A/N: Welcome, readers, to the second installment in the Tales of Diamond Earth. For those of you who are new, let me just explain quickly: Diamond Earth is the in-story fanfiction universe in which this tale, as well as others in the series, take place. It is a DC universe of my own creation that incorporates elements from the comics, cartoons, and movies - but is not otherwise related to any of those media. At present, I have twelve stories planned in the series, but there might be more. This is only the second, so there are a lot more adventures to be had in Diamond Earth.

Disclaimer: I own the Diamond Earth universe, but the original idea was, and always will be, DC's. Hence, I have no claim to the Teen Titans.

TALES OF DIAMOND EARTH

Secrets of State

Chapter One: Abduction

In a dimly-lit room on a distant planet, three aliens sat around a small table for an important discussion.

Two of the aliens were large and bulky, with great muscles rippling beneath their green, scaly skin. Their heads were block-like and square, sitting on short, stocky necks. Each of them had a reptile-like tail extending some five feet from their posterior. Both were dressed in simple black garb that left their arms, legs, and tails free; there were black bracers on each of their wrists and long black boots around their legs. On their heads, they wore simple black helmets that left their face open. Their entire bearing screamed ruthless.

The third alien was by far the most attractive. She had golden orange skin and curious green eyes without pupils. Her lustrous dark red hair was held back by a crown-like headband that framed her ovular face within a silver metal 'M', its outer lines curved around her cheeks.

"You know what to do?" she asked.

The larger of the two green aliens nodded. "We know our objective."

"Good," she said. "Fulfill it, and I will pay you handsomely. The faster you do it, the more you get paid. Understand?"

They nodded again, their orange eyes gleaming in anticipation of their payment.

"Go, then," the red-haired alien said. She smirked; in the gloom it gave her beautiful face a chilling demeanor. "It's time my sister came home."

Breakfast was always a rather noisy affair at Titans Tower. This was due, in part, to the fact that it was the only meal of the day when everyone in the Tower was in the kitchen at the same time, but mostly because of the typical argument that always started up between Cyborg and Beast Boy about the benefits of a strict vegan diet.

"Come on, Gar – let me make you a real breakfast for once," Vic was saying. "Bacon, eggs, cheese, and lots of real milk. Doesn't that sound good?"

"I told you," Garfield said, waving a box of his favorite muesli, "I'm perfectly happy with my muesli and soy milk."

"Dude, look at you – you're the smallest of us all. You're, what – fourteen?"

"Sixteen," Gar corrected emphatically.

"– and you're like five feet tall! You're tiny! You need to eat, man, and you need to eat proper food – not that tofu stuff you're always munching."

"I like tofu."

"And I like grass," Vic retorted sarcastically. "Just because you can turn into animals doesn't mean you can't eat them."

"It's a principle of respect, Vic," Gar informed him tartly, emptying some muesli into a bowl and topping it off with soy milk. "I know what it's like to be those animals, and that gives you a different perspective about what life's like for them. It's a personal choice. You don't see me bugging you about all the meat you eat, do you?"

"Give him a break, Vic," Raven intervened from the corner where she was standing with a cup of steaming herbal tea and a bowl of fruit and yogurt – Raven always ate healthy. "He's entitled to his own eating habits."

"See?" Gar shot at Vic. "Now leave me in peace."

"Fine, fine," Vic grumbled, opening the fridge and taking out a platter of bacon rashers. "But one of these days, I'm gonna get some meat into you."

Ignoring him, Gar asked, "Who's on Tower duty today?"

"Kory," Raven replied, carrying her tea and yogurt to the dining table.

Since moving into their Tower about eight months ago, the five Titans had set up a schedule that fit into everyone's lives while still allowing them to fulfill their obligations as Jump City's protectors. Each of the five had an assigned day to 'babysit' the Tower, during which they were supposed to stay in for a full twenty-four hours (unless they were fighting criminals or doing some other Titan duty) to monitor the city, while the other four could do their own thing until and unless the Titans were needed. Raven, Cyborg, and Beast Boy, having no home of their own, were permanent residents of the Tower, and they were the ones who traded off the weekend shifts. Nightwing and Starfire had other aspects of their lives to keep up with – Dick had college and his day job as a part-time mechanic and Kory was working as a model – so they lived in Dick's apartment in the city, unless they were on Tower duty, in which case one or both of them would sleep in their rooms at the Tower. Still, most of their free time was spent at the Tower anyway – they usually only went back to their apartment at night.

All in all, the Titans had settled in pretty well after the Parallax crisis. The citizens of Jump knew them all by sight and name, and were even aware of Starfire's, Cyborg's, and Beast Boy's identities (not that they could really maintain civilian disguises, being noticeably alien, half-cybernetic, and green, respectively). Raven didn't have a civilian identity – she had never needed to create a separate identity for herself, since she hadn't lived on Earth for most of her life. The only one of them who actually had an alter ego was Nightwing – it was a practice deeply ingrained in him by Batman, and he wasn't about to break it now.

Vic checked his watch. "It's 8:45. Shouldn't they be here by now?"

"Dick has classes today," Raven reminded him. "Kory's coming by around nine."

"I've gotta say, I really admire Dick," said Gar around a mouthful of muesli. "It can't be easy being a superhero and keeping up with his education."

"And helping Kory adjust to Earth, don't forget that," Vic added.

"Precisely," agreed Gar. "How does he do it?"

"He manages his time properly," Raven responded. "Speaking of education – are either of you two thinking about university?"

"Looking like this?" Vic asked disbelievingly, gesturing at his cybernetic body. "Forget it."

"And I've been homeschooled ever since I turned green," Gar put in. "It's worked fine for me."

"What about you?" Vic asked Raven. "You can't be past college age yet."

"I'm not. But college really wouldn't do much for me – I was trained in everything I'll need to know by the monks of Azarath."

Just then a loud siren sounded, accompanied by flashing red lights. Cyborg had designed the Tower's computer mainframe to link remotely to the alarm systems of Jump City's public buildings – if any of those were triggered, the Tower alarm went off too, and the computer would pull up information from nearby video cams about the location and nature of the crime. This system, along with the regular patrols they ran, had cut the crime rate in Jump City by almost one-quarter since they first started superhero activities.

"Where's the fire?" Gar queried, abandoning his muesli as Vic brought up the necessary data on the computer.

"East sector," the cyborg replied. "Kory's on site. Let's go."

Raven, Cyborg, and Beast Boy met up with Starfire in the east sector; Nightwing joined them soon after, having made an excuse to get out of class early.

"Who are we dealing with?" Cyborg questioned, observing the mayhem in the street.

"He calls himself Dr. Light," Starfire replied, hovering in the air. "He appears to be able to use his suit to absorb light and expel it as energy missiles. It is similar to what I do with my starbolts."

"Is he working alone?" Nightwing asked.

"It would seem so."

"Surround and close in?" Cyborg suggested. Nightwing nodded.

"Let's do it. Titans, go!"

They split up, moving in a precise pattern. Nightwing went in to confront Dr. Light head on while Cyborg and Beast Boy covered his back and blocked off Light's routes of escape. Raven and Starfire circled in the sky, ready to dive in the moment they were needed.

Nightwing dodged a blast of light and lunged for the suited villain. Dr. Light was a thin man with a short black beard and long limbs. His suit was a simple black affair that covered him from head to toe, leaving only his face free. There was a reflective circular disc in the middle of the white motif on his chest, which Nightwing deduced was probably how he absorbed light. Dr. Light nimbly sidestepped Nightwing's attack and fired a ray of light from his gauntleted hands, sending the Titan leader crashing into a window. Cyborg and Beast Boy converged on the villain at the same time; Dr. Light absorbed the cyan light from Cyborg's circuits and used them to deflect Beast Boy's crocodile form.

"Kory, don't use your starbolts," Raven warned.

"I know." Starfire dove down, taking Dr. Light by surprise and using her alien strength to sock him in the jaw. Light, from his position on the ground, quickly absorbed the radiance from the sun and demonstrated a new ability: he trapped Raven in a cage with bars made entirely out of light energy.

Cyborg recovered from his brief immobilization and charged at Light at the same time Nightwing leaped at him, bo staff extended. Light barely had time to dodge, but dodge he did – he must have used the residual light energy in his suit to increase his speed somehow. Cyborg had to swerve sharply to avoid hitting Nightwing.

Raven burst out of the light cage in a surge of dark energy, heading straight for Dr. Light. Using her telekinesis, she hurled a broken piece of cement at him. Light used the last of the energy in his suit to shatter the projectile and, in the resultant rain of pebbles, disappeared to absorb more energy. The Titans used the opportunity to regroup and strategize.

"If he can make a cage out of light, I think it's safe to say he can do a lot more with it that we don't know about," Raven said dryly, brushing cement dust off her cloak.

"Yet," Beast Boy added.

"But he's powerless without his suit," Nightwing pointed out.

"More specifically, he's powerless without that absorption disc on his chest," Cyborg clarified. "If we can take that out, we can take him down easily."

"The problem is getting near him," said Beast Boy. "Every time we get close to the disc thing, he blasts us away."

"A ranged attack is our best shot," Cyborg mused thoughtfully, "but it can't be me."

"Nor me," added Starfire. "My starbolts would only add to his power."

"I don't do well with light," Raven said.

"If you guys can distract him, I can take out the disc." Nightwing held up a birdarang.

"I'll cover you," Beast Boy volunteered.

Nightwing nodded. "It's settled, then," he agreed, as Dr. Light, fully recharged, resumed his looting spree.

"Commander, we have an unconfirmed sighting of a Tamaranean in Quadrant 4."

The green-skinned alien commander looked up. "That's the Sol System, isn't it?"

"Yes, Commander."

"Who reported the sighting?"

The subordinate referred to his computer. "Scout 2 – B'zall Narv."

The commander looked thoughtful. "Narv is a reliable scout – and a Tamaranean this far from the Vega System is very suspicious. What planet did he sight the Tamaranean on?"

"Earth."

Dr. Light hopped out of the way of Starfire's punches.

"You'll have to do better than that, girlie," he mocked.

A split second later, a birdarang flew into his chest, implanting itself dead center in his absorption disc and cracking it. A few volts of electricity crackled over the broken disc before fading.

"No!" Dr. Light cried angrily, plucking the birdarang out and trying to use what was left of his disc to absorb more energy – a futile effort, as it was plain to see that the disc was no longer functional.

With his power source gone, the sound of a sonic cannon cocking in his direction was enough to make Dr. Light surrender unconditionally.

"Boo yeah." Cyborg smirked.

The Jump City police had arrived by now, and the Titans happily handed custody of the defeated villain to them.

"Good work, team," Nightwing praised.

"Nice shooting, Nightwing," Cyborg complimented.

"Very," Starfire agreed, rising into the air. "I should get to the Tower – I believe it's my turn today."

"I'll come with you," said Beast Boy. "I didn't get to finish my breakfast, and if Vic doesn't come, I might actually get to eat in peace for once."

Cyborg rolled his natural eye.

A sudden loud boom had them all assuming battle stances again. They all stared as a small spaceship dropped into the atmosphere, casting a shadow on the sun's brightness. A hatch opened in the hull and two large, scaly green beings flew out, hovering on jet packs strapped to their backs. Starfire gasped.

"Gordanians!" she cried.

"That's her," one of the aliens said to his partner, pointing at Starfire. The Tamaranean looked stricken; her teammates were confused and concerned.

The next instant, both aliens were rushing towards Starfire, who gave a yelp and zipped farther up into the sky. The Gordanians didn't even bother to chase after her; one of them simply withdrew a nasty-looking ray gun and, taking careful aim, zapped Starfire with it.

The effect was immediate. Starfire went limp and dropped from the air, landing in the waiting arms of the other Gordanian, who promptly took her into their ship.

It happened too fast for the other four Titans to react. However, their gasps and exclamations of shock and anger seemed to register on the second Gordanian, who, when he turned to face them, found them preparing to attack.

"Do not interfere in matters that are none of your concern," he warned them briskly, in his deep, gravelly voice. "This is an affair between the Grand Ruler of Tamaran and the fugitive Koriand'r. Stay out of it."

With that, he too retreated into the spaceship, and a second later, the ship was speeding out of the atmosphere, leaving the Teen Titans short one member.

A/N: That's Chapter One. What do you think?

Updates will be daily as usual, so expect Chapter Two tomorrow!