“Microsoft!”
“Sony!”
“Microsoft!”
“Sony!”
“Microsoft!”
“Sony!”
For the octillionth or so time, Robin pinched the bridge of his nose and wondered. He wondered if he should have stayed in his room to watch the newest episode of the latest TV series to catch his ever-discerning eyes. After all, he did finally get the option to soundproof his room at the flip of a switch. Sure, in his line of work, that could prove dangerous, disastrous even, but it would only be for about an hour and if his teammates really needed him, they could always either use the buzzer right next to his door or their Titan's communicators. Plus, he wouldn't have to hear Beast Boy and Cyborg go at it again over which console company was better in the kitchen… and not even once mention Nintendo, the undisputed king of the industry.
But, though Robin had finally scraped enough together to shell out for kitting his room out with all that high-tech sound insulation, he didn’t have enough green to get his room a massive plasma screen-computer hybrid with all the audio and visual specs the one in the living room did. He probably could have gotten Cyborg to set him up, but he didn’t feel like bothering him since Cyborg was almost always busy with some other project that took precedence. Besides, Robin joked, his cybernetically enhanced compatriot probably would have used that opportunity to bug him more than the NSA was doing for all the times Robin had done things in secret that came back to bite the team like an atom bomb with teeth. Particularly, preeminently, and predominantly, of course the whole Red-X Fiasco.
After the kind of dirty, rotten, clandestine junk Robin had pulled, he wouldn’t blame him.
Robin couldn’t blame him.
So, for the octillionth or so time, Robin’s resolve returned and he decided to continue to brave the noisy, annoying wilderness of the living room instead of retreating into his own personal batcave.
There were still about ten minutes left on the clock before the new episode aired, and the last one, which he was watching a rerun of now, was very hit and miss. So, he decided to whip out his old, vintage, walkman. His intent was to let some Japanese heavy metal he had gotten into ever since all that Trouble in Tokyo carry him through those final ten minutes to the promised land of awesome he had a reasonable hope tonight’s episode would be while simultaneously drowning out Beast Boy’s and Cyborg’s dumb console warrior rhetoric in a beautiful language he barely understood and tasty riffs faster than even Mas and Menos, Kid Flash, and regular Flash combined.
Though he had managed to put his headphones on, he didn’t even get to press play when he noticed Larry’s fat, chibi mug was now taking up the entire screen.
“Hiya, boy wonder!”
With an undignified shriek, Robin’s feet pushed him up and over the couch, and he landed on the ground behind the couch in a heap, head first.
“Ow,” he groaned out, rubbing his aching cranium.
Through the pain, he could make out mechanical footfalls and the steps of much lighter feet coming from the kitchen.
“Robin! What’s wrong!?” Cyborg shouted as he and Beast Boy rushed towards him.
“Please don’t tell me Darkseid’s Apokoliptian horde finally decided to stop working through Intergang and just invade earth outright! I don’t think my booty can take another stomping by Stompa!” Beast Boy shouted afterwards in a panic.
As they got to within a few feet, however, Robin finally pulled himself together enough to backflip himself back into a standing position… though Cyborg and Beast Boy did have to prop him up after he lost his footing due to dizziness from his fall he hadn't gotten totally rid of.
“What’s the deal?” Cyborg asked.
Robin shook his head clear.
“Please don’t tell me you saw Stompa leading a bunch of parademons on an all out assault on the city on the evening news!” Beast Boy pleaded.
“No. Worse,” Robin said, prying himself loose of his friends’ grip.
“Worse than booty stompin’ Stompa!?” Beast Boy said, shivering at the thought.
“Much worse.”
Beast Boy’s eyes widened in horror and he slunk to a fetal position on the ground before grabbing a hold of his bountiful butt and kissing it goodbye. “Oh, booty! I’m sorry I didn’t get to use you one last time!”
“Don’t look so glum, chum,” Beast Boy heard a very familiar disembodied voice say before a massive boil ripped through the part of his jumpsuit that covered his derriere and formed into a miniature version of the head of a very familiar looking fifth-dimensional imp. “Larry’s here!”
Suffice to say, Beast Boy leapt higher into the air than he ever did in his base form and shrieked a shriek far more girly than had before ever escaped his lips. When he landed on the couch, he shut his eyes to spare himself any more knowledge of the horror upon his rear and furiously spanked the affected part of his tookus like it was on fire. When he had worn himself out, his breathing heavy and shallow, Beast Boy took a peek at his posterior and wiped away the ocean of sweat that had formed on his brow.
Sure, his butt was aching almost half as much as whenever Stompa stomped it into the asphalt, but at least that nightmare fueling boil was--
“Weeeeeeeeee!”
Suddenly, the boil appeared from Beast Boy’s booty again, but this time, popped off of it before slowly falling to the ground and growing into Larry’s chubby little chibi Robin-esque body.
“Larry!?” Cyborg shouted, looking to Robin for confirmation at what both his mechanical eye and normal human eye were seeing.
“Unfortunately,” said Robin with a nod, not taking his eyes from his magical doppleganger.
“Dude!” Beast Boy shouted, holding his booty and scooching as far away from Larry on the couch as he could. “Why’d you have to go and pop out of my booty!?”
The little fifth-dimensional imp tapped his magic index finger against his regular index finger nervously. “Well, I wanted to pop out of your forehead, but just like last time, I guess I sort of got a little… uhm… lost,” Larry said before rubbing the back of his head and chuckling even more nervously.
“Dude! How does that even begin to--I mean my booty’s nowhere near my--” Beast Boy rambled incoherently for a few moments, his brain failing to cough up the words he needed for this situation before he finally just gave up and slapped himself in the head to alleviate the raging migraine he was getting before he said, in a defeated tone, “Uhhh… dude…” and slunk back into the couch.
“Why are you here?” Robin asked coldly, cutting to the chase like a well thrown birdarang through kevlar.
Flinching from the power of Robin’s rendition of his former mentor’s famous glare, Larry anxiously twiddled his thumbs and began whistling what all three titans recognized as the classic 60's song, ‘Do You Believe in Magic?’
When several more moments passed without an answer, Robin leaned on the couch and stuck his head as close as he could to Larry without having to balance on the tips of his toes. “Larry… why are you here? I thought we agreed after the last time that you’d never enter our dimension ever again.”
Larry stopped his whistling and found everywhere except Robin’s domino-masked face extremely fascinating. “Uhm… would you believe me if I said I had my fingers crossed and said ‘except in case of emergencies' under my breath when you made me swear that?”
Robin couldn’t hold back his grimace anymore… or his rage. He reached out and grabbed Larry by the collar of his costume with both of his hands. “So, you lied to me!?”
“No, no, no, no, no! I didn’t lie to you! Honest!” Larry spouted off rapid fire, holding his hands up and moving them in a gesture intended to placate the boy wonder. “I just... uhhh… added an extra super special awesome condition… that I… didn’t… tell you… about… Hehehe.”
In Larry’s mind, Robin’s eyes burst into flame at that and ebon smoke poured forth from his mouth when he said, “Keep talking.”
His head having completely retreated into the depths of his costume like a turtle’s head into its shell, Larry said, his voice muffled by his outfit, “I think that should wait until Starfire and Raven are here. It sort of involves them too.”
Robin turned his attention to Cyborg, who nodded and said, “Got it,” before pulling out his Titan’s communicator from a compartment in his leg.
Robin then heard a poofing sound from in front of him and his arms felt as though they weren’t carrying anything anymore. His eyes confirmed this was true when he looked back at his hands and found they were empty of Larry’s collar and the fifth-dimensional imp himself. He turned his entire body around when he heard the poofing sound again to find that Larry had rematerialized on Cyborg’s shoulder and watched as Larry snatched the communicator out of Cyborg’s mighty mechanical grip as though it were the easiest thing in the world.
“Hey! Give that back!” Cyborg shouted, trying in vain to catch Larry, who kept hovering just out of his grasp.
“Fret not, my half-artificial friend! Allow me to summon the rest of your stalwart team!”
Larry’s magic finger started glowing and he touched the center of the communicator with it.
Two poofing sounds reached the ears of Beast Boy, Cyborg, and Robin, and their three pairs of eyes beheld two porcelain bathtubs appear in the center of the living room several feet away from the back of the couch. In each, much to their mutual horror, they saw the silhouette of a girl rinsing out her hair beneath the showerhead before the water suddenly stopped dropping due to the tubes no longer being connected to any of their attendant pipes.
The silhouette with the longer hair said, “Most strange.”
The silhouette with the shorter hair said, “I swear, if this is another one of Beast Boy’s stupid pranks, I’ll start calling him Garfield aga--”
“Raven!?” the silhouette with the longer hair shouted, facing the other girl at whom she most certainly got much too good of a look at given how the tubs were positioned in relation to each other.
“Starfire!?” the silhouette with the shorter hair shouted, facing the other girl at whom she also most certainly got a much too anatomical look at due to the placement of the tubs.
The ensuing twin shrieks were loud enough to temporarily render Robin, Beast Boy, and Larry deaf and temporarily scramble Cyborg’s auditory systems.
“What in X’Hal’s great name are you doing in my bathroom without clothing!?” Starfire shouted, covering herself up as best she could without a towel.
Raven, also covering herself up as best she could sans a towel, said, “Your bathroom!? This is my--” She stopped mid-sentence, however, as she looked around her new surroundings. “Wait! We’re not in either of our bathrooms! We’re in the living room!”
“The living room!? But that means… that means…”
For three solid seconds, Starfire and Raven stood there in their respective tubs in complete, utter, deafening silence. Then, ever tentatively, they grabbed ahold of their individual shower curtains and hesitantly pulled them away enough that they could peek their heads over without exposing the rest of them. They found, much to their mounting terror, Beast Boy, Cyborg, Robin, and Larry, oddly enough, with their eyes closed and looking away with their hands clasped firmly on their ears.
Starfire and Raven’s subsequent second mutual shriek could have split the atoms of the strongest Promethium armor let alone the ears of the boys, which it also did to the point where Cyborg’s electronic eye started going all haywire along with his auditory systems.
“Larry! Dude! Do something!” Beast Boy yelled over the clamour.
“I’m trying! I’m trying!” Indeed, Larry was trying. His magic finger was raised up and glowing, but with the screaming reaching into the higher octaves, he found his focus slipping and didn’t want to risk making a mistake that could very well make an already bad situation all the worse.
“Well stop trying and do it! My CPU can’t handle much more!” Cyborg yelled.
“Larry! What Cy said! Now!” Robin yelled.
Spurred onwards by the words of his idol/three dimensional self, Larry found enough of a reservoir of will to, in fact, do something. With a poof, a giant, hollow, metallic, plaid (or tartan if you’re weird and from Europe), semi-spherical dome appeared in the air above Starfire and Raven and landed around them, blocking them from sight as well as sound,
Breathing heavily and wiping his face clean of the sweat it had built up, Beast Boy said, “Phew! Glad that’s over! For a second there, I thought my ears were gonna burn off and I was gonna need sign language lessons like Jericho.”
“Uhhh… BB? Jericho’s mute, not deaf,” Cyborg said, running a quick diagnostic of his systems.
“What!? No way! Then why does he know sign language, then!?”
“Mute people have to learn sign language too if they want to communicate effectively,” Cyborg replied, not bothering to look up from the readout built into his arm.
“Huh. No foolin’?”
“Nope.” Having made sure that everything was running optimally, Cyborg closed the readout.
Robin, who was still massaging his ears, said, “Okay… not what I had in mind, but I suppose now you can think clearly enough to fix things permanently, right?”
Larry, who had just finished massaging his own ears as well as screwing his head off so he could better shake out all of the decibels that had built up in his ear canals before screwing his head back on again, saluted his idol and said, “You betcha, Mr. Robin, sir!”
Robin raised a brow. “What!? Speak up! I can’t hear you!” he yelled.
Larry covered up his own mouth with a foot. “Whoops! Looks like I’m gonna have to fix that too.” His magic finger glowed twice: once to fix Robin’s ears and twice to conjure forth a megaphone that he pointed at his idol before yelling out, right into his ear, “Can you hear me now!?”
Massaging his ears yet again, Robin said, “Crystal… I think.”
“Goodie!” Larry then faced the dome. He grabbed a hold of his left glove and stretched it out until it covered his left arm completely and did the same with his right glove and arm. Then, as he put his game face on and twiddled his fingers, the gloves snapped back into their normal position. He rose his magic index finger and it glowed once more.
With a poof, the dome disappeared, revealing Raven and Starfire standing, sans their bathtubs, completely fine and fully clothed. Their hair was even dry and properly shampooed and conditioned with the fanciest and overpricediest french stuff.
However, something was visibly, and evidently, off.
“This does not seem correct,” Starfire said, pulling Raven’s cape, which she was wearing along with the rest of the witch’s clothes, up to her face and inspecting it.
“No. It doesn’t.” Raven said, grimacing as she realized she was in Starfire’s garb: go-go boots, short mini-skirt, midriff-exposing crop top, metal collar with a green gem set into the center, and metal wristbands very much included, to her rising annoyance. However, as her eyes and hands burned with dark magic and her feet left the ground as she hovered in the air, the thing that annoyed her about the outfit she now wore was something else. “Purple is most definitely NOT my color!”
With great celerity, Raven took off towards Larry, intent on making his face as black and blue as her usual get-up, the potential consequences of doing so having been rendered inconsequential in her mind.
In a panicked yelp, Larry hid under Robin’s cape and raised his magic finger again. In a flash, Raven got her normal clothes back and Starfire got hers back, right as Raven was about to hurl a dark magic comrpised claw at the poor fifth-dimensional imp.
“Raven! Stop!” Robin yelled, putting up his hands up as though he were keeping Raven’s wrath at bay. “Your and Starfire’s clothes are fine now!”
Raven dispelled the magic she had gathered and looked at herself to find out that, yes, she was in fact back in her own clothes. She glanced back at Starfire to find the Tamaranean was back in her own clothes as well and jumping for joy as was her nature. “Glorious!” Starfire proclaimed.
Raven turned back and said, “Fine.” Her feet touched back on solid ground. “Now, why is he here? I thought he agreed to never enter into our dimension again after the Johnny Rancid fiasco.”
“He--” Robin took a moment to sigh. “--had his fingers crossed, apparently.” He stepped to the side so that his cape was no longer covering Larry up and turned to him. “Alright, Larry. The gang’s all here. Get to talking. NOW.”
Larry nodded and floated back up into the air. “Alrighty then, heroines and heroes! Turn your attention now to the television screen! Up, up, and away!”
Larry then hurled himself at breakneck speed back into the television screen. The screen then suddenly switched from the recap of the last episode that was playing at the beginning of the newest episode of Robin’s new favorite series right as the narrator said, ‘Previously on The New Adventures of Batman and Robin.’ In the recap’s stead, an old timey movie countdown sequence, in black and white no less, started off from the number eight.
The assembled founding five of the Teen Titans quickly took their respective places on the couch just as the counter reached two and the screen faded to black for a few moments.
After those moments were done, a very familiar logo started playing, belonging to a film financing/distribution/production company usually involving a roaring lion trapped within a gold circle inlaid with the latin words, ‘ARS GRATIA ARTIS’ and the words ‘Trade’ to the left of the circle, ‘Mark’ to the right of the circle, and ‘Metro Goldwyn Mayer’ above the circle. Only, instead of a roaring lion trapped within the circle, a meowing Larry in a lion suit was trapped within the circle, the original latin words were replaced with, ‘ARS GRATIA LARRY,’ and the words ‘Metro Goldwyn Mayer’ were replaced with ‘Larryo Larrywyn Larryer.’
After that logo was done, the screen faded to black for another few moments before another very familiar logo for a film financing/distribution/production company started playing. This one however, usually involved a nondescript, ghostly-looking boy casting a fishing line into a lake from his perch atop a crescent moon that turned into the ‘D’ for the title, ‘Dreamworks: SKG™.” Of course, this time, the boy was a nondescript, ghostly version of Larry and the crescent moon turned out to be the first ‘L’ for the title, “Larryworks: LLL™.”
The third logo, of course, followed the same pattern. The difference this time, however, was that the logo was usually of a striking brown haired woman in a toga standing tall atop a series of steps and holding a torch high into the air that the camera zoomed out from as the words, ‘Columbia’ appeared up top and the words, ‘a Sony Company,’ appeared at the bottom. Of course, the beautiful woman was replaced by the far more hideous form of Larry in a toga and carrying up the torch that the camera zoomed out from as the words, ‘Larryumbia’ appeared at the top and the words, ‘a Larry Company’ appeared at the bottom.
While Beast Boy had been amused by this at first, it was starting to grate on even him, which was saying something considering he was, well, Beast Boy. “Uhhh! Dude! We get it already! Where’s the fast forward button and the remote when you need them!?” he said, as he furiously began checking in-between the couch cushions to see if he could find the remote to press said fast forward button.
“Ooops. Hehe. Sorry,” the toga clad Larry said before pulling out a remote from inside his toga. “Here. Allow, moi.”
With a press of the fast forward button on the remote, the remaining logo lampoons sped by so fast that even the more astute of The Titans could only get vague ideas as to which company they originally belonged to.
After a few more moments, the screen returned to its normal pace as the words, ‘AND NOW: OUR FEATURE PRESENTATION’ flashed into place.
“Finally!” Beast Boy sighed.
The screen then suddenly transitioned to Larry in a five-star general’s ceremonial outfit on a stage with a giant American flag plastered on the wall right behind him. “Friends! Romans! Adolescent adventurers with powers and abilities far above the normal run of mortal men! Lend me your ears!”
“We’re listening. Intently,” Robin said.
Larry nodded and continued. A massive map stand waddled (literally) into frame from stage left and stopped next to him. On the map stand was an almost as massive picture of Larry’s head, winking. “As a quick refresher just in case any of you forgot, I, Nosyarg Kcid--also known as Larry--hail from the fifth dimension (though I now reside in dimension 4 and 9/8ths).” He punctuated his point by hitting the picture of himself with a large, ornate riding crop he pulled out of his pocket, causing the picture to go, “Oww! Hey! What's the big idea, jerkface!?”
When he took his crop off of the picture, the picture grew grew two arms to massage its head and two legs and jumped off the stage, looking mighty angry at Larry right as another picture walked on from stage left and took its place upon the map stand. This one had several vignettes.
The first, at the top, depicted Larry standing tall upon a mountain top with his magic index finger raised high like a sword and with a horned viking helmet atop his head, while what looked like a fifth-dimensional imp version of Batgirl lay prone on her stomach and grabbed a hold of Larry’s legs with a frown on her face.
The second depicted a bulked up Larry in the stereotypical circus strongman outfit holding up a steel I-beam with the word ‘MULTIVERSE’ riveted into it and bending it like a pretzel.
The third depicted Larry, in outdoorsman attire and with binoculars, looking into a mystic portal that seemed to depict Robin’s first fight with one of Slade’s Slade-shaped robots.
The fourth depicted Larry emerging from a shrieking Robin’s (whose arm was in a cast) forehead during his first visit to the Titans’ universe.
The fifth, at the bottom, depicted Johnny Rancid laughing victoriously as he rode off into the night, Robin’s blown up R-cycle and his bruised, battered, and unconscious body, far behind him.
“With the aid of my handy, dandy, magic finger, I bent the rules of the multiverse so that I could peer into other universes, where I first discovered my idol-to-be, Robin, and decided to enter into his shard of reality to pep him up after Johnny Rancid laid him low and broke his arm,” Larry said, punctuating his point by slapping his crop once against each particular vignette in the picture--hurting each of them and getting them all to bemoan to his name--as his speech referred to the events they showcased.
This picture also grew arms and legs and massaged its head and jumped off the stage as the next picture ran in from stage left and took its place. This one depicted Johnny Rancid in the eviler-looking form he took after acquiring some of Larry’s reality warping power, riding through the sky on his much more evil-looking (and cooler-looking) motorcycle through Jump City while Larry looked on worriedly with his broken magic finger.
“Things didn’t exactly go as planned. Hehehe,” he said, not slapping the picture with his crop this time and chuckling nervously with a big, fake grin plastered from ear to ear.
“Yeah. Hehehe,” Raven deadpanned while crossing her arms over her chest.
Larry sweated profusely as the picture ran off the stage like it was being chased by some horrible monster (which Raven could certainly qualify as when she so whimsied) and the next one stepped onto the map stand. The mood of said latest picture was far more upbeat than the one before, as it showed Larry and Robin standing triumphantly atop Johnny Rancid’s awesome, transformed motorcycle, which was parked right on Mr. Rancid’s lame, unconscious body.
“But (with the aid of yours truly of course), Robin was able to save the day like he always does and teach that no-good Full Throttle reject what happens when you mess with the boy wonder’s town thanks to the ole’ one-two, buckle my shoe! Hiyah!” Larry said, before shadow boxing so poorly that his lame attempt at martial arts mimicry ended with him tripping flat on his face, much to Beast Boy's laughter.
Grumbling something about a ‘jolly green jerkface,’ Larry picked himself back up and dusted off a veritable mountain of dirt from his uniform as the next picture took the place of the previous one. The newest one was a picture of Larry and Robin shaking hands like pals.
With renewed vigor, Larry smacked his crop against this latest picture for emphasis, getting a far more subdued response out of it that went, in a brooklyn accent no less, “That all you got, leprechaun!? Come on! My Grandie hits harder than you!”
Promptly ignoring the insult, Larry then said, “And, at the end of it all, Robin and I agreed that I was never to come back to this universe ever again under any circumstances whatsoever because it was sorta, kinda, my fault that Johnny Rancid went all speed demon and almost gained control of Jump City and probably the world.”
Larry then pulled out a large magnifying glass from his other pocket and placed it over the back of the cape he wore in the picture. The gigantic lenses made it clear that Larry was holding one of his hands back over the cape… as well as crossing all his fingers there with one another in such a mashed up way that they barely resembled fingers at all and looked more like a bundled up ball of yarn.
“But, as I told Robin earlier, I sorta, kinda, had my fingers crossed and muttered a teeny, tiny little condition under my breath that I didn’t tell him about. A… catch, if you will,” Larry went on, the sweat and fake grin returning with a vengeance.
“If you do not mind my asking, what was this ‘catch' you speak of, exactly?” Starfire asked.
“Yeah, Larry. Enlighten us,” Robin said, eyes narrowing to pinpricks.
His sweat and false smile grew for a couple of seconds before he smacked his crop against the next picture, which didn't even flinch. Impressive. This one depicted Larry lying on a recliner and reading some comic book the Titans had never heard of entitled ‘Kingdom Come: Issue #1’ by some company they also never heard of though some of the figures on the cover were immediately familiar to them. Next to him, on a small stand, was a big, red, old-school, rotary-dial telephone with the Titans’ emblem drawn on it with crayon and covered by a large, glass case. Attached to said glass case, via loads of duct tape, was a note that read, ‘BREAK ONLY IN CASE OF EMERGENCIES!’
“It’s simple, really. I secretly promised not to enter your universe except in the case of a serious emergency or emergencies, plural. Yay!” Larry flew into the air in a circle for a moment before landing back down only to see the bemused faces of the Titans.
“Yeah. You sound REALLY serious,” Raven said.
“Giddier than Beast Boy when I fixed up his moped after that cow-stealing, alien tofu mess is more like it,” said Cyborg.
“Hey! Don’t judge me! You know how long I wanted that thing for!?” Beast Boy said.
“You still didn’t have to turn into a dog and slobber all over me as I was about to finish,” Cyborg replied.
Beast Boy opened his mouth to retort, but with a dismissive gesture of his hand, he decided not to open that potential can of worms any further in front of a booty-boil-emerging trickster like Larry and shut it at the last minute.
“Why does your tone sound most joyous?” Starfire asked the fifth-dimensional imp. “Should you not be speaking with the utmost of urgency?”
“Nope! Because I know my best buddy Robin and the rest of his team can handle it! Yay!”
“Handle what, exactly?” Robin asked.
The subsequent picture took the place of the antecedent one. This one, like one of the ones before, depicted multiple vignettes, though unlike that one, was fortunate in that Larry didn't smack it the mug with his riding crop, which made the picture sigh in relief and say, “Oh, thank goodness.”
The first vignette was of Larry sitting in his recliner with a remote in hand watching a television screen that depicted the Titans’ first fight with Cinderblock in Jump City Supermax Prison.
The second was also of him watching the TV, though this time, it showed the Titans all snoozing peacefully around the living room couch and Larry had a bored expression on his face.
The third was, likewise, also of Larry sitting in his recliner and watching TV. This time, however, he was actually pressing a button on his remote, which seemed to have changed the channel from the Teen Titans’ living room to what looked like the living room of Titans East all the way in Steel City, where Bumblebee, Speedy, Aqualad, and Mas and Menos were likewise all spread over their couch and sleeping like newborn babes. Larry looked more steamed in this picture than bored.
The fourth was of Larry watching what looked like the planet Earth with the same expression as in the third one, his remote held high and pressing a button.
The fifth was of Larry looking surprised as he looked upon an entirely new planet on the screen that couldn’t possibly have been planet Earth since all the continents and oceans were all wrong.
The sixth was of Larry hugging his television set something fierce with a trio of hearts emanating from either side of his head.
“As I think I’ve mentioned before, I stumbled upon you guys by accident, sort of like how you discover a really awesome show by channel surfing randomly one day when you’re really, really bored. However, while I think you guys are great, sometimes when you aren’t doing anything interesting, I ‘change the channel,’ if you will, to some other team on your planet. And when they aren’t doing anything interesting, I change the tube to some other version of planet Earth. And when those other versions of planet Earth don’t have anything interesting happening on them… well… I usually just decided to wait for you guys to do something cool again since I never watched any worlds that weren't versions of Earth before. But then, one day, I accidentally pressed the wrong button and stumbled upon--” Larry stopped for a moment to sprout a pair of cherub wings, hover in place, and clasp his hands together before bringing them up to his chin. A dreamy look came upon his face as hearts spilled forth from his ears and rose up into the air. “--that world. That beautiful, beautiful world.”
Several moments of awkward silence passed. The Titans looked at one another, some of them shrugging, before Robin turned back to Larry and asked, “Okay… what world?”
Larry tsked and rolled his eyes. “Uh, the world I’m going to send you all to save? Duh! That’s the emergency! Yay!”
“Ummm… come again, please?” Starfire asked.
“You wanna run that by us one more time?” Cyborg asked.
“It’s just like I said. That beautiful, beautiful world I found out about is about to go through bad times, and I just know you guys are perfect for turning that trouble to rubble, because when there’s trouble, I know who to call! The Teen Titans!” Larry threw his arms up into the air and jumped up into the air before suddenly freezing (literally) in place. From out of nowhere, a bunch of fireworks shot up above him and exploded. The pyrotechnic gases left over spelled out, ‘Teen Titans’ in bold, golden letters. “So, what do you say? Wanna add another world saved to the proverbial notches on your metaphorical belts… even if four out of five of you literally do wear belts?”
The wide eyed expressions of the Titans didn’t exactly lift Larry up with hope. In fact, it fettered him with doubt and he promptly became unfrozen (again, literally) and plopped down onto the stage, face first. Larry lifted his face up after several moments and asked, “So… the resounding silence means you’ll help… right?”
“Well…” Robin said while rubbing his chin. “While the offer IS tempting--”
“Tempting!? Robin, are you out of your little bird lovin’ gourd!?” Cyborg yelled, grabbing Robin by the collar and bringing him up to his face. “In case you forgot, we’ve sort of been having our hands full with a certain Apokolips-loving proxy group called INTERGANG that wants to take over the world for a guy almost as much bad news as Trigon!”
“To be fair to my father, I don’t think he’s as smart or ambitious enough to find and solve the anti-life equation and take over the universe like Darkseid is,” Raven said.
“Cyborg, calm down. You didn’t even let me finish. If you did, I would have said that we have too many issues to deal with here that take priority,” Robin responded.
“But that’s the beauty of it!” Larry said, his head emerging from one of the pockets on Robin’s utility belt, freaking Cyborg out enough that he dropped Robin out of surprised fright. “With my magic finger, I’ll bend time and make it so that you’ll only be gone from this world for a minute! The fifth-dimensional authorities won’t like it (and will probably punish me even more than they did the last time I was here), but if it’ll help to get you guys to save that beautiful, beautiful world I found and get back here to kick New God butt, I’ll do it! Just say the word!”
“Really?” Robin asked from his now upside down, sprawled out position on the couch.
“E’yup!” Larry said in an uncharacteristically deep and southern accent.
Robin started rubbing his chin. “Well… that does change the equation quite a bit--”
“Robin! Is all the blood going to your brain!?” Cyborg asked, waving his arms about furiously.
“Actually, not really. I have been an acrobat for most of my life, remember?”
“Do the words ‘fifth-dimensional authorities’ mean anything to you!? If we agree to this and they catch Larry, we’re culpable! And I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel like being punished by a bunch of crazy dudes with even crazier magical powers like Larry… no offense, little man.”
“Oh, no, no, no,” Larry said, jumping out of Robin’s utility belt and flying up to Cyborg’s face. “They won’t do anything to you guys. They’ll just think I pressured you into doing what I wanted at the end of a magic finger and probably give me a millennia in solitary in a black hole. They won’t touch you. In fact, they won’t even undo all the good you do on that beautiful, beautiful world because I sent you there, just like they didn’t take away yours or Jump City’s memories of me after the Johnny Rancid thing. They’re such non-interventionists, they won’t even intervene to fix the damage done by interventionists when they intervene. They’re weird like that.”
“Are you… certain of this?” Starfire asked.
Larry nodded. “Believe me, after the kind of trouble I got into last time, I studied the fifth-dimensional laws on the books for this sort of thing inside and out… and sometimes outside and in, but that was only on Tuesdays.”
“And you’re… really willing to risk a full thousand years just lying in a black hole, doing nothing, for this world we’re talking about?” Raven asked, raising a brow.
“That beautiful, beautiful world,” Larry said, nodding again.
“Right. That beautiful, beautiful world,” Raven said, eyes rolling.
“Yes. Without question.” Larry suddenly sported a black and white tux, a fedora on his head, a pair of shades in his hand. Putting the sunglasses on, he said, “Because I’m on a mission from God,” with a serious deadpan expression and voice more serious and deadpan than the titans had ever recalled him being before such that they wondered if he was in fact being serious and deadpan and wasn’t just making another one of his pop culture references.
As quickly as it had appeared, his expression and voice shifted to normal as he said, “And, in case there are still any doubts, I’m also willing to sweeten the pot even more by giving Beast Boy over there (and the rest of you, to a lesser extent) a--” Larry did a quick twirl, and turned back to where he was facing before and stopped, now clad in a cheap two dollar suit so many game show hosts wore with a mic in hand. Also just like a game show host, he boldly proclaimed, “FABULOUS PRIZE!”
Beast Boy, who was one of The Titans still on the fence about going through with Larry’s plan, felt his eyes light up and his ears perk up. “A fabulous prize!? For me!?”
“MOSTLY FOR YOU!” Larry said, still with his game show host voice.
“Dude! Sweet!” Beast Boy said, jumping to his feet from the couch and rubbing his hands together enthusiastically. “What’ll I win!?”
Larry pointed at another Larry in a punk rock outfit sitting at a drumset. “MAESTRO! DRUM ROLL, PLEASE!” he said.
The other Larry did as he was told, creating the stereotypical drum roll sound with his sticks.
Larry flew up to Beast Boy and wrapped one of his arms around him. “FOR YOU, MY DEAR BOY, YOUR PRIZE SHALL BE BETTER THAN ANY OF YOUR EARTHLY POSSESSIONS! EVEN YOUR MOPED!”
“Even my Tidwell? No way!” Beast Boy said, crossing his arms over his chest disbelievingly.
“WAY, DEAR BOY! VERY MUCH WAY! FOR I WILL (PAUSE FOR DRAMATIC EFFECT)--” Larry paused for dramatic effect for a few moments before pointing Beast Boy to a purple curtain on the opposite side of the living room. “RETURN TERRA’S MEMORIES OF YOU!” The curtain parted to reveal a heart-shaped box/vanity mirror almost identical to the one Beast Boy had fashioned for Terra so long ago, except this one was Valentine’s Day pink and labeled, ‘Terra’s Memories.’
For one of the few moments in his life, Beast Boy remained dead silent. In contrast, the other four Titans’ gasps could have been heard all the way across the country in Gotham or Metropolis.
“What do you mean ‘Terra’s memories?’ She’s been petrified beneath the city for almost a year now,” Raven said, recovering far more quickly than the others.
“OH REALLY?” Larry said, flying up to her, his game show host voice still being maintained. “AND WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU CHECKED UP ON HER? A MONTH? TWO?”
Raven opened her mouth and was about to retort, when she stopped halfway as her eyes widened in realization. Instead of merely saying the number of months it had been since she had last visited Terra’s trapped form, she said, “Three months. A couple of days before Beast Boy started seeing Terra everywhere and went--”
“Let’s go,” Beast Boy interrupted.
The other pairs of eyes of the Titans fell on Beast Boy, who said, “Look, I know I didn’t tell you guys, and I’m sorry about that, but that girl I saw a couple of months back and thought was Terra even though you guys all said I was crazy? She really was Terra,” Beast Boy hung his head low. “Even if she didn’t want to remember it.”
The others gasped again, except Raven, though her expression did grow even more shocked along with theirs.
“But you said--” Robin began.
“I know what I said!” Beast Boy yelled, bringing his head back up. “But I lied, okay. I lied to make you guys feel better. I lied to make me feel better. But now, we’ve got a chance, the best chance I’ve ever heard, to bring Terra back. So what are we still doing standing around here? Let’s go!”
The quiet that followed was so great, one could have heard the pitter patter of ants, even if the Tower was so well defended by this point in their superheroic escapades that not even insects so small could have entered without getting fried. Larry was practically cascading with sweat as his head alternated between Beast Boy staring down the other Titans with a fierce glare he rarely put on on one side and the other Titans still looking as though a quantum bomb had just gone off in their faces on the other. Much as when he had made his agreement with Robin never to return to this universe, Larry had his fingers crossed behind his back. Though, this time, he did so with both hands (and several extra pairs he conjured up just in case) and in the hope that The Titans would agree to his plan.
Then, Cyborg decided to be the first to break the stillness. “I’m in this thing with you, BB.” He walked over to Beast Boy and placed a reassuring metal hand on his shoulder. “I may not have been as close to her as you were, but dang it if the little lady wasn’t my friend, and a dang good one to boot.”
“I as well am ‘in this thing with you,’ Beast Boy,” said Starfire, before hovering over to Beast Boy and placing a reassuring hand of her own on his shoulder. “For Terra was also a most fine friend of mine ‘to boot'.”
Beast Boy’s expression softened at their support and he smiled faintly. Looking between them, he said, “Thanks guys. That means the world to me.”
He turned his attention from the two and to the duo who hadn’t yet come over to his side. For a moment or two, he alternated between Raven and Robin before his eyes settled on the boy wonder. “Come on, Robin. We got tof--”
“I’m in,” Raven interrupted, much to everyone’s surprise, Beast Boy’s especially.
In fact, so shocked was he, that he stuck his index fingers in both his ears, pulled out a bunch of built up wax, and cupped one of his ears before sticking it out as close to her as he could. “I’m sorry, but did I just hear you say you’re--”
“Yes. You did,” Raven interjected, walking towards Beast Boy, Starfire, and Cyborg. “Is that a problem?”
“What? No, no, no, no, no!” Beast Boy said, holding his hands up and waving them about defensively. “That’s great! Terrific! Neato! Cool beans! SupercalifragilisticexpialiAWESOME, even! It’s just, well, I thought you still wouldn’t like the deal, is all.”
“What’s not to like? We spend X amount of time saving another world for one minute of time on our world and get a good friend of ours back while Larry’s the one who takes the fall if the higher powers that be catch wind and things go south. Sounds like a bargain if you ask me.” Raven stopped in front of Beast Boy, put her arms over her chest, and looked into his eyes. “Just promise me that you’ll tell her to please not betray us again, and I promise I won’t tell her your real name--” she smiled cheekily. “--Garfield.”
Beast Boy was speechless. In fact, he didn’t know what to say at all. In fact, so tumultuous was his mind, that his face started displaying many different and conflicting emotions at rapid fire pace before it settled on a thousand yard stare with drool mindlessly dripping from his wide open maw.
Starfire brought her hands up to her mouth to contain her worry.
Cyborg, on the other hand, knocked on Beast Boy’s head with the bottom of his fist. “I think you broke him, Raven.”
After the tenth or so knock, Beast Boy’s brain seemed to have completed its reboot, as he quickly leaned forward (conveniently avoiding Cyborg’s falling fist) and wrapped Raven up in a big hug that couldn’t be matched even if he had transformed into a polar bear. Tears welling up and carrying her a couple feet off the ground, he said, “Thank you, Raven. Thank you so, so, so much. I appreciate this a lot. I really do. I know you took Terra turning super hard, so just… thank you for working through that for me. For her. ”
“No... problem... Beast... Boy…” she gasped out. Still struggling for precious breathing gas, Raven said, “Now… could you… please… let go? Haven’t… found a… spell… that makes it... so that I... don’t have to... breathe... yet.”
Gently, Beast Boy put her back down and let go. Ever bashful, he rubbed the back of his head. “Hehe. Sorry.”
After Raven nodded her acceptance of his apology, Beast Boy turned his attention back to Robin. “So… Robin... how’s about hoppin’ aboard this love fest express? You know you want to.”
Robin chuckled and walked over in leader mode. “You’re right. Our mission is now twofold: save this world Larry keeps going on about--”
“That beautiful, beautiful world,” Larry interjected.
“--and save Terra.” Robin stopped in front of Beast Boy and bumped him in the shoulder. “I’m in… Romeo.”
Beast Boy grinned widely at that, as though the wider he smiled the more likely everyone would focus on it rather than his furiously blushing cheeks. It backfired spectacularly, of course, and only served to draw even more attention to them.
Luckily, though, a certain fifth-dimensional imp soon became so ecstatic that his game show host clothes literally jumped off of him to (fortunately) reveal his normal outfit underneath.
“Yay! Yippie! Wahoo!” Larry shouted before he flew around the room doing victory laps like his chibi self was on fire before stopping and raising his now glowing (again) magic finger. “Good luck and Godspeed, Titans!” he said, saluting them as his five star general outfit magically reappeared back on him.
“Larry, wait!” Robin yelled out, looking worried along with the rest of the team. “Aren't you going to give us a bit to prep?”
“Why? You’ll have everything you’ll need to get things done! More even! See ya!” Larry said, waving them goodbye with his magic-finger-possessing hand.
“Larry, what do you mean by--”
Before Robin could finish, the glow on Larry's finger flashed so bright that he and other Titans had to look away, covering their eyes and groaning out in sudden discomfort.
For a few seconds, their world became white…