I have to apologize for the spelling errors and the slight grammatical problems in the last chapter. When you type as quickly as I do, it happens. I'll try to keep it to a minimum...I hope.

Chapter 2: Afterparty

A beast on eight wheels is prowling these city streets. The time? After midnight. The place? Jump City, USA. At this time of night, all good boys and girls were snug in their beds, dreaming of sugar and lollipops. As for everyone else, clubhopping and bars is the order of the day. Jump City did have 22 bars that catered specifically to metahumans, and 18 clubs. They ran full swing every night of the week.

But enough of that. Let's shift our perspective towards the city limits. A slightly battered truck was making it's way back into town. The front end was smashed up good, with smoke trailing from the front grille. The engine was still running, so that was something. Connected to the cab was a flatbed trailer with five large metallic blocks mounted on it. Let's move up about twenty feet back to the truck cab. Sitting in the driver's seat is one of the protagonists of our sordid little tale. Red and blue are his colors. He likes chocolate chip ice cream, and root beer. His aunt tells him he should cook more, but he's always been lazy. Microwaving Hot Pockets is so much easier.

But that's enough about the little things...at least for now. Right now, the driver has stomped on the brakes and has come to a stop. He switches on the lights and slips out a map. It details all the major highways and byways of this fair city. He thinks he's lost.

"I'm here...and the warehouse is here." a finger traces lines on the map, trying to go from point A to point B. "This is Highway 74, need to go on Route 14 twelve miles down, then take a left..." he folds up the map and tosses it to the side. At least he has a general idea of how to get to his destination, and that's a start.

"Webslinging is so much easier..." he mumbles under his breath, before restarting the engine and slipping into gear. Complain later. Got a job to do. Let's roll out...

Let's switch gears and move back, twenty, thirty miles in the wrong direction, back out of town. True believers, we are back where this story of high adventure and thrills began! HIVE Academy, where only the best and brightest mischief makers of our generation attend, to be molded into the future terrorists and leaders of societies dedicated to world domination.

But today is a dark day. A shadow, a blemish has been cast on the pristine reputation of HIVE Academy, and on Brother Blood. Barely an hour ago, it was the dawn of a new era. Things were looking up. But lo, how the mighty have fallen. The intruder's damnable webbing has since disintegrated, but it has left a taste in his mouth that will undoubtedly last for days. Everything feels gummy, and tasteless.

Ugh.

As for his three 'prized' students, disgust has replaced any other feeling he might have held toward them. Jinx, bad luck to any who would oppose her. Gizmo, the evil genius whose IQ ranks in the quadruple digits. Mammoth, the man-mountain strong enough to tear apart a tank. They were taken down like amateurs. Less than that, even. Currently, they were stuck together with some damnable concoction. They struggled and failed to get loose. This was the best HIVE had to offer? The Titans were taken from them without a punch even being thrown, practically no resistance whatsoever.

And his school, his precious school...was burning.

Still.

A student had reported to him that the fire supression systems had been disabled, and that the manual overrides had been destroyed. The water mains had been closed and clogged with the same material currently holding Jinx, Gizmo and Mammoth. By the time they could be cleared, HIVE would be less than a shell of what it had been.

Another student landed to Brother Blood's right. He could fly, and had been tasked with aerial surveillance of the devastation. The student's face said it all.

"The student dormitories are all but destroyed, Headmaster. The fire burned up everything. Beds, sheets, personal belongings. Everything is gone." The student sounded broken.

Blood rubbed his temples, trying to center himself. One man had done this. One man. All previous reports had labeled him a buffoon. An annoyance whose victories in the past had come due to blind luck and the incompetence of the so-called villians he faced in his home city. That assessment would have to be massively reevaluated. He had come, a wolf among wolves, and shown them up.

Destroyed everything!

Blood estimated that it would take at least 70-80 million dollars to fix and replace everything, if not more. The cafeterias were gutted, as were the student dormitories. His own private suite was not undamaged. Beyond that, the computer core was a problem, and severely compromised. There was data that had just been lost, and could not be retrieved again. Future missions for at least the next year and a half were now so much smoke in the wind.

Brother Blood did not look foward to the meeting he would have in the morning with the Brotherhood of Evil. They supplied the funding, through discretionary channels, for 32 HIVE Academies worldwide. A reckoning would be demanded, and he would have to explain himself.

If he still had a position by this time tomorrow, he would get in contact with Slade. Beyond corporate terrorism and industrial espionage and thievery, Slade was an assassin. This...insect who had so thoroughly ruined everything had to be squashed, permanently. Normally, Blood, after seeing one man wreak such destruction, would have been tempted to offer HIVE membership to him, but not this time.

No one hit Brother Blood where he lived and kept living.

He had close to a billion dollars in several Swiss bank accounts. He would access that money and pay any price for the broken body of that...man!

Blood has to keep that anger, and use it. He needed a clear head. HIVE still needed him as their lord and master.

He saw blood on the horizon for this...pest. Very soon, he would drown in it. Then he would die...

The scene shifts, yet again, to an abandoned meat packing plant in the industrial sector of Jump City. It's been shut down less than a year, and is still in good condition. The building is currently in possesion of a holding company who accuired the assets of Tastee Pork Products after it went belly-up. The power and water is still connected, for some reason.

The sliding garage door to the main loading bay slides open with surprising force and snaps up into the ceiling. A figure runs back to an idle truck waiting outside and drives in about fifty feet before coming to a stop. Slamming the cab closed behind him, he leaps up onto the flatbed and looks at these prison units.

"Well Spidey," he muses, a hand scratching his chin. "How are you going to break these Easter eggs?" A backflip takes him to the top of Robin's unit. He openes up a panel and looks at the circuitry for a second before closing it again.

He opens it one more time, and looks at the circuitry again. He seems to be deep in thought. Suddenly, Spidey snaps his fingers.

"Aha!" he declares. "When in doubt, smash." Flipping from unit to unit, our intrepid young hero opens the control panels for each unit. Pulling on wires, he's soon holding a tangle of red, green and yellow wires connected to hardwired control systems built into the cages. With a final yank, the control systems pop out, opening the cages.

One by one, the front sides of each unit opens, and a flood of bluish liquid streams out, and with it, five drenched and disoriented Titans. The neurolytic gel has shifted to a liquid state, but it's still dangerous. One by one, these champions struggle to get up, but two days in a neutral buoyancy tank seems to have taken out the piss and vinegar from them. Something has to be done about that.

Another backflip lands our rescuer on the far end of the loading bay, near an industrial hose that was used to clean trucks. A quick twist of the pipes gets the water flowing. another leap, hose in hand, and we're back on the flatbed.

All five of them immediately scream in protest as a high-powered stream of water hits each and every one of them, and then the floor, washing away the residue of the gel. A hop down to the ground, and our friendly neighborhood wallcrawler is in front of the Titans, the water pressure turned down somewhat. He the gets in close, washing out the hair and scrub, scrub, scrub.

Starfire tries to slap him, but is slow and groggy, and misses by a mile. "Hey!" Spidey barks. "There will be no hitting. I'm trying to help you." Suddenly, a wave of black energy hit out beloved hero, smashing him hard into a nearby wall and cracking it. Slowly, Raven stands up. She still seems unsteady on her feet, and every muscle feels out of sorts. But discomfort will have to wait. The last two, three days feel strange, unreal. More recently, there was some kind of explosion. And now, here we are, waking up to a hose in the face and a cold room.

One after another, all five Titans get to their feet. Cyborg is last, as his systems have to reintialize themselves. Everyone looks around. What seems to be some kind of garage greets them, with a battered truck nearby. A flatbed is hooked up to the back, with five emptied and wet containment units on it. There's a flash of movement. Trying to get up on the far wall is a man, wearing a bright red and blue costume with a full face mask and two wide, bright eyes.

Raven strikes out again, a stream of dark energy catching this stranger and forming a talon, pinning him to the wall. Raven struggles to find words. She feels numb all over, and any feeling is distant. Slowly the Titans appraoch this stranger.

The outfit makes some kind of connection in Robin's head. He should be able to put a name to a face, but everything feels slow and not quite there.

Bug-Man...that's not right. Something-Man. Heard about him recently, but where? Not from around here, that's for sure. Robin can't make the connection right now. He feels weak as a kitten.

"Ask...him." Raven mutters. Things feel weird and out of place. She wants to be anywhere but here in this cold garage. Even generating the will to hold this guy in place is taking energy she really doesn't have. "Why...why here? Who...you?"

"There was a BOOM," Beast Boy said. They all looked spaced out.

The guy spoke. "Yeah, a BOOM. That's what happened. You guys have been drugged. That's why you're all spacey. HIVE would have killed you all if I hadn't stepped in."

"Who...you?" Robin was struggling to stay coherent. He really didn't feel like interrogating anyone.

"I'm Spider-Man, professional party crasher, at your service."

I know this is short, but I got several good reviews, and I felt I owed a quick follow up. I'll come up with a continuation to this in a day or so. Please provide suggestions for how you want this story to go! I'm open to good ideas.