Find Your Way to Forever

by Scribbler

The Tournament of Heroines: a true test of grit, a showdown to end all showdowns, and final proof of Who Is Best Evah! Too bad all the contestants are actually snackage for the Master. [Discontinued]

Disclaimer: Not mine, and never were.

A/N: This was written a long time ago, and I've kept it under my hat because I always promised myself I'd finish it someday. Now, however, I have to concede defeat. I just don't have the time or inclination to write this anymore – plus, Toon Titans continuity has ploughed on without me, and what I wrote no longer fits into the universe created by the show. New characters I thought I was so clever to introduce have become canonical (and very different than I envisaged), old characters have had their backstories developed in directions I never took (or predicted when writing), and the JLU episode Patriot Games sets the entire Justice League cartoon in some indeterminate point in the Titans' future, rather than running alongside TT continuity like I'd previously thought. In many respects, I should probably have binned this story, but in other respects I'm still a little proud of it. As such, I'm posting wholesale what should have been the first three or four chapters of a much longer fic. The idea was to send Raven and a few other select members of the tournament dimension-hopping in an attempt to get home, and would've looked in on such universes as 'Slade did poison and kill the other Titans, sending Robin into a vortex of depression and compulsive crime-fighting', 'Raven opened the portal to Trigon the moment she arrived on Earth, and they now rule the resulting wasteland side by side', and 'gender-swap-verse', which is pretty self-explanatory. I'd still like to write about some of these universes, but not here. This fic will remain as it is, and so I present it to you for your enjoyment. Remember that it was mid-Season Two when I wrote this, so Terra had not yet been revealed as a traitor (though the hints dropped could've brained a cow), Raven's connection to Trigon was still described as merely 'issues with her father', Cyborg had not yet infiltrated HIVE and learned the secrets of its students, and Starfire's reasons for leaving Tameran were uncertain. Think of this as an AU if it makes it easier.

Feedback: I'd adore you if you left a review for me to snack on.

Written: May 2004

Posted: June 2006

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Find Your Way to Forever

© Scribbler 2004/2006.

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There are new words now that excuse everybody. Give me the good old days of heroes and villains. the people you can bravo or hiss. There was a truth to them that all the slick credulity of today cannot touch. -- Bette Davis, The Lonely Life, 1962.

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The voice rolled around the chamber like a clap of thunder. "Welcome, champions all. You are hereby invited to compete in… the Tournament of Heroines!"

Starfire turned her head. "Raven…"

"Yes?"

"I have a bad feeling about this."

Raven had no words with which to answer. Loath as she was to admit it, she agreed – insofar as being spontaneously plucked from the living room couch and zapped who-knew-where by an unknown force didn't exactly fill her with warm fuzzies. The recent disappearance of the boys in much the same manner did little to help matters.

Her psychic shields were up before she had even opened her eyes against the bright signature glow of teleportation, and she had let her body fall into a familiar defensive posture. Starfire's words and the strange ape-creature's announcement only compounded her apprehension – if simply because the announcement was not one she had been expecting.

Tournament of Heroines?

"Welcome, welcome," the creature said again, descending a long flight of steps. He stood on a truncated obelisk of some white marble. Though not especially wide, it dominated the space they were in by height alone.

Shifting her shields up an extra notch, Raven briefly tore her eyes away to cast around.

The room was not unlike pictures she'd seen of Roman amphitheatres, with large stone archways, balconies and metal supports for unlit torches – obviously ornament, since there were atmosphere-destroying halogen strip lights dotted about. Other than this, decoration was sparse, if still Graeco-Roman in design. Mostly angular patterns painted on off-white backgrounds. The whole impression was one of an interior designer, drinking buddies with Sophocles.

Yet, unlike an amphitheatre, the room was roofed with durable glass. Through it, one could clearly see a night sky, even though it had been daylight when they left the Tower.

By briefly stretching her extra senses, Raven was able to determine that the immediate surrounding area was a labyrinth of narrow corridors, hallways and small antechambers. Exits from this room were everywhere, but it was a false impression. Even if they escaped through one, there was no telling where the actual main way out was from there, or even what was beyond the labyrinth. She had the strangest feeling that they had shifted much more than just their physical location.

She might have sensed further, trying to home in on the familiar bulk of Titans Tower for a reference point. It was a habitual technique – once she knew where the Tower was, she could figure out where they were in relation to it.

However, her sweep was interrupted by the continued prattling of the ape creature, now that she could see him more clearly, seemed to be wearing little more than a loincloth and some vainglorious jewellery. The bare chest, though covered in grey fur, was obviously male and powerfully built. Knots of sinew bunched as he moved, and there was no rustic shamble of the kind she had come to associate with gorillas. Though he was no Cyborg, it was obvious even to the most dim-witted onlooker that this was not someone you tussled with lightly.

He reached the foot of the staircase and stood with arms wide before the assembled crowd. His face, though vaguely fearsome, was softened by a welcoming smile.

And it was indeed a crowd. Raven counted eight auras in a cursory mind-sweep. She also noted that, along with herself and Starfire, Terra had also been abducted. It was a grim realisation.

A brown bag of spilled groceries sat at Terra's feet, orange goop oozing from a split packet of some candy or other. If possible, she looked even more surprised to be there than her teammates.

"Well… this doesn't look like the supermarket," she said, looking around. Though not immediately evident in her posture, Raven sensed a battle-ready undercurrent to her mind. "I get the feeling I'm not in Kansas anymore."

"Indeed, it is not 'Kansas'." The ape-creature nodded like she had uttered some pearl of wisdom instead of a pop culture reference. His smile was broad and toothy.

Raven kept her thoughts guarded, not sure what to make of then people around her, or the ape-creature. She had been expecting an attack of some sort, or even an empty room. Given the Teen Titans' nature as superheroes, spontaneous teleportation was usually an earmark of kidnapping. Sometimes it even turned into a hostage situation. It would not be the first time.

She had not been expecting a … well, a trivial competition.

Tournament for what, though?

Suspicion – her natural fallback. For the moment, though not content, she was willing to let the ape creature speak uninterrupted – if only because he seemed to know more about what was going on than anyone else. Still, she remained on the defensive, aware that Starfire was doing so in a much less secret manner.

"Who are you?" A halo of green energy glowed around one clenching and unclenching fist. "Why have you brought us to this place? How did we come to be relocated from our home so suddenly? What is this tournament of which you speak? What is going on here?"

The ape creature laughed at Starfire's rapid-fire questions. "Patience, young warrioress," he assured, raising his hands in the universal gesture for 'calm down'. "All shall be revealed. I promise you, I mean no harm to any person here." His tone was friendly, though his words were formal, and he surprised everyone present by bowing low and exposing the back of his neck.

It was one of the most vulnerable points on any vertebrate. Had anyone felt so inclined, they could easily have launched an attack at that moment. He was unarmed, and there were many of them against one of him. That he openly showed such willing vulnerability caused a ripple of whispers to circle the room.

Raven only caught half of them. She was far too engaged in scrutinising their strange host.

He did not feel like a predator. She could sense little to no traces of aggression. When he raised his head, she found herself briefly meeting his eyes, and though she searched she could find no antagonism there that might explain him kidnapping them – if it had indeed been him who brought them here.

She cleared her throat. Though she did not raise her voice, her words still carried across the room with ease. "Did you bring us here?" It was even a little subdued for her, but it seemed to command the attention of the room. Images of sheep being herded into a pen sprang to her mind.

A nod. "Yes, fair maiden."

She chose not to react to the name. "Who are you?"

He puffed up a bit like a cat and said proudly, "I am the Master of Games. You are all my guests here, and your summons to my dimension is my invitation for your participation in the Tournament of Heroines – a friendly competition between eight of the greatest young female fighters of your Earth."

"Friendly competition. Right. Which is why you abducted us without consent or warning." Her words had a brittle edge. Though nobody could see it beneath her hood, one eyebrow was hoisted into a sardonic peak.

"Your dimension?" One of the newcomers Raven didn't recognise spoke up. She had a flutey, overly feminine voice. Without looking around, Raven's immediate impression was of someone more comfortable holding Tupperware parties than making cross-dimensional journeys.

Her own disbelief had been suspended so long ago that she was vaguely amazed she could still see it anymore. Being who she was, even without being a Teen Titan, meant that she knew secrets of the world most people could not even begin to imagine. All the Titans frequently had to remind themselves that not all teenagers' lives were as colourful as theirs. Neither were all adults' lives, for that matter.

Raven had seen stars begin and die, spoken to people who breathed water as easily as air, and come within an inch of touching real, live gods in the time since she joined the Titans. Prior to that, she'd grown up knowing there were more dimensions than just the one she lived in. she had even moved from one to another when she came of age, starting a new life in a world that, to her, had been as much legend as Arthur and his knights were to Earth kids stuck in third grade History class.

Her powers alone allowed her access to another world – one that was hidden not so much beneath as within the one they inhabited. Contact with that world was exhilarating, intoxication in its purest sense. It was only through constant exposure to her teammates that she remained grounded in reality as much as she did.

In Azarath, the problem had been lessened somewhat by tutors who understood the temptation to simply abandon physical form for the potency of existence as an unfettered spirit. Although Raven's empathic abilities did not stretch to true telepathy, she was still prey to the temptations that went along with brushing the Astral Planes. There was a freedom there she couldn't achieve – no, couldn't afford in a realer sense.

The Titans made sure she never took that final step and let go of her earthly form. Though they couldn't any of them quite understand the frustration of having to leave the psychic realm once she had entered it, they knew enough to remind her why she needed to stay in the physical plane.

Duty, honour, responsibility over the safety of innocent people – she remembered all that on her own. Yet, she needed her teammates to strike the chord of friendship, that indefinable glue that adhered all the different pieces of her together when it was so much easier to simply let go. Half the time they didn't even realise they were doing it, but she appreciated them just being there to coax her back into her own head.

All this had created a certain amount of shared indifference toward what most people would term the supernatural, the miraculous and the paranormal - or, as Beast Boy would put it, the just plain weird.

Or at least, how he would have put it, had he, Robin and Cyborg not been MIA for most of the past week.

As a matter of fact, at time of abduction Raven had been knee-deep in yet another diagnostic of Titans Tower's assorted computer scanning programmes. She had been trying to pick up on some signal from Cyborg's unique power source. Frustration had prompted it after her umpteenth mental scan revealed nothing more than what the three remaining team members already knew – i.e. that the boys had disappeared without trace. A week away from his charge-bed should have made Cyborg's automatic distress indicator easier to pick up on, but all radio frequencies Raven tried had remained stubbornly clear. Her frustration had increased steadily with each new frequency, to the point where Terra had retreated to grocery shopping – a hated chore – rather than stay in a building where light bulbs exploded without warning.

The newly identified 'Master of Games' nodded. "Welcome to Gameworld; a pocket dimension of my creation, where champions from across the cosmos may meet in the beauty that is combat. A place where events of conflict are held in the highest regard, and competitors revered like the godlings they are. For what could be more holy than the struggle of one mortal body against another? I ask you today to become a part of that sacrosanct assemblage, and lend your talents to a tournament of participants gathered from the planet known as Earth."

Terra blinked. "Okay, creeped out now."

Raven considered the Master's words carefully. Melodramatic as he was, if this creature was powerful enough to create his own pocket dimension then perhaps he was a greater threat than she had anticipated.

Then again, she had heard tell of technology able to do the same. It was possible he came from a world where such equipment existed in a workable form, though she'd only ever known it in a theoretical sense – and even then it had been flawed enough to remain more science fiction than science fact. Even Cyborg had been sceptical on the sole occasion she mentioned the subject.

Of all the Titans, they were the two most proficient with the Tower's extensive computer systems. Robin, Starfire, Beast Boy – they all knew how to use it, and Terra was learning fast, but Raven and Cyborg concerned themselves with the inner-workings, as well.

When Raven first arrived on Earth from Azarath, Cyborg had been the one who taught her of technology, the strange 'magick' that didn't require a psychic boost to get it started and keep it going. Azarath practically ran on spiritual energies. It had been a totally alien concept that people could live without them. The long hours Cyborg spent introducing her to technology had stirred her thirst for knowledge in new and interesting ways. She had devoured book after book on it all, poring over and digesting all she could until they could hold the kind of quick-fire conversations that left the others with big fat questions marks hovering above their heads. In less than a year she knew everything from LEDs to experimental software programmes given Cyborg for testing by the government. It was also one of the reasons why she hadn't disliked working on the T-Car as much she'd thought she would.

That Cyborg found it difficult to believe in machines and programmes that could whip up a small pocket of reality or two bespoke real problems in changing their existence from idea to actuality.

All this reflection took place in an instant – an eye blink. Then Raven spoke, using the same tone as before; that not loud, not quite quiet tone that carried easily across the full space. It was also about as wet as a desert long past the rainy season. "You created this dimension? Forgive me if I find that a little difficult to believe."

As if in answer, the ruby hanging around the Master's neck shone with some inner light, turning the fur around it a soft red. "Believe what you will, Raven, but I should think that the evidence speaks for itself. Please, conduct a psychic sweep of the area. You will find that it has boundaries enough to prove my honesty."

Raven narrowed her eyes.

"He knows your name, Raven," Starfire stage-whispered. It was entirely needless communication, set against a backdrop of renewed murmuring from the other abductees.

Raven chose not to reply, instead fixing the Master with a stare that had been known to melt teammates into puddles of terrified goo. "You know of my powers." It was not so much a question as a statement, but he answered nonetheless. Raven did not let any alarm creep into her voice. Just because he knew of her powers didn't necessarily mean he knew their limitations.

"I know the traits and abilities of each and every one of you. Else, how could I have known whom to choose for this, the greatest of contests? I have watched and searched your Earth for some time, young ones. This is not the first contest involving partakers from your planet."

Raven was very glad her hood was raised to hide her expression. She did not want to alert Starfire or Terra if they weren't already suspicious. However, if and when an opportunity presented itself, she wanted to conduct a bit of psychometry for traces of their missing teammates.

A loud snarl lassoed her from her thoughts. It was a brutal, feral sound, and it almost buried the words that came with it. "I don't like to be watched."

Knowing it could not have been made by either of her teammates, Raven traced it to a bristly bundle hunched against a wall. It looked for all the world like a discarded opera coat, but for the pinpricks of yellow light that glared out, scouring the room and yet somehow never leaving the Master's face.

The bundle shifted slightly, muscles rippling like cables beneath fur spiked like an animal on the offensive. All the signals Raven had not sensed from the Master radiated from this spitting, growling creature. Its aura practically screamed 'predator'.

"Ah, Pantha," said the Master, not at all perturbed by the murderous way he had been addressed. "There was nothing inappropriate about my observations. I simply watched each of you in combat. Think of it as a scientific gathering of research. An audition you didn't know you were involved in."

Fangs appeared. "I don't like to be watched."

Though her instinctive reaction was to contain this coil of pent up fury before it did any damage, Raven could understand the way this 'Pantha' was acting. Raven was a renowned privacy fiend. The idea that someone could have been watching her without her knowledge filled her with the kind of anger that had to be clamped down before it led to more serious consequences.

A small crack suddenly appeared in the stone of the nearest archway.

It didn't go unnoticed. "Let us progress, young champions." The Master clapped his hands and rubbed them together enthusiastically.

"To what? You want us to just up and fight each other?" Terra tugged on the edges of her gloves. "'Cause I'd like a really good reason why we should indulge you, buddy, when you've pretty much pleaded guilty to kidnapping and being a freakin' peeping tom."

One of the unfamiliar voices sniggered. Raven couldn't establish where it had come from.

The Master frowned. "Would the promise of safe passage home for those who do not wish to participate encourage you to 'indulge' me? Or perhaps prizes for the winner would make my offer more palatable."

The atmosphere in the room shifted slightly. Not a massive change, but a subtle swing from outright anxious to anxious-but-interested. It ran beneath proceedings, not coming from any single person but fading from one mind to the next. It seemed that with this announcement, the Master became less a kidnapper and more a proposition – a means to an end. The feeling was greasy and smelled of basic human greed, and Raven resisted the urge to wipe at her skin, knowing there was nothing really there.

"That depends." Terra cocked her head. She was chewing something – gum picked up at the checkout of the supermarket, most likely. She was terrible for passing the strategically placed rows of Twinkies, candies and other assorted sweet things without buying something to munch on. "What kind of prizes?"

"Who cares?" A mishmash of black and white strode forward; coalescing into a girl with skin paler than anything Raven had ever seen. And that included her own paleness.

There was nothing the slightest bit natural about this girl's pallor. A head of slicked black hair, coupled with a form-fitting black catsuit accentuated it horribly, making her look like nothing so much as a walking corpse or some old photograph given life. Her voice gave proof of this life, booming loudly and sheathed in a tone obviously used to being minded. "Hey, monkey boy," she called.

"Master of Games, if you please." The Master sounded vaguely disapproving, but his smile never wavered.

The pale girl shrugged. "Whatever. I'm interested in your offer. Sounds fun. But how about we lay all our cards on the table, huh? No point in being caught like some four for four batter in a game that's gone bottom of the ninth, y'know? We could gamble a whole bunch, and then strike out while the bases are loaded. Then where would we be? So fess up at the starting block, chumley. How exactly does this tournament thingy work, and how much is it gonna cost us to buy tickets?"

"Argent!" At first, Raven thought the humanoid thing that grabbed the girl's arm was just glass. Then it flickered, changing colour from palest blue to a sickly yellow, and its outline became clearer.

She could have been forgiven for her first assumption, since the distinctly female-shaped creature did indeed appear to be made of glass instead of flesh and blood. She was impossibly hollow, filled with only a kind of mist, like the low fog that sometimes creeps across the ocean in the early morning. Now and then twists of electricity or some similar energy curled and fizzled through it. With a composition like that, Raven could see no viable way for her to be alive at all, unless she was the product of some magick or other.

However, the automaton-like appearance was belied by a pair of eyes that, though completely white, were more alive than anything Raven had ever seen in a human. Or Azarathian, come to that. There was a vibrancy there that took the impossibility of a living-glass girl, rolled it up into a ball and threw it out of a seventh storey window.

The corpse look-alike tried to shake off the hand clamped around her upper arm, but the glass girl's grip was tenacious, openly flouting her fragile appearance.

"Leave off, will you?"

"Argent, I don't like this," she said, claiming the flutey voice. She had an unplaceable accent, and sounded far younger than her full figure suggested. "This feels bad - "

"I said leave off."

Something silver crackled between them, and the glass girl hastily let go.

Corpse look-a-like ran a hand over her hair, as if flattening it even further – a ridiculous task, since the contours of her skull were already visible. "It sounds fine to me. I've been looking for something to stretch my powers recently – haul the lead out a bit, yeah? This could be just what I need to let off steam. What we both need." Her words were loaded with hidden meaning.

The glass girl seemed less than convinced. Her fingers clinked musically, a nervous pattern emerging as she twisted them together. Yet she voiced no further argument. Evidently, these two were a package deal, much like Raven, Starfire and Terra, but there was no mistaking the dominant one between them.

The pale girl turned back to the Master, cocking her head to one side and surveying him through dark eyes. "So, buddy, how's it work? You got a WWF ring stashed someplace? Swish pad, by the way. A little fusty, but swish."

"Uh, thank you. But no, there is no … WWF ring in this complex." The Master's tongue clearly did not like the feel of these words, and he hesitated to say them.

Then he spread his arms wide, gesturing to the ceiling in what was clearly more comfortable territory. Raven wondered what he had planned next.

"Behold, young champions. The participants of this, the greatest of contests."

Those who were ready to accept his invitation looked up. Those still suspicious did so when the noise started. The huge window coloured, fizzling like a television with bad reception. Then the domed surface reorganised itself into a strikingly lifelike picture of pastel cheeks and vivid pink hair, tamed into two horn-like pigtails.

Raven felt her stomach sink to her ankles. "You have got to be kidding me."

"Jinx," boomed the Master in his best announcer-voice. "The teen witch who could give Sabrina a run for her money, and who has far more than a white rabbit up her sleeve." His patter was cheesier than the three-month-old Gorgonzola Starfire once adopted as a pet.

The image of Jinx zoomed out from a close-up of her face, revealing a room full of laser canons. She gambolled away from each shot, ducking and weaving like a dancer involved in some particularly complicated jazz number, stepping, twirling and leaping gracefully over those that came close to the mark. After a few seconds of this she flipped backwards, landing on top of one canon, and flung out her hands. The image froze on the pose, capturing the smug look that always preceded a hex bolt.

"Raven," said Starfire, not taking her eyes from where the screen was changing, "I understood this to be a tournament for heroines. Has Jinx reformed her ways and not notified us of this fact?"

Raven fought down a snort, but didn't reply because she was suddenly confronted with a larger-than-life version of herself. Her hood was up, her hands encased in obsidian energy, and her eyes glowed a furious white.

"Raven," the Master declared. "A telekinetic mystic who can move any object with just the power of her mind."

She recognised the short film as part of the Titans' first battle with Atlas, a hyper-competitive robot. In that skirmish she had hurled the full force of a tidal wave at him, but he had not even been fazed by it. It was not an incident she liked to dwell on. Defeat never was, no matter how noble you were. The whole thing had actually ended up with most of the Titans trapped in force-bubbles and used as hostages to force Cyborg into a fight. However, despite the ultimate uselessness of her effort, the obsidian wave made her look imposing, and the Master's little movie freeze-framed her at the peak of the attack.

The sheer invasiveness of knowing he had been watching them since then surged through Raven, and she grit her teeth against a swell of righteous anger clenching her stomach. With supreme effort, she thrust the emotion back into its box, leaving what vestiges couldn't be recaptured to sizzle the lining of her gut.

Starfire was next, replete with irritating sports-commentator dialogue. Her piece of film involved another floating figure, and she gasped openly.

"Sister!"

For it was indeed Blackfire on the screen. Blackfire, Starfire's less than loving older sibling, who, on her first, last and only time on Earth, had operated with the specific intention of framing Starfire for her own intergalactic crime spree.

The image was from their last tussle, right before Blackfire was arrested, and it showed Starfire in the throes of blazing fury. Hair flaring vengefully around her shoulders and green energy tingeing her eyes, she was both beautiful and frightening, each impression playing off the other to increase the whole.

Someone whistled. "No wonder the newspapers like to take her picture so much."

"Argent!"

Beside her, Raven sensed Starfire begin to blush. It was not that she disliked the attention that accompanied those times media-folk arrived after the Titans' latest heroics. More accurately, she liked that the team's efforts to preserve peace were acknowledged, but disliked that the subsequent articles almost always heavily featured her photograph, whether or not she had played any significant role in proceedings. She did not understand human preoccupation with beauty and body image, which was refreshing, if a direct link to her naïveté. When not commenting on Wonder Woman's gaudy costume, or Hawkgirl's lack of colour coordination, more media sniping came from Starfire's inability to 'dress-down' and stop wearing revealing mini skirts to fight crime, than any other topic. Though the Titans efforts were largely confined to Jump City and the immediate surrounding area, Starfire's hemline had once even knocked Lexcorp's new 'chauffeur CEO' off the front page of the National Enquirer.

The image changed. A black shape encased in silver streaked past the screen.

Argent whooped. "Now that's what I'm talking about!"

The figure floated above a forest, wreathed in a silver outline and stepping on treetops like they were strong as rock. Each spindly branch bent in her wake, but she showed no signs of stopping her mad dash across the skyline, or giving in to gravity as the laws of physics demanded.

She dived right off a glorified twig; face a mask of wild delight. It had to be a plunge of forty feet or more to the ground. However, instead of becoming a black and white pancake, the girl's outline flared outward, briefly resembling a pair of silver wings, and she soared back into the sky with arms outstretched.

"Argent," said the Master. "A flying powerhouse whose energy manipulation could give Green Lantern a run for his money."

Raven raised an eyebrow, studying the image before it faded away. I seriously doubt that. Granted, the Titans' links to the Justice League were tenuous at best, but she knew enough of Green Lantern to say that this little fashion disaster would last approximately thirty seconds against his ring and his experience. Perhaps less.

For her part, Argent merely preened. She did not seem bothered in the least that her private life had been violated, instead blossoming in the spotlight.

Raven did not know her, however talented she had to have been to be eligible for this tournament, but based on her first impression she doubted Argent would make the cut for any serious kind of superheroics. The emotions swirling around her – those that her empathy simply could not ignore – all spoke of a risk-taker, an adventurous person who found fun in danger and the gauntlet of chance. Her aura was strident like her voice and it scraped along Raven's skin like a scalpel.

She stepped away, instinctively drawing closer to Starfire. The Tamaranian's boundless optimism and general cheerfulness was a good buffer against other auras. Since Starfire's powers revolved around the intensity of her emotions, she made a good set of psychic earplugs, effectively drowning out others in her vicinity.

For once, Raven found herself glad that Starfire insisted on training together and having Raven teach her proper meditation. It meant that Raven had developed a sort of defence against being completely overwhelmed by her teammate's emotions, but that Starfire could still cushion her from the emotions of others. For now, while she struggled to figure out what they should do next, it was a welcome thing.

The image switched.

Raven recognised Pantha instantly. The lithe felinoid was backed up against a brick wall, snarling. Around her, a phalanx of thugs bearing Mohawks and one or two baseball bats advanced in an ever-tightening knot. Their excessive body-piercings glinted in the maggoty glow of a streetlight, and all at once Raven was struck by just how much the scene resembled the cliché B-movies Beast Boy liked to watch.

However, unlike those screaming victims, Pantha did not so much as utter a sound. Instead, she bunched digigrade legs under her and sprang over the thugs' heads for the lamppost. It was an impossible jump, but somehow she managed it, swinging up and over like a practised gymnast. The precision of her movement was such that Raven had to wonder whether it was instinct or acrobatic training, but again, she knew nothing about this contender save what little spiel the Master now reeled off.

"Pantha. A dervish of raw animalism and extraordinary strength just waiting to strike."

Well, that was illuminating. Not.

The Pantha on screen took only a moment to steady herself on top of the street light. The movement, though small, was filled with a kind of meticulousness not found in any wild creature. Then she lunged from it, caught by the magic freeze-frame between post and floor. Though it was only a projected picture, Raven noted the light in her eyes with some concern. Somehow she did not have to think what had happened after the camera stopped rolling.

The only question being, just how far is she willing to go in a fight?

She cast her eyes sideways, picking out Pantha's huddled form. Pantha was alternating her stare between the ceiling and the Master, but stopped when Raven glanced her way. Her top lip rippled, revealing needle teeth, far sharper and whiter than teeth had any right to be.

Raven didn't need psychic abilities to understand the thought that went with that look.

Pantha didn't like to be watched.

The image changed yet again. The glass girl, the one called Prysm, flashed into being above their heads. She wore a smile this time, and although it was quite ridiculous, she sat in a grassy meadow dotted with wildflowers and stroking a small yellow dragon on her lap. In the distance the unmistakable bulk of a castle rose up, but it was not like any castle Raven had ever visited. It looked like those found in storybooks for very young children, replete with pink marble, gleaming stucco and ludicrously slender turrets.

The image froze bare seconds after it had begun. There was no action sequence, no demonstration of powers, just this simple scene. And yet, of all the introductions, this one sparked the most questions in Raven's mind. There was a story behind it that she could not begin to guess at, and she slid her eyes toward the glass girl with renewed interest.

Prysm was entranced. She lifted a hand toward the ceiling, like she could pluck the scene out of the air. Her face was turned away from Raven, but there was no mistaking the gesture from so open an aura. That image was a place out of time – something past that was deeply missed.

The Master began speaking again, whipping it away, and the hand fell.

For some reason, Raven felt her anger redouble at the cruelty of that act, unintentional or not, and she devoted a moment to keeping it in check.

The crack in the archway got bigger.

"Prysm. Able to capture and reflect light in a variety of ways, including deadly laser beams."

Light. It figured, given the illuminative energy coursing inside of her. Still, lasers were nothing to take lightly. Raven stored the information away where it could be called on later if needed.

Terra was next. The Master had chosen her first meeting with the Titans, when she had attacked and destroyed a giant scorpion just outside of Jump City. The image was graphic, but cut away at the splattery point of impact.

Terra griped loudly, covering her unrest with bravado, as was her habit. "Aw, man, you could've at least tried to get my best side, monkey-boy. I look like a reject orc from that angle."

"Terra," the Master said, ignoring her. "A geokinetic with the power to move mountains and make the very earth obey her every command."

Scene change. The last contender hove into view.

Raven blinked. Now this was someone she recognised. Not that she wanted to, of course.

"Flamebird," intoned the Master. "An exceptional athlete, whose martial arts skills are only surpassed by the technological prowess of her weaponry."

"Raven…" Starfire sounded unsure of herself, as though she wanted to be angry but couldn't find the energy for it. "Is that not the girl in the photographs Robin received?"

Raven grunted. "Yes, that's her."

Flamebird – resident heroine of Los Angeles and bona fide Robin fan. Raven watched with some annoyance, as a semi-familiar figure in red leotard and matching boots swung from skyscraper to skyscraper. She used grappling lines like a modern day Tarzan, just like Robin.

Flamebird's costume was anything but subtle, despite the fabric covering half her face. Waves of blonde hair spewed over the top of her headgear, and she stood out against the dull brick and glass structures like a butterfly in a room of mirrors. A cape fashioned from some bright yellow fabric flowed behind her, giving the impression of giant wings that beat the air whenever she changed direction. On her face sat a pair of neon orange goggles, disguising her eye colour and completing the fiery motif.

It was not that Raven had met Flamebird before that made her familiar. Neither was it the newspaper articles devoted to L.A.'s newest costumed crimefighter. Rather, Raven recognised her from the multitude of photographs that had made their way to Titans Tower in the past few months, alongside countless fan-letters addressed to Robin. Each letter had been carefully packaged in specially made envelopes. Envelopes emblazoned with his colour scheme. And at the corner of every page was a yellow R in a black circle.

For a long time Flamebird had over and over again professed herself to be Robin's 'biggest fan'. The letters were an extension of this devotion, detailing extremes and boundaries rarely acknowledged by the casual reader of a newspaper. Eventually they spilled over into accounts of how she had modelled her own superhero career after him.

The Titans had written her off as just another nutball, like all the other similar nutballs who sent them fan mail. That is, until Cyborg caught the end of a CNN editorial about how she'd busted up a drugs ring in downtown L.A. – one that had ties to the Mafia, no less.

The fan-letters trickled to a halt after that, the last few filled with apologies for superheroing taking up all her writing time, but Flamebird still made a point of thanking 'that cute Boy Wonder' whenever she was interviewed. Which was a lot. After all, she was a very photogenic superheroine.

Robin viewed the whole thing as mildly irritating. It was much easier to ignore romantic attentions when you could just file away letters instead of talking to people, but the sheer volume of Flamebird's meant his filing system bulged considerably – especially the 'F' folder.

For a while, Starfire had been livid with the thought that Flamebird might 'pull a Kitten' and turn up looking for a date. Yet Flamebird had remained in L.A., and eventually even Starfire ceased to think of her as anything more than a likeminded superhero whose exploits she could admire, but would rather not meet in person, thanks all the same.

The Master had put paid to that idea.

The ceiling flickered, light dying, and reverted to normal glass. Raven looked down, blinking away bright afterimages.

"These are the gathered. These are the invited. You eight have been chosen. Do you accept the challenge?" The Master looked at them with eyes that seemed too intelligent for his body and shaggy, ape-like face.

"You do realise we're not a bunch of hyper-competitive males with levels of testosterone that make us want to beat the snot out of each other just because of some trophy, don't you?" Terra folded her arms, chin bouncing with every chew.

"Who says only men can be competitive?" A figure strode forward and cracked her knuckles. Red leotard. Red boots. Fiery wing motif. Flamebird grinned, leaning to one side in such a way as emphasised her hips. She'd obviously had a lot of practise posing for photographers. "Personally, the idea of going up against a Teen Titan or two gives me that good ol' keyed up feeling. I mean, how often does a chance like that come along? So how about it, noob? Fancy going a few rounds?" She fell into a boxer's stance and threw a few shadow punches.

Terra's expression wavered between intrigued and furious. Though she had been working as a full Titan for several months now, newspapers still referred to her as the 'newbie' or 'noob'. She'd confided to Raven more than once that it irked her, because it made her feel like she wasn't being taken seriously, despite all her hard work.

"Flamebird. You're the squealy über-fan whose picture Robin likes to throw darts at, right?"

"He throws darts at my picture?"

"No, but you call me noob again and I'll pass the idea along next time I see him." Terra's smile showed her gums. "You sure you could handle taking me on in a fight, pretty girl?"

"I'm sure I could handle myself." Another shadow punch.

Though she hated to, Raven had to admit that Flamebird's form was good. Her stance bespoke much training, and though her costume was garish it couldn't hide a well-toned musculature.

The Master smiled. "Two competitors have accepted the challenge. Shall there be others to match their fortitude?"

"Hey, buddy," Terra began to protest, "I never said I was going to - "

"The Teen Titans accept," Raven cut in. She threw Starfire and Terra a look that said 'don't argue'. "All of us. We all accept."

Starfire blinked, but clearly trusted Raven's judgment enough to nod. Terra grumbled, toeing the ground, but did likewise.

"Four competitors!" The Master sounded gleeful. "And what of the remaining four? Who shall stay, and who shall cower and leave?"

"We don't cower from nobody," Argent asserted, folding her arms – quite difficult, since Prysm was clinging onto one. "Me and Prysm accept."

Prysm opened her mouth, but shut it again without a word.

Two competitors left. The group turned to regard them.

Jinx had stayed out of proceedings thus far. Had her little introductory movie not been shown, she might have gone unnoticed in the general throng of colour, but now it was her silence that drew attention.

She leaned against a pillar, eyes closed. Her hands were linked behind her head, the sole of one foot pressed against the marble. Her breathing was so even that one had to wonder whether events had bored her so much she had fallen asleep.

Raven felt her lip curling involuntarily. Jinx, while not quite the mortal enemy the media would have the public believe, was definitely on her Least Liked People list. From the first time they met in battle outside the Pizzeria, to the undersized crimes since, Jinx somehow always managed to press Raven's buttons – an uncanny and an unwelcome knack. Perhaps it was the slapdash way she treated her opponents, or her continued contempt of the Titans, despite being beaten by them time and again. Perhaps it was her outright refusal of decency. Perhaps it was because fighting her invariably brought out something in Raven, something angry that made her dangerous to both teammates and enemies alike.

Perhaps it was just the grating sound her of her voice.

Whatever it was, she rankled, and Raven had to wonder just how she'd come to be invited to a tournament meant for heroines. Azarath knew, it wasn't because she went out of her way to fetch cats from trees and help old ladies across the street.

"I accept," Jinx said quietly – minimally, without opening her eyes. She added nothing else, and all eyes moved to the last invitee in quick succession.

Pantha was still in her huddle, growling softly. She repeated what was fast becoming her mantra. "I don't like to be watched."

"Yeah, yeah, we get it. Change the record, huh?" Argent rolled her eyes. "You in or out, pussycat?"

Pantha's eyes blazed. Her growl escalated to a throaty noise caught somewhere between a yowl and a roar.

Argent took a step back, and then blustered, "Jeez Louise. Someone needs to take a chill pill."

Unexpectedly, the growl ceased. It was replaced by a mumbling so soft they each had to strain to hear it. "Always fighting," Pantha muttered, something bitter hidden in her voice. "Never left in peace. Got claws, gotta use 'em. Can't just leave 'em alone, can they? No, gotta make 'em work for their keep. Gotta, gotta, gotta …" She looked up, gaze ignoring the girls and fixing on the Master. "If I win, will I get to fight you?"

The Master gave an uneasy smile. "The game is never over."

Pantha nodded. Then she stood up. She was over six feet tall – something that had not shown up on the video footage – and bounced on broad feet tipped with unnervingly jagged claws. Solid feet. Feet that could bear up against an unthinking onrush. Her entire bearing, even at rest, denoted thinly veiled power and ferocity.

She stepped forward.

Argent and Prysm, the closest, took another step back.

"I get to rip your lungs out through your eyes? Then I accept." There was no pleasure to her words, only a coldness Raven recognised as that of a workman discussing how to best approach a job. Her expression, though tempered by her feline features, was remote, but dark embers burned deep in her eyes.

The Master beamed and spread his arms wide. "The challenge is accepted. Ready yourselves, young warriors, while I prepare to begin this, the most illustrious of contests."

"You gonna talk all day, or are you gonna get to preparing?" Terra asked.

The Master did not reply, but there was a strained edge to his smile. He glowed with the same signature they had when they arrived, and winked out. He had teleported himself someplace unknown, and there was silence in the moments immediately after.

Flamebird broke it. "That's a nifty trick."

"Meh, you get used to it." Terra shrugged. "Raven teleports all the time. It's no big deal – glurkurghurgahgahargh!"

Raven dragged her by the collar to the other side of the chamber. Starfire followed, glancing behind at Flamebird. Flamebird eventually moved off to engage Argent and Prysm. Raven was almost certain she heard the words 'weird' and 'overworked' feature in the dialogue that followed, but was too preoccupied to take much notice.

She released Terra when they were a good distance from the rest of the crowd.

Terra rubbed at her throat, tugging the collar down a little from where it had cut into her skin. "Ouchie. And that was for…?"

"Why not just tell them everything about us in one go? I'm sure they'd love to know our abilities, strengths and weaknesses. Especially if we're going to be fighting them soon."

"Uh, Raven, we're the celebrities in this little group. I know it's not your usual reading material, but Time Magazine just printed that big feature on us. Plus there's all that stuff the papers printed when Robin went 'bad', and again when I joined up. And that's not even mentioning all the message boards on the Internet." Terra shook her head. "Those people are scary. Well-informed, but scary. I think those guys over there," she gestured to the milling knot of girls, "knowing our abilities is a moot point – especially if that Firebird chick is as big a fan as you say she is." Terra had seen the tail end of Firebird's letters, and been shown the swollen folders when she asked why a groan went up when the mailman delivered one of those distinctive envelopes.

"She's a Robin fan," Raven replied, "not a Teen Titans fan. There's a difference."

"Uh … huh." Terra didn't look convinced. Ruefully, she massaged her neck. "Even so, overkill much? If we're going head to head with these guys, I think choking the life out of me is a bad idea. But, y'know, that's just me. Little old biased party."

Raven grunted, tugging at the edges of her hood. It had been raised since they arrived, but it was a habit she'd never really grown out of. "I barely touched you. Stop being a baby."

Starfire reached out a hand as if to touch Raven's, then thought better of it. She looked between her teammates, then at the floor, then back at them again.

Raven half expected her to make some comment about friends not fighting. She was mildly surprised when instead Starfire said quietly, "On Tamaran there is a traditional rite of passage called the Klorbek. When a Tamaranian comes of age, they are expected to journey to the Arena and engage in combat with others of their sun-cycle. Those who emerge victorious from this combat are exalted, and have great feasts of houchi and freik, or even jinstra held in their honour. These feasts can last until long after the suns have set and the third moon has risen, and many families celebrate the new adulthood of a Ghochui. I… have not been able to discover a direct translation of this word into any language of Earth, but I believe the closest is 'true blood'." She fumbled, trying to explain. "In my time here I have discovered that Earth is a planet with much warfare and bloodshed in its history, much like Tamaran. But its people do not share the liking of battle that Tamaranians hold so precious. I myself was considered a 'peculiarity' on my planet, for I did not… I believe the phrase is 'sing lyrically of the polish'?"

"Wax lyrical," Raven corrected.

"Many thanks. I did not wax the lyrical of battle, as did others of my sun-cycle. Many were the times my sister attempted to teach me the beauty of conflict, but… I confess, though I trained and diligently learned the ways of my people, I never truly came to understanding of proper battle-love." She looked down. "I left Tamaran before the Klorbek of my sun-cycle. This 'Tournament' the Master of Games suggests is very like the Klorbek of my home. On any other occasion I would be joyous to replicate the customs of my people so, but at this point in time I am confused as to your decision to engage us in this combat, Raven. Would our time not be better spent at home, conducting further searches for our missing friends?"

Terra nodded. "Um, yeah. What she said. Only without the whole gore-block thing."

"Klorbek."

"That too."

Raven said nothing. She opened her sixth sense, feeling for the mental signatures of the five other girls in the room, familiarising herself with them. When she was certain the three Titans were not being paid more mind than was comfortable, nor about to be approached, she returned to her own head and streamlined her thoughts into a coherent whole. "I think Robin, Cyborg and Beast Boy are here. Or have been here recently."

"You do?" Starfire's aura brightened visibly. In the six days since the boys' disappearance, and the continued failure to locate them, she had become increasingly despondent, her aura darkening with each passing day. Now it returned to a degree of its former glory.

Raven winced, upped her psychic shielding a notch. Then she nodded.

"Um, not to rain your parade or anything, but… how?" Terra looked around, movements infused with urgency. "Can you sense their minds somewhere in this crazy place?"

Just as well as any other Titan, Raven knew of the feelings blossoming between Beast Boy and their newest recruit. She neither condoned nor condemned the change in team dynamics, merely observed with the same detachment she did everything of that nature. It did no good to dwell on something she could neither predict nor alter. Even so, the significance behind the sudden change in Terra's aura was not lost on her.

"Not exactly. I caught a whiff of their psychometric signatures just now, but I'd have to do a full-scale reading to be sure. And frankly, I'd rather not have that rabble around when I do it."

Terra looked blank. "Psycho-whosit-what-what? Don't get me wrong, I'm happy as a clam if you can track down BB and the others. But I have absolutely no idea what you just said."

"Psychometry."

"Ummm… nope, still drawing a blank."

"I believe that Raven is speaking of some feature of her psychic abilities," Starfire said tentatively. "Is that correct, Raven?"

Raven sighed and counted to ten in her head. One, two, three, four…not working. Going to break something… "Azarath. Metrion. Zinthos," she murmured instead. "Azarath, Metrion. Zinthos." It seemed to do the trick, and she said a little louder, "Psychometry is the technique of sensing or 'reading' the history of objects and places. It's not one of my primary abilities, so I'm not especially practised at it, and I rarely have cause to use it, but since the boys' spiritual signatures are so familiar it makes traces of them easier to pick up on."

"So … what? You're saying that this Master dude has them stashed away someplace?" Something dangerous flashed into Terra's eyes, though her customary half-grin stayed in place.

It was when she saw looks like that that Raven wondered a little about Terra. After the chaos of her introduction and the events that followed her formal offer to join that Titans, she had never given them any real reason to doubt her. She was a loyal and true friend, and more than once she had put herself in very real danger to keep them out of it.

Still, there was so much about her that Raven didn't quite understand: The unvarying optimism, the courage that she would prevail no matter what. There was a potential in Terra that Raven recognised in herself. It was a potential for ruthlessness, for violence. There was also potential for great good, but good was not necessarily an absence of bad. It was there in all people, but showed up more in some than others. In Terra it shone like a beacon, a soap bubble just waiting to pop.

Maybe it was this similarity with herself that made Raven not want to pursue the oddness in Terra – that incongruity of spirit that made her feel like not all jigsaw pieces were present and accounted for. Or maybe it was just that Terra was a genuinely likeable person, and Raven didn't want to spoil whatever friendship they had with groundless suspicion.

Maybe.

"I'm not sure. Like I said, I'm not the world's greatest psychomatrist. I'd have to meditate for a while – focus my mind to get a proper sense of what's going on here." Raven's brows knitted beneath the shadows of her hood. "Whatever it is, I doubt it's anything good. We don't exactly have the greatest track record for attracting positive phenomena."

Terra raised her eyebrows. "Excuse me? Did I just hear the illustrious Raven actually admit that she's less than perfect at something? Saints alive, the apocalypse must be nigh."

"I never claimed to be perfect at anything," Raven snapped, annoyed at the trivial change in subject. She had come to accept that Terra talked of inconsequential things when she was anxious. It was something a lot of people did. Still, knowing about it didn't make it any less irritating.

"Maybe not. But you are a perfectionist." Terra shrugged. "Which is practically the same thing."

"No it's… Do you even know what a dictionary is?"

"Sure I do. It's the thing you use as a doorstop when you can't find the real one."

Azarath. Metrion. Zinthos. Azarath. Metrion. Zinthos… Raven closed her eyes and repeated the usually calming words with a zealousness that all but cancelled their soothing effect. Exasperation carved taut niches under her cheekbones. She tried very hard not to let her temper get the better of her.

"Still the same old routine, eh Raven?" said a voice that sounded like silk tearing on thorns.

Raven whirled, admonishing herself for letting her emotions cloud her senses. The speaker had approached without her noticing, thanks to a combination of her increased mental shielding and Terra's infuriating effect.

Jinx smirked. "Long time no see."

A scowl set up shop on Raven's brow. "Not long enough."

If the response affected Jinx then she didn't show it. She tipped her head to one side like a cat on a windowsill, watching raindrops trickle down the pane. "I won't say it's always a pleasure, because quite honestly it's not. Still, it's amusing to watch you try to keep that famous temper in check. If nothing else, I can count on that pitiful little display for a laugh or two."

Raven felt Starfire move closer, as if trying to defend her from the barbs with her body. "Jinx, we would greatly appreciate it if you did not voice such unfriendly sentiments towards us."

Jinx laughed humourlessly. "Oh, now why on Earth would I be unfriendly to the famous Teen Titans? Even if you do seem to be missing half your team this time." She looked at Terra. "And picking up strays off the street, too. Standards certainly have dropped since the last time we met. By the way, when was that?" She tapped her chin. "Oh, yes. When you smashed me into a telegraph pole and handed my unconscious body to the police. And before that I seem to recall you collapsing part of a building on me. And the time before that you wrapped me in a steel girder and left me on the steps of the Flamingo Hotel – where, I might add, there was a police officers' ball in progress. No, I'm sure I don't know why I'd have any reason to be unfriendly to you after those minor episodes."

"Forgive me, but each of those meetings occurred because you did not wish to adhere to the law," Starfire reminded her. "As upholders of justice, we did nothing more than - "

"Piffle." Jinx raised her arms above her head and stretched, standing on tiptoes. She was less than a head taller than Raven, who found herself drawing her own body up, as if competing with her.

Terra stepped into rough formation with Raven and Starfire, forming an uneven phalanx against the known enemy.

For her part, Jinx did not seem bothered by the hostilities. She finished stretching and ran her fingers through one pigtail, tucking a few stray hairs back into place. "Am I supposed to be scared now? Ooh, the big bad Titan trio are angry with me. I'm shaking in my stylish little booties – really I am."

"Jinx, right? I've heard all about you. Quite the interesting file you've got," said Terra, exchanging a look with Raven that meant 'please calm down, I don't know how to deal with you when you have a tantrum'.

Raven realised that her cloak had started to float upwards. She yanked it back down, fixing Jinx with a cool stare.

"I've heard a few things about you, too, noob." Jinx started on the other pigtail, fingers catching in a knot of tangled hair. "Can't say I was very impressed, though. How you got inducted into their ranks astounds me, considering your track record with heroics and collateral damage. Not that I'm especially fond of to the Titans, but come on – recruiting someone who could accidentally collapse your funky little tower on you? Makes you wonder if someone was adding inappropriate stuff to the burritos that day."

Terra smiled in that brightly forced way that wasn't really all that cheerful. "See this foot?" she said, pointing to her left boot. "It comes from a little town called Pink Witch's Butt, and it's getting homesick."

"I'm trembling inside. Really."

"Jinx." Raven kept her voice level. "I'd advise you to leave us alone, or else this Tournament will be starting early." To emphasise, she allowed her hands to crackle with obsidian energy.

Jinx actually smiled at the idea. "Bring it," she replied, falling into a defensive posture. "You know how I simply love these little tête-à-têtes of ours, Raven."

"Tête-à-têtes?" Starfire, never one to hide her innocence, frowned at the unknown word.

"That would be a little thing called sarcasm." Jinx did not take her eyes from Raven, though Terra's hands also began to glow. "I know you were absent the day they ran Mockery 101, super-ditz, but at least try to keep up."

The black energy travelled up Raven's wrists. "What are you even doing here, Jinx? Last I checked, you hadn't signed the petition for Truth and Justice. How did you qualify for a Tournament of Heroines?"

"I am a heroine."

Terra snorted.

"Hey there, Damage Patrol; up until recently you weren't exactly qualified for the title, either. Mudslides, earthquakes, smashing up most of what you came across with big frikkin' rocks? Oh yeah, very heroic. Remind me never to get myself rescued by you. I can't afford the hospital bills."

Terra scowled. There had been several people who crawled out of the woodwork after the press conference called to announce her recruitment into the Titans – people she'd come into contact with when control over her powers had still been at a minimum. A woman in Dakota City, especially, had revelled in the media attention, telling the story of how a young girl had tried to lift a buckled crane off a couple of kids and submerged an entire construction site under seventeen feet of earth in the process. Though nobody had been seriously hurt in any of the reported incidents, emphasis always rested on how much money the damages had cost, and how the mysterious girl fitting Terra's description had always vanished without trace when things went wrong.

"At least I was trying to help."

"And we all know how good intentions count more than the thousands of taxpayers' dollars shelled out in the wake of your brand of 'help'." Jinx slid her eyes sideways, smirking.

Terra opened her mouth. Then she closed it again. Leaning towards Raven, she hissed, "Damn. You're right. I've only known her five minutes and already I want to clean her clock."

There was milling in the background. The other girls were taking an interest in the face-off.

"You shouldn't be here, Jinx," Raven said flatly.

"Says who?"

"Says the definition of 'heroine'."

Jinx sniffed. "I can be a heroine just as much as you." Then her smile returned, worming its way over her face like whorls of smoke. "For the right price, of course."

"You exchange the wealth of metal disks for good deeds?" Starfire sounded aghast. "That is most … not heroic."

"And she of the pitiful vocabulary strikes again." Jinx cast a glance over her shoulder, taking in the eyes watching them. "It seems we have an audience. How nice. Take one more step, people, and you'll be crawling onto the battlefield on broken legs."

A feral growl sounded. It could only have come from Pantha. Raven broke off staring at Jinx to see the lithe feline form stalk back and forth behind the crowd like some caged beast.

Despite her threats, Raven had no intention of starting a fight now. However, with personalities like Pantha and Jinx around, the situation had every possibility of developing into violence. She opened her mouth to at least attempt to defuse things.

"I'm sure HIVE would love to hear that kind of mercenary attitude from one of their operatives," Terra said first, unable to resist a jab. "Selling out to the other side if they offer you enough moolah? For shame, Jinxie, for shame."

At once, Jinx's eyes blazed. Her head snapped around as if attached to a piece of elastic, and she spat, "Yeah? Well, I wouldn't have to sell myself short doing namby pamby good deeds if HIVE was still looking out for me. But they're not, so I do what I have to in order to survive. You Titans, with your tower and your gadgets and your public approval ratings. You can afford to be sanctimonious with the rest of the world, but some of us don't have that option. Ideology only works if you've got the means to live first, so don't talk to me about selling out, you bunch of hypocrites."

"I see." Raven's voice stayed at a careful monotone. "You spend years professing to be a bad guy, compounding this declaration with criminal deeds a' plenty – including constantly trying to wipe us off the face of the planet in many vicious, creative, and often sadistic ways – only to turn around saying you're a heroine. And we're the hypocrites?"

"Bad girl, please." Jinx shrugged, but her eyes still smouldered. Try as she might, Raven could not quite block out the intense wave of bitterness that flowed from her. "I'm a free agent now. I work for the highest bidder, and I don't much care what the job is so long as I get paid. Call it …" She paused, obviously searching for the right words. "Call it economic heroism."

"You have a strange sense of heroism if that's what you class it as."

"He seems to think I meet the criteria." Jinx nodded her head to where the Master had been standing.

"I don't. We don't."

Terra and Starfire nodded their agreement.

"And, of course, the world should bow down to the opinions of the great and eminent Teen Titans." Jinx threw up her hands. A splinter of energy try to leap off Raven's palms for it. "All hail those who live in the giant T – the pubescents who can never, and are never wrong in whatever they do. Why don't we build a temple to worship them in while we're at it?"

Raven could feel her anger mounting. Jinx was impossible to talk to, which was why most of their conversations were short and ended in fisticuffs, followed by either an ignoble getaway from her, or a handover to the police from them.

It might also have been why they hadn't known that she was no longer a part of HIVE – provided that little titbit was truth, of course.

None of the Titans had ever assumed that Jinx, Gizmo and Mammoth always worked together. Many were the times they'd run across Gizmo or Jinx flying solo, and though meetings were Mammoth were less frequent, they had yet to see him alongside the other two components of Attack Pattern Alpha.

Thinking about it, Raven found herself wondering whether the evidence from their skirmishes with the three supported Jinx's claim that she now worked on her own, outside of HIVE's influence. Gizmo in particular had been conducting little more than childish pranks recently, and the last time they ran into Jinx had been when she broke into the Jump City Museum, ignoring the gold and precious jewels in the Egyptian Exhibit in favour of a single piece of papyrus, recently auctioned and situated in the most well guarded part of the building.

The papyrus was valuable only as a collectors' item, since its contents were nothing more than information concerning an unknown prince's mummification. Several buyers had expressed interest while it was on display in the museum – mostly millionaires whose private collections rivalled museums and galleries the world over. One of them kept trying to purchase it behind the backs of all other candidates, until he was outbid by a substantial amount. Robin later told the Titans that this particular buyer had a reputation in the richissime crowd for being underhand, though they didn't question when he cited the source of this information as private.

Jinx had been quite insistent on retrieving that particular piece above all others, until the Titans arrived and put a stop to her thievery. Now Raven began to wonder whether Jinx had been in the employ of the defeated buyer. She was mildly surprised Robin had not broached such an idea before her, but supposed it was because none of them had ever thought to question Jinx's connection with HIVE.

The swell of bitterness Raven had sensed was indicative of sincerity when Jinx said she was a free agent, but still … she just couldn't bring herself to trust Jinx to any degree. There was too much history there. This was, after all, one of the people who had tried to drown Robin in a sewer the first time she met the Titans, as well as take over the Tower that same afternoon and casually invade the inner sanctum that was Raven's room. And as Beast Boy and Cyborg well knew, Raven's room was a place of privacy for a reason.

So, rather than bruise her brain with the witch when they had more important matters to think about – namely, finding their missing teammates – Raven turned on her heel and walked away from the confrontation as calmly as she could. "This conversation is over."

"Who said you get to decide when we're done, Titan?" Jinx's voice had lost its anger in favour of a delicate edge – one with the promise of pain. The air fairly sang with it, and Raven paused to look over her shoulder.

"Was that a threat?"

Jinx smirked. "No. It was a promise. Here in this tournament, it's one on one, no holds barred."

"The Master never - " Terra began.

"The Master never said it wasn't. What, you think he's going to just blow a whistle and we'll all start shooting at each other? Grow a brain, noob. He's gone to set up battlefields – plural. And since there's only going to be one winner, there can only be one on one matches. You Titans will have to face me on your own, and we all know what happens when you don't have your teammates to back you up, don't we? That well-oiled machine of yours comes to a grinding halt. And when it does, I'll be there with my trusty mallet to smash it up into scrap metal. I feel some well-deserved payback coming on." The smirk widened into a Cheshire Cat grin. "Why else do you think I'm sticking around?"

"Um, because you are as unable to transport yourself home as we are?" Starfire suggested.

"Every empire has a weak point. You just have to find it to make the whole thing fall. If this place has a way out, I could find it. I just don't want to. Yet." Jinx slapped her hands together and rubbed them like a caricature of a cartoon villain. "This tournament deal sounds like fun. I plan to enjoy myself before I vamoose."

Raven sniffed at the statement, turning away from Jinx's smug face. "Whatever happens, whoever you face, make sure you win," she hissed, so low only Starfire and Terra, the closest, could hear her. "We need to find the boys, and we need to stick together to do it."

"Raven - " Terra began, but a flash of light cut her off.

It blinded, and then the Master of Games was among them again. "It is done," he said loudly, raising his arms like he'd never left. "The combat zones are arranged and the match-ups picked. Let the Tournament of Heroines…" he paused, grinning fangs "… begin!"

---

Robin entered the Tower's main room to find Beast Boy sprawled on the couch and Cyborg with half his arm in the computer.

"No luck?"

"Nada." Beast Boy shook his head. He was in one of those impossible positions that only he could manage and still look entirely comfortable. Had Robin not been so used to such sights, he might have winced. BB's spine was going to hate him when he was older. "You'd think us being, y'know, MIA would stop them from going on a mall crawl."

"When was the last time Raven voluntarily went on a mall crawl?"

"Uh… okay, point taken. But still, I was kinda looking forward to the whole triumphant return thing. Or at least a 'we missed you', or 'we were worried', not an empty Tower with no girls in sight. A guy can get a complex from being ignored that way."

"Cyborg." Robin moved to where the other boy was hooking into the extensive Titans mainframe. He was still affixing wires, indicating he hadn't been back from his sweep of the Tower for long. "Any luck?"

"I'm being ignored again," Beast Boy warbled.

Cyborg didn't even look up. "Can it, BB. Not so much as a wisp of hair, Rob. Gotta admit, I'm with the little guy on this one. We go AWOL from a card game in a flash of blinding light, and they just go out? We obviously mean a lot to them."

Robin folded his arms and closed his eyes in thought. "They may just be on patrol. Who knows what might have come up while we were away? It has been - " he paused, reached for his communicator and flipped it open, "- thirty-six hours since we left. That's a day and a half. And we all know how much can happen around here in just a day and a half."

"Well, the city's still standing, birds are singing, bees are buzzing, and CNN isn't talking about the impending apocalypse, so I guess that rules that out." With a gentleness that belied his huge frame, Cyborg attached a small node to the output socket at the tip of his index finger. It beeped, and he took a moment to tap a multi-digit code into the touch-pad in his bicep.

Robin nodded. "Or, they could be out searching for us."

"Liking that idea better," Beast Boy put in, leaning over the back of couch and letting his arms dangle. "Shows concern for our well-being. All except for one thing – the communicator conundrum."

"Which is why I'm logging into the system to find out why we can't get through to them." Cyborg used a voice that bespoke talking to a very young, and rather slow child.

Beast Boy frowned. However, as usual, the expression didn't last long. He turned over and balanced on his shoulder blades, looking at them upside down before announcing, "I'm hungry."

"You bring anything remotely like tofu near me and I'll reroute the toaster to shock you every time you go past," Cyborg warned.

"Party pooper." Vaulting the couch instead of going around it, Beast Boy hastened to the kitchen and busied himself with opening cupboards, moving crockery and generally making a noise.

Robin might have chastised him for not paying attention to an increasingly disturbing situation, but he knew that this was the way Beast Boy dealt with anxiety. To wit – he did his best to ignore it. Food was often the best way he could think of to block out unpleasant thoughts. The activity thence said that their arrival back from the Master of Games's pocket dimension to an apparently abandoned Titans Tower was bothering him more than he let on.

Robin had to admit, the absence of the girls troubled him, too. He could think of many reasons why they would not be at the Tower, but the failure to reach Raven, Starfire or Terra on their communicators did not factor into any of them. They all kept their com-links on them every hour of every day, even when they were sleeping. It was something he insisted on, and as their leader they adhered to his ruling – especially when it made so much sense to their screwball lifestyles.

He had beeped Cyborg and Beast Boy's coms just to be sure, and then sought out the spare handsets in case travelling between dimensions had affected theirs. All of them were in perfect working order, but none had been able to reach the girls'. Even Cyborg's inbuilt amplifier made no dent in the wall of silence. A thorough sweep of the Tower itself had turned up nothing, save the fact that wherever they were the girls had their com-links with them.

It was creepy, in a worrisome sort of way. The place had all the marks of being suddenly and abruptly vacated. A mug of cooling herbal tea sat on the floor beside the couch, and the keys to the T-Car were gone from their hook. Robin felt like he had walked into the Mary Celeste.

"Hey!"

Both he and Cyborg turned to the kitchen area. "What?"

Beast Boy made a face and held up a grey lump of something that might have been a fish-weasel hybrid before it died under the wheels of a very large truck. "Either of you guys recognise this?"

"Why have the words 'Starfire' and 'cooking' suddenly popped into my head?" Cyborg mirrored the grimace.

Robin recognised it. Starfire had tried to feed it to him once before, right after his time as Slade's apprentice, when he had taken to brooding on the roof or locking himself in the gym to train incessantly. It was his way of venting his frustration for letting Slade get away after what he'd done, and eventually he would have gotten all of it out of his system on his own.

However, Starfire had viewed the process as unhealthy. While on his way to the roof one day she had cornered him, bringing him to the kitchen amongst many protests. She had then explained in great detail that this traditional Tamaranian food, known as kitchie-koo, was eaten to relieve stress and fretfulness. As far as he could understand, it worked much the same way as Sad Pudding, in that the horrendous taste was supposed to give the eater something other than his or her own problems to focus on. It also used a selection of naturally occurring chemicals to fortify their resolve not to let things bother them. The only thing that made the two different was time needed to set and amount of ingredients involved.

He related this memory, adding, "But she was real insistent that it doesn't keep for long out of cool conditions. Something about the mildew turning sour if it's left in the warm."

Beast Boy's eyes went wide. "I'm holding mould? Eew!" He dropped the half-prepared food like it had bitten him.

"Hey, man, I've seen the state of your laundry. The amount of mould on your socks, you ain't got no reason to say you can't handle it," said Cyborg, not even raising his head as he slotted the last wire into place on his arm. The blue conduits in his structure lit up, as his internal pathways logged on and melded with the Tower's CPU. He fell silent, processing.

Robin waited.

Beast Boy went back to preparing his food, leaving Starfire's ill-fated cuisine on the chopping board where it had fallen. "You know," he said as he worked, "this is an encouraging sign. If this coochie-coo stuff does what you say it does, Robin, then Starfire must have been really worried about us."

"Kitchie-coo," Robin corrected. "And who's to say they were worried about us? There could have been some other gigantic problem they were dealing with that called for that kind of food."

"Gee, rain on my parade, why doncha?"

"Uh, guys…" Cyborg's voice snagged their attentions. He was frowning, an LED in his head blinking erratically. "What day is it?"

"Huh? You're the one with the inner-chronometer, dude." Beast Boy leaned forward, elbows on the counter, frowning. "You tell us."

"Just humour me, BB."

"Thursday," Robin informed them. "Why?"

"Thought so. That's what my chronometer says."

"So what's the big deal, dude? Ugh - " The block of tofu in Beast Boy's hand had started to absorb his fingertips. He looked for a fresh chopping board to put it on.

"The deal is that according to the Tower's systems, it's Tuesday. As in after the Thursday it's supposed to be."

"You mean the system's gone wrong?" Robin raised his face to the ceiling. "Oh, perfect. Just what we needed. Not only do we have to recap on what's happened since we left, but we have to reconfigure everything, too."

"That's what I thought, but cross-checking exterior sources tells me the entire city also says it's Tuesday. There are logs for each of the days in between, too. Detailed logs, all written by different people, and my systems can't detect any signs of malfunctioning or tampering anywhere. Guys," Cyborg's voice was serious, "if this data's accurate - "

"Then that means we've been gone for six days, not thirty-six hours." Robin came over to inspect the information, tapping a few keys and examining what showed up. He scanned the lines of meaningless code, translating it in his mind without real thought to what he was doing. Long hours spent tracking criminals by poring over similar codes had resulted in skills that, though they couldn't compete with Cyborg's systems, could decipher faster than the average programmer.

"Um, share the love, people?" Beast Boy waved a tofu-covered hand in the air. "Can the one who doesn't dream in HTML have a reason for the serious looks, please?"

"Well, unless the entire city – hang on, checking international regulators. Unless the world was struck by a virus that sent all clocks careening forward – which is highly unlikely, given what I'm seeing – we really have been gone six days." Cyborg's frown deepened. Metal plating rubbed against skin, his brows knitting tight.

Robin stroked his chin. "I suppose … it's possible that time moved differently in the dimension the Master of Games took us to. I'm not exactly an expert in inter-dimensional travel, but if time travel is a possibility, then manipulation of time-rate should be doable …"

"Give me some time to run through other options, maybe call in a few classified whosits. But based on what I'm seeing, that scenario looks the most probable," said Cyborg. "My systems indicate that if that were the case, time in that dimension moves at least four times slower than it does here on Earth." His human eye ticked over to Robin. "No wonder Starfire made that food of hers. As far as they knew, we've been gone without trace for nearly a week. I'm getting feedback of phonecalls and emails sent all over the country looking for signs of us, buddy. The girls were searching, just not in the right places. I – whoa!"

Robin's head snapped up. "What?"

"Major power influx. The Tower's sensors picked it up this mor-… uh-oh." Cyborg began typing furiously at the touch-pad in his arm. His face took on the kind of expression that made Robin's lower bowel sink to his shoes and stay there, though he showed no outward sign of it.

Tofu forgotten, Beast Boy edged around the kitchen counter and tried to peer around their shoulders. "What's up, dude? We win the state lottery while we were away?"

The huge TV screen that dominated the room crackled to life. Both Robin and Beast Boy looked at it, then back at Cyborg, but he was busy watching his fingers dance. A moment later a grainy image appeared, recognisable as security footage from some kind of CCTV camera. In one corner of the screen sat the logo of a local TV station, its colour totally at odds with the sepia footage.

"This has been playing non-stop on all the local channels since this morning." Cyborg turned a last dial and the recording sharpened.

It was the checkout of a local supermarket – the kind of family-run place that was always trying to compete with sprawling, national superstores. Robin knew that this one pretty much stayed in business despite its size because of the prestige it got from the Titans doing their grocery run there. Beast Boy adored the place because it had both an extensive vegetarian section and its own proven organic range, and had first insisted they use it to 'help the local community'. Once the delights of genetically modified foods had been explained to Starfire, she had followed his lead when purchasing ingredients for her own culinary masterpieces. Though she freely ate other foods, apparently layers of pesticide and genetic meddling inhibited the flavour of Tamaranian dishes. Robin also knew that the owners had started importing different kinds of herbal teas to tempt Raven's business when it was her turn to shop.

Tailing from the checkout was a moderate queue of carts and baskets, headed by a familiar figure in shorts and goggles. Terra lumped her groceries into a brown paper bag, flicking a packet of gum and a Twinkie Bar onto the conveyer belt at the last second. The girl beside the cash register read out the price, and Terra reached for where she kept her money.

Then, quite suddenly, she vanished in a flash of light that whited out the camera for a second. The money she had been handing over jingled to the floor with no hand to hold it.

There was a second or two of stunned silence.

Then pandemonium erupted. Though it was used to having superheroes shop there, the store was evidently not used to having super-stuff happen within its walls. The checkout girl attempted to restore order, all the time stabbing at the emergency button under her desk. A young child screamed in its stroller and a middle-aged woman ran back and forth with a box of soap flakes clutched to her bosom. She demanded to know whether everyone else had also just seen that nice girl vanish into thin air, actually shaking one man who was staring blankly ahead.

The footage halted and started again from the beginning. Cyborg had set up a loop, and they watched in silence as Terra once again made her purchases and vanished.

When it played for a third time, Robin spoke. He chose his words carefully, not taking his eyes from the screen. "Was this the 'whoa'? That power influx you were talking about?"

"Nu-uh. The whoa was here in the Tower. My sensors indicate that there were two sudden surges of energy of unknown origin around the time we arrived back."

"Two?"

"Very localised, and matching the signature of another from six days ago. My personal sensors conform a match to when the Master of Games teleported us around that freaky little funhouse of his. The energy signature comes from his whacked-out necklace."

"So, the surges from today…"

"I'm guessing the first one was us. The second had to be milliseconds after our re-entry, practically on top of our location. I crosschecked the time on this video recording. It matches that second energy surge to the nanosecond."

"Terra …" Beast Boy's voice was hushed, and Robin didn't have to look to know there was an expression of ill-concealed anguish on his face. Beast Boy wore his emotions on his sleeve, almost a complete antithesis to the Boy Wonder. Some days it was refreshing to be around someone that open. Right now it only compounded the gnawing sensation threatening to chew through the pit of his stomach.

"I think," he said quietly, "that we have just discovered why the girls aren't answering their coms."

---

Terra spent the first few moments of post-teleportation blinking spots from her eyes and trying not to fall over. For all her boasting, she had never actually been teleported before today – not even by Raven.

She had already decided that she didn't like it one bit.

Terra liked the ground. It might have been a throwback to her power, but she liked the security of it under her feet. It was her comfort blanket. Teleporting took that away, suspending her in a second or two in something less than air. It was almost like freefalling, but without the knowledge of solid earth somewhere far below. It unnerved her, and she only began to feel better when she was once again on the ground.

The heel of one hand planted itself against her left eye. I think m'gonna hurl ...

However, a low growl pulled her from the fight with nausea. She looked up, taking in the bizarre landscape and the only other figure in it.

Pantha crouched low, tail lashing. Unusual as it was to see someone who was not Beast Boy with a tail, Terra was more taken with the plinth Pantha was perched on. It was no more than three feet off the ground and identical to at least a dozen others she could see dotted around. Flat, desolate land stretched as far as the eye could see in all directions, and the sky overhead burned a deep, matte purple.

Okaaaay … when did I fall asleep and wake up in Freaksville?

The floor beneath her feet had a dark yellow tinge, not unlike fine sand or fingers stained with nicotine. It was solid, though, with none of the give she associated with deserts and sandy beaches. When she experimentally moved her toe there was no crunch, but a loud squeak like a fat mouse wedged in a small hole.

Metal.

Pantha growled again but made no move to start the match. Terra assumed they were to fight each other, since they were the only two in the vicinity. Evidently, Jinx had been correct about one-on-one bouts. Faboo. One-nil to her.

Still, sourness towards Jinx would have to take a backseat for now. Though Terra was still a relative novice at this whole superhero thing – scratch that; at this whole successful superhero thing – she had spent enough time with the Titans to learn that preparation and knowing your opponent counted overall.

Though she didn't know much about Pantha's offensive capabilities, she could make good with her own prepping. Had Robin been here, she knew what his first orders to her would have been, 'ready your weapon before confronting the enemy – if you're not ready, you're starting with a disadvantage,' whether that weapon be just your body or a honking great mound of compressed dirt.

Centring herself, Terra extended a finger of her power and felt for the earth beneath the metal. Utilising senses only available to her geokinesis she reached down, trying to find those first grains that would lead her to soil and rock. She did much the same when caught fighting on streets and in buildings – finding the earth beneath the asphalt and willing it to the surface so she could use it. It made for some interesting collateral damage, and she had tried not to do it so often since joining the Titans, but sometimes there was just no option. In those situations where it was either wreck street or be squished, she chose to sacrifice the street.

Still, since the Master had set all this up knowing what she could do, she assumed the price tag at the end was not an issue.

"I'm not footing the bill for this when we're done," she said loudly, covering her back anyway.

She reached down. And then further down. And then further again. She spread her senses, sinking them into the very essence of her surroundings and feeling for even the tiniest hint of earth.

Nothing.

Just solid metal, as far as it took her senses to hurt.

Terra muttered a word. It was a word good girls were not supposed to use. Then again, good girls were not really supposed to run around under codenames, throwing stones, either. Besides which, Terra had always figured the word could not really be all that bad, because it almost always had a friend; little companions like 'off' and 'you'.

The platform Pantha crouched on was not really big enough for pacing, but she was doing her best. All the while her gaze remained fixed on Terra, never leaving the other girl's face for an instant. For this reason, Terra tried to hide her dismay at finding herself in a combat situation where her geokinesis counted for exactly squat.

Okay. Don't panic. You can handle this. Just… um… just do what Robin would do. It was the best strategy she could think of, given Robin's status as the only non-superpowered member of the Titans.

As leader, Robin tended to supervise all their training sessions, even when he wasn't participating. He made sure all the team had basic instruction in hand-to-hand combat, sans powers, testing them personally against his own formidable skills in case they should ever find themselves in a situation where powers were not an option. At last count, Terra had managed a full three and a half minutes before having her face ground unceremoniously into the crash mat.

Though she was disappointed in the result, Beast Boy had assured her that she hadn't done so terribly. In unarmed combat Robin was second almost to none. Beast Boy had shown her some footage of previous battles, as well as relating various tales with frenzied hand gestures. Cyborg had once even hooked himself up to the Tower's systems to show playback of Robin's tenure as Slade's apprentice, when he had single-handedly felled the entire team, practically without any weapons whatsoever.

Robin had been trained by the best, and the more Terra understood whom 'the best' was, the more she understood what BB meant. Three and a half turbulent minutes was not bad for someone of her limited experience.

Jeez, I hope Pantha's no Robin, she thought suddenly, looking the felinoid up and down and not liking what she saw. A feeling of inadequacy took root at the base of her spine, unfolding throughout her nervous system. If I don't win this, Raven will frikkin' kill me.

Knowing appearance was important, Terra drew herself up tall and refused to let an iota of worry stray into her expression. For reasons she preferred not to think about, she was an adept at hiding her true face when she needed to.

She fell into a ready posture, bouncing on the balls of her feet. If she couldn't summon a hunk of rock to carry her away, speed would be of the essence: mundane, legs-don't-fail-me-now speed.

Pantha sat up. She cocked her head to one side. "You don't look so tough."

"It's the bath oil beads."

She skinned her teeth. Then she lunged.

---

Raven touched down with enough grace to stay vertical and took in her immediate surroundings at a glance. The Master's brand of teleporting was different than her own, but the side effects were similar and just as simple to deal with. She experienced a moment of tightness in the pit of her stomach upon re-entry, but shook it off.

The space was enclosed, both roof and floor vaulted metal. The walls were also metal, but straight, at least twelve feet high and dotted with ledges and small reflective outcroppings. There was no discernable light source, but she sat in a hazy grey illumination that allowed her to see, while also casting melodramatic shadows everywhere.

Already shadowed beneath her hood, Raven's face became wreathed in the kind of gloom Hitchcock would have given his eye-teeth to capture on film. Her eyes narrowed, austere against the dark, pupils darting for her selected opponent or opponents.

Terra and Starfire's signatures were gone; transported elsewhere, most likely, though the more pessimistic part of Raven nursed ideas about dishonesty from the Master. It created far-too-lucid images of them dissolving to basic protein molecules during the 'port. One fist tensed, crushing these pictures to a husk that could be tended later, should the need arise.

She set her feet, instinctively falling into a defensive posture. This kind of tunnel-like structure was not her preferred battleground, but maybe she could tear those ledges away and use them as missiles. She tested their strength with a scrap of telekinesis, snapping it back to use as a shield when a small explosion went off inches from her feet.

Confidence. Pleasure. The thrill of combat. These things washed over Raven, suffusing her the way her own emotions could not. She searched for the source through her obsidian defences.

The shield stretched to an egg-shaped casing when another explosion followed the first. Whoever had caused them either had very bad aim, or else was using them as a sort of calling card to announce her presence. Either way, Raven took it as idiocy and locked onto the thrower's emotions before the smoke cleared enough for her eyes to see. It took a heartbeat more to convert her shield into a bolt of power and propel it in that direction.

A loud squeal sounded, but loud squeals could be misleading, like a blackbird drawing a cat away from its nest by making noise in another location. Raven felt her telekinesis grip something. She drew it back delicately, lest it be another explosive.

Flamebird looked anything but dignified, hanging upside down by one ankle. She was smiling, hair gushing at the floor. Eyes of some unidentifiable colour beneath her goggles looked … merry?

"Think you have me, doncha?"

Raven didn't grace her with a reply. Instead, she extended a hand to guide the finger of energy. Her eyes glowed searing white for a moment, and the single spear divided into several thinner parts. Each part advanced on a limb, intending to tie it up and prevent access to the utility belt so obviously on show around her waist.

Flamebird grinned and clenched a fist. There was a small click, and suddenly her goggles glowed brightly. Orange Perspex lightened to blazing yellow, until the light spilled over and leapt from her face in an arc.

Surprised by the unprecedented move, Raven threw up her arms in another shield. The cost was her concentration on Flamebird's manacle, which unravelled and absorbed back into the main body of her power.

The other girl dropped to the concave floor, landing in a crouch. Her muscles were just tense enough to signal movement, but loose enough not to signal in which direction. The glow faded, her eyes coming back into view.

"New trick," she said proudly. "You're the first to see it in action. Let's see how god you are against laser beams, Little Miss Gothic."

Raven said nothing, but readied herself for another attack.

---

Jinx drummed her fingers. Not that she hated Mother Nature or anything, but she'd been expecting some sort of arena, not a river flanked by meadows. In the distance she could see cliffs, sheer and white like their famous cousins at Dover. The sky was a pretty blue, just like Earth, with barely a cloud in sight.

Sickeningly sweet, really.

Her opponent, however, was a definite no show.

She wondered whether Raven was hiding somewhere, gauging her emotions with empathy to see what she did first.

Well, let her. Jinx stretched her arms above her head, not bothering to cover her yawn with a hand. Her veins sang with power, muscles taut and ready to go, but everything about her said 'bored rigid'. It was a form of playing possum she'd long since mastered.

She was perched on a large, flat rock, but not in the way ordinary people sit. She was kneeling in a sort of crouch, weight resting on her left leg, right leg bent and pointing forward. It was a position that allowed for swift and unrestricted movement in any direction. Her hands rested on one knee, chin on her knuckles, as she surveyed the picturesque place she'd landed in.

Being a city girl, she was not impressed.

She was even less impressed at her opponent's non-appearance. She'd already cast aside ideas of Starfire or that new girl, Terra. They were forthright fighters who liked to make the first move – preferably with a starbolt or large chunk of rock. She'd got the same impression from most of the other girls the Master had gathered, too. Certainly, she couldn't imagine Pantha waiting around to be picked off instead of ploughing in, claws flashing. Maybe that Prysm chick might hang back. She had the earmarks of a defensive style rather than an offensive one. Then again, appearances could be deceiving. Nobody who was truly that timid could merit a place in this kind of tournament.

The only one Jinx could imagine using subterfuge was Raven.

The part of her that was not annoyed revelled in another chance to grind Raven's nose into the dirt. A chance without other Titans, or cops, or whatever other unfair advantage the little nonentity had on her side.

There was no birdsong. This was a little disturbing, but it didn't register with Jinx at first. She hadn't spent sufficient time in the countryside to notice when things were absent. It was only when her brain conjured images of Jump City's Municipal Park that she began to notice differences in this engineered place.

For a start, there were no flowers, and all the grass was a maggoty yellow or brown. It felt healthy to the touch – lush, even – but the colour was misleading by Earth standards. A light breeze wafted through, but Jinx fancied she could hear voices on it. Nonsensical whisperings that meant nothing, but lingered in the air like the smell of soap. They fell into her ears, playing a rhythm on her eardrums. When she finally acknowledged them they seemed to fade away, leaving her to wonder whether anticipation of the match was making her imagine things.

A flash of silver. Something powering across the landscape at a rate of knots. Jinx narrowed her eyes.

Raven's signature was obsidian.

She cursed when the silver bullet slowed and pulled up six feet from her rock.

"Hey," greeted Argent, flipping a lackadaisical salute. Her dark eyes shone in her pale face and no sweat beaded her brow, despite her swift flight hence. She looked like some kind of porcelain doll, all dark lashes and full lips and impossibly slender hands. Artist's hands, a voice in Jinx's head said. She attributed it to one of her old HIVE instructors.

They had always said things like that, using art, culture and flowery language to catch you off guard. The most dangerous foes were those who seemed especially civilised and knowledgeable. Those were the people who used brains over brawn – who set traps and knew what you were going to do before even you did. A screaming pile of muscle was easier to take down that a small person who smiled nicely and recited Shakespeare while they reduced your skull to a bloody pulp.

Argent ran a hand over her perfectly lacquered hair and blew air through her mouth. "Guess I must've got dropped off in the wrong place," she said conversationally. "So… it looks like we're partners, then. Funny, I was kinda hoping to get a Titan to start with."

Jinx's smile was catlike and fixed. It didn't waver, but her eyes held a spark of disappointment and irritation.

This was not Raven.

Therefore, Raven was fighting someone else.

Which meant Jinx was once again forced to leave off grinding Raven's nose with a boot heel for something less important.

Her lips parted, air rushing between her teeth in a steam-kettle whistle.

She didn't wait for more conversation. Like Starfire and Terra and dozens of other trained fighters, Jinx liked to make the first move. It gave her an edge, letting her know right off whether she had an advantage or not. Raising a hand, she summoned her favourite type of magic.

The hex bolt disintegrated the ground beneath Argent into a large crater. Argent squeaked, falling a few feet before her body shimmered and she soared back into the air.

Jinx was already moving. As soon as Argent's trajectory was set, she launched from the rock and cannoned into the other girl's path. Argent's momentum had been set by instinct when she saved herself from falling, giving her little time or opportunity to manoeuvre. Jinx was counting on that, and gave a satisfied smirk when her foot connected solidly with the other girl's gut.

Air whooshed from Argent's lungs. She sputtered, but remained airborne and climbing. Her control was impressive, and Jinx noted it. At the beginning of battle the most important thing was not inflicting damage, but gauging an opponent's limits. Once you knew those then it was easy to make a quick and clean finish.

She compounded her move by placing her palms on Argent's shoulders and flipping bodily over her, driving an elbow between her shoulder blades before she had chance to retaliate. While Argent grunted, Jinx dropped to the ground and landed lightly, arms flung out in an acrobatic flourish.

"This is your idea of fighting? Tsk, tsk." She wagged a finger.

Draw them out; make them lose their reserve. Make them angry, if that helped. Anger clouded judgment, and without judgment mistakes came more often. Exploit them. Her old tutors' voices rang through her head. Though Jinx no longer worked for HIVE, she owed them much of her battle strategy.

Argent recovered remarkably quickly. With a wordless cry, she threw out her arms in Jinx's direction.

Jinx jumped away, flipping with her usual aplomb. She'd learned that needless acrobatics threw off an opponent's game. They expected some kind of controlled fighting style, or a full frontal attack – evidence of the rules from some school of combat. It was the usual way with heroes and villains. They trained hard and stuck to the rules of that training. Hell, even the Justice League did it. Their actions were swift and precise, with no room for flourishes or frilly trimmings.

What opponents usually didn't realise was that Jinx was no less swift, no less precise, and no less deadly. She fought with all the accomplishment of a trained warrior, but utilised trickery to get the upper hand in a fight. Those were the rules of her school of combat. To wit; do whatever is necessary to win.

What looked like four silver knives thudded into the ground where she had been standing. She regarded them with one eye, the other fixed on Argent.

Hmm. Projectiles. A new part of the game. "You'll have to do better than that, Miss Priss."

Argent flung another round of silver knives at her. The others sizzled and hissed, vanishing and leaving large grooves where they had been. There was no way to tell how deep the grooves went, but Jinx had her suspicions. Better to err on the side of caution with that one.

She dodged again, playing out the drama to gauge just what Argent was capable of. Though being on the ground with her opponent in the air should have disadvantaged her, she smiled and weaved and sidestepped like it took less effort to comb her hair in the morning.

By contrast, Argent yelled and flung round after round of silver knives at her. Each set missed and sizzled away when the next was launched.

Jinx did not think this fight would last long.

---

Starfire was doing her best to keep the sun behind her, diving out of its brilliance to snipe at her opponent. It was a strategy that had worked well in the past, and since they appeared to be over an some kind of ocean, light refraction should have been on her side.

Prysm, however, was another kettle of fish entirely. Equally versatile, she could both fly and shoot some kind of laser beams not unlike starbolts from – at least – her hands. For every shot Starfire got off, Prysm would dodge and send back two of her own. And while Starfire had yet to be hit by one of these disturbingly similar attacks, the whole process was both tedious and tiring.

Starfire's physical strength and stamina dwarfed those of the average human. Her Tamaranian anatomy granted her the kind of endurance previously claimed by only Superman, and it made her a fearsome adversary when coupled with her ability to create starbolts – even if repetitive starbolts drained her more than strength and flight combined.

On Tamaran, only a select few could absorb ambient solar energy into their bodies and manipulate it the way she did. The ability was considered a rare genetic defect that did not manifest until the time Earthlings called 'puberty'. A defect, because to gain starbolts was to lose another part of oneself.

Starfire knew that, for her, gaining the ability to generate starbolts had come at the cost of her instinctive bloodlust, just as Blackfire's genes had sacrificed Glorbfah – the hereditary sense of family loyalty and honour common to all Tamaraneans. While a proud and ferocious race, her people were also gregarious and fiercely protective of their own.

It was because of these differences that the two sisters had decided to partake of Jebuchukai, a ritual Starfire had come to correlate with the Earth term 'spirit journey'. In truth, she was a little surprised that such an abstract concept could be so similar on two planets whose inhabitants had never come into contact before. Leading her to take another, more serious look at the old legends about visitors from other worlds and precocious godlings with skin like sunsets.

Jebuchukai involved leaving home without any worldly possessions in a quest to find yourself, if you thought you were missing something in your life that living on Tamaran could not provide.

For Blackfire, the thrill of thievery was something their home could not give her.

For Starfire, it was gentleness.

Tamaraneans were not renowned for their kindness towards others. Mothers, while protective of their children, did not show them the warmth and affection famous among Earthlings, or Martians. With the absence of her bloodlust, Starfire had been left with a docile nature that was completely at odds with the world around her. While others of her sun-cycle trained rigorously and pulverised rocks for fun, she preferred to memorise songs and elaborate poetry that was not obligatory until after Klorbek.

It made her something of an embarrassment to her family. Blackfire at least possessed a desire for combat that had since made them overlook her criminal activities. They reasoned that while she had indeed broken the law, she had demonstrated true fighting spirit while doing so. And if she had tried to frame her sister for each and every crime, well then, it was a small price to pay for a daughter who venerated the age-old spirit of combat.

This embarrassment was what had eventually driven Starfire to embark on her Jebuchukai, a part of her hoping she would return as a daughter her parents would not be embarrassed to introduce to others.

Instead, she had found a surrogate family in the Teen Titans: a family that did not care that she was too gentle, that she did not truly enjoy combat, or that she could fire starbolts from her hands and, since her chrysalis stage, from her eyes. Instead, they celebrated what she was, and she was more grateful to them for that then she could ever put into any Earth language.

To the Titans, her starbolts made her special, not defective. They had helped her learn how to use them in many varied ways – ways Tamaraneans could not, and had not ever considered. No 'defect' ever amounted to anything on Tamaran. It simply was not done.

Perhaps that was why Starfire's Jebuchukai had ended with Earth, and not back on her home planet as she had first planned.

And perhaps that was why having Prysm hit her with practically her own attacks made Starfire feel … she did not have a word for it, but a human might have called catalogued it as 'foreboding'.

Starfire did not have a good feeling about this. Not at all.

---

"Will you just hold still so I can shoot you!"

Raven didn't bother with a reply. Her dislike for Flamebird grew with every passing second. She was brash, loud, impulsive … and a good combatant.

Grudgingly, Raven could find little wrong with Flamebird's style. She had obviously trained hard and long before trying her hand as a crime-fighter. And that was a point in her favour, since only a true idiot would take on hard-boiled criminals without that kind of precaution.

Yet that didn't excuse the sheer overconfidence with which she treated this whole situation. She acted like a school kid in a playground brawl, wading in with little thought of consequences or implications. It had probably not even occurred to her that she would lose.

Raven despised a lot of things, but Flamebird's arrogant, antagonistic cockiness was climbing her personal chart.

Plus, this fight was going on far too long. She'd intended to finish off the wannabe as quickly as possible and get back to the Master. Instead, Flamebird persistently evaded her attacks, using a seemingly endless procession of weapons to launch back at her.

Not that Raven couldn't handle the counters. One or two had surprised her at first – though she supposed she should have expected the phoenix variation of the birdrang. Flamebird had based herself on Robin, after all. Still, training the original gave her an edge, and she used it to full effect.

She levitated to a ledge. Flamebird remained in the depression, glaring up at her. She reached for her visor, but Raven opened a portal and faded into the wall.

"Damn it! No fair."

Raven reappeared behind her and snapped a kick at the small of her back. "Fair."

Flamebird flew like her namesake. She had the presence of mind to tuck and roll, and came up out of it on her feet. Too far away to use her fists, she instead reached to her belt.

Raven tensed, not recognising the three small yellow spheres. And what she didn't recognise, she didn't like.

Flamebird threw them at the floor. With a single fluid motion Raven cocked her right arm back and hurled black energy at them as though it were a spear. Soft black nothingness wrapped two up, rendering them harmless. The last impacted, spewing reddish-purple smoke that expanded in almost exponential clouds.

Flamebird disappeared inside the haze. Seconds later Raven heard a pop, and fresh swirls blew at her, fuelled by whatever chemical reaction had been set in motion when the spheres' casings broke. The smoke didn't seem to be caustic, but all the same she handled the captive pair delicately.

Idiot. Trying to lose me in a smokescreen. She felt out Flamebird's emotions once the spheres were in her hands.

Immediately, she spun on her heel and brought an arm up to shield her face as the blonde girl dived from the smoke. She was behind and almost on top of her. Part of Raven wondered how she'd moved so fast without teleporting.

Flamebird used her full weight, attempting to pin Raven under her. Raven was slightly shorter, and Flamebird had taken advantage of her using her telekinesis to try and stop the two smoke-spheres, trying to get the upper hand before Raven regained her composure.

A hail of similar spheres, all different colours, came sailing from where she'd tossed them high into the air before she attacked. They might have been more smoke. They might have been duds. It was unlikely they were especially incapacitating, since they were coming down so close to their owner. Nonetheless, Raven did not want to take the chance of being thrown off her game again because she let them fall. Even if they were just smoke, empathy only went so far in a fight like this. Visual helped, too.

Obsidian power snagged each sphere as it careened towards the floor.

Her concentration divided, Raven found herself forced back a step. Brute muscle was not her strong suit, and she felt something bubble inside of her, something that feasted on crushing opponents and whispered promises of glorious victory.

"No!" she shouted, much louder than was strictly necessary.

Summoning strength she didn't realise she had, she dropped the two yellow spheres into waiting telekinesis and swung her freed left hand up into a bone-crunching blow that shattered at least one rib, knocking the other girl back. The fingers of Flamebird's right hand snagged under Raven's hood, as if clawing it for purchase. Raven ducked under her grasp and popped her in her already damaged chest.

Unprepared for the outright savagery of this assault, Flamebird staggered backwards. Her eyes were wide beneath her visor, one hand sliding over the injured area as if to solidify what had just happened. Then she reasserted her stance, stepping into a bank of purplish-red that was still thick enough to hide her.

Raven absently allowed her telekinesis to gather the collected spheres together. There was no conscious thought to the action. Her mind was caught in a sudden wash of feeling – pain, pride, pain, anger, exhilaration, pride, pain, pain, pain.

And mixed in with it was her own revulsion.

For a single moment, she had allowed herself to slip. For a single moment, she had wanted to do more than simply beat Flamebird. She had wanted to devastate her – humiliate and slaughter her, then grind her remains into powder. Her body had acted accordingly, and would probably have inflicted even more damage had she not restrained herself.

The old refrain. The one from before the Titans found her. She would not give in. She was stronger than she used to be. I am not a killer. I am not a killer. I am not a killer… Even a ridiculous situation like this could not make her break this oath.

She could kill. She had the power.

But she would not.

She would not, damn it!

She turned to intercept Flamebird's renewed offensive.

---

Pantha's evasion was so swift that she seemed to slip between moments.

Terra struck out with her left fist, and then her right. She whirled into a kick Robin had taught her. When he had done it, his foot had struck the training dummy with enough force to decapitate it. Terra knew she couldn't hope to put that much power behind hers – from lack of practise, apart from anything else. In both combat and training she preferred to concentrate on using her geokinesis – a critical mistake, as she was now learning.

Not a single blow struck Pantha.

Terra resolved to train in hand-to-hand night and day when she got home, until she could comfortably take on the Boy Wonder himself.

The idea that she would not get home didn't so much as enter her head.

Pantha did not talk now; did not mock or taunt her, but she did hit her; a backhand that sent Terra pirouetting to the floor.

Sweeping around like a scythe blade, Terra tried to knock Pantha's legs out from under her, but the felinoid danced lightly away. She moved like a ballerina tipped with claws and infused with a kind of ferociousness Terra had never before encountered in sentient beings. Beautiful, but deadly.

Pantha did not view this as a simple contest. She pulled no punches, gave no quarter, and asked for none. She swept in and scored a deep gash across Terra's cheek. It numbed her for a second, blood spilling down her face.

Major owie!

Doing her best to ignore the pain, Terra pressed her counterattack again. Once – twice her blows missed. Pantha's body curled impossibly around them, like water around her fist. She seemed to be moving at another speed completely, with Terra trailing behind her in slow-mo.

Yet the hopelessness of her circumstances had forced Terra to think more, act less. A few months ago she would have scoffed at the idea of her outwitting an opponent instead of just blasting them. After all, she had never even considered crime fighting before getting her powers. She wasn't like Robin, just a plain old human using his smarts to make a difference. She needed her gift to give her the edge and push her into a life of helping others.

Yet right now, brains were her best option. She had never before considered a time when she might not be able to geo-form her way out of a fight.

There was a first time for everything. It paid to be adaptable.

Watch her stomach, she thought, remembering endless training sessions with Robin drilling battle expertise into his teammates' skulls, then removing the drill and plugging the holes. She can feint with her head, legs and arms, but she can't feint with her stomach.

She had extracted herself from the moment, examining the conflict as though it were a chess match. Pantha played for keeps, but that didn't mean it wasn't still a game, with rules and offsets and tactics on both sides. Terra's attack now was simply a feint to draw another swing from her opponent.

When Pantha struck out at her again, she was ready. She sidestepped, grabbing Pantha's left wrist, and coiled into her arms like they were following the steps of some terrible waltz. One hand a fist, Terra wrapped herself in Pantha's left arm and drove that fist into her gut. When it met resistance from tensed muscles, she reversed and grabbed shoulder instead, bringing up her knee with a satisfying collision, then twisting to fling the off-balance Pantha over her head.

Slightly amazed that the ploy it had worked, Terra only barely avoided Pantha's slash, as the felinoid flipped in mid-air and used the force of her impact to launch herself forward. There was the sound of tearing fabric, and suddenly Terra's belly felt more exposed than usual.

"Aw, geez – do you realise how much it costs to have these things custom made?"

"Smash you," Pantha spat. "Cut you up. Make you bleed!"

"Watch it, puddy-tat. Your IQ is showing."

Terra barley had time to react as Pantha slapped a hand on her shoulder and another on her hip. She felt claws pierce her clothing, and then she was being lifted off the ground. With no apparent effort, Pantha turned and threw her at one of the cylindrical posts.

Terra slammed into it. By some miracle she remained conscious, but a hundred new aches and pains were suddenly clamouring for her attention.

And through them, a small voice wondered why, if she had been so close as to do that, Pantha had not made good on her promise to 'make her bleed'.

Terra staggered to her feet. There was an unpleasant grinding sensation in her chest that she recognised as a cracked rib. All the breath had fled her lungs, and she gasped openly at the white-hot stabbing pain, as though an irascible grandmother and her knitting basket had rented the space for cheap. Though she had experienced her fair share of injuries since getting her geokinesis – and especially since joining the Titans – Terra was sure she'd never truly get used to them.

Still, if there was one thing she'd learned since becoming a crime-fighter, it was how to force a quick recovery. Or at least how to fake one.

Her nose was bleeding. She felt the metallic taste of blood on her tongue when she stuck it out.

"Okay, no more free shots for you."

Pantha did not answer. Terra peered at her, slightly bemused at the strange behaviour. By all accounts, she was on the ropes and at the other girl's mercy. Yet instead of pressing her advantage, Pantha had frozen. Fists bunched and unbunched at her sides. Her jaw worked like a masticating cow.

She was whispering something.

Terra strained to hear it.

"Always watching. Never left alone. Cut one, watch ten. Kill five, study a hundred more. Fight, fight fight…" Pantha was trembling.

Terra didn't know what to make of it. She cleared her throat loudly. "Um, excuse me? You okay there, kitty-cat?"

"Make you bleed," Pantha murmured, but without her earlier conviction. "Make you … bleed …"

"Hey, if you're having second thoughts then I'm happy to pass on the whole bleeding thing. You don't want to fight? Fine. Just fall down and I'll pretend like I hit you. We'll call it quits and both be home in time for Jeopardy."

"Not showing you my belly, small-fry." Pantha skinned her teeth. "I don't like to be watched."

Terra rolled her eyes, moving her shoulders from side to side to ease some of their tension. She was quite content to let the conversation go on. It let her joints stop rattling and allowed her to box up and shelve the various hurts of her up-close-and-personal smooch with the pillar. "We established this part already."

"I don't like to lose."

"Right. That's a new part. But see, I have this friend – well, maybe not a friend, per se. A teammate. And she specifically told me to kick your tail. And if I don't do that then she's going to be pissed. And I'd rather face the promised bleeding than her when she's pissed."

The inflection didn't change. "I don't like to lose."

Terra sighed, body deceptively slack. She darted forward without warning, dialogue over.

Pantha put her head down and rushed. She was back to moving in fast-forward, and Terra gave a grunt as Pantha's head rammed into the pit of her stomach. With a roar, Pantha kept on coming, slamming Terra up against the same pillar as before. Terra's head whipped back, hitting with a sickening smack.

Her whole skull swirled with pain. Bright pinpoints of hot white light danced at the edges of her vision. Automatically, she locked her knees to keep herself steady and stop from sliding down the smooth surface. First rule of fighting – once you're down, you rarely get back up again.

She shook her head, desperately trying to clear it. There were two Panthas now. Both of them were unaccountably backing off, though not without a great deal of hissing and spitting. Terra managed to suck in a breath – the first since her close encounter with the other girl's cranium. Her brain felt like it was being worked on by a burly construction worker using an enormous jackhammer.

She shook her head again, harder this time. Nerve endings screamed in protest, but she had to get back to herself before Pantha did something serious with those claws. She was painfully aware of how vulnerable she was. That part of her mind not concerned with pain once again wondered why Pantha had chosen a move with such little finesse over teeth or claws, like at the beginning of the fight.

A burst of coloured lights joined the white spots, but it worked. Terra's vision cleared. She could count to ten and remember what year it was and the names of those presidents she'd bothered to memorise in school. No concussion.

Excellent.

Pantha was whispering to herself again. She seemed to have forgotten Terra was there, and was pawing at her face with claws unsheathed. Deep bloody furrows opened up on either side of her snout, staining her fur. Red droplets ran the length of her whiskers. They plopped to the floor.

"No more watching. No more watching. No more watching," she muttered with each swipe.

Terra began to wonder if Pantha was playing with a full deck. Or even half a deck.

I'm thinking she's only got a three, she thought cruelly, surveying her options.

Pantha was stronger than her. Faster, too. That much had already been made excruciatingly clear. Added to this, Terra realised she was possibly fighting with someone on the brink of madness – an adept warrior driven past rationality by something in her past. That was the only thing she could think of to explain the ramblings about being watched, and the other odd performance – like backing off at crucial moments and restraining the use of her best weapons.

It disturbed her a little to think what could have made Pantha like that. She was skilled and deadly, but flawed in such a fundamental way that it made her more vulnerable than old biddies with full purses in dark alleys. Pantha was her own worst enemy.

But perhaps … that was a vulnerability that could be exploited?

It was an underhand thing to think. Terra told herself that in the real world she never would have considered it. Really.

But this was not the real world. This was a contest. And beyond that, according to Raven it might be the key to getting the missing Titans back – or at least figuring out where they'd gone.

Terra thought of Beast Boy. She thought of Robin and Cyborg, and all the others the Master of Games had probably kidnapped if Raven's theory were true.

And suddenly there was fire in her chest that had nothing to do with her cracked rib; as if there were hot coals where her throat and heart ought to be. She let it harden her and burn away any stray thoughts of mercy for Pantha.

You've got to be in it to win it, she thought, repeating the phrase that had been old before she was born.

A weird laugh percolated like coffee in Pantha's throat. Blood streaked her mouth and whiskers. "Make you bleed?" she said. "Make me bleed! Let them watch that."

"I'm so pleased for you," Terra replied, and circled for another dance.

---

Jinx's right foot shot out and snapped a flurry of blows at Argent's head and chest that the pale girl was obliged to defend against. She ducked the first facial strike, and clumsily blocked the second kick that would likely have caved her ribcage. Then, in a burst of coordination, she slapped Jinx's leg to the side as the third kick tried for her sternum.

The return blow left Jinx marginally off balance. As she tried to correct for the sudden change in her body's centre of gravity, Argent opened her hands and let a gobbet of thick silver energy surround her opponent.

The short burst of hand-to-hand was some of the first in their fight after Jinx's initial attack. Argent was a long-shot hitter – someone who preferred taking out her enemies from a distance with projectiles shaped from the strange silver energy. Much like Green Lantern's ring, this energy seemed limited only by her imagination.

The silver throwing knives had turned out to be her primary method of attack, typifying her fighting style, and it had not taken Jinx long to realise this. Argent liked fighting from a distance. Therefore, Jinx took the fight to her, up close and personal, in the hopes that this would throw off her game and make her easy to take down.

It turned out to be a mistake. A minor one, true, but a mistake nonetheless. Hexing Argent to the ground and then smothering her with punches and kicks before she could get back up had seemed a good idea at the time. At the very least it was a calculated risk. However, a combination of dumb luck and hidden talent had led to Jinx's current predicament. Evidently, Argent knew more about close range combat than Jinx had given her credit for, and Jinx's own arrogance had factored into the silver energy now squeezing her arms tight enough to steal her breath.

And there it stopped.

Jinx hadn't exactly been waiting to have her face pounded in, but even so, she was surprised when the next blow didn't come. Having little place else to look, she met Argent's gaze, expression relaxed enough to suggest that she didn't want to scream and could, in actual fact, feel her fingertips.

Argent tipped her head to one side. "You're the famous Jinx?"

"You say that like it's an insult."

"Well … yeah. I mean, you hear all the time about how badass you are. All that, like, trouble you give the authorities and stuff – not to mention the Teen Titans. But it's been, what, five minutes?"

"Don't give yourself too much credit. It's been at least seven."

"Jeez, they never said anything about you being anal-retentive, either." She scrunched up her nose, for all the world a teenager debating the charms of some hot young actor versus some hot young singer.

Jinx pigeonholed her at about sixteen, seventeen at a push, and with little to no combat experience. Certainly, she was not a trained fighter. Argent had none of the hard edges that showed formal training, but more of a fluid looseness that implied self-taught techniques and powers not long in her possession.

Some part of Jinx wondered after Argent's story – how and when had she got these powers? And how had such a relatively weak fighter passed the criteria for this tournament? – but there were other, more pressing matters to hand right now, so the questions were quickly buried.

"Okay, seven minutes if you wanna be, like, a complete anal-retentive. But still, seven minutes and here you are. I mean, you're completely at my mercy."

Jinx rolled her eyes. "Oh puh-lease. Don't get ahead of yourself. True, I underestimated you a little - " She paused, looking Argent up and down. "Very little. But I'm hardly in bite-sized chunks on the ground. You're not the winner."

"Don't look that way to me." Argent's grin was wide and self-satisfied, but faltered a little when an equally smug smirk squirmed across Jinx's mouth.

"Doesn't," Jinx corrected, expression never wavering. "It doesn't look that way to you. If you're going to attempt taunting me then at least do it properly." She waggled her right hand.

The hex bolt had barely fizzled out when the mountain of dirt speared upward. Argent screamed as it shaved against her back. She was forced to barrel forward to avoid being crushed when tonnes of dirt and debris came crashing back down on top of them. It seemed she couldn't concentrate on more than one use of her power at once, but she was unwilling to relinquish her hold on Jinx. As a result, when they emerged from the onslaught they were covered in small pebbles and loose soil.

Argent opened her mouth to say something, but Jinx just smiled and did it again.

The third time, Argent screeched angrily and, once she had once again successfully evaded the blitz of dirt, began to draw her hands apart, as if in preparation for a hug. In tandem, the manacles of silver energy that held Jinx's arms wide apart began pulling in opposite directions.

Jinx bit down on a scream. She refused to show weakness, even when she was in agony. Signs of weakness gave the enemy the upper hand.

The muscles in her arms, back and chest stretched tight and strained further than nature intended. She could feel tendons and ligaments drawing further apart, white-hot pain filling the gaps created. She gritted her teeth, refusing to cry out. If she did, there was a possibility it would be considered a surrender, and then where would she be? Back on Earth, most likely. Back where life was liveable and that was all.

Screw that.

Jinx brought both legs up close to her chest and flipped her body backward, flashes of pain searing through her shoulders as she did so. Both knees crashed into Argent's throat. The blaze of pain shattered her concentration, and the silver energy released Jinx instantly. Argent brought both hands up to belatedly protect her airway.

They were not excessively high up. Jinx landed without need for a hex bolt to slow her descent. Any other person might have landed on their back, such was the angle of her release, but Jinx twisted like an acrobat and somehow tucked her feet under her. She followed up with a twirl that sprayed hex bolts in all directions.

Argent screamed with pain and not a little anger, as dirt, rocks and fragments of earth geysered up around her. To dodge one, she flew into another, and her shielding went up only after she was liberally pelted with pebbles that, while they could not seriously injure her, sure as hell smarted.

She surfaced bearing a look of rage that turned her pretty features into an ugly mask.

Jinx just smiled sweetly. Her arms felt like they were three inches longer than when the fight started, and her back was going to bruise in a major way, but she was still standing, and that was enough to keep her smiling.

"Look in a mirror lately, sugarplum?"

Argent spat out a mouthful of dirt and dragged the back of one hand across her mouth. "You are so dead!" she screeched. Jinx imagined a house where petulantly slammed doors accompanied that screech. It was not such a great leap to make. "You are deader than dead. You are deader than a snowman in July. And I mean TV movie of the week, CNN all-day-coverage kinda dead!"

"I've got to give you points for originality in your threats, but not much for your chances of carrying them out," Jinx sighed, toeing the ground like she was bored. "It's been fun, don't get me wrong, but I'm sorry, sugarplum. You're just the entrée. I'm much more interested in the main course."

For a brief moment Argent looked confused. "Huh?"

"If I give you a dollar, will you please buy your first clue?" Jinx flexed her fingers, the prelude to a hex bolt. Argent saw this and propelled a volley of silver knives towards the ground, but not even they could cut across Jinx's words. "You're. Not. A Titan."

The ferocity of Jinx's attack made her previous dirt-geysers look like dusty trickles. Ten individual masses of soil powered into the air, surrounding Argent in a circle. The sight was formidable. To her credit, Argent converted her knives into a giant scythe and tried to hack her way through the upwardly gushing earth. The sheer enormity of the assault rendered this useless. She had little option but to escape or try again and risk being crushed.

She flew aloft in an unswerving vertical line. Really, while her fine control over projectiles was lacking, her prowess in flight was impressive.

Yet even this was not enough to save her. Had she flown away to begin with, instead of trying to tackle things head on, then she might have outrun the spelled earth. As it was, she was less than an inch from safety when the cascades put on a last burst of speed, overtook her, and turned inward.

Jinx watched as her adversary was beaten down and eventually lost amongst the falling debris. She thought she could see a pale hand flailing about for purchase to begin with, and a battered attempt at some sort of shield, but nothing much.

She thought the flash of red light among the rubbish also her imagination, until a similar one enveloped her and dragged her bodily through the ether.

Jinx could not teleport herself, but she recognised the sensation. It was difficult to describe, that sense of being pulled apart on a molecular level and then swept along like a dust mote on a thermal, but she recognised it. For the shortest of moments, probably less than a nanosecond, she left everything behind – her heart, her lungs, her problems, her responsibilities, her life … everything and everyone became just so much irrelevance, a memory of something just north of nothing. There was no sense of good or evil, right or wrong, love or hate. It was, she thought, like a brief taste of eternity.

Ironically, even that sensation-free eternity couldn't last forever. When her molecules snapped back together on the other side of the 'port, everything was waiting for her. For a second her brain was blasted by the reinstatement of all her thoughts, senses and emotions.

When she blinked back into reality, the first thing she saw was a set of grinning fangs, and the first thing she felt was indignation.

"Hey! I wasn't done there!"

The Master shook his head. "You are the victor," he intoned. The gem around his neck glowed faintly, she assumed with the after-energies of bringing her back to the main chamber.

Jinx looked around. Nobody else was present. "They all still fighting?"

"Indeed."

She nodded, then stretched and yawned, giving no more attention to her fallen adversary. "You got any grub in this place? I'm starving."

---

Starfire yelled, firing a volley of starbolts so fierce and accurate they would have singed the hair off a gnat's kneecap.

Prysm dodged, curving her body around each projectile and avoiding most entirely. What did hit her bounced harmlessly off her glasslike skin, confirming Starfire's suspicions: in this fight, starbolts would be of no use. While they could force Prysm backwards if they struck her with enough force, they did no injury, and the other girl just kept coming back for more.

Prysm's laser beams, on the other hand, were proving quite successful.

Compared to humans, Starfire was built like a tank. Her skin was tough enough to rival granite, and her pain threshold was more than triple that of the average biped. Yet thanks to Prysm, she was cut and bleeding in more than a dozen places. Her costume hung in shreds across her back and right hip, and the toes of one boot had been completely burned away.

Most disturbing, however, was not that Prysm was so powerful. Rather, Starfire found herself a little unsettled by the other girl's tendency to apologise after every attack. It reminded her far too much of her own early days in the Titans, when she would stand to the side of every battle until Robin pointed out the bad guy and she knew who she was allowed to pummel.

Humans were so fragile, she had nearly beaten her first few adversaries to death before she was pulled off and told they'd had enough. After that, she'd resigned herself to light punches, punctuating each with an apology she'd made a point of learning in their tongue. She had almost been upset when the Mexican gang that had been moving in on Jump City decided to abandon the venture. It had taken her almost a week to memorise the different apologies of their tongue.

Starfire did not get unnerved easily. The last time had been when she entered her chrysalis, and then it had been more fear of being eaten than unease. Her upbeat emotions ensured she rarely second-guessed or doubted herself, though she was still prey to the pitfalls of embarrassment.

However, when confronted with this Prysm girl, who was so much like her, and yet so much her opposite, she felt an undercurrent of disquiet slowly worming its way beneath her boundless energies.

And to a Tamaranean, this was very dangerous indeed.

She raised her hands, crossing her arms in front of her face a moment before Prysm's laser struck. It blew her backwards, end over end, and she righted herself with a grunt.

"Sorry."

"Do not apologise. It is not necessary."

Prysm blinked those strange, dead-and-alive eyes and tipped her head to one side like a child that didn't understand a complicated explanation. "Why? I thought it was good manners."

"It …" Starfire fumbled. She had no real reason behind the request other than her own discomfort, and some unknown voice told her not to voice that. "It is simply … not necessary," she finished lamely. "That is all. It is a unnecessary expulsion of breath that would be better conserved for the conflict at hand, correct?"

"But I don't breathe."

"Oh." She couldn't think what to say to that.

Starfire knew of many aliens who did not require air to breathe, much less the specific compound of gases humans inhaled and exhaled millions of time per day. Just before entering her chrysalis, she had developed the unusual talent of surviving for long periods with only a single lungful of breath, enabling her to fly from planet to planet sans spaceship without her head imploding.

The thought spurred another, and she quickly asked, "What planet do you hail from?"

Prysm stopped, a rainbow of emotions ghosting over her face. Her reflective skin made her difficult to read, but Starfire was not exactly brimming over with intuition herself, so it didn't really matter.

"I … my planet?"

"Yes. Are you human, or were you born on another world and journeyed to the small green and blue sphere known as Earth, as I did?"

"I … I don't know. I think … I remember …" Prysm shook her head vigorously, as if dispelling the memory of a bad dream. "I am … part human," she said at last. "I think," she added, vacillating. She actually swayed from side to side, and Starfire was on the verge of asking after her health when she snapped back to attention, head held high and shoulders back. "Argent said I needed practice. She looks after me. I have to do what she says." She drew back a hand that was already sizzling with blue-yellow energy. "I'm sorry."

Starfire did not nod, did not shake her head. She did not even yelp when she dived to one side and the blast scorched a path between her shoulder blades, incinerating what was left of the back of her top. What was left slipped and hung forward, barely covering her decency.

"I regret to inform you that I must retaliate to that attack." She thrust both arms outward, heels of her palms touching and fingers splayed. A ball of green energy had coalesced before she remembered the ineffectiveness of starbolts on this opponent.

It took a second longer than planned, but she concentrated hard, flinging out a palmful of smaller bolts. They were useless for actually inflicting any damage, but made a nifty smokescreen to confuse and let her hide behind while she zipped forward and used her entire body as a battering ram.

Prysm absorbed a few of the smaller energy discharges – a trait not previously shown. The tiny green blobs did not so much bounce off her skin, like the larger starbolts, as stick and melt, sinking and smoothing out like rocks dropped in tar. Faint pinpricks of green glow remained below the surface, like afterimages from the flash of a camera, but they soon faded. The energies springing around inside of Prysm took on a greenish tinge.

Yet there was little time to consider this new development. Starfire shot faster than a bullet from a gun, faster almost than Superman. Her elbows hit Prysm in the midriff, causing a jarring ring, like a cracked bell tolling. She wrapped her arms around the other girl's torso, fleetingly thinking that there should have been a whoosh of air expelled from lungs that were not there.

The momentum kept them both going at a rate of knots. Prysm twisted in Starfire's grasp, involuntarily turning them onto a downward trajectory. They grappled for a moment, swerving as Starfire tried to redirect herself without letting go, and then struck the surface of the ocean below.

Starfire's blood was colder than humans'. As such, the transition from air to water was not a real jolt to her system.

She did need to breathe though; her ability to do without air having faded with her horns and scales.

Water forced itself into her nose and mouth, as fists as hard as diamonds beat upon her back. She had no option but to let go or drown, and so she pushed hard at Prysm's body with her Tamaranean strength, then kicked away towards the surface.

The water was dark, murky like it was full of ink. Beneath the surface she could barely see, and above it strange shadows danced and weaved on the surf, giving the impression of a dozen adversaries powering towards her all at once.

Starfire began to rise into the air where she had a better chance of predicting an attack, but when her body was half free of the water she felt a strong hand close around her ankle, yanking her backwards. She splashed down, surprised at Prysm's strength, and in that moment was rolled like a fresh piece of crocodile kill.

It took only a few second for Starfire to become totally disorientated. To her, there was neither up nor down, only the swirling void of water pressing against her face and clutching hands. There was no gravity in the vortex that dragged her down and spun her around, leaving her to wonder whether she'd ever see daylight again – even the bruised purple of the strange sky over this battlefield.

Lungs bursting, she could still feel the grip around her ankle. Leaving off kicking it for a second, she cupped her hands around her mouth and allowed a small burst of bubbles past her lips. They yanked hard to the right, telling her where the surface was, and she renewed her efforts to reach it, but the ankle-grip forced her down again.

Despite many people claiming the contrary, Starfire was no fool. She had an intelligence that deviated from the norm, was all. It concerned itself less with books and high thought and more with fundamental survival. She knew she was drowning, and her brain had already coursed down several avenues on how to change the situation. Now it happened upon another one, and she acted upon it without really thinking, body slipping into survival mode like richissime women slip on shoes.

Bending her body almost double, Starfire grabbed at the fingers around her ankle. It took two tries, but eventually she closed her own left hand around them, moving her right hand down around the attached wrist. Then she powered up a large starbolt, feeding it through the tips of her fingers directly into the glassy skin beneath.

The energy lit up the surrounding area. Strangely, the water was free of floating debris and other life forms, so once the murk had been dispelled Starfire could see clearly all around her. Prysm's arm, shoulder and face were immediately illuminated a brilliant echoing green, but the shadows cast under the contours of her features gave her an unearthly, somewhat gargoyle-ish quality. Floating there, she looked like nothing so much as a ghost, forever condemned to haunt the sunken wreck on which she had drowned.

Except there was no sunken wreck; and it was not Prysm who was in danger of drowning, but Starfire.

There was an iron band around Starfire's skull. Small black dots began to dance at the corners of her vision – darker than the gloom surrounding her little halo of light. She upped the ante, forcing energy from the core of her being, down into her fingers where it spilled into Prysm in a raging tumult.

Prysm's hand and wrist flared brighter than the rest of her, as her body's natural processes tried to absorb the ambient energies like it had the smaller starbolts. The light grew stronger and stronger, until finally she cried out in that bizarre, smothered way a person does underwater, and released Starfire's ankle to shake a hand so full of energy it could no longer digest it.

That was what Starfire had been counting on. She had risked everything on Prysm's localised energy stores overflowing enough for her to escape. The gamble had been huge, accentuated by the fact that she knew so very little about the other girl's physiology, but it had paid off. She flung herself towards the surface for a long draught of air.

But the price paid had also been high. Rising into the air, chest heaving, Starfire felt the first twinges of exhaustion in her muscles. Feeding so much energy into Prysm had drained her far faster than an extended skirmish would have done. Her arms felt heavy, her ankle throbbed, and her lungs were sore. Each breath was sweet agony. It was not a feeling she was especially used to, and she did not relish it.

A loud splash, and she knew Prysm had joined her back in the air. A quick look told her the submerging had barely affected her at all. In fact, Prysm looked invigorated – probably as a result of all that extra energy she'd absorbed. Her smooth exterior dripped water, refracting the light yet further and making her a living light show. Had it not been for the severity of the situation, Starfire would have thought her one of the most beautiful things she'd ever seen – on par with the rare space lightning of Oranjina Twelve.

Starfire knew she should ready herself to continue the fight. She knew she should call upon her natural buoyancy to keep her going, just as she had in countless other battles. Yet instead, all she could think about was how angry Raven was going to be if she didn't succeed and win this round; how disappointed. Starfire hated to let people down. She took it as a personal failing, even if the situation was beyond her control.

"You're all wet. Sorry," Prysm said, and by some means Starfire didn't doubt the sincerity in her voice. She really was sorry, and was only doing this because she had to.

Somehow it didn't make her feel any better.

Prysm didn't waster further time on words. She spiralled up into the air, a dervish of limbs and light. Starfire flew after her, forcing all thoughts of tiredness from her mind. She was Tamaranean, and she was a Teen Titan. She would fight on and win, even against impossible odds, because that's what they did – what she did. Had she quit when she was sent into that horrible future world? Had she given up when Robin was taken from them? Had she rolled over and let Slade win when he tried to destroy them all?

No, she had not.

She didn't attempt summoning a starbolt, but opted for a full frontal attack. There was still a chance she could take Prysm down in close range, bare knuckle combat. Pushing herself, Starfire shot towards the slowing other girl, aiming for her legs.

Prysm dodged and doubled back, dropping on Starfire from behind and above. She landed on her back, heels pressing into the base of her spine. The impact drove Starfire down seven feet, until she turned over and coiled herself around Prysm's lower legs. From there, she dragged her own body to a halt and swung in circles, using Prysm as a sort of Olympic hammer. The impetus behind the manoeuvre meant that when Starfire eventually let go, Prysm sped away backwards, and not at all of her own volition. This disorientated her enough that Starfire's fist ploughed into her gut while she was still pulling up.

It was like punching carbondium, save that Starfire was sure her knuckles had not hurt quite so much the last time she punched down a carbondium door. True, the super-alloy was pretty much the only metal she could not disintegrate with a single hit, but she could still put a severe dent in it, and given enough time she could still take it to pieces like wood in a chipper.

Prysm sailed backwards, but other than that there appeared to be no damage. She straightened and flew right back at Starfire, landing a return punch that sent the Tamaranean spinning.

"Sorry."

Starfire did not see the hands pressing against her midriff, forcing her back under the waves, but she felt them, just as she felt water once again closing over her head. Prysm had figured out she had an advantage in the ocean and, like a true warrior, she was exploiting it to her own advantage.

A distant part of Starfire thought that her parents would be proud of such a thing in their daughter.

She sought the topography of Prysm's body with her hands, found her waist and shoulders by feel, and then moved on to the circumference of her neck. Prysm had a deceptively slender neck. It made her seem almost fragile, like any human. Yet there was no pulsing life-vein there – the symbol of human frailty.

The closest equivalent Starfire had to a jugular was the frenkbul in her midriff, sequestered safely behind the thick mass of her stomach sac. She had never understood why nature designed humans – and most other Earth creatures – to have such vital machinery so exposed and easily open to attack. Would it not have made more sense to shield it deep within the body?

Biological conundrums aside, Starfire couldn't breathe. Her lungs and throat were a supernova of anguished nerve endings. Her skull felt like it was about to cave in from pressure – a very unpleasant sensation. How far down were they now? And still descending, too. Prysm shoved them deeper and deeper, turning as they went until Starfire had no idea where she was, or what now sat between her and the surface.

She scissored her legs around Prysm's waist, fighting against the pressure on all sides, but Prysm was unrelenting. She barely reacted to Starfire's wild kicking and punching, keeping up a steady force that bullied her ever downwards. She was impossibly strong.

Starfire could feel the larger of her two hearts beating faster, its smaller sister already an insistent thrum, so fast she could not tell one beat from the next. They all melded together, flowing, surging, like a swift currant of water.

Of water …

The black dots had returned. Starfire struggled, even going so far as to try overloading Prysm's hands again, but her energy fizzled out after the first few weakening starbolts. The dots crept further across her eyeballs, rimming her vision. She blinked, trying to force them away and carry on fighting, but they really were very firm little dots, and they simply refused to leave.

She felt her grip on Prysm slacken, felt her body begin to go limp. She also felt the answering movement from Prysm, the surge upward and the water parting for them. Yet it was all through a dark haze, like someone had spread black lace over her senses and stuffed the fur of a Kipowèe into her ears. Her body reacted instinctively, without conscious thought, banishing the dead air from her lungs and inhaling greedily.

"Sorry. I'm so sorry."

She barely felt it when Prysm lifted her into the air and brushed sopping wet hair from her face. She didn't eve notice when her molecules began to break down in a red mist, transported elsewhere for some other purpose. By that time, Starfire was deep into darkness, and so she didn't hear the words that crested into oblivion with her.

"I'm sorry …"

---

Instead of letting Pantha take the offensive, Terra took a double step forward and leaped into the air, lashing out with a strong right foot at her throat.

Pantha brought a hand up to block, managed to catch Terra's heel and overturned her in midair. Terra hit the ground hard on her shoulder. Pain flared from the jolt to her broken rib. Her stomach lurched. She wanted to throw up – badly.

As Pantha pressed in and bent to reach for her, Terra shoved off, sending both feet directly into the felinoid's chin. Taken by surprise this time, Pantha wasn't able to block the blow. It sent her staggering backward.

Terra regained her balance. Her stomach protested. She told it to shut up. Realising openings like this were few, she kept up the attack with all the abandon of a bar brawl. She rained down on Pantha with a swift combination of punches and kicks. Razor teeth cut through her thick gloves and grazed her knuckles once, but she jerked her hand away and replaced it with a booted foot. Teeth crumpled beneath her heel. When she drew her foot away there was blood running from Pantha's snout and mouth.

Terra felt a grim kind of satisfaction. Though she didn't actively chase bloodshed, she was already streaming red from what felt like hundreds of small cuts and contusions. It felt good to dish out a little payback.

The feeling was only slightly tempered. Terra had drawn the conclusion that Pantha was, if not completely mentally unstable, then at least verging on some sort of breakdown. At times she would stop fighting and sink into childlike weeping, only to snap into a dervish of claws and teeth a few seconds later. Here and there was evidence of formal combat styles, but more often Pantha fought like a true wild thing, discarding whatever vestiges of humanity she possessed to howl and dig into Terra like a meal, forcing Terra to wonder if, should she fall, Pantha really would feast on her flesh.

The thought spurred her on.

Even so, she felt a misplaced sense of inadequacy rising. Whether savage or civilised, Pantha moved like liquid silk. By comparison, Terra reckoned she moved with all the finesse of a gazelle with broken legs and a serious concussion. No matter how many hits she got in, Pantha was always still dancing, as if drifting in and out on gossamer wings.

If only I could hit her with more than a fist. Then I'd show her.

Terra had never missed her geokinesis quite so much as she did now. It made quite a change from the early days of getting her powers, when she could barely move without creating an earthquake, or collapsing some unlucky building. Then, she had begged the universe to take it all away and make her normal again. Now she would have given her eyeteeth for just a drop of power.

Why did the Master of Games put me in an environment where I can't fight to the fullest of my abilities?

Perhaps he favoured Pantha to win. Or perhaps he'd teleported them to the wrong battlefield. There wasn't much time for conscious deliberation, but the question niggled at her like an ant bite.

Pantha ran her tongue over her fangs. One of her teeth had broken, leaving an even sharper uneven edge. It glinted crimson, as though it was a winking eye. "You hurt me."

"I'd say you hurt me first, but do we really want to dissolve into playground banter?" Terra dragged the back of one hand across her face. The blood seeping against the interior of her glove mixed with the blood running from a half-moon gash on her cheek where Pantha had tried to bite her. Blending the two hurts created an even bigger hurt. She winced and hissed.

Pantha replied by bouncing forward, faster than a flash of lightning, and slammed Terra with a savage backhand that seemed intended to knock her face clean off her head. Terra lurched sideways, completing her trip to the ground when Pantha's full weight landed on her back.

Her face hit with a loud smack. Hot throbbing blossomed from her rib; melding with the smaller cuts to fan the flames of her injuries like her cheek had done when it met the slice on her hand. She didn't let out a scream so much as a whimper of pain, cut off when claws closed around her shoulders from behind and cut fresh gouges above her collarbone.

"Now I hurt you back," Pantha breathed, mouth so close that Terra could feel moisture bead inside her earlobe.

"Dude," she wheezed, "ever hear of personal space?"

Pantha dug her claws in and yanked, the result being that Terra's head and shoulders lifted off the floor. She scrabbled to bring her arms up and brace the flats of her hands, but she was smashed down before she could so much as twitch.

Pantha repeated the move twice more, until Terra's spatial awareness was virtually nil and a thick, heavy pain pulsated inside her skull. She felt something warm dripping from her nose, realising belatedly that it had taken a lot of damage. In fact, it was more than damaged, sweeping past 'broken' and continuing right on into 'pulped'. She had to breathe through her mouth, and coughed when she sucked air in too voraciously.

Her thoughts were scattered, pushed further away by the insistent throbbing. She tried to gather them in, instinct leaving her high and dry except to say 'you know, you really are in a lot of pain right now'. Like she didn't already know that? Thanks subconscious. Thanks a bunch.

Pantha's claws were still latched into the fleshy tissue just below her neck, but she felt them creeping free, moving upwards. Maybe it was the damage she'd taken, but their touch felt softer than before, like a lover's gentle caress.

And some leftover survivalist impulse insisted that this was a very bad thing.

Suddenly Terra identified the throbbing as her pulse, amplified by the loudspeaker of her body, and she could feel all the vital points crying in partnership: wrists, thighs, fingertips, throat …

Throat.

She pressed her palms to the floor, trying to buck Pantha off, but the felinoid's weight was greater – too great to shift. And the pain – the pain. Her chest was on fire and her face felt like it had been shut in a waffle iron. While it was switched on.

Grunting, Terra twisted her head away, but that exposed the soft tissue of her throat. A small noise of panic passed lips that were already beginning to redden and swell.

This had ceased to be a game. For Pantha, it had probably never been one in the first place, but now Terra comprehended the true severity of her situation. If she didn't stop this – now – Pantha was likely going to kill her.

Kill her …

Panic suffused Terra – hot panic and cold fear. Every nerve ending undulated with adrenaline; fizzed and spat and sent little terrified impulses to her brain. The threat of death made her a hub of hyperawareness.

And that was when she felt it.

Earth.

So deep it was hardly noticeable, but still, it was there. She felt it, felt the infinitesimal grains, felt the shift of soil and rock and dirt as her consciousness slid between them. She pushed, jostling lower, and lower still, until she felt as though she should be breaking crust into magma and white-hot mantle.

And then she let it rip.

First the ground shuddered. The cylindrical pillars trembled. Then, with a grind of twisting metal and a rush of air, a great nub of soil jutted between the two girls and forcibly plucked Pantha off Terra's back. It flung her aside like so much garbage and then sank down, helping Terra up by converting itself into a prop.

Terra felt her throat. There was a small line that leaked blood just below her left ear. Nothing serious, but enough to make her shudder at what might have been.

She allowed the soil to buttress her until she could stand on her own two feet, then set herself more firmly. She could feel this earth leading into another patch, and another, so deep that without that extra stimulus she would not have found them. They were of a more alkaline composition than she was used to, but it hardly mattered. Alone they were small, no more than handfuls of dust; but corralled together she could use them as a formidable weapon.

Terra smiled a smile that was battered, but not beaten. "Now we're cooking with gas!"

Pantha launched herself, but the soil swept her aside. She squalled as she tucked and rolled, and then tried again, with much the same result.

After the third attempt she stopped, squealing to a halt and sitting on her haunches no more than six feet away. Her tail flicked.

Terra braced herself. She no longer felt afraid, instead embracing the sense of retribution and raw power that coursed through her.

Pantha regarded her through narrowed eyes, clearly not knowing what to make of this development. For a moment it looked as though she would try to jump Terra again. Then, against all expectation, she threw back her head … and laughed.

Terra jolted, fists clenched, until she comprehended the noise. Then she blinked, nonplussed. There was a frenzied edge to the laughter that spoke of oblivion and celestial pranks played by gods on unassuming mortals. She frowned, not seeing the joke.

Beside her, the mound of soil convulsed, new pieces joining it and increasing its size with every passing second.

The hysterical laughter continued, grew louder, became higher in pitch. The individual laughs melted into each other, until Terra could no longer tell in-breath from out-breath. Then they changed to a high, keening wail, which became more rounded, throatier, until it was an unmistakably cold and piercing howl. That howl made Terra shudder. There was anger to it, but there was also grief, deep-seated and profound – the kind that genuinely can't be put into words. It was as if Pantha were screaming at the universe, venting herself before she had no more chance to do so.

Another jolt as the significance of that sank in, but Terra had no more time to consider it. Still shrieking, Pantha hurled herself at her. The soil rushed upward, encountering her before she got even halfway, but she propelled herself off it like a platform. She was like an Olympic gymnast, twirling and bouncing from nub to nub. It was almost like she had some level of precognition, to know where each soil-fist would be next.

Terra shook off any fogginess and concentrated hard. Earth lanced into the air, grabbed at whiskers and tore out clumps of fur. Pantha wove and ducked and dodged, shrieked and yowled and screamed. Footprints appeared in Terra's best aims. She felt each impact and cursed a blue streak when none connected properly.

Terra tried harder, thrusting herself deep into the earth and pushing it, yanking it up and out by its basest molecules.

This was impossible. Pantha could not be avoiding these attacks.

And she wasn't – not all of them – but not enough were hitting her to stop her, or even slow her down significantly. She came on like an out-of-control freight train, and Terra was forced to throw up her hands to create a protective wall.

I'm still on the defensive. Why am I still on the defensive? I should have the advantage now!

She heard Pantha scream with frustration, could feel her scrabbling against the wall as if trying to dig her way through. Her mind ached from the lengthy hyperawareness, claws tearing strips from the soil she was connected to. It felt like gashes opening in her abdomen; yet Terra concentrated again and the wall tipped sideways.

Pantha shrieked – right before she was buried.

If she'd had the energy, Terra might have punched the air. There was no way anyone could have escaped that. There was no way. She'd seen her go under. She could feel the lump of body under the soil.

So it was with utter disbelief that she felt something scraping aside that soil, and saw that same something launch into the air, using the collapsed earth as a springboard. She threw up her hands again, creating another wall, but Pantha had extra height this time and hurdled it, landing inside.

She grinned.

She unsheathed her claws.

And Terra fell for the last time.

---

Discontinued

---

Side-flings, Homages and Downright Rip-offs

Titans' Tower (website) -- Invaluable for info on all the 'new' Titans featured here, plus some tidbits about the 'old' Titans, too.

Terra smiled in that brightly forced way that wasn't really all that cheerful. "See this foot?" she said, pointing to her left boot. "It comes from a little town called Pink Witch's Butt, and it's getting homesick." -- Riffs off a line in the Chris Rock version of the movieDown to Earth.

All fights scenes were helped immensely by the novels Resurrecting Ravana, by Ray Garton; BtVS: The Lost Slayer Series, by Christopher Golden; and Chaos Bleeds, by James A. Moore.

"You are deader than dead. You are deader than a snowman in July. And I mean TV movie of the week, CNN all-day-coverage kinda dead!" -- Courtesy of Rogue in an issue of Uncanny X-men I no longer own, and so can'tremember the issue of. It came out in the early-to-mid-1990s, I think.