The Measure of a Titan (NEW ch.38 added)

[LadyTevar]

Chapter 28: Cont'd

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And just like that, Devastator was gone.

He did not blink out of existence with a flash or a pop, or even through simply disappearing. Raven did not see him leave. She merely was conscious that one moment he was here, and the next one he was not. And as though in mimicry, all of the remaining elements had vanished off to wherever they had been preparing to go, leaving Raven alone to do as she would.

All, that is, save one.

The golden statue was absolutely lifelike, just like the others, save of course that it had suffered terrible damage in the Ice-David's attack. One side of its face was beaten almost out of recognition, and its body was pitted with puncture and bludgeoning wounds that leaked liquid gold down onto the floor in small, silent streams. Yet the statue did not complain or whimper, but stood still, watching her much like a scientist observing the antics of some test specimen, a sort of detached gaze that spoke volumes by itself.

"So," it said, "here we are."

Perhaps it didn't know what to say, but Raven certainly had an idea. "Why'd you do that?" she asked.

The golden figure shrugged. "Why else?" he said. "Because I didn't want Devastator to kill you."

"Do you know what I was about to do?"

"More or less," said the golden figure.

"And you didn't want to stop me? Or talk me out of it?"

The figure seemed to consider that for a moment. "That wasn't really in question," he finally said.

Raven blinked. "What are you, his suicidal side?"

The golden figure laughed. "No," he said, "no, I'm just..." He trailed off for a minute. "I'm Gold," he finally said, as though that answered everything.

"And what's Gold supposed to represent?"

"It's not supposed to represent anything," said Gold passively. "It's just... gold." He seemed to read Raven's confusion (it wasn't hard), and explained further. "This place is... a combination of your expectations and David's perceptions. You're used to a fragmented mindscape where emotions sit in little cubbyholes decorated and color-coded, and fight with one another for dominance, and you brought that with you when you came here. But David isn't like you. He doesn't have that dissonance that you have. He's not at war with himself."

"Is that why the Ice sculpture tried to rip your head off?" asked Raven, unimpressed, "because you all play nice with each other?"

Gold simply smiled. "You'll notice, he failed."

She looked him over. "Not by much."

"By enough."

Raven let it go, watching the gold statue passively, before finally asking a question.

"So if you knew what I was doing, why did you make Devastator stop?"

"Because I chose not to," said Gold, which did not exactly clear the matter up. "We are whatever we choose to be. You taught us that."

Raven raised an eyebrow. "I did?"

"Well not you specifically, but all of you did, yes."

"That doesn't really sound like something David would say," said Raven.

"I'm not David," answered Gold. "I'm just a figment of his imagination shaped by yours. And you only think that because you don't understand what he chooses to be. Which is fine, because he doesn't either."

The metaphysics of this situation were starting to make Raven's brain hurt. "Are you supposed to be his intellect? Or his subconscious?"

Gold merely chuckled and shook his head. "You're thinking of it wrong," he said. "We're all David's intellect. We're all his subconscious. We're all his emotions. We're all him. And he is each of us, by turns and by degrees. He is iron, and ice, and smoke, and water, and gold too, and a hundred other elements. So are you, even if your mixture is different. So is everyone."

"Are you being literal or figurative?"

"Both," said Gold with a smile, and for the first time he seemed to acknowledge his injuries, lowering one hand to his side and holding it over the largest puncture wound. Liquid gold seeped through his fingers and ran down his arm, and he seemed to wince.

"You er... you wanna come see something?" he asked her casually. "There's a great spot for it nearby."

Raven thought about it for a moment. "What are we gonna go see?"

"Well," said Gold, "there's some things going on right now that I thought you'd want to be aware of, and... besides... I sort of figure you've got a bit of deciding to do for yourself, right? I know how the others can be when you're trying to think clearly..."

The reminder brought Raven back around to the task at hand. "I sort of already made my decision," she said.

Gold seemed unperturbed. "Well even so, come along anyway. You look like you could use some fresh air..."

He walked slowly over to her and offered his hand, still wet with the liquid gold he had been trying to stem the flow of. She took it hesitantly, less because she was afraid of the Golden statue of David, and more because, given what she knew she was going to have to do, it seemed... needlessly cruel to humor him further. Even if he wasn't real.

The world shifted around her, and suddenly she was in open air.

She turned around to find herself standing on the very top of another tower, shaped identically to the one she had been in a moment ago, but she knew instantly it was different, for the roof beneath her feet was not made of stone. Instead, it seemed to have been carved from a skyscraper-sized block of vulcanized rubber. It dimpled and bent and wobbled treacherously under her feet, and yet it seemed as stable overall as the one she had left a moment ago, like an inflatable castle for little children. It took her a second to recover her balance, and when she did, she stood up and looked around.

All around her was spread the landscape of David's mind, the forest unending of verdant green, enveloping the entire area, bounded in the far distance, she could see, by snow-capped mountains barely perceptible on the horizon. Below and to her right, there sat the shining golden sphere that led to Devastator's realm, rippling in the soft breeze. And spread around the sphere there sat the five Towers, steel and wood and crystal and rubber and volcanic stone. She had assumed from ground level that the towers were arranged evenly around the sphere, but now she saw that it was not so. Some other pattern was at work here. Here, atop the tower of rubber, the closest one was the tower she had just left, that of stone. Across the way, past the sphere, opposite these two, there was steel and crystal. And mid-way between them, off-centered by the sphere, anchoring the semi-circle they were built in, there was the tower of wood.

She knew this arrangement had a purpose, but she did not presume to guess what it was.

Gold was standing a few paces away. Apparently he was having no trouble keeping his balance.

"What are we doing here?" asked Raven.

"Just... watching," said Gold nonchalantly, as he walked over to the edge of the Tower and sat down, hanging his legs over the side of the Tower, and apparently staring off into space. He made no further comment, leaving Raven to interpret this however she liked.

"Uh..." said Raven, "I'll bite. What are we watching?"

"Hrm?" Gold turned his head, looking puzzled, then his eyes widened and he slapped his forehead. "I'm sorry, I forgot," he said. "We're not exactly used to visitors..."

He turned back, raised one hand, and slowly swept it from side to side, and at his command, the sky in front of him seemed to open up, like snow being cleared off a windshield by wipers. Before Raven now stretched an enormous blank opening in the sky, black as pitch, which only slowly began to resolve itself into an image, like an enormous television screen. And on the screen, she slowly made out the image of someone standing there, staring at the screen. The image was very dark, illuminated only by a red and golden light emitting from somewhere, and yet as Raven shaded her eyes and squinted and tried to make out the picture against the bright background of the sky, she thought she knew that person from...

... the person stepped closer, and her face became visible, and Raven gasped and took a step back.

"Terra?!"

"She can't hear you," said Gold, watching impassively, "or see you. It's just an image."

"But... where is she?"

"The same place David is, some damned pit underneath the old library. At least I think we're still under the library. He got a bit turned around in the fall."

Icy chains wrapped themselves around Raven's heart. "How long have I been in here?"

"Couple of hours," said Gold. "The alert came in about ten minutes after you got here. An important one, or they'd have gone looking for you instead, I imagine."

Raven suppressed the urge to scream. Why hadn't she thought of this? And even as she asked the question, she knew the answer. She hadn't thought of this because she hadn't been thinking of anything except getting the answers she needed to avert the apocalypse she was scheduled to participate in shortly. Nothing else had mattered, certainly not the consequences of whatever actions she took to avert it.

Given what actions she was about to take, that much was coming into stark relief.

"The others can handle it," said Gold, as though reading her mind.

"Are they all right?"

"Last we saw of them, yes, they were fine," said Gold. "Though obviously we got separated..."

Raven looked back up at the silent image of Terra speaking. The camera seemed to shake and move almost imperceptibly, like a camcorder held by an amateur.

"Is that happening... right now?" she asked.

"Yes," said Gold. "A live broadcast, so to speak."

Standing there, watching Terra, Raven suddenly felt the strength go out of her legs, and she flopped down onto the rubber rooftop, which bounced and undulated beneath her like a waterbed. The strain of simply being on a razor's edge for so long, seeking desperate answers to desperate questions that all pointed to the same place, of wondering who among your friends you were going to murder, and how, and in what order, was one that could only be borne for so long, and the massive miscalculation she now realized she had made by staying in here too long just overloaded her. Only so many threats and contingencies could she juggle without assistance. Only so many life and death decisions could she make. She collapsed onto the quivering tower and sat there with her head bowed, trying not to let her emotions overcome her, for there was no telling what might happen if they did.

A little while passed before Gold spoke. "Are you okay?"

She did not look up, perhaps she couldn't, and by reflex she started to say yes, but stopped herself. Here, in this place that did not exist, talking to a figment of her own imagination, what was the purpose of maintaining the lie that was ripping her apart.

"No," she said, and her voice faltered. "No, I'm not."

No immediate reply was forthcoming in words, but she felt a metallic hand gently pat her on the shoulder, no doubt smearing liquid gold on her cloak, but that was hardly important now. The gesture was supposed to be re-assuring, she could tell, and yet given the circumstances, it was anything but.

"Seems to me," said Gold, "that you're carrying a hell of a lot right now."

She raised her head to find him watching her with the same expression David had whenever he was staring right through a metal container or visualizing the molecules in a plank of wood. "What, are you offering to help?"

"I can't help," said Gold with a hint of sadness. "You know that already. Not with this. I'm just saying. You look like a toy wound up too tight. Like you're ready to fly apart."

She certainly felt like one. "And I suppose you know what that's like?"

"Not a clue," said Gold. "But I have a vivid imagination. And I'm sorry."

She stared at him in something like disbelief. "You're sorry? Do you have any idea what I have to do?"

"I can guess."

"I have to kill you!" she shouted suddenly, and her voice echoed across the forest. "I have to burn this whole place to the ground! I have to kill David, do you get that?! That's what I'm gonna do!"

"You've decided then?" he asked in a conversational tone

"I have to!" She yelled at him. "If I don't do it, everybody dies, don't you see?! I don't have a choice!"

She wanted him to yell at her. She wanted him to get angry, as Ice had. She wanted him to curse her and call her a demon and a traitor and a coward for doing such a thing, but he did not. He simply sighed softly and shook his head. "That does seem to be a theme right about now," he said.

She could not believe what she was hearing. "What the hell is wrong with you?" she demanded. "Are you his Death drive or something? Did you even hear what I just said?"

"I heard every word," said Gold evenly. "And before you ask, yes, I believe you, yes, I understand your reasons, and yes, I think Devastator was telling the truth. I'm neither ignorant nor suicidal, and I understand exactly the implications of everything that you are talking about. And now I'm asking you to accept that even though I understand perfectly what the situation is here, I'm not screaming or attacking or running for cover, and I am not going to do any of those things. Whatever you decide you have to do, Raven, I just want to sit here for a little while, and I would be very grateful if you'd care to do the same, though as always, it's up to you."

Raven found she had absolutely no idea what to say, but Gold seemed to take her non-answer for an answer, and smiled, and turned back to the screen, where Terra seemed to be delivering some kind of impassioned plea to the camera in question. After a minute or so, Raven did the same, sitting down next to Gold, and just watching the silent proceedings, her mind struggling to even accept what was happening.

"Hey er... you want to listen in to what they're saying?" asked Gold suddenly, turning his head back to her. "We get sound on this thing."

"Uh..." she had no idea how to answer. Indeed she barely had understood the question. And as before, Gold simply smiled.

"I really don't think he'd mind this time. They're um... well you might just find it interesting."

She was fairly certain that normally she would have found reasons to object, but she wasn't really thinking clearly right now, and obviously Gold had his mind already made up on the subject. He pointed his hand towards the floating screen as though aiming an invisible remote control, and "clicked" a button on it, even making a little clicking noise with his mouth.

"... will you come with me to meet Slade?"

Terra's voice boomed out from the screen like a loudspeaker, filling the entire area with noise. It was the same voice, the same inflections in it, that Raven remembered from all those months ago, and the memory flushed much of the confusion out of her addled mind, and focused her attention on what she was seeing and hearing. From somewhere down below, she heard a chorus of answers being shouted out in different permutations of David's voice. "Yes!", came the shouts, "All right!", "Over my dead body!", and countless others too soft or too distant to make out, as though children were shouting instructions to a character on a movie screen. And yet the real reply drowned them all out, despite being pitched softly, more a whisper than a defiant cry, but a whisper broadcast through amplifiers the size of a building. And when it did come, it was not the same as any of the chorus of suggestions, save the one Raven heard the Gold statue next to her softly whisper back.

"No."

Terra looked like someone had slapped her across the face. Her voice cracked and stammered, her train of thought having clearly just derailed on her. "What?" she said, a question that appeared to be circling around a lot today, but judging from what came next, one David had expected.

"I'm not going with you," came David's voice, and this time there was enough of his speech for Raven to catch the fear in it, but no hesitation, no pause, no equivocation. His voice indicated that he was saying something fraught with awesome significance, personal or otherwise, but he did not prevaricate even slightly. "Not now, not ever."

"They're going to kill you, David," came Terra's reply, and Raven, who had no clear idea what they were talking about, felt her blood turn to ice regardless as she realized she didn't need to know the context to know who Terra was talking about. "Did you miss that part? They're going to kill you if you don't come with me."

"Maybe," was all David said.

"No," spat Terra back at the screen. "Not maybe, David, definitely. One way or another they are going to have to kill you."

"Fine," said David. "Then that's how it's gonna be."

Terra looked as though she was watching the laws of the universe shatter in front of her. "David, you don't understand! This is not - "

"No, Terra," said David, "I think you don't understand." Terra stopped in mid-sentence as David slowly explained in an even, quiet voice, that almost succeeded in masking the trepidation he must have been feeling. "You say they're gonna kill me? They're not gonna have a choice? They're gonna have to? I believe you. I understand you. And I am not going to lift a finger to stop it."

The floating picture began to blur, and Raven squinted unconsciously to focus the image until she realized that the effect was due to tears welling up in David's eyes. And yet David's voice remained almost preternaturally calm, as though held there by force. It probably was. "If they wind up having to concoct some insane plan to kill me, then I guess it's gonna succeed, because I'm not going to stop it. If that's really the only way out of the apocalypse, and they wind up having to do that, then that's what's gonna happen." He paused for a moment to let that sink in. "Am I being clear enough, Terra?"

His voice was starting to waver by now, but Raven doubted seriously that Terra noticed, occupied as she was in staring at David like a deer in headlights. "You're... you're gonna let them kill you?"

The 'camera' moved forward just a little bit. Likely David had leaned forward. "Yes," he said, deliberately loading the word with all the finality he could muster. "That's exactly what I'm gonna do. I'm going to let it happen. Do you understand, Terra? I'm gonna let them do whatever it is they think they have to do. Period."

"Even if it means they kill you?"

"Absolutely," said David, and Raven could almost feel the strange cathartic relief David had to be feeling to have up and said such things. The camera shifted again, David had taken a step towards Terra. "But do you know what I'm not gonna do?" he asked her. "I'm not gonna go hiding out somewhere underground with Slade or you or whoever else, to try and stop it from happening. Even if it is the only way to stop it. I'm not gonna do that."

Terra's head shook slowly, almost of it's own accord. "David..."

"No, Terra," he said. "I've heard what you said, I believe what you said, I understand what you said, and I'm not going with you."

"Have you lost your mind?" asked Terra in stupefied disbelief. "You have to come with me, you don't have a choice!"

"I think you'll find I do have a choice," said David. "And I probably have lost my mind, but that doesn't change anything." He seemed to be finding his footing now, and his voice grew, not in volume but in certainty. "And I know you like to reduce everything to not having a choice," he said. "I do it too. I hate having a choice, usually. I just want to... do what I'm supposed to do, the way I'm supposed to do it, not have to worry about having to choose the right thing to do. Choices scare the hell out of me. If you can choose, that means you can screw up, and pick the wrong one, and it's all on your head."

The 'camera' shook slowly from side to side, focussing on the floor for a moment before David's voice continued. "But we always have a choice, Terra, even when we don't want one, even when it only looks like we don't because of one the choices looks crazy." Terra's face began to slowly fall as David finished. "And I think you can guess who taught me that."

Terra lowered her eyes. "I'm... not asking you to betray the other Titans, David."

"No," came the answer, "but you are asking me to walk away from them, and go join Slade. And we can stand here and tell each other that I don't have a choice, but we both know that I do, just like you did. Just like we both chose to become Titans, even if I didn't realize I was doing it. Just like the others chose to bring us in, even after what you did. And I can't tell if that meant nothing to you, or just not enough, but you chose to walk out on them." The camera shook slowly side to side again. "I don't know why. Maybe you were scared or angry or maybe you thought it was the best thing to do, or maybe you convinced yourself that you didn't have a choice to begin with. It doesn't really matter. You chose to do that." The camera rose and fell slightly and a puff of steam indicated that David had just taken a deep breath. "I'm not."

"So... then what are you gonna do?" asked Terra.

Another deep breath. "I'm gonna go find the others," said David, "and I'm gonna go home. Because right now I really, really want to go home. And I don't care how corny that sounds." The camera tilted down a bit, and shook, as though David were chuckling. "I never even knew what that was," he said. "I thought it was something people said when they didn't know what else to say, or put in TV shows because it sounded good." He shook his head. "It's real. It's actually real. I want to go home. And I don't care if they drop an axe on my head the instant I step through the door. I'm not leaving them. Not ever."

The look in Terra's eyes told Raven that she knew she had lost. Her plans had come straight to a dead end, and she now had no direction as to what to do. And perhaps David could also see that, judging from what he said next.

"So you go ahead, and pull those rocks out of the wall," he said, "and do whatever you think you have to do with them." She saw him raise his baton into the ready position he had learned from Robin, and then suddenly the picture seemed to snow over like a television turned to static, a riot of colored dots that danced across it for a moment or so before suddenly clearing away and resolving into...

Raven gasped involuntarily.

... into an ocean of lights.

It was like a satellite image of the Earth at night, a mosaic of millions and billions and trillions of tiny points of light, red, green, blue, yellow, orange, purple, every shade and every color, and all of them alive. Humming in place, zipping back and forth like shooting stars, so many distinct points of light that it should by rights have dissolved all into one solid mass, and yet it did not. And though Raven had not the first idea how to tell what any of these points were, she saw instantly the patterns in them, the order that they fell into, hundreds of thousands of trillions of them, each in their places to form shapes that were distantly familiar. She could not have described how it was possible, but staring at the fresco of lights, she could both see every single one of them individually, and see the outlines of the form they took on when combined in their trillions and thousands of trillions, all at the same time.

"Is that - "

"Yes," answered Gold, without needing her to finish. "That's what it looks like."

The image remained steady, for to David this was clearly nothing new or special, and Raven saw a mass of solid red dots rise slowly into view, studded regularly with emerald and sapphire points like a jeweled sceptre. And as she realized what that was, she heard David say his last words.

"Make your choice," said David to the mass of scintillating particles that Raven knew intellectually represented Terra, "because I've already made mine."

Terra stared silently at David, her hands still held at her sides, and Raven could read nothing into her gaze, not when her face was made of sparkling diamonds and a thousand other specks of Technicolor light. Ten seconds went by in silence, as they faced one another, before Terra nodded almost imperceptibly.

"All right," she said hollowly.

And then there was a bright flash, and the screen went dark.

Raven blinked silently in surprise, but the image did not return, and all that could be heard was the soft breeze whistling around the rubber tower. She half expected thunder and lightning, hurricane winds, or perhaps something even less explicable, but there was nothing, no change in the landscape before her to indicate what she knew must now be going on outside.

And where did that leave her?

The golden statue next to her was watching her expectantly, and she raised an eyebrow. "Shouldn't you be helping him?" she asked.

Gold shook his head and smiled. "This is a job for Devastator," he said. "Maybe one or two of the others. The day he needs me for one of these things will be an interesting day..."

She nodded. "So was this some plan to get me to change my mind?"

Another shake of the head. "No," said Gold. "At least not the way you think. Honestly, I just thought you might want to see it."

Her eyes narrowed skeptically. "Really?"

To her surprise, Gold looked almost offended by the question. "Yes, really, Raven. I'm not trying to convince you of anything here. Of course I'd prefer it if you didn't blow us all apart, I'm not suicidal, and neither is David. But I don't know what's going on here. I don't know what you should or shouldn't do, I don't understand what's happening. Neither does anybody, not David certainly, and not the others, and probably not even you. I didn't bring you here to talk you out of killing us. You and Devastator say that you might have to, and I don't know enough to disagree. And if it comes down to that, then... then that's what it comes down to." He turned away for a second and grimaced as he held one hand over the injuries in his side again, as droplets of liquid gold rolled down his leg and dripped off the side of the tower. "I just thought you might want to see it," he said. "I figured David could say it better than I could. I wanted to make sure the others didn't sic Devastator on you, because I know he could crack you like a walnut if we ordered him to. But mostly..." he sighed and lowered his head. "Mostly I just wanted to talk."

Raven shook her head uncomprehendingly. "Why?" she asked.

Gold raised his eyes and looked back at her. "Because I wish we knew you better."

The simple sincerity of this admission was enough that Raven lost all sense of what she was going to say, and left her silent, which Gold seemed to take as an invitation to continue.

"We don't... know anything about you. Maybe the others do, they've known you for longer after all, but I doubt it. And, look, there's nothing wrong with that. Whatever's happening here is something really personal for you, I understand that, and I'm not trying to say you owe us any explanations. David wouldn't ever say this, but he's not here right now, so I will. We understand you're just doing what you think is best for everybody. I know that, so does he, but..." he trailed off, apparently unsure of how to say what he was trying to say.

"But?" she prompted.

"But you're lost in the woods right now," he said finally. "Everyone can see it. I'm not even a whole person, and I can see it. You're so... obsessed with making sure nobody finds out what's happening that you've completely missed the fact that there's five people out there who only want to know what's going on so that they can help you deal with it. Whatever you are, whatever your thing with this 'Trigon' guy is, they aren't gonna do whatever you're so afraid they're gonna do to you. And you'd know that already if you weren't so scared of what's going on here."

As if in reflex, she opened her mouth to protest that she wasn't scared, but a single glance at Gold told her that this would be wasting her breath. "Look," he said, "I'm sure you're right to be scared. We've all seen enough to know that. And maybe I'm wrong, and you've got other reasons for not telling everybody. That's fine too. I'm not trying to get you to 'open up' or something, I know better than that. It's not about facts and numbers and where you went to third grade. It's not about knowing things about you. You know all sorts of things about David, especially now, but..." He trailed off in a manner very reminiscent of David, boiling his thoughts down before speaking again. "But," he said finally, "I just wish... that you guys knew each other better."

She let that sit for a little while before softly adding her own comment.

"So do I."

They sat in silence for a few moments.

"For whatever it's worth though," said Gold, "even with everything that's happened or going to happen... I'm still glad he met you."

"Yeah," said Raven, "but is he?"

"Well, I can't speak for him," said Gold with a shrug. He glanced back at the blank screen for a moment. "But what do you think?"

Raven didn't reply.

There were no birds here, no insects, no sounds of animals, just the wind distantly blowing through the trees, and the soft moaning sounds of the rubber tower beneath her as it swayed and bent like a ponderous willow tree. And she sat quietly and listened to the wind, Raven could hear voices, all David's of course, but each one subtly different. Unconsciously she sought out the sounds, and a moment later spotted their sources. Below her and across from the tower she was sitting on, affixed to the side of the tower of stone, there was a small balcony upon which were arrayed a quartet of figures of Ice and Smoke and Iron and Water. Too far away for their words to be made out, they seemed to be talking to one another, while each stared off over the balcony's railing and into what appeared to be empty space.

"They're watching it," said Gold. "We like to watch them together. It makes it easier..."

At this distance, she could see plainly as Ice clenched the railing as if ready to vault over it, restrained only by the hand of Iron on his shoulder. She could see Iron speaking to Ice, though not what words they were using, his expression careful and collected, even as Ice gripped the stone railing hard enough to carve gouges into it with his fingers, and occasionally snapped a no-doubt caustic comment back at Iron, though Raven noted he made no effort to shake off his counterpart's hand. And next to them stood Water, leaning carefully against the railing as he stared up into the open air half in anticipation, half in dread of what he was seeing there, one arm draped around the shoulders of Smoke, who seemed ready to melt into the floor or dissolve into thin air, but who still periodically found it within himself to look up and contribute a comment, sometimes only to wince and shy away again, and sometimes to chance a careful smile. And as Raven watched, Water turned to smoke and said something to him, gesturing with his head towards Ice, and Smoke nodded and turned, and edged over to where Ice was standing, and spoke soft words of some sort, and ventured to lay a hand on his other shoulder. Ice reared around and snapped something at Smoke, and glared daggers at him, but instead of flying at Smoke and dispersing him with a wave of his hand, he seemed, after a moment, to master himself, and turned back to the railing with an audible growl. Hesitant though he was, Smoke nevertheless edged in next to him to do the same, and Water slid over to flank him, patting Smoke gently on the shoulder in unmistakable imitation of a parent telling a child that everything was going to be all right.

And whether or not all of these versions of David were just figments of her imagination, it did not escape Raven that, no matter the situation or circumstance, there was utterly no way that any of her incarnated emotions would ever do the same thing for one another.

"So, have you decided what to do?" asked Gold.

Raven didn't look up, just closed her eyes and nodded.

"Yes."

He didn't make a sound, or at least not much of one, and when she looked up, she could read the nervousness on his damaged face as clearly as if he'd had it stenciled on his forehead. Yet he did not pry or demand to know what her intentions were. No doubt they would soon become clear.

"I do want to know something though, before..."

He blinked. "What's that?"

"What are you," she asked. "Really?"

He smiled. "I told you already, I'm Gold."

"So, what?" she asked, "you're rare and valuable?"

Gold simply shook his head with a soft laugh. "You're thinking about it wrong," he said. "I'm not represented by Gold. I am Gold. I'm a metal, a soft metal at that. I can be beaten into whatever shape people think is most convenient," he gestured at his ruptured stomach, "or ripped apart by anything harder than glass. I bend, I tear, I melt, I boil. You can pound me into gold leaf or melt me down into bars if you want. I'm not much use, I'm no good as a sword or a shield or a tool, I don't have practical purpose all, and I can't be relied on to stay in the same shape."

He took a deep breath, looked up at her, and smiled.

"But," he said, "I never tarnish. I never rust. I don't oxidize or burn or dissolve in acid. You can boil me to vapor or freeze me in outer space, and I'll never change chemically. I'll mix with anything, heat and electricity go right through me, and you can fire me, soak me, or bury me in the dirt for a hundred million years, and at the end of it, I'll still be Gold. I'm hard to find, especially pure, and I'm not completely indestructible, but there's almost nothing you can do to get rid of me that isn't gonna destroy your entire world. And despite the fact that I'm pretty much useless, and can't keep you alive if you're in imminent danger, everyone agrees that I'm one of the most valuable things in the world."

Raven considered all this for a time. "I wish I was that lucky," she said.

Gold smirked. "Raven, you wouldn't be sitting here if you didn't have any Gold yourself."

And strangely enough, she felt a little better.

She stood up slowly, it wasn't the easiest thing to do with a Tower that wobbled and bent under your feet, and Gold did the same, watching her as if looking for a sign. She didn't know what to say or do, still not utterly confident he wasn't about to attempt some last-minute desperation move.

"It's a nice spot up here," she said.

Gold nodded and turned to look out over the emerald forest, and the carved obsidian spire of pumice stone that emerged from it nearby. "Yeah," he said. "But that's more your doing than his."

Raven half-turned her head and raised an eyebrow questioningly, and Gold laughed.

"You didn't think we put this tower next to yours by accident, did you?"

Raven couldn't help, despite the circumstances and what she was about to do, but to laugh herself, and when she had finished, she took a deep breath, and said the words she had subconsciously set to be the queue for her powers.

"Goodbye, David," she said.

Gold lowered his head carefully, a nod of recognition of what had always, Raven realized, been inevitable.

"Good luck, Raven," he said.

Gold stood impassively and watched as Raven's image slowly faded out into nothingness, leaving him standing alone atop the tower of rubber. He sighed, quietly, and turned back to the edge, looking down at all the others, at Ice holding the stone railing for dear life, and Iron holding his shoulder for the same, at Smoke nervously glancing over at his frozen counterpart and whispering nervous words of calm and reassurance, and Water standing next to Smoke, and doing for him what he was doing for Ice. And despite everything, Gold smiled.

And then, as he felt the foundations of the tower beneath him begin to shake and heard the rumblings that heralded Raven's powers, Gold lifted his head and stepped off of the Tower into empty space, letting the wind rush around him as he plunged down towards the ground, his injured side leaving a trail behind him of golden droplets, glistening in the crisp air, and sparkling like falling stars...

*--------------------------------------------------------------------------------*

The only warning Terra received was David's scream.

It was piercing, it was unexpected, it was sudden, and it was genuine beyond all doubt. One moment, David had been standing before her, eyes locked, baton flaring, and the next moment he collapsed like he'd been shot. His baton clattered to the ground, extinguished as though plunged into a bucket of icewater, and he fell to his hands and knees, forgetting Terra or everything else. So stark was the shift that Terra froze in astonishment. Not even when she had overloaded David's powers had he reacted like this, and he had, as yet, not made any real use of them.

She had no idea what was happening to him, likely he didn't either, but regardless of the reasons why, she knew what she had to do. She raised one hand, and at her silent command, a polished rock the size of a motorcycle rose from the stone-paved ground, sheathed in an unearthly yellow glow. David was too engrossed in whatever appeared to be assailing him that he did not even seem to notice, and Terra waited only long enough to shake her head in silence, before clenching her fist and sending the massive rock flying at David like a meteor, with sufficient weight and force to crush him to paste.

And no doubt it would have, had not a coal-black energy shield materialized out of nowhere surrounding David like a protective bubble a millisecond after she commanded the rock to hurl itself at him, against which the stone shattered like a Christmas ornament.

Terra stood before the crumpled form of David as though rooted to the ground, her brain unable to process what had just happened. Other rocks remained all about her, hundreds and thousands of them, silently awaiting their orders, but she could not muster the wherewithall to call upon them. And instead she watched in mounting horror as, before her very eyes, David suddenly convulsed, threw his head back and screamed again.

Silently.

His mouth opened, his breath came, but no sound emitted, or rather none he was capable of making. Instead, there was a cold, ripping sound, and suddenly black tendrils of energy exploded from his eyes and nose and mouth, and as he reared back up on his knees and screamed silently at the ceiling, the energy coursed out of him into the air, where it swirled and danced and then finally coalesced together into a single black mass that settled down onto the ground between Terra and David, shrank into a humanoid shape, and then finally resolved into...

Terra's breath choked off as she took two large steps back, and whispered the only word she could manage right now.

"No..."

Raven stood in the center of the room, her cloak wrapped around her body, her arms at her sides, her eyes shut, and only after a moment did she lift her head, open her eyes, and fix them solidly on Terra. Her voice was calm, collected, and cold as ice.

"Hello, Terra."

Behind Raven, David lay collapsed on the ground, moaning softly, yet slowly he appeared to regain awareness of his surroundings, and managed to prop himself up on one hand, rubbing at the side of his head. It was several moments before he realized that he and Terra were no longer alone.

"... Raven?"

Raven paid him no mind, save to wave her hand, and slide him, shield and all, across the floor to the side of the room, clearing herself space with which to operate.

"Raven?" asked Terra, blinking in astonishment. "Is... what are you doing here?"

"A lot of things," said Raven, her hood pulled up over her head, the hem of her cloak flapping around her ankles. "But right now," she said in savage mockery of another voice, "I'm here to deliver a message."

It did not take wild leaps of genius to determine roughly what the tone of Raven's 'message' was going to be, but Terra had little choice but to ask. "What are you talking about?"

Raven stepped forward, cloaked in a dark aura of menace. "Run back to Slade," she said, "and tell him and his master that I'm gonna help bring him into the world over my own dead body."

Terra narrowed her eyes. "That can be arranged."

The ceiling collapsed.

An avalanche of rock and dirt erupted from the roof of the amphitheater and crashed down onto Raven like a landslide. Caught by surprise, she barely had time to raise a second shield to protect herself before several tons of debris smashed into it, and she was knocked over from the effort of maintaining it, landing on her side on the floor as debris and dirt rolled off the shield onto the ground.

"I don't know where you came from," said Terra, "or what you think I'm doing here, but I think you forgot something. Slade is under orders not to kill you. I'm not."

Raven scrambled back to her feet to find a hailstorm of rocks and accelerated debris flying at her. She shifted her shield into a conical one, and deflected most of it, gathering up a pile of rocks of her own and hurling them back at Terra, who simply raised one hand and stopped them in their tracks.

"Killing David might save the world," said Terra, "but killing you will stop the Apocalypse." She smirked. "Remember what happened last time we had a little fight?"

"Don't even try it, Terra!" snarled Raven, and she lashed out with her powers, sending tendrils of energy crackling across the room like whips. Terra leaped backwards out of range, letting them bite into empty air.

"Or what?" she asked, "you'll get mad?" She raised one hand, and lifted enormous boulders out of the ground which began to spin around her like planets orbiting a star. "Well we wouldn't want that, now would we?"

Raven forced herself to stay in control, and she grabbed telekinetically at one of the enormous boulders, only to have Terra hurl it and all its fellows at her before she could get a mental hold on it, a barrage she followed up with other rocks scooped up from the floor and walls. Raven batted them aside, sending them spinning off in every direction, meeting each of Terra's motions with one of her own, preparing a counterstroke to smash the geokinetic into the nearest wall like a fly.

But she never got it off.

With one hand, Terra raised another handful of debris and dirt and hurled it at Raven, only to see it flung aside by Raven's shield, but with the other, she brought her hand around and waved it at the stone gargoyles that sat perched around the room. Visibly gritting her teeth with the effort, Terra shouted aloud as she poured her powers into them, shrouding them in yellow energy, until they quivered and shook. Raven braced herself for the attack, expecting that they would soon be hurled at her like the other boulders Terra had been employing.

She did not expect them all to rise to their feet one by one, leap down into the arena, and advance to the attack.

Raven fell back desperately as two dozen gargoyles fell over themselves lunging at her. She lashed out, slicing the head off of one, which failed to arrest its advance, animated as it was by Terra's will alone. It reached out to seize her and she backed up, hurling her powers forward in an unfocused blast that tore the offending statue to pebbles and sand, but three more took its place in a heartbeat. She managed to seize one with her powers and hurl it across the room to shatter against the wall, but another struck low, tripping her with one of its granite claws, and spilling her backwards onto the ground. Its partner raised its fists and brought them down to crush her to jelly, and she threw up a shield which just barely held against its earthshattering blow. It raised its fists again, and brought them down again, this time cracking the shield, and knocking her flat onto her back. Before she could re-raise the shield, before she could conjure a single spell, the gargoyle's fists were looming over her once more, swinging down for the coup-de-gras.

It never arrived.

There was a thunderous roar, and the entire gargoyle exploded like a bomb. Fragments of rock flailed at her face and hand and cape, stinging her skin and raising welts under her uniform, but she barely noticed, for right then she spotted a flash of orange-red from beside her, and the second gargoyle, the one that had tripped her, had its arm torn off as if by a bazooka. It whirled around to face its assailant, slashing with its claws at a figure Raven could not see from where she was laying, but she raised her head up to look in time to see David ducking under the clumsy slash, and bringing his baton around in a backhand stroke that barely grazed the Gargoyle's stony skin, and yet no sooner did he do so than three tremendous blasts cleaved the hulking statue in half at the waist, and sent it crumbling to the ground.

Terra turned on David with a vengeance, hurling a barrage of loose shrapnel his way. He dove to one side to avoid the worst of it, and fired a rock from the far wall back at her with a flick of his baton, missing high, but forcing her to duck, giving himself time to get back to his feet. Two gargoyles lunged at him. One chose to telegraph its attack with a roar, and David turned on it and blasted its head into its chest before detonating its entire body like an artillery shell. But in doing so, he failed to spot the second one, which grabbed him from behind and slammed him into the far wall, before bringing its other arm around to disembowel the psychokinetic, at the very least.

Raven did not hesitate. "Azarath! Metrion! Zinthos!"

A tendril of black energy snaked out and grabbed the gargoyle around the waist, lifting it bodily into the air before smashing it to pieces against the ceiling. Another gargoyle lunged forward to take its place, but she snared that one too, pulling it into the air by one leg and using it as an enormous wrecking ball to scatter three more. Granted a moment's respite, David did the sane thing, and fell back towards Raven wordlessly, blotting another gargoyle that tried to intercept him out of existence and reaching her side in time for her to scramble to her feet. No words did either of them speak. They had no time, for a dozen more gargoyles quickly closed in, lunging at them with mass and numbers too great for him to destroy or her to repel. And so instead, without asking or stopping to thing, she simply grabbed him and shouted a spell to the stone-littered room, trusting to Devastator's explanation that so long as her intent was not to harm him, her magic would bypass the cosmic protections.

It did.

Raven and David both disappeared, seconds before a large pile of Gargoyles landed on the space they had been occupying. Instants later, they both re-appeared on the opposite side of the room, Raven standing defiant, David having fallen to the ground at the unexpected shock of having his atoms transported through a non-Euclidean gateway. Still, he managed to recover enough to rise to one knee, raise his head, and reverse the grip on his baton, which burnt and flared like the flaming sword of an avenging angel.

Terra shrieked in frustration and desperation, and the gargoyles responded to her unspoken command, hurling themselves after the two Titans with all the fury of enraged berserkers, but having granted the two teens range to operate in, and a few seconds to prepare, the gargoyles had no chance at all. Raven raised her hands and commanded the laws of the universe to bend to her will, and tore gargoyle after gargoyle to ribbons with the power of her mind, while David simply focused his mind on the rocks themselves, and ripped the energy forth from the stony assailants in the form of shaped charge blasts that tore them limb from limb. Distracted by the need to command her stony minions, Terra herself could contribute little more than a few desultory rocks, easily batted or blown aside by either Titan, and before long, the last remaining gargoyle was stopped dead in its tracks a few feet from Raven and David by a wall of impenetrable darkness, moments before David blew a hole through its torso the size of a cannonball, sending the debris flying at Terra like an enormous shotgun shell.

Smoke and dust covered the entire room in a thick shroud, too thick to see through. David moved as if to step forward in search of Terra, but Raven restrained him with a hand on his shoulder and a wordless shake of her head, and without protest he deferred to her, waiting with baton in hand as she cleared the dust away with a slow wave of her hand.

Terra was in the center of the chamber, doubled over onto her hands and knees, with one hand clutched over her stomach, where a dark red stain was beginning to spread over her shirt. Her breathing was labored, and each breath brought on a wince. She raised her head as the smoke cleared and managed to sit up, and Raven saw that a spine of rock was driven into her side like a nail, a piece of shrapnel no doubt from one of David's explosions, or perhaps one of her telekenetic assaults. There was no way to tell.

"You... you don't know what you're doing..." she said, gritting her teeth against the pain. "It's all gonna end! You're both gonna end the entire world!"

David said nothing, and Raven caught his nervous glance out of the corner of her eye, but she stepped forward. "I won't let it come to that, no matter what Trigon, Slade, or you do. Do you hear me?"

"You can't stop it!" shouted Terra, half-blinded with pain and fear. She knew now that she had failed utterly, she was no match for both Raven and David combined, and had no more weapons but her words. "Nothing can stop it, Raven, you know that."

"Yes," said Raven. "I know."

The admission stunned Terra to silence, and she fell back to her hands and knees, still clutching her injured side. Behind Raven, David lowered his baton slowly in silence.

"But then..." stammered Terra, "if you... if you know you can't stop it. Then..."

"Because I won't avoid my destiny by murdering my friends," she said, and as she said it, she turned her head back to face David, who was watching her like a sparrow watching an owl. "There's always another way," she said. "We just have to find it."

She turned back in time to watch Terra clench her free fist and raise her head, her eyes glowing a radioactive yellow. "You're making the biggest mistake of your life, Raven," she said, "and we're all gonna die because of it." And then, before either David or Raven could make a move, the ground beneath Terra suddenly split open, and Terra plunged down out of sight into the earth, the crevasse she had used to egress slamming shut again with a thunderous 'crash', leaving the two Titans alone in an amphitheater ringed by ruined statues, and covered in a layer of debris.

David collapsed.

His legs gave out on him and he fell back against the wall and slid down onto the ground, letting his baton clatter to the floor, tucking his knees against his chest, placing his folded hands atop them, and letting his forehead rest on top. She could hear his breathing coming in ragged gasps, and feel the swirling emotions emanating from him like an aura. She let him sit there for a few minutes, before slowly walking over and crouching down herself.

"Are you okay?"

He swallowed and raised his head. His hands were shaking like loose leaves, and it took him several tries to find his voice. "I... think so," he finally managed to say. No doubt he had about a hundred million questions, but clearly he had not the wherewithall to ask them right now.

Which hopefully would give her enough time to figure out how to answer them.

She opted for the basics. "You saved my life back there," she said, and he laughed nervously.

"Yeah, well, six hundred more and we'll almost be even, I guess," he said with a weak smile. His heart wasn't in the joke, but it helped take the edge off.

She nodded silently. There was no use evading it, she supposed. "Look," she said, "David, I - "

"Do you know where the others are?" he asked, and she blinked and stopped. Searching gave her something to do, and she let her mind wander through the catacombs and tunnels they were in, until she could sense the familiar patterns.

"They're not... too far away," she said. "I think they're all together. There's... something with them..."

Her eyes shot open as she realized who the fifth presence was. David noticed. "What?" he asked breathlessly. "What is it?"

"Slade," she said in a horse whisper. She scrambled back to her feet, as did David, retrieving his baton in the process.

"Can you get us there?" he asked her.

"I think so," she said. "We'll have to teleport."

He winced visibly at the prospect, but did not protest. "All right," he said. "Let's go."

Despite everything, she felt she couldn't just... just plunge off into a new encounter without at least trying to explain what she had been doing inside his head. "David, before we go, I just want to - "

"It can wait, right?" asked David a little too urgently for her suspicions to not be triggered, and she realized all of a sudden that he wanted to discuss all the insanity that had transpired no more than she did. She blinked a few times before nodding silently, and he returned it. "Okay," he said. "Then let's go."

"Give me your hand," she said, as she mentally prepared the necessary spells. "I've got an idea..."

[LadyTevar]

Chapter 28: Cont'd again

*--------------------------------------------------------------------------------*

"Struggling only makes it worse, and how I hate to see you suffer..."

Slade stood in the center of the enormous chamber, watching his handiwork with what passed for an expression of satisfaction on his featureless one-eyed mask. One hand was on his hip, and with the other he held four flaming tendrils that snaked and twisted about the room like enormous leashes. One by one, his cyclopean gaze fell upon one of the Titans, each one bound and tangled within a fiery tendril, and lovingly savored the sight as they writhed and cried out in pain. His second statement had been a lie of course, there were few things he enjoyed more than watching the Titans suffer, but the first had been entirely accurate. Indeed, he had made sure that the tendrils would have such an effect.

Robin, as always, had the biggest spark of defiance. The other three were merely concentrating on the agonizing pain shooting through their nerves, but Robin managed to weakly cough out some form of threat or defiant remark. He couldn't catch the words over the sounds of the others moaning, and so lifted Robin's tendril and brought him in closer, the better to hear whatever clever remark the Titans' leader had to say.

"You won't..." stammered Robin weakly, "won't... get away..."

Slade laughed. Had he nothing but cliches to fall back on? "There, there, Robin," said Slade as he raised his other hand, fire springing forth from it capable of melting through steel, "not to worry. This won't hurt a bit."

The wall exploded.

The blast was more sound and flash than damage, but it was powerful enough to throw enormous blocks of rock into the room, which rolled and rumbled about like enormous crushers, though none came anywhere near him, or the other Titans. He turned to see that an eight foot hole had been blasted in the wall as though a tank had fired into it, and standing in the smoke-filled entrance was a small figure in a red suit clutching a burning stick.

"This will."

The floor beneath Slade's feet erupted like a volcano, flinging Slade into the air like a rag doll. He dropped all four tendrils, which instantly extinguished and vanished, releasing the remaining Titans from their fiery grip. No sooner had he landed, than the floor blew up again, tossing him back into the base of the enormous hand-shaped altar that adorned this chamber. The blasts would have crippled any living man, but Slade was well past such things, and no sooner had he landed than he leapt back to his feet rolling forward to avoid a third blast, before turning back to the agent of these explosions with a snarl in his throat.

"That was an incredibly stupid thing to do, David," he said, and raised one hand, letting another tendril of molten rock snake towards Devastator, intending to bind him up with it, and teach him the true meaning of pain, as he had been teaching his fellows.

Devastator did not simply break the tendril. He destroyed it in detail.

Before the fiery tendril had gotten within ten feet of him, Devastator raised one hand and extended his fingers at Slade. One by one, each piece of the tendril was blown to dust, a sequential series of explosions that left nothing behind but ash and tiny fragments of pumice rock. Thirty explosions at least he conjured, blasting the binding chain to bits link by link, until Slade was left holding nothing but the rump of a flame tendril in his outstretched hand, like a cartoon villain with the hilt of a broken sword.

Well that hadn't gone as planned...

"You've been tormenting everybody for long enough," said Devastator, his voice dripping with bitterness, and he actually advanced on Slade, his baton held out like some kind of magical ward. "I don't care who's backing you. You touch any of them again, and I'm gonna make you wish you could die."

"Young man," said Slade evenly, "not only have you made a colossal mistake in coming here at all, but you have just earned yourself the privilege of watching helplessly while I dissect every one of your friends before your eyes." He stepped towards Devastator as though he had not a care in the world. "I intend to make it last days."

"When I'm done with you, you won't be torturing anybody ever again," said Devastator, in a fairly decent facsimile of someone who wasn't afraid. Slade wasn't fooled.

"You can't physically hurt me, boy," said Slade as he moved closer to Devastator, who for some insane reason was not retreating before him. "I am well beyond the ken of you and every one of your friends."

"Wanna bet?" came a voice from above and behind Slade.

A block of stone the size of a small car slammed into Slade and smashed him into the far wall like a wrecking ball, powerful enough to crush him to jelly had he still been made of flesh and blood. He knew of course whose voice that had been, and inside his stone tomb he grinned. He had been wondering how much pain Raven was going to permit the others to undergo before she finally came out of hiding.

A pulse of energy, and the block that had hit him exploded like a bomb, and he strode forth, fists shrouded in flame. There, in a shaft of light atop the carved altar in the center of this room, stood Raven. Her eyes were solid white, burning with power overwhelming, her fists cloaked in a living darkness, and her entire body was covered in burning red runes, as though someone had attacked her with a branding iron. The fury and hatred pouring off of her was palpable.

"I told you to leave them out of this," snarled Raven like a rabid animal.

"How sweet," said Slade. "You've finally emerged to save your friends. Unfortunately, you're only delaying their pain." He lit his hands burn with demonic fire, flaring up and scorching the air around him. "And yours," he added.

To his surprise, Raven did not attack. The desire was there, and yet instead of screaming her magic words and barraging him with projectiles and tendrils of energy, she simply landed on the ground between her friends and Slade.

"Well? What are you waiting for?" she asked, slowly approaching him with an expression and a demeanor that was utterly bereft of fear. "Aren't you going to attack? Reduce me to ashes?"

"Or did your master forbid you from hurting her?" asked Devastator.

Slade froze. Raven was one thing, but how the hell had Devastator found out about Trigon unless...?

Oh Goddamnit...

"Did he order you to keep his precious gem safe?" asked Raven, advancing to within arm's reach of Slade.

Slade didn't answer. This was not how he had envisioned this conversation going. He had hoped to force Raven into the light and drag a tearful confession of what her true role in this charade was out of her by force. He had hoped to induce her friends to denounce her, to curse her, or to recoil in fear. He had been waiting for this!

This was not how it was supposed to work!

While Raven held Slade off, Devastator had slipped around to assist the others, who were even now, picking themselves up off the ground. Cyborg (of course) couldn't help but contribute a comment. "Wait," he said, "Raven has the Gem?"

"No," said Robin, and the tone of his voice told Slade that the game was up, "Raven is the Gem."

Scowling at Robin and Raven in turn, Slade realized he now had no choice. His fun was ruined, but at least the mission was complete. It was time to leave.

"I'll be sure to give him your regards," he said to Raven, and with a thought, he phased himself through the floor, leaving only a circle of fire on the ground to mark his passage. It was singularly disappointing that he had not gotten the chance to turn the others against Raven, but perhaps that would come later. In any event, he had fulfilled his orders to the letter, and would now be able to devote his time to more important pursuits.

That at least was his assumption right up until the point where something reached through the floor and dragged him back up into the chamber. Before he knew what the hell was going on, he found himself staring Raven in the eye once again, his body encased in her black energy, while she hovered over him like a puppeteer controlling a marionette.

"I'm not finished yet!" she shouted at him. "This time, I have a message for you."

Slade knew before she acted that this was going to be unpleasant.

She slammed him up into the ceiling like a rubber ball, then down into the ground, and across the room into a pile of rubble, which she dumped unceremoniously on his head. "You tell him he'll have to destroy me before I help him!" she shouted at him.

"Tell him yourself," snarled Slade back. "The hour is near."

He had nothing further he wanted to say to her, but clearly he had made her angrier than he had anticipated. In retrospect, that might not have been such a good idea...

Raven yelled a war-cry and catapulted him across the room, batting him up and down like a pinball against anything that came to hand. The other Titans, even Devastator, fell back to one side of the chamber as she laid bare her powers and let them tear into him like a voracious wolverine. Six tons of rubble flew into the air at her command and packed themselves around him like a straightjacket. He was just gathering the energy to try and blast them off of him when she let out a primal shriek and sent a massive wave of pure negative energy in the form of a cawing raven, screaming into his packed debris cluster. The entire debris field exploded with him inside it, hurtling him down to the ground like a shot bird, and scattering rubble in every direction. He landed with his head bent at an angle, his every nerve screaming in pain. Devastator himself would have been hard pressed to conjure up a better explosion than that, and yet as he looked up, he saw Raven still hovering over him, hands raised, as if ready to throw down yet more pain.

This was getting out of hand.

"I'm not afraid of you any more!" shouted Raven defiantly as Slade slowly picked himself up out of the rubble. None of the other Titans moved to interfere. Perhaps they did not dare to.

He saw his opening.

"You might not fear me," he said, resetting his neck with a sickening pop. "But look who's afraid of you."

The words had the effect he had hoped for. Her concentration, and with it, her rage, faltered. She hesitated, turned, and looked back at the other five Titans, all of whom were staring at her in various degrees of utter shock. Slade saw the light dim out of Raven's eyes, saw her rage subside as she realized what she was doing, and smirked under his mask. The truth, as always, was more damaging than any lie.

It was long-past time to go. He turned and phased through the wall, leaving a trace of fire in his wake. This time, nothing tried to stop him. Let her try to explain this one to her friends. After seeing what they had seen, after Robin had made his realizations, Slade was fairly confident she would be lucky if they didn't try to burn her at the stake...

It was, after all, what Slade would have done in their places.

*--------------------------------------------------------------------------------*

The common room of the Tower was quiet, quieter that it had ever been maybe, despite the fact that all six of them were arrayed within it. It was as though the very room itself had stilled its own systems, listening to Raven's every word with as much intensity as the other five Titans did.

She took a sip from the mug of hot tea in her hands, and spoke without looking up.

"The ancient order used the name 'Scath' to protect the identity of their master," she said. "We know him as 'Trigon'."

She heard a sharp hiss as someone caught their breath. She knew who it was without looking.

The journey home had been spent in total, abject silence, largely of Raven's own making. The others had seen her in all her rage and wrath before, that much was a caution but not a surprise. But the slow realization, if not of the full explanation of what was happening, then at least of significant pieces of it, that had been a much different prospect. She had expected them to demand the full story right then and there. She had at least expected that they would be falling over each other to ask questions, especially Robin. And yet, perhaps the scale of the affair was so great, the questions so vast and the implications of them so terrifying, that they all resolved silently to wait until they were all back at the Tower, and could hear the matter from her laid out in one simple narrative. And so it was that, except for a few tentative questions from Beast Boy to ensure that she was actually all right, none of them had said anything at all.

None of them were hurt significantly, bruises, welts, rope burns, and other minor injuries notwithstanding, and so all of them, immediately upon arriving, had filed silently into the common room. There had been many looks and glances between the others pregnant with meaning, or perhaps she had just imagined that there were. She had spent most of the car ride with her eyes shut so as not to see the accusing looks she expected were on the others' faces. Accordingly, she did not know who it was that had spent the entire ride back with their hand gently laid on her shoulder, though in practice she could feel the thick glove through her uniform. It helped her remain calm. It helped her imagine that maybe it wasn't going to be as bad as she thought. It helped her... not to decide so much, for she already knew what she was going to do, but rather to come to terms with the decision.

And so it was, after they had all entered the common room, after Cyborg had made her a mug of herbal tea without a word, after Beast Boy had gently guided her to a couch and sat her down, sitting next to her also without a word as the others took up positions on chairs, the other couch, or just standing, so it was that Raven began to speak.

And she didn't stop.

She told them everything. Everything, every dream, every action, every scrap of information she knew, laying it all down without permitting herself to censor the flow. Every word was torture, every sentence had to be clawed from her unwilling throat like a rabid animal, so desperately protective had she been of this information, but she refused to stop, and slogged on, admission after admission, secret after secret. She told them about her nightmares, about the flames and the blood and the bodies petrified in the streets. She told them about Slade, about their meeting in the cathedral, about what he had said to her on the roof, about the Mark of Scath burnt into her hands and body. She told them about the prophecy, and who had spoken it, and why, and what it meant, about Azarath, about Azar and the monks of that doomed planet who had taken her in willingly, and trained her to control her emotions and wield her powers in service of Good. The others had said nothing, listening only, and as the full magnitude of what she was telling them began to sink in, she saw their expressions change slowly from concern to astonishment, and then to shock. She kept on anyway. She told them about entering David's mind for the first time, and what had happened to her there, about the shame and fear she had felt, about why she had hidden all this from them. She made no excuses, asked no forgiveness, did nothing but tell and tell and tell until the words began spilling out on their own accord, and she could not stop.

When she finally got to the events of this evening, only then did she raise her eyes, and turn to David, sitting quietly like the others in a chair, and watching her expectantly. Only then did she make eye contact as she slowly, inexorably, explained what she had done tonight. Waves of panic and fear and shame broke over her as she described how she had violated every rule of telepathic contact, broken her own restrictions on what she was allowed to do with her powers. She left nothing out. She described, in exquisite detail, how she had entered David's mind without permission, how she had fought with Devastator, what he had told her about himself, and David, and about the things to come. She explained how she had sat there and watched part of his encounter with Terra from within his own head, sparing no words for what she had done, and finally finished off by describing how it was that she had come within a hair's breadth of striking him dead from within his own mind, stating nothing but the facts, laying the cards out upon the table for everyone to see. The only things she did not tell of were the conversations she had had with Gold and the others, for those tales, if not the rest, were not hers to tell.

And when it was finally over, when the well of confessions and secrets had finally run dry, only then did Raven lift her head, to see what the reaction to all that she had told was to be. Robin was standing over her, and his face was almost blank, as though for once, he did not know what to say. No lecture or stern warning did he have to present, this was far beyond him, and he knew it. Starfire was pale, paler at least than normal, her hazel eyes filled with concern and compassion. Cyborg had stood up, he occasionally paced when he was very upset, she knew, and he had been pacing back and forth for the last half hour. Yet he did not look angry so much as worried, and every so often he would stop to lay a hand on David's shoulder, who very much appeared to need it. David was sunk over in his chair, his eyes squeezed shut, his hands trembling as he fiddled nervously with his baton like it was a set of prayer beads, and she had seen him wincing periodically during her tale, yet he had not become angry and stormed out of the room, as she had half-expected he would. Likely whatever reaction he was having was simply subsumed in shock. And Beast Boy...

...

She couldn't even bear to look at Beast Boy.

He was sitting next to her, quieter than he had likely ever been in his life, and his hand was on her shoulder, and had not left it. At times his grip had tightened, at times it had relaxed, at times she wanted nothing more than to throw it off, and at other times she had wanted to grab his hand with hers and just squeeze it, but she had mastered herself and done none of those things. What his expression was, she did not know, for she could not force herself to look at him, for fear of what condemnation she might read in his emerald features and sea-green eyes.

"So," said Cyborg, "you're... sayin' that we're up against Trigon?" She nodded, chancing a look up, and watched as he took a deep breath and brought his hand to his forehead. "Oh man..." he said, lacking anything better to say. In the face of a flat statement like that, there was nothing to say

"His cruelty is legendary, even on my world," ventured Starfire. Raven had no idea that either Cyborg or Starfire had ever heard of Trigon, but then she hadn't really asked, had she?

"So, what makes you go all glowy in the dark?"

The question was so perfectly Beast Boy, such an absurd thing to ask given everything she'd just said, that Raven actually turned to him in surprise before she even remembered that she was avoiding doing so. And then it was too late, she was looking straight at him, and him at her, and he looked... no different at all than he had a hundred times before. He was a little more subdued certainly, his eyes wider than usual and sparkling with concern, sitting on his heels on the couch and waiting for her to answer his inquiry, but of condemnation there was nothing, of hatred there was nothing, of fear there was nothing, and the shock of realizing that choked off her reply until she had to take another sip of tea to cover. He wasn't angry, and he wasn't yelling at her, as he had in the quarry. He looked concerned, he looked worried, he looked a bit surprised certainly, but he looked just like himself.

But then, she realized, he still didn't know the biggest revelation of them all. One that she had thus far avoided, the one at the center of everything.

She tried to ease into it. "It's a warning," she said. "It means Trigon is coming, and the way he gets here is through me. I'm not just a person, I'm a portal."

Robin, alone among the other Titans, seemed to pick up on the obvious question she had been leading to. The one that explained it all.

"But, Raven," he asked, "why you?"

Raven closed her eyes. "Because," she said, "Trigon... is my father."

The silence that greeted that nuclear statement was deafening. She felt Beast Boy's hand freeze on her shoulder, she heard five teenagers' breaths all catch at once, she felt the stares, the shock, the stigma, through her eyelids, and yet at the same time, she felt a liberating weight fall off of her. It was all out in the open. At long last, it was all revealed.

"Bad things are going to happen soon," she said, standing up and turning away from the others to avoid their frozen stares. She walked towards the enormous windows of the common room, staring at her own reflection in them. "Really bad things. And it's gonna be my fault. I thought I could handle this alone... I tried..." She looked down at her hand, where not long before the runes of Scath had been emblazoned like scarlet letters. "But I was wrong," she said simply. It was all the explanation she could give, all the excuse she had for the deception and the concealment. No excuse at all.

Someone reached out and laid a hand on her shoulder, and when she turned around, she saw Starfire standing behind her.

"For confiding in us, we are most humbled."

Before Raven could react to this, Robin and Cyborg had joined her at the window. "I've only got one question," said the half-robotic Titan. "How do we stop him?"

Raven literally did not know what to say. "We don't," she said, still barely able to credit that they were... that they weren't angry. They weren't afraid. Didn't they understand?!

She was about to try and force the understanding down their throats, when all of a sudden someone snuck up behind her, and slid an arm around her shoulders. She turned her head in reflexive annoyance to see Beast Boy grinning, actually grinning up at her, and the incongruity was so strong it struck her dumb on the spot.

"But that doesn't mean we still can't try," said Beast Boy.

"I told you that we wouldn't let Slade get whatever he was after," said Robin. "We won't let Trigon get it either."

She felt tears coming on, and shut her eyes to block them. "You guys don't understand..." she said.

Cyborg's hard, heavy hand landed on her shoulder like a twenty pound weight. "Yeah, we do," he said, and his voice was as sure and certain as it always was, a big brother's voice, confident, calm, and clear. "We understand plenty," he said, "and we're gonna stop this guy, whatever it takes."

He sounded so... certain of it, they all did, that she couldn't bring herself to protest any more, let alone to scream that they had to run away from her as far and as fast as possible, no matter how much she knew she knew better. She turned away so that they wouldn't see the tears leaking through her shut eyes, but Beast Boy's arm was still draped around her shoulders, and when she heard him say "Hey, look at that," she couldn't help but open her eyes, to find that the sun was rising, framing them all with golden light, as she stood there amidst her friends who, despite her best efforts to the contrary, despite the fact that she was the self-confessed living embodiment of the apocalypse, were all still willing to stay with her.

She knew they were all wrong. She knew the sunrise wasn't an omen. She knew everything was going to end, and that it was all going to be her fault, but despite all that, for one, brief moment, she believed.

*--------------------------------------------------------------------------------*

Nobody had wanted this night of terror and soul-baring to end more than Raven, and yet, when Robin finally told them all to go and get some sleep, she knew there remained one thing she still had to do.

Five of them had stayed up to watch the sun rise, something Raven herself had done before of course, occasionally even in the company of Robin or Cyborg whenever they chanced to get up earlier than usual, but she couldn't remember a time when all of them had done it.

And of course, this wasn't one either, for one of them had not stayed.

He had slipped out un-detected, something he was good at and had only gotten better at as his familiarity with the other Titans grew, and theirs with him, and when they noticed that he was gone, Starfire and Beast Boy had been on the point of finding him and dragging him back up to the common room in a gesture of solidarity, but Raven had told them not to, and thankfully, Cyborg and Robin had backed her up. If David had wanted to make a fuss of himself, or even attract attention at all, he could have with a word or even a sound. He had not. And Raven could guess why.

Raven found him in the basement.

Cyborg had set up a handful of folding chairs after the last time one of them had been forced to spend the night down in the medical bay, with several of the others looking on. Now that Raven thought about it, she remembered that the person in question had been David, beaten to within an inch of his life by Terra on the day they had all been ambushed by Slade. Cyborg hadn't bothered to clear the chairs away, and David was sitting in one of them, his head bowed, his baton held in one hand. The baton was on 'fire', shimmering softly in the low light of the Tower's basement, and David had it held up in front of his face, silently watching it burn, visualizing it by means of light or molecules, she couldn't tell. The light it cast was sufficient for Raven to see that he had changed out of his uniform, back into his civilian clothes and sneakers. Despite the fact that, as it turned out, he was as deeply involved in this thing as she was, she had no idea what could possibly be going through his mind now. She at least had had her entire life to prepare herself for the fact that she was one day going to be the vessel of her father's re-animation. David had been given no such warning.

He made no sign that he noticed her presence, not even when she walked slowly towards him, her footsteps echoing through the basement. His eyes never left the steel baton in his hand, not even when she took a seat in one of the other folding chairs.

"I didn't think it would be like this," he said, after a time.

"Like what?" she asked.

He didn't answer immediately, turning the baton over in his hands. "I could see things," he said, "and break them if I wanted to. I thought it was me."

"Devastator picked you," said Raven. This wasn't what she had come to say, but she would play along until the time came. After everything, she owed him that much. "He wouldn't tell me why, but he picked you specifically."

"Lucky me..." said David. He shut his baton off and stared off into space, remaining quiet for a little bit, before picking at a different thread of conversation.

"So I guess," he said, "this explains why my powers don't work like other kinetics' do?"

"Yeah," she said.

"And... that's why yours don't work on me sometimes? Like in the street?"

She suppressed the urge to wince. She wasn't proud of what she had done, and he knew it. "Yeah,"

"And the ghosts in the library?"

"They were Trigon's servants. Trigon's servants can't hurt you."

"So is Slade, isn't he?"

"Slade's different," she said. She was sure of that much, even if she wasn't sure how he was different.

Despite everything, a faint smile crossed David's face. "So I guess you were right," he said.

"About what?"

He turned to face her for the first time. "I was sent here to kill you guys."

Maybe he hadn't meant a rebuke by it, but she felt an implied one, and lowered her eyes. "David..."

"I guess they decided that the problem with Terra was that she knew she was a plant. Figured they'd get better results from somebody who didn't."

"David you're..." she had been planning to say that he wasn't a plant, save of course that he was one, involuntary though that roll had been. "... you're not like Terra," she said.

"I am exactly like Terra," he responded, no histrionics or shouting, he didn't even raise his voice. "In a lot of ways at least."

"That's not true."

"Yes it is," he said, "and if you don't think so, then you don't know either of us as well as you ought to."

"David, you're a Titan," said Raven. "You're one of us."

"I'm a Titan because you guys decided to make me into one, and I went along with it. That's the only reason I'm here, and it's the only reason Terra was here. It's also, by the way, the reason Terra turned into a traitor. Slade approached her, not the other way around, convinced her she didn't have a choice but to help him destroy you guys."

Raven didn't know what to say, and so said nothing, and let David continue. "Do you know why that worked?" he asked. "I mean you'd never turn on the others whatever Slade said, right? It worked for the same reason that Robin's training worked on me. Because she didn't want a choice. She wanted someone to tell her what to do. So did I. For me, it was you guys. For her, it was Slade."

She waited for him to finish the thought, not wanting to interrupt or antagonize him further, not after tonight, but he seemed to have made his point, and turned his head away again. "And you can stop looking at me like that," he said. "I'm not running off anywhere. I'm a Titan now, thanks to you guys. I couldn't stop being that even if I wanted to. I just wanted to feel... normal for a little while." He paused for a few moments. "And that stuff doesn't make what Terra did any less of her fault," he said finally, turning back to Raven, "but I'm a lot like Terra. A lot. And if it had been Slade or the Hive or anyone else that I'd run into instead of you guys, then I know exactly what I'd be doing right now."

"I don't believe that," said Raven.

David shook his head. "Well I'm thrilled to hear that..." he said more bitterly than he probably intended, for he immediately winced and clammed back up.

Raven sighed. "David," she said, "I'm... sorry."

He didn't respond immediately, and didn't turn back to her.

"Why didn't you just ask me?" he asked.

She could have claimed she didn't know, or made something up, but she had resolved to be brutally honest with herself tonight, and she refused to back down now. "Because I was afraid," she said. "I was afraid you'd say no, and I was more afraid you'd say yes and ask why. I should have asked you, I should have done a lot of things, but I didn't, because all I could think about was finding a way to stop what was happening without letting everyone find out about it. And I thought Devastator might know a way, so I did it." She took a deep breath. "And none of that is an excuse for it, David. I'm just... I'm sorry. I wish I hadn't done it."

He closed his eyes. "It's all right..."

Raven was honestly stunned. "It... seriously?" she asked.

"Of course not," snapped David angrily. "You broke into my mind and tried to kill me! Of course it's not all right, it's about as far from all right as you can get, Raven!" He visibly stopped himself and took a deep breath, forcing his anger back under the surface. "But," he said, "I'll get over it..."

That made a bit more sense at least. "You... don't need to get over it."

"No," he said, "I don't. And I probably shouldn't, because this sort of thing keeps happening. But... I will anyway. We both know that. Probably not tonight, but... I'll get over it..."

She nodded. "Thanks."

"Yeah, well, expect me to remind you of it the next time I piss you off," he said, sounding more annoyed than angry, which was a tradeoff she could live with. "Is that what you came down here for? To say you were sorry?"

She shook her head. "No," she said. "I came down here to give you this."

Raven stood up produced a small box from within her cloak, unlabeled and unadorned, and handed it to David, who raised an eyebrow and took it gently. No larger than a wallet, it was nevertheless surprisingly heavy. David shook it slowly, and looked back up at Raven in puzzlement. "What's... this for?" he asked.

"It's like you said," said Raven, turning to go. "We don't know each other very well. And... I wish we did."

Despite everything, David laughed. "Raven, you just told us, like, your entire life story. And you've been inside my head twice, you probably know more things about me than I do."

"Probably," said Raven, as she paused in the doorway. "But I wish I knew you better."

David stared silently at her, until she finally smirked. "Get some sleep," she said, and she walked out of the door and down towards the elevator to return to the top of the Tower, leaving David behind to make what sense of it he could.

And within the room, David listened to her footsteps disappearing, and only then did he open the box slowly, stare into it for a few seconds, and slowly scratched his head as he tried to puzzle out what in the hell the meaning of this could possibly be...

... for inside the box, was a small, ounce-sized bar of pure Gold.

[LadyTevar]

Chapter 29: Be All My Sins Remembered

"To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
devoutly to be wish'd.

- William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act III, Scene 1

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In her own way, she was always floating.

It was a funny thing to realize now, but she was. Always. Even when walking on the ground, she seemed to be floating, as though temporarily conceding to gravity's laws only because it was expected of her. She moved like a dancer, like an angel, her green eyes sparkling like emeralds, her red hair framed by the sun in a halo. She was running, and yet she seemed to be moving in slow motion. Somehow, he had plenty of time to study the expression on her face, the glowing green energy around her closed hands, the deep swirling gems of onyx and obsidian adorning her bracers and gorget. A vision of light in the descending darkness, a valkyrie coming to rescue him and take him home. He wanted to reach out to her, call out to her, something, but his body and voice would not obey any longer. It was all he could do to force his eyes to remain open long enough for her to reach him, gathering him up in her arms, screaming his adopted name with enough force to shatter glass, though it registered as nothing more than a dull echo. The world around could fade, or burn, or crumble like stale bread, but she was here, and nothing else mattered.

A strange fate indeed, to realize it only now, when it could no longer make a difference, unless of course realizing it made all the difference in the world.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"But, Robin," said Starfire, "I do not understand. You have told me many times of the adventures you had alongside the man of bats. Surely, even if you and he are no longer teammates, he would be willing to come to our assistance?"

Robin sighed. "He probably would, Star," he said. He expected Starfire to ask the obvious question, but apparently she could tell the answer from his tone and expression.

"Except that you are not going to ask him for assistance, are you?" she said, a question that was not a question.

"It's not that simple," he replied.

Once again he expected the obvious question, and once again she was not forthcoming with it. Indeed she was quiet for long enough that he raised his head to look at her. "You don't want to know why it's not that simple?"

"I know that you do not wish to speak of it," she said. It would have been a rebuke from anyone but Starfire, who followed it up with a sweet smile. "You have the look upon you."

Robin raised a mask-covered eyebrow. "Look?" he asked. "What look?"

"This look," she said, and tried to imitate an exaggerated expression of brooding concentration. So incongruous was this on her light and almost bubbly features that Robin actually laughed, which, he realized belatedly, was probably the point. A moment later, and she was laughing too, and the weight on his shoulders seemed to lift, as it always did when she laughed.

"But if you do not wish to ask the assistance of the man of bats," said Starfire, gently returning to the point, "then perhaps instead I could ask Galfore. All I need do is ask, and he would come at the head of a host of Tamaranean Warriors to fight alongside us."

Robin felt the weight return. He was still thinking of how to say what he knew he needed to say when she answered her own suggestion.

"You... do not wish for me to do this either," she said.

He didn't answer.

"Robin..."

"Star, I've been talking with Raven about this, and she doesn't think that any army or other hero we bring will help if it comes down to a fight."

A worried look briefly crossed Starfire's face. "Raven believes that there is no hope at all."

"And she's wrong about that," responded Robin, "but she's right about one thing. We can't fight Trigon directly, not even with an army of Tamaraneans."

"So then what are we to do?"

"We're not going to fight him at all. We're going to make sure he never appears. We'll build a saferoom in the Tower, use Cyborg's security systems and Raven's spells to make sure nothing gets in. When Trigon's servants come for her, we'll meet them on our own turf and stop them from using her to summon him."

It sounded so simple in theory, though both of them knew it was not, and yet Starfire penetrated, as usual, to the heart of the matter with one question.

"But surely, Robin," she asked, "the assistance of either the man of bats or the Tamaranean royal guard would be of as much assistance in fighting Trigon's minions as they would in fighting Trigon himself?"

He didn't answer.

"Robin, please," said Starfire after they had walked along another thirty feet in silence. "I simply wish to understand what your intentions are." She approached him cautiously, laying a hand on his shoulder, and he stopped. "There is no shame in asking for the help of our friends to fight against Trigon the Terrible. No one will think any less of us as heroes if we request such a thing. I know that... that you do not wish for us to be perceived as unable to protect ourselves or this city, but if you and he were truly comrades in arms, then that is not what he will - "

"I already asked him, Star," said Robin without turning around.

Starfire hesitated. "You asked for the assistance of the man of bats?"

"I tried to," said Robin. "I tried the entire Justice League. They're not available."

"Not... available?"

"Their message just said they were on some other planet dealing with an interstellar threat of some kind. It wasn't specific, except to say that they won't be back for a month or so."

"Then I will speak to Galfore," said Starfire with a nod. "If the Justice League cannot assist us, then the Tamaranean Royal Guard will."

Robin simply shook his head. "Galfore sent me a message last night."

Starfire blinked. "He sent... you a message?"

"The Citadel have attacked Tamaran."

Robin winced as Starfire was struck dumb by the news, gasping in horror. "What?" she exclaimed. "Why did you not tell me of this immediately?!"

"Because he asked me not to," said Robin as quickly as he could. "He said it was just a minor raid, so minor that he was worried that it was a plot of Blackfire's to get you to go running off to Tamaran or something. He said he couldn't figure out any other reason why the Citadel would launch an attack that the Tamaranean army will have dealt with in a couple of weeks."

The surprise on Starfire's face began to be replaced with realization. "... except," she said carefully, "that if the Tamaranean army is occupied with the Citadel for that long, they will be unable to come to our aid before Trigon is scheduled to return."

Robin nodded, exhaling slowly. "Exactly."

"And... it is the same with the others?"

Robin nodded again. "Dr. Light announced yesterday that he has a new Superweapon being built in Antarctica that he's going to use to destroy Steel City. The Titans East went down there to stop him. And all of the other honorary Titans are either busy with random attacks in their home towns, or aren't responding to their communicators."

"You believe that Trigon has arranged all this?"

"I'm certain of it," said Robin. "Terra told David that Trigon has servants besides Slade, and Raven said there's an ancient order that worships him. Either he set this all in motion himself, or he used his agents to do it. Probably both."

Starfire took a deep breath. "Then," she said, "we are alone?"

Robin could only nod in reply. "It looks that way."

And to his surprise, Starfire's response was to lift her head, smile, and nearly crush the air out of his lungs with her version of a light hug.

"Then we shall emerge victorious by ourselves," she said, with perfect certainty and warmth, "and reveal to Trigon that all his efforts have been wasted."

Robin, who had been bracing for Starfire's anger rather than this, was temporarily unable to speak (partly because he could not draw breath). He had been afraid that she would either become furiously angry with him, or (perhaps worse yet), invoke the silent treatment on him, as only she could.

"But, Robin," she said with a smirk as she released him. "Regardless of what Galfore said, you should have informed me of what his message contained."

Robin could only rub the back of his neck and look sheepish. "I didn't want you to worry."

"My only worry, Robin," said Starfire with another beaming smile, is that you will once again begin failing to confide in us when you know that you should. So long as you do not do that, I do not care what plans Trigon believes he has. There is no force in the universe that can stop us together." And with that, she walked on down the street, leaving Robin to wonder if the temperature had actually just increased, or if it was just his imagination...

He caught up with her after a few moments, and they walked the next few blocks in silence. Battery Street had been fully repaired since David and Cinderblock's destruction of most of the waterfront, and the sparkling white sidewalks and freshly-laid asphalt seemed to sparkle in the late summer sun. It was unseasonably good weather, and the public were out to take advantage of it, families picnicking and playing in the small park between Battery Street and the waterline, acknowledging Starfire and Robin with smiles and stares and the occasional bashful request for an autograph, but mostly minding their own affairs, content in the knowledge that they were under their protection, and that with the Titans once more on patrol, all would be well today.

Robin was grateful for the apparent break, because while he would have liked nothing more than to give them all a long rest to recover from what had happened, the alerts kept on coming in, and the patrol routes still needed to be run. Fortunately, one benefit of having six Titans, rather than five, was that they could be divided up into three different patrols without leaving anybody by themselves. And so, after a bare two days, he had ordered a resumption of their civic patrols, though this time he set aside all pretense and assigned them manually, rather than by lottery. Cyborg and David would cover downtown, he figured David was in need of a little sanity after everything that had happened, and Cyborg was the best person for that sort of level-headed assurance. Against his own best instincts, he had paired Beast Boy and Raven together to cover the suburbs. Normally that was like pouring nitroglycerin over open flames, but Beast Boy had been so... single-minded in trying to open her back up after the big revelation that he figured it was worth a shot, even if the only reaction Beast Boy got was convincing Raven to blow him up.

And of course, just by coincidence, that left Robin and Starfire to cover the waterfront.

"It is a beautiful day, is it not?" said Starfire.

It was, of course, a beautiful day, even considering that this was Southern California, where warm sunny days were a regular occurrence, but while Starfire was taking in every sight with the same enthralled wonder, Robin couldn't keep his eyes off of her. Star had been on Earth for several years now, had been patrolling Jump City for almost as long, and yet it was as though every time she went on patrol with him, she was seeing the city fresh, for the first time. She no longer asked him why people put hot dogs on their mustard (yes, that's right), or about the purpose of parking meters and the reason why people so diligently fed them on all days but Sunday, but she had lost none of her wonderment at the sight of the city alive with all its people, nor in her determination to make sure everyone with her felt the same wonder she did, by one means or another.

"Robin?"

Robin snapped out of his musings, suddenly realizing that Starfire had said something else that he had completely missed. "Uh... what?" he asked, flustered, but Starfire merely smiled.

"I asked if you believed that the others were managing well."

It took Robin a second to re-orient his brain around that subject. "They'd call us if anything was happening," he said.

"That was not precisely my meaning," said Starfire. "I am... worried, about Raven in particular."

Robin nodded. "Me too, Star," he said. "But I think getting out and doing something will help her take her mind off things while we get everything ready for..." he hesitated, "for whatever happens."

Starfire seemed, if not convinced, at least partly mollified. "I hope that Beast Boy is able to assist her."

"I hope we all can," said Robin, an unthinkable statement to make to the others, but with Starfire it was... different. They both knew that.

"Perhaps we should determine if their patrols have proceeded uneventfully?" asked Starfire, brightening. Robin wasn't sure if it was a good idea to disturb them or not, but Starfire was clearly worried, and even though they had all promised to alert one another at the first sign of danger, surely it couldn't hurt to check in...

"Titans, come in," said Robin as he opened his communicator. Static filled the screen for a moment before it was split in half by a black dividing line, and the faces of Cyborg and Beast Boy appeared.

"What's up?" asked Cyborg. "You guys got problems?"

"Just checking in," said Robin. "What's the situation?"

"Dude, this place is like a sitcom," said Beast Boy in what Robin hoped was mock disgust. "We haven't even had a jaywalker."

"Same here," said Cyborg, "even the beat cops are lookin' bored. How much longer we gonna be doin' this?"

Complaints were good, Robin reminded himself. Complaints were normal. "We're gonna run a full patrol route," he insisted. "I want Slade and his minions to see that he hasn't scared us off, and I want the citizens to be able to relax. We'll rendezvous back at the Tower at dusk. Until then, we show the flag."

Cyborg grumbled, but oddly enough, Beast Boy did not. Indeed Robin caught him looking up from the communicator every couple seconds, as though watching something else.

Robin wasn't the only one who noticed. "Yo, BB, you got something goin' on over there?" asked Cyborg, sounding almost hopeful.

Cyborg's question jolted Beast Boy back into the conversation. "Uh, no!" he yelped. "No, it's... it's nothing." He glanced up from the communicator again, and there was a muffled crash from somewhere off-screen. "Look um... I'll call you guys back in a little bit, okay?" he said quickly, and closed the communicator once more.

Robin and Starfire shared a quick look. Star looked worried. But before he could ask Cyborg the obvious question, Cyborg answered it.

"Just leave 'em be," he said. "They'll be all right."

"Cyborg, if there's a problem..."

"Trust me," said Cyborg, in that voice of his that meant an argument was brewing if Robin chose to push it. "Y'all can help best by just stayin' back for a while. Let BB handle it."

A glance to Starfire, who gave him the slightest of nods, indicated that she concurred. "All right," he said reluctantly. "Where's David?"

"His com unit's having problems. I'm workin' on it. He's fine."

"Put him on for a second, I want to make sure - "

"Robin," said Cyborg, letting the name hang for a moment to ensure he had Robin's full attention. "I got this one, okay?"

Robin and Cyborg stared at one another for a few seconds. "... fine," said Robin at last. "Check back in an hour."

"Roger that. Cyborg out."

The screen went dark, and Robin clipped his communicator back to his belt, grumbling softly to himself. The soft touch of Starfire's hand on his shoulder brought an end to that, and he turned his head to see her smiling serenely at him.

"Since the others are not in danger, Robin, and since there appears to be no crime being undertaken presently, might we not proceed to the carnival grounds?" she asked. "It is the next place we are to visit, is it not?"

It actually wasn't, and Robin knew it, and for that matter so did Starfire, but it was nearby, and something about the way she said it made the prospect suddenly a tempting one. "Um... I, maybe when we're done with our route..."

"Robin," said Starfire, "surely if our intent is merely to show that we are not afraid of Slade, then there can be no harm in our expanding our patrol to include the carnival? I believe... it would be of benefit.

In the back of his mind, Robin was wondering when he had completely lost control of the team, and yet right now that didn't seem half as important a thought as it probably should have been. Right now in fact, there was very little he could think about except Starfire's sweet smile and sparkling emerald eyes as she entreated him. And before he even knew what was happening, he was walking down Battery towards the carnival, Starfire literally floating next to him. In the back of his mind he knew that he was being played by Starfire and Cyborg, if not by the others, but given the prospect of just spending the day with Starfire, he really couldn't bring himself to care.

And that's when the van exploded.

An unmarked gray van, parked on the curb, blew up with the force of an artillery shell, blossoming into a mushroom of fire and smoke, and sending a shock wave rippling up and down the street. Windows shattered, branches broke, and a hail of shrapnel rained down upon Robin and Starfire. Robin reacted by reflex, grabbing the side of his cape and swirling it around himself, the unbreakable titanium polymer weave easily repelling the bits of aluminum and steel, while Starfire raised a hand to protect her eyes, fragments bouncing off her as though she were made of cast iron.

The two heroes spared only a glance to one another to see that they were each all right, and then instantly both were off, racing towards the demolished vehicle as fast as they could. Robin had only taken half a dozen steps before he realized that something was up. The blast had been powerful, but a real car bomb, the kind used by terrorists, would have leveled half of the block. As it was, it had done nothing more than scorch the walls of the nearby buildings and smash a few windows. No civilians (thank God) had been close enough for the blast to injure them, nor had the bomber waited until he and Star were within danger range themselves. So then what could have been the purpose of -.

A prickling in the back of his neck made Robin stop in his tracks, and slowly turn around.

"Well just look what we got here..."

Starfire turned around and landed next to Robin, looking back up the way they had come, as one by one, a series of figures emerged from the smoke and dust. A countless army of identical teenagers filled the street from one side to the other, each one clad in a solid red jumpsuit with a black and white division sign emblazoned upon it, all of them smirking and snickering to one another.

"Looks like we got y'all outnumbered," shouted one of the dozens of identical clones. "Just two o' you, and as many o' me as y'all can handle."

"Billy Numerous," called Starfire back to the crimson duplicator, her fists igniting green as she stared him down. "For what purpose did you destroy that automated conveyance?!"

"Billy didn't destroy anything," came another voice, from the other direction. Robin turned back to see four more figures advancing out of the dust, not clones this time, but individual teenagers, strutting like arena champions as they walked down the street in unison. Their leader, in the center of their line, was a pace or two ahead of the others, her cat-like eyes darting back and forth between Starfire and Robin, like a predator deciding which prey animal to eat first.

"Jinx..." said Robin, narrowing his eyes. "What's the matter? The Hive run out of parking meters to rob?"

"Oh, we're not here to steal, Robin," said Jinx. "All we want is the two of you."

"Big mistake," replied Robin, sliding around Starfire until they were standing back to back. The sea of Billy Numerouses spread into a semicircle, enclosing the two Titans in the middle of the street between themselves and the four other Hivers.

"How do you figure that, stoplight?" asked one of the Billies. "I got you a hundr'd to two right here."

"Then we'll each beat you fifty times," replied Robin. "And we'll let the others do the same when they get here."

All five Hivers exploded into laughter, the chorus of Billies drowning out the others. "You think we didn't plan this out?" asked See-More. "This here's a trap, bird-boy. The others are gettin' jumped right now, just like you."

"You two are worm-food," snickered Gizmo, practically giggling with anticipation.

"We're gonna waste you, and all four of your friends at the same time," said Mammoth, cracking his knuckles in preparation for the festivities to come.

Robin turned back to look at Starfire, who was now pressed back up against him, ready for anything. They exchanged no words, this was hardly the time for them after all, but Starfire gave him the slightest nod, and Robin took a deep breath, and turned back to face Jinx, drawing the telescoping bo staff out of his belt, and extending it to full length.

Jinx took a step or two forward, grinning evilly. "I know you Titans think you can take us all out whenever you want," she said, "but your friends aren't gonna help you this time. You really think the two of you can handle all of us at once?"

Robin's only answer was to look from one Hiver to another and back to Jinx, and then to smile.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Roger that, Cyborg out."

Robin's face disappeared as Cyborg deactivated the communicator built into his arm. Only then did he turn back to David, who was standing some five or six feet away, in the shadow of a storefront awning, watching the older Titan carefully, and fiddling with his own communicator, presently closed and silent. "Thanks," he said almost sheepishly.

Cyborg chuckled and shook his head. "Don't mention it, man," he said. "I know how it can get."

"Yeah," said David, "I guess you do." He seemed disinclined to elaborate further, and Cyborg moved on down the street, David falling in beside him. They walked on for another half a block, taking their time. Civilians stopped, pointed, and stared, but that had long-since become normal to Cyborg, and clearly David had enough on his mind to render him completely oblivious.

"So how you holdin' up?" asked Cyborg.

David laughed, shrugging as he did so. "Honestly, I don't know."

"Your head ain't botherin' you again, right?"

"No," he replied, "it's been fine. Which is kind of weird, since it turns out there's something living inside it that wants to kill me."

"Long as he ain't gettin' in your way, and does what you tell him to do, don't much matter what he wants to do," said Cyborg. "Way Raven tells it, that thing needed her to do the dirty work."

David didn't reply, and they walked on another half a minute or so before Cyborg asked another question.

"You and her gonna be... all right?"

David didn't answer immediately, sighing softly and massaging his temples with his hand. "I don't know," he finally said. "I mean..." He trailed off and glanced up at Cyborg, who was still waiting for his answer. "I'll be okay."

"You don't gotta be okay, man," said Cyborg. "There ain't no excuse for what she did, even she knows that. You got every right to be mad."

"Yeah," he said, "but I do have to get over it. And I will... eventually." He sighed again. "It just might take a while."

"You know you can just talk to her," said Cyborg. "Even get mad at her. She ain't gonna blow you up. Hell, way I hear it, she can't blow you up."

"I'm not ready to test that," said David. "And besides, that's... that's just not my thing. I just want to..." he trailed off for a moment. "I don't know what I want."

Cyborg laughed. "Well until you figure it out, man," he said, "how 'bout we do what I want, which is to finish this damn patrol and get back home?"

"Sure thing," said David with a laugh of his own, a bit weak, but something nonetheless. He seemed a bit less down, which was something, Cyborg supposed. Things like this didn't work themselves out overnight after all.

"Don't worry so much," said Cyborg. "We've dealt with all kinds of stuff before. No matter how bad it looks, we always come out on top."

"Raven doesn't agree," said David quietly, glancing furtively up at Cyborg to see if such sentiments were all right to air between the two of them. All this time, and the kid was still watching his words like a hawk.

"Raven said the same damn thing when BB and I went into her head," said Cyborg. He wasn't about to lecture David on the need to keep up face, but they couldn't have him going around thinking they were all screwed. Robin was right about that much. "She's usually pretty calm, but any time somethin' o' hers goes wrong, you'd think the world just ended."

"It... is ending, at least according to her."

"It ain't," said Cyborg. "We ain't gonna let it, all right? None of us came this far, and kicked butt this many times just to let some four-eyed devil reject come down to wreck our shit. Don't matter what it takes, we're gonna drop this guy like a sack of flour and make him wish he'd picked another planet."

David didn't say anything, closing his eyes and breathing slowly. "Hey," said Cyborg, putting a hand on his shoulder, and the psychokinetic raised his head. "He sent a goddamn army at us in Yellowstone, right? Look at all the good that did him. He thought he'd scare Raven into workin' for him instead of trying to fight it, and just managed to get her good and pissed off. And what about you?" He smiled. "Thought you were just some kid he could push around like a chess piece right? And now look." He took a step back, as though admiring David's getup, uniform, baton, communicator, and all. "Next wannabe devil punk gets in your way's gonna wind up in the ER. You think that was all 'part of the plan'?"

David smiled and shook his head. "No..."

"No. That's right. He didn't think we could do that. He didn't you could do that, now did he?"

"No, I guess he didn't," said David.

"You don't gotta guess, he didn't," said Cyborg with a grin. "So you see man, what you have to learn from this little situation is one thing. One very important thing. You know what that is?"

"What?"

"You have to learn that Cyborg," said Cyborg, "is always right."

David burst into laughter, which was of course partly the point. Cyborg merely widened his grin. "Oh you think that's funny?" he asked, in mock anger. "You don't believe me? Do I have to make this more clear?"

"No," said David sarcastically, still coughing down laughs. "No, I believe it."

"Say it with me then."

"You're always right," said David, managing not to roll his eyes this time.

"Who's always right?"

"Cyborg's always right."

"That's right," said Cyborg, "say it again."

"Cyborg is always right," repeated David, a bit more clearly.

"Make me believe you, man."

"Cyborg," said David, forcefully this time, a broad grin on his face, "is always right."

"There you go!" exclaimed Cyborg theatrically, and he clapped David on the back. "Now you got it. Now you see that this ain't no thing at all, because I said so. And why does that make it so?"

"Because Cyborg," said David, laughing again, "is always right."

"My man," said Cyborg. "That's the way. Now come on, I wanna show you somethin'." He led David down the street, towards one of the shops ahead. Something there had caught his eye a week or so ago, but he had refrained from mentioning it until now. This seemed, to him, to be a good moment to bring it up.

The shop in question was a comic book store, one Beast Boy frequented fairly regularly. In addition to the usual comics, card games, and miniatures, the store also sold memorabilia of the various superheroes the country and the rest of the world. Being as it was located in Jump City, much of the merchandise was dedicated to the city's local protectors, the Titans, the sale of which helped the city partly recoup the cost of whatever property damage the Titans and their enemies caused whenever they fought. There were T-shirts, bobblehead dolls, framed photographs, and a hundred other items dedicated to the Titans. None of this was out of the ordinary.

"Check it out," said Cyborg.

David looked over the displayed merchandise in the window of the store and looked puzzled. "I... don't get it," he said. "What are you - "

And then he saw it.

It was hanging on the wall behind the cashier. A series of glossy posters, two feet high and photo-realistic, probably taken with a digital camera. Each poster was of one of the various Titans, caught in a combat position, the background behind them painted up to look vibrant and dramatic, color-coded for the convenience of those who could not instantly recognize which Titan was which. But it was the one nearest to the door, the one with a background of orange and red, the one that had only been there for a week or so, that David was staring at. The one that was a city-sponsored, collectible poster, of himself.

"I think they did a pretty good job, don't you?"

David was unable to answer. He was staring wide-eyed at the poster like he could not believe what he was seeing. On reflection, Cyborg wondered if that wasn't close to the truth. God-knew where the shot had come from, probably some citizen with a cell phone camera, but it was of David standing on a ruined stone staircase, flames and rubble littered all around him. His burning baton was in his right hand, held back and low, and his other hand was extended forward and up, towards some foe unseen, while his eyes had that thousand-yard-stare to them that Cyborg knew indicated that he was presently manipulating something mentally in preparation for an explosion. He looked serious, dangerous, ready-for-action, exactly the sort of thing that would sell well to the kids or whoever else frequented this shop. Not that any of those thoughts were likely passing through David's head right now. He looked like something had just broken his brain.

"You okay?"

David honestly looked like he wasn't sure himself. "I..." he stammered. "I... what the..."

"Hey, least it's a good shot. You should'a seen the first one they made of Robin." He patted David on the back a few times, as though trying to jump start him. "C'mon man, don't tell me you actually didn't expect this sorta thing."

A single look at David's thunderstruck face was enough to confirm to Cyborg that no, he hadn't. As always, the practical implications of his new role had escaped him until he found them staring him in the face.

David was spared further embarrassed sputtering by the intercession of two young kids. No more than eight or nine years old, they were exiting the store, chattering to one another, and one of them carried a rolled up copy of the very same poster David was staring at. The instant they spotted Cyborg and David they both stopped dead in their tracks, and gasped. "Whoa!" shouted one. "Cool!" the other, and then instantly they rushed over and began exclaiming as rapidly as they could, how awesome they thought it was to actually meet two of the Titans, talking over one another breathlessly until Cyborg had to marvel how it was that neither of them passed out.

Cyborg took the lead in talking to the kids, he'd done this a thousand times before after all, and David needed a moment to regain the use of his vocal cords. Both kids swore to Cyborg that they already had his poster up in their bedrooms. He asked them their names, if they had a favorite Titan, the usual, and even agreed to demonstrate shifting his hand into sonic cannon and back, a trick that never failed to produce "oohs" and "aahs". By then, David had recovered enough to awkwardly contribute to the conversation. Some people never got used to being the center of attention, but he was clearly doing his best, and the kids didn't notice anything wrong.

After a couple minutes, the kid with the poster asked (inevitably) if David would autograph his new acquisition. Obvious though the request was to Cyborg, it (of course) caught David by surprise, again, and he was left to sputter for a second before Cyborg providently pulled a pen out of one of his compartments and handed it to him. "Go for it man," he said. "I'm gonna get a hot dog. You want one?"

"Um... no... no thanks, Cy," said David, and when he turned his head to face Cyborg, he had a look of such astonishment in his face that Cyborg had to suppress a laugh, and yet gamely, David took the pen and turned back to the kids, asking them in they wanted him to write anything in particular, and managing, barely, to keep the shock out of his voice. Cyborg laughed and shook his head, and walked across the street to a hot dog vendor, and ordered two hot dogs anyway. If David didn't want one, then he'd have them both. After he got his hot dogs, he turned back to look, and saw that the kids had convinced David to show them his baton up close. He had 'ignited' it for them, and one was gingerly touching the business end with one finger, obviously not entirely convinced that the flames were just an effect. Cyborg chuckled and wolfed one hot dog down in two bites, and was deciding whether or not to do the same to the second one when he heard something from his left, turned to see what it was...

... and dropped the other hot dog.

Standing in the middle of the street, where Cyborg knew that five seconds ago there had been nobody at all, was a young man in a massive red suit of armor, twelve or thirteen feet tall at least, and presently bent over a parked sedan, reaching underneath it. Before Cyborg's eyes, he hefted it into the air over his head as though it were a barbell, and turned towards David, still chatting amicably with the two kids, and unable to see the threat that had just... somehow materialized behind him.

"David, look out!" shouted Cyborg at full volume, and he dropped to one knee, extended his hand, morphing it into his sonic cannon, and fired full blast at the center of the figure's chest.

Too late.

The young man grunted with the effort, and threw the entire car straight at David an instant before Cyborg's shot hit him dead center and blew him off his feet, sending him flying thirty feet down the street straight into another car. But David had only a split second's warning. Turning around to see a car flying straight at his head, he did the only thing he could do, and snapped his baton around like a tennis player. The car exploded like a bomb barely ten feet from David's head, and an instant later, the blossoming mushroom cloud of flames and oily smoke engulfed David, both kids, and the entire storefront, and nothing more could be discerned save for the sound of shattering glass and high pitched screams.

The man in the red armor slowly picked himself up, laughing despite the blast he had taken as he gazed at his own handiwork. "That's what you get when you mess with Adonis!" shouted the young man, grabbing a manhole cover off the ground and throwing it at Cyborg like a discus. Cyborg easily shot it out of the air, but did not pursue Adonis, instead racing back across the street, swatting the smoke out of his face, trying to find any sign of -

"Marcus..."

Cyborg stopped short, Adonis froze, and an instant later, a gust of wind blew the smoke clear, to reveal David, standing exactly where he had been a moment earlier. His baton was pointing forward like a fencing sword, crackling with red energy, and his other hand was held back towards the two little kids who were cowering on the ground together behind him. David's face and uniform were splattered with black motor oil, as were the kids. The storefront had been utterly destroyed, and pools of flaming gasoline and bits of red hot debris lay scattered about like the aftermath of a missile strike, yet neither David nor the two boys appeared to have been harmed in the least, and David was staring directly at Adonis like a rifleman staring down a mad dog.

"Marcus," said David again, and he stepped forward into the street, shaking his head slowly, his voice sounding pained and disappointed, like a teacher addressing a juvenile delinquent who had finally crossed the line. "Oh, Marcus," he repeated a third time, "that was such a bad idea..."

Adonis looked, if not scared, then reasonably put out of sorts, and as the realization slowly dawned on him that he was now outnumbered by two extremely irate Titans, he took a careful step backwards, even as the asphalt and concrete under his feet began to warp and shake at David's command.

A predatory grin slowly crossed Cyborg's face. He stepped into the street as well, raising his sonic cannon and slowly walking towards Adonis.

"My man..." he said, and then it began.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Look um... I'll call you guys back in a little bit, okay?" said Beast Boy, and without waiting for Robin's inevitable objection, he closed the communicator. Immediately he ran over towards the streetlight that Raven was standing next to, carefully stepping over the broken glass from the car window she had just blown out. Raven was standing with her arms folded against the streetlight, her hood pulled up over her head, which was lowered onto her crossed arms, breathing erratically and shaking.

"Whoa, Raven," said Beast Boy, laying a hand on her shoulder. "Are you O-"

"Don't touch me!" screamed Raven, snapping her head around to reveal flaming red eyes. Beast Boy yelped and jumped back as the streetlight overhead exploded, raining shattered glass and carbon filament down onto Raven's head. Raven didn't even bat an eye as one of the falling fragments cut down her cheek deeply enough to draw blood, which, even as it trickled down her face, was actually boiling away into steam, leaving a red smudge behind.

Beast Boy had seen Raven hurt many times, but he'd never seen that before.

Slowly the fire went out of Raven's eyes, and she seemed to master herself once more. Shaking visibly, she drew her cloak around herself, sucking air in and out through clenched teeth. She looked up at Beast Boy again, but plainly didn't know what to say, and finally opted for nothing at all, turning and walking on up the street, leaving stunned civilians to stare and Beast Boy to follow or not as he wished.

Beast Boy followed her at a distance, trying to think of what to do. She'd been almost completely uncommunicative since the revelation last week, even moreso than usual, and so far nothing he'd done or said had managed anything but pissing her off. And when Raven got pissed...

But no, there was something else going on here. She hadn't blown up over the story he'd been telling her. She hadn't even been listening to it. She had just stopped as the call from Robin came in, and then suddenly everything nearby started to shake or shatter. For once, it wasn't him.

The realization gave him the courage to catch up to her and fall in alongside. "Um... Raven?"

She didn't answer.

"You uh... cut yourself there..." he said, pointing to his own cheek. She turned her head slightly, and brought her hand to the side of her face. Closing her eyes, she whispered her mantra to herself, and her hand turned blue. She rubbed at her cheek for a few seconds, and when she lowered her hand, there was no sign of the cut, merely the red smudge of boiled-off blood.

"Yeah," he said. "You um... got it..."

Still she said nothing, preferring to walk on in silence. Beast Boy followed closely, racking his brain to try and figure out what to say or do. Parking meters quivered as she walked by, windows rattled in storefronts or homes, even the fire hydrants seemed to creak. It wasn't ever hard to tell when Raven was on-edge. Symptoms resembled the early stages of an earthquake. But it had been like this off and on for three days, and judging by the intensity of the tremors, it was getting worse. Beast Boy could care less about the property damage, but what it signified was troublesome enough that he knew he had to do something.

But what?

"So um... after we get back to the Tower," he said, largely speaking off the top of his head, "do you maybe wanna try Mega Monkeys Five? It's the sequel to that one that you and I played that one time..."

No answer was forthcoming, nor even an acknowledgment that he had spoken, and so he persisted. "Uh... well if you don't wanna do that, I could show you this cool TV show from a few years back that someone showed me. It's about these people on a spaceship, and there's horses and cowboys and zombies and everyone speaks in Chinese and - "

"Just leave me alone, Beast Boy," said Raven all of a sudden, and while this was hardly something uncommon for her to be saying, the fatigue dripping from her voice stopped him short. Her voice, so tightly controlled normally, sounded like it could barely be summoned forth from her throat.

"Raven, what's wrong?" asked Beast Boy automatically before he could stop himself and think of a better way to put it. She didn't answer, didn't even look at him, indeed she seemed to draw her hood and cloak tighter around herself. "You can't still be worried about Trigon, can you?"

She turned sharply to look at him, and he gulped and took a step back. "Okay... so maybe you can still be worried about him," he said, and she shook her head and walked on, leaving him to catch up.

"Seriously though, Rae, we're gonna find a way to stop him. You don't have to worry," he said, but even that didn't engender a response, not even a demand that he not call her 'Rae'. "Robin and Cyborg were saying that we can build this big room and - "

"Beast Boy, please," said Raven, a request that was not a request. "I don't want to talk right now."

'Oh no you don't', thought Beast Boy as he crossed his arms. "Well that's too bad," he said, "because I'm not gonna stop asking you what's wrong until you tell me." Left unsaid was the second option that occurred to him: 'or you throw me into the bay'.

Fortunately, it seemed that Raven hadn't thought of that option either. She groaned softly and shook her head. "Beast Boy..."

"Raven, c'mon. It's gonna be okay. You know we're gonna do whatever we have to do to stop your dad, right? So why are you all - ?"

"Because you shouldn't have to."

Beast Boy stopped. "What?"

"This was my problem," said Raven. "I should have dealt with it. I shouldn't have dragged you all into the middle of the apocalypse."

"But, Raven, you did try to deal with it."

"And I should have succeeded!" she exclaimed, causing people to stop and stare and the sidewalk panels to tremble. "I've been preparing for this thing my entire life. All the training that the monks on Azarath gave me was so that I would be able to face this. I've been making plans about it since I was five! And now it's happening, and I can't do anything except force you all into it."

Beast Boy tried to mollify her. "But Rae..."

"Will you stop calling me that?" shouted Raven, cracking the pavement he was standing on. "I have a real name!"

He refused to be baited. "Raven, I know you didn't want to tell anyone about all this." He neglected to mention that she was now shouting about it to anyone within earshot. That much wasn't going to help. "But we want to help you. You're not forcing anything on us. And we're gonna do it whether you like it or not. So please stop worrying."

His words fell on deaf ears. He could tell as much the instant he said them. Raven simply pulled her hood back up over her head, retreating back into shadow. "You can't help me," she said. "None of you can stop what's coming."

"If he's anything like that guy from your head, we beat him once already," said Beast Boy, trying to sound confident.

"He's not," said Raven. "He's not like anything you've ever seen. Not like the worst villain we've ever fought. Not even Slade. He's..." her voice caught in her throat, and she had to stop walking. "He's like a plague. He's the incarnation of pure evil. And there's nothing any of you can do to stop him. Anyone who's ever met him and survived can tell you that."

"Yeah?" said Beast Boy, "well he's never met anything like us either." He grinned. "You always say that there's nothing as annoying as me in the entire universe, right?"

Raven raised one corner of her hood to stare at Beast Boy with a raised eyebrow. She didn't laugh or smile, but that was all right, this was at least more like her normal reaction.

"You're not funny," she said acerbically.

His grin only broadened. "Doesn't mean I can't try to be," he said.

"No, Beast Boy, you're really not funny. This isn't a laughing matter."

"Pft," scoffed Beast Boy. "Of course it is. You'll see. We're gonna build a safe room in the Tower and Cyborg's gonna - "

"This is the end of the world!" shouted Raven. "Don't you get it? I'm the end of the world! No safe rooms, no second chances, it's all gonna end because of me!"

Silence fell as Raven's voice echoed over the streets full of now-frozen pedestrians, men, women, children, even pets, all staring at Raven like she'd grown a second head. Her outburst over, Raven only now seemed to realize what she'd just yelled, out loud, in public, but before she could retreat back into her hood once again, Beast Boy grabbed her wrist and, giving the astonished public a nervous smile, quickly dragged her into an alley between two apartment buildings.

"Raven," he said in an urgent near-whisper as soon as they were out of earshot and sight of the startled civilians. "Come on, even if your dad wants to destroy the world, that doesn't mean it's your fault."

"It's all my fault," said Raven, eyes downcast, speaking in a hollow voice that sounded almost on the verge of tears. "I should have... I should have left, or never come here in the first place. I should have found a way to stop it from happening. I had plenty of warning..."

Raven had been acting strange ever since the last encounter with Slade, but this was actually frightening. Beast Boy knew that Raven felt responsible for everything that was happening, but he'd never seen her like this before. It scared him to see her this upset, particularly this upset with herself.

"Raven - "

"Do you remember what I told Robin the first time we all met?" she asked.

He remembered it perfectly well, and furthermore she knew he did, for she didn't bother to remind him what her words had been:

'Trust me. If you knew what I really am... you wouldn't want me around.'

"Raven, we know what you are now, and none of us care. You're our friend. It doesn't matter who your dad was or what some old prophecy says about you. We're all gonna get through this together. No matter what."

Even as Beast Boy was speaking though, he could see that it wasn't working. Raven raised her head slightly, and there were tears running down the sides of her face, though these at least weren't boiling. "Beast Boy, I'm a monster," she spat angrily. "I'm half-demon! Daughter of Trigon the Terrible! Don't you see?! I'm a nightmare, Beast Boy!"

The words poured out of her like water from a breached dam, angry words, bitter words, savage, biting, bladed words, all directed at herself. He didn't know if she couldn't stop them or didn't want to, if she was trying somehow to scourge herself enough with this torrent self-hatred to purge away the guilt she quite obviously felt in buckets. People occasionally lashed out at one of the Titans in word or print, castigating one or more of them for all manner of crimes or moral turpitudes. More often than not, their target was Raven, for she was an easy target to pin the ills of society on. And yet never had Beast Boy read or heard or seen anyone attack Raven with as much violence, as much hatred, as much loathing to their words, than Raven herself was doing now.

He wanted her to stop. He wanted her to hear what he was trying to say, that they couldn't care less what she was, that they never had cared about that, that what was happening wasn't her fault. And yet she couldn't. The feelings of guilt and presumed sin was just too much. Whether or not he believed a word of it, she plainly did. He wondered for a second if she always had.

It didn't matter. She was wrong. She was so wrong that to hear these terrible things being said about her, even from her own voice, was enough to drive him mad. He wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake her, scream even, something to knock the sense back into her, something that would let her see herself the way he saw her. She was the strongest person he'd ever met, the tower of strength and assurance that had dragged him back from the depths that Terra's death and return had dropped him. She was brilliant, she was caring, she was scary yes, but they all were in some way. And on top of everything she was beautiful. He didn't mean she looked beautiful, though... she did. He meant 'filled with beauty'. In every sense. He wanted to make her see that. He wanted to tell her that.

But Beast Boy wasn't good with words, and didn't know how say any of what he was thinking, and so when he stepped forward to try and think of something to do or say to stop her, instinct or something else took over, and he leaned in and kissed her.

... and... well... it worked.

He was nearly as surprised as she was... well probably not... and he wasn't entirely sure of what he was doing until he did it, but then he was doing it, and even though he knew he was probably going to be electrocuted or skinned alive, he didn't want to stop. She went as rigid as a board, her tirade fell silent like a plug had been pulled, and he could hear her heart beating like a snare drum, but she didn't move to stop him, didn't move at all even, until finally he drew back, hot blood rushing to his face, as it was to hers. The thousand terrible fates that were probably in store for him now raced through his mind, and yet he didn't feel an urge to run or shift into a paramecium. She looked... well she looked stunned. The torrent of words that had been pouring so freely was utterly staunched, indeed she looked like she had forgotten how to speak. Her mouth moved, but no sounds emerged, and he knew he probably should be taking this opportunity to either explain himself or beg for mercy, but instead he took a deep breath, and just waited for her to say something.

"W... Why did you do that?" she asked in a quiet, shocked voice.

He had no idea how to answer that. And so, groping about for something to say, he decided on something that he thought sounded closest to the truth.

"'Cause... I like it better when you're mad at me," he said.

Raven appeared to not know what to do, which made two of them at this point. Not that Beast Boy had any objection to not being vaporized, which was he assumed she would do as soon as she recovered her equilibrium. He had no idea of what else to say, and clearly neither did she, and so they stared at one another, Raven in some kind of shock, Beast Boy scrambling to find something to say to alleviate the sudden awkwardness of this situation..

A roar from out in the street, and the sound of civilians screaming in terror.

'Oh thank god'.

He ran out of the alley, and Raven followed him, though he could tell she was moving on autopilot. To his right, the source of the screams was instantly apparent. A huge, purple monster, vaguely bipedal, stood in the middle of the street, having torn a sewer pipe out of the ground, and was gulping the noxious effluent from it down its massive gullet. Civilians ran in every direction, abandoning their cars, but the creature took no notice of them whatsoever, its form swelling larger and larger with each successive gulp. Despite everything that had just happened, Beast Boy grimaced at the smell and sight. "Ew... nasty!" he said. Behind him, Raven contributed no comment. He wondered if she could.

No time to worry about that. He shifted into the form of a cape buffalo, snorted once, and charged towards Plasmus. As he ran, he saw another huge form looming up behind Plasmus, a humanoid as well, but no more human than the first monster, a sparking monolith made of ball lightning. Overload...

He couldn't abort his charge now, not with this much mass and momentum, and so he put on the accelerators, racing towards Plasmus, who noticed him coming, dropped the pipe, and roared loud enough to wake the dead. Beast Boy leaped up, planning to shift into something a dozen times more massive, a whale or elephant perhaps, but Plasmus was too fast. He lashed out with his tendrils of sludge, seized him by the horns, and slammed him into the ground like a steer wrestler, even as Overload moved around to electrocute him on the spot.

And then suddenly something went terribly wrong with Overload and Plasmus' plan.

The ground heaved and kicked, and then all of a sudden a section of street fifty feet long and thirty wide uprooted itself from the ground just behind Beast Boy. Cars, fire hydrants, streetlights, even a delivery van rose into the air, and as Beast Boy turned back to look at the cause of this occurance, he saw Raven standing in the middle of the street, sheathed in black like a fountain pen, her eyes washed out white, raising the entire street into the air with one hand stretched into the air. As he watched, the massive divot of earth and asphalt floated over past Beast Boy, and tipped, dumping every single object on it onto Overload, who fell back, crushed under a hail of vehicles and municipal infrastructure. And no sooner had Raven done this, than she swept her hand around and dropped it, and the entire section of street flipped over and landed on top of Plasmus like an enormous hydraulic press, instantly smashing him to jelly.

Beast Boy resumed human form and stood back up, doing his best to wipe off the Plasmus-sludge that had been splattered all over him, and looked back at Raven. She still looked like she was in shock, to be honest, but there was a ferocity in her stare that had not been there before. One he didn't recall having ever seen before, to be honest. And while it was certainly scary... it was also kind of cool.

It was mostly cool because she had decided to destroy someone other than him, but he would take his victories where he could get them.

He smiled, broadly, even as Overload began shoving the empty vehicles off of himself, and Plasmus slowly started to re-coalesce. And as he turned back to the rising monsters, he could help but turn his smile into a feral grin as he crouched low, already deciding what to shift into next.

"Wow," he said, "did you guys ever pick a bad time..."

[LadyTevar]

Chapter 29, Cont'd

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"I know you Titans think you can take us all out whenever you want," said Jinx, "but your friends aren't gonna help you this time. You really think the two of you can handle all of us at once?"

Robin's only answer was to look from one Hiver to another and back to Jinx, and then to smile.

"Watch us."

Robin jumped.

Skilled martial artists could perform amazing vertial leaps. Very skilled martial artists could do so without even looking like that was what they planned to do. Robin was one of the latter, and his leap caught all five Hivers by surprise. Neither See-More nor Gizmo nor even Jinx thought to shoot him before he was up, flipping through the air, and pulling a half dozen flash bombs from his belt, even as he heard the telltale sounds of Starfire leaping into the air behind him. She knew what to do, he trusted that much implicitly. All he had to do was his own bit.

He rained the bombs down like confetti, shrouding the entire street in flashes and smoke. The majority of the flashers he threw at See-More, who withdrew several steps, his arms raised to protect his oversized eye. The residual flashes were enough to hold the other Hivers for a couple seconds, and he threw his weight to one side so as to land next to See-More. As he came down, he swept his staff around at eye level, smashing the very tip of it into See-More's visor. The lens shattered like glass, the frame crushed like a tin can, and See-More spun halfway around with the blow. A second stroke, with the butt of the staff, hit him in the back of the neck, and sent him crumpling to the ground, out like a light.

And then Robin landed.

The other Hivers stared at Robin like frozen mannequins flatly unable to believe what they had just seen him do. He planted his staff and smirked. "Had enough yet?"

"Tear him apart!" shouted Jinx, and Robin swept his staff up and back around to a ready position, and everything hit the fan.

Gizmo launched a barrage of rockets as a good fifty copies of Billy came charging in from all directions, several of them leaping up over the others to cut off his escape. Robin crouched low and lunged forward like a coiled spring, spearing one of the Billies in the throat with his staff and slamming him back into the ground, using him as a pivot and his staff as a vaulter's pole to crash right into and through three more Billies, titanium-soled boots first. The rockets crashed to earth behind him, knocking two dozen more copies of the copyist sprawling in all directions.

He landed and rolled, springing back to his feet, but a monumental shadow loomed over him, and he had to dive to the side to avoid Mammoth's fists. A Billy kicked at him as he rolled, and he grabbed its foot and twisted, spinning the unfortunate clone around like a glassblower, and using him as leverage to get back up. He spun around to face Mammoth, but Mammoth was no longer there. Starfire had shot him in the chest with a pair of energy beams from her eyes, and the bruiser was presently hanging half-out of a newspaper kiosk on the other side of the street, his flight path strewn with toppled Billy clones.

Starfire was up in the air, hurling Starbolts down at Jinx like a vengeful deity. Jinx skipped around the projectiles like a dancer, summoning and flinging hexes back up at Starfire, who danced around them in turn in all three dimensions. Several Billies climbed onto one another's shoulders and leaped at Starfire, three of them managing to grab onto her as she flew. They soon regretted it however, for not only could Starfire support their weight, but she used their own momentum to spin around and hurl all three into and through a storefront window, recovering fast enough to dodge Jinx' latest hex, and return a starbolt which struck the Hive leader square in the solar plexus and practically smashed her into the ground.

Another tide of Billies closed in, and Robin reached up and fired a grapling hook at an overhead neon sign, connecting and flying up into the air in the nick of time. One of the Billies grabbed his leg, but he kicked it in the face, and it fell away. A second later, a laser from Gizmo's harness severed the grappling cord, and Robin found himself falling again. Starfire dove to catch him, but a missile caught her first, and she was blown off course into a wall, and rolled down it to the ground. Robin tried to spin around to see where he was about to land, but before he could do so, something hit him in the side like a wrecking ball, and the next thing he knew, he was thrown bodily into a series of trash cans on the side of the street, and Mammoth, chest still smoking from where Starfire had shot him, was grinning and cracking his knuckles as he approached.

His staff was somewhere in the garbage, and he had no time to search for it, so instead he drew a pair of smaller sticks from the back of his belt. Shorter than his staff, these were Escrima sticks, retractable police batons designed to be used in one hand each. Though functionally identical to David's baton, Robin had no intention of using these as mere power props...

.. a fact he proceeded to demonstrate.

Mammoth charged him, and he spun to the side like a matador at the last moment, whirling around to strike Mammoth in the back of the knee with one stick. Mammoth gave a shout of pain as eight copies of Billy came up to support him. Robin turned on them, spinning around and lashing out with both sticks, aiming not at specific targets, but at the areas he knew from experience that his attackers would be most likely to occupy. A skilled martial artist might have tried something unexpected, but Billy was no such thing, and within seconds, four of the eight copies were sprawled out on the ground, the other four drawing back from the spinning sticks. Braver than Billy, Mammoth chose to attempt them, lunging in with an enormous fist. A serious mistake. Robin stepped into the punch and slid around it to the right, driving the tip of one of his batons into Mammoth's stomach before smashing the other one into the giant's temple. To Mammoth's credit, he did not immediately fall, though the blows would have dropped even the toughest boxer like a broken puppet. Instead he staggered back, stunned and disoriented, groping blindly for something to steady himself against. Robin charged him, dodging the clumsy swipes of several more copies of Billy, jumping up, spinning around, and slamming the heel of his boot into Mammoth's temple.

This time he fell.

The whine of machinery spinning up was all the warning Robin got before a concussion grenade hit him in the back. The polymer cloak absorbed some of the shock, and of course he knew to relax his muscles the instant the blast hit him, but the shock was still enough hurl him into a brick wall, clouding his vision and destroying his balance for several, crucial seconds. They might well have been his last, had not Starfire bodily hoisted Gizmo, harness and all, into the air a moment later. Gizmo screamed bloody murder, slashing at Starfire with his mechanical spider legs. They were bladed, but the blades might as well have been made of styrofoam for all the good they did. Starfire peremptorily smashed the blades to pieces with her fists, then ripped all four legs off of Gizmo's harness for good measure, throwing them down to the ground like toothpicks.

Understandably enough, Gizmo panicked, pressing a button on what remained of his harness, and blasting a compartment of tear gas into Starfire's face. He had chosen both wisely and poorly in selecting the gas, wisely in that Starfire was not immune to it, poorly in that she was not amused either. Coughing and retching, she nonetheless maintained enough wherewithal to blast Gizmo out of her hands with a pair of point blank starbolts, flinging the diminutive gearhead into the hood of a car hard enough to crush the windshield and rock the car on its suspension. Gizmo moaned softly and did not get up.

Two more Billy clones now got in Robin's way, obstructing his view of Starfire. One went to grab him by the throat and he folded his arm up and hit him in the throat with his elbow, dropping it instantly. The other one managed to grab his other arm, but Robin had managed to recover his balance, and stepped around him and twisted before pitching him over his shoulder in a Judo throw. He turned back, only to see dozens more Billies rushing towards him, too many even for him to handle alone, but fortunately, he wasn't alone. A green flash overhead heralded Starfire's assault, and she simply blazed a path through the crowd of Billies with starbolts flying, sending dozens of copies scattering like bowling pins. For a second, it looked as though she was going to either join Robin, or grab him by the arm to pull him to safety, but then there was another flash, pink, not green, and Starfire's flight was halted as though she had struck a brick wall. She tumbled to the ground, landing hard enough to carve a furrow in the asphalt. And behind her, Robin saw Jinx, standing with hexes in hand, just for a second, before the sea of Billies closed between them again, and Robin could see no more.

"Starfire!" he shouted, and without regard to his own safety or anything else, he rushed four dozen copies of Billy Numerous by himself. Billies lunged at him from every direction, caring nothing for how many of them he might clobber or beat, attempting only to bury him in bodies and drag him down by weight of numbers. He lashed out with both sticks, every swing connecting with something, and yet he simply could not advance, pressed back by the sheer number of his attackers. Falling back again, he spun and struck and spun again, laying Billy clones out by the dozen and the score. Two of them managed to uproot a mailbox and chucked it at him, but he simply slid under the throw and let it cream three more of the clones before it stopped. Two dozen more pooled their strength and managed to lift an entire car into the air, but Robin simply threw a flash bomb into their midst, distracting several of them long enough for gravity to do the rest, and pinning the lot of them beneath the dropped car. One climbed onto a restaurant's awning and leaped down onto Robin's back, but Robin ducked and slammed him down onto the ground like a throw rug, before picking him up and throwing him into his fellow clones. Around and around he spun, striking clone after clone down, until the fallen Billies were piled four feet deep in a ring around him, and the few clones remaining were unwilling to climb over the unconscious forms of their fellows to face his sticks and fists any longer.

He assumed that the clones had thinned out because not even Billy could replicate indefinitely, but when he finally turned to find Starfire, he realized what the real reason had been.

Starfire was on the ground a good fifty feet away, on her hands and knees, with an enormous mass of Billies dogpiling her, trying to force her down. Not even with thirty clones could Billy easily overcome Starfire's Tamaranean strength, and gritting her teeth, she managed to throw one arm back, tossing four of the clones into the air like dolls. It was not enough however, as the remaining clones forced her down again, and Robin saw Jinx approaching her, stepping around the fallen Billies as she raised one hand with a razor-sharp hex, and hurled it down into Starfire's upturned face. The shock was enough to make the ground itself tremble, and Starfire shuddered for a second, and then fell still, as Jinnx prepared another hex to finish the job.

That was as far as she got.

Robin raised his arm and shot a grappling hook at Jinx, catching her throwing arm and pulling as hard as he could. Jinx's hex flew off into the pile of Billies and scattered them, as she herself was dragged down onto the ground. With a cry of defiance, she severed the grappling cord with another hex and scrambled to her feet, but Robin was already on the move, clotheslining a Billy clone as he ran with one of his sticks, and stepping around another one only to backhand him in back of the neck. Both Billies fell as Robin ran on, and the look on his masked face was apparently enough to make even Jinx think twice. She fell back behind a protective screen of Billy clones, hoping thereby to delay Robin, but Robin would not be delayed. He sprang into the air, flipping over the Billies, and dropping a series of explosive bombs in his wake to scatter or disable them. Before Jinx could conjure another hex or even react, he raised one hand, and brought one of his escrima batons down on Jinx's raised arm.

He felt the bone snap through his baton.

The Hive leader let out a scream that could have woken the dead, but Jinx was no civilian or novice to the arts of fighting, and even a broken arm did not dissuade her from attempting to defend herself. She brought her other arm around with a searing hex glowing in her palm, intending to throw or smash it into Robin with all the force she could muster. Too late. Robin stepped into her swing, blocked it with his own arm, seized Jinx by the collar, and spun around like a top, hoisting Jinx off of her feet and hurling her as hard as he could into the tile-covered wall of the Jump City public library. The tile facing, already weakened by the car bomb, shattered, raining bits of masonry and glazed ceramic onto the ground, as Robin completed his spin and came to a halt facing Jinx, both batons held in an automatic ready position. Jinx, covered in ceramic dust, bleeding from the head, her broken arm dangling uselessly at her side, clearly disoriented, managed to stagger back to her feet for a few seconds. She tried to conjure another hex, but plainly her fragile consciousness was no longer up to the task, and the hex sputtered out like a quenched flame moments before she pitched over and collapsed onto the ground, motionless, surrounded by the fallen bodies of her teammates.

Quiet descended on the street as Robin slowly lowered his weapons and looked around at the scene. It resembled the aftermath of some hideous massacre or brutal battlefield. Dozens of red-clad bodies lay scattered around, some folded around lampposts, some hanging halfway out of broken store windows, others littering the street and sidewalks. Dotted amongst them were the unconscious forms of the various other Hive members. And somewhere in this pile of beaten warriors was...

"Starfire!"

She was laying on the ground, half buried in Billy clones, yet even at this distance, Robin could see that she was breathing and moving slowly, stunned or unconscious, rather than dead. Robin thanked whatever lucky stars he had for that, and quickly began to rush over to her, picking his way around the dozens if not hundreds of other moaning, sleeping bodies he had to navigate to reach her, already retracting his batons and putting them away, already sliding the communicator off of his belt to call the others and see what the situation was with them, already making plans for the next step in countering whatever evil plot this was.

He never saw the Man in Gold.

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The Man in Gold crouched on the rooftops, and watched as Robin and Starfire destroyed the Hive Five. He watched as Starfire's starbolts and energy beams struck down the red-suited clones in droves of tens and twenties, even as Robin dealt with each of the unique Hivers in turn, one after the next. He watched as Gizmo made an ill-fated attempt to contest with Starfire physically, and failed, and watched as Jinx managed to disable Starfire, but was herself disabled in turn by a furious Robin. He smiled at that. Ever the White Knight, Robin, reserving his greatest anger for those who harmed his precious Starfire.

Only when the fighting was finally complete, did the Man in Gold reach down to his side, and lifted a pair of thick ear protectors, which he slid over his ears carefully. He slid the pair of LCD sunglasses on his forehead down, covering his eyes, and plugging the the small cord attached to them into the massive piece of equipment next to him. He watched as the link was activated in a quarter of a second, and the equipment began feeding him data directly to his glasses, and he smiled as the telescopic lens revealed a close-up picture of Robin scrambling over the bodies of the fallen Hivers, racing to get to Starfire, to ensure that she was all right.

How perfectly typical.

He waited, he bode his time. There were precious seconds of time here that he had to savor, and savour them he did, as the EM coils cooled down and the superconductors powered themselves up. Even then he still had time, time to watch every move Robin made, time to see him slowly drawing his communicator, time to see him holster his weapons, time to watch Robin believe that he'd won.

And then... just like that... it was time.

The Man in Gold took a deep breath.

"Grayson!" he shouted.

Robin stumbled in mid-step, recovered his balance, and turned around to see who had shouted that name that he had believed nobody knew. He watched in slow motion as Robin's head inclined up, up, up, to the rooftops, to the figure in shining gold, outlined by the setting sun, that had not been there a minute ago, and to the blurry object next to him. The Man in Gold watched him do these things, and watched through the telecopic lens for the exact moment when the flash of recognition, impossible to mask or hide, came over Robin's features.

And then he pulled the trigger.

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Adonis hit the side of the car hard enough to cave it in, and shattered glass from the window and windshield spilled all over him like a waterfall. His pitted and dented armor groaned as he slowly stood up once again, turned around, and tried to lift the car. He had not even gotten it an inch off the ground before Cyborg's sonic cannon speared him in the back, slamming his head into the crushed car door and forcing him to drop the vehicle again.

He roared in frustration and leaped up again, though what he intended to do to the two Titans standing in the middle of the street fifty feet away was unclear. As it happened, he hadn't managed more than three or four steps before David blew the ground up under his foot and flipped him four times through the air, only to dump him on the sidewalk beneath a streetlight.

"You're makin' this a lot harder than it's gotta be, man," said Cyborg. "Why don't you give it up now and we'll all go down to the jail."

"Up yours, bucket-head!" shouted Adonis. "Nobody arrests Adonis!"

"Wrong answer, Marcus," said David, and he extended his baton towards Adonis, and twisted it like a screwdriver. The piece of equipment mounted in Adonis' chest groaned, shook, and exploded outward, sending a shower of electrical components scattering over the ground. A moment later, the magnetic locks that held the various pieces of Adonis' armor together all failed at once, and the armor fell apart like a glass sculpture struck by a baseball, leaving a disheveled young man in a dark blue jump suit sitting in the middle of a pile of assorted bits of armor.

Cyborg raised his human eyebrow, and turned to David. "Now why the Hell didn't you just do that in the first place?"

"Because I didn't know what it was until just now," he responded. Cyborg crossed his arms and raised his human eyebrow, as though unconvinced. "What?" protested David. "I don't build these things! I was just looking for... you know... anything strange. I figured thorium had to be the power source."

Cyborg blinked, then slowly turned his head back to Adonis. "... Thorium?"

"Yeah," said David with a smirk, "and a cast iron frame."

This time, Cyborg did a double take. "A what?"

"You heard me."

The half-mechanical Titan exploded into laughter. "Cast iron. What the hell Adonis? Lookin' to join a Dickens revival or somethin'? What's the matter? Couldn't find any steel in the scrapyard?"

"Hey, screw you, asshole!" screamed Adonis. "None of you wimps have what it takes to fight a real man, anyway!"

"Well hell, Adonis," said Cyborg with a grin as he began to walk forward. "Find us a real man, and we'll go fight him."

"You don't have the guts to face me for real!" repeated Adonis,turning to David, who was watching the proceedings silently. "You! 'Devastator' or whatever you call yourself these days. You're nothin' without that stick and those fancy explosions. Why don't you come over here and fight me like a man?!"

"What?" asked David.

"C'mon!" goaded Adonis, raising his fists towards David. "Fight me like a man, if you've got the guts!"

Cyborg sighed, but stopped and turned back to David to see what he wanted to do. David was standing stock still, his baton still in hand, staring at Adonis evenly, as though trying to figure out how to say what he wanted to say. Cyborg let him stare, and was about to open his mouth to tell David that this sort of thing really wasn't necessary, when David answered.

"No."

The ground under Adonis' feet burst like an overinflated balloon, sending Adonis rocketting upwards to a sudden face-first encounter with the streetlight above his head. The light shattered as his head crushed it, and Adonis got a nasty 20,000 volt shock, a moment before gravity took over and he plunged back to the ground, landing on his stomach, his hair smoldering, and coughing up smoke.

"You just tried to murder me and two little kids with a suit of power armor and a car, and you want to tell me about fighting like a man?" said David. His voice was low, but he sounded good and angry as he walked towards the downed supervillain. "You were bad enough in school, Marcus. Now you're going where you belong."

"I shoulda killed you when I had the chance, you freak! When I get back out you're dead! You hear me! Dead!"

"Oh, shut up," said David, as he knelt down over Adonis, planting one knee on Adonis' back to keep him pinned down while he slid a pair of plastic zip-cuffs off his belt and fastened them around Adonis' wrists. Only once Adonis was properly restrained did he stand up and haul Adonis to his feet. Adonis tried to shake David off, just to be defiant, but his head was still shakey from the impromptu flight he had taken, and despite the fact that David was considerably smaller than he was, he couldn't even muster the strength to do that much. Not that it would have mattered with Cyborg standing right there.

David frog-marched Adonis over to Cyborg, who was watching the proceedings with crossed arms and a broad smile. "I just don't get you, man," he said.

David paused as Cyborg grabbed Adonis' wrists with one massive hand. "What don't you get?"

"You do somethin' like that, and you don't see why they'd put you on a poster?"

David blinked, clearly missing something. "I... just arrested him," he said. "Isn't... that how I'm supposed to do it?"

"No, no, no, that ain't what I'm talkin' about," said Cyborg. "I'm sayin' you go out here and get it done, just like the rest of us, you gotta expect people're gonna start lookin' at you different. It comes with the territory, man."

David actually blushed, to Cyborg's amusement. "I... I know that, Cy."

Cyborg laughed and shook his head. "No, you know it, but you don't know it, you follow? You keep thinking like you're some regular Joe, and then you come out here and serve it up like one of us. I just don't get it..."

David lowered his head. "Sorry," he said.

"Ain't nothin' to be 'sorry' about, man," said Cyborg with a chuckle, patting David on the shoulder with his free hand. "There's nothin' wrong with it. I just don't get it is all." He laughed. "I guess we all do it different. Back in the day, BB used to - "

Cyborg's story was cut off all of a sudden by a thunderous blast, coming from somewhere to the North. Cyborg dropped Adonis, who was too shocked by the sound to remember to run, as all eyes, hero, villain, or civilian, turned to the north, where a small plume of smoke seemed to be emanating from somewhere near the waterfront...

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Overload's screams mixed with the sound of electrical equipment shorting out into a hideous static screech, but Beast Boy didn't let up, sucking water out of the pool formed by the ruptured hydrant, and spraying it with his trunk into the sentient electrokinetic computer. The sprayed water mixed with the puddles of slime that were splattered all over the places, forming a disgusting slurry that Beast Boy avoided stepping in, but this wouldn't take much longer in any event. Sure enough, Overload's capacity to handle the water soon gave out entirely, and his electrical frame collapsed, leaving behind a small, waterlogged circuit board.

Only once he was convinced that Overload wasn't getting back up again, did Beast Boy turn back around to ensure that Raven was still all right. She was still floating in her lotus position over the street, completely covered in Plasmus' sludge, which was dripping off her (as it was him) like sticky tar. The sleeping form of the human at the center of Plasmus was laying at her feet, laying where she had deposited him after blowing Plasmus' body to shreds with her soul-self while Beast Boy was dealing with Overload. He had not known that she was able to do that.

Add it to the list...

He reverted to his human form, and slowly approached Raven. She hadn't said a word to him since the fight began, but given the... verve... with which she had torn Plasmus to bits...

Well... it could be said that he wasn't sure what kind of a reception he was about to get.

"Um," he said, "are you... okay?"

Raven slowly lowered herself back down to the ground, and landed lightly, brushing the sludge out of her bangs absent-mindedly, and nudging Plasmus with her foot before furtively looking back up at Beast Boy. "I... think so," she said, sounding extremely unsure.

"Oh," he said. "Uh... well, good!" He rubbed the back of his neck nervously. "So... should we uh... call the others or - "

"Beast Boy," said Raven all of a sudden, and then suddenly she was staring directly at him. He couldn't tell if it was the look of a friend or a predator.

"Look, Rae... uh... Raven... I..."

"Why did you do that?" she asked. He still couldn't tell if she was going to melt him or not, but there was fear in her voice, though what she was afraid of was beyond him.

"Because I... I wanted to," he said, having considered about seven thousand other possible answers in a half-second or so and rejected them all.

"Why?"

That one caught him by surprise. She sounded... well to be honest he didn't know what that sound in her voice was supposed to be. It might have been disbelief. Whatever it was, it drove all thoughts of joking or dodging the question out of his mind.

"Because you're not a monster," he said, as calmly and as sincerely as he could. Sincerity was not his strong suit. He preferred to dance around things like this with a joke and a smile, but he made the effort for her sake. "You're not a monster or a nightmare or any of those other things you said you were. You're... you're just not, okay? You're... the best person I know. I've lived with heroes my whole life, and you're the best person I've ever met. Not because you're all powerful or brave or anything... but... just because you are. Because you put up with me even when you don't want to, and you always think about other people even though you hate other people thinking about you." He scuffed his shoe on the pavement and took a breath. "I don't... I don't know how to say this kind of stuff, and... I know you don't believe me because you think you shouldn't have come here and that all this is your fault and everything but... even if you're right, and it turns out we can't stop Trigon from doing his thing, even if that's true, which it's not, but even if it is, I'm still glad you came here, and that I got to know you." He grinned sheepishly and lowered his head. "That's... why I did it."

He expected... honestly he didn't know what he expected. And apparently Raven didn't either, for she simply stood there, staring at him like he'd suddenly turned blue before his eyes. For a good half a minute, neither one of them moved or said anything, until finally, Raven's mouth trembled, and she managed to say a few words in a halting voice, tears welling up in her eyes.

"B... Beast Boy..." she said.

She got no further.

A tremendous blast, like a missile strike, echoed from somewhere to the east, and as both Titans whirled around to face it, they saw a towering cloud of smoke rising from somewhere beyond the immediate skyline. Beast Boy blinked, and turned back to Raven to ask her what the hell that could have been, for undoubtedly she had a better idea than he did, but no sooner did he lay eyes on her than the question died in his throat, for Raven's eyes had bolted open, her breath had frozen in her lungs, and she had a trembling hand clutched to her chest as she stared off into space. And as Beast Boy opened his mouth to ask her what was wrong, her eyes suddenly focused on him with a look of the most profound terror he had ever seen in anyone's eyes, and right then he knew that something horrible had just happened.

But he had no idea how horrible it was...

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In her own way, she was always floating...

Starfire woke up very slowly.

Tamaraneans were not knocked unconscious lightly, but when they were, it tended to require some time for them to come around. She had no idea what had happened beyond the fact that the Billy Numerous had sent dozens of his clones to pin her down, and she had been struggling against them when Jinx had walked up and shot her in the head with one of her illuminated magical spells, like the lowly Clorbag she was. She raised her head, slowly, to try and determine where said Clorbag had run off to, or if Robin had subdued her while she was asleep, and only then did she notice that she was all but alone.

That fact pierced the slowly-clearing clouds that fogged her brain like a Wusserloop darting through the water. There had been dozens if not hundreds of fallen copies of the Billy Numerous scattered about where either she or Robin had disposed of them, to say nothing of Gizmo, Mammoth, and See-More, all of whom had fallen in the battle prior to Jinx rendering her unconscious. And yet while the street bore the obvious signs of battle and destruction, there was no sign of any of their fallen assailants scattered about. And where was Robin? Had he gone in pursuit of the HIVE? Or been forced to retreat to another location? Or... or had the HIVE overcome him as well, and captured him for nefarious purposes of their own?! The thought suddenly galvanized her to action, and she raised her head and shoulders up to look around, to find some sign of what might have become of Robin...

... and her heart stopped.

Robin was laying in the middle of the street, on his side, his cape crumpled and stained, his combat batons laying at his side, untouched, though only scarce inches from his hands. But from where Starfire was laying, she could see a puddle of some sort of dark fluid, dark red fluid, that Robin was presently laying in.

"Robin!"

It was a funny thing to realize now, but she was. Always. Even when walking on the ground, she seemed to be floating, as though temporarily conceding to gravity's laws only because it was expected of her. She moved like a dancer, like an angel, her green eyes sparkling like emeralds, her red hair framed by the sun in a halo.

She was on her feet in a nanosecond, and raced to his side with such alacrity that the very laws of relativity bent around her. She knelt at his side, and gently, gently as she could, rolled him over onto his back, and when she did, a horrified gasp escaped her lips.

There was a half-inch hole drilled through his chest.

Somehow, he had plenty of time to study the expression on her face, the glowing green energy around her closed hands, the deep swirling gems of onyx and obsidian adorning her bracers and gorget. A vision of light in the descending darkness, a valkyrie coming to rescue him and take him home.

"Robin..." she said, stunned to near-silence, and she blindly groped for her communicator, which was already soaked through with Robin's own blood. She tore it open and hit the panic button, shouting into it for the others to come, to come as quickly as they could, that Robin was hurt, and yet there were no responses, and she could not determine why. Human physiology was beyond her. She had no idea what to do, what she could do, save that humans were so fragile that moving Robin would likely be instantly fatal, and so she held him in her lap, and tried desperately to staunch the flow of blood which refused to cease.

"Robin!" she shouted, screamed even, her Tamaranean vocal cords powerful enough to sunder glass at need, and yet not enough to pierce the veil descending over him. "Robin, can you hear me?! Robin!!!"

He wanted to reach out to her, call out to her, something, but his body and voice would not obey any longer. It was all he could do to force his eyes to remain open long enough for her to reach him, gathering him up in her arms, screaming his adopted name with enough force to shatter glass, though it registered as nothing more than a dull echo. The world around could fade, or burn, or crumble like stale bread, but she was here, and nothing else mattered.

He said nothing, and moved only slightly, raised one gloved hand weakly, and she took it in hers without hesitation, squeezing him hard enough that he had to have felt it, and yet he didn't react. Yet when his hand fell away, he had left behind something. Something that had been in his hands when she arrived. She glanced at the object in question, a small round disk of polished gray metal, perfectly smooth save for the fact that it had been marred by an ugly, jagged crack down the middle of it. She had no idea what this thing was, nor why Robin had just given it to her, and presently she didn't care. Where could the others be?! Or the paramedical personnel that should have already been making their way towards this location as soon as hostilities began?!

Robin coughed, a horrible, truncated cough that caused bubbles of red fluid to emerge from his lips, and he shuddered as his face began to pale. A small crowd had by now gathered around, and in desperation, Starfire turned her head to them. "Please!" she cried, "Assist us! He must be taken to a hospital!" But none of the civilians moved or stirred themselves, perhaps too deeply in shock at what had just occurred, perhaps unable to materially assist... or perhaps cognizant already that there was nothing they or anyone could do.

Robin's breathing slowed, as did the rate of blood flow, and through the tears welling in her eyes, Starfire clung to the hope that this might somehow be a good sign, that the wound was cauterizing or that he was otherwise going to get better. And yet, no matter how tightly she held him, no matter what cries she uttered in what language, there was nothing she could do but look on as Robin's body stiffened and quivered for a few moments, and then with a soft, almost inaudible sigh, his limbs went limp, the air slipped from his lungs, and then...

... and then, between one moment and the next, he was gone.

Starfire threw back her head and screamed, screamed as loud as she could, shattering windows and driving back the small crowd of onlookers. And so it was that a few minutes later, the other four Titans found her, sitting in the middle of the street, tears rolling down her face, covered in red human blood, and cradling Robin's lifeless body.

A strange fate indeed, to realize it only now, when it could no longer make a difference, unless of course realizing it made all the difference in the world...

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Six hours later...

"How's that feel?"

Jinx grimaced as she gently waved the cast up and down like a penguin's flipper. Her arm still throbbed relentlessly, though the painkillers had helped a bit, as had stabilizing it. And compared to what had happened to Gizmo, she supposed she should count herself lucky.

"It's okay."

See-More nodded and put the medical kit away. "So," he said. "That sucked."

Despite everything, Jinx laughed. "Yeah, didn't go so well, did it?"

"No," said See-More, though he was also smiling at the sheer absurdity of the situation. "It really didn't."

"You gonna be all right?"

"Need a new visor," he said. "And about six tons of Tylenol."

"Well don't worry," said Jinx. "That's the last of our 'special' operations."

See-More let out a sigh of relief. "Well I'm glad to hear that," he said. "I'd rather go after Fort Knox than go through that again."

"Well we're not gonna be doing much for a while, anyway," said Jinx, looking glumly down at her cast-encased arm.

"I think after this one, we deserve a rest, don't you?"

"Maybe," said Jinx. "Anyway, go find Mammoth and see how Gizmo's doing, will you? And remind him not to use too much - "

The entire HIVE Tower shook.

Jinx and See-More froze for a second, and then turned to look at each other. "... earthquake?" asked See-More.

Another shock tore through the tower, prolonged, and accompanied by the sound of rending metal. Definitely not earthquake sounds. Jinx and See-More had only enough time to glance at one another once again before there was an ear-splitting screech, and suddenly, something peeled open one of the infirmary walls.

And one look at who it was told Jinx that this was about to become the worst day of he life.

The infirmary was at ground level, and the fall wall formed the outer wall of the HIVE Tower, twelve inches of solid titanium steel, impervious to everything from meteor strikes to tank shells. Yet before Jinx' eyes, a section of the wall eight feet long and six feet high was simply ripped open as though someone had taken a can opener to it. And there, in the resulting hole, there stood five of the six Titans, all of them but Robin, staring into the infirmary at Jinx and See-More with expressions that, for all her claims of unflappability, made her want to run screaming and hide under a bed.

Particularly Starfire's.

Starfire was glowing, literally. Her eyes and hands were encased in radioactive green energy, and her teeth were bared and snarling, like some kind of predatory animal. Next to her, Cyborg was staring daggers into Jinx' eyes, his hand in the form of his Sonic Cannon. Nothing, nothing she had ever done or seen, no event she had borne witness to, had ever inspired the look that Cyborg was giving her now, a look of absolute rage, one so profound it seemed to extend even to his robotic eye.

For a moment or two, the Titans and Hivers simply stared at one another, the former seething, the latter simply stunned. Finally, Jinx gathered enough of her wits to speak. "What the hell?" she said, and she conjured a hex in her good hand almost reflexively, as See-More reached for something, a weapon perhaps, or a communicator.

As it turned out, that was a serious mistake.

Starfire moved so quickly that it looked to Jinx like she had just teleported. One instant she was in the impromptu doorway she had just torn open, the next she was right in front of her, her hands fastened around Jinx's throat. She screamed something in another language, some guttural and violent, and lifted Jinx into the air before reversing her momentum and slamming her down on her back into the medical table so hard that the table collapsed into a heap of sparks and metal panels. Meanwhile, the table See-More was reaching for was summarily vaporized as Cyborg shot it with a full-power blast of his sonic cannon. He then charged into the room like an enraged rhinoceros. See-More avoided getting his head punched clean off only by backing into a corner and raising his hands in abject surrender. Honestly, Jinx couldn't blame him.

The other three Titans entered the room after Cyborg and Starfire, and quietly took up positions on either side of the room, saying nothing, and staring at Jinx and See-More like the witnesses to an execution. A very palpable chill ran down Jinx' spine as she stared up into the merciless gaze of Starfire, who seemed to be trying to gauge whether or not to literally bite her head off.

"Who employed you?"

The words shot out of Starfire's mouth like cannon shells, no flowery verbiage , no comically superior register of language. She did not so much say the words as snarled them at Jinx.

"What the hell are you talking about?" coughed Jinx.

Wrong answer.

Starfire shrieked some kind of war-cry-of-the-damned, and smashed Jinx headfirst into the ceiling, shattering one of the ceiling tiles and raining plaster into the room. She followed up on this by kicking the ruined medical table aside (an impressive feat, given that it was bolted to the floor), and pinning Jinx up against the wall like a tapestry.

"Hey!" shouted See-More. "Leave her alone you bi-"

No more words did See-More get out, for Cyborg simply reached out and backhanded him in the head with an enormous metal arm, hard enough that Jinx felt it. See-More collapsed like a house of cards, stunned by the enormous blow, and Jinx' eyes darted to each of the other Titans in turn. None of them seemed to be in any hurry to restrain Cyborg or Starfire. Probably for the first time ever, she wished Robin would show up.

"This was a setup operation," said Cyborg, his voice even despite his fuming rage. "Adonis, Plasmus, and Overload ain't part of your little club. Somebody hired your asses to do this job. You're gonna tell us who it was and where we can find 'em. Right now."

"What the hell's going on in here?" Mammoth and Billy Numerous stormed into the room from opposite ends at the same time. Mammoth still had his neck brace on, and Billy was a unified whole, a rarity for him, but a necessity, considering the collective beating he'd taken.

Neither one lasted more than two seconds.

Raven turned to Mammoth and raised her hand, not even bothering to recite her magic words, and suddenly Mammoth was lifted bodily into the air, flipped over, and driven like a pile driver headfirst into the solid metal floor. Raven dropped her hand and let Mammoth fall like a dead weight to the ground, where he remained, motionless, and moaning softly.

Billy on the other hand, got a much more simple solution. Devastator took the baton from off his belt, slid it into his left hand, and the instant Billy's head appeared inside the room, he smashed it into the bridge of Billy's nose as hard as he could.

Raven's blow had been harder perhaps, but it was Devastator's that stunned Jinx, for Devastator she had actually met, spoken to, even fought alongside. She had pegged him easily as the weakest link in the Titans' chain, the one who was still holding back, afraid of violence and the consequences thereof. There was no sign of that here. Billy went down like puppet with its strings cut, his nose bleeding profusely, hollering and clutching at his face.

"You broke my goddamn nose, man!" shouted Billy through the injury. Devastator simply lowered the baton, pointing it like a sword at Billy's throat, and ignited it, his eyes never deviating one millimeter. Cyborg and Starfire turned back to Jinx and See-More.

"Who hired you?" asked Cyborg. "Tell us right now."

"After what she did to Gizmo?" spat Jinx. "I'm not telling you a damn thing!"

"Where's Gizmo?" asked Beast Boy, from behind Cyborg. He seemed to be at least slightly under control of his own faculties, at least it looked that way.

"He's in a coma," said Jinx. "Where's Robin?" To hell with appearances, this was insane. She needed to talk to someone who could be counted upon to be rational at least.

Starfire hoisted Jinx up and brought her fist back. "Robin is dead," she said.

And among the hundred thoughts that burst into Jinx' mind at that bit of news, the foremost one was the sudden realization that she was almost certainly about to die.

"For what purpose was Robin given this?" asked Starfire, and she pulled out a small disk of metal, cracked down the middle by some unknown force.

"I... I've never seen that before..." said Jinx, her eyes darting from Titan to Titan. "Look, we... we didn't kill Robin!" she said. "He beat the hell out of all of us, and when we woke up, we were back here. I swear!"

"Do not lie to me!" screamed Starfire so loud that the class face on the wallclock shattered. She slammed Jinx up against the back wall again and pinned her their, pulling her other fist back as though preparing to punch Jinx' head off.

"She ain't lyin', man!" insisted See-More. "It's the truth!"

"It sure is!" chimed in Billy from where he was laying on the floor.

"Who was your employer?" demanded Starfire.

Jinx hesitated just a second too long. "We didn't have an emp-"

Starfire hit her, hard, right in the stomach. She felt the wind leave her lungs and gasped for air desperately, her eyes threatening to pop out of her head.

"You better tell us who hired you, Jinx, or you won't live to join Brother Blood," said Cyborg.

"I... I c... I can't..." stammered Jinx, still struggling to inhale. "I can't... I can't tell... tell you..."

"Well then you better find a way to tell us," said Cyborg, "before I decide that you were behind the whole thing."

Jinx looked around the room, desperately looking for an out. None was immediately forthcoming. "I can't tell you. There'd... we'd be... you don't understand!"

"No, I don't think you understand, Jinx," said Cyborg. "I'm gonna have to - "

"Asian guy," blurted See-More suddenly. "Brown eyes, black hair. Maybe five-eight. Hundred forty pounds. Wore this weird-ass armor all the time..."

Everyone in the room slowly turned to look at See-More, including Jinx, who had actually just forgotten about Starfire for a moment. See-More looked around at the Titans and Jinx, and chose to address the latter. "These guys mean business, Jinx. We gotta tell 'em."

"Nevermind that," said Jinx. "How the hell do you know what he looked like?! How the hell do you even know he existed?! I never told anybody!"

"Because I've been spyin' on you, okay?!" shouted See-More. "You've been actin' weird for a month solid. Ever since that diamond thing. You keep obsessing over jobs that I can't even figure out why we're doin', and runnin' off on 'errands' all the time without sayin' a word about where the hell you're goin'. You think nobody noticed?"

Jinx honestly didn't know what to think right now. "If... you saw what I was doing," she said, "then you... you know why we can't tell them what - "

"Look," said See-More, turning back to the Titans. "Like I said, this guy's kinda small, but he's got weapons all over the place. Lasers and things pop up out of his armor. And he can teleport. I dunno if he uses somethin' to do it or just 'does' it, you know, but I've seen him do it." Only then did he turn back to Jinx. "What the hell's that guy gonna do to us that these guys here ain't?" he asked.

"You got a name?" asked Cyborg.

See-More shook his head. "I never heard it," he said.

Jinx sighed in resignation. "He never told me his name either."

The Titans glanced at one another, seeking some kind of positive identification from one of them, but none was apparently forthcoming. Jinx took the opportunity to turn back to See-More. "I can't believe you spied on me."

See-More seemed to deflate, and shook his head slowly. "I was worried about you, okay. You were actin' like somethin' really big was goin' on. I just... I wanted to make sure you weren't in over your head with somethin'. None of the others knew, I didn't wanna tell 'em. But then I saw you meetin' with the gold guy and I thought - "

Jinx felt Star go rigid, and Cyborg turned back to See-More instantly. "Gold guy?" he asked.

See-More blinked his single eye. "Uh, yeah... like I said, this guy wears this armor? Well the armor's all gold-lookin'. Like polished gold. Has a helmet too."

One by one, lights of recognition appeared in each of the Titans' eyes, all except Devastator, which Jinx supposed was only to be expected. Starfire slowly let her go, and looked down at the small metal disk in her hands, and when she raised her head again, the green glow in her eyes was gone, and her rage seemed totally replaced by surprise. She turned to Cyborg, who was evidencing the same shift.

"It... it cannot be..." she said.

"I thought... he was gone," said Cyborg.

"Who?" asked Devastator, which saved Jinx from having to ask the same question.

Starfire turned to Devastator, and her voice was quiet and thin as she spoke a single, simple name.

"Warp."

The name meant nothing to Jinx, but plainly it meant plenty to the Titans, as each one save Devastator's eyes widened. Cyborg and Starfire seemed to be running the possibilities over in their minds, when Raven asked a question of her own.

"Why did you agree to do what Warp asked?"

Jinx stared at Raven contemptuously. "Isn't it obvious?" she asked. "Because this 'Warp' guy is working for Trigon."

"So you're working for Trigon then?" asked Raven. There was a hint of suppressed anger in her voice, a slight tremble that augured very bad things.

"We're working for ourselves," replied Jinx. "He offered to arrange to spare us when the world ended if we helped him with a few jobs. We were supposed to steal that diamond for him, but that one," she pointed at Devastator, "switched the rocks on me." She turned back to Starfire. "So he told us to fight you and Robin. Just fight, not kill. He said we weren't supposed to kill anyone, but just get in your way. You guys knocked us all out, and we woke up here. Whoever killed Robin, it wasn't us."

Starfire looked like she was about to say something unkind, but she was pre-empted by Raven. "That doesn't matter," said Raven, stepping towards Jinx. "All of you are dead."

Even the other Titans seemed taken aback by this, and Jinx felt her heart leap into her throat. "You... you can't," she said. "We... we didn't kill anybody!"

"I don't have to kill you," said Raven pitilessly, her voice like the pounding of a judge's gavel. "You tried to make a deal with Trigon. Trigon never keeps his promises. Ever. He's gotten what he wants from you, and now he's going to throw you away like any other pawn." Raven leaned forward, staring Jinx squarely in the eye. "You're all gonna burn with the rest of the world," she said. And with that, she turned around, and contemptuously floated out of the jagged hole Starfire had torn in the HIVE Tower wall. One by one, the other Titans followed, last of all Cyborg and Starfire, who released See-More and Jinx only after all the others had left. None of them said anything on the way out.

Clearly, none of them had anything to say.

Once the Titans were gone, See-More slowly limped over to Jinx. "Jinx, you all right?" he asked.

"... yeah," said Jinx noncommittally, staring at the hole that the Titans had disappeared through, her mind far away from the HIVE tower.

"Look," he said, "I... I understand if you're pissed."

"See-More, honestly, right now I don't have the juice to get mad," said Jinx.

See-More chuckled nervously. "Yeah," he said, "I know what you mean. I mean... I thought Robin was like immortal or somethin'. I can't believe he's dead."

"I can," said Jinx, her eyes not moving from the hole in the wall. "Warp, or whatever his name is... left Starfire that disk thing. It was a clue to who he was. And he had to know they'd come here to ask, right?"

"Prob'ly," said See-More. "But then he won't mind if they know, right?"

"I think he wanted them to know," said Jinx. "But there's something else."

"What?"

"He teleported us all back to the Tower while we were out," said Jinx. "And I'm assuming he's the one who killed Robin, right?"

"Sounds right," said See-More. "So?"

"So," said Jinx, turning to See-More for the first time. "We knocked Starfire out before Robin took us down. So if he was there, and he killed Robin, why didn't he kill Starfire too?"

See-More thought about it for a second. "I don't know," he said. "Why wouldn't he do that?"

Jinx turned back to the hole in the wall. "Because I don't think this is about Trigon at all," she said. "This is personal."

"Somethin' between him and Robin?" asked See-More.

"No," said Jinx. "Between him and Starfire."

"Hrm..." said See-More as he considered it. "Well... whatever this thing is, Jinx, what do you think's gonna happen next?"

Jinx took a long, slow breath. "You want my opinion?" she asked.

"Yeah," said See-More. "What do you think?"

Jinx hesitated a moment before replying.

"Armageddon..."

[LadyTevar]

Chapter 30: The One-Eyed King

"Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark."

- Rabindranath Tagore

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"The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake."

They buried Robin on a Sunday.

The whirlwind had begun within hours, as news of Robin's death spread like a fire through a dry field, whipping around the planet and beyond at the speed of light. Within a day, the New York Times was carrying it on their front page, while commentators online indulged in wild speculations, and dignified television anchors soberly repeated the same somber information to a watching public. Strange, clinical terms like "electromagnetic accelerator", "overpenetration", and "ventricular hemorrhage" served only to cushion the truth. Interviews and pundit speculation could change nothing. All that was left was the pageantry.

The flags atop city hall and the skyscrapers downtown flew at half staff, as they did on the other side of the country, in the city where Robin had first flown. The Jump City Tribune's special edition had a masthead hung with black, filled with the stories and pictures of Robin's life and deeds, and of the secondary papers, even the ones who had castigated Robin, the Titans, and all their ilk as dangerous vigilantes and disturbers of the public peace, even they turned suddenly to stories of heroism and reminiscence and a life cut tragically short as though Robin, being dead, could now be safely eulogized, that chapter of their lives finally over.

Mourners held vigil at the impromptu shrine that arose overnight at the place Robin had died, the street blocked to all traffic by a barricade of flowers, candles, and memorabilia, tied together with a thousand messages of thanks and sorrow and farewell. Meanwhile the manhunt for Robin's murder raged on like a holy crusade, as the JCPD scoured the state with the support of the state police, the California National Guard, and the FBI. Within a day however, people were saying openly that the police would find nothing. Anyone capable of slaying Robin was simply beyond the ken of normal police.

And to all appearances, the rest of the Titans agreed.

The police cordoned off Titans Tower with patrol boats and helicopters, and despite the ravenous press and the throngs of citizens and mourners who turned out on the waterfront day after day, the Titans were not there to be seen. Some whispered that without Robin, they would disintegrate, disband forever and abandon their city to criminals and the corrupt, but such people were shouted or cuffed down by their peers, for true or not, none wished to hear such sentiments spoken aloud. On the third day, the mayor of Jump City, a man who had known Robin since first he had moved to California, issued a statement on his own behalf. His relationship with Robin had not always been smooth. A civic-minded professional administrator with three children of his own, he had not welcomed the idea of teen-aged metahuman protectors in the first place, invoking constantly the notion that the Titans might inspire other children to throw themselves in harm's way. Yet when asked where the Titans were, and why they had not made statements, he spoke simply.

"Leave them be," he said. "Children don't mourn the way adults do."

And so it was that seven days after Robin's death, on a shining Sunday morning, a funeral procession half a mile long wound its way slowly down Jump City's streets. Homes and shopfronts alike were hung in black banners as the city paid final homage to its fallen protector. A riderless police horse, hooded and bridled in rich caparison, led the procession with a pair of black, metal-shod boots turned backwards in the stirrups. Behind rode limousines and police in cars, on horses, on motorcycles, on foot. The roads were lined with civilians, and the sky resounded with the sound of helicopters, police and news in equal measure, as the procession slowly made its way to the Jump cemetery.

Yet for all the ornamental reverence that Jump City could perform for its adopted son, the service was poorly attended, for the Batman was not there, and neither was Superman, nor any representative from the Justice League, all of whom were gone from Earth on some mission of terrible importance, and could not be reached for any reason or by any means. Not one of the network of allies the Titans had so painstakingly built over the course of the last two years was present either, though charitable persons admitted that they likely would have attended if they physically could. The Titans East were enmeshed in a brutal campaign in Antarctica against Doctor Light, and the others were simply scattered to the winds, embroiled in other missions, and unable to return to Jump City even if they had wanted to. Of the entire metahuman community, the five remaining Titans alone were in attendance, their every move and gesture scrutinized by the press for import and meaning.

The civilian authorities did their best to make good the lack. The Mayors of Jump and Gotham Cities were both in attendance, along with Amos Brown and James Gordon, the Police Chiefs of the respective cities, both men of long acquaintance, sometimes amicable, sometimes stormy, with the boy who had been Batman's apprentice, and became the leader of the Titans of Jump. The Governor of California was there, two US Senators, eight Congressmen split evenly from both regions, and a whole host of state and local officials and dignitaries. Marines from Camp Pendleton were there, bearing rifles with which to fire the last salute, and a flag to drape over the mahogany coffin. And besides all the officials and dignitaries, there were a handful of civilians of no particular note at all. Among them were Barbara Gordon, daughter of the Gotham City police commissioner, who had apparently known Robin from his days in Gotham City, and an elderly British gentleman that no-one seemed to know, whose reasons for being at the funeral were his own, who said very little and stood by himself with tears in his eyes, watching as the coffin was lowered into the grave. He identified himself only as 'Alfred'.

"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me."

Apart from the civilians and officials, there stood all five remaining Titans, but if the populace and press thought to gauge something from their reactions, they were to be disappointed. The Titans had no reactions to gauge, no hysterics, no explosions of emotion, no fodder for the tabloids. Cyborg stood implacable in the center of the line of Titans, staring down at the grave with a dead, thousand-yard stare, like he was looking through it and off into some other place where this memorial was not happening, not necessary. Raven stood next to him, ashen-faced as she had never been, and Beast Boy next to her, for once without a joke or smile or mug for the cameras. On the far left side stood Starfire, a pace or two away from the others, and she alone showed movement, her hands clenched at her sides, shaking almost imperceptibly, save that the tremors were passing through her to the ground, and from there to the lectern where the eulogies were being read. Her eyes were closed, indeed she barely seemed to even acknowledge where she was, yet on the occasion when her eyes did open, she alone had tears in them, the others too far in shock, even now, to cry for their fallen friend.

And on the other side, also an imperceptible distance away from the others, there stood Devastator.

It was the first time David had ever been to a funeral, and he had no idea how he was supposed to behave, nor how he wanted to. The Titans, alone among the gathered mourners, were not clad in suits of black, but in their normal uniforms, this, according to Beast Boy and Cyborg at least, being the custom among metahumans. Right now, David wanted more than anything to magically be shifted into the ranks of the nameless mourners in black, to not know that everyone was staring at him, waiting for him to react in some "acceptable" manner, exhibit some kind of public display of "proper" grief. His dislike of being a public spectacle had dimmed somewhat over the last couple months, but today, this place, brought it back in full force. He wanted to be back at the Tower. He wanted to be a thousand miles away from this place.

He knew he wasn't the only one.

"Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over."

The eulogies and speeches had gone on forever, or so it seemed, and David could only barely hear the words that the Archbishop was reciting. Even with the week that had passed, even with all this, the pageantry and speechmaking, even with the flag-draped coffin and the marble headstone, it was like something out of a bad dream, whose power to scare had evaporated because of the certainty of waking up soon. None of this could make it real.

What made it real was being in the Tower, and not seeing Robin there. Silence in the evidence room, in the training room, in the common room. It was the ten thousand little bits of Robin, spare masks, birdarangs, bits of a deconstructed flashbomb, spare keys to the birdcycle, the formerly mute debris, that now served as a neon sign to all of the remaining Titans. "Robin is dead," it all said. "He is never coming back."

A sharp cry, stifled instantly, but no less piercing for it, whipsawed David's attention down to the other end of the line, where Starfire was doubled over, one hand steadying herself, one hand clutched over her mouth like a gag, supressing whatever was trying to force its way out, be it screams in Tamaranean, or the contents of her stomach. Cyborg was by her in an instant, bent over, whispering something to her that David couldn't hear from where he was standing, but he moved around the others to help, if he could. Cyborg and Beast Boy had helped Starfire back up, and the tears were now freely streaming down her face. Raven had her fists clenched, like she was holding back the urge to incinerate the entire crowd of gawking onlookers. Several press reporters even had the temerity to snap flash photographs, an indignity David might have repayed by shattering their cameras had Raven not beaten him to it with a twitch of her finger. Murmurs ran through the crowd, but none of the Titans save David paid them any notice, as Starfire regained control of herself and looked up at Cyborg.

"Please," she said in a near-frantic whisper. "Please, I... I wish to leave..."

Cyborg simply turned his head to Raven and nodded, and Raven raised one hand, whispering a small spell. An instant later, all five Titans vanished into thin air before the eyes of the entire gathering, leaving the Archbishop to regain the crowd's attention and to finish his psalm. Right now none of them, not even David, cared in the slightest what the public might think of their precipitous flight. There would perhaps come a day when they could face the fact of Robin's death, but it was not today, not in public, not like this. Robin had been the heart and soul of the Titans, and now he was gone...

"Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life," said the Archbishop, "and I will dwell in the house of the Lord... "

... forever.

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Among the wild speculations that the media had been casting about since the news of Robin's death had broken, were two notions that seemed to be on everyone's lips. One was that without Robin, the Titans would disband forever. The other was that without Robin, Jump City would experience a crime wave of epic proportions.

David didn't presume to know much, but he knew enough to know that both of these notions were as wrong as they could be.

He hadn't been in the Tower for when Terra had betrayed them all, though from the sideways tales he'd been privy to, he didn't regret the omission. The death of Robin made up for it completely. David knew by now what no outside observer could possibly know. The Titans were not some loose coalition held together only by the efforts of one leader. They were a thing unto themselves, a coral reef, a collection of planetary bodies bound to one another by their own gravity. None of them had anywhere to go, anything to be, anything at all save one another. David knew that even if they didn't. For them to separate now was an impossibility. Faced with the sudden loss of Robin, not one of them could have brought themselves to lose the others.

The Titans did not fall apart. The Titans fell together. So much so in fact that David, as he had all those long months ago when first he arrived at the Tower, found himself once again separated from the other Titans by an invisible wall. Not of power or gratitude, but of simple sorrow.

And it was no easier to bear now than it had been then.

Robin had been his trainer, his mentor, his friend. The news, the shock of Robin's death had been as profound as anything he had ever felt in his life, a numbing, deadening feeling that washed out the rest of the world and left him staggering in disbelief. And yet for all that, David was still the newcomer to the Titans. Moreso than any of the other Titans, moreso even than Beast Boy, who secretly and openly idolized Robin by turns, David was simply set below Robin, as though it had been ordained by some governing force that Robin should have wisdom, and David should receive it. Robin was the leader of the Titans of course, he gave orders to all of them, and was (mostly) obeyed, but David, as the latecomer, and as the one Robin had trained up from nothing at all, was forever separated from Robin by a degree of formality that simply was not there for the other Titans.

David had lost his teacher and friend, and he was badly shaken, stunned, and hurt. The other Titans however had lost something infinitely worse. They had lost their brother, their surrogate parent in his own strange way, and they were simply crushed. And worse even than watching them go through it, was the knowledge that he should by rights have been going through it too, and that he was not. Despite what he might have wished, he had not known Robin as the others had, his ties to Robin had not, in the final tally, been as strong as the others. Whether or not that was to be expected, which it was, whether or not the others resented it, which they didn't, David resented the hell out of it. It felt like the final betrayal, that Robin should die, and David alone should be able to carry on as though he had not. He cursed himself blue for his own callousness, but all the curses in the world could not change a thing, and all that was left for him to do was to do what little he could to help the others, who were suffering through a hell unimaginable.

Starfire took it the worst of all. Tamaraneans were not restrained in their emotional reaction to anything, let alone to something like this. David saw her but seldom, her eyes stained a permanent red with tears, unable to fly, head constantly bent down as though oppressed for the first time by the weight of gravity. And yet horrible as it was, Starfire's sorrow wasn't what scared David. What scared him was her rage.

The crime wave that the papers had so confidently predicted failed to materialize. It did so because, while the uninitiated might have thought that the criminals of Jump City would leap at the chance to commit crimes with Robin out of the picture, the fact of the matter was that Robin and the Titans had trained the criminal element of Jump City well. A handful of dim bulbs, vandals, miscreants, petty thugs who could not be bothered to think, behaved as though given free license to steal and murder. The majority however, whether metahuman or mundane, knew better. They had not survived in Jump City this long by being stupid, and as soon as Robin's death was made known to them, they all curtailed their activities, battened their hatches and hid. They knew what was coming.

The rest were taught. Rapidly.

Every night, Starfire left the Tower alone. Every night, she traveled the streets of Jump City, and sought for trouble, for criminals, for targets, and usually she found it. Every morning the police found her chosen victims beaten senseless, wrapped around light posts or hurled through cement walls. She refused to explain herself, not to the police, not to the press, not to the other Titans. Cyborg begged and pleaded with her not to go, or at least to take someone with her, and when she refused, tried to shadow her himself or to send David or Beast Boy to do so, but none of them, not even Beast Boy, could keep up with her as she dove again and again into the most violent, dangerous parts of town and left broken criminals strewn in her wake. None of the civic authorities complained, the men she thrashed nightly were lawbreakers after all, and yet everyone could feel her newfound ferocity like a shift in the wind. Perhaps she was taking some kind of revenge, perhaps she had a death wish, or perhaps, as David thought most likely, she simply could find no other outlet to release her inconsolable rage and pain. It was as though she was daring Warp or Slade or whoever else had killed Robin to come and find her.

One more worry for Cyborg to juggle.

Cyborg had taken Robin's death no better than the others, yet he, less so even than them, had not the luxury of falling into mourning or catatonia. His was the greatest weight of all. While no chain of command had existed in the Titans save that Robin led and the others followed, by a strange sort of unspoken, unanimous agreement, it was Cyborg upon whom the responsibilities of leadership now fell. Oldest of the Titans, and the only one remaining with any experience at leadership whatsoever, he did his level best to step into shoes that he and everyone knew could never be filled, but that needed filling regardless. The challenge demanded stoicism and fortitude beyond the ken of any teenager, and in David's humble opinion, Cyborg met it as well as anyone could have expected, shouldering a burden David could scarcely even guess at with nothing but grim determination not to let his makeshift family fall apart. Robin had been working on a plan to combat the threat of Trigon and Slade when he was killed, and it now fell to Cyborg to turn the plan into a reality, as well as to oversee the protection of the city, to deal with the civic officials and the press, and to try and keep the remaining Titans together and alive. David's overriding memory of Cyborg from these days was of a hulking figure, dimly visible by the light of a desklamp, trying to make heads or tails of paperwork or notes in Robin's shaky hand, for stretches so long that more than once he ran his batteries out, and the others were forced to handcart him back to the garage to recharge.

David could only try to help in his own inadequate fashion, which meant long hours of everything from upkeeping the garage when Cyborg could not spare himself to do so, to serving as a sounding board against which Cyborg could throw ideas or theories as to how they were supposed to defend themselves against Trigon's threat. Obviously, David was not the ideal person for this job, but it was his nonetheless, for the person whose job it should have been could not do it.

Robin's death had hit Raven harder than anyone but Beast Boy knew and anyone but David suspected. Already teetering on the edge of total despair given what she knew to be coming, and possessed of some kind of mystical connection to Robin that even Beast Boy didn't know how to describe, Raven outwardly remained calm, but inside, it was like a fire had died. The Tower no longer shook to her eruptions or nightmares, something any observer would have thought a good sign, but all of the Titans knew was not. She no longer shook the Tower's foundations because she was no longer fighting herself. Robin's death had been the last straw. She had given up all hope. They were all going to die. Never talkative, she now seemed only partly aware of her surroundings, responding in monotone whispers to any question, no longer reading, no longer even meditating, remaining in her room, alone, save when called for.

Beast Boy did his best to bring her back, under circumstances so trying that David wondered how he could stay sane. He was as badly hurt as the rest of them, anyone with eyes could see that in his forced smile and red eyes, and yet he plastered his smile on regardless of how forced it was, and never let any of the others see him cry or despair. Nobody even bothered to groan at his jokes any more, certainly not Raven, whom he inflicted himself on the most, as though he could snap her out of the trough she had fallen into by sheer act of will. He spent hours, talking to her, forcing her to acknowledge his presence, trying to get her to react at all, if only to blow him through the window or threaten him with the wrath of ages. David, feeling as useless as ever, could do nothing but occasionally go on a patrol with Beast Boy, during which time his job was merely to smile and pretend to laugh at Beast Boy's jokes, and try to do something to take his mind off of Raven.

He failed most, if not all of the time.

Days slipped by, one after the next, with no change whatsoever to this horrible new reality the Titans had found themselves in, and every day, David felt more and more helpless in the face of this terrible pall that had descended on his friends. Criminals were fought and went to jail, patrol routes were run, if more haphazardly, Cyborg even made a gesture at restarting Robin's training regimen. But all of them were simply going through the motions, locked in their own rage, despair, or impotence in the face of everything that had happened and all that was coming. And all David could do was watch in company with the nagging voices inside his own head as the calendar marched steadily towards the appointed end, and all hope of escaping the vaguely-defined doom that faced them all drained away like an ebb tide.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Gethsemane Baptist Church, on Chestnut street in the waterfront district of Jump City, had been through a rough month.

Positioned at the crux of a T-intersection between Chestnut and Union streets, its tall spire and stained-glass rose windows normally faced down Union towards Patriot Park and Jump City Bay. 'Normally' was the operative word, for the church's window frames were empty, the colored glass still on order, while the view of Patriot Park it normally commanded was marred somewhat by the ongoing construction work in the park itself, city workers replacing shrubs, benches, paths, and even whole trees after the last 'incident'.

Overall though, Pastor Bennett was reasonably satisfied with how things had gone. The deacon had assured him that all of the construction on the church would be complete within three weeks, which, as usual, had become four and now threatened to become five. Still, the building itself was finally finished, the roof no longer admitting rain, and all that remained was the internal work, meaning the church could once more be used. He'd been holding services where he could, even bringing in an old-style traveling preacher from Arizona to hold a revival in an enormous tent, but it was good to be back in a permanent home. The Sunday service had gone well, despite the plastic sheeting over the windows and the pile of construction materials where the organ was supposed to be.

Normally, the church was supposed to be closed during off hours, but the last week's services had been so well attended, and so many neighborhood passers-by had stopped in to see how work was coming, that Pastor Bennett had decided to leave it open to the public for a week or so. The contractors had agreed to work around the church's schedule, and as today was a Monday, they normally would have been assembling the wood paneling for the north wall, save that today was also Labor Day, and thus no work was being done. Accordingly, the church was very quiet, save for a couple of members of the choir who had taken the opportunity to practice the hymns for next week's service, and nearly empty, save for a handful of onlookers who stopped in for a few minutes a piece, a pair of old women who were whispering prayers to themselves in one of the pews nearest the podium, and...

... and him.

From where he was sitting, Pastor Bennett could see the young man well enough, not that he needed to in order to tell what he was doing. Sitting on the outside of the rearmost pew on the right side of the church, half-hidden beneath the shadows cast by one of the support pillars, his head was bowed, but not in prayer, and his eyes were downcast and covered with one hand like a veil. He looked almost as though he had fallen asleep in his seat, save that whenever the church doors opened, he would raise his head ever so slightly to see who was entering, and slide his free hand into his jacket. It took no leaps of brilliance to tell that the young man had a concealed weapon inside his coat, but Pastor Bennett did not call the police. Instead, against his better judgment, he had let the boy remain undisturbed, and so far at least, there had been no trouble.

The boy had simply shown up one day about a week ago without so much as a word, and had been showing up periodically since then, always during off-times, never during a service or a church meeting. Sometimes he only stayed for a few minutes, sometimes he was here for hours, sitting quietly in the back, not even looking at any of the people or objects around him, save for a quick glance to ensure that they presented no immediate threat. Neither weather nor loud construction deterred him, and none of the other parishioners so much as noticed his existence, so well did he simply blend into the background.

Churches tended to attract a lot of itinerant, troubled youth, especially ones whose doors were open to the public, and it shamed Pastor Bennett to remember that this was one of the reasons why most churches were not. There was, however, something very different about this boy. He did not have the look of a runaway or delinquent to him, despite being quite obviously armed. nor did he interact with anyone at all. A single glance seemed to be enough to satisfy him as to who was and wasn't a threat, even from far away, though how he made the distinction was beyond the Pastor. For the most part, Pastor Bennett had left him alone, but today he had finished the notes for next week's sermon early, and also his letter to the Deacon, and there was no construction to supervise. He could not return home while the church was still open, and he did not wish to close it, not yet at least. Accordingly, after watching the boy simply sit for a few, quiet minutes, he slowly stood up from the desk on the side of the church and walked over to the side of his pew.

"I hope the floor is interesting, at least."

The boy started and gave a soft gasp of surprise, his free hand darting inside his jacket as he looked up. For an instant, the look in his eyes was vacant and hollow, like he was staring right through the Pastor, yet a second or so later his eyes focused, and he remembered where he was and who had spoken. He relaxed, albeit slowly, and slid his hand back out of his jacket. "Sorry," he whispered, almost too quiet to hear.

Pastor Bennett stood there for a few moments, watching him carefully. "Do you mind if I sit down?" he finally asked. The boy looked back up, puzzled, but nodded silently and slid over in the pew to permit the pastor to have a seat. From where they were sitting, the ethereal sound of the choir singers practicing in on the other side of the church floated past like the disembodied voices of ghosts or angels.

"They're wonderful, aren't they?" asked the Pastor, folding his hands atop the back of the pew in front of him and watching the choir singers practice. "Practice four times a week, after school or work. You should hear them when they're actually performing."

"I can't," whispered back the boy, without looking up.

Pastor Bennett nodded simply. "I see," he said. "Is there a reason why not?"

"Yeah," answered the boy, but he did not elaborate.

"Fair enough," said the Pastor with a shrug, turning back to the choir, watching and listen for a few moments. The boy did not contribute a further remark, and so after a little bit, Pastor Bennett tried again.

"The acoustics will be better once the construction is finished," he said, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw the boy wince subtly. "We hang wood panels over the stone to make the sound fill the room better. There was an... incident here, not long ago. The church was destroyed, and we had to rebuild it. It should be quite a sight once everything is complete."

By now the boy was looking up at him apprehensively, but Pastor Bennett didn't turn his head, waiting as the boy slowly formed words into a quiet admission.

"I was..." he said, softly, "I was one of the ones who destroyed it."

Pastor Bennett nodded slowly.

"I know."

Without turning his head, Pastor Bennett saw the boy's expression change to surprise, and he smiled. "I read the papers, son," said the Pastor, "I know who you are. It takes more than jeans and a windbreaker to disguise that. Besides," he pointed at the boy's jacket," you're not very good at hiding that."

The boy seemed to shrink back down, his hand feeling the contours of whatever was held beneath his coat as he lowered his head.

"They call you 'Devastator', right?"

"Yeah," said the boy softly.

"If I might ask, that's probably not the name your parents gave - "

"David," said the boy suddenly, looking up again. "I'm David."

Pastor Bennett turned to David with a smile and an extended hand. "Jeremiah Bennett," he said. "Pastor of Gethsemane Baptist Church." David shook the Pastor's hand weakly, then seemed to stumble for words.

"I'm... sorry I blew up your church," he said finally.

"You didn't," replied Pastor Bennett. "A church is a community of people gathered in praise of God. What you blew up was simply a building, and I... assume you had your reasons for doing it." He smiled. "But thank you."

David nodded slowly, and seemed to sigh, as though resettling an enormous weight on his shoulder. He leaned forward, laying his arms on the back of the pew ahead of him, placing his head atop his arms, and closed his eyes. Pastor Bennett let him be for a few moments, and then ventured another question.

"Something tells me you didn't come here to apologize though," he said.

"No," replied David quietly, not moving his head. Pastor Bennett nodded.

"Are you a Baptist?"

David shook his head.

"A Christian?"

"I'm not religious."

Pastor Bennett nodded slowly. "Bit of an odd venue for someone who's not religious, isn't it?"

David took a deep breath and slowly let it out. "Should... I go?" he asked.

"Of course not," said Pastor Bennett, "all are welcome here, whatever their faith or lack. I was simply curious. You've been coming here, off and on, for five days. I wondered what would bring someone like yourself to do that."

David sat in silence for a few moments before shaking his head. "I don't know," he said.

Pastor Bennett nodded. "Well then," he said, "perhaps I can help you find out."

David looked up at Pastor Bennett quizzically. "Am I supposed to confess my sins or something?

"That's the Catholics, son," said Pastor Bennett with a smile. "We do things a bit differently."

David shrugged. "I... didn't come here to convert," he said. "Or to find God."

"Maybe not," said Pastor Bennett, "but you did come here. And if all you're here for is to listen to the choir practice and find a quiet place to think, then you're welcome to stay and I'll leave you be. But if there's something troubling you that drove you to come here, even if you don't know why," he shrugged, "then maybe I can help."

David turned his head slightly, looking sideways at the Pastor. "Don't... take this the wrong way," he said, "but... why do you want to help me?"

Pastor Bennett folded his arms. "Well, because I'm a preacher, son," he said, "and it's my job to care for the spiritual welfare of everyone, even non-believers. And because, like it or not, you're responsible for protecting this city, and everyone in it." He paused for a moment, gauging the young man's reaction. "And... to be perfectly honest," he said with a smile, "because the last time you entered this building, you blew it up, and if that's going to happen again, I'd rather have a bit of notice."

David didn't respond, but traces of a smile appeared at the corners of his mouth as he nodded and lowered his head, resting it on his arms once again. Pastor Bennett turned back to the choir.

"I assume it's about Robin?" he asked.

To his surprise however, David shook his head. "No," he said. "It's not. It ought to be, but it's not..." He lowered his head until his forehead was resting on the back of the pew before him. Pastor Bennett waited, and when an explanation was not forthcoming, he sought for one. Directly.

"What's wrong, son?" he asked.

David's voice was practically a whisper. "We're all gonna die," he said.

Pastor Bennett did not react. "You mean the rest of the Teen Titans?"

"I mean everybody," said David, and the Pastor could see his hands gripping the wooden pew tighter as he spoke. "The whole planet. You, me, everybody."

Pastor Bennett sighed softly. "Everyone dies, David. It's the way of things. I know that - "

"The world is about to end," said David, his voice choking as he did so, and he lifted his head as though it weighed fifty pounds, revealing wet eyes ringed in red. "It's gonna end soon. Maybe a week, maybe two. Fire and brimstone, all the worst parts of the Bible. Some guy who might actually be the Devil himself is going to appear and devour it. And when he does..." David trailed off, but his meaning was clear enough.

The Pastor waited for David to recover a bit. "And you all are trying to stop him?"

"We can't stop him," said David, eyes filling with tears as he looked furtively at the Pastor. "We don't know how. Maybe if... if Robin were still here he'd have some kind of plan, but none of us know what to do. And so he's going to come, and we're all going to burn. He'll turn the Earth into Hell, or worse."

Pastor Bennett considered all this for a moment, but as he was doing so, David contributed something else.

"But that's not even why I'm here," said David all of a sudden. "I mean... I don't know why I'm here, I don't believe in God, and even if I did I don't know how to pray. But the world's coming to an end. Robin's dead. The others are all just... they're... broken without him." He glanced back at the Pastor as though looking for agreement or understanding, and received a nod in return. "All this stuff is happening, I don't know how to fix it or help or do anything useful... and despite all that, the only thing I can think about is that this guy is coming for me, and I'm probably going to die."

Pastor Bennett ventured a word or two of advice. "Son, it's... only natural to be - "

"I don't care if it's 'only natural', it's not all right. Not for me. Not for us. It's like you said. We're responsible for everything. But even if we weren't, they're my friends. They're my only friends. And instead of helping them, I can't stop worrying about what's gonna happen to me.

It was only then that Pastor Bennett recalled that Devastator was the newest addition to the Titans.

"I mean," said David, and Pastor Bennett wasn't sure if the young metahuman was still talking to him or simply talking out loud, "I've never known what to do, and that's... that's usually okay . It used to be enough to just do whatever the others were doing and sort of use common sense for the rest, you know?" He sighed. "But now none of them know what to do. And I'm not even trying to find out. I'm just scared out of my skull and sitting here because..." he trailed off for a second. "Because the person I'd usually ask about this is dead."

"David," said Pastor Bennett. "Whether you think it all right or not, it is not shameful to be afraid. Even Christ was afraid when he mounted the cross, and none of us are him, not even heroes. I guarantee you that even your friends are undergoing the same fear."

"Not like this," said David. "I mean, yeah, they're all afraid, I know that much. But... Raven's a wreck because she thinks she's responsible for this. Beast Boy's a wreck because she is. Starfire's a wreck because Robin's dead and Cyborg's a wreck because he has to keep us all alive somehow." He grimaced and looked back down at the floor. "And I'm just sitting here like a little kid who wants his parents to stop fighting so that everything can go back to normal."

In some ways he was right, Pastor Bennett admitted to himself. Sitting here, in the rearmost pew, he looked like a skittish runaway fleeing some kind of domestic dispute. And yet this child, he reminded himself, had destroyed Cinderblock, battled devils of steel and flame alongside his fellows, and theoretically done so on behalf of the city itself. Just like his fellows, he was endowed with power far beyond the ken of normal men, his to employ or not as he saw fit.

"You're not a little kid," said Pastor Bennett. "You're a miracle."

David barely reacted to the term, save to wilt slightly and lower his head a bit more. "I'm not a miracle," he said.

"Of course you are," said Pastor Bennett, and he leaned down, framing his words as carefully as he could. "I've seen what you can do with your abilities."

"I didn't get my 'abilities' from God," said David. "None of us did."

"Well of course you didn't," said the Pastor. "You got them from magic or radiation or aliens or genetics. But why that makes you think that they don't derive from God?"

"Because I don't believe in God," said David.

"But you do believe in the Devil, Hell, and the End of the World. And you believed that you would find the answers to those things in a Church."

David didn't answer.

Pastor Bennett sighed. "David, I'm a Minister. God is how I approach the world. I see His presence everywhere, and I'm..." he hesitated, "I'm prepared to accept that not everyone does, for one reason or another. But if I'm understanding you right, the Devil, or something like him, is about to rise over the Earth and consume it with fire, and none of us, the rest of us that is, could possibly defeat him. And yet what should appear just as he is preparing to do so but a band of heroes armed with powers far beyond the prospect of even our mightiest soldiers and leaders? Each one of them is here, and so-armed, through a series of co-incidences and circumstances so incredible, that to even consider them is to boggle the mind." He smiled. "Even nonbelievers would call that a miracle."

"It's not enough," said David softly.

"Perhaps not," said the Pastor, "but a wiser man than me once said that when you say a situation is hopeless, then you're not just denying God, you're slamming the door in his face.

"You don't understand..." said David.

"No, I don't," replied Pastor Bennett, "but I don't have to understand." He smiled. "All I need is faith."

David sighed and shook his head. "In God?"

"In God," said the Pastor, gently placing a hand on the teenager's shoulder, "and in His miracles."

David took a deep breath and let it out slowly, staring off into space as though he could see through the pew in front of him.

"Some miracle," he said quietly.

"That's not for me to judge," said Pastor Bennett. "Nor for you to judge, incidentally. But since you insist on doing so, you should know that it is neither a sin nor a crime to fear for your own life. The only sin comes from living only for yourself, and never thinking of or working for others. And I don't believe, David, that even you are about to sit here and insist to me that you are guilty of that. Not when you and God alone know how many lives you've saved. Not when you're willing to sit down in a church and seek a means to push past your own fear and help your friends, even though you don't believe in God."

Despite everything, that seemed to bring a small smile to the young man's face, though he did not look up, and the Pastor smiled in turn and withdrew his hand, sitting back in the pew.

"You are not betraying your friends through fear, nor through helplessness. Your friends are faced with their own roads, and you will assist them as you can. If you have no faith in God, then you shall have to have faith in yourself, and, if you'll forgive an unpardonable cliche, in your friends, whom I doubt are as irreparably broken as you think."

David took in a deep breath very slowly, and let it out at equal speed. He sat up carefully, sitting back in the pew and watching the choir as it continued to practice. He said nothing, did not smile or turn his head, but his posture seemed to be slightly lighter, and the Pastor watched him for a few moments before venturing a question.

"Was that what you were looking for?"

That drew a soft smile. "Not really," said David. "But thanks."

"You're most welcome," said the Pastor.

"I... sort of thought when you sat down that you were going to..."

"Preach?" asked Pastor Bennett. David nodded. "Well what makes you think I didn't?"

David smiled. "You know what I mean."

Pastor Bennett didn't answer immediately, inhaling and exhaling slowly as he looked past David at the old women on the other side of the church.

"Can I tell you a story?" he asked. David simply nodded.

"I knew a young man once," said the Pastor. "Knew him from when he was an infant. His mother brought him here on Sundays, like clockwork. I watched him grow up. I took his profession of faith, and baptized him myself over there." He pointed to the screen on the far left side of the church that hid the annex containing the baptismal font. "It was his mother that brought him into the church. His father wanted nothing to do with us. It's... often like that."

The Pastor took another deep breath. "When he was... I'd say about your age, he was in an accident of some sort. A terrible one, by all accounts. His mother died, he was gravely injured, would have died himself but for the grace of God and modern medicine. Afterwards he was... disabled. He had a very difficult time coming to grips with what had happened to him. I attempted to assist him, as best I knew how to." The Pastor sighed. "I failed. I... pushed him too hard, and instead of bringing him back into our fold, I drove him away. I tried to convince him that what had happened was God's will, and that he needed to accept it as such. I was unable to understand what he was undergoing, and I fear that I made things much worse. Eventually he broke all ties to the church, and left us."

David nodded, but remained silent for a little bit. "What happened to him?" he finally asked.

"He found another path. His own path," said Pastor Bennett. "One that, I believe, brought him some measure of peace. I admit that I did not approve of it. I'm not entirely certain I do now. But I learned at least my role is not always to show people the path. Sometimes I'm here to help them walk it, even if it's the wrong one."

David had nothing to say to that, and sat back in the pew, though whether he was watching the choir or staring right through them, Pastor Bennett could not say. Several minutes passed before David cleared his throat slightly, and stood up.

"I should go," he said. "I'm not supposed to be here."

Pastor Bennett simply nodded, and watched the boy turn and walk towards the entrance to the church. Only when he had neared the door did the Pastor stop him.

"David," he said, and David halted and turned back.

"Yeah?"

"Would you do me a favor?"

"Sure," said David. "What is it?"

"When next you see Victor," said the Pastor, "would you..." he hesitated. "Would you tell him that... our doors will always be open to him. Even in the face of the end of the world."

David didn't answer for a few moments. When he did, the Pastor caught what looked like surprise in his eyes, though his voice was steady as a rock.

"Yeah," he said. "I'll do that."

"Thank you," said the Pastor. "And er... David?"

"Yes?"

"Our doors are open to you as well."

But David's only answer was a soft smile as he slowly turned and walked out the door of the church, looking for all the world like just another young teenager, giving those who passed him no hint of who he actually was.

Pastor Bennett walked back through his church, across the aisle and up to the small writing desk he kept in on the side of the baptismal alcove. He had his own office in back of course, but he found at times that he preferred to work in the body of the church, with the choir and the Sunday schools and the glass stained to represent scenes of the bible.

And so, sliding the letters to the deacon and his sermon notes to one side, unobserved by the choir or the few worshipers in attendance, Pastor Jeremiah Bennett folded his hands over the bare wood of his desk, lowered his forehead until it rested upon them, and slowly began to whisper words as familiar to him as his own name.

"Our father, who art in heaven..."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[LadyTevar]

Chapter 30, cont'd

Upon later reflection, it was the baton that gave him away.

The key to invisibility was the total absence of defining characteristics. Someone trying to go unseen always wound up drawing attention to himself, acting outside the normal bounds of common behavior, attracting the eye of every passerby. For someone to truly be invisible, the best method was to be unremarkable in the strict, literal sense. There needed to be nothing about one that could be remarked upon, no purchase for a wandering intellect to grab hold of and use as the basis of suspicion. David had sort of half-known this back when he had actually been nobody, but he had not realized just how deeply the behavior had ingrained itself into his person until he had tried going out into the world without his uniform. Despite the fact that everyone knew him now, had seen his face in newspapers and on television, he had found that, given a simple desire to go unseen, he could reliably walk through a crowd of a thousand people without ever once being recognized.

It was both a relief, and not, at the same time.

Right now he had much to think about and little desire to be interrupted, and so he blended in with the crowds of pedestrians, not glancing up, another teenager absorbed in his own selfish thoughts, plain, unspoken, and safely ignored. He glanced up only to the extent that he had to in order to avoid walking into something or someone, and otherwise was content to simply return home to the Tower.

The difficulty with this particular form of invisibility though, was that you could not absolutely rely on it. None of the parishioners of the church had known who he was, but the Pastor had, for he had inadvertently drawn the Pastor's attention by his unexplained presence in the church. And someone who was actively looking for you, particularly somebody who had the capacity to use an X-ray filter on his eyepiece-lens and see the rather large lump of metal you were carrying under your coat, could still see you plain as day.

So it proved.

One second, David was walking down the street next to a series of Brownstone town houses, and the next, he was dangling forty feet in the air, encased in some kind of spherical energy field that crackled around him like ball lightning. Ordinarily this would have been the sort of thing that people noticed, save that a split second before he was unceremoniously abducted from street level, a car on the other side of the street backfired with a sound like a canon retort, echoing down the street and instantly attracting the attention of every passerby and driver. By the time the people below had determined that it was nothing but a car exhaust, David had been hoisted over the edge of one of the rooftops and vanished from sight, having disappeared without notice or trace as though he had been vaporized.

But very little of that was crossing David's mind at the moment, for having been bodily lifted into the air and pulled onto the roof of the Brownstone, he found himself staring face to face at two people he had hoped dearly he would never see again.

Gizmo was hovering about four feet off the ground, suspended by his harness, which had a pair of small fusion rockets extended from the back on either side of him, keeping him relatively stable. On his wrist was mounted an electrical gadget that David could not have identified in thirty years, but it was visibly projecting the energy field which had encapsulated and lifted him. He kept the device pointed at David, a satisfied smirk plastered on his face, and next to him stood another green-suited Hiver, See-More, who had managed to replace the headpiece he had recently lost, and was adjusting it to bring some kind of red filter down over his cyclopean visor, one no doubt that augured no good at all.

The forcefield that had picked him up felt as solid as carved stone, enclosing him like a hamster ball, and he pressed his hands against it trying to see if he could find any weakness, but whatever was projecting it was too well-built, too strong. It was not, however, soundproof. Through the crackling of the electric field, David could hear See-More and Gizmo's voices.

"Told you it'd work," said Gizmo, but he sounded surly and annoyed. There was a white bandage taped around his head and over one of his eyes, and while David had hardly known Gizmo for any length of time, there was none of the gleeful bloodthirsty grinning or absurdly childish insults that he normally spewed liberally about on anyone nearby. He looked irritable, not nervous but aggravated, like he did not want to be here, doing this, whatsoever. Of course, if he was still recovering from the coma Robin and Starfire had knocked him into, that only made sense.

"Where do you want him?" asked Gizmo, and David half expected them to dump him unceremoniously off the roof, but See-More just nodded with his head towards a spot opposite himself. "Just leave him there," said See-More, and Gizmo obediently lowered his hand, setting the electrical bubble down on the roof as gently as a passenger elevator, and then, to David's astonishment, dispelling the field entirely with the press of a button, leaving him standing on the roof, facing the two of them in silence. And before David's mind could come up with a rational explanation for why he had done that, Gizmo turned to See-More, ignoring David completely as he muttered something angry under his breath. "Make it quick," he said to See-More, and then without a glance backwards, he turned around and floated across the roof to an open doorway in an access stairwell, moving through it and closing it behind him with a click, leaving See-More and David alone atop the roof.

David honestly would have given even money at this point that See-More was about to execute him. "Make it quick" sounded ominous enough after all, but the cyclopean Hiver did no such thing, standing stock still, staring at David with one unblinking eye like a gargoyle on some ancient cathedral. He said nothing, gave no indication of what the hell they were doing here, until finally David could stand the tension no more and reached for the baton inside his jacket.

See-More shot him.

The laser that fired out of See-More's visor was low-powered, sufficient only to burn a hole through his jacket and burn the back of David's hand. It lasted barely a microsecond, but it was enough to raise a blister and cause him to reflexively cry out and withdraw his hand, as though he had touched a hot stove.

"Don't even try it," said See-More. "You're not that fast. You reach for it again and I'll burn a hole right through you."

The pain had sharpened David's wandering mind like few things could have, and a flash of anger pulsed through him. "I don't need it to blow you off this roof," he said, already reaching out to the molecules of stone and insulation that surrounded them.

Perhaps See-More could tell, or perhaps he just guessed. "You're not a match for me, man," he said. "And even if you were, there's three hundred people in this building. What're you gonna do, blow 'em all up?"

Right now, faced with a Hiver, David was almost willing to test the first part of that statement, but the second stopped him short. He slowly let the molecules go, his vision returning to normal. "What..." he said carefully, "what do you want?"

To his surprise, See-More looked almost as nervous as he did "I want to talk," he said.

"Talk?" David could scarcely credit his own ears. "You want to talk? About what?"

"I want you to talk," said See-More. "You can start by tellin' me what the Hell is going on here."

David blinked, considered his position, and blinked again. "Are you kidding me?"

See-More looked almost offended. "What?" he asked, putting one hand to his visor. "Do I look like I'm kidding you? You start talking right now or I'll burn a hole through you big enough to fit a - "

"Go fuck yourself."

See-More froze like he'd been turned to stone.

"What did you just - "

"You heard me," said David, his voice so bitter, and yet so drained of emotion that even he was surprised, though he didn't show it. He had been worried, scared, bound up as tightly as an overwound watch ever since Robin died if not before, and this... this Hiver standing here demanding answers from him just capped it all off. See-More absolutely had the capacity to just kill him where he stood, he didn't doubt that for a second. He just no longer cared.

"You have ten seconds," said David, "to get out of my sight. If you don't, I swear to God, you will die right here on this roof."

"You are not gonna blow this building up," said See-More, though he sounded rather unavoidably like he was trying to convince himself. "No way."

"No," said David. "I'm not. What I am gonna do is push this button." Before See-More could stop him, he slipped his hand into his front pocket and drew out his palm-sized yellow communicator, one finger atop the large panic button built into the side of it. "And when I do that, the other Titans are going to come boiling down here and rip you to pieces. They won't even have to touch the building."

Despite everything, there was a hint of fear in See-More's voice as he lifted his hand to his visor again. "You'll be dead before they get here," he said.

David didn't even hesitate. "And you'll be dead as soon as they do. You got away with killing Robin. You think that means you'll get away with killing me?"

"We didn't kill Robin!" snapped See-More.

"What, you were just trying to 'talk' to him too?"

See-More said nothing, as David slowly approached him.

"I don't have time to sit here and talk to you," he said, his voice monotone and shaking, but not with fear. "And even if I did, it wouldn't change anything. You guys have done enough. Leave us alone."

All capacity to regard the Hive as a serious threat had simply been burnt out of him, half-replaced by a soul-draining apathy. He knew what he should have been doing, what he should have been saying, or how he normally would react, but right now he felt so divorced from the reality he had come to know that it was like he was reading about it in a book. If See-More wanted to shoot him, then what the hell did it really matter? They were all dead anyway.

But See-More didn't shoot David as he walked by. Instead, perhaps under the impression that he was still controlling the situation, he reached out, grabbed David's arm to make him stop and do as he commanded, and thereby found out what the other half of David's normal equilibrium had been replaced with...

It all happened in a flash. There was no discrete thought process, no effort put forth, just a spike of boiling, savage rage that shot through him like a cannonball, and an instant later, See-More was laying smashed against the side of the roof, his visor in pieces around him, trying to figure out what in the hell had just happened. David was turned towards him, one hand extended like a magician, having just given the best impression of one of Raven's emotion-charged explosions that he had ever performed. So fast, so viscerally had he lashed out with his powers that he didn't even remember doing it. Muscle and thought memory had taken over, and See-More had not even had a chance to blink. In another time this would have scared him, shaken him even. He had been positively dreading the day when he developed his powers to the point where he could do something like this, still crippled by lingering fear of his own abilities. In normal times, he'd have hesitated.

These were not normal times.

"Sonofabitch!" shouted See-More, and he reached to his belt for something, a weapon maybe, or a communicator. It didn't matter. There was a sharp 'crack', followed by a hollow 'thud' as an antenna snapped off of a radio aerial mounted on the roof and flew past David, burying itself in the low wall an inch from See-More's head where it lay quivering like an arrow from a bow.

See-More gave an incoherant yelp. "Jesus Christ!"

"The next one goes through your throat!" shouted David, literally shaking with pent-up fury. "I've got all the ammo I need up here!"

See-More froze.

The the low roaring sounds of Gizmo's rocket pack as the youngest Hiver raced up the stairs to assist his teammate could be heard plainly, but David didn't even glance backwards. Raising his other hand, he extended it back towards the door to the stairwell, and jammed the hinges with a pair of micro-explosions, a moment before a three larger blasts crushed the doorframe around the door. Nothing short of a battering ram would suffice to rip it open, a fact Gizmo discovered an instant later as he slammed into the suddenly-stuck door, and began swearing and frantically beating against it, unable to budge it in the slightest. David paid neither Gizmo nor the door any more mind, reaching into his jacket and drawing out his solid metal baton in one fluid movement, flicking it out with his wrist to snap it to full length, and then pointing it straight at See-More's unblinking eye, an instant before the entire baton burst into flames like the flaming sword of an avenging angel.

"Don't ever touch me," said David through clenched teeth, the flames from his baton dancing in his tear-filled eyes, "or I will rip your fucking head off." The baton shook in his hands as he clenched tightly enough turn his knuckles white, even as the false fire flickering off of it continued to build, until it was encasing his entire hand, and his eyes seemed to be practically burning themselves. "I will blow you to pieces and scatter you over the city, do you understand me?!"

Whatever See-More had been expecting, this was clearly not it. He blinked like a deer caught in headlights at the fire-breathing monster that had appeared where he had expected to find a nervous, emotionally-damaged teenager. Unable to think of what he should do to ward David off by force, he stammered what answer he could.

"I'm... I'm not here to fight you, man!" he said. "Calm down, all right?!"

"Or what?!" shouted David, stabbing at the air with his baton. "What will you do? Kill me? Kill the others? What do you have left to threaten us with? Are you gonna end the world twice?"

"Nobody's ending the goddamn world, all right?!" yelled See-More desperately. "I just want to know what the hell is going on. Starfire's tearing half the city apart, and the rest of you guys just disappeared."

"Go ask Warp."

"I would go ask Warp, except he's gone too! Even Jinx doesn't know where he is."

"Well of course he's gone," said David. "You did what he wanted."

"For the last goddamn time," said See-More as he started to get up, "we didn't kill - "

The roofing material beneath See-More's feet shattered and flew upwards like a miniature volcano, dumping See-More back down onto the roof.

"Don't even try to sell me that crap," snarled David. "All you did for three years was try to kill Robin!"

"I didn't think we'd actually do it!" protested See-More. "He was Robin for God's sake! Besides, it's not like we pulled the trigger or something! We were out cold when he died!"

"Which is the only reason any of you are still alive."

"You think I don't know that?" insisted See-More. "Have you seen us runnin' around celebrating? You think any of us are about to mess with Starfire or the rest of you?"

"I think it doesn't much matter what the hell any of you do!" shouted David. "You're all complicit in the fucking apocalypse! Do you get that?"

"I don't get a goddamn thing," yelled See-More back. "I don't know anything except what Warp told Jinx."

"And what did he tell her?"

"That we could do whatever the hell we wanted, except we couldn't kill you, and we couldn't kill Raven. Everybody else was fair game."

Despite everything, David's wrath subsided slightly, as a thought came to him. "Is... is that why Jinx let me go back at the diamond mine."

"Man, how do I know why Jinx does what she does? Warp sent us there to get some kind of super-diamond, but you stole it back from here down in the tunnels, and to make it up to him, we had to agree to kill Robin. If you hadn't done that, we wouldn't have gone after him."

The wrath returned with a vengeance. "Are you trying to say that it's my fault?" said David, advancing towards See-More, looking like he was considering feeding the baton to him.

"No!" shouted See-More. "No, no look. All I'm saying is that we thought we were just doing another thing, and then suddenly Robin's dead, you guys are breaking the walls down to get at us, and Raven's talking about how we're all gonna burn. Jinx either doesn't know what's going on or won't say, and I'm just trying to figure out what the hell is going on here, all right?"

David said nothing for a moment, still holding his baton out towards See-More like a red-hot firepoker. Slowly though, the flames died and vanished altogether, and David lowered his hand to his side.

"You want to know what all this is?" he asked.

"Yeah," said See-More. "That's all I'm looking for."

David carefully leaned forward. "This is you winning," he said.

See-More plainly was expecting some other kind of explanation. "... what?" he asked, perplexed.

"You win," said David. "You guys, the Hive. You won. You beat us. We lose, you win, you follow?"

He clearly did not follow, not based on the look of total confusion that came over his face. "Look, I don't know what you're talking about, so could you just tell me what..."

"You beat us," said David. "You beat the Titans. All those times you were fighting the Titans before this, before I even showed up even, all those plans you laid that they spoiled? This is what it's like for you to pull them off. This right here, this is you winning the war. You killed Robin, you did what Warp wanted you to do, you won. Maybe Raven's wrong, and Trigon will even spare you guys when he shows up, I don't know..."

Scared See-More might have been before, but this admission simply un-nerved him. "Who... what is Trigon?" he asked.

"Didn't Jinx tell you?" asked David. "Trigon's the end of the world. He's the Devil." He wiped his eyes, and found they were wet, tears having formed from the strain of the anger and fear wrapped around his stomach like a vice. "It doesn't matter who or what he is. He's some kind of doomsday. He's the sort of thing people like the Titans are supposed to stop. And now we're not gonna be able to."

"What, you're... you're not even gonna try?" he asked. It no longer mattered how strange it was that a Hiver was asking a Titan a question like that. The concept was so alien to See-More that he could remark on nothing else.

"Of course we're gonna try," said David. "But we're gonna fail. Flat out. All those evil speeches you guys like to give about how death is inevitable and you can't be stopped? Well this time you're right. The evil plan worked, and now the world is gonna burn."

With one motion, David lightly tossed his baton down onto the roof in front of See-More. It bounced once, then rolled along the roof before coming to a halt next to See-More's boot.

"You guys won," said David. "We lost. The details don't really matter. This is what happens when we lose." Slowly, David turned away, lowering his head as he did so.

"This isn't what we wanted," said See-More.

"Yeah it is," said David. "This is exactly what you all wanted. And now you've got it." He glanced back at the Hiver, intending to give him a look of total contempt, but all he could manage was a sad, tired, frown.

"I hope you're happy", he said. And then he walked away.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

He did not turn back, not for an instant. His heart was thundering in his head so loudly that he did not even know if See-More was watching him leave quietly, or he was calling down all the curses of Hell on his head and screaming for him to stop. He blew the door out of its bent hinges and crushed doorframe with a wave of his hand, and walked straight past an astonished Gizmo without so much as a word. He didn't know if Gizmo had said anything either, but neither he nor See-More had tried to stop him by force. For that he was thankful. By the time he got to street level again, tears were welling up in his eyes again.

By the time he got three blocks away, he was shaking so hard that he could no longer walk.

He collapsed into an alleyway off of Battery Street, for all he knew the same one he and Terra had used for cover from Cinderblock all those endless weeks ago. His legs gave out as he entered it, and he fell to his hands and knees on the dirty ground, his head spinning like a top. A moment later a spasm tore through his midsection, and he coughed once, twice, before suddenly expelling the entire contents of his stomach up and into the gutter next to him. The emotions swirling through his head were too great, too much for him to deal with, and no sooner had he wiped the vomit off of his mouth, and sat back against the brick wall of the deserted alleyway than he began to weep.

To say that David was not given to showy acts of emotion was an understatement. He had not cried like this since he was a very small child, not since before he had realized that he had powers, for all he could remember not since his parents had died. But now, all of a sudden, he couldn't stop it. He did not cry because of any one discrete thing. It was everything all pouring out at once. He cried because Robin was dead, and because the Titans were shattered without him. He cried because the world was coming to an end, because billions of oblivious people were about to burn, because he was going to be one of them, no matter what he did. He cried because he was useless, because he could not help his friends, nor himself, nor anyone else for that matter, because he had some integral part to play in the end of the world that he did not understand, because he was a coward and a traitor and a hundred thousand other terrible things names that he flayed himself with. He cried because he had not had the courage or foresight to even try and implement one of the crazy, half-formed plans that had been running through his head at night. He had not disappeared in the middle of the night and vanished without a trace, even to the other Titans, hiding on the other side of the world to evade Trigon's sight. He had not convinced Raven to find a way to banish him to some other dimension.

He had not stepped off the roof of the Tower and dashed himself to pieces on the rocks below, freeing Devastator to choose another host halfway across the universe.

David wasn't suicidal, not by any stretch, and indeed that was the problem, that was what Warp and Trigon were counting on, and he knew it. Yet in the bitter watches of the night, unable to sleep, a hundred crazed ideas had come to mind, and not a few of them revolved around the fact that, in the end, something in Trigon's plan called for David to be present when he arose. Escape was impossible, save for the one, sure method of making certain that he was not here when Trigon appeared.

But he hadn't done it. He couldn't have done it, he knew that much. He didn't want to die. He wanted...

What did he want?

He knew the answer already, even if he had never vocalized it, never even dared think it aloud. The closest he had come to saying it was to Terra, when they were alone in the dark arena beneath the library, but even then he had held back from admitting the full truth, for fear that, like a ghost, acknowledging its existence would make it even more real. Today though, with his will broken and his mind assailed on all sides by his own fears, he could no longer avert his eyes from the one, simple fact.

He wanted to stay in the Tower.

He had been in Titans Tower for eight months, three as a guest, three in training, and another two as a full-fledged Titan. He remembered quite clearly wanting to leave after barely a week, even getting into a drawn out fight with Robin over it. The others had assumed it was because of the monsters that attacked them periodically. He had even told himself that for a while. But the truth was that the monsters had nothing to do with it. He had wanted to leave because he was ashamed, and because he was afraid. Ashamed because he was interfering with the insane, unworkable, and yet somehow perfect dynamic that the five orphan teenagers had going. Afraid because he knew on some level that this was the sort of thing he could come to want for himself, and be damned to the consequences.

He had been right on both counts.

He had turned himself, or rather permitted Robin to turn him, into a hero. He had the uniform and the powers to prove it. And yet heroes were driven by a need to do good and right by the world, to protect the weak and defend the innocent, and in his heart of hearts, David had always known that he was not. It wasn't that he didn't want to do those things, any moral person did. Those things were easy to want. What separated a hero from a normal person was that heroes were driven by a need to do them, had to do them, forced themselves to do them at all costs and all prices. Robin had thrown himself at monsters fifty times his size in defense of the city because heroism was so deeply ingrained into his psyche that he could literally not do otherwise.

But to David, heroism was merely a means to an end. Amazing as it was at times, rewarding as it was at times, to him it was a job, not a driving ambition. It was a job that provided a very specific sort of payment, not fame or prestige or wealth, something more valuable to him than any of them, even if it had taken him many months to realize it, and even more to admit to it.

Being a hero permitted him to stay with the Titans.

Everything else, everything else, was secondary to this. The Titans were like no other people he had ever met, like no other friends he had ever had. Why this was, he did not know how to put into words, but he knew it with greater certainty than he knew anything else in the world. Being with the Titans these last few months had been like a dream, not because of the powers or magic or fame or even the Tower and all the goods therein, but because of the Titans. Because the Titans had had a makeshift, jury-rigged family of five, and they had somehow opened a place for him in it. There was no way of describing what that was like without devolving into schmaltz and cheap sentimentality, or resorting to anecdotes of Star's cooking or Beast Boy's games or the various conspiracies always floating about designed to get them all out of Saturday morning training sessions. Family, he had found, defied description. It simply was.

And having been brought into it by the intercession of a benevolent God, or lucky stars, or simply the willing trust of five extremely unique kids, David had come to the realization that this here was what he wanted. And to stay, to remain here, with his friends, he slowly realized that he would do anything. Robin had asked him to become a superhero, and he had, not without copious assistance from all of the others of course, but he had still done it, because if that was the price he paid to stay here, then it was one he paid gladly. Terra had lied to him, tried to kill him, set him up for Trigon, but it wasn't until Terra threatened to turn the other Titans against him by making it appear as though he was a traitor that he had learned that there was actually something he would kill for. They all knew that Terra had tried to kill him in their battle in Patriot Park. What none of the others save Starfire knew was that the attempt had been mutual. And just as he had not realized that he would kill for something until that moment, it wasn't until his long conversation with Jinx in the Diamond Mine that he realized that... given a change in circumstance, he would do almost anything else. If the Titans had been criminals, he would have willingly committed crimes just to stay with them. He would have joined the HIVE academy, served under criminal masterminds...

... maybe even made a deal with Trigon himself.

But some things could not be helped, not even with all the willingness in the world. Robin was dead. Trigon was coming. These were immutable facts that could not be negated by any means at his disposal. It didn't matter what he wanted, or what he would do to get it. They could not stop Trigon. All they could do was die in the attempt.

Pastor Bennett had spoken of the necessity of hope, but with Robin dead, and the others shattered, what hope was there? Even the HIVE had noticed. See-More hadn't needed to know what exactly was coming in order to know that the wind had changed for the worse. He had been right, before, despite their 'victory', the HIVE had been as quiet as churchmice since Robin's death. Perhaps they feared Starfire's retribution, to say nothing of the others. Or perhaps Jinx knew more than she had told the others.

"You all right, son?"

David lifted his head and turned to see a man in a business suit standing in the entrance to the alleyway, a concerned look on his face. Still crouched next to a puddle of vomit, David slowly stood up, his stomach still performing calesthetics inside him. He held onto the wall for support as he shakily walked out of the alley.

"I'm okay," he said. "Just... a little sick is all."

"You need help getting home?" said the man, who clearly didn't recognize who he was talking to. "I can give you a lift if you - "

"No," said David, "thanks, it's okay. I'm not far."

The man nodded. "Well you take it easy then, son," he said, patting him gently on the back. "Gettin' home's the best cure for anything that ails you."

David hesitated only the briefest of seconds, raising his eyes to meet the man's, but only for an instant. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah, it is..." And then thanking the man once more with a nod and a forced smile, he made his way off down the street, towards the hidden tunnel that led back to the Tower.

Or by another name... home.

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The Tower was quiet, as ever these days. Starfire was either out or in her room somewhere, and the others were nowhere to be seen or heard. Even when things had been normal, the Tower had had quiet periods, but these were different, they were sharper, more oppressive, like orchestral music missing a vital instrument, so that the absence showed up more clearly than that which was present.

But for all that, it was still home.

He took the elevator up from the basement and went to his room to change, for he'd smeared dirt and motor oil all over his jeans and jacket between his encounter with See-More and with the alleyway. He had a couple other sets of street clothes, mostly borrowed from Beast Boy, but instead of those, he changed back into his uniform, with whose reds and oranges he had never managed to be comfortable in public, but had come to represent 'normality' around the Tower. When in Rome...

He walked into the common room expecting to see nobody, but Beast Boy was there already, curled up on the couch in the form of a housecat. For a second, David thought he had to be asleep, and was going to turn and leave the room, but the sound of the door opening stirred him, and he opened an eye, saw David, raised his head, stretched in a typically feline manner, and then returned to his human form.

"Hey, dude," he said with a yawn. "Where you been?"

Despite everything, David managed a thin smile. "Just... out for a while," he said. "How's it going?"

Beast Boy shrugged. "S'okay," he said. He glanced around the room. "You uh... you wanna play some Monkey Racer?"

Beast Boy's voice betrayed that everything was not going okay, and that this request was just an attempt at a facsimile of normal life, but it was no less heartfelt for that. Beast Boy had been trying his level best, trying almost desperately to return everyone to something like normal. For his sake if nothing else, David had tried to play along, and likely would have accepted the invitation had Beast Boy not pre-empted it.

"Oh, wait," he said. "I forgot. Cy said he wanted to see you when you got back. He said he'd be in the evidence room. We'll play a round after, okay?"

Right now David did not want to go to the evidence room, nor any other place pervaded with Robin's missing presence, but even if Cyborg hadn't been in charge now, David would not have refused a request like that. "Sure," he said to Beast Boy. "I'll be back soon as I can."

That much was true at least.

Months ago, some wit (probably Beast Boy) had dubbed the evidence room the "Birdcave", even going to the lengths of taping up a modified Batman logo to cover the metal plate that clinically explained what every door in the Tower led to (something Cyborg had added at long last). The joke was no longer funny, but even though the paper had been taken down, the place still felt like Robin's lair, wallpapered in press clippings detailing crimes of all sorts, and filled to capacity with computers, evidence lockers, forensics equipment, and all manner of other devices that defied description.

Cyborg sat in the corner, head bent over a pile of paper at least a foot deep. He too looked almost asleep, and it wasn't until David cleared his throat for the second time. Raising his head suddenly, Cyborg turned around and saw David standing there, and let out a visible sigh of relief, though for what reason, David didn't know.

"Hey, man," he said. "How you doin'?"

Right now, David wasn't sure. "I'm okay," he said, temporizing.

Perhaps Cyborg sensed it. "You sure?" he asked. "You look a little pale."

David sighed. "I'm just tired," he said. 'Tired' was the euphemism they had all seemed to collectively agree upon as the proper term for dancing around everything that was really the matter but didn't fit into words. "BB said you wanted to see me?"

"Yeah," said Cyborg, and he let a deep breath out, as though not relishing this task. "Look, man," he said. "You can't be goin' out like that by yourself anymore."

David lowered his eyes. "I had my communicator, Cy," he said. "And Starfire was out too, wasn't she?"

"Yeah," said Cyborg, "but we know they can jam the comms, and if I could stop Star from goin', I would, but she won't listen to anybody. All we need now is for Slade or whoever to get you too."

"They're not trying to kill me, Cy," said David. "They need me to be here, remember?"

"Look, we don't know what the hell they wanna do with you. And I ain't too keen on findin' out by surprise. So just... if you gotta go somewhere, take somebody with you. BB'll go with you, hell I'll go with you if you want. Just... don't go alone, all right? Do me that favor."

David sighed. "Sure," he said. "I won't do anymore."

Cyborg took another deep breath and released it, deflating like an overfilled balloon as he did so. "Thanks, man," he said, and as he leaned forward and shut his human eye for a second, David noticed how utterly spent he looked. Even his robotic parts seemed dulled, bent down under the weight of trying to pick up where Robin had left off, and instantly, David regretted having made even the minor protests he had. Cyborg didn't need anything more to worry about.

"How's it coming?" he asked, trying to shift topics.

Cyborg rubbed his human eye with his robotic hand. "I don't know," he said. "I just don't know. I mean I can build that safe room Robin was talkin' about, but I cannot figure out how the hell we're supposed to keep Slade from just walkin' right in here with an army and takin' Raven and whatever else he wants with her. I mean, even with Robin, this was gonna be almost impossible, but now..." he trailed off as he shifted through some of the blueprints on the desk absent-mindedly, and sighed. "I'll think of somethin'," he said unconvincingly, but David nodded anyway.

"Is there... some way I can help?" asked David.

"Not unless you got some secret weapon I don't know about," said Cyborg without looking up. A moment later he seemed to realize how that sounded. "Sorry," he said, turning back to David. "I meant that it's all right, I got this. Just uh... do me a favor, and check and see if Star's back, will ya?"

"Sure thing, Cy," said David.

"Thanks, man," said Cyborg. "Now if I could just figure out what the hell's actually gonna happen, maybe we can start doin' something about it."

Cyborg returned to his work, evidently expecting David to leave, but David did not, not immediately anyway. Something had stopped him, something that had been buzzing around in the back of his mind since this afternoon, since his talk with the Pastor, his confrontation with the Hivers, and his soul-searching in the alleyway. He hadn't even been aware of it, stewing back there, not until he had thrown up in the alley, and even then it had remained nameless, identity-less, just one of a thousand foolish ideas that he had paid no mind to.

"All I need is faith in God," had said the Pastor, "and in His miracles."

"Thou preparest a table for me in the presence of mine enemies," had said the Archbishop, "and I will fear no evil."

"I'm not here to fight you, man," had said the Criminal, "I'm just trying to figure out what the hell is going on here, all right?"

And then, like the answer to a long-pondered riddle striking out of nowhere the instant it had been put out of mind, all of a sudden, David knew what he had to do.

"Cy?"

Cyborg raised his head, hesitated, and turned around, obviously surprised to see David still standing there. "You sure you're okay, man?" asked Cyborg. "What's up?"

David blinked a couple times, and tried to muster the appropriate words.

"Can I make a suggestion you won't like?"

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The first indication that Beast Boy had that anything had happened, was an explosion.

Explosions were not exactly rare in Titans Tower, not between Raven, Starfire, David, and the small arsenal of bombs that were lying about. Still, this one sounded bad, or at least loud, and in an instant he had switched to the form of a hummingbird and was flying down the halls towards the source of the blast. He was reasonably certain that he was going to find either David or Raven in the center of it. Most all of them could produce explosions at need, but Raven did so by accident, and explosions were sort of David's 'thing'.

He was right, but not in the way he'd expected.

He raced around the final corner and swerved in mid-air to avoid running straight into Raven, who was standing in the doorway of the evidence room, watching the proceedings as Cyborg stood in the center of the room and tried, through entreaties and his own physical presence, to prevent Starfire from killing David.

Or so it appeared at least.

He buzzed past Raven's ear and landed in the evidence room, instantly resuming his human form. "Dude!" he exclaimed, though even he wasn't sure who he was addressing. "What's going on?"

Starfire ignored him. Indeed Starfire looked like she had taken leave of her senses. "Perfidity! she yelled. "Faithlessness! Profanation! This is an outrage!"

"Star, for God's sake," said Cyborg, "calm down! We're just talkin', okay?"

Starfire plainly had no intention of calming down, as the green starbolts around her fists attested to. David was watching her like a swimming watching a Tiger Shark, which given the still-smoking scorch marks on the floor, was probably a good idea.

"I will not countenance such a betrayal!" declared Starfire. "It is an affront to Robin's memory that you would suggest such a thing!"

"Star," said David, keeping back as he tried to explain itself, "we don't have a choice. There's no-one else."

His reply was in the form of a Starbolt, which smashed into a black shield that Raven conjured around David an instant before it hit. The Starbolt was not of lethal size or full power, but it still made quite a point, and David nearly fell backwards in trying to avoid it.

"Jesus, Star that's enough!" said Cyborg in a commanding tone, and he grabbed her wrist, not hard, but securely. For a second, Beast Boy thought that Starfire was about to pitch Cyborg over her shoulder (she could do it), but she retained enough self-control to refrain from doing so, giving Raven an opening to ask a much-needed question.

"Okay," said Raven, "what's going on here?"

"David thinks he's got a way for us to stop Slade," said Cyborg, though he did not look back at David and he did not elaborate, leaving David to explain as best he could.

"Look," he said, obviously expecting the others to react in a similar manner to Starfire. "The way I see it, even if Robin thought that we could stop Trigon's army from getting Raven when the time came, without Robin we don't have much of a shot at it. And Slade or Warp or whoever's running the show has gone to a lot of trouble to make sure that nobody can help us when the time comes. I mean we've called everyone right? The Justice League, the Doom Patrol, the Titans East, everybody's been called away."

"Yeah," said Beast Boy, "so?"

"So," said David. "There's one group of people who could help us that Slade and Warp haven't thought of."

Nobody said anything, so Beast Boy bit. "Who?"

It was Cyborg who answered, and the disgusted look on his face made it plain what he thought of this idea. "The Hive," he said.

Beast Boy blinked in astonishment. Even Raven looked surprised. This here was a notion that had not crossed his mind in a thousand years. Indeed he still could scarcely credit the suggestion. "You want us to get the Hive to help us?" he asked, unable to believe the words he was saying.

"Look, I know they're criminals," said David, holding his hands up defensively to ward of argument, or perhaps attack. "But they're also the only Metahumans left in the city besides us, and Warp and Slade won't be expecting us to turn to them for help. If they did, they'd have made sure the Hive were on the other side of the planet or dead by now."

"Well yeah," said Beast Boy, "but, dude, they're bad guys, they're our enemies."

"I know," said David, "I know but, Raven..." he turned to the sorceress. "If Trigon shows up and wins, he's gonna kill them too, right?"

Raven nodded carefully. "That's right."

"So then unless the Hive all have death wishes," said David, "they should be willing to help us."

"But aren't they working for Warp?" asked Beast Boy.

"Jinx was the only one who knew that, and she told us herself that it was so that Trigon would spare them when he showed up. But Raven told them what Trigon's actually gonna do, and I think they believed her. See-More and Gizmo jumped me on my way back to the Tower and - "

"Whoa, wait a minute," said Cyborg, whirling around. "You didn't tell me nothin' about - "

"Cy, please," said David, almost desperately. "They jumped me because they wanted to know what was going on. They were scared. See-More told me that Jinx said that Warp had disappeared and Jinx didn't know where he'd gone to. He wanted to know if Raven was telling the truth. Even if they are working for Warp, I think they've realized that it's not gonna save them."

Beast Boy had more questions, but he was not given a chance to ask them, for in that moment, Starfire wrenched her arm out of Cyborg's grip, walked the three paces between her and David, and before anyone could do anything, grabbed David by his collar and slammed him into the back wall, holding him up off his feet against the wall with one hand, her eyes glazed over in neon green.

"The Hive murdered Robin," said Starfire.

Nobody else breathed. David looked like he was staring down the barrel of a cannon, but he managed to conjure up a few words.

"Yes," he said. "They did."

"And now you would have us seek their assistance against the rest of Robin's murderers?!" demanded Starfire, lifting David higher off the ground. David was shaking like a leaf in the wind, but still he replied.

"Yes," he said. "I would."

"How dare you!" shouted Starfire, tears streaming from her eyes as she shook David like a rag doll. "After all that Robin did for you, is this how you repay him?! How can you even think of casting his memory aside like that! Seeking succor from his own murderers when you know that Robin would not have wanted us to - "

"Robin's dead, Star!" exploded David all of a sudden. "I don't think he wanted that, either!"

The sheer, stark bluntness of that statement stunned Starfire, stunned everyone into silence. And given his chance, David let loose a flood.

"If Trigon wins," said David, his voice cracking under the strain of his emotions, "then the whole world is gonna burn and everyone, including us, is gonna die. The way I see it, Star, anything we do that doesn't end with that is a good thing because I don't want to die, and I don't want you to die, and I don't want any of us to die, and I don't think it matters if that's what Robin would want us to do or not!" Tears rolled down the sides of his face, and he wiped them away with the back of his sleeve.

"And if you do," he said, "then that's fine, but don't tell me about what Robin did for me because you have no idea what I owe Robin..." He stared down into Starfire's eyes, which were slowly losing their fiery glow. "... or what I owe you."

Starfire didn't reply. Maybe she couldn't. What she did do was slowly lower David back down onto the ground, and release him, whereupon he instantly collapsed back against the wall, sliding down it until he was seated, with one hand held over his eyes. His breath came in ragged hisses, and tears stained the collar of his uniform. Beast Boy crossed over and crouched down next to him, laying a friendly hand on his shoulder as he slowly calmed down.

"BB," said Cyborg. "What do you think?"

Honestly, Beast Boy didn't know what to think, but Cy was asking him the question, and he answered as honestly as he could. "Way I see it, dude," he said, "Robin wouldn't have wanted us to die either. I say we call the Hive." Neither Starfire nor Raven nor Cyborg responded to this, but David lowered his hand and raised his eyes, as if unable to credit that he had heard him correctly.

"Raven?" asked Cyborg.

Raven had contributed barely a word to all the goings on, and now only sighed softly. "It's not gonna matter," she said. "The Hive can't stop Trigon any more than we can."

"They can't hurt," said David.

"Yeah, they really can," said Cyborg. "But that ain't what I asked."

But if Cyborg wanted a clear statement one way or the other, he was to be disappointed. "If you think we should do it," said Raven, "then go ahead."

Cyborg seemed to realize that this was all he was going to get from Raven, and slowly turned his head.

"Star?"

Starfire had turned away from the others, standing facing the corner with her head lowered. She did not respond to Cyborg's question immediately, but Cyborg didn't repeat it. Beast Boy and David both watched her and waited. Nearly a minute passed before she responded.

"They will not speak ill of Robin," she said, not a condition but a statement of fact, "nor will they act in a manner that would tarnish his legacy." She turned around slowly, and the others could plainly see the tears running down her face to her gorget, and her voice was pained, but left them in no doubt as to her sincerity. "If they do these things, they will be destroyed."

Slowly, all of the other Titans turned their eyes back to Cyborg, who was standing, grim-faced and silent in the middle of the room. Nobody asked the question that they were all thinking. Nobody needed to.

"All right then," said Cyborg at last. "I'll make the call."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mammoth crossed his arms and stared down at Cyborg like he was considering which part of him tasted the best. A scowl, ugly even for Mammoth, was plastered on his face.

"You got one hell of a nerve, callin' us," said Mammoth, and the various copies of Billy Numerous nodded in agreement. "'specially after what you did."

"Boy," said Cyborg, not bothering to keep the anger out of his voice, "you don't wanna be talkin' to me about that right now." He leaned against the cabinet in front of him and stared implacably at the screen, trying to focus on Jinx, who stood in the center of her team with her arms crossed. "Way I hear it, you all did what you did 'cause you thought it would buy you a Get out of Armageddon free card. There ain't no such thing. You want to survive this, then you help us. Period. You do what we say, when we say it, and you do it with no complaints and no conditions. You break any of the rules, and I let Starfire pull your heads off."

Jinx said nothing, indeed she didn't even twitch. Whatever was running through her head was beyond Cyborg's capacity to discern, at least via video-screens. Based on what David had said after escaping the diamond mine in her company, Jinx still harbored a bitter grudge against him for the deception he had pulled on her and her friends during his infiltration of the HIVE academy, but right now he frankly had better things to worry about.

Jinx may not have made her feelings felt, but next to her, Gizmo certainly did. "Let you snot-guzzlers call the shots?!" he asked, looking mortified at the very concept. "Why the hell would we agree to that?"

"Because it's your only chance of getting out of this alive. If you don't help us, and we do beat him, then Starfire's gonna celebrate by playing drum set on your ribs with a tire iron. And I'm gonna help her. And if we lose, Trigon's gonna light the whole world on fire and roast you all like marshmallows. You feel like riskin' those odds?"

"Oh screw this," said Gizmo. "This guy's your problem, we don't need to - "

"We'll do it," said Jinx.

Gizmo recoiled as though he'd been slapped in the face. "What?!" he shouted, whirling around to face Jinx. "Are you out of your - "

"Yeah, I agree," said See-More, cutting Gizmo off. "We're in."

Gizmo blinked in pure stupification, like the world had just turned into a surreal nightmare. Cyborg had to force himself not to laugh as he blew his top, raging and screaming incoherent epithets at both Jinx and See-More. Mammoth scratched his head, looking puzzled, and Billy began an animated conversation with himself. From Jinx' expression, it appeared this was all perfectly normal.

"You keep Starfire on a leash, and make sure the police don't interfere, and we'll help you take down this demon of yours," said Jinx.

Frankly, Cyborg had expected this to take longer. Gizmo was still speculating wildly (and loudly) about Jinx having lost her mind. Cyborg suspected something else.

"How do I know you're not about to run off and tell Slade everything I just told you?"

Jinx didn't bat an eye. "You don't," she said. "How do I know this isn't just some ploy to get us out in the open so that Starfire or Batman can take a crack at us?"

There was a moment or two of silence.

"Be here at eight o'clock tomorrow," said Cyborg. "Bring everything you've got. Guns, mines, rocket launchers, magic, whatever it is, you'll need it."

"We'll be there," said Jinx crisply. "And Victor?"

Cyborg did not flinch at the use of his real name, though it took physical effort not to. "Yeah?"

"If any Titans lays one hand on us," said Jinx, "Trigon won't have to kill you."

Jinx had always known how to deliver a threat and make it stick, Cyborg remembered that much from the academy. But then he was no slouch either. He leaned forward slightly and smirked.

"And if any of you so much as breathe wrong, especially in Starfire's direction, not even Trigon will be able to save you."

Jinx considered Cyborg's words for a moment. "See you tomorrow," she said. And an instant later the screen went black.

Standing in the middle of the darkened room, Cyborg took a deep breath and let it out all at once, slowly rubbing his human eye with his hand. "You didn't say much," he said without turning around.

"What was I gonna say?" asked David from the shadows behind. "You know them better than I do."

"You know," said Cyborg. "I didn't bring this up before, but there's something else."

"What's that?"

Cyborg turned around. "What happens if they screw us?"

"What do you mean?"

"What happens if they tell Slade or Warp all about our defenses before the day comes? Or better yet, what if they wait until Slade comes for Raven and then stab us all in the back? I wouldn't put it past any of 'em, so what happens if they do that?"

David sighed and lowered his head. "Then we all die," he said.

Now it was Cyborg's turn to sigh. "Yeah, I figured you'd say that."

"Look, Cy, I don't have a plan. I just had... an idea. I don't know what we're supposed to do, with or without the Hive. It was just some stupid - "

"It ain't a bad idea."

David hesitated. "It's not?"

"Hell no," said Cyborg. "They got no interest in seein' Trigon win, and they got enough firepower to really make a difference. If they do what they're told, it'll double our juice for the big throwdown. And they might act like a bunch of punks, but they know how to hold their own. 'Sides, it don't matter if it's a good idea or not now anyway. They're comin'. Now we just gotta hope it's enough."

"Yeah..." said David.

"Get some sleep," said Cyborg. "I gotta get ready for tomorrow. It's gonna be a looooong day..."

David, already fighting back yawns, stood up and walked over to the door. "G'night, Cy," he said.

"Night."

Punchy with fatigue, worn out by everything that had happened today, David slowly made his way back towards his room. But before he got there, he turned a corner in one of the hallways, and saw ahead of him someone waiting in the shadows, invisible save for a silhouette.

But he knew who it was instantly.

He stopped, standing in the hall like a statue, facing the obscured figure.

"Have the HIVE been summoned?"

David nodded. "Yes," he said.

"And did they accept the summons?"

"Yes," he repeated. "They'll be here tomorrow."

Slowly, Starfire stepped out of the shadows and walked towards him. David didn't know what she intended to do, but he held his ground regardless. He had no energy left to run with anyway. Star's face was streaked with tears, but she moved with precision and poise, slowly walking over to him.

"There is something I wish to say," she said.

David winced, visibly. "S... Star..." he stammered. "Please, I... I just - "

"Please," she said, "permit me to say only this." David closed his eyes and nodded.

"I simply wished to say that... while you are correct in that I do not know what debt you owe to Robin, I do not believe that you owe me one. Nor have I ever."

David began to tremble, his voice quivering as he managed only to whisper an answer. "Star..." he managed to say. "I didn't - "

"But most importantly," said Starfire, laying a hand gently on David's shoulder as he slowly opened his eyes and looked up at her, "I desired to say that I do not wish for you to die either."

The simple statement, the sincerity in Starfire's voice, simply destroyed him on the spot, and before he knew what was happening, tears were streaming down his face for the second time today. His body convulsed, and he either lost his balance or was pulled forward, for a second later his head was pressed against Starfire's shoulder, and he was quite literally crying on it. His hands shook, his entire body was racked by uncontrollable sobs, and yet he did not fall to the floor, as he otherwise assuredly would have, for Starfire reached around and gently placed her other hand on his back, and held him there effortlessly.

The reasons for crying were all the same, the troubles still as omnipresent as ever, but if there was one lesson that could be taken, it was that, no matter the circumstance, no matter the crisis, the presence of a true friend, the sort of which David had not thought existed a year ago, made everything a thousand times easier to bear.

Even if only for a little while, it was miracle enough.

[LadyTevar]

Chapter 31: Red Storm Rising

"Do not go gentle into that good night,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

- Dylan Thomas

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"I have to say, David," said Slade, "even by the standards of the Titans, your capacities for self-delusion never cease to amaze me."

Smoke wafted across David's face, even down at ground level, an acrid, bitter, brimstone-tinged smoke that forced open the sinuses and refused to let the mind focus on anything else. A smoke without fire, one that choked the air out of his lungs with just a whiff. His chest burned with each breath, and he had to fight to stay conscious. He was losing the fight and he knew it, but he had to endure, just a few moments longer.

Concentrate.

"This was all ordained long ago by beings mightier than you can even envision. By prophecies written in the blood of angels. Did you actually think you had the slightest chance in the world of stopping it? You or any of your friends?"

There was something lodged in his stomach, something hard and sharp that should not have been there, a fragment of rock or shrapnel perhaps. His entire body throbbed so badly that he couldn't feel any pain from whatever it was discretely, and his only indication that it was there was how much it generally hurt to breathe. He couldn't focus his eyes on anything, there was nothing but an indistinct red blur all around him, or at least all around the area he could see with his head laying on its side on the ground. Red was everywhere, blocking his sight, no matter what he did, or what method he used to look at the world

Concentrate! You know what to do.

Heavy footfalls, moving towards him, pushing through the soft roar of the flames and the distant screams of the others, those who were still alive at least. He could not guess what horrors they were being subjected to, nor even identify the voices, not at this distance. Roaring flames and the guttural cries of Slade's army of fire demons blocked all attempts to locate them by sound. And yet, through it all, the damnably calm voice of Slade kept cutting right past all interference, as though he could will the words straight to David's ears.

"At a certain point," said Slade, sounding almost amused, "one realizes that there is no purpose in fighting further. I don't really care what it takes to bring you to that point, but I'd appreciate it if you'd stop wasting my time with childish gestures of defiance."

Ignore him. Just find your focus and use it!

David tried to answer, but nothing came of it except a soft cough and the taste of blood in his mouth. He slowly reached a trembling, shaky hand towards the baton that he knew had to be laying somewhere to his right, feeling with his fingers over the bare rocks splattered with his own blood. He had just found it, just seized it with his good hand, when Slade's foot landed right in his field of vision and he felt the heat on the back of his neck as Slade crouched down.

"Come now, David," said Slade, conversationally, "you didn't think that the pitiful resistance you could muster would actually stop this from happening, did you? You haven't the capacity to save your friends, or yourself, and you've always known it. That's why you didn't want to be here in the first place. That's why you tried to leave."

Gently, ever so gently, Slade laid a burning hand on David's shoulder, a gesture that would almost have seemed kindly had his hand not been coated in raging flames. David no longer had the energy to scream, but he writhed on the ground, clenching his eyes shut and grasping wildly for anything in reach. It was all for naught. Slade simply laughed darkly, watching the proceedings with a single, detached eye, and finally extinguished his flames, leaving David laying on the ground, whimpering softly amidst the smoking ruins.

Hold on! Don't let it slip now! You know what's at stake!

A sudden jerk nearly ripped his mangled arm out of its socket, as Slade hauled David to his feet, his hand clamped around David's shoulder like a vice. David stumbled, no longer able to support himself on his feet, but Slade did not let him fall, instead regarding him as he might have regarded a piece of discarded garbage. "Your friends are dead," said Slade, kicking aside the charred bones at his feet, "as shall you be shortly. And as I told you when we first met, there is nothing you or anyone else could have done to stop it."

Slade released David's arm all of a sudden, and David fell to the ground, landing on his hands and knees. He could feel the very earth trembling, see the red mass of molecules of granite and limestone spread out before him, even through the residue carpet of carbon and sulfur spread over it. He used his good hand to brush some of it aside, feeling the quivering rock beneath his hands, even as footsteps indicated Slade approaching once again.

"If only you all had believed me when I first told you," said Slade, "then Robin would still be alive, as would your friends." David resisted the urge to turn around, holding his baton as tightly as he could even as his broken hand felt the ground beneath him, felt it starting to chill.

Almost there. Not long now. Just hold on a little bit longer...

Slade reached down and grabbed his shoulder, pulling him over onto his back where he lay like an overturned turtle, his baton held against his chest like a religious icon. His vision swam, from molecules of air and carbon to wafting clouds of flame and smoke. But through it all, there loomed Slade, towering overhead, his very gaze a mocking challenge. Flames danced around his hands, and he stared down at David like a victorious Gladiator preparing to finish off his fallen foe.

"I suppose it doesn't matter," said Slade. "They would soon be dead in any event. But have you nothing to say for yourself after all this pain? Not one word of retort or prayer? Perhaps you'd like to beg for mercy? After all, these are your last words..."

Only one thing came to mind at this time, and he tried to mouth it, but no sound emerged. Slade's eye narrowed, and he knelt down, grabbing David by his shoulder once more and hauling him to his feet, holding him up off the ground by one hand as he brought his head in close.

"What was that?" asked Slade, "did you have something you wanted to say, David?"

The pressure within his own head was overwhelming now, the world around him slipping away. Even his pain was fading fast. There was almost no time left. His heart thundered in his ears, and it was all he could do to whisper one, single word into Slade's ear, the only word he could think of to say in a circumstance like this. Slade heard the word, and for a second, David could tell that he didn't understand.

But the last thing David saw was Slade's eye suddenly popping open wide, as the sounds of the fire demon army behind him faded away, and a blissful warmth, not the raging flames of Slade's fire, but a warmth that comforted and succored, a warmth that wrapped around him like a warm blanket, encased him within its arms. And he lifted his eyes to the ashen-dark skies, forgetting Slade and all his works, as the world disappeared around him, and he was surrounded for one last instant by a great light that shone brighter than the invisible sun...

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Eighteen Hours Earlier

It was a Saturday.

The mountains to the east of Jump City gleamed in the shimmering sunlight that beat back the twilight and blanketed the city and the bay in the cloak of shining blue. The stars twinkled out overhead one by one, as the sun chased them away for one more perfect, sunny day, bathing Jump City and its surrounding area in the same warm glow that it had for the last four and a half billion years.

The wind up here, thirty stories above the ground, was strong enough to blow Raven's cloak back behind her like a pennant. It blew in from the east, dry, warm, and fresh, a wind that normally augured a brilliantly sunny day, chasing the ocean-borne clouds away. Raven had never really considered the weather here. This was the only city on Earth she had ever lived in, and had nothing to compare it to save for the sterile, manicured environment of Azarath. Most of her time here had been spent in her room or at least within the Tower, shut away from everything, and the weather was no more to her than whatever climatological annoyance she had to put up with during a given patrol or fight. She knew intellectually what the weather patterns around Jump were, but not the way that Beast Boy or Starfire did, not with the passing, casual, deep familiarity of those who thought nothing of dancing through the clouds on a contrail of green fire, or plunging through the waves in the form of a swordfish or dolphin. She had never actually stopped to feel the wind, listen to the sounds of the city waking up, or even to watch the sun rise over the mountains.

And right now, that seemed like a great pity.

She did not greet the sunrise as a friend, with a smile or waved hand. Starfire would have, she knew, for Starfire was friend to every living thing, but she was not Starfire, and this sunrise was explicitly not her friend. She watched it rise over the hills and blanket the tower in light and warmth, and all she could see in it was a ball of fire, and its light was the same flickering, searing flamelight that she had seen so often in her dreams recently that it was beginning to appear to her even while she was awake. She knew the sun was blameless, not to mention inanimate, a star, not a living thing that would react one way or another if she was pleased to see it or not. The sun neither knew nor cared what was happening here, for the sun was not alive.

Raven looked down at the red runes that were entwined around her arms like vines, so bright now that they shone even through the indigo fabric of her uniform, and for a moment permitted herself to believe that the sun was lucky.

Nobody else was up here today. She had made sure of that, sealing the door to the roof with a spell that could not be breached with anything short of a cruise missile, not that she expected any company anyway. Robin had been in the habit of watching the sun rise of course, but Robin had possessed the capacity to go completely without sleep whenever he found it convenient. The others all believed in the virtues of sleeping late on Saturday, and from the sounds of it, so did the HIVE. Beast Boy would have joined her up here if he'd known she was awake, but she'd intentionally not warned him. She didn't want anyone else here. She didn't want to answer questions or explain her bloody thoughts. She just wanted to sleep. In a very exact sense.

She was tired, tired in a way she had never before imagined possible. The nightmares that had invaded her dreams and meditations and now her waking hours too were unrelenting, and the gut-wrenching suspense that accompanied them everywhere had worn her down to a nub. In a strange, perverse way, when she had woken up today and seen the marks written all over her body like iridescent tattoos, part of her had felt relief. 'At last,' she had thought, 'no more waiting and worrying. At last it's all going to end.'

All going to end...

The waves crashed below her against the shore of the island, four hundred feet below, far enough away that barely a whisper of sound reached her up here on the roof. She stared down at the vaguely hypnotic sight of the waves advancing and retreating, one after the next. She had no fear of heights, being able to fly tended to cure one of such things, but staring down at the jagged rocks, she felt a twinge of nerves nonetheless. It wasn't vertigo. It was a reminder of the fact that, no matter how ironclad the Prophecy was, there was always one way to prevent it from coming true. All it would take was a single step forward, a few seconds of freefall, a slip in her concentration, and that would be that. Trigon could not return without his precious portal. Whatever his additional plans for David were would forever go unknown. The others might or might not understand, but they would be alive, as Robin would have been had she done this earlier on, or never come to Earth in the first place. The entire world would be safe. Was that not what they were all trying to do here? Save the world? How could she possibly hope to save it in a more starkly literal fashion than this? If she didn't do it, everyone, including herself, was going to die. All she would be sacrificing was a little bit of the time that she had never placed any value on anyway. It wasn't suicide, far from it. It was entirely reasonable. It was the only sane choice.

Raven took a deep breath, composed herself, and with another look up at the shining sun now rising over the mountains, stepped back from the edge of the Tower and collapsed into a heap on the roof.

The worst part, if there could be said to be a 'worst' part in this living nightmare, was that she knew that Trigon was counting on her being unable to do it. He could stifle every action she might conceivably take to ward off his coming, except for this. Alone among all the possible solutions, he couldn't stop her from killing herself. And yet he had known that he didn't need to. He was her father, her kin, her blood. He knew her better than she knew herself. And he had known, intrinsically, that whatever torments he inflicted on her psyche, whatever guilt welled up inside her, she would never actually do it. He was counting on it, on some kind of nebulous side of her, cowardice and self-delusion and all of the other aspects of herself that she had suppressed for so long, rearing their heads at the last and refusing to let her carry through with what any sane observer could tell was the only solution.

And he was right.

She sat alone on the rooftop for many uncounted minutes, as the rest of the Tower slumbered peacefully. The weight of her own fatigue pressed on her like a mantle made of lead. She no longer had the energy even to curse herself for having brought this doom on an entire planet, on her friends. Slowly, the brands on her arms and body faded out, as if, having delivered their message, they now no longer were necessary. Soon enough they were gone entirely, and she was left sitting on the gravel that covered the Tower's roof, to all viewers simply lost in thought on this, a normal and average day. Her own curses had run dry, and the End of the World now loomed before her like a clinical thing, a fact, unalterable by any source, neither evil nor good. It simply was. It was of course impossible to remove the personal element of what was happening, nor to disguise her own culpability. But, for a little while, it was possible to pretend.

She only needed to pretend for a little while now.

The wind died away, and in its place left only the soft warmth of the sun, which she knew would grow over the course of the day and become truly hot as only the late summer of Southern California could be. People would be outside, in the parks, at the beach, doing whatever they could to enjoy themselves. For many days and nights, she had wondered idly what she would do when this day finally came. A thousand useless plans she had considered and discarded, in the hopes that when it actually did happen, inspiration would strike her.

And sitting here, turning her thoughts away from herself, she thought of her friends, sleeping soundly below, oblivious to what was coming much sooner than they had thought. Her friends who had been working so tirelessly on her behalf for weeks to try and prepare for a thing that could not be prepared for. And as she thought of them, sitting here in the warming sun, no inspiration or flash of genius struck, but rather a gradual realization that there was really only one thing to do.

Carefully, she stood back up, and dispelled the holding spell on the roof's door with a wave of her hand. With one last deep breath, she turned, opened the door, stepped through it, and descended the staircase towards the Common room, leaving the sun to shine alone down upon the metropolis of Jump City, to watch over it or not as it saw fit, and to bathe the shining city in its lifegiving warmth.

One last time.

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On the day he died, the boy called David Foster woke up to the smell of something burning.

It was half past eight in the morning, and the alarm wasn't scheduled to go off for another fifteen minutes, but the acrid smell whatever was presently burning had a way of insisting upon itself, even from the midst of a deep sleep. Sitting up and rubbing his eyes, David simply sat in his bed for a minute, listening.

The walls of his room were soundproof in theory, layers of acrylic tile sandwiched within the bare metal of the Tower itself. But given that the door was not so-equipped, and transmitted all noise from outside like a sounding board, David was not entirely sure why whoever designed this place had gone to the trouble. For the moment though, he didn't mind the intrusion. For the last few days, he had found it prudent to listen to the ambient sounds of the Tower before venturing out into it. At present, there were no explosions, no screaming fights, no loud, repeated 'thuds', like the sound of a hydraulic pile driver. Just the faint noise of people stirring outside somewhere. All evidence that pointed to, if not a calm day, at least a reasonably calm one.

Given the current residents of the Tower, reasonable calm was the best he could hope for.

He dressed quickly, attaching his belt around his waist and clipping a retractable baton to it. Despite Robin's efforts, David had never gotten used to thinking of his baton as anything but an fifteen ounce prop for his explosions, and normally preferred to so-equip himself only when out in the city. This, however, was not a normal situation. He'd had to draw and 'ignite' the damned thing four times in the last three days alone, thanks to various "disputes" that he was involved in either directly or indirectly, and he would no more consider leaving his room without it today than he would leaving it at home when going out on alert.

Opening the door and stepping into the hallway, David could hear the sound of something sizzling from down in the common room's kitchen area. He sincerely hoped it was food, and not somebody's face, but there were no screams or curses coming from the room, just the deep voice of Cyborg and the nasal one he knew to be Gizmo's, as they spoke in what appeared to be normal tones.

Would miracles never cease?

He entered the common room, and instantly wished he hadn't. The smell of burnt... something was simply overpowering. On second sniff, much stronger than the first, he wasn't sure if it was burning food or burning tires. The air was lightly tinted with a white smoke that the Tower's air circulation system was greedily sucking out through a ceiling vent, and the various teenagers spread around the common room were keeping well away from the kitchen area, though why any of them were in here at all when Starfire was cooking (only Starfire could possibly create a smell this noxious) was beyond him. Normally the others knew better.

"Morning," said someone from behind the awning. "Pancakes?"

David turned to see who was addressing him, and froze. For a second or two, his brain simply hung, like a computer that had experienced some kind of massive operating system failure, and only slowly did he begin to rationalize what he was seeing.

His assertion a moment ago that only Starfire could have created such a smell through cooking had apparently been in error. Raven, of all people, was standing in the middle of the kitchen, holding a platter of some kind of... material. He couldn't really narrow it down any more than that, for the stuff looked like it had just been roasted with a nuclear incinerator. It was a shapeless, formless mass of charred organic matter that smelled vaguely like an oil fire, and yet all that barely registered. Strange burnt objects in the Tower were normal. It was even normal to see Raven holding them.

Seeing Raven smiling... was not so normal.

Raven was smiling, grinning even, like she was glad to see him or something, and held out the tray of fried slabs invitingly. Across the room, Cyborg was kneeling over the table in the center of the common area next to Gizmo, both of them looking down at some kind of enormous blueprint spread out on the table. Beyond them stood Mammoth, leaning up against the wall with a sneer on his face, as though daring anybody to shift him from where he stood, watching Cyborg and Gizmo, mostly Cyborg. And to one side, curled up in a large easy chair, was Beast Boy. A Gamestation Portable was in his hands, emitting various sounds at high volume, and yet David didn't even need to look twice to see that he wasn't paying it any attention. Instead, he, like Mammoth, was watching the room, one of his eyes still purple and swollen from where he and Mammoth had "fallen down the stairs" two days ago after Mammoth had said something or other to set him off.

Beast Boy caught David's furtive glance, and gave a small shrug to indicate that he had no idea what was going on here or what had come over Raven. Mammoth turned and fixed his eyes on David as well, growling softly to himself, clearly suspicious that this was all some kind of secret code between the Titans. David paid him no attention at all. Mammoth, he had learned, was always growling about something.

"They're a little overdone," said Raven, "but they should still be good."

The last thing on David's mind was the quality of whatever those incinerated lumps were, but his body acted where his mind refused to, and he sort of nodded, surreptitiously (or so he hoped) removing his hand from the handle of his baton as he did so. "Th... thanks," he managed to say. He even managed to make it sound sincere. "What's... what's the occasion?"

Raven smiled again. "I just felt like doing something nice for my friends." She said.

Given that Raven had (to David's knowledge), never done so before, he wasn't sure what to say to that, and yet none of the others sitting or standing around the room appeared to be taking any overt notice of this wholly uncharacteristic change that appeared to have come over Raven. Cyborg glanced up from his blueprints long enough to send David the quick signal of the finger drawn across the throat, but he appeared to be referring to the food.

One bite confirmed that he was not exaggerating.

Doing his damnedest to maintain equilibrium so as not to offend Raven (a mortally foolish thing to do, whatever her present demeanor), David tried to ignore the burning sensation in his mouth (had she boiled these things in gasoline?) and half-turned away from the table after forcing a smile onto his face, partly so that he could follow what Cyborg and Gizmo were saying, partly so that if he would up gagging, he wouldn't spit it all over Raven.

"I figure we'll use the obstacle course hardware to power everything," said Cyborg. "How much energy do these things need?"

"The EM coils are supercooled, and the tracking sensors are power hogs," said Gizmo, not looking up. "Make it twenty-five megawatts for the whole setup."

Cyborg frowned. "Isn't that a little much?" He said, "That's more than most office buildings use."

"Yeah," said Gizmo, "so? This place has a reactor, doesn't it? That's like two percent of what you can put out. Unless you want them to fail when you need 'em the most."

"Fine," said Cyborg curtly, and made a note on the PDA built into his arm. Normally, discussions this technical were wholly beyond David, but right now he needed an excuse for why he wasn't eating any more.

"What are you guys building?"

Gizmo lifted his head, and his face was covered with a grin that stretched ear to ear. "Rail guns," he said, sounding almost giddy at the prospect.

"We're not building rail guns," said Cyborg definitively. "We're installing a few outside the Tower for when Slade decides to make his move."

"Not just a few," said Gizmo excitedly. "Forty of 'em. Part of a whole system." Cyborg frowned, but did not gainsay him.

David of course didn't know a rail gun from a transistor radio, but he knew he'd heard the term before somewhere, though right now he couldn't remember where. "Rail guns?" he asked.

"Electromagnetic accelerators," said Cyborg. "Fire a slug five times faster than a normal bullet. They'll put a hole through anything short of battleship plate."

"Will that work on Slade?" asked David. It seemed like a reasonable question.

"Worked well enough on Robin, didn't it?" commented Gizmo offhand.

The room became extremely quiet extremely quickly, as everyone, Mammoth and Gizmo included, realized at once just what a mistake that had been. Gizmo looked up in mortal terror, fully expecting Cyborg to ram a fist right through his face. Honestly, so did David. Had Starfire been present, blood would have no doubt have been shed, but she was not, and Cyborg retained enough lucidity to hesitate for a second before blasting Gizmo's head right off of his shoulders with a single shot of his sonic cannon.

A second's hesitation was enough for something to totally pre-empt the fight that was about to happen.

"What else do we have?" asked Raven.

If Raven's goal had been to defuse the situation, she could not have possibly succeeded more triumphantly. Both Cyborg and Gizmo seemed to instantly forget what they were doing. So did Beast Boy. So, honestly, did David, spinning back around to face Raven so rapidly that he nearly gave himself whiplash. It wasn't that the question was so strange, David had been about to ask something similar (and for similar reasons). It was that... well... Raven hadn't so much as asked a single question about their preparations since they had started making them. She had thought the entire process a waste of time, and had not been shy in letting everyone know it. And now here she was, asking calmly what they were planning to use to ward Slade off. And she was still smiling.

Fortunately, Gizmo was not as thunderstruck as he had looked, and given a chance to talk about something completely different, he seized it as rapidly as he could, returning his attention to his blueprints as though merely looking at Cyborg risked incurring his wrath. It probably did.

"We've uh... we've got everything," said Gizmo quickly, pawing through his blueprints. "Anti-tank mines, thermobaric grenades, particle beam emitters. Once we power the whole network up, anything that steps on shore's gonna get smeared all over the rocks." He chanced another look up at Cyborg, who was staring at Raven like she had sprouted wings. "I've got enough firepower here to make Slade wish he'd never heard of you guys."

David recalled Cyborg telling him that Jinx usually kept Gizmo on a leash insofar as his outlandish military-grade weapon designs were concerned, but faced with an existential threat to the entire planet, he'd been allowed to indulge himself, an opportunity he had been enjoying enough to thoughtlessly run his mouth all damned week. Raven gave a thoughtful nod. David couldn't tell if she was just feigning interest or if she had actually decided they had a chance.

"The plan right now," said Cyborg carefully, giving David a puzzled look before returning his eyes to Raven, "is to use this stuff to thin out whatever Slade sends against us, and then take him on ourselves once we've cut his army down."

"Dude, do we even know he's sending an army?" asked Beast Boy. "I mean, last time he showed up, he made a pretty big mess of things by himself."

"We don't know anything," said Cyborg, "so we're preparin' for the worst. Whatever shows up when all this goes down, we'll have a surprise or two waitin' for 'em."

"More than that, hopefully," came a reply from the doorway behind them. All heads turned to see who it was, but everyone already knew from the voice alone.

Jinx stood in the open doorway, arms crossed, surveying the scene as though trying to decide who to hex first. Gizmo breathed an almost-silent sigh of relief, as Beast Boy narrowed his eyes, but Jinx took no notice of either of them, nor of anyone really, except Cyborg. For his part, Cyborg seemed to wilt slightly, as though Jinx' very presence was yet another one of the travails he had to undergo lately. Perhaps it was.

"How's Billy doin'?" asked Cyborg.

Jinx, as was her wont, didn't mince words. "Starfire broke six of his arms," she said, which given Billy, wasn't nearly as strange a statement as it sounded, "and dislocated his jaw three times. See-More's patching him up in the infirmary."

"Is... he gonna be okay?" asked Beast Boy, who like David, was having trouble following how that all worked out.

"He'll be fine," said Jinx without even turning her head, walking right up to Cyborg with a cutting stare. "I thought we had a deal here, Sparky," she said. "I thought I told you what would happen if any of your people messed with any of mine."

Cyborg was plainly having none of it. "Starfire's not my 'people'," he said. "She's my friend and this is her home. And she caught your boy Billy tryin' to break into Robin's room with a keycard scanner. That wasn't part of the deal either."

Jinx flinched, almost imperceptibly, but enough that David knew instantly that Billy hadn't mentioned that little aspect of the encounter to her. Still, she recovered and went on gamely.

"You're supposed to be keeping your team under control," said Jinx, trying to sound threatening. That doesn't include this."

The threat was a mistake. "You're supposed to be keeping your team under control too, way I remember it." snapped Cyborg in exasperation. "And it ain't my team. It's Robin's. He's dead, and so in case you hadn't noticed, things aren't exactly workin' the way they should, right now"

"Well that's just tragic," snapped Jinx right back, "except I'm the one who has to go downstairs in a few minutes and explain to Billy why he can't go get back at the person who just threw him down an elevator shaft. Have you got a good suggestion for what I'm supposed to tell him to make him walk away from that?"

"Maybe you should try reminding him about the four-eyed Devil that's coming along in a little bit," said Cyborg angrily. "If he wants to pick a fight, he's gonna get all the chances he wants."

"I didn't notice Starfire holding back on that account," replied Jinx in kind. "You guys are supposed to be the responsible ones, remember? That's why you're so much better than us, right?"

Inevitably, Gizmo picked that moment to chime in, and with the worst possible thing to say. "Yeah," he said. "We're not the ones who brought some demon-witch onto our team and made this whole mess."

Before Cyborg, Jinx, or even Raven could react, there was a primal roar, and in the blink of an eye, Gizmo was suddenly being held eight feet in the air by an enormous, red-eyed, green-furred gorilla, whose hands were cupped around the stunned gearhead's throat. Nobody had even seen Beast Boy move, so swift was the transformation. Mammoth had no time to react, nor did Jinx, nor certainly Gizmo himself, before he was dangling in mid air with his eyes wide open. What might have happened next was conjectural, but Cyborg wasn't interested particularly in finding out.

"BB!" he shouted, his digitally-enhanced vocal chords drowning the deep growl that Beast Boy was making. He didn't need to say anything else, for Beast Boy turned his head, took one look at Cyborg's face, and after an agonizingly long second or so of indecision, slowly lowered Gizmo back to the ground, even as Jinx signaled for Mammoth to hold with one hand. Once back on the floor, Gizmo seemed to recover both his powers of speech and his acerbic temper. "That's right, you snot-guzzling..."

"Gizmo," snapped Jinx through clenched teeth, interrupting his string of epithets. She clenched her fists tightly enough to cause her hands to shake. "Shut up!"

Jinx looked deadly serious, and Gizmo, who of course knew her better than any of the Titans, was in no mood to chance it, and so with a few more whispered mutterings, he settled back down onto the ground in front of his blueprints, while Beast Boy resumed his human form and sat back down in his chair, saying nothing. Jinx took a long, slow breath, one that was laced with fatigue, and slowly turned back to Cyborg, suddenly drained of her anger, and unmistakably eager to simply get yet another 'crisis' over with. "Can you..." she said, trying not to sound as tired as she looked. "Can you at least try to get Starfire to stop," she said.

Cyborg could not help but groan. Too many flashpoints and potential disasters in the last few days had plainly ground him down as well. "I'll try," he said. "But I can't speak for it if Billy goes playin' burglar again. If he gets in her - "

"He won't," said Jinx with all the certainty in the universe. "I'll make certain he won't."

"Good," said Cyborg, eying Jinx carefully. He let the word sit for a second or so before adding one more. "Thanks."

"Don't mention it," said Jinx with all the sarcasm she could muster, rolling her eyes as she collapsed into a chair. Gizmo was still plainly unhappy, but equally plainly, was not about to gainsay Jinx when she was in a mood like this. Jinx looked annoyed and tired enough to respond to complaints with a hex or worse.

She wasn't the only one, by the looks of things.

The conversation in the room had died, and David was trying to decide if he should contribute another comment or let silence reign for a while. Once more though, he was pre-empted by the most unlikely source.

"So what's the plan for today?" asked Raven, and she sounded... well... pleasant, not giddy of course, that would have convinced him that he had entered an alternate dimension, but upbeat, positive. It was strange enough to see Raven like that at all, let alone right now, when everyone else was teetering between exhaustion and despair. David didn't know what the plan was for the day, but if he had, he wasn't sure that he'd have been able to respond coherently.

Fortunately, Cyborg was. "Settin' everything up for the big throwdown," he said, his voice filled with weariness as he considered the prospect. "Same as yesterday. Don't worry, I don't think we'll need to bug you for any - "

"Actually," said Raven. "I was sort of wondering if anyone wanted to go out."

For a second, David was certain he hadn't heard Raven right, and it wasn't until he saw the flabbergasted stares of everyone else in the room, Titan and Hiver alike, that he realized he had. He turned slowly back to Raven, who was smiling gently, as though she had just made the most reasonable suggestion in the world.

And by some standards she had, but...

"It's a nice day out, and we've all been cooped up in the Tower for too long anyway," she said. "I just thought it might be nice to spend some time together, is all. Maybe go to the park or something."

Just off the top of his head, David could think of fifty reasons why that was not a good idea, starting with the Hive being in the Tower, and ending with the fact that Warp, Slade, and whoever else was likely still out there, waiting for them. None of those reasons however came leaping to his tongue, so stunned was he at what Raven was suggesting. In other circumstances, he might have imagined Beast Boy making such a request, perhaps even Starfire, but Raven?

"You..." said Cyborg, "thought we should... go out?"

"Sure," said Raven. "I mean, if you guys want to that is."

"Why do you want to do that?" asked David, and he knew that it sounded rather heartless, but right now he was too busy trying to ascertain if Raven had just lost her mind to care. He was hardly a stranger to new and odd developments from the other Titans, but eight months in the Tower had given him some idea of what Raven was and was not likely to do. This was the latter in a huge way.

Raven didn't get angry, but merely shrugged. "I've just... missed hanging out with you guys over the last couple weeks," she said in all innocence.

So sincere, so truthful was the answer, that David almost felt ashamed. When, he wondered, had he become so cynical as to immediately suspect the worst whenever someone expressed an uncharacteristically kind sentiment? The alarm bells in his head continued to ring, but he pushed them aside and smiled and turned back to the others to see what they thought of this unorthodox, but, in his opinion, perfectly valid idea.

And then he saw the stone mask that was Cyborg's face, his entire body motionless, like he had just turned to stone, and like a light switch had been flipped, David suddenly understood, and the blood froze in his veins.

The plate of burnt food slipped from his fingers and shattered into a thousand pieces on the metal floor, and the sound was like a gunshot, shaking Cyborg from his meditation, distracting the Hivers and Beast Boy and Raven herself. Jinx rolled her eyes and smirked and Gizmo laughed and said something David didn't even hear, no doubt some stock insult. His hands began to shake, and he clenched them tightly, squeezing his eyes shut, trying to force his body to remain still. If only to give himself something to do, he crouched down carefully onto the floor and began to gather the pieces of the plate together.

"Unless," said Raven, and she sounded almost afraid. "I mean, if you guys don't want to hang out - "

"I'll go!"

David raised his head and saw Beast Boy standing up. He looked... well David honestly couldn't evaluate it in his present condition, but merely seeing Beast Boy's reaction was enough to calm his own screaming nerves. Slightly.

Only slightly.

Needless to say, there were generally few things in the universe Raven wanted to do less than hang out with Beast Boy, but given everything, David wasn't at all surprised to see her hesitate for a second, and then smile and nod wordlessly. Beast Boy grinned, broadly, uncaring as ever who might see it and what they might think and with a glance to Cyborg to see if he would stop them (Cyborg made no such effort), he walked out of the room. He even managed to look triumphant.

Raven turned to follow him, but before she did she stopped, and turned back to David and Cyborg. "Are... you guys sure you don't want to come?" she asked.

There was no way on this Earth that David could possibly have responded to that question coherently. But fortunately, Cyborg came to his rescue, standing up and walking over to where David was crouched, placing one hand on his shoulder as a signal not to interfere. "Y'all go ahead," said Cyborg carefully, his voice as calm as a lake on a windless day, his face composed as though at a funeral. "We'll be right here when you get back."

Perhaps Raven sensed what he meant by those words and perhaps she did not, but she nodded thoughtfully and turned away, walking out the door after Beast Boy. Only once it had slid shut behind her did anyone voice an opinion.

"Well that was weird..." said Gizmo, scratching his head.

David ignored him. So did Cyborg. So did Jinx, for that matter, who was watching not the door but the two remaining Titans, particularly David, as if she alone among the Hivers had sensed that something was going on here beyond the obvious. David paid neither her nor anyone else any mind, staring into space in the vague direction of the door. Only after nearly a minute had passed did he slowly stand back up and turn to face Cyborg, who was watching him carefully. Neither one of them said anything, until Cyborg drew his hand back, and crossed his arms.

"Go find Star," he said, "and let her know."

David's resolve shattered with Cyborg's confirmation, and he tried to nod, but wound up nearly doubling over, his entire body beginning to shake so hard that the baton on his belt was rattling against his side. "Hey," said Cyborg, sharply but not harshly. "Listen to me, man." And David slowly recovered his equilibrium and raised his head again.

"It's gonna be all right," said Cyborg. "Just find Star and tell her, okay?"

"R-," stammered David, "right..." He took a deep breath, expelled it, took another, and then slowly turned around and made his way out the door, leaving Cyborg and the three Hivers behind.

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Most of the Titans were fond of Patriot Park, down by the waterfront, and there was really nothing wrong with it in Beast Boy's opinion (at least on the increasingly rare occasions when it hadn't been torn to bits by some lunatic with a rocket launcher), but if he had his choice in excursion locales, he far preferred to get away from the city altogether, up into the mountains to the East of the city, the domain of deer, foxes, even mountain lions, cut only by the occasional bike or hiking trail. He came here himself on occasion, a place where he could become any animal within reason, with nothing to mark him out from the rest of the local fauna save his green coloration. He had brought the others here too once or twice. He'd gone camping with Starfire and Cyborg here, walked and talked with Terra for hours. It was here that Robin had taught him how to pitch a tent, and where Starfire had taught him the Tamaranean names for the gemstones and rocks common to both her planet and Earth. It was a place of old familiarity.

To his knowledge, Raven had never been here before today.

The woods were oddly quiet, at least to Beast Boy's ears, the ambient sounds of wildlife muted as though they resented the intrusion. Despite his powers, Beast Boy wasn't some Doctor Doolittle who could discern the meaning behind their chirps and calls. But if he had to guess, he figured they were wary of Raven.

He didn't mention that part to her.

Raven was quiet, which wasn't uncommon, and smiling faintly, which really was, not that Beast Boy was complaining. He had volunteered to come on this little excursion of hers largely on a whim, without pausing to evaluate if she was likely to say yes or no, as was his custom. That wasn't to say he didn't care, but ever since Robin's death, he'd largely been trying to engender just this sort of reaction from Raven, with little success. He didn't need to understand why she was suddenly acting nice to appreciate the change.

"So... uh... you're feeling better?" he asked. Not the most subtle question, but it would do.

Raven had been turned away from him, looking out at the City. She half-turned her head back to him as he asked, but didn't answer with anything but a slight nod. It was answer enough, he supposed.

Outlined against the edge of the trail, with the sun overhead and the city behind her, Beast Boy mused that there was something different about Raven today, beyond the base fact that she was acting differently. She was walking along as normal, but her movements seemed... relaxed somehow, lacking the tension that she usually kept bottled up and that recently had been so profound as to be visible to anyone who knew how to read the clues. What brought this shift on was entirely beyond him, but it emboldened him enough to venture a return to a subject they had not spoken of for several weeks.

"So I guess this means you don't hate me?"

He realized only too late that he should have phrased that better. A lot better. Raven halted in mid-stride and turned around, looking half-confused and half-aghast. "What?" she asked.

Beast Boy sputtered for words. "I um... I thought... after that time in the alley a while back..." he trailed off.

Raven got the idea. "Oh..." she said, and did not elaborate. She resumed walking, and Beast Boy followed her, unsure if the subject was dropped or not before she added a question. "What about it?"

"I thought... you might be upset," said Beast Boy, catching up with Raven and falling in alongside her.

She waited an inordinately long time before answering him, and when she did, it was with a rather perfunctory "I wasn't upset, Beast Boy," and then more silence. He glanced at her as best he could without attracting attention, but she seemed to be lost in thought, to the extent that she tripped on a root and stumbled. Beast Boy caught her arm almost reflexively, but instead of shaking him off or blasting him into the nearest tree, she simply steadied herself, and tuned to look at him without a word. He let go of her gently, confused by her non-reaction, and debated whether or not to take a step back and what she would think if he did or didn't do so.

"Beast Boy..." she said finally, though she left it at just his name.

"Y.. yeah?" he said, confused.

"I..." she seemed to have no better idea than him. "I'm... glad you're here," she finally said.

By now, Beast Boy had no idea what to think. "You are?" he asked. It was a reasonable question, he thought, given what her usual reaction was.

"Yes," she said. "There's... there's some things I've been meaning to tell you."

"What things?" asked Beast Boy.

Once again she didn't answer immediately. Whatever she had to say, she seemed to be in no hurry to actually say it. She breathed in and out and closed her eyes and whispered to herself so softly that he couldn't tell what she was saying, before finally elaborating, albeit slowly.

"I've... I've never really told you... a lot of the things that I should have," she said, all without turning her head to face him. Her voice was controlled and careful, as though she were choosing each word with exquisite precision. "You've... been a better friend to me than I deserve."

That was just about all that Beast Boy wanted to hear, and he smiled and put a hand on her shoulder. "Rae, it's cool," he said. "I told you, you're fun when you get upset. You don't have to - "

"Please just let me finish this," she said abruptly. "I'm bad at it and I'm not going to be able to do it twice." Beast Boy blinked and hesitated and finally removed his hand and nodded. Even though she wasn't looking at him, she evidently saw it. Raven did that.

"Ever since we met," she said. "All I've done is try to get rid of you somehow, and... I wish I hadn't. You've always been there for me, no matter what, even when I didn't want you to. I never... thanked you or even thought about how lucky I was to have you there to do all that. And... I know that you're gonna say that it's all right and that you didn't mind and maybe you didn't, but it's not all right, even if you think it is. But I... I wanted you to know that I... always appreciated what you tried to do for me, even when I said I didn't."

Beast Boy blinked a few times. "I uh..." he finally stammered. "That's... really nice of you to say." He was frankly so astonished to hear all this come from Raven unbidden that he didn't know what else to say.

Far from looking grateful or relieved though, Raven grimaced and clenched her fists and shook her head. "No," she said bitterly. "It's not. 'Appreciated' makes it sound like you helped me move some furniture or something. You deserve more than that. You all do. And I... I don't know how to give it to you. I don't know how to do this. And it's too late for Robin, and nearly too late for the rest of you too."

Beast Boy stood quiet. He didn't know what to say, or even if he should speak at all. But before he could make up his mind either way, Raven turned to him.

"That... that time in the alley," she said, and he saw that there were tears in her eyes, though her voice was not sad. "I never... I didn't know..." she stopped, took a few breaths, and started again. "I didn't give you an answer."

This was rapidly becoming stranger and stranger. "An answer?" he asked, unaware that he had even asked a question.

She didn't explain herself, Raven was never fond of doing that, but instead she walked over to him, and such was the look in her eyes that he had the sudden urge to back up. She looked so... composed... that for a second he was worried she had actually decided to kill him.

"You've been my friend for so long. All of you have, but... you especially," she said. "And I... I wanted you guys to stop worrying, to just... have one more perfect day without worrying about me or anything else. And I know that wasn't going to happen, because of Robin, and all this... and because I didn't realize what I wanted to do until way too late."

She seemed to steel herself, as she put a hand on his shoulder. "But... I'm still glad you came with me, because I want you to know that I never ever hated you. Ever. Not even when I said I did. And I know it's so far beyond too late for me to tell you this that it's almost funny, but I want to make sure you knew anyway. You... told me back on the day Robin got killed that I was a good person."

"I said you were the best person I knew," said Beast Boy.

"I never imagined that anyone like you existed," said Raven. "Ever. I never thought there was anyone like the others either, but especially like you. You've been my friend even when I didn't deserve it, especially when I didn't deserve it. You're..." she seemed to lose her place, stuttered, stopped, and then with a visible act of will, forced the words out of her mouth.

"You're the one who made me glad I came to Earth," she said.

And then she kissed him.

It was so far out of the blue, so beyond any possible expectation he'd had that Beast Boy didn't even realize what she was doing until she was doing it. When he had kissed her, back on the day that Robin died, she had been too stunned (or something) to react, and had stood there like a frozen statue. Now he knew why.

It might have lasted five seconds, or thirty, or two. It might have lasted an hour. Time lost all meaning for a brief period, and the next thing he knew, Raven was pulling back from him slightly, and her face was more composed, more calm and peaceful than he had ever seen it. And he knew that he was just standing there, staring like an idiot, and that he should have been doing something, even if he didn't know what that something was, but he couldn't move at all, all he could do was stare in something like wonder at Raven.

She didn't seem to mind.

Her hand was still on his shoulder, light and gentle, and she left it there as she smiled softly. She said nothing, perhaps there was nothing to say, or perhaps she figured that he wouldn't be able to understand her if she did, but after a few moments she pulled him carefully towards her and wrapped her arms around him in a soft hug. This alone would have been shocking but for what had just happened, but Raven didn't seem to care that he was too thunderstruck to reply coherently. She squeezed him tightly, her eyes closed, her head resting on her shoulder. And as she did, she whispered something into his ear.

"Thank you."

Then Raven released him, stepping back and taking a deep breath. And in an instant, she was Raven again, the Raven he knew, composed and calm. She nodded carefully, though what she was nodding at was beyond him, and then she turned away, and slowly began walking up the path, leaving Beast Boy standing there with his tongue tied in knots and his heart pounding like a snare drum and his eyes following her of their own volition, for his brain had just switched off.

"Are you coming?" she asked without turning back after what might have been a minute or a century, and he followed her, slowly, walking like he was in a trance. He had all kinds of questions of course, but he didn't ask them, he didn't want to ask them. He didn't want answers and facts and analysis, he just wanted...

He wanted nothing. Nothing in the entire world. He had everything that he would ever want or need right here.

He followed along after her without watching a single other thing, such that this time he tripped, and stumbled, and fell on all fours. And as he caught himself on the ground, he spotted a small glinting object, a coin, a copper penny that some wayward hiker or bicyclist had let fall here some time ago. He lay there for a moment, looking at this most familiar of objects, and then the words to some half-remembered rhyme that Elasti-Girl had once taught him came back, something about finding pennies and good luck, and he scooped it from the ground without a word.

And when he looked up, Raven was staring at him.

The wind ran through her violet hair and teased the hem of her indigo cloak, and the sun overhead seemed to be shining down on her alone, like a spotlight in midday, or so it appeared to him. Her hand was out-stretched, fingers splayed out towards him, for he had made some inadvertent cry when he tripped and she had spun back in case he was being attacked. And he saw her relax as she realized what had happened, and even smile at him, and at the sight of her smile, Beast Boy's face shifted into a grin all by itself. He felt like springing up and running over and tackling her with a gigantic hug. He felt like dancing through the forest singing at the top of his lungs. He felt like turning into a giant Eagle and picking her up and flying into the clouds. She had kissed him! She had kissed him and smiled at him and hugged him as well, something she had only ever done twice before and both times when she was in the middle of...

...

The smile froze on his face. The urge to sing and dance vanished like smoke, and he stared at Raven, and an icy fear gripped his heart in chains of frozen steel, and all of a sudden, he asked her a question whose answer he was already dreading.

"Raven," he asked, "why are you telling me all this now?"

But before she could answer him, the sun went out.

The birds stopped singing, the insects vanished, the creatures nearby all squealed and fled, but Raven remained stock still as the sun darkened overhead, and the light faded and vanished altogether. A black disk, like the moon during a solar eclipse, had placed itself before the sun, save that it had done so in a matter of seconds, covering the sun in a sheath so total that not even a glimmer of light remained, plunging the forest and the mountains and the city below into a darkness so complete that Beast Boy could not see his hand in front of his face. Far away he could hear the sounds of squealing brakes, of shattering glass, of shouts and screams as thousands of cars crashed at once and people ran into the streets and screamed and cried and prayed aloud for forgiveness and deliverance, but the sounds were distant and he paid them no mind. All he was watching was Raven.

His eyes were still adjusting to the un-natural twilight, but he still had no difficulty seeing Raven, for before his eyes, glowing red marks, glyphs in some language he could not recognize, slowly appeared on Raven's body. Bright red, glowing in the darkness like embers, they seemed to materialize from nothing, running up her legs and arms and down her sides, shining right through the fabric of her uniform. She made no sound or sign as the marks appeared one by one, last of all a great rune on her forehead, circling the chakra jewel she wore there. Only when the last one finally appeared did she look up at Beast Boy with eyes that were suddenly full of tears, and suddenly she jerked back as though she had been struck, and fell to the ground.

"Raven!" shouted Beast Boy, and he was on his feet in an instant and racing over to her. He fell to his knees at her side and grabbed her wrist, half-expecting it to be burning with the terrible brands that had been seared into her, but it was chill and cool to the touch, and he could feel it shaking. Tears were running down her face, but she did not appear to be in pain, at least not that he could tell. And while he was stammering to try and figure out what to do, she turned her eyes to him and answered his question from before.

"Because," she said through choked tears, "I don't think... I'm going to get another chance to."

"We're not gonna let that happen!" yelled Beast Boy without even realizing that he was yelling. "Not ever!"

"Beast Boy," she said, and she sounded almost almost delirious, "it's happening. Now. You have to get the others and run or something, save - "

"I'm not going anywhere," he said. "We have to get you back to the Tower and get ready."

"No!" she shouted, grabbing his collar and shaking it. "You Have. To. Go. You can't fight him!"

"Watch us," he said, and he stood up and shifted into a pteranodon. Gently picking Raven up with his claws, he beat his wings against the still air and lifted off, circling around and flying back towards the Tower. She didn't resist or try to fight him off, perhaps she couldn't, but he flew as fast as he could regardless. Trigon was coming, and they needed to finish getting everything ready for him.

But then he was pretty sure that the others already knew that.

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[LadyTevar]

Chapter 31, cont'd

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Darkness lay on the city before him, a darkness more profound and total than anything he had before experienced aboveground. The sun was extinguished, the moon still below the horizon, and the stars that should not have been visible in the first place at this hour were vanishing one by one from the sky, swallowed up by an invisible malice that crept around the margins of what few lights still shone, palpable and cruel, waiting only for its appointed hour. Titans Tower was more than a mile offshore, but even at this distance he had heard the sounds of the panic within the city for an hour or more, mixed with the sirens of the emergency personnel trying to restore some semblance of order. Barely a handful of flickering lights came from the darkened city, for the automated, timed streetlights that normally illuminated Jump knew only that it was still early afternoon, and had not turned themselves on.

The sounds were mostly dimmed now, as the populace had mostly returned indoors, either home to barricade themselves, or to churches, temples, and mosques to pray for whatever salvation was available to them. Accordingly, David could now hear the sound of the waves below breaking over the rocks at the edge of the island. He did not know, as he stared into the darkness, that Raven has stood in the same place this very morning and contemplated similar thoughts on this, the last day of the world.

He heard the door behind him open, and half-turned to see who it was. When he did see, he paused, considered for a moment if he should stay or go, before finally turning back and leaning against the railing without a word. His baton was clipped to his side, extinguished and cold, and in his hands instead was a dog-eared, paperback book, closed at present.

"See anything?" asked the person in the doorway.

David shook his head. "No," he said. "But I'm not up here as a lookout."

He heard the door close and footsteps crunching on loose gravel as the other approached. "Well then what are you doing up here?"

"Waiting," he said. "Same as everyone."

A few more footsteps, and the other figure strode into the light of the floodlights that covered the Tower's roof. Unlike the darkened city before them, the Tower was lit up like a navigational beacon, every light switched on at full force, bright enough in the all-consuming darkness to be visible fifty miles away. Cyborg had turned everything on partly so that the Titans could actually see what they were doing, and partly because the Jump City Chief of Police had asked him to. Merely seeing the Tower still shining as brightly as ever on its lonely island was enough to calm the worst of the panic in the City.

Most of the rest of the world had no such help.

David turned his head as Jinx came fully into view. She looked no different than she had in the diamond mine, oblivious, to all appearances, to whatever pressures must be weighing on her as they were on Cyborg. He remembered Cyborg's warning about how the HIVE might try to stab them all in the back when the time came, but no sooner had he dredged up the warning than he pushed it back again. It didn't matter anyway. If the HIVE did screw them, there was nothing he could do about it anyway. And he already had too much to worry about to add another care.

"You guys have everything set?" she asked.

Why she expected him to know was a question he chose not to ask. "Raven's in the safe room," he said. "Cyborg and Beast Boy are in the control room. Starfire's..." he didn't know what Starfire was doing or planning to do, so he let her sit. "I think everything's in place."

"And what about you?"

He exhaled slowly, watching the condensation from his breath float off into the darkened sky. "I'll be all right."

"You'd better," said Jinx with a smirk. "We don't have time to babysit you when everything starts."

He shot her as stern a look as he was capable of. "I'll be fine," he said. "I'm not the one who was working for these guys."

"Relax," she said. "It was a joke."

If it really was a joke (which he doubted), it wasn't a particularly funny one, but he didn't say so. He hadn't spoken more than five words to Jinx since the Hive had arrived at the Tower, and right now he just wasn't up for her usual back-and-forth. It was all he could do to keep his nerves under control as it was.

As it happened though, it appeared that Jinx wasn't really in the mood for it either. She was standing against the railing with her arms crossed, watching the darkened city as though she could discern something from it and glancing back at him every few seconds as though he somehow had any better idea of what was coming than she did. He paid her no mind.

"A little light reading?"

For a second, David wondered what she was talking about, before he remembered the book in his hand. "Oh," he said. "No, I just..." he trailed off. He had brought the book up here in the hopes of being able to read a little and take his mind off of what was coming (he could read, even in the dark, simply by visualizing the molecules of ink on the pages), but his mind had been too jittery to take in a single word. Accordingly he shrugged and gently tossed the book to Jinx.

Jinx raised an eyebrow. "The Lord of the Rings?"

David nodded. "Raven loaned it to me a while back. I lost my copy when I came here."

"I never read it," said Jinx.

"I've read it six times," said David. He looked up at Jinx, who was smirking at him, and half-smiled. "I know," he said. "Don't say it."

"Wouldn't dream of it," said Jinx sarcastically. "But I never figured you for that sort of heroic fantasy stuff."

"I'm not, normally," said David. "But that one's different. Elves and dwarves and hobbits and all. I always liked it. It felt... I dunno... safe? Just a story, not some lesson or something, nothing to do with me, or what I could do." He sighed. "At least it used to. And now..." He trailed off and shook his head.

"Now we're sitting in a Tower waiting for a Dark Lord to send his armies after us?" asked Jinx. David raised a confused eyebrow at her, and she smirked again. "I saw the movies," she said.

"Yeah," said David, and he sighed. "I feel like I'm trapped in some bad novel, and I don't know how to get out."

"Cheat," suggested Jinx. "It's what I do."

David chuckled. "Thanks," he said, only half-sarcastically. "That's such a big help."

Jinx tossed the book back to him with a smirk. "I'm a bad guy," she said, "I'm not supposed to help you. It'd be against the rules."

The two of them turned back to the railing and watched the city for a little while. It might have been five minutes before Jinx spoke again, this time in a more serious tone.

"So Sparky says that you were the one who thought up calling for our help."

David nodded. "It was my idea," he said. "Starfire wasn't real happy with it."

"Yeah, I noticed," said Jinx. "Still, I'm surprised."

"What do you mean?"

"After what happened to Robin, I figured the next time we heard from any of you guys, it'd be on the business end of a gun. I didn't think any of you hero types would look to us for help of all things."

"They didn't," said David. "Never even occurred to them."

"But it did to you."

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see her watching him, but he didn't turn to her. "Yeah," he said after a little while. "It did to me."

The implication went unsaid by either of them. It was clear enough in any case.

"Annoying as you guys are, I'm glad it did," said Jinx finally.

He sighed softly. "Yeah."

Neither one said anything for a little bit, each watching the horizon in their own unique way.

"See-More told me about what happened on the roof," said Jinx after a time. David didn't respond, didn't turn his eyes, simply continued to stare off at the distant city.

"I guess I ought to thank you for not killing him," she said.

"Well," said David, "you didn't kill me when you could've. I figured that's the sort of thing I ought to encourage."

Jinx laughed softly. "Good plan."

"Even though I know why you didn't."

Jinx stopped laughing and turned to look at him, but didn't answer.

"Warp told you not to kill me, didn't he?" asked David without turning his head. "Back in the mines?"

"Yeah," said Jinx. "He did."

David lowered his head slightly. "That's what I figured," he said.

She watched him for a few seconds. "That wasn't the only reason."

He lifted his head a bit. "Oh?"

"I was gonna kill you anyway," she said. "Originally. Before we got cut off. I didn't know why Warp wanted you alive, but I knew he was bad news and he was trying to insist on it without sounding like he was insisting on it, you know? Besides," she smirked, "I don't follow instructions too well."

"So why didn't you, then?"

Jinx sighed and leaned against the railing. "Because you're weird," she said.

David laughed. "Thanks,"

"I'm serious," she said. "I mean you guys are all weird, you heroes, but you're... well... Any of the others would have helped me out down there, you guys are all stupid like that, and most of them would have been better at it by the way, but you actually wanted to talk."

David shrugged. "Beast Boy talks more than I do."

"Yeah, but he talks like a hero. 'You must do the right thing' and all that. You didn't. That whole time we were down there, you never once tried to get me to 'see the error of my ways' or whatever. Maybe you were faking it, or just trying to kill time, but you actually sounded interested in what I had to say. Only Cyborg ever did that, and... let's just say that didn't go well."

"I haven't been doing this long enough to start converting people," said David. "Besides, would you have listened to me if I had tried?"

"'Course not," said Jinx. "Do I look like the kind of girl who switches sides whenever some kid in a red suit asks me a couple of questions? But let's just say I appreciated you not trying, even so."

"And that was enough to make you change your mind?"

Jinx shrugged. "That and Warp's little manifesto. Plus if I'd actually killed you, Cyborg would have murdered us."

"You killed Robin," ventured David. "Cyborg didn't murder you for that."

"Only barely," said Jinx. "And besides, Sparky never felt responsible for Robin."

An almost imperceptible shudder ran through David as he closed his eyes and sighed. "Yeah," he said.

The two of them stood there for a few minutes, listening to the sounds of the wind and the waves and the soft sounds of the distant city. No sign could be seen of anything amiss, save the darkness itself, and yet the darkness itself felt almost tangible, like it was reaching out towards them, a nebulous, shapeless malice just outside the range of the Tower's light. The dread seemed to grow and deepen as they stood there, until a chill ran up David's spine and he shivered, his baton rattling against his leg.

Jinx glanced at him. "You all right?" she asked.

"I just... I wish Warp or Slade or whoever would just get on with it, you know?" said David. "Waiting for it's almost worse than being in it."

"I doubt that," said Jinx as she peered back off into the gloom, "but I know what you mean. Can't you use that other sight thing you do? See if something's coming?"

David shook his head. "I can't see far enough," he said. "The air molecules get in the way. Besides, Cyborg and Gizmo have got sensors out for a mile in every direction. We ought to know if anything comes close."

"I don't really trust 'ought to' right now," said Jinx.

"Me neither," said David, "but this waiting's gonna kill me if something doesn't happen al- "

And then all of a sudden, something did.

The loudspeakers atop the Tower's roof suddenly burst to life, startling both teenagers out of their conversation. Jinx had a hex formed in her hand before she even turned around, while David was so surprised that he was unable to draw his baton. And yet rather than the alarm or alert or serious announcement that both of them had anticipated, the speaker's static resolved all of a sudden into music. Guitar music.

And singing.

"I see a bad moon rising.
I see troubles on the way."

Both Jinx and David stared up at the loudspeaker above and behind them like paralyzed manaquins. All decorum was forgotten. In fact, everything was forgotten. It was superfluous to say that this was the last thing either of them had expected to hear tonight. Indeed, David wasn't sure he hadn't suddenly started hallucinating. From the looks of it, so did Jinx, at least judging from the glowing hex she had materialized.

David just broke down laughing.

"Don't go round tonight,
Well it's bound to take your life.
There's a bad moon on the rise."

Jinx was just shaking her head as David laughed. "There is something seriously wrong with you people," she said. "You know that?"

"No argument," he said, smiling.

"Who the hell decided this was a good idea?" asked Jinx. David knew of course, he had known the instant the music had started playing. But before he could answer, someone else answered for him.

"Guess," said Cyborg from the doorway to the roof. The music had masked his footsteps approaching, and neither Jinx nor David had heard him opening the door. He now crossed the rooftop towards the two metahumans, his face a study in poker calm. Immediately, David knew that something was up, and all impetus to laugh left him in an instant.

"Is it... is it time?" he asked, nervously than he had intended to, but then he probably wasn't fooling anybody anyway.

"The buoys we set out picked somethin' up coming this way from the north," said Cyborg. "Right over the bay like it's walkin' on water. Moving slow, but headed right for us." He walked over to the balcony. "Could be it's a fault or something..."

"No," said Jinx, pointing into the un-natural darkness. "It's not."

Far off, more than three miles away yet, a small speck of red was just becoming visible in the dim darkness at roughly horizon level. It was too far away to identify, too far away even to see if it was moving, save that the speck seemed to flicker and dance, like the flame of a candle being blown in the wind. Perhaps it was merely David's imagination, but he could swear it was slowly getting brighter.

Cyborg did not indicate any surprise. He folded his arms and nodded grimly. "So yeah," he said. "It's time."

David's internal organs all began to tighten. Had the light been better, he was sure the others would have been able to see him turning pale. Even after all the buildup and anticipation, the revelation that the moment of truth was here, now, made him feel lightheaded and queasy. He remembered sitting up here on the roof all those endless months ago with a firebreathing dragon bearing down on him, helplessly terrified and unable to think clearly. Some things never changed.

Cyborg was watching him carefully, and he forced himself to remain upright and steady. He took a ragged breath and straightened out his red and orange uniform, the baton at his side clinking nervously against his belt. He drew the baton slowly, felt its grip in his gloved hands, let it slide out to full extension with a soft 'click'. He concentrated, pushing down the fear, repeating the mental mantras that Raven and Robin had forced into him, closing his eyes for a moment as he reached out to the molecules in his baton, and felt them respond to him, felt the temperature of the metal beginning to fluctuate in a rythmn, and when he opened his eyes again, red flames were gently rising from the dark steel, casting a soft light over the the three superhumans.

"Okay," he said.

Cyborg smiled, and he slowly extended one robotic arm and gently laid his heavy, titanium hand on David's shoulder. "My man..." he said almost whimsically, and he chuckled.

Jinx, standing off to the side, smirked at the scene. "So are you gonna tell him?" she asked. "Or was I supposed to?"

David's eyes flicked from Cyborg to Jinx and back. "Tell me what?" he asked.

"I need you to do somethin'," said Cyborg. "And I know you're not gonna like it, but I need you to do it for me, all right? It's... important."

David blinked quizzically. Cyborg wasn't exactly a taskmaster, but normally if he had an unpleasant order, he just gave it. The framing was unusual. "Sure, Cy," he said. "What do you need?"

Cyborg sighed. "I want you to go down into the sub-basement," he said, "and I want you to go into the safe room with Raven."

David froze, his brain skipping a track. "... what?" he asked.

"I know this ain't what we planned," he said, "but I need you to do this. I want you to go into the safe room, lock it behind you, and stay in there no matter what happens." He emphasized the last words without raising his voice. "Don't come out until you get the all-clear from us. Do you understand me?"

David honestly didn't know what to say. "I... I mean... yeah, Cy, I understand... but..."

"I know," said Cy. "And believe me, I'm not sayin' you wouldn't give a good account when it starts. This ain't about you. It's about what is. We've all been dancing around pretending that Trigon is only coming after Raven when we know that ain't so. He wants you. I don't know why, and I ain't about to find out. I'd have told you before, but I didn't make up my mind on it until just a little while ago. I know you think you can help us with this, and maybe you're right, but this is how it's gotta be.

Was he disappointed? Should he be? Would Cyborg have been disappointed in his place? He didn't know. Right now he didn't know what to feel. He lowered his head. "Cy..."

"David," said Cyborg, with just a touch more formality, just the slightest hint of command in his voice, and David's words died in his throat. "I need you to do this," he said. "Can you do it for me?"

There was only one answer to give. He knew that it would not have been any use arguing even if he had wanted to argue, which he wasn't sure if he did or not. "Yeah," he whispered. "I can do that."

He saw Cyborg breathe a sigh of what might have been relief. "I knew I could count on you," he said. "Now go on. We're gonna be locking it down in a few minutes."

"Is there... anything you want me to do when I get there?" asked David. He didn't know why, but he felt he needed to ask.

"Just make sure Raven doesn't do anything crazy," said Cyborg. "She's... in a weird place right now. I don't think she'd be able to fight even if we let her."

David nodded. "Right," he said, and he turned to leave. He was a couple paces from the door into the tower when Cyborg stopped him short.

"And David?"

David turned back. "Yeah?"

"If they get past us," said Cyborg evenly, "and try to break into the safe room, I want you to take them out any way you can. If you have to bring the Tower down on them... if you have to bring it down on me... You do it."

There was no way David could respond to that in words. He nodded instead, silently, and then opened the door and walked through it, descending the stairs towards the Tower's sub-basement. Cyborg and Jinx watched the door close behind him, and only after it had done so did they slowly turn away, Cyborg back to the horizon where the red speck seemed just a little closer, and Jinx to Cyborg, crossing her arms and smiling despite herself.

"A little melodramatic, don't you think?," she asked.

"I hope so," said Cyborg. "But he's a good kid, whatever else."

Jinx considered that for a moment. "Yeah," she said. "Yeah, he is." She turned back to the horizon, and crossed her arms as she peered into the darkness. "So were you planning on shutting that music off?"

"Actually, no," said Cyborg, and Jinx turned her head slightly and raised her eyebrow. "BB thought it'd buck everyone up, but I want Slade to hear it. I want him to know we ain't afraid of him 'fore he even sets eyes on us."

"I don't imagine he's the sort to care," said Jinx.

"Maybe not," said Cyborg. "But I ain't shuttin' my tower down on his account."

The door behind them opened again, and Jinx and Cyborg both turned to see who it was, half-expecting to find David having returned for a last minute question or some such. However, the figure they found standing in the doorway, hanging back as though avoiding the light of the rooftop, was not David.

Indeed she was about as far from David as one could get.

"Is the moment at hand?" asked Starfire. A quiet voice that held a coil of razorwire.

"They're coming," said Cyborg. "We were about to make the call."

Starfire did not move, did not enter the light, standing veiled in shadow. Cyborg had not seen her for three days. She had ignored or left unanswered all of his pages and messages, and he had been unable to integrate her into the plan he had for confronting Trigon's army. He'd been forced to assume simply that she would fight.

"I am prepared for them," said Starfire softly, her voice almost frighteningly calm and even. The second-hand reflection off of her green eyes gave her an otherworldly look that even made Jinx hesitate. "Where are we to have the encounter?"

"They're comin' in from the North," said Cyborg. "We're gonna meet 'em outside the Tower."

Starfire's silhouette nodded. "Then I will see you there," she said, and turned to leave.

"Wait, Star," said Cyborg, taking a step forward. "What... What are you gonna do?"

Starfire didn't turn back, though she did pause long enough to answer.

"I am going to exact retribution."

And then the door clicked shut.

Cyborg was left standing, facing the shut door. He stood there for a few moments, until Jinx walked up next to him. She didn't ask him anything. She didn't need to.

"All right then," he said, perhaps to Jinx, perhaps to himself, perhaps to nobody in particular. "Let's do this."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The last stars went out as Slade stepped upon the island's shore.

He was alone, for he apparently had no need of minions on this last day, a statue of obsidian and rusted iron, one eye gazing upon the Tower before him, and flames were about his hands and feet. None had hindered his approach to the Tower, not the police, not the coast guard, not even the navy, for all had been warned away by Cyborg and their own commanders. What was to transpire here could not be halted by a mundane agency. The only representatives from the world at large were above, giant insects of steel and diesel fuel marked in red and blue numbers. News helicopters, whose spotlights illuminated the scene below, their cameras transmitting the events to all those within range of their broadcasts. How they had learned that something was to occur here was unknown, and unimportant. Mute witnesses, they could do nothing but watch and comment on events that exceeded their understanding.

So it went.

Slade stood upon the shore, and flames ran about his hands and feet. "I've come for what's mine," he said to the empty scene ahead. "Give them to me."

There was no reply, not at first, but then slowly, from the rocks and ridges that lined the island's shore, there came a figure, large and broad, with a wide stance and footfalls that shuddered the ground beneath him. He advanced alone to meet Slade, his hands at his sides, his form glowing a pale blue in the all-consuming darkness.

"We ain't givin' you anything," said Cyborg. "This place is off limits to you and everybody else in Trigon's little crew. You have five seconds to leave or we'll be mailing you back to your master in pieces."

Slade merely smiled. "This day was ordained eons ago," he said. "This is the end of the World, boy. What are you possibly thinking? That you can save your friends with some selfless heroics at the eleventh hour?"

"What I'm thinkin'," said Cyborg, his voice dangerously quiet, more a growl than spoken words, "is that you're a loudmouth punk who thinks he's gonna scare us into handin' our friends over to you with a bunch of fancy tricks and some fire-play."

"I see," said Slade, not the least bit discomfited, "and is that what your new friends from the Hive think?"

From behind Cyborg there now emerged a second figure, smaller and lither, her pink hair done up in horned spikes. A crystalline glyph of karmic energy was in her hands, and she played with it as though she had no concerns at all, tossing it lightly from hand to hand. Cyborg did not so much as glance at her as she stopped next to him. "I think you're a liar who tried to use us to jump-start the end of the world," she said. "We don't like being used. And we really don't like being used for something that's gonna get us all killed."

More figures now appeared, from behind rocks and crevices before the Tower. Most were identical, a crowd of clones clad in red. Before the clone army though, there stood figures large and small, in green and black and purple and bearing harnesses of gold and dun steel.

Slade surveyed the array of teenagers before him with a practiced eye. "Quite the little get-together," he said, affecting bemused interest. "Tell me, did what did Raven tell you all to get you to throw your lives away on her behalf?"

"You shut your mouth." shouted Beast Boy from where he was perched atop a nearby rock, his gloved finger pointing at Slade like a jouster's lance. "Just shut up! We're not letting you have her! Get out of here and don't come back!"

"No," said Gizmo, and Slade could see a gleeful grin on the diminuative Hiver's face. "No, let him try. I wanna see what this stuff can do."

"Shut up, Gizmo," shot back Cyborg without turning his head, and the newly anointed leader of the Titans stepped closer to Slade. "Go back to Trigon and Warp and tell them they're gonna need another Portal, because this one's shut."

Slade laughed, as a schoolmaster might laugh at the antics of precocious kindergardeners. "This is all very amusing," he said, "but I'm afraid you don't really have a choice in this matter. I am taking Raven, and Devastator too. If you interfere, I will simply reduce you to ash."

He didn't really expect them to believe him. Indeed he hoped they would not, and the Gods of Chance favored his hopes today, for he saw the hardening of Cyborg's gaze, and of Jinx', and he saw Beast Boy ('why him?' he wondered), tense up like a coiled spring. "Oh yeah?" asked the shapeshifter, "you and what army?"

Slade did not answer in words. Instead he raised his hand, and from the ground there issued forth living fire.

A company, a regiment, an army aflame, a roiling mass of hukling warriors, vaguely humanoid, whose bodies were formed of some substance unknown, magma perhaps or something similar, and they burned like torches soaked in oil, burned without being consumed, every one of them roaring and crackling with the flames of Hell. Hundreds there were, emerging from nothingness, demons of fire and molten rock, and foul vapors issued forth from the crevices in their skins, and they stank. And as they appeared, surrounding the Titans and their newly minted allies, Slade beheld the fear that formed in the eyes of his opponents, and watched as Beast Boy's bravado quailed and subsided, and he laughed.

Jinx groaned and rolled her eyes as she looked up at Cyborg. "He just had to ask, didn't he?"

"Their name is Legion," said Slade, and he closed his fist, and watched as it too began to burn "for they are many."

But before he could order his army to attack, something else intervened.

There was a green flash, and an explosion of fire and smoke, and two of the burning warriors nearest to Slade were blown to pieces, and still-burning fragments of their bodies were hurled into the bay. And as the smoke wafted away in the sea-borne breeze, something descended from on high.

If an angel, it was a singularly angry one.

Starfire floated above the army of Slade, and green fire danced from her eyes and dripped from her hands, searing the ground where the droplets struck. Rather than the violet she usually wore, for this occasion she had donned a uniform of black, like velvet dyed with pitch, and around her upper arms and stomach were bands of iron. Plate steel was mounted on her shoulders and wrists, and a terrible crown framed her face, jagged and gleaming in the glow of her flaming hands. And all who looked upon her, friend or even foe, were filled with wonder and awe, for this was the uniform of the Tamaranean Royal Guard, the very one she had worn when first she arrived on Earth, and then never again before today.

Today was a special day.

"Slade," she said bitterly as she touched down upon the ground, before the other Titans and Hivers, before Cyborg and Jinx, directly in front of Slade himself. The army of flame demons stood waiting for Slade's order, but Slade did not command their attack. Not yet.

"Princess," said Slade sarcastically. "To what do we owe the - ?"

"You will not speak," she said, her eyes flashing green, anger boiling up from her throat like bile. "You will say nothing. You have done enough."

"Or what?" asked Slade bemusedly. "Will you arrest me? Read me my rights perhaps?"

"No," said Starfire, and none wished or dared to gainsay her. "You and all your associates have gone too far. You have committed crimes which cannot be atoned for." She stepped forward, her eyes aflame, her bearing regal and indomitable, a princess proud and merciless. If you are still susceptible to death, then I swear by Tamaran's star that you shall die this night."

"And what if I am not susceptible to such things?" asked Slade. "What will you do then, Koriand'r?"

If Slade had hoped to scare Starfire or the others, he was to be disappointed. Starfire drew herself up to her full height, her face stony and quivering with anger, and with short, proud words, spat Slade his answer.

"Then we shall improvise."

Behind Starfire, a forest of mechanical tools, of guns and launchers and weapons of various sorts, unfolded themselves from within the nooks and crannies of the island's terrain, and a swarm of red-suited clones descended towards Slade's army, slowly at first, then at a dead run. And as Starfire lifted her hands to the heavens and the flames that danced about her condensed themselves into bolts of pure energy, and as Jinx washed her eyes out white and conjured crystaline hexes into her hands, and as Cyborg's form rippled with blue and chrome as cannons emerged from where hands had been, and as Beast Boy's lanky form vanished and was replaced with that of a nameless thing, furred and clawed and guided by orbs of red blood, then, only then, did Slade clench his fist and cry silently to his legions to attack.

And so broke the Red Storm.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Fell deeds awake: fire and slaughter!
spear shall be shaken, shield be splintered,
a sword day, a red day, ere the sun rises!"

As he shut the book for the fourteenth time, both unable and unwilling to focus on the words, David reflected on the absurdity of this situation: When there was silence, he longed for sound, and when there was sound, he longed for silence.

The safe room was well-named. Hermetically sealed, with walls of solid titanium steel so thick that even David couldn't see through them, protected by electromagnetic locks on the enormous double-doors, built with redundant power and air circulation systems, this was beyond any doubt the most secure location in the entire Tower, and by extension, in Jump City itself. The walls were inscribed with stone and neon sigils, taken straight from one of Raven's magic books, supposedly part of some kind of warding ritual designed to keep anything noncorporeal or supernatural from penetrating the room. A circle of bright light shone on the ground, and in it lay Raven, sprawled on the floor, her eyes shut, saying nothing. Dead to the world, or so it appeared.

David was jealous.

He was pacing back and forth nervously, a habit he'd picked up when he had first come to the Tower and that had not abated with time. Leaving Raven the center of the room, he moved around the margins like a caged panther. Nothing he did was of any help in stemming the tension that was screwing his insides into knots, and his ears were perked for every rumor, every minor echo of the raging battle that had to be going on outside. The walls were thick, and they were deep underground, but every so often he caught one regardless, a muffled explosion, a high energy discharge, a distant roar, or the clash of metal on rock. Deprived of actual information, his imagination ran wild with each successive sound, imagining the raging hurricane of fire and blood that was blowing just a few dozen yards away.

Raven emitted a soft groan. She'd been laying there, like that, when he arrived in the safe room, and he'd been unable to wake her or get her to acknowledge his presence. He'd chosen to assume that she was meditating or some such, but now she appeared to be stirring at last.

"Raven?" he asked. He tentatively entered the circle and knelt down beside her. She was twitching, like she was in the throes of some kind of extremely deep dream. "Raven? Can you hear me?"

"No..."

Raven's voice sounded pained, and David was fairly certain that she wasn't talking to him, though that of course begged the question of who she was talking to. "Raven, are you there?" he asked.

"Don't hurt them..."

An icy coil wrapped itself around David's heart. "Hurt... who?" he asked.

"Father," said Raven, still asleep or whatever this was, and still plainly addressing someone who wasn't even here, "I don't want to..."

The tense screws inside David's guts and head tightened even further. He gently extended a trembling hand towards her shoulder. "C... C'mon, Raven, snap out of it. You're scaring the hell out of - "

"You cannot hide from your destiny!"

The words came from Raven's mouth, but the voice wasn't Raven's. It was deep, malevolent, a voice of doom and damnation that chilled the very marrow of his bones and sent shivers running all the way down to his heart. David stared in wide-eyed horror as Raven's eyes went blood red, and a second pair of equally-red eyes materialized from nothing on her forehead. He yanked his hand back, stumbled, and fell backwards, as Raven suddenly jerked bolt upright, her voice returning in a pained gasp. "No!" she cried, and her eyes opened, and suddenly she was awake, and blinking, and looking around at the room and at David as though astonished to be sitting here.

And before either of them could say anything, there was a thunderous boom from somewhere above and outside the Tower, shaking the entire room like a small earthquake. And then all of a sudden the lights went out.

David was absolutely certain that he felt his heart stop, just for a moment.

The safe room had its own emergency power system, and moments later, it kicked in, and the lights returned. Without even meaning to, David had scrambled away to the side of the room, shaking like a leaf in the wind, and Raven was kneeling in the center of the room, one hand held to her temple, her eyes, now reduced back to the usual two, squeezed shut.

For a few moments, David could not physically move. His muscles were frozen, his nerves shot. Only with difficulty did he manage to force his body back under control. He sat against the wall on the side of the room, one hand clasped to the handle of his baton. "What the hell is going on?" he asked.

"The end of the world," she replied without opening her eyes.

All of his fear and uncertainty boiled to the surface at such a dismissive answer. "I know that!" he snapped before he could stop himself. "What does that mean?"

"It means Trigon's coming," said Raven, slowly looking at him. She looked utterly drained. "Whatever any of us do."

It was utterly hopeless to try and get more specifics out of Raven, David could see. She was only half-here to begin with, and her gaze was so forlorn, so devoid of emotion, that David was suddenly reminded of something from his prior life, of the kids from the Foster care centers who had been abused by their parents or other caregivers. The dead eyes, the hollow stares, the emptiness that led the other kids to avoid them even when they weren't violent, that was what he read on Raven's face as clear as daylight.

The screw tightened another turn.

He stood up carefully, eyes locked on Raven. "What's happening out there?" he asked.

She lowered her head. "They're fighting the inevitable."

"What does that mean?" he asked, desperately. "Are they winning? Losing? I know you can see out there. Tell me what's going on."

Raven tried. She bent her head and held her temple harder and tried to concentrate. Seconds rolled by like hours as David waited, barely able to breathe.

"Fire," she said at last. "So much fire... and blood. A tide. Screaming and shooting. Metal. They're... they're afraid. Adrenaline everywhere. And... and I can feel something... something else... "

The Tower shuddered suddenly as a series of blasts outside shook dust from the ceilings and rumbled through the safe room like thunder. Raven's eyes opened, and she met David's frightened stare.

"Pain."

As the tension crushing the life out of his insides mounted yet further, something in David's brain desperately clawed its way to the fore. "We..." he stammered, "we've... we've gotta do something. Help them somehow."

"We can't," said Raven quickly. "Nobody can."

"Cyborg doesn't believe that," retorted David, "none of them do. There's gotta be something, a... a spell, a ritual, some magical thing you can do to help with - "

"I can't stop my father's army," insisted Raven. "And Trigon's power is a million times more than everything the others have put together."

"W-wait a minute," said David, his brain flailing for straws to grasp at. "Raven, you're more powerful than all of the rest of us put together, you know that. There's got to be something you can do. Anything."

"I can't perform miracles!" insisted Raven.

The tension and frustration boiled over all at once, and David exploded. "Well we've got to do something!" he shouted angrily. "We can't just sit here and listen to them die!"

Raven, under no less pressure, and probably under considerably more, still managed to hold herself somewhat together. "There is nothing we can do," she said with the finality of ages. "Nothing anyone can do, do you get that?"

David was not easily excitable. He had a very strong filter in place between his brain and his mouth, one which normally would have caught his next statement before he had even begun to speak. But this was not a normal day, and his mind was flailing about in panic.

"You broke into my head and tried to murder me so that this wouldn't happen," he said, "and now you won't lift a finger to even try and help the others?"

Raven's eyes twitched, her whole body froze for an instant. And then suddenly she let out a choked cry and raised her hand and fired a blast of pitch-dark energy straight into David's chest. David didn't react, he didn't have time to even flinch, but the bolt of dark energy vanished into nothing the instant it touched the fabric of his shirt, leaving behind only the faint smell of acrid smoke.

For a few seconds, neither one of them moved or said a word. And as they stood there in silence, there came a muffled roar, like a jet engine or a raging firestorm, and the room shook once again, moments before they caught the distinct sound of a high pitched, agonizing scream that trailed off into silence once more.

Raven looked back into David's eyes. "The others are already dead," she said. "All we can do is prolong their pain."

And like that, David's tensed, taught, frayed nerves, finally snapped.

"Bullshit."

He stood up and quickly walked over to the door of the safe room, sliding the cover off of the electronic keypad next to the door and setting it on the ground.

"What are you doing?" asked Raven.

"I'm going out there by myself," said David without turning around.

Raven could only sigh and lower her head. "You can't help them," she said.

"I don't give a damn," said David, typing his security code into the doors. "I am not sitting in here like a sardine waiting for Trigon's army to kill the others and break in." His fingers moved robotically, his brain refusing to dedicate conscious effort to what he was doing, lest he lose his nerve.

"The only thing you can do out there is make their last day worse," said Raven, stepping forward as she made a last attempt to try and get him to see.

"You have no idea what I can do!" shouted David as he whipped back around to face Raven. "Neither do I. Neither does Trigon, for God's sake! And even if you're right, what the hell does it matter if I get killed out there or in here?"

Raven had nothing to say, and without looking, David reached back and hit the green button next to the keypad. The magnetic interlocks clicked and hissed for a moment, and then suddenly the door slid open, admitting into the room the still-quiet but plainly audible sounds of the raging battle going on outside.

David felt his fear, the self-preserving fear that normally coursed through him prior to a fight, starting to metastasize. He hesitated, standing at the doorway, and looked back at Raven.

"Lock it behind me, I guess," he said lamely, not sure of what else to say.

"David," said Raven sadly, "all you can do by fighting is make it worse for them."

Part of him believed her. Part of him wanted to believe her, and concede the initiative to the others, who were so much more certain of what they were doing. And then a large part of him was presently screaming that he was about to die horribly. But none of that really bore on the subject at hand. The others were in trouble, maybe even dying. This was what he had to do. There was no choice at all.

Thank god for that at least.

He managed to shrug. "I'm good at that," he said. And with that he turned away and ran, ran down the hallway towards the elevators, letting the door slide shut behind him.

It sounded like a guillotine.

He sprinted down the hallway to the elevators that would take him up to the ground floor. They were out of order of course, the power was cut to non-essential systems when the Tower was in battle mode, but next to the elevators was a stairwell. He threw the door open and ran up the stairs two at a time, the sounds of fighting growing with each step he took. Two flights later, he was standing on the landing, and he shoved the hidden door open that led into the lobby of the Tower.

The lobby was dark and deserted, but through the enormous windows that lined the front of the entranceway, he could see flashes of light and beams of energy flying past in every direction. Green and pink and orange and light blue and combinations thereof, and every so often a dark shape flew past, too quickly to identify. The noise was loud now, deep, thunderous explosions, and the staccato snarl of gunfire mixed with roars, screams, shrieks in what might have been English or some other language. Outside was a cauldron of death, a maelstrom, a dwelling place of unspeakable abominations, and the fear gripped David as he stood there, and held him in place, trying to force him back down the stairs. He reached to his side and grasped the baton, unclipping it from his belt, and reaching his mind out to it largely to prevent it from wandering to the terrible things that might be about to occur. And then, dragging himself forward by main force, he approached the front door.

He reached it just as something wrenched it open.

There was a hollow thud, the sound of rending metal, and suddenly the front door was torn open in front of him, and in the open doorway, there stood a creature that burned like a raging bonfire. Ten feet tall and vaguely humanoid, it looked like a straw effigy aflame. It had a head of sorts, and two long arms, but no legs, floating over the ground like a disembodied spirit. Its very skin burned with an unholy flame, and it faced David and roared. David's heart froze and his blood ran cold, and he fell back without thinking about it before this monster of living fire, and as he did so, the wind blew through the doorway around it, and the smell of it accosted his...

... wait a minute.

He stopped retreating all of a sudden and sniffed the air again. That pungent, rotten smell, vaguely mineral. He knew that smell from somewhere. Something in training... one of the substance-drills he'd done with Cyborg and Robin. The creature was still prying the doors apart to make a hole wide enough to enter, but he shifted his vision to molecules rather than light, and beheld the thing in its constituent parts, all agitated and roiling from the heat. There was a fair bit of miscellaneous rock and other minerals that he couldn't identify, but running through the entire thing were rivulets of a very pure, very specific substance, a substance he knew well, but had never expected to encounter like this, one whose continuous burning was producing the acrid smell. Sulfur.

Or by another name...

"Brimstone."

...

Fire and brimstone?

...

Seriously?

The ridiculousness of a demon comprised literally of fire and brimstone hit him all of a sudden, and perhaps it was just the tension seeking an outlet, but in reducing the monster before him to such a rank absurdity, he felt the fear that had tied his insides in knots starting to loosen. He stared at the monster as it finished peeling the Tower's doors back, and where previously he had seen a demon from Hell, a monster, a creature of darkness and flames come to carve out his heart and devour his very soul, now he saw only an animate heap of a purified substance that he knew well, had trained with and practiced with, and knew precisely how to manipulate on a molecular level.

And then he heard a scream from outside, a scream with nothing to cut it off anymore, a scream of pain, though he could not tell its source. And like a switch had been flipped, before the fear that had so abruptly dissipated could return, David felt a strange, numbing calm flow over him, like a windless night on some distant prairie, peaceful save for a looming thunderstorm on the horizon. Before he even knew what he was doing, the baton in his hand exploded into the red flames of wrath and devastation. The book was still in his hand, and he dropped it unconsciously, and it landed on its spine on the ground, opening randomly to a page near the end, the lines at the top of the page illuminated suddenly in the flickering firelight

"Ride to ruin and the world's ending!"

"Hi there," he said to the fire demon as it loomed before him in the doorway. "Looking for me?"

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The explosion caught everybody by surprise.

Pandemonium reigned. A cacaphonious whirlwind of disparate sound and fury which raged about the base of the Tower like a tornado of living fire. Gunshots and screams and roars all merged into an unrelenting bedlam. Cyborg had long-since lost track of what was happening, of who was where and what they were doing there amidst the tides of violence, chaos, and anarchy. He had resorted to a microwave uplink to the news helicopters flitting about overhead so as to retain even the slightest idea of what was going on, but the thick smoke that now shrouded the island made even that impossible, even for his electronic sensors. Try as he might, accosted by swarms of enemies wherever he turned, he could not retain any kind of lucid idea of how the battle was progressing. He could only catch brief glimpses, breaks in the smoke and cries for him, towards which he fixed his attention as best he could.

And it was one such glimpse he was trying to act on now.

A fire demon loomed before him, and he scythed it down with his sonic cannon even as another one caught his arm in a flaming tendril. He bellowed like a weightlifter and hurled the offending demon over his shoulder and onto the ground, stomping its head to ash as he forced his way towards the main entrance of the Tower. More flame demons were arrayed there, pounding on the armored door, and the sounds of rending metal told him that the barricade would not long hold.

"Don't let 'em inside the Tower!" he yelled to anyone who might be able to hear him, but his words were hollow and he knew it. A dozen more demons who had just finished bludgeoning down a handful of Billy Numerous' clones turned and interposed themselves between Cyborg and the entrance, even as the shriek of protesting steel told him all he needed to know about the demons' progress. Desperately, he bum-rushed the demons, sending four of them flying in every direction before the others dragged him to the ground. He roared and fought and smashed two more with his fist, and aimed a chancy shot at the demons on the doorstep, managing to blast a hole straight through one of them, but a dozen more were ready to advance, and as Cyborg watched, the first one roared and stepped into the Tower.

And was expelled.

Even amidst the background of chaos and cries, the blast was loud and deafening, a booming cannon shot that rang out bare instants before the entranceway to Titans' Tower was transformed into an artillery piece, and the disintegrated remains of the fiery demon that had entered the Tower were flung out like giant shotgun pellets, mingled with the tangled ruins of the front door. Half a dozen other fire demons were caught up in the blast and tossed into the air like toys or torn to shreds by the jagged debris. The pressure wave managed even to clear some of the smoke away, and the distraction permitted Cyborg to throw off the remaining demons pinning him to the ground and turn to the agent of this new devilry, only to see exactly what he was afraid he was going to see.

Devastator stood in the entrance to the Tower, and fire was in his hands, and his uniform looked like a flame writ in mylar, crimson and orange illuminated by the burning light of war. Demons thronged around the stairs that led to the Tower, and they pointed at him with their long arms, and cried aloud and rushed towards him in a tide, but he leveled his baton at them like a flaming sword, and their leader exploded like a bomb, casting fragments of itself about in every direction. A score of others were thrown back by the force of the blast, and tumbled to the ground among the rocks. And a moment later, from out of nowhere, a dark green beast, a werewolf or some other hideous creature conjured up from the bowels of Beast Boy's mind lunged out of the smoke and fell upon the sprawling demons, and rent their hides with his claws and teeth, sending armfuls of burning sulfur flying in every direction.

Cyborg only had time to shake his head. "You goddamn little idiot..." he said, mostly to himself, for in this mess of noise and screaming, he doubted that anyone could hear him. Seeing that there was nothing more to do, he turned back to the army of Slade, and flaying the air with his sonic cannon, Cyborg charged into the breach once more.

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[LadyTevar]

Chapter 31, cont'd further

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As it happened, David did hear Cyborg, but there was nothing more that he could do about it either. Besides, it wasn't anything he wasn't thinking himself.

It was as though a sea of fire had materialized upon the island, a sea punctuated periodically by the shadowy forms of the Hivers and Titans fighting for their lives. He could identify only glimpses of what was happening. Starfire darted in and out of view, visible mostly through the green flashes of light that appeared whenever she unleashed her starbolts. Cyborg was easily visible even through the haze, for he was made of metal, and thus stood out to David like a blazing torch in the darkness, charging into and through demons of fire like a raging bull, stabbing at the air periodically with bursts of sonic energy that disintegrated everything before them. Beast Boy was below him, on the steps, and he had become a creature of terror and bloodlust, a ravening wolf-thing, a Beast whose claws glowed with molten rock and who howled in primal rage against those who dared threaten his family.

The sight of Beast Boy's horrifying bestial form sent shivers running down David's spine, dredging up memories of a similar creature he had met long ago, but he suppressed them as best he could. There were, after all, far better things to be afraid of here. And yet at the same time, the practiced observer still within him couldn't help but venture a question. Many times, since the incident at the chemical factory, David had seen Beast Boy fight, sometimes ferociously, in defense of his life, his friends, or both. Yet never before had he seen him willingly bring forth the werewolf-inspired monster that the others had come to call simply "The Beast", not even when the danger to himself and the others reached levels of near-certain death, as they had tonight.

So what exactly was he defending tonight that had forced him to bring out the Beast?

There was no time to answer that question, or even muse upon it. Two masses of animate evil lunged from the darkness, one from either side, shrieking like damned souls as they beat the air with their whip-like arms. David compartmentalized his thinking, by now it was rote, and focused on their constituent materials, on the sulfur, the brimstone that coursed through them like blood or ichor, and as he did, he swung his baton back and forth, like a fencing sword. Instantly, both demons were blotted out of existence like mosquitos struck by sledgehammers, and bits of flaming sulfur rained down upon him. It was fortunate that his uniform was fireproof.

He could not stand here. There were hundreds of demons before him, to say nothing of whatever other monsters lurked in the shadows. Dozens already were looking up at him, screaming like steam whistles, and from every direction there came tendrils of flame, snaking and writhing as they flew towards him like loose ropes in a hurricane. He ducked and ran forward, avoiding most of them, though one wrapped around his upper arm and nearly pulled him off his feet. Even through the fabric it burned, and he hissed in pain and brought his baton around and down onto the tendril of fire as hard as he could. It wasn't an explosion, but it did the trick. The tendril parted, the sulfurous bond around his arm extinguished and crumbled away, and before the demon could resume its attack, David had scrambled down the stairs and into the thick of things.

The very earth was on fire. Noxious fumes choked his nose and mouth, and screaming flame demons assaulted his senses as they pressed towards him from every direction. He could see nothing, nobody, except the demons that pressed around him, and in desperation he lashed out randomly, striking at half-glimpsed figures of sulfur and flame in every direction. Half a dozen he blew to pieces, sending three times that many flying in every direction, but more pressed in from all sides. Something hit him in the back like a baseball bat, and he cried out, and fell forward onto the ground. An instant later something landed on his back, something large and heavy and he cried out and blew it off of him with a wave of his hand, sending it pinwheeling into the bay like an errant firework, but others pressed in around him, reaching down to bind him before he could stand up.

But before they could do so, something landed amidst them feet first, something huge and hulking, and with a roar, it seized the nearest flame demon, and ripped off its head, and cast its body into the crowd. Laying prone on the ground, choked and barely able to see, David thought for a moment that it was Cyborg, perhaps even Beast Boy in his feral form, but then other figures joined the large one, and he realized with a shock that it was neither.

Mammoth roared, roared like his namesake, enraged and covered in soot, and he beat the ground with an enormous iron bar that he had dredged up from somewhere and swung it two-handed like a viking berserker, cutting a swathe through the nearby demons. They snatched at him with their tendrils, and he seized them with his bare hands and tore them apart, heedless of the fire that scorched its skin. And next to him stood Jinx, flinging hexes like throwing stars and sending waves of pink energy rippling through the legion of the damned. It took David's addled mind a full second and a half to process this before he grabbed his baton from off the ground and scrambled to his feet.

He lunged into the fighting without giving himself time to think. Fire demons roared and threw themselves at him from every direction, far too many for him to have dealt with. Had he been alone, no amount of desperation would have saved him, for the demons would have buried him beneath a mountain of their bodies and roasted him alive. Yet he was not alone, for Jinx was there, spinning like a dancer, laying flame demons down left and right, and Mammoth was there too, the iron bar in his hands glowing cherry-red from the heat, and yet he smashed it into and through demon after demon and cast their crumpled forms into the water, whence emitted clouds of thick steam.

Had either Hiver chosen to betray the Titan beside them, David would surely have been crushed, but neither Hiver did. In this moment, faced with this enemy, all other enmities were simply absolved, all sins forgiven, and they fought like cornered wolves, as did their friends and fellows across the battlefield, all simply trying to stem the tides of darkness.

David's arm was like lead, his head pounding from the extended concentration, and the sulfur dust was so thick that he could barely see, much less breathe, but still he lashed out, ripping more animate fires apart with his mind, even smashing them with his baton when necessary. Their flaming tendrils stung his face and chest like whips of molten steel. They grabbed at his arms and legs, trying to snare him or pull him to the ground, and he stumbled over and over but always Jinx or Mammoth bought him enough time to stagger back to his feet and fight some more. He tried his best to do the same for them. Perhaps it helped, perhaps they could have handled it without him, but all three were still standing when the press of demons began to thin.

For a second, David thought they might have won. But then he saw otherwise.

He turned to his right, back towards the entrance to the Tower, and he saw Cyborg standing there, alone. His blue skin and metallic body were marred by scorch marks and jagged rents torn in his armor. A true army of fire demons, of searing magma and burning sulfur, were arrayed before him in a wedge. And amidst them stood a tall, menacing figure in black and brown. David didn't need to be able to see his face to know who he was. The empty void where the figure's molecules should have been told him enough.

"Slade," hissed Jinx.

And then to David's surprise, Jinx actually ran towards Cyborg, Cyborg whom she professed to hate. Though all the hordes of Hell lay between them, she ran to help him defy Slade, though what motives she might have for doing this were anyone's guess. There was not one chance in ten million that she could make it. A thousand demons and more stood between her and Cyborg, but she tore into them with renewed vigor, and Mammoth followed her, as did David, after a fashion. The army of demons was already closing on Cyborg though, and none of the other Titans were within sight. It seemed hopeless.

But Cyborg, as it turned out, had a trick or two up his sleeve as well.

"Nobody's gettin' in here!" he roared, and slammed a button on one arm. Instantly, his form began to ripple and shift, his metallic body parts unfolding and unfurling like an origami sculpture. Enormous cables snaked down from the Tower and plugged themselves into ports on his back, and both his forearms expanded and shifted into gigantic cannons that glowed with blue energy like pilot lights on a flamethrower. The Tower behind Cyborg darkened, the lights dying floor by floor, as Cyborg's electronic parts began to glow ever more brightly, and a small crystal eyepiece slid into place over his human eye, marked in red with a crosshairs.

The demons hesitated. Even Slade seemed to freeze, as whitish-blue energy built up within the twin cannon's of Cyborg's siege weaponry. David stared, his baton limp at his side, stared like a deer in headlights, and would likely have continued staring had not Jinx had the foresight to grab him by one arm and physically drag him to the ground.

A moment later, Cyborg fired.

A tsunami of blueish energy flew right over David's head, a wave front, a ribbon of pure annihilation that carved a furrow in the ground and struck the wedge of fire demons a thousand strong head on and blew through them like howitzer shell striking toy soldiers. The roar was deafening, and David lay on the ground and covered his head with his hands and screamed and could not even hear himself as Cyborg bathed the entire island in white death. The demons were obliterated, the lucky ones flung thousands of yards offshore to drown in the bay, the unlucky ones simply reduced to ash on the spot or vaporized without a trace. And David distinctly saw Slade's single eye widen in shock and surprise an instant before the blast wave struck him dead on, and then he saw no more.

As the light and the sound faded, and David slowly regained his hearing, he carefully got back to his feet. The entire island was a charred ruin, rocks melted to slag, bits of smoldering sulfur scattered about like confetti, and choked with smoke. David saw Cyborg's body re-assemble itself into its normal configuration, saw Cyborg slump over onto the ground, his power reserves utterly spent by the terrible holocaust he had unleashed. And through the smoke he saw Beast Boy and Starfire joining him, both beaten and exhausted, heads hanging, hands clasped over injuries, but still they moved to help Cyborg up. Their thoughts were easy to gauge. Surely, surely not even Slade could survive a blow such as that, a blast which could have cut a battleship in half.

And then David heard a laugh. A calm, smug, arrogant laugh, the laugh of an adult amused by the antics of children, and he turned, and there, standing exactly where he had been a moment ago, stood Slade.

And he was unblemished.

"No way..."

The voice was Jinx', she had gotten to her feet and stood next to David without him even realizing it, but the sentiment was David's, indeed it was everyone's. Even Mammoth could not believe what he was seeing. Cyborg had struck Slade dead on with enough power to set the very sea to boiling, but it had not been enough.

And then Slade lifted his arms, and a thousand more flame demons emerged from the ground.

Time seemed to slow down.

The demons charged even as they emerged from the ground, a flood tide advancing on the three Titans. David had plenty of time to watch them, watch their expressions turn from horror to grim realization of what was about to come. Cyborg could not even stand. Beast Boy was nearly as bad off, staggering to his feet and struggling to muster the strength to shift forms one more time. Starfire alone remained able to fight. Her body was marred by burns and her uniform torn and charred, but the fire still burned in her eyes, and with a single glance back at her friends, she turned back to the army of fire and charged it alone. Starbolts burst from her hands like missiles, and the front rank of demons collapsed, but then they were upon her. For an instant, David saw her struggling against a sea of foes, crying Tamaranean war paeans aloud, fighting to buy Cyborg and Beast Boy a few more seconds with which to fall back into the Tower and escape. And then the demons dragged her to the ground, and David could see no more.

And then all of a sudden, he was running.

It was as though his body was acting without conscious input. His mind was still fixated on the image of Starfire being overwhelmed and Cyborg and Beast Boy about to share her fate, and yet his body was already moving, running, sprinting even directly towards the army of fire demons. And all of a sudden he realized that he felt no pain at all, no fear, no hesitation, no worry about what else might be transpiring. His vision had become a tunnel, his awareness reduced only to the scene in front of him as his friends were overwhelmed by a sea of enemies. And as he ran, he lifted the baton, that an instant before had been as heavy as lead, and was now as light as a feather, and felt the flames around it flare to life once more, and pointed it forward, and willed his enemies to be destroyed.

And they were.

The ground heaved, the skies split and a dozen different demons all along the demon army's flank were blown to steam with such force that the rock beneath them was sundered and fissures were torn open like an earthquake had been unleashed. Dozens of demons turned on him, roared and screamed and tried to seize him, but he lashed out at them with in desperation and wrath, and they were tossed away like broken toys, detonated with a wave of his hand or his fiery baton. A moment later and he was in the midst of the enemy force, refusing to stop, his hand held up in front of him motionless, striking at anything nearby with his mind, and blowing it outwards, sending demons by the dozen and the score flying in every direction. Still more pressed in around him, far too many for him to have dealt with even at his most potent, but then a fusillade of rockets smashed into the far side of the demon army, punctuated by the sharp bark of Gizmo's rail guns, engaging the enemy from the flank, and as the demons turned from foe to foe, and some moved away to deal with this new threat, he managed, barely, to push through. He had no time to consider what he was doing, no sense of accomplishment in laying the demons down. His only thought was to get to the others.

Suddenly, he was there. He was standing in front of the stairs that led up to the Tower's entrance, and Starfire was laying on the ground unconscious in front of him. Two fire demons were crouched over her, but he tore them apart with a wave of his baton and slid to the ground next to her. He grabbed her wrist, tried to help her to her feet, and then suddenly Beast Boy was next to him, in human form once more, taking her other arm. Between the two of them, they managed to haul Starfire to her feet, and half-drag, half-carry her up the steps to where Cyborg was limping back towards the entrance to the Tower.

For a brief instant, David thought they might make it.

"Tell me, David," came Slade's voice from right behind them. "Do you know what the definition of insanity is?"

David froze. Beast Boy froze. Cyborg froze. And as all three of them turned around, David and Beast Boy still supporting Starfire between them, they saw Slade standing at the base of the steps, not ten feet away, his arms folded, staring up at them.

"Insanity," said Slade, "is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result."

David raised his baton towards Slade, intending to blow the ground out from under his feet, but before he could manipulate so much as a single molecule, Slade was on him.

Perhaps Slade was inhumanly fast. Perhaps he simply teleported. Either way, suddenly Slade was simply there, right in his face, and with one hand he grabbed David's arm and stopped his embryonic swing with the same effort a giant might need to repel a gnat. And then suddenly, with a motion so fast that it was simply a blur, Slade pivoted around and hurled David down from the steps of the Tower. He landed on his stomach, sliding to a halt two dozen yards from where he had stood, fetching up against a large broken rock.

Urgent signals to move came blaring from brain, and he obeyed them, scrambling back to his feet as quickly as he could recover his balance. He turned around to see Slade already standing before him some fifteen feet away. Behind Slade, a cordon of fire demons moved to block his path back to the Tower.

"You know," said Slade. "I knew the others would try some infantile flailing rather than accept the inevitable, but I rather assumed, David, that we would wind up having to chase you halfway around the planet. Even after all this time, I still figured you for a pragmatist, rather than someone given to these juvenile displays of rage."

David did not allot himself enough time to be scared. Instead he tightened his grip on his baton, and released his powers like a sharpened spike, directing one of said juvenile displays of rage straight at Slade.

The earth heaved as a subterranean explosion vomited the two ton rock behind David into the air, cracking it in half and showering David with pebbles and bits of rock. He raised his hand behind him as the broken pieces of the rock rose, slowed, and reached the apex of their flight. And then, when he judged the moment proper, he threw his hand and baton forward like he was directing a flight of birds overhead, and two enormous blasts hurled the pieces of rock straight down at Slade with enough force and momentum to crush an armored car. But the rocks shattered against Slade as though made of styrofoam, and he did not even break his stride.

He loomed before David, a monolith of inviolate armor and malice, and David searched desperately for something else to detonate, but it was too late. Suddenly Slade was directly in front of him, and as David stumbled backwards, Slade's flaming fist shot out and belted him in the stomach, hard enough to double him over and crush the air out of his lungs. And then a moment later, Slade swung his other fist around low and hit David in the solar plexus with what was, quite literally, the strongest punch David had ever imagined.

It was like being uppercutted by a kodiak bear. The blow snapped David's entire upper body back and lifted him clean off the ground. The baton slipped from his hand as he flew up and backwards before coming down on his back on the broken carpet of rock. His chest felt like it had been struck with a baseball bat, bright spots danced before his eyes, and he physically, absolutely, could not breathe. The blow had sent a cavitative shock straight through his body, like seismic waves moving through gelatin, and his diaphragm was frozen, his nerves unable to respond. He lay on the ground stunned and half-conscious, one hand pawing spastically at his throat as he gasped for air.

"Did you harbor some fantasy of the being the loyal, plucky underdog, springing into action at the last minute to save your friends?" asked Slade as he approached. "Did you imagine they would cheer your name after you defeated an enemy that none of them could master?" He folded his arms and watched impassively as David slowly forced his lungs to work, forced a breath down his quivering throat, and groped with his left hand for the baton that lay bare inches away. Slade stood before him as David reached for it blindly, until his fingers brushed against the handle, and managed to turn his head and stretch his arm out to take it.

And then Slade lifted his foot and stomped down on David's wrist like a pile driver, and David threw his head back and screamed.

There was a loud 'snap', and David's vision went white, and the bloodcurdling scream he released drowned out even the roars of the fire demons scattered about. He writhed on the floor in agony, clutching his maimed left hand to his chest, unable to see or hear or do anything except scream in pain, and above him, Slade's eye watched with approval and satisfaction, as he crossed his arms and pronounced judgment.

"You are an, unskilled, unnecessary intruder in matters that you will never understand, David. And for this intrusion, you are going to die."

There was the wail of an energy discharge, and the screech of machinery, and suddenly a wave of pink force slammed into Slade from the right like a miniature tsunami, accompanied by a barrage of micro-rockets and a hail of rail gun slugs powerful enough to stagger even him. Even in his agony, David managed to turn his head towards the source of this fresh assault, and saw Jinx standing there, eyes washed out white, her hands extended with fingers splayed out in a fan. And beside her hovered Gizmo, his green jumpsuit burned black and soot smeared liberally on his face and hair, but grinning at Slade with a diabolic glare as the reflected fires of Hell danced in his eyes. Gadgets of all description hung from his harness as he raised one hand, and the laser pointer on his arm drew a bead on Slade's face. An instant later, the rail guns mounted up near the tower all turned and fired remotely, locking onto Gizmo's signal, sending slugs of ferrous metal at hypersonic speeds smashing directly into Slade's face.

Slade's response was instantaneous.

He roared in anger and frustration and with a single leap, he flew through the air and landed before the two Hivers. Jinx brought up her hand with a hex held in it, intending to smash it across his face, but he caught her arm before she could do so, and spun, hurling her into the nearby rock hard enough to shatter its face. Jinx slid to the ground in a heap of rubble and did not rise.

"Hey!" screamed Gizmo. "Leave her alone, you flaming piece of devil snot!", and he hit a button on his arm, and the rail guns behind him switched to automatic fire, deluging Slade in a rain of iron flechettes. But Gizmo might as well have been firing nerf guns, for the slugs bounced off Slade as though he were Superman, and before Gizmo could prepare another counterattack, Slade charged him and drove his burning fist into the gearhead's electronic harness, which simply shattered like glass, raining pieces down onto the ground. With his other hand, he caught the suddenly-falling Gizmo and hoisted him into the air by his throat, where he struggled and kicked and swore at Slade.

There was a flutter of wings, and suddenly David noticed that a small green sparrow had landed next to him. A moment later, and Beast Boy was crouched over him, saying words he couldn't hear, taking his undamaged arm and helping him slowly to his feet. Beast Boy was badly injured himself, beaten and bloodied from all manner of terrible abuse, but he somehow found the strength to help David up, draping David's arm around his shoulders, and taking part of his weight, for David could barely even stand.

"I've got you, dude," said Beast Boy. "Come on, we've gotta get back to - "

"Do you think this is a game?!"

Slade's voice boomed out like a cannon, like that of an angry, wrathful god, and reflexively, both David and Beast Boy turned their heads. Jinx was on her feet once more, and was facing Slade, who still held Gizmo with one hand high above the ground. Slade looked pissed, angrier than he had been before by far, and David saw Jinx hurl hexes at Slade that shattered against him like crystal thrown at a cinderblock wall.

"Do you think I came all this way to abide your delusions of grandeur?!" demanded Slade of Jinx. "Do you think you can simply turn on Trigon the Terrible without consequence?!" Slowly he brought Gizmo around in front of him, raising him as high as he could, even as the gearhead continued to struggle and squirm.

"Behold the wages of sin!" roared Slade, and then suddenly Slade's entire hand burst into flames that wrapped themselves around Gizmo. Gizmo screamed, screamed Jinx' name in unimaginable agony, no longer a confident Hive member, no longer a wrathful mad scientist, but a ten-year-old child once more, crying for his elder sister to save him from monsters cast forth from Hell itself. Behind Slade, See-More was rushing towards the scene, his visor switched to a red filter that fired a high powered laser, tracing searing designs on Slade's back as he tried to force Slade to release Gizmo, but Slade merely reached back with his other hand and launched an enormous fireball straight at the See-More without even bothering to look his direction. And then, before the eyes of all present, the fire in Slade's hands flowed over Gizmo entirely, and burnt him to ash, moments before the fireball he had launched struck See-More head on, and blew him apart like an overripe melon.

And right then, like someone had waved a magic wand over his head, David realized with absolute certainty that they were all going to die.

Everyone stood frozen in stunned horror as Slade let the charred bones and twisted harness that was all that was left of Gizmo fell to the ground, even as blood and bits of burnt flesh rained down all over the battlefield. Jinx stood frozen like a statue, and David recognized the expression as clearly as he would an old friend, that of shock and disbelief and the inability of the mind to comprehend what had just happened. Slade stared down at her, a cobra facing a mouse, and then, contemptuously, he turned his back on her, his feet kicking aside the small pile of ash that had once been Gizmo, even as he brushed the splattered remains of See-More off of his arms and shoulders.

A second later, Jinx' mind caught up with the situation, and she went absolutely wild, screaming incoherently, hurling hexes and blast waves of energy at Slade like a vengeful goddess, but Slade did not even bother to turn around and Jinx could not so much as dent his impenetrable armor. She would have charged him anyway, her eyes shot red and streaming tears, incandescent with rage, but Mammoth, alone among all present, had managed to retain a clear head, and ran up and seized her from behind, lifting her bodily off the ground to prevent her from killing herself by attacking Slade directly. She screamed and cursed Mammoth and fought with all her might to break free of him, and even tried to blast her fellow Hiver with a hex, but Mammoth held her firmly as he backed away from Slade and his army both, having made within whatever mind he had, the simple calculation that there was no winning this, and that having lost two friends in as many seconds, he would not lose a third.

Slade ignored them both. He had another target in mind.

Even had they been able to think clearly after all the death that had suddenly materialized around them, Beast Boy and David could never have made it to the Tower, not with a thousand demons between them and the entrance, and Slade bearing down on them with the inexorability of a locomotive. David could clearly resist no further by himself, and so Beast Boy, despite what he had just seen, despite his own injuries and what he knew Slade to be capable of, released David and stepped forward, turning himself into a velociraptor and snarling at Slade. In his present state, he likely couldn't manage any bigger animal. Slade continued to approach, and Beast Boy lunged at him as soon as he was in range, but he might as well have thrown a spitball, for Slade simply seized him in mid-leap and slammed him to the ground. For a brief, horrible instant, David thought that Slade might do to Beast Boy what he had just done to Gizmo and See-More, but instead of burning him to ash, Slade merely shook his head at Beast Boy before spinning around and hurling the changeling like a discus, over the heads of his own army, into the entrance to the Tower, where he landed in a heap and did not rise.

Carefully, Slade turned back to David, who now stood alone in the midst of his enemies, unarmed, beaten, and crippled. And he seemed to smile, even through the emotionless mask he wore, and raised his hand, and the ground shook beneath David's feet, and he stumbled and fell forward, landing on his stomach on the ground, with Slade standing over him only a few feet away.

"I have to say, David," said Slade, "even by the standards of the Titans, your capacities for self-delusion never cease to amaze me..."

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"Star, can you hear me?"

Starfire was slowly coming to, all too slowly, but Cyborg had no idea how to bring her 'round any faster than she was already waking up. Tamaraneans needed a lot to knock out, but consequently, would simply sleep right through things that would bring even a human coma patient leaping from their beds.

Beast Boy was knelt next to Starfire, the entire right side of his face a mass of purple bruises, and God-knew-what other injuries held invisible within his torn purple and black uniform. Cyborg refused to think about it now. Everyone was beaten up, and they needed to get moving before Slade's army decided to press the attack rather than standing around like the idiots they were.

"Can you see any of the Hive?" asked Beast Boy.

Cyborg shook his head but didn't raise it. "I think Jinx and Mammoth got out. The others..."

"I was there, dude, I saw," said Beast Boy, and he sounded scared. Hell Cyborg thought his own voice sounded scared. That wasn't a huge surprise. He was terrified out of goddamn mind, but he didn't know what else to do at this point.

"This was all ordained long ago by beings mightier than you can even envision. By prophecies written in the blood of angels. Did you actually think you had the slightest chance in the world of stopping it? You or any of your friends?"

Slade's voice rolled across the broken battlefield like thunder. Cyborg didn't need to be able to see him to know who he was talking to. By process of elimination, it could only be one person.

"What the hell did he think he was doin'?" snapped Cyborg angrily. "I told him to stay in the safe room. I shoulda' locked the goddamn door, I'm so fucking stupid!"

"Cy!" cried BB sharply, "chill, dude, we'll worry about that later. We've gotta get Star and get over there and - "

"Yeah, I'm workin' on it!" snapped back Cyborg, as he shook Starfire a bit harder. He hated to do that with all her injuries, but they couldn't very well break through the wall of fire demons without her.

Not that they had a chance with her.

He shoved that thought aside. It didn't matter. After all this, he was not going to just abandon one of the Titans to Slade's devices, no matter how bad the situation looked. He was certain it was what Robin would have done, and even if not, what else were they supposed to do? Retreat to the Tower and wait for Slade to walk right in?

"At a certain point, one realizes that there is no purpose in fighting further. I don't really care what it takes to bring you to that point, but I'd appreciate it if you'd stop wasting my time with childish gestures of defiance."

"I'd give real money if he'd shut up," remarked Cyborg.

"He's Slade, dude, he doesn't know how to shut up."

"Yeah, well I'm gonna teach him." It was a preposterous bluff. They already knew that nothing they had here could even phase Slade, but it made him feel a little bit better anyway.

Starfire gave a soft moan, and to Cyborg's infinite relief, her eyes slowly opened, or at least one eye did, the other one swollen shut.

"Wh... what is..." stammered Starfire, but before she could get any further, Beast Boy practically lunged forward and hugged her tightly, his entire body quivering in relief at seeing her alive. Bewildered, but still capable of reacting to such an elemental thing, Starfire returned the hug, nearly crushing Beast Boy's lungs as she did so. And by the time she was done, she had remembered what was happening, and taken stock of her surroundings.

Her first question got right to the point.

"Where is Friend David?"

"Slade's got him," said Cyborg, gesturing in the vague direction of Slade's mocking voice. As was typical with Slade, he was playing with his chosen victim like a cat toying with a mouse.

"If only you all had believed me when I first told you, then Robin would still be alive, as would your friends."

Starfire looked at the swarm of demons that separated them, and Cyborg knew that she understood. Starfire had never been as naive as she appeared, certainly not in matters relating to combat and war. And yet despite that, she did not even hesitate.

"Then we must retrieve him."

Her voice was absolutely certain, no trace of debate or hesitation or even fear. She could plainly see what odds stood between her and Slade, and she chose not to care.

Cyborg glanced at Beast Boy, who looked nervously at the army before them. For a second, Cyborg thought that he might object. They were way past any sort of command structure here. Beast Boy would do as he wished to, and neither Cyborg nor Starfire would compel him. And yet when Beast Boy spoke, it was not with an objection, but merely an observation.

"I didn't... think it'd end this way," said Beast Boy.

Cyborg reached over and put a battered hand on the changeling's shoulder. "It ain't over yet," he said.

Beast Boy nodded slowly. "Do... d'you think Raven'll be able to hold them off long enough to escape?"

"I don't know," said Cyborg. He had long since abandoned any hope of comparing the levels of power on display here. "All I know is that we lost Robin already. And I ain't losin' anyone else. Not Raven, not David, and not you, Grass Stain."

An ironic thing to say, given what they were all about to go and do, but what of it?

Beast Boy nodded, and slowly his grim expression turned into the feral grin that Cyborg remembered all too well. "Okay, dude," he said, slowly getting to his feet. "Let's show this losers how we do things here."

Starfire was on her feet too, and she extended a hand to Cyborg to help him up. She said nothing. There was nothing that needed saying, and he checked his power reserves (less than ten percent), and took a deep breath, and turned to face Slade's army.

But Slade's army wasn't facing them.

The demons had thinned out, spread around Slade and David in a loose circle, and from the Titans' elevated position on the stairs, they could now see Slade and David. David was laying on his back before Slade, who was towering over him, delivering some pithy lecture about inevitable victory, typical villain stuff.

"Have you nothing to say for yourself after all this pain? Not one word of retort or prayer? Perhaps you'd like to beg for mercy? After all, these are your last words..."

Something was wrong.

David was holding his baton, and it was pulsing softly with red energy, not the roaring fire it normally had whenever it was being used as a mental focus, but a soft, glowing ember. Cyborg couldn't remember perfectly, but he was pretty sure that he'd never seen the baton do that before. What it signified was beyond him, perhaps simply that David was beaten within an inch of his life (which was true enough). And yet there was something... something in David's expression, his demeanor, in the way he held his baton with his right hand and cradled it with his mangled left arm, something that made Cyborg intensely uneasy.

Whatever David had to say was whispered so softly that neither Cyborg nor Slade could hear it, and Slade hauled David to his feet to better hear it. Neither Starfire nor even Beast Boy had a prayer of overhearing David's whisper, not at this distance, but being half-mechanical had advantages, and he switched his sound amplifiers on, screening out all of the background noise automatically as he listened carefully for whatever David was saying to Slade. As Slade leaned in to hear what David had to say, David's head turned slightly such that he could see Cyborg, and their eyes locked for just a second. And in that instant of wordless communication, in that single glance into David's hollow, pained, nervous eyes, Cyborg realized that David had made the same calculation that the three of them had, and come to the same conclusion.

And then Cyborg heard the word that David whispered to Slade, and his circuits froze.

"Boom."

"No," said Cyborg, his voice trembling as he realized what was about to happen. "God, no, no no, David, NO!"

Too late.

Without a word, Cyborg threw all that was left of his emergency reserve power into his limbs, and he seized Beast Boy and Starfire both, and pulled them back behind him, and flung them to the ground even as David and Slade and the entire army of flame demons suddenly vanished from view, replaced by the undifferentiated, blinding flash of a thousand burning suns...

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"Sweet Jesus!"

Unlike the cameraman, the Helicopter pilot had no time with which to swear, as the flash of light blinded him right through his polarizing goggles, and scrambled every camera and LIDAR system on board the news helicopter he was flying. The flash lasted only a second before slowly abating, as a horrible, atonal roar filled the air around them, a violent, evil sound that physically shook the helicopter and threatened to rip it from the air. The flying machine bucked and twisted and the pilot had to strain in order to retain control of it, and yet as he did so, the light diminished, and he could see once more, and his mouth fell open of its own accord so as to contribute his own comment.

"Madre de dios," whispered the pilot, and he crossed himself.

A fireball, an enormous fireball was rising from Titans Island, boiling into the air like some type of alien life form, already hundreds of feet tall and growing ever taller. And behind it, Titans Tower had gone dark, and the entire face of the Tower was shattering, floor by floor, glass spilling down onto the island below or being blown half a mile across the water. The pilot pulled the control stick towards himself as rocks the size of minivans passed them nearly six hundred feet in the air, and an entire flame demon, or rather both halves of one, flew right past their passenger-side window. The enormous antenna and satellite dish complex on the Tower's roof teetered and fell, collapsing off the back side of the Tower into the ocean, and the Tower itself swayed, the sounds of groaning metal audible even up here. For a horrible second, the pilot thought the Tower might collapse or topple. In the end, it did not fall, but the cloud of flame and destruction before it continued to rise, bubbling upwards to form the ominous shape of an enormous mushroom. Already it was as large as the Tower itself, and beneath it, the entire front section of the island, thousands of tons of rock and stone, were simply gone, pulverized and blown into the ocean out to a distance of half a mile.

The pilot slowly backed the helicopter away as the mushroom cloud reached their altitude and continued to rise and spread. Only once he had managed to stabilize the helicopter did he turn to the cameraman.

"What the fuck was that?!" he exclaimed, adrenaline still pumping through him.

"I don't... I don't know, man!" shouted back the cameraman.

"Was anybody in the middle of that?"

The cameraman didn't answer immediately, reviewing his tape before he slowly lifted his head and turned to the pilot with a hollow expression.

"Yeah," said the cameraman. "Yeah... someone was..."

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For a long, long time, Cyborg didn't know if he was alive or dead.

His money was on dead.

There had been just enough time to hurl Starfire and Beast Boy to the ground and dive on top of them in the hopes that his own metallic, armored body, would shield theirs from the worst of the blast. Of what happened next, he could tell very little. A thunderous roar, the ground bucking beneath them all like a living thing, the sounds of glass shattering and the feel of it raining down upon his back, the horrible moans of the Tower itself as its foundations and structural supports protested and shook, but finally held. Splashes, as debris and wreckage landed in the bay for miles around, and always the lingering echo of the explosion itself, a sonic pressure wave that rebounded and danced throughout the entire Jump City basin, turning it into a huge timpani drum.

Only when the sound finally faded, and the last bits of debris had finished raining down onto the ground, did Cyborg realize that he was actually still alive.

He got up slowly, shattered glass sliding off of his back and tinkling onto the ground. Beneath him, Starfire and Beast Boy were laying stunned. Cyborg was not light, and they had not received any warning before he had leaped upon them. Still, they were both still alive, which was more than he had dared hope for, and he carefully helped them up, before all three of them turned around to see what was left of the battlefield.

Not much.

The entire front section of the island was simply gone, as though someone had carved it out of the island with a giant ice cream scoop. In its place the sea now sat, whipped into an angry frenzy, its waves beating against the newly truncated shoreline with such violence that spray even reached the three Titans standing on the stairs. Barely a trace of Slade's army was still visible, a few fragments of smoking sulfur and cooling lava here and there. The rest were all gone, pulverized and hurled off into the black or simply vaporized where they stood. No trace of the Hive could be seen, at least not within the field of vision they possessed, hemmed as it was by clouds of dense smoke.

And of David and Slade... nothing remained.

"What happened?" asked Beast Boy, his eyes wide.

Cyborg shook his head. "I don't know, man..." he said, but the truth was that he did know, and could not bring himself to say it. Even as his conscious mind was sitting in astonished awe of what had occurred, his mechanical brain was making calculations of volume and forces and pressure gradients. The explosion, whatever the hell it was, had been powerful enough to simply obliterate several thousand tons of solid stone, turning hundreds of cubic feet of bedrock into sand and pebbles and bits of debris that were still raining down in the distance. The physics simulations came back with an absolute verdict. A blast capable of doing that should have blown the Tower itself to pieces, and torn all three of them to shreds.

But Cyborg didn't need to wonder at why they were still alive. He knew already that the same will that had generated the monumental explosion had also contrived to channel the majority of it upwards, away from his friends, directly towards Slade, and by extension, directly towards himself.

Starfire whispered something in Tamaranean, something his computer didn't know how to translate. Beast Boy was simply standing stock still, staring wordlessly at the scene of ruin before him as the wind began to blow away the smoke. And as Cyborg did the same, he saw, several feet in front of him, a small metal object sticking out of the rock, and realized all of a sudden what it was. It was a steel riot baton, shiny once again, for the layer of impurities on its surface had been boiled away by the heat. It had been driven like a railroad spike halfway into the rock before them, and then buffeted with a wind of such violence that its still-visible half had been bent double.

At his side, Beast Boy lowered his head, and Cyborg reflexively laid a hand on his shoulder as the Changeling swayed and fell against him, his fangs clenched together like a vice, his hands balled into fists which he pounded lightly against Cyborg's metal side even as tears began to run down his face. Starfire meanwhile stepped forwards, down to the edge of the water where the baton was laying, and took it with her hands, and wrenched it out of the ground. She turned it over in her hands for a few moments, staring down at it in shock, and then she let it fall from trembling hands, and suddenly her legs gave out beneath her, and she fell to the ground, staring out over the waves wordlessly as the baton rolled to a stop next to her.

But Cyborg only tangentially saw any of this, for in his mind, he was not even present anymore. As he had been on the day that Robin had died, he was gone from this place, transported back to a time not so terribly long ago when his robotic parts had been fresh additions, a time when he had stood in a place of long familiarity for the very last time, and stared down at a casket covered in flowers, ignoring the whispers of those around him. And despite the fact that he had not returned to that place in years and had put it and all it stood for out of his life, forever, words as familiar to him as his own discarded name softly emerged from his mouth, mingling with the tears that began to run from his human eye.

"Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name..."

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Is this how you thought it would end?

Is this what you expected? A last, desperate act, a final defiant blow against the hated aggressor? Selfless desire to spare the others with one last effort? Was it, after all this, to be expiation by death? All sins forgiven, all errors corrected, all mistakes remedied in one desperate, selfless act of heroism? Did, in the end, you believe this tale was to be that of the immortal hero, memorialized, remembered, redeemed through one burst of all-purging fire? Was that to be the epitaph? One final entry into the immortal ranks of the honored fallen?

Tell me, in all this time, through all you have seen and all of these adventures, have you truly learned nothing?

In a world of such chaos, death, and ruin, did you actually believe that the salvation of man, of Earth, of the Titans themselves, could come at the hands of an explosion of hydrogen and granite? With the forces of Hell itself arrayed against the Titans, did you really believe that salvation could come at the hands of an explosion, or that prophecy so-long anticipated, so long-arranged, could be undone by a mere child, play-acting at the role of the heroic suicide?

Or, in the depths of your heart, did you know better? Did you know, with all the certainty in the world, that no misguided delusions of sacrifice could stop what was intended to happen? Did you realize, on some level at least, that the easy way out, the simple, heart-plucking cliché of the heroic death would not suffice here? Did it occur to you, as you saw the flames rise, that it was all in vain, that the world would not be permitted to get off that easily?

A hero cannot be forged through such means, no matter the intent, no matter the belief. The truth is that death, heroic, self-sacrificing death, is just a lie told by those who need to believe it to those who want to. Death is a surrender, a concession, an acknowledgment of defeat and failure. Death is nothing but a coward's escape, glorified by those who stand to benefit from it until foolish children imagine it as the end of every glorious tale.

Death is a surrender. It earns you no sympathy, no reward, no tug on heartstrings from those left to ponder the meaning of it all. It is not some cheap ticket that lets you evade those things you have a responsibility to do. Just as an author cannot garner cheap sympathy for his characters by forcing them to die for one another, so a hero cannot kill himself to vanquish his foe. To do so is to fail, and to fail is to break the promise you have made.

If you learn nothing else, nothing whatsoever from all the months spent at the study of this matter, learn only this then. You cannot evade your responsibilities through anything so short-sighted as this. If you wish to complete the task set before you, you must complete it, not strive towards the easy way out through fantasies and clichés of self-sacrifice. The parties interested in the resolution of this case deserve better than platitudes and cheap tricks. They deserve better than a meaningless death to satiate them.

For no matter how much you want to, you cannot destroy the Devil with a bomb.

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"Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done."

A deep and full throated roar lifted everyone's heads, tears suddenly staunched, prayers choked off as all three Titans stared in wide-eyed astonishment as, hovering above what had once been part of Titans' island, there appeared a pillar of fire.

It roared like a thing alive, twisting and writhing like a tornado of flames, casting bright light upon all who beheld it. Beast Boy's jaw dropped, Starfire sprang back to her feet and retreated back to her friends, and Cyborg could do nothing but stand there and watch as the flames danced above the water, whipping them into a whirling frenzy. And as they watched in horror, the fire began to slow its mad dance, and the flames died down, the Titans could only blink in disbelief, as the smoke parted to reveal Slade once more.

It could not be, and yet it was. Slade floated above the waves where the rock had stood a moment before, and he was unharmed. No blemish, no injury, not even a scratch was on him, despite having just been subjected to a direct hit from an explosion of the same power as that of a sub-nuclear bomb. And with one hand, he held David aloft, unmoving and limp, but physically intact, which was even less possible. David had no protection whatsoever from the explosions he had unleashed, and was not some kind of demonic construct held together by hatred and flame, but a normal, human boy. A blast like that should have disintegrated him, yet there he was.

None of the Titans moved, none of them could move, as Slade slowly floated down to the newly-hewn shoreline of the Island. And as he did so, he cast David down before him, where he landed on the rock on his stomach. He was still alive, albeit barely, breathing softly and with great difficulty. His face was turned to the other Titans, and it was covered in blood, blood that was leaking from his nose and ears and the corners of his eyes. He was not moving so much as twitching, his right hand trembling as he slowly slid it over the ground towards God knew what. But whatever he was trying to do was simply beyond him at this point, and after only a few moments, he gave a soft sigh, and his hand fell still, though whether he was dead or merely unconscious was impossible to tell, for an instant later, Slade raised one hand, and a thousand more flame demons emerged all around them.

The situation was so beyond desperation that none of the Titans even reacted as a fresh army of fire demons materialized all around them, cutting off their view of David, though not of Slade, for Slade walked forwards, through his army, ascending the stairs until he was within ten feet of the three remaining Titans.

"I told you that this was inevitable," said Slade, shaking his head, "but you chose instead to fight it. Tell me, did David convince you to perform an act of collective suicide? Or did you decide on this all by yourselves?"

Cyborg, Beast Boy, and Starfire were now standing in a tight triangle, back to back to back, facing the army around them. Cyborg was in front, where the majority of the demons were, as well as Slade himself, and he stared into Slade's eye, and answered him.

"He didn't have nothin' to do with it," said Cyborg. "I made the call, and we all agreed to it."

"Then you have succeeded," said Slade, "in getting yourself and all your friends killed for nothing." He shook his head again. "I'm disappointed. Robin would have done much better."

"Robin would've done the same, and you know it," said Cyborg. "Now shut up, and get it over with."

"As you wish," said Slade, and he turned his head to his awaiting army, and his hands caught fire once more.

"Take them," said Slade.

But before the army could react, someone else countermanded him.

"Stop!"

The shout came from behind the Titans, from the Tower itself, and everyone, Slade and demons included, turned to look. Above the fray, at the very entrance to the Tower itself, there now stood a lone figure draped in shadows, an indigo cloak pulled tightly around her, its hood draped over her head. And as the assembly watched, she took to the air, flying over the heads of the three other Titans, and landing lightly between them and Slade, stared Slade straight in the eye.

Beast Boy, alone among the other three, had the wherewithall to venture a word. "Raven?" he asked.

Raven did not answer him, nor did she turn around. Her eyes were locked on Slade's, and the army of demons slowly withdrew to the water's edge, leaving only Slade and Raven before them, with David laying motionless at their feet. Slade crossed his arms as Raven looked up at him and spoke.

"I will go with you."

[LadyTevar]

Chapter 32: Sic Transit Gloria Mundi

"Behold the Pale Horse. And the man who rode on him was Death. And Hell followed with him."

- Revelations, 6:8

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"Your friends cannot stop the inevitable."

The voice was like thunder in the mountains, distant and yet magnified, inexorable, rolling and rumbling long after it had finished. A voice like ten thousand screaming children writhing in agony and howling curses at the skies. A voice comprised of the auditory manifestation of pain. A voice she knew better than her own.

She was in a cave, dark, secluded, a trillion miles beneath the surface, the weight of rock overhead suffocating, stifling her. She cowered on the ground, huddled beneath her cloak, hiding like a girl of six from the terrors of her nightmares. Blood coursed through channels in the floor beneath her, steaming, boiling, the fumes making her sick. A hundred thousand damned souls wailed faintly in the distance, immured alive for all eternity in some private Hell. She did not have to raise her eyes to know that behind her was a wall comprised of living flesh, pulsating and undulating like a jello mold, periodically emitting the smell of stale formaldehyde mixed with the indescribable scents of death and entropy, more sensed than smelled, but all too present. Several times in the past, she had tried to blast her way through that wall by main force, rending the flesh, scattering the fluids, carving a furrow a hundred miles long through it, but never had she come to the end.

And in front of her... well...

"They are doomed."

Something slid underneath her, something rough yet soft, something that pulsed with heat and rage, and she felt herself moving. Slowly she drew the cloak back from over her head, raising her eyes to see, as she expected, that she was cupped in a gigantic red hand, connected to an arm that trailed off into the gloom, but not so far as to disguise what was waiting therein.

Her father stared at her, quiet now, expectantly, and she faced him directly, the four red eyes that had followed her so far, and had her at last.

"I won't help you," she said.

He did not rage. He did not scream or curse her, as was sometimes his wont. Nor did he laugh contemptuously and mock her feeble attempts to deny her birthright. She was prepared for either of those.

Not this.

The walls of dark rock receded, and in their place appeared visions of her friends in pain. Her friends being overwhelmed and butchered like cattle, vivisected, rent apart, screaming, cursing her, crying aloud for succor. They were fake, and at some level she knew it, for the torments being inflicted on them bore no resemblance to the events going on outside, tortures too cruel, prolonged and calculated to inflict in the middle of a raging battle. It didn't matter. They were no less effective for being invented. Indeed they were moreso.

"Do you really want their last day to end like this?" asked Trigon, spinning the images around her like disembodied screens, visions of her own personal apocalypse. She did not move, did not dare to, as the images floated past her one by one. "How can you stand to watch them suffer?"

Her head dropped, her eyes closed to stem the flow of tears that were already forming. "Don't hurt them..." she whispered.

"I am not the one hurting them," said her father, "you are." His voice was calm, reasonable, like that of a professor or judge... or father, she assumed.

Despite the heat of the cavern, she suddenly felt a chill, and shivered, wrapping her cloak around herself and clutching it to her sides like a winter coat. Dimly, she could hear another voice, one she knew that she knew, but it was too faint to identify, and she hadn't the means to concentrate on it anyway. Not now.

"You know what must be done."

She tried to scream that she did not know that, or that she would never do as he commanded, whether she knew it or not. She tried to conjure up the reasons why. She tried to think of the world and her friends and what they meant to her. She tried to make philosophical arguments about how they were fighting to protect her, to prevent this very thing from happening, but it was all rhetorical ash swept aside by the first stiff breeze. The truth was that the others were dying on her behalf. The first sensations of their pain, their real pain, not the imagined torments of her father, were already pushing their way into her consciousness.

"Father," she whispered, "I don't want to..."

Someone was shaking her by the shoulder, gently for now, but with increasing vigor. Enough that her mental equilibrium was being disturbed. Part of her wanted to flee back to the real world anyway, but another part of her knew that she would like what she found there even less than what she had here. Here the images of her friends dying were only figments of her father's diseased imagination. There...

But her father made the decision for her. "It is as I told you, Raven," he said. "No matter how you try, no matter where you flee, no matter what struggles you impose on yourself or your fellows, you cannot ever escape me."

And then he evicted her from her own mind, cast her back into the realm of the living with one final warning to follow, one that burst forth from her throat like the voice of a possessing demon, sending David, who had apparently been trying to wake her, scurrying backwards.

"You cannot hide from your destiny."

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She'd never seen him this upset.

It shouldn't have been a surprise. David didn't get upset easily, always trying to suppress his own anger rather than cause a problem. He was good at it too, very good in fact, better than Raven was (though that wasn't saying much), better than Beast Boy or Starfire, better than Cyborg even. There had been times when she was envious of it, that he could just shove all of his rage and frustrations aside and proceed like everything was fine, for while he had his limits, just like everyone else, she found that she had actually become accustomed to them being safely beyond reach. He had, after all, essentially forgiven her for coming within an inch of murdering him with scarcely more than a caustic remark and a couple of days to cool down.

But then things were not normal. Not for either of them.

She knew he was afraid, fear was hardly in short supply around here, but she had nothing to assuage it with, no words of comfort, no words of hope, nothing, and this time, in his panic and terror, he shouted and grasped at straws. He begged her to help him help the others perform acts that were physically impossible, so far beyond the realm of what could be done that it was like bailing out the ocean with a thimble. And when she refused, when she tried to make him see how all such acts were in vain, his temper snapped, and he openly accused her of bad faith, treachery, and all of the other names she had been flaying herself with for weeks.

To Raven, in that one moment, David ceased to be David, and became instead an avatar of her own guilt, and before she could stop herself or think twice, she had shot him.

It was a stupid, instantaneous act, one she hadn't planned for, an atavistic reaction she wished immediately that she could take back, and for a second, she imagined he might retaliate in kind. For a second, indeed, she wanted him to. She had caused him no harm of course, Devastator still shielded him from her wrath, but it struck her for just an instant that the reverse was not true. Devastator had told her that he had been created to fight Trigon. Whatever David's level of power relative to her own, Devastator himself surely had the means to destroy her, and for a second she wondered if that might not be the best way.

But in the end, she was whistling in the dark, for David commanded Devastator, and not vice versa, and as the surprise faded out of his eyes, she watched the decision crystallize there. She knew before he even said a word what he was going to do, race out and face Slade directly. Deep inside, part of her wished to do the same, to stand by her friends and pour her unbridled powers out on Slade and his minions.

But she did not do it. She could not do it, for she knew with the certainty of mathematics that it was useless, that the result would be nothing but more agony for her friends. Against the finality of the end of the world, even Raven's meteoric rage was impotent, relegated to a back corner of her mind, left to beat its bloodied fists against the bars of its cage until everything came to an end. She did not know how to communicate this to anyone, least of all David, who was scared and confused and wracked by his own uncertainties and fears at being thrust into the center of this living nightmare. And before she could figure out what to say, he was gone, and the doors had closed behind him, and he was lost with the others to the empathic sea of adrenaline and pain that flowed about her like a polluted ocean.

She never knew what to say.

'What is there to say? Did you not already tell them who you are?'

"Why are you doing this?" she whispered aloud, eyes clenched shut as she sat in the center of the room.

'I am doing nothing,' came the reply 'You are the prime mover of these events. Ample warning was given, yet you chose to permit this to occur.'

"That's not true!" she shouted to the barren walls, her voice bouncing back at her from all directions. "I didn't want any of this!"

'Did you lift a finger to stop it?'

"I couldn't stop it!"

'You know that you could. Even now you could do so with but a gesture and a word, yet you hold back. You permit your so-called friends to die on your behalf, even knowing the depths of agony that you could spare them.

"Spare them?" she demanded incredulously, loading the words with all the contempt she could muster. "You wouldn't spare them an instant's pain if I offered you the galaxy! You don't know the meaning of the word! You're evil incarnate!"

'And what does that make you, my daughter?' came the endlessly calm reply. 'If I am so depraved, what of my creations? You who employ your friends as a shield to ward off my minions for a few moments, are we so unlike one another?'

She bent beneath the invisible weight, eyes shut, hands clutched to the sides of her head. "I don't want to hurt them!" she insisted.

'Yet that is precisely what you are doing. Reach out. Sense them. Use the power I gifted to you when you were born. Feel their fear, their pain, their terror of the unknown. Feel their resentment and hatred. How long, do you think, before they throw down their weapons of their own accord and permit my servants to seize you?'

"They won't do that," she whispered dourly, not a challenge but a statement of immutable fact. Whether she wanted them to or not, she knew the others would never give up the fight while still alive.

'Perhaps not,' replied her father, 'even though it is what you would do in their place.'

"That's not true!"

'Is it not? Can you say such a thing for certain? You who have done everything to conceal your heritage from your friends?'

"I told them what I was!"

'Yes, under duress, faced with no other choice. Prior to which point you had considered every possible crime, from theft...'

"I didn't..."

'... to kidnapping...'

"Stop it..."

'... to suicide...'

"Father..."

'... even murder.'

"Don't hurt them."

'I will hurt them. I am hurting them. And I will do worse.'

Her eyes opened even as the breath caught in her throat. "... worse?"

'There is always worse.'

She raised her head in trepidation, as though expecting to see her father manifested before her, but the room remained empty save for herself. For a few moments, her gaze darted from corner to corner, the sounds of the battle raging outside, when all of a sudden, her father spoke to her once more.

'Behold,' he said, his voice a silky whisper, 'the wages of sin.'

There was a distant, muffled scream.

Raven was empathic. She could and did feel the emotions of the people around here, whether she wanted to or not. Even with training, she had never been able to shut it all off altogether, especially where strong emotions were concerned. Battles tended to bring out the strongest of emotions, and since the fight had begun outside the others had been in the back of her mind, their pain shared, their fear feeding her own.

But then two of them just stopped.

For an instant she didn't even know what had just happened, merely that two of the presences outside had stopped broadcasting entirely, like televisions switched off. One instant there was fear, pain, panic. The next they were gone, and did not return. There was only one explanation for something like that, but in her current state, it took nearly three whole seconds before she stumbled upon it.

"No... no... NO!"

'If you will not consent to face your own destiny, then others will die in your place.'

She screamed, screamed incoherently in abject panic, and in an instant she turned on the doors to the safe room and blew them to pieces with the raw force of her uncontrolled mind. Torn from their sliderails, the ruined doors were cast down the hallway towards the elevator, but she ignored them, all thought bent on what had just happened, panic rising in her throat like bile. She hurled herself down the hallway like a meteor, not bothering even to summon the elevator. Flying at top speed in blind panic, she shattered the elevator doors like glass with a wave of her hand and flew into the empty shaft, ascending as quickly as she could. The elevator car was many stories above, and she rose to the ground floor, caving the doors in there as well, before stepping out into the main lobby of the Tower.

She barely had the first idea what she was doing, adrenaline and blind panic calling all the shots. She did not have time to consider if her father was trying to lure her out of the safe room, nor what it was she proposed to do when she got where she was going. She could not even determine which two of the combatants outside were dead, for her mind was racing far too fast to make use of her magical divinations. All she could think about were the visions in her head, of her friends broken and dead, and, in terror of this like nothing else in the world, she flew towards the broken front doors of the Tower.

She never got there.

She was within half a dozen paces of the door when there was a flash so bright, so intense, that it seared her eyes like hot pokers and stopped her short as though she had crashed into a solid wall. She staggered backwards, her arm held up in front of her eyes, as a thunderous roar echoed from outside, like the enraged bellow of a giant monster. And as the light and sound rose to a furious crescendo, the entire front wall - doors, windows, and all - exploded at once and was thrown into her face like the cosmic wave front of a supernova.

She reacted on bare instinct, throwing her hands out and conjuring the strongest shield she could, an elemental barrier of stupefying power, anchored to the ground by the nuclear forces of reality itself. She was fortunate that it was so, for an instant later a hailstorm of shattered glass and broken rubble smashed into the shield, accompanied by a blast wave so intense that she thought for a moment that Trigon had found a way to manifest himself without her aid. The sound wrapped around her like a blanket, an atonal roar that shook the very foundations of the Tower, accompanied by the horrible sounds of the Tower itself groaning under the strain as windows exploded on higher floors and equipment from the roof came crashing down. Potent as the shield was, fed by Raven's own desperation, capable of withstanding guided missiles or barrages of supernatural fire, this blast was almost too much for it, and she gritted her teeth and poured power into its maintenance, as the hallway buckled and warped around her and the Tower threatened to break and collapse into the ocean.

Yet, finally, the blast wave subsided, dissipating off into the night, and the flash and fireball darkened, and slowly, Raven lowered her shield, letting the detritus it had accumulated roll off it onto the floor to join all of the rest of the ruins the explosion had cast about. Smoke and haze filled the air, and she waved it away from her face with a simple spell. Her panic and desperation remained, but it had been stunted, stunned even, by the tremendous blast that had emerged from Azar-knew-where. None of the weapons that the Titans or Hive had on offer, no missile or energy cannon, not Starfire's largest starbolt, not even the awesome powers that Slade had manifested, nothing she knew to be present was capable of unleashing a blast of that caliber. Yet despite this mystery, Raven had a sick feeling in her stomach that she knew precisely what had happened.

And so she stepped forward onto the threshold of the Tower, and beheld the end.

The island itself had been savagely truncated, as though a volcano had blasted the entire front section of it away. That which remained had been scoured clean of all debris and equipment, swept aside by the broom of an explosion so large it could have been generated by a thermobaric bomb. Down below, on the steps that had once led to the docks on the north shore of the island (now vaporized or hurled off into the sea), Cyborg and Beast Boy and Starfire all stood, facing away from her, apparently having not yet noticed her presence. She hung back, hidden in the shadows of the darkened, ruined tower, her heart beating at blistering speed, relief flowing through her as she realized that they, at least, were still alive. Of the Hive there was no sign, but by process of elimination, the deaths she had sensed had to have come from their ranks. Right now, she was too relieved at seeing her friends alive to spare tears for any of them.

But of course, there was also someone else missing.

It was clear beyond any doubt who had blown the front of the island apart. Though she had not thought an explosion like that to be within David's capacity to unleash, desperate times often had a way of bringing out capacities in people that they did not believe they had. From the demeanor and feelings radiating from her friends, to say nothing of the evidence on offer, she could tell roughly what had happened. David had somehow contrived to conjure an immense explosion, consuming himself, Slade, and his army, in one, cataclysmic blow.

Perhaps she should have wept. Perhaps she should have felt the pain of loss, as she had when Robin died. She didn't know what she was supposed to do or say. She knew instead that she did not feel these things. There was a pang of regret, a sharp one, that stabbed through her, but the relief she felt at seeing her remaining friends alive, where a moment ago she had believed them dead, had not yet faded, and it smoothed over the pain, buttressed by the sudden hope that Slade was dead, dead, and that Trigon had been stopped, and it was over. Perhaps later, on reflection, she would have time to weep, or to curse herself. Later, when the adrenaline and relief had faded, and she and Cyborg and Starfire and Beast Boy were back in the Tower and had time to take stock of all that had happened, later, she would mourn and consider what she had done and not done, but not now. She simply couldn't now. Maybe that made her a coward. Maybe that made her a sociopath. Maybe that made her undeserving of this sacrifice. But on the other hand, maybe that made her human...

Her empathy warned her before her eyes did, as Slade and David appeared out of nothingness, accompanied by Slade's entire army.

... or maybe it didn't matter at all.

Slade landed on the edge of the island and cast David down onto the bare rocks, where he lay unmoving, broken in body. She could tell via empathy that he was still alive, albeit barely, and she knew that should have given her relief, in the way that the others had, but it did not. Nor did it provoke any other strong emotion, rage or anger that Slade had done this, fear that she was not actually out off the woods. Nothing was galvanized, nothing gained by this appearance. It was a disembodied fact, devoid of emotional content. She lowered her head, ignoring Slade's confident laugh and words of victory. She didn't even need to lift her head to know that her friends would fight him anew, and that they would lose, and die, on her behalf, as David had tried to, as the Hivers had.

"Father," she whispered, "I don't want this..."

'What you want is irrelevant. What is, and what is not, is all that matters.'

And she knew that he was right.

Her friends were. In a few moments, they would not be. And she wished for them to continue to be.

Nothing else mattered.

"Stop."

She had spoken in normal tones, but the background noise seemed to melt away at her speech, draining off like an orchestra silencing itself so that the audience might hear clearly the sound of a single horn. All heads, all eyes, turned to her, and she lifted herself with her mind, and floated overhead, landing gently between her friends and Slade, the place, she now belatedly realized, she had belonged all along. She lifted her eyes, dead and cold, to meet Slade, and crossed her arms in resignation.

"I will go with you."

"No!"

A brief breath of wind, and then suddenly Beast Boy appeared in front of her, ignoring Slade, facing her directly, and his emerald eyes were wide and wild with desperation. He seemed to trip over his words, but his meaning was clear enough, so clear that Raven's newfound resolution briefly faltered. "We won't let them take you!" he shouted, half-turning to ward off Slade, as though he stood a prayer of doing so in his beaten condition. It was seeing his injuries up close, seeing him hurt and bleeding, coupled with the image still burned into her mind of him tortured to death in front of her, that resolved her once more.

"Beast Boy, I have to go with him," she said, unable to hope that he would understand, but needing to say something. They would all kill themselves to stop her if she did not make them see..."

"You must return to the safe room," said Starfire from behind her. "Please!"

"We got this," said Cyborg, framing his voice with as much command as he could. "Get back inside, right now!"

Raven lowered her head, clenching her fists and knotting them into her cloak. "I can't hide from my destiny any longer," she said, before bringing her head back up. "I have to do this."

Yet Beast Boy would not let go, to say nothing of the others. "Rae, you can't!" he said desperately, grabbing her by the shoulders as though to force her to not walk off with Slade. "There's gotta be something else we can... some kind of other... Please!!!"

She wasn't looking at him. She couldn't bear to. She was watching Slade, who had remained silent through all this debate. His expression was that of mild amusement at the antics of children, which probably wasn't far off the mark, but she could read in his face a message to her. Either she did something about this, or he would...

And so without turning her head, she raised her arm and did just that.

Beast Boy's protests were cut off as black lightning flowed through her hand and out into all three of the remaining Titans. It was a spell she had used many times, in many forms, on criminals of all stripes, but she had never imagined she would use it for this purpose. The spell coursed through her friends, lifting them from the ground, their features frozen in surprise, but at least not in pain. A moment later, all three were out like lights, somewhere between unconscious and asleep. Gently, she lowered her hand, laying each of them down side by side on the ruined rock, and wordlessly channeling a healing spell through the energy beam into each one of them. It was useless, a gesture they would never live to appreciate, but it was all that she could do.

With a whisper, she terminated the spell, and left them laying there peacefully, oblivious to the world.

"Goodbye," she said ruefully in a soft voice. "Be safe."

And then she turned away.

"Let's go," she snarled bitterly at Slade, who smiled, and nodded gently to her, and gestured for one of his fire demons to retrieve David.

That she would not countenance. Before the demon could touch him, she reached out her hand and disintegrated it with a snap of her fingers, letting its windborne ashes float off into the darkness. The other demons hesitated and glanced to Slade, who was staring at Raven.

"You came for me," she said. "He's not part of this. He stays here."

Slade shook his head. "I came for both of you, Raven," he said. "And he is coming with us, whether you like it or not. If you do that again, I shall kill all of your friends, knock you unconscious, and drag you before your father in chains of fire."

She hesitated. "He's not part of the prophecy," she said. "What do you want with him?"

"Me? Nothing," replied Slade. "But your father is quite eager to make his acquaintance."

She narrowed her eyes. "I won't let you drag him into this."

"You dragged him into this," snarled Slade, his patience suddenly at an end. "You dragged all of them into it by your own selfishness and stupidity. It is far too late for demands and threats. Either attack me and be beaten into submission at the cost of your friends' lives, or come quietly. Choose now."

David lay at her feet, motionless, bleeding inside, broken and helpess before Slade' wrath. The others lay behind her, stable but unable to defend themselves. But even had all of them been intact, armed, and ready to fight once more, there would still be no choice at all.

She lowered her arm slowly, her impotent rage deflating. "Don't hurt him," she said, but she knew that Slade would do as he wished, regardless of her preferences.

Slade however, having finally won, seemed to be in a magnanimous mood. He gestured to one of his flame demons, who approached and lifted David off the ground, moderating its flames so as not to roast him alive. This was likely not out of kindness, for they needed David alive too, for some damned reason, but she retained enough sense to thank Azar for small mercies.

Very small mercies.

And then, without another word, Raven walked away over the empty air that had once been part of the island that was her home, as the Flame demons parted to let her pass and Slade fell in beside her, an escort towards the destiny she had never been able to evade.

She did not permit herself to look back.

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Initiating primary boot sequence...

Project "Hephestus" Automated Conscious Control Startup Procedure, Version 1.02b. Author: Dr. Silas Stone.

There were certain advantages to being half-machine.

Activating ACCSP Subroutines:

Clock generator online.
Chipset controllers online.

At best, Cyborg's feelings about his mechanical side were dangerously ambivalent, at worst, downright resentful. His father had rebuilt him into Frankenstein's monster, separated him forever from his fellows. The stares that resulted from him doing something as innocuous as walking down the street were enough to sear that into his mind forever. From the first time he had woken up to find himself imprisoned within a body of steel and silicon, on even to this very day, he had needed to adjust himself mentally for the reality that he was now, and forever, a freak.

Power regulators online.
System memory online.

Many times, in the years since the accident, Cyborg's father had tried to explain why he had done what he had done, why he had replaced over 60% of his son's body with servos and actuators and circuitry. He had claimed that there was no other way, that he had been forced into an impossible choice by terrible circumstances. That he had been too badly injured to save by any conventional method, and that in the aftermath of the accident that had claimed his mother, his father had simply been unable to let his only son die as well. Perhaps his father even believed that.

Cyborg didn't.

Mass storage controllers online.
M/MI uplink online.

ACCSP Subroutines active.

His father was a genius, a Rhodes-scholared, triple-doctorate, two-time Nobel laureate, MENSA-certified genius. A master of bioengineering and cybernetic technologies. All of Cyborg's own not-inconsiderable talents in micro and macro-scale engineering were mere reflections of his father's own abilities. Yet what his father had done to him was wholly unique, a technological leap forward that left his contemporaries scratching their heads or staring in awe. The equipment, the construction techniques, the medical advances that had allowed Cyborg to come into being, were so far advanced that they could not have come from any single work of staggering genius. They were the fruit of careful research, long preparation, and detailed planning. Cyborg didn't know if his father had planned this for him all along, or if he had originally had other plans and adapted them on the spot. All he did know was that on the day of his accident, his father had had all the tools, materials, and medical preparations ready and present to turn him into what he was now.

His creation was pre-meditated, that much was obvious even to an infant, and his father's denials had only served to sharpen his curses, both of the machinery he was locked within, and of the man who had locked him there.

Initiating preliminary system scan:

For years, he'd extended his resentments from his father to his new body, to the host of computers and chips that governed his body, kept him breathing, intruded into his life in the most intimate and terrible ways. Prior to meeting the Titans, he'd damaged himself, purposefully, if only to spite his father. He'd refused to learn the proper functioning of his new body, disabled systems without a glance, cursed and railed against every sensory intrusion by his eyepiece and artificial ears. Had he been able to survive doing so, there were times he might have ripped all of his mechanical implements out of his body and cast them all in the nearest incinerator.

Warning. Major structural damage detected. M/MI Synapse prompts unresponsive. Conscious control disabled. Cesium Decay Projections loaded. Power reserves below defined super-critical threshold (8.2% optimal capacities).

But machines were funny things...

Initiating full organo-mechanical repair sequence.

Machines didn't care, in the end, what you thought of them. They didn't care if you begrudged them every erg of power they sucked down from your organic power converters, nor that the meaning of the words you addressed them with was insulting enough to drive a priest to reach for a gun. They didn't bother themselves with worrying about what other people would think of the jobs they performed, nor of how they looked. Whatever you thought of them, machines did their jobs to the best of their abilities.

Fusion injectors online. Thorium pellets loaded. Matter reactions at 84% stability.

Machines, in their own unique way, were blameless and guiltless instruments of higher will. Whatever madness their creator created them to do, whatever horrors were perpetrated in their creation, machines did only what they were commanded to do. Without praise or thanks, without pausing in self-consciousness or doubt, even in the face of threats to their own well-being or very existence, machines continued to do precisely what they had been designed for, to the exclusion of all else.

Priority alert! Hypothalamidic activity below 60% normal threshold. Metabolic signs suppressed. Unknown energy signature detected. Activating emergency neurosynaptic purge, charge level 17 nanovolts.

In a way, the total dedication of machines was frightening, even ghastly. How many berserk robots or out of control war machines had the Titans been called upon to stop by force? And yet at the same time, for one whose continued existence depended on the willing cooperation of thousands of machines, there was also something almost noble to them. Thanklessly they toiled, without praise, without recompense, without any thought save for their task of keeping him alive by any means available. He did not love his mechanical systems, indeed sometimes he still hated them, but after all this time, he could not think of them as soulless trinkets, anymore than he could the T-car or the Tower or any of the other devices he had constructed with his own hands. They weren't alive, but they were living, each with their own quirks, their own personalities, imagined or real, it didn't matter.

Firmware engaged. Loading non-volatile CMOS settings

ERROR: Primary CMOS cache non-responsive. Status unknown. Loading Virtual Serial Peripheral Interface. Downloading secondary CMOS settings.

He quite literally could not live without his mechanical half, he was as dependent on it as he was on food or air, and he chafed against this dependence, and always would, but he did not fear it. His robotic parts might break, or collapse, or prove unable to master the challenge arrayed against them. They might become confused by a hacker or tele-mechanic, or be warped out of all functioning by magic, but never, of their own volition, would they ever turn against him. Will-less themselves, they nonetheless possessed wills of iron and adamant, and would serve their purpose of keeping him alive come Hell, High Water or both. That his father had created them to serve his own God-play, that Cyborg himself hated them and their creator by turns, none of that mattered. Their selfless devotion was total.

There was something valiant about that.

Brainstem activity normal. Estimated time to nanobot repair completion: 21 seconds. Chemical organic activation sequence initiated.

Some days Cyborg hated his machine parts. On others he was simply ambivalent. But no matter what mood he was in, or what his present thoughts towards his inseparable companions were, on days when the daughter of the incarnation of pure malice used a magical spell to put his conscious mind to sleep so as to prevent him from trying to save the world...

Neurosynaptic purge complete. Unknown energy signature no longer detectable. Chemical brain stimulation complete. Shifting to conscious control in 3... 2... 1...

... well, suffice to say, even Cyborg had to admit that there were certain advantages to being half-machine.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Raven..."

There were no words to describe the relief that flowed through Cyborg at hearing Beast Boy say that word, at hearing him say anything really, not that he stopped to show it. Normally Raven was the one that was called upon to bring the others around from whatever state of unconsciousness they had been knocked into, but with her gone off with Slade, Cyborg had had to improvise.

Raven's spell had put them all into a cross between a deep sleep and a coma, and there they would likely have remained had she not forgotten (or simply neglected) to do the same with Cyborg's mechanical systems, which knew neither sleep nor fatigue and detected only that some unknown energy had shut his higher brain functions off like a computer deprived of power. Unable to determine anything beyond this, his robotic systems had painstakingly purged the energy from his system with a combination of micro-electric shocks and chemical additives to his bloodstream, all while simultaneously cordoning off damaged circuitry and flooding his organic parts with nano-probes to repair any other damage they could. The process was entirely automatic, and the first that Cyborg had learned of it was when he awoke some thirty minutes after Raven's departure, and found the log file waiting for his perusal, and his semi-robotic body once more awaiting his orders.

Bereft of Raven's healing powers, Cyborg had been forced to resort to smelling salts to revive Beast Boy, whose ultra-sensitive nose had practically catapulted him back to consciousness at the first whiff. Starfire was a tougher proposition (Tamaraneans seemed to consider smelling salts to be some sort of food additive) but even she was beginning to stir. The swelling around Beast Boy's face had gone down, and his skin was returning to its normal emerald color, while Starfire's injuries also appeared to be receding, the lingering effects of whatever magic Raven had cast before departing, no doubt.

"She really packs a wallop," muttered Cyborg as he shook Starfire hard enough to liquefy the organs of a normal human. It sufficed, barely, to slowly drag Star back into consciousness.

Starfire moaned softly before opening her eyes, shaking her head and blinking to clear her vision. Cyborg let her go, let her sit up under her own power, as Beast Boy crouched down next to them both, still rubbing the scorch mark on his uniform where Raven's dark lightning had struck him.

"Dude," he said plaintively, "we were only trying to help her."

"I fear it is too late to assist her," said Starfire quietly, head lowered.

"It can't be too late!" exclaimed Beast Boy, his eyes darting from Cyborg to Starfire and back. "We've... we're not gonna just... let her go are we?" He tried, and failed, to hide his fear that this was precisely what Cyborg and Starfire were about to suggest they do.

But the thought of doing that had not even crossed Cyborg's mind. "We gotta go after her. After both of 'em," he said. Beast Boy took a sharp breath and looked to Starfire once again.

Starfire however simply nodded. "Agreed," she said, albeit nervously. "We cannot permit Raven to destroy herself, nor David to be ensnared by whatever fate Trigon holds in store for him. But can we even locate them now?"

Cyborg raised his forearm and flipped open the screen built into it, and with a handful of keystrokes, brought up a labeled street map of Jump City, on which two pulsating dots of light were superimposed. It took him only a second to deduce, based on the location of the dots, and the direction they were headed, where their intended destination was likely to be.

"Looks like they're headin' for the old library," he said. None of them knew why Slade would be taking Raven and David there. None of them wanted to. But Cyborg, at least, could guess, given what had been there the last time they had gone looking for Slade.

And apparently Beast Boy could too. He turned a slightly paler shade of green, and scrambled to his feet. "We've gotta go after them!" he insisted. "Come on!"

Nothing would have suited Cyborg more, but there were discrete limits that he had to work within. "My power's almost drained, man," he said. "I can't make it that far without a recharge."

Beast Boy was nearly frantic. "Dude, she's almost at the library! We can't wait or she - "

"Two minutes," said Cyborg. "And we'll go. Just let me get somethin'."

Plainly, Beast Boy begrudged every second's delay, but he nodded and turned away, clenching and unclenching his hands nervously. Starfire glanced at Cyborg, wordlessly imploring him to hurry, as she moved to try and calm Beast Boy, putting a hand on the smaller changeling's shoulder and trying to re-assure him that, despite appearances, everything would be all right.

Moving as quickly as his power-starved motors would allow, Cyborg scrambled over the ruins of what remained of the front part of the island, pressing on around the Tower to the west side, facing the ocean. There, near the base of the Tower itself, concealed behind a false rock, was a small emergency supply cache containing a spare power cell. All he would need to do was change out his depleted cell with the replacement, and he'd be ready to go.

Except when he rounded the Tower, he saw something that made him stop.

The west side of the island was more or less intact, the explosion having confined itself mostly to the southern quadrant. On the rocks nearest the shore, a lone figure sat motionless, staring expressionlessly at the pounding waves. Coated in gray ash and splashed with dark blood, she might well have been a statue for all she moved, neither raising her head nor giving any other sign of acknowledgment as Cyborg carefully approached.

"... Jinx?" he asked. She didn't answer, didn't even flinch, and for a moment he wondered if she was dead, slain instantly by some massive shock and left to sit there like a perched gargoyle. It was only when he approached and saw the tremble in her hands that he realized that the shock hadn't killed her.

Though given everything, that might not be such a mercy right now.

"Where's Billy?" asked Cyborg.

"He's dead." Her voice was monotone, blank, an empty vessel bereft of higher thought. She looked like something had broken within her brain, and as he approached, he saw that in her hands she held a small scrap of green cloth, from a jacket perhaps or jumpsuit, singed on all sides and soaked with a dark substance that might have been blood or engine oil or both.

"And Mammoth?" he asked, quietly.

"I don't know..." she said. "He was... here. And then..."

Cyborg didn't know what to say. He wouldn't have known what to say even if he had time to think about it, which he simply didn't. To his surprise however, even as he was trying to decide whether to say anything at all, Jinx asked him a question, her voice a quivering whisper.

"Are you going after them?" she asked.

Cyborg nodded. "Yeah," he said.

Jinx' blank expression didn't change in the slightest. She was silent for a few moments. And then slowly she whispered her reply.

"I'm coming too."

There had been a time not that long ago when such a notion would have been greeted with laughter. This was not that time. Jinx' eyes were rimmed in red and crusted in dried tears, and her movements slow and hesitant, as though she were still stunned by all that had happened (which likely was accurate enough). Yet as she turned her head up slowly to meet Cyborg's gaze, he saw that her hands trembled, not in fear or shock or even sorrow, but in barely-suppressed, inconsolable rage. Her feline eyes smoldered with anger, rage with no outlet or conduit, rage enough to light the world aflame with or without Trigon's help. She stood up slowly, unsteadily, and it was plain that she could barely walk, and yet he had no doubts whatsoever that she would flay the very skies to ribbons if he even thought of trying to prevent her from going.

He had fought Jinx a dozen times. They'd beaten one another within an inch of their respective lives. He'd seen her furious, he'd seen her cowed, he'd seen her exultant, he'd seen her terrified.

He had never seen this.

"What are you gonna do?" he asked despite himself. She turned her head back to him, staring at him as though she was seeing him for the first time.

"I'm gonna kill Slade," she said.

And despite everything, Cyborg believed her.

[LadyTevar]

Chapter 32, cont'd

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Twice, the civic authorities tried to stop Slade's army.

The first attempt was practically over before Raven realized that anything was happening. They turned a corner, and found a phalanx of police cars drawn up in a barricade across Union street manned by SWAT and JC counter-terrorism units, along with whatever uniform cops could be drawn up on short notice, and a pair of police helicopters thundering overhead carrying sharpshooters. The police had been watching the broadcast of the battle at the Tower, and given everything, were not in the mood to obey the usual rules of engagement. They opened fire upon sighting Slade's minions, destroying half a dozen flame demons before Slade raised his hands and incinerated the entire company.

Raven barely had time to save even half a dozen of them.

Slade didn't even break stride as he contemptuously swept the entire barricade aside with a wave of his hand and a wave front of solidified flames, tossing a dozen police cruisers to one side in a twisted, burning mass of wreckage. The two Helicopters overhead simply exploded like fireworks, raining flaming debris down onto the street. Raven managed, as a gut reaction, to manifest energy shields around five of the cops, chosen at random, and imperturbably teleported them all to the other side of the city. The others died where they stood.

Having done so, she whirled on Slade. "That wasn't necessary!" she shouted at him. "You didn't need to kill them all!"

"No, I did not," replied Slade lightly. "But because it amused me to and so I did so. Now what will you do about it, little girl?"

Raven's preferred reply would have taken the form of a meteor, but that could help nothing, and so with difficulty she refrained from attacking Slade and turned away from him.

Slade laughed. "They are all going to die in a matter of minutes anyway," he said, "in a way, this is a kindness..."

"You don't know what you're talking about," she snarled at him without turning.

"Oh I think I have some idea," replied Slade, "besides, I still need to practice with these these lovely powers. Now I see why you people place such stock in them..."

Raven glanced back at Slade. "You actually think you're going to get to keep those once my father returns?"

"Of course," replied Slade, "you don't think I'm doing this for free, do you?"

Despite everything, Raven managed to twist her features into a smirk. "You're a fool," she said, sneering at Slade. "Whatever Trigon promised you, he won't deliver."

Slade laughed and fell in beside her, swaggering along as though he had not a care in the world. "Now it's you who doesn't know what you're talking about," he said.

She raised an eyebrow. "You think I don't know my own father?"

"You are merely the portal," replied Slade, his voice beginning to sound testy, "an insignificant pawn in Trigon's game."

"Then I guess we have that in common," said Raven, "because once he gets what he wants, you'll be insignificant too."

"Don't speak of things you don't understand," said Slade, now sounding annoyed.

"Or what?" asked Raven. "You'll kill me? Go ahead and try. Your own army would turn against you the instant you raised your hand. They're Trigon's minions, not yours."

Slade turned on her with fists aflame. "I've heard just about as much from you as I'm prepared to countenance," he said. "Now be quiet or - "

Slade never got to finish his threat. He was cut off by a half-stifled cry of pain from behind. Both he and Raven turned around, but Raven knew who it was even before it finished.

Somehow, David was awake.

Slade made a move to grab her, and she teleported out of his grasp, re-appearing a few dozen yards back, next to the demon that was holding David. The demon's arms were extinguished, its body reduced to a low heat, but the damage David had sustained was already enough. He was coughing, retching, his broken body convulsing in the demon's arms as he fought, semi-consciously, to clear his throat of blood, his crushed left wrist hanging limply, his red uniform stained an even darker red by his own blood. David was no stranger to terrible injury, they'd found him in such a state after all, to say nothing of the mess Terra had made of him weeks before, but this was worse than before, much worse.

What with everything from before, she hadn't realized how bad off David actually was. It took only a single glance to realize that she needed to act. Now.

"Put him down," she said to the demon, and to her surprise, it obeyed, setting David onto the ground as gently as could be wished and backing away to give her room to operate. His eyes were open, but they stared blindly up into the air, blinking spasmodically to try and wipe away the blood that still leaked from the corners of his eyes.

He moaned softly, whimpering almost as she crouched down over him. "It's okay," she said, unsure if he could even hear her. "You're gonna be okay..." She didn't even know where to start. Broken bones and bruises, or other trauma wounds she was used to, but she had never even seen anything like this before...

David was soaked in blood. His own blood. It was beaded on his forehead and soaked into the fabric of his crimson uniform. Blood seeped from the corners of his mouth, from his nostrils, from his ears and eyes and from the base of his fingernails. Every so often he would convulse and cough up yet more blood, onto the ground or onto his own shirt, already saturated with the stuff. Yet despite the immense volumes of blood on display, she could not see where it was all coming from. Bruises he had in abundance, and a shattered wrist, along with other minor injuries, but no gaping wounds, no arterial spurts that would be needed to explain this much blood.

Gently, she laid a hand on him, and whispered a spell. Immediately she saw into him like an X-ray machine, and what she saw confirmed what she had suspected. He was bleeding out internally, not from any single wound, but from a hundred thousand tiny ones. His entire circulatory system was run through with micro-fissures, the tiny blood vessels that ran through him having spontaneously hemorrhaged for no reason at all.

"The chamber has been prepared for you," came Slade's voice from behind her. "Everything is ready for Trigon's ascent." She heard his footsteps approaching over the asphalt, sensed him stopping right behind her. "Stalling will not avail you. We have to go."

She whirled around in indignant fury. "What the hell did you do to him?" she demanded.

Slade laughed. "I did nothing to him. He did that all of that to himself. My only action was to shield him from the primary effects of his own stupidity. Had I not done so, he would presently be a puff of smoke on the winds."

David coughed violently, spitting blood up onto the street. Slade regarded them both with equanimity. "We have an appointment to make," he said. "We're leaving. Now."

"He's dying," said Raven, as deadpan as she could. "If I don't help him now, he'll never make it to the library. And then you get to explain to my father why he's dead."

Equipped with his nigh-omnipotent powers, few things in the universe could have forced Slade to back down. This, however, was one of them. Raven watched as his eye narrowed, and his fists closed, but he did not lash out. Instead he peered down at the two teenagers and grudgingly spoke.

"Very well," he said, "you have two minutes."

"I need ten," she protested.

"You have two!" snapped Slade. "He only needs to survive another hour. Shore him up for that long, now, or else I'll make him wish he had died."

Raven had had quite enough of Slade's threats, and might actually have lashed out at him for this last one, had the skies not suddenly opened and vomited forth an entirely different kind of wrath.

There was an ear-piercing scream, like the wailing of a thousand damned souls amplified through a sounding board the size of a small city, and suddenly something burst into the sky from over one of the buildings, something dark and winged and flying at incredible speed on a tail of fire. In the blink of an eye, it turned down Union street and hurtled overhead past Slade and David and Raven and Trigon's entire army. Yet in its wake, it let fall half a dozen canisters, each of which burst in turn into a hundred bomblets that rained down onto the street below before exploding. In half a second, the entire area erupted into flame, as well-nigh half of Slade's demonic army was blown to ashes, along with the majority of the street.

Debris and shrapnel flew as thick as a swarm of bees, but Raven had prepared her shield the instant she had heard the fighter jet approaching, and knowing roughly what it portended, had erected it around David and herself with barely a second to spare. Slade had no such protection, but then he did not require it, standing upright and unscathed in the middle of unspeakable violence, as cars, streetlights, the faces of buildings, and hundreds of his flaming demon servitors were rent to pieces by the barrage of cluster munitions. She had thought, indeed she had hoped, that the military would not have time to react to Slade's army, but plainly her hopes had been in vain. That much was made all the more clear as the fighter returned for another pass, even as a flotilla of helicopters appeared from the south, some broad and packed with armed men, others sleek and agile, and spitting fire from gatling guns and unguided rockets, turning the entire street into a theatre of flames and devastation.

Fire roared around Raven, the very earth convulsing and cracking the asphalt on which she was crouched. The maelstrom was deafening, even through her impermeable shield, a cacophony of roars, gunshots, and sound waves so intense that they struck with physical force. Beside her, David cried weakly as the concussive waves slammed his broken body over and over again, and she felt him grab her wrist with his unbroken hand. No doubt he was just automatically clutching at the nearest stable thing, but it served, nonetheless, to refocus Raven's attention.

Alone amidst the sound and the fury stood Slade, the nearest demons to him having been incinerated or torn to pieces. He did not react, not to the bombs or the fire, not even when a rocket struck him square in the back. Instead he stared down at Raven, a palpable menace even through the black opaqueness of her psychic shield. He said nothing, only stared, his wordless gaze speaking more than his voice ever could. They both knew what was about to happen, and both knew who was at fault for the result.

That much didn't need saying.

Slade turned away, vanishing back into the flames and smoke of battle, as the larger helicopters began to disgorge their living cargo, grim-faced men in black and green warpaint, bearing badges of World and Anchor, who shouted to one another in code and opened fire on Slade's army with small arms and grenades. Bare seconds later, nothing whatsoever could be discerned, the smoke and flames having enveloped demons and marines alike, leaving the two Titans alone beneath the black shroud of Raven's telekinetic shield.

There was no time to pine or curse herself. She had urgent work to do and turned to it with a will, hoping it might distract her from what was ongoing. David's eyes stared sightlessly up at the smoke-shrouded sky, and he did not react when she laid her free hand on his chest as gently as she could. Softly at first, then louder as the noise of battle threatened to drown her out, she chanted her mantra over and over. Her healing powers were vast, and honed to a razor edge, having become the unofficial medic of the Titans over the last couple of years, yet the damage to David's body was far beyond anything she had ever seen.

Tens of thousands of microscopic capillaries all over David's body had burst like frozen water pipes, flooding every organ, every tissue with blood. Five minutes more, and he likely would have bled to death internally. As it was, she could only hope that she had gotten to him in time. The job would have been beyond the capacities of the most efficient and skilled surgical team in the universe, but her magic was yet more precise, and many times more powerful. As she whispered the ancient spells and let their energy flow into David's body, she spared a moment's wonder at the sheer breadth of the damage he had sustained. Devastator's powers were far beyond the capacities of a human body to sustain at full strength, and she vividly remembered how he had once over-taxed himself and blown half a dozen blood vessels in his head and eyes, but this was a thousand times worse than that had been.

Still, the damage was finite, and Raven's powers untapped and untrammeled by the battle he had sustained it in. She forced the blood pooling within David to return to his veins, sealed the breaches in his circulatory system one after the next, and slowly repaired the swelling and tissue damage that had already been caused. The whole process might have taken five minutes, perhaps ten, she lost count. But before terribly long, his breathing had regularized, his whimpers of pain had ceased, and finally, he woke up.

He opened his eyes slowly, blinking several times before any sign of recognition passed over his face. "Raven?" he asked weakly, as though uncertain if she was actually there. Strong healing magic suppressed the vital functions of the patient so as to better repair their tissues, and coupled with the blood David had lost, he looked as though he had been slipped a powerful sedative, reduced to fighting his own body merely to stay awake.

"I'm here," she said, and he seemed to relax somewhat, as though her presence somehow alleviated everything that was happening. It only served to deepen her sense of shame, and she turned her head away, suddenly unwilling to even look at him.

"What's... where are we... what's happening...?" he asked.

There were too many possible answers for that question right now. She opted for the simplest answer.

"The end."

The source of the shooting and screams that permeated the shield and surrounded them in stereo was hidden, for the smoke had cloaked all, and nothing could be discerned outside the small black bubble. Yet given the circumstances, this made them more appropriate for the setting, not less. She felt David tense up beneath her hand, and turned back, redoubled her concentration to try and close off the remaining leaks before he could injure himself further through precipitous movement.

"What the Hell did you do?" she asked, partly to distract him.

"I don't... I don't know..." he said, his voice fading in and out, still half-delirious from blood loss and shock.

"You accidentally blew half the island apart?" she asked. Right now it didn't matter in the slightest how he had managed to channel this much power, but she had to focus his mind on something other than what was happening, or else she'd be forced to tell him things she'd rather not presently think about.

"No..." he said, too weak to protest with any force. "No I - " He caught himself, suddenly lifting his head. "I did what?"

"You nearly brought the Tower down," she said as calmly as she could. She didn't mention that it hadn't been enough. That much was obvious.

He fell silent for a few moments, to the point where she wondered if he'd lost consciousness again. Then suddenly he spoke again.

"There was... so much fire," he said, his voice weak and thin. "Everywhere. All around and... inside my head. And the others were... they were dying. I just wanted to stop him. I didn't know how..."

"What did you use?" she asked. "A propane tank? A pocket of natural gas?"

He shook his head. "No," he said. "No there wasn't... there wasn't anything. I looked for things... with my mind. I tried to... to sense anything nearby but... but there wasn't anything. Just the rocks and the water..."

Despite everything, she hesitated. "You got... that... out of nothing but granite and seawater?"

"... I don't know," he said almost wistfully. "I just wanted to stop him... I wanted it... so bad. To stop him, and drive him away from the others... and then it was like everything started to move by itself. Without me forcing it to. There was... so much energy. All around me. In the rocks, and in the sea, and even in the air. And I pushed it. I pushed it down into a tight little ball... and I aimed it right at Slade and..." he blinked several times and seemed to snap out of whatever waking dream he was in. "... and then I don't... I don't know what happened after that. Just... a bright light and then... I was here."

Something tugged at the back of Raven's mind. Something she had heard, either from Devastator itself or about it. Something relevant to this and desperately important, she knew, but she couldn't recall what it was. And as she hesitated, David's eyes focused and he looked around the shield and asked a question that halted her train of thought where it was.

"What happened to the others?"

"They're all right," she said, omitting the obvious postscript. Nobody in the world was all right at the moment, but she had at least managed to buy them a few more moments' peace.

He craned his head around, trying to discern what was going on, but the shroud was total, and the gunfire and shrieks of dying men and demons seemed to come from every direction at once, muted down to a tolerable level only by the shield itself. When finally he gave up trying to see what was happening, he turned back to face her, and his eyes were wet, this time with tears, and she could see him trembling like a leaf in the wind.

"Raven," he asked haltingly, nervously, yet directly, "are we gonna die?"

She lowered her head, turning away again. "Yes," she said.

He didn't scream. He didn't protest or fight or try to convince her otherwise. Any of the others would have, in their own way, because deep down the others didn't believe her when she told them it was hopeless. David did. And despite the fact that he had quite nearly killed himself just moments ago trying to save the others, the prospect still clearly terrified him, hell it terrified her, but she was considerably more experienced at hiding it. As usual, his emotions leaked out of him like a sieve, with or without empathy to catch them. Tears rolled silently down the sides of his face as he tried, and failed, to stop shaking.

"I didn't think it would end like this," he said.

"All things end," came the reply, but not from Raven. David gasped softly and Raven turned her head to see Slade approaching them. The smoke was thick as ever, yet she could see him perfectly well, just as his voice easily penetrated all the din and clatter around them, as though he were whispering directly in their ears.

Slade approached at an even pace, his form unblemished by whatever violence had been directed his way. The sounds of battle still raged, yet plainly he had no part in them, and he walked up to the edge of the shield, paused only for a second, and the lay a hand on it. Instantly, the shield popped like a soap bubble, letting the smoke of the world outside flood in, and setting David to coughing violently, spitting up more blood from his torn lung tissue. Slade ignored him.

"Come with me," he said to Raven, and without waiting for her answer, he grabbed her wrist and pulled her to her feet. She tried to pull away from him, and when that failed, even blasted him in the back of the head, but he didn't even change his pace, pulling her along through the smoke, before they emerged on a larger street and he raised his free hand and clenched it into a fist. Moments later, great gusts of hot wind swept in from nowhere, parting the clouds of dense smoke, such that Raven could see everything that was transpiring.

"Behold your handiwork," said Slade contemptuously.

The street was covered in wreckage. Twisted, burning metal was strewn about like the discarded playthings of a giant. Some of it Raven could recognize, the broken remains of helicopters and aircraft, interspersed with what might once have been cars or buses or streetcars. The facings of every building in sight had collapsed in an avalanche of brick and masonry, spilling into the flame-lit street like a landslide. Slade's flame demons lay here as well, hundreds of them, some perforated with shrapnel and bullets, others torn to pieces by high explosives, or crushed to paste by falling debris. But lest Raven imagine that she had been brought here merely to view a sterile battlefield, Slade pointed up ahead, further down the street, and she lifted her eyes to follow him, and her heart froze.

There were the marines.

Their vehicles obliterated by Slade or his army, they had formed a rudimentary barricade at one end of the street out of overturned cars and piles of rubble, and from there they fought, blasting away at an army of flame demons twenty times their number and more. The demons surged about them like an angry sea, and the marines scythed them down by the hundreds with machine guns and grenades, but it was plainly useless. More demons emerged from the ground even as Raven watched, replacing those that had been cut down in an unending swarm, surging around the embattled unit like a rising tide. Raven was no military strategist, but it was instantly apparent that these soldiers had no chance whatsoever, even if she had not known what will it was that animated the demons.

"Let them go," she said without turning away, her voice hoarse and curt.

"No," responded Slade.

"They can't hurt you!" she shouted, rounding on him in fury. "They're just trying to defend the city! You don't have to kill them, you don't even have to fight them, just walk right past and ignore - "

"They took up arms against the soldiers of Trigon," said Slade implacably. "I am commanded to ensure that those who do so pay the dearest cost, a lesson you would have done well to learn much earlier." He smirked and glanced down at her. "I don't see why you're so upset," he said. "They would only have died anyway, when Trigon arose."

Far from placating her, his contemptuous dismissal blew the top off of her already shaky temper. Her vision turned red, her mind erupted into fire and rage, and she felt her powers gathering up into a cyclone of vengeance and blood. She turned on the scene before her, and raised her hands, and let fly waves of pure destruction, her mind flailing at her enemies. Black energies surged forth and struck the demon army in the back. Within seconds, hundreds of demons were simply torn to shreds, their flaming remnants scattered across the burning street like crumpled leaves. The raw injustice of it, of these men being slaughtered for no other crime than trying to stop what her father was bringing to the World, was enough to break all restraint, and her powers flayed at the very air as she -

Something grabbed her arm.

A spike of unimaginable pain shot through her like red lightning, strong enough that she screamed aloud. Strong enough that her volcanic rage was subsumed instantly beneath it. Her powers dissolved instantly, her tendrils of dark energy vanishing into the smokey air, and the demons she had torn to pieces were duly replaced by others emerging from the ground. And then she was whirled around, and came face to face with Slade, whose iron-clad hand gripped her upper arm like a vice of molten steel.

"Spoiled child!" he roared, and raising his other hand, he backhanded her across the face, knocking her to the ground as though she'd been struck in by an iron bar. She shook her head and looked up to see Slade towering over her, flames dancing from his hands and his one eye wide in fury.

"Now? Now, at the end, you would bring forth your powers?! Now?! When your friends have already burned, when your city is already in ruins, when your father's reign is assured, now you choose to fight?!" Slade was physically shaking, enraged beyond anything Raven had seen from him, his voice a full-throated roar. Slade was a vicious, brutal murderer, but one who prided himself on his god-like detachment and Hannibal Lecter-like calm. Never before, not when Robin had abandoned his apprenticeship, not even when Terra had turned on him and struck him dead, never before had she seen Slade this angry, this righteously indignant, and it stunned her to momentary silence.

"A thousand chances you had to escape this fate!" he roared at her. "A thousand different solutions, but you refused them all! And now, at the end of all things, when you have personally condemned the planet entire to oblivion, now you have the gall to become upset at the measures you initiated?!"

She couldn't help herself. "I... I couldn't," she stammered. "There was no way!"

"There was!" bellowed Slade, and the street rang with his words. "You could have killed David, or yourself, or fled to another dimension! You could have read the signs that were visible to you! But you did nothing! Nothing! And now you think you have the right to be angry?! This is all your own doing! Every bit of it! Your handiwork, your actions, your responsibility."

And she knew he was right.

In another time, in another place, she might have argued otherwise, that this was Trigon's doing, not hers, but the truth was that she didn't believe that. She never had. Trigon was the incarnation of pure Evil, a force of nature, a thing that acted the way it was made to. She had long tried to convince herself and others that she was not, that she was different than her father, if not a hero, then at least capable of deciding for herself what she would do. But if that were true, then she could not blame Trigon for this. Trigon was doing only what Trigon was always meant to do. It was like blaming the bomb for killing people, rather than the bomber.

She lowered her head, and felt tears running down her face, her anger spent and gone, and she might have sat there for hours had she been permitted to. But Slade merely sneered, and reached down, and grabbed her by the arm to pull her back to her feet, before turning her around to face the still-raging battle, and forcing her head up so that she was staring directly at it.

"No," he said. "You watch."

She watched.

The marines never gave up. Not even as their ammunition ran out, and they were reduced to shooting at the demons with sidearms and grenades. Not even when the demons surged over their makeshift barricade and tore it to pieces, they still never gave up. They fell back into small knots of men, back to back, and shot the demons down with pistols until they had no more bullets, and then they fought them with knives and entrenching tools. At first she thought that they simply had no other choice. Surrounded and outnumbered dozens to one, they could do nothing but sell their lives dearly.

But then she realized otherwise.

A chance gust of wind blew much of the smoke aside, and she saw further down the street. There the damage had been less great, the wreckage less complete, and there she saw the tiny forms of people climbing out of their ruined buildings, civilians, families, ordinary people who had taken shelter in their homes from the oncoming apocalypse, and who were now fleeing for their lives away from the swarm of demons. They were defenseless, burdened with injured and without means of rapid escape, and would be easy prey as soon as the demons deigned to turn and destroy them.

But the demons could not do so while the Marines still fought.

And they knew it.

She watched, she watched with no words, no feeling except shame, as the marines fought to the end. One by one they were overcome and dragged down by flame demons who tore them apart, limb from limb, who cleaved their bodies and roasted their flesh with the fires of Hell. She could feel them empathically, feel the fear flowing off of them like an aroma, mingling with their bloodcurdling screams as they were overwhelmed. Many of them were only a few years older than she was, still practically children, confronted by monsters that none of them had imagined save in nightmares, and yet, while some did panic, none ran. They might have managed to escape, in the confusion and the chaos she could see paths out of their predicament, escape routes that led off elsewhere into the city. None of them even tried, preferring or at least accepting that their duty was to stand and fight and let others escape. And consequently, the tides of fire drowned them all.

The last one alive was older than the others, the commander perhaps, a Hispanic man in his late thirties, who was the last to live simply because the demons left him until then. Having watched all his marines fall, he faced the army of the damned with an equanimity that would have made Robin proud. His pistol was still in-hand, and as the demons moved in around him, he raised it and shot three of them down at his feet. The fourth pull of the trigger was rewarded with a hollow "click", and he glanced down at the gun, back up at the demons, and then unhesitatingly threw it into the enemy army. With one hand, he reached into his shirt and pulled out a small brass cross, which he brought to his lips and kissed. And then, as one of the demons stepped forward, he lifted his chin and spat in the monster's face.

The demon tore the Marine commander's head off, and cast his body into the midst of its fellows, and then the smoke occluded them all, and Raven saw no more.

The violent spectacle seemed to have mollified Slade somewhat, and he released Raven and gestured to his undiminished army, who turned and marched back towards them, an escort for the final stage of their journey. In the sudden silence of the empty streets, Raven heard something behind them, and turned, and saw David, standing between two more flame demons, who were propping him up. His eyes were wide and unblinking, and not aimed at her but at a point further down the street, and she knew he had been made to watch as well.

"It's high time we left," said Slade impatiently.

Raven didn't move immediately. Instead she stared up at Slade, who returned the favor, and then finally dredged a few words out of what remained of her shattered soul.

"One way or another," she said, "you're going to pay for everything you've done."

Slade smirked as he turned away and led the procession of the damned down the street, over the burnt corpses of his fallen enemies.

"Then I suppose we have that in common as well..."

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The cavern was dark as Slade entered it, quiet, yet plainly inhabited, a palpable malice pervading the place like a rank smell. Even to him it was a noxious sensation, like that of walking into fetid sewer or abattoir. The knowledge that this would be the last time he had to do this was something of a relief.

He had left the army at the entrance to the old library, and rushed here as quickly as he could, a calculated risk perhaps, but one worth taking given what was at stake. The army would conduct Raven and David to the chamber for the ceremony. Amusing as that promised to be, he had no intention of being on-hand when that happened. Trigon's intentions for the Earth were clear enough, and now that he had done what he had been told to do, the only thing left was to leave as soon as possible.

But of course, there was a matter to be resolved first.

He approached the far end of the cavern with a measured tread, the walls lit by the river of flickering lava that ran before him. He paused at its edge, crossing his arms and waiting, as the facing wall begin to glow a dull red, which brightened slowly into four points of light, like searing eyes, that stared down at him the way a scientist might regard a laboratory specimen.

Slade was not one to blanch at the sight, even knowing what it portended. He folded his arms, ignoring the flames that began to rise from the lava pit before him.

"The portal approaches," he said evenly. "The hour is near. It's time for my payment."

The lava began to boil, the chamber resonating with a voice that the very rocks seemed to shrink from, a voice dripping with malevolence, deep and resonant and utterly pitiless.

"Payment?" asked the voice. "For what? The Gem returns of her own free will. You did not deliver her. I did."

Slade's fist tightened incrementally. "We had a deal," he said, his voice as sharp as a straight razor. "I held up my end of the bargain. Now give me what I was promised."

A low, throaty rumble filled the room, like a distant earthquake. Small pebbles fell from the ceiling, clattering against the stone floor like castanets. Louder and louder it grew, shaking the entire chamber, until it became clear that it was no earthquake or eruption, but rather the savage, mocking laughter of Slade's 'benefactor'.

"Do you think me such a fool?" asked the voice. "I know what you have done. You who worked to deny me the host I demanded. You who strove to sabotage my plans with petty sleight of hand. You would now stand before me and demand payment?!"

In an instant, there was fire everywhere, tendrils of flame erupted from the lava, from the walls, from the eyes that bored into him, and wrapped themselves around Slade's limbs, binding him in place. He struggled uselessly, ripping the tendrils from the walls, conjuring flames and hurling them at the eyes mounted on the wall, but it was of no use. The eyes absorbed the fire as though born to it, and the tendrils replaced themselves by the dozens and hundreds, forcing him to his knees, dragging him to the ground as the four searing eyes lorded over him.

"Caitiff wretch," intoned the terrible voice, as flames poured over Slade. The eyes glared down on him contemptuously. "Did you think you could take my favors with your left hand, and run blades through me with your right? Did you envision this a moment for mediation and neutrality?"

The tendrils drew taught, bearing Slade's struggling form into the air, spread eagle facing the agent of his torture. As Slade watched helplessly, the river of boiling lava rose into a motionless wave, filling one side of the cavern, with Trigon's burning red eyes still superimposed upon it.

"Slade Wilson," pronounced the voice of doom. "You shall join the legions of those accursed by Gods and Devils. Enemy to all, friend to none, yours shall be the shared fate of all who oppose Trigon the Terrible."

The wave of flame flew at Slade with a rush, pouring over him like a tidal wave, boring through his impenetrable armor to scorch his very soul. As the flames engulfed him, Slade heard Trigon's final condemnation.

"Burn with your world, wretch."

And Slade Wilson opened his mouth to scream.

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The eclipsed sun shone through the rose window of the abandoned library as Raven stepped across the threshold.

Trigon's minions had been busy here. The chamber was well prepared, swept clean of debris and dust, every surface polished to a mirror shine and lined with mosaics of obsidian glass. The demon escort had held back, forming a barricade behind her. Other flame demons stood before her, arrayed in a ring around the base of an enormous pillar of hewn stone, several stories tall, and carved in the shape of an enormous hand and forearm, the palm and fingers opened as if to present a sacrificial offering to the Gods.

Fitting, in a way.

"It's time," she said.

A murmur of noise from her right, and she turned to see two demons holding David firmly by the arms. His eyes were wide with fear, and despite their firm grip, she could see that he was shaking. It hurt, it physically hurt her to look at him, both of them knowing full well what she was about to do, but the time for choices had long passed. Everything was pre-ordained. It was fate.

"Let him go," she said to the demons. "You've already won."

She really didn't expect them to obey her, but they did, releasing David so suddenly that he stumbled forward. He shied quickly away from them, his glance darting from point to point to point, as though expecting the demon army to jump him at any moment. None of them so much as twitched as he drew closer to Raven, as though she somehow afforded some kind of protection.

She said nothing as David approached her, mentally steeling herself for what was to come. Part of her wanted to get it over with, to not have to face whatever accusations he had in store. But she refused to permit herself to do that. Whatever else he was, either to Trigon or to the others, David was a Titan, a teammate. In another universe, he might even have been a friend. She owed him the chance to speak his piece, even if it was only to curse her.

But plainly, David was too far gone in fear and shock to muster the energy to curse anything, and his question was fairly to the point.

"N... now what happens?" he asked.

"Now the prophecy comes to pass," she said, as simply as she could. He did not ask what that meant. He didn't need to.

Even as Raven was avoiding David's gaze, David seemed to be avoiding hers. He trembled, quivering like a bowstring, and from the corners of her downcast eyes, she could see him trying to muster the wherewithal to say something, anything, but after a few moments, the enormity of the situation overcame him, and he collapsed to his hands and knees on the stone floor. Two dozen demons immediately moved in towards them, but Raven turned on them with a molten glare, and they stopped and fell back. Carefully, she knelt down at his side as he held his tightly clenched fist up to his forehead and tried to force down the spasms that wracked his still-weak body. He gasped once, twice, and then all of a sudden he was sobbing.

She could feel him trying to stop. She could sense, of all the god damned things, shame, not the shame of ending the world that she had, but the more mundane version. Shame at his own inability to do anything more useful than what he was doing. The conscious knowledge that he was supposed to be a hero, and presently was incapable of saving himself, let alone anyone else. Shame, guilt, the same gamut of emotions that she herself was suppressing with great difficulty. But atop it all, leavening the entire toxic mix, was the fear, fear forcing him to his knees, clawing the sobs out of his unwilling throat. She knew the mixture well.

He lightly pounded his clenched fist on the stone floor, and wiped the tears from his eyes with his other hand, trying to force himself back under control, and failing, and she didn't know what to do, the agent of this cataclysm that was overwhelming his ability to cope. She didn't know if she could face him or not, but she finally laid a hand on his shoulder, gently as she could, unsure if he would violently throw her off.

But he didn't. He didn't react at all, seemingly, at least for a few seconds. Then slowly, he reached back and took her hand and held it, tightly. He didn't turn around, didn't even raise his head, but gradually his sobs trickled to a halt, and his breathing regularized, and the empathic pulses mellowed and receded, like a tide drawing back once more from the land.

"I'm sorry," she said. It didn't matter that it was inadequate. It was all that could be said.

And perhaps he sensed that, for he lifted his head slowly, craning it up, up, up, until he was looking up at the enormous pillar in the center of the chamber. "Me too," he said, and only then did he let go of her hand. She closed her eyes, taking several long, deep breaths, and then she stood up, and stepped forward towards her destiny, walking past David, still crouched on the floor of the chamber, who watched her go without speaking.

"Raven!"

Both Raven and David froze, Raven in mid-step, as a desperate and slightly raspy voice that both of them would have known anywhere called out her name. For a second, they turned to one another in mutual shock. It couldn't possibly be...

A primal roar and a crash as a dozen flame demons were hurled aside by an enraged Tyrannosaur.

It was.

The Titans burst into the room like raging whirlwinds, scattering the guards that sought to hold them back and casting them aside like broken playthings. Starfire was there, and Cyborg, their skins, alien and metal, scorched and rent and covered with grievous injury, yet clearly they were unbroken in spirit, for they crashed into the phalanx of flame demons and tore it to pieces, starbolts and sonic blasts stabbing through the air and impaling their enemies like the lances of charging knights. And with them, of all people, was Jinx, spinning like a top as waves of entropy lashed her enemies, sundering limbs and shattering demons left and right.

But white-hot though their ardor burnt, it paled before Beast Boy's.

He was before them all, ever before them, his form shifting from shape to shape so quickly that Raven could not follow the changes with her unaided eyes. From dinosaur to condor to rhinoceros to field mouse to bobcat to stallion to screaming eagle and then finally to something wholly fantastical, a towering monster of fur and fangs and claws honed to a razor's edge. No matter how violently the others threw themselves at their foes, Beast Boy outdid them, seizing the demons in his claws and rending them to pieces, heedless of what they might try to do to him in return, like some viking berserker on an ancient battlefield who had truly gone mad.

It was enough to actually stun Raven. But not so David.

Perhaps it was just his habit, drilled into him by Robin and the others, and having seen the others fighting he was acting on instinct, or perhaps he saw here a brief, fleeting chance to survive, and seized it with both hands. Either way, he was on his feet before Raven even realized what was happening, and though he had no weapon but his trembling hands and his frayed mind, he made what use of them he could. He reached out his arm to the demons, his fingers splayed out, and she saw his eyes glaze over as he called upon Devastator to strike them down. Without a somatic focus such as a baton, to say nothing of his physical condition, the process was slower than it normally would have been, but the demons were otherwise occupied, facing the wrong way, and they paid him no mind at all until Devastator's power burst forth in their ranks like an artillery strike. In an instant, half a dozen demons were blown to pieces, their bodies flying apart like fragmentation bombs. Thirty more were hurled in every which way, overhead, into the walls and ceiling, where they shattered like Christmas ornaments.

But it was all in vain. No matter how many demons the Titans tore to pieces, hundreds, thousands more were already converging on them from every direction, coming out of the very walls and floors, forming barricades of impenetrable strength and advancing in ranks on her friends. Fueled by panic and desperation, the Titans tore through the first line of foes, and the second, but then the demons formed up in a mass and simply buried them, hurling themselves at the Titans in a cresting wave that broke and flowed over them all, pinning them down beneath restraints of molten rock. Others broke off and rushed David, who blew four of them to pieces before the rest seized him in their tendrils of flame and dragged him to the ground, where he lay writhing and adding his screams to those of the others.

The screams jolted Raven back to her senses. Carefully, she marshaled her powers, channeling and sharpening them into a terrible weapon. Turning to one side, she swept her hand across the entire room, and her magic exploded forth like an enormous broom. In one fell swoop, the entire army of demons was brushed aside, smashed against the far wall like broken crockery. In its wake, the Titans and Jinx were left on the ground, slowly stirring in the midst of the suddenly-silent chamber.

Beneath her, around her, she could feel the demons stirring once more, the endless legions prepared to burst forth into the room once more, but they did not move, and she knew why. They had orders to ensure that she fulfilled her destiny, orders they would carry out, should she try to defy it, but failing that, they would let her do things her way. Slade was the one who imparted the personal touch. The demons themselves cared only that she did what she had come here to do.

That much she was thankful for.

The others rose to their feet, mystified, but plainly in no mood to gainsay the reprieve. They moved into the chamber quickly, lest the demons return. David rose as well, unsteadily, his body still dreadfully weakened from the physical trauma he had undergone. He staggered towards them and was caught by Cyborg, whereupon he promptly collapsed, managing only to lift his head weakly to Cyborg and nod when asked if he was all right. The depraved conditions that presently defined "all right" were no longer even remarkable.

Beast Boy was standing before Raven, human once more, and his eyes were wide and spoked by the red streaks of tears. "Rae, come on!" he half-said, half-shouted. "We've gotta go before this prophecy thing starts to happen."

She shook her head sadly. "It's already started," she said. "And there's no stopping what's meant to be."

Beast Boy advanced another pace. "You can't just give up!" he exclaimed. "Just because of some prophecy you heard when you were a kid?"

"Beast Boy is correct," said Starfire. "For your own sake, you must not lose hope in such a way!"

"What if you're wrong?" asked Beast Boy.

"Beast Boy, I..." she didn't know what to say. She never knew what to say about this. "I... know what I know," she finally said, knowing it wouldn't be enough to convince him. If anything would.

"We can't accept that," said Cyborg at his most big-brotherish. "Not after everything we've done. How many times have we all run into something that 'couldn't be changed'? That's what we do, Raven."

"This is different!" cried Raven, the words exploding from her throat without her consent. "It just... it is." Her voice degenerated to a soft plea. "Please... don't... don't make this harder than it has to be."

But even as she said it, she knew that Beast Boy was hellbent on doing just that. "Rae, it doesn't have to be at all!" he said. "I know you, you can take control of all this. You can make it... not happen or something!"

"You don't understand," she said, lowering her head. "I've known my whole life that this day was going to come. I tried to..." she choked up, but pushed on, "I tried to control the dark side of me. I tried to do... good things. To fight evil. And I hoped that it would somehow make up for the horrible thing I'm destined to do."

"But..." Beast Boy stared at her, his emerald face as forlorn as she had ever seen it, grasping desperately at straws. It tied her insides in knots just to see him like this. "But you don't know!" he cried desperately, tears running down his face. "You don't know all this, you just think it's gonna happen!"

"There... were some things I didn't know." She lifted her head again and stared at him, forced herself to do so even though it tore her apart. She spoke slowly, preventing her voice from cracking by force of will alone. "I didn't know that I'd make such wonderful friends. That I'd meet... someone like you." She barely knew what she was saying, but she proceeded regardless. "All I wanted was to make your last day perfect," she said, slowly turning away. "But instead, you spent it worrying about me."

None of the others spoke, not even Beast Boy, who was staring at her like he was witnessing his own death, or those of his family. He said not a word, but instead rushed towards her all at once and threw his arms around her, burying his head on her shoulder, tears running freely, and she felt his tears soaking the fabric of her leotard. She clenched her own eyes shut to try and stop her own tears, but they leached out regardless, and gently she returned his embrace, no longer able to care what anyone else might think.

"Please," he whispered to her as he fought for breath. "Please don't. I can't take... not again... please..."

She wanted to stay here. She wanted to leave with Beast Boy and her friends. She wanted to force the demons to take her, to tear them apart for hours until they finally overwhelmed her. She wanted to hold him until the stars burned out. She wanted this.

But this was not a night where she would get the things she wanted.

Beast Boy held her like a drowning man holding a life preserver, and she held him more gently, carefully, as though he were a fragile thing that might shatter if she held on too tight, a dream that vanished once tampered with. She opened her eyes and looked at the others, at Cyborg, Starfire, David, even Jinx, who stood to one side watching the proceedings with a vacant, hollow stare. She knew the look. Jinx had lost everything tonight, her own makeshift family wiped out in the blink of an eye, and her gaze was that of one who sought to pour death and pain out upon her tormentors until she herself was overcome. It was the gaze of one who had nothing left to live for except death itself.

What Jinx was thinking now, Raven did not know. She did not even know what she was feeling. Empathically, Jinx was dead, her feelings non-existant, an automaton operating on adrenaline and motor reflex. Starfire had had much the same look for weeks after Robin's death. But for this new crisis, she still might have. They all had tasted that kind of despair in the past few weeks, but despite that, she still did not know what Jinx was going through.

But she could feel the demons waiting, and knew that if she did not act, she would find out what it was like. She'd known that all along of course, but Jinx was standing there, a perfect poster child of despair, more real than any threat Slade could offer.

And so Raven counted three seconds off in her head, three last seconds of contentment, willing them to last eternities, and then she did the hardest thing she had ever done in her entire life.

She released Beast Boy, stepped back out of his arms, and with a wave of her hand, she erected a barrier.

Less a shield than a wall of pure force, the barrier stretched from wall to wall, running between her and her friends, cutting them off from the rest of the room as though by divine fiat. Black and vaguely opaque, it sprang into existance with a whispered word of command, severing the others from where she stood, forever. And as the shield firmed up, touching the very ceiling, Raven felt something inside her die. She lingered for one final glance at the frozen, stunned forms of her friends, and then, for the last time, she turned away.

She did not look back. Not when Beast Boy screamed her name and raced up to the shield, pounding his fists against it. Not when she heard the others join in chorus, bringing out their most potent weapons to try and blast a hole through the translucent barrier. Cyborg blasted it with his cannon, Starfire with beams of energy from her eyes, and when those failed, they struck the shield with their fists. Beast Boy took form after form, each larger and stronger than the last, buffalo, grizzly bear, elephant, dinosaur, charging into the barrier with enough force to crush an armored car, yet it accepted his blows without breaking, repelling him. Of the teenagers arrayed on the far side of the barrier, only Jinx and David did not act. Jinx did not act because she no longer knew how to muster the will. David did not because he no longer believed that he could.

She walked towards the spire of rock in the shape of a hand, and at her command, the stones from the ground rose beneath her feet in the form of a staircase. Behind her, the attacks became ever more desperate, as Cyborg fired missiles into the shield to no effect, and Starfire uprooted entire statues and beat against it with them as though wielding an enormous hammer. Beast Boy switched to the form of a gnat, searching the periphery for a way through, anything, but at Raven's command, the shield was air-tight. She did not see Beast Boy desperately grab David by the arm and beg him to do something with his own powers, but she did notice when the stones she was using to ascend the statue began to explode like popcorn kernels. For a moment she teetered and nearly fell, but with a wave of her hand, she levitated above the exploding rocks, and let them fall back to the ground, floating up under her own power until she was hovering a foot above the top of the carven pillar, sitting cross-legged in mid-air as she repeated the damning words of the prophecy itself.

"The gem was born of evil's fire,
The gem shall be his portal,
He comes to claim, he comes to sire,
The end of all things mortal."

One by one, red sigils appeared over her body, running down her arms and legs, circling her stomach and chest and branding the sides of her neck. They glowed with fierce intensity, like burning coals, and she felt the flames pulsing within them, hellfire, searing her very soul, beating against her mind to be let loose.

The chamber began to shake as invisible energies coursed through her. She could feel them, like poisoned rivers flowing into a lake, feel their corrupt energies filling her. The brands on her skin grew brighter and brighter and brighter still, as she fought to remain still. Her breath came in short gasps as the voice of her father rumbled through her head.

"My daughter," he said, "my creation, my blood, at long last, you are mine."

She screamed.

No sound emerged, for her lungs had seized, but she screamed nonetheless as power unimagined burst through her like a raging torrent. Her limbs stiffened as she floated unaided above the pillar, arms and legs splayed out wide, mouth agape, screaming and yet silent, as her father's energies coalesced. She felt as though she might burst into flame at any moment, or fly to pieces like an overwound clockwork toy.

And then she felt something gathering at her midsection.

She looked down, and saw a light, swirled blue and while, dazzling in intensity, shining from her stomach, as though she had been impaled on a shaft of light. She watched in mixed horror and fascination as it grew, encompassing more and more of her stomach until it covered her from her waist to her ribcage. Still further it grew, and as it did, she felt herself coming undone beneath its brilliance, the very fabric of her body disintegrating with such totality that it was almost painless.

Almost.

The light grew inexorably, and she clenched her eyes shut, biting the pain back, focusing all her thoughts on the others. She had no discrete plan, no last-minute thoughts of reprieve. She did not think of them in longing or sorrow, nor in a final attempt to impart power or avert the inevitable. She did not do anything rational.

Instead she prayed.

She had never prayed before in her life, and did not know how. She did not pray to a specific god, though she knew of many, nor recite a liturgy, though she had memorized thousands. No saint, no holy figure, not even Azar herself crossed her mind, nor did she conceive of a God or a faith among the others. She prayed to whoever might listen. She prayed to the universe itself, to the million Gods, or one, or none at all that might inhabit it. She prayed with no expectation of being heard, as the white-hot flare engulfed her chest and shoulders and rose up her neck. No words did she speak discretely, for her lungs had already disintegrated by then. All she did was focus on a simple wish, that somehow, despite the iron bonds of prophecy that ensnared her and the world entire, that her friends might be spared the apocalypse they had unwittingly accepted in the form of her friendship.

And then the radiance swallowed Raven's head, and she thought and prayed no more.

[LadyTevar]

Chapter 32, cont'd further

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And in the end, despite all the protestations of the universe, it ended as it always had to.

Starfire turned away before the end, unable to watch another one of her friends being consumed forever. She took three steps and teetered and fell, all rage spent, the lightness of being that usually held her aloft having deserted her in the end. She fell against Cyborg, who held her up, silent now, watching all that transpired without comment or expression. Eventually he too could stand to watch no longer, and as his head lowered, his eyes fell upon Jinx, who stood to the side, a broken shadow of her former self, and not for the first time but for the last, he felt that perhaps they understood one another.

Of the original Titans, Beast Boy alone watched the entire proceeding.

The sphere of radiant energy floated above the upstretched hand like a thrown ball suspended in time, rotating at impossible speeds, the runes that had coated Raven's body spinning around and around in rings. Beast Boy watched, and next to him stood David, his hands pressed up against the shield for support if nothing else, watching the spectacle with eyes wide. Carefully, David turned to the others, one at a time, but Cyborg said nothing, and Starfire could not reply, and Beast Boy stood frozen like a statue, staring up at Raven's grave.

Slowly, the spinning sphere began to flatten, shrinking down until it formed a flat disk of flames, haloed by swirling red energies. The disk expanded slowly in mid-air, becoming brighter and brighter, filling the room with golden light. David winced and turned away, even Beast Boy was forced to shield his eyes, as the disk of fire slowly began to lower, consuming the tower beneath it in an orgy of pyrotechnics that sent bits of flaming rock hurtling in every direction. But for the shield, they might all have been torn to bits by the flying shrapnel, but it held firm. By then however, the disk had reached the floor of the chamber, and opened dozens of yards wide, a cauldron of flame and boiling sulfur that cast a flickering firelight across the accursed chamber.

But then a shadow fell.

A silhouette of darkness, of a black shadow, began to grow within the churning heart of the maelstrom. It grew by volumes, a dark figure ascendant, surging towards the surface of the fiery portal. Humanoid in the vaguest sense of the term, the silhouette was of a monstrous shape, antlered and hooved like some pagan devil conjured forth by blackest rituals. Yet still it grew, and grew, its features taking definition and shape, until it was no longer black but red, the red color of drying blood. Moments later, it erupted forth.

Red-skinned, white-haired, with four eyes aglow with malice, the monster loomed over them. Iron bands it wore around its arms and chest, and a loincloth of white fabric ringed with skulls human, alien, and bestial. It was huge, the size of a skyscraper, so large that the chamber, enormous as it was, had no prayer of containing it, and the creature burst through it, tearing off the roof, crashing effortlessly through the layers of catacombs and concrete that stood above it, and it hurled wreckage aside like an elephant shaking off insects. Blocks of stone the size of delivery vans fell to earth and shattered, striking the shield, which shook and bent but held out long enough to ward off the falling debris. And then it too collapsed, the agent of its will no longer present to maintain it, and the Titans were left alone.

For a moment, the towering devil stood, beholding its new surroundings, standing like a spire of red stone amidst the city, listening to the faint sounds of screams and panic as all fled before its face, save for the insects at its feet, too small yet to be of importance. And as the Titans stared helplessly at the incarnation of Evil, they saw, far above, a single figure standing on a balcony overlooking the ruins of the ritual chamber. He had not been there a minute ago, any one of them would have sworn to that, but he was there now, and alone amongst the denizens of Jump City, he was not running away.

And the man was dressed in Gold.

His demeanor relaxed, his face exultant, the Man in Gold stood at the balcony and stared up at the devil that had erupted into his midst, and his eyes sparkled as he stared at it, his hands clenched around the railing. Gold were his gloves and his boots and belt and helmet. Gold were his plated gauntlets, his greaves, the shining armor banded around his torso, yet he seemed unconcerned by its weight. In his chest was mounted a sphere of flawless gray metal, and another in the forehead of his helmet, and his face was drawn back in a ruthless smile, his black mustache and short-trimmed beard bristling in anticipation.

David did not know this man, he had never seen him before in his life, but despite that, he knew precisely who he had to be. One glance at Cyborg, at Starfire, at Jinx, told him that much. The name that Terra and Jinx had both given out came back to him all at once, and unbidden, he whispered it to himself.

"Warp..."

As though he had heard David speak, the demon lord lowered its four eyes to the balcony, staring down at Warp, who gazed up at it with no fear, no appearance of hesitation. Instead he raised his arms, like a parishioner venerating a sacred icon, and as the Titans watched, the Man in Gold knelt before Trigon the Terrible, and shouted words up to him that they could not hear for the roaring of the flames that foamed about Trigon's feet. But whatever was said, Trigon's reaction was to turn his head, and lower his gaze yet further, to the figures arrayed at his feet. His enormous eyes bored into each of them in turn, into Jinx, into Cyborg, into Beast Boy, into Starfire...

... and then finally...

Trigon's features twisted into a cruel smirk as he stared down at David, his red eyes like four gigantic headlights, paralyzing his will, shriveling him on the spot. He could not move, could not act, could only watch as Trigon opened his mouth and intoned words that sounded like the rumblings of a distant thundercloud.

"Devastator..." rumbled the devil overhead, and it chuckled darkly. "At last, you have nowhere to hide..."

David could not have responded to Trigon had he been granted a thousand years to do it in. He stared up at the four-eyed Devil in abject fear, paralyzed, unable to think. But as ever, his friends were made of sterner stuff.

"You shall not touch him," commanded Starfire, her voice quivering but not with fear, and suddenly she was in front of David, between him and the Devil, and her eyes and fists were coated with green energy. What she hoped to accomplish was unclear, perhaps she had not thought that far ahead, but she faced him regardless, her voice raising to a tone of challenge. "You shall not have - "

Trigon raised his hand and struck them all down.

A cone of red energy materialized and blasted the area that the Titans stood in with such force that it scoured the stone clean and simply vaporized the debris in its wake. The blast threw all of them off their feet, hurled Cyborg, Beast Boy, Starfire, and Jinx away, swept them to one side of the room like a raging torent. Only one figure did it leave in place, transfixing him to the ground as though impaled, and even as the others shook themselves free of the rubble they had landed amidst, they heard David scream.

He lay in the middle of the cone of energy, his head thrown back, his limbs hanging limp, his face contorted in agony, and he screamed, screamed like a banshee, as whatever malice Trigon had unleashed pounded him into the stones. Cyborg and Starfire scrambled to their feet and raced towards him, but the edges of the energy cone were solid, and repelled them like a magnetic charge. Before their eyes, David was lifted bodily into the air, as though suspended from a guidewire or meat hook, convulsing and coughing up blood, as Trigon spread his fingers ever wider, jerking David's helpless form about like a puppet on strings.

"What possessed you to hide in such a place?" asked Trigon, taking no notice of the others. "What vanity drove you to this planet of weakness and febrility. What did you seek here? What did you think you would find?" He jerked his fingers back and forth, hurling David against the confines of his red prison, each movement producing fresh cries. "Was it absolution?" he asked, punctuating each sentence with a fresh pulse. "Wisdom? Serenity? Did you feel pity for these insects? Did you seek to play God with them? What motivated you to bring yourself so low?"

There was nothing that the others could do but watch as Trigon toyed with David before finally dropping him back onto the ground. He lay there, in a ruined heap, sobbing and convulsing in a pool of his own blood, and the energy beam narrowed and constricted until it ringed him like a spotlight

"It matters not," said Trigon. "Your time is at an end. Now come forth..."

Nothing visibly changed, yet David threw his head back and screamed once more, writhing on the ground like a live wire, arching his back, digging his fingernails into the broken stone until they cracked and bled. Starfire hung her head, each scream sending a sympathetic shudder through her system, as she uselessly beat her hands against the invisible barrier. Beast Boy stood next to her, his hands pressed against the same barrier, his eyes wide and tear-filled, helplessly watching. Beside them stood Cyborg and Jinx, who like the others could do nothing but watch. Neither of them spoke. There was nothing to say. All that Cyborg could do was to pray that the torture might end soon.

It did.

"Come forth," said Trigon, as David screamed helplessly. "There is no evading your destiny." The energy brightened, and David's scream sputtered to a halt, the agony so profound that his diaphragm no longer obeyed his commands. "All you are doing is prolonging the inevitable," said Trigon. "If you will not come forth, I will tear you from your hiding - "

"Leave this one alone."

The words were deafening, booming drowning out even Trigon's voice, shaking loose rock from the walls and echoing up through the open pit that had once been the old library, and like a switch had been thrown, the energy stopped, leaving David laying crumpled on his side. For a few seconds, nothing happened, and then slowly, a fine red mist began to lift off of David's fallen form. His eyes were closed, his breathing erratic, his hands trembling, but the mist emerged from nowhere in particular, fading into being around his body and lifting up slowly, inch by inch, before coalescing above him like a faint red star. He stirred slowly, lifting his head, shaking it weakly, and as he did so, the red mist firmed up beside him into a solid form. The color altered only by degrees as it condensed into a small humanoid form, slight and thin and dressed in red...

By the time David managed to roll over onto his side and look up at what was happening, he was staring at himself.

The simulacrum was perfect in every detail, save that unlike David, it was in peak condition, its uniform crisp and smooth, its face untarnished by dirt or blood. Its demeanor was calm, collected, and vaguely mournful, and it looked down at David as he slowly sat up and stared back at it in wide-eyed wonder. The clone looked from him to the others, one after the next, taking its time, before returning to David, its eyes downcast, sorrowful. And finally, without turning back around, it spoke to Trigon in David's own voice.

"Leave this one alone, Trigon."

Above and behind the clone, Trigon laughed, deep and throaty. "'This one' is not in question," he said.

"As ever," said the clone, and it shook its head sadly. "They're never in question, are they? All that is in question is you."

"And you."

The clone's features set, its jaw locking, its fists clenching into balls. "Is it never enough with you?" it asked, before turned around to face Trigon directly. "Three hundred trillion dead?" he asked. "After all this, are you still unsated? What will the slaughter of this world afford you that the previous fifty thousand did not?"

"You would presume to judge me?" asked Trigon. He did not sound offended. Rather he sounded amused.

"Judge you?" asked the clone. "I can barely comprehend you. Death herself scarcely equals your score, yet here you stand."

"As do you," said Trigon. "Or have you forgotten the others."

"What of them?"

"You spoke of Death," said the Devil. "Where is Desolator? Where are Deceiver and Defiler? Where are your compatriots, weapon?"

The figure narrowed its gaze. "They have left," it said.

"But not you" replied Trigon. "Not you... you remained. You endured. Despite proving yourself incapable of fulfilling the role for which you were creating, you lingered. You subjected yourself to gross indignities. Was it out of fear? Guilt?"

"You have no understanding of these things." snapped the clone.

"Do not presume to define the limits of my understanding," said Trigon evenly. The clone fell silent as David slowly stood up, unsteadily, barely able to do that much, though Cyborg couldn't tell if it was because of his injuries or because his mind had simply frozen at the scene before him.

"The Great Devastator," said Trigon, taking no notice of David. "The Lord of Destruction. And where do I find you?" The four-eyed devil laughed before extending his hand down at David himself. "Bound to the will of a pubescent insect from a primitive backworld, who employs you like a primate would a stick."

"Your opinion on my selection," said the clone acidly, "was not solicited."

Trigon's mouth curled upwards at the corners. "Neither was his."

The clone said nothing, and for a moment, neither did Trigon. David by now had managed to steady himself on his feet, and, as Cyborg watched, he gingerly approached his identical counterpart. Shaking, stumbling, his eyes wide, his mouth slightly agape, he reached a trembling hand out to the other figure, as though unsure if he was real, and moved to touch his sleeve. But his hand passed through the clone's arm without encountering the slightest resistance, as though he was touching nothing more than a hologram, and only then did the other turn his head, and meet David's gaze.

"Did you ask him?" asked Trigon, as the clone watched David. "Did you ask any of them, prior to making your selection? Did you give them a chance to voice their opinions on being made into hosts for forces beyond their comprehension? Did you pause at the threshold and ask permission before helping yourself to their deepest secrets and thoughts?" With every question, the clone's eyes lowered slightly, almost imperceptibly, until he was staring at David no longer, but through him, wearing the empty gaze of one whose accuser was speaking aloud his own inner thoughts. "Or did you enter like a thief in the night, like the parasite you are, and feed off their lives until you had drained them dry and led them to their ends?"

"I will not be lectured by you on morality." said the clone.

Trigon exploded. "You will do as you are told!" he thundered. "You have proven yourself fit for nothing else!"

The clone said nothing, but did lift its head once again. This time it did not look away from David, though Cyborg could read nothing in its expression, and from the looks of it, David was too far gone to try. It said nothing to him directly, did not approach or make a gesture, yet its next words, directed though they were at Trigon, were spoken as it stared right into David's eyes.

"I chose this one for a reason," it said. "Whatever else, I will not repent of that."

Trigon's features twisted as his eyes began to glow bright red. "Then let that be his epitaph."

All four glowing eyes discharged beams of red energies that fused into a single column red energy that swept across the chamber floor. David had enough time to cry out and bring his arms up in a last, useless defense before it broke over him. His cry was silenced instantly, as the wave front hid him from all view, but only for a second or so. Trigon's eyes darkened once more, and the energy wave ceased, and the smoke cleared to reveal David standing where he had been before, his arms still crossed above his head, eyes clenched shut, half-turned away.

It took Cyborg a second to realize what had happened.

He had expected Trigon to kill them all, frankly. Cyborg was no fool. With Raven gone, and Robin, and nothing they had even capable of stopping Trigon's minions, there was no chance of halting Trigon himself. But that didn't lessen the shock. One second, David was crying out in fear. The next...

The invisible barrier that held the other Titans back collapsed all of a sudden, and Starfire surged forward towards David. The light was bad from where she stood, and it took her three steps before it dawned on her what had occurred. She slowed to a walk, took the last few steps in a sort of daze, and stopped next to David. Weakly, she lifted her own hand, and laid it on David's shoulder, closing her eyes and lowering her head as she did so.

The lifeless stone beneath her fingers did not react.

Beside them all, the image of David remained for a few more seconds, eyes closed, head lowered. It did not stir at Starfire's approach, nor at Cyborg's, nor Beast Boy's, as all three of them gathered around the frozen statue. Starfire fell against Cyborg, as sobs forced their way out of her throat. Beast Boy clutched the back of his head with both hands and fell to his knees, and Cyborg found his own human eye wet with the same tears that the others were crying. For Raven, for David, for Robin, for themselves. As he stood there next to the petrified body of yet another one of his friends, he saw the clone raise its head, and in the brief instant that their eyes met, he could have sworn he saw a glint in its eye as well.

"I'm sorry," it said.

Trigon simply raised his hand.

A beam of red energy, sharper this time, and more narrowly defined, radiated down onto the image of David, which flickered like a television screen for a moment, before suddenly exploding into a red mist. Unlike before, the mist twisted and whirled like a boiling fluid, writhing in mid-air as it dispersed and condensed rapidly. But before long it was drawn upwards, ever upwards, ascending high into the night until its soft red glow merged with Trigon's own. And as it did so, Cyborg put one arm gently around Starfire, laid his other hand on BB's shoulder, and closed his eyes.

Far above, Trigon laughed, a deep, booming laugh that built and built like an oncoming avalanche. He raised his arms to the smoke-black sky, to the invisible stars and shrouded moon, and about him, a red whirlwind burst into being. He let it rise, swirling and dancing about him, towering into the skies like a tornado of fire, sweeping over everything nearby, over Cyborg and Jinx, Starfire and Beast Boy, over Warp, who raised his own hands to the sky in mimicry of Trigon, and over the lifeless statue that had once been David. Flaring like a beacon, the swirling energies covered Trigon himself, obscuring all vision, leaving only the uproarious, mocking laughter of the Lord of all Evil.

"The Earth is mine," roared Trigon, and then the blood-dimmed tide was loosed, and everything went red.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jump City died in a tenth of a second.

The wave front radiated out from Trigon, a sheer, conical wall of red energy that stretched from deep below the ground to the highest reaches of the upper atmosphere. It passed over and through everything in its path, through houses of wood or brick, skyscrapers of steel and glass, moving like an elementary particle, penetrating all matter. Radiating out from its central point at fifty thousand miles per hour, it covered the entire city in the blink of an eye and in its wake left nothing but death. Buildings warped into ruins, as though gutted by fire and earthquake. Plants and animals withered and disintegrated, blown away like dust. Jump City bay, and the ocean beyond it, was instantly converted to a lake of searing magma, washing the shores of a barren wasteland. And every person in the city, every soldier, every civilian, every man, woman, and child, every single one was instantly turned to stone, frozen as a statue in perpetual monument to the last moments of their lives.

Having slain Jump City, the wave front erupted outwards, undiminished, flowing over hill and mountain, desert and forest, ending all life in its wake. Within twelve seconds, it had annihilated everything from San Diego to Salinas, blotting thirty million people out of existence as though by an act of God. Ten more seconds, and the rest of California followed, as the wave washed outwards, turning fertile land to ashen desert, teeming ocean to burning lava, and thriving city to sterile ruin. No act of war, no nuclear holocaust, no fevered imaginings of a disaster-minded pulp author, nothing could compare with this apocalypse. It spared nothing in its path, not the survivalist in his bunker, not the prisoner in his cell, not the child in his crib or his mother's arms, not those hiding in the deepest depths of the earth, or soaring high above in airplanes or orbit. It plumbed the depths of the earth as it passed, and scraped the very skies. It was undiscriminating, inexorable, total.

In Washington DC, the President of the United States had been speaking with his advisers, trying to make the terrible decision of whether or not to strike at the "disturbance" in Jump City with a nuclear weapon. His generals and advisers argued forcibly for one course of action after another. To strike, or to hold back, and see if the military could restore order by conventional means, to bargain with the agent of this cataclysm, or to call upon the Justice League, already hurrying back from their mission off-world, to deal with the threat. The first warning that the President received that all his options had been reduced to irrelevancies was when the video link to the Secretary of Defense cut out. The Secretary had been speaking from the fortified bunker at Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado, when the screen flashed red and washed out to static. Technicians struggled with the video link, tried to place calls back to NORAD, to Peterson Air Force Base, to the State Capitol in downtown Denver. They had no way of knowing that the entirety of Colorado had just been wiped clean of all life, and that the Secretary of Defense was dead.

The President did not know what was happening, but on impulse perhaps or some other vague sense of dread, he rose without speaking and left the situation room, walking up the stairs and down the colonnades of the White House, arriving in the residency of the venerable building some two minutes after leaving his advisers behind. There he ascended the steps that led to his personal chambers, and opened the door to find his wife and children there waiting for him. The President had time to smile upon seeing them, had time to take two steps into the room as his youngest child ran towards her father. He had time enough to open his arms to receive her, and to notice a faint red glow on the western horizon. And then the wave front swept over him and the rest of the city, and he saw and heard no more.

The countries on the far side of the world had more warning. Satellites and early warning radars, designed to alert their governments to the outbreak of nuclear war, gave notice instead of an entirely different apocalypse. The leaders of Europe and Asia watched in real time as the wave-front passed over the oceans, converting them to magma in its wake, and reducing islands and continents alike to burnt cinders. Some ordered massive strikes against the supposed originators of this cataclysm. Some spoke to their people, informing them of their impending doom. Some ran in panic for fortified bunkers or aircraft. Some turned to alcohol. Some prayed.

None survived.

The wave front reached Britain and Japan at the same time and killed every living thing on both in less than thirty seconds. Moments later, it was China's turn, and Europe's. Billions died in minutes, left to sit silent and forgotten in whatever position their last instants had afforded them. In Beijing, a man fell from a window and died before he struck the ground. In Paris, a policeman was frozen forever in the act of striking a rioter with his truncheon. In Singapore, a newborn infant was killed along with its mother as it drew its first and only breath on the Earth, and with each passing second, the toll of slaughter grew. The Pope was in mid-prayer when Rome fell, perishing along with a crowd of the faithful in St. Peter's Square. A minute later, and Jerusalem followed, and Mecca, and Varanasi, extinguishing prayers to dozens of gods in hundreds of languages. Unchecked, the wave front rolled on, through India and Russia, Africa and the Middle East, racing around the entire planet towards its inevitable end.

The last men left alive on Earth were the crew of the Aircraft Carrier Viraat, flagship of the Indian Navy, on maneuvers fifteen hundred miles southeast of Madagascar. At General Quarters since the first alerts from Jump City hours before, the crew spent their last minutes in confusion and uncertainty, as one by one, their sources of information on what was happening to their world vanished without a trace. Both the government in Delhi, and the Indian naval command in Mumbai went silent at the same time, and further radio calls to them or other stations went unanswered. Satellite communication was down, and in the end, they could not even raise any other ship on the waters.

The only warning the crew of the Viraat had was the red glow that appeared on the horizon from every side, prompting sailors to crowd the flat deck of the warship, and speak to one another in hushed tones. As it brightened and grew in size and visibility, the Captain of the carrier stepped out from the bridge onto a small balcony from whence he was wont to watch firsthand the workings of his ship. As he beheld what he knew to be his impending doom, his mind wandered back to a passage of the Baghavad Gita, the Hindu scriptures he had studied as a child.

"If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst into the sky,
That would be like the splendor of the Mighty One.

I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds."

As the fire on the horizon rose to cover the sky, and the waters began to boil around them, the Captain raised his hands to the sky. He had just begun to take a breath so as to call upon the name of God when the wave front swept over his ship from all directions at once, and all ended in darkness.

And on the other side of the world, surveying the ruins of what had once been Jump City, Trigon the Terrible permitted himself a cruel grin as he felt the last, frightened remnants of humanity flicker and die. He leaned back, resting himself against the skewed and burning tower that had once been his daughter's home, and gazed at the fires burning fiercely over his new realm, and saw that it was good.

"Sic Semper Vitae," whispered the Devil, and he settled back and watched the world burn.

[LadyTevar]

Chapter 33: Prisoners of Time

"When you are at the end of your rope, tie a knot in it, and hang on."

- Franklin D. Roosevelt

*-------------------------------------------------------------------*

The earth was without form, and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep.

The sterile ruins of the city once called Jump had nothing to distinguish them from the rest of the burnt, smoke-swaddled planet they sat upon. Shrouded in fire, fumes, and ash, its buildings and skyscrapers seemed to huddle together under the magenta skies, like the weary survivors of some disaster. Dotted amongst the buildings, statues of men, women, and children stood, lay, or sat in every possible position, most of them wearing expressions of pain or terror. The hot, dry winds from the sea of fire to the west listlessly stirred the dust about the figures as they watched silently over the lifeless remnants of their cursed city.

Such was the setting when Beast Boy awoke.

He did not know how long he had been awake for, nor even that he was awake. He did not remember waking up, nor passing out. The last thing he recalled was being in the ruins of the Library as Trigon's raging powers swept over him. It might have been ten minutes before he awoke again. It might have been ten years.

He was laying on his back on hard ground, asphalt or concrete or some other artificial material, and the rocks digging into his back hurt, and let him know that he was alive. For an eternity, for a glacial epoch, that was the limit of his understanding. All that had transpired, all the bloodshed and fighting, the tears and death and defeat piled on crushing defeat, such things were distant memories without the power to harm, recollections without meaning filed away in a book somewhere and forgotten. For an age he lay alone and motionless on the streets of the dead city, still like the petrified corpses around him, and thought not, and saw not, and felt not, and it wasn't until the smell struck him that he began to wake up.

Beast Boy's olfactory senses were those of a bloodhound, and what anyone else might have detected as a weak tinge in the air, hit him like a chemical weapon had been thrown into his face. A strong, powerful stench, like rotten eggs, galvanized his fragmented mind and cast him back into reality. He coughed, doubling over on the ground, wretched as his throat tried to expel the non-existent contents of his stomach. Gasping for air, and finding only noxious fumes, he opened his eyes involuntarily and saw animate darkness.

A shield, an opaque, black energy shield, was shrouding him like a tent, a hemisphere of dark force that he recognized instantly, and the shock of recognition was enough to stop his lungs from spasming. Even as he watched, the shield quivered in the wind, unraveling at its edges to admit the fetid air of the burning, dead city outside. In a matter of seconds it boiled away into nothingness, leaving Beast Boy curled in the middle of the street, all alone in the ethereal firelight.

He stirred then slowly, sitting up and coughing as his nose and lungs adjusted the sulfurous haze that pervaded the area. It hurt to breathe, stung his face like pepper spray, but plainly it wasn't actually poisonous, and before too long, he had recovered enough of an equilibrium to stand up, one gloved hand automatically reaching to the back of his head as he surveyed his surroundings.

"... dude..."

Around him stood the city, dark buildings crowded overhead and around, their windows cracked and drifts of ash piled in their corners and doorways. A flattened, nuclear wasteland would have been bad enough, this was a scene of abandonment and despair, as though Jump had been deserted by her inhabitants and leaders, and left desolate for a thousand years. He felt like he was standing in a lost city, on another planet, transported into an episode of the Twilight Zone or one of Control Freak's lunatic fantasies, anywhere but home.

But that wasn't the worst part.

The bodies were everywhere, not strewn about dead, but frozen; stone statues of men, women, children, scattered all over the street and buckled into warped and broken cars. Lifelike expressions of exquisite detail were frozen onto their features, fear, anguish, panic, their arms petrified in the act of shielding themselves or their loved ones. Worse, almost, than the street-turned-cemetery before him was the smell, or rather the lack thereof. Sulfur there was in abundance, and the pungent odor of volcanic minerals, yet beneath it there was nothing. No trace of any living smells, not of birds or animals, not of flowers, trees, cut grass, not of the millions of people who had called this place home. What to the others might have been un-noticeable was to Beast Boy as stark as the difference between thunder and silence. He could smell no living things, nor even dead ones. Save for himself, the city was as empty as the surface of the moon.

He felt... he felt drained. Empty. His world burnt, his friends all dead... these were things he could not process or react to. He fell to his knees in the street, head bowed, hands limp at his sides, and shut his eyes against the horror without. It didn't help. All he could see was horror within. He saw David, helpless, stripped of his powers, screaming as he was converted to stone like the rest of the city. He saw Raven encased in a glowing sphere of energy that swelled and grew to swallow her whole. He felt the steel grip of Cyborg's hand on his shoulder until a force unfathomable finally tore it away. He heard the rustling of wings as...

... wait.

His ears pricked, he raised his head and half-turned, back to where a dozen burnt-out cars were stacked like cordwood up against a shattered storefront. The firelight played tricks with his eyes, but he had heard something, he was certain of it, something other than the roar of flames and the whistling of winds. Carefully he took a step towards the stacked wrecks, and was rewarded with movement.

A bird, a small bird, pitch black but for red eyes like smoldering coals, fluttered up from behind the cars, landing atop them and freezing as still as a statue. It made no sound, gave no evidence for what it was doing there, but as far as Beast Boy could tell, it was the only living thing left on the planet besides himself. And his mind was so addled by the revelation that it took him a good ten seconds before he realized what kind of bird it was.

"R... Raven?"

As if by cue, the bird leaped into the air in a flurry of wings, spinning about and flying away . Beast Boy stood dumbstruck for a brief moment, then ran after it. "Wait!" he called, but the bird took no notice, flying up and around the corner and vanishing behind a department store.

Leaping into the air, Beast Boy took the form of a hawk and sped after it, rounding the corner and lancing down the street like a fired arrow, flaying at the desiccated air with his wings. ahead the raven flitted and danced, seemingly dawdling, yet effortlessly matching and exceeding his speed. He shifted forms again and again to faster and faster birds, teal, merganser, frigatebird, swift, yet no matter what form he took, or how fast he flew, still the black bird ahead of him seemed to pace him with ease, floating away like a feather borne on the wind, perpetually out of reach and receding into the distance.

Ahead loomed a spire, once a luxury hotel, now charred black and bent in ruin. The revolving restaurant at its pinnacle hung like an ornament on a dying Christmas tree, twisted and gutted by fire. With a shock, Beast Boy realized that he had been here before, in this place, in this form. Weeks ago it had been, yet it seemed like years, when Slade had first returned and chased Raven to this tower, before letting her fall. He had caught her then, in the nick of time, but no matter how hard he pumped his wings, lightning adamantly refused to strike twice. Clawing for altitude, he could only watch as the bird flew up and over the lip of the rooftop, vanishing from view.

Seconds later, Beast Boy burst onto the roof himself, but it was too late.

The restaurant's roof had been peeled back like a can of sardines, jagged fragments of still-smoking metal twisted into the sky like an abstract sculpture. The restaurant itself was a blackened ash heap, soot layered a foot deep around the sprawling, clumped statuary that had once been patrons, waiters, or chefs. Despite the fact that he had seen the bird fly out of sight over the lip of this roof, there was no sign to be seen of it, nor of anything else living. He alighted on the rooftop, resumed his human form, sniffed, listened, searched desperately with his eyes, but there was no sign of any other living thing, just ashes, death, and the sundered remnants of a once-living city.

Bent though it was, the hotel was still one of the tallest structures in Jump, and from up here, on a good day, the entire city could be seen. This was not a good day in so many ways, and the fires and smoke conspired to shroud much of Jump, yet much of it could still be seen. The skyscrapers of the burnt city loomed upwards like the fingers of damned souls stretching for the heavens, dark and misshapen, twisted on their foundations, some with cruel rents torn in them from which black smoke issued. To the north, Jump City Bay burned, now a lake of radiant fire, and through the mists could be made out the form of Titans Tower itself, canted to one side and half-melted to slag, yet still distinctive enough to catch the eye. A vast, dark shape reclined upon it, as though the Tower were a crucifix to which was affixed some dark messiah. As Beast Boy watched, the shape undulated and shimmered in a wholly alien fashion, and he tore his eyes away from it, and collapsed onto the roof on his hands and knees.

He didn't know what to do.

He wasn't prepared at this juncture to consider the question of why he was still alive, and failing that, he didn't know what to do at all, nor even what things he might consider doing, the last living thing on this burnt cinder of a planet, save for the architect of its demise. Everywhere he looked, he saw death, and even when he shut his eyes the smell and sound and presence of death invaded his consciousness. Half-remembered stories from science fiction comic books and magazines flooded back to his memory, the ones from the anthologies that Raven read and that he occasionally "borrowed" from her, ones that ended as often as not with the hero at the mercy of some god-like alien or insane defense computer that tortured them for all time by forcing them to view the destruction of the world forever. Idly, he wondered if that was to be his fate, if Trigon or someone else had specifically picked him alone to be tormented through the ages by witnessing the handiwork of his ascension. It was a thought that should have scared him to death, except that thinking about Raven's books reminded him that Raven, like the others, was dead, and that thought robbed him of his capacity to feel anything. He knelt on the side of the roof, oblivious to everything, and simply sat.

He might have sat there forever, save that right then, without the giving the slightest sign of prior instability, the remains of the roof of the damaged restaurant suddenly caved in.

Before he knew what was happening, he was falling, and before he realized that he was falling, he had landed, flat on his back, inside the restaurant, shrouded in a cloud of dust and ash. Coughing, he tried to get back to his feet, but debris from the collapsing roof landed upon him, broken beams and piles of loose plaster that knocked him back onto the ground. Half-consciously, he tried to shift into a smaller form, an insect perhaps or a rodent, but his mind was sluggish, and before he could even begin to muster the wherewithal to do so, the entire roof came loose from its moorings and collapsed inwards on top of him.

But it didn't hit.

He closed his eyes reflexively, and heard the screech of metal on metal, but nothing landed on him, and when he opened his eyes again, he saw the collapsed roof suspended two feet above his face. There was the sound of mechanical servos, and then suddenly the entire roof, girders, tiles and all, was hurled up and out of the restaurant, flying off into the distance. And before Beast Boy could even begin to register what had happened, a metal arm the size of a cannon grabbed him by the arm and pulled him free of the debris he had landed amidst. The next thing Beast Boy knew, he was looking up at a familiar face, covered in soot, ash, and God-knew what else, and listening to a voice he had been absolutely certain a moment ago that he would never hear again.

"Gotcha, grass-stain."

It was as though a faerie godmother had suddenly waved a magic wand over his head and commanded him to feel better. Not in ten thousand years had he considered the possibility that anyone besides himself had survived, and the relief was so stark that for what was probably the first time ever, Beast Boy was struck dumb. It didn't last. After a few seconds of silence, his mouth started working on its own accord.

"Dude!" he exclaimed, his voice flabbergasted. "You're... I mean are you..."

"I'm all right, man," said Cyborg, giving him a weary grin and laying a heavy, metal hand on his head. "Goddamn, am I glad to see you."

Beast Boy had no chance to answer before someone practically crushed him to death from behind, squeezing him so hard that he subconsciously shifted into the gelatinous form of an octopus to avoid organ damage. He knew who it was without looking, and despite the crush, his guts loosened a notch at the realization, even before he heard Starfire's voice. "Beast Boy," she said, as though speaking his name made him real, "you are unharmed."

He couldn't respond, not without lungs, and by the time she released him, and he had resumed his normal form, Cyborg had cleared out a space in the middle of the restaurant for them to sit down, awkwardly moving several of the petrified patrons aside.

"I saw something," said Beast Boy as Cyborg settled himself down on the floor. "Out in the city. I thought it was..." he let the sentence trail off, but Cyborg and Starfire glanced at one another, understanding wordlessly.

"I believe I saw it as well," said Starfire. "It was... a black bird of some type."

"It led all of us here," said Cyborg quietly.

"But, how is this possible?" said Starfire, kneeling down next to Cyborg and Beast Boy, the three of them forming a rough circle in the dim light. "The others were... were destroyed, were they not?" she asked, looking from face to soot-streaked face. "How is it that we survived?"

"It was Raven," said Beast Boy. "It had to have been. She must have... saved us somehow."

Cyborg nodded softly, his head hanging low, as though oppressed by a great weight. "Back at the Tower," he said "when she knocked us all out... she just put me to sleep. She didn't shut down my mechanical systems. My audio recorders picked this up."

There was a soft burst of static, and then a playback, grainy and muffled though it was, of a voice that could only be Raven's. Beast Boy winced and shuddered, and Starfire put a comforting arm around his shoulders as the playback spoke only three words.

"Goodbye," said Raven. "Be safe."

Cyborg shut off the recording. "She did something," he said. "Shielded us from her father somehow." He sighed, long and slow, his head shaking back and forth in a ponderous sway. "Most of us, at least."

The three of them sat in silence for a time, before Beast Boy ventured to break it. "What..." he asked. "What do we do now?"

"There's nothin' to do," answered Cyborg, bitterly, his hands clenching into metal balls, as though he were preparing to punch through a wall. "The whole damn world's toast. There's nothing left."

Starfire lowered her head. "Robin... would not wish for us to give up," she said. "He would..."

"Robin's dead," said Cyborg, silencing Starfire in a heartbeat. "Raven's dead. David's dead, everybody's dead." He looked at Starfire and shook his head, as though in disbelief. "What the hell can we do now? Nothing we tried to do made a goddamn bit of difference. Everybody died anyway."

"I will not believe that our efforts have been wholly in vain," said Starfire, voice quivering like a steel razor. "So long as we are alive, we can continue to fight against Trigon."

With visible difficulty, Cyborg managed to retain his equilibrium. "Everybody I dragged into this is dead Star. Jinx, David, the rest of the Hive, even JCPD. And what's it gotten us? What'd it get them?"

Starfire opened her mouth to respond, then plainly thought better of it, and paused for several seconds before answering. "You are our leader now, Cyborg," she said, "what would you have us do?"

"I don't know, Star!" snapped Cyborg, and immediately he grimaced and smashed his hand into the ground he was sitting on, hard enough to gouge a divot. "I don't know what the hell to do now. I didn't know what to do before, I just made up like I thought..." He did not say what it was that he had thought, but Starfire seemed to understand.

"We have no choice but to fight on," said Starfire. "Even if we fled this planet now, Trigon would surely follow us."

"We should never have fought in the first place," said Cyborg, shaking his head. "I should have listened to Raven. I should have listened to my own common sense. But no, I had to get all obsessed with being the big man who was gonna stop it all from happenin'. I let this whole goddamn thing happen because I was too stupid to - "

Beast Boy stood up.

Instantly Cyborg and Starfire fell silent, their argument momentarily forgotten as they watched him get up, and take a few steps away, walking over to the shattered window that overlooked the rest of Jump City. He could feel the stares of the others on his back, as though they expected him to deliver some sort of motivational speech or something, but he had no such intent or capacity. He didn't know what to do, nor what to say, nor did he have the heart to decide on such a thing, not presently.

He stood at the window for a minute or so, quietly, watching the burning city below him, and said nothing, lost in thought. It wasn't until Cyborg gently brought him back to reality that he even gave word to what he was thinking.

"... BB?" asked Cyborg, his voice calm once more, and concerned. Beast Boy closed his eyes but did not turn around.

"I just can't believe they're dead."

Starfire and Cyborg glanced wordlessly at one another. "Look," said Cyborg, "man..."

"I know we all saw them die," said Beast Boy, turning back. "All of them. But... it just doesn't... it doesn't feel like they're gone, you know? Especially..."

He trailed off, but the others did not need to ask who he had been about to name.

Slowly, Cyborg stood up, and walked over towards Beast Boy. "BB," he said. "I... I know this is hard, but she's... Raven's gone man. They're all gone. We gotta..." his throat caught and he paused to ensure that he would remain in control. "We gotta move on."

Beast Boy turned back to the window, his eyes downcast. "I know," he said. "It... I can't explain it dude, it just... it feels like Raven's still... here. Somehow."

Cyborg might have responded with any number of things. He might have tried to be consoling or hard-headed and realistic. He might have even agreed with Beast Boy. But he did not get to say any of the things he might have said, for no sooner had Beast Boy postulated this, than a voice that every one of the Titans prayed daily that they would never hear again, answered him.

"I can only speculate," came the voice, low and sinister, yet instantly recognizable to all three of the Titans, "but that might be because she is."

All three Titans froze for a second or so, and then turned to the source of the comment, some quickly, some slowly. Only once all three of them were on their feet, facing him, did the speaker slowly step into the light from the secluded shadows he had occupied previously.

"Unfortunately," said Slade as he stepped into the light, "at this point, Raven no longer matters in the slightest..."

Starfire shot Slade before Cyborg had a chance to decide whether to do the same.

A starbolt, white-hot and fueled by matchless Tamaranean fury, slammed into the bridge of Slade's nose, and felled him like a tree before a lumberjack an instant before Beast Boy smashed into him horn-first in the form of a rhinoceros, driving Slade into, and nearly through the wall. Cyborg's arm shifted into a cannon, and he waited for Slade to free himself from Beast Boy's clutches so as to nail him with the sonic beam, but Slade did no such thing, sustaining blow after blow as Beast Boy and Starfire tore into him. Before long, the wall behind Slade gave way entirely, spilling the supervillain backwards into what had once been the restaurant's kitchen. Even then, Beast Boy was not finished, hurling Slade into the air with his horn like a rag doll before spinning around, shifting seamlessly into a horse, and firing a double-barrelled kick from his hind legs into Slade, still in mid-air. Slade was hurled through several tables and oven racks before fetching up on the opposite wall against a dishwasher, which itself was blown to pieces when Starfire hurled another starbolt to meet him as he slid down to the floor.

Slade landed on the ground in a smoldering heap, but Cyborg grabbed Starfire's arm before she could hurtle after him to deliver yet more punishment. Beast Boy resumed human form as Cyborg stepped through the hole in the wall, flanked by his two teammates, his cannon locked on Slade's ravaged form. Slade lifted his head, and slowly got to his feet, but no flames did he conjure, no attempts did he make to counterattack. He stood up carefully, sending cascades of debris rolling off his blemishless surface, and faced the three Titans with equanimity.

Starfire moved to meet him with further punishment, but Cyborg tightened his hold on her shoulder, and she desisted, for the moment, in gainsaying his signal. "What's the matter, Slade?" asked Cyborg, perceiving something the matter but unable to tell what. "Givin' up already?"

Slade laughed bitterly as he brushed the ash and rubbed off of his shoulders and arms. "So sorry to disappoint," he said, "but I'm not here to fight."

"Then what the hell are you here for?" asked Cyborg.

"Among other things," said Slade, "to have a question answered."

"We're not interested in your questions," spat Beast Boy bitterly at Slade. "We've got work to do."

"Yes, of course," responded Slade, his voice smooth and collected. "I forgot, you've a planet to rescue from the flames, a devil to destroy, an army of demons to defeat, and several billion people to bring back from the dead, all without the first idea of how to go about doing it. Have I missed anything?"

The mockery was hardly subtle, and Cyborg saw Beast Boy's face flush the darker shade of green he always went whenever he was lividly angry. He did not however get the chance to take his aggression out, for however angry he was, Starfire was moreso.

"Murderer!" she shouted, and she tore free of Cyborg's grasp, striding purposefully towards Slade with her fists sheathed in green energy. "Vile betrayer! You dare dishonor our friends with your trickery and lies? Be silent or I will rend you apart!"

Slade stared at the enraged Tamaranean with equanimity. "You are welcome to try," he said. "And to fail, as you have failed at everything. I cannot die, no matter how much you wish it. Trigon has seen to that."

"You saw to it," retorted Starfire. "You planned for this all along! This was your handiwork!"

To Cyborg's surprise, rather than laugh, or attack, or even respond to Starfire's accusation with his usual dismissive sarcasm, Slade seemed to stiffen. His body went rigid, just slightly, and a hesitation visible even through his featureless mask came over him. When he responded, his voice was as calm and detached as ever, yet just slightly lower in tone, more serious than it had been.

"Think what you like of me," said Slade, "but what Trigon did, even I would not wish on this world."

Starfire stopped before Slade, plainly unmollified, staring daggers up at the larger criminal. Cyborg advanced until he was next to her, and laid a hand on her shoulder, even as Beast Boy moved around them all to the side.

"It's a little late for 'I'm sorry'," said Cyborg.

"You mistake me, Cyborg," replied Slade, not taking his eye off Starfire. "I am not expressing regret. I am here because it suits me to be and for no other reason."

"Then talk," said Beast Boy, crossing his arms. "You said Raven was still alive. What did you mean?"

"No," said Slade, reciprocating the gesture. "I will tell you nothing, until you answer a question of mine."

"And what's that?" asked Cyborg.

"Is Robin actually dead?"

The three Titans blinked, glancing at one another in puzzlement at the question. "Are you serious?" asked Cyborg. "Did you miss the funeral?"

"A funeral means nothing," said Slade, with absolute conviction. "Robin once pretended to be a criminal at my behest for weeks so as to protect the rest of you, and heroes have a pronounced tendancy to treat death as a temporary state of affairs, as I'm sure all of you have noticed. Raven appears to be dead, and is not fully so. The same could easily be true of Robin, now answer my question."

Neither Starfire nor Beast Boy could answer that coherently, but Cyborg could and did. "He's dead," he said, his voice a low whisper. "Warp shot him through the heart with a railgun. He died in Star's arms." At Cyborg's side, Starfire shuddered visibly and lowered her head, and Cyborg squeezed her shoulder tightly. "Does that answer your damn question?"

To Cyborg's surprise however, to all of their surprises, Slade reacted to the news by taking a long, deep breath, and letting it out equally slowly. With infinite care, he stepped over to a low counter and sat down upon it, his eye narrowed, saying nothing.

"You helped to kill Robin," said Starfire, her eyes wet with tears. "Do you now expect us to believe that you wish he was not dead?"

"This may sound rather strange to you," said Slade, "but yes, I would prefer that, at this stage. It likely would not make a difference, but at least there would be a... theoretical possibility."

"A possibility of what?" asked Cyborg.

"Of stopping Trigon, fool," said Slade, lathering his words with sarcasm, though still refusing to raise his voice a single decibel. "What precisely did you think we were discussing? The weather?"

"You helped Trigon!" said Cyborg. "Every step of the goddamn - "

"Wait," said Beast Boy, and Cyborg and Slade both fell silent as he approached. "We answered your question. You said before that Raven was still alive. Is that true?"

"In a manner of speaking," said Slade, "yes."

"But - " said Starfire, "but we saw Raven become the portal. She was destroyed!"

Slade nodded. "Raven has fulfilled the prophecy of her birth," he said. "That part of her existence is complete. But another part still remains," he shook his head and groaned softly. "For the moment."

That was all Beast Boy needed to hear. "Then we've... we've gotta go get her!" he exclaimed. "We've gotta bring her back, somehow!"

"You can't," said Slade simply.

"Why not?" demanded Beast Boy.

"Because Warp has made certain that you cannot," said Slade. "He knew that you would try to recover Raven in some way, and took steps to ensure that you would fail; just as he knew that you would try to fight Trigon's army off in a last stand at your Tower; just as he knew how you would respond to my provocations at the library and the bottling plant; just as he knew that you would be coming back from your confrontation with Brother Blood through Yellowstone Park right when you were; just as he has known, in advance, every single thing you have done and will do."

The vehemence with which Slade insisted on this point took all three Titans aback. "How the hell would he know what we're gonna do?" asked Cyborg

"Because," said Slade, "it's exactly what you did the last time this happened."

Dead silence followed this remark as the Titans blinked wordlessly at one another. As before, Cyborg was the one to ask the question they all were thinking.

"What are you saying?" he asked, apprehension palpable in his voice, as though he were afraid of what the answer might be.

Slade however only sighed in what sounded like resignation, and slowly shook his head.

"I am saying, Cyborg," said Slade, "that this was all supposed to be different..."

"Trigon's ascension was always inevitable."

The Titans stood in a semi-circle around Slade, Beast Boy crouched atop an overturned steel refrigerator, as Slade explained himself.

"Raven was created to provide the mechanism for Trigon's re-birth into the world. Her destiny was set before she was even born, and so long as that destiny was fulfilled, Trigon did not concern himself with what else she might do. The prophecy itself was absolute, and so Trigon assumed that it didn't matter what Raven did with her life prior to fulfilling it. It never even occurred to him that someone might contest his coming after he had arisen, nor that some element of Raven might survive her becoming the portal."

"As it turned out, this was something of a major oversight."

"Trigon's disdain for mortals did not equip him with a particularly accurate view of them. As a being comprised of pure evil, he has no understanding of anything but the dark sides of what we call human nature. He interpreted your attempts to defend Raven as motivated solely by self-defense, and your opposition to him after the end as nothing more than spite. Not until it was far too late did he appreciate the danger he was in, and by then there was nothing he could do to stop you."

"While the three of you held Trigon's attention fixed on yourselves, Robin and I were able to locate and retrieve what elements of Raven still remained. Raven then unleashed her full power against her own father, negating his presence on the planet, and utterly destroyed him and all his works. In doing so, she reversed his destruction of the Earth, and restored it to its pre-Trigon state, along with all of its inhabitants."

Slade paused, letting the story sink in to the three Titans, who watched him in silence, periodically casting glances at one another in wordless conference.

"What are you saying?" asked Cyborg. "Is that what's gonna happen?"

"No," said Slade, "That is what should have happened. To the best of my understanding, it is what would be happening right this moment if Warp hadn't interfered."

"What do you mean, 'interfered'?" asked Beast Boy.

Slade answered with another question. "What do you know of Warp?" he asked.

Starfire was still staring resolutely at the floor, and said nothing. "He was a time traveler," said Cyborg, covering for her. "Said he came from a hundred years in the future or somethin'. He came back about a year and a half ago, tryin' to steal some artifacts from the Jump City Museum. We fought him, and his time machine got damaged in the fight. He and Star got pulled ahead twenty years into the future."

"Not the future," chimed in Starfire, still refusing to raise her head even as Beast Boy slid over to her and put a comforting hand on her shoulder. "A future. One where I no longer existed, and the others had... ceased to associate with one another." She shut her eyes tightly as Cyborg finished the tale.

"Whatever it was," said Cyborg, "Star managed to get back to our time. Warp didn't."

"There was a battle," said Starfire. "Warp attempted to flee back to his time, but his time machine was further damaged, and it reverted him to the age of an infant. I left him in the care of the Titans of that time, and the portal he had created took me back here." She looked up at last. "Until the day with... Robin, that was the last I ever saw of him."

Slade said nothing, merely narrowing his eye as Starfire followed up. "What is Warp doing here?" she said, finally raising her head. "What does he want? He was a... a thief, not a servant of Devils."

"He's no servant," said Slade.

"He killed Robin," spat Cyborg. "You just said he's been 'interfering' this whole time. He's working for Trigon!"

"But not as a servant," replied Slade, deadpan as ever. "I am Trigon's servant, or at least I was. Cinderblock was Trigon's servant. Warp is no servant. He was a full partner."

"What do you mean?" asked Starfire.

"It's a dangerous game, making deals with the devil," said Slade. "I happen to know that much from experience. But it helps immeasurably if you have two things on your side. The same interests as the devil, and something to offer besides mere servitude. Warp had both. He was prepared to support Trigon's goal of annihilating the Earth, and he had the means to permit Trigon to do just that without being destroyed by his daughter in the immediate aftermath. It was a trivial matter for him to go to Trigon and make a deal."

"Wait a minute," interrupted Cyborg, "you're saying he approached Trigon?"

"Yes," said Slade. "Warp had the advantage of knowing what was going to happen in advance. To him, this entire situation is ancient history. He knew that Trigon would arise, and when. He knew what would happen when he did. Where he was from, he could simply open a history book to learn that much."

Slade paused. "But more than that, Warp managed to find a way to ensure that it would turn out differently."

"How?" asked Beast Boy.

Slade's eye narrowed, not in anger but amusement. It was possible to picture the sly grin on his masked features as he answered. "David."

The name landed like a leaden weight. Nobody spoke. Nobody even moved. Slade permitted himself a dark chuckle as he continued.

"David was right about one thing," said Slade. "He was never meant to be involved in any of this. In the original history of this affair, you and he never even met. Matters moved towards Trigon's ascension without him participating, and the battles and events he participated in either did not occur at all, or occurred without his involvement. This entire sequence of events, everything that happened between Cinderblock's attack on the orphanage, up to this very day, all of it has been one gigantic divergence from the natural course of things. And the catalyst for this divergence, the agent of the changes in play here... was David."

Silence reigned within the restaurant for a good long while, before Beast Boy alone found the means to speak.

"I don't believe it..." he said, in tones that supported the claim. "There's... there's no way that David was working with Warp this whole time."

Slade laughed, a deep, booming laugh that echoed in the silent streets below. "Well of course he wasn't," he said. "David was never anything other than what he appeared to be, that was the point. Warp didn't need a spy, he already knew what was going to happen. All he needed was to be able to predict what you Titans would do when placed in a given situation. And I'll admit, he was able to do that flawlessly."

"He contrived to have David transferred to the foster facility in Jump City. He then sent Cinderblock to attack it, knowing that you would respond and bring him back to your Tower, where, lo and behold, you would discover that he was a Metahuman. He also knew that once you had made that discovery, it was only a matter of time. This was, after all, only shortly after the... 'incident'... with Terra. He knew Robin well, better than I did when I tried to conscript him as my apprentice. He knew that eventually, as long as he prevented David from leaving the Tower, Robin would inevitably try once again to create an apprentice of his own." Slade chuckled darkly. "I suppose he and I had that in common. He also knew that David didn't have the strength of will to turn Robin down. And once Robin and the rest of you had decided to bring David onto your little team, he knew that it would no longer be necessary to ensure that he didn't leave it."

"He did all of this, just to ensure that David would remain with us?" asked Starfire

"No," said Slade. "That was merely the means to an end. His goal was to ensure that when Trigon arose, David would be on-hand for the event."

"Then why go through all that?" asked Cyborg. "Why not just... I dunno... kidnap him or somethin'? Why would Warp wanna make him one of us if he just planned to drag him in front of Trigon?"

"Two reasons," replied Slade. "One was that he felt the most effective way of guaranteeing that David would be on-hand for the apocalypse was if he was one of those appointed to prevent it. If he'd simply kidnapped him, the police and FBI would have become involved, if not other heroes. He wished to take no risks of some lucky costumed do-gooder spoiling the end of the universe by tracking him down prematurely. Why do that when you can have Robin and the rest of you do his work for him?"

Slade paused a moment before continuing. "But the other reason was that Warp didn't do all this in a vacuum. This is, for him, an entirely personal matter, and you are the subjects of his ire. He did not simply want to destroy the universe. He wanted you to get to know the agent of that destruction, to make him one of your own, and then kill him in front of your eyes and let you all watch the world burn thanks to your own compassion."

Starfire and Beast Boy said nothing, their stares hollow as the chilling logic was spelled out item by item. Cyborg alone managed to retain the wherewithal to speak.

"So where do you fit in?" he asked.

Slade did not answer immediately, sitting down on a banister, crossing his arms and emitting a long, exasperated sigh. "Simply put, I learned of this plan of Warp's," he finally said. And I tried to stop it."

"You tried to stop it?" asked Cyborg, raising an eyebrow. "We're s'possed to believe that?"

"You can believe whatever you like," said Slade. "But a ruined wasteland is not exactly my choice of homes. And as I'm sure you've noticed, I don't enjoy playing second fiddle to anyone."

Whether satisfied or no, Cyborg made no further objection, and Slade explained.

"To be frank, I was lucky," said Slade. "Warp had done very thorough research to figure out what was supposed to happen, but it was focussed entirely on you Titans. He had no idea that I would ever dare to work against Trigon, or that I thought his plan was insane. Accordingly, he confided the details of it to me, and I was able to attempt to stop it."

"How?" asked Cyborg.

"Killing David of course," responded Slade, his voice as smooth as though he were discussing the weather. "Without David, none of Warp's changes would take place. I reasoned that killing him would allow history to turn out the way it was supposed to, with Trigon destroyed and the world restored to normal.

"So then why did you not do so?" asked Starfire, her voice bitter. "You had opportunities."

"I couldn't," said Slade. "Warp may not have been watching me closely, but Trigon was. As a pledged servant, my actions could be monitored at any time. Normally he didn't bother, but whenever I was near to David, I knew he would be watching. The instant I transitioned from fighting to killing, Trigon would have reduced me to ash."

"Then what did you do?" asked Cyborg.

"What any good manager would," said Slade, "I delegated the task to subordinates."

Beast Boy's eyes widened. "Terra," he whispered.

Slade nodded. "As part of our deal, Trigon infused me with a portion of his powers. Given that Terra was indirectly the one who got me into this situation, I thought it fitting that she be the one to assist me in getting us all out of it. As you have no doubt noticed, Trigon has the power to turn the entire planet to stone. I simply contrived to turn one person back."

"You're lying!" insisted Beast Boy. "She'd never agree to help you! Not again!"

"With the fate of the world at stake?" asked Slade with a laugh. "Whatever she thought of me, Terra saw the wisdom of agreeing to help me stop doomsday."

"She agreed to help you kill David?" asked Beast Boy incredulously.

"Not at first," replied Slade. "She and I still had... unresolved issues. We did kill one another after all, and that is not the sort of thing easily put aside. She agreed to monitor David and the rest of you, but no more. For obvious reasons, David was the only one she could meet in person, and even that was a risk, but I assumed you would not be eager to dredge her memory up." Slade inclined his head to Beast Boy. "Out of sight, out of mind, I suppose."

Beast Boy jumped to his feet and took a step forward, his form already begining to ripple as he prepared to take another shape on, but Cyborg caught his shoulder before he could do anything violent, and the changeling slowly returned to his human form. "What happened to change her mind?" asked Cyborg.

"Many things," said Slade. "After the incident with Adonis, Warp began to get nervous. David was not as enduring as the rest of you, and Warp realized he might well get himself killed through mischance or random attack before Trigon could arise. Accordingly, he decided to implement a backup plan, and struck at the rest of you."

"Yellowstone," said Cyborg.

"Yes. He knew from his histories that you would engage and defeat Brother Blood, and knew that you would return to Jump City via Yellowstone. He set an ambush there, using robots I had left over from my abortive attempt on Jump City. He knew that originally, it had taken all of your combined efforts to stop Trigon once he arose, and reasoned that if he killed some of you, you would no longer be able to stop Trigon no matter what happened to David." Slade paused. "It might even have worked, save that he told me of his plans, and I was able to stop him."

"What?" asked Beast Boy. "You didn't stop him, Raven did!"

"Without me, you would all have assuredly died," said Slade evenly, "with or without Raven's temper tantrum."

"The shells..." said Cyborg. "When those robots attacked us, they were supposed to be firing armor-piercing shells, except that someone loaded them with lead instead of DU, fake armor-piercers. That was you, wasn't it?"

"Yes," said Slade. "Much as I would have loved to watch you all die remotely, doing so would not have suited my purposes. I managed to swap the ammunition belts with ones I had doctored. Raven did the rest. But with you all removed from the scene, I decided it was best to attempt to end the threat from David as well."

"Forgive me..." said Starfire, "I do not understand. Why was David of such importance to Warp and to Trigon? What role did he fill in their destruction of this world."

Slade paused, turning his head to Starefire and saying nothing. Moments later, he resumed, speaking as if she had said nothing at all.

"Warp had been employing Cinderblock to ensure that David did not leave Jump City, but as Terra refused to kill David herself, I was forced to re-purpose him. Fortunately, Cinderblock did not have the wit to wonder at why his orders had changed. Unfortunately, it appears that David had learned more than I expected. Rather than being killed, David disabled Cinderblock, and instead of finishing him off then and there, Terra got cold feet and ran."

Slade adjusted his seating before continuing his tale. "After Cinderblock's defeat, things became much more dangerous. While David was still no match for any of you, he was clearly improving to the point where minor threats would not do the trick. And while I had managed to stop Warp's first attempt on your lives, the Cinderblock incident had made him suspicious of my motives. I was able to silence Cinderblock before either Warp or Trigon could find out what had caused him to attack David, but that still left me with no weapon to employ, and the clock running out. I had no choice but to have Terra act directly, despite her previous objections. It was only when I made absolutely clear to her that the stakes of killing David were the continued survival of the planet itself, as well as the rest of you, that she agreed to do it. We set up a sting for him using a pair of her old goggles and some Email messages, and took the opportunity of my 'revelation' at the bottling plant once more separate him from the rest of you. Terra was supposed to do the rest."

Despite everything, Cyborg smirked. "But she didn't kill him."

"No," said Slade, darkly. "She didn't. Whether through Raven's actions or her own, Terra failed to accomplish her mission. I tried to get Raven to kill David myself when I met her in the street, but her 'better nature' won out." Slade gave Beast Boy a withering glance before continuing. "Once that was done, it was more or less all over. I had no more agents to use against David, and no way of stopping Warp from trying to kill the rest of you again. By eliminating Robin, Warp all but guaranteed that nobody would be able to take effective action against Trigon. Either Robin's death, or David's survival, would independently have been enough to guarantee Trigon's victory. Both of these things occurred."

Slade leaned back against the wall, placing his hands behind his head like a beachgoer preparing to soak up the rays of the sun.

"The rest, as they say, is history."

[LadyTevar]

Chapter 33 Cont'd

The library was burning.

No sirens greeted another burning building in a world made of fire and ash. No tears were shed for the books incinerated, nor the tapestries and paintings that had lined its walls. Its flames cast shadows across the darkened ruins that surrounded it, flames fueled by nothing more than malice, for all fuel had long since been extinguished, and all that was left was the malevolent hate that had spawned this cataclysm. All across the planet, buildings such as the library burned, but none of them had served as ground zero for the end of the world.

The library had.

Around the library, death-fires danced in the murky twilight, the orange-red forms of Trigon's servants, magma demons of flame and hatred, swirling about like marionettes. Inheritors of the doomed world, they danced in the darkness, awaiting the commands of their risen lord, who even now gathered his strength upon a melted cross writ in glowing iron. They danced through the fires and ruin of the world of men, for their sole animation was the will of their creator, and his pleasure was theirs. They danced for victory and the triumph of Trigon the Terrible, danced at the ruination of the Earth, danced in delight at the slaughter they had wrought, and that which they would enact hereafter. About, about, in reel and rout, they danced that fiery night, swimming through the ash-choked air like a river of ambrosia, exultant, victorious, triumphant.

All throughout the building, and the city that surrounded it, the demons danced, alone, in armies, or in small groups, swirling through the air like ghosts. Through one chamber in the Library, the center of Trigon's victory, three such demons flew. The chamber had, at one time, been an underground storage facility, cavernous in size, used to store the library's exhaustive collection of periodicals, microfilmed newspapers, graphic novels, and trade paperbacks. The collection was gone now, ravaged with fire and burnt to ash, and the empty shelves and broken lights alone bore witness as the three demons spun and flew along the stacks, their passing disturbing the piles of ash that were all that remained of what had once been one of the foremost collections of the works of man, like their creators, ended forever.

And perhaps, in their mirth and rapture, the demons grew careless or clumsy, for as the three of them rounded a corner, something, perhaps their passing, perhaps the traumas of fire and devastation, disturbed one of the four-ton metal stacks that they were flying past, and it toppled all at once, landing atop one of the demons and smashing it to paste.

The other two paused in their rapturous flight, not out of concern for their fellow, for like their master, they knew no such thing. Rather they paused as any onlooker would from the unexpected nature of the thing that had happened, and to ascertain for themselves that such a fate was not about to befall them all. They turned and stared at the starkly empty shelves, like withered trees stripped of leaves, searching for any sign of instability amidst the soft groans of the chamber they were in and the shelving they were amidst.

It turned out to be a bad idea. All at once, with no sign or signal that anything was the matter, a block of stone the size of a delivery van fell from the ceiling like an enormous hydraulic piston, landing square atop one of the demons who scarcely had a chance to hiss in anger before it was summarily crushed like a wine grape.

The last demon now perceived a threat in what passed for its mind, and took to the air as another, similar-sized block fell from the ceiling aimed its way. This one missed by inches, shattering against the stone floor, and the demon flew up, towards the ceiling itself, howling like a damned soul, searching for its unknown assailant. The flames coating its body burst into riots of yellow and orange, casting flickering light over the room, yet the shadows played with the corrupt thing's diseased imagination, and no pattern or assailant could it discern.

Then it heard a noise from behind, the sound of rocks clashing against one another like giant castanets, and it spun round to see that the entire rear half of the chamber was progressively collapsing, as though leveled by an earthquake. Rocks and tons of loose soil fell from the ceiling in a waterfall, utterly destroying everything in their path. Section by section, the room collapsed like a chain reaction, trapping the demon with nowhere to flee to. And despite the violence, behind the cascading debris and the waves of sundered rock and masonry, somewhere beyond it all, in the darkest corner of the room, the demon perceived, just for the briefest instant, a soft flash of gold...

An instant later the entire room imploded, and the demon was crushed to nothingness. And then there was only silence.

*-----------------------------------------------------*

Prior to this year, the corridors beneath the library had been unused for over a century, the relics of some forgotten cult of Trigon worshipers that pre-dated the foundation of Jump City itself. Layers of dust only partly disturbed by the Titans in their exertions and battles with Slade or the minions of Trigon lay draped over everything. So it was, that when one of the demons patrolling the lower corridors found a disturbance in the dust, its brain, ganglia, or whatever center of thought it possessed, directed it to investigate.

The disturbance was not footprints, not precisely at least, it was merely a disturbance, uniform yet scraggly, as though someone had made a half-hearted attempt to sweep the dust aside with a broom, and then abandoned the effort after a few paltry strokes. Intermittently the pattern was repeated, every forty or fifty feet or so, accompanied by strange divots that had been carved in the floor or walls or even ceiling. What these represented was unknown to the flame demon, who merely paused every so often to note their existence, before continuing to wend its way down the corridor, its molten body sizzling as it brushed against the cold stone walls.

Bare minutes after it had begun its search, the flame demon emerged into an antechamber ringed with carven statues in forms bestial and grotesque. The dust here had been disturbed far more violently than before, and actual footprints could be discerned, sliding and slipping over the cobbled stones. Divots there were in abundance in the floor and walls, and fragments of rock scattered about where said divots had come to rest. Yet none of these things attracted the demon's attention so much as that which lay in the center of the room.

There, on the floor, lay the smashed remains of at least two more flame demons. It could be determined that there were at least two, for the remains were too extensive for it to have been only one, yet beyond that nothing more could be said. They had been violently destroyed, as though the fist of Trigon itself had descended through the ceiling and crushed them to molten jelly without leaving any trace of its passing. Whatever had done this had to be extensive, for demons of Trigon were not struck down easily, much less crushed out of all shape, yet the agents or means of this violent assault were not apparent. No wreckage or fallen column was visible to show what had occurred or how it had come to pass.

Then something landed on its head.

It was a droplet, nothing more, a single droplet of liquid sulfur. The demon inclined its headless torso upwards to gaze at the ceiling of the room it stood in, seeking the source, and found it. There, on the blocks of solid granite that lined the ceiling of the chamber, a gooey mess of superheated sulfur and mineral rock lay splattered over the ceiling as though some demonic mosquito had been crushed there. Though the conclusion was perhaps obvious, the demon's thought organ took an inordinately long time to determine what had transpired.

And by then it was too late.

Suddenly the demon was moving, air rushing past it in a torrent, though it was confused, for it had not taken flight. And as it lifted its head to gaze once more at the splatter on the ceiling, it saw the ceiling itself racing towards it like an oncoming train.

*-------------------------------------------------------------------*

Ground Zero, the physical epicenter of Trigon's ascent, was empty now, quiet save for the soft wind and the distant crackle of flames. The chamber he had emerged in had once been underground, but was no longer so, for in manifesting physically upon the world, Trigon had sundered the layers of passages and rock above him and burst forth into the open air. Thus the chamber now lay open to the elements, a conical shaft of slagged rock descending hundreds of feet into the ground, where scorched and broken stones lay, surrounding the site of Trigon's emergence onto Earth.

Demons were here, of course, their primitive wills drawn to the taint of Trigon like moths to an open flame. Here and there they ran, their primitive wills set loose by Trigon, who was drinking in the novel experience of being alive, and had no need yet for his servants of sulfur and flame. Some sat idle, lounging in the darkness and the heat of the surrounding fires. Others flew lazy patrols around the room, searching for nothing in particular. Whatever the demons were, whether damned souls bound to Trigon, or extensions of his personal will, they had no purpose while their master brooded on other matters, no goals and desires of their own. Inheritors of the Earth by default, they had no notion of what to do with their inheritance, and so they waited for the time when Trigon would call upon them once more.

High above the floor of the ruined chamber, many dozens of passages terminated in abrupt drops, opening forth into the summoning room like passages in some giant termite hive. Dark and empty, these passages held no attraction to the demons, leading nowhere that they wished to be. On occasion, one would disgorge a demon that had been flying the halls of the former library, who twirled and danced like a mayfly as he rejoined his fellows. Whenever a large enough group congregated, they would clump together in a school and fly up and out into the city at large, leaving a dozen or two of their fellows behind to continue to wait.

It was a process without thought, automatic, like the workings of a water clock, and like a water clock, it took only the slightest disturbance in the system to interrupt it.

A single flame demon, moving down one of the warren-like passages to join its fellows, turned a corner at high speeds, intending to burst forth into the summoning chamber. Rather than an open hallway and quick passage to the chamber however, the demon found instead a single figure, standing in the corridor, blocking his path. The demon had only a split second to see that there was an obstruction moments before its own momentum carried it straight into the figure and bowled both of them over.

The demon fell, as did the figure it had impacted, and the speed of the impact sent them both rolling and bouncing down the corridor. The demon careened off the walls like a pinball, before finaly sliding to a stop near the very end of the hallway, where it opened up into the cavernous summoning chamber that yawned a hundred feet below.

In an instant, the demon arose, as a flash of light blinded it and it the loud sound of hard objects impacting one another echoed down the halls. Operating on other senses, it lunged for where the figure had fetched up, intending to burn it to a cinder or rip off its head. The figure ducked, and the demon missed, crashing into the wall an instant before a massive blow from the direction of the wall knocked it sprawling and sent it spinning dizzily towards the edge of the pit.

Yet the demon was not perplexed, and it lashed out again, this time with one of its limbs, cracking it like a whip as it managed to snatch at the ankle of the kneeling figure. The strike hit home, and the demon wrenched as hard as it could, plunging into the summoning chamber an instant before it pulled the mysterious assailant along with it.

It did not avail the demon.

Flashes of light, source undetermined, erupted all about the chamber, and before the demon could re-orient itself in mid-air, one of the leering statues that was positioned around the perimeter of the chamber came loose from its pedistal and toppled. Eighty tons of carven stone slammed into the demon in mid-air and crushed him to sizzling pulp against the floor of the chamber. Pieces of rock the size of small cars were cast into the air as the statue shattered, and the falling figure hit several of these, knocked back and forth like a rag doll before finally landing on the ground in a heap of gravel and dust.

For several moments, the figure lay motionless on the floor of the chamber, as the dust settled and the echoes of the enormous collapse began to fade out. Only after these had passed did the figure begin to stir, emitting a soft moan as it rose to its hands and knees and looked up.

What it beheld there was likely not encouraging.

More than a dozen demons had been waiting in the chamber itself for Trigon to turn his face to them once more. Two had been smashed to bits by the falling debris, but the others remained, lining the walls, facing the intruder who had suddenly inserted itself into their midst. And as the figure shakily managed to get back on its feet, the demons, who knew neither mercy nor fear, animated by the remorseless will of Trigon himself, all charged the figure at once.

[LadyTevar]

Chapter 33 Cont'd

It was a long time before anyone said anything.

Beast Boy stood at the side of the room, looking out a window. Once it had been glass-covered, but the glass had shattered or melted away, admitting the thin fumes that now cloaked the ruins of Jump City. The Tower could not be seen from this angle, but much of the rest of the city could, illuminated by fires, with occasional shadows passing over it as some unholy thing flew into view for just a split second. In the far off distance, he thought he heard a low rumble, like thunder or the collapse of buildings, and closed his eyes, imagining some new devilry underway, unwilling to face the sight of his burning home any longer.

Behind him, Cyborg and Starfire sat on overturned furniture, saying nothing. Slade was reclined before them, apparently content to sit for the moment, having related the ways in which the world had come to this.

It was Starfire who finally broke the silence.

"Why Robin?" she asked, almost plaintively. She did not seem to be addressing Slade, but anyone who chose to answer it. "Warp... Warp could have slain me the day that Robin died, but he did not. Why did he choose only to kill Robin?"

Slade shrugged. "Because Robin was all he needed," he said. "Robin was the one who originally retrieved what was left of Raven and made it possible for her to destroy her father. He was the only one of you strong enough to make that journey. Without him, there is no stopping Trigon, even without David's involvement."

Starfire shook her head. "Even if that is so," she said, "it makes no logical sense that he would permit me to live when he had the - "

"Of course it doesn't," said Slade. "Warp is deranged, he is not operating in the realm of logical sense. He is obsessed with your obliteration, and is quite willing to drag the entire planet down with you. It would not at all surprise me to learn that he left you alive simply so that you would suffer."

Starfire's original words died in her throat, and she coughed several times before she could even begin to respond. "You... you mean that he has done all this merely to hurt us?"

"In general, yes," said Slade, "but in specific, Princess, I believe his intended target was you."

Starfire's voice failed her as Beast Boy turned back from the window. "Me?" she asked, her voice hollow, her eyes wide and wet with tears.

"Of course," said Slade. "You were the one who trapped him in that future of his, who prevented him from living the history he was supposedly 'intended' to live. In my discussions with him, I heard more venom directed your way than anyone else's. I can't speak with absolute certainty as to Warp's motives, but I believe that he killed Robin and not you so that you would spend these last weeks in agony." Slade's eye narrowed and his voice sweetened, the honeyed stinger he employed whenever he was smirking beneath his mask, "Personally, I'd say he did an exemplary job."

Starfire leaped to her feet, fists clenched, tears streaming from her eyes. For a second, Beast Boy thought she might blast Slade with her starbolts, but as Cyborg stood up to prevent her from doing just that, she squeezed her eyes shut and turned violently away from him, stalking off to the other side of the room to weep in private.

Cyborg started after her, then thought better of it, and shaking his head, turned back to Slade. "Why the hell are you tellin' us all of this now? When it's too late to do anything about it? Why didn't you tell us before Trigon woke up?"

"For the same reason I didn't kill David myself," said Slade. Trigon was watching my every move. Had I attempted to contact you, I would have instantly been caught."

"Bullshit," said Cyborg angrily. "You ain't some helpless victim. You could have sent us a message, through Terra or anyone else. You could have warned us about all this!"

"And what good would that have done?" asked Slade. "Would you have believed me? Consider it. Your greatest enemy contrives to send you a warning that the newest member of your team was actually sent there by the Lord of all Evil as a plot to destroy the entire planet, and the only solution is to kill him in cold blood. Are you seriously telling me that you would have followed such an instruction?"

"Raven almost did!" insisted Cyborg.

"The key word being 'almost'," retorted Slade. "And Raven was always the most pragmatic of all of you. The rest of you would have reacted with sentimentality and stubborn refusal to face the facts. You would have insisted on 'finding another way' or some other inane stupidity, thanks to your idiotic belief that bad things should not happen simply because you do not wish them to."

Cyborg might have contested this, but he chose not to, turning away with as much violence as Starfire had, grumbling to himself as he paced away to the far side of the room. Slade settled back into his ersatz seat, and Beast Boy merely stood and watched, unable to contribute anything further. A minute or so later, and Starfire had recovered enough to venture another inquiry.

"You did not answer me before," she said softly, standing in the shadows. "I asked you why David was of such importance in the annihilation of the world?"

"Not the world," said Slade. "Trigon managed that much by himself. But surely you can guess what Trigon would want with Mr. Foster?"

"Devastator?" asked Starfire.

Slade nodded. "David himself is meaningless. It was what he carried that Trigon wanted."

"Why?" asked Starfire, stepping back into the light.

Slade threw back his head and laughed. "Why?" he asked, his voice a mocking tone. "Devastator is one of the most powerful weapons in the universe. Why wouldn't he want it?"

"He did not simply want it," said Starfire, crossing her arms. "You said that Warp arranged for him to get it, because with Devastator in Trigon's possession, his victory would be assured, even if Raven and Robin were still with us."

"And?" asked Slade.

"And Trigon himself is a force of raw destruction and hate," said Starfire, raising her voice to a barked command. "What possible use can he have for something such as Devastator? He has already proven that he can destroy this planet by his own means. What does Devastator give him that he does not have already?"

To Beast Boy's surprise, Slade seemed to find this funny. The supervillain chuckled darkly and shook his head. "Do you truly have no notion of what Devastator is?"

"A force of destruction," said Starfire. "Raven told us as much."

"Not a force," replied Slade. "The force. As Trigon is the embodiment of pure evil, so Devastator is the embodiment of one of the primal forces of the universe itself. Devastator is destruction, weaponized and made manifest. In terms of raw power, Devastator is easily Trigon's equal, if not his superior."

"So you say," said Starfire. "Yet David never showed any such levels of - "

"David was a human," insisted Slade, his voice echoing with authority. "There were discrete limits to what he could put himself through and survive. That little trick of his on the island was more than I thought him capable of, but even that was a mere firecracker compared to Devastator's true power. That alone nearly killed him. Any greater effort, and he would have charred his brain to cinder and boiled the blood in his veins."

Slade leaned forward slowly, framing his words with expert care. "Trigon, on the other hand, is a Demon Lord. He is a cosmic being in his own right, and he has the raw fortitude to employ Devastator at full power."

Starfire narrowed her gaze. "And what does that mean?"

"Devastator is the most powerful weapon of raw destruction in the known universe," said Slade. "Once Trigon recovers his strength, he will be able to use Devastator to unmake entire galaxies. He will carve a swath of annihilation across the cosmos the likes of which have not been seen since the Big Bang. Nothing, no spell, no empire, no warship, no divine being, nothing will be able to stop him. He will no longer need to play with the inhabitants of the worlds he consigns to the flames. With Devastator at his command, Trigon will be able to trigger supernovae with just a thought. He will be able to blast galaxies apart with the raw force of his own will. Nothing, not even your precious Tamaran, will be safe from his wrath."

Slowly, Starfire lowered her head. "Yet... Devastator claimed that he did not wish for this to occur. Can he not prevent Trigon from employing him thus?"

"Devastator is a weapon, not a living being," said Slade. "What he or it 'wishes' is beside the point. Devastator is commanded by will alone. And Trigon's will is to cloak the universe in pain."

Starfire had nothing more to say, and slowly she sat down, looking deflated, cupping her head in her hands. From behind her, Cyborg asked the only real question that mattered.

"So... you're sayin'... that's it?"

"In so many words, yes," said Slade. "Whether Trigon or Warp intend to kill the rest of you off quickly or leave you to watch the universe burn, the battle is over. And you have lost."

Silence.

Vague rumblings in the distance, like thunder from thirty miles away, were all that could be heard, as Starfire remained silent with head bowed, and Cyborg gently laid his hand on her shoulder, and sat down as well. Slade, taking perhaps some perverse sense of victory from this reaction to the news he brought, sat back and said nothing for himself, though surely his fate could be no better than theirs, having drawn the ire of Trigon, Warp, or both.

But right now, Beast Boy didn't care about Slade. He didn't care about the plots and plans that he had explained so painstakingly, Devastator, cosmic beings, Warp, any of it. He felt drained, the scale of the disaster that had overtaken him and everyone else simply overwhelming. He slumped down onto the ground, gaze vacant, unable even to form the tears that still leaked from Starfire's eyes. The end of the world, of the entire universe, was more than he could process. His mind seemed to have reset, or reverted to an elemental state. If Slade was right, if the world was over, and Trigon had won, then there was no use in forming plans and plots, or in yelling at one another about what might have happened, or who was to blame for things. He no longer felt like asking more questions. All priorities, all responsibilities, everything seemed to have receeded from his mind.

All but one.

"Slade?"

Beast Boy's voice was quiet. Had not the others been in silence, nobody would have heard him. Slade inclined his head to the green changeling. "Yes?" he said.

Beast Boy was seated against the wall, his knees drawn up to his chest, his arms wrapped around them and hands linked. But his head was lifted, his eyes bright, and his voice extremely clear as he asked the only question that, in these circumstances, meant anything at all.

"Where's Raven?"

For the first time since he had approached them, Slade appeared to hesitate. Starfire slowly lifted her head, and Cyborg as well, as Slade seemed to consider the question for a moment.

"Outside of your reach," said Slade finally. "Thanks to Warp."

Beast Boy did not respond immediately, but took a deep breath, before he slowly leaned forward. "Slade," he said, as guileless as the first time he had pronounced the name, "where's Raven?"

Slade frowned. "Was I not clear that it no longer matters where Raven is?" he asked.

Starfire answered before Beast Boy could. "Beast Boy did not ask you whether or not it mattered," she said, her voice barely a whisper, but easily understandable for that. "He asked you where she was."

Slade rolled his one eye and answered. "Some element of Raven remains," he said. "I do not know in what form, or exactly where. Within the city, I would think, but far from here in any event.

"But you do know where," said Beast Boy, slowly getting up. "You said that the way this was supposed to turn out, you and Robin went there to get her back."

"I know roughly where she might be," said Slade. "But it will be an area deeply penetrated by Trigon's minions and will. In the original tale, Robin alone managed to find her. I was..." he hesitated again, "... sidetracked."

"If you know where Raven is," said Cyborg, "then you could take us to her, couldn't you?"

"There are so many reasons why that is not true," said Slade.

"Such as what?" asked Cyborg.

"Such as the fact that the instant we tried, Trigon would perceive it and act to stop us," said Slade. "Trigon is all-seeing. His mind can perceive whatever he chooses. The only reason that Robin and I were able to make the attempt was that the three of you distracted Trigon's attention while we were doing it. Even if you did so again, who precisely would be left to actually seek - ?"

"Me."

It took Slade a moment to realize that he had heard the answer correctly, and another moment to realize that neither Starfire nor Cyborg had spoken. Slowly, he turned his head to Beast Boy, who was standing away from the wall, his hands at his sides, staring into Slade's eye with wide and worried eyes. Yet there was no half-measure in his voice as he confirmed the answer.

"I'll go," said Beast Boy. "I'll find Raven."

*-------------------------------------------------------------------*

The figure stood alone in the darkness, and beheld its handiwork.

All about lay demons, mangled, crushed, broken, their bodies churned to mulch beneath the fallen statues that had once lined the walls of the cavern of the damned. Pools of liquid sulfur bubbled on the uneven floor, leeched from the corpses of the fallen demons like wine trod from grapes. The air was still, the chamber silent as a tomb, but the figure did not move or lower its hands, breathing carefully and nervously, eyes darting from point to point, as though the very shadows on the walls augured more evil.

The shadows kept the peace though, and no further demons arose to resume the assault. The leering statues, toppled and smashed, remained quiescent, and gradually, the figure lowered its arms, breathing the fire from its lungs, still nervously watching the corners of the room, lest some slavering spawn of darkness leap out from nowhere. Only after the last echos had faded to nothing, leaving naught but watchful silence in their wake, did the figure dare to move.

Move and halt, and move, and halt again it was, shadow to shadow, darting through the firelight to take shelter in the dark, with nothing but the sound of footsteps on stone and curt, frightened breathing, to indicate that anyone remained. Any observer looking on would see only the dead demons and the ruin they had caused in dying, strewn about like the discarded toys of a child. The agent of these deaths kept to the shadows and hid.

Until finally, the figure found what it sought.

Fragments of stone ranging from pebbles to boulders lay scattered about, some rough and unworked, some exquisitely featured and detailed, yet it ignored them all, climbing over and around the detritus. Ahead, perched upon scorched rock, there stood another statue, this one lifesize and lifelike to a degree no stonemason or sculptor living or dead could ever replicate. Reclined, though not in repose, head at an angle, face contorted in pain, mouth frozen in mid-cry, the statue was bracing itself half-up with one arm, the other held over its head in a last, helpless gesture of self-defense. The very picture of agony, despair, and fear, the sight of the statue stopped the cautious figure in its tracks.

For a moment, neither moved. Then slowly, the living being approached the dead one, cautious footsteps resonating in the empty arena. The figure neared the statue carefully, crouching down to look into its face and pausing once more on the threshold. Yet again, it surveyed its surroundings, ensuring that no unspeakable abominations were about to interrupt it.

And then the shrouded figure gently laid one hand on the statue's shoulder, and closed its eyes.

[LadyTevar]

Ch. 33 Cont.

*-------------------------------------------------------------------*

"... You?"

Slade sounded like he was trying to decide if he should laugh or hit his head against something. His voice was a soulless monotone, as though the question made no sense, and yet needed to be asked, as though even in this ruined world, in the presence of demons, devils, and animate evil, the situation had now become surreal.

It was not a view that Beast Boy appeared to share. He stood before Slade with his arms at his sides, looking up into the face of the mysterious one-eyed villain. He looked nervous and small, smaller than he normally did, but not joking. Beast Boy's serious side so rarely manifested itself, even in the midst of catastrophe, that it never failed to surprise everyone when it finally did appear. It was in full-view now, an indescribable "bearing", a clipping of words and straightening of posture, a more direct stare from a kid whose mannerisms were always slightly bestial, slightly evasive.

Not this time.

"Is this some kind of joke?" asked Slade in the manner of one who already knew the answer and wished that he did not. Such was obvious even to him. Beast Boy said nothing, did nothing, and neither did the others, leaving Slade to make of it what he would.

Slade's roving eye turned from Titan to Titan in turn, before returning to Beast Boy. "You are either insane or stupid," he said, with all the authority of the universe. "You cannot rescue Raven."

"Why not?" demanded Beast Boy. "You said that you and Robin - "

"Yes," interrupted Slade, "Robin and I retrieved her. You are not Robin."

"I know that," said Beast Boy, "but Robin's not here, so - "

"So what?" demanded Slade, raising his voice just slightly, which for him was the equivalent of screaming in thunderous rage. "So you imagine that you are fit to serve in his place? I did not select Robin to accompany me at random. Despite all of your fanciful abilities, Robin was always far and away the strongest of you. That's why I selected him as my prospective apprentice in the first place. And it's likely one of the reasons Warp decided to deprive us of his presence."

Slade leaned forward, his voice bitter and barbed. "You on the other hand, changeling, do not even have the advantage of useful abilities. Tell me, what will you do to the legions of Hell? Tell them jokes? Turn into a gorilla and beat them with your fists? You are the most negligible element in this equation, as you have been all along, a millstone around the neck of your teammates, a useless impediment in the present situation as in all others."

This was simply too much for the others. "Hey!" shouted Cyborg. "You shut your goddamn - "

"Or what?" asked Slade, turning his head. "I am impervious to your attacks, and we are at the end of the world. What will you do, shoot me?"

Momentarily stymied, Cyborg might well have shot him anyway, but he did not, and Slade scoffed at him. "Overpowered children playacting at the hero in the ruins," he remarked acidly. "Trigon operates on more than just the physical level. He attacks the wills of his enemies. If you can't bear to hear the truth from me, how exactly do you propose to defy him? Besides, even if you did find Raven, which you can't, with Devastator in Trigon's hands, she cannot save the - "

"I DON'T CARE!"<br><br>Beast Boy's voice was like a gunshot in a dark room. Cyborg jumped. Slade jumped, his smug rant terminated as though a switch had been flipped. And then suddenly Beast Boy was in the middle of all of them, facing Slade, eyes wide, gloved hands balled into fists.

"I don't want to find Raven because she can save the world, I just want to find her!" he shouted. "And I'm going to whether you come with me or not!"

Slade seemed unsure of what to make of this. "Why?" he asked. "Trigon cannot be beaten, even by her. Will you find her just so that she share in your own torture?"

Beast Boy stumbled over his words, starting and stopping several times before he managed to say something. "Because I want..." he finally managed to stammer, tears forming in his eyes. "Because if she's out there I have to get her back. I have to..."

Nobody said anything for a little while.

"You cannot find her yourself," remarked Slade finally. "No-one can, and you least of all."

"Then come with me," said Beast Boy, quietly but urgently. "What, you've got something else to do around here?"

"I can think of things to do besides suicide," insisted Slade. "The instant you set out to find Raven, both Trigon and Warp will know if it, and stop you. It took all three of you to distract Trigon the last time this was attempted, and Warp was not even involved."

Beast Boy was about to answer, yet he did not get the chance, for before he could say a word, he was pre-empted by Starfire, who spoke softly, yet with absolute conviction.

"Warp will not interfere."

Both Slade and Beast Boy turned to Starfire, who was looking at neither of them, her head lowered, yet she neither explained nor retracted her statement, leaving Slade to ask the obvious question.

"And why exactly is that?"

"Because," said Starfire, slowly looking up, the drying tears from before still moistening her eyes. "While friend Beast Boy is retrieving Raven, I am going to kill Warp."

She said it simply, as though she was stating an immutable fact of nature, yet that served only to make it all the more disturbing. Beast Boy said nothing, neither did Cyborg. It fell to Slade to contribute a comment.

"And here I thought you Titans didn't kill."

Beast Boy shot Slade an ugly look, which he ignored, but said nothing. Starfire however answered. "We do not," she said.

"Then if I might ask - "

"Because he has reduced this planet to a cinder," said Starfire through clenched teeth. "Because he has given it over to the Lord of Evil to use as a plaything at the expense of its inhabitants. Because he slew Robin, and arranged to slay Raven and David, and because he has done all of these things to cause us to suffer, for that reason I am going to kill him." She wiped tears from her eyes and clenched her fists together. "And I do not care to be lectured by you on my morality for doing this thing."

"Perish the thought," said Slade in a silky smooth voice. He might have said more had Cyborg not shot him a threatening gaze as he turned to Starfire and spoke as gently as he could.

"He's... right, Star," said Cyborg. "We can't... we'll fight him if he shows up but we can't just..." He foundered for an argument, frankly he wanted to kill Warp as well, but in the end the reason he cited was the one that mattered. "Robin wouldn't want us to. Not even Warp."

It worked, and he knew it worked the instant he said it. The knife-edge of Starfire's rage dulled slightly and she nodded slowly. "I am... aware of this," she said. She said nothing more. Cyborg did not push her.

"Fascinating as this is," said Slade. "None of it is important. You will never get an opportunity to kill Warp while Trigon remains unfixed. He will eradicate you the instant he realizes what you purpose to do."

"Yeah, we heard you the first time," said Cyborg, slowly turning back, taking a deep breath and letting it out. Starfire had withdrawn to the side of the room, and Beast Boy was watching him, he knew. "But Trigon isn't gonna be watchin'."

Slade scoffed. "The two of you will distract him alone then?" he asked. "I can think of better ways to kill myself than to trust my fate to - "

"No," said Cyborg, and it was less the word than the way he said it that caught Starfire and Beast Boy's attention. "BB's goin' after Raven," he said, not as a suggestion but a statement of fact. "Star is goin' for Warp."

Beast Boy stared at Cyborg like one who suddenly had caught a glimpse of light in the tunnel. Starfire just looked puzzled, as did Slade. "You just said - "

"Not to kill him," said Cyborg, and rather than explain, he touched one of his forearms, opening a small storage compartment and retrieving a thin grey metal disk with a crack running from one side to the center. He held it up before Slade.

"Warp left this with Star when he killed Robin," he said. "It's a calling card, part of the time machine she wrecked back when we ran into him last time. He wanted us to know it was him doing all this, not Trigon. He wanted us to have this little talk. He wanted us to know."

"And?" asked Slade.

"You said yourself he's doin' all this because he hates us. Hates Star maybe. That's why he isn't killing us right now. He thinks he's won, and that there's nothin' we can do to get him back, just like you. If he just wanted us dead, we'd be dead, but he doesn't want that. He wants to hurt us." Cyborg glanced back at Starfire, who was looking down at the burnt floor. "He wants to hurt Starfire." He returned his eyes to Slade, and folded his arms. "You know better'n any of us, Slade. What's the best way to hurt Starfire?"

Recognition slowly dawned on Slade's masked features. "Robin," he said.

"But Robin's dead," said Cyborg. "And if Robin's dead, Warp can't hurt Star anymore." Despite everything, Cyborg smirked. "He wouldn't have that."

Beast Boy cut in. "Dude," he said, "are you... are you saying...?"

"You just told me a moment ago that Robin was certainly dead," said Slade, and Cyborg could detect the faintest hint of interest breaking through the emotionless monotone that Slade usually used. "You said you watched him die."

"He is," said Cyborg forcefully, "but look around you, Slade. The Devil showed up. Everybody and their brother's comin' back to life. We watched you die too, and Terra, and Raven, and they're all back. So why not Robin, if Warp wanted to use him to get at us? I think he wants us to go lookin' for him. I think he knows it's what we'll do."

"And you intend to oblige him?"

"You're goddamn right I do," said Cyborg, with such certainty to his words that even Starfire began to look hopeful. "If there's even a chance that Robin's still - "

"Is there one?" asked Slade, cutting Cyborg off.

"We cannot know without attempting to find Warp," said Starfire quickly.

Slade groaned and covered his face with his hand. "Then I will repeat, while you are all gallivanting about searching for people who might or might not be dead, who exactly is going to distract the attention of Trigon the Terrible?"

Cyborg crossed his arms. "Me," he said.

Slade looked up. "You?" he asked, incredulous. "By yourself, you are going to hold the attention of Trigon?"

"That's right," said Cyborg.

Slade looked like he had just entered a madhouse, and was trying to determine if everyone around him had gone insane or if he had. "And... how are you going to do that?"

"I have no goddamn idea," said Cyborg. "But I'm gonna do it anyway." He shrugged. "I'll think of somethin'."

"This is insanity," said Slade. "Trigon will reduce you to an abstract sculpture in moments. "You haven't a prayer of surviving more than five seconds."

Cyborg didn't dispute this. It was likely the truth after all, yet he managed to find the wherewithall to smirk.

"Hell, Slade," said the half-metal Titan. "It's the end of the world. Don't tell me you thought it was gonna be easy..."

Slade blinked several times, but plainly had no answer to this. Yet the proposal was so far beyond the pale that even Starfire was taken aback. "Cyborg..." she said, approaching him carefully. "This is... you do not need to..."

"The hell I don't," said Cyborg. "I got us into this goddamn mess. I gotta try to get some part of - "

"You did not place us within this situation!" insisted Starfire. "This was the doing of Trigon and Warp, not you."

"It happened on my watch, Star," said Cyborg. "I made the call to pull the Hive in. I said we'd fight instead of doing what Raven said and runnin' like hell. Everything we've done since Robin died has been on me. I tried to run the show, and look what happened." He forced his voice to be stable, forced himself not to get upset, as the words were shoved through his clenched teeth. "I'm not Robin, Star," he said. "None of us are. But that don't matter now. I can do this. I'm gonna do this. And you're gonna find Warp and Robin, and BB's gonna find Raven. And I don't give a damn who the hell's standin' in the way," he looked back over at Slade with a withering stare, "because that's how it's gonna be."

Slade frowned darkly. "Wishing for a thing to be does not make it so," he said.

"Maybe," said Cyborg. "But I'd rather be stupid about gettin' them all back, than smart about how it can't be done."

"Me too," said Beast Boy quietly.

"And I as well," said Starfire.

Slade watched them impassively, saying nothing, giving no sign. And then slowly, he raised one hand, and from his finger he slid a small ring. Plain and unadorned, comprised of some precious metal, gold perhaps or platinum it bore tiny sigils in an unknown language inscribed into the bands, runes of some sort, of meaning indeterminable. None of the Titans had ever seen its like before, but Slade simply looked at it for a moment, before slowly walking over and handing it to Cyborg.

"This is a Ring of Azar," said Slade. "Forged by the same order that imprisoned Trigon originally. It has some limited means of protecting you from Trigon's powers. I happen to know from experience that it works."

Cyborg took the ring carefully, and as he did, the ring seemed to swell in size, growing until it fit Cyborg's oversized fingers. With a last glance at Slade, who stood unmoving, he slid it onto his finger, where it seemed to glow faintly.

"Why are you here?" asked Cyborg. "Why are you even botherin' to help us if you think this is all impossible."

"My reasons are my own," said Slade, "and none of your concern. But if you insist on this madness, I will see it as far as I can." He turned away then, walking towards the exit of the room, glancing back at Beast Boy. "Are you coming?"

Beast Boy didn't answer him. Neither did anyone else. The three Titans stood together, none of them able to come up with what to say at this juncture. It was Starfire who finally made the appropriate gesture, placing one arm around Beast Boy's shoulders and another around Cyborg, and squeezing all three of them together not quite tightly enough to break bone, but close.

"I shall see you both when I return," she said, and the others could see the effort it took for her to keep her voice steady. "We shall retrieve our friends and return to one another."

Cyborg nodded. "I'll hold him as long as it takes. He ain't got nothin' on me." A preposterous lie, but who cared at this point. "Get back here with Rob and Raven, and the five of us'll show this guy why he shouldn't've messed with us."

Beast Boy looked pale, scared, hell they all did, but when he finally raised his head, it was with a sentiment that, given everything, the others had simply not had a chance to muse on.

"I wish..." said Beast Boy, "I wish there was... something we could do for David too."

Both of the others fell silent, Starfire and Cyborg glancing at one another with empty looks, but it was Slade who responded.

"There isn't," said Slade. "David was merely the carrier for Devastator. He is of no consequence in and of himself. And neither Warp nor Trigon has any personal stake in keeping him around. He is now no different than the billions of civilians that Trigon has slain. And even if there was some way to retrieve him, there is no-one left to do so, nor would he be able to assist you if they did."

Beast Boy nodded sadly. "Yeah..." he said, as Cyborg laid a hand on his shoulder and he raised his head.

"David was a good kid," said Cyborg. "And whatever else happens, we're gonna give Trigon one back for him."

Slowly, Beast Boy nodded again. And then, unable to think of anything else to say, he slowly turned away from the others and walked after Slade. At the threshold he stopped, and turned back for a second.

"I'll get her back," he said. "Whatever else happens, I promise I'll get her back."

"And we shall be here when you return," said Starfire. She looked up at Cyborg for a moment. "All of us."

"Good luck, man," said Cyborg, and then Beast Boy turned away and exitted the room, catching up with slade and falling in alongside him. Slade was shaking his head, muttering something inaudible to himself, but Beast Boy did not have the stomach to ask him what it was, not at this juncture. He walked with his head downcast, ignoring Slade, to the point where Slade finally glanced over and contributed a comment.

"It will require a miracle to save even Raven, let alone Robin," said Slade. "I would not waste my time pining that you cannot find a third miracle for David if I were you. The road ahead will be difficult enough."

"Don't worry about me," muttered Beast Boy, glancing up at Slade. "I just... I wish we could've done something for him. He didn't... he didn't deserve to get abandoned like this."

"No more than the rest of the planet 'deserved' it, I should imagine," said Slade. "But if it makes you feel any better, David's fate was sealed the moment he entered this tale. You could not have saved him. Nobody could. For better or worse, his part in these events and the affairs of this world, is over."

*-------------------------------------------------------------------*

Neither figure moved for an eternity. They stood together in the darkness and the silence, one's features contorted in horror and pain, the other's calm and relaxed. One's hands were stretched to the sky, as though to ward off a blow unseen, the other's lain carefully on the first figure's shoulders. Neither one moved so much as a muscle, one because it could not, the other because it would not. And for a time they stood like this, and were still.

And then there was light.

Faint at first, then slowly growing in intensity, the light was soft and golden, eminating from the dark stone of the statue as though gilding had been plated over it. Dull though it was, it shone brightly in contrast to the dark surroundings, and grew in strength until it was bright enough to flood the chamber with light, gleaming like a polished effigy writ in shining gold. No detail was lost as the light flooded, and the statue seemingly changed from one of stone to one of radiance, yet the other figure still did not move, and as the light began slowly to fade once more, suddenly a sound shattered the silence of the empty chamber.

A gasp.

The noise startled the figure who had wrought this work, and as they stepped back, suddenly the statue collapsed. But rather than crumble to pieces, it fell to the floor like a boned fish, as the last of the light faded away, and lay there, prostrate and motionless, save for the unmistakable sounds of wheezing, gasping breath, mixed with soft moans of pain.

Slowly, the figure standing by approached, as the statue on the floor coughed and clawed for breath. For the first time, the figure chanced to speak, whispering quietly.

"David?" said the figure. "Can you hear me?"

More coughing, more ragged breath was the reply, as the fallen being rolled over onto its back, unable to move further. He tried to answer in words, but could not, every attempt simply bringing more agony to his tortured lungs and body, and the effort caused him to lapse into another coughing fit, and fall into near-convusions on the ground.

"It's all right," said the other quickly, running over and kneeling down beside him. His head hung limply, and she carefully lifted it, feeling him trembling, his hands shaking, his breath coming only in ragged gasps as he tried to force his lungs to function. His eyes were open, but blinked spasmodically, unfocused, and she waited for them to clear, for him to finally recognize who it was that was staring down at him.

She knew when he did by the sudden shudder that went through him, and the strangled gasp that substituted for words from a throat that simply could not obey, so soon after having been restored to flesh and blood. She knew it was coming, indeed she expected it, given everything, and having been recognized she carefully laid one hand on his shoulder and looked into his wide, frightened, eyes.

"It's okay, David," said Terra. "You're gonna be okay..."

[LadyTevar]

Chapter 34: The House of Stone and Fire

"He who has a thousand friends,
Has not a friend to spare.
And he who has one enemy,
Will meet him everywhere."

- Ali Ibn-Abi-Talib

*--------------------------------------------------------------------------------*

In a world made of fire, one more flickering light went un-noticed.

The structure had once been an underground parking garage, and in a way it still was, for the cars within it were more or less still there, the occasional cracked windshield or broken mirror the only signs of what had transpired to the world above. Eight levels of ferro-concrete sat overhead now, enough to eliminate even the slightest traces of sound, for the power was out, and the ventilation fans were quiet, and the garage was thus more silent than it had ever been since it was first gouged out of the earth.

To anyone else, eight two-meter-thick layers of solid concrete might have seemed oppressive, especially in the eerie stillness of a preternaturally-silent garage, where every creak and groan hinted at some hideous purpose lurking just out of sight. Most people got claustrophobic in such surroundings, expecting the walls to cave in, or feeling as though the very air around them was heavy and leaden.

Terra did not. To her, this place was too exposed, a bare two dozen yards of building material separating them from the open sky, where Trigon reigned and demons flew. Though a thermo-nuclear weapon would have been hard-pressed to shake them this deep in the Earth, to Terra it was not deep enough by a longshot. A large part of her wanted to be a dozen miles below the surface right now, safely cocooned inside a pocket of stone. Instead, this was the deepest she could get, close enough to the surface that she imagined she could feel and hear the fires raging above.

Irony of ironies, it was actually cold down here, at least relative to the rest of the planet, the furnaces of Hell not having yet penetrated the bunker-like subterranean chamber. Indeed it was chilly enough that she had built a small campfire in an empty parking space, assembling it out of wooden signs and lighting it with flint dug up from the ground and gasoline siphoned from an abandoned motorcycle. It was a risk of course, some passing flame demon might see the fire or sense it somehow as a kindred spirit, but one she felt she had to take.

The fire wasn't, after all, for her sake.

No sound, save the crackling of the flames. No light, but for the flickering yellow of the firelight, for she had turned off her flashlight to conserve its battery. The flames cast deep shadows over the cars to either side, and occasionally a flare would reveal the silent cement walls that ringed them in. But mostly it sufficed only to illuminate a tiny patch of bare asphalt, alone in a void of interminable darkness. Terra sat perched on a carstop, her knees tucked up against her chest, trusting to the earth and stone that surrounded this underground chamber to warn her if anything approached. And whispering as loudly as she dared in this cement nightmare of an amplifier, she tried, for what had to be the tenth time, to get her counterpart to say something.

"David?"

She might as well have spoken to the walls.

David sat on the ground on the opposite side of the fire, and stared through it unblinking, motionless save for his hands, which trembled almost imperceptibly, like the nervous shakes of an old man. His expression was hollow and dead, his eyes downcast towards the crackling flames. He looked as though he had been coated in a layer of volcanic ash. His hair, his uniform, his very skin was tinted a sickly, slate gray, gray like an overcast sky, gray like a corpse drained of blood or a golem made of river clay.

When first he had awoken, she had taken it to be some kind of coating, dust or ash or pulverized concrete, and tried to brush it off of him, only to realize her mistake. He wasn't covered in gray soot, he had actually turned gray, like Frankenstein's monster re-animated from the grave. No mere change in skin and hair pigmentation, the change had affected his uniform as well, his flame-orange and fire-red suit, his shoes, his belt, dying them all various shades of gray as though the color had been leached out of them with bleach. She had no idea what could have caused such a thing, if it was some side effect of the depetrification process, or something else entirely. She had no idea if she had made a mistake, or forgotten something. It was not as though she had done this often.

He paid no attention to her, not to her words or her questions. When she had brought him back, she had expected him to fight her, attack her, argue or denounce her, do all of the various things he had done the last two times they had encountered one another. David was a weakling by many standards, but there had been enough of an iron core to him for him to reject her desperate request to come with her to meet Slade that time in the library, following which he had managed to fend her off, with Raven's assistance, and nearly impale her on a shard of her own rock. She had expected something similar this time.

She hadn't gotten it, and that almost made things worse. Instead of erupting or accusing her of further betrayals, he hadn't said one word, not one single word, and beyond an initial agonized look of recognition, hadn't resisted her in the slightest. She had led him out of the burnt remains of the library like an automaton, supporting him when he collapsed, which was often, simply leading him by the hand when he managed to walk under his own power, which was not. She had led him here, to this garage, and down into its depths, and he had followed her like a sleepwalker or a shell shock victim. She could not tell if he even knew where he was.

"David?" she repeated, to the same lack of reaction. He didn't appear to be ignoring her so much as unable to hear her, deaf perhaps, or too far lost in whatever he was staring at. She remembered that he had once explained to her how in times of indecision or stress, he often liked to draw on Devastator and view the world through the parasite's eyes. He'd described it as a mosaic of particles of some sort, entrancing, almost hypnotic. Carefully she got up, walked around the fire, and knelt next to him. "David, can you hear me?" she asked, as she gently reached out and touched his shoulder.

He turned his head to face her, and she screamed.

His eyes...

She fell back in an instinctive, jerky reaction, and caught herself on a promontory of rock that she dug out of the ground subconsciously as she fell. He made no move towards her, nor any indication that he understood her reaction, staring directly at her with blood-red eyes, red like burning coals, washed out and glowing, with no features visible therein, no pupils, no irises, just solid red like a pair of stoplights mounted in his head. His eyes had looked bloodshot when first she had re-awoken him, but nothing like this. Not infrequently, when a metahuman gave full reign to their powers, their eyes, the most direct channel to their brain, would begin to emit a shining glow. It had happened to Terra more than once, to Raven, to Jinx, to Starfire whenever she called on her Tamaranean powers, but Terra had never heard of it happening to David, nor did it look like he was in the throes of absolute power.

She half expected a barrage of explosions, but nothing happened of the sort, and indeed slowly, David lowered his head again and shut his eyes, plunging the room back into campfire-lit twilight. Slowly, Terra picked herself back up, and closed with him again, kneeling down once more.

"David?" she asked, "are you all right?" An absurd question to ask with the world in ruins and himself turned into whatever the hell he was now, but the only one she could think to ask. "What happened?"

No reply, once more, though this time he clearly did hear her, slowly opening his blood-colored eyes again and looking up at her with an expression of confusion and apprehension. His mouth worked a few times, no sound emitted, and he blinked, his trembling hands more pronounced now.

She composed herself, wanting to shake him like a toy to get the information she desperately needed, but knowing that in his state, it might well kill him, if it didn't induce him to kill her that is.

"David, listen to me," she said, taking him by the shoulders and staring directly into the red glow. "Where are the others?"

Deep inside, something was working, she could see that much, even with the un-natural color. He blinked several more times, as though trying to dredge memories out of an unwilling brain. She could practically read the answer he was trying to give. 'Others... others...'

"The others," she repeated. "Beast Boy, Starfire, Cyborg, Jinx. When I found you, there was nobody else there. We need to find them. Did Trigon take them somewhere? Did they get turned to stone?"

His breath came in ragged wheezes, and she saw tears welling up in his molten eyes. He mouthed the word several times before he found the means to actually vocalize it.

"Gone..."

She fought down the urge to scream again. "Gone where, David? Did you see anything before Trigon - "

He doubled over all of a sudden, his hands clutched over his stomach like something was trying to eat its way out of his body, and collapsed onto his side. Soft muffled moans of pain or duress forced themselves between his clenched teeth, as he held his stomach with one hand and closed the other into a fist which he used to grab at his collar as though he was being choked. Terra's questions died in her throat and she hesitated for a moment, unsure of what to do. Yet moments later, the fit seemed to pass, and slowly David unclenched his tortured body, laying spent and exhausted on the asphalt like the victim of a car accident.

"I don't know..." he said, and his voice was raspy and thin, like a wraith's, yet he visibly forced the words out, one after another, at God-knew what cost in agony, for she could see his entire body shudder with each one. "I... don't.... know... where they are..." he said.

She let that sit for now, watching him lay on the ground, wheezing for breath, tears pooling on the oil-coated asphalt next to his head. "Are you all right?" she asked for the second time, but this time she actually meant it.

He shuddered, curling up on himself. "C... cold..." he whispered.

"Hold on, I'll move the fire," said Terra, and she raised her hand to do just that, but he shook his head to stop her.

"No," he rasped, and he laboriously rolled over onto his stomach and struggled to his hands and knees, one hand still clutched over his midsection as though he was afraid his guts would spill if he did not hold them in. "In... inside..." he stammered, voice flecked with pain. "Like I... swallowed ice..."

Unsure if trying to help might make it worse, Terra waited as David slowly calmed down, and managed, with difficulty, to sit up. Slowly, he caught his breath, before opening his unearthly red eyes and turning his head back to her. "What... what did you do to me?" he asked.

She couldn't tell if the question was a rebuke or just fear-fueled confusion at what had happened to him. It didn't really matter. "The same thing Slade did to me," she said. "Trigon gave Slade the power to turn me back from stone. I... know stone. I remembered how."

It sounded so easy in words. There was no way to describe what the unspeakably intricate process was like, nor had she an explanation for what had happened to him when she did it. The red eyes, the machine-gray skin and hair and clothing, she had no idea what had caused that, if it had been something of her doing, or how to reverse it if it had.

Still semi-delirious, David raised his head slowly, his red eyes unfocused as he tried to collect his thoughts. "I was... dead?" he asked.

"Petrified," she said. "Trigon turned you to stone, same as everyone else. I guess you could call it dead."

"But then... the others...?"

"You were the only one I found in the library," said Terra. "Trigon might have taken them somewhere else or..." she shook her head. "I don't know what happened to them."

He seemed to sense the various things she refrained from saying in her explanation, and lowered his head, covering half his face with one hand as he breathed with what appeared to be great difficulty, wheezing like a sprinter trying to catch his breath. "So... now what?" he asked.

"I have no idea," admitted Terra. "I thought the others would be there, and if I turned them all back then maybe we could..." she trailed off, staring into the small campfire before lifting her head again. "We have to find them."

He didn't agree or disagree, in fact he didn't do anything, still shakily taking one breath after another, one hand clutched firmly over his midsection. When he finally did speak, it was to ask a wholly unrelated question, his voice a thin whisper.

"You were working for Trigon," he said, but all malice had been burnt out of him. He had not the strength left to curse her, just to state facts. "Why did you come back for us?"

"I was working for Slade," she corrected. "He didn't want this to happen, and neither did I. We tried to stop this." She closed her eyes, bitterness bringing the words to her throat unbidden. "If you'd just let me... if you'd listened to me instead of..."

She couldn't finish the statement. They both knew how this might have been prevented. They both knew why it hadn't been. She had been angry at him for so long before the world ended, and even afterwards. Yet now here, in the darkness, watching him writhe ever-so-slightly in whatever torment he was shot through with, she simply couldn't sustain her anger any longer.

Apparently, neither could he.

"It doesn't matter now," she said. "You've got to help me find the others."

Her anger had not drawn so much as a peep, but this did. He raised his head, his expression such a perfect image of futility and anguish that she almost laughed. Tears were rolling down his face, his eyes still capable of that much despite their discoloration. It took him several tries, but he finally managed to vocalize his refusal.

"I can't," he said.

A sudden wave of bile rose in her throat unbidden. "They're your friends," she spat at him. "They're in trouble. You have to - "

"I know that!" he half-shouted, half croaked, and the effort doubled him over. He lay on his hands and knees for a moment, trying to catch his breath, fists clenched tightly as he fought for breath.

She watched him fight with equanimity, the bile withdrew as quickly as it had risen. This was the boy, she reminded herself, who had fought her to a standstill twice, who had once told her that he was willing to have the other Titans kill him rather than go with her to meet Slade.

What the hell had Trigon done to him?

Carefully, she crouched down in front of him, taking his shoulder and helping him to sit up against a concrete pillar. "David, what happened? What's wrong?"

He lifted his head, pain visible even through the red fog of his scorched eyes. "He... took it."

"Took... ?" she knew the answer before she even finished the question, and her eyes widened as she suddenly understood.

"Devastator," he said, confirming it, clenching his teeth as he forced the words out. "He... took Devastator."

The implications all hit her with a rush. Her expression went blank, her arm fell limp, and she felt an icy chill grip her heart. "How?" she asked, blankly.

He shook his head. "I don't know," he said. "There was a light and... and pain and... then he just... ripped it out. I could feel it. I can still feel it missing. He winced and shuddered and lowered his head.

Terra didn't know what to say. She had known for months that Trigon had plans for Devastator, but not in a thousand years had she ever imagined that it might be this. She had no idea what Trigon could do with Devastator, but she had sufficient imagination to be able to guess. As images of galaxies on fire swirled around her, she wondered idly if Slade had known that this might happen.

Then again, at this point, did it matter if he had?

"Oh god..." she said, her voice hollow.

"Without Devastator, I can't help them," said David. "I can't help you. I can't even see."

The comment shook her out of her reflection. He was staring right at her. "What?"

He ground his teeth in frustration. "Not... see see, I can't..." He waved his hand around at their surroundings, his voice turning thin and desperate. "I can't see the air. I can't see the walls, the carbon in the smoke, it's... I know it's all there, but I can't see it! I've always been able to see it. Even with no light, but now... I feel like someone ripped my guts out with a scoop and..." His grip tightened on his stomach as he knotted his shirt through his fingers. "I can... feel where it ought to be, and it's not there. I never even knew it was there until he..."

He trailed off, breath coming in ragged pulses, and his hands shook harder than ever. Terra had no idea what to say. She sat mutely as he tried to compose himself and failed.

"I can't..." he stammered, quieting to whispers, "I can't help them. I'm not a metahuman or a kinetic or... or whatever you are. I was just a host. And he took it away and... I can't... I can't help them. I can't help anyone... I... I can't..."

His voice disolved into formless sound. He fell to his side and and dug the fingers of one hand into the sides of his temples, and for a second she thought he was coughing until she saw the tears leaking through his hand and saw him convulsing softly with the effort of keeping them in, and before she knew it, he was crying.

Nothing showy, nothing extreme. He did not wail to the heavens or pound his hands on the cement floor, and indeed she didn't even realize what he was doing at first, and then he was already doing it, and she was sitting there watching him, and she hadn't the first idea of what to do now.

Not in any sense.

She didn't move, didn't say anything, just watched him in silence as he visibly struggled to stop and failed, whatever pains, imagined or real, guessable or wholly unknowable he was suffering simply too much to bear. There had been times of course when Terra would have given everything to let some devil rip her powers away. Most metahumans had such moments. But to actually have it happen...

... not to mention everything else.

She felt a lethargy descend on her shoulders like a leaden weight. What few plans she had managed to scrape together had all been predicated on the assumption that, no matter how bad things got, she had the one ace in the hole, the capacity to reverse Trigon's petrification process. She had gone to the library seeking to use it, but found nothing there, nothing but ruin and death and the rubble of men, and David, whom Trigon had broken more thoroughly than any Dantean hell she had been imagining lay in store for them all. Trigon had stolen everything that he defined himself by, his powers, his friends, his world, and left him to stand a silent monument to the futility of resistance to the Lord of Evil.

The fate of the others could be explained away with ease. Trigon had cared nothing for them, insects and protozoa scurrying beneath his cloven feet. David, former host of the Devastator, had been a matter of personal interest to the Devil. The others had not. Whether by conscious act, or as a mere side effect, the other Titans had simply been destroyed.

Until that very moment, Terra realized all of a sudden, she hadn't truly believed that it would come to this.

David was quiet now, still lying curled on his side on the bare floor, his blood-red eyes squeezed shut and veiled behind his knotted hand. In the stillness of the subterranean chamber, he could still be heard, breath hissing softly through clenched teeth, the occasional stifled sob still wracking his tormented frame. Whether he was mourning his burnt world, or his dead friends, or trying to alleviate his own pain, or perhaps all of the above, could not be determined. Nor did it matter.

She knew what Slade would have done here. She also knew what she probably should have done. And in a twisted way, she knew what would likely be the kind thing to do. But rather than any of these things, all Terra did was to slowly reach one hand out and laid it as gently as she could on his ashen-gray shoulder. She wasn't sure what reaction she would get, if he would throw her hand off or ignore it altogether, locked down in his own grief. Yet a few seconds after she did so, he reached around with his far hand, and took hers, and squeezed it as tightly as he could, like a vice, like a handhold above an abyss. He squeezed so tightly that it hurt, that she bit her lip to avoid crying out herself, but she didn't try to pull away, and when she raised her head, she found to her surprise that there were tears welling in her eyes as well.

The certainty of what Slade would have said in this situation hung before her, yet as she closed her eyes, and felt the tears start to run down her face, she took a wordless breath, silently prayed forgiveness for what she was about to do, and lied.

"It's okay, David," she said. "It's gonna be okay..."

*--------------------------------------------------------------------------------*

The path wound down, down, down, endlessly down it appeared, to the point that Beast Boy was sure that sooner or later they would emerge in China. A sheer rock wall on one side, a bottomless pit on the other, and rough, uneven steps to descend. Despite the fact that he could fly, Beast Boy hugged the wall and kept well away from the yawning pit. Who knew what lay within it, or how things worked here after all?

Slade didn't seem to give it a second glance, but that didn't make him feel any better.

The darkness was total, no starlight, no moonlight, no reflections from some other, better lit place. His night vision availed him not at all, and he would have been walking blind had not Slade and he both been carrying burning torches, which served to illuminate their immediate vicinity. Not that there was any change in the scenery to mediate on. There was no sound except for their shuffling footsteps, not even an echo from somewhere else in the shaft, and despite the fact that this was Slade after all, Beast Boy finally had to say something, if only to end the oppressive silence.

"So... where're we going?" he asked, trying to sound nonchalant.

He'd have bet even money that Slade was not going to answer him, having taken him on this trip under protest to begin with, but to his surprise, Slade answered cordially, or at least as cordially as Slade ever was.

"I'm not entirely certain," said the supervillain. "Into grave danger, regardless."

"Yeah," said Beast Boy. That much hardly needed saying. "But... is Raven near here? Do we have a long way to go?"

"Raven no longer exists on the same level that you or I do," said Slade. "She is not in a specific location. Finding her is as much a matter of instinct and desire as it is diligence."

Somehow, that actually made him feel slightly better. "Dude, I know instinct," he said. "And I want to find her. Should be easy, right?"

Slade only groaned. "We'll see," he said, darkly.

Beast Boy frowned. "What, you don't believe me?"

"Let's just say that Trigon has a way of altering people's priorities," said Slade.

Beast Boy might have asked more, but at that moment, they found the bottom of the shaft.

The staircase ended abruptly in an enormous open cavern. Beast Boy raised his torch, squinting as he struggled to see in the oppressive darkness, but could discern no features on any of the walls except for bare rock. Slade however didn't so much as hesitate, but turned halfway to the left and moved off into the darkness. Beast Boy followed, and presently they came to a pair of doors in the solid wall.

Carved from the living rock, and inscribed with meaningless sigils, the doors towered overhead at least twenty feet. No handle or knocker was visible, but a sliver of reddish light was just visible around the margins of both doors. Slade walked up to one of the two doors, but paused at the threshold, before turning back to face Beast Boy for the first time since they had left the library.

"Before we continue," said Slade, "a warning. Even if Cyborg is successful at diverting Trigon's attention from us, his will permeates this entire place. Behind this door, you will find threats both physical and mental, and even if we succeed, I can't guarantee you'll like what you come upon."

Privately, Beast Boy wondered what was in the water that supervillains drank that led them all to throw out cryptic threats every ten seconds. He folded his arms, intending to look resolute and committed, but succeeded only in burning himself with his own torch before yelping and dropping it. Slade didn't react, though Beast Boy was sure he saw the supervillain's one eye narrow appreciably, and he quickly snatched the torch back up and tried to pretend that nothing had happened.

"I'll take my chances, dude," said Beast Boy.

"Hmph," was all Slade had to say to that, and he turned back to the door, bracing his shoulder against it. Beast Boy tossed his torch aside and shifted into the form of a cape buffalo before trotting up to the opposite door, lowering his head and touching it to the stone.

"One, two..."

The two of them shoved in unison, and with a loud grinding sound, the doors slid open enough to admit them onto a balcony overlooking the river of fire.

There was nothing else that this place could conceivably be called. Before them loomed a huge chasm, rent in the earth as though cloven by an axe. Despite the untold depths to which they had descended in the spiraling shaft, this place was deeper still, its vaulted ceiling lost in the darkness above, as would have been its depths had they not been flooded with molten lava, which flowed turgidly onwards like a slow-moving river. The sheer walls were lined with spigots of stone, carved in elaborate shapes bestial and monstrous, from whence poured further liquid fire to feed the molten river.

Beast Boy stood on the edge of the balcony, looking down into the pit of flowing flame, feeling the heat that, even at this height, could still be felt wafting off of it. He stared unblinking at it, mouth slightly ajar, conscious of Slade, who was watching him silently, and only after a few moments did he turn away from the river of fire and back to Slade.

"Slade, where... are we?" he asked, hesitantly. An underground catacomb made by Trigon worshipers beneath the old library he could perhaps accept, but there was simply no way that this place had existed all this time beneath Jump City.

Slade only shook his head. "Perdition," he said.

Before he could ask anything else, Slade gestured downwards. Beast Boy followed his pointed finger, and saw that directly below them was a small stone landing on the banks of the fire river. On it was located a small spire of rock, to which was tied a small boat. How a boat could possibly have survived sitting in the midst of a river of lava was unclear, and yet it bobbed there calmly, as though sitting on nothing more dangerous than a slow-moving river in some urban park.

Slade did not offer any explanations of what might be going on. Instead, in one, swift movement, he leaped off of the balcony and plunged down towards the landing, landing on his feet two hundred feet below with the balance of an acrobat. By now, Beast Boy didn't even wonder at how Slade hadn't shattered every bone in his body, and instead shifted into a hummingbird, and quickly flitted down to the landing, switching back to human form as Slade calmly stepped into the boat and took up position at the bow.

Though the boat accepted Slade with ease, Beast Boy was not so eager to leap into molten lava. "Um..." he asked, "are you positive we're not about to just melt?"

"If you're having second thoughts, changeling..."

Beast Boy frowned at the implication. "No way," he said. "This just isn't what I was expecting."

"It's the end of the world," said Slade, "what exactly were you expecting?"

He had no answer to that question, and so changed the subject. "Look, where are we going?" he asked testily. "You said Raven's around here somewhere, right? If you don't know where she is, then how do you know that this is the right way?"

"Do you see another way?" asked Slade. "If so, you are welcome to follow it forever if you like. I will move down this river until another road presents itself."

Beast Boy rolled his eyes, but Slade seemed to consider the matter concluded. He took up the enormous pole mounted in the front of the boat and turned towards the front of the boat, leaving Beast Boy to board or not as he saw fit. Though he hated to prove Slade right, in the end there wasn't another obvious path to take, even if he had felt like trying to fly over this river, and so grudgingly he climbed into the back of the boat and sat down, muttering as he took the rudder. No sooner had he done so than Slade drove the pole into the lava and pushed them off.

The boat bobbed and rolled, but took to the magma stream as though it were water, floating along without the slightest sign of structural damage. Beast Boy crouched lightly in the stern, half-expecting the floor of the boat to melt out from under him at any moment, yet it didn't even seem to heat up, and after a few minutes, even he had to admit that it seemed unlikely to do so.

The lava flow was slow and gentle, and Slade poled the boat forward like a gondola, moving at a steady pace. They passed tiny islets of rock sticking out above the turgid lava, some no larger than checkerboards, others larger than the boat they were in. The sheer rock walls that bordered the lava did not vary, and neither did the monstrous spigots that continuously vomited fresh lava into the river. Beast Boy steered them well around the apertures, having no desire to take an abrupt magma shower, but the pace was slow and the spigots sparse enough that this hardly took most of his concentration, and as the river rolled on and on, despite his best efforts to remain alert, his mind wandered.

And as always, heaven help whoever happened to be with him when that happened.

"So if you didn't want all this to happen, how come you were working for Trigon in the first place?"

They had been traveling for what might have been fifteen minutes in complete silence before Beast Boy asked the question, and for some time afterwards, Slade said nothing, indeed he did not even seem to acknowledge that Beast Boy had said anything. Beast Boy frowned and wondered how exactly he had wound up stuck on a boat in the middle of Hell with the world's only non-talkative supervillain, when suddenly Slade answered.

"It was something of a complex situation."

This, of course, was no answer at all, and Beast Boy snorted. "Right," he said. "I guess the powers and the demon armies were just side benefits?"

"Not everything is as cut and dry as you would have it be," said Slade. "Thanks to you and your friends, I wasn't exactly left with much choice."

"My friends," repeated Beast Boy. "You mean Terra."

Another pause. "I suppose I do mean her," said Slade. "It was her that got me into this, after all."

"What are you talking about?" asked Beast Boy. "She told David you were making her do all this, not the other way around."

That elicited a hollow laugh. "That much is true," said Slade. "Terra never had the stomach to operate on her own behalf after all. If she had, she wouldn't have needed you all."

Suddenly Beast Boy wished he had been stuck with a non-talkative supervillain. "Shut up," was all he could say.

Slade, as always, saw right through it. "Not so eager to talk now, are we?" he asked in a sickeningly sweet tone that made Beast Boy want to throw him overboard. "It's been what, a full year? Does it still bother you, changeling, that she chose me over the Titans? Over you?"

"You tricked her," he said. "You lied to her and manipulated her into doing all that stuff! Just like you did while you were working for Trigon"

"Use me as a scapegoat if it makes you feel better," said Slade, "but even I'm not that good. Terra made her own decisions. I merely informed them." Slade returned his gaze to the lava ahead, poling the boat forward as he continued. "Besides, I think it's unquestionable that she did far better for herself with me, than she ever did with you."

Bitter anger rose like bile in Beast Boy's throat, but he managed to supress it as he twisted his face into a feral grin. "Oh yeah?" he said. "Way I remember it, she killed you and saved the city from your little volcano trap."

"And look how well that turned out," said Slade, his voice just a shade testier than it had been, which Beast Boy took as a victory. "She managed to kill me, and herself, and thereby condemn us both to the service of the Devil for the purposes of ending the world. I offered her status, power, and training in the control of her abilities, not to mention a share in my new world order. You offered nothing but a cheap box held together with duct tape."

Beast Boy's eyes shot open, and his voice died in his throat as Slade slowly turned his head back. "Oh yes," said the supervillain, voice whisper-quiet and dripping with arrogance, "she showed it to me. If that's your idea of romanticism, it's no wonder she tossed you aside."

It took everything, everything Beast Boy had, to remain seated. It took everything he had to not act, to not adopt the form of some eldritch nightmare from the darkest corners of a horror novel, to not smash the boat to splinters in a frothing rage. What with everything, with Raven and Robin and the crises piled upon crises, he had almost forgotten how bad the pain was, but right here, right now, it came back like an old friend, like a spike driven through his chest that brought tears back to his eyes. It was still just as bad as it had been the day, the hour, the very instant that he had hung there, clinging by his fingertips to the side of a bottomless chasm, as Terra brought a massive rock down to seal him off, his last sight of her a twisted, mocking grin that bored through him like a mining laser.

He fought himself, he fought the presence that he called "the Beast" that lay within him always, and now roared like the caged animal it was and beat its fists against his psyche in pure outraged pain, ready to tear Slade apart and festoon the walls with his entrails. He dug the fingers of his gloves into the seat and clenched his teeth tightly enough to bite through a steel bar, and let the tears run down his face as he fought it off. A year, a full year it had been, with chaos and adventure and triumph and agony and pain and joy all its own, and still, even now, it took Slade no more than a dozen words to turn him back into a raging animal. And he hated himself for that almost as much as he hated Slade for it.

Almost.

He had no idea if Slade knew how close he had come to provoking Armageddon redux, but for whatever reason, Slade didn't push it further, returning to his task in smugly satisfied silence. And after a few minutes, once he was calm enough to speak again, Beast Boy pronounced his final judgment.

"You're a monster," he said simply.

Slade didn't even bat an eye. "Yes," he said. "We have that in common don't we? Beast Boy?" He let his voice slither over the name as though it were some delectable liqueur, just long enough to be noticeable. Beast Boy didn't answer, refused to let himself answer, just sat in the back of the boat in stony silence, until Slade spoke again, and suddenly his voice was back to normal, no nonsense, no inflection, no emotion at all, just hard practicalities.

"You think I do this to amuse myself?" he asked. "If you really want Raven back, you must deal with much worse than that. If you can't control yourself, you're of no use to anyone, least of all me. Trigon is not as nice as I am, and he will place obstacles in your path far beyond anything I can do."

Beast Boy had had it with this 'ominous cryptic warning' crap, especially from Slade. "I don't need your advice," he snapped at Slade, "and I don't care what you think about me! What is all this stuff Trigon's got to throw at us that you keep pretending you know so much about?!"

Suddenly, the boat lurched to a halt, nearly pitching Beast Boy over into the gunwales. He grabbed the side to steady himself, and looked up to see that Slade had jammed the steering pole down into the bottom of the river, and brought the boat to a sudden halt.

And before Beast Boy could open his mouth to ask the question, his eyes widened as he saw why.

The river ahead of them was boiling, writhing, as though a school of demonic fish were trying to rip their way out of it. A moment later, and they were no longer trying. First one, then five, then dozens of fire demons, the same legless floating figures of sulfur and magma that had assaulted the Tower and carved a path of ruin through the streets of Jump City, erupted into the air like startled birds. Screaming and roaring like damned souls, they twirled through the air for a moment, before spinning and diving towards the small boat, and the two occupants thereof.

Things got somewhat chaotic after that.

Beast Boy jumped out of the boat, an action which, given what the boat was presently sitting in, was not something he would have ever envisioned himself doing, and only the instinctive choice to opt for the form of a small bluejay rather than a massive pterodactyl saved him from being diced to sushi by the lashing tendrils of a dozen screaming demons. Behind him, the boat was instantly cut to ribbons by demons aiming at either him or Slade, he couldn't tell which. Slade however had also opted to be elsewhere, pivoting off of the pole and vaulting through the air like an acrobat. Two of the demons tried to interrupt his flight, and he smashed them to paste with the fireproof pole before landing on a table-sized rock island in the middle of the river, brandishing the lava-dripping boat pole like a quarterstaff.

For a brief moment, Beast Boy was reminded of Robin. And then the demons blocked his view, and he had too much else to worry about.

They lunged at him from all sides and he clawed for altitude, evading a dozen strikes at a time as the demons flayed the air with their flaming tendrils and elongated arms of molten rock. His feathers wilted as the searing heat passed within milimeters, and he downsized again and again, to a hummingbird, then a dragonfly, then finally a mosquito, so small that the demons could barely see him, let alone attack. A good half of them gave up, and shouldering over like fighter planes, dove at Slade, who was trying to fend two dozen demons off by himself with nothing more than an iron stick.

Monster or not, Beast Boy didn't even hesitate.

From the smallest of insects, Beast Boy suddenly turned into a furious grizzly bear, surprising the nearest four demons, three of whom were ripped apart by claw and tooth before they had a chance to register what had happened. The fourth lashed out, but its tendrils struck empty air, as Beast Boy shifted into a Python in mid-air, spun his body into a loop, and grabbed the demon's extended arm-tendril in one of his coils. He half-hissed, half-cried out in pain as the demon's fiery skin scorched his scales, but a moment later he swung his weight hard to the side and launched the demon like a slingshot straight into the rock wall with enough force that it exploded against it like a water balloon.

The lava river loomed below, but a second later, and Beast Boy was an eagle, not normal but gigantic, an primordial eagle the size of a Cessna airplane, and his talons lashed out and tore another demon to pieces even as his great wings beat the air and carried him towards Slade.

Slade had relocated to a larger rock, impaling a demon and forcing it back under the surface as a pivot in order to do so, but three more demons had seized his pole with their tendrils and were now trying to drag him into the lava with it. Perhaps a dozen more were moving to try and intercept Beast Boy, to prevent him from interfering. But if there was anything Beast Boy was good at, it was interference, something Slade knew, and the demons were about to find out.

In an instant, Beast Boy was simply gone, gone as though he had teleported away. Two demons, unable to abort their lunge, collided in mid-air and spiralled down into the river like shot birds. The others sliced the very air apart, but caught nothing whatsoever, and a second later, Beast Boy re-appeared beyond them all, having traversed the intervening space in the form of a gnat so small that it was nearly microscopic. Now he took on the shape of a peregrine falcon, and before any of the demons behind him could so much as react, he folded his wings and dove at the three accosting Slade.

He hit one of them at nearly two hundred miles an hour and caved its head in like a piece of bubble wrap, bouncing off of the demon's crumpled form and back up into the air so fast that the splashing sulfur and magma didn't even have time to burn him. Another one released Slade's weapon and lashed at him, but he switched to the form of a Rhinoceros and shrugged the blow off with thick armor before landing atop the unfortunate demon and splattering it all across the cavern. The last demon had no chance to even act before Slade planted his feet and hurled it towards Beast Boy, who simply impaled the sulfuric monster on his horn before hurling it off into the river of lava with a shake of his head.

The remaining demons, having lost half their number in less than thirty seconds, fell back to regroup, and Beast Boy switched back into his human form, crouched low, as was his wont. Slade had selected the largest and most stable-looking island in sight to make his stand, a flat slab of immobile granite the size of a tractor trailer, and he now moved into the middle of it, brandishing his ersatz staff, cherry-red at both ends where he had used it to cleave demons apart or plumb the depths of the river of fire. Not without hesitation, Beast Boy backed up towards him, half-expecting to feel Slade plunging the business end of the staff into his back at any moment. Slade however, managed to restrain himself. Whatever the business between them, the demons were plainly a more pressing threat.

Yet rather than resume the attack, the demons held back. Though they still numbered at least twenty, no further demons were surging forth to join their ranks, the lava beneath them once more in calm state it had been in prior to their rising. Wherever the endless legions that Trigon had employed before were, this group plainly was finite, and bereft of the advantage of endless numbers, they seemed more subdued, waiting for an opportunity rather than blindly charging.

"Is this one of those 'obstacles' you were talking about?" asked Beast Boy without turning around.

"This?" scoffed Slade, planting his staff in the rock at his feet. "This is just a minor inconvenience. Nothing two old friends can't handle."

For a brief second, Beast Boy forgot all about the demons, rounding on Slade in righteous fury. "I am not your friend!" he yelled, loud enough to echo through the cavern.

Slade seemed almost bemused by his reaction, and no doubt would have responded with some pithy comment or other, save that, at that moment, someone else beat him to it.

"Of course not!" came a voice from far above, raspy and mocking and instantly familiar, and as both Slade and Beast Boy turned their heads, they saw, far far above them, perched atop one of the stone spigots, a small, lithe figure, crouched on all fours like a cat preparing to pounce. At the distance they were at, so small a figure would not normally have been discernible, yet despite that, Beast Boy's eyes popped and his heart froze, for he recognized the silhouette instantly without need for a second glance. And as he watched, the figure leaped from the spigot and plunged down, landing in a crouch on another rock island, the orange glow of the river of fire revealing its ash-gray skin and clothing, its red eyes burning like coals, its fanged teeth bared in a twisted grin, gloved hands crossed as it stood up and faced itself across the stream of magma.

"You don't have any friends," said the perfect duplicate of Beast Boy in a mocking laugh, and then all the demons charged at once.

[LadyTevar]

Chapter 34: The House of Stone and Fire

"He who has a thousand friends,
Has not a friend to spare.
And he who has one enemy,
Will meet him everywhere."

- Ali Ibn-Abi-Talib

*--------------------------------------------------------------------------------*

In a world made of fire, one more flickering light went un-noticed.

The structure had once been an underground parking garage, and in a way it still was, for the cars within it were more or less still there, the occasional cracked windshield or broken mirror the only signs of what had transpired to the world above. Eight levels of ferro-concrete sat overhead now, enough to eliminate even the slightest traces of sound, for the power was out, and the ventilation fans were quiet, and the garage was thus more silent than it had ever been since it was first gouged out of the earth.

To anyone else, eight two-meter-thick layers of solid concrete might have seemed oppressive, especially in the eerie stillness of a preternaturally-silent garage, where every creak and groan hinted at some hideous purpose lurking just out of sight. Most people got claustrophobic in such surroundings, expecting the walls to cave in, or feeling as though the very air around them was heavy and leaden.

Terra did not. To her, this place was too exposed, a bare two dozen yards of building material separating them from the open sky, where Trigon reigned and demons flew. Though a thermo-nuclear weapon would have been hard-pressed to shake them this deep in the Earth, to Terra it was not deep enough by a longshot. A large part of her wanted to be a dozen miles below the surface right now, safely cocooned inside a pocket of stone. Instead, this was the deepest she could get, close enough to the surface that she imagined she could feel and hear the fires raging above.

Irony of ironies, it was actually cold down here, at least relative to the rest of the planet, the furnaces of Hell not having yet penetrated the bunker-like subterranean chamber. Indeed it was chilly enough that she had built a small campfire in an empty parking space, assembling it out of wooden signs and lighting it with flint dug up from the ground and gasoline siphoned from an abandoned motorcycle. It was a risk of course, some passing flame demon might see the fire or sense it somehow as a kindred spirit, but one she felt she had to take.

The fire wasn't, after all, for her sake.

No sound, save the crackling of the flames. No light, but for the flickering yellow of the firelight, for she had turned off her flashlight to conserve its battery. The flames cast deep shadows over the cars to either side, and occasionally a flare would reveal the silent cement walls that ringed them in. But mostly it sufficed only to illuminate a tiny patch of bare asphalt, alone in a void of interminable darkness. Terra sat perched on a carstop, her knees tucked up against her chest, trusting to the earth and stone that surrounded this underground chamber to warn her if anything approached. And whispering as loudly as she dared in this cement nightmare of an amplifier, she tried, for what had to be the tenth time, to get her counterpart to say something.

"David?"

She might as well have spoken to the walls.

David sat on the ground on the opposite side of the fire, and stared through it unblinking, motionless save for his hands, which trembled almost imperceptibly, like the nervous shakes of an old man. His expression was hollow and dead, his eyes downcast towards the crackling flames. He looked as though he had been coated in a layer of volcanic ash. His hair, his uniform, his very skin was tinted a sickly, slate gray, gray like an overcast sky, gray like a corpse drained of blood or a golem made of river clay.

When first he had awoken, she had taken it to be some kind of coating, dust or ash or pulverized concrete, and tried to brush it off of him, only to realize her mistake. He wasn't covered in gray soot, he had actually turned gray, like Frankenstein's monster re-animated from the grave. No mere change in skin and hair pigmentation, the change had affected his uniform as well, his flame-orange and fire-red suit, his shoes, his belt, dying them all various shades of gray as though the color had been leached out of them with bleach. She had no idea what could have caused such a thing, if it was some side effect of the depetrification process, or something else entirely. She had no idea if she had made a mistake, or forgotten something. It was not as though she had done this often.

He paid no attention to her, not to her words or her questions. When she had brought him back, she had expected him to fight her, attack her, argue or denounce her, do all of the various things he had done the last two times they had encountered one another. David was a weakling by many standards, but there had been enough of an iron core to him for him to reject her desperate request to come with her to meet Slade that time in the library, following which he had managed to fend her off, with Raven's assistance, and nearly impale her on a shard of her own rock. She had expected something similar this time.

She hadn't gotten it, and that almost made things worse. Instead of erupting or accusing her of further betrayals, he hadn't said one word, not one single word, and beyond an initial agonized look of recognition, hadn't resisted her in the slightest. She had led him out of the burnt remains of the library like an automaton, supporting him when he collapsed, which was often, simply leading him by the hand when he managed to walk under his own power, which was not. She had led him here, to this garage, and down into its depths, and he had followed her like a sleepwalker or a shell shock victim. She could not tell if he even knew where he was.

"David?" she repeated, to the same lack of reaction. He didn't appear to be ignoring her so much as unable to hear her, deaf perhaps, or too far lost in whatever he was staring at. She remembered that he had once explained to her how in times of indecision or stress, he often liked to draw on Devastator and view the world through the parasite's eyes. He'd described it as a mosaic of particles of some sort, entrancing, almost hypnotic. Carefully she got up, walked around the fire, and knelt next to him. "David, can you hear me?" she asked, as she gently reached out and touched his shoulder.

He turned his head to face her, and she screamed.

His eyes...

She fell back in an instinctive, jerky reaction, and caught herself on a promontory of rock that she dug out of the ground subconsciously as she fell. He made no move towards her, nor any indication that he understood her reaction, staring directly at her with blood-red eyes, red like burning coals, washed out and glowing, with no features visible therein, no pupils, no irises, just solid red like a pair of stoplights mounted in his head. His eyes had looked bloodshot when first she had re-awoken him, but nothing like this. Not infrequently, when a metahuman gave full reign to their powers, their eyes, the most direct channel to their brain, would begin to emit a shining glow. It had happened to Terra more than once, to Raven, to Jinx, to Starfire whenever she called on her Tamaranean powers, but Terra had never heard of it happening to David, nor did it look like he was in the throes of absolute power.

She half expected a barrage of explosions, but nothing happened of the sort, and indeed slowly, David lowered his head again and shut his eyes, plunging the room back into campfire-lit twilight. Slowly, Terra picked herself back up, and closed with him again, kneeling down once more.

"David?" she asked, "are you all right?" An absurd question to ask with the world in ruins and himself turned into whatever the hell he was now, but the only one she could think to ask. "What happened?"

No reply, once more, though this time he clearly did hear her, slowly opening his blood-colored eyes again and looking up at her with an expression of confusion and apprehension. His mouth worked a few times, no sound emitted, and he blinked, his trembling hands more pronounced now.

She composed herself, wanting to shake him like a toy to get the information she desperately needed, but knowing that in his state, it might well kill him, if it didn't induce him to kill her that is.

"David, listen to me," she said, taking him by the shoulders and staring directly into the red glow. "Where are the others?"

Deep inside, something was working, she could see that much, even with the un-natural color. He blinked several more times, as though trying to dredge memories out of an unwilling brain. She could practically read the answer he was trying to give. 'Others... others...'

"The others," she repeated. "Beast Boy, Starfire, Cyborg, Jinx. When I found you, there was nobody else there. We need to find them. Did Trigon take them somewhere? Did they get turned to stone?"

His breath came in ragged wheezes, and she saw tears welling up in his molten eyes. He mouthed the word several times before he found the means to actually vocalize it.

"Gone..."

She fought down the urge to scream again. "Gone where, David? Did you see anything before Trigon - "

He doubled over all of a sudden, his hands clutched over his stomach like something was trying to eat its way out of his body, and collapsed onto his side. Soft muffled moans of pain or duress forced themselves between his clenched teeth, as he held his stomach with one hand and closed the other into a fist which he used to grab at his collar as though he was being choked. Terra's questions died in her throat and she hesitated for a moment, unsure of what to do. Yet moments later, the fit seemed to pass, and slowly David unclenched his tortured body, laying spent and exhausted on the asphalt like the victim of a car accident.

"I don't know..." he said, and his voice was raspy and thin, like a wraith's, yet he visibly forced the words out, one after another, at God-knew what cost in agony, for she could see his entire body shudder with each one. "I... don't.... know... where they are..." he said.

She let that sit for now, watching him lay on the ground, wheezing for breath, tears pooling on the oil-coated asphalt next to his head. "Are you all right?" she asked for the second time, but this time she actually meant it.

He shuddered, curling up on himself. "C... cold..." he whispered.

"Hold on, I'll move the fire," said Terra, and she raised her hand to do just that, but he shook his head to stop her.

"No," he rasped, and he laboriously rolled over onto his stomach and struggled to his hands and knees, one hand still clutched over his midsection as though he was afraid his guts would spill if he did not hold them in. "In... inside..." he stammered, voice flecked with pain. "Like I... swallowed ice..."

Unsure if trying to help might make it worse, Terra waited as David slowly calmed down, and managed, with difficulty, to sit up. Slowly, he caught his breath, before opening his unearthly red eyes and turning his head back to her. "What... what did you do to me?" he asked.

She couldn't tell if the question was a rebuke or just fear-fueled confusion at what had happened to him. It didn't really matter. "The same thing Slade did to me," she said. "Trigon gave Slade the power to turn me back from stone. I... know stone. I remembered how."

It sounded so easy in words. There was no way to describe what the unspeakably intricate process was like, nor had she an explanation for what had happened to him when she did it. The red eyes, the machine-gray skin and hair and clothing, she had no idea what had caused that, if it had been something of her doing, or how to reverse it if it had.

Still semi-delirious, David raised his head slowly, his red eyes unfocused as he tried to collect his thoughts. "I was... dead?" he asked.

"Petrified," she said. "Trigon turned you to stone, same as everyone else. I guess you could call it dead."

"But then... the others...?"

"You were the only one I found in the library," said Terra. "Trigon might have taken them somewhere else or..." she shook her head. "I don't know what happened to them."

He seemed to sense the various things she refrained from saying in her explanation, and lowered his head, covering half his face with one hand as he breathed with what appeared to be great difficulty, wheezing like a sprinter trying to catch his breath. "So... now what?" he asked.

"I have no idea," admitted Terra. "I thought the others would be there, and if I turned them all back then maybe we could..." she trailed off, staring into the small campfire before lifting her head again. "We have to find them."

He didn't agree or disagree, in fact he didn't do anything, still shakily taking one breath after another, one hand clutched firmly over his midsection. When he finally did speak, it was to ask a wholly unrelated question, his voice a thin whisper.

"You were working for Trigon," he said, but all malice had been burnt out of him. He had not the strength left to curse her, just to state facts. "Why did you come back for us?"

"I was working for Slade," she corrected. "He didn't want this to happen, and neither did I. We tried to stop this." She closed her eyes, bitterness bringing the words to her throat unbidden. "If you'd just let me... if you'd listened to me instead of..."

She couldn't finish the statement. They both knew how this might have been prevented. They both knew why it hadn't been. She had been angry at him for so long before the world ended, and even afterwards. Yet now here, in the darkness, watching him writhe ever-so-slightly in whatever torment he was shot through with, she simply couldn't sustain her anger any longer.

Apparently, neither could he.

"It doesn't matter now," she said. "You've got to help me find the others."

Her anger had not drawn so much as a peep, but this did. He raised his head, his expression such a perfect image of futility and anguish that she almost laughed. Tears were rolling down his face, his eyes still capable of that much despite their discoloration. It took him several tries, but he finally managed to vocalize his refusal.

"I can't," he said.

A sudden wave of bile rose in her throat unbidden. "They're your friends," she spat at him. "They're in trouble. You have to - "

"I know that!" he half-shouted, half croaked, and the effort doubled him over. He lay on his hands and knees for a moment, trying to catch his breath, fists clenched tightly as he fought for breath.

She watched him fight with equanimity, the bile withdrew as quickly as it had risen. This was the boy, she reminded herself, who had fought her to a standstill twice, who had once told her that he was willing to have the other Titans kill him rather than go with her to meet Slade.

What the hell had Trigon done to him?

Carefully, she crouched down in front of him, taking his shoulder and helping him to sit up against a concrete pillar. "David, what happened? What's wrong?"

He lifted his head, pain visible even through the red fog of his scorched eyes. "He... took it."

"Took... ?" she knew the answer before she even finished the question, and her eyes widened as she suddenly understood.

"Devastator," he said, confirming it, clenching his teeth as he forced the words out. "He... took Devastator."

The implications all hit her with a rush. Her expression went blank, her arm fell limp, and she felt an icy chill grip her heart. "How?" she asked, blankly.

He shook his head. "I don't know," he said. "There was a light and... and pain and... then he just... ripped it out. I could feel it. I can still feel it missing. He winced and shuddered and lowered his head.

Terra didn't know what to say. She had known for months that Trigon had plans for Devastator, but not in a thousand years had she ever imagined that it might be this. She had no idea what Trigon could do with Devastator, but she had sufficient imagination to be able to guess. As images of galaxies on fire swirled around her, she wondered idly if Slade had known that this might happen.

Then again, at this point, did it matter if he had?

"Oh god..." she said, her voice hollow.

"Without Devastator, I can't help them," said David. "I can't help you. I can't even see."

The comment shook her out of her reflection. He was staring right at her. "What?"

He ground his teeth in frustration. "Not... see see, I can't..." He waved his hand around at their surroundings, his voice turning thin and desperate. "I can't see the air. I can't see the walls, the carbon in the smoke, it's... I know it's all there, but I can't see it! I've always been able to see it. Even with no light, but now... I feel like someone ripped my guts out with a scoop and..." His grip tightened on his stomach as he knotted his shirt through his fingers. "I can... feel where it ought to be, and it's not there. I never even knew it was there until he..."

He trailed off, breath coming in ragged pulses, and his hands shook harder than ever. Terra had no idea what to say. She sat mutely as he tried to compose himself and failed.

"I can't..." he stammered, quieting to whispers, "I can't help them. I'm not a metahuman or a kinetic or... or whatever you are. I was just a host. And he took it away and... I can't... I can't help them. I can't help anyone... I... I can't..."

His voice disolved into formless sound. He fell to his side and and dug the fingers of one hand into the sides of his temples, and for a second she thought he was coughing until she saw the tears leaking through his hand and saw him convulsing softly with the effort of keeping them in, and before she knew it, he was crying.

Nothing showy, nothing extreme. He did not wail to the heavens or pound his hands on the cement floor, and indeed she didn't even realize what he was doing at first, and then he was already doing it, and she was sitting there watching him, and she hadn't the first idea of what to do now.

Not in any sense.

She didn't move, didn't say anything, just watched him in silence as he visibly struggled to stop and failed, whatever pains, imagined or real, guessable or wholly unknowable he was suffering simply too much to bear. There had been times of course when Terra would have given everything to let some devil rip her powers away. Most metahumans had such moments. But to actually have it happen...

... not to mention everything else.

She felt a lethargy descend on her shoulders like a leaden weight. What few plans she had managed to scrape together had all been predicated on the assumption that, no matter how bad things got, she had the one ace in the hole, the capacity to reverse Trigon's petrification process. She had gone to the library seeking to use it, but found nothing there, nothing but ruin and death and the rubble of men, and David, whom Trigon had broken more thoroughly than any Dantean hell she had been imagining lay in store for them all. Trigon had stolen everything that he defined himself by, his powers, his friends, his world, and left him to stand a silent monument to the futility of resistance to the Lord of Evil.

The fate of the others could be explained away with ease. Trigon had cared nothing for them, insects and protozoa scurrying beneath his cloven feet. David, former host of the Devastator, had been a matter of personal interest to the Devil. The others had not. Whether by conscious act, or as a mere side effect, the other Titans had simply been destroyed.

Until that very moment, Terra realized all of a sudden, she hadn't truly believed that it would come to this.

David was quiet now, still lying curled on his side on the bare floor, his blood-red eyes squeezed shut and veiled behind his knotted hand. In the stillness of the subterranean chamber, he could still be heard, breath hissing softly through clenched teeth, the occasional stifled sob still wracking his tormented frame. Whether he was mourning his burnt world, or his dead friends, or trying to alleviate his own pain, or perhaps all of the above, could not be determined. Nor did it matter.

She knew what Slade would have done here. She also knew what she probably should have done. And in a twisted way, she knew what would likely be the kind thing to do. But rather than any of these things, all Terra did was to slowly reach one hand out and laid it as gently as she could on his ashen-gray shoulder. She wasn't sure what reaction she would get, if he would throw her hand off or ignore it altogether, locked down in his own grief. Yet a few seconds after she did so, he reached around with his far hand, and took hers, and squeezed it as tightly as he could, like a vice, like a handhold above an abyss. He squeezed so tightly that it hurt, that she bit her lip to avoid crying out herself, but she didn't try to pull away, and when she raised her head, she found to her surprise that there were tears welling in her eyes as well.

The certainty of what Slade would have said in this situation hung before her, yet as she closed her eyes, and felt the tears start to run down her face, she took a wordless breath, silently prayed forgiveness for what she was about to do, and lied.

"It's okay, David," she said. "It's gonna be okay..."

*--------------------------------------------------------------------------------*

The path wound down, down, down, endlessly down it appeared, to the point that Beast Boy was sure that sooner or later they would emerge in China. A sheer rock wall on one side, a bottomless pit on the other, and rough, uneven steps to descend. Despite the fact that he could fly, Beast Boy hugged the wall and kept well away from the yawning pit. Who knew what lay within it, or how things worked here after all?

Slade didn't seem to give it a second glance, but that didn't make him feel any better.

The darkness was total, no starlight, no moonlight, no reflections from some other, better lit place. His night vision availed him not at all, and he would have been walking blind had not Slade and he both been carrying burning torches, which served to illuminate their immediate vicinity. Not that there was any change in the scenery to mediate on. There was no sound except for their shuffling footsteps, not even an echo from somewhere else in the shaft, and despite the fact that this was Slade after all, Beast Boy finally had to say something, if only to end the oppressive silence.

"So... where're we going?" he asked, trying to sound nonchalant.

He'd have bet even money that Slade was not going to answer him, having taken him on this trip under protest to begin with, but to his surprise, Slade answered cordially, or at least as cordially as Slade ever was.

"I'm not entirely certain," said the supervillain. "Into grave danger, regardless."

"Yeah," said Beast Boy. That much hardly needed saying. "But... is Raven near here? Do we have a long way to go?"

"Raven no longer exists on the same level that you or I do," said Slade. "She is not in a specific location. Finding her is as much a matter of instinct and desire as it is diligence."

Somehow, that actually made him feel slightly better. "Dude, I know instinct," he said. "And I want to find her. Should be easy, right?"

Slade only groaned. "We'll see," he said, darkly.

Beast Boy frowned. "What, you don't believe me?"

"Let's just say that Trigon has a way of altering people's priorities," said Slade.

Beast Boy might have asked more, but at that moment, they found the bottom of the shaft.

The staircase ended abruptly in an enormous open cavern. Beast Boy raised his torch, squinting as he struggled to see in the oppressive darkness, but could discern no features on any of the walls except for bare rock. Slade however didn't so much as hesitate, but turned halfway to the left and moved off into the darkness. Beast Boy followed, and presently they came to a pair of doors in the solid wall.

Carved from the living rock, and inscribed with meaningless sigils, the doors towered overhead at least twenty feet. No handle or knocker was visible, but a sliver of reddish light was just visible around the margins of both doors. Slade walked up to one of the two doors, but paused at the threshold, before turning back to face Beast Boy for the first time since they had left the library.

"Before we continue," said Slade, "a warning. Even if Cyborg is successful at diverting Trigon's attention from us, his will permeates this entire place. Behind this door, you will find threats both physical and mental, and even if we succeed, I can't guarantee you'll like what you come upon."

Privately, Beast Boy wondered what was in the water that supervillains drank that led them all to throw out cryptic threats every ten seconds. He folded his arms, intending to look resolute and committed, but succeeded only in burning himself with his own torch before yelping and dropping it. Slade didn't react, though Beast Boy was sure he saw the supervillain's one eye narrow appreciably, and he quickly snatched the torch back up and tried to pretend that nothing had happened.

"I'll take my chances, dude," said Beast Boy.

"Hmph," was all Slade had to say to that, and he turned back to the door, bracing his shoulder against it. Beast Boy tossed his torch aside and shifted into the form of a cape buffalo before trotting up to the opposite door, lowering his head and touching it to the stone.

"One, two..."

The two of them shoved in unison, and with a loud grinding sound, the doors slid open enough to admit them onto a balcony overlooking the river of fire.

There was nothing else that this place could conceivably be called. Before them loomed a huge chasm, rent in the earth as though cloven by an axe. Despite the untold depths to which they had descended in the spiraling shaft, this place was deeper still, its vaulted ceiling lost in the darkness above, as would have been its depths had they not been flooded with molten lava, which flowed turgidly onwards like a slow-moving river. The sheer walls were lined with spigots of stone, carved in elaborate shapes bestial and monstrous, from whence poured further liquid fire to feed the molten river.

Beast Boy stood on the edge of the balcony, looking down into the pit of flowing flame, feeling the heat that, even at this height, could still be felt wafting off of it. He stared unblinking at it, mouth slightly ajar, conscious of Slade, who was watching him silently, and only after a few moments did he turn away from the river of fire and back to Slade.

"Slade, where... are we?" he asked, hesitantly. An underground catacomb made by Trigon worshipers beneath the old library he could perhaps accept, but there was simply no way that this place had existed all this time beneath Jump City.

Slade only shook his head. "Perdition," he said.

Before he could ask anything else, Slade gestured downwards. Beast Boy followed his pointed finger, and saw that directly below them was a small stone landing on the banks of the fire river. On it was located a small spire of rock, to which was tied a small boat. How a boat could possibly have survived sitting in the midst of a river of lava was unclear, and yet it bobbed there calmly, as though sitting on nothing more dangerous than a slow-moving river in some urban park.

Slade did not offer any explanations of what might be going on. Instead, in one, swift movement, he leaped off of the balcony and plunged down towards the landing, landing on his feet two hundred feet below with the balance of an acrobat. By now, Beast Boy didn't even wonder at how Slade hadn't shattered every bone in his body, and instead shifted into a hummingbird, and quickly flitted down to the landing, switching back to human form as Slade calmly stepped into the boat and took up position at the bow.

Though the boat accepted Slade with ease, Beast Boy was not so eager to leap into molten lava. "Um..." he asked, "are you positive we're not about to just melt?"

"If you're having second thoughts, changeling..."

Beast Boy frowned at the implication. "No way," he said. "This just isn't what I was expecting."

"It's the end of the world," said Slade, "what exactly were you expecting?"

He had no answer to that question, and so changed the subject. "Look, where are we going?" he asked testily. "You said Raven's around here somewhere, right? If you don't know where she is, then how do you know that this is the right way?"

"Do you see another way?" asked Slade. "If so, you are welcome to follow it forever if you like. I will move down this river until another road presents itself."

Beast Boy rolled his eyes, but Slade seemed to consider the matter concluded. He took up the enormous pole mounted in the front of the boat and turned towards the front of the boat, leaving Beast Boy to board or not as he saw fit. Though he hated to prove Slade right, in the end there wasn't another obvious path to take, even if he had felt like trying to fly over this river, and so grudgingly he climbed into the back of the boat and sat down, muttering as he took the rudder. No sooner had he done so than Slade drove the pole into the lava and pushed them off.

The boat bobbed and rolled, but took to the magma stream as though it were water, floating along without the slightest sign of structural damage. Beast Boy crouched lightly in the stern, half-expecting the floor of the boat to melt out from under him at any moment, yet it didn't even seem to heat up, and after a few minutes, even he had to admit that it seemed unlikely to do so.

The lava flow was slow and gentle, and Slade poled the boat forward like a gondola, moving at a steady pace. They passed tiny islets of rock sticking out above the turgid lava, some no larger than checkerboards, others larger than the boat they were in. The sheer rock walls that bordered the lava did not vary, and neither did the monstrous spigots that continuously vomited fresh lava into the river. Beast Boy steered them well around the apertures, having no desire to take an abrupt magma shower, but the pace was slow and the spigots sparse enough that this hardly took most of his concentration, and as the river rolled on and on, despite his best efforts to remain alert, his mind wandered.

And as always, heaven help whoever happened to be with him when that happened.

"So if you didn't want all this to happen, how come you were working for Trigon in the first place?"

They had been traveling for what might have been fifteen minutes in complete silence before Beast Boy asked the question, and for some time afterwards, Slade said nothing, indeed he did not even seem to acknowledge that Beast Boy had said anything. Beast Boy frowned and wondered how exactly he had wound up stuck on a boat in the middle of Hell with the world's only non-talkative supervillain, when suddenly Slade answered.

"It was something of a complex situation."

This, of course, was no answer at all, and Beast Boy snorted. "Right," he said. "I guess the powers and the demon armies were just side benefits?"

"Not everything is as cut and dry as you would have it be," said Slade. "Thanks to you and your friends, I wasn't exactly left with much choice."

"My friends," repeated Beast Boy. "You mean Terra."

Another pause. "I suppose I do mean her," said Slade. "It was her that got me into this, after all."

"What are you talking about?" asked Beast Boy. "She told David you were making her do all this, not the other way around."

That elicited a hollow laugh. "That much is true," said Slade. "Terra never had the stomach to operate on her own behalf after all. If she had, she wouldn't have needed you all."

Suddenly Beast Boy wished he had been stuck with a non-talkative supervillain. "Shut up," was all he could say.

Slade, as always, saw right through it. "Not so eager to talk now, are we?" he asked in a sickeningly sweet tone that made Beast Boy want to throw him overboard. "It's been what, a full year? Does it still bother you, changeling, that she chose me over the Titans? Over you?"

"You tricked her," he said. "You lied to her and manipulated her into doing all that stuff! Just like you did while you were working for Trigon"

"Use me as a scapegoat if it makes you feel better," said Slade, "but even I'm not that good. Terra made her own decisions. I merely informed them." Slade returned his gaze to the lava ahead, poling the boat forward as he continued. "Besides, I think it's unquestionable that she did far better for herself with me, than she ever did with you."

Bitter anger rose like bile in Beast Boy's throat, but he managed to supress it as he twisted his face into a feral grin. "Oh yeah?" he said. "Way I remember it, she killed you and saved the city from your little volcano trap."

"And look how well that turned out," said Slade, his voice just a shade testier than it had been, which Beast Boy took as a victory. "She managed to kill me, and herself, and thereby condemn us both to the service of the Devil for the purposes of ending the world. I offered her status, power, and training in the control of her abilities, not to mention a share in my new world order. You offered nothing but a cheap box held together with duct tape."

Beast Boy's eyes shot open, and his voice died in his throat as Slade slowly turned his head back. "Oh yes," said the supervillain, voice whisper-quiet and dripping with arrogance, "she showed it to me. If that's your idea of romanticism, it's no wonder she tossed you aside."

It took everything, everything Beast Boy had, to remain seated. It took everything he had to not act, to not adopt the form of some eldritch nightmare from the darkest corners of a horror novel, to not smash the boat to splinters in a frothing rage. What with everything, with Raven and Robin and the crises piled upon crises, he had almost forgotten how bad the pain was, but right here, right now, it came back like an old friend, like a spike driven through his chest that brought tears back to his eyes. It was still just as bad as it had been the day, the hour, the very instant that he had hung there, clinging by his fingertips to the side of a bottomless chasm, as Terra brought a massive rock down to seal him off, his last sight of her a twisted, mocking grin that bored through him like a mining laser.

He fought himself, he fought the presence that he called "the Beast" that lay within him always, and now roared like the caged animal it was and beat its fists against his psyche in pure outraged pain, ready to tear Slade apart and festoon the walls with his entrails. He dug the fingers of his gloves into the seat and clenched his teeth tightly enough to bite through a steel bar, and let the tears run down his face as he fought it off. A year, a full year it had been, with chaos and adventure and triumph and agony and pain and joy all its own, and still, even now, it took Slade no more than a dozen words to turn him back into a raging animal. And he hated himself for that almost as much as he hated Slade for it.

Almost.

He had no idea if Slade knew how close he had come to provoking Armageddon redux, but for whatever reason, Slade didn't push it further, returning to his task in smugly satisfied silence. And after a few minutes, once he was calm enough to speak again, Beast Boy pronounced his final judgment.

"You're a monster," he said simply.

Slade didn't even bat an eye. "Yes," he said. "We have that in common don't we? Beast Boy?" He let his voice slither over the name as though it were some delectable liqueur, just long enough to be noticeable. Beast Boy didn't answer, refused to let himself answer, just sat in the back of the boat in stony silence, until Slade spoke again, and suddenly his voice was back to normal, no nonsense, no inflection, no emotion at all, just hard practicalities.

"You think I do this to amuse myself?" he asked. "If you really want Raven back, you must deal with much worse than that. If you can't control yourself, you're of no use to anyone, least of all me. Trigon is not as nice as I am, and he will place obstacles in your path far beyond anything I can do."

Beast Boy had had it with this 'ominous cryptic warning' crap, especially from Slade. "I don't need your advice," he snapped at Slade, "and I don't care what you think about me! What is all this stuff Trigon's got to throw at us that you keep pretending you know so much about?!"

Suddenly, the boat lurched to a halt, nearly pitching Beast Boy over into the gunwales. He grabbed the side to steady himself, and looked up to see that Slade had jammed the steering pole down into the bottom of the river, and brought the boat to a sudden halt.

And before Beast Boy could open his mouth to ask the question, his eyes widened as he saw why.

The river ahead of them was boiling, writhing, as though a school of demonic fish were trying to rip their way out of it. A moment later, and they were no longer trying. First one, then five, then dozens of fire demons, the same legless floating figures of sulfur and magma that had assaulted the Tower and carved a path of ruin through the streets of Jump City, erupted into the air like startled birds. Screaming and roaring like damned souls, they twirled through the air for a moment, before spinning and diving towards the small boat, and the two occupants thereof.

Things got somewhat chaotic after that.

Beast Boy jumped out of the boat, an action which, given what the boat was presently sitting in, was not something he would have ever envisioned himself doing, and only the instinctive choice to opt for the form of a small bluejay rather than a massive pterodactyl saved him from being diced to sushi by the lashing tendrils of a dozen screaming demons. Behind him, the boat was instantly cut to ribbons by demons aiming at either him or Slade, he couldn't tell which. Slade however had also opted to be elsewhere, pivoting off of the pole and vaulting through the air like an acrobat. Two of the demons tried to interrupt his flight, and he smashed them to paste with the fireproof pole before landing on a table-sized rock island in the middle of the river, brandishing the lava-dripping boat pole like a quarterstaff.

For a brief moment, Beast Boy was reminded of Robin. And then the demons blocked his view, and he had too much else to worry about.

They lunged at him from all sides and he clawed for altitude, evading a dozen strikes at a time as the demons flayed the air with their flaming tendrils and elongated arms of molten rock. His feathers wilted as the searing heat passed within milimeters, and he downsized again and again, to a hummingbird, then a dragonfly, then finally a mosquito, so small that the demons could barely see him, let alone attack. A good half of them gave up, and shouldering over like fighter planes, dove at Slade, who was trying to fend two dozen demons off by himself with nothing more than an iron stick.

Monster or not, Beast Boy didn't even hesitate.

From the smallest of insects, Beast Boy suddenly turned into a furious grizzly bear, surprising the nearest four demons, three of whom were ripped apart by claw and tooth before they had a chance to register what had happened. The fourth lashed out, but its tendrils struck empty air, as Beast Boy shifted into a Python in mid-air, spun his body into a loop, and grabbed the demon's extended arm-tendril in one of his coils. He half-hissed, half-cried out in pain as the demon's fiery skin scorched his scales, but a moment later he swung his weight hard to the side and launched the demon like a slingshot straight into the rock wall with enough force that it exploded against it like a water balloon.

The lava river loomed below, but a second later, and Beast Boy was an eagle, not normal but gigantic, an primordial eagle the size of a Cessna airplane, and his talons lashed out and tore another demon to pieces even as his great wings beat the air and carried him towards Slade.

Slade had relocated to a larger rock, impaling a demon and forcing it back under the surface as a pivot in order to do so, but three more demons had seized his pole with their tendrils and were now trying to drag him into the lava with it. Perhaps a dozen more were moving to try and intercept Beast Boy, to prevent him from interfering. But if there was anything Beast Boy was good at, it was interference, something Slade knew, and the demons were about to find out.

In an instant, Beast Boy was simply gone, gone as though he had teleported away. Two demons, unable to abort their lunge, collided in mid-air and spiralled down into the river like shot birds. The others sliced the very air apart, but caught nothing whatsoever, and a second later, Beast Boy re-appeared beyond them all, having traversed the intervening space in the form of a gnat so small that it was nearly microscopic. Now he took on the shape of a peregrine falcon, and before any of the demons behind him could so much as react, he folded his wings and dove at the three accosting Slade.

He hit one of them at nearly two hundred miles an hour and caved its head in like a piece of bubble wrap, bouncing off of the demon's crumpled form and back up into the air so fast that the splashing sulfur and magma didn't even have time to burn him. Another one released Slade's weapon and lashed at him, but he switched to the form of a Rhinoceros and shrugged the blow off with thick armor before landing atop the unfortunate demon and splattering it all across the cavern. The last demon had no chance to even act before Slade planted his feet and hurled it towards Beast Boy, who simply impaled the sulfuric monster on his horn before hurling it off into the river of lava with a shake of his head.

The remaining demons, having lost half their number in less than thirty seconds, fell back to regroup, and Beast Boy switched back into his human form, crouched low, as was his wont. Slade had selected the largest and most stable-looking island in sight to make his stand, a flat slab of immobile granite the size of a tractor trailer, and he now moved into the middle of it, brandishing his ersatz staff, cherry-red at both ends where he had used it to cleave demons apart or plumb the depths of the river of fire. Not without hesitation, Beast Boy backed up towards him, half-expecting to feel Slade plunging the business end of the staff into his back at any moment. Slade however, managed to restrain himself. Whatever the business between them, the demons were plainly a more pressing threat.

Yet rather than resume the attack, the demons held back. Though they still numbered at least twenty, no further demons were surging forth to join their ranks, the lava beneath them once more in calm state it had been in prior to their rising. Wherever the endless legions that Trigon had employed before were, this group plainly was finite, and bereft of the advantage of endless numbers, they seemed more subdued, waiting for an opportunity rather than blindly charging.

"Is this one of those 'obstacles' you were talking about?" asked Beast Boy without turning around.

"This?" scoffed Slade, planting his staff in the rock at his feet. "This is just a minor inconvenience. Nothing two old friends can't handle."

For a brief second, Beast Boy forgot all about the demons, rounding on Slade in righteous fury. "I am not your friend!" he yelled, loud enough to echo through the cavern.

Slade seemed almost bemused by his reaction, and no doubt would have responded with some pithy comment or other, save that, at that moment, someone else beat him to it.

"Of course not!" came a voice from far above, raspy and mocking and instantly familiar, and as both Slade and Beast Boy turned their heads, they saw, far far above them, perched atop one of the stone spigots, a small, lithe figure, crouched on all fours like a cat preparing to pounce. At the distance they were at, so small a figure would not normally have been discernible, yet despite that, Beast Boy's eyes popped and his heart froze, for he recognized the silhouette instantly without need for a second glance. And as he watched, the figure leaped from the spigot and plunged down, landing in a crouch on another rock island, the orange glow of the river of fire revealing its ash-gray skin and clothing, its red eyes burning like coals, its fanged teeth bared in a twisted grin, gloved hands crossed as it stood up and faced itself across the stream of magma.

"You don't have any friends," said the perfect duplicate of Beast Boy in a mocking laugh, and then all the demons charged at once.

[LadyTevar]

Chapter 34, Part II

*--------------------------------------------------------------------------------*

Life comes down to a series of choices.

Some of them are hard. The kind that keep you up at night, waiting for inspiration, divine or otherwise, to strike you. They burn at your mind in the quiet hours of the night, second guessing, telling you all about the verdant green of the grass on the other side of the fence.

He stands on a lump of sterile rock that was once part of the waterfront. His systems are telling him that everything is in perfect readiness, within normal threat tolerances. Several encyclopedias worth of information are being beamed through his optic nerves every few seconds, but he's really not paying attention to any of it. When the readouts finally realize this, they switch automatically to a standby mode, waiting for him to call them back up. And then it's just him. And the Devil.

Those kinds of choices will kill you if you let them. They'll drag you down into your own personal Hell, crying all the time, those most horrific of words in the English language: 'If I had only...' They come back at you, years after the fact, gnawing at your mind like rodents in the darkness, when time has worn the memories down to raw fact, and the context is lost, and all you can think about is why... why did you do that... why didn't you do this.

They're enough to drive a man mad.

It looms ahead like the shadow of Death itself. A vast, nebulous figure, diffused by the haze, indistinct, even with polarizers and cutting-edge image amplification software. Draped over the ruined Tower as though it were a cross between a crucifix and a throne. His arms draped across the Tower's. His body resting on its slanted form. His head is invisible, hunched, hanging down where the smoke is thicker. And from across the sea of flames, there is the distinct sound of something breathing.

Cyborg is standing on the shores of Hell, looking across the Lake of Fire at the Devil himself.

And he's got a cannon.

For a brief moment, he's reminded of one the video games Beast Boy used to play...

Most choices though, are a little different.

His arm begins to change, shift, morph. His fingers fold in on themselves and slide back over his forearm, and his wrist expands and slides forward, becoming an aperture rather than a limb. The blue glow that permeates his entire being becomes more pronounced, more concentrated. His forearm glows bright blue, like the skies used to be before the Devil arrived, and he doesn't even need to glance down at it to know that it's ready.

We make choices every day. We make them in split seconds, without even thinking about them. Hundreds and thousands of them, every minute of every day of our lives. Sometimes they're so routine that we don't even need to think about them. Sometimes they're not of any particular importance.

He raises the cannon, taking his time, for what can a few more seconds matter at this point? His targeting sensors are useless in the dust and smoke, but he doesn't need them. Not at this range, not at this target. He sights along the barrel of his cannon by eye, aiming at the center of the black mass, his mechanical joints locking into place to prevent any last-second twitch. Seven hundred and twenty four diagnostic systems perform their checks in less than a quarter of a second, and all of them report back green. Mechanically-speaking, everything is ready.

The great paradox of our lives though, is that sometimes the choices we make are so important that we don't let ourselves think about them at all.

He fires.

His fusion battery has long-since allocated power to the task at hand, transfered through networks of superconductive Magnesium Diboride fiber-cabling chilled with liquid helium to four hundred degrees below zero. Twelve different ultrasonic emitters switch on, and two thousandths of a second later, the micro-distortion field attains criticality, and a brilliant blue-white glow emerges from the end of his forearm, swirling and dancing through the dust-loaded air like a magical spell. It's the light of a hundred billion particles of dust, pollutants, individual molecules of argon and CO2, all undergoing spontaneous nuclear fission as they're subjected to an ultrasonic wave thirty times stronger than that of the most powerful jet engine in the world. In the blink of an eye, the visible beam of ultrasound stabs across the gulf like the finger of God, and slams straight into the Devil's chest with enough power to punch a hole through a battleship.

Trigon notices.

Our brains are selfish, relentless calculators, a thousand million chemical microprocessors churning at once in a remorseless rhythm. Complex simulations running through a hundred probable outcomes a second and discounting ninety-nine of them before they even break the surface of our conscious mind. We analyze, deduce, predict, estimate, all in our own interest, all without even trying to, trying constantly to figure out how best to serve ourselves.

But once in a while, we decide to stop.

The haze closes back in over the ionized trail left by the sonic cannon, and shrouds the target, fogging sensors, obfuscating analysis. None of it matters in any event. Powerful as the sonic cannon is, Trigon is simply beyond it, even in his weakened form. It is as the finite pitted against the infinite.

Low growls, rumbling in the distance like heavy machinery. A shimmer in the polluted air, and then the vast, Dantean shadow begins to stir. It seems to swell, rising like a fume of poison, looming into the air as tall as the Tower itself. An indistinct red glow emanates from the top of it as Trigon opens his four red eyes and turns towards the shore on which Cyborg stands. And then, with a footfall that sounds like the thunder of heavy artillery, he approaches.

We are not creatures of logic and reason by nature. We are animals of instinct and reflexive reaction. Our affectations of calculation are learned, not inherent. We learn as children to think before we act, to draw conclusions from the world around us, to operate the computers of our minds. From our earliest years, we practice with the faculties of reason until it becomes rote, and we no longer know how to set it aside, until one day something compels us to learn.

That something can be anything. Revelation, fear, anger, depression, anything that makes us throw aside our cultivated rationality and revert to base instinct. The veneer is so thin that a thousand things can tear it, even rip it to pieces, sometimes never to be repaired, a single powerful emotion bringing us back to the basics of our humanity all at a rush.

Step by seismic step, Trigon approaches, looming up out of the darkness like a nightmare given form. The fire laps at his cloven feet, and the smoke clouds wreath his head like a coronet. He stretches to the heavens, vast, unimaginably vast, taller than the tallest skyscraper. Still hundreds of yards from the shore, he stares down at Cyborg with four eyes of glowing hate, like charcoals set in a statue of blood.

This is different.

"Insignificant insect," comes a voice that could only be the devil's. It rumbles and rolls like boulders crashing down from great heights, deep and twisted, a voice of animate hate that bores into his metal skull like a drill bit. Despite the ocean of lava not five steps away, he feels the air chill as Trigon speaks.

"Do you think yourself wise?" says the Devil. "To attack me while I gather my strength? Did you deem this to be to be wisdom of a sort? You are a fool, Victor Stone, and your soul shall dance in agony for the rest of time."

He's not here because he's enraged.

All four of Trigon's eyes glow bright red, and beams of purified death manifest from them, blending together into a cone that strikes the sea of fire and parts it like a blade, sweeping over the flames towards Cyborg, who stands on the shores of Hell and watches it come.

He's not here out of fanaticism or desperation.

There's nowhere to run. The cone is fifty yards wide and approaching at speed, and he can't get out of its way fast enough to make a difference. He doesn't even brace himself for the impact, staring up past the cone at the devil who looms overhead, arms at his sides. The sound and the fury of the destruction that Trigon is wreaking before him becomes blinding, deafening, and the ground beneath his feet shatters from the force of it. And then a second later, the cone overtakes him, and everything vanishes.

He's here, in this place, at this time, because he made a choice.

The red beam combs over the promontory where Cyborg once stood several times, methodically reducing it to ash and ruin. And then, when it is done, and complete, the Devil's eyes dim, and the cone of death vanishes, and there's nothing left but a shroud of smoke.

A sudden gust of wind tears the smoke aside, and reveals the results of Trigon's handiwork.

And it was the easiest choice in the world.

Nothing.

The promontory is gone now. Melted and vaporized and cast away into the atmosphere like sand in a dust storm. Yet Cyborg still stands where he was a moment ago, his arms still limp, his eyes still fixed on Trigon. The ground beneath his feet still remains, now carved off into an island in the sea of fire. And all around him, like a bubble manifested from nothingness, vaguely tinted red like the rest of the world, is a translucent shield.

And on Cyborg's finger, a small ring of gold sparkles in the unearthly twilight.

Trigon does not react at the failure of his powers. He does not rage or act in surprise, nor even fire anew. For a second or two, devil and teenager stare at one another. And then Trigon's mouth curls back into a sneering smile, and he laughs.

"You carry a ring of Azar," says Trigon. "No doubt a relic from a former minion." Trigon seems amused, almost pleased by this turn of events. For a moment he laughs, a horrifying sound, like that of a tidal wave drowning a village of innocents. And then his face is stern again.

"It matters not," says Trigon, "fighting you is beneath me."

The lava begins to boil.

To stand before the Devil, and to try and fight him is not rational. To do such a thing is not self-interested, not even in the wider sense that people use to justify living by codes of heroism or justice. It does not advance the causes to which Cyborg has dedicated his life, nor does it permit him to think of himself in a better light. It does not expiate guilt or vanquish doubt. It does not bring him peace. It does not bring him closure. It does not matter.

It is not meant to.

The boiling lava begins to surge, splashing at the rock near Cyborg's feet, as though within it, things were writhing in the deep. A moment later, and the truth of this statement is made manifest, as numberless creatures, demons, beings of flame and sulfur, begin to claw their way out of the fire sea. All around they surge forth, like raindrops in a hurricane, and they rise into the air, damned souls or demons or some other creature of darkness brought forth by the will of Trigon.

Cyborg crouches and jumps backwards, landing back on the shore and backing slowly away from it as the demons form up in phalanxes a hundred wide and sixteen deep. Trigon too is backing away, moving back towards the island, where he sits once more, leaning against the Tower as though it were his throne, barely visible through the haze, yet his words are loud and clear as clarions rung in the morning.

"Die with your world, hero, and know eternity as my slave."

What use is there in shouting defiance at the Devil? The Devil who no doubt has heard every curse and vile malignancy ever pronounced by the living a hundredfold. And so, as the armies of Hell form up before him, Cyborg does not respond to Trigon's taunts. He does not scream a warcry or repeat the words of learned men. Yet despite this, words come to him unbidden. Words he has pronounced only once in four years, welling up from within him, from a place he had thought no longer existed, from a life he left behind years ago. Words that he left behind ages ago, but that he finds, now, here, in this present of death, are with him still.

"Our father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name."

It has been two and a half years since Cyborg entered a church, and longer than that since he prayed. Indeed, Cyborg has never done so. The half-remembered prayers he uttered so long ago were those of Victor Stone, and like so much else, he gave them up when he became what he is now. He did not miss them, liturgical nonsense recited by hypocritical liars who thought themselves holy for pretending to work on behalf of others. He had been drifting away from it before the accident, and the transformation only made it permanent. Rather than listen to a paid spokesman preach morals to him, he put them into practice by himself, and with his friends, and left God to see to his own affairs. It was an arrangement he never regretted, ever.

Nor does he regret it now.

"Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven."

There is no rapture. He does not feel the light of God gracing him. Angels do not descend from on-high, to challenge the Devil and defend their champion, if indeed that is what Cyborg is. Yet he does not stop, and he does not falter, his voice ratcheting up in volume and intensity as he recites the words buried deep in the corner of his mind. The demons range themselves around him in a semicircle, advancing onto the shore, as he continues to speak, louder and louder, stretching tall, his mechanical limbs shining silver and blue in the twilight of the Gods.

"Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us."

He steps to the side, and grasps a street sign, eleven feet tall and topped with a metal board painted to indicate no parking along the waterfront. With one tug, his robotic servos uproot the entire sign like a tree, and he smashes the concrete divot on it against the ground, shattering it like pottery, leaving bare metal behind. He turns it over in both hands, feeling the weight, and turns back to the demons, advancing at the will of their master in lock-step, and he hefts the sign like a poleaxe and steps towards them.

"And lead us not into temptation," says Cyborg, "but deliver us from evil."

Cyborg made a choice, not long ago. Faced with the situation he was in, he chose to consciously set his calculating mind aside. He chose to fight Trigon alone, not because he could win, not because he wished to make a game ending of it, not because he had staked his very self-worth against the notion of acting heroically, and not because he felt it would save the world. He chose to fight Trigon, knowing full well that by no metric anyone had ever invented, did this choice make rational sense.

He has chosen to fight Trigon because every second that Trigon must send his armies against him, is a second in which they are not being sent at Beast Boy and Starfire, and another second in which his only remaining friends in the world, will live.

It is the easiest choice that Cyborg has ever made.

The demons close, yet they hold back out of reach of his ersatz poleaxe, and he does not open fire on them, not yet, for he wishes to save his power for where he feels it will be of most use. But before he can determine whether to strike now or to wait, the demons stop in their tracks, and he hears a loud "crunch" behind him, as though something heavy has just fallen from on high and landed on the ground.

He turns, and he sees himself. A perfect replica, identical in every way save color, for where Cyborg's skin is dark brown, and his metallic components blue and silver and indigo, the duplicate's skin is ashen-white, like a vampire or animate corpse, and his cyborg parts a gunmetal gray, washed out, like a picture denuded of color, save only for his eyes, both human and mechanical, which shine like burning coals in the darkness of the ruined shore. And as Cyborg watches this perfect replica rise to a standing position, and fold his arms in the way that he knows is his own, he hears the duplicate finish his own prayer... in his own voice.

We make choices, every day. Some are important, and some less so. But common to all of them, and to all of us, is one simple truth as creatures of reason: We make the choices, whatever they might be, and we live with the consequences. Sometimes for a moment. Sometimes forever.

"For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory," says the duplicate, and his arm shifts into a cannon, as he crouches low and grins in anticipation. And part of Cyborg is surprised, shocked even, to see this thing here before him, and wonders what it is, and how it came to be here, and why, but the rest of him, the part of him immune to surprise and calculation, the part he has consciously placed in control, only narrows his eyes.

"Amen."

Such is life.

*--------------------------------------------------------------------------------*

Starfire didn't know where she was going.

The landmarks were still there, but they seemed to have been re-arranged, as though somebody had taken the buildings and moved them, like children's block towers. The familiar grid of streets no longer was familiar, and not merely from the smoke, yet she pressed on regardless, flying over ruins that had once been houses and apartment buildings, factories and office towers. Had she been trying to find a specific place, it would have been utterly maddening, but she had no idea where to look, and so one place was as good as any, no matter where it was in relation to anything else.

The shroud of ash and smoke closed behind her as she flew, blocking out her view of Trigon and Cyborg and Beast Boy and whatever else might be about tonight. She was glad that it did. Had she been able to see the others, she likely would not have been able to muster the necessary joy to propel herself in flight. Indeed, she was only able to manage as she was by dint of memory, dredging up the memories of happier days, of the days before Trigon had arrived, before his minions had reached out, the days when things were still as they had once been. Compared to now, these memories were like ambrosia.

A roar, a sharp, angry roar, was all the warning she got, as suddenly three flame demons descended on her from out of the smoke-cloud, and by pure instinct she rolled to her left as they slashed past, biting through the air she had occupied an instant before with razor-sharp tendrils of living flame. Passing her elevation in a rush, the demons split up, one flying on ahead, as the other two came about for another attempt.

They didn't get far.

Joy required memory, required denial and longing and a host of other emotional exercises to conjure up. Fury however, was close at hand, a hair-trigger away at even the best of times now, and she called on it so quickly that the demons never had a chance to regret their decision. Beams of energy lanced forth from her eyes and skewered one of the flame demons, blowing it to steam and flecks of rock. The other managed to evade her thrown starbolt, and lunged at her like a thrown spear, but she jackknifed in mid-air and met it head on with her fist in a downward swing, tearing a deep gouge straight through it and letting it pinwheel towards the ground below.

The last demon saw what had befallen its fellows, and turned tail, fleeing into the city at best speed. Starfire flew after it, shaking the molten sulfur from her hand like rainwater as she chased it down streets and around corners. Fists extended forward, she conjured starbolts and fired them, splitting the air all around the demon, yet it twisted and twirled and evaded her shots, turning again and again and preventing her from aiming correctly. On and on they flew, Starfire neither knowing where they were nor where they were heading, yet no matter how fast she urged herself, the demon matched her speed, though it did not exceed it, remaining within view at all times, until finally she ceased firing. The demon was plainly not trying to evade her entirely. It wanted her to follow it.

She did so.

Several minutes passed in silence, as the demon flew on, and Starfire followed, until all of a sudden, there loomed an enormous edifice, appearing through the smoke and haze quite out of nowhere. The size of a major skyscraper, it was black and crenelated, carved from what seemed to be a solid block of volcanic stone, rising into the air like a soaring cathedral of the damned. Towers and spires emerged from it haphazardly, reaching far into the sky, and illuminated by bright fires that burned ceaselessly atop their pinnacles. Where this monstrous eyesore had come from was beyond her, for it resembled no other structure she had seen on Earth, let alone in Jump City, yet she did not pause to determine its origin, but flew after the demon as it closed on one of balconies opening up on this side. A moment later and it landed, and turned about, looking up at her, waiting.

She landed next to demon, touching down on the balcony of stone lightly, not trusting that it wouldn't crumble at her touch. An instant later, the demon flew off into the darkness, so quickly now that she lost sight of it in moments, as the smoke closed behind it, and then she was alone.

A pause on the threshold, and then she entered the building.

The balcony led to a short corridor, unadorned with tapestries or any other hanging or decoration, and ahead loomed a massive door made of rusted iron, from which loose chains hung attached to empty manacles. She brushed these aside gingerly, and placed her hands on the door, pushing against it to open it. It weighed more than the T-car, yet she shoved it open without undue difficulties, and stepped inside.

Before her stood a large, vaulted chamber, carved from the same stone as the rest of the place, but with infinitely more care than the outside had been. Reliefs were carven into the walls, spiraling up the freestanding columns that dotted the chamber, representations of horned devils and other monsters devouring numberless beings, humanoid and otherwise, or casting them into cauldrons of flame to be boiled alive. The room was enormous, the size of a temple or the great hall of a Tamaranean castle, and archways, and columns loomed overhead like great trees, yet there was no roof for them to hold up. The chamber was open to the scorched sky, and the clouds of ash that danced overhead.

Carefully, she walked into the enormous chamber, alert for the ambush she was certain was in order, yet nobody appeared to be present, be they demon or otherwise. The only sound was that of her footsteps on the stone floor, and the soft rumblings that augured any number of things, periodically emanating from the rest of the city.

And then suddenly, she saw him.

A light materialized from overhead, a light that came from nowhere, for there was no ceiling to bear it, and the sun remained hidden. Yet light there was, and it illuminated the far side of the room. There stood a dais near the far wall, looming above the rest of the chamber, with steps leading up to it. And atop the dais, there stood a man in Gold.

He was facing away from her, bent over an object at waist height, a basin of some kind mounted on a pedestal, from whence soft light emitted. Initially, he gave no sign that he had seen her. Then slowly, he raised his head, stretching up to his full height, though he did not turn.

"Hello, Princess," said Warp, his voice smooth and calm, barely more than a whisper. "I was hoping that you would come."

She did not answer in words.

Before she could speak, before she could think, a spike of bilious fury shot through her like a spear made of light, and her vision clouded over a radioactive green. With a roar of incandescent rage, she stepped forward and hurled a white-hot starbolt at Warp's back, powerful enough to reduce a man to ash. It sailed towards Warp like a meteor, singing the very air as it passed, yet an instant before it struck, Warp simply disappeared.

The starbolt hit the far wall and exploded, blasting a divot out of the living stone and scattering fragments over the room, yet before it had even struck, Warp simply materialized five feet in front of Starfire, facing her this time, his arms still folded carefully. No flash or burst of power accompanied this sudden appearance. He simply was atop the dais one moment, and the next he was directly before her.

"And here I was hoping we might have a pleasant conversation," said Warp.

Once more, her rage boiled over, and she lunged forward with her fist, tears streaming from her glowing eyes. But as before, Warp simply dissolved before her eyes, and her fist struck nothing but the air. Before she could even recover from the strike, an energy blast hit her in the back, throwing her off her feet onto the floor on her stomach. She rolled over onto her back to find Warp standing behind her, one arm raised towards her with fist extended, and atop his forearm was a glowing laser.

"It's been a long, long time, Princess," said Warp. "Longer for me than you I suppose, but then that's to be expected."

"Warp," she said, spitting the name out as though it tasted terrible, and she got back to her feet carefully, watching him as she prepared new Starbolts. He did not act to stop her, but neither did he lower his hand. She considered how best to hurl them this time, but as she was considering it, he seemed to read her intentions, and shook his head.

"That would be a grave mistake," said Warp, "one I am hoping it won't be necessary to correct."

"You have nothing with which to threaten me, Warp!" she spat back at him. "It was a grave mistake for you to permit me to find you."

"Ah, but some mistakes are worth making," said Warp, a cruel smile crossing his face. "This one most of all. Believe me when I tell you that you have no idea how long I've been waiting for this little chat."

"I will not countenance your lies," said Starfire through clenched teeth. "I do not care to hear them!"

"No!" barked Warp sharply, "No lies! No lies between us, Princess, I won't allow it. Not now. Only the truth. The unvarnished truth."

She didn't know what to make of this. "Why did you bring me here?" she asked, trying to determine if any of the golden material covering Warp's body might be the source of his ability to vanish and re-appear.

He smiled conspiratorially, as though he could read her mind, but chose to play along with her. The thought was unsettling, to say the least. "Because, Princess," he said, as he casually extended his hand back towards the softly glowing pedestal, "there are things I wished you to see."

For a moment, she thought he intended for her to look into whatever the light source on the dais was, as though she were mad enough to do such a thing at his behest. Yet a moment later, the light flared up like a bonfire, and all of a sudden a picture appeared above it, like a projector or holographic display.

And in the picture, she saw Beast Boy, and the relief that she felt in seeing him alive and apparently unharmed, unsuppressible, indisguisible relief, was suddenly overcome by shock.

There were two.

Two Beast Boys, both in the form of great birds, flying high above a river of molten fire. Identical in form, apparently identical in capacity, she watched as both of them shifted again and again, form after form both monstrous and mundane, as they sought advantage over one another. They ducked and wheeled, darting in and out, seeking openings, both endowed with the miraculous shapeshifting powers that the original had possessed. Yet there was no question which was the original, for one of the two Beast Boys was as she remembered, a thousand shades of green, emerald and viridian and harlequin and evergreen by turns. The other was like nothing she had ever seen. No matter what it shifted into, scaled, skinned, or furred, it remained the same sickly gray, like a corpse animated from the dead, its eyes a molten, fiery red. Yet even without the color-coding, she would have known which was the Beast Boy she knew. The gray changeling had Beast Boy's powers, but did not make use of them as he did, his attacks too feral, his motions too aggressive, too sudden, as though someone had amputated Beast Boy's reason and restraint and left only the raging bestial force that lay somewhere within his core.

"Trigon may be the Lord of Evil," said Warp, watching her watch the pictures, "but as with all heroes, you are your own worst enemies."

The picture pixilated, and then suddenly she saw Cyborg. He stood in a ring formed of living flames, and in his hand was a pole of iron, beaten and bent out of all recognition and glowing cherry-red at both ends. Demons lay broken at his feet in numbers unguessable, yet the demons were not the focus of his attention, for before him stood another Cyborg, and it too was gray, as if formed from bricks of ash, staring at the original with red eyes both human and mechanical, a cruel sneer on his face, and his hand replaced with a glowing cannon.

It took great efforts to suppress her initial urge, which was to fly off as fast as she could to find Cyborg and Beast Boy and help them. That she did not do so was more or less only because she had no idea where they were now, and because Cyborg had told her that if there was any chance to find Robin...

Steeling herself, she turned back to face Warp. "Is this all you have to show me?" she asked, loading her voice with regal contempt. "Parlour tricks and cowardice? Is your master so unimaginative that he can face us only with pale imitations of ourselves? Or were you hoping you might break our wills by showing us twisted simulacra and make us fall down and beg you for mercy?"

Warp seemed to find this funny. "They are not mere copies," he said. "Raven was not the only one possessed of a bad side, after all."

"Then am I to assume you have prepared a similar version of me?" she asked, crossing her arms, and looking about, half-expecting a gray-skinned, red-eyed copy of herself to appear from behind some column or archway. "Did you bring me here to watch me do battle with myself?"

Warp however merely shook his head. "No," he said. "Nothing so crass. I've brought you here to offer you a chance at redemption."

"I wish for nothing you have to offer!"

"Not even Robin?"

She froze, silenced as if by fiat, and when she managed to resume speaking, her tone was quieted somewhat, a near-whisper like his.

"Where is he?"

"He's here," said Warp with a soft smile. "I had him brought here as part of my arrangement with Trigon. I was hoping that his presence might induce you to come looking for him. Perhaps, if you give me what I am owed, I will even let you see him."

Her rage boiled up once more. "I owe you nothing," she roared at him, "save for justice!"

"Justice?!" exploded Warp, his eyes suddenly wild with unmistakable fury of his own. "Justice!" he repeated, "you would dare to speak to me of justice?! You know nothing of justice! Nothing! You are a liar and a hypocrite and you will not speak of justice to me! EVER!"

So furious, so explosively enraged was Warp that Starfire actually took a step backwards, yet her own fire did not quench before his. "You are a murderer and a traitor!" she shot back at him. "You murdered Robin, you betrayed your own world, and you have sided with the Lord of Evil against all of creation! I will speak to you of what I choose!"

"Yes," said Warp, staring daggers as he circled her slowly, Starfire turning to match him as he did so. "I did those things. But nothing I have done or will do changes what you are, nor your responsibility for all that has happened."

"My responsibility?!" asked Starfire incredulously.

"Yes, yours," he said. "You were the one who turned me into what I am today."

"You have always been a murderer!" said Starfire. "You attempted to kill us the first time we met!"

"I was never a murderer!" shouted Warp, brandishing his laser. "I was a thief! A THIEF! A petty thief who stole antique clocks from museums! I stole inanimate objects locked away in vaults and curator displays. I only used force to defend myself! And for my crime of petty theft you condemned me to life imprisonment in a hell the likes of which you have never imagined!"

"I did no such thing!"

"You regressed me to the age of an infant and abandoned me in a dystopian hellhole of a parallel universe! You used my time machine to return to your world and left me there as a helpless child in one you knew was an inhospitable disaster zone! And this after your interference was what stranded us in that hellhole to begin with! Do you deny it?!"

"That is not what occured!" shouted Starfire. "Your time machine was damaged during the battle. It reverted you to that age!"

"And who damaged it?" retorted Warp. "And then ran away to your comfortable universe leaving me to rot in the greatest prison ever devised!"

"There was no time!" insisted Starfire. "The portal was collapsing, I... I had to leave!"

"You found sufficient time for touching goodbyes," spat Warp venomously. "Yet not enough to bring me with you." He continued to circle her, eyes aflame with indignation. "And why would you? After all, I was a criminal! A thief! Sufficient reason for a Tamaranean child to condemn me to an eternity in HELL!"

The last word was practically a scream, punctuated by a laser blast that struck inches from Starfire's foot, scoring the floor of the cathedral and causing her to reflexively jump back. Yet though he raised the laser back to aim at her face, Warp did not attack, prefering instead to stare down the barrel at her with eyes wide and unblinking.

"Have you felt pain, Princess?" he asked, lightning flashing from his maddened eyes. "Since Robin died? Have you known anguish? Agony? Have you felt it burning within you like an unquenchable fire? Have you stalked the streets pouring vengeance and rage out upon your unsuspecting foes to try and empty yourself of its neverending flames? Was that the cure you sought for the hell that your life has been these past weeks?" Warp suddenly spread his arms wide, sweeping them over the entire chamber, over the burning city beyond, and raised his head like an emperor overseeing his realm. "Behold my cure!" he said.

Starfire's mouth opened despite herself, her eyes widening in horror and disgust. "You are insane," she said.

"I come from a world of insanity," said Warp. "One you know as few here would."

"Then you have done all this for what? Some twisted sense of vengeance? Against me?"

"Among others, yes, against you" said Warp. "You were the one who caused me to suffer as I have. You were the one who so cavalierly played God with my fate. Now it is your turn to be played with, Princess. Your turn to suffer. I have long since paid for whatever crimes I did commit. Now you will do the same."

Starfire said nothing, staring at Warp as though unsure of what she was looking at. Warp continued to circle, lowering his arm and managing to make the gesture contemptuous, as though he cared nothing for what tricks or impotent attacks she might launch.

"Tell me," he asked her, "did you ever even spare me a moment's thought after you abandoned me there? Did it even cross your mind to look in and see what had become of me? Or was I out of your mind the instant you left that place?"

"I had no means of returning to that world!" cried Starfire. "Even had I wished to! And I did not abandon you anywhere! I left you in the care of the remaining Titans of that world!"

"And it never occurred to you what a poor idea that was?"

The anger returned. "You will not dishonor my friends with your lies!" shouted Starfire. "They would never have permitted any harm to come to you, no matter who you were or what you had done!"

"Perhaps not," said Warp, "but that would be contingent on their survival, no?"

She stopped short. "What are you - "

"They died," said Warp, brows furrowing as his eyes bored into hers. "All of them." He paused, letting that sink in, and a grim smile came to his face as he beheld her surprise. "You never considered that possibility, did you?"

Before, spikes of anger had shot through her like molten arrows, but not this time. This time a guttural, bitter savagery materialized in the pit of her stomach, a mixture of rage, disgust, and indignant fury. "You... vile betrayer," she spat at him. "You... you slaughtered the Titans of your world, and then came here to do the same to ours?! Did you burn that planet to cinders too? Or was that treatment reserved only for this one?!"

She did not want the answers to those questions. She had asked them only to feed her anger, the righteous fury that in turn would fuel her starbolts when she leaped at Warp to strike him down. Yet rather than ignore them, or answer them, or even attack in his own turn, Warp did something she did not expect.

He laughed.

He stepped backwards, throwing his head back, howling in laughter, so intense that he had to gasp for breath and nearly fell over. Half of Starfire wanted to shoot him while he was thus distracted, yet before she could resolve whether to do so or not, Warp doubled over, hands on his knees, and shook his head, a broad grin on his face as he lifted his gaze to stare her straight in the eyes.

"You just can't do it can you?"

"Do what?" she asked.

"Perceive." he said, his voice low and gravelly, and he stood up slowly. "All your vaunted empathy, all your pretenses at mercy and compassion, and you simply can't see past your own hatred to perceive what's been sitting in front of you the entire time!"

"What are you talking about?!" demanded Starfire. "I am tired of your - "

"I was eight," said Warp, voice booming. "I was eight years old when the Titans died," he said. "Eight. Even if I had wanted to kill them, do you seriously believe that I could have done so at that age? You saw that I was unable to defeat them as an adult. How would I have done so as a child?"

Starfire watched Warp in silence as the man in Gold turned slowly about her. "I didn't kill the Titans of my world, Princess," he said. "They were not the ones against whom I desired revenge."

"Then... if you did not kill the Titans of that other world," asked Starfire, "who did?"

She expected more verbiage and self-justification, but Warp said nothing. Rather, he smiled, a soft and almost endearing smile, and shook his head, chuckling softly to himself at some private joke.

She was having none of it. "You will not answer me then?" she taunted him. "What is so amusing? Have you run out of lies to tell me?"

"No lies," he said softly. "Not between us. But what is amusing, Princess, is you."

"Me?"

"Yes... you," said Warp, stopping and crossing his arms. "All this time, and you still insist on asking all the wrong questions."

She raised an eyebrow. "Very well then," she said. "What are the right questions?"

"Only one," said Warp, a feral grin beginning to grow on his face. "One question. The most important one of all. The question that answers all of the others. The one question you have studiously failed to ask anybody, yourself, your friends, even me. The question you refuse to ask, because deep inside, you know what the answer could mean."

The lights seemed to dim, the ambient glow of the horizon flickering down as though commanded to, as Warp took a step towards her, his twisted smile bearing down like a predator.

"Princess," he said, his voice a malevolent whisper, "if I am the one who set all of this in motion, then tell me, how could I possibly have known about any of it in the first place?"

*--------------------------------------------------------------------------------*

"Why did you come back?"

How much time had elapsed since last any words had been spoken by either of them? She had no idea. Ten minutes? An hour? Three? Two days? There was no sense of time underground, one of the reasons she enjoyed being below the surface, Her mind had been lost, wandering blindly as though through a labyrinth, seeking answers that did not exist to a situation whose conclusion was foregone. And she knew it.

"What?" she asked. The fire had died to embers now, a bare glow that served only to cast inky shadows over everything. Even with his glowing red eyes, she could barely make David out by silhouette, yet she made no move to re-ignite it. Neither did he.

"You..." he ventured, not tentative but hesitant, as though his mind was having trouble converting his thoughts to words. "You didn't come back for me," he said, though he didn't sound upset or angry, or even surprised. "You were trying to save them?"

"Yeah," she said quietly, wondering idly if he would believe her. "I thought..."

She let that one sit. She had thought, idiotically, that Trigon would be fool enough to leave the Titans petrified like the rest of the world, and that she would thus be able to restore them to life. She had not thought far enough ahead to decide what should come after such a rescue. Her assumption had been that the Titans would know what to do. Not in a thousand years had she considered that this assumption might not be accurate, for never, not even in the throes of her most furious hatreds, had she ever ceased to think of the Titans as anything but ultimately invincible. The notion died hard.

Very hard.

"I can't believe they're gone," he said, and his voice reflected the stunned shock implicit in that sentence, though she couldn't see him well enough to see his reaction in the near-total darkness. At this point, it was probably a mercy.

"Me neither," she said, "but..."

"Yeah," he replied. "I know."

They sat in silence for a time, before David broke it.

"I thought you hated them," he asked.

She took her time before answering. "I don't know," she said. "I guess I did, for a while. Slade, he..." she stopped. What use now, hiding behind Slade, when both he and his principal enemies were dead. "I was... afraid of them," she said finally, speaking to the darkness more than to David. "I was afraid of... what they'd do to me. What they'd think of me."

The last time they had spoken, he had accused her of all manner of turpitudes and moral questions over this very question, yet plainly he hadn't the stomach this time to do so. He didn't say anything, until finally she followed up with a question of her own.

"I guess they hated me for it?"

There was a pause, for decorum perhaps, but when the answer came it was solid and unequivocating. "No," he said. "They didn't."

"They had to have," she said. "I... I tried to..." she clammed back up. Why the hell was she dredging back over all this now of all times?

"They didn't hate you," he said, and as before he sounded certain. "They didn't understand, but... they didn't hate you."

Perhaps there was something in the air. Perhaps it was just exhaustion, or the recognition that it no longer mattered. "Do you?" she asked.

Another pause, long and pregnant, before he finally answered. "Maybe," he said. "The others couldn't... they didn't hold it against you, after what happened, after you... died. But I wasn't there for that. And... I'm not like them."

"No," she said, staring off into the darkness that concealed him. "You're not. You're like me."

Two red pinpoints of red light appeared in the darkness, as David raised his eyes. The lights held steady for a moment or two, and then slowly nodded up and down.

"Yeah," he said. "I'm like you."

It was neither comforting nor chilling, neither a blessing nor a curse. It was just a fact. And they both knew all that it implied, all that it said about both of them, summed up in a simple statement.

"But you didn't leave," she said.

"I couldn't leave them," he replied. "I tried. Twice. But... I couldn't..."

"We stopped you," she said, and she lowered her eyes. "I stopped you. And Cinderblock, and Warp, and Slade..."

"It wasn't that," he answered, and the lights were once more extinguised, as he either closed his eyes or averted them. "I... used you and Cinderblock and all the rest of it as excuses. So that I could let myself stay."

She shook her head. "Why did you need to let yourself stay?" she asked. "They wanted you to stay, didn't they? Even after what I did? And you wanted to. So why did you need an excuse?"

She heard him take several deep breaths as he tried to conjure the words up to explain what he meant. "I don't... know how to do this. I don't know how to be part of a group. A... family, a team, whatever the Titans really were. I never learned that. I didn't know how to do it. I always... I always took care of myself, you know? I wasn't strong or tough or adventurous or whatever, but I knew how to not get in anyone's way. I... hated owing people things, money or gratitude or just... anything. I hated being... dependent on other people, like I was getting in their way, or making their lives harder just by being around. And... I knew I was doing it, even before the Titans, I mean I lived in foster centers and all that. There were dozens of people just taking care of me and the other kids, but... it was different then. It was a system, and it was designed for this sort of thing, and it wasn't personal. Nobody thought less of us for being there. It wasn't our fault we were orphans."

He paused for a few seconds.

"But then I got to the Tower, and I couldn't pretend anymore. And they were... well you know what they were like. It was like, all of a sudden I realized that this sort of thing existed. And more than just that, they... they shouldn't have let me into it, but they did. Me. I wasn't anybody special. I mean had powers, yeah, but so did fifty other kids they knew. And they let me in. And they didn't resent me for bringing all this fire down on them, or make me feel like I had to measure up or anything. I kept... waiting for the other shoe to drop, or something, and it never did. They never made me feel like I owed them."

"They made you want to be a hero?" she asked.

"No," he said. "I never wanted to be a hero. I didn't even want to be a Titan, really. I just wanted to be one of them."

She couldn't think of anything to say to that, and silence closed over them once more. Yet the conversation had set her to thinking of the past, perhaps as a way of escaping the Hell she had been plunged into, who could tell, but the memories it dredged up were powerful enough in their own right that she didn't even react with surprise when he finally asked the ultimate question, the one she knew he had wanted to ask since first he had found out her true identity.

"You're more powerful than I ever was," he said. "And you were there before me. They gave you everything they gave me. Without any questions." He paused for a second, as though unsure if he should ask it, but finally gave in. "How... How could you just leave them like that?"

She felt like she was half in a trance of some kind, all the justifications and obfuscations burnt away, leaving nothing but the truth as she knew it.

"I was scared," she said. "I was... scared of everything. They... they wanted to make me into one of them. A Titan, a hero, you know? I was afraid of it. Of the responsibility, of what my powers might do..."

She hesitated once more on the cusp of admitting all, and looked up, and saw David's red, glowing eyes watching her, like the eyes of the judge on the day of doom.

"But... mostly I was... afraid that I was going to hurt them in the end. They were gonna give me all this stuff, just because they wanted to be my friend, and I was gonna hurt them. I wasn't even afraid of it, I knew it was going to happen. Because I've killed or hurt every person I've ever met. And I knew I was going to do it to them, and so I left." She felt like laughing and crying at once. "And I wound up with Slade and did it anyway."

If she was expecting judgment or forgiveness, she was to be disappointed she knew. David had neither to give, and certainly not now. All he had was another question.

"You and Beast Boy," he said. "You guys were... together?"

Terra prayed to every God that might exist that the light had been too dim for David to see the shudder that passed through her as he asked her that. "For a while," she said. "Before I left, yeah." She shook her head, though she knew he couldn't see her do it. "I wish we hadn't been."

"Really?" he asked. He sounded almost surprised.

"Not like that," she said. "But if we hadn't been together maybe..." she sighed. "He took it hard is all. Harder that he would have maybe otherwise. I wish I... I wish I could have spared him that much at least."

David said nothing, and there was silence again, before she broke it herself. "Did," she said, hesitating before asking on. "Did Beast Boy... did he ever say anything? About..." she couldn't finish the question, but David understood anyway.

"Not to me," he said. "I didn't ask, really... I didn't want to know what happened before. I mean I did, but..."

"You were afraid they might not let you stay?"

She saw him raise his head, as if the question surprised him. "No," he said. "I knew... something had happened. And I knew that they were afraid it was going to happen again, and that they'd... made themselves let it go, and trusted me anyway, so that I could stay. I just... I didn't really want to know just how hard it had been for them to do that."

He fell silent for a moment, but just a moment, before continuing. "But I heard him talking a few times," he said. "When he didn't think anyone was listening. And after you... re-appeared, he went looking for you."

"Yeah," she said, "Slade told me. But I didn't know what he was gonna do if he found me."

"I don't think he knew either," said David. "But he never hated you. I don't think he even blamed you."

"Not even when I tried to kill you?"

"No, not even then." David shrugged limply. "I don't know what he thought," he said, "but... he never hated you. I know that much."

"Were... were he and Raven... you know..."

Of all things, that seemed to generate a soft laugh, and she could imagine, rather than see, the smile on his face. "Yeah," he said, "sort of. It was... complicated I guess. It's always complicated."

Despite everything, she smiled at the thought. "I always thought she couldn't stand him."

"I'm pretty sure she thought that too," said David. "Least that's what she said a lot, but... well..."

"You saw through it?" she asked.

"I think everyone did," he said. "Who knows, maybe not. But yeah, I did. Raven wasn't hard to figure - "

A growl.

Deep, full-throated, and unquestionably malevolent, like the sound of concrete blocks being dragged over one another., the growl seemed to emanate from nowhere and everywhere at once, and before she even knew what she was doing, Terra was on her feet, eyes wide as saucers, her heart in her throat. She heard rather than saw David doing the same thing, as the hostile growl faded out, leaving only cruel and hostile silence in its wake.

She scarcely dared to breathe, and if the sound were any indication, David did not dare even that much. The last embers of the fire were dying out now, leaving them in pitch darkness. She could not have relit it now, not even if she had been willing to chance moving, which she was plainly not. She settled for remaining as still as she physically could, staring into blackness, listening for any sign of whatever had produced that horrible sound, and praying that David would do the same.

Nothing. No sound, no sign that anything had occurred, and yet Terra remained frozen as if turned to stone, and as to David, he might as well have vanished into thin air for all the sound or sign he gave. Her mind played tricks on her, imagining that whatever had made the sound had abducted him in perfect silence and was now preparing to do the same to her. Her doubt and fear fed on itself and grew, until she heard it again.

The growl was louder this time, and more prolonged, a lengthy, sinister growl, accompanied by swishing noises, like a tail or wing slicing through the air. Faint shuffling sounds could be heard, as something slid over the ground. Something coming closer.

As the growling sound reverberated through the garage, she chanced a soft whisper.

"David?"

Her voice had deserted her, and she could barely hear herself speak, yet instantly she heard David's reply, from closer than she had expected. No words, just a sharp intake of breath, laced with fear.

But before she could answer, something shrieked right in front of her.

It sounded like a bat or mouse, or hissing cat, but amplified a hundredfold and infused with audible venom and malice, and it was suddenly there, right in front of her, so close that she could feel hot breath on her face, and she cried out and threw up her hands in automatic reflex, her mind blanked by the sudden eruption as she stumbled backwards in an automatic, paltry defense. Golden light poured forth from Terra's body automatically as her powers took commands from her racing heart, suddenly casting everything before her into view.

She took one look and screamed.

A vast, chiropteran horror loomed before her, less than a foot away, broad and tall and leathery, with immense wings spread out five feet in either direction, hooked with wicked claws. Its face was a horrific network of black leather, culminating in a pendulous mouth that seemed to unfurl from beneath its jaw like a toothed octopus. Its eyes were glistening and wide, whether from surprise or anger or some other unfathomable reason, and it lunged forward at her, slavering and shrieking, its clawed feet scrabbling over the asphalt floor as it reached towards her with a hooked appendage.

Without so much as a command, her powers raised a column of stone right through the ground underneath the horrible thing, and smashed it into the ceiling like a hydraulic ram. An awful squishing sound, a splatter of fluids and mashed up parts, and the rock fell back down, now coated with a pungent yellow goo. And then, just as quickly as they had flared up, her kineticist's powers subsided, and they were plunged back into darkness once more.

Moments later, Terra raised the golden glow of her powers once again, this time of her own volition, and turned to see if David was all right, yet before she could speak a word, they heard further bone-chilling howls from deeper within the garage, and the rustling of wings, as though a swarm of locusts were approaching them. And without a word or a moment to think, Terra grabbed David by the wrist, and ran for her life.

[LadyTevar]

Chapter 34, Part III:

*--------------------------------------------------------------------------------*

"How could I possibly have known?"

The pedastal beside Warp was glowing, burning even, like a torch in the darkness, casting multicolored light into the sky and off of the walls of the open chamber. It radiated upwards, hundreds of feet, soaring like a beacon into the ashen skies, spreading out in three dimensions, forming patterns that could not be discerned, like a projector out of focus.

"The world you abandoned me to live in recorded only that Trigon had come twenty years before, and that the Titans had destroyed him, shortly before disbanding. That world knew him as nothing more than an interruption, a momentary destroyer who arrived and was dealt with and was never heard from again. Against the backdrop of misery that pervaded that place, Trigon's coming was nothing more than a footnote, and the Titans themselves, the only ones who knew any better, said nothing of it"

The lights continued to dance as Warp spread his arms wide. "Yet I pieced all of this together. Devastator, Slade, Terra, the mark of Scathe, the cult of Trigon. Rituals, sigils, cosmic entities and the ancient histories of dead planets. I enmeshed you all in a net of labyrinthine complexity, and you never bothered to ask how. How could I know about Raven's heritage, something she never even spoke of to you, her dearest friends? How could I know how to cross dimensions and contact Trigon, when Trigon himself had been dead for eons, and his very memory lost in the mists of time? How could I know about Devastator, when David himself had no idea that Devastator even existed, and when, before I interfered with them, he was never a part of these events, either in my world or in yours."

Starfire clenched her fists, summoning starbolts to them as she stared at the madman on the dias. "Did you bring me here to brag then?" she asked him, largely automatically, for she knew that he had not. Starfire had met her share of villainous braggarts, evil men who used villainy to cloak grave insecurities, who enacted grotesque and convoluted plots less for the sake of causing misery, and more because they wished others to think them brilliant and clever for having thought them up. Such men could not help but brag, boast, explain their evil plots in exacting detail, often foregoing perfectly valid opportunities to simply kill the heroes trying to stop them in favor of lengthy monologues extolling their own genius. It was a well-known phenomenon.

On the surface, this appeared to be yet another case... but yet... something was wrong...

"No," answered Warp. "Merely to see. To ask, to question. And perhaps, for the first time in your life, to understand."

The light show behind him swirled and twisted, colors running together like water-paints in the rain. Abstract constructions of impossible color and patterns without form spun together. Like a hypnotic dance, the light commanded attention, demanded she watch it, until she had to tear her eyes away by main force.

"Enough!" she shouted. "I did not come here to listen to your justifications! Tell me where you have hidden Robin, or I shall pry the knowledge from you by force!"

Warp laughed, lightly, as though the threat were a thing of no weight, no concern. Perhaps it was not. "Is that what you truly seek, Princess?" asked Warp. "Or is possibly that you fear the answers to the questions you refused to ask?" The golden supervillain smirked as he folded his arms.

"After all," said Warp. "That was Robin's reason for avoiding them."

Starfire stood stock still, face motionless, like a statue writ of living flesh. Warp waited patiently, as she slowly, with infinite care and precision, lowered her hands to her sides, and in a clipped, bitter tone, asked a single question.

"How did you come to discover all of this?"

No expression of triumph. No visible sign of relief. No waterfall of self-praise to butress his own insecurities. Warp, having finally received the question he had theoretically sought, simply took a deep breath, reached his hand to the pedastal at his side, and spoke.

"I watched the Titans die."

*--------------------------------------------------------------------------------*

Breathless, heedless, Terra ran like she had not run before, as a maelstrom of noise exploded from behind her, screams, roars, howls bonechilling and unearthly, and the sound of naked claws scratching over asphalt and concrete. She did not turn back to see what was chasing her but ran in blind panic, practically dragging David along with her. Though he was running too, fatigue and the aftereffects of his traumatic shift from flesh to stone and back slowed him, and he stumbled over carstops and jagged cracks in the cement floor. She had neither the time nor the inclination to be gentle however, and physically dragged him forward until he found his footing and could run on his own again.

Behind them, all manner of bowel-quaking monstrosities screamed hatred to the scorched skies above, as leathery wings beat at the air and grasping claws gouged at pavement. Terra did not spare a glance backwards, running flat out for the stairs that led out of the garage, trying desperately to recollect where they were. Around corners and cars, past piles of rubble and fallen I-beams, she ran and twisted and ducked and ran some more. Yet before she could find where the exit she sought was, everything went straight to Hell.

There was a crack, and a swish, and a chitin dart flew past her head, six inches long and cruelly barbed, disappearing off into the darkness ahead. She turned to shout a warning, but it was too late. David gave an aborted cry as a second barb struck him square in the back like a throwing knife. What noxious toxins it might have carried went un-discovered, for the dart did not penetrate his ashen-gray uniform, bouncing off of the micro-woven composite-fiber like a rubber ball, yet the kinetic force of the impact hurled him off his feet and threw him forward onto the ground on his face, where he rolled and slid into a parked car with a crash, fetching up on his side.

He shook his head, rising shakily to his hands and knees, yet seconds later, a bat-beast landed before him, mandibles clicking and oozing a foul substance that scored the very concrete beneath it. Clawed wings reached for his throat, and he scrambled back in the only direction open, the corner formed by the car and a concrete pillar. The terrible thing pursued him, grabbing his foot and trying to drag him out of the corner. He kicked at it in vain, panic and terror clouding his mind as the thing pulled him out into the open air, snatching him up off the floor by the collar, and ignoring his frantic struggles, leaned forward to deliver a fatal bite with jaws of dripping acid.

It did not succeed.

A rock the size of a volleyball flew out of nowhere and hit the thing square in the side of the head with such force that it tore its head clean off and left its truncated corpse to crumple lifelessly to the ground. David fell backwards, landing awkwardly on the ground on his back, seconds before the ground itself heaved and the parked car beside him was swept aside by a wave of stone, and then suddenly he saw Terra.

But it was not the Terra of a moment before. She stood where the car had been moments before, her eyes blazing with golden light, hands raised forward, palms extended, and about her the ground shifted like a liquid, like a living thing, as stones and clods of earth burst through the pavement and spun about her like electrons around a nucleus. Undaunted, the monsters charged her in unison, a writhing, screaming pack of nightmares given form, but she hurled herself forward, falling to one knee, shooting the fingers of her right hand towards the legion of the damned, and then her entire body exploded into golden light, and David could see no more.

There was the sound of screams, not wrathful but terrified, and the unholy roar of collapsing masonry and exploding stone, and David could only crouch on the ground like an earthworm and cover his head with both arms. He might even have screamed, the noise was such that he couldn't hear himself. Slabs of stone the size of bicycles crashed to earth around him, pelting him with wasplike fragments, yet as before, the bonded micro-weave that Cyborg had made for him held fast. And then, bare seconds later, the roar of rushing air, of flying stone, of undifferentiated chaos, drowned out all else, and he heard no more.

And then it all stopped at once.

The silence was so profound that it was almost deafening, save only for the ringing in David's ears. Carefully he peeked out of the ball he had almost instinctively curled himself into, raising his head to see what was left.

The monsters were gone. All gone, save for ichor stains and bits of carapace and sodden leather that decorated the walls and ceiling and the floor. Everything nearby seemed to have gone with them, cars torn to piles of twisted scrap metal, motorcycles wrapped around support pylons, the pipes and broken lights that lined the ceiling vanished as if by magic, and in their place lay a knee-deep carpet of dirt and chipped stone. Terra stood nearby, barely a pace or two away, standing up once more, but doubled over with one hand on her knees and the other holding her forehead. She looked exhausted, bent over and breathing heavily, yet she retained sufficient alertness to lift her head once more as David stirred, and turn completely about, seeking more enemy. She found none.

"Are you all right?" she asked then, turning back to David. Though the glow had faded elsewhere, her hands still retained the golden energy that heralded her powers. For his part, David could not remember how to speak. Though he had seen Terra's powers in full force before, indeed he had seen them directed at himself, the stark display of power unbridled, coupled with the gaping hole that he felt within him where his own powers should have been, reduced him in an instant back to the days before he had been a hero, when he had been nothing but David Foster, the civilian, who stood in the presence of Gods and Titans and watched them do battle at the ending of the world.

Another distant roar served admirably to focus his attention.

Both of them turned sharply, expecting to see further monsters loom out of the darkness. Yet all they heard was distant rumblings and the sounds of what might have been footsteps in the darkness. And just as David was about to ask if perhaps they ought to leave, Terra turned, grabbed his arm, and ran for the exit.

The carpet of dirt parted before her with a wave of a hand, and she ran ahead, nearly dragging him off his feet, her grip like a gloved vice, not that he was tempted to wrestle away from her now. When last they had met, Terra had tried to kill him. Now that he was helpless, she was exerting every effort to save his life. The irony would no doubt have been funny had he retained the mental facilities with which to laugh.

Ahead loomed a door, metal, and they burst through it into a stairwell. Terra pushed David through, and slammed the door behind them, leaning against it with her hands aglow once more and her eyes closed. He was about to ask her what she was doing when it became pattently obvious, as a muted roar, thunderous and abrupt, sounded from the other side, instantly aborted as something thudded against the door and was still. Wet earth leaked through the seam at the bottom of the door as Terra slowly stood back. "Come on," she said, and she grabbed him once more and began to ascend the stairs.

They double-timed the stairs, legs burning and lungs aflame, sixteen stories in all without a pause, for neither one of them were inclined to stop. Still groggy and weak from the transformation, David felt his heart thundering in his ears and his vision turning red as they ascended endlessly, before, at long last, they reached topmost landing, burst through the main doors, and entered the windswept hellscape above.

It was hardly an improvement. They stood on an empty street, lined with ruined buildings and burning cars, beneath a smoky sky of slate gray. The air was tinged with sulfur and volcanic gas, and low rumblings on the horizon testified to new tortures that might well lie in store. Yet right now, David's mind simply could not process more devastation and death, and he collapsed to the ground next to the entrance, panting like a dog, one hand still clutched to his stomach, where the cold nothingness that had once held Devastator continued to gnaw at him like a parasitic worm.

Beside him, Terra managed only the comparative dignity of sliding down the side of the garage entrance to a seated position, if not as tired as David was, still blown from the effort of the fight and the ascent. They both sat there, like runners at the end of a race, simply breathing and recovering their breath for several minutes.

"Thanks," he finally said, the word coming out semi-automatically. She let it sit for a few moments before answering.

"Don't mention it," she said, and from the sound of it, she meant it. Why she had turned back to help him, he didn't even bother to ask. He didn't know how.

Slowly, Terra stood up, looking up and down the street carefully before walking over and offering him a hand, pulling him back up to his feet. By now he needed the help. If she noticed him lowering his eyes as she looked him over to see that he was all right, she didn't mention it.

"Come on," she said. "We've got to find somewhere to..." her voice trailed off. Somewhere to what? The question was implied if not asked, for David by now had no means to question her, the absent pain in his midsection and the bitter one in his chest from the twin losses of Devastator and the other Titans had robbed him of all sense of agency. Had Terra suggested they go jump in a pit of lava, he might well have followed her there.

"We'll find somewhere to hole up," she finally said. "Come on." And without waiting for him to protest (as though he would have), she put a hand on his shoulder to guide him towards one of the empty buildings.

But they never got there.

There was a roar, a low roar like thunder rumbling over the mountains, and both of them turned to see a black cloud forming up on the horizon. Twisting and turning like a living thing, it erupted into the air from some source so distant that it could not be made out, yet the cloud itself was easily visible, and it darkened quickly, a null-space in mid-air. Flashes from deep within served to illuminate, of all things, brilliant colors, purples and greens and deep reds. And then suddenly the colors burst forth in a riot, swirling around one another in a technicolor wonder, before they all ran together like watercolors in the rain, and then a picture began to form.

And as Terra and David watched this wonder with wide eyes and silent tongues, they saw, so far away that it was barely a speck, a single, lone figure, slowly walking up the empty street towards them.

*--------------------------------------------------------------------------------*

A void, like the inky blackness of interstellar space. It surrounded her, encapsulated her, yet it was all an illusion, and Starfire knew it. Yet she did not look away. The fountain of light had projected an image of dark nothingness so vast that it encompased the entire chamber, and indeed most of the castle, visible no doubt from miles and miles away. Yet despite the omnipresent darkness, there was no malice here, no intent to frighten or scare. This was not darkness for its own sake, but merely a default, as the worker of this wonder waited for the artist to fill it with imagery.

And sure enough, it did.

"When you left me in that future world," came Warp's voice, neither near nor far away, a presence unfixed in location, like a narrator's voice over a documentary film, "I was a helpless infant. You were the one who placed me in the charge of the Titans of that world."

"They were my friends!" she shouted to the inky black. "They agreed to take you in, and they would never have permitted you to come to harm. Never!" She turned in circles, as though expecting to see Warp behind her, or at her side. "After all your protestations, did you bring me here to tell me such obvious lies?!"

"No," said Warp's disembodied voice, calm and collected. "You are correct. They did not allow me to come to harm, until the night that choice was taken from them, and from me."

And then suddenly there was light.

Not much light, granted, but light nonetheless. A cityscape at night, viewed from overhead. Buildings loomed like the shadows of giants, barely visible against the darkened skies. They arched upwards, in shapes both familiar and alien, but all dark. The city was without power, and not a light could be seen, save for pinpricks of the lights of vehicles below, and a dull, red glow somewhere off near the horizon.

The buildings were unrecognizable, particularly under these conditions, yet the topography from above was still sufficiently similar to the one she knew for her to realize which city it was that she was looking down into. And when she turned around, looking out over the water that formed the enormous bay in to the north of the city, she saw proof in the form of a golden tower, perched on an island, the only structure that still seemed to have power, shaped in the unmistakable form of the letter T.

When last she had seen this world, the Tower had been a shattered ruin, long abandoned save by Cyborg, whose systems he was unable to decouple from. Evidently the years between then and this scene had given it new life, for it blazed once more as resplendently as ever, shining like a beacon in the overcast darkness.

"For eight years, they tried to reverse the tide of darkness in this city," came Warp's voice, as the view panned about the dark metropolis. "They rebuilt the Tower, they fought back against those who had ruined the city. They even credited you as the inspiration for it. And for a time they even thought they were succeeding."

The vision swept downwards, through the clouds and below them, into the storm-lashed city, as torrents of rain poured down past her sight. Below ran a massive open boulevard, one she did not recognize, lined with darkened buildings and dead streetlights. Cars sat abandoned on the side of the road, empty and forlorn. No lights were visible in any direction save one, for approaching at rapid pace were two lit vehicles that Starfire recognized instantly.

It was not that she had seen these vehicles before specifically, for she had not. Indeed she had never even seen anything like them. One resembled a motorcycle with the wheels removed and replaced by massive electromagnets that sparked and crackled as they levitated over the street. The other was a six-wheeled automobile, long and sleek and low to the ground, with lights mounted atop and in front of it, painted in neon blue, chrome and glistening white. Yet despite this, she knew instantly what they were and who was riding them, for the design, the style, all the thousand little details that added up in her head, revealed that much beyond question, and despite everything she felt her pulse start to pound as the vehicles approached and she caught sight of the man on the hovercraft, a man with dark flowing hair, his face obscured behind a black mask, his clothing entirely black, save for a blue symbol, a double-headed eagle, emblazoned on his chest like a heraldic crest.

"Robin..." she whispered before she could stop herself.

"Not Robin," said Warp's disembodied voice. "His life as Robin had long-since ended. When I knew him, he called himself Nightwing."

The hovercraft screamed past, followed a second later by the automobile, and Starfire's vision turned after them and followed as they raced towards a red glow on the horizon, one that could be no sunset or dawn. She had seen such a glow enough times herself to know what it was. It was the glow of raging fires unchecked, ravaging some distant part of the city. The darkened city cast the hideous glow into stark relief, and Starfire realized suddenly that she heard no sirens, no flashing lights of emergency vehicles, no helicopters or other flying craft. The city was burning, and save for the Titans themselves, there was no sign of response at all.

"There were no alerts by then," said Warp. "No signals save for the occasional furtive call from a private citizen seeking some desperate measure of succor. The police had long-since ceased to call on the Titans. Half of the time, they were the ones the Titans were deployed to fight. But that night it was different."

The vehicles screamed down the empty road towards the flames, their engines the only sound in the silent city, as the glow on the horizon loomed higher and bighter.

"Crime was omnipresent," said Warp. "Violence, murder, gang assault, even metahuman attack, the city was rife with these things, but not like this. This attack struck the Green zone, the fortified heart of the city, where the wealthy and powerful had retreated to erect impenetrable barriers against the suffering of the rest of the city. The banks, the corporations, and what few government agencies or utilities still maintained a presence in Jump, all these were sequestered within a small, impenetrable sector of the city, defended by police and private security forces. It was the most heavily defended location within five hundred miles. Even the Titans themselves would have been hard-pressed to secure entrance to the Green zone had it been opposed. And now it was burning."

Through canyons of darkened buildings and high rises, some gutted by long-quenched fires, some abandoned to squatters and vagrants, the Titans raced ahead, squealing around corners and through impromptu barricades built across various streets by unknown forces. Ahead loomed the so-called "Green" zone, now dyed the red and orange of wrath and war, smoke and flames vaulting into the leaden skies. Yet the Titans did not slow or falter, screaming through the dead city like ancient heroes riding chariots of fire and magic.

"I was a child," said Warp. "I was not permitted to go with them, but I went anyway. I hid myself within the transport's storage trunk and accompanied them because I wanted to watch them triumph. I wanted to see them at their most resplendent and glorious, defeating the forces of entropy and driving back the darkness. Nightwing knew who the attacker had to be, and told the others, yet to me, it was nothing but a name. I had no conception of what lay in store.

"Who was it?" asked Starfire. "Who attacked the city?"

Warp did not answer.

One last corner, and suddenly the Titans were there. Ahead loomed a massive gate of wrought steel, like an armored shutter blocking out all comers, set into a fortified wall of concrete and iron, encrusted with towers and sensors and posts for armed robots or human guards. Yet it had availed nothing, for the gate had been torn apart and cast down in ruin, the wall gouged out and holed in half a dozen places. Shattered fragments of what had once been security robots littered the street, along with the bodies of security personnel, their weapons deformed and broken and in some cases cast vast distances into the surrounding topography. Several bodies had been physically torn apart, limbs and heads adorning nearby cornices or swept into debris-choked corners, still sporting the useless fragments of body armor that their owners had vainly sought to protect themselves with.

Slowing at last, the Titans drove over the ruined threshold and into the formerly beating heart of the city, following a path of ruin and violence unimaginable that led towards its core. Vehicles lay overturned and shattered, some hurled through the windows of nearby buildings, others simply ripped to pieces with such violence that fragments were embedded in the surrounding walls like thrown darts or fired arrows. Here and there, there were signs that someone or some group had tried to fight back, and their dead bodies were heaped in piles or strewn about in a carpet like fallen leaves.

Starfire was no stranger to scenes of death, yet this was beyond the pale even for her. Her mind raced with the thoughts of who might have been the agent of this catastrophe. The signs were those of a massive monster, of Cinderblock or Plasmus or Overload or some unholy combination of the three, or perhaps of Slade with his armies of robots. Yet this was nearly thirty years in the future. Who could tell what bestial horrors could have arisen in the meantime, what monsters from the darkness had been conjured forth in the absence of the Titans or municipal governance? The agent could be anything, she knew.

And then the Titans finally came to the focal point of the disaster, and all was revealed.

Ahead loomed an open area, a hundred yards long and as many wide, in the center of which had once stood a grand fountain of marble. The fountain was gone now, amputated as though felled by a lumberjack, and the cars that had lined it now lay crushed against one another along one side, leaving the plaza empty. The ground was cracked and run through with fissures that zigzagged across the concrete and asphalt, and pockmarked with great craters. To the right of the plaza loomed an enormous building, a power plant of some sort, filled with electrical equipment, from which electrical lines radiated out towards the rest of the city. The plant was quiet and dark now, the power lines torn town in a heap and swept to one side as though by a gigantic broom. Yet the plant was not the source of the firelight.

That was the enormous edifice before them.

Directly opposite the Titans stood an structure imposing even within these surroundings, built like a government building or embassy, faced with stone and festooned with flagpoles and statues. Yet tonight it commanded attention, not from architecture, but from fire. The entire building was in flames, which poured from every window and danced across its roof, producing an unearthly roar as internal structures warped and gave way. Around its collapsed front entrance, more bodies were heaped, but these were not soldiers or police. The bodies were dressed in the remains of business suits and evening gowns, their hands and arms thrown out to defend themselves from whatever had struck them down, their faces contorted with terror.

The hovercycle skidded to a stop, and Nightwing leaped off of it before it had even done so, landing with perfect grace on the broken ground, a small cylinder of metal in one hand. A second later, and the cylinder expanded a dozenfold, telescoping out into a tempered metal staff.

Behind him, the car ground to a halt, and out poured the others. She had known that Cyborg was driving the car even before she had known what car it was, and indeed, he stepped out of the driver's seat. His half-human face was lined with the same premature aging that she remembered from her trip to this future, yet his mechanical parts were polished and gleaming with energy, his circuitry restored to top condition and beyond, and his eyes, both mechanical and organic, showed no signs of slowing, nor of the sadness and despair he had inculcated in his years of exile. Several new devices of indeterminate use were mounted in various places around his body, and he seamlessly shifted one hand into a cannon as he advanced to stand alongside Robin.

Beast Boy, or whatever he called himself now, actually looked better than she remembered. She had found him eight years before in a ramshackle zoo, overweight, balding, and depressed from the destruction of his team, life, and family. Yet barely a sign of that could be seen here. He had dropped the excess weight, or at least much of it, and his hair had even returned, still as green as it was in her time. He did not adopt a new form, but folded his arms, stepping up next to Nightwing and peering into the darkness with his emerald eyes.

Of Raven there was no immediate sign, yet seconds later there was a flash, and she appeared in midair, her cloak, hood, and uniform a dazzling white, as it had been when last Starfire saw her future self, yet the vacant stare of madness was gone. Pale as ever, she nevertheless moved with quiet assurance, wrapped within her cloak, as she touched lightly down on the ground. Beast Boy swiftly moved to her side, yet she neither pushed him away nor scowled at him, nor flew off herself, as Starfire had seen her so-often do.

And behind them all, Starfire saw another flash, a smaller flash, and before her eyes, a young boy appeared, crouched behind the back of the car, peering over it at the Titans and the scene itself from behind. Either none of the other Titans noticed the child appear, for the flash was small and the sound non-existent, or they otherwise did not react. The child wore no uniform or identifying marks, dressed in street clothes and sneakers, with black hair and dark eyes, yet Starfire did not even have to ask who it was. She had seen this child as an adult, as an old man, and as a baby. The identity was obvious.

The plaza was deserted aside from the Titans and the dead, or so it seemed, and the rain that beat down showed no sign of suppressing the raging pyre that was consuming the building ahead. Starfire herself looked around in vain, and she was about to demand that Warp answer her question, when all of a sudden, Nightwing spoke.

"There," he said, pointing with his staff.

To the side of the burning building, in plain sight, stood a lone figure in a long coat. He was half-turned away from them, cloaked in the shadows cast by the raging bonfire. He had not mysteriously appeared without warning, for indeed, upon immediate recollection, Starfire realized that he had been standing there the entire time, so well hidden and unremarkable amidst the scene of chaos and death that her eye had simply skipped over him. The four Titans slowly fanned out, moving carefully towards the semi-invisible figure, as Starfire stared at the man in the coat with a leaden sense of dread building up inside her.

"Nightwing knew," said Warp. "Nightwing always knew. An attack like this, so brazen, so long after the last time anyone had dared attack the city, there was only one person it could have ever been. While the rest of us sought for phantoms in the air, or oversized monsters, he was the only one looking for what was actually there."

Nightwing stood out front, the others in a semicircle behind him, as he extended his staff towards the man in the coat. "Freeze," he said, in a voice that meant business.

For a moment, the man did not react. And then slowly, very slowly, as though he had all the time in the world, he turned his head towards the Titans. One hand was at his chin, holding a lit cigarette which he puffed on softly, a small ember serving to illuminate nothing. Slowly he exhaled a halo of smoke, lowering his hand to his side, and only then did he turn fully. With an air of nonchalance, he raised his head and stepped fully into the light.

Starfire's heart froze.

The man was smaller than Nightwing, thin and slight of build, with light brown hair, cropped short and unstyled, which was beginning to gray at the temples. Despite the fact that it was nighttime, he wore dark glasses, mirror-shined, obscuring his eyes. He had an open overcoat, dark brown in color, long-sleeved and knee-length, over clothing so nondescript that it scarcely caught the eye and was in any case near-invisible in the shadowy firelight. In one hand he held his cigarette, and in the other the neck of a wooden cane, varnished and capped by a molded handle of sterling silver. Yet despite the walking stick, the man neither limped nor leaned upon it holding it lightly as he turned to face the four advancing Titans.

But none of this, not the cane or coat or glasses, none of this was what Starfire was staring at, her eyes wide, her breath frozen, the Tamaranean blood in her veins turning to icewater. No one specific thing caught her eye and chilled the very marrow of her bones. It was no discrete flash of recognition. It was instead a shapeless dread, an amalgam, a thousand little things, features, tics of movement, tiny gestures unconscious and unintended, which all added up to a composite picture, one that stirred the deepest recesses of her subconscious, warning her in ever-escalating terms that she knew what she was looking at, moments before the man in the coat opened his mouth to speak, and removed all doubt.

"Hello, Nightwing," said the man, his tone even and calm, betraying no trace of surprise. "How nice to see you again." The voice was gravelly and dark, twisted by years and the ravages of time. Yet Starfire recognized it instantly. It was a voice she had heard a thousand times before.

"By Tamaran," she said, her own voice wavering in shock. "No.... it cannot... this can't possibly... NO!"

"You wished to know who killed the Titans?" came Warp's disembodied narration. "You demanded the identity of the one who set this all in motion?" Warp's bitter laughter swam about her head as she felt dizziness coming over her. "Had you only the wit to ask this question earlier, you might have realized that the answer has been staring you in the face the entire time..."

"Devastator," said Nightwing, spitting the name out like a mouthful of venom, as he shifted his staff around into a battle stance. "You're going down."

*--------------------------------------------------------------------------------*

"Oh my god..."

The words came to Terra's lips without her even needing to think them. She stared up at the dark canvas in the sky, on which was displayed Nightwing, and Raven, and Cyborg, and Beast Boy, all older, all standing defiant, and all facing...

"... no."

David stood in the middle of the street like a manaquin, his eyes wide in horror and disbelief. His mouth formed words that could not be spoken, for his voice had deserted him, as he watched in mounting horror the scene before him. He staggered, swaying like a leaf in the wind, stepped back, stumbled, and fell, his movements uncoordinated and jerky, yet his eyes were nailed to the sky before him, and the terrible scene it showed. He tried to move, perhaps to get up or scramble away or some other gesture, but failed, and managed only to repeat himself in a thin, anguished voice. "No... no... no..."

Terra finally stirred, approaching and kneeling down to help him up, unable to even process what she was seeing, but before she could do so, she saw his eyes finally lower, from the sky to the ground, and to the figure still walking towards them. And though an instant before she would not have thought it possible, she saw in that instant his wide, horrified eyes widen even further in horror.

She turned, and she realized why.

The man did not slow his pace, nor did he hurry, walking towards them as if he had not a care in the world. His right hand rested lightly on the silver handle of a wooden walking stick, on which he relied not at all, tapping it lightly on the pavement as though strolling through a park on a bright summer's day. The soft wind that blew from the west kicked dust up about his feet, and shifted the hem of his knee-length overcoat, worn open over his dark and featureless clothing, and he smiled beneath his dark, mirrored sunglasses, the edge of his mouth gently curling upwards towards light brown hair, in which there was flecked just a hint of silver.

"No..." she heard David whisper, and she realized he was speaking for both of them.

Still thirty yards away, the man stopped in the middle of the street, planting the brass tip of his walking stick on the ground lightly with his left hand, while the other fished around in the pocket of his coat before re-appearing with a packet of cigarettes. He drew one out with one hand, replaced the packet, and brought the cigarette to his mouth. No lighter or matchbook did he produce, yet seconds later the tip of the cigarette burst into flame of its own accord and quickly smoldered down to a soft ember. He drew on it carefully, a long, deep pull, before lowering the cigarette to his side, and blowing a soft stream of light-grey smoke off into the ashen air. Only then did he speak.

"Hello there, David," he said with a smile. "I trust I need no introduction?"

[LadyTevar]

Chapter 35: Enemies Foreign and Domestic

"Helplessness induces hopelessness, and history attests that loss of hope and not loss of lives is what decides the issue of war."

- B. H. Lidell Hart

*--------------------------------------------------------------------------------*

I had seen them fight before. In training, on video, even in person, from hiding. It never occurred to me that anything was wrong.

"Devastator."

The man in the coat did not react to the name, one hand resting lightly on the handle of his walking stick of varnished hardwood, the other gently holding the cigarette that smoldered in the flame-flecked darkness, a thin trickle of smoke rising past his black, mirrored glasses. His eyes invisible, he breathed slowly, puffs of condensation trailing out into the flame-lit sky. He moved, when he moved, with poise and ease and total disconcern, as though he had all the time in the world, and nothing whatsoever to command his haste.

"Hello, Nightwing," he said at last, his voice an elevated whisper, barely audible above the crackling flames.

Nightwing said nothing. Cyborg and Raven and Beast Boy said nothing. The wide-eyed boy hiding behind the T-car said nothing. Before buildings in ruin and streets in flames and bodies piled in their hundreds, what was there to say?

The man called Devastator did not hurry them, pulling softly on his cigarette and tapping the metal-shod tip of his wooden cane on the ground in time to some beat only he could discern. Only after a lengthy time had passed did he discard the stub of his cigarette, flicking it into the gutter and carefully extinguishing it with the heel of his boot, ignoring the bonfires that raged about him. Having concluded his immediate business to his satisfaction, only then did he raise his head, a disarming smile on his face, and speak.

"So," he said, "here we are."

Still none of the Titans moved, save for Nightwing, who for the first time, took his eyes off Devastator for the split second he needed to sweep his gaze across the fire and death that surrounded him. Devastator did not react, and when the Titans' leader turned back to him, it was with a single, bitter, anguished question.

"Why?"

The question seemed to amuse the man in the coat. "Why?" he asked with a wry grin. "Isn't that obvious?"

"You didn't need this to get our attention!" snapped back Nightwing, his staff trembling as he gripped it tighter and tighter. "If it's us you wanted, you knew where to find - "

"And walk into the Lion's den alone to face whatever traps you've set for anyone fool enough to attack your little Tower?" asked Devastator, his voice as calm as a still pond, "I don't think so. I prefer it this way."

Not, that is, until Raven spoke.

"What do you want from us?" she asked. And there was nothing at all untoward about the question, a perfectly valid one when confronted by a mass-murdering metahuman, yet Starfire's breath caught as she heard them. There was nothing obviously wrong, and yet the tone was clipped and shortened, the words forced through her teeth, so subtle as to be almost imperceptible, yet enough that she noticed, and Beast Boy noticed, his eyes turning to her automatically. They both had heard the same thing.

Raven was afraid.

I'd never heard fear in Raven's voice before. I never would again.

"I want your blood," said Devastator, as simply and calmly as though discussing the weather. "I want your souls. I want your heads mounted on spikes, displayed for the cameras on the parapet of your little Tower." He leaned against his cane, planting it on the rubble-strewn asphalt. "I want you all dead," he said. "And I'm here, today, to collect the things I want."

It was no different than a thousand speaches Starfire had heard before, justifications, bravado, proclamations of defeat that every would-be criminal mastermind from Slade to Mad Mod to Brother Blood would recite at the drop of a hat. She had learned, through long experience, to simply ignore such lectures of impending doom as the rantings of the mad. The Titans of the future, having had many more years' exposure to such things, should have been even less likely to give them credence.

Yet they did.

And so did she.

"Who's payin' you for this?" asked Cyborg, and his voice was like a ringing bell, snapping Starfire and the others out of their own fears, driving them back into the present. "Luthor? Immortus? Some kind of - "

The man began to laugh.

Somehow the laugh made it worse, for it wasn't the laugh of the mad, some far-fetched cackle of a mind long-past the realms of sanity. It was a polite, calm laugh, that of a sane man amused by the antics of a clown. Though the David she knew had not been given to laughter for its own sake, Starfire had heard enough of it to recognize the cadence, and she felt a pang in her stomach as the man responded.

"I had targets here," he said, sweeping his hand around to gesture at the piles of dead bodies heaped among the nearby ruins and piled before the burning building. "Six of them, to be precise. The rest just got in the way. But you four..." he smiled again, a wistful smile, like a sommelier savoring the taste of a fine wine. "You four are another matter."

"What, you couldn't find any buyers?" asked Cyborg.

"Quite the opposite. You wouldn't believe how many people of want the four of you dead. I could scarcely believe it. Presidents, dictators, CEOs, retired villains, I even had a Sultan make an offer. But that's really all beside the point." He popped his cane up and grabbed it by the neck, letting it swing out behind him lightly as he began to approach the four Titans.

"You really think you can take us all?" asked Nightwing as the Titans spread out, moving to surround the man, an action he took no measures to prevent, content to watch them do so.

"Yes," he said with perfect assurance, "and so do you."

Perhaps he was right, for none of the four responded immediately, Beast Boy looking to Raven who looked to Cyborg who looked to Nightwing, who stared, inscrutable as ever, at the man with the coat and cane. Nightwing did not move a muscle, gave nothing away, and yet...

"It doesn't have to go this way," said Nightwing, and his voice only hinted at the terrible depths represented by that phrase.

The man merely shook his head. "Yes it does," he said. "You know that. I just killed four hundred people. I could give you reasons, or letters of marque, but none of those things matter to you. You're an idealist, Nightwing. And idealism requires a certain myopia. You simply aren't permitted any other option."

The man smiled and fingered the neck of his cane. "And as for me," he said, "don't get me wrong, I'm not turning down the payoff. Money or otherwise, it's astronomical." He took a deep breath, and his voice distorted slightly, a feral edge entering his otherwise calm demeanor. "But to be perfectly honest, Nightwing," he said, planting his cane back on the ground, "the truth is, I'd gladly kill you for free."

None of the Titans replied. One by one, their eyes turned to Nightwing, who remained as still as a statue, sizing up his opponent, as his grip on the staff in his hand imperceptibly began to tighten.

The man either did not notice, or did not care, and after a lengthy pause for decency, he smiled one more time, as though recalling an old joke. "So what do you say, Titans," he asked, lifting the cane slowly and sliding his hand down it to the midway point. A bare moment later, malevolently red flames ignited along its entire length, flickering in the fire-lit darkness as they licked at his bare hand. "Shall we?"

"Titans," said Nightwing, his voice clipped and dry. "Go."

Years might have passed, yet time had not slowed the Titans' reactions. In a split second, in the blink of an eye, Nightwing leaped from the ground, and Cyborg raised his cannon. Beast Boy erupted in size and Raven wove her magic. It was like the explosion of a flashbulb, a burst of activity from absolute inaction that was dizzying to behold, and yet it was not fast enough. For before any of them could complete the actions they had begun, the man with the burning cane inclined his instrument downwards just a fraction, touching the tip of it to the ground, and then everything went black.

*--------------------------------------------------------------------------------*

"No..."

It couldn't be. It had to be a mistake. A trick. Some multi-layered plot of Trigon's or Warp's. It was some sort of cruel joke perpetrated by evil men. A twisted mockery of reality designed to cause him to suffer. A hallucination, a construct, a simulacrum. It wasn't real.

"No..."

It couldn't be real.

"It's good to meet you at last," said the man, and it was his own voice. Deep and gravelly, scarred by years of abuse and smoke, but still recognizably, obviously, patently his own voice, the same cadence, the same rhythm, belying all denial. He watched mutely as the man smiled, his face weathered by time and God-knew what else, but the gestures were his own, unconscious and unintended, the twitch at the corner of his mouth, the way he brushed his open coat aside with his right hand, and held it behind his back, the posture of his calm stance, there was no question, no minute dissonance to lay hopes upon. He was staring at himself.

"No."

"I admit, it's been a while," said the man, with just the vaguest hint of a wry smirk, "but I'm pretty sure that at your age, I knew more words than that."

David gave no evidence that this was so. Indeed he gave no evidence that he could even understand what was being said. He stared in dumbstruck shock, hands trembling at his sides, mouth agape, looking for all the world like he had just been frozen in place, like his mind had just experienced a segmentation fault, and could not determine how to compute the data being fed to it.

The man in the coat said nothing, did nothing to indicate that he was surprised at this reaction. Indeed he smiled, like a trainer amused by the antics of a small dog, and passed it over without so much as a word.

"And you must be Terra," he said, turning his head to the other teenager, his manner calm and collected. He planted the cane's tip on the asphalt with practiced ease, looking for all the world like a schoolteacher or civil servant asking after a student or case file.

Surprised though she might have been, Terra was not staring at herself, and retained sufficient lucidity to speak. Doing her best to at least mitigate her astonishment, she tried to answer with equanimity. "Have we met?"

If anything, this seemed to amuse the man. "No," he said, breaking a disturbingly familiar smile. "Not originally at least. But I've heard a great deal about you."

Right now, what he had heard of her, and from whom, was the last possible thing on her mind. Yet before she could ask another question, David recovered enough of his powers of speech to ask a question.

"What are you?"

That one did not amuse. "Please don't play stupid," said the man, "you know perfectly well who I am."

"I didn't ask who you - "

"Yes you did," said the man. "It's the same question, and you know the answer in both cases." He paused, looking David over for a second with a discriminating eye. "You'd still be going by 'David Foster' at this point, wouldn't you?"

David was visibly oscillating between horror, shock, and anger. "What are you talking - "

"It's just that it's been quite a while since I went by that name," said the man evenly. "We both know that you just made it up. So did I."

Several seconds passed in silence, Terra not daring to venture a word, the man choosing not to, and David seemingly incapable of doing so. Yet when finally the silence broke, it was David who broke it, his very voice wavering with the implications of the simple sentence he conjured forth.

"You're... me."

But the man simply shook his head. "No," he said, "not the way you mean it."

"I don't understand. You're... you said you - "

"My name is David Foster," said the man, "among many other titles. "The question is, who are you?"

If anything, David looked even more confused. "I'm... I'm David - "

"Really?"

The question was like a gunshot, barked in a tone entirely different than that of the previous civil conversation. It echoed down the silent street, making Terra jump from the sheer unexpectedness of it. David fell silent, as the man who called himself by the same name stared at him with eyes like jellied fire. All pleasantries were forgotten.

"Just look at yourself," said the man, and it was not a polite suggestion, it was an order. Almost reflexively, both Terra and David obeyed it, their eyes flicking to David's ash-gray skin and hair and uniform, and to the burning red coals that sat where his eyes should have been.

"It's the mark of a Doppleganger," said the man, "or whatever Trigon calls these little metaphorical playthings of his. A conceit to theatricality, he's full of those. It's a symbol of the fact that you're not supposed to exist."

"What are you talking about?"

"I'm saying that you're not supposed to be here," said the man, wrinkling his brow. "You're not supposed to be involved."

"I know that!"

"No you don't know that. You say you do, but you haven't thought it through. If you had, you wouldn't be anywhere near here, and you certainly would be wearing that ridiculous getup."

Addled by shock, fear, and a thousand other things, David was plainly having trouble keeping up. "My... my uniform?"

"That's not a uniform," said the man, "it's a costume. Uniforms are meant to be uniform with other things. Costumes are intended to stand out. And it's not about what you're wearing, it's why you're wearing it."

"You know why I'm wearing this."

"No, David, I'm afraid I don't," said the man in an exasperated tone, spreading his arms wide as though inviting an answer. "I'm an intelligent man. I'm capable of accepting that there are a wide range of appropriate behaviors among similarly intelligent people. But I cannot, for the life of me, figure out what would possess you to spend the last year in that Tower with those... lunatics. I can't figure out why you've been willingly placing yourself in a position to get killed, and ignoring clear signs that doing so would lead to the end of the world."

The man took several steps forward, his expression and voice becoming more and more animated. "You've been engaging in extra-curricular fights with bank robbers and terrorists for no reason, inserting yourself in a situation which should rightly have nothing to do with you, not to mention associating with, of all people, the Teen Titans. So please, tell me, David, for the love of God, what in the fuck are you doing here?"

David tried to answer, tried to say anything, but his tongue was cloven to the roof of his mouth, his nerves deadened by this final, ultimate shock. He stared at himself, his own face, his own voice, angry and bitter, changed but yet clearly the same, and all words fled before the sight.

"Leave him alone."

He snapped out of his daze to find, of all things, that Terra had stepped forward, hands aglow with yellow light, staring his older self down. Surprised (as indeed seemed the older man), he could only blink and watch as the man who called himself Devastator regarded her with what looked like annoyance.

"Ms. Markov," he said, and David saw Terra flinch at the name, "I'm afraid I don't see how this concerns you at all." He lifted his cane lightly and stepped forward. "I'll be with you in just a moment if you - "

"I said STOP!" shouted Terra, punctuating her command with a peal of thunder as the ground split in front of Devastator's feet. And for a second, he did stop, but only for a second. Glancing at the small crack as he would the antics of a small child, he lightly jumped over it, landing with ease on the other side, before lifting his head to Terra once more and smiling.

"I will not," he said. "Kill me."

So nonchalant, so light and yet serious was that command, that Terra hesitated. "What?"

"You told me to stop. Your implication being that if I didn't, you would make use of those kinetic powers of yours. I have not stopped. Now you have to attack."

"I'm warning - "

"Warning me," interrupted Devastator, altering neither his pace nor his voice in the slightest, "is a waste of time designed to cover the fact that you don't know what to do. You're here, I'm here, the rocks are here, what exactly are you waiting for?" He strode forward, cane tapping in time with his footsteps, as Terra stepped back a pace, then another. "Maybe you know you haven't got a chance. Maybe you're afraid to try. Maybe you're just slow. Either way, if you can't act, then what's the point of making empty - "

"That's enough," shouted someone, and it was a moment or two before David realized that that someone was him. Before he even knew what he was doing, David was suddenly standing in front of Terra, hands balled into fists at his sides.

"Why are you here?" asked David. "For me?"

He stopped. "Yes."

David willed his voice to remain even. "To kill me?"

"I suppose so."

"Then what are you waiting for?"

No answer. Not for a few seconds. And then slowly, a smile grew across the man's face. "Now that's a bit more like it," he said.

"That's not an answer."

"No, it's not." The smile died as the man slowly began to circle the two teenagers, walking carefully, no hurry or rush to his movements, as though he was carefully considering what course of action was best. "I suppose it's morbid curiosity," he said. "I needed to see for myself."

"See what?"

"You. I needed to see what happened to you. What they did to you."

"They didn't do anything to me."

"Well you sure as hell didn't come up with this teenaged hero crap by yourself," said the man. "I would know, wouldn't I?"

David didn't answer. He simply watched, turning in step as the man circled around him and Terra. He said nothing, but plainly he had no need to.

"You're surprised." said the man.

"No," responded David.

"Yes you are," said the man. "I can see it on you. You know you shouldn't be surprised, but you are. It's not that you didn't know. It's that you let yourself think you'd been wrong. You let them talk you into thinking you were one of them. And how you could do that, is entirely beyond me."

His throat seemed to seize, his eyes blurring with tears or denial or just directionless rage, and all he could do was stare wordlessly at the man circling him, like a truant child caught red-handed in some offense.

"What was the first thing you told the Titans when you first met?" asked the man.

"I don't... I don't remember," he said.

"Bullshit," said the man sharply, and he stopped, and stepped towards David, his eyes like power drills. "Don't lie to me David, I know you better than anyone else in the world. You know exactly what you told them, it's been thundering inside your head ever since you saw me. What was it?"

Conscious of Terra watching him out of the corner of his eye, David could only stammer out his answer. "I... told them I wasn't a hero."

"And did they believe you?"

"Yes," he choked out.

"So I'll ask you again, given that you know you're not one of them, and given that they know it, why exactly are you surprised to see me?"

His tongue wouldn't work. His brain wouldn't form the necessary words, and yet the man said nothing, waiting for him to answer, until finally he managed to cough it up.

"You're... you're a supervillain."

"Oh good God," the man exclaimed, his tone exasperated, and he turned away, agitated, swishing his cane through the air like a riding crop. "A supervillain?" he exclaimed, turning back, "Jesus Christ, David, what the hell did they do to you?"

"What?"

"Am I wearing a purple cape?" demanded the man, spreading his arms wide. "Am I in pinstripes? A gladiator costume? Do you see me dancing on top of a pyramid made of skulls while singing my own theme music?" He turned his head to Terra. "You've turned in those circles. How many people do you know who actually call themselves supervillains and aren't trying to be funny?"

Terra and David spared a glance at one another, but neither said anything.

"No, David," said the man. "The Joker is a supervillain. Brainiac is a supervillain. Maniacs who obsess over some costumed vigilante with an overdeveloped occipital lobe are supervillains. Whatever you think about me, David, try to divorce yourself from this childish stupidity and see things for what they are. I am not a supervillain." He planted the cane down once more and shook his head. "I am a contractor."

"You're a mass murderer."

The man rolled his eyes, but this, at least, did not seem to offend him. "Always with the dramatic," he said. "I remind you that if I'm a mass murderer, so are you."

"I've never killed anybody."

"But you will," said the man. "Or rather you would have, had you not succeeded in destroying the universe and getting yourself killed instead. That's rich, by the way, calling me a mass murderer. I certainly never wiped out humanity, nor delivered reality itself into the keeping of the Devil."

"You're working for the Devil!"

"And how exactly does that excuse your actions?" demanded the man, and suddenly he sounded angry, raising his cane in one hand and holding it by the neck. "Are you seriously so desperate to prove that you're not responsible for all this that you'll bandy excuses about what I did, ignoring the fact that you just destroyed the fucking world?"

Nothing happened, no fireworks or peals of thunder, yet none was necessary. David's breath caught, and he fell back a pace as though he'd just been struck, wilting before the man's anger. His head swam, he felt like he was going to faint, even as the man unleashed a torrent of bilous wrath.

"What are you thinking? That I'm some twisted version of you? Tortured into insanity? Beaten until the breaking point? I can see you grasping at the straws. 'No! It can't be true! What could possibly have gone wrong?' Can you imagine, David, that looking at you, I ask myself the exact same question?"

"No..."

"Repeating that word does not transform the nature of the universe, boy. What have they been feeding you in that Tower of theirs?"

"Leave him alone," said Terra, pitching her voice at its most menacing, fists clenched once more. "He doesn't need your - "

"Interrupt me again, girl, and you will lose all means of interruption forever," said the man without even a glance in Terra's direction. He stepped forward, walking slowly, yet evenly, like an unstoppable force advancing in spite of all denial or opposition, and before his level gaze, David's mind simply wilted.

"I did not suffer some horrid trauma at the hands of evil men. I was not abused, or beaten, or driven mad. I suffered my fair share of life's unpleasantries, no more, no less. What I am, what we are, was the product of rational, calm reflection."

"You... you killed them," said David weakly.

"Yes I did," said the man, approaching still closer, not even needing to ask to whom David was referring. "I killed them all. I've killed a great many people. I've lain waste to entire ideologies. I've broken governments and thrown nations down in fire. I'm the most effective contractor in history. Men who command the worshipful obedience of a billion souls beg for my services at any conceivable price. I have a hundred different aliases, and seven legal names, including David Foster. But by and large, they call me the Devastator."

He was right in front of him now, close enough to reach out and touch if need be, yet David did not recoil, did not even move. He stood rooted to the spot, and could only watch, as the man stopped in front of him, and planted his cane calmly at his side.

"So why don't we just stop bullshitting one another, and you can tell me, given that you knew what you were, and what you were not, what in the name of God made you think, for one instant, that you were meant to be a superhero."

David said nothing. He could not even remember how.

The man merely smiled. "You asked me before about that little discoloration problem," he said, gesturing at David's ash-gray skin and ember-red eyes. "It's not a side effect or curse. It's a symbol. Trigon likes to conjure up the dark sides of his victims. Dress up their bitter natures in that sort of livery and make them fight themselves. But... simply put, that's not what I am. I'm not some evil alternate version of you, I am you as you were supposed to be." He slowly folded his arms, fixing his gaze like a headmaster staring at a truant pupil. "You look like that, David, because I'm not your evil twin. You're mine."

Had his older self produced a weapon then and there to kill him, David would have stared helplessly at it as it descended towards his face. He had lost all sense of action, all capacity to move or speak or even think. His eyes wide, his mouth hung in mute horror, he could do nothing but stand and watch the end.

It was therefore fortunate that there remained someone present for whom the shock of the situation had not resulted in such total paralysis.

There was a loud BOOM, like thunder from directly overhead, and suddenly David was jerked off his feet as something grabbed him from behind and hurled him backwards, away from his older self. He landed on the ground on his back, and the impact knocked his head clear, at least enough to see what was happening.

Terra stood between him and the man with the cane, and around her floated volcanic stones the size of medicine balls, orbiting her body like a moon around a planet. Her fists were closed and sheathed in gold, and her posture was the same one David remembered from a time not that long ago, when, as now, she had faced David Foster with powers on-hand and intent to kill.

"That's enough!" she spat. "I don't care what version of him you are. Leave us both alone and go back to Trigon, or I'll smear you all over the street."

The man regarded Terra with what looked like a tired gaze. "I told you not to interrupt - "

Terra opened her hand.

Two massive blocks of limestone flew at the man's head like speeding meteors. The first was poorly aimed, and missed by several feet, but the second was on target, and would no doubt have taken the man's head off had he not acted precipitously and ducked out of the way. Both stones flew on another thirty feet, before shattering against the asphalt, even as Terra stepped back and lowered her hands, and the ground shook as she prepared to call up more.

Yet, strangely, the man did not counterattack, nor brandish weapons and powers. Instead he turned his head to watch the blocks land, and then, carefully, reached into his pocket, and produced once more his packet of cigarettes.

It was an oddly innocuous thing to do, and David didn't know what to make of it. Neither, it appeared, did Terra. Rather than continue the attack, she stopped, and backed up a couple paces, and helped David back up, even as the man slowly turned back to face them, fishing a single cigarette out of his packet.

"Leave us alone," she repeated. "Whatever you and Trigon want now, we don't want any part of it. Go back and ask him whose fault this all is. Nobody here cares what you think."

"I don't believe that's entirely accurate," said the man.

"I don't care what you believe!" shouted Terra, "and I don't care who you've killed. I took David out once. I'm happy to do the same to you."

No laughter. No mad cackling. No denials. The man simply stood, watching, before slowly bringing the cigarette up to his mouth. He had no lighter, yet the cigarette burst into flame of its own accord, before smoldering down to an ember. Only once it was lit and emitting a fine trail of smoke did he answer her.

"Really?"

Terra narrowed her eyes. "I once killed all of the Titans," she said. "Just like you." The man said nothing, drawing a long pull on his cigarette, and holding it in, lifting his head as though savoring the taste of a fine wine as wisps of smoke leaked from his nose and the corners of his mouth. He said nothing, and she made bold to continue. "I don't care how important you think you are or how much you don't approve of all this, get away from us or I'll smear you all over the - "

The man lowered his head, fixed his shaded eyes on Terra, and exhaled his lungful of smoke.

And then a skyscraper exploded.

Far in the distance, behind the man, loomed the shadowy ruin of one of Jump City's tallest buildings. The Transpacific Tower, a seventy-four story monolith of glass and black stone, home to the west coast headquarters of several of the largest multi-national corporations in the world. Ruined like the rest of Jump City, it stood nonetheless, vaguely visible through the scorched skies, a landmark in a world turned upside down.

The top story exploded first, blossoming into flames like a match being struck, blowing off the roof and casting flaming debris off of itself like a volcano. Though nearly a mile away, the blast was plainly visible, and rumbled like a living thing, the force of it parting the smoke and ash and giving the two stunned teenagers a full view of the awesome destruction. A bare moment later, and the next floor down erupted into flames, just as the previous one had, and then the next, and the next, the entire structure going up story by story like a Roman candle. The man gave no sign that he knew what was happening, save for a soft twitch of the hand that held his cane as each successive floor detonated. In barely thirty seconds, the entire building was blown apart, flames and pieces of debris as large as tractor trailers raining down indiscriminately on the city below, as a roiling cloud of smoke boiled forth sweeping over the empty city, before overtaking the two teenagers and the man with the cane, and then they could see no more.

Hand over his eyes, coughing, peering through the smoke, David saw a soft red ember glow, like the end of the lit cigarette writ large, which resolved gradually as the smoke began to clear and the dust to settle. And as his vision cleared, David saw the silver-tipped cane, now lit with flames of dull red, held gently in the bespectacled man's hand as he calmly beheld the two teenagers, who stood stunned, at last, into mutual silence.

"I'm sorry," said the man calmly as he took the cigarette from his mouth and dropped it to the ground, turning the red-sheathed cane in his offhand. "You were saying ...?"

*--------------------------------------------------------------------------------*

And just like that, it was over.

In the blink of an eye, the demons were gone, even the broken bodies of the ones that had been destroyed, vanished into nothingness as though they had never existed. In a split second, the world went from a roaring maelstrom of noise and frenetic action to the soft background hiss of the river of lava. In an instant, what had been a nerve-pounding battle, without pause to think or breath, was suddenly concluded, and the greyscale double of Beast Boy that had just tried to murder him was simply gone.

He was in the form of a spider monkey, hanging from one of the carven lava spigots by his tail, and below him, he saw Slade balanced on a slab of stone the size of a sedan in the middle of the lava river, brandishing the boat pole like a quarterstaff, seeking more foes, and not finding them.

A shift to cormorant, a quick beat of wings, then back to his humanoid form, and Beast Boy landed on the other side of the rock island, as Slade turned back to face him.

"What was that?"

Slade took a moment to sweep his gaze across the flame river in search of further enemies before he bothered to reply.

"Demons," said Slade. "Bits of rock and sulfur animated by a minor spirit. Functionally innumerable."

"Not those," said Beast Boy. "That... me!"

"Ah yes." Slade stepped back and crossed his arms, his single eye betraying the barest hint of a smile. "That one's special."

"Slade..."

"Raven, as it happens, was not the only one who had a dark side," said Slade. "That was a manifestation of yours."

Beast Boy blinked. He was sure he'd seen this in a Star Trek episode somewhere. "You mean it's... like my evil twin?"

"I suppose that fits," said Slade. "It's certainly equally annoying."

Beast Boy let that one pass. "But why would he want an evil copy of me?"

"It's how Trigon operates," said Slade, and he turned away, searching for some means of proceeding forward. "It's not enough for him to kill his enemies. He has to see their wills broken."

"Pft," said Beast Boy, crossing his arms. "He didn't break much."

"He wasn't trying to," replied Slade. "That was just a warning. If you choose to continue, you'll find much worse where that came from."

Small wonder that Slade had to work alone if he was always this cheery. But rather than articulate that particular thought, Beast Boy asked a question.

"So if that's my bad side, where's yours? Trigon can't be too happy with you either."

"You see it standing before you," said Slade casually. "Or were you under the impression I had a good side?"

With a groan, Beast Boy simply gave up. "Whatever, dude, let's just go."

"Indeed," said Slade, and he used the boat pole to vault from rock to rock, even as Beast Boy shifted to a hawk and followed him. It was barely a half dozen bounds before they came to a small path, perhaps a dozen feet wide, carved into the living rock of the crevasse wall thirty feet above the lava river. Slade vaulted up onto it as Beast Boy touched down and resumed humanoid form.

They moved down the road in silence, Beast Boy too preoccupied to question what this new trail was or who had carved it. Slade, as usual, ventured no comment on this or any other topic. If Slade considered Beast Boy's silence to be strange, he gave no sign of it, and indeed, when the silence finally broke, it was Slade who broke it.

"The way ahead forks left and right," said Slade. "Raven can be found along the rightmost path, if you take it to the end."

Beast Boy didn't answer, indeed he stopped where he was, looking down at the ground with a blank expression. Slade continued on for a few paces before he noticed that the changeling was no longer pacing him, and stopped as well, turning back to Beast Boy with his boat pole held like a walking stick.

"Having second thoughts?" asked Slade.

Beast Boy didn't explode or deny the matter in loud rhetoric, but instead answered with a question that seemed completely out of place.

"Why are you even here?"

Slade narrowed his eye. "I thought we covered this."

"No, why are you here. With me."

"Certainly not for the company," said Slade. "Now come on, we have to keep - "

"You don't think I can find her, do you?"

Slade took the accusation in stride. "Not in a hundred million years, no," he said. "You're far too weak in every sense."

"So then why would you agree to come down here with me?" he asked. "If all I'm gonna do is fail, what are you getting out of this?"

"Like your friend Cyborg said, I don't exactly have a great deal else to do."

"Sure you do," said Beast Boy. "You could be up there helping Cy fight Trigon off, or helping Starfire find Robin. But you came with me."

"Perhaps you need the most assistance, being the weakest of the three of you."

It was an obvious bait, and Beast Boy ignored it. "You want something else," he said. "Something from down here. Something you need me to help you get, or else you'd have left me behind."

Slade was silent for a few moments, which to Beast Boy served as all the confirmation he needed. "Perhaps so," said the villain finally. "Shall we go?"

"Well what is it?" demanded Beast Boy, ignoring the question.

"What exactly does it matter at this stage?" asked Slade. "I agreed to help you find Raven. I will do so. What else I require along the way is my business."

Beast Boy crossed his arms. "Not if I say it isn't. How do I know you're not just gonna turn on me or something?"

"You don't," was Slade's less-than encouraging answer. "Would you prefer to proceed by yourself?"

Annoyed, Beast Boy fired back. "What's the deal, dude? What are you afraid of?"

"The things I am afraid of would melt your brain, changeling," replied Slade. "I told you that my reasons were my own. Leave them there."

"So I'm just supposed to trust that you're not out to betray me with this secret side-mission of yours?"

Slade didn't answer in words.

Without a sound, without a hint of prior intent, Slade whirled around, and in a split second, Beast Boy was up against the wall. Slade was looming over him, towering like a one-eyed colossus, and when he spoke, his voice was clipped and deep and fierce.

"What are you doing here?"

It was not the question he expected, but Beast Boy responded in kind, drawing himself up as much as he could. "You know why I'm here," he said. "I'm here to find Raven."

"Why?" demanded Slade.

"What do you mean why?"

"I mean exactly what I just said. Why? Why go search for her quixotically? Why not stay with your living friends and die with them, rather than down here in some pit."

"We're not gonna die."

"Then you are as delusional as you are stupid. You are all going to die. Whether or not you find Raven."

Beast Boy refused to be intimidated. "We've heard that from you before," he said. "Didn't work so well for you, remember?"

"I am not Trigon, boy. Trigon holds Devastator. As long as that is the case, even Raven at the height of her powers is no match for him. Finding Raven will not save the world, and it will not save your lives. You know this. I told you before we left. So what are you doing here?"

Beast Boy leaned forward, keeping a mental grip on his powers. "I'm here to find Raven."

"So that you can have the privilege of dying together? How many times do you need it repeated to you? She cannot help you now."

"That's not why I want to find her."

"Then what is?"

Silence. Slade stared down at him, his eye like a searchlight, until finally Beast Boy looked away, expecting yet another rant about focus and will and all that crap that supervillains loved to go on and on about. Yet instead of all that, Slade let him go, and stepped back.

"Do you not know?" asked Slade, "or do you not know how to put it in words?"

He looked up again, to see Slade standing with his arms crossed, looking, of all things, amused. "I want her back," was all he would say. "Whatever it takes."

"And you can't, or won't, tell me why?"

"I could."

Slade smirked. "Then we have something else in common, don't we, changeling."

He turned away without another word, walking away in the obvious expectation that Beast Boy would follow. Beast Boy watched him go, as arrogant as ever, and then finally sighed and shook his head before, as was inevitable he supposed, following Slade.

But he only got a few steps before something jumped Slade.

There was a gray blur, a flash, faster than the conscious mind could process, and something smashed into Slade from above with the force of an avalanche. Chips of stone flew at Beast Boy like bullets, and he instinctively shifted to the form of a marmot, scurrying to the side to take cover from the flying debris. Moments later, he peaked out from behind the rock, and emitted a startled squeak before he could stop himself.

Slade lay on the ground, facedown, and above him was crouched Beast Boy himself, or rather the evil version of him, one hand on the back of Slade's head, the other on his back, forcing him to stay on the ground as his red eyes leered down at the supervillain.

Beast Boy shifted back to human form, kicking the stone fragments aside, but his double paid him no mind, shoving Slade's face in the dirt effortlessly, as Slade struggled to shake him off.

"You want to know what he's after?" asked the double mockingly without looking up, each word punctuated by another hard shove into the dirt. "He wants his flesh and blood back."

Slade convulsed violently, bucking the Beast Boy double back and leaping to his feet with a loud roar. Yet before he could lay so much as a finger on the duplicate, it shifted into the form of an anaconda, twisting a coil around Slade's fist and slamming him back to the ground on his hands and knees. Before Slade could react, the double was bent over him once again in human form, and had grabbed him around the neck in a headlock.

"What's the matter, Slade, didn't want to talk about it?"

Novel, and admittedly enjoyable, as it was to watch Slade being humiliated by someone who looked just like him, Beast Boy was here for more important reasons than personal fun. He rushed at the double, shifting on the go into a giant condor and lunging at him with his talons, but the double simply turned into a Tyrannosaur, pinning Slade down with one foot while lunging upward with foot-long teeth. Beast Boy evaded the lunge by switching to the form of a hummingbird and diving towards the ground, then taking on that of a rhinoceros and charging the T-rex directly. The double switched to a mosquito, flying up and back as Slade got back to his feet and Beast Boy ground to a halt and shifted back to human, before landing some dozen yards away and doing the same.

"Awww, what's the matter?" asked the double. "I thought you wanted to know what he was here for."

Beast Boy glanced up at Slade before he could catch himself. "What do you mean flesh and blood?" he asked, leaving it open as to who he was talking to.

It was the double that answered. "Slade's dead, dude," he said, grinning widely. "Dead as a doornail. Terra cooked him. He's just an empty shell now. Thinks his life is down here somewhere waiting for him."

"What?" Beast Boy turned back to Slade, who was standing very still all of a sudden. "Dead?"

"He got tossed into an active volcano," said the double. "You were watching, remember? Or did you forget that night already?" The double raised the back of one hand to his forehead and staggered dramatically. "I know how hard it was."

Beast Boy snarled and might have lunged for the Double had not Slade done so first, lashing out with fist held high. Yet the double barely seemed to break a sweat as he slipped with practiced ease into a kangaroo, bounding into the air before turning into a giant squid. A suckered tentacle snatched at Slade's ankle and upended him, and seconds later, the double landed atop him in human form, posing like a big game hunter with his beaten prey.

"Don't believe me?" asked the double. "See for yourself." He bent down and grabbed Slade by the neck once again, and before Slade could so much as resist, he twisted the supervillain's head right, then left, at a sickening angle, moments before there was a loud 'pop'. A second later, the double sprang up, brandishing Slade's one-eyed facemask in his hand.

Beast Boy gasped.

Slade's face was a rictus skull, a burnt, withered ember of black ash and white bone, with two searing red eyes set within the empty sockets like live coals. His ghoulish, toothed grin, with no lips or skin to cover it, bored into Beast Boy like a laser drill. He fell back a pace without thinking of it, horrified, his evil twin temporarily forgotten.

"What the..."

"Aww, you're not afraid of a bunch of old bones are you?" asked the double mockingly from a perch overhead. "I just thought you'd like to know that he's just using you to try and get himself brought back."

Slade spun on the ground and lunged upwards, missing by inches as the double sprang back and tossed his faceplate aside. Rather than attack however, the double stepped back, crossing his arms and smirking, though who he was laughing at was unclear.

"A couple of gutless wimps," said the double. "You really think you're gonna find anything down here?"

Neither Beast Boy nor Slade responded, and the Double laughed, waving his hands around him in a circle as another horde of flame demons emerged silently from the walls, behind and before, above and below, ringing them all in a fence of flame and sulfur.

"I didn't think so," said the Double with an evil grin. "Let's see how you guys handle this..."

[LadyTevar]

Chapter 35, part II

*--------------------------------------------------------------------------------*

There was light, plenty of light, flashes of crimson, violet and cerullean, fused with the red flames of wrath, so much that it overloaded her senses, and she could not see. There was sound, plenty of sound, deep guttural roars like the throated eruptions of live volcanos, high pitched whines of machinery and protesting steel, and the filled-in punctuations of cries and screams in any comparatively silent moment, so much that her ears were filled with indistinguishable din, and she could not hear. She had been in battles a-plenty before, fights with hundreds of assailants, crossfires between gangs of armed men and companies of police, close-quarters melees of frenetic violence, she was no stranger to the chaos of battle.

But this was something else entirely.

She could see nothing, find no-one, determine nothing of what was happening. Smoke thick enough to be grasped boiled forth from seemingly everywhere simultaneously, while the din and clatter of collapsing buildings and gyrating asphalt roared in her ears and blotted out all else. Flashing lights, source indeterminable, burst before her eyes every second, nearly rendering her senseless. Bad enough as it was for her, Starfire could scarcely imagine how any of the actual participants in this re-enactment could possibly be determining what was going on.

But Warp. Warp she could hear just fine.

'I watched the world explode.'

Suddenly she saw Warp, child-Warp, the stowaway who had snuck out to watch the Titans fight, and how he could make heads or tails of the frenetic maelstrom was beyond her, but he managed somehow to pick his way through the rubble to what she found herself hoping, despite everything, was safe ground. Behind him the T-car exploded into fragments and ruin, walls collapsed, the ground itself up-heaving like a living, angry God, knocking him off his feet time and time again, as rocks larger than his body flew past or burst into fragments at seemingly random intervals. Desperately he ran, crawled, stumbled and scrambled up again to run some more, finally finding cover of a sort, if cover meant anything in a whirling death-zone such as this, behind a pile of rubble that had, moments before, been a towering edifice of masonry and steel. He vaulted over the crest of the rubble and threw himself down as an entire tractor-trailer, container, wheels, and all, pinwheeled overhead like a child's toy, and crashed to earth some hundred yards away, erupting into flames with a bone-shaking roar moments before the general calamity covered all once more.

'I hid. I hid like they'd taught me to hide, but I had come all this way to watch them fight, and so I turned back.'

The chaos did not decrease, indeed it seemed to intensify, yet the boy-Warp turned, and crawled gingerly back to the top of the rubble pile. Starfire watched as he peered over the lip, an expression of awe and fear mixed on his face, as he watched the convulsions of air and smoke and fire that cloaked whatever violent disasters were underway beneath the opaque shroud. What sense he could make of all this was beyond Starfire. He peered into the dark storm, as though trying to discern what might be transpiring within it, as enormous objects, cars, vans, chunks of building ripped forth as though by a giant scoop, were hurled about or blown to shreds by side effects of the massive power on display. The very sky seemed writ in red, slashed by lightning and torn by firestorm winds, and he had to duck and cover his head every few seconds as another convulsion cast debris or shock waves about like the playthings of a mad god.

'All this, and I still thought that what I was watching was normal. They were the Titans. Invulnerable. Indestructable. Conquerors of Devils and Armies and Aliens from outer space. I could not conceive of anything capable of besting them. For all the violence of the battle, I had nothing to compare it to to warn me that anything was amiss.

But then...'

Suddenly, there was a deafening blast, an explosion which, even by the standards of before, was simply enormous. The shockwave it created was visible, boiling up from within the stew of smoke and dust like a living thing, and sweeping them aside. Starfire saw Warp duck reflexively as the shockwave passed over him, shaking the very ground violently enough to bounce the boy a foot in the air. And when he had landed, and recovered his equilibrium, and looked up, suddenly he could see again, and by extension, so could Starfire.

David stood in the midst of ruin, but it was not the David that Starfire knew. It was not even the one that had moments ago stood calmly and quietly, telling the Titans that he was here to murder them and place their heads on pikes. This David stood atop the piled debris, his coat open and flapping in the artificial winds, and in his hand, he held a staff made not of wood or metal but flame. Fire coursed from it like an oil-soaked torch, and he brandished it aloft like a holy symbol. It spun in his hand as he raised and lowered it and twirled it about himself, hand over hand, grasping it now by the handle, now by the tip, now by the center like the axle of a wheel. And with every gyration, every sweep, every dance of the fiery cane, the world around him exploded, flinging debris and flames and sprays of rock or shrapnel in any direction he chose, again and again and again, as though the battle were all a mad dance, and he the conductor.

Of Cyborg and Nightwing, Starfire saw no sign, yet Beast Boy was present, the focus of David's violent and unrelenting assault. He was shifting from form to form at lightning speed, bird, dinosaur, rodent, octopus, dragonfly, rhinoceros, and back again, ducking in and around the debris hurled his way, trying desperately to avoid the relentless explosions that clove the air from all directions. Beside him was Raven, floating in mid-air, shields of darkness raised against the barrage of missiles, and she returned every shot with one just as great, seizing cars and parking meters and hunks of rock and hurling them at David with waves of her hand. Yet none of her hurled shots came close to the mark, for each was blotted out of existence by a flick of David's hand or cane, shattered or thrown off course or even hurled back in Raven's face by the dozen.

Suddenly David half-turned, sweeping the cane around in a broad arc, up and over his head before bringing it down like a pick-axe, and instantly, the ground beneath Beast Boy and Raven was torn open, vomiting flames and stone up and at them. Beast Boy was caught mid-transformation and hurled up and back, smashing headlong into a brick wall and tumbling down it. Without missing a beat, before Raven could even turn around, David swept the cane back upwards, spun it around his head, and swung it like a tennis racket. An instant later, every brick in the wall exploded at once.

The concussive wave nearly bowled Raven over, even David staggered before it, but in an instant, Raven was back on the ground, kneeling over the pile of shattered bricks. There was no sign of Beast Boy, but Raven raised her hands, cloaking the entire rubble pile in black before hurling the smashed bricks away in every direction. Several dozen flew at David, and he spun his cane like a propeller, blowing them all to dust. But Raven ignored him, concentrating instead on rubble, hurling tons of it aside with a flick of her wrist to finally reveal Beast Boy, laying unconscious and half-buried, unmoving, with rivulets of blood running down the side of his head.

'That was when I first began to feel fear.'

For once, David did not attack immediately. He stood calmly behind Raven, his fiery cane held contemptuously at ease, watching the scene with evident interest. And in the ensuing quiet, the first for many minutes, Starfire could hear his casual comment.

"Hm," he said, leaning back slightly, planting the tip of his cane on the ground once more, even as Raven half-turned to face him. "It's funny... I always assumed he bled green."

The comment produced the inevitable result.

Raven growled, deep and demonic, her eyes flaring red, and she raised her hand and fired a beam of pure darkness at David, but David threw his hand forward and detonated the ground beneath her feet, hurling both her and Beast Boy back and throwing off her aim. She landed hard and rolled, coming back up on one knee to fire again, yet everything she threw was beaten out of the air by David's relentless explosions, and he blew them both back again, Beast Boy fetching up against a broken wall, Raven sliding to a stop beside him.

Looking pleased with his handiwork, David calmly approached them, not even batting an eye as, to his left, a massive pile of rubble was suddenly shunted off, revealing Cyborg, broken and battered but still very much in the fight. With a cry of wordless anger, Cyborg leveled his sonic cannon at David, but David did not so much as turn his head, contemptuously waving his hand at the half-metal Titan. Moments later, there was a thunderous explosion, and Cyborg let out a howl of surprise, pain, and shock as his entire arm was blown apart, the cannon's pent up energies backfeeding and blasting him off his feet. David did not even turn, walking calmly over the piled ruins towards Raven, giving Cyborg no further thought.

Raven lay prone next to Beast Boy, struggling to rise once again. She grabbed onto the side of the ruined wall, pulling herself back to her feet, as she half-turned to David and hissed.

"Back off."

Starfire's breath caught. Nevermind that it was decades in the future, she knew that voice, the quiet, fearsome snarl that seemed conjured out of the depths of Raven's soul. She had heard it before, rarely, but always on occasions that stamped it indelibly into her memory. She knew what it meant.

And plainly, David did not.

He laughed, once again not in madness but mere amusement, and shook his head, obviously taking the words for nothing but another toothless threat. "No," he said simply, and he walked on, stepping over rubble towards Beast Boy and Raven, gripping his cane by its neck and raising it up. Starfire watched as Raven backed up a pace, then another, until she was standing above Beast Boy's broken form, and then David crossed some invisible boundary around them both, and Starfire instantly knew what was going to happen.

It did.

"I said BACK OFF!" shouted Raven, and her voice distorted into a full throated roar, instants before she erupted off the ground like a whirlwind. Before Starfire's eyes, before Warp's, before David's, Raven's cloak fused together into a shroud and she exploded into the air, swelling up, up, up, like a living Tower of vengeance and destruction, four cinder-red eyes glaring down at David like a vengeful God. An unearthly roar, a scream of outraged air and matter, howled across the battlefield as hurricane winds whipped at the flames and smoke, spiraling them up and away from the raging demon that had suddenly manifested.

'This was when the fear became terror.'

David fell back, visibly stunned, his apparent control over the situation shattered, the burning cane in his hand clutched unconsciously like a religious icon. For the first time since this scene had begun, Starfire recognized his expression, even through the sunglasses, one of bewilderment, awe, and thunderstruck astonishment, mixed liberally with what had to be fear. His identity had never been in question, but this was the first time she could actually see something of the David she knew reflected in the casual murderer who stood before her. For the first time since this had all begun, something had happened that was quite plainly not part of the plan.

"Mother of God!" he exclaimed, speaking to nobody in particular, and he scrambled back, raising his staff and blasting smashed cars and bits of asphalt and masonry at Raven, yet it was as hurling pebbles at a stone castle. The howling winds sheathing Raven tore his projectiles to bits, even when he blasted an entire delivery van into the air before hurling it at her with a rocket-propelled explosion.

Raven roared, roared like a caged demon unleashed, and lightning crashed overhead and blew divots in the ground even as the living storm tore entire buildings from their foundations, catapulting them into the air before hurling them down at David like flaming meteors. Abandoning his attempts to pound Raven into submission, he brandished his cane like a priest brandishing a cross before hellspawn, falling back, back, ever further back as he sought to beat back the hail of flaming debris, yet his resistance only served, if possible, to enrage the storm further. Like a living spectre of destruction, Raven advanced, scouring the very earth beneath her towering form like a tornado, raining hailstones of fire and bolts of forked lightning down on the previously confident Metahuman. Shot after shot he deflected, tearing buildings to pieces and casting the debris about like a raging animal, yet plainly even his awesome power was not up to the task of containing Raven, and inevitably he faltered, and missed one, and a blast of living flame blew him off his feet and back into a wall.

She pursued him, slowly shrinking back down to normal size even as the storm overhead intensified further and further, raining flames down indiscriminately. "No more!" she roared, her voice amplified by all the throats of Hell. "No more! Don't you dare touch them! You think you know Hell, Devastator? I'll show you Hell!"

"You first!" snapped David back, and there was fury in his words too, bitter anger from sources unknown. He scrambled to his feet, but rather than retreat, he reached into his coat with his free hand and pulled out, of all things, a handgun, which he pointed at Raven and fired. The shots rang out one after another, rapid, blooming thunderclaps that lit the night up with flashes, yet the shots had no effect, consumed by the raging storm system that cloaked Raven. Shouting in frustration, David threw the empty gun at her, detonating it when it drew close, yet this too did nothing, and neither did the barrage of stones, bricks, and pieces of pipe that followed as he fired them at her with gyrations of his flaming cane.

'It was like nothing I'd ever seen before,' came Warp's voice, 'I couldn't help but watch.'And Starfire saw him then, staring out from behind the rubble pile, fear and awe and every other thing written on his child's features. 'I wanted to turn away, but couldn't make myself, and so I watched...'

Back and forth the powers flew, Raven and David both hurling everything they had at one another, but it was visibly an unequal contest, for there was nothing that David could detonate, nothing he could destroy or throw, that made even the slightest dent in Raven's berserk powers. He lasted some fifteen seconds, smashing down everything she threw at him, before finally she seized a motorcycle and hurled it at him along with seemingly everything else. He detonated it in mid-air, but was a fraction of a second too late, and the full gasoline tank caught and went off like a bomb. The shock wave slammed into him and hurled him back into a shattered wall, knocking the wind out of him, leaving him open for further strikes. Raven struck, firing a barrage of projectiles, which he batted aside with difficulty, closing the distance to point blank range, before one of the pieces of debris leaked through his defenses and smashed him square in the chest. He staggered, willing himself not to fall, catching himself on his cane as his concentration abandoned him and the flames that sheathed it went out. And then finally, sensing at last the final opening, Raven stepped up to within five feet of the teetering supervillain, threw out both her hands, and unloaded.

Raven was, by most measures, the most powerful of the Titans, demon-child, mystic, practitioner of magic and sorcery, and this was the strongest blow Starfire had ever seen her unleash.

The blast manifested in a wave of pure darkness, parting the air, disintegrating the ground and walls and debris, a blast of pure energy that made Warp duck and cringe, even at the distance he was at. Everything went into the shot, the storm abating, the lightning and fierce winds dispersing at a glance, everything Raven had, all her anger and pain and fear weaponized and conjured forth, and it was all David could do to throw his hands up in a paltry defense before the black wave struck him dead on and then everything vanished.

Far to one side, Warp lay behind a of a pile of rubble, curled into a ball, cringing at the display of awesome power, until finally the sound echoed off, and the debris ceased to rain down. And then, hesitantly, he peeked back over the lip of the rubblepile, and peered into the smoky darkness, at Raven, powers now spent, nearly doubled over with the effort of having struck Devastator with a blast nothing in this world could possibly have survived.

'And then... right then... I saw the seed from whence this all progressed. The first hint of what I was truly witnessing. I had seen the fantastic.'

The smoke parted, and Starfire gasped.

'Now I saw the impossible.'

David stood where he had a moment before, and he was untouched. Smoke wafted from his skin and clothing and from the cane clutched in his left hand, his arms still crossed, his head turned away, as if in anticipation of what should have been his total destruction. About him there was nothing, not even ruins, for the piles of rubble that ringed him in had simply been vaporized with the force of the energy blast down to the bedrock. Latent electricity crackled on the scorched ground, residue of an enormous static charge, yet to all appearances, David himself, the target of this act of incalculable violence, was utterly unaffected by it.

"... Devastator," whispered Starfire.

'Yes,' responded Warp. 'But we didn't know that. Not then. All we knew was that something had gone terribly wrong.'

It was some time, a second or two perhaps, before David slowly lowered his arms. He seemed dazed, stunned to near motionlessness, as he turned his hands over, looking down at himself as though unable to believe that he was still alive. Raven stared at him in equal disbelief, her mouth agape, shocked as Starfire had never seen her shocked before. Behind her, Starfire saw Beast Boy, who had apparently come round in the interim, watching silently from the heap of ruins he was laying upon, and he too looked stunned, as stunned perhaps as David himself, who slowly lifted his head to look Raven straight in the eye. Neither of them said a word, staring in silence at one another, enmity temporarily forgotten in the aftermath of this occurance that by all standards, even the warped ones that governed metahumans, should have been impossible.

But only for a moment.

Perhaps it was Warp's recollection that was... well... warped, or perhaps Starfire's own perceptions slowed down, but in what seemed to be slow motion, David reached over with his free hand towards the head of his cane.

'I knew what was going to happen next before it did. And yet I couldn't do anything except watch it happen.'

He gripped the cane's handle with his right hand, clenched his fingers around it, and twisted. There was a soft click that might well have been imaginary, and then suddenly the handle came loose from the body of the cane, and attached to it, hidden within the cane's body, was a thin ribbon of razor steel thirty inches long. In one, fluid motion, David drew the entire length of the blade free of its wooden sheath, yet there seemed to be plenty of time to watch the firelight glinting off of its polished blade before he turned to his right, and as part of the same stroke, slashed the sword through the air at neck level.

Raven didn't move.

The sword swept down to David's side and stayed there, and for an endless moment, neither of the two of them moved. But then, as if by magic, a thin red line appeared on Raven's throat. Blood slowly ran down from it, staining the fabric of her leotard red. Only then did she begin to move, trembling, rocking her head slowly back and forth, her hands clenching and unclenching at invisible objects at her throat. Her eyes unfocused, staring up into the dark skies, and David watched her, carefully shifting his shaded gaze from Raven to Beast Boy, who was still laying broken on the ground, eyes wide with dumbstruck horror.

And then, as David met Beast Boy's thunderstruck gaze, he stepped forward, brought his right hand around, and without so much as a word, drove all three feet of the sword into Raven's chest.

There were screams, incoherant screams, from Beast Boy perhaps, or the others, Starfire couldn't tell. She was watching David and Raven, as David drove the sword into Raven up to the hilt, until the last foot or so was sticking out of her back. And as he did so, the sword burst into red flames, even as Raven emitted a soft gasp, hung for a moment, and then went limp. David held her up for a fraction of a second more, and then he stepped back, pulling the sword back out of her, and let Raven crumple to the ground in a pool of her own blood.

He stepped back anew, sweeping the sword around, casting droplets of dark blood about him, and leveled it once again, aiming his sight down the length of the blade at Beast Boy. And as the changeling's broken form shifted once more, this time into something wholly bestial, Starfire saw David smile.

'I thought it was the end of the world,' said Warp. 'But it was only the beginning...'

*--------------------------------------------------------------------------------*

"Some say that we are what we choose to be. Others think that we are what we're made to be. But if you ask me, then I'd say it's obvious..."

The man stood in the street, his cane held in the middle, dripping flames and ruin on the street. Carefully he lifted it to waist height, crouching slightly, his offhand held behind his back, as he looked over the lip of his glasses at the two frightened children who were even now slowly backing away.

"We are," he said, "only what we will to be."

The storefronts on either side of David and Terra exploded simultaneously, sending a hail of shattered glass spinning towards them like an ocean wave. David yelped and dove to the ground, but Terra merely raised both her hands, and two walls of packed earth erupted from the ground on either side of them, absorbing the rain of glass with a series of wet thumps.

David looked up in time to see the man smile.

Terra threw her arms forward, and both walls compressed themselves into massive boulders studded with glass and were hurled at the man as though fired from a cannon. Yet the man simply spun his cane like a baton, lifting it into the air, and both boulders were blown to pieces dozens of yards away, raining bits of stone, dirt, and glass down all over the street.

"Will is everything," he said, slowly walking towards the two teenagers. "Will moves mountains and alters rivers. Will starts wars and ends them. The will to be. The will to decide. And the will to act."

He raised his hand behind him, and four parked cars were summarily blown into the air, spinning and pirouetting hundreds of feet into the air above. The man waited until they were at their apexes before bringing his hand down towards the two teenagers as though throwing something at them. Instantly, four more explosions sent the cars hurtling towards them like flaming meteors.

This time Terra dove too.

They leaped to either side as quickly as they could as the first two cars smashed into the center of the street and exploded like bombs, the shock waves hitting them in mid-dive and throwing them to the sidewalks on either side of the street. Yet plainly, the man had anticipated that they might do something like this, for the other two cars were aimed at the sides of the street, and blew up barely a dozen feet in front of them, tossing them into the air like rag dolls and hurling them back down the street. Terra managed to keep her head long enough to catch herself with an uprooted pile of fine dirt. David was not so lucky, and was smashed into the windshield of a minivan, before rolling limply off of it and down onto the street.

The man advanced nonchalantly towards David as he moaned softly and tried to scramble back to his feet, expecting any second for the van or the ground to explode around him. Yet the man seemed content to let him struggle, dismissively shattering Terra's barrage of thrown rocks with nothing more than a wave of his hand.

"Devastator is commanded by will alone," said the man as David rose to his hands and knees. "That's what he told Raven, isn't it? Will is the key. Will is all he's missing. Will is what lets mortals like us command the powers of Gods. Will, David, is why Trigon has Devastator now, and why you're lying there in front of me without the slightest hope of defending yourself."

David gave a shout in reply, and from beneath a pile of crushed masonry, he pulled a foot-long section of iron rebar, springing up at the man with all the force he could muster. It was not fast enough. The man raised his cane, knocking the clumsy stroke aside, seconds before the rebar exploded.

Had the parry not knocked the rebar out of his grip first, the explosion would have simply blown his hand off. As it was, it whipped him back and to the side, spinning him around and dumping him unceremoniously on the ground. Desperately, he tried to rise again, but before he could so much as move, the section of the street he was laying on was blown into the air, spun lazily end over end, and then exploded, hurling him like down and into the side of the pile of dirt that Terra was disentagling herself from. He hit it hard enough to overturn it, sending both of them collapsing onto the sidewalk in a heap of dry soil.

"Will, it happens, is the most powerful force in the universe," said the man. "And it's precisely what you have none of."

Clawing her way back to her feet, Terra raised a shower of volcanic stones from the fire channels coursing deep beneath the city, sending them bursting through the ground in a hundred different locations. The man stepped back, brandishing his cane, blotting the dozen nearest stones out of existance, but the others flew to Terra and began to orbit her like electrons around a nucleus. David, lying half crumpled on the ground, lifted his head to watch as Terra clenched both fists, sheathing all of the stones in a golden light. Faster and faster they spun, as Terra gritted her teeth and concentrated, before finally throwing both of her hands forward and sending the entire barrage hurtling at the older version of David.

Or rather... she would have, save that the instant she tried to do so, the man raised his hand, and every single rock exploded at once.

The blasts were small, relatively speaking, but there were dozens of them, and instantly, David lost sight of Terra behind a cloud of dust. The accumulated blasts flipped him over and bounced him unceremoniously down the street, where he slid to a halt. He barely had time to register where he had landed when something landed on the asphalt next to him. He knew who it was before he even rolled over to look.

Terra lay stunned on her back, eyes wide and unblinking, staring up at the scorched sky with dirt smeared across her face and a cross between disbelief and awe written on her face. For a second, he thought she might actually be dead, before she coughed and her eyes slowly, grudgingly, focused once more.

"C'mon," he said, scrambling up as best he could and grabbing her by the wrist. "We've gotta - "

"Got to what?"

David turned around to see his older self standing nonchalantly in the middle of the street some two dozen yards away, arms crossed, a smirk on his face. He froze, expecting the ground beneath him to detonate, yet the man only laughed.

"Let me ask you something, David," said the man, sounding like nothing more than a patient schoolteacher. "Do you know what the core principle of Devastator is?" David didn't reply, watching like a deer in headlights as the man smiled and continued. "It's not explosions. Explosions are just a side effect. Destruction, as embodied by Devastator, comes down to the transfer of energy. Energy is everywhere. Devastator merely gives us the capacity to manipulate it."

David neither knew nor was interested in finding out where his older self was going with this. He turned back to Terra and knelt down, grabbing her arm and trying to help her up, but she was barely conscious, unable to assist in her own locomotion, and given his own condition, the best he could do was get her sitting up before a nearby explosion served to focus his attention back on his other self.

"I know you think you know all this," said the man. "You've played around with Devastator before, and you're not a complete idiot. The colored dots, the vibrations? You know what that is, don't you?" The man waited for David to answer, and when he did not, blew up another section of street, closer this time. David gulped, and answered.

"Cyborg..." his throat seized and he coughed, trying to force words out. "He called it thermo-kinetic energy,"

"Did he?" asked the man. "Well I suppose that will do as a definition. It's the thermal energy of molecules in any object. It causes them to vibrate, shake their bonds. Enough of it, and they break them completely. They come loose from their rigid structures, liquify, even vaporize. But even as solid objects, the energy is still there, waiting to be harnessed. Devastator simply permits us to do so, shift the thermal energy into kinetic, store it up deep within, and then unleash it all at once."

"I know how it works!"

"No, you don't. You make up definitions that suffice for your purposes and then live on in ignorance. You've played with solid objects. Maybe even a simple liquid or two? Water? Gasoline?"

David didn't answer.

The man smiled. "Solid molecules are locked into rigid lattices," he said, "barely mobile at all. Liquids can't even overcome their own surface tension. No wonder you couldn't stop this. You never learned how to deal in really potent substances."

"Gasoline and water worked just fine for me," spat David.

"If you've no ambitions beyond throwing a motorcycle at someone, I'm sure it does," said the man with the tone of one speaking to a tiresome child. "But I'm talking about the fundamental principles of matter, David. The stuff of reality. To unlock real power, you can't merely content yourself with the vestigial heat from solids or liquids. You need something richer.

The man drew himself up and slowly extended one hand, palm open and upwards, fingers splayed out as though holding an invisible object. He smiled as he spread his fingers wide. "You need gasses."

David's heart stopped.

The man's shaded gaze turned from David slowly to his open hand, as he slowly turned it over, letting the smoky wind ply through his fingers. "Do you have any idea how difficult it is to manipulate a gas?" he asked. "How much energy courses through it? Molecules four hundred degrees above their condensation point, flying in every direction like meteors?" He was no longer looking at David, speaking half to himself, as David watched in mounting horror. "Did you ever stop to just watch them go? Watch them dance around you like fireflies? Did you ever imagine..." he turned his palm back upwards and locked it rigid, "what it would take to harness them?"

"Oh god..."

David turned and grabbed Terra's wrist, hoisting her to her feet by main force. She responded weakly, head hanging to one side limply, and he threw one of her arms over his shoulders and struggled to walk, even as he glanced back at the man.

"A hundred trillion molecules," said the man, wistfully, "just to fill the volume of a marble. And each one requiring its own effort. Fewer by volume of course than any solid, but they're so eager to mix... diffuse, transfer energy from one to another. You wind up playing a billion games of table tennis mentally just to get them started."

Slowly, David noticed the air around the man's hand was beginning to darken, as though a cloud were starting to condense in his hand. A soft whistling sound began to emit from all directions as the wind began to pick up.

"Terra, come on, we've gotta go!"

"Wha... what's going..."

"He's gonna - "

The wind suddenly increased from a whistle to a scream, as streams of smoke and air lashed at them, galvanizing Terra back to her senses and nearly knocking David off his feet. Bits of ash and debris stung their faces, forcing them to turn sideways to the wind, as David looked back at his older self, who seemed entirely unconcerned.

Around the man's hand swirled a whirlwind of air, violent, dark air that seemed to spiral inwards towards an tiny, central point. Though the air seemed leaden and filled with smoke, the center was white, gleaming white, floating an inch above the man's outstretched hand. And very slowly, it began to grow.

"Nitrogen freezes," said the man, staring intently at the small speck, "at sixty-three degrees Kelvin. Oxygen at fifty-four. That's four hundred degrees below room temperature. Can you even conceive of that? You need to bleed off 80% of the thermal energy in every single molecule, at once. And then, you need to contain it, deep inside, because all that energy just wants to do one thing..."

The small speck became a pebble, then a rock, then a round sphere the size of a tennis ball, white ice dusted with grey ash and sprinkled with black soot. David redoubled his efforts, clawing his way through what was now a wind of nearly hurricane force, hurling debris at him, trying to drag him off his feet. Something hit his leg and he stumbled, falling to his hands and knees, desperately trying to drag himself and Terra forward, step by agonizing step.

And then suddenly the wind stopped.

It stopped instantly, sending David and Terra crashing forward headfirst onto the ground as the wind resistance died away. David rolled over onto his back, lifting his head, and saw the man turn sideways to him, the now fist-sized ball of glinting ice still floating several inches above his outstretched hand. Slowly, the man lifted the cane in his other hand, before turning his head to David.

"The universe is full of energy, David," said the man. "And if we only can find the will to bend it to our own ends... " He brought his cane-hand back as he lightly tossed the frozen ball into the air, before turning his head just enough to look straight into David's eyes.

"Then we are free."

The man swung his cane like a tennis racket, and struck the frozen ball with the handle, sending it flying directly towards the two teenagers. David opened his mouth to shout a warning, but before he could make a sound, a blinding flash burst before his eyes like the radiance of the sun. He had just enough time to see Terra throw up her hands sheathed in gold, and then the very earth convulsed, and the air caught fire, and he saw and heard no more.

*--------------------------------------------------------------------------------*

Not even the demons were expecting it.

There were too many. Far too many. Hundreds at the lowest, he couldn't take the time to calculate. And while his evil twin was busy fighting Slade, Beast Boy had found himself battling a horde of demons without limit, for more and more streamed out of the very walls with each successive moment.

He had taken to the air in the form of everything from a giant condor to a mosquito, dodging swarms of demon tendrils hurled his way every fraction of a second, striking back whenever he could find a free moment. Two demons seized his talons in swallow form with flame tendrils, but he simply turned into a pleisiosaur in midair and tore them from the walls, grinding them to paste against the rocks below before taking on a flying form once again. Another seized him around the neck, only to find itself grasping an enraged gorilla, which seized it in both hands and dashed its sulfuric ichor out against the far wall. Yet no sooner had he done so than several hundred more demons lunged at him from nowhere, burying him beneath an avalanche of living flame. He shifted once more, this time to an armored dinosaur, and flung a dozen of them off to be smashed to bits against the opposite wall, but five more took the place of every one he shed, and before long he was forced to the ground. They beat at his armored back and clawed at his flanks, and he ran his mind trying to think of what to do before the demons simply tore him to bits.

And then something wholly unexpected occurred.

The ground gave a heave, a sharp jolt, like an earthquake of enormous magnitude, bouncing all eight tons of his and the demons' weight into the air like a rubber ball and sending them tumbling off of him like the pieces of a board game with the table overturned. He bounced twice, landing on his back, and shifted semi-consciously into his human form, only to open his eyes and gape.

Far, far above, towering over the yawning heights of the deep chasm he was in, there loomed a cloud, but no ordinary cloud, not even the perpetual smoldering thunderhead of Trigon's damned realm. This was a living cloud of flame and smoke, boiling up from some unseen source into the all-too familiar shape of a giant mushroom, towering a thousand feet above ground level. A deep, rumbling roar built and built and finally brimmed over, echoing down the chasm in crashing and rolling thunder, as though mountains were being bowled. Behind the sound came a pressure wave so violent as to be visible, tearing rocks from the walls and ripping the lava spigots to pieces, amplified by the confines of the narrow chasm. Beast Boy rolled back onto his stomach, and, in pure instinct, shifted into the form of a cockroach, crawling underneath a pile of debris and ducking down moments before the shockwave hit.

The debris pile simply exploded, ripped apart like an anthill in a tornado, as Beast Boy's ears, or rather his tactile antennae, were flooded with a boundless roar like the howling of a mad God. A blast front like the fist of some enraged giant smashed him against the ground over and over and over again. He heard demons howling against the wind, and a sound like bugs hitting a windshield, or crockery thrown against a wall, as it sent them flying off to be smashed to paste against the walls or the fire river below.

Had he been in any other form, likely he would have been blown to pieces as well, the pressure wave popping him like a ripe balloon. But one of Mento's first lessons long back in the day had been how to survive something like this, which form was properly equipped with the gelatin structure and compartmentalized pockets that enabled it to survive, just for a moment, gyrating atmospheric pressures of a dozen atmospheres striking against his body like tidal waves.

He had no idea where this tremendous outpouring of destructive power had originated from, and for a second, he worried about whichever of his friends it might have been intended for. But the second it passed, he was on his feet as a human once again, brushing the smoke from his face as he surveyed what opposition remained. Most of the demons had been blown away, or simply torn to pieces where they stood, but a good thirty remained, saved by one trick or another from the violence of the mighty explosion. Scattered and distracted, the demons hesitated, turning to one another as though to seek instruction. Whatever had just happened had rendered even these monsters capable of astonishment.

But not Beast Boy.

Before they could recollect themselves, before they could even determine what was going on, Beast Boy set upon the nearest two demons in the form of a bighorn sheep, tossing both of them over the edge of the cliff they stood near, before half-turning, shifting to a horse, and kicking with his back hooves, caving a third demon in like a glass sculpture. A fourth lashed at his neck and caught nothing but air as Beast Boy collapsed into a coiled anaconda, before lashing out with his tail, encircling the demon with his coils and flinging it towards his head. By the time the demon arrived however, Beast Boy was a rhinoceros, and he impaled the demon on his keratin horn. He dropped his head, letting its lifeless body slide to the ground, and then suddenly he was a field mouse, and the flurry of fiery whiplashes struck nothing but air in his wake.

The demons crowded around from every direction, and he let them do so before suddenly assuming the form of a Tyrannosaur, bursting upwards with a sudden change in volume, casting demons off of himself left and right. Two wound up before his snout, and he tasted the bitter and burning sulfur on his tongue as he crushed both of them to steaming jelly in his powerful jaws. Another demon looped its burning tendril around his neck and squeezed, hoping to choke him to death or lop off his head, but he lost his volume as quickly as he had gained it, shrinking down, not to some mincing field creature, but a Velociraptor, eight feet tall and hissing, and the burning lasso closed around empty space. Before the demon could recover, he leaped onto it, striking downwards with his four-inch razorclaws, splitting it from head to abdomen like a battle axe through a straw effigy. And even as he landed, he twisted his neck to the left to avoid the blow of yet another demon and turned his head around to sever the offending tendril with his teeth, and when they proved inadequate, shifted on the fly into a tiger shark.

He had scarcely hit the ground before he was a grasshopper, bounding into the air to evade the attacks he knew were already coming. With a quick shift to swordfish, he bucked in mid-air and dove, driving all eleven hundred pounds of his body headfirst into the largest demon he could find. The sword at the end of his nose ripped through the demon like a projectile, moments before Beast Boy's weight drove both him and the demon over the edge of the cliff. Shifting to turkey vulture, he withdrew his head from the dying demon and pushed off of its body, selecting the form of a gyrfalcon to accelerate upwards and prepare his next move.

He was not afforded the opportunity. Three demons leaped from the cliff towards him, howling like the damned, their fiery limbs beating the air as they slashed towards him. Without missing a beat, Beast Boy turned a clumsy somersault, the purpose of which was unclear until, a moment later, he became a massive stegosaurus, his tail whiplashing down and bludgeoning all three demons out of the air as though they had been struck by a wrecking ball. And then he was a dragonfly, re-orienting himself and flying back up to the level of the rocky ledge. The remaining demons hung back, trying to discern how best to attack the gyrating shape shifter, but before they could come to a decision, Beast Boy turned into a golden eagle, and dove.

The demon he had selected was unready, and he staved its head in with his claws, already switching to a pterodactyl, lashing the air with his enormous wings and hurling himself backwards. With a sickening rip, the demon was torn in half, the bottom half collapsing as the top was hurled into the air. Beast Boy turned a complete flip, changing to kangaroo and smashing into another demon feet-first, splattering it against the wall before springing away, turning over in mid-air and torpedoing another demon in the torso, this time in the form of a bison. The demon exploded as two thousand pounds of angry ungulate collided with it at twenty miles an hour, and Beast Boy managed to catch yet another demon with his rear hooves in a bucking kick, seconds before he turned back into a human at last, his uniform and hair creased with burn marks and splattered with liquid sulfur, staring down the handful of demons that remained, surrounded by the broken and crushed bodies of their fellows.

For just a moment, the demons stared at the agent of this massacre, the skinny green changeling whom their master had commanded them to slay, the weakest by far of all of the Titans by every reckoning known, the prankster and weak-willed joker who hid behind his fellows. They stared at Beast Boy, the feeble organs that served as minds for their fiery bodies spinning in circles, and all of them, as one, froze.

It was the last thing they did.

Beast Boy became an elephant, nine tons and eleven feet tall, and he let loose a roar, not a trumpet but a deep, angry roar, and charged. The demons leaped and scattered to avoid him, but he seized one with his trunk and beat it against the ground, gouging another with his tusks. One enterprising demon vaulted up onto his back and brought its fiery arms around to plunge them into the back of his neck. But before the demon could do so, Beast Boy was a giant tortoise, and his thick shell repelled the blow without so much as a divot. A second later, he was a raging mountain gorilla, and he reached back with his long arms, seizing the demon and slamming him against the wall before using him as a bludgeon to smash two more demons. He became a flea as another demon tried to decapitate him with a whipping strike, and from there a wolf, leaping into the demon's chest and bowling it over. By the time they struck the earth, Beast Boy was a Gray Whale, and he barely felt the demon's splattered corpse as he crushed it beneath his blubbery hide.

And then silence.

Beast Boy held his breath, laying prone on the ground as the bubbling sulfur oozed out from under his enormous bulk, before finally shifting back into a human and getting up. Stepping around the quivering pieces of the slaughtered demons, he raced back down the path towards where Slade and his evil twin had been fighting.

Too late.

The slate gray version of Beast Boy stood leering over Slade, grinning from ear to pointed ear, with one foot planted atop Slade's back, like a triumphant hunter posing with his slain prey. Slade lay on his stomach like a puppet whose strings had been severed, prone and unmoving, and there were jagged rents torn in his side like knife slashes through paper mache.

Slade's armored hide had stood up to literally everything that the Titans had thrown at it for the last three weeks, from railguns to rhino horn, sonic projectors to starbolts, dark energy to demolitions. Even the sub-nuclear detonation that David had used in desperation, powerful enough to blow Slade's entire army to steam and tear twenty thousand tons of bedrock to rubble and dust, even that had done nothing to Slade. Yet here he lay, and the evil twin bent down over him, sneering as he hissed in Slade's ear.

"Now who doesn't have any friends?"

What Slade might have said to this went unheard, for a second later, a three hundred pound ostrich slammed into the evil twin at forty five miles an hour.

For the first time, Beast Boy's clone let out a cry of pain as he was hurled against the far wall. He sprang back from it, spinning back around, but Beast Boy was already back in human form, sulfuric sludge smeared all over his uniform, standing warily between the broken form of Slade and his own twin. Beast Boy didn't move, anticipating that his clone would attack, yet rather than doing so, the clone seemed to hesitate, before smiling evilly, and folding up his arms once again.

"You think he's leading you to Raven?" asked the smirking changeling.

Beast Boy closed his hands into fists, glaring at his evil twin with an unblinking stare. "I think you wouldn't be trying to stop us if he wasn't."

There was a fractional hesitation, a split second of indecision that leaked through the evil twin's mask of disdain and indifference, so quick as to be imperceptible to anyone but Beast Boy himself. And then it was gone, and the gray changeling sneered once more.

"You're gonna wish Trigon had killed you," he spat, and then he was gone, transformed into something too small to be seen, and all that remained was Beast Boy, Slade, and the turgid fire.

[LadyTevar]

Chapter 35, part III

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I don't know how long it was before I could see anything.

The fires were calmer now, starved down to embers from lack of fuel. The thunder of the explosions had receded into distant echoes. Even the smoke was beginning to thin at long last. But it scarcely mattered anymore. There was nothing left to see.

The destruction was total. The very rubble had been reduced to rubble, with no distinction given any longer between buildings and open space. All was covered in indistinct heaps of ruin, studded periodically with larger pieces, a broken car, a crushed sculpture, or a vent of flame that might well have been channeled direct from Hell for all anyone could tell. The extent of the destruction was hard to discern, enough smoke continued to vent into the air to preclude seeing anything beyond a hundred yards. All that Starfire could make out at this stage besides the undifferentiated ruin, were two men who stood amidst the devastation. One standing. One on hands and knees.

The flaming sword that had once been a cane, in the hand of the man standing, indicated which was which.

The wind blew cape and coat off to one side, yet neither man moved, the standing figure holding the sword down at an angle, letting a soft red liquid, whether blood or some other fluid dyed by the flickering firelight, she could not tell, drip from its tip to the ground below. He watched his counterpart with shaded eyes, as though waiting for some inevitable action.

Nightwing seemed to be in no hurry to accommodate his expectations. His head was lowered to the ground, one hand resting on his metal staff, broken at one end. He seemed to sway back and forth in the wind, as though barely able to keep upright, yet David did not approach him or make any move to press the attack, waiting for Nightwing to strike, as strike he inevitably must.

"You're not fooling anyone," said David, eyes invisible behind the mirrored glasses. "I can literally see right through you. Get up and try it."

"Raven..." said Nightwing, and his voice was pained. "You..."

"She's dead," said David, with a chilling calmness that reminded Starfire, for an instant, of Slade. "So are Cyborg and the changeling. All dead. The universe's only constant."

Nightwing raised his head, and his mask was missing, torn off by some unfathomable force. He set his teeth and spat defiance back at the man in the long coat. "You sick, twisted - "

"Don't patronize me," said David. "I'm no crazier than you, and you know it."

"You're a murderer."

"We're all murderers. All of us would-be gods, you included. By act or omission, we kill every day. We're the Valkyries, Nightwing. We choose who lives and dies. The only difference between us is that I don't lie to myself about it."

"The difference between us is that you're a sadist," spat Robin.

David seemed to freeze, as though this, at last, had surprised him. "A sadist?" he asked, incredulously, and his voice was bubbling with anger. "That's rich, coming from you. But even if I am a sadist, what are you? A legalistic anachronism who thinks that he has the right to impose his will on all the world. Nevermind what people need or want, you know best, don't you?"

"Shut up!"

"Or what?" roared David, brandishing his flaming sword in the air, fire dancing from it like a living thing. "What will you do?" He swung the sword down, cleaving the ground apart between him and Nightwing with a series of massive explosions. "What do you have left to threaten me with that I haven't already seen? Will you break my arm? Smash me through a wall? Beat my head against the pavement until the blood flows? What have you got planned for today? Another arrest warrant?"

"Not this time."

Starfire choked back a gasp, so cold was Nightwing's voice, a chilly hiss like an arctic wind, one that presaged nothing but ruthless violence.

David too seemed to notice, but he was not impressed. "Is that anger I detect?" he asked, voice dripping with sarcasm. "My God, he can react. I'm stunned. Please, Nightwing, elaborate. Are you actually preparing to kill me? And here I thought we'd have tea and discuss old times."

Nightwing sprang to his feet, faster than the blink of an eye. And like a blur, a barrage of explosive birdarangs shot at David like bullets. But David was ready and equally fast, and every one exploded ten feet from his body, moments before another explosion sent Nightwing tumbling backwards to the ground.

"You think yourself put upon?" demanded David, striding forward, sword in hand. "Am I being unfair to the stalwart defender of Jump City? What a terrible notion! How will I live with myself?"

From the place where he had landed, Nightwing groaned weakly, rolling over and clawing back to his feet before turning around to face David. David did not hinder him, watching Nightwing carefully, as though waiting for some inevitable attack.

"Still laconic as ever?" asked David. "And here I thought your tongue might be loosened at last."

"I don't have anything to say to you," said Robin, voice clipped. "You're a mass murderer, you're insane, and it's time someone stopped you for good."

"Well lord knows you've tried," said David darkly. "And with such effect. Tell me, do you remember Ceylon? Do you remember Minsk? Or how about Uganda?"

"I remember them."

"You're lying," said David. "Oh you remember what happened, I'm sure. But not the way I do. Not the way you made certain that I would, now do you?"

"You tried to murder innocent people. We stopped you. That's all there is to remember."

"Well that's funny, because I managed to remember something else. I remember the Great Nightwing, who never kills his enemies. Because that would be uncivilized. He just cripples them, leaves them broken and helpless in his wake, and then makes them thank him for the mercy of having spared their lives."

To Starfire's astonishment, David's voice began to shake, through anger or sheer emotion, she could not tell. "I remember lying in a pool of my own blood as your little brute squad made jokes. I remember being beaten so badly that I couldn't walk for six months. I remember what it feels like when a martial artist breaks your arm in four places, and then kicks you into the mud." David's sword flared like a torch. "I remember that very well."

From the looks of it, Nightwing was having none of it. "You know what I remember?" he asked. "I remember you blowing up a loaded passenger bus. I remember you trying to assassinate the President of Ethiopia. I remember you derailing a train off a cliff and then murdering the survivors with a landslide."

"But you don't remember why I did those things, now do you?"

"I don't need to know why."

David smiled. "No. You don't. Because it doesn't matter to you that the President of Ethiopia was a bloody murderer who deserved to die painfully every day that he drew breath."

"You killed eighty people along with him. People who never did anything. Peasants, bystanders, women and children. And even if you hadn't, you don't get to decide who lives and dies."

"No," said David. "That's your job, isn't it? You made that decision, and then you came after me because I had the temerity to challenge it, didn't you? There's people out there with body counts eight times mine. Most are in politics. But I usurped your authority. And we just couldn't allow that, now could we?"

"You played God with the lives of thousands of people. You murdered most of them. You murdered my friends. I don't care how you justify doing that."

Slowly, David lowered his sword, until the point was resting on the ground. He seemed to smile almost wistfully as he inclined his head at Nightwing.

"If you ask me, Nightwing," said David. "You couldn't ask for a better epitaph."

From within Nightwing's cape, he drew a metal cylinder, extending it with the flick of his wrist into a new staff four feet long. He leaped into the air, avoiding the treacherous ground, flying towards David with all the speed he could muster, and Starfire could tell that neither time nor injury had slowed his reactions by as much as a milisecond. He gave no indication that he was going to move, no shout, no expression, not so much as a twitch.

But for all that speed and subtlety, he had to leap, and charge, and swing, whereas all David had to do was flick his wrist.

The staff exploded like a firecracker, and Nightwing was blown out of the air like a bird hit with a shotgun. Starfire heard the splinter of bone and the painful cry that stabbed right through her heart over the echoing explosion, as Nightwing fell, crumpling to the ground like a broken toy. David simply watched, his expression confident and calm, as Nightwing struggled to rise again, but failed. And then, slowly, David reached back into his coat, and produced a gun. He regarded it for a few moments, and then, without another word, draw back on the slide, released it, and aimed the business end straight at Robin's forehead.

"Goodbye, Nightwing."

"FREEZE!"

The shouted command could not have been more surprising if it had been delivered from by a winged angel descending from on high amidst halos and light. As it was, Starfire jumped in surprise, and both Nightwing and David started visibly. Both of them turned their heads to see who had just intruded on the situation, as did Starfire. And when they did, the eyes of all three onlookers widened in surprise.

Warp stood a dozen yards away, a gun several sizes too large for a child his age held shakily in both hands, but aimed squarely and clearly at David.

I don't know what possessed me to move. I don't even remember where I found the gun. I didn't know how to use one beyond what I'd seen on television. But I remember staring into those black lenses like it was yesterday.

David stared at the eight year old child who had just materialized from nowhere, armed with a weapon and threatening him, his expression approaching disbelief. For a moment, he seemed lost for words, his entire equilibrium thrown off by this most unexpected of interruptions. And then, finally, he asked what was, perhaps, the obvious question.

"What the hell is this?"

"Don't move!" shouted Warp, plainly terrified, but equally plainly not backing down. He drew back the hammer on his gun, aiming it straight at David's chest. "Put it down!"

David did no such thing. He didn't even seem overly concerned at the prospect of the weapon presently pointed at him. Instead he looked rather like he was trying to puzzle out a particularly difficult riddle. Shaking his head, he half-turned to the frightened child, keeping his gun trained on Nightwing. "Who are you?" he asked, his voice calm but confused.

Warp hesitated before answering. "I'm Warp," he said. "I'm a Titan."

Instantly, David's expression changed. He froze in place, features turning from puzzlement to something approaching horror, and he slowly turned back to Nightwing. "I don't believe it," he said, and his tone was that of shock, subdued and legitimately stunned. "You didn't!"

"Warp, get out of here, now!" shouted Nightwing in his most stentorian tone, but Warp did not move.

If anything, this seemed to shock David yet further. "You brought a child into this? Are you out of your mind?"

"He followed us here," said Nightwing rapidly. "He's not part of this, let him go!"

"Not this, you idiot!" shouted David, brandishing gun and sword at the surrounding desolation. "Warp's not a given name. That's a superhero handle! You inducted a child into the superhero business? What is wrong with you?"

David had been angry before, but now he was visibly furious. He seemed to have forgotten Warp completely, consumed with shouting at Nightwing.

"What, were you trying to follow in Batman's footsteps? Do what was done to you? I knew you were capable of any sort of rationalization, Nightwing, but this - ."

"Warp, LEAVE!" roared Nightwing, cutting David off. "Blink out of here, now!"

"Leave him alone!" shouted Warp

"Go back to your Tower, boy," said David without turning his head. "This is not your business." He shook his head, looking down at Nightwing with contempt written all over his face. "How you can call me insane, after what you've done in the name of your obsessions, is entirely beyond me."

"STOP IT!" shouted Warp, and it might have been desperation, or it might have been mere accident, but in that instant, his finger clenched the trigger of his gun.

Click.

The sound was soft, but it shut David up instantly. He turned his head to the boy with the gun, as though unsure of what he had just heard, and Starfire saw Warp staring wide-eyed at the browncoated man he had just tried, and failed, to shoot.

Slowly, David shook his head. "Such a waste," he said.

The words seemed to galvanize Warp back to life, and he stepped back, pulling the trigger once more, this time clearly with deliberation, yet once more it refused to fire. Again and again he pulled it, but each pull was rewarded with the same soft click, and no result.

"Don't bother," said David. "It won't work."

Warp blinked, lowering the gun slowly as his mouth tried to force out words. "Wha -"

David smiled. "I don't know what Nightwing and the others told you about me, boy," he said. "But I'm not that stupid. I broke your firing pin the moment I saw the gun."

Warp said nothing, but his eyes darted to the gun, his face going pale as it fell from his hands. David's grin broadened as he shook his head. "Next time," he said, "don't give warning by shouting demands. Just shoot."

And then Nightwing tackled him.

Both David and Starfire's attention had been directed away from Nightwing, and in that split-second, Nightwing had acted, lunging at David like a noiseless phantom, and the first warning David had was when Nightwing collided with him at full speed. Sword and gun went flying, as David let out a shout of surprise, and Nightwing one of pure rage. They struggled for a moment, no fancy maneuvers or martial arts, for one was plainly untrained in close quarters combat, and the other badly wounded. Grappling with one another, they twisted and turned, and then lurched to one side, and went spilling down the heap of debris that David had been standing atop, rolling over one another down into a small depression in the rubble.

As one, they scrambled back to their feet, David racing up the side of the shallow depression towards where his weapons had landed, Nightwing pursuing him. Despite his injuries, Nightwing was still faster, and he leaped onto David's back with a razor-sharp birdarang in his hand. David screamed like a stuck pig as the birdarang plunged into his leg, moments before Robin tore him off of the slope and threw him back down into the depression. He pursued, slashing at David once more, but David seized a broken rock from the ground where he had fallen, and clubbed Nightwing across the temple with it hard enough to shatter it in his hand. As Robin staggered back, David moved to follow up, but Nightwing knocked his arm aside, and elbowed him in the chest before hitting him in the chin with a two-handed axe-blow that threw David off his feet and onto his back onto the ground.

Above, Warp crept up tentatively to the lip of the depression as David and Nightwing struggled within it, no powers, no explosions, no martial arts or fancy gadgets. There was no room or time for any of these. Nightwing was plainly the superior fighter, but he was sapped by injury and fatigue, his lightning skills degraded to the point where it was simply a matter of bloody slogging. And for David to use his matchless powers of destruction at this close of a range without blowing himself apart required time and concentration that Nightwing was plainly intent on not affording him. All weapons material or supernatural denied them, David and Nightwing were reduced to rocks, broken bits of metal, and the birdarangs still hanging from Nightwing's belt. The only sounds were shouts, cries, and the sound of fist striking bone, or body flung against broken rock.

Back and forth the two men struggled, grappling and beating one another bloody by every means on hand, before David seized a broken lead pipe from within the rubble and swung it at Nightwing's head. Nightwing simply ducked the awkward slash, hit David in the stomach with his open palm, and then clubbed him in the back of the head as hard as he could with his fist, sending him crashing to the ground like an inanimate object.

Bleeding, bloody, and badly injured, Robin took a few moments to catch his breath, a bloody birdarang still clutched in one hand. Carefully, he removed three more from his belt, adjusting and then sliding them together with a series of soft clicks, until he was holding a makeshift sword fashioned from the razor-sharp blades of each handheld throwing star. Only then did he approach David's crumpled form once more, kneel down, and roll him over onto his back before placing the tip of his sword against the demolitionist's throat.

"Don't. Move."

For once, David seemed inclined to obey. His glasses had been lost or broken in the tumult, and his eyes were unfocused, staring up at Nightwing, teeth clenched against pain or anger or both. For several seconds, neither he nor Nightwing said a word, until finally David spoke.

"Well, Mr. Grayson?" he hissed, voice shaky but firm. "What exactly are you waiting for?"

"This is what you wanted, isn't it?" asked Nightwing, the tip of his sword resting against David's throat. "Everything destroyed, everyone dead. You wanted it to end like this."

"What do you take me for, a nihilist?" spat back David. "I wanted to kill you and everyone around you. All this," he gestured weakly up and around at the ruins of the city, "is just window dressing. And you give me half a chance, that's exactly what I'll do."

"I feel any ice on this sword or see any red, and I'll cut your throat."

"Then what the hell are you waiting for?" demanded David. "Are you still trying to take me prisoner? There's no jails left in this city, and there's none on the planet that could hold me anyway. I just killed four hundred people including your so-called friends and you've got me at swordpoint, so shut up and do the job."

Still Nightwing didn't move.

"You think you're being noble? You'll kill eight million people by omission, but you won't kill me in a standup fight? You think that makes you honorable?"

"So now you want to die?"

"What I want doesn't matter. You've got the sword. If you can't use it to get what you want, then you might as well hand it to me."

Nightwing said nothing for a moment, but then slowly stood up, the point of his sword still aimed straight at David's throat, but withdrawn several inches.

"I'm not killing you," he said with finality. "You're going away."

Of all things, David seemed to regard this as funny. He shook his head slowly. "Away?" he asked, like a teacher terminally disappointed with a truant student.

"I'm going to find somewhere to stick you where you can't hurt anyone anymore. I don't care what it takes or where I have to go. I won't be you."

"You're out of your mind," said David. "There is no facility in existence that can restrain me perpetually, and you know it."

"Then I'll find one outside existence," said Nightwing. "Another dimension, another universe, it doesn't matter. Whatever it takes to make it happen, you're gonna rot in a prison for the rest of your - "

Nightwing froze in mid-word.

Starfire wasn't sure what had just happened. Nightwing simply stopped, like television program paused in mid-frame. David did not move either, and for several seconds, they simply stared at one another, before slowly, a smile spread across David's face.

"I don't think so..."

Nightwing shook in place, twitching, convulsing, his shakes becoming stronger and stronger, as though he were being shook by the hand of an invisible giant. The sword fell from his hand and clattered to the ground, as David slowly, painfully, climbed back to his feet.

"The human body is 60% water," he said, carefully picking himself up off the ground, nursing his broken arm and bleeding temple. "And water is one of the easiest elements of all." He dusted himself off slowly with his remaining good arm, wincing with pain as he did so, one hand clutched over his stomach, as Nightwing stood and watched. "You didn't have a chance anyway," he said. "The brain itself has no sensory nerves. By the time you felt anything, it was too late."

Starfire could see Nightwing trying desperately to move, to speak, to act, but he was unable to do so much as breathe in or out. David steadied himself, walking over to Nightwing, and looking him straight in the eye.

"You asked me before if this here was what I always wanted? Well the answer is no. I didn't always want this. I wasn't raised by a madman in a bat costume. I didn't grow up in the same metahuman madhouse you did. In fact, there was a time when all I wanted was to have nothing whatsoever to do with you and all your kind."

He reached up and laid one hand gently on Nightwing's forehead.

"I came to want all this, Nightwing, because you convinced me to."

He pushed lightly against Nightwing's head, and as though his very touch were toxic, Nightwing instantly collapsed. David stood in the bottom of the rubble depression, and watched as Nightwing landed on the ground like a lifeless doll, twitched several times, and then moved no more.

"Goodnight, sweet prince," said David. And then he turned and walked away.

But he didn't get far.

All of a sudden, there was a flash of light from behind David, and suddenly, standing where there had been nobody a moment ago, there now stood a child holding a thin sword, retrieved from where David had dropped it bare minutes ago. The flash alerted David, and reflexively, he turned around to see what had just happened, yet he was too late. Before he could complete his turn, before his eyes could identify what it was that had appeared behind him, the child lunged forward, and without a second's hesitation, drove all three feet of the razor sharp sword directly into David's chest.

There was a shout, not of pain but of shock and surprise, and a loud crack as the blade broke off at the hilt, knocking Warp back and onto the ground, but David scarcely seemed to see him. He staggered back, tripping and falling back against the shallow slope of the depression wall. The sword sticking through him prevented him from landing flat, and he rolled, crumpling down onto the scorched ruin, landing on his stomach like a boned fish, his head raised and mouth working, but no sound emerging. Eyes wide and breath coming in scared gasps, Warp scrambled back, away from the stricken murderer, but he needn't have bothered. David groped blindly for the end of the sword, failing to find it, and with his other hand he reached towards Warp, staring in wordless shock at the architect of this sudden reversal of fortune. But before he could say a word, or do whatever it was he had purposed to do, his hand stiffened and fell limp. He coughed, took one last gasping breath, and then slowly, lowered his head to the ground, blood leaking from the side of his mouth and from the rent in his stomach to feed a growing pile on the floor. There was one final shudder, and then silence.

Starfire watched, barely daring to breathe. And only once silence had fallen once more over the tapestry of violence and death, did she contribute a word.

"You... you killed him," she said.

"No," came the adult Warp's voice in reply. "I only thought that I had. The true agent responsible for this was beyond my capacity to kill."

Starfire looked around, as though expecting yet another surprise attack by some unseen figure. "I don't understand," she said.

"Neither did I, at first."

And suddenly, there was light.

Not a flash, but a gradual glow that began to emit from the fallen form of David, a cherry-red halo so intense that Starfire thought for a moment that his body had caught fire. But this glow was not of flames, nor of any other visible source. It seemed to emit by its own accord, framing David's body in crimson light. And then, before Starfire and the child Warp's astonished eyes, it began to rise.

It lifted from David's body like a wisp of cloud, twisting and turning as though alive, to a rhythm all its own. A second later, and it had detached itself from David entirely, leaving him behind as it slowly rose into the air. Starfire saw Warp get up, staring wide-eyed at the red cloud as it danced into the air, now rising faster and faster, and so stunned was Starfire by all that she had seen that it took some time before she suddenly realized what she was looking at.

"Devastator," she said.

"I didn't know it's name at the time," came the Adult-Warp's voice, as the Child-Warp watched the red mist flying off into the air, eyes blazing with a mixture of tears and impotent rage. "I was just a child. I didn't know anything of demons or energy parasites. All I knew was that I was watching some part of the person who had just murdered everyone I ever knew, escaping. And with God as my witness, I swore then and there that one day I would find that part, and destroy it once and for all.

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Darkness.

Pitch darkness, darkness so profound as to negate the possibility of light. He could feel nothing, as though his nerves had shut themselves down. No sound. No sensations. No scents to the air. He wasn't even sure if he was breathing.

Was he dead?

Did death exist in this place?

The last thing he could remember was a flash of light so intense that he saw it through his clenched eyes, that he saw it even now, dancing before him. A flash that hurt to even think about, and then, instantly, a profound darkness, the transition so stark that it had stunned his brain to silence. And then there was nothing, and maybe there never would be again.

"David?"

A whisper, so quiet, yet it shocked his entire system back to life, and he felt his heart beating, and the breath flowing in and out of his mouth and nose, and realized all of a sudden that he was laying on his back, and that all around him was weight. Not pressing against him, just a sense of weight, of enormous pressure, held at bay by means unknown, enveloping him like a cocoon. He did not dare to guess where he was.

"David?" came the whisper again, the same quiet urgency, but this time he knew who it was. Where Terra was, he couldn't even guess at, but he heard her as though she was right next to him. Maybe she was.

He didn't answer her, too afraid to even whisper back, but somehow she seemed to sense that he was awake.

"On your right," she said. "By your hand." And for the first time, he became aware that his hand was there, and intact. He reached out, millimeters at most, and his fingers closed around something cold and rough and metallic.

"I'm gonna draw him in," she whispered to him. "Distract him. You have to take him by surprise. You'll only have one chance."

And then suddenly, the world seemed to convulse.

He felt himself moving, though how or by what means, he couldn't tell. His ears were full of sound, a roaring, crushing sound like a raging landslide, but one that refused to stop. He felt himself buffeted about, by what he could not tell, and he clenched his hand reflexively about whatever metal object he had found there, until some time later, seconds, minutes, it was impossible to tell, it stopped.

And then, suddenly, he felt hot air on his face, and opened his eyes, and to his astonishment, he saw light, red light, blurry still, but slowly moving into focus. And as his addled brain began to process the images that it was being shown, he realized what he was looking at, and accordingly, where he was.

He was laying on his side, nearly entirely buried by a pile of dirt and rock, save for an opening around his face. Before him stretched an expanse of empty terrain so barren and cracked that, for a time, he did not even recognize that he was still in Jump City. And in the middle of it all stood the man with the cane, his back to David, facing down the street with one hand on the handle, and the other tucked into a pocket and held behind his back. He seemed to take no notice of David, if even he knew that David was there. And after a few moments, he began to walk.

The man walked through a city street scourged, first by fire, and then by the wrath of some angry god. There was no rubble or heaped debris, for everything mobile or semi-mobile had simply been blown away, cast aside in a wave of rock and ash and vanished into the gloom. The streets and sidewalks had been swept bare, streetlights, mailboxes, and parked vehicles hurled off into the distance, and the buildings that lined either side of the road had suffered varying fates. The sturdier ones, built of concrete and iron, manacled together by the strongest bonds men could devise, these still stood, huddled together like refugees on a cold night crowding around a fire. All had lost their facings, some their interiors and roofs, and others stood reduced to skeletons of twisted steel. Between them yawned empty gaps studded with plumbing fixtures and foundations, or sometimes with nothing at all, scorched spots on bare ground marking where other, weaker buildings of wood, masonry, or brick had once stood. There was no sound, save the soft rustling of the wind, no smoke save that of the ambient fires scattered far away, for all flames nearby had been summarily extinguished, along with anything that might have produced noise.

Across the magnificent desolation walked David's older self, pace unhurried, demeanor unconcerned. He might have whistled for all he acknowledged the lifelessness of his surroundings, as he slowly approached the one distinguishing feature that remained within this blasted heath.

In the middle of the street loomed a hemisphere of stone, caked with what had once been loose dirt, now reduced to blackened cinder painted across its pitted surface. The entire front section had been crushed, as though beaten into the ground with a giant hammer, and the remainder of the rock and packed-earth structure was twisted and riven with cracks. Considering the magnitude of what it had just withstood, it was a wonder that it was still existent at all.

The man considered the broken edifice for a moment, and then slowly walked towards it. But he hadn't taken more than a dozen steps before it erupted.

There was no explosion, no venting of white-hot gases and kinetic pressure waves. The pile of stone did not fly to pieces but erupted, like a volcano stirred once more to life. A column of earth and rock flew into the air and whiplashed back and forth like a loose fire hose, writhing in the hazy air, before the column collapsed, parting in two as it did so and landing in two smaller heaps on either side of the street.

And between them, Terra.

She was covered in loose dirt, which ran from her arms and face like water, painting her in a uniform shade of brown. Her hair was matted with blood, to which the dirt stuck in dark clumps on her forehead and down the sides of her face. Yet her eyes were washed out in golden light, and her closed fists sheathed in it, as the wind whipped about her, kicking dust up around her feet and billowing it back behind her like an unfolding cloak.

Standing some dozen yards away, his back turned to David, the man regarded Terra and folded his arms. "Very impressive," he said, unconvincingly. "Where is he?"

"He's safe," she said. "Safe from you."

The man seemed to find this funny. He sighed, chuckling, shaking his head and rubbing his eyes behind his glasses. "Is that right?" he asked, patronizingly. "And while he's off being safe, what exactly do you propose to do?"

Terra narrowed her eyes, pulling her arms in closer to her body, as the rocks around her stirred at her unspoken command, clashing together like castanets, sending peals of thunder rolling about the empty ruins. Faster and faster the rocks spun, the tumult rising to a deafening crescendo, yet what purpose she could have for them was unclear, for the man with the cane was plainly neither impressed nor intimidated. Yet finally, at the climax of the display, David felt the weight of the debris and dirt that buried him shift violently and drain away, as the dirt above him slid back into the ground, leaving him laying alone on the bare ground, save for a heavy, lead pipe, clutched in his right hand.

"I'm gonna break you."

Terra's voice was distorted, perhaps by the whirlwind of stones or some other trick of the air, but the man she addressed simply sighed and shook his head in disappointment.

"It's like I'm speaking to a wall sometimes," he said, and then he blew the rocks up.

They all went off at once, bursting like firecrackers in the smoky sky, but this, at least, Terra had anticipated, and she threw them away in every direction at best possible speed. Still, the blasts lifted her off her feet and dumped her on the ground on her back, knocking the wind out of her lungs as the man carefully stepped towards her.

"You know what the problem is with kineticists?" he asked her as he advanced. "You, all of them?" He paused, as if to give her a chance to answer. "There's no discipline."

Terra rocketed back to her feet, pulling stones from the ground as she did so and hurling them at the man with the cane, who batted them aside almost offhandedly, as he reached behind himself with his free hand without looking. "Kinetics are all emotion-based," he said, "all about how much you feel. No study, no training, just random chance. And you know what that does?"

Three dozen yards from where David still lay, a block of bedrock the size of an ambulance was blasted out of the ground fifty feet into the air, where it began to slow to a stop.

"It makes you lazy," said the man, and then he threw his hand forward, and another titanic explosion sent the block of stone hurtling towards Terra like a jet engine.

Terra shouted, throwing her hands out, encasing the rock in a sheath of golden light, planting her feet against the ground and gritting her teeth as she leaned forward, as though into a tremendous headwind. The flying stone block shook and corkscrewed, plowing into the ground and sliding towards her as she fought to bring it under control. She squeezed her eyes shut, her entire body glowing with light, as the rock bucked, and groaned, and heaved, and finally slid to a stop bare inches from Terra's hands.

And then the man with the cane opened his hand, and the rock exploded.

The blast was deafening, sending a visible shockwave wafting out that nearly bowled the man over and temporarily blinded David. The smoke took a few moments to clear, and when it did, David saw Terra laying crumpled on her side some thirty yards back, moving only weakly, surrounded by the fragments of the enormous stone bomb.

"You don't have to work for Kinetics," said the man. "You don't have to train for them, earn them through years of effort. At best, you might make the concession of learning how to keep them under control, but they come to you as naturally as breathing." He stepped forward, using his cane to pick his way through the shrapnel as he continued to lecture. "All I have to work with are explosions. Omnidirectional, thermokinetic explosions, triggered by parasynaptic rote. You want to move a rock, you simply will it to move. I have to will Devastator to perform an unspeakably complex series of properly calibrated micro-detonations in an exact sequence, with perfect timing, to accomplish the same goal." He shook his head. "Can you even conceive of the difficulty of such a task, of the years of practice and refinement that need to go into it?"

Terra did not appear to be listening to him, raising herself up weakly on her forearms as she rolled over onto her back, her eyes once more their normal color. She looked back up the street, past the man with the cane, straight into David's eyes, as he lay still on the pavement, fifty yards behind. She said nothing, gave no sign, save for what could be read into her frightened, pained expression.

"Of course not," said the man, who either did not notice that she was looking right through him, or did not think anything of it. "You don't know anything about control, do you? All you know how to do is rage."

It might have been David's imagination, or simply his eyes playing tricks on him, but he could have sworn that at the man's last comment, he saw Terra's mouth curl ever so slightly into a soft smile. And then her eyes went gold again, and she scrambled back to her feet to face him down once more.

In that instant, he understood.

He picked himself up unsteadily, for his balance was still recovering from the subterranean trip, his heart still pounding in his throat like a battering ram, and he held the pipe, heavy as it was, like his own baton, low and to his side, as he began to creep towards the two combatants.

Terra pulled a wedge of stone into the air, sheered it to a razor edge, and hurled it like a whip at the man, who blew it aside almost contemptuously, advancing towards her with an even gait as she conjured and hurled ever-larger, ever-deadlier stones and hurled them at him at breakneck pace. Not one came closer than twenty feet, blasted off course, blown to fragments and steam, even aborted before they could be carved from the ground.

"Spoiled children, throwing tantrums because they can't get their way," said the man, as he clubbed down a dozen more hurled projectiles. "No finesse, no responsibility, no understanding of what you're doing. Just raging anger, crudely beaten into a weapon and hurled out into the world."

Terra fell back again, and sent a tremor through the earth, ripping spikes of stone out of the ground in rhythm with what David belatedly realized were his own footsteps, her washed-out, gold-glowing eyes rendering it impossible to determine what she was actually looking at. He moved as quickly as he dared, fearful that his alter-ego would somehow sense him approaching even through the cover of the explosions and the fire. Yet as he moved, he found to his amazement that with every step, the ground seemed to warp beneath his feet like rubber, the earth itself muffling any sound of his approach, as Terra slowed her retreat and increased her attacks, bringing her adversary to a stop, temporary though it might be.

He didn't question how it was possible that she was simultaneously flinging so much material at the man with the cane, and taking care to conceal, by every artifice in her repertoire, the sound of David's approach from behind. He could only trust to her capacities, and break into a run.

The man took no notice of anything amiss, mechanically blasting each spike into dust as it was raised, his voice growing more and more contemptuous. "Go on," he spat at her. "Rage at me, Terra. Throw your worst tantrum. Cut loose. Watch where it gets you."

She certainly seemed to try. A geyser of loose stone and rock exploded from between her and the man, rocketing a hundred feet into the air, before snaking around and spraying like a firehose towards him. But the geyser was slightly off-center, and the man stepped briskly to the side of it, not realizing that in doing so, he was lining himself up perfectly with David, now approaching at a dead run. He planted his feet and counterattacked, hurling a series of explosions down the street and blowing Terra off her feet, but no sooner had she struck the ground than she rose again and threw rocks anew.

David could feel Terra's influence slipping as she fought to maintain control of a hundred different objects at once. He felt the ground firming up beneath him as she lost her grip on it, and plainly she did too, cutting everything loose in a violent maelstrom of stone and rock, trying desperately to bury any sound of David's approach under a barrage of raw sound. Only a few more seconds...

Suddenly, the man shot his cane forward, and a tremendous blast turned one of Terra's rocks into flames and flying debris, all of which were blown back into her chest like a shotgun blast. She gave a stunned cry, and was lifted off her feet and hurled back a dozen yards to the ground, where she lay like a boned fish, gasping for air, curled automatically into a ball on the floor.

"You can only get by on rage for so long," said the man, as the echo of the explosion was fading out across the ruined city, "before you encounter something impervious to your anger." He raised his cane, but before he could bring it down to do whatever it was he had planned, he froze.

And by the time he had spun around, half a second later, it was too late.

David had given no sign, and Terra was past the point of being able to, but as the last echos of the most recent explosion faded out, the sound of David's footsteps had at long last become discernable. Had the man reacted the instant he heard them, he might have managed to pre-empt David, but the split-second's hesitation was unavoidable, and he could not turn in time to prevent David from bringing the pipe down at his head.

It was not, however, too late for him to try to block, and with an action borne from reflex as much as any thought, he brought his silver-handled cane up to parry the blow. The ringing sound of metal on metal morphed into a savage "crunch" as David's overhand swing collided with the cane and forced it back down into the bridge of the man's nose, smashing into his sunglasses and crushing them before knocking the man back with a stifled cry of surprise and pain.

Thrown off-balance by his clumsy swing, David struggled to recover, and slashed at the man's head again, but this time the man managed to grab David's arm, wrenching him around before slamming the head of his cane into David's stomach like a pool queue, doubling him over. But when he withdrew to repeat the blow, David grabbed the cane with his free hand, locking them both together as they struggled and twisted for the upper hand. Smaller than his older counterpart, driven by adrenaline and pure fear, David could only hang on for dear life, aware in some reptillian sense that he was only safe for so long as he remained too close to his adult self for him to safely employ his explosions.

Back and forth they wrestled, each trying to wrench the weapons from the hands of the other, scrambling and stumbling on the uneven ground. No matter how much he shoved or pulled, the adult David's mass was not so much greater than his younger self that he could simply manhandle his way out of the teenager's grip. Then suddenly he lurched backwards, slipping perhaps, or overcompensating for some shove of David's, and lost his footing, and fell to the ground. His brain operating on autopilot, David lunged after him, desperately trying to keep close, but apparently his older self's tolerance for risk was tighter than he thought, for no sooner had the man landed on the ground, than the pipe in David's hand exploded.

He felt the frost forming on it, and reflexively let go, and that alone was what saved him from having his hand blown off. The shock wave aborted his lunge and blew him off his feet, sending him bouncing and sliding down the street to a stop up against the curb. It did damn near the same to his older self however, cracking the asphalt he lay upon and sending him rolling away several feet, for he had been given no time to mitigate the explosion or channel it away from himself.

Fighting back tears from his wounded hand, not even daring to look at it, for fear of finding it a mangled stump. He scrambled uneasily back up, and turned to find the man doing the same...

... and gasped in horror.

The man's glasses were shattered, and lay in fragments on the ground, permitting David, for the first time, to see his face. His own face.

But...

"You... you're blind."

He couldn't stop himself from staring, nor from speaking, and indeed, blind was just the beginning. The man's eyes were wholly opaque, like marbles, indeed they might well have been marbles, given everything else. A horrid, flaming scar was carved across his face at eyelevel, crossing from temple to temple through both eye sockets and the bridge of the nose. Yet no sooner had David spoken up, than the man lifted his head towards him, and with perfect assurance of sight, raised his cane and blew the ground out from under him.

It was a short blast, scarcely enough to knock him over, but the man used the opportunity to rise once again. Yet despite everything, he seemed almost amused.

"I can see as well as you can," he said, brushing the dust off of himself. "Better in fact, given your present circumstances."

"But how - "

The man merely smiled and tapped one finger to the side of his head. "The same way you used to," he said. "Devastator provides, after all."

"What... what happened?"

"Your little friends happened. Along with a lesson on the fundamentals of life." He popped his cane up with one hand, and the red flames cloaked it once more as he rolled it up and down his fingers.

"In the end," said the man, "nothing matters except who's left standing."

"Couldn't agree more," came a voice from the side.

The ground shook violently and tore apart, throwing both David and his counterpart off their feet, as a chasm opened between them venting a massive wave of loose earth and stone into the air. Before either of them could react, the wave split, sweeping both of them off their feet. David was washed down the street, fetching up on the sidewalk like a beached fish, while the man with the cane was spun head over heels back, as the wave carried him into and through the front of a small building.

Before David could even figure out what just happened, Terra grabbed him by the wrist, jerking him back to his feet. He was half-pulled, half-ran a dozen steps down the street, before Terra pulled a slab of rock from the ground as cover, and shoved him behind it.

He slid to the ground, next to Terra, and it took a moment or two before he recognized just how spent she looked. Blood, matting the dirt that liberally covered her, framed her entire face and ran down one arm. One hand was clutched over her stomach, where her shirt was stained black with mud kept wet by what had to be yet more blood. She collapsed next to him, breathing heavily, leaning against the stone she had just conjured up.

David waited for her to speak, and when she did not, ventured a comment of his own. "Are you all right?" he asked, trusting that she knew what he meant.

"I'll be fine," she said, hissing the words through her teeth. But before he could ask another question, she raised her head, staring him straight in the eye. "You have to get out of here."

Had she asked him to jump into a pool of magma, he would scarcely have been more surprised. "What?" he asked. "What do you - "

"There's no time to argue," she said quickly. "That wave won't hold him for long. Just get up and run! I'll cover you."

"If you want to run, let's both go, come on!"

"He'll just follow us, somebody has to stop him, and I'm the one who still has powers. You can make it if you leave right now."

Fire flared upwards from somewhere deep inside his stomach. "I'm not just leaving you to - "

A tremendous explosion from down the street interrupted both of them, and they peered over the edge of the rock shelter in time to watch the entire building that the man with the cane had been hurled into exploding. Flaming pieces of debris flew a hundred yards into the air to rain down in every direction, as a shadow began to form within the flames that raged inside it.

Terra was the first one to act.

She grabbed David by the collar, pulling him back down behind the rock and forcing him to look her in the eye.

"You have to go," she said. "You're the only one left."

He blinked. "What are you talking about."

"You're the only Titan left," she said. "Trigon killed the others, and now he's trying to kill you. That's why he sent that double of yours. He needs you all dead."

"He's trying to kill both of us," said David.

"He wants me because I betrayed him, just like Slade. He wants you because he knows that the Titans beat him the first time, and as long as there's still one of you alive, he's vulnerable. That's why you have to get out of here."

"But," stammered David, still barely able to even credit what she was suggesting, "but I don't... I don't have Devastator! How am I supposed to - "

"I don't know!" shouted Terra. "I don't know how this is supposed to end. None of this was even supposed to happen. But it did happen. And the only people who can still set it right are the Titans."

David didn't know what to say, but Terra didn't wait for him to figure it out. "Go," she said, standing back up. "I'll hold him here."

"T... Terra..."

"Run!"

She whipped her hand out, and David was hurled back by a convulsion of the earth, moments before another wave of living earth picked him up and brushed him down the street like an insect caught in a gust of wind. Over and over he rolled, until finally he reached the end of the street, and saw Terra turning back towards the scene of the action, her body cloaked in a golden halo, before the smoke closed between them, and he saw no more.

Back up the street, Terra turned back towards where the man in the cane had last been, and gasped, as she saw the man in question standing not a dozen yards in front of her, leaning on his flaming cane, watching her with equanimity, staring into her soul with his lifeless, blank eyes. She took a step back, clenching her fists and raising fresh stones with which to do battle, but the man did not advance to the attack.

"So tell me," he asked her, his tone calm and curious, "why did you really want him to run?"

She hesitated. "To get away from you," she said.

"And why should you care whether he gets away from me?" asked the man. "Surely you don't actually believe that he's going to run off and single-handedly kill Trigon?"

She took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. What use now in lying?

"Because I wiped the Titans out once," she said, "or I thought I had. I thought it was what I wanted to do. And after I'd done it, I just wanted to die." She paused, letting the stones spin around her like heavenly bodies. "I won't let Trigon, or you, or anyone else wipe them all out again."

"That may not be up to you."

"I say it is up to me," she said, and she dropped back into a ready position. "You wanna say otherwise?"

The man simply nodded, picking his cane up idly and looking it over, as though expecting it to bloom in his hand. Then with a single, fluid motion, he grasped the top of his cane and turned the handle. There was a soft click, and suddenly the handle came off entirely, and from within the cane came a ribbon of bright steel, razor sharp and glistening in the unearthly twilight. In one motion, he raised the handle and sword into the air, letting it ring as it vibrated in the breeze. And then at once, the entire sword burst into heatless flame.

Terra took a deep breath, trying to still her heart rate, as the man slowly lowered his flaming sword, looked her in the eye once more, and smiled.

"I knew a man once who had a saying for occasions like this," he said. "Tell me, Terra, would you like to know how I got these scars?"

[LadyTevar]

Chapter 35, part IV

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If there was a God, he had a sick sense of humor.

Beast Boy wanted nothing more than to race off, take to the air, to the ground, whatever he had to do. He had the unavoidable sense that time was slipping through his fingers while he loitered here. But rather than do what he wished to, and run after where he thought Raven was at full speed, he was stuck here, moving at a pace a snail would have described as a dawdle, practically carrying someone he would ordinarily have spared no effort to reduce to a state such as this.

Slade was barely mobile, unable to maintain his own weight. He would not even have been able to move had Beast Boy not been supporting him. Sickly yellow ichor leaked from the slashes in his side, oozing like mucus down his side and dripping onto the ground, where it bubbled and hissed, etching the very stone. Beast Boy didn't ask what it was, nor how his duplicate had managed to rip through Slade as he had. Even if Slade had been willing to tell him, he was pretty sure he wouldn't understand the answers.

He was almost equally sure he didn't want to know.

Slade said nothing, save for a persistent groan that seemed to emanate from some indistinct point within himself. It sounded like dying machinery, like the groan of a gnarled tree as it shifted in the wind. Every time he made his mind up to ask if Slade was all right, he managed to think better of it. All he could do was help him along, and trust that he was doing the right thing here. For all he might have hated him, Slade was the only one who seemed to know what this place was.

At long last, they rounded a corner. Ahead, the boiling river turned sharply to the right, and bore away into further fathomless depths. The path that they were following, running along it some twenty yards above the surface of the lava, split here, one branch wrapping right along the cliff wall, bearing gently upwards before being lost to sight. The other fork turned away, towards a tunnel carved into the living stone, vanishing almost instantly into darkness, but not before plunging down a further set of carven stairs.

Step by shambling step, they made their way onwards, Beast Boy not even asking which way they were to go, assuming that Slade would make his intentions clear in good time. Yet when finally they came to the fork in the road, the last step seemed too much, and Slade's body suddenly went rigid, and then limp, moments before he collapsed to the ground on his hands and knees. He remained there for a moment, teetering on the brink of total collapse, until finally his limbs seemed to give out beneath him, and he fell, utterly spent, on his front, and moved no more.

Beast Boy thought for a moment Slade might be dead, until he reminded himself that Slade was dead, and that death didn't seem to mean what it previously had.

Kneeling down carefully, Beast Boy tried to roll Slade over, but to no avail. Whatever Slade was now made of, his weight was such that he might as well have been carved from solid lead. It wasn't until Beast Boy resorted to using himself as a makeshift auto-jack, shifting to a tiny form, sliding underneath Slade, and then progressively adopting larger and larger forms, that he managed to budge Slade at all.

Once he had gotten Slade onto his back, he resumed normal form, and bent down over him. Slade's rictus-skull looked, somehow, even worse than it had before, the flame-red lights where his eyes should have been, staring unfocused upwards at the towering heights above. He raised his hand weakly, and seemed to grasp at things that were not there, even as the ichor continued to leach from his injuries, if they could be called that. He gave no sign that he could even tell that Beast Boy was there.

"Slade?"

Slade's eyes brightened, then dulled once more. He stirred slightly, looking as though he was seeking for something. It was several seconds before he managed to find Beast Boy, kneeling directly overhead.

"Slade, are you... "

Beast Boy stopped himself from asking the question he had meant to. Slade was dead. Whatever lies his evil twin had or would tell, that much he believed. He tried again.

"What... what are you?"

The question seemed to galvanize what life remained in Slade. His eyes brightened, he focused on Beast Boy, and emitted a sound that might have been a laugh.

"A son of Perdition," he said, his voice fading in and out.. "Adversary's adversary." He coughed, or seemed to. "Petulance or stubbornness. Too much hate to die forever."

None of it made sense. Beast Boy left it off. "Which way do we go now?"

"Nowhere."

Beast Boy fought off the urge to drive his fist into that grinning skull. "You said you'd bring me to Raven," he said, not bothering to conceal his anger. "Where is she?"

Slade fixed his eyes, or what passed for them, on Beast Boy. "You'll find her in Tartarus," he said, "rolling boulders up a hill. Frozen in Cocytus. The darkest Hell is reserved for traitors."

Instantly, Beast Boy forgot where he was or who he was talking to. His vision clouded over in red, and before he even knew what he was doing, he had lifted Slade, lead weight or not, half-off the ground, and was staring down into his face in a form he would not have been able to describe, had he been asked.

"Raven is not a traitor!" he practically roared into Slade's ashen face. Slade simply seemed to laugh.

"She came here of free will. Joined a team meant to save the world. Wound up destroying - "

"This wasn't her fault!" By now, Beast Boy wasn't even sure if he was still speaking English, or howling in some guttural animal-tongue. Slade seemed to understand him, either way.

"Fault?" asked Slade. "Never anyone's fault. That's the problem these days... a culture of buck-passing. Nobody takes pride in their work."

Beast Boy leaned down over Slade, pressing him back against the ground. "Tell me where Raven is," he said through clenched teeth, "or I'll make you wish Trigon left you dead."

Something galvanized deep inside Slade, and he slowly raised his head and shoulders, propping himself up carefully. He forced words out, his tone clearing slightly, his entire body shaking with the effort required to maintain even this level.

"Nothing..." he said. "Nothing... you can do... to threaten me now... boy. Your worst nightmares... rages... nothing close. Not a fraction of what Trigon could... in your place."

"Don't bet on that," said Beast Boy, but he didn't even believe himself, and slowly, he felt his rage drain away. Slade wasn't important now. He had to move on.

"If you won't tell me where she is," he said finally, "then I'll find her myself. I don't care what I have to do. I'll find her, and I'll bring her - "

From nowhere, Slade's hand shot out like a piston, and grabbed Beast Boy by the throat in a grip of iron, and suddenly Slade was right in his face, sitting upright, his soulless red eyes boring into Beast Boy's from bare inches away.

"Convince me," hissed Slade, with a voice like grated glass.

The sudden reversal cost Beast Boy both his train of thought and his equilibrium. He shifted to a tiny insect, slipping through Slade's fingers before he could tighten his fist and re-appearing a foot away. Bereft of support, Slade collapsed back once more, a sick wheezing sound emitting from his skeletal face, as Beast Boy approached warily.

"Convince you of what?" asked Beast Boy.

Slade didn't answer, not when Beast Boy repeated his question, not even when he shouted it. Cautiously, the shapeshifter knelt down over Slade once again. Slade might well do anything, grab him again or even attack, but he simply had to know what Slade knew if it was possible to know.

"Slade?" he asked, letting some of his desperation creep into his voice, and tentatively he reached out and took the armored cyclops' shoulder, half expecting Slade to bolt upright again, but Slade barely reacted, and to his surprise, Slade's armored skin was hot to the touch, even through Beast Boy's thick gloves.

"Slade?" asked Beast Boy again, louder this time, even as the heat under his fingers increased to the point where the surface of his gloves started to scorch. He withdrew his hand, sliding back as the air above Slade began to shimmer with the radiating heat. "Slade?"

A soft hiss of what might have been breath, and Slade twitched, though he did not rise or seek for something to grasp. Gurgled sounds from deep within his form resolved slowly into indistinct words.

"Boil forever in the river. Till Phlegethon runs dry."

Beast Boy blinked. It wasn't that he had the first idea what Slade was talking about, not specifically, but...

"You are dead, aren't you?"

"Dead..." said Slade, and he didn't seem to be talking to Beast Boy so much as himself. "Dead and burnt."

"Then how are you here?" asked Beast Boy. "What happened to you?"

Slade's eyes seemed to clear, not that Beast Boy could easily tell, and his voice became slightly stronger. "Promised... promised to serve. For power. Liberation." His armored skin began to glow a faint, cherry red, as the heat wafting off his body became more and more palpable. He snarled, spitting the words out by force of will. "Lied. Betrayed the Devil... all for... guesswork."

"Guesswork?"

"Can't... stop Trigon," said Slade, his words clipped, boiling with barely suppressed agony. "Nothing... nothing can stop... not Raven. Not you."

"Then why did you come all this way? Did you think I was going to find your body for you or something?"

Slade laughed, a horrible, hollow, pained laugh. "Never much hope... for that..." he said. "Came to see... if Raven... would let you find her..."

"All you care about is yourself," said Beast Boy, but he found that he couldn't infuse the words with his usual scorn. They were simple statements. "What do you care if I found Raven?"

Slade's head lolled over to one side, as flames began to flicker around his skeletal face. And yet despite that, his withered features slowly twisted into a smile.

"You should have died... in the fire..." he stammered. "In the ambush... in Yosemite. Should have killed David with Cinderblock. Should have been turned to Trigon-stone. You all... should have been killed... so many times before... Brother Blood. Terra. Me..."

Beast Boy hesitated, staring down into Slade's face. "What... what are you saying?"

Slade's head drooped, as he visibly fought to stay awake. "Trigon... indestructable. Raven... dead. Devastator... gone. Situation... utterly... totally... hopless." He gathered his breath, forcing the flames to subside slightly, looked back up at Beast Boy, and seemed to smirk. "You people... make a habit... of those sorts of situations."

Despite everything, Beast Boy felt a soft smile coming to his face, the first since this whole nightmare had started. "You do think we can stop him, don't you?"

"No," croaked Slade, "I know you can't. But... I think you Titans..." he strained to force out the last few words, "you enjoy making me look... stupid."

Deep inside himself, Beast Boy felt something wake up, something he couldn't describe nor identify, but recognized nonetheless. He smiled once again, this time in earnest, and crossed his arms.

"Well guess what, Slade," he said, "you're about to look stupider than ever."

Maybe it was the light playing tricks, but he thought he saw Slade's rictus-face twist into a smile.

Suddenly there was a roar of flame, and Slade's armor began glowing bright, cherry red. Fire wreathed his head, and shot several feet into the air from every crack and opening in his boiling armor, and Slade emitted a sound like a raging gorilla, writhing on the ground, even as Beast Boy scrambled back from the withering heat. He raised his arm to his face, peering through his fingers at the burning supervillain, trying to think of something to do to beat the flames out, when Slade's voice roared out, above the flames, a loud, keening wail, like that of an evil spirit conjured up from the dark pits of the earth.

"Prove it!" he roared, the words repeating over and over like a neverending echo.

"Where... where is she?" shouted Beast Boy, not even sure what to look at anymore. He stood back up, backing away from the roaring pyre that now encased Slade. "Tell me where she is!"

"Ascend," came the reply, barely discernable through the howling flames. "Keep going, no matter what. Find her."

"Where?"

"The halls of lamentation. The depths of your own guilt. Find her in your own fears. Whereever you go, there she will be..."

"I don't - "

The flames exploded a hundredfold, driving Beast Boy back against the wall, his hands thrown up to protect his face, as gouts of fire shot in every direction, and Slade's voice became a horrid scream. For a moment, he thought he saw a looming shadow burst out of Slade's body, boiling up like a wraith of darkness to cloak the world in ruin. And then it dissipated, along with the scream, trailing away into the far distance, and all that was left was a glowing husk of iron, crackling and burning with orange flame.

Slowly, Beast Boy lowered his hands, staring at the burning pyre, looking for any signs of movement, but there was nothing there. He hesitated only a few moments, watching as the flames continued to dance over Slade's surface. And then, finally, Beast Boy turned back to the fork in the path, selected the rightmost path, the one that climbed out of the crevasse, took one, long, deep breath, and slowly walked away.

*--------------------------------------------------------------------------------*

And then there was nothing at all.

Starfire took a breath, held it, exhaled, and still there was nothing. The world had shut off completely, all light, all sound removed, save for the sound of her own heartbeat and breathing. But just as she was beginning to wonder if Warp had somehow contrived to banish her to some nether dimension, suddenly the darkness disapated with a soundless flash, and she was standing in the ruined castle once more, staring up at Warp, who stood before the small fountain, the glow from which was beginning to subside.

Warp stared at her expectantly, but said nothing, waiting patiently, as Starfire slowly re-acclimatized herself to her surroundings, and faced him once more, before finally, she offered a comment.

"You... you did all this," she said, "all this death and destruction. You betrayed an entire world, your world, killed Robin, and delivered the Earth to Trigon, all to take revenge on David?"

"No," said Warp. "Not on David."

Lightly, Warp stepped off the dais, walking slowly around Starfire, towards a small wooden chest propped against the back wall, speaking as he walked.

"I killed David, but I had seen something else escape. I thought it was some part of David, an astral projection, a consciousness transfer... a ghost perhaps. I didn't know anything. But I knew that some element of the person who had slaughtered the only family I had ever known had escaped. And I knew that I had to find it."

Starfire followed Warp with her eyes, turning to keep him in sight as he moved around her. "How did you discover what it was?"

Warp reached the chest and crouched over it. Starfire briefly considered shooting him where he stood, but before she could do so, he popped the latch on the chest, and reached into it, even as he turned his head back to her and smiled.

"Time," he said. "Persistance. And my inheritance."

He pulled something out of the chest, a large bundle wrapped in sackcloth, which he held to his chest as he turned around.

"I knew that once the word escaped that the Titans were dead, that their enemies would congregate in Jump City and ransack the Tower. I had only bare moments to escape with what I would. But fortunately, I knew exactly what item I required to find what I needed."

Warp undid the sackcloth wrapped around the bundle and removed it, and in his hands, he held a large book, bound in black and violet and clasped shut by golden fixtures and hinges. Sigils of an unknown language were inscribed on its cover in threads of woven silver, and the entire codex seemed to glow with a soft purple light, and trembled in Warp's hands like a living thing.

Starfire's eyes popped. She let out a gasp, and took a step back. "Raven's book!" she exclaimed.

"The Book of Azar," corrected Warp. "The collected wisdom of the monks of Azarath. A very useful tool for one who wished to kill something he did not understand."

Starfire bit her lip and clenched her teeth. "You had no right to take that!" she snarled at Warp. "That belongs to Raven."

"Raven was dead," snapped Warp back. "So were all the other Titans. I was the only one left. If I hadn't taken it, then one of her enemies would have. It was mine by right. And if you disagree with that, then I'll remind you, princess, you put me in that Tower with them."

"She would not have wished for you to use that book to destroy the Earth!"

"Then perhaps she should not have died," said Warp coldly.

Starfire shook her head, lowering it, before another thought came to her, and she raised it once more.

"But... Raven attempted to determine what David's powers were with that book as well. She was unable to discover anything about them."

Warp frowned. "Raven didn't have the time I had," he said, "and she didn't know what I knew."

Starfire fell silent, and Warp continued.

"I had nothing to go on," he said. "Nothing but what I had seen. But I remembered that David had somehow contrived to resist Raven's powers at their most extreme. He didn't even appear to know how he had done it, meaning somehow he had managed to nullify the most powerful weapons Raven had at her command, by accident."

Warp opened the book with a touch, the clasps undoing themselves before the book flipped open, and the pages began to turn of their own seeming accord.

"You see," said Warp, "I didn't have the advantage of a regiment of learned monks at my beck and call, nor anyone to teach me how to even read Azarathian. And with the Titans dead... well... I had to make my own way. Something none of you ever understood the necessity of."

Something in Warp's voice stuck out. "What... happened to you?"

Warp didn't answer immediately, looking down at the pages of the book as they flashed by. "I survived," he said finally. "And moreover I learned. It took me years to decrypt what was in that book. Years of drudgery and degradation and scraping by in a dystopian nightmare world." He raised his head again, looking into Starfire's eyes with fire dancing behind his own. "Every day, I was taught once more the full price that you extracted from me for my crimes. Every day, I was made to suffer indignities the likes of which you never even imagined. All because you condemned me to a life sentence in Hell."

Starfire did not answer, and finally Warp looked back down at the book. "But I survived," he said. "And I learned. I travelled all around the world, looking for scraps of arcane lore, ancient temples, anything that might shed light on what I'd seen. I became an expert in Metahuman physiology and paraphysics. And eventually... I was able to gather enough to finally break the code. And when I finally was able to translate the book into English... then I found the key."

"You discovered what David was?"

Warp smiled. "No," he said. "Far better. I learned of Trigon."

He began to pace back and forth, the book's pages flipping as though in a windstorm, as his voice became more excited. "Trigon was an obsession of Azar's. She knew he would return, and she poured all her lore and all her knowledge into this book, hoping to find a solution. I learned everything, what Trigon was, why he had come, how he had been defeated in the past, and best of all... theories as to how he might be beaten, once he returned."

"Devastator."

"Of course," said Warp. "Raven had never heard of Devastator, but Azar had, and she hid the information deep within the book, mired in riddles and rumors. A complete description of the entity called Devastator, one that matched what I'd seen that night in Jump perfectly."

"If you discovered all this from the Book of Azar," asked Starfire. "Why did Raven not find the answer when she sought for the identity of Devastator?"

"Raven searched for mere weeks," said Warp. "I had decades to unravel the mysteries of this lovely tome. The secrets of Azarath do not reveal themselves lightly. I found more in here than she learned in her entire lifetime."

The implication of that statement was frightening enough that Starfire felt a shiver run up her spine. Somehow, Warp seemed to notice, and he smiled darkly before slamming the book shut with a loud clap like a peal of thunder.

"Once I learned of Devastator," said Warp, "then I realized what I had to do. For my own sake, for the sufferings I was put through, and for all those murdered by Devastator I would take my revenge in two parts. One against you. The other... against Devastator itself."

Starfire felt another chill. "You did all this to revenge yourself against Devastator?"

Warp smiled a half-smile. "Devastator destroyed my life. Destroyed what little support I had left after you cast me into the midst of Hell itself. Devastator removed everything from me that I had come to care for. What passed for my family, for my entire world, was ripped from me in an instant because Devastator empowered a madman to slaughter them all."

"So to avenge your family, you went back in time to kill them all again?" exclaimed Starfire in horror.

The smile faded from Warp's face. "The Titans of this planet were not my family," he said. "These were adolescent children from another dimension who happened to share their names. I returned the punishment done to me onto the world that inflicted it," he said. "It was the only way to ensure that Devastator paid for its crimes... and that you did."

Her eyes wide with horror, Starfire could only stammer a reply. "If it was your wish to kill me, why did you not simply do so? Why did you need to destroy our world?"

"Because that was not my wish," said Warp. "If I wanted you dead, Starfire, you would already be as dead as Robin. I wanted you to know what you had wrought, to understand what your actions set in motion. And above that, I wanted to take my revenge, not just on you, but on Devastator itself."

"Then why not do so? Why arange to bring back Trigon?"

"Because in my world, David was dead. Devastator had already chosen a new host, and I had no means of finding it, let alone of taking action against Devastator itself even if I had. Devastator exists outside time and space. It's an energy parasite. Strike down a host, and it simply finds another. I needed something permanent. I needed something capable of destroying a cosmic entity, something capable of killing a being that was not even fully alive by our definitions of the term. In short, I needed Trigon."

"So you returned to our time."

"Of course I did," said Warp. "Trigon was already dead in mine. I came back, and contrived to contact Trigon directly. I offered him everything he wanted, the world, the universe, Devastator, his daughter. I told him of how the Titans had slain him, how Robin had found Raven's spirit, rescued it, and gave her the opportunity to strike him down. And then I told him that I knew how to give him victory." Warp smiled, lowering the book in one hand, and stepping forward. "And all I asked in return, was that he grant me this opportunity."

"And what opportunity is this?"

"The opportunity, princess, to stand in front of you, and see your face when you learned that through your actions, you caused the death of Robin, the incineration of this world, and the sentencing of your friends to damnation and death. I wanted to watch as you realized that for months now, you have lived in the company of the very same madman who slaughtered all your friends simply because they were in his way. I even permitted you to think him your friend. And I wanted you to know that I did all of these things, and was only in a position to do them, because you placed me there."

Quivering now, with anger and perhaps even fear, Starfire spoke slowly, as to as to emphesize each word.

"I am not responsible for your crimes."

Warp only smiled. "You are wholly responsible for everything I am, and everything I did. As much as Devastator was, if not more. Devastator was created to fight Trigon. For its sins, I enabled Trigon to devour Devastator whole. You swore, on your arrival here, to protect the people of this world, and those who accepted you. For your sins, I have sentenced you know what your actions have wrought, before you join all those whose deaths are on your hands."

Starfire shot him.

Anger boiled within her like a seething cauldron, and she raised her hands and fired a starbolt comprised of white-hot rage. It split the air at nine times the speed of sound, exploding with a flash of green light that temporarily cloaked all else, moments before another starbolt followed in its wake, and another, and another, a barrage of energy blasts that sundered stone and shattered the wall and blew the wooden chest at Warp's feet to splinters and vapor. Into them, Starfire poured her fury, righteous or otherwise, deluging him in the searing fire that was the mark of a Tamaranean scorned.

And it was all in vain. Warp lifted his hand, and a shield of animate blackness materialized around him, warding off the onslaught effortlessly, the shield barely quivering as Starfire flung her rage against it. Only when she had spent her fury against it did he lower his hand once more, smiling broadly.

"Like I said," said Warp, grinning at the wide-eyed Tamaranean. "I had more time to study this book than Raven ever did..."

Fear began to replace anger, as Starfire slowly stepped back from Warp, who made no move to follow. Instead he lowered the book in one hand, and with the other, began to trace designs in the air with his fingers, which hung in soft purple light and floated around him like planetary bodies around a star.

"You came here," he said, "seeking for Robin. You came in the hope that he might somehow be restored to life, and brought back to you." He raised his free hand, and the symbols congregated around it, spinning around his wrists, their glow increasing in radiance to that of sparkling jewels. "Never let it be said that I did not give those who call on me precisely what they want."

The symbols flashed as one and vanished, and then all of a sudden, there was Robin.

But it wasn't Robin.

The distinction wasn't subtle in the least, for the figure standing before Starfire resembled Robin's corpse more than it did Robin himself. His skin was gray, like volcanic ash or powdered concrete, a leached, colorless monochrome that extended even to his uniform, which should have been red and yellow and green. He stood with his head lowered, like a somber statue, not moving a hair, not even to breathe.

"I'm going to give you a gift, Princess," said Warp, as he slowly lowered his free hand. "One that very few people ever receive. I'm going to let you die with a perfect understanding as to why this has happened to you.

Robin, or whatever this corpse-pallor simulacrum was, raised his head, revealing two glowing red eyes, which seared like burning coals. His expression blank, his motions robotic and precise, Robin slid one hand to his belt, removed a small metal cylinder, and extended it into a steel battle staff.

"Kill her," said Warp, his arms folded atop the Book of Azar, "and bring me her head."

*--------------------------------------------------------------------------------*

The path curved upwards, ever upwards, snaking back and forth along the towering heights above, blocked periodically by fallen rocks or cascades of magma, yet always moving on and on and on some more. Beast Boy ran, shifting forms as the terrain required it, not knowing where he was going or if it was the right way, but running regardless. He refused to let himself think of the possibility that there was anything else to do, and no matter what pace he set, it seemed to him not fast enough.

Only once did anything try to get in his way. A quartet of fire demons lunged out of the wall by surprise, snatching at him with their tendrils, hissing like steam vents as they came. He shifted imperturbably into the form of a grizzly bear, reared up on his hind legs, and smashed two of them to paste with swipes of his heavy claws before the demons even had a chance to determine what was happening. The other two had ducked his slashes and seized him by the throat, trying to manhandle him off the cliff. He'd become a mosquito then, slipping through their grasp, then a bighorn sheep, whereupon he butted one of the demons off the cliff, and dashed the other's innards out beneath his hooves. A second later, he was a tiger, sprinting and bounding up the trail once more, the encounter already forgotten, save for his nagging worry that he had lost still more time, and that now every second was precious.

Beyond that one interruption, there had been nothing, and while he didn't resent the lack of intrusions, it worried him that the demons seemed to have given up trying to stop him beyond a purely incidental skirmish. He wasn't so much afraid that this meant they were preparing something special for him, as he was that it meant he was going the wrong way.

But then again, what other way was there to go?

He ran on, faster and faster, heedless of fatigue or what forms he had to take, as he climbed up higher and higher and higher still, until the flame river was a distant ribbon of red below, half-hidden by the smoke and haze. The cliff towered above as enormously as ever, and so he refused to look at it, racing against a clock he couldn't see, couldn't read, and yet could feel like the pounding of drums deep inside his chest.

He was practically ready to try leaping off the cliff in the hopes of finding something, when the smoke began to thin, and the air to clear, and he turned another corner and saw the path running up and on and into an enormous building.

A monastery perhaps, or a cathedral, it towered over the stony landscape around it. Ruined, it still stood out, angular of architecture, built of black stone that gleamed in the firelight, festooned with buttresses, crenelations, and towering spires. The roof was gone, the walls worn down as though with the passing of centuries, yet the path that ran towards it was as clear as daylight.

He raced ahead, turning to a swallow on the run and flying at top speed towards the cathedral's entrance, heedless of anything that might seek to prevent his passing. Enormous stone statues, human and bestial, lined the route, but they stood mute and cold, watching silently as Beast Boy passed them by. He soared through the tangle of conflicting air currents, driven up by the boiling lava miles below, and landed before the stone double-doors of the ruined cathedral. He was about to shift into a rhinoceros to batter them open, save that the instant he landed, the doors opened of their own accord, inviting him in, as it were. He switched to human form, and stepped through.

And then something truly strange happened.

In the blink of an eye, his entire surroundings, the cathedral, the fire-scorched sky, the statues, the cliff, everything was gone, and in its place was an open plain of ice, across which whirled a raging blizzard. The ice was perfectly level and utterly featureless, sparkling blue beneath clouds of white snow, driven this way and that by gusts of howling, bone-chilling wind. He stopped, stunned, looked behind himself for the door he had just stepped through, but it was gone. He stood alone.

Was this some new trick? Had Trigon laid a trap for him or something? The Cathedral had... it had felt right, familiar in some way that couldn't be put in words. And this place... well this place did too somehow, though he was absolutely stone-certain he had never seen it before. Either way, there was nothing for it now. He shifted forms into a Polar Bear as defense against the biting cold, and slowly lumbered ahead.

He hadn't gone more than a dozen paces before he began to notice shadows under the ice.

The light here seemed to come from nowhere in particular, but dimly, underneath the ice, there were shapes visible, twisted shapes bent into strange configurations. Some were barely discernible, buried deep within the frozen ground. Others were nearer to the surface, and could be recognized for what they were.

Bodies.

Human, alien, even some that defied description. The bodies of creatures lay scattered beneath the ice like frozen action figures, motionless, indeterminate as to whether they were living or dead. They made no move to rise up and attack him, nor to otherwise bar his passage, their frozen eyes watching him as he padded slowly over the ice. Searching.

"Looking for Raven?"

His own voice, borne on the winds from some indeterminate location, biting and sarcastic. He knew who it was.

"Where is she?" he called out to the winds, shifting back to human form in order to speak, clutching his arms around himself as his body lost the protection of his warm fur.

"She's here," came the reply, the voice mockingly dancing around him. "She's waiting for you."

He turned in circles, peering into the storm, trying to find the speaker, but he could see nothing but indistinct shadows darting this way and that. There might have been a thousand of them, or one, or none at all.

"Come and see," came the voice, and suddenly the storm ahead of him parted like a hallway, revealing a path that led up to the foot of a stone altar. The altar was carved from obsidian, covered in drifting snow and carven sigils of pentagrams and goat-heads. And laying atop it was...

"Raven!" Beast Boy instantly forgot everything else, racing down the path towards the altar, bounding up the steps that ringed it four at a time, before skidding to a halt at the top.

"Raven? What..."

Raven lay upon the altar, eyes open, skin like white porcelain and cold to the touch. She was dressed in her leotard and cloak, as always, but both were pure white, dazzlingly so. Her cloak lay unfastened, draping over the altar, providing no protection whatsoever, and Beast Boy couldn't initially tell if she was alive or frozen solid.

But those weren't the most surprising things. The most surprising thing was that she was nine.

Though Beast Boy had found Raven's birthdate out for her party all those endless weeks ago, Beast Boy actually wasn't sure how old Raven had been, fifteen or sixteen, he'd guessed. She was clearly no longer so. Whether she was nine or eight or ten, she was a little girl, dressed in the same uniform sized downwards, staring blindly up at the swirling clouds. She did not react when he touched her forehead (ice-cold), not even when he shook her, calling her name as loudly as he could. Pushing the question of what had happened aside, he pulled one of his gloves and held it in front of her mouth and nose, and felt, to his infinite relief, a very very weak breath, even as he found an almost imperceptible pulse at her neck.

"Raven, it's me! Can you hear me?" he asked, shaking her shoulder, totally unsure as to what to do now. The storm still swirled around in unbroken strength, and she looked to be suffering from advanced hypothermia, to say nothing of whatever had de-aged her. He tried to remember what first aid lessons Robin had forced him to learn, what he should do, but couldn't recall anything about what to do when you found a child-version of a half-demon girl laying unresponsive and frozen in the middle of a supernatural version of Antarctica. That one must have been in the advanced session.

He fell back on instinct.

"Raven, c'mon, wake up," he said, and gently lifted her off the altar. Her normal form was taller than he was, but like this, she weighed next to nothing. He crouched down behind the altar, forming a sort of ersatz shelter between the altar and his own huddled body, which managed, at least, to block much of the wind, even as he shook the snow out of her cloak and wrapped it tightly around her. The cloak wasn't much, frankly neither was the shelter, but it seemed to work. Very slowly, her breathing became more distinct, her eyes blinked and slowly came into focus, and she began to shiver, first almost imperceptibly, then violently, teeth chattering and hands trembling like a palsy victim.

She still gave no indication that she knew where she was, or who Beast Boy was, or that he was even there, but he chose to take it as an encouraging sign, and grinned despite himself. "There you go," he said as she coughed and shook and then moved, curling up into a tight ball inside her cloak. "Come on, we'll find a way out of - "

"Now why would you want to do that?"

The storm stopped instantly, like light being switched off, and in the eerie silence, Beast Boy heard his own voice addressing him from behind. Raven heard it too, and it seemed to wake her up. She opened her eyes, blinking as she looked around, up at Beast Boy, and past him, behind him, at something else.

Beast Boy knew who it was before he turned around.

His double stood with arms crossed, smirking at him from twenty yards' distance. "We made this place specially for you, after all," said the double. "It'd be a shame if you didn't at least try it out."

Beast Boy frowned. "We're leaving here," he said, trying to sound intimidating. "Both of us. We're going home."

"You are home," said the double. "Both of you." He spread his arms wide to encompass the frozen wasteland. "Can't you tell where you are?" he asked mockingly. "This is where the traitors live..."

"She's not a traitor!" shouted Beast Boy, blood boiling. It was everything he could do not to leap at the double's throat for even suggesting it, but the double seemed unimpressed, laughing as he responded.

"Of course she is," he said, "and so are you."

He'd had it with this. Beast Boy turned around and picked Raven up, holding her with both arms as she continued to blink and look around in confusion and fear. Turning back once again to his double, who still stood staring, a smarmy grin plastered to his face, he growled at him.

"You can't hurt her anymore," he said. "Get out of our way."

"But can you?" asked the double? "Or is that why you're taking her?"

Beast Boy felt Raven tense up in his arms, which tore the answer from him faster than his brain could have.

"I'd never hurt Raven!" he shouted.

The answer came, but not from the double.

"Oh really?"

Beast Boy froze.

It had nothing to do with the chill in the air or the ice underfoot. His blood turned instantly to icewater, his limbs froze solid, and his lungs seized, as though he'd just been switched off, the only part of his body still capable of movement, his heart, which began thundering somewhere in his ears as he recognized the voice who had spoken in the double's stead.

Footsteps, approaching softly, unhurriedly, from behind. Beast Boy very slowly turned around to face the person whose footsteps they were, but he already knew who it was going to be before he did so.

She stopped a dozen feet from the altar, her hiking boots crunching the snow beneath them, arms folded in front of her, the wind teasing the hair beneath the blue goggles mounted on her forehead. Her skin was slate gray, like that of Beast Boy's double, and she had the same burning red eyes, without pupils or irises. Yet none of these things in any way prevented him from recognizing her instantly. Beast Boy would have recognized her blindfolded, from the sound of her heartbeat alone.

"Terra..." he whispered.

Behind him, his evil twin laughed, as he walked slowly into view, circling around the altar until he was standing next to Terra. Terra herself said nothing, simply watched him in silence, but then she didn't need to.

"She's been waiting for you a long time," said his twin, as he grinned at Beast Boy. "We've all been."

Beast Boy could say nothing, could do nothing, and in his arms, Raven looked at him, and at Terra, and back again, and he could feel her fear like a cold finger running up his spine. His twin simply turned to Terra, and nodded.

"Kill him," said the twin, folding his arms, "and bring me his head."

*--------------------------------------------------------------------------------*

David ran.

He ran for a countless interval. He ran forever. He ran without direction or purpose or hope of ever being allowed to stop. Down streets filled with the silent dead and lined by unchanging ruin, over heaps of wrecked vehicles and overturned newspaper kiosks he ran, tripping and stumbling and falling over himself and scrambling back to his feet to run some more. He ran with the sound of explosions and violent upheavals in his ears, emanating always from some indistinct point behind him. He did not look back.

He just ran.

He might have run for hours, for days even. He ran so far that he knew intrinsically he should have run into some geographic obstacle, a mountain or ridgeline or flaming, lava-filled bay, one of the landmarks that ringed Jump City and that he would inevitably have to encounter, yet he did not. He ran for as long as his legs would carry him and his lungs draw breath, and when finally they would no longer do either, he collapsed.

He landed on the ground like a boned fish, his burning lungs gasping for air. Breathing painfully, he managed only to crawl to the side of the street before his muscles gave out entirely. For another interminable time, he simply lay in the gutter, forcing air into and out of his lungs, his hands trembling, his guts on fire.

He wasn't sure when it was that he started crying.

No sobs, no sound, nothing but the tears, that simply began to flow like a dammed stream finally loosed. He didn't even realize that he was crying until the tears began to drip from his face, splashing ground so parched that the very asphalt absorbed them instantly, leaving no trace that they had ever been.

Somehow, that seemed appropriate.

Every attempt to move just resulted in more violent tremors, as though the various parts of his body were no longer able to face the task of working in concert. It took only a few moments before he simply stopped trying to move at all. There was, after all, nowhere to go. The entire world was nothing but an extension of the flame-scorched gutter in which he lay, stalked by the twisted phantoms of his own mind, one of which was assuredly in the process of killing Terra, if hadn't managed to finish doing so by now.

Perhaps he had run far enough for the sounds of the battle to be lost, or perhaps the leaden air dampened them more effectively than they otherwise would have, but try as he might, he could hear nothing of the fight that had to be transpiring. The air was still and quiet, save for the omnipresent low roar of the accumulated fires, volcanic vents, and other manifested miseries with which Trigon had cloaked the doomed planet.

He lay in misery and motionlessness, curled in a ball in the gutter, his ash-grey skin coated with ash-grey dust, his red eyes leeching tears onto the thirsty ground, the last bits of moisture remaining within the scope of the planet. There was no one discrete source for the tears, nothing specific that leapt to his mind. It was leaden fatigue, crushing despair, paralysing fear, and soul-wilting shame all rolled into one. The senses of loss, culpability, and utter hopelessness were so overwhelming that they got in one another's way, leaving it impossible to focus on any one element. He saw the faces of the other Titans flashing by incomprehensibly quickly, saw Trigon looming up from the ruins of the library, saw himself standing in a field of rubble with a burning cane in his hand, casting fire down on his enemies. His friends. His...

He convulsed, clutched his hands to his head, and screamed.

There was nobody to hear him scream, but scream he did regardless. Painfully, his throat burning from the effort, yet the screams tore themselves out of him like living things, and after each one he collapsed once more, to lay useless and motionless in the dust once again. He gritted his teeth against them, knotting his fingers into his hair, and yet he could not stop the screams any more than he could the tears. Again and again, for a minute, perhaps two, perhaps an hour, perhaps a year, he screamed and cried and cursed himself, willing death and ruin upon himself, on Trigon, on his unknown parents, on Terra, on even the other Titans by turns, yet always it came back to his own wretched self. Terra had told him to run so that he could somehow fight Trigon or preserve the Titans in form and memory. He knew himself capable of neither, indeed of nothing. Everything had gone wrong. Every decision, every choice, every possible shift of events had failed utterly. All there was left to do was to lay here, alone, broken, and wait for someone, Trigon or Warp or Cinderblock or perhaps himself, to come along, and finish the job.

"David?"

David's eyes opened.

For a moment, he wasn't sure if he had imagined hearing something. He raised his head slightly, fear already beginning to cloud out the rest of his emotions, and slowly he turned his head back and forth and back again, but could find nothing waiting for him. Likely enough his broken mind was playing yet further tricks on him, but he continued to peer off forlornly into the darkness, though for what he could not say. If anything yet lived in this horrid place, it could not be sympathetic to one that Trigon had named his enemy.

"David."

He started this time, his breath catching, yet the voice was not hostile or mocking. It was soft, barely a whisper, and both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. It came from no particular source, no direction, no location around him that he could identify. And yet despite that, he knew, immediately, where the speaker was located.

Slowly, David turned around, wiping the tears from his blood-red eyes, not rising to his feet, but remaining seated in the gutter, half-turned behind him to see who it was that had addressed him. And there, standing five or six paces away, stood a small, slight figure, a boy of perhaps fourteen, with light brown hair and matching eyes, wearing a costume of fire-red laminated mylar that tapered to yellow-orange at the sleeves and pant legs. About his waist was a belt of brass, to which was clipped a retractable police baton of stainless steel, and a small, palm-sized communicator, a black T emblazoned on its golden cover.

David said nothing, did not react, not even in surprise, for those circuits were no longer functioning within his brain. He sat in the gutter, and looked at himself as he had once been, watching as the boy stood and watched him back, arms at his sides, face expressionless save for a slight melancholy that might well have been his own imagination.

"Hello, David," said the boy at last, his voice a whisper, but easily understood, as though the sound were being transmitted directly into David's head.

David said nothing immediately, watching his counterpart as though he could somehow distill understanding from simple observation.

"Who are you?" asked David at last.

The boy's eyes flickered downwards for a moment before he answered.

"My name's Devastator," he said. "And... I was hoping we could talk."

[LionElJonson]

Having stayed up all night reading this, I certainly hope that the Endless turn up. Destruction's somewhere on Earth making his mediocre attempts at art, for sure; I think he would notice the land turning into a blasted hellscape and a Demon Prince eating an entity powered by his domain. He definitely wouldn't let Trigon destroy the universe; that'd not only kill him, but also end his ability to create new stuff.

Even if it's set in an alternate reality to the Sandman comics, Dream defines Reality by embodying its opposite, so it's entirely possible he'd notice this little melodrama going on, and possibly bring it to Destruction's attention. Possibly resulting in a new Destruction taking the mantle, and maybe even the other Endless intervening to help their new brother out. At the very least they might teach him how to exercize whatever power he might have over his creatures to banish and/or destroy Devastator-Trigon.