Disclaimer: I don't own Teen Titans. Poor Beast Boy. He's been laughed at all through the last three chapters. Hopefully things start to look up for him.
"When there's trouble you know what to dooo..." Cyborg sings as he types new commands into the Titan mainframe.
It has been approximately four hours since the others left. Still only nine thirty in the morning. The morning sun shines through the window and lights up the main room.
Beast Boy lies on the couch, already bored out of his mind. A handheld game console lies in front of him, almost unplayable by the changeling due to his lack of coordination and short fingers.
"Dis is wedicuwos. Da onwe games I can pway propawee awr Fieya Embwem an Gos Wecon." Beast Boy complains.
"Sorry BB, I wish I could help, but I can't change how your hands work. Unless you don't mind extensive surgery." Cyborg looked thoughtful as he mentioned surgery.
"I'll pawss." Beast Boy sighed. He was so very annoyed. He still couldn't do much on his own, even though Cyborg had installed all sorts of small ramps and buttons for him to use in order to open doors and get things from the fridge. The half-robot was just now initiating the new programs to make the buttons functional.
"I hope de udders awr havink more foon dan me." He said, looking out the window.
###
"Freeze Mumbo!" Robin yelled. After hours of waiting around Mumbo had decided to attack a diamond dealer again. The wait had paid off.
"I prefer wax museum!" The insane performer cried. He pointed his wand at a nearby clothing shop and the mannequins became animate and crashed through the glass.
"Those are made of plastic, not wax!" Robin shouted as he leapt back from an attacked launched by the closest foe.
"Plastic, wax, what's the difference!?" Mumbo laughed.
"A couple chemicals." Robin responded. He slapped two birdarangs together and forms a sword. He quickly cut down the clumsy mannequins. "Stand down Mumbo, you won't escape this time."
"I smell a chase coming on! Let's fly boy blunder!" Mumbo swings his wand and hops onto a manhole cover. The manhole cover bursts out of the ground and starts flying off with the laughing magician on it.
Robin growls in frustration. He breaks up the sword and throws the two birdarangs at the retreating man.
Mumbo whips around and blasts the two projectiles out of the sky with rays of pink energy. "I love duck hunt! Your turn!"
Robin drops to the ground to avoid the flock of ducks that fly out of the magician's hat. He then leaps up and dashes down the street and hops on to his R-Cycle. He takes off after Mumbo.
"Robin to team. I'm in pursuit of Mumbo. Fly up and cut him off!"
"I'm quite capable of cutting things myself, thank you very much!" Mumbo says indignantly as Robin uses the R-Cycle's jet boosters to propel the vehicle, and himself, into the air. Robin jumps off the red bike and pounced at the magician.
"Mumbo Jumbo!" The boy wonder suddenly finds himself floating in the air, trapped in a long box with only his head and feet sticking out. A large saw appears in Mumbo's hands.
"See? I'm already an expert woodworker!" Jokes the performer. He puts the saw on top of the box and starts cutting through it.
"I'm guessing the Mumbo is too old a dog to be taught new tricks." Says a familiar voice. The saw is blasted out of Mumbo's hand and Starfire flies in from the side.
"That doesn't even make sense!" Complains the turquoise colored man. He ducks to avoid a punch from the alien girl and knocks her away with a blast from a squirting flower.
"She's saying that you've used this tricks multiple times already." Raven's raspy voice explains from behind Mumbo.
The magician whirls around only to be hit with a burst of dark energy. He falls of his manhole cover and crashes to the ground. Mumbo tries to rise, but a bo-staff plants itself firmly on the ground right next to his head.
"Show's over Mumbo. Your last act of crime stops here." Robin stares down the crazy man who is sweating slightly.
"Not quite Mr. Traffic Light! I still have one last trick up my sleeve!" He sticks his left hand up his right sleeve.
The hand comes shooting out of one of the pouchs on Robin's utility belt holding smoke pellets.
"Ta-ta Titans! Hope you enjoyed the show!" The hand throws down the pellets creating a huge cloud of smoke.
"Hold him down!" Comes Robin's voice from the cloud. The noises of a scuffle are heard coming from the smoky area. The smoke clears to reveal all three Titans grabbing each other's legs and arms.
"The Mumbo is gone." Starfire says sadly. She releases her grip on Robin's leg.
"He can't have gone far!" Robin shouted, letting go of Raven's left arm.
"Let's move then!" Raven hisses. She relinquishs her grasp on Starfire's right leg and flies up into the air, searching for the escaped villain.
Robin and Starfire watch the angry girl for a moment.
"She is feeling much of the anger towards the Mumbo yes?" Starfire asks the boy beside her.
"Yeah, not surprising. Beast Boy getting turned into a two year old affected her more than the rest of us, she worries about him more than she's willing to admit." Robin says, grinning. "We should probably help her before she starts yelling at us for not taking this seriously."
The two Titans quickly start looking around for the escaped magician, but they know that they have a very low chance of finding him. Mumbo is long gone.
Back at the tower, Cyborg sits back. He learned about the fight from a news cast a few minutes ago. A reporter managed to get a word from Starfire, who explained how Mumbo managed to escape before she was pulled off by an annoyed Raven who said she was "slacking". Robin was visable in the background, apparently studying scraps from Mumbo's magical attack to try and get a hint of where he might be.
"Mumbo got away again." Mutters the metal teen. "Stupid magic tricks."
Cyborg turns around in his seat and sighs, investigating his handiwork. The main room has had several things added to it: a low button on all doors leaving the room, small ramps leading up to the table, couch, and refrigerator, along with sliding doors that replace the normal pull-open cupboards doors.
"But I suppose I expected that, or else I wouldn't have bothered making all this in the first place." He muses to himself. He glances down to the depressed, green changeling sitting on the couch. He is staring at the TV screen, not happy Mumbo escaped.
"Mumo gots away." Beast Boy said unhappily. "I'm still stuck wike dis."
"Don't worry BB, we normally miss catching Mumbo the first few times remember? but we always get him eventually." Cyborg reassured him.
"Buh wah if you guys can't dis toim? Wah if I gotta lerwn to wiv wike dis?" The shapeshifter started to panic.
"Woah BB chill!" Cyborg walked over to Beast Boy and sat down next to him on the couch. "We haven't even tried asking League spellcasters for a cure yet cause we don't wanna bother them when we might be able to handle this ourselves. If we can't do it by ourselves we can just get help from them. Everything will be fine."
"Weally?"
"Really."
And few moments of silence pass.
"Can we pway a game? I bored." The changeling half asked, half whined.
"Sure BB." Cyborg shook his head slightly as he walked over to the gamestation to find a suitable game. 'He just can't focus on anything bad for more than ten seconds. Sometimes I wish I could do that.' The metal man thought ruefully.
Cyborg finally found something they could both play that didn't involve button mashing or the need for coordination. He wasn't actually aware they had such a game in the first place since most of their games involved the two things mentioned before.
"Was dis?" Asks a suspicious Beast Boy.
"Ya heard of the Civilization games?" Beast Boy nodded. "It's like that."
"I gonna kick yowr butt!" The changeling announced cockily in his high voice.
"You can try green bean." Said Cyborg, happy his friend was back in good spirits.
The other three Titans returned at lunch to find the changeling and half-robot still battling it out in their first game, which had stretched on for hours as each player could never get enough of an advantage to conquer the other.
"Figures." Raven muttered. "We're working our butts off and they're here playing video games."
"It's electronic entertainment Rae." Cyborg calls back to the empath, not even looking away from the screen as he observes Beast Boy taking his turn. "There's nothing wrong with sitting down to play some games, you should try it sometime. Or would it mess with your inner bookworm?"
Raven gives an "Ugh!" and stomps over to the fridge, Starfire flies over to watch the two gaming Titans, and Robin joins The empath the fridge.
"Normally comments like that don't get under your skin unless your feeling lots of emotion, you still worried about Beast Boy?" Robin asks sympathetically.
"I told you before, I am NOT worried about Beast Boy. I just don't want him to be stuck like that, that's all." Raven glares at the other bird.
"Uh huh, and Starfire's favourite drink isn't mustard, it's sewage water." Robin clearly expresses his disbelief and amusement at Raven's denial.
"Robin." The empath says, deceptively calm. "I will tell Starfire about your crush if you don't drop this matter."
Robin paled slightly. "I'm just trying to get you to admi-"
"Oh Starfire!" Calls Raven. "Robin here has something to te-" Robin slaps a hand over her mouth. Starfire looks over at the two of them, confused.
"Friend Raven, why do you do the kissing of Robin's hand?" Starfire looks slightly sad.
"Wah!? No sh-she's not doing that!" Robin waves his hands around as he backs up, accidentally bumping into the counter and falling back into the sink.
"Only you could turn a perfectly normal gesture into something embarrassing Starfire." Raven puts a hand to her head which shakes in irritated amusement.
Beast Boy and Cyborg, who had turned around to watch the spectacle, laugh quietly as their esteemed leader tries to get himself out of the sink.
"That motion was of the normal variety? I apologize friends, I was unaware of this. Please, what does the hand across the mouth mean?" The alien gives the two birds an attentive look.
"It means Robin didn't want me saying something." Raven smirks as Robin's eyes widened.
"What did you not want said?" The alien girl questions the panicked boy wonder.
"I-I Umm..." The nervous boy stutters.
"Azar help this fool." Raven mutters under her breath as she steps back to watch Robin explain his way out of this. "If he would just admit it rather than hiding it everything would be so much better for him."
"You might do well to follow you're own advice!" A voice shouts in Raven's head.
'For the last time, I am NOT In love with anyone!' Raven hisses mentally at the emoticlone.
"You're just being a coward! Admit it already!" Another voice pipes up.
'Not you too Brave!' Raven moans.
"The others are correct I'm afraid. Admitting it, at least to yourself, would improve your emotional stability dramatically." A very reasonable sounding voice notes.
'Even you're on their side!?'
"Of course, I am your embodiment of knowledge, and the smart thing to do would be to admit your affection, denial only leads to confusion."
'I already said I am NOT in-'
"No one said you were, but that doesn't mean you don't harbor SOME manner of attraction."
Raven utters a stream of curses at the logic presented by the yellow cloaked emoticlone.
'I really hate you all sometimes.' She says after finishing her tirade.
"Hey, you're the one who made us all in the first place." Rude pipes up.
"And I'm seriously reconsidering it now." Raven mutters as she turns to watch her four teammates. "At least they don't have to deal with voices in their heads."
"Just being half-metal, having little to know clue how things work on this world, being considered a freak because you have green skin, and being overly obsessed and paranoid." Rude replies.
Raven sighs. "I know. But that's why they have each other I suppose. To be able to fit in without worrying about stuff like that."
"You fit in too Waben." Says a young voice from below her.
The empath looks down, startled, to see Beast Boy standing in front of her. A smile on his face.
"You awr awr fwiend. You fit in here too." Beast Boy repeats.
"Thanks Beast Boy." Raven whispers.
He grins even wider. "I'm jus thowtful like dat." Raven rolls her eyes. Beast Boy's stomach growls suddenly. "Now can you moves aswide? You kinda blockink da fwidge."
Chapter 4 complete. Raven talking to her emoticlones and Cyborg not being a jerk. Beast Boy still seems to suffer from occasional bouts of depression though.