Chapter Text
Well well well… My captive audience! Welcome, welcome. I am the one, the only, the mighty, Control Freak! Ironically, I am the only villain that has successfully had an impact on your puny little real world lives. How, you may ask?
Well behold, my greatest accomplishments! Direct your attention to the tv screen on my left… No you morons, my other left! Good.
As you all may know, I was the one who shut down your precious Teen Titans! Teen Titans Go was supposed to be SO much better! My mortal enemies, reduced to mere bobble headed idiots who walked all over each other and pretended to do something great! But alas, they were a failure… So you all got your wish! Reboot! But not quite how you intended, right? Meet the Titans!
Dark, gritty, bloody… Just how you like it right? I mean, we throw a little daddy-robin in there from time to time! Oh wait, it’s nightwing now… It’s great! But too intense and rough for a high level of viewers. Well, not the ones currently sucked into my video feed. You all knew exactly what you signed up for...
Beep Beep
Oh, my cookies are ready! I need to wrap this monologue up and fast. Now where was I? Ah yes, we already got a cross over between Teen Titans and Teen Titans Go! So now, it’s time for Titans and Teen Titans! I may have backtracked a season just a little to make things more interesting… But you’ll see what I mean. So strap in. Get ready… Not like I’m letting you go anywhere… Because I’m about to make their all of their lives a living nightmare…..
Ha…. Muha! Muhahahahaha!
{SCREEN ON THE LEFT BLINKS TO LIFE: TITANS UNIVERSE}
“Are you sure we can play games on this?” Rachel asked hesitantly as Dick finished the loading sequence.
“Positive.” The boy wonder replied. “Kory and I are going to talk to that Organization doctor Replacement Robin and I caught yesterday. So just uh… turn up the sound and pretend not to hear anything.”
“You’re gonna hurt him?” Rachel looked a little worried.
“We’re… gonna talk to him.” Dick replied awkwardly. “Look. We won’t kill him, but if we’re going to figure out who’s been chasing us, we gotta get answers. We’ll just twist his arm a little. Nothing like that family did. I promise.”
Rachel and Gar shared a look before the green haired boy shrugged. Dick had logged the computer into his steam account so the kids could play games while he and Kory got answers. He knew Bruce would be peeved, but perhaps that’s why he used his steam account. So Bruce would know. He felt like a teenager again, the teenager who went against Bruce’s direct orders and played video games on the batcomputer in the cave.
Alfred, being Alfred may or may not have turned a blind eye to the shenanigans.
Dick pressed the sound up button.
“Hey, Dick. You have one friend… one… and hey! He’s online.” Gar said with a chuckle. “Who’s C0ntr0l Fr34k?”
Dick paused, stooping down to look at the gamer tag.
“I don’t have any friends on there… So who the **** is that?”
Gar startled. “Dude you just got bleeped.” Dick blinked, touching his mouth. “Like in the movies… How is that possible?”
The boy wonder stiffened. “I don’t… Know.”
Rachel was just staring at them.
“I bleeped you.” A maniac’s voice echoed from the speakers, making the trio jump violently. The gamer tag began to grow bigger on the screen, taking up more and more of the pixels. Gar clicked the ‘X’ on the tab bar, but that irritating ‘it’s not working’ bleep was all he got for his valiant effort. The picture attached to the Gamer tag was of a fat man with red hair… He looked… Cartoony.
“Hi ya, kids!” The picture waved at them, crawling out of the picture box and standing on the screen.
Gar had jumped back holding an arm out to shield Rachel.
“What the **** are you? How did you get into the ******** Computer!? Would you stop ****** bleeping me!?”
“Sure.” Control freak grinned darkly. “I’ll tell you what I am… More specifically ‘who.’ But I’d rather not explain it twice.” He snapped his fingers from the otherside of the screen, and Kory appeared in a flash of light.
Dick caught her by the arm as she stumbled, completely discombobulated and off balance. “Wha-”
“Welcome Kory, to the most awful day of your life!”
She looked at the man on screen, and then at Dick and Gar with a quirked eyebrow. “Nice video. When did you have the time to make this?”
“Not a video.” Rachel declared, “I can… feel emotions radiating off of it… I think it wants us to suffer.”
“Not it, Rachel, he... I am the control freak, techno-master extraordinaire! In regards to suffering, you’re both right and wrong. How would you feel if I told you that all of this! All of the heart ache and misery is for the enjoyment of an audience in another world!?”
Rachel and Kory blinked, eyes narrowing. Dick just crossed his arms. “If what you said were actually true, then the world would actually start making sense.”
Dick didn’t pay much mind to the startled gazes he was receiving from the others.
“Well it’s the truth.” Control Freak declared, a small pop up in the corner revealing through a slideshow the countless souls with their eyes glued to a TV show. “These and so many more are watching your lives play out! Rooting for every tragic turn!”
“That’s… Demented.” Kory muttered, putting a hand on her chin. “But why-”
“You see, you aren’t the only titans! There was a TV show long before you, much loved by the fans. But I’m a villain. The fans didn’t like me, so I shut the show down and rebooted it to stupidville… But the original universe still remains!” Other universes full of titans appeared in the upper corner of the screen, flashing through several variations, all seeming rather cartoony.
“Why… are you telling us this?” Gar demanded, looking startled and unsettled.
“Because, I’m attempting to get the fans on my side… by pulling the ultimate cross over!” Control Freak bellowed, clearly a lover of dramatics. It irked Dick that someone could apparently manipulate their lives so easily. In fact, it set him entirely on edge.
He did a pretty good impersonation of the Batglare, straightening his shoulders. “I’m good right where I am. And I think it’s time for you to leave.” The former robin hooked his foot around the computer’s power cord, giving a sharp yank. It flew free from the wall.
“Why didn’t that work?” Gar murmured, taking a step back. He couldn’t imagine what this guy had planned for them, but he knew that it wasn’t likely to be very good. He had just gotten settled on this new team, and they had their hands full with Rachel’s stalking cultists. They seriously didn’t this to compound their problems. But Control Freak just laughed maniacally, raising his hands.
One snap of his fingers… And their world went dark in a blazing flash of light.
{THE SCREEN GOES BLACK, AND ANOTHER BLINKS TO LIFE: TEEN TITANS UNIVERSE}
Robin watched the chaos unfolding in the Titans Tower living room with a sigh of disdain. His friend, his family, often resorted to chaos on quiet days. Personal affects were scattered across the room, someone’s jacket, a few darts sticking out of the wall, a spare blue cloak hanging off the back of the couch, a repair kit shoved in a corner, books stacked on the end table, comics scattered across the floor, and videogame packets thrown every which way.
“Titans!” He called out. Beast Boy and Cyborg simultaneously crashed their vehicles in surprise, Raven’s hair shot up, only to cascaid around her cheeks one more as she set her book aside with a sigh. Starfire just beamed from where she was making friendship bracelets. “It’s time to get this place cleaned up.”
“But, it’s our day off!” Beast Boy groaned. Why couldn’t their leader understand that days off meant relaxing? It seemed as if being the protege of the bat had instilled a work ethic that surpassed all others. Robin for his part, hated cleaning up just as much as the rest of them; but that didn’t make it any less vital.
“And you’d rather clean up on a day when a villain attacks and you’re either too injured or too tired to move?”
Silence.
Without another peep of resistance, the others popped out of their seats and began cleaning their personal belongings. Robin found a birdarang hidden behind the lamp, vaguely recalling that he’d set it there distractedly a week ago. “Oh hey, guess I get to join the rest of you in cleaning up.” He holds up the weapon with a lopsided smirk that earns chuckles from the rest.
It wasn’t that he enjoyed work; but in Robin’s mind, work meant taking less time to think… In this regard, less thinking and more dwelling on the past, his parent’s death at Haley’s Circus, his difficult upbringing under batman, the split that drove a wedge between them, and everything in between. He could remember a lot of things he really didn’t want to, and it seemed as if they waited for the moment when his mind was unoccupied to make a reappearance. While he remained strong for his team, a destructive and damaging past lay ready to make itself known, a past burdened with grief and anger and hate. Ignoring it seemed to be working for the time being.
His team helped, giving him a distraction, temporary relief from the overwhelming force that stood ready to strike the moment he let his guard down.
“Robin.”
Grayson looked up. Beast Boy was holding his flashing communicator up. There was trouble in town.
{SCREEN 2: TEEN TITANS UNIVERSE, ELSEWHERE WITH THE GRITTY TITANS}
When Dick could see again, he and his ‘alliance’ were standing in an alley way. The sun was too bright, the colors far more apparent than normal. The lines dictating the beginning and endings of objects, were bold, like in a cartoon. He glanced down at his own hands and realized that to an extent, they were 2D, though that changed as he rotated them.
“Woah.” Gar’s breathy whisper drew Dick out of his thoughts. His friends were all much like him in regards to being less 3D. “I don’t know whether to freak out or point out how cool this is.”
“How about neither.” Rachel muttered, wiping her hands on her hoodie and shuddering slightly. Kory, seemingly unfazed by anything crossed her arms and nodded.
“Dick, we need to figure out how to get out of here.”
“I know. This looks like where that Control Freak guy was from. If we can track him down, then we can… convince him… to send us back.” Dick’s fist impacted his open palm, an irritated look flashing across his face.
“That might be easier said than done.” Kory pointed out, folding her long slender fingers over her biceps as she crossed her arms. “We don’t know where we are, or where he is. My suspicion is that he won’t be willing to make an appearance until he gets what he wants from us.”
“We need to get our bearings.” Dick agreed. “First we figure out what town we’re in. Then we get a place to stay.”
“Wait. Didn’t that guy say there were other versions of us here?”
Gar’s question earned a moment of silence. No one had believed the red headed freak of nature when he said they were only one of many dimensions; but this place was beyond anything they could have ever imagined. If he said that their doppelgangers were there… Then it there may have been a shred of truth behind it.
“They could help us find Control Freak.” Rachel pointed out hesitantly, clearly as uneasy with the thought as the rest of them.
Dick shook his head. “No. Logically speaking, alternate dimensions can be vastly different than our own. For all we know, this world’s version of us works with Control Freak. We’ve been managing just fine on our own so far. I don’t see a reason to change things.”
“Says the guy who had to be saved by his replacement and take refuge in the building of a man he hates.”
“Burn.” Gar whispered, shooting a surprised look at Kory. She had a tight smile that allayed her worries to the others. Dick just glowered.
Instead of the expected comeback, he just ran a hand down his face and shook his head. “Come on. Let’s see if this world has newspapers.”
The city streets were busy, but they weren’t going to find any newspapers stashed in the alley ways either. It was unnerving to be out in the open like this; but Dick also knew they could probably cross Rachel’s stalker cultists off the list of current threats.
“I can hear the gears turning.” Kory remarked as they walked, letting the younger two take the lead down the way to colorful sidewalk. “What’re you thinking?”
“We’re so far out of our element that it’s laughable; I have no way to gauge to the situation properly; and threat assessment can just fly out the window because I have no fudging clue what to do.”
“Did you just say fudging?”
“No, I said fudging… Wait a minute.”
Garfield, now in tune to their conversation just snickered. “Well he did say he’d stop bleeping you.” The green haired animal boy quipped, between snorts of laughter.
“Aw Halloween no!”
Dick slapped a hand over his mouth as Kory burst into laughter. Defeated and unable to effectively portray it without bursting into a temper-tantrum just glared at the floor and cursed this Control Freak. If the boy wonder ever got his hands on that chubby little imp, there would be Halloween to pay.
“Hey, look, a newspaper crier.” Rachel pointed, actually looking excited at the prospect of getting some information.
“Breaking News! Titans versus the Clockwork thief! Valuable jewels returned!” The boy called, black and white paper clutched in his outstretched hand. “Get your Breaking News!”
Dick darted across the street, weaving between oncoming cars. Horns blared, brakes screeched, but that hardly deterred Batman’s former sidekick. He stopped on the other side and let a breath out. The crier just blinked as the man walked over and plucked the newspaper from his hand. Who would risk life and limb for a fudging newspaper?
The crier watched the gasping idiot skim the headlines
“Thanks.” He breathed, handing the paper back and walking away.
“Uh...”
The others had been smart enough to find a cross walk. For while this world may be cartoony, they knew full well that death was death and injuries could happen anywhere. As Dick caught up to them, Kory crossed her arms and stared him down.
“You can yell at me later. I know where we are.”
“Jump City.” Kory supplied deadpan, eyes flickering up to the Jump City News building right behind Dick. The man turned and glanced up at the skyscraper the boy was standing before with a weary groan.
“Oh..." Great work detective Boy. Maybe you should just resign now while you're ahead.
“Find anything else?”
“Yeah. Apparently the dates line up perfectly. Same day, month, and year. The only thing that doesn’t line up is the team of superheroes supposedly guarding this town. They’re called the Teen Titans. They look fairly similar to you guys… for the most part. But I don’t think I’m here.”
“What makes you think that?” Kory asked, uncrossing her arm and stepping sideways into the shade.
“Well because Robin’s leading the team. He’s clearly a teenager, has black hair, and openly wears the suit. I don’t match that description in anyway; so I’m pretty sure it’s Jason behind the mask.”
“Todd?”
“Unfortunately.” Dick nodded. It wasn’t that he didn’t like Jason, but the kid was a loose cannon. It was only another reason that he didn’t think seeking aid from this world’s titans was a good idea.
TBC