YOUNG JUSTICE: Blood Red Shadows.

A/N: I do not own Teen Titans, DC Comics, or Young Justice.

Chapter One.

End of Days

"Titans, go!" Robin shouted as Monsieur Mallah stepped forward.

Beast Boy immediately changed into a gorilla of the same size as Mallah and charged the black, French gorilla. The large ape met the shapeshifter head on and the two started to wrestle. Meanwhile, Starfire flew into the air and began to fire green energy bolts at the Brain who was standing in front of the computer console behind Mallah. Using a retractable cable-like arm, Brain promptly pressed a button on the console, generating a shield of blue energy which absorbed the bolts. Cyborg raised his arm and fired a blue laser at the shield only for it to hum and glow brighter.

"That shield won't go down unless somebody destroys the console," he shouted, powering down his arm cannon. Raven flew up into the air and she raised her hands.

"Azarath Metrion Zinthos!" she shouted as dark energy condensed around her hands.

All around the Brain, wires and pipes coated with Raven's shadow-like energy burst out of their previous holdings and attacked the brain in the jar. The Brain apparently was expecting this, as he once again pressed a button on the console. A loud hum was heard and the wires and pipes fell to the ground.

"You see, young heroes, I cannot be beaten this time," the Brain said in his robotic voice. "I have computed every outcome and have prepared accordingly."

As he said this panels opened up in the grey walls, revealing several ringed rods. They shot out lightning out at Cyborg, causing him to yell in pain. A few more panels opened up and trapped Starfire in a blue bubble, much like the one that Brain was in.

As all of this was happening as Robin had been jumping from wall to wall, destroying laser guns that were blasting at him. He had soon taken out the last one and looked down to see how his team was doing. He watched as Cyborg collapsed and Starfire beat against the bubble uselessly, screaming curses in both English and Tamaranian. Beast Boy shifted into a tyrannosaurus rex and tried to eat Mallah, only for the talking gorilla to punch him in the head. The attack shocked the green boy out of his monstrous form and slammed him into a wall. He slumped onto the floor, unconscious. Raven was flying around, avoiding electrically charged cables that shot out of the wall at her, creating a net of electrified doom.

Robin grabbed throwing birds from his belt and threw them at some wires that would have hit his teammate. They flew through the air, making a slight whistling sound as they did, and hit the approaching cables, knocking them away just in time.

"You cannot win. We shall reign victorious this time," the Brain taunted from the safety of his forcefield. "And now for the grand finale of the Teen Titans-I shall destroy you and all that you hold dear."

The robot extended an arm out to a lever and pulled it down. In the corner of the room a turret rose from the floor. It started to spark and sizzle as it powered up. Robin threw a throwing bird at it, only for it to be blocked by Monsieur Mallah, who jumped in front of the projectile. It hit his chest harmlessly and he laughed at the two remaining heroes. He landed and calmly walked over to the edge of the forcefield. The Brain switched a lever and the field surrounding him fell. Before Mallah had a chance to carry him to safety, Raven flew at the now exposed robot and accessed her power, making her eyes glow white. She encased Brain in two sheets of metal and welded them to the floor.

Robin leapt off of the wall and used his cape to glide towards Mallah, who was growling and breaking the Brain free of Raven's metal cage. The Boy Wonder pulled out his collapsible bo staff and brought it down on Mallah's head. The ape growled and turned to face the colorful hero.

"Ignore him, Mallah," the Brain said. "They have already lost."

The ape looked at the robot and nodded. He then ripped the Brain off of its body. He ran away while Robin jumped in front of the fleeing villains. He smirked at them.

"You're done, Brain," Robin said as he crouched in a battle stance.

"I think not." Brain said.

The ape leveled a minigun at the Boy Wonder and fired. A stream of red lasers blasted out of the gun, causing the boy to roll to the side to avoid getting shot to pieces. This allowed the ape to climb out of the room and escape out of a window that the Titans had originally used to enter the lab. It was only then that Robin felt the wind pulling at his hair and cape. He looked around to see a massive black vortex in the center of the room. Raven was standing in front of it, appearing to be meditating as the vortex pulled in everything that wasn't bolted to the floor, including the other Titans.

"Raven, what happened?" Robin called as he lunged and grabbed Beast Boy from flying into the black hole. Raven opened her violet eyes then answered in her usual monotone.

"The turret that the Brain activated, it fired a- Azarath Metrion Zinthos!" she said before breaking off and shouting out her spell to stop Starfire's bubble and Cyborg from flying and sharing the same fate as the rest of the lab.

"I get the picture," Robin said as he grabbed Beast Boy from the air and slung the shapeshifter over his shoulder. Robin then hauled the green boy as far away from the hole as he could. "How do we stop it?"

"Friends, we must stop this or our city could be destroyed!" Starfire said in her bubble. Robin nodded and looked at Raven.

"We need to break it's core," Raven said with her eyes closed as she probed the growing vortex with her powers. "But whoever does it won't be coming back." Robin narrowed his eyes through his mask and hissed like a cat.

"I'm going," he said simply before jumping onto the wall that Beast Boy's limp body was resting against and pushing off with his legs. He sailed straight for the center of the vortex.

"Robin, no!" Starfire yelled.

Just as he was about to enter the vortex, it's pull increased, hauling Raven almost directly in front of him. Robin had no time to react as he collided with Raven and they were both sent tumbling into the hole. Robin saw a lightless sphere and assumed that it must have been the center of the hole. He threw a bird at it, yelling as he did so but no sound came out.

When the weapon got close to the core, it compressed and became a tiny ball of compacted steel. Robin watched as his weapon became smaller and smaller until it was nothing but a speck. He tried again with another but only for it to happen again. Raven saw that he was failing and tried to help him.

She sent her shadow magic at it, but nothing got to the core. Robin raised one of his exploding birds, already primed, and showed it to Raven. She sent a tendril of power into his mind through their mental connection so they could communicate in the soundless place.

I'll throw this and you protect it for as long as you can, Robin told her. Raven nodded and raised a barrier around the small object as Robin threw it with all his might.

The blinking projectile sailed so close to the core that Robin thought it might actually hit it, but Raven's power failed at that moment. The bomb compressed and exploded in a flash of yellow and red and the two Titans saw only light as the explosion engulfed them and the core.


Starfire saw nothing of her friends after they had been launched into the black hole. She stared at the hole for several moments, waiting for the monstrosity that had claimed her friends to disappear. She saw a flash of light from the center of the vortex and then the black hole disappeared in an explosion. The wind immediately stopped howling and all was silent in the lab. Cyborg groaned and sat up.

"Man, what happened? Where are Brain and Mallah?" he asked, checking his systems. When he was sure that he was fully functional, he stood up and went over to Beast Boy. "Yo, BB, wake up."

"The Mallah hit him particularly hard, friend Cyborg," Starfire said. Cyborg looked over at her and frowned.

"Let's get you out of there," he said shifting his arm into a variety of different tools.

He moved over to the computer console and flipped a few switches and soldered a few wires, releasing the Tamaranian princess. She fell to the floor and walked over to their green-skinned friend somberly.

"Hey, where's Rob and Ray?" Cyborg asked as he looked around the room.

"I am afraid that friends Robin and Raven will not be joining us this Blorthog," Starfire said sadly before starting to cry into her robotic friend's shoulder.

Cyborg didn't know what to do. Robin had been their leader, and Raven, sure the girl was hard to get along with at times, but she was still an important part of the team. He grabbed Beast Boy and held Starfire as she cried. They would go back to the Tower and figure out what to do now that their fellow Titans were no more.


Robin woke up with a splitting headache. He was laying in a warehouse with boxes all around him. He sat up and looked around. He saw that several of the boxes had been knocked over and that he was sitting in the ruins of one. He noticed Raven laying in the remains of another box a little to his left and a pile of white dust under his feet. He swiped his gloved finger across the powder and smelled it. Vertigo. This was obviously an illegal storage facility of some kind. Robin shook head. He would deal with this later. Now was the time to get back to the Titan's Tower and get Raven medical attention. He pulled out his communicator and pressed the transmit button.

"Titans, this is Robin, requesting immediate assistance," he said into the small circular device. He waited for a second and only heard static. "Cyborg? Starfire? Anyone?"

Again, he got no response. Robin sighed. Guess it was the old-fashioned way, then. He got to his feet and was surprised to find that he was mostly unhurt. Just a few cut and bruises here and there, though his uniform was ruined. He walked over to Raven's body and gently lifted her up, having her draped across his arms. He jogged out of the warehouse and onto a wooden dock that had a few boats by it. It was mid-evening, with the sun just starting to set on the calm water.

Robin dragged his gaze away from the ocean view and onto the city. As he gazed on the sprawling gray buildings, he easily realized that he was in Jump City's harbor, right across from the Tower Island. He turned, expecting to see his home, and he saw that instead of the massive T-shaped tower, there was a small beach side resort residing on the small spot of land. Robin's eyes widened then narrowed suspiciously.

"Something's wrong," he muttered to himself. Raven groaned and Robin realized that she needed some form of medical attention.

He jogged down the pier and into the city that he was so familiar with. He stepped into an alley and gently laid Raven down. He tried to assess her condition. She wasn't exhibiting signs that she was injured. Her power would have been lashing out everywhere if that was true. She wasn't running a fever or anything of the sort. The best the Robin could figure she was just taking longer to wake up than he was.

He stayed in the alley until it was dark, nearly black in the under belly of the city, then once again picked up his comatose friend. He walked slowly this time as he carried Raven down the alleyways, though he stayed alert, expecting trouble of some sort. He was heading for the only place that he was sure would be abandoned-Slade's factory, as much as he loathed to stay there.

He made it to the factory with no trouble, much to his surprise, and just from looking at the outside he knew that nothing had changed in since he had last been there. The factory was as run down as Robin remembered it, if not more so. He entered the decrepit building and went down to the basement and laid Raven on the ground once again. It was eerie the gears that had normally turned silently in the shadows were still.

What's the matter Robin? Scared of your former master's den? Robin could almost hear his deceased enemy whispering in his ear. Maybe this hadn't been such a good idea, after all. There were too many bad memories in this place.

Robin sighed as he looked around for any form of computer-it wouldn't do for him and Raven just to wander around, hoping to walk into answers. He eventually found a discarded laptop that had been left in an old office of some sort. It was practically dead and was missing several components, so he had to connect it to the factory's generator to get it to work. Once he fixed the old machine and got the power current fluctuating properly, Robin booted it up and spent the rest of the night searching through all the information that he could find. He started by searching for what had happened to the Titans, but strangely found nothing mentioning them at all. He kept coming up with results relating to the Justice League, not at all helpful.

It was by pure chance when he stumbled across the article that started him on the correct path the following morning. It was an article about how Batman and Robin had once again put the Joker behind bars. Robin had thought nothing of it until he had seen the picture on the article. The Robin standing next to Batmen looked nothing like the Robin searching for answers on the abandoned laptop.

He didn't have any green in his costume and he looked to be much younger. Several searches later revealed that the unknown Robin had always looked like this and had only been around for about a year. Robin found that the younger Robin had never gone solo and nothing he saw gave any mention of him falling out with Batman.

"This doesn't add up," Robin muttered as he checked the wires connecting the laptop to the generator. "It's not an imposter. The Titans would still be in the news if it was, so what am I missing?"

He closed the computer and folded his hands together, his chin resting on them, thinking. The fact there wasn't a single article on the the Titans and instead of him, there was another Robin that had never left Batman's side. This didn't make sense.

"What's going on here? It's like everything with the Titans had never happened," Robin muttered, thinking out loud. His eyes narrowed as a particular thought crossed his mind. "Maybe they didn't. Maybe… this place isn't home."

Brain's device must of sent him and Raven to some other timeline… or universe. That would explain it. Robin grinned, knowing that he had finally figured it out. "Well, that's one black hole theory answered."

He booted the laptop back up and began a new search. If this was a parallel universe or whatever this was, he wanted to know everything there was to know about it. His searches found that some villains he was familiar with had never existed and some that he didn't know about caused trouble on a regular basis. Robin found out that there had been no mention of the other Titans, though he did find some of the Honorary Titans. Speedy was still Green Arrow's partner. Kid Flash was still with the Flash. Aqualad was still with Aquaman. The only weird part was that Aqualad wasn't Garth, but some dark-skinned teen.

For the next few days Robin divided his time between caring for Raven and going out for supplies that he needed for his new costume. After extensive research on the laptop-generator combination, Robin had found neither hide nor hare of anything relating to his Red X persona, and had decided to once again take it up. If there really was another Robin, then he couldn't walk around as himself. Two Robins would just create problems he didn't need, and cause other heroes to ask questions he didn't want to answer, so it would be better if he just avoided it all together. Might as well use Red X, an alias he knew well. Still, he couldn't help but feel guilty when he thought of the lies that came with Red X and his previous actions. By the end of the second day he had everything he needed for his new identity, except a Xenothium core. It was on that day that Raven finally woke up.

She sat up from the stained yellow mattress that Robin had found in a back alley and looked around. Her immediate reaction was fear as she realized that she was in Slade's old hideout. She flew up, searching for the one-eyed villain. Without even realizing it, she condensed her power around her hands, ready to blast the first sign of Slade she saw.

"Whoa, Raven, calm down!" Robin said from behind her. In reflex at the sound, she whirled in the air and shot a stream of shadow-like magic at him. It was only a flip backwards that saved Robin from losing his head.

"Robin?" Raven asked as she floated to the floor.

"It's me, though I won't be Robin for much longer," he said as he stepped up towards the demoness.

"What are you talking about?"

"Come with me. I'll show you," he said as he walked to the stairs of the former villain's base.

Raven followed him up the stairs and into the main floor of the factory and to a small room in the back. Robin had laid out several changes of civilian clothes, along with a small, walled off area to change in. Raven looked at the boy and saw that he was already picking out a pair of dark grey jeans, a red sweatshirt, and a pair of black tennis shoes from the pile of clothes he had set out for himself.

"Trust me, it'll be better if we're not heroes when we walk out the door," Robin said when he saw her practically glaring at the pile of clothes he had set out.

Raven sighed and grabbed a purple hooded sweatshirt, a pair of blue jeans and grey tennis shoes, wondering where he got them from. She went into the section Robin had set up and quickly changed out of her current attire. It was only then that she realised just how shredded her outfit was, like somebody had taken hundreds of knives to it. When she walked out Robin was in his selected clothing. She wasn't really interested in that, however, because it was the first time Raven had ever seen her leader without his mask on. The first time that his cold blue eyes were visible to her. With those he could definitely give Batman a run for his money in the intimidation department.

He had a small panel open with his folded, multi-colored costume carefully placed inside the opening. He gestured for Raven to do the same with her costume and she did so, knowing that if anyone got in here they did not want the intruders to find their uniforms. Robin slid the panel back in place and walked away from the hidden compartment.

"You've been busy," Raven noted dully. Robin shrugged and turned towards the door.

"Come on, I'll explain everything that's happened as we walk around town," Robin said, walking out of the room. "There are some thing you need to know."

"What things?" Raven asked, continuing to use her trademark stoic tone.

Robin didn't respond and instead walked out of the building with Raven following close behind. They stepped out into the light of mid morning and briskly walked to the main street of Jump City. Almost immediately Raven recognized the city that was their home. The only thing that stopped her from questioning Robin about why they weren't at the Tower-a question that had been bugging her ever since she had woken up-was the fact that the energy of the place felt… wrong, somehow.

"I'll cut to the chase: we're not in the Jump City that we know," Robin said as he walked, never looking to see if she was following or not. "The Titans have never existed and as far as I can tell most of its members either never existed or never became heroes." Raven turned her head and looked at the city she had once known as she listened to Robin explain their situation.

"So what members do exist?" Raven asked as she followed Robin onto a tightly packed street that was crowded with people.

"Cyborg is a star athlete and is currently living in Metropolis, but the accident that made him need the cybernetic implants never happened. I couldn't find anything about Beast Boy or Starfire," Robin explained as he dodged people on the sidewalk.

"Anything else?" Raven asked.

"I found a few of the Honorary Titans, but they haven't gone solo yet," Robin replied as he lead her through the streets, towards the beach front. "There's also a Robin here and again he hasn't gone solo but that means I can't keep using the Robin alias for myself. I've been setting up a new version of the Red X costume."

"Wait, what did you say?" Raven asked.

"I know, I don't like it, either," Robin said. "But at this point, we don't have a choice. We need to figure out what's going on without bringing attention to ourselves."

"And how is Red X going to accomplish that?" Raved said, her tone annoyed.

"I created Red X. I know him better than anyone. Red X hides in the shadows, away from the spotlight. There's no one better," Robin argued

Raven looked like she wanted to argue further, but decided to be silent, understanding Robin's point. By then they were finally at the harbor where the tiny island sat and Raven saw the resort that sat where the Tower should have been.

"So now we have a choice," Robin said. "I've already made it, so it's your turn. This town could use just as much cleaning up, if not more, than when we were Titans. So you can either leave this city, or not, and do what you want to do for the rest of your life. Or we go back to doing what we're good at and clean up this city," Raven nodded. It wasn't really a plan but it would do.

"What would we be, if not heroes?" she replied sarcastically. Robin smirked lightly and held out his hand.

"Welcome back to the Teen Titans, Raven," he said once she took it.