Villain Control Freak

Once upon a time, on a perfectly ordinary Saturday afternoon, the Teen Titans were doing perfectly ordinary teenager things.

Cyborg was arguing with the microwave. Starfire was reading a cookbook she had translated from six languages and was very confused about the chapter on casseroles. Raven was sitting cross-legged on the couch with a book and a cup of tea and an expression that said clearly: do not talk to me. Robin was reviewing patrol maps at the big table. And Beast Boy — Garfield Logan, green from head to toe — was very comfortably in the middle of a movie marathon on the big TV, wrapped in a blanket like a green caterpillar.

Then the alarm went off.

It was not a gentle alarm. It was the kind of alarm that pulled you right off the couch.

Jump City Mall. Incident in progress.

They arrived to find every screen in every shop window blazing with strange, brilliant light. And standing in the middle of the main walkway, pointing an enormous remote control at the nearest screen, was a man in a jumpsuit covered entirely in buttons and switches.

His name was Control Freak.

Control Freak loved television the way other people loved air. He had studied every monster movie, every science-fiction serial, every fantasy epic ever made. And with his special remote, he could reach right through the screen and pull those creatures into the real world. Which was, everyone agreed, a very inconvenient hobby.

ZZZZT. A giant robot stepped out of a hardware store window display.

The robot was made of old film-grain and flickering light, but its metal fists were quite real. Cyborg hit it with a blast from his sonic cannon. Starfire launched starbolts in quick golden arcs. Raven surrounded it in dark energy. Robin struck from three angles at once.

And Beast Boy — thinking quickly the way he always did, even when his plans looked silly at first — turned into a very large green rhinoceros.

Then he ran straight at the robot's knees.

CRASH. The robot went down like a falling tree.

But Control Freak was already backing toward the food court, pointing his remote at a screen showing a fantasy film. Three armored dragon-knights stepped out, sword tips scraping the floor tiles, visor-slits glowing orange. Beast Boy became a hawk, circled up past the food court skylights, spotted the angle he needed, and folded his wings.

He dropped as a gorilla. Landed on the first knight's shoulders with a WHAM that echoed off every wall. Elbowed the second knight into a smoothie stand.

Two down. One retreated.

Control Freak ducked into the electronics department. Rows and rows of screens. He grinned and pointed the remote at all of them.

The room filled with moving shapes — half-real, flickering, reaching. The Titans pressed back to back. There were too many.

Robin looked at Beast Boy. Beast Boy looked at the remote.

He had spent, as his teammates well knew, an enormous number of hours watching movies in Titans Tower. He had watched films about robots and knights and sea monsters and space explorers. He had also — very importantly — watched a documentary about television remotes once when nothing else was on.

Every remote needed batteries.

Beast Boy became a mouse. A small, green, entirely unnoticeable mouse, the size of a plum. He scooted along the baseboard, unseen in all the chaos. He scrambled up the leg of Control Freak's jumpsuit — up past the belt, up past the buttons — and he bit down firmly on the battery compartment.

It clicked open. Two batteries rattled to the floor.

The remote went dark. The screen-army froze. The creatures flickered and began to fade.

"HEY!" Control Freak spun around, but Cyborg was already there, and the sonic cannon made a sound like a very firm period at the end of a sentence. BOOM. Control Freak sat down on the floor.

When the police arrived, he was still sitting there, looking at his powerless remote with the saddest face you have ever seen.

Beast Boy had found an abandoned pretzel on a table by the food court and was eating it thoughtfully.

"You know," he said to Robin, "I think I earned this."

Robin did not answer. But very, very quietly, the corner of his mouth went up.

Beast Boy grinned his big green grin, finished his pretzel, and followed his team back to the Tower.

Some days, being a mouse was better than being a T-rex.

Today was one of those days.