Though dark beneath the stage, intermittent beams of light filtered down through the slats in the floorboards of the stage and the trapdoor which hung above them. Each of their cages were cluttered together amongst the other junk thrown down there (mostly old paint cans and busted backdrops), so that they were within easy reach of the trapdoor; and in turn, Mumbo. In the back corner of the room, a stagehand had been posted on the stairs (one of two exits) in the unlikelihood that the Team managed to escape. Though by the stagehand's loud snoring, he had more or less written those attempts off, as no one could out-trick Mumbo within his own hat.

Slumped down in her cage with stumpy little feet barely brushing the opposing bars of her cage, Raven listened to the roaring crowd above them as Mumbo began his show. It appeared that her new ears were good for something, at least. "Ladies and gentlemen! Mumbos of ALL ages! We have a REALLY great show for you tonight…!"

"…We have to stop the show before the finale!" Said Robin as he climbed the bars of his cage in agitation, tail whipping back & forth behind him. While one of the witch's long ears remained trained on the stage above them, the other twitched towards the conversation going on around her. "Or else it's curtains for us!"

"Perhaps if we work together, we can find a way to defeat him?" Ms Martian suggested. This time her voice echoed out of a handheld radio which idled in the bottom of her cage. From beneath furrowed brows, Raven could still see just how relieved the martian was to be free of the 'costume' that Mumbo had forced her into.

"But Mumbo's taken our powers, he's turned us into furry creatures and a shapeshifting phone!" Raven sulked, arms crossed over the itchy bodysuit and tried her best not to pout as she slid further down. It wasn't working. "How can we defeat him, when he's holding all the cards?!"

"Why're you so upset about this, Rae?" Kid Flash kicked his lanky paws to hang out between his cage bars, where they brushed up against her own.

"You don't get it!"

"Then why don't you tell us, O exalted one?"

"He's not a real sorcerer!" Raven snapped irritably, making a nearby can of paint explode against the back wall when her magical control slipped. "He's just some pimped out stagehand with powerful conduits that're riding him for all he's worth! And when he inevitably drains himself dry, they'll move onto the next sad sack who thinks it's a good idea to put 'em on and take 'em for a joyride! Magic has rules! You can't just wear a hat & wave a wand and think nothing'll happen! And he—he just…grr!"

"Uh…" Kid Flash blinked dumbly, not quite expecting that rant. "I got like…half of that"

"What was that about 'powerful conduits'?" Aqualad puzzled, leaning forward as much as he could.

"Nn…" Raven grumbled low in her throat as she quietly forced back her demon half which bubbled close to the surface, "They're vessels, y'know? Like—like the Helmet of Fate! They're magical conduits that need hosts to work, y'see. You get magic & power beyond your wildest dreams—I mean if you can control it before it kills you—but it also drains your life source dry. S'why compatible vessels are so hard to find"

"That's great and all—" Superboy retorted as he picked at the too tight suspenders that dug into his shoulders. "But how does that help us?"

"Superboy's right! Powers or no powers, we're still heroes!" Robin agreed. Though he did sound slightly incensed at the idea that having no powers meant that they were all automatically useless. He, of course, had never had any superpowers to speak of (much like his mentor) and that had never stopped him. In fact, it had motivated him to turn himself into a living, breathing weapon so that he'd never be useless again. "What we've gotta do is—"

BANG!

"—The show is starting!" Kid Flash cut off the boy wonder as the trap door above them suddenly banged open to reveal a hook looming above them. There was no need for lepus ears now, as the roar of the crowd funnelled in through the trapdoor and echoed about the place like gale-force winds. Raven sat upright, blinking repeatedly as she watched the hook lower towards their cages with apprehension sitting tight in her shoulders. Despite knowing that she was to be playing Mumbo's assistant towards the end of the show, that still did not help her nerves in the slightest.

"…Now put your hands together!" Mumbo appeared at the edge of the square, his foreboding figure painted black against the spotlights that lit him. "For Aqua, the magnificent dancing Sea Bear!"

"…And it would seem that I am the opening act" Aqualad swallowed thickly as he was harshly hoisted into the air.

BANG!

Aqualad's cage had barely scraped through the hole in the stage before the trapdoor slammed shut behind him, shrouding the rest of the Team in dimly-lit darkness once more. Both of Raven's ears twitched up towards the stage where she watched the unevenly spaced slats with rapt attention. "NICE TUTU, JERK!" Some heckler called from the audience, making Raven growl threateningly at the unknown man as Aqualad tumbled from his cage and onto the stage.

"Care to dance?" Mumbo taunted as he flourished his wand.

"All I care about is—!" Aqualad growled, the animalistic sounding sounding low in his throat and echoed about the theatre. From the creaking of the slats above them and the shocked gasps from the audience, Aqualad must've tried to make a break for the magician. But as the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy quickly changed into Trepak, Raven knew that the atlantean hero had been unsuccessful.


Above them, the sound of music flowed through every possible type of genre; from ballet to tap, hip hop to classical, it was clear that the sadistic magician was going to make the atlantean perform every move under the sun just because he could. Currently, the sound of a fast-paced polka fluttered through the Team's ears as they threw out suggestion after suggestion on how to get free & beat Mumbo. But at this point, they were all just spitballing.

"…We could sneak up behind Mumbo and grab his hat?" Kid Flash half-heartedly suggested as his tail curled around his feet in the most delicate of ways and irritably tapped against the ground.

TIK…TIK…TIK…

"M-U-M-B-O-S G-O-T E-Y-E-S I-N T-H-E B-A-C-K O-F H-I-S H-A-T" Superboy slowly read out as he picked up the endless sheaf of paper that trickled out of the martian-made telegram machine.

"Ms M's right!" Robin nodded.

TIK…TIK…TIK…

"T-H-A-N-K Y-O-U"

"Well, then do you have any better ideas, bird brain?" Kid Flash huffed as he slumped back against his cage. "What about you, long ears? Gotta spell we can use?"

"I told you, my magic doesn't work in here!" Raven retorted, feeling utterly exposed without the safety of her cloak.

"Tch! Some use you are!"

"Like you can talk, Mr. Mistofelees!"

"Can you two just cram—" Robin snarked, only to be cut off by the sound of the trapdoor slamming open.

BANG!

"Robin!" Raven cried, reaching uselessly through her bars as the monkey was hoisted skywards towards the stage. This time instead of the trapdoor shutting as soon as someone was taken out, Aqualad—exhausted beyond belief—was returned to his spot beneath the stage. Eyes & ears trained on the stage above, Raven barely registered the conversation going on around her as she worried for the monkey above them.

TIK…TIK…TIK…

"W-H-A-T H-A-P-P-E-N-E-D-?" Superboy read aloud to the bear slumped over in his cage.

"He…he made…made me…do a jig…!" Aqualad panted in reply, eyes sliding shut in exhaustion.

"That madman must be stopped!" Kid Flash sassed, making Superboy snort slightly at the comment.

TIK…TIK…TIK…

"P-L-E-A-S-E W-H-A-T I-S A J-I-G-?"

"Well, Megalicious, y'see it's this kind of dance…"

"…And now, for the comedy portion of our show!" Mumbo chortled.

"We'll see whose laughing now!" Robin grinned as he palmed two bananas straight at the magician. A twitch of her little bunny nose told Raven that the squishy fruits had gone flying, a notion which was backed up by the enraged cry of Mumbo and Robin's manic laughter. The audience roared their approval, though those quickly devolved into boos as a variety of objects were hurled down upon the poor monkey.

"What was that?!" Kid Flash worried, eyes blowing wide in alarm as the whole stage was rocked by whatever had hit it.

"Whatever it was, it didn't sound good" Superboy grumbled, whiskers twitching agitatedly.

"And it smells gross!" Raven whined as she tried to smother her suddenly sensitive nose beneath fuzzy paws in an attempt to escape the rotten scent. It wasn't working.


BANG!

"…Any ideas?" Robin groaned as he was returned to the Team painted in splotches of black & blue and reeking of rotten fruit.

Robin! Raven's worried gaze traced over the monkey with fear pricking at her heart. Even if Mumbo was all smoke & mirrors, he was still aided by powerful conduits that made everything hurt.

"Still working on it" Superboy sighed dejectedly as he was hoisted into the air.

BANG!

"Now, c'me on lil' mousy! Why don't you pick a card, any card?" Mumbo offered a plain-looking deck to the surly kryptonian who just stared at the deck with great dislike. Before Superboy could even hint at moving against Mumbo, he suddenly found himself encircled by the very deck offered to him, only this time they were much larger and each card wore a pair of bright red boxing gloves. "Come now, pick a card before they pick you!"


BANG!

"I got it—!" Kid Flash piped up, only to be cut off by Robin.

"—A cannonball, driving a tank or unleashing magician-eating sharks" Robin cut off as Superboy returned just as black & blue as the monkey. Only his bruises appeared to be distinctly hand-shaped.

"…I don't got it" Kid Flash sighed as the hook descended once more, this time choosing him. "Guess, it's my turn to overwhelm them with my performance!" Kid Flash grinned, trying for some kind of positive reaction, an uplift of the mood—something.

"Or underwhelm them" Robin smirked, taking the bait as he recalled a very similar conversation that the two had had before. "Hey, why isn't anyone ever just whelmed?"

"Cause then they'd be dead" Superboy puzzled, not quite sure what to make of the boy wonder's butchering of the English language.

"Huh?"

"To be whelmed? It means to drown…"

"Really? Huh, the more y'know…"

BANG!

"…Open wide!" Mumbo sang, prying open Kid Flash's jaws. "I hope your hungry!"

"God, yes!" Kid Flash drooled, hoping that the teal magician would give him something to eat aside from the bananas he'd been pawing off of Robin; though even those had sat odd with him. Can cats even eat bananas? Instead of the buffet that the speedster had been dreaming of, he instead found himself devouring the very magician himself. "Hurk—!"

"Ta~da!" Mumbo sang as he reappeared beneath the shaken feline. And that was only the first of many things he'd make the hungry kitty devour.


BANG!

Ms Martian was next, this time playing the role of plate & pole in Mumbo's failed balancing act. The sound of carnival music grated against Raven's eardrums, making her yank them down towards her chin in an attempt to block out the loud sounds. Across from her, Robin had pulled taught with an unexplained tenseness (possibly from the upcoming finale, but Kid Flash's wandering gaze stated otherwise).

"Five acts down, one to go" Robin hummed. "We don't have much time before the finale"

"Raven, you are the Mumbo's assistant" Aqualad implored of the young girl, "Surely you must know of some of his secrets!"

"He never told me anything" Raven pouted, silently cursing the old adage: A magician never reveals his secrets!

BANG!

With Ms Martian's return (now a beaded—and slightly stained—lamp once more), Raven felt her anxiety rise to the surface as she too, was hoisted skywards. Only Robin's panicked call of "C'me on guys! Think!" Followed her upwards before she found herself shielding her eyes from the bright lights of the stage.

Freed from her cage, Raven hissed out a sigh of relief to be able to move freely once more. But before she could hop too far from the table she had been placed upon, she found herself stuffed inside a small compartmentalised box by one of Mumbo's showgirls.

"As you can see, there is no way out!" Mumbo chirped as the constricting box was twisted this way & that. There lay a hacksaw nearby too, but Mumbo simply waved his wand with a twist & a flourish. A cloth appeared in his hands instead and was tossed over her head. Raven barely had time to blink before she found herself staring at a rather intense close-up of the doily-patterned tablecloth upon which she stood. "Oh! My assistant seems to have worried her head off!"

Laughter echoed about the audience as Mumbo's own head fell away and when his wandering hand picked up her head instead of his own, that laughter only increased. Despite the fear in her heart, Raven found it strange to be staring down at her own disassembled body, the one that she could still feel itching inside the bodysuit and whose tail twitched just as much as her nose. With a wave of his wand, Mumbo shoved her deep inside his hat so that he could replace his own head, which wasn't the greatest feat of magic; though to the audience it must've seemed so for they were soon on their feet as the curtain fell.

"What is the point of putting me back together, when you're just gonna finish me off?" Raven grumbled as she was yanked from Mumbo's hat by her ears and none-too-gently shoved back into the cage.

"Ooh! I need you in one piece for the finale!" Mumbo leered, his long nose almost poking her in the eye before she was taken away by some showgirl and returned to the others.

BANG!


"People! Hurry! The finale's up next and we're on in five!" A stagehand called, his hurried footsteps sounding like a horde of drones amongst the click-clack of the showgirls' heels.

"You heard the man! Five minutes 'til poof!" Kid Flash worried as the Team grew tense at the notice. They'd been down there who-knows-how-long & not one viable plan had been thought up between the six of them and now they only had five minutes until their demises.

"There's got to be something we're not seeing!" Robin replied.

RING~RING! RING~RING!

"Hello?" Robin picked up the martian-made phone, before he put the device on speaker for them all to hear.

"Maybe all of this is more of Mumbo's mumbo jumbo?" Ms Martian suggested, "Just a big trick?"

"It all seems awfully real to me" Superboy grumbled as his tail instinctively curled in close for comfort.

"Superboy's right…" Raven sighed.

"…Hey! But you said—" Kid Flash snarked.

"—Whatever happens in here is real, even if it is a trick" She cut off the speedster, who was more than willing to throw her earlier words back in her face. No matter how much Raven despised Mumbo's baby magics—and oh how she hated them!—there was no denying that they felt awfully real. Him and those damn conduits of his made them all very real, even if it was only sleight of hand tricks. Ooh!

"What is it…?" Robin hedged, not quite sure if he liked the bright gleam in the witch's eyes.

"They may only be tricks, but that doesn't mean we can't perform an even bigger trick!" Raven grinned, "Robin? Can your tail reach those cans of paint?"

"Sure!" Robin mirrored her grin as he started to catch on.

"M'gann? Can you be a paintbrush?" Raven turned next to the martian across the way.


"Thank you! Thank you! You've been a great audience!" Mumbo threw kisses to the audience, who in kind replied with bouquets of yellow flowers and top hats were thrown high into the air in celebration. "And now, the moment you've all been waiting for! The grande finale! My greatest trick ever!"

'Wow! He really likes hamming it up, eh?' Kid Flash murmured through the telepathic link as a drum roll sounded in the background.

'God! This stuff itches!' Robin groused as he tried to avoid scratching at the paint covering their front halves.

'Don't you dare scratch it off!' Ms Martian replied hotly, 'D'you know how long it took to put all that on?!'

'Uh…too long?'

'That's right! Too long! So don't you DARE move!'

'Dude, girls are SCARY!'

'Y'know, we can STILL hear you!' Raven smirked as they all stood perfectly still, eyes slammed shut within their own cages just as the curtain began to rise.

'Dammit!'

"I present to you, for the last time anywhere…the SIDEKICKS!" Mumbo beamed as the curtain rose. Though that quickly changed. As predicted, when the crowd saw that no sidekicks—animals or otherwise—were present within their cages, began to boo and crow for the return of their money.

'Haha~ Sucker!' Kid Flash grinned.

'Dude! Don't move!' Robin snarled. They only had one chance at this.

'I got it! I got it!'

"Huh? But—but I don't understand!" Mumbo blubbered as he peered into their seemingly empty cages. Crouching down low, the teal magician slowly unlocked the witch's cage as Raven prayed that he could not hear her jackhammering heart beat. "They were just here a second ago!"

"ALAKAZAM!" Raven roared as Mumbo's nose stop mere centimetres from her own. She took vindictive pleasure in the crunch of bones beneath her boot as she kicked away her opponent before they were all booted from the hat and returned to the Jump City Reserve Bank in a storm of dollar bills.


25 July 2010
Jump City Bank, Jump City

"All right! I'm back" Kid Flash cheered as everyone checked themselves over for any traces of the animalistic selves. "With a vengeance!"

"Eek~!" Mumbo squeaked as he quickly backpedalled away from the superpowered Team, hoping to make it to the door before he was caught.

"Hehe~" This time when Robin palmed one of his weapons, it was in fact the familiar-shaped batarangs he had grown up using. He didn't even bother to hide his chuckle when the weapon ensnared the magician's feet, making him smash against the tiled floor just as Black Canary & Red Tornado greeted them at the door.

"Yes!" Kid Flash high-fived the boy wonder (much to the confusion of the Leaguers), "You have no bananas!"

"That WAS the greatest trick ever! Booted out of his own hat!" For a moment Raven worried that she still had rabbit ears upon her head as she could've sworn she heard the laughter of the audience float up out of the aforementioned hat. But they were long gone and with Mumbo soon in cuffs, the witch held no qualms about taking both conduits from him.

"We're gonna make sure you don't have any encore performances!" Raven sneered as her (real) magic enveloped the hat & wand, bringing them to her without the need of his flourishing.

"But—but—my magic—!" Mumbo spluttered like an upset toddler. "How did you escape?"

"I had a better trick up my sleeve"

"I gotta know—c'me on, kid, just between us—tell me what you did"

"A magician never reveals her secrets!"