Read and review!
Arual-san
0000000000000000000000000000000
The world he found himself wandering through was like a picture of rolling meadow that was forever fuzzy and out of focus. The dandelions swaying several yards away were the same blurry mess as the one he held right up before his eyes.
Beast Boy could only look so long without getting a headache.
Whether it was his vision that was out of whack or the field itself, neither seemed inclined to clear up and so he threw the weed aside in annoyance. Looking up, the blurry meadow seemed to stretch on forever and beyond. He gave a sigh and kept straight on walking as he'd done for what seemed like days when there was only the green of the grass and the yellow of the dandelions.
As nonsensical as dreams could be, despite the fact that he usually forgot most of what they detailed by the time he woke up, Beast Boy seemed to be able to sense that this was a dream unlike many that came before it. Usually, when he was able to come to the realization that he was in a dream while it was still playing out in his head, he could manipulate so much more than just the shape of his body. He'd had quite a lot of fun making dream-versions of his friends do whatever he wanted, namely laugh at any and every joke he told, but now his thought processes were every bit as blurry as the meadow.
He knew this realm wasn't real and that was a start. For so long Beast Boy could only continue to walk across the meadow in efforts to get his sluggish mind running again somehow when the rest of him pleaded for him to just lay down in the soft grass and let it swallow him up.
Something had happened…hadn't it?
But that thought wasn't any new information uncovered. It had been the same thing he'd been repeating to himself over and again in hopes that it would spark further information. His brain couldn't process coherently, it didn't want to, but he kept pressing the matter with every step he took.
"Starfish…" he murmured, picking out that memory. "I morphed into it…on the side of the jet…why did I…?"
Pulling that thought stream from out of his head slowed him a little as his brain finally started to wake up.
"Umm…" he continued on, continuing to walk when the need to sit and rest became greater, "my wrists were all red, Raven was…yelling at me…but she's always yelling at me…uh…became a lemur…those nasty, smelly…"
That was the memory that brought the rest all flowing back like tidal wave and the shock was enough to wake him up in that same instant.
"It was a trap!"
Beast Boy sprung up straight-backed from the bottom bunk of the bed he was on so fast that he just missed banging his already ailing skull into the wooden frame above. The harsh transition from horizontal to vertical made his head spin some more. He couldn't pay that any mind now, not when he realized that he had lost that crucial fight with the last remaining android.
Even now he still saw that robotic girl standing tall over him in his remaining moments of consciousness, waving goodbye to him and taking on his form, that fake that had fooled him into believing she could be the real version of that pretty academy girl he had met in the café.
"Stupid!" His scalp still hurt from where he had pulled it in a last ditch effort to stay awake but Beast Boy pulled at it some more for being a hormonal teenager back then instead of the hero he was supposed to be. If only he'd been thinking, analyzing the situation in the basement like Robin always did, he would've known that the droid couldn't have possibly been Brooke. The two droids they'd spied on that night had been the ones in the café had possessed the correct information of that night so only another model of droid could've known the same.
"Hey, Rob," he said hazily, fumbling for the bunk above him, "thanks for getting me out of that pinch." By his tone he barely omitted to add "again". "I'm really sorry, I…"
"Keep it down, brat!" And the sleeper above pulled onto the far end of the mattress.
"Huh?" Beast Boy was fairly sure that Robin was past his awkward stage and so his voice shouldn't have been sounding as deep as it did. He was also pretty sure that his friend wouldn't insult him like that but with his mind still returning he had to be sure.
He jumped onto the ledge of the top bunk but he didn't see his teammate there switching beds for the sake of not having to lug his friend's unconscious body up the ladder for their final night.
From what he could see in the dark the person there had a bald blue head and tiny funnels for ears.
Tension rising at once, Beast Boy touched back down to the floor. Now he looked left and right, taking everything in, and he saw more of the same bunk beds stacked up against the walls in a room much longer than his dinky dorm room could boast. Parts of the other people sleeping revealed that they were not at all the kind of people he was accustomed to seeing but aliens from other worlds.
While he was observing things he noticed that the droid had stolen his pajamas and he was left with only that awful, moth-bitten stand-in for his regular uniform. A plain outfit laid out for him on a shoddy nightstand but he didn't put it on just yet.
His skin was still the healthy peach color of any normal teenager but the generator rings were low on energy, the batteries not meant to run for such a long length of time. They wouldn't keep him disguised for very much longer.
All of these things were poor distractions that his mind raced to gobble up before he had to come to the worst part of his situation. It wasn't about where he was or what his fate was to be but that the droid was now certain to be posing as his double.
"Robin…"
This could quite possibly be the only time his fearless leader could be rendered defenseless. Robin trusted him as his friend and he only needed to expose his back once to that imposter and…
Beast Boy scrambled for his communicator just as fast as his hands could function. Luckily it was still there; the android hadn't stolen it from him. He soon found that the droid hadn't needed to however. All he received was static.
"No…No!" he hissed at the communicator, banging at it. He was up off his feet at all angles of the room and perching off an empty top bunk for any kind of signal. There was nothing.
"Not good, not good!"
"Would somebody shut him up?"
"Oh man, I was such an idiot." He'd had slips of judgment before but none so serious, none that put his friend's life in danger. "If anything happens, if anything happens I-"
He'd thought he'd been recovering from that serum he'd been injected with but a sudden flurry of motion behind his eyelids made him stop babbling and fall back against a bedpost for support. Hundreds of images flashed by much too fast for him to process and he somehow felt an alien presence fingering over those images that were his memories of his friends. It was overwhelming of his vision and Beast Boy could only close his eyes and wait for it to stop, unable to get rid of it.
A few things he'd managed to pick up during the rushing stream of images were sights that weren't his at all. He saw an aerial view of the tower with Starfire and Raven below firing bolts and energy at him and he squirmed at viewing the receiving end of their firepower.
"It's that droid," he murmured woozily. "Some kinda link…"
But just as he was about to resign himself to the sickening feel of all those flashing images Beast Boy felt a familiar presence slip into the throng. He didn't need her image added to know that it was her.
"Raven!" Beast Boy cried out in a loud whisper so that he wouldn't push the other sleepers to distract him. Had he been thinking clearly he might've thought to think the words rather than speak them.
"Raven, what's going on?"
Where are you? Raven asked and she sounded rushed in the heat of battle. Are you hurt?
"No, no, fine!" he got out in a rush. "What's happening with that droid? What about-?" He'd known that their time was short but still he was shocked when she was suddenly cut off and the visions stopped.
Raven would be unable to reconnect that link when they were so far away that the communicators didn't work.
Beast Boy sunk to his mattress in stress hardly relieved by his contact with her. What she asked was the standard first line of communication in any given situation, if he was okay, other questions would've had to wait for later. He'd only seen the girls and even then in a dangerous position. He knew nothing about how they were doing in the fight taking place at that very instant and worse still he didn't know if Robin had made it through.
Those awful thoughts spiraling in his head made it impossible to sit still for very long.
"Hey!" He jumped back onto the upper railing of his bedpost to his grumpy bedmate. "Where are we?"
"You'll be wedged deep within the floorboards if you don't leave me be."
"I don't need any attitude right now!" he came back harshly, his anxiety giving him strength in an unknown situation. "You can complain about it or you can just tell me what I need to know and get to sleep sooner. Just know that I can be very, very annoying."
"I've noticed that," the alien man grumbled but he rolled over to face the boy. Beast Boy might've startled a little at the alien's bug-like eyes the size of CD's but his raging anxiety didn't permit that. "You're in the worker quarters of your new lord and master so get used to it."
"Details please!"
The man grumbled some more but obliged. "This is the Horse-Head Nebula, Planet Gamoht, a relatively small world that is nothing but sand, wind and desert monsters. All of us here are currently in the employ of Lord Nezhara, ruler of the Southwestern region."
"Employ?" Beast Boy scoffed. "You mean we're slaves."
"If you want to be technical about it, yes. Anything else?"
"Yeah, give me the layout of the building so I can make a break for it."
So many of the others had been trying to ignore him and get back to sleep but just then a great deal of them perked up with laughter. Beast Boy's eyes shot to a side in annoyance, having been completely serious.
"Oh we're not kept here under lock and key," one said between chuckles. "You can escape quite easily but it's a five day journey to the nearest city."
Another pitched in, "You'll be dead long before then with the sandstorms and the monsters that hide within them."
"You guys wouldn't really know if anyone's survived the journey, would you?" Beast Boy came back smartly and the laughter stopped. It turned to resentment that this scrawny Earth boy was mocking them in so many words but Beast Boy didn't intend to waste any more time with them.
He didn't have any possessions on him so there was no delay in him walking to the door, placing a hand on the handle.
"Wait." A hand pulled back his shoulder before he could leave.
Beast Boy turned to see another human teenager, one of the few humans in the quarters. The slight boy with glasses wore an academy shirt, an insignia different from Birnamwood, confirming Robin's suspicions that the operation was widespread across the nation. The shirt was so wrinkled and dirty that just the sight of it would've earned the boy a demerit.
"If you won't be convinced otherwise than please just don't go at night."
Beast Boy hesitated when the concern in those words was genuine. He saw several others on the bunks wearing the same worried expression.
"If it's the monsters…" Beast Boy started, plenty used to being underestimated in human form.
The academy boy shook his head and then nodded it toward the one window in the room. "Not even any of the animals of this planet are equipped to withstand how cold the desert gets at night. They all burrow away; the sands are bare for miles. Check it if you don't believe me."
The boy had no reason to lie to him but Beast Boy stepped forward to check anyway.
The sand beyond the palace walls stretched on for just as long as the meadows did in his dreams. Mountains of sand formed and valleys dipped low, a landscape forever changed and sculpted by the harsh winds that blew. Although Beast Boy could see for many miles, the sands were without a single hint of life, as was the same for the sleeping palace grounds and town below.
The window he was sure was insulated to ward off the cold but still it was a shock to touch it. He pulled away with a look of doubt.
"Well," the boy continued, making a marked effort to put a little cheer in his voice after the gloomy subject, "my name's Benji. I guess I'll show you the ropes tomorrow since you're new. It's really not so bad here if you follow all the rules and-"
"Mine's Gar," Beast Boy said bluntly, too stressed at the moment for manners. "See you then." He didn't move towards his bed but made a beeline straight back to the door.
"Hey! You're not still going outside, are you? You'll freeze!"
"No," Beast Boy grumbled. There was no possible way he was getting any sleep that night when he was so worried over Robin and quite possibly the whole rest of his team. "If I'm going to be staying here for a while I want to look around and get a feel for the place. Are there any guards around here to make sure we stay in our little cell?"
"Technically no, but there are guards that patrol the halls anyway. This Lord Nezhara guy is pretty hated by the residents of the palace town so he needs a lot of security for assassination attempts. Don't think those guards won't punish you though if they catch you past lights out."
Beast Boy gave a lazy wave over his shoulder. "Got it. Thanks, Benny."
If he hadn't had the powers he did Beast Boy would've most likely have been the least stealthy of the Titans but having those powers automatically made him the stealthiest. Not even the Boy Wonder could stroll straight past a guard undetected but Beast Boy did in the form of an indistinct insect. He didn't know the types of fauna this world contained so couldn't take the chance of becoming anything larger.
Once the guard was gone down the hall Beast Boy changed back, never getting used to an insect's compound eyes.
He glanced back with the hope that he would be able to find the slave's quarters when it bore no distinguishing characteristics from the rest of the hallway other than a plain-looking door. He went a good long time without running into anyone else and he slipped under the doors just as he had done back at the academy, this time without fear of repercussions.
So many were useless to him but when he finally found a communications room he still found himself barred from contacting the others. The alien language labeling the control board bore no resemblance to English and additionally required a key to activate the system.
Beast Boy couldn't go putting a giant red 'X' on the door to mark it as a room to come back to so he changed to an ant and left a pheromone trail only he could pick up while in that form. That was some progress at least when each winding corridor was like the one before.
There was nothing he could do right then and he knew it, nothing but get to bed so he wouldn't be tired for his sure to be early shift tomorrow.
"Sorry guys," he murmured under his breath, depressed that he couldn't do more. "Be safe."
He'd already passed the guard assigned to patrol the hallway he walked currently so he found his ears instinctively perking up a little when he heard a new set of footsteps coming from up ahead.
He didn't need to be in an animal form to recognize that they were lighter set not in the heavy, clunking boots of the guards. He'd seen no one else during that late night trek so he could only assume it was another slave up out of bed like himself.
Erring on the side of safety, Beast Boy grabbed a small vase from a display to make like he was delivering it. There was really no need to transform just then and he didn't have the energy for it anyway.
The footsteps neared and with it came the slight figure of a shadow. The figure rounded the corner before he did and the abrupt sight of that face again nearly made him drop his vase.
"Brooke?"
The brunette had seemed so focused to finish her assigned task with the tray of medical supplies she held but she looked up the way anyone would at being called by name. When she did, he saw that she wasn't precisely the perfect female form the androids had depicted her as. She was still a pretty fourteen-year-old but not in top game with flat, un-styled hair and without a trace of makeup to put a little more color in her pale, slightly drawn face.
Brooke's blue eyes were tired but with a little apprehension they flashed to the stranger that had called her name.
"Are you…" Beast Boy started with some hesitation after he'd been tricked twice already, "are you real?"
A side of her face pulled lightly at the bizarre question, the dignified way a high society girl would express distaste. Keeping her focus on him, she very gradually set down her tray on the ornate desk by her side.
When she was free of that burden Brooke made a break for it.
"Wha-? No wait!" Some part of him cautioned otherwise but he took off after her. "I'm not some creepy little weirdo! Come on!"
Rushed footsteps echoed with more intensity than light ones but for that Brooke didn't have a care and Beast Boy didn't either as he chased after her. She was only a few yards before him but then she darted right and he overshot the turn. He doubled back and there was more space between them but there was no hesitation in any of her decisions to navigate the seemingly identical halls. He always ran harder and she ran with a trained eye until they were whole corridor lengths apart, until he lost her completely.
"That's just peachy," he said between gasps for breath. He turned round a bend. "You try to be nice to people and-"
Only his training with Robin had toned his reflexes enough to be able to grab the flying fist from connecting with his face.
"Hey!" he said with some irritation, easily holding off Brooke's lesser strength. "Would you settle down?"
"Settle down?" she repeated, incredulous, trying to pull free and hit him again. "You're one of those…those things, those robots! I'm not going anywhere with you, not again! Where are the other girls? Where did you send my sister?"
"What? I'm not an android!"
"Then how do you know my name and why are you acting so weird!? Am I "real"!?"
"Because I thought you were an android!"
"That's what an android would say! I can prove I'm the real deal." And in the heat of the conversation she pulled back a bandage on her knee to reveal a cut that a droid could not fake. "How about you?"
Beast Boy sighed but he knew enough not to get caught up in the same anxiety Brooke was feeling. After all, she'd been kidnapped by alien robots and sent worlds away from anything she'd ever known. No one could really take that situation calmly.
He thought about it for a moment as the girl tensed on her feet, waiting to run should his lips pull back in a metallic grin, but didn't know the real girl well enough from her look-alikes to tell any truths that he wasn't her enemy.
Going the simple route, he bit one of his sharpened fangs down on his palm.
"There you go," he said, showing her the tiny wound there. "I bleed too."
"That…" Brooke started, some concern showing through her waning anxiety, "that looks like a puncture wound. How did you…with those flat teeth…?"
It was a minor detail he'd overlooked, that the hologram covered every abnormal aspect of his person which included his fangs, but it was still a minor detail that he smoothed out easily. Now that she wasn't going to try to hit him again, Beast Boy asked how long she'd been there.
"A few weeks," Brooke answered and to let out her anxiety faster she pulled out a mini med-kit from her pocket and set about to sterilize the wound he'd inflicted upon himself. A little surprised, Beast Boy stood back and let her work.
"They've got me working in the nursing department. Some guard broke his leg falling down the stairs so I don't get to sleep tonight but wait…wait, you knew my name so that must means you've met one of my doubles, right?"
"Right."
"What's been going on back at home then?" She'd clearly been dying for details for the span of her absence. "Those droids haven't infiltrated the rest of Gotham, have they? They said there was going to be a takeover, one that even Batman couldn't-!"
"Batman can and he did…with some help." Beast Boy of course neglected to mention that he was part of that help. "The Justice League is aware of this operation now and they're going to use all their resources to find us. Oh, and your roommate Rowan, I know that she's already been rescued if that helps at all."
Brooke's lips turned up a little at hearing that and she knotted the gauze tight on Beast Boy's hand. "So…what do I call you while we're waiting to be rescued too?"