Chapter Text
“ How many times do I have to remind you nitwits? “
Jinx yells over a half-wheeze, exhausted, but decides to spend all of her weight on words that probably won’t stick to the two bruised up villains on the ground whom she used to call teammates.
“ Leave me alone! “
The pink haired sorceress crawls back up on her feet, her platforms, now chipped, tipped her ankle over before she gains her balance to take a good look at the aftermath of a yet, another unwanted altercation.
Jinx’s tights are ripped at the knees, dirt, dust and bits of concrete cling to her clothes, hair and the palm of her hands, still stinging and burning like a thousand tiny bloody scratches. But that’s nothing compared to Mammoth and Gizmo. She hated that they still have to resort back to violence, but violence was all they knew and the only way to make them learn.
At least that’s the only solution she could think of when they were trying to sabotage her ideal evening date with a certain red-headed speedster.
“ And you’re taking his side? You’re more protective of those Titans nutjobs instead of us?”
Yelled back the pint-sized gadget genius, still on the ground next to an unconscious Mammoth, too injured and in pain to get up to bark back at her eye-to-eye. It’s not like he could if he was intact anyways, Jinx’s hexes were responsible for the blackened, burnt patch that used to be his jetpack. He has resorted to angrily crawl at her feet with his tiny arms. His jumpsuit ripped in tiny patches.
Gizmo hates how pathetic he looks right now, feeling smaller than ever before, humiliated not just in front of anyone: his former leader, a traitor that he’s ashamed to admit to have thought as a friend, a bickering, snobbish older sister that he was afraid to lose despite how much they fought.
“ You used to be one of us! After all we’ve been through… and you discarded us like trash. – he grunts – Not even trash, we’re nothing in your eyes now are we? “
“And you never asked yourself why it came to be like this? – Jinx fires back – Let’s jog down to memory lane shall we? I was a pawn, we were all pawns, henchmen, obedient lackeys smiling through the orders while they put their feet on our necks! “
All the images flashing through their heads, of Slade, Brother Blood, Madam Rouge, The Brain,… playing in a never ending reel. Every single encounter between them was just another reminder of Gizmo and Mammoth’s stubbornness and another can of worms Jinx has to open to remind them about their ugly history, a small of hope she has for them to just help them realize how wrong they were.
“ What I wanted wasn’t just child’s play, I wanted more while you lots were lying about. The glory, the notoriety, the power. That’s why I took the scolding, I chose to always be the first on the chopping block while you were all cowering behind me. Because I was the leader. “
Jinx has a small gain of composure. She sucks in a painful breath and stiffens herself against her burning rage. Her voice cracks.
“ But I know all the hard work I poured in, was all for a lie. They never wanted the best for us, and I’m not playing that game anymore, it was my life and my responsibility to be the best version of myself. ”
The fire has somewhat cooled down, all she sees now are two sad, lost teenagers with nothing but childish tantrum beneath her feet.
“ If you really are a genius, then you’d recognize that, sooner or later. ”
Nothing but two wide pure white pupils staring back at her in disbelief. Gizmo, with all of his intellectual might, froze open-mouthed, not even feeling the oozing blood from his broken nose seeping down to his chin nor its bitter, iron taste in his mouth. He has truly lost, on every front. All that’s left in his utter defeat was the sight of a limping Jinx distancing herself further away, until she and the city scape all came to a dark blur while he, like a machine with its battery drained dry, can only gasp her name in desperation.
“ Jinx… ”
The motionless night grows deeper, clear moon
The clear moon shines brighter
“ Hey… little buddy. You’re up early. ” – a man’s voice, quiet and distant, one Gizmo vaguely recognizes. “ The anesthetic must’ve worn off already, but don’t fret. ”
Nothing but a blinding circular white light hanging heavily above him, all bright and foggy, his face felt nothing but a tingling sensation. A distant dream? A memory?
Soon enough he realized, it was the latter, because he knew that voice, it belonged to his father.
He was a miracle worker, the gadget genius he always wanted to be.
“ A ba, can I unwrap them now? It itches. ”
Mikron fingers reached for the familiarity of his eye sockets, covered in layers by fresh white bandages, he grazed his fingers over the hard material hiding underneath.
“ Your body might need time to get used to it, but it should be fine to open now. ”
He searched for the bandage’s knot around his head, finding the metallic pin. Mikron unhooked it, rolls of cotton slowly come undone and draped over his legs.
He blinked, slowly and awkwardly, almost like fidgeting a new camera lens, keep turning and adjusting until everything come into picture. He saw himself there, the same pint-sized boy in front of the large mirror of his father’s sterilized workshop. Mikron stared back at himself, no longer seeing the deep dark brown pupils, nothing there but two stale white orbs. He had expected this, getting used to his uncanny new self as he eyed down to a bloody broken pencil, snapped in half, laying neatly on a washed cloth next to the operating table. It was his blood and a class bully’s prank gone too far.
“ It will prove more useful than you think, I’ll give you a manual later on how to connect it to some of your gadgets. ”
Two callused hands, not much bigger than his own, held him by the shoulder. An auburn bearded face placed itself next to his, smiling through his words
“ You can get back at them later. Remember what your strength is, Gizmo. Those guys have nothing to laugh at when you’re packed with this.”
One hand came up to ruffle his black hair, tangling it with all the love and pride a supervillain could give. It was almost comical.
Having walked over the land since I left home
Deep sorrows arouses as I look at the moon
How can I, in this faraway land, turn around to go back home?
Every night gloomily yearning
Gizmo flicked the light switch to their half hazard bathroom, holding an electrical shaver that he struggled to even fit in his hand. His mother had already packed everything they needed. They’d be leaving this box-sized life back in Hong Kong and start anew anyways. Mrs. O’Jeneus has already cut her hair for her husband’s funeral, suitcases and flight tickets ready, she had even packed her black cheongsam in a separate case so she can put it on in the second they land in the States and when all business errands come crashing at her. Adult logistics stuff, he couldn’t be patient enough to learn the full story. All he knows that his mom was glued to that couch for hours, answering condolences phone calls from god-knows-how-many acquaintances. Shady political figures or his dad’s fellow supervillains he assumes.
Gizmo was never keen on formalities nor tradition, but his stubbornness couldn’t rival his mother’s persistence. This time it didn’t take her much convincing for her son to be prim and proper for his late father, to save him a bit of face in front of his pristine terrorist colleagues.
He had chosen a more extreme approach however, in a fit of childish rage he was set on leaving this stupid lame life of an average endlessly bullied schoolboy behind, he wanted to be free from this image entirely.
It was customary to cut your hair when a loved one passed away.
He stepped on a couple stools, finally seeing himself in front of the mirror and places the shaver to his forehead.
Smiling towards the bright moon
Moonlight illuminates the pond’s surface
Shining on the merry and delightful reunion
And then it was all shades of black, rows of suits and ties after one another and white flowers scattering the path they walked. His picture held up heavy in his hands, his tiny hands, ironically, was the ones holding him close instead. A melancholic trance, all of it was.
Ever since they’ve laid his father’s casket 6 ft deep away from his wife and child, everything went by as seamless as it gets. Gizmo and his mother never talked to each other about grief, they wanted to get back on their feet as quickly as possible. Her first step was to enroll her son into a pristine academy for rogue metahuman teenagers like himself – H.A.E.Y.P or H.I.V.E Academy – build specifically to train them to follow the footsteps of great villains before them in hope they could one day reach that glory.
But for the O’Jeneus, it was more because Gizmo needed a place to enroll in, and no normal public schools would take a child with his records in their program, not to mention his age. The whole shaping-him-into-a-mini-version was more of his father’s ambition, even going as far as to give his son the same name and alias.
It no longer matters as much, it was the least of her priority for her son to carry on her husband’s legacy. She said he could do whatever he wanted with that whole ordeal. To honor him, to defy him, it didn’t matter to her as it was his life, she said. What mattered most was him forming his own villain identity.
After that, he had barely seen his mother ever since H.I.V.E took him under their wings, he didn’t think that her absence would affect him much, until the hollowness became deafening. He chose to ignore it.
Because he loved his new home, despite the adults he feared or the fellow snobs that get on his nerves, it was this or the streets, and in here, he was one of their best – a prodigy, a powerful genius villain in-the-making. He loved the thrill of the high chase pursuits, the raid and the robberies, the sheer terror when people gaze up upon his giant Gizmotron 3000 that proved a challenge to the Teen Titans themselves. This was as good enough of a legacy he’s left for himself, it didn’t matter that he’s stealing just to make more crazy gadgets and to steal some more, it was fun, and he never felt like those 80s action the movie stars back in Hong Kong more than ever, funny enough.
But the ghost of his once family still lingered. At the back of his mind, a father’s legacy whom his admiration only stopped at child-like imitation but lacks ambition and vision, a mother too absent who was so ready to cut ties whose reason was too complex for a 10-year-old to imagine. A normalcy that was robbed from him too quickly, too violently.
He would never admit it, but the only thing he had always been scared of was the future, the thought of growing up was terrifying to him. The thought of your decisions having weight and consequences, the thought of you being alone with no one behind your back. There was no comfort nor stability one can find in the future.
Since his family was out of the picture, he thought that perhaps he could rely on his fellow teammates to relief that anxiety. They were all older than him after all. Whatever came would come for them first and he could just sit back and watch, until he figured out a way to deal with it, he had plenty of time.
Until, everything fell apart and nothing had gone like what he had hoped. All because of Jinx’s departure. He never thought she could’ve destroyed his ego even more but she always proved him wrong. It was bad enough he was assigned leader against his will when she left, one could argue he was the exact reason why the entire HIVE five fell apart overnight. Everyone drifted their own ways with only Mammoth remain by his side, nothing but his incompetence to blame.
This sucked.
He just wanted everything to be back the way it was, the three of them against the world and he could fall back to hide behind his older teammates whenever things got too ugly. But even he knew that was too unrealistic, that it was impossible to ever return to the past.
The glaring blue – red flashes and blazing siren jolted him back into consciousness. Yet, he hasn’t moved an inch, still on the ground, bloodied. He can still see two adult-height figures approaching. Jinx has called the cops on them, brilliant.
“ This imp again. ” One of them grunted, the voice crouches down and lifts one of his limp arms in the air. “ Rascal tried to ply my car’s hood open to yank a cable out of its engine… I was in hot water with Chef for a week, he couldn’t even trust me to park his damn car. ”
Another one, inspecting Mammoth who’s lying face-down on the ground
“ Ugh… couldn’t ever bother to send a third guy over, the lowest tier supervillain we had to deal with and it’s a damn elephant. ”
The cop let go of his arm, throwing him a dirty glare. With one armored boot, he presses his toe over his ribs and rolled him over onto his back before switching his attention to helping his coworker, currently struggling to put Mammoth’s giant hands in a cuff.
These guys are newbs, the gears in Gizmo’s head already turning, they probably thought this was a simple clean-up job for the Titans, only two personnel and two ill-equipped ones for that matter. Just because they’ve been laying low, putting aside their usual raids to handle personal matters, those police dogs already thought they’ve gone soft and posed less of a threat to be treated seriously.
“ Alright, you try to take this end and I’ll carry this end. ”
“ Seems fair huh, the bastard’s arms are half of his body mass. “
An annoyed sigh was heard between the two.
“ Damnit man you don’t have to whine, just get him into the truck. ”
Gizmo could see the big doof subtle shifting upon the contact. His eyes fluttering open as his limbs are being dragged and twisted on top of his injuries. He knew Mammoth’s strength came with his ability to quickly recover from physical injuries. With that logic, you can conclude that Mammoth is awake.
“ Shit, shit! Go easy! Can you deal with what would happen if this ape gets up? ”
“ Sorry, geez! Dramatic as hell… ”
He scans the ground around him, his gadgets littered the place like a junkyard, not much he could use in this situation. His metal backpack, though emptied out of its weapons, is still twitching with electricity. A familiar image of a birdbrained wonder boy came to mind. One can only try to find out if it works. He snatches the tiny program detonator inches nearby.
“ Okay, stop! Stop. You’re doing it all wrong. Screw this I’m calling backup. ”
One of them lets go of Mammoth’s feet, turns his heels around and reaches for the black box shaped communicator hanging on his hip. The other follows suit, setting Mammoth’s head and two arms back onto the ground.
“Woah, woah, woah…. don’t start blaming me when this wouldn’t have happened to us if someone hadn’t answer dispatch to a janitor’s job without knowing what he’s into.”
Standing on his feet felt like propping himself up with broken branches, his legs hurt no matter how he puts his weight on it. He hissed, a buzzing disk flashing with blue electrical bolts in hands as he limps, taking gentle, excruciatingly painful steps, careful not to drag his metal boots behind the men.
The caller turns to face the other, one hand covering his communicator.
“ Not now, goddamnit couldn’t you pick another time to complain?”
“ Oh no, man. First you barked me orders for the heavier duties. As if I hadn’t got enough shit thrown at me by our higher-ups. Who are you to tell me what to do? ”
“ Well maybe it will all turn out well if you didn’t mess with the Chef and got us both in trouble, we would get a lot better cases instead of cleaning up after teenagers. Now keep your eyes locked on these rascals until backup comes! ”
“ I am keeping my eyes on them! ”
Just as he finished his rebuttal a sudden weight pulls him violently backwards. High-pitched ting of a mechanism locking itself as it latches onto the groove of the cop’s armor. Gizmo jumped and pushes himself up, pulling him by the crook of his torso armor, bending him backwards by the weight of his body. He slaps the detonator on, almost immediately, the tiny bug-like pin turns the backpack into a burning ball of electrical firework. Gizmo quickly lets go of his grip on the cop before the circuit, as it snakes its way throughout his opponent’s metal garb, can fry him alive as well. He land onto the concrete with a dull, hard thud, wincing as he feel another bruise stacking on top of injuries that came before. He rolls over and holds his stomach as his face bathes in the human torch’s blinding light. He shuts his eyes close and commands.
“ Mammoth! Now! “
The other cop frantically reaches for the rifle strapped behind his back, his eyes locked onto the pint-sized boy on the ground not knowing a muscular left leg has already bent itself for a powerful kick forward into the man’s right rib, sending him into the ground with a loud crack of metal colliding. Armored red visor shattered into a million tiny particles as the man falls face-first and lands on his cheek. Mammoth gets up on his knee, yanking the rifle until the fabric strap tears from the cop’s shoulder. He digs his five hard fingers in its nook, his veins tense and popping as he tears the gun apart like a ripped plushie. Coils, bolts all come flying in the air before Mammoth throws the casing back in the stunned man’s face. The mutant teen bolts up, immediately head to a barely awake Gizmo. He scoops his fellow villain up in his arm, ready to sprint and throw them both into the police truck for a swift getaway.
Just as Mammoth opens the door to the driver’s seat, Gizmo managed a wheeze.
“ Hey apeface, forgot the car keys. ”
“ Oh yeah, right. ”
The mutant teen pushes himself in, setting the smaller boy in the passenger seat, head against the window’s edge before heading out again for the intact, unconscious cop on the ground. Gizmo hears the car’s door shut in place, blinking out of his daze as Mammoth’s hurried steps echo further. His bleeding nose is seeping down onto his green jumpsuit now, all gross and clogged up and making him struggle to even breathe. He opts for gasping through his mouth and with a frustrated knock of his back hand, snaps the front drawer open, scrambling for any tools and scraps he can use.
Next to him are some tissues, a pack of unfinished cigarette, mint gum and a pair of house keys. Gizmo groans. His eyes give a quick scan of the police truck’s interior, they dart down and notice a small digital screen and cable sockets next to the steering wheel. He snatches the keys and dig it into the metal plate in front of his chest, trying to ply his hacking system’s cover open. His jetpack and other gizmos were gone so the big three buttons shortcut to his combat gear are useless now anyways, all he had was his controller and cable still dangling on the side of his hip.
“ C’mon, open up you crud-munching zit- “
The keys kept slipping and scratching against the small gap of a bent crooked metal plate. Its screws have already flown off in their previous altercation but the cover remained stuck, something must have jammed and the only way to get it open was brute force.
Mammoth returned in a huff, opening the driver’s seat door to see Gizmo frustrated and swearing to himself.
“ What are you doing? ”
“ Trying… ugh, to get this thing off so I can manually hack the car’s defense system. All my other stuff are trashed, this is the only way. ”
Mammoth stood there, dumbfounded, unsure of what to do with that information.
“ Crammit! Help me get it off! ”
Panicked upon the boy’s bark, Mammoth quickly grabs the set of keys and snap the thing open in a blink, its hinges flying off to the side.
Gizmo reaches behind for the dangling cable, the faintest look of relief flashes across his face. Mammoth plucks the car keys in, with a forceful step on the peddle, he kicks the car engine alive in a rumbling smoke-filled choke. He glances over to the boy genius, who now has thrown his controller aside, only using its cable to pluck into one of those USB portals on one end and the other to himself. His mouth snarled into an ugly red grimace as he types the tiny keyboard fixed between a million other components on his chest that’s no more complex than a pilot’s booth in Mammoth eyes. He’s never seen Gizmo do something like this before. Something caught up in his throat, maybe today’s injuries might be a lot more serious than their many other run-ins, he worries his teammate might not even be able to get back on his feet after this.
The boy’s bionic eyes shot open, his white pupils let out a freakish yellow glow as the truck’s digital system spring to life, Gizmo lets out a strained grunt.
Mammoth froze in shock at the sight.
“ I know what I’m doing! Just drive! ”
Tires screech beneath their seats, a loud, violent roar, clouding the air along with hot smoke and debris. The truck ran forward before its wheels bend a sharp turn left, almost hitting a storehouse metal door. Two wheels hovered above the ground for a split second, pulling both boys along its momentum before slamming its weight back onto the concrete path. Gizmo bumps his head on the window upon the impact and managed to throw the responsible driver a dirty glare.
“My bad! My bad, Giz! ”
Mammoth shifts his focus back to what’s in front. He steps hard on the peddle, speeding them straight into the main roads.
And so things repeats. Another botched dispute, another high-chase getaway that ugly wasn’t a bad enough of a word to describe, but Gizmo really has a hunch. A hunch that things end for real this time, that this was a sign their attempts are futile and everything he has ever known will end in flames.
He can barely make out the image of what’s around him through a hundred lines of fluorescent code in his vision, but he can feel the big dull-headed giant is looking at him more than the traffic ahead.
“ Gizmo! You’re still bleeding! ”
“ We’ve done this already, so stick to it! ”
Not to mention the constant bumping and honking and the clutter of blinding neon signs making up Jump City’s nightlife overwhelming his senses. It’s getting very hard to stay focus.
“ I need to disable the car’s tracker before those pit-sniffing hunting dogs can get on our tail. ”
But sirens are already blaring in the distant, red and blue lights flickering through the truck’s back window.
“ Crud! How did they catch up already?” The gadgeteer props himself up to the car’s view. “ You took the route out to 3rd street? ”
“ You said to stick with what we did! ”
“ It was almost to midnight the last time.” He angrily points to the digital clock glowing 8:54pm. “ The whole city knows where we are at this hour! You… you! ”
Gizmo hasn’t finished calling Mammoth any other degrading name when shots of glowing bullets shatter the sideview mirror into a glittering cloud of sharp fragments. It exploded right next to Mammoth’s seat. Another round of fire opened, digging into the car’s body like holes of a bee nest.
Two boys ducked and cowered in reflex. Gizmo tries to gain the last bit of his composure and focus it all on his fingers, installing the last piece of malware while Mammoth just barely avoided a whole row of parking vehicles. The side door still scrapped the last one, sending a trail of spark upon its screeching impact.
A red sign flashes on the screen before them, the car has finally stopped sending tracking signals. Gizmo lets out a loud audible exhale that he himself doesn’t even know how long has he been holding it in.
Ironically, Mammoth’s reckless driving has been the thing that saved their team from getting nabbed countless of time. He’s always the designated getaway driver, though it never ends smoothly.
They are running out of time now. Keep messing around with those lackeys will only inch them closer to alerting the Teen Titans. And they are not dealing with them again.
Gizmo reaches up to the car’s front view, they’re heading straight for a well-lit seaside avenue. White flowers and white seating, all packed with suit-up men and women in cocktail dresses.
“ Mammoth! Don’t do anything stupid now! ”
“ Trust me! Just this once! ”
A blood curdling scream tears apart the atmosphere as people snaps their heads to the blinding headlight slowly engulfing where they’re standing. Last vestige of formalities stripped in a blink of an eye when everyone turns to frantically running and scrambling away from the iron bull of a car charging in with its full might. Fancy chairs, tables, the pretty white flower bundles swirled beneath its thick tires like a shredder. Wood chips, flower petals and invitation papers come flying off and cloud the sky like a heap of trash confetti as the wheels spit them out.
Its impact sends Gizmo flying from his seat. His brain, already almost fried by overloading himself with the truck’s program, is spinning a thousand frenzied loops. Mammoth snatches the cable connecting the smaller boy off, removes himself from the steering wheel and punches as hard as he can against the door next to him. It flies open, he can feel his hair jumbled as the mighty wind invades the car’s interior.
The truck is heading straight to the harbor and into the black murky water. Mammoth sweeps Gizmo off, who’s now limp and dangling off of his right arm, proceeds to kick himself away from his seat and dive into ice cold water depth, while the big iron scrap ascends walls of white tall water waves as it crashes and.
The sea goes quiet again. What’s left is only the gurgling of a wreckage slowly consumed by the ink black, foamy void.
The mutant boy emerges to the surface, gasping for air, still holding his teammate in his arm and resorted to letting him rest on his right shoulder. He swims quietly further away, desperately covering his oversized stature under the dock’s boards away from a crowd that’s starting to gather where they left off.
Red trail from Gizmo’s nose was wiped off somewhat by the water. It just only occurred to him that they didn’t get electrocuted by the small boy’s device when they get submerged. It was drained out of power just in time, they rarely have this kind of crazy luck. He tries not to think to hard on what it may imply.
Mammoth switches to holding Gizmo by the shoulder, the boy’s head folded downwards, unresponsive. The bigger teen lifts him up and wipes the last bit of red stain that still clings to his cheek and chin.
“ Gizmo, We’re clear. ”
He shakes him a bit, still nothing.
“ Gizmo! ” He loudly whispers his name.
It was just like what he feared about their injuries, but he can’t panic now. The kid has done enough. He lets the gadgeteer rest and places him on his shoulder again before he holds onto the nearby pillars, pushing himself across the water’s edge, neck deep. At this rate, they’ll have no choice but to walk back to base, tedious but they’ve caused a big enough commotion to shift all attention away.
Despite the dazzling city nights, their path home seems darker than ever.