Disclaimer: see chapter one
Special thanks to all of you who reviewed last chapter, namely, Tsukikage1213, ThSamurai, ShadowKnux, Dragonfire967, Splint, and TeSsA-MaRkOv. You guys really made my day—er, I mean week—giving me that many reviews for one chapter, and provided a major incentive to continue with this story.
And one more thing before I get on with the story. I know for a fact that at least two of the above authors, namely Tsukikage1213 and Splint, are suffering from a remarkable lack of reviews in their ongoing stories. They are both good authors who have come a long way to become as good as they are right now, and could use an extra review or two—or even three.
Practice Before Work
Many hours before dawn, in a back alley of Jump City, a clandestine meeting was taking place. The fact that the alley was uninhabited made it a good place to meet, and in addition to that fact, there was next to no light to illuminate any outstanding features of the two who were conferring, which made the location even better.
"You say you have information on the disappearances?" spoke the one with spiky hair.
The taller, thinner one answered. "No, that's not what I said—my boss asked me to tell you that HE has information, and would like to 'compare notes,' in his words."
"Who is your boss?"
"Felix Spencer."
"When does he want to meet?"
"Come to his mansion just after twilight, and bring your friends."
And with that, they both exited the alley, promptly going off in opposite directions.
This time, he couldn't even see the end of his own nose. His only source of light, the flame of a feeble, old-fashioned torch, had sputtered and died, leaving him, literally, in the dark. He couldn't even remember how he had gotten into this cave, and whatever reason had brought him here had long since escaped his memory.
After what seemed like hours fumbling around in the dark, trying to feel his way out, he gave up, finally admitting to himself that he was lost. He leaned against the wall, then slid down it and sat on the cave's floor, giving in to despair. It couldn't possibly get any worse, could it?
Just as he had that thought, he felt a slight tremor, and a groan reverberated through the long tunnels of the cave. 'OK, maybe it can get worse,' he thought, as a sound reached his ears, the sound of something, probably a stalactite, crashing to the floor near him. The tremor became more powerful, turning into what could only be a full-fledged earthquake, and more crashing sounds came to his ears, some thankfully distant, but others frighteningly close. Once, he even felt some fragments hit the leg of his jeans, and bunched himself tightly into a ball in an attempt to make himself as small a target as possible.
But finally, the furious shaking subsided, and he slowly lifted his head, trembling from the leftover fear—and saw light! His eyes widened in shock, then in comprehension. The earthquake must have collapsed a significant portion of the cave, and it wasn't really all that far from the surface anyway. He might have a way out now!
And sure enough, when he rounded a bend, careful not to step on the knife-edged shards of what had been a stalactite, he saw light. Glorious sunlight! Eagerly, he started climbing the rubble, only to find that the last few yards were completely vertical, with no handholds. But before his bubble of hope was truly punctured, a rope was lowered by an indistinct figure at the top, and he climbed up as fast as his arms could pull his weight.
A hand reached down to pull him up the last foot, and he gratefully accepted the help. Once he'd recovered sufficient breath at the top, he turned to thank his benefactor—and got the biggest shock of all.
"Mom?"
As before, two different souls shot up from their sleep, pulses racing and eyes open wide, this time joined by another over four thousand miles away across an entire ocean. However, this person took it more calmly than the others…
Blissfully unaware of the plots and investigations in which they would soon become hopelessly entangled, the Hive and their newest recruit assembled in the large, open basement of their hideout. Once they were all there, Gizmo brought out a small console he had installed in the wall near the entrance.
"All right, you crud-munchers, listen up. What you see in this practice course, though completely holographic, will still be able to hurt you if you're stupid enough to ignore it. It has been augmented by force fields, meaning these are solid holograms, so you better use the snot you have for brains if you want to come out unscathed. And, of course, it has the added advantage that even if you losers completely trash the environment, a flip of a switch causes it to vanish, and with another flip, it is completely repaired." With that, he suited actions to words, flipping one switch to the "on" position.
Instantly, the large, empty room vanished, replaced with the image of a city block, complete with skyscrapers, pedestrians, and streets. But a monstrous robot was rapidly advancing on their position, causing the "civilians" to, predictably enough, scream and run away from the scene as fast their legs could carry them.
The simulated robot was approximately four stories tall, and the ground seemed to shake with its every stride. It had roughly human proportions, and it was made out of some gleaming black metal. The body was cylindrical, and tapered off to a rounded, dome-like head. On that head, where its eyes should have been, were instead relatively small protuberances made of a more brightly colored metal. Elm wondered what they were for.
He didn't have to wonder for long, as a moment later, the ground under his feet exploded, throwing him into the air and back several feet, where he landed rather painfully on his rear end. 'So they shoot lasers. How original.' But any further sarcasm he might have thought was brought to a screeching halt when he noticed it lining up for another blast, which he somersaulted backward to avoid.
No sooner had he regained his footing, when a small bolt of pink energy from Jinx's glowing hand slammed into one of the robot's legs. The energy didn't seem to have any effect, but a moment later, it somehow tripped over the only car between it and the HIVE, and came crashing down to earth—with a bit of help from Mammoth, who pulled the other leg out from underneath it with his bare hands, and See-More, who'd maneuvered around it and blasted the back of its head with an explosive sort of, well, eyeball. That was the only way Elm could think to describe the round projectile that came from the lens of See-More's helmet.
The impact caused wavelike ripples in the street, which buckled and cracked under the strain. Every member of the team had trouble keeping their balance, save See-More, who was using another "eye" to float like the basket of a hot-air balloon, and Gizmo, who had triggered the rockets on his backpack to hover over the destruction.
After a few seconds, the waves subsided, and the road settled back into place, the only indication of the recent stress being tiny, almost invisible cracks. "The bigger they come, the harder they fall," Mammoth commented, dusting his hands off. However, just as he finished this and turned to exit the scene, a loud crack! split the air. Everyone whirled to face the source of the noise, which happened to be the robot they had thought defeated.
It had split in half along its back, in a straight line from the top of its head to the base of the torso. Slowly, to the amazement of the onlookers, the halves began to push themselves apart, despite the fact that they had to move uphill out of the crater to do so. When a high-pitched, metallic whine filled the air, they looked closer at the space in between the halves. Small, thin bars of the same black material as the robot spanned the gap, and the sound was emanating from them as they lengthened.
Once they'd reached close to twenty feet in length (almost exactly 6 meters), they stopped, and nothing more happened for a few seconds. Silence reigned supreme in that short span of time, as everyone stood completely immobile, waiting to see what would follow. A small bead of sweat appeared on Elm's forehead as he tensed in anticipation, and the others weren't exactly relaxed, either. Gizmo especially (undoubtedly because he knew what was coming next) projected an aura of nervousness as he landed and extended his robotic legs—nervousness so powerful it bordered on fear, nearly overwhelming Elm's Empathic sense.
There was a sudden spike in the tension as they detected shadowy movements in the robot's innards, then all at once, the contents burst out. Dozens upon dozens of miniature, two-foot-high robots swarmed out, all perfect little replicas of the large one that gave birth to them.
Immediately, it became apparent why Gizmo was on the verge of panic, when a tiny laser aimed at him cut completely through one of his metal legs, throwing him off-balance. But instead of causing him to scream and run, it prompted him, and the rest of them, into immediate action.
See-More sent an explosive eyeball into the center of the massed robots, sending them tumbling in all directions but doing little real harm—unlike the two mini-missiles from Gizmo's pack, which landed near a small group of ones that landed on their feet and completely incinerated them.
Mammoth picked up a mostly intact robot that landed near his feet, ripped its head off, and leapt into a third group of ten or so, using the body as he would a club.
Kyd-Wykkyd teleported into the middle of a group that had managed to pick themselves up. Every one of them turned to fire on him, only to turn each other into so much scrap metal when he teleported back to his original position.
Billy used a similar technique, replicating himself and deliberately placing his copies between pairs of robots, who would subsequently destroy each other when he reabsorbed the clones at the last second.
Jinx hexed one after another, causing them to misfire and blow themselves up. She had to back-flip a few times to avoid serious injury.
Elm was almost literally a whirlwind of activity. He blocked several laser blasts with his staff, which, to everyone else's surprise, caused it no harm, reflecting them back at the robots, and then he was in among them, jabbing here, kicking there, and generally keeping them off-balance enough to keep them on the defensive.
Seeing this, Gizmo skewered one with one of his remaining legs and then took to the air once more, to better aim at the robots and avoid hitting teammates. The HIVE got a nasty shock, however, when he was followed by about half a dozen of their little foes. Evidently they had little rockets of their own contained in their feet!
Jinx attempted to hex one from below, but narrowly missed Gizmo, who let out a stream of invective at her "clumsiness." She wisely decided to stay focused on the ground-bound enemies.
And more of them kept pouring out of the giant. There must have been the remains of at least five dozen littering the ground, yet there seemed to be twice that many still combat-effective, not counting the ones chasing Gizmo through the air, which now numbered ten. For each one he destroyed, at least two more took to the air, and soon, not only the ground, but the sky was filled with them.
However, the fight soon turned in their favor.
See-More managed to clear a small space around himself with another explosive eyeball, then switched to a laser that cut a line of enemies in half. Then Gizmo swooped low and finished off another group with a volley of missiles, and Jinx pounded their remains with bolts, causing them to accidentally fire and slice the top off a nearby fire hydrant.
Water gushed out in a small fountain, spraying several of the little robots—which promptly short-circuited and collapsed.
Seeing this, Mammoth began grabbing them and tossing them into the stream, one after the other, until a rather large pile was heaped up all around the fire hydrant.
This left only the few that were still flying, but one by one, those were taken out by either Gizmo's missiles, See-More's eyes, or Jinx's bolts of bad luck.
The team fell silent, as before, but instead of tension, a feeling of elation grew in each of them, and they all started cheering. Gizmo, Billy, See-More, and Mammoth started giving each other high-fives; even Kyd-Wykkyd lifted one corner of his mouth in a slight smile.
Elm rested the end of his staff on the ground, grinning at their antics, and his expression grew even wider when he made eye contact with a smiling Jinx.
All of a sudden, though, his grin disappeared, and his eyes widened. He lunged, hefting his staff and throwing it like a spear, seemingly at her—which was shown not to be the case when instead of hitting her, it hit the robot that had been sneaking up behind her. But something peculiar happened then. Instead of merely knocking the robot off its feet, the staff pierced its skin and nearly severed its head.
Everyone stared, first at the where the staff protruded from the robot's body, then back at Elm, then back at the weapon once more—and that's when the environment disappeared. The basement was visible once more; it was unharmed. Elm's staff clattered to the floor, and he walked over to retrieve it.
Bending down to pick it up, he inspected the end that had pierced the simulated robot. He found nothing but the blunt end that had always been there…
Upon returning to the main floor, the others promptly decided to initiate Elm into the team as a full member, and escorted him to his new room to prepare.
While they were waiting for him to get ready, they had an incoming transmission. Jinx switched on the screen to take it. It didn't make much difference. Whoever was calling went unseen on a screen that was entirely blank. As for hearing them, that was a different story. The female voice was low-pitched, but clear.
"Greetings, HIVE members. I hear you haven't been very active lately. I may have something of interest to you."
Jinx spoke up. "What is it?"
"I believe you are acquainted with the name Felix Spencer? I have reason to believe he has a vault underneath his mansion, a vault containing items of enormous value. What most of those items may be, I have no idea, but they are rumored to be valued at somewhere between two and three million dollars."
"And what do you get out of it?" For once, Gizmo refrained from insulting the person he was addressing, sensing it would not be wise.
"You may take what you wish, but do not harm any of the books you find. My superiors would not be pleased with either me, or you." The voice took on a threatening tone. "They are not people you want unhappy with you."
"All right, we'll take the job," Jinx declared.
"I thought you would…" And with those words, the transmission was cut.
Everyone looked at Jinx. "Well, what are you waiting for? Let's get ready!" she finally ordered.
"Ready for what?" Elm asked, entering the room.
"We have a mission," answered See-More. "Looks like your initiation will have to wait."
A slight reddish tinge came to Elm's cheeks as they eyed the costume they'd told him to change into. "I—I'll just go change back, then," he declared, and hurried out once more, and there was the sound of ruffles and lace flapping as he broke out into a run to escape their amused gazes…
Had I been aware of who the HIVE five actually were when I met them, I would not have joined them. You'd think, from all that Brian told me concerning the Titans, that he would have mentioned the HIVE's history. Instead, it wasn't until later that I found out their origins as a mercenary team hired by a psychotic villain named Slade to destroy the Titans. The rest of their history wasn't so nice, either. They aided another notorious villain, Brother Blood, in an attempt to create a super weapon that could have destroyed whole cities, and staged many a violent robbery that the Titans or their allies had to put a stop to.
Then again, it was for the best, I suppose, that I did not possess that knowledge. Had I refused to join, I would not have been in a position to see the good in their leader, the sorceress known as Jinx…
A/N: I just want to make one thing perfectly clear concerning the point where Elm pierced the robot by hurling his staff. It is not an indication of super strength. He is quite normal when it comes to matters of strength—at least, normal for someone of his unusual height. I plan on revealing the reason for that entire episode in the next chapter
Also in the next chapter is the first appearance of our favorite superhero team, the Teen Titans!
One more thing before you click that blue button to review this chapter. I know I mentioned it after the first chapter, but I want to mention it again, just in case you might have missed it. I GAVE A LINK IN MY BIO THAT LEADS TO A PETITION, A PETITION TO BRING THE TEEN TITANS SHOW BACK! PLEASE SIGN IT, AND TELL OTHERS ABOUT IT TOO!!!