Episode 4: New Teen Titans Go vs. The Grudge Match Apples!
Earlier that morning (before Cat-Con), a mysterious and shadowy figure snuck stealthily into Titans Tower, intent on some decidedly nefarious deeds. The figure waited and listened in on the tower's inhabitants. Her time to act, she told herself, would be soon...
"You know this is pretty much going to be cruel and unusual punishment for her, don't you?" Raven asked.
"I am aware." Starfire said, unconcerned. "But I have faith that the kittens will soon work their kitteny ways upon her and she will thank me for the punishment in the end."
"Either that, or she's going to turn evil again and reek horrible vengeance on us both with, I don't know, an alien armada or something?" Raven offered.
Starfire just looked at her, a little disappointed in her girlfriend's lack of faith. "My sister does not have such an armada." She told her, hugging the Silkie. "And we are going to the Cat-Con for sister bonding time, no matter what you say."
Raven sighed. Blackfire was always a touchy subject for Starfire, she'd known that. She was family, after all. Raven could relate. "You know that's not what I meant. I'm just worried... I don't want her to hurt you again." She told her girlfriend, thinking about how many times Blackfire had done just that to Starfire. To say Raven was still holding a grudge for it wouldn't be inaccurate, so much as it would be stating a fact. If she wasn't afraid that Starfire would hate her for it, she probably would have sent Blackfire to a trash dimension a long time ago.
Starfire smiled, charmed, setting down the Silkie on the couch and going over to kiss Raven lingeringly. "And that is yet one more reason why you are the bestest of the girlfriends." She told her, hugging her, then nuzzling her cheek and giggling. "You are also the cutest." She added, scratching Raven's chin with one finger and kissing the tip of her nose.
Raven blushed a little. It was for sure a sign that Starfire pretty much owned her by this point that she was now dressed up in a hood that was white with gray stripes and had cat ears on it... the fake tail that was dangling out behind her was a pretty strong indication too... She just had to make very sure that she never told Starfire that she could use her magic to make the tail and ears real. That... might just cross a line for her. "Um, yeah, thanks, I guess..." She said under her breath, blushing even more when Jinx and Terra came in.
Jinx was making like a starry-eyed ballet dancer again, dancing as she moved, and was decked out in a homemade cat suit that matched the way she usually liked to dress. Terra was just smiling indulgently and walking at a normal pace. She'd let Jinx make a costume for her too though, so Raven felt better that she'd let Starfire do the same thing to her. "You too, huh?" Raven asked as Terra came up beside her while Starfire caught Jinx's happy mood and went to dance with her, the two of them devolving into giggles before Starfire dragged Jinx with her over to see the costume she'd put Silkie in, in honor of Cat-Con.
"Pretty much, yeah. Got a problem with that?" Terra asked, looking sideways at Raven with a little fearful suspicion.
Raven sighed and threw up her hands. "Fine! I'm sorry I dumped you in a trash dimension repeatedly, I promise I won't ever do it again. Satisfied?! Can you just move on already?" She pleaded, because, really, the looks were getting freaking annoying.
Terra just kept on looking at her like that a moment longer, then her expression softened. "You, um... You really mean it?" She asked hopefully.
"Yes, okay? You're, you know, part of the team or whatever. I um, I trust you now, okay?" Raven told her, trying her best not to blush too much more.
"...Yeah, okay." Terra said in a soft voice, looking back over to where Jinx and Starfire were, feeling a pang of emotion. "Um, thanks..." She said, looking shyly over to Raven.
"Yeah, well, don't expect me to hug you or anything." Raven told her.
Terra giggled a little. "It's okay. I know you like me now." She told her, feeling a little smug somehow... Not that she was going to let her guard down around Raven completely just yet, but, well, this felt good. Like a weight off her shoulders, you know?
"Whatever." Raven said, looking away to hide the small smile that came to her lips.
Blackfire stood in the room she and Rose were sharing now, looking at herself in the mirror. "This is just... I hate her, you know? Usually, I just like messing with her too much not to, but every once and a while? Hate." She told Rose as she stared at herself in the mirror and tried to not... go blind or something.
"Yeah, I guess I can see that. But hey, don't worry so much. You kinda look hot in anything." Rose told her. Blackfire was dressed in a head to toe cat suit that Starfire had gotten for her. Rose herself was in the process of dressing in one too, though it was hard not to cringe repeatedly, thinking about what she was doing. But, well, this was a solidarity with her girlfriend thing. The principle of it, you know?
"You think so, do you?" Blackfire asked, pleased and suddenly in the mood to seduce her. When Rose was around, she was pretty much always in the mood for that though. She flew over and landed behind her on the bed, cozying up to her and wrapping her arms around her, kissing her shoulder, then starting to lick her. "Care to prove it then?" She asked, in a low purr, pushing her over onto her back and getting on top of her. "When we get home today? I'll have you know? I am going to enjoy ripping this monstrosity you're wearing to shreds with my bear hands so I can have my way with you again... I promise..." She finished in a heated whisper.
Their eyes met and Rose just stared back a moment, swallowing at her girlfriend's words. Backfire's eyes were intense. Rose brought a hand up and cupped her neck, pulling her down for a heated kiss, rolling her over onto her back so she was on top.
They lost themselves in making out for a few minutes, and Blackfire decided maybe she could forgive her sister after all. Kissing Rose always put her in a better mood... a much better mood.
"Sister? Sister, it is time that we are going..." Starfire's voice called, but Blackfire and Rose ignored her. "There you are... Oh! Such cuteness!" Starfire gushed, seeing her sister and Rose making out in their cat costumes. "I will go get the camera to commemorate this momen- yipe!" She dodged out of the way just in time as Blackfire's eyebeams nearly scorched her. "What was that for!?" Starfire demanded, outraged.
"Like you don't know!" Blackfire shouted, angry and embarrassed, blushing a little as she sat up. The hate was back now, oh yes it was.
Starfire tilted her head. "I... apologize, sister. I did not mean to embarrass you." She told her.
"Oh, whatever. I'm not embarrassed, okay? Can we just... get this over with? This day cannot be over soon enough, as far as I'm concerned."
Starfire just looked at her, eyes going watery with hurt and regret. "Very well... I will be waiting with the others when you are ready to depart, then." She said, floating off down the hall, feeling dejected.
Blackfire sighed, Rose moving to hold her from behind. "What you think of her matters a lot to her. You know that, right?"
"You're taking her side now?" Blackfire asked, but there wasn't much heat behind the words.
"I'm on your side, you know that. You're my girlfriend. It's kind of in the job description." Rose told her. "But... you know, she's your sister, right?" She asked, thinking of her own stupid brother... who was currently in jail.
Blackfire sighed. "Yeah... She just... She gets under my skin, you know? It's annoying."
"I get that, believe me. Remind me to tell you about my little brother sometime." She offered.
"You have a little brother?" Blackfire asked, not having known that. She felt guilty she hadn't known that. Rose had talked about her dad, that Slade guy, once, but... She resolved herself to asking her more about Rose's past, learning other stuff a girlfriend should know. It was just kind of hard not to kiss her or get her into bed every time she looked at her though... Thinking about it, the logical thing for her to do would be to break up the Teen Titans so she could have Rose to herself more... It was something to think about, anyway, she considered. It was weird though, she... Starfire's hideous cat torture aside, she... kind of liked it here.
"Yeah... but, later, okay? We've got to go do the cat thing now, right?" She asked.
Blackfire groaned. "Don't remind me." She said, dutifully getting up off the bed. "So, get dressed then, I guess."
"Yeah, okay." Rose smiled a little.
Blackfire watched as Rose finished getting the cat outfit on. She actually found herself getting hot watching her. There's something seriously wrong with me... She thought to herself about how Rose wearing the cat outfit turned her on for some reason. Maybe it was just that Rose was willing to do it for her that was the turn on? Yeah... that had to be it.
Rose caught her staring and smirked.
Blackfire actually blushed a little at that. "Let's go already." She told her to cover, taking Rose's hand and dragging her with her to go off to meet their Cat-Con doom.
In the living room, they met up with the others. Once they were there, Raven made a portal for them and they left.
For once, Terra felt more confident about walking through one of Raven's portals. She took Jinx's hand and went through to Cat-Con with a small, shy smile on her lips.
"They're all gone. Finally." The mysterious figure spoke, coming out from her hiding spot.
She walked over, saw the Cat-Con poster Starfire had put on the refrigerator door and giggled to herself at the sight, thinking how the timing on this was so funny. There was a bowl of apples on the counter that Jinx had gotten for the team of Titan girls the previous day.
The figure proceeded to steal the apples and replace them with the apples she'd brought with her.
This was going to be perfect... and, she thought, it was going to make her rich again—guaranteed.
Her wicked deed done, she disappeared back into the shadows and left the tower silent again... that is, of course, until the Teen Titans returned later that day.
Meanwhile (we're still in the flashback), in the big, expensive loft apparent in Jump City that Kid Flash owned, Nightwing sat there, eating an apple and brooding as he watched the city through the expansive two-story window that took up one whole side of the apartment, along with some of the ceiling. "Great view, right?" Kid Flash asked, sitting down next to him, eating an apple too.
"Yeah, totally... These are really good apples, by the way. What kind are they?" He asked his boyfriend.
Kid Flash shrugged. "I don't know. Salad boy probably bought them." He commented, referring to Beast Boy, who was a vegetarian.
Nightwing hid a laugh with a pretend cough. "You know, you really should stop calling him that." He offered, his gaze wandering to where Beast Boy and Cyborg were making out while watching sock puppets... again. There was a half-eaten pizza next to them.
"Hey, I'm a jerk. It's kind of my thing. You know you love it." Kid Flash said, bumping shoulders with him.
"Yeah... maybe." He admitted, looking over to where their new recruits, Aqualad and Speedy, were playing table hockey together. "You really think we're going to be able to make this work? The new team?" He asked.
Kid Flash shrugged. "Yeah, sure, why not?" He asked. "And, you know, if not, who cares? You've got me, right? I'm pretty much carrying all of you anyway."
Nightwing scoffed. "Yeah, right." He said.
"Oh, shut up." Kid Flash told him, light and playful, setting down his apple and moving to kiss his boyfriend.
Nightwing sat down his own apple and let himself get lost in the kissing. This being in a boy love fan fiction thing was really working for him by this point. Who knew having a boyfriend could feel so good? And he had a team again. They'd done the work, they had the poses down, and Kid Flash had worked his magic with the TV reporters. Today was the day, he told himself. Today, they'd make their big debut, and then he'd show Raven and Starfire what a mistake they'd made. All they needed was...
CRIME ALERT! CRIME ALERT! CRIME ALERT!
Everybody perked up, Nightwing raised his fists in the air. "Yesss!" He got up to his feet and went over to the new crime computer Kid Flash had paid to have put in yesterday. He really did have to ask where all the money came from, he reminded himself, again ruing the fact that Batman had cut him off since he'd wrecked the Batmobile last year. "Cinderblock!" He read the alert. "This is perfect!" He exclaimed as Kid Flash lazily wandered over to stand next to him, the other four boys gathering around. "All right—this is it, everyone. Remember our training. Teen Titans Let's Go!"
And off they went. Once they were gone though, that same mysterious figure from before stepped out from the shadows. "This is a really nice place." She said a little wonderingly. "Kid Flash has good taste." She said to herself, wandering around and starting to steal the paintings and stuff, because, unless she missed her guess? They were originals.
A few minutes later, she found her way into the secret room she'd noticed that Kid Flash kept a secret from the others on his team. Her eyes widened as she saw bags of money and other assorted valuables. She rubbed her hands together. "Well, well, well, what do you know. Looks like I'm not the only one who's been bad lately." She said, taking out her cell phone. "Hey, yeah, I'm at Kid Flash's place. Come on over girlfriend, looks like I'm going to need some help carrying all this stuff."
And so it was that (we're back to the present now) in Jump City, near Hong-Kong Stir-Fry, after an action-packed fight scene between Nightwing's new team and the villainous Cinderblock, Nightwing and Kid Flash stood, triumphant, on top of the unconscious stone villain, both of them striking dramatic poses as the press photographed them along with the rest of their team of Teen Boy Titans.
"Well, well." Raven spoke up, stepping up to the front of the crowd, Rose standing with her, having her back. "Look what H.I.V.E. Island coughed up." She said, mentally cursing herself. She'd just paraphrased Look what the cat dragged in, and with a hairball inference too... She'd been around way too many cats lately, she thought with a little bit of an internal cringe.
"Raven." Nightwing accused resentfully, narrowing his eyes at her.
"Yeah! Raven!" Beast Boy imitated Robin's tone, still not at all okay with having been kicked out of Titans Tower by her.
"What are you doing here? Want us back now, don't you? Well, it's too late, we've got a new team now." Cyborg said, he and Beast Boy crossing their arms and standing back to back, striking a pose too.
Rose looked over to where Speedy and Aqualad were both striking poses of their own. "Um, hey. What's with all the posing, exactly?" Rose asked.
Cyborg deflated a little. "It's horrible!" He confessed overdramatically, remembering the hours of pose practice they'd had to put up with lately. "I know it's horrible. You sure you don't want us back? We'd totally ditch Robin if you want?"
"You would?" Rose asked, looking at Beast Boy.
"Yeah, totally." He admitted. "I mean, jeez. If you thought Robin was bad by his self, he's ten times worse with Kid Flash around!"
Robin cleared his throat. "Actually... It's Nightwing now." Nightwing corrected. "And get back in line, sidekicks! Mutiny is a hanging offense!" He shouted them down, left eye twitching a little. He had to rally things, he told himself. Get back in control.
"Oh! So we're his sidekicks now?" Cyborg asked his boyfriend.
"Yes! And don't you forget it!" Nightwing told them, in no uncertain terms. "Step out of line one more time, and it's no pizza for a week!"
Cyborg gasped, narrowing his eyes. "You wouldn't!"
"Oh, I would." Nightwing told him, being smug about it. He hadn't expected to come up against Raven's team the first time out, but he wasn't going to back down, he told himself. Besides, it looked like it was just her and Ravager for now. He had them outnumbered... that was, of course, if he could actually count on Beast Boy and Cyborg to have his back. They would... right?
"Did you notice we're just standing around in the background?" Aqualad asked Speedy. "It's kind of insulting."
"Yeah, I know what you mean." Speedy said. "We didn't even get a couple's origin story, not even a paragraph. Heck, they've only thrown me cameos since season one, and not even very many of them! It's so not fair..." He muttered.
"Please, momma!" Beast Boy said, getting to his knees in front of Raven. "You gotta save us!"
Rose chuckled. "Yeah, like that's gonna happen." She looked at Raven a little doubtfully though, wondering if the other girl was really considering going back to the status quo. If that happened, she and Blackfire, Terra and Jinx too, would get kicked out of the tower again and she'd probably have to sneak around off-screen to be with Blackfire. They'd also probably not get that many cameos either. That would just... completely suck.
"Yeah... Not interested. Sorry." Raven told Beast Boy.
Rose sighed in relief.
Kid Flash laughed at Beast Boy. "Yeah, I could have told you that would happen. Now you're out pizza for a week." He gloated, finding the whole thing hilarious.
"Two weeks!" Nightwing said. "They get no mercy." He hissed at them, squinting again. Was he letting this whole being Nightwing, leading the team again, and having an (as it turned out) very rich boyfriend who could kick people out of his place if he asked him to thing go to his head a little? Yeah, he kind of was—duh! But so what? This was awesome! Now he just had to win this grudge match they were so clearly about to have, and life would be perfect!
"Are you really just going to let him go full-on dictator on these guys?" Rose asked Kid Flash.
Kid Flashed shrugged. "Sure. It's kind of a turn on, actually." He admitted.
Rose cringed, making a face. "Ew." She said, backing away a little. "Boys are so weird."
"It... might also be the way his buns look in those tights though, I'll admit." Kid Flash confessed belatedly, having to admit that he was, perhaps, shallow enough about these things for that to be at least partly true...
"Yeah, whatever, poser boy." Raven said, feeling like she was ready for a fight for some reason. Maybe she just missed having Robin and Beast Boy to pummel into mush or something? She had to admit, it had always been mildly entertaining... even if her reasons for doing it had mainly been for stress relief about not getting to be with Starfire on screen like she'd wanted to be and blaming them for it. "You can't call yourselves the Teen Titans anymore. That's us now. Call yourselves something else."
"Like there's any chance of that happening." Nightwing scoffed. "Why don't you go back to sleep and keep dreaming?"
Rose shook her head. "So lame."
"Yeah, sorry... if anyone's dreaming here, that would be you, Nightwing." Raven told him, narrowing her own eyes. "Our tower, our name, you lose."
"Hmm." Nightwing said. "Well, then, it seems like we've reached an impasse, doesn't it? ...You know there's only one way to settle something like this, don't you?" He asked.
"You don't mean..." Cyborg said.
"Yes!" Nightwing confirmed. "We're going to have... a grudge match!"
"Fine by me." Raven said, an anticipatory smile curling her lips. "Girls?" She asked, teleporting Starfire, Jinx, Terra, and Blackfire to her from the tower.
Starfire and her sister caught themselves by flying. Jinx was agile enough to keep to her feet, but Terra tripped and fell. "Hey!" Jinx scolded Raven indignantly.
"Yeah, save it for later. Its time... for a grudge match!" Raven said.
"Teen Titans? Attack!" Nightwing called the charge.
"Girls? Ditto." Raven said, calling her own charge.
Jinx and Terra watched on as their teammates started to get into a brawl with the boys across from them. "Um, should we help?" Terra asked.
Jinx shrugged. "I don't see why not. It could be fun?" She offered, wiggling her fingers and making Aqualad slip and fall on his butt.
Terra giggled. "Well, I guess it is kind of expected for super heroes, right?" She offered.
"That's the spirit!" Jinx said, zapping the already sparkling arrows (fireworks arrows?) Speedy had shot their way with her magic and making them turn around to chase him.
Terra looked and saw Starfire and her sister trying to tag Kid Flash with their energy blasts. She smirked a little and turned the ground beneath him against him. At the same time, Rose angled one of her swords to glint sunlight in his eyes, the combined effect of which was to make him stumble and tumble end over end until Terra grabbed him and held him in solid stone. He looked dazed and out for the count. "Well, that was easy." She said, even as she looked and saw Speedy's quiver explode and knock him out too.
Rose was dodging Cyborg, but Blackfire, no longer occupied with Kid Flash, noticed and turned on him, growling and launching herself at him. They traded blows for a few moments, but, soon enough, he went flying over Terra's shoulder and hit a brick wall, going down for the count.
Blackfire smirked, dusting off her hands. "No one messes with my girlfriend, losers." She said.
Beast Boy had turned into a T-rex by this point and Jinx was having fun zapping at his feet while Starfire eyebeam zapped him. "Do not think I will go easy on you, just because we were once on the same team, friend Beast Boy. You will not take the Titans Tower away from us. There are too many stuffed animal kittens at stake and you will not make them the homeless!" She said defiantly, flying at him super-fast with two glowing fists in front. As Terra watched, it seemed like the knockout punch went in slow motion. She looked over at Jinx who'd, coincidentally, cast a slow motion spell on the scene.
"It's more dramatic this way." Jinx explained. "The fight's been way too one-sided—we've gotta play up the drama more, or the readers will get bored."
"Oh..." Terra said, nodding. "That makes sense." She agreed as Beast Boy T-rex fell on the ground with an earth-shaking thud.
"I wonder what's going on with Raven and Robin?" Jinx pondered.
The two of them turned and stared. "Um, I guess... he's Nightwing now?" Terra said, as they watched on while Nightwing uselessly fought against Raven, who was just smiling in relaxed amusement as he tried all sorts of martial arts moves, staff strikes, and Batarang throws, all of which she used her magic shadow powers to harmlessly turn aside.
"Give up yet?" Raven asked, smirking as she made a clawed shadow hand materialize from the ground and pull one of his legs out from under him so he fell on his face.
"No... Never!" Nightwing said, tiredly getting to his feet and adopting a fighting stance again.
"You should, you know." Rose said, as she, Blackfire and Starfire came up to stand with Raven. Jinx and Terra looked at each other, Terra shrugged, and they walked over to join the others. "You're the only one left, and that's just because Raven thinks it's fun to torment you." Rose added.
"I agree with her about that, by the way. It's hilarious." Blackfire added unhelpfully, pointing a finger at him and zapping his staff from his hand to clatter to the ground yards away.
Nightwing looked around at his defeated team. He sighed. "Fine." He said. "You win." He admitted, feeling like a loser saying it, but it was kind of obvious. "We'll... We'll pick a new name."
"Um yeah, you might want to go into a new line of work, too, while you're at it." Blackfire added—again, being not at all helpful.
"Hey, can't you go a little easy on him?" Jinx said. "He looks really sad." She offered.
"Huh? Oh, um, yeah. Sad." Terra offered, scrambling to show girlfriend support. Really though, Robin was usually kind of an annoying jerk, so she didn't so much feel bad for him.
Blackfire sighed. "Fine." She allowed for the sake of team harmony. She went over and patted Nightwing on the head. "You aren't a complete loser. There, happy?" She asked Jinx.
"Um, yeah, I guess so..." Jinx allowed, shrugging. "Can... we go get the Chinese food now? I'm hungry."
Raven looked at Starfire who nodded that she too was hungry. "Yeah, okay. We can do that." Raven agreed, turning to head back over to Hong-Kong Stir-Fry, which, thankfully, had been left unharmed in all the grudge-matching that had been going on.
"Nightwing! Nightwing!" One of the reports who'd just started to emerge from hiding could be heard asking. "How does it feel to have your first grudge match as a team turn out to be such a crushing, one-sided defeat?"
"Yeah, and who does your hair, by the way? It's fabulous." Another reporter asked, which did actually perk up Nightwing's mood some.
"Well, you see, it's all about the right hair jell, actually." He started to say.
"What are you going to call your team, now that you've agreed to drop the Titans moniker?" Another reporter asked.
"You know, I'm thinking we might try... Young Justice!" Nightwing answered.
"BAWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" A laugh to end all laughs could be heard out on the bay in Jump City... before a hacking cough and a choke cut it short, that was.
Out on H.I.V.E. Island, the four H.I.V.E. boys had been sitting around the TV, and See-More was at that very moment giving Gizmo CPR because he'd hyperventilated and choked on his popcorn from laughing too much at how badly Robin and his pretty boy loser squad had gotten owned out there.
Mammoth and Billy-Numerous let out sighs of relief as Gizmo coughed up the offending popcorn kernel and sat up, catching his breath. "Damn! People say you can die from laughter, but I never thought that was really a real thing." He said, looking up to see tears falling down Mammoth's cheeks. The boy looked like he was about to break down any second. "Aw, come on big guy, don't be sad. I'm alright, see?" Gizmo said, using his flying rig to float up and kiss him on the cheek.
Mammoth hugged him and Gizmo squirmed from the strength of the hug. Sometimes, he thought, there were serious downsides to having this boy for a boyfriend.
"He does kind of look cool as Nightwing though." Billy Numerous said to See-More.
"Yeah, maybe, but don't tell me that. It's depressing." See-More said.
"Aw, come on. No way is he as hot as you, See-More. No. Way." Billy countered earnestly.
"Yeah, thanks I guess." See-More said, wondering to himself if he really should try a makeover like Robin had after all.
"Hey, check that out." Billy said, hoping to distract See-More from his mentioning Nightwing's new hotness mistake.
See-More went to look. "Hey, yeah. There was totally a crime wave at the same time as the big fight."
"Total genius." Billy said, looking over to See-More. "I wonder why we never thought of doing that?"
Gizmo got red in the cheeks at that. "Hey!" He protested, flying over between his team and the TV. "Stuff like that's strictly bush-league." He told them. "It's a cheap shot. I'd never lower our standards that low." He told them, even though it was a complete lie.
"But... we're the villains. Isn't taking cheap shots kind of what we're supposed to be doing?" See-More asked.
"He's got a point, you know." Billy said.
"Yeah, whatever. Sue me for having a sense of artistic integrity about my job." He told them, blustering his way on through.
And, back at Titans Tower...
"It's weird how much I was into it, you know?" Raven was saying later as the Titans girls were eating Chinese in a circle in their redecorated living room. They were sitting on pillows around a low table.
"It was very satisfying to smack the Beast Boy down for some reason." Starfire nodded, agreeing with her girlfriend.
"I thought it was fun." Jinx shrugged. "Chaos and mayhem is kind of ma thang." She offered.
"Yeah, I don't know what the big deal is. They were threatening our top billing slot (and Starfire's stuffed animals collection, I guess). Of course we had to beat them down. What else were we supposed to do?" Rose asked.
Raven sighed. "Yeah... I know. I just can't shake the feeling that something weird was going on. The fact that there were all those robberies at the same time as our fight is way too suspicious, if you ask me."
"Oh, you mean like, it was all part of an evil plot, and there's some evil mastermind out there, messing with us from the shadows?" Terra asked, wiggling her fingers to mock illustrate the creepy doom of it all.
"Yeah, maybe, I guess." Raven allowed.
"I don't know." Rose said. "I mean, it had to be only a matter of time before some brain case out there figured out that using one of our fights as cover to steal stuff was an obvious move to make some easy cash, right?" Rose yawned. "You're probably over thinking it too much."
Blackfire smirked. "Seconded." She offered.
A small, goofy smile came to Rose's lips that she quickly hid before kissing her girlfriend on the cheek. "Thanks, babe."
"Whatever." Blackfire countered. "That was pathetic as kisses go, you realize that, right?" She said, looking at Rose a beat before tackling her to the floor and showing her in detail what she expected to receive in the way of a say thank you kiss.
Rose did not mind the lesson—at all.
"Is it the kissing portion of the evening now?" Starfire asked.
Raven looked and saw that Jinx and Terra were making out now too. Raven shrugged. "Apparently so." Raven admitted.
"Joy!" Starfire said, imitating her sister.
Raven laughed as she was tackled and kissed too.
Meanwhile, the remaining apples in the kitchen glowed faintly in the dim light of evening, promising that this might not be the last grudge match our heroes could face this season...
And so it was the next morning that, on the outskirts of Jump City, Kitten Van Cleer (aka: the mysterious shadowy figure who'd planted the grudge match apples in Titans Tower and Kid Flash's loft) and her girlfriend, Gaea (aka: Mother Nature as a teenage girl, who'd made said grudge match apples with her magic nature powers), closed the deal on a modest size mansion.
A very happy realtor departed the premises and the two set out to lunge by the pool. "Ah, life of luxury? I've missed you." Kitten mused. She wasn't going to say it where her girlfriend could hear, but this beat camping out in the woods all to hell.
"You're so clever." Gaea said fawningly.
"I know, right?" Kitten answered, sitting up and looking over at her new girlfriend/partner in crime. "But, on the other hand, it's not like it was really all that hard though." It had been pretty easy to get her girlfriend to make those apples and to agree to become a thief with her too. She was beginning to think she had a definite aptitude for criminal genius. Who knew? She for sure hadn't gotten it from her dad, the loser.
Gaea looked around. "So, this is where you grew up, then, is it?" She asked in wonder.
"Yeah... I don't want to talk about that now though. Can we just make out for a while?" She asked hopefully.
Gaea smirked a little. "I don't see why not." She allowed, going over to share Kitten's lounge chair with her for a while.
This whole having a girlfriend thing was really nice, Gaea thought to herself. She should have tried it a long time ago...
Next Episode: How Kitten Became An Evil Mastermind
In our next episode, Kid Flash finds out he's been robbed... and he has a confession to make to his boyfriend (uh-oh!). Also, learn how Kitten and Gaea (Mother Nature) became a couple and decided to be sneaky super villains who use grudge match apples to get what they want. There might be something else in the episode too, I haven't decided what yet...
So many interesting plot developments! Be sure to come back for our next episode to find out what happens next!