Here I am again. I had sucha hard time updating, and I don't know why. Well, it could do with showchior practice every morning and every other monday, my part time job, school work, church stuff. Wow, I too busy!
The following morning started out as any other; the kids woke up, got breakfast, and watched some TV. The only thing that was missing was Gar and Vic's fighting over the food. They then went and worked out a little bit. The only thing different there was that Richard wasn't there to yell at them. While the others put it off, Mari started to get worried.
"Tim, I'm telling you something isn't right. They should be home by now. If not, they would have called," Mari said, pacing the main room.
"Chill, Mari. Maybe they're at their normal houses."
"They would have called," she said again while stopping in front of Tim, who was sitting on the couch watching TV.
"Fine, maybe they're still sleeping. It's been a while since any of them have fought. And they're old too. It probably took a lot out of them," he said dismissively.
"Name one time either of my parents have slept in past noon," she countered. Tim stood up, getting in everyone's way of seeing the TV.
"Mari, calm down. You're just overreacting. Look, there are a number of things that could cause them to not be here now," he said, walking to the kitchen and grabing a bottle of water out of the fridge. "Why don't you get out the White Rock and calm down?!" He tossed her the water bottle. She caught it in the air and opened it.
"Fine." Mari took a drink of it.
"What's the White Rock?" Elle asked. She was sitting with a fashion magazine.
"White Rock is Mari's guitar," Cam said. She was sitting next to Elle with her nose in a gossip magazine.
"Why do you call it White Rock?" Kevin asked while he surfed channel.
"It's white and it rocks," Mari said. "It's an acoustic. I've been trying to get an electric but Dad thinks I'll make too much noise."
"I didn't know you played the guitar," Joey said. He and Claire were sitting in each other's arms.
"That's 'cause I didn't tell anyone. It's just something that I do to calm down."
"Joey can play the guitar too," Elle said without taking her eyes off the magazine.
"Elle!" Joey said, taking his arm off Claire. He looked upset. "I told you never to tell anyone."
"You play the guitar?" Claire asked, turning to look at him.
"Why do you sound all upset about it? Back in Tennessee, a guy that can play the guitar could get any girl he wanted," Ivy said. She seemed to be into whatever was on the TV.
"How come I didn't know you play guitar?" Claire asked again.
"Kevin knew. I thought you knew," Elle said, still not looking up and sounding like she wasn't all that into the conversation.
"Kevin knew and I didn't?" Claire was getting steamed.
"Kevin found out. That's it. I wasn't even going to tell him, he was going to borrow some of my notes and I forgot to put it away. He saw it and just figured it out," he explained.
"Why didn't you tell anyone that you played the guitar?" Ivy asked, looking away from the TV. Joey was just about to say something when a guitar strummed. Everyone turned to see Mari holding a white acoustic guitar and sitting down at the table. She was fidgeting with the pegs.
"Dang it. This thing keeps going flat!" She strummed it again and smiled. "Perfect." Elle, Kevin, Claire, and Ivy got up and went to stand near Mari. Joey walked out of the room but no one noticed
"What do you know?" Kevin asked. He sat down across from her.
"What do you want to hear?" she countered with a smile.
"Can you play 'Walking in Memphis'?" Ivy asked. Right then, Joey came back through the door with a guitar case. He walked over to the table and Kevin scooted over, giving Joey room to sit. He quickly tuned his guitar and looked at Mari.
"What are we playing?" he said with a smirk.
"'Walking in Memphis'. If you think you can keep up with me, that is," she replied. Joey stuck his tongue out and started to play the intro to the song. Mari soon joined in with the harmony.
"'Put on my blue suede shoes as I boarded the plane,'" Ivy started to sing, her voice soft and floating through the air like it had wings. "'Touched down in the land of the Delta Blues in the middle of a pouring rain.'" She turned to Mari and smiled. "W.C. Handy, won't you look down where you lay? 'Cause I've got a first class ticket and I'm blue as a girl can be.'" Claire just kept staring at the boy with the guitar with angry eyes.
"'Then I'm walking in Memphis. Walking with my feet ten feet off the Beale. Walking in Memphis. But do I really feel the way I feel?'"
"'Saw the ghost of Elvis down on Union Avenue,'" Joey started to sing, surprising everyone, including Elle. "'I followed him up to the gates of Graceland watched in walk right through. Now security they did not see him, they just hovered 'round his tomb. There's a pretty little thing, waitin' in the King, down in the Jungle room,'" Joey continued. Mari stared at him, her fingers just automatically playing the cords. She started laughing when he hit the last note.
"'Then I'm walking in Memphis.'" As he sang, Ivy and Elle started to sing the background parts, harmonizing together. "'Walking with my feet ten feet off the Beale. Walking in Memphis. But do I really feel the way I feel?'" Ivy was about to start singing the bridge when Claire jumped in.
"'They've got cat fish on the table. There's a gospel in the air.'" She sounded horrible. Ivy and Elle stopped singing and covered their ears. Cam, who was enjoying the music from the couch, turned around and covered her ears.
"Who is torturing a poor animal over there?" Kevin turned his head so Claire wouldn't see him laughing. Mari and Ivy, on the other hand, weren't as kind. Ivy about fell over laughing with Mari. Elle snickered a little behind her hand while Joey just looked shocked. Cam looked confused. "What? Why are you guys laughing?"
"I don't sound like a tortured animal! Do I, Joey, honey?" Everyone looked at Joey, waiting for his response. Sweat was starting to form on his forehead. Joey looked at everyone for help. Right when he was about to answer, Mari's phone went off.
"Hello?… Oh, hi Pete," she said, sounding depressed. "No, it's good to talk to you too. I'm just expecting a call. … Well, call her on her cell and ask her!… Hold on." She put her hand over the mouthpiece and yelled at Cam. "Did you forget to charge your phone again?" Cam looked at her and then reached for her phone in her pocket and pulled it out, flipping it open in the process. Her eyes widened and she sent Mari an apologetic look. "Sorry, Pete. Turns out she's still a bit forgetful when it comes to her phone. …Yeah, I'll have her call you when she gets her charger out. …'Kay. Talk to you later." She hung up the phone and threw the water bottle cap towards Cam. "He likes you. Call him, or I'll have to go to drastic measures."
"I'll call him. Who are you expecting a call from, though?" Cam asked as she flipped over the couch ungracefully and grabbed the cap.
"I'm hoping that my parents call soon." Mari put her guitar down on the table and stood up.
"Well, that calmness lasted all of one minute," Tim said, walking back to the couch. Cam stood up and walked over to the other teens at the same time as Scott walked through the door for the first time that day.
"Good morning, sunshine. Enjoy sleeping in 'til late in the afternoon?" Ivy teased as Scott walked by. His hair was all disarranged and he was wearing just a plain white t-shirt and a pair of blue jeans. He stuck his tongue out as he passed her before he tossed a phone to Tim.
"Your girlfriend was talking my ear off." Scott then went to the fridge and grabbed a can of soda.
"Hey, she's my fiancée first of all. Second, she'll be your mom in a few months, so be nice." Tim said pocketing the phone.
"Where's Shorty?" Scott took a quick drink of soda.
"My sister?" Elle asked. Scott nodded and drank the soda. "She's at daycare right now." Scott just shrugged his shoulders and walked over to the table.
"By the way, if you're so worried 'bout your parents, call them yourself. The phone works two ways, you know." Mari's eyes got big. "Didn't think of that did you?" She got up and went out the door dialing a number into her phone. "So now that Miss Paranoid is taken care of, why aren't you guys worried?"
"Our dad, like, runs a free vet clinic. He gets called in a lot. Sometimes he gets calls in the middle of the night." Joey said. He started strumming the guitar, not really paying attention to what he was playing.
"And my dad has a tendency to have the random need to work on the car. He calls it his 'baby'. I can't say it's weird‒ if I had a car like that, I wouldn't sleep in my bed," Kevin said. Soon Mari walked back through the door. She was still on the phone.
"Hey, it's me. Listen, I just wanted to talk to you about what we were talking about earlier. Call me back ASAP. 'Kay, bye." She hung up the phone and looked at Elle, Joey, and Kevin. "Call your parents, be extremely vague about it. Don't say who you are, who they are, or anything." She walked over to where she had been pacing earlier. The three of them did as they were told, each one of them calling a parent or two.
"They didn't pick up," Elle said, after leaving a voicemail to her mom.
"Same here," Joey said.
"It rang for my mom, but for my dad, it went straight to voice mail. Weird, my dad usually keeps everything charged up completely," Kevin added.
"Your dad has his communicator built into him, right?" Cam asked walking over to the computer in front of the TV. She the turned to Tim. "Do you know where any old communicators are?"
"Yeah. Hold on." Tim got up and left the room.
"I think I could use, like, a radio wave and send it out to my dad and it can tell me if it's hit him or not," Kevin said, taking the computer over from Cam. As he started typing things into the computer, he started to yell. "Dang it! My dad still has a security system on the computer! I can't get on here without five passwords."
Cam pulled her hair up into a loose bun. "Then I guess it's my turn." She pushed him out of the way and started typing on the computer.
"It won't work. My dad designed this to be unable to‒"
"I'm in," Cam said, interrupting his speech with a smile. "Okay, I think your idea was good, but I have a different one." Right then, Tim came in with a yellow communicator.
"Here you go," Tim said, handing it off to Cam. Cam found a cord and plugged one end into the communicator and the other into the computer.
"I'm going to try and triangulate where the last transmission came form. That may be able to give us a general area." She continued to type rigorously on the computer. Soon, a grid map appeared on the TV screen. Cam looked up. "Cool feature." On the grid map was a flashing dot inside a grid. "Okay, I'm trying to zoom in. Does anyone recognize this area?" Joey moved closer to the screen.
"It looks like it's out near Branch Forest over by the cliffs."
"Yeah, that's about as far away as the distress call came from," Kevin said, standing near Cam. She zoomed in more and more until she came to a picture of a meadow in the middle of a forest, and one dot was flashing on the screen. "That dot represents the last transmission. It was sent from one communicator to the other five. It was sent at 10:27 last night."
"Can you see who it was from and what they said?" Mari asked, looking at the screen.
"Nope. It seems that in the middle of the transmission, the communications shut down." She started to type into the computer and looked at Kevin. "My guess is that soon after the communicators went down, your dad was shut down." Kevin looked down, not meeting anyone's eyes. Tim put a hand on his shoulder.
"Don't worry. It's just like he's asleep. He's fine." Kevin kind of smiled before turning back to the computer.
"Your dad has a mechanical eye, right?" Cam asked, still not looking away from the computer screen in front of her.
"I guess. I mean, I haven't really seen him in Cyborg form yet. Why?"
"I think if I can get into his system, I'll be able to see out of his mechanical eye and see what he saw right before he was shut off. That will tell us what we're dealing with and what they can do."
"Well, good luck with that. There may have been only five passwords for you to get around to get the computer to work, but my dad would make it so nobody but him could get into it. You would have an easier time trying to hack into the CIA than my dad's system."
"If they're on the same level, I'll be able to get in there with my eyes blindfolded and arms tied behind my back. If I can hack into the mainframe for the Secret Service at age nine, I think I'll be able to get into your dad's system with ease," she said confidently.
"Wait, you hacked into the Secret Service's main frame at nine?" Ivy said, shocked to just be learning this. "How'd you do it?" Kevin asked.
"Cam can't answer that." Mari said smiling. "Or else she'd break that little contract we signed. I would rather not go to a federal prison at 14, thank you." Elle, Ivy, Joey, and Kevin all started laughing. Tim and Scott chuckled a little.
"I'm in!" Cam cheered over the laughter. Everyone stopped and looked at her. "Alright, a few more seconds and I will have the last thing Vic saw up on the big screen." Just as promised, a few seconds later, the TV showed a picture of a forest.
"Are we ready, team?" a voice said, sounding a lot like Nightwing. The picture moved down to a robotic arm.
"Ready over here, Nightwing," Cyborg responded.
"We are ready up here," Starfire said in her old dialect. Mari had a hard time recognizing her.
"Ready," Changeling said lastly.
"Alright team, move into position." The picture moved again and it soon showed what they could only guess was a spaceship. As they got closer, a bunch of lizard-like things came out of nowhere. They all started to fight with all their might. They saw green animals shifting into each other and green, yellow, and black streaks raining from above, hitting all of the lizard things in their way. Cyborg was hitting them with sonic blasts and fighting off however many he could. Off to the side, they could see Nightwing fighting with some of them hand to hand. As the fight went on, they could see a lizard come up behind Nightwing and hit him with something.
"Guys, Nightwing's down!" Cyborg said into his arm. Soon, a black shield went around Nightwing where he lay on the ground surrounded by lizards. The shield blew up and pushed back everything in its way. Raven soon floated down and protected Nightwing from anything trying to get their hands on him. As she fended them off, more and more lizards surrounded her and hit her with the same thing as Nightwing. She too, fell. "Change, Bee, help Rae and Night!" Cy said into his arm, which was still in communicator mode. A green tiger ran up and started to claw at the aliens trying to come near his wife and friend. Bee flew down and started shooting the weapons out from the aliens' hands. As she flew down lower to help protect the fallen teammates, she was shot with another of the things, which the kids could now see was a staff.
Cy ran up to the monsters to protect his wife unthinkingly until Starfire shouted from the sky. "Do not go! It is a trap!" Cy thought that he was talking to him, but then Changeling quickly ran by in a quick blur. He realized that he was upset and going to save his wife also, not really caring to listen to Star's warning. He soon fell too, joining the pile of fallen teammates. All that was left was Cyborg and Starfire. Starfire was shooting star bolts left and right, hitting everything that she aimed for. Soon the vision pulled away from him doing the same thing.
"Star, we need to hold these guys off so we can ge…." He was interrupted by Starfire screaming. The vision turned to see what had happened, but before it could, the vision went black.
Cam, who was standing directly in front of the screen, looked back at the others. Elle was crying into Joey, who was trying hard not to cry. Kevin had just sat down and stared out into space. Ivy, Scott, and Tim all looked sick and upset, but not as bad as the others. Mari had gotten up at some point and walked over to the counter, turning her back to the screen. Claire just looked confused.
"Anyone know who they are? Those lizard-things?" Cam asked. She looked at Tim, Claire, and Scott mostly.
"Gordanians," Tim said, standing up. Mari stiffened up more, if possible, but didn't turn around.
"So… what are we going to do? Just let our parents be captured by these 'Gordanians' forever?" Elle asked angrily. Her eyes were bloodshot and her cheeks still had tears rolling down them, and Joey had a protective arm around her shoulder while she hugged herself. Everyone looked down, not knowing what to do.
"We fight." Everyone looked up and turned back to see Mari moving from her spot. She walked up to the front of the room where the TV was still covered in static.
"Oh, of course!" Claire said. She stood up from the table and walked over to Mari. "Amateur heroes should go and try to save their parents, who are veteran heroes, from space aliens. Yeah, super plan!" Mari looked up at her.
"You're right; the odds are up against us." Mari looked up and into everyone's eyes. "But our parents have done this before. The only members of the team that were used to fighting were your dad," she looked at Joey and Elle, "and my dad. Your dad," she pointed to Kevin, "was making his sonic cannon in the middle of a big fight with these space lizards. We can fight these things. I know we can."
"How do you suppose we do that, little Miss 'I-Have-All-The-Answers'?" Claire said, sizing up Mari.
"We work as a team, that's how. Unless you have a better idea." Mari said, sizing her up as well. Claire didn't answer. "Oh, so no comeback? Fine. Cam, trace that signal and see if there have been any other signals in that area going in or coming out. Joey, help Elle calm down a little. Kevin, you've been working on some devices right? I need to see what we can all use now. Ivy, help Joey, Elle looks like a mess."
"No I don't," Elle said with a weak smile, her eyes and face still really red. She looked into her reflection in the window. "Yes I do." Everyone smiled and giggled. Everyone except Claire.
"Well, I, for one, am not taking orders from some little, boyfriend-stealing troq." Claire was right in Mari's face. Mari went from surprised to hardened in a nanosecond.
"If that's how you feel, then fine." She turned around and left the room, soon followed by Ivy and Cam. The latter turned and gave a very threatening look to the blond girl. Following them was Tim and Scott, who hopped to catch up with Mari. Elle, who was already upset, just shook her head at her old friend. Kevin did the same, leaving through the door. All that was left was Joey and Claire.
"Come on, Honey, we don't need them." She wrapped her arms around his neck. Joey took her arms off from around his neck.
"How could you say something like that? That was uncalled for. And what do you mean by boyfriend-stealer?"
"I saw her flirting with you last night when the two of you were out by the ocean. You're my boyfriend, not hers. Besides, she thought that she knew way more about your family then you do."
"That's 'cause she was raised on stories of the Titans. She's more familiar with them then any of us are." Joey looked at her and stared right into her eyes.
"Whatever. Now, Joey-woey, what are we going to do?"
"How can you call one of my friends something terrible, and then expect me to listen to you?"
"You're my boyfriend, you're suppose to support me," she retorted, starting to get mad, but not as mad as Joey was. A crack had formed on some of the dishes that had been left in the sink.
"You don't go and call my friends something as bad as that and expect me to support you!" The cracks started to get bigger as Joey started to yell. He then started to walk towards the door.
"Where do you think you're going?"
"I'm going to see if my friend's okay."
Claire walked up to him and looked right into his face. "If you walk through that door, you and I are through."
Back in Mari's room, Mari sat with her back turned toward the door with Cam on one side and Elle on the other. "It's all right, Sweetie. She's blond; she's supposed to be an idiot," Cam said. She had her arm around her and was stroking her hair. Mari's shoulders jerked up and down.
"That doesn't mean that she can say anything that she wants to anyone," Mari said in a broken, tear-filled voice.
"No, she doesn't," a voice said near the door. Everyone turned around, including Mari, to see Joey standing there. Ivy was the first person to speak.
"Blond idiots aren't allowed in here at this time. Neither are their boyfriends," Scott said, standing next to Mari with a menacing, bouncer stance.
"Well, I'm a blond idiot, and I'm sorry. And, as for that boyfriend part," Joey said, moving in towards the bed.
"Please, tell me you dumped her," Elle said. Joey just smirked a sad smirk and shrugged his shoulders. "Yes!" Elle jumped up and down, making Mari chuckle a little. "And I got her to smile again! Yes!" Everyone chuckled also.
Joey turned to Mari. "I'm sorry about what Claire said to you." Mari turned around the fully to face him.
"It's not you that I want an apology from." She crossed her arms in front of her chest. "Did you really just break up with her over what just happened?" Joey nodded and looked down at the ground. "I'm sorry. I really am, but she gives blondes a really bad name. Even makes Kitty look nice." Mari muttered that last part, but was heard by everyone in the room. Those who got the irony laughed.
"That's fine." The two of them smiled and turned to Kevin who started to talk.
"That's great, everyone's sorry. We get it, but we have a bigger problem: how are we going to save our parents?" Everyone looked around at one another for the answer.
"I think we should go with Mari's idea," Elle said. She stood up and looked at everyone.
"Yeah, but when are we going to start training? I mean, none of us really know what it's like to fight the Gordanians," Ivy said from Mari's computer chair.
"I'll lead you guys," Tim said, looking at of the teens. "And as for training, we'll start right now."
So, I don't know when I will update again. Sorry, I have a bunch of tests coming up. Also, my showchior is taking a trip to see In The Heights on nov 19th. I can't wait! I could barly keep from jumping out of my chair and doing the Beast Boy dance! So, I can't give you a guess about when I will next update. Review por favor.
