Disclaimer: Moo!
Yay, 'nother chapter! (: Finally some action. Battle scenes, woop!
Also, I apologize for the spoilers that showed up in this story in the past. I didn't really think about it, and I'm really sorry for anything that might have caused! Anyone who was inconvenienced by the spoilers, please let me know and I will draw a fanart of your request as an apology gift.
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We arrived at the scene of the crime promptly. The Teen Titans never were ones to keep the villains waiting. I think it was the first time any of us had really been excited about a battle since we were just starting out as a team. I remember how eager we were to prove ourselves in those earlier days, how anxious we were to show Robin that his decision to add each of us to his team was a good one. I had been so worried that they were all going to find about my secret, about how I had these terrible things that my powers were capable of and that I was destined to bring an end to this world, that it had been nearly impossible to open up to them for a long time. Proving myself was an entirely different matter all together, but I'm not going to go into that right now.
Anticipation for battle was palpable in the air as the five of us dropped from the sky and landed in formation. The robbery currently in progress was being initiated by the Hive Five (minus Jinx, as she had recently joined the Honorary Titans). Apparently they had somehow managed to escape being frozen by the innumerable Titans who had been taking every villain in the Brotherhood's base down. Mammoth, Seemore, Kid Wicked, Billy Numerous, and of course, Gizmo, were in the process of ransacking the department store. We landed near Billy Numerous, who was shaken by the sudden appearance of five superheroes dropping from a skylight, and jumped, a CD he had been in the process of stealing flying from his hand. Robin lifted a hand and caught it easily in one fluid motion.
"Didn't anyone ever tell you it's wrong to pirate your music?" he asked before the five of us simultaneously flew into attack mode as though our minds were joined as one. Numerous wasn't expecting Robin's attack, and Robin caught him in a headlock easily, though Billy began to multiply and his clones attacked Robin from behind.
"Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos!" I focused my attention of Kid Wicked, using a jet of black psychic energy to lift him into the air from the cash register he had been emptying of its contents, spinning him around to face me and giving him a blank stare out from under the shadowy mask of my hood. He said nothing, only countered my attack with a blast of his own strange energy that nearly knocked me backward. I recovered and intensified the strength of the power I sent at him, using it to slam him against the wall while lifted the metal railing from between two checkout counters and bent it around him so he couldn't move.
Another burst of the irritating energy of his flew at me and I ducked my head, feeling it ruffle my hair as it just missed me. I kept him floating there as I lifted a wet floor sign that lay nearby and brought it down on his head just hard enough to knock him unconscious.
This taken care of, I turned my attention to my friends to make sure they were doing alright. Cyborg hadn't even had to use his sonic cannon to subdue Gizmo, he had merely picked him up in one fist. The boy was still struggling in Cyborg's grasp as he wrestled with Mammoth. Gizmo's current gadget had been smashed in Cy's fist, leaving Gizmo no way to escape, since there was no way he was going to do it on sheer body strength.
"Come on, let me go you snot wad!" Gizmo squealed, squirming in Cy's iron grip. Cy chuckled and hit Mammoth with a blast from his cannon, which knocked him against the wall. Pretty much the only thing that could subjugate Mammoth was knocking him unconscious, since his incredible strength could overpower pretty much any restraints put on him. Cyborg looked through the cloud of dust, scanning for signs that Mammoth was awake. I think the fact that Mammoth leaped out and tackled him was a pretty good sign, but that's just me.
Mammoth had Cyborg on the ground, now, and had his huge fists clamped around the sonic cannon, ripping the mechanism from Cyborg's arm and smashing it like an aluminum can between his hands. Gizmo, still in Cy's other hand, was now yelling up a storm at Mammoth.
"What are you doing, trying to kill me? Are you outta your stinkin' mind?" he squealed, but Mammoth ignored him.
All of this happened over the course of about three seconds, and so now I reacted, lifting Mammoth off of Cyborg and sending him sailing--hard--into the wall. He slid to the floor, knocked unconscious. Cyborg climbed to his feet, shaking his head to clear it. "Thanks, Rae," he said. I acknowledged this with a nod and turned my attention to the other three. Robin was just finishing with Seemore, I could tell the teen was starting to weaken under blows from Robin's bo-staff. Seemore suddenly flipped a lens over his one huge eye and hit Robin with some kind of strange light, which knocked him clear off of his feet, and Starfire was over in a fraction of a second, pulling him out of the way before he could get hit with anything else. Robin smiled at her to show his thanks, and the two were instantly back in battle.
Robin pulled a disk out of his utility belt and threw it straight for Seemore's face. When it hit, it exploded into a mess of thick, sticky black goop, covering the eye impossibly. Seemore was officially down for the count, blind as a bat and now totally worthless in this battle.
Meanwhile, Garfield was beating off multiple Billy Numerouses, and they were coming at him left and right. When he knocked one off, another three would be on him. The four of us flew straight in to help him. Cyborg, unable to use his cannon, simply grabbed Billy after Billy and threw them. Whenever he knocked one out, Billy drew it back into himself, knowing well that unconscious clones were useless in battle. Knocking people unconscious was getting very old very fast, but today it seemed the only way to get things done.
"Raven, find some way to wrap his body so he can't multiply!" Robin shouted, taking a swing at one of the Billys as he came at him. I looked around quickly in search of something that would do the trick. Nothing came to sight immediately and I started to grow impatient until my eyes fell upon a roll of packing tape lying on one of the nearby checkout counters. I willed my powers forward and tendrils of black energy burst from my fingertips, catching the roll of tape and lifting it into the air, doing what Robin said even though I knew it was futile.
"You do realize the clones can multiply too," I pointed out, since this seemed to have slipped Robin's mind. He swore and shook his head, frustration pouring into his expression.
"Alright. I guess we'll have to get them all down. Titans, swarm them!" he called out, leaping forward and flinging half a dozen disk at once toward the crowd of red spandex-clad clones as Cyborg began knocking them down with his bare hands, having lost his cannon. Garfield had transformed into a gorilla and was knocking them out left and right, and Starfire was blasting starbolts one after another. I concentrated on blowing as many backward with a single blast as possible. We continued on tirelessly for the better part of twenty minutes, until finally the very last Billy hit the ground unconscious and we were able to breathe again.
"Well, I guess that's it," Garfield said, transforming back into his human form and wiping sweat from his brow. Gizmo, who was still clutched in Cyborg's fist, began to chuckle. All of us looked at him as though he had just sprouted several extra heads.
"Okay, we just totally kicked your butts, you're getting the law brought down on you again, and your daily crime spree is officially cut short. What part of that exactly do you find so funny?" Cyborg asked, raising his eyebrow. Gizmo gave a rather devilish smile, which was slightly frightening on his face.
"We're not through with you yet," he said. "Jet, now!"
I wasn't exactly sure what the hell he was talking about, and then suddenly something whizzed by my ear, and I smelled singed hair, since whatever it was had missed me very narrowly. I whirled around in midair, levitating about three feet from the ground, just in time to see something coming flying at me. I swooped upward and the thing that had flown at me pulled out of its dive and levitated about ten feet away. It was a teenage girl, chin-length ebony hair framing a slightly pale and very malicious face, rosebud mouth drawn into a malevolent smirk, eerie, orange eyes glowing slightly.
"Who are you?" Robin snapped, bo-staff still at the ready. But Jet made no move to reply. She expertly lifted one hand, that terrible grin still on her face, seeming like it was glued there, like a paper mouth pasted onto a paper face.
"Lumorte¢!" a ball of something glowing and bright shot from her palm and headed straight for Cyborg, hitting him square in the chest. He dropped Gizmo, who hit the floor with a thud on his head, and stared down in horror at the melted metal where the strange energy had hit. "You're looking at the newest addition to the Hive Five," she said, lifting both hands over her head and shooting a larger ball of the glowing energy from her hands. None of us were exactly prepared for this, as everything was moving so fast, and the ball hit Garfield, who was standing directly in her path. It sent him rocketing backward, and he slammed against the wall with a dull, sickening thud. I could feel my eyes widen and I'm sure my knees would have given way if I were standing on the ground.
"Beast Boy!" I strange, shrill voice that rarely came out of my mouth burst forth and I flew across the room, landing at his side and feverishly struggling to see if he was alright. There was a small trickle of blood pooling around his temple and his check was badly burnt from the energy, and he was unconscious. I cursed under my breath, trying not to panic. 'Ohmygodohmygodohmygod. Please let him be alright!' my mind screamed, unable to think of anything in the world but his condition.
All eyes were focused on Beast Boy, and Jet used this to her advantage. Reeling back a hand, she prepared to strike Robin in the side of the head with another burst of power.
A chunk of the ceiling came down on Jet's head, a chunk large enough to knocked her to the ground, though she struggled quickly to her feet, swaying clumsily and looking wildly around to see if it had fallen on its own or if there was another culprit.
"Oops, did I do that? Clumsy me," came a voice from the doorway as a pink-haired teenager stepped in, followed by a blur of red and yellow that soon revealed itself to be a boy.
"Figured you guys could use some help," he said with a wink.
If Gizmo had been conscious, he probably would have said something derogatory to Jinx. She had been a member of the Hive Five since they had started…she had probably been one of the founders. But Wally had been able to convince her that she could do better. And so she had. She had become a Titan. But since Gizmo was currently down for the count with a bump on his head, the room was silent for a spilt second before Jet gave a growl of malice and sent more energy toward the two most recently appeared teens. Wally rocketed off to the right as Jinx too expertly flipped out of the way in a strange display of acrobatics.
"You're going to have to do better than that," Jinx told Jet with a smirk, sending a shelf of CD's crashing down on her. The room fell silent as everyone craned to check if she had been defeated. The answer manifested itself when the shelf shifted and Jet squeezed herself out from under it. Her eyes glowed even brighter orange now as she turned them in Jinx's direction.
"You're going to pay for that, bitch," she hissed at Jinx, who feigned fear, placing a hand on her forehead and pretending to swoon.
"Please," she said with a roll of her eyes. Robin hit Jet with a good, solid strike with his bo-staff and Starfire hit her with several starbolts, and Cyborg came jogging over to where I knelt over Garfield.
"Is he alright?" he asked. He looked slightly panicked and I didn't blame him. The thought of one of them getting hurt, getting somehow killed and lost forever, haunted me constantly, too. It had never been such a big deal when someone was wounded in battle before, but now to me it felt like the end of the world (and believe me, I know what the end of the world feels like). A warm, protective feeling had settled over me. If anyone had tried to harm Garfield any further right then, I doubt they would have lived to tell the tale.
"He should be fine. He has a cut and some burns, but he shouldn't have any lasting damage when I'm done," I replied, hoping with all my being that this was true myself. I lifted my hands over Garfield's chest and proceeding to heal the burn. As I concentrated on my task, a warmth started somewhere in my center and traveled slowly up my shoulders, down my arms, and into my hands. Instantly, they began to glow white. The soothing white energies traveled down to Gar's burned and shiny flesh, quickly turning it back to its normal quality, the burn disappearing as instantly as it had appeared. With the burn healed, I took care of the cut on his temple and then instinctively rubbed a hand over his hair, trying not to look too much at his exposed chest. My hands had been so close to his bare skin, and I was tingling all over with that yearning feeling once more, physical and emotional all at once, a hunger that I buried as best I could and turned my attention back to the scene of the battle, unwilling to leave Garfield.
Robin, Starfire, Jinx, and Wally were giving Jet a run for her money. Four against one was definitely not an advantage in her favor. She was fighting back as best she could, but obviously the strain was proving too much for her. A good starbolt hit to the head finally and she was down, collapsing onto the floor. High-fives were exchanged.
"Who is this chick, anyway?" Wally asked. No one seemed to have an answer.
I scooped Garfield up in my arms, carefully, cradling him against me much more than I needed to, and walked over to where the others were gathered. "He's still unconscious," I said, drawing their attention. "We need to take him home."
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More soon, as always. :D