel doors, waiting for Julius to arrive. The dark haired genius rushed to the scene and waved his arms into the air. "I'm here, I'm here, and were all ready to go" Julius said. The soldiers smiled eagerly at sight of their new weapons, the scatter blaster cannons were handed out to each golden suited soldier. Julius smirked "Now then, let's show the Teen Titans what were really made of".

"I've got a fix on Blood's location, but we need to move fast" Robin said.

"Yes, I am hopeful we will not encounter more HIVE soldiers" Starfire said.

The Titans open the steel door and are confronted by dozens of new soldiers.

"You had to say something" Raven said.

Julius laughed "Arm your scatter blasters men, ready……aim……FIRE". Robin and the other Titans flinched as they waited be to be blasted apart by the guns, but the guns themselves exploded instead. The soldiers gasped as the scatter blasters literally fell apart in their hands. The young HIVE student cried out "No, what happened to my blasters? Someone's completely disassembled them". Robin raised his staff and shouted loudly "Titans GO".

As Julius and Robin battled together, Aqualad and Beast Boy were struggling in the compacting confinements of a garbage disposal like system. The heroes had been caught in the security system Julius had designed for the sonic resonator force field generator. The same security system Julius assured Brother Blood would succeed, meanwhile, elsewhere in the academy. "HA, HA, HA that sucker, he's totally screwed" Gizmo cackled.

The miniature mechanic and his massive friend, Mammoth was laughing proudly over their victory over Julius. Mammoth nodded "He's gonna look like such a loser, this is going to be great". Gizmo smirked "I know its so pit sniffing brilliant it even scares me, the loser. Once he finds out we sabotaged his weapons and sent Kid Wicked to wreck Blood's chambers, it'll be too late. Brother Blood is going to drop his smart ass into next Tuesday night".

CLANG! A wrench was knocked onto the ground, Gizmo and Mammoth looked up and gasped. Jinx was standing at the door way with tears swelling up in her eyes. The girl had knocked down the wrench off Gizmo's workbench when she heard the news, Jinx's hands tightly folded into fists. "You bastards, you rotten, miserable, little bastards" Jinx screamed, her eyes burned brightly with the stinging tears of sorrow, and searing flare of hatred.

Gizmo gulped "Uh J-j-j-j-jinx w-w-w-w-what are you doing here, w-w-w-we thought". Jinx angrily cut him off "I was going to see Julius and see how he was doing, but couldn't find my keycard to his room so I came back here, thinking I might have dropped it or left it here on accident. But no, what did I find instead, I find that you back stabbing little jerk wards STOLE it and used to ruin Julius's lifework". Mammoth turned white, Gizmo stuttered.

Jinx snarled "I can't believe it, I can't believe you rotten little piss ants did that to me, I should rip your fat little heads off right freaking now!". Gizmo stood up and replied "He had it coming, that smart mouthed little punk was trying to upstage us and make us look bad. Not to mention the fact he's a gunk sucking little traitors". The pink haired girl screamed in agony "He is not a traitor, he is my boyfriend and you two treated him like dog crap.

I'm sick of putting up with all your crap Gizmo, I finally find someone I truly care about and you have to go wreck everything by sabotaging his life's work. He gave that keycard to me and me alone. But instead, you used it to break into his room and sabotage his guns so you can make him look like a fool in front of Brother Blood. Just like you did when you had Kid Wicked lure him into Blood's chambers and tricked him into trashing it".

A voice from behind blurted out "What did you just say?". Jinx blinked and turned around, her pink eyes bulging with shock. Julius was standing right behind her. The boy had been beaten. Julius had cuts along his face and body, bleeding wounds appeared on his arms and chest. There were burn marks and torn cloth all over his pants. Heart broken tears dripped from Julius's weeping eyes "I……I……I trusted you……I loved you Jinx".

The boy ran off and cried in tears of bitter agony, suffering filled his aching heart. Jinx screamed as she ran after him "Julius……Julius……JULIUS".

To be continued……