RavenXStarfire: Part VIII

Teen Titans: Uncertainty Part VIII

(Teen Titans femslash of Raven and Starfire. Don't read if you don't like it)


Robin, Starfire, and Cyborg barely had time to fall into serious conclave following Beast Boy's seizure from their midst, when once again the particular darkness that had spirited him away reached back into their space, and replaced the green changeling with someone else. Starfire's whole face lit up like a Chinese lantern, and she leapt forward to embrace the billowing blue robes that had been cast before them in a blast of sudden wind. As the winds died down, Robin and Cyborg were able to see the person, but for a moment couldn't quite believe that it was her.

"Raven!" Starfire cried happily. "Oh it is most joyous to see you again!"

"It's good to see you too" Raven said in her usual tone, but with a softened expression and a noticeable smile on her face.

"Raven?" Robin asked. "Is that you?" he looked quite unsure, as though he sensed something in her manner that made him doubt it somehow.

"Yeah" she said, gently disengaging herself from Starfire. "Hey guys"

"Raven, what're you doing here? Where'd Beast Boy go?" Cyborg asked.

"Don't worry, it's-" she cut herself off, as though struck by a sudden doubt. "Well, it's taken care of. At least, as well as it can be"

"But what are you doing here? Where's Beast Boy?" Robin squinted at her.

"I took him out of here. I'm here because the spell Mumbo used requires the same number of people he specifies to be here at any time until he alters it, or until the spell is broken"

"Okay..." Cyborg said, evidently having a little trouble following. His mind being so immersed in mechanics and calculations, Raven imagined it must be hard for him to grasp at something like magic, which by definition is unpredictable and not subject to specific rules. It's hard enough for adepts to think three steps ahead, let alone someone who knows nothing about it.
"So why Beast Boy?"

"It was the only way. I had his container, and so I could only switch with him"

"But why switch at all?" Starfire asked, looking rather as though she didn't so much object to it, as merely seem curious about it. Raven gave her a small side-long look, then cleared her throat.

"Mumbo isn't working alone; he has a partner in all this, someone who's provided him with some of the background details. They planned out this entire scenario, everything that's happened, everything we've done so far, has fallen precisely under what they've wanted, except for me switching with one of you"

"What do you mean?" Robin said, as though he thought he understood something. "You mean he never wanted to capture you like he did us?"

"No. I told Beast Boy this already, but Mumbo and the other one planned everything. The object Mumbo told us needed to be destroyed in order to return the city to normal are the objects you've all been turned into, and I was left out of it so that I'd be in a position to figure this out, and to... well-"

"He wanted you to be the one to destroy us" Robin said with dawning comprehension. "To save the city you'd have had to destroy the things keeping us here"

"And by extent" Raven continued "your only way of getting out of here. You'd all have been stuck here forever"

"Oh man, that's just evil" Cyborg put in, shaking his head.

"But what if you refused to do it?" Starfire asked. "What if you refused to destroy your friends?"

"Mumbo has your three objects" Raven said, grimly. "They were betting that I'd seek out and find them, and during the confrontation if I refused to try and save the city, they'd do it instead, in front of me"

Amongst all of them, Starfire was the most stricken by this terrible notion. Some time ago, when they had fought the villain Warp, Starfire had travelled to a dystopian future where the Titans had splintered upon her disappearance. She readily remembered with a cold shiver and a stabbing in her chest the sight of Raven, alone and silent in her room, unable to conceive of the notion that she might still have friends, and tormented by unhappy constructs of her own mind.
If this terrible plan of Mumbo's had succeeded, if Raven alone had survived this plan, as Mumbo and his mysterious partner so planned, Starfire could well imagine with tearful clarity what might well happen to Raven as a result. It would be Mumbo's ultimate revenge in Raven's slow mental decline, and possibly her own eventual self-destruction.

"Starfire?" Robin asked. Starfire looked up at him, and realised that her vision was blurry with tears. "Are you alright?" she hurriedly wiped her eyes, not looking at him.

"I just, um" she coughed a little "I hope Beast Boy is alright" she said.

"We should all hope that" Raven said. Despite herself, she could feel Starfire's feelings, and it made her happy in spite of the sadness she sensed, to know that Starfire was in fact thinking of her.
"I've told Beast Boy what to do, now we can only wait to see if he does it"

All of them looked at each meaningfully, Robin and Raven serious, Starfire worried. Cyborg spoke.

"We're gonna be stuck here forever" he said, nodding matter-of-factly.

-

The Nautical museum was a new addition to the city that currently occupied the place where Jump City used to be. In the modern day the museum was venerable, tall, somewhat imposing, seeming to embody the age and mystery of the sea that it wished to explain to any that ventured into its doors. In its current state, the museum was too new, too shining and bold. If the modern day museum were an old man telling stories of his youth, then this museum standing now was that old man in his youth, living the adventures he would one day tell to willing listeners.

As it was, Mumbo would not personally have found this place a good location for a lair, but certain considerations had made it necessary to forgo some of the stage effects he was so fond of. As such, using his magic, Mumbo had transformed most of the interior into a single great room. At the behest of his partner in crime, he had kept the artefacts and various maritime objects on display in an organised fashion around the room. Before the doors inside the museum now stood a great dais raised upon high, led up to by a pair of staircases snaking from its base and around to its top. To the left and right of this were the assorted objects the museum usually displayed, and above was the now new electrical lighting illuminating select parts of the room and leaving others in impenetrable shadow.
Mumbo had made some theatrical additions to this grandiose theme. He'd caused several red curtains to hang down from the ceiling and certain parts of the walls, and incongruous with the time period, made several modern spotlights hang from the ceiling. Also, apparently unable to stop himself, he'd created a giant amalgamation of balloons suspended from the ceiling that was coloured and shaped to resemble himself, arms and legs akimbo as though he were caught in mid-air about to belly-flop to the floor below.

All-in-all, Mumbo was relatively happy with this, and he stood eagerly awaiting Raven's arrival, and the final fulfilment of his revenge. Whatever old proverbs said, revenge was a dish best served after a great deal of befuddling mania, mania he intended to make.
Standing with legs positioned as though he were straddling a horse, he surveyed the stage, smiling broadly from beneath his hat. The new hat he had stolen before all of this began was just that much taller than his usual one, and was curiously curved in the middle, rather like an hourglass. He bobbed up and down on the spot in avid anticipation, several times consulting the two watches on his wrist, then the one on the other wrist, then the three on his leg, and the pocket watch that dangled from inside his hat.

"What is taking her so long?" he asked, a little petulantly. "The curtain is ready to rise"

"Patience" came a voice from the top of the dais. Mumbo looked up at it, his black mask gleaming in the dual spotlights cast down upon the spot before the door he happened to be standing in.
"She'll come. You might want to move an'all, she'll be standin' right there" Mumbo extended his arm, from which his wand shot out like the "bang!" message from a toy gun. He gave it a casual wave over himself, and he vanished in a plume of purple smoke. He reappeared at the top of the dais through a trap door that had certainly not been there a second before, and seemed to disappear once he'd risen fully from it. Still as a statue, Mumbo gazed down upon the spot. Next to him, his compatriot, leaning lightly on a long, black cane, stared down too. To Mumbo's great delight, not sixty seconds passed when the creak of hinges on a heavy door could be heard. He leaned forward, grinning like an excitable goblin. One of the four great doors below opened with a loud groan, and closed again with a thud. Mumbo leaned so far forward he was hunched, his shiny shoes literally half on the side of the dais, half on the top, and he was leaning at a perfectly diagonal angle off the corner of the platform. Not two seconds later he found this position most inopportune. As the figure stepped into the spotlight, Mumbo's grin sagged comically into a look of the utmost disbelief, and he lost his balance. Scrabbling back away from the edge of the dais, he surveyed the individual standing before them. His partner leaned forward on his cane, eyebrows raised.
Beast Boy stood in the glare of the spotlights, staring up at the dais with narrowed eyes.

"What!?" Mumbo cried, hands on either side of his head. "How did-? Who-? Don't tell me she figured out how to-!"

"Yep" Beast Boy said, hands on hips and taking an impressive stance, that nonetheless looked fairly ridiculous given his small stature and thin frame.
"She figured it all out" he finished, dramatically. For additional effect, he raised a single hand slowly as he talked, and then suddenly pointed dramatically up at the top of the platform, as though about to pronounce them under arrest.
Mumbo seethed, his blue face actually turning bright red and steam hissing from his white hair.

"No!" he shouted. "No! This isn't how it's supposed to go!" he yanked a large leaf of papers stapled together like a script from inside his jacket and rifled through it feverishly.
"There's nothing in here about this! Nothing at all!" he flung the paper into the air where it exploded into a rain of white sheets that whipped and spun around.

"Calm yourself" his partner in crime said. Beast Boy narrowed his eyes again at the sound of the man's voice. It was just as Raven had said.

"So it is you" Beast Boy announced, as though he himself was reading from a script too. "Raven said you two were working together. She figured out your whole scheme" Mumbo's hat actually rose into the air on an upsurge of steam that hissed suddenly from the top of his head. The shadowy figure however, grinned, a very uneven toothy grin.

"Oh yes?" the figure asked. "Oh do tell, I love it when children tell us what they've learned"

Beast Boy explained the gist of what the plan had been up until his arriving at the museum, about how Mumbo had contrived to get them all stuck in a pocket dimension and to make Raven destroy the objects that embodied them, thus trapping them forever in limbo, or leaving them to be destroyed by Mumbo himself, thus dooming Raven to a friendless state and leaving the Teen Titans decimated.

"Oh" the figure said, evidently amused "That isn't half the plan, my little-"

"Hey, I'm not finished" Beast Boy interrupted. "You teamed up with Mumbo so he'd help you out too. Once you'd taken us out, you'd have teamed up to take over the city"

"True enough" Mumbo said, touching his hand to his hat and smirking.

"But we figured out how to stop you!" Beast Boy announced, dramatically. "All I have to do is get the objects off you, and Raven can break the tea out from the other side!" almost before he'd finished speaking, he'd turned into a raven, and swooped sideways into the darkness outside of the range of the lighting. Mumbo spun around, wand at the ready, pointing it in all directions. His companion stood up a little more erectly, and turned his head this way and that, a flash of spectacles glinting in the dim light. Suddenly with a loud cawing, the raven swooped out of the darkness and right at Mumbo's head. With a cry, Mumbo stumbled backwards. The raven flew off and down, did a small spin in the air, and landed feet first as Beast Boy on the floor. He stood, arm raised, and like a showy baseball player, caught the three items he'd swiped from beneath Mumbo's hat.
Mumbo himself was standing without his head, feeling around at the collar of his dress shirt whilst his hat remained improbably suspended above, as though his head were still there. After a few moments of fretful searching, he tapped the side of his hat with his wand, and the head popped down like a coconut. He blinked down indignantly at Beast Boy, who looked back with an insolent smirk on his face.

"Give those back!" Mumbo yelled, but his partner held up an arm. Stepping into the full light of the dais, the man raised his cane, and grinned a toothy smile.

"You think you've won, my little snot?" Mad Mod, for it was he, said with cruel amusement. "You think you can do anything with them?"

Beast Boy's smirk lessened a little. He looked down at the three objects in his hand, then up at them.

"Well, yeah" he said, as though unsure. Mad Mod leant forward on his cane. Interestingly enough, he was his young self, not his elderly form. His red hair hung in its Beatles cut, his spectacles resting on his nose at a rakish angle, and his impenetrable wall of yellowing teeth gleaming in the equally yellow light of the lighting. He wore a blue suit with a black tie, shiny black shoes, and a dress shirt that, given what Beast Boy could see of it, featured a large union jack.

"And how are you gunna do that?" he asked, giving Beast Boy a supercilious look. "The odds are still the same, and staked against ya, my little guttersnipe"

"How so?"

"Oh come on, snotty" Mod said, standing up properly and waving his cane vaguely. "You think I wasn't watchin'? That lit'le attack on yer towah before all this star'ed? I was testin' yer resolve. Me and mah' associate over 'ere" he said, jabbing his cane in Mumbo's direction. Mumbo beamed in the manner of a successful play-writer taking the stage to his audience.
"With his magic and ma' top'a'th'line British technology, we got you good and stymied this time, my ducky"

"Not so!" Beast Boy said, pumping a fist as though in certain victory. "Raven figured out your magic mumbo jumbo, Mumbo, and while I'm holding these, she can get them out!"

Mod's smile faltered, and Mumbo paused as though in doubt. They looked at each other.

"Can she do that?" Mod asked out of the corner of his mouth. Mumbo rubbed his chin as though considering the idea.

"I don't think so" he said, as though unsure. "No, definitely not" his smile returned, and he declared down to Beast Boy
"No fibs, shape shifter! If it were just my magic, then maybe, but I learned from that, and with my partner's technology, there's no way she's getting them out, especially not when she's there with them" he laughed.

"Oh yeah?" Beast Boy replied, throwing out his chest. "She's working on it right now, any second they'll come bursting out, and then we'll kick your butts!"

"You think so!?" Mumbo shouted. He raised his wand, and yelled "Mumbo Jumbo!" a massive cage appeared improbably in the shadows of the ceiling, and descended with alarming speed down on Beast Boy. He vanished, and the cage slammed down onto open floor. A small green mouse skittered away across the floor.
"Ya!" Mumbo slashed his wand, and a number of colourful ropes exploded out of his sleeves and zoomed at the mouse like leaping snakes. The mouse jumped and dodged, the ropes slithering and lunging forward with increasing hostility. The mouse expanded, turned longer and thicker, a green scaled snake suddenly flew sideways across the room with impossible speed by wiggling its body like radio frequency.

"No you don't, my ducky!" Mod raised his cane and clicked the red gem at the top. Several panels in the walls opened, and a line of his mechanical coldstream guards marched with heavy footfalls into the room. The snake changed direction as the robots fired their guns, blowing the coloured ropes to ribbons.
Mumbo replied in kind. He raised his wand and gave it a flourish. From his other hand his white glove divided into ten and expanded to human height. The hands ran towards the snake on two of their fingers, their thumb and little fingers reaching forward like hands. In addition, the giant, Mumbo-shaped balloon cluster above landed on the floor as though it were made of rock, and stood into a stance as though it were a boxer. In response, the snake exploded into a monstrous lizard and unleashed a terrifying shrieking cry. The T-Rex looked down upon it opponents as though slightly amused, then stomped down. One robot and a glove were too slow, and both were crushed under the colossal clawed foot. The balloon monster it bit on the head as though it were trying to decapitate it. The balloon creature exploded with a bang, and sent the dinosaur skidding backwards. Many tinier balloon Mumbos exploded from the giant one to stand amongst the army of gloves and robots. It was difficult to say exactly what the dinosaur was thinking, having no discernible human features to read, but the huff and throaty sound it made might well have been a dino-sigh. The robots aimed their guns and fired. The T-Rex shuddered and reared up, then fell forward in a makeshift body slam. The room shook, and most of the robots were sent flying backwards. The gloves and balloons however leapt forward, being lighter and more nimble, and seized upon the dinosaur with iron grips. The T-Rex righted itself, roaring with displeasure and smashed its way through the wall, followed by the robots, balloons, and remaining gloves.

Outside, late-night workers around the area all screamed and ran away as the dinosaur tripped over a metal statue of some naval gentleman and crashed into a warehouse on the opposite side of the street.
Beast Boy sat up amongst the rubble in normal form, rubbing his head. The gloves lay torn and twitching all around him, and remnants of coloured latex was drifting down through the air in a disconsolate manner, but more of them, and the mechanical guards came roving towards him over the broken walls and roof. He leapt forward and smashed a robot to scrap with a giant gorilla fist, then leapt backwards and ripped a glove to shreds with massive crocodile teeth. Two balloon Mumbos went flying off with loud hisses of escaping air as in porcupine form he leapt backwards off of the torn glove in their direction. This did nothing to dissuade the rest though. They came forward, the gloves leaping, the balloons bouncing, and the robots firing. Beast Boy flew up in hummingbird form, the shots of the guns and the leaping gloves missing him entirely. The balloons gave simultaneous bounces and rose as though filled with helium to meet him. He seemed to disappear for a moment or two, but then a massive green blob appeared in the sky. The robots and gloves could only watch as the massive brontosaurus came crashing down upon them with many balloon Mumbos stuck fast to his vast underbelly. Machines exploded, balloons popped in a variety of coloured latex shreds, and gloves were blown away or crushed. On its back, the brontosaurus shrank to human form. Beast Boy smiled broadly at his victory, surveying the carnage of sparking mechanical pieces, latex shreds, and torn sheets of cloth, before being bound stealthily by more coloured rope. Like striking cobras they zipped upwards, around his body and tied themselves tight. No matter what he did he couldn't break them. They were so tight they stopped him changing into something bigger, and even when he changed into a fly the ropes merely cocooned him. There was no getting out. As he reverted back to human form, two coldstream guards clanked forward, and grabbed him bodily by the shoulders.

Mad Mod and Mumbo stood at the head of a battalion of more robots, both looking immensely pleased as the two holding Beast Boy pushed the green shape shifter down to his knees in front of them.

"That's right, my ducky" Mod said, quietly. "Just let it sink in. It's like I said; you've lost. Maybe mah' associate didn't get the revenge he wanted in the way he wanted it, but one way or th'other" he held up the three objects representing his friends.
"The city is ours, and you lot of snotty brats won't get in our way"

Beast Boy merely glared at him. Mod and Mumbo smiled broadly, and Mod kneeled down so he and BB were on a level.

"I think we can have some small level of revenge though" he said, with grim amusement. "In your defeat, let me tell ya a secret" he leaned in.
"You were right. There was another way to get them out" he tapped his cane onto the floor. "Lit'le good it'll do y'now, my ducky. There's no way you'll stop us, and once I burn these" he held up the objects "your little friends'll be stuck forever. And the best part is, with them trapped there, my cane will sap their life force forever, keepin' me in peak shape for my reign over this city" Mod chuckled at Beast Boy in malevolent victory. Somewhat to his consternation, Beast Boy's glare suddenly changed. His mouth twitched, and slowly broadened into a smile. Mod's smile lessened again.

"You might want to count those odds again" Beast Boy said. "And while you're at it, you might want to count how many of us you're holding" he nodded at the objects in Mod's hand. Mod frowned, and looked down. Beast Boy watched his mouth move, soundlessly.

"One, two, three..." Mod's expression tensed. Suddenly from behind him, Mumbo let out a cry of surprise. Mod spun around, and looked up to see Mumbo's hat wiggling around on top of his head. Mumbo had grabbed it by the sides and seemed to be trying to either hold it down or yank it off, it was hard to tell. The hat was growing bigger, and bigger.

"Wha-!?" Mod exclaimed.

"Didn't you notice I was already carrying a doll when I came in?" Mod turned toward Beast Boy's gloating voice, incensed, but was met with nothing but a pile of coloured rope on the floor.

"No!" he brushed the rope aside and found a small, green doll, a broad grin on its face.

Meanwhile Mumbo's hat had exploded in a shower of black velvet, a large blue thing having burst out of it like a bird from an egg. The thing leapt nimbly off of Mumbo's head, sending him careening backwards into the battalion of robots, and dived at a still shocked Mad Mod. Before he knew what was going on, his cane had been wrenched from his grasp. Standing up so fast he cramped his knees, he looked with wide-eyed horror at Raven hovering before him, who was wearing a small yet grimly delighted smile on her face. Before Mod could even shout "No!" she brought the cane down on her knee.

The next few moments were a blur of various mingled occurrences. The objects fell from Mod's immediately aging hand. His hair was turning grey and his frame hunching slightly with age. His voice, which he was using at that point to cry out in panic, was turning more and more husky and cracked as the wrinkles deepened in his jowls. The items meanwhile glowed brilliantly, and then suddenly vanished in an explosion of white light. Within moments the Titans stood there, all of them battle ready.
Most extraordinary of all, the world around them began to change. As though the giant napkin that had been placed over the city had been set on fire, the sky peeled away in a single spot, forming a hole, which widened and widened until it sank over the city. Buildings slipped back to their original height, people back into their modern clothes, and cars out of their rickety old classic shapes into sleek modern ones and large rumbling lorries. In the distance across the water, Titans Tower stood on its island, tall, dark, and shining in the renewed sunlight, which as though conscious of the spell's end, shone brightly over the horizon to usher in a brand new day.

"Nooo!!" Mad Mod wheezed, looking down at his wizened old hands. Then he looked up, fury in his face and his eyes dancing behind their spectacles in rage.
"You lit'le snots will pay for this!" with a rickety arm, he pulled a small black baton from his pocket, which elongated into another cane. He clicked the top of it, and the battalion of soldiers, which had not vanished, all surged forward, guns raised and feet clanking against tarmac. Behind them as though in a military parade, several tanks also rumbled from the broken museum entrance, rolling towards them on caterpillar tread, turrets trained on the five superheroes.

"Titans!" Robin announced, pulling out his bow-staff and swinging it skilfully in one hand. "Go!"


- To be Continued