Thanks to Legend Maker, without whom this chapter would be so full of errors I'd be the laughing stock of the non-fanbrat users of this website.
Terra was the first to charge, jumping over the fists thrown (literally) by Progeny and surfing on pocket-rocks over a series of blasts from Psimon and Gizmo. She then plowed into Shimmer, knocking Mammoth's sister down and rolling her across the room before punching the girl in the face several times…
Mammoth, in a surprising burst of speed, rushed over and grabbed Terra by the collar. "YOU PUNK! LEAVE MY SISTER ALONE!"
Mammoth threw Terra in the air and delivered a massive punch to her midsection that sent her flying across the atrium and through the wall to the president's room, which overlooked it.
"TERRA!" Beast Boy shouted! "NO!"
"She did something stupid," Savior said to him. "Stay on the line. Don't rush until you see an opening."
Mammoth was busy helping Shimmer, so Noel decided he had HIS opening. He needed to make sure Mammoth got the picture: nobody messed with his team, even if they were conceited, weak-minded, petty, and potentially treacherous little girls throwing stones…
(Wow, that had come out harsher than he had intended. He slowly began to wonder if Chaltab was perhaps trying to win the favor of some entity or person...)
Savior started to run forward into the fray when he was suddenly pushed aside by Gauntlet. He started to step forward again when Cyborg ran into him from behind, spinning him all the way around. Savior grunted, jumped into the air and reached for the ceiling. Several strands of Shimmer shot out and attached themselves somewhere high up in the bank's darkened atrium and Savior went flying above the fray for a better view.
Unfortunately, he was quick to notice that his escape wasn't total. Angel had followed him up, and was charging at him with those accursed razor-wings of hers. Savior immediately recalled all shimmer strands to his body, flipped over in the air as he ascended, and delivered a powerful kick straight downward.
KRAKOW!
Savior's boot-clad foot made contact with Angel's face and sent the evil teen ricocheting away from him. Savior made a pair of glider wings out of the Shimmer, and sailed back down towards the chaos below…
Meanwhile, Gorilla Beast Boy was grappling with the masked wrestler Libre. "Voy a ganar!" Libre grunted, altering the angle of his pressure from straight forward to almost directly towards his own left. This Beast Boy to flip over sideways, his arms crossings as he went down.
Libre jumped into the air in order to stomp on Beast Boy with his considerable weight, but a sonic cannon beam blasted him away from the changeling. Beast Boy transformed into a mouse and chirped a quick 'thank you' to Cyborg, then darted off through the now massive 'forest' of combatants, dodging feet that wanted to step on him… and found Progeny's leg.
Deciding the conceited womanizer could use a lesson in humility, the little green mouse ran up Progeny's leg, making sure his claws were out enough to hurt or at least tickle.
This created a problem for Progeny, as his hands and one eye were detached and, at the moment, trying to deactivate Cyborg from behind…
Beast Boy crawled out of Arturo's shirt and up to the top of his head, then jumped off of him, becoming a squid and attaching himself to Gizmo. Meanwhile, Progeny, finally able to free a hand, brought his erstwhile extremity back, only to wind up punching himself in the face in Beast Boy's absence.
He rubbed his noise and muttered something nasty about Beast Boy, just as Jinx hit him in the chest with a hex blast…
Mammoth sniffed, rather than saw, the pink energy, and threw the dazed Gauntlet to the ground, and ran after the traitor. "Hey Jinx!" he barked, pistoning a fist back. "Chew on this, turncoat!"
Llarenes Morrath turned just in time to see Mammoth's massive fist fill her vision She threw her hands up to shield her face, but went sailing backwards from the punch anyway. But never to be taken down so easily, Jinx flipped over her head in the air and landed on her feet.
Jinx fired a series of hex blasts that had always confounded her adversaries—then realized that it was a pattern she had drilled with Mammoth and Gizmo a hundred times before. Mammoth weaved in and out of the path of the blasts even with his considerable bulk, and any time a beam hit the ground in front of him, he jumped that plot of floor before the bad luck affected him.
Mammoth reached back in preparation for a backhand strike, (which Jinx readied herself for,) only to trip when his feet were caught in what looked like one of Robin's bolas, though Robin was nowhere near. As he fell, Scalpel leapt in and delivered a powerful flying kick to Mammoth's chest, knocking him away from Jinx. "Leave the new girl alone!" he shouted. He landed, then nodded at Jinx, drew his glaive, and charged at Mammoth.
Robin had only lent Scalpel the bola because he knew he wouldn't need it against Kid Wykkid. The shadow-shifter could just turn dark and phase right through any restraint, so incapacitating force was Robin's only option. Kid lashed at him, the ends of his shadowy cloak becoming razor-sharp blades. Robin backflipped away from a series of strikes, then through an ice-disk at Kid Wykkid. The dark teen melted into shadow, and the disk struck the bust of the bank's founder behind him, encasing it in ice.
Robin rolled forward, anticipating the strike from behind him, which never came. He glanced right and kicked left. As it turned out, the kick was the correct direction, because his foot made contact with Kid Wykkid's knee with more force than he'd anticipated, and Robin thought he almost heard a voice somewhere in the wordless hiss of pain that escaped the HIVE student's mouth.
Either way, Robin rolled away and got to his feet as fast as possible, drawing his bo-staff for added range. "You know, you remind me a lot of someone," he taunted the silent teen.
"…" said Kid Wykkid.
"Name was Shadowmaster," Robin continued, not allowing any hint of levity into his voice. "Worked with the Lord of the Night."
Kid Wykkid cocked his head to the side and replied with a disdainful, "…"
"Of course," Robin said, "Shadowmaster is dead now. The Lord killed him in cold blood just because he wanted to be a god. I hope you never have an such—"
Kid Wykkid must have decided he'd either heard enough or didn't want to know where Robin was going with this, because he stepped forward to strike. But his form was sloppy, and Robin saw the attack coming a mile away. He deflected the strike with his bo-staff and swept Kid Wykkid's foot out from under him with his own, then twirled the staff around and struck at Kid Wykkid's head where it hit the ground—only to hit noting but marble tile, as the dark teen had managed to phase into shadow. Robin stifled a curse and ran back towards the fray…
"I take it you've found a new base," Robin grunted as he leapt forward and kicked the charging Gizmo out of the sky. The smaller fighter, supported by the robot spider legs in his backpack, was launched into the air and landed on his back. The legs compensated, lifting him back up.
"Yeah, so what's it to you?" Gizmo shot back, drawing an energy shotgun from the matter compression unit in his backpack. He aimed it at Robin, but the Boy Wonder was out of the way long before he pulled the trigger. Robin waited for Gizmo to start to pump his shotgun and stepped forward. He performed an clean front kick that sent the gun flying from Gizmo's hands, then reversed into a spinning crescent. Gizmo dodged it, however, and put forth two of his spider legs in defense.
"It's not been that long since that sky base was blown out of the air, and three of your strong men are already here," Robin, even as the two continued to exchange blows.
"Why do you care so much, snot brain?" Gizmo shouted, launching a duo of small rockets at Robin, who dodged in between them, causing them to collide behind him and explode.
"Scorcher called.. She said that Wilby Tierney, Rhinoceros Beetle, mysteriously disappeared two weeks ago. Do you know anything about that?" Robin's question was additionally punctuated when he swung his bo-staff at his diminutive foe.
"Ha!" Gizmo said, dodging underneath the swing and zapping Robin with his wrist-mounted stun beam. "Wilby is one of us. Those snot-munching Elementals can't break us apart. Brother Blood makes sure of that!"
"Maybe not," came a voice gratingly familiar to Gizmo, "BUT I CAN!"
Cyborg jumped in, with a brief salute to Robin, and dive tackled Gizmo, breaking off one of the mechanical legs as the two fell and throwing it across the room.
"By the way," called Robin at the rapidly leaving Gizmo, "I'll be sure to tell Scorcher what you said!"
The leg that Cyborg had ripped off sailed through the air straight towards Gauntlet, who was mostly recovered, and now fighting both Shimmer and Private Hive. Shimmer grabbed a fichus and transmuted the whole plant and all the dirt in the pot into acid, and dumped it on Gauntlet…
But Gauntlet made an energy shield, then turned the shield into a trough to collect the run-off, and hurled it all onto Private HIVE.
HIVE threw up his shield, which was instantly corroded away by Shimmer's acid.
"Dive on a grenade, Sergeant Candide! You just ruined my defensive capabilities!" he barked at Gauntlet…
Rob held up his hands to stop HIVE, (who was about to punch him)… "Wait, hey, stop, solider!"
"Whut?"
Rob thought for a moment, then pointed a finger at Shimmer. "She was the one who made the acid after all."
Selinda sweatdropped, then pointed at Gauntlet. "He's the one who dumped it on you!"
"Yeah, but I was only doing it in self-defense. Effective misdirection or not, you just got hit by friendly fire, Private."
"He's right!" said HIVE. Whirling around, he started chewing out Shimmer. "You are a disgrace to your uniform, Private Flinders. I ought to have you court-martialed!"
Mammoth, however, heard the conversation and disagreed. "Nobody is court-martialing my sister, Leonard!" he barked at Private HIVE after crashing through the battle lines, just to smack him in the face… Then Shimmer began protesting that Mammoth didn't need to stand up for her, and Private HIVE agreed that she was old enough to take responsibility for her actions (and therefore should be court-martialed). At this point Mammoth displayed a surprising amount of logic by pointing out that they were, in fact, an Academy, and not a military, to which Shimmer made the wry comment that you couldn't tell the difference with Brother Blood as the Drill Sergeant.. er.. Headmaster…
Rob watched the ensuing argument with a smirk on his face, even has he formed the Gauntlet energy shield into a massive baseball bat…
"Hey, guys," he said…
"Huh?" asked HIVE.
"What do you want?" Mammoth growled, turning around.
Shimmer's eyes just widened somewhat.
"Grand slam," Gauntlet said, then swung the bat at them, hitting all three students and sending them flying across the bank atrium…
The three crash landed near Jinx, who was dodging a series of psychic bursts from Psimon.
"Come on now, my dear Llarenes," Psimon chanted lecherously, "be a good target!"
Jinx stood still for a brief second… then Psimon shouted, "I DIDN'T SAY 'PSIMON SAYS!'"
A psychic burst the size of a double-wide trailer shot towards Jinx, but suddenly stopped a few feet from her face… coated in black energy. More seeped up from the ground and formed into Raven, who held up her hands. "A little old for children's games, aren't we, Dr. Jones," she said.
Psimon gave a psychotic giggle and pushed harder, only to be blasted in the chest by a Starbolt. This threw off his concentration, and Raven pushed her attack, blasting him towards the ceiling in a giant column of dark energy…
"That was most excellent team-work!" Starfire called to Raven and Jinx, before flying off after Psimon. Angel tried to stop the Tamaranian warrior, but Starfire just grabbed Angel and threw her at the ground.
Unfortunately, Angel crashed into Scalpel, who was dueling with the re-surfaced Kid Wykkid, glaive to shadow blade…
Fortunately, Beast Boy in the form of a tiger took up that fight even as Scalpel mentally switched his attack plan from Shadowmaster to slower Cauterize with wings… Unfortunately, he maybe underestimated how much slower or how much the wings gave her an advantage, because he quickly found himself swiping at her with his glaive and hitting only air.
Angel flew up higher then dive-bombed him, and he jumped backwards, wall-kicking off of a column, and then kicking Angel in the face.
The girl recoiled, her helmet flying off as a grunt escaped her mouth. A gash opened in her chin from the sharp metal covering the vestigial third toe on Scalpel's heel. Angel growled in rage and flipped over, wiping the blood from her mouth, and angrily aware that any lower and that blasted alien would have punctured her throat.
Angel swooped up from another slice of Scalpel's glaive, then swooped down and kicked him in the head, driving the alien back. She landed, then shoulder rammed him, gaining the needed momentum with a gust of her razor wings. Scalpel slammed backwards into a column in the atrium, then swung his glaive forward in a horizontal motion, stepping forward as he did it. But Angel managed to get enough air under her wings to flip over top of the alien, and landed behind him.
She immediately stabbed her razor wings into Scalpel's shoulders, and the Blacktrinian let out a feral cry of pain, and grabbed at the wings when he saw them protruding through his front side. Blacktrinians were unusually resistant to bladed weapons, and Scalpel had quite a few stab scars already on his body, including one that had never quite healed…
Still, Angel's attack hurt. She jerked her wings out of him, splashing some blood on her leg and on the ground behind her, even as Scalpel staggered forward. He crouched and picked up his glaive, and turned to regard Angel… with a smirk.
Her eyes first widened in surprise, then narrowed in anger at the insolent Blacktrinian (not surprising, really, if she was arrogant enough to name herself Angel)…
Suddenly, an acrid smell and burning pain clued Angel in on the source of the alien's bemusement: her wings had caught on fire, as had the spot on her leg. And she instantly—albeit too late—remembered that Blacktrinian blood had similar properties to napalm.
Angel hissed and screamed, flapping to put her fires out and only making them spread, even as Scalpel got as far away from her as possible—he didn't want to be on the receiving end of her wrath…
Gizmo, recovered from his poor performance against Cyborg, was using his jetpack backpack to hover above the battlefield and fire lasers at the Titans. But when he saw Angel's wings burning, his leader instincts—what few he had—took over, and Gizmo darted towards her, dousing her wings with a fire-extinguishing chemical. "What the snot happened to you? Trying to play phoenix or something? Well if you burn to ashes I doubt you'll rise from them."
"That alien!" Angel snarled.
"Yeah, yeah, take your pick," Gizmo muttered. "Can you still fly?"
"NO! I may never fly again!"
Gizmo facepalmed. "Just pit-sniffing great…"
"Girls," a voice called. Fuming, Gizmo turned to see Jinx standing behind him, her hands raised. "I think your bad luck is just beginning."
"Crud."
A massive Hex blast lanced out from Jinx' wrist, catching Gizmo full on. Angel managed to dive out of the way, but Jinx ran after her, performed a jumping flip over her head, and delivered a round-house kick to Angel's now-uncovered face, knocking the winged girl out cold…
Unfortunately, as things go in this world, this reality with superheroes and bad luck charms, bad to worse is a way of life. And Jinx, unwittingly, was the catalyst for this. Gizmo's backpack, charged with concentrated bad luck energy, flew off towards the fray.
Beast Boy in Beast Within form and Kid Wykkid were clashing, claw to shadow blade, when Gizmo flew right through the fray. One of Kid Wykkid's blades slashed into Gizmo's backpack, throwing the wayward teen even further off course. Gizmo began spiraling and twisting out of control, and the Titans and Hive members scattered to dodge his wild flying.
If that wasn't bad enough (and trust me, it was no where NEAR bad enough), the bad luck energy build up in Gizmo's backpack crackled, sparking across the machine with a brilliant flash…
And in a burst of crackling energy, the backpack's matter compression unit spewed up a step ladder.
"Oh crud," Gizmo swore, even as the jet-pack's thrusters double in intensity, sending the tiny kid flying across the bank atrium in erratic patterns, losing the contents of his backpack as he went…
INSTIGATOR ducked underneath Gizmo as he swooped by, but when Gizmo did a loop-de-loop in mid air, his backpack discharged again, and Jimmy Hoffa's corpse fell on INSTIGATOR, disintegrating on impact…
"No way!" Gauntlet exclaimed from across the room. "That was lame—Bruce Almighty already used that joke!"
Another green burst shot in his direction, however, and Gauntlet hit the floor as a coyp of Photoshop 7 flew of his head and shattered against a bust of the bank's founder behind him.
Cursing her bad luck, Jinx ran towards Gizmo to try and stop him somehow, hoping she could negate the spell with her own magic, an idea Raven seemed to have too.
But suddenly his backpack discharged again, and an OMAC flew out, and immediately attacked Raven, leaving Jinx to herself. She continued to chase Gizmo, when suddenly it fired again and she was hit in the head with a DVD case…
Rubbing her head with one hand, she picked the bloody thing up and examined it. "Final Fantasy X2? Pervert."
"Actually, it does have a good battle system," Robin observed. She glanced at him oddly. "What? I mean—" before Robin could finish his defense, a case of Red Bull turned projectile hit him in the chest and sent him flying across the room.
Savior, annoyed almost beyond measure, tried to use the Shimmer as a lasso and wrangle Gizmo before he could cause any more trouble, but had to dodge as various assorted weapons, a pie, and an Keyblade (?) pelted him or came close to it. The Intrinsic Field Remover he had destroyed Uberjason with flew straight at his head and he cut it in half with a Shimmer blade and landed on Gizmo's back, but before he could do anything, he was pelted in the chest by a double whammy: a copy of Watchmen by Alan Moore… and an issue of The New Frontiersman magazine. He fell backwards off the flying midget, and landed on Private Hive…
"Get off of me!" Hive barked. "I ought to have you court-mffuffwd!" Hive's last word was distorted, and Savior had heard, rather than seen the reason.
Savior turned over and rolled off the Private and found that a comic book had been lodged in his mouth. He pulled it out and looked at the cover. "Actions Comics number one? With old what's his name holding up the car on the cover…"
Meanwhile, Libre ran forward to stop his out-of-control teammate when he a cardboard box erupted from the backpack and slammed into his gut, knocking the air out of the massive wrestler. He doubled over, and as the arcing energy subsided from the box, he saw that it was full of dirty magazines and a Fin Fang Foom action figure…
"Pervertido,"Libre muttered.
After flipping through the New Frontiersman, Noel threw the right-wing magazine aside, deciding it went a bit too far on some points even for him, and focused on Gizmo again. "That little midget is going to get someone impaled. How much worthless junk does he have in that backpack?"
As Noel said that, a bad fake of a Picasso, a model of the O RLY Owl, and a Blues Brothers fedora all flew out and hit various people in the room. "I ask again…" Noel started, not finishing his thought as Gizmo came towards him. Noel leaped into the air over him and came down behind, Shimmer lines already lashing out to constrain him.
But fate was cruel, and the pack discharge again twice in rapid succession, first expelling a Backstreet Boys CD that nearly lacerated Savior's face and several Shimmer strands—Noel had to twist in mid air to avoid it—and second a giant glowing square that Noel couldn't avoid.
Savior wrapped himself in a Shimmer cocoon, then his eyes widened when he saw, at the last second, the glowing square finish materializing—into a glass window pane. Protecting himself as best he could, Savior plowed through the glass, wincing as tiny shards made tiny cuts in his only metahuman talent…
He hit the ground hard and started trying to mentally block out the pain, like his nerve endings were set on fire.
Gizmo's backpack discharged again as Starfire and Raven converged on him… and out came Mammoth!
"How the snot did you get in there?" Gizmo demanded as he flew by.
"I have no idea!" Mammoth shouted back at him, before falling to the ground with a resounding THUD.
Then Billy Numerous popped out, and EVERYONE gasped.
"How the…"
"Not possible…"
"You're dead!"
Billy sat up and rubbed his head. "Well, tarnation, Gizmo. Don't you remember what we agreed to?"
Gizmo, too dizzy to care, just continued to scream.
"What did you agree to?" Mammoth asked.
"Well, we got together with several them there heads," Billy said, dividing into three, "and thought that maybe it would be good if he kept a spare me tucked away in that high-falutin' fancy-tech backpack of his just incase I ever bought the big'un. "
"You've cheated death, then!" Gauntlet said. "I know a guy named Adam—you two would get along great!"
"Knock the chatter!" Jinx commanded, "and shut down that midget before he gets himself killed."
The pack discharged one last time before sputtering out, and a pair of Jinx's striped stockings attached to a garter belt fell out, even as his jetpack ran out of power and sputtered to a stop. He crash landed and slid up next to Jinx, the stockings and belt floating down and landing on his head.
"Um…" he said. "I was going to give them to you 'cause you forgot them?" he tried, quite unconvincingly.
"On second thought," Jinx said, "kill him."
After the two forces stood around and stared at each other, thankful the chaos was over, they didn't notice one member moving until it was too late. Psimon, nearing the back of the Atrium near the vault, tripped over the Keyblade and fell into one of the busts, making a loud crash.
Everyone turned and gasped when they saw him sitting there, holding two handfuls of loot. "Ah, so I've been found out. Brother Blood was a fool to think he could dominate a mind such as mine! So with that, I bid you all a very fond adieu, and hope you all die horrible, painful deaths!"
Pink energy hummed, and Psimon disappeared into one of his dimensional vortexes.
"That snot munching traitor! He's worse than Jinx!" Gizmo shouted.
"Course of action?" asked INSTIGATOR.
"Nothing," Mammoth said. "This whole thing is a big failure. Let's go home and eat this pie," he said, picking up the pie Savior had dodged earlier. It had miraculously survived the battle. "It's a good thing you think to keep snacks in your backpack, Mikron."
"My name is Gizmo!" he shouted. "And I don't remember any kludge-eating snacks in my…"
Gizmo turned white even as Mammoth buried his face in the pie to eat it…
"MAMMOTH, YOU PIT SNIFFING MORON! NO!"
The big brute turned, his face covered in blueberry. "What?"
"THAT IS THE PIE! THAT THREE EYED WITCH! MOTHER MAY-EYE!"
"…" said Mammoth.
"Matriarch fornicating feces," Savior commented, noting that Starfire was nearby.
Suddenly, a sinister female laugh echoed throughout the bank, and every hostage on every floor heard the mad chortle. "Mother knows best, children. And she knows how NAUGHTY you all have been!"
"Not again!" Robin snarled.
"Dude… somebody do something!"
"Raven," ordered Robin, " can you think of anything?"
Raven nodded, then glanced over at Jinx. "Llarenes, help me prepare a counter spell…"
As she spoke the word, a blue beam erupted from the ruined pie, and another from Mammoth's mouth. The blue energy arced over the whole atrium, and a deep foreboding became tangible. "My sweet, sweet children," said Mother May-Eye… "You cannot resist the will of your mother!"
"You are not my mother," Savior replied tersely.
"Calm down, Savior," Raven admonished…
Then she turned back to Jinx. "I just need some help focusing. Now… Azarath Metrion Zinthos… Tharacen, Metaronone, Karasar, Metalsha, Danatru REKAMD NEGEL!…" The two girls changed in unison…
Energies surrounded them, a black and pink column that shot up to contend with Mother May-Eye's spell, struggling in the air… then failing…
"NO!" Raven shouted. "YOU WILL STOP!"
The world went white and gray, and Raven's word seemed to echoed throughout the entire bank… Savior felt energies course through his body, 'saw' in his minds eye the three eyes of Mother May-Eye drag his girlfriend away, and reached out to rescue her….
And then, everything was completely and totally black.
Next chapter: Tara and Noel--THE REMATCH.