Characters: OPEN TO ALL TITANS Robin, Starfire, Raven, Speedy, kaie Setting: In the woods at a campsite. Previous Threads: N/A Plot Summary: The Titans are going camping~ spooky stories are a must.
Twilight was upon them, but the pile of firewood the team had collected could easily last them hours, and the tents hadn't been difficult to set up. Robin was silhouetted by the fire as he rose from the logs they'd pulled around the fire pit to go and pull out the bag of marshmallows. S'mores, after all, were the best part of camping.
It was strange being outside in the wilderness so far away from the city. There were all sorts of noises Robin wasn't familiar with. Bugs creaked, and birds chirped, and occasionally an animal screamed in the burgeoning darkness and made his heart skip a beat. He was being ridiculous, there was nothing out here that could hurt a bunch of superheroes, but that also kind of made it more fun.
The team had left the tower early that morning and had enjoyed some hiking and general exploration. It was, unfortunately, starting to get too cold to go swimming. Nobody but Aqualad wanted to brave the cold creeks they crossed in their adventures, but autumn made the forest awash with a brilliant firestorm of colors. It was breath-taking. Even if the Titan's leader was one of the least out-doorsy people on the team.
Camping was a great team-building activity, though, and having to rely on each other out in the middle of nowhere helped solidify their bond. Robin grinned as he dropped the s'mores making supplies on a stump near the fire. "Who wants one?" Robin asked, speaking a marshmallow on a stick and holding it out for his friends to take. Other fluffy treats followed that initial impaling.
Stars bloomed across the purpling sky and masked eyes glanced up in wonder before tipping back down to his friends. Robin reached into his utility belt and pulled out a flashlight with his emblem on it. Because, of course, that was monogrammed too.
"We have s'mores and a fire, but you know what we're missing?" Robin asked as he flicked on his flashlight. It was a rhetorical question. The Boy Wonder pulled the light up under his chin and grinned in the eerie light. "Spooky campfire stories~ who wants to go first?"
The wondrous, marvellous outdoors! The sun shone down brightly on them, energizing her while she led the way in the hike, stick in hand, lugging a backpack stacked higher than a Titan pizza delivery. While her friends caught up, she examined the wild fauna with fascination. Nature was so beautiful; so diverse. So...
"GLORIOUS!" she had shouted at the peak of their explanation to the vast treetops below. Orange, red, brown, the colour of fall, and what a gorgeous array they made.
The day's activities were met with much zeal for the alien of the group, but when it drew closer to night-time the enthusiasm was not lost. She helped start the fire without the use of her powers, learning about tinder and blowing to ignite the flames. Fire led to a delicious reward in the form of s'mores. It was a perfect combination of sticky, sweet, and crumbly.
Her head lifted at the rhetorical question, brows raised. What was it they were missing? They had the s'mores, they had the water, they had the salty snacks, and the hotdogs for the sticks both vegetarian and not, and--she gasped. Spooky stories?
"I would like to hear you tell a story," she said, her shoulder lightly bumping his as she smiled, the corner of her mouth stained with sticky chocolate. She'd also like s'more kisses, but a story would suffice~
Robin grinned shyly at Starfire when she bumped him in the shoulder and suggested that he start them out. He was glad for the red tint of the fire to hide the blush on his cheeks as he tied to shrug it off nonchalantly. "Alright," he agreed easily. He considered for a moment, tapping the flashlight against his chin, before deciding on something with a smile.
"It was a dark night just like this one," Robin began his tale, face outlined devilishly in the light of the flashlight under his chin. "A young security guard was on his very first shift at Gotham Cemetery. He stayed in the guard house for as long as he could, not feeling quite up to the job, but eventually he had to do his rounds. The man left and started his patrol. Everything seemed fine at first, but then, suddenly the hair on the back of his neck began to rise. He felt as though he was being followed."
Robin paused for dramatic effect before stomping both of his steel toed feet on the ground. "He heard a bump behind him. Then another. Bump. Bump. Bump." each time the word was punctuated with the sound of boots hitting the hard packed earth. "The guard was terrified and too afraid to look back. He increased his pace."
"The bumping noise behind him kept getting closer and louder. Finally, he couldn't ignore it any more! He turned around, terror stricken, and saw a coffin standing on end bumping down the road from side to side- bump. Bump. Bump. BUMP! He started running for his life, but the coffin only kept on coming, increasing it's pace to match his. BUMP, BUMP, BUMP!"
"He was getting tired from running and the coffin began to catch up to him. The guard knocked a trash can into it's path. It didn't slow the coffin down. He kept running, fleeing into the only proper structure in the cemetery: the church."
"Lucky for the guard, Batman was there following a lead. He heard the guard's screaming and helped barricade the door. Batman grilled the guard about what was chasing him, but the man was incomprehensible with fear. In Gotham, that could only mean one thing. It didn't take long before a crash sounded behind them. The coffin had broken through the door and bumped through the church after them. Bump. Bump. BUMP! Batman led the way, ushering the guard up the stairs to the bell tower before turning to make one last stand."
"He flung a few batarangs at the coffin, even explosive ones, but it didn't stop it. Soon, he'd used up all of them. The now partially shattered coffin continued to come at them. Batman backed up the stairs, not at all surprised when the coffin burst through the door and begin to bump up the stairs after them. Bump, bump, BUMP! They reached the top. This was it. There was no where to go from here. Batman closed the trap door to the top of the bell tower and reached into his utility belt."
"The guard screamed when the trap door shattered under the force of the animated coffin. Batman moved between it and the civilian, pulled the cough syrup from his belt, and hurled it at the coffin. The bottle shattered, covering the splintered coffin with cough syrup. And the coffin stopped."
OoC; -weeps for joy of puns; mostly about posting again though hoorayyy~ :'3 Getting on my Who's Who soon, too, guys! C': |
A few members of Titans East dotted the core team’s team-building ranks today, and their archer was excited beyond compare. After a childhood spent in the great outdoors, Speedy was known to spend much of his free time up stargazing on a roof, or generally getting fresh air with a solid jog through some park. However, how long had it been since he’d actually left himself to the element and gone camping? And with someone other than his mentor for necessity on missions, or way back with his family for life skills? Introducing sweet, sturdy Starfire to flint rock. Swinging Aqualad off a branch into an impressive cannonball into the water. Yodelling at the top of the mountain with a makeshift chorus of anyone who hadn’t minded being a little silly with him and generally chatting up anything with a pulse that had either begun the trek with the group, or made itself known to them in the trees. Hiking and swimming thereafter had been a refreshing way to get to know some of the Jump Titans. The outing was a perfect opportunity to run his mouth break the ice with a sibling team, and of course, show off his abs survival skills.
“You mean the one spelled with two ones?” A more aggressive rhetorical question concurrent with Speedy’s attempt to spear double-digits of marshmallows on a single branch. Currently, as Robin’s story began, the munching mask rolled his eyes above a debilitating mouthful of s’mores. For once, the smooth talker held his tongue (as if the delicious camping confectionary gave him much choice). At least, at first.
“Uhl bgght (I’ll bite),” came a barely intelligible, cheeky response to the evening’s entertainment commencement, as layered as the double-decker he had just crammed into his mouth. So much for holding his tongue, never mind. Campfire snackage was about to be lodged in Speedy’s throat, though, as the rising action ramped up. He glanced around, surveying the reactions of his fellow Titans with a thin smile, but in actuality peering just over their heads at any additional ‘helping’ audio/visual from the surrounding thicket. Despite the grim ginger’s earlier bravado, his knuckles grew whiter and whiter in a clench about their respective fistfuls of fire-dried, fluffy peach-coloured swim-towel adorning his torso like a security blanket…
“PFFFF, are we gonna let him get away with that, guys? Who's next?” …until the last line produced mixed, shocked feelings of first horror, then settled into realisational hilarity. Leave it to a circus talent to be a master showman and comedian.
"You crack me up, bruh." A liberal spritzing of the bird-boy with graham cracker bits in retribution.
Maybe he'd make good on the next story after another mouthful to calm his nerves.
Starfire listened to the story with rapt attention, eyes fixated on Robin as he told the story from beside her. She could distinctly visualize Batman's silhouette against a dark night, and hear the coffin go thud as it scraped on after the masked vigilante. Throughout the story her hands sought Robin's cape, ever so slowly lifting it higher and higher to cover her face, green eyes growing wider. Then, she braced herself for the part where in a horror movie, would be the scaring jump. She closed her eyes and...
...cracked them open in utter confusion. What?
She looked around as she lowered the cape slightly, to see groans and cackles around them. Her brow pinched, and she just as slowly released the cape from her grip. Why would cough syrup be the solution? What was she missing. Feeling out of the loop and a little dumb, she scooched over closer to Robin with her head tilted slightly, peering up at him with a somewhat helpless expression after she lightly bumped his shoulder to call his attention to her.
Kaie took a little more marshmallow than most. Her process looked more like a shot from an Epic Meal Time episode, with a row of jumbo marshmallows on one long stick. She was still trying to figure out how to best do the Graham Cracker part of the s'more, but she got the rest down pat. Whole big chocolate bars, stuffed with marshmallows. She didn't break up the crackers into smaller parts like most did, but there were still times she lost track of her strength and crushed them up a bit. Everything was just so small!
The giantess sat beside the other Titans, listening with rapt attention as Robin told his story. It took her a moment to get it after he stopped, wordplay and punnery had never been her strongest skills. By the time Speedy was adding his commentary she'd caught up, joining in the laughter. "Thas a good one!" she agreed, giving him a thumbs up. She hadn't known Robin was such a punster. He often had to be the serious one as their leader, it was good to see him cut loose sometimes.
Starfire, however, seemed to be having more trouble. "Is like, coffin the box ya put dead people in, but also coughin' as in when you cough a bunch." She hoped explaining the joke didn't ruin it, she'd heard that was a good way to do it. "So, who else has a story?" Kaie couldn't really think of any herself, except maybe a few horror movies or creepypastas she'd seen. For now, she was happy to just be part of the audience.
Robin laughed brightly at the mix of groans and laughter from his teammates at the story. He grinned at Kaie's thumbs up, raising a hand to ward off the graham cracker spray from Speedy, and nearly missed Starfire's question. He was shaking off his glove, making a light face, when Kaie explained it to her.
"Yeah," he agreed with the giantess' assessment. "It's a word pun. You stop coughing," he mimed a cough into his elbow, "with cough syrup. So Batman stopped a coffin the same way," Robin explained with a grin at his own cleverness. He'd never mentioned his mentor before, and anyone else who did got a scowl in response, so this was a rare moment.
When both Kaie and Speedy asked who else was next Robin held up his flashlight and wobbled it back and forth in the air. "Who wants it?" he echoed their questions with a smirk, "Even if you don't have any story ideas you can make a scary face~" he joked and put the beam of light under Speedy's chin for dramatic effect.
Blinking back the sudden glare of flashlight into his (albeit masked, and somewhat protected) eyes, Speedy swatted at his clever friend's hand, swiping the beam-torch in the process. Ridding his mouth of graham and sugary goo was a short affair, and the slightly ailing archer cleared his throat as he thought up a tall enough tale to tell.
"Awrighty, settle in, kiddos. This is the tale..."
A swallow, more like a gulp, for dramatic effect.
"...of how we met the Vanishing Fly-Girl."
Speedy began his story, the beam now positioned more comfortably out of his line of vision, and settled somewhere between up his nostrils and through his teeth (because the devouring of s’mores was rather disorienting).
“So, I was driving the team home late one night when we picked up this pretty hitchhiker in a hot little black and yellow number on her way home from this club. Seemed like the neighbourly, Titanly thing to do! She was super nice but she had quite the mouth on ‘er, and we all chatted it up. Mas and Menos did at least; a fog was coming up, so I was trying to focus on keeping us on the road. Aqualad was doing his shy-gentlemanly-thing and didn’t contribute much at first. Wouldn’tchya know it though, the fog was thickest riiight next to this cemetery. And everyone knows you’ve gotta hold your breath around those. So, Aqualad and the twins got into it with this chick, and I ended up joining in last minute since I’d slowed down by then…trouble is… she never made I back to her pad. ‘Cause riiight as we passed the gates and turned the corner…”
Speedy shut off the flashlight as he forcefully hissed the final words.
“—SHE VANISHED FROM THE CAR.”
The campers were suddenly re-lit with the glow of the torch, as Speedy delivered the thrilling let-down conclusion.
“—but it’s cool; turned out her superpower was shrinking! Scared the absolute crud out of the twins…but thankfully not literally, and for my sake, not on G.A.’s upholstery."
Grinning (somewhat weakly, recalling the scariest part of the half-true outing was when he thought the Green Arrow would wring his neck for ruining his expensive low-set sedan), Speedy nudged shoulders with, and the flashlight at, Kaie. He’d given a couple of hints during the story that it was someone they all knew, so maybe it wasn’t as scary as the first one.
"We were still getting to know Bumblebee back then. She can be a prankster on par with BB himself sometimes.”
It far from ruined the joke; with the help of Kaie and Robin, Starfire was finally able to get the joke. Her eyes lit and her face split into a grin once more. "That is brilliant," she praised, fully aware that she was adding fuel to Robin's ego given that smug smile, and only happy to do so. "You are so clever," she added softly, eyes crinkled as she leaned in closer, completely enraptured by his profile and the way the fire cast shadows across his face...
...but then the flashlight was being handed to Speedy and Starfire was distracted.
Speedy's story managed to be scarier than Robin's. She really should have known that there was a twist to the story, but while he told it she fell for the creepiness hook, line, and sinker. Once again she borrowed the cape next to her to hide behind, as if its titanium properties could protect her from other-worldly spirits whose sole intentions were to frighten her. At least this time she completely understood when it was revealed that Bumblebee had in fact been the ghost.
All these fake ghost stories, that played with her emotions so, put her in the mood for a real ghost story.
"May I?" she asked, reaching to take up the torch of storyteller. The flashlight in hand, Starfire began to share a local urban legend from their very own city.
"This is a true story about Mary Ellen Pleasant," she began, as all of the scariest stories were the ones that were true, and not fictional.
"If you do not know the history, Mary was a former slave and indentured servant who became a wealthy entrepreneur on top of being a prominent abolitionist. She helped bring the Underground Railroad to the state of California. She was quite a fierce woman and immensely clever," Kory told her story with a look of delight in her green eyes. "She gained her wealth by listening in to the financial tips thrown about by the founding members of our city who frequented her lavish eatery. By sharing these tips with a man by the name of Thomas Bell, they became multi-millionaires and business partners."
So far it was just a history lesson, but for those who knew how Starfire arrived to Earth might understand some of the passion behind the topic of badass-former slaves who were excellent in life. However, this was a ghost story, and her grin became more cat-like the closer she drew to it. "Mary designed and built a mansion that Mr.Bell and his wife moved into. This mansion had many rumours surrounding it of secret passages and strange events stirring in the dead of night... and it was called 'House of Mystery'."
Kory felt it appropriate to finger-waggle and make spooky sounds following the title of this mansion, which stood on Octavia street. "There were many mysterious things about Mary Pleasant. She would claim in some accounts to be a daughter of a voodoo priestess. In the end, I believe the mystery and rumours surrounding bits of her life came to haunt her when Mr.Bell died. She was accused of throwing him down the stairs and killing him. To this day it is unknown if the Bell Mansion is the scene of a murder, or just an unfortunate accident. What could have happened between those walls that would have business partners and civil rights activists in a deadly dispute?" Starfire wondered. So many possibilities. Had Mary succumbed to jealousy as some people speculated? She didn't think so. The woman had practically hand-picked Mr.Bell's wife for him. Perhaps it came down to money in the end, or it was simply an just an accident and Mary a victim of prejudice against her.
"Whatever may have happened, the following court disputes damaged her reputation and poor Mrs.Pleasant died in poverty. However, she did not die without her pride. Her ghost has been seen in the windows of the Bell Mansion, and there is a game that some daring citizens like to play called 'Ask Mary Ellen Pleasant'," she said, and went on to explain. "If you stand by her plaque, surrounded by her six eucalyptus trees, and ask her a polite request it is said that it will be granted."
Of course, not every person was the nicest, and there were consequences for that. "If you do not ask politely, however, and offend Mrs.Pleasant..." she began, drawing it out for dramatic effect. "She will throw rocks at your head!"
At that, Kory laughed. That was exactly the type of ghost she wanted to be; dolling out petty punishments to those who did not show her the proper respect. It was inspirational more than frightening, and she thought, very fitting for the sort of woman Kory imagined her to be.
The giantess listened in rapt attention as Speedy told his ghost story. She wasn't expecting that twist ending, drawing a few guffaws from the girl. "Like half the Titans are pranksters." Kaie never really pranked much herself. She always worried about squishing someone, or breaking something. Besides, with her heavy footfalls it wasn't like she could really sneak up on people. And to top it off, she was more brawn than brain, she'd never been good at outwitting anyone.
Star's story was a little different. Kaie leaned in, eyes wide as the alien built and built until... well, a bit of an anticlimax. Kaie giggled, not sure if Star was joking around, or if she was just... did Tamaraneans have different standards of scary? She couldn't imagine that something throwing rocks would be very scary for someone who could toss a car around, unless the rocks were huge. She didn't really specify how big the rocks were, but they had to be pretty small or that wouldn't just be a secret story anymore.
Kaie sat back, thinking. "Well, there's an old one from back home, Mrs. Don't-Come-Runnin. Nobody knows what her real name was, jes' that she was a mother what never cared much for her children. Whene'er they got hurt, she'd tell em to stop whining. Even when her boys fell off a wall and broke their legs, she told em not to bother her. Now that kinda cruel don't die easy, and they say even after she died she never really passed on. So kids in Ireland gotta be careful, and not get hurt when they're playin, or they might hear Mrs. Don't-Come-Runnin tut-tutting them, comin to take em away." It was the hard kind of story to tell, always vague on details. More of a boogeyman than a proper ghost. Kaie looked around the campfire, trying to see how well it went over.
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Alviss: Darn doesn't show the pic
Apr 18, 2019 7:10:17 GMT -6
force: miss this place. if anyone comes back and sees this, i'm force, i was kid flash here once. you can find me on discord at rook#9485
Jan 12, 2023 13:11:35 GMT -6
The roleplay takes place after the series end of the original Teen Titans animated show, but does not include the movie Trouble in Tokyo. Since then Robin has been on something of a recruiting spree, and many new young heroes have found themselves a home in Jump City as well as Titan Tower.
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