A/N: Have to give credit where it's due. Legend Maker helped a lot on this one, especially with the argument between Trevor and the Stranger.

Chapter Two: Visitors From a Dead Planet

Trevor followed Rachel out of the bar, shortly after he watched the red-haired stranger disappear around the corner of the bathroom hall. He mostly wanted to make sure the psycho didn't put a knife in his back, or something…

He looked around. Rachel was gone. Odd, he thought; she disappeared awful quickly. Oh well, might be best to let her have her secrets. She'd said she wasn't allowed by her father to even have boyfriends, so perhaps it was best if he let her have her space.

Realizing, suddenly, that he had to use the bathroom, Trevor ran back into the dark establishment and entered the men's room… Forgetting until it was too late that his girlfriend's stalker was in there too.

"Hello," he said, as Trevor entered.

Trevor gasped in mild surprise and swore. "Listen, man, I don't want any trouble. What problem do you have with Rachel?"

"My problem isn't with her; it's with you."

"I'm not going to hurt her. I—"

"You're a nice guy, right? Well, for a nice guy, you're an awfully bigoted person." The stranger held up some photos—photos Trevor had taken for his uncle's newspaper. Photos of the Teen Titans, the city's so-called heroes, fighting so-called supervillains and destroying half the city in the process. They included before and after shots of the battle in front of the bank, where the schizophrenic teenager known as Flare had burnt down half the courtyard, and a random comment by Ragnarok had caused one of the bank's walls to fall over. One showed the blue-clad female called Raven, her hood over her face, her eyes split into four and glowing red while she dragged a middle aged man underneath her cloak. He seemed to be screaming in terror. All the photos had been used in an op-ed piece Trevor had written under a pseudonym about why teenage metahumans and superheroes in general were nothing but trouble, why he didn't trust them, and why their vigilante crusades should be banned permanently.

"What do you and Rachel have to do with metahumans?" Trevor asked.

The man responded by single-handedly forcing him against the wall of the bathroom. "Wouldn't you like to know?"

"You're one of them!" Trevor hissed. "You're all the same—Gestapo Nazis who think it's their job to police the world."

"Right. Next time some demi-god goes on a rampage and slaughters half the town, let's see you stop him." After a beat, the man said, "Funny that you call me a Nazi. Hitler believed in the purity of the race and the extermination of all who didn't fit it. We believe in the right of life for any and all, even those who really don't deserve it. Are you one of them?"

"I don't want the metahumans dead. I just want them out of business. And what does any of this have to do with Rachel? She tolerates my opinions, even if she disagrees. And—"

The stalker cut him off by increasing the pressure he was applying to Trevor's solar plexus, which caused extra pain.

"You talk. You never listen. Better break the trend—and know this. If you break her heart, I'LL BREAK YOU." As if to accent his statement, the man's hand was briefly covered by something white and shimmery, and he punched the wall, breaking several of the faded ceramic tiles.

"Rachel said she didn't know you," Trevor replied through the increased pain and sudden realization that he was in it deep…

"You're so dense. I'm sure there are a lot of things she's hidden with you around." The man threw him against the sink. "Be sure to wash you're hands when you get done. Some of the stupidity might come off."

The Titans gathered on the shore of their island and watched as the vessel newly identified as Tamaranian grew closer.

"What do you think?" Cyborg asked Robin.

"I don't know what to think. Star, is it possible that there were other Tamaranians off world when it was destroyed? You're species can go into space without a ship, so maybe some of them got away."

"Of course," Starfire said. "There is most always some portion of the population not on the planet, but I do not know how any of them would know to come here. My departure was common knowledge on my home planet, but… not my destination."

"Then we have to prepare for the possibility that this isn't what it seems," Raven said evenly.

Ragnarök eyed the ship with his threat-assessment goggles. During the three weeks since Delirium had been defeated, Starfire and Cyborg had helped reprogram his suit to display information in English instead of Tamaranian. Well. Cyborg had done most of the actual programming. He mostly just watched. But I digress.

"I'm not really getting anything threatening from the ship," Collin said.

"Keep you're eye on it," Robin warned. "If anything can detect a threat from a Tamaranian ship, it's a Tamaranian battle armor."

After what seemed like a few minutes of the ship getting closer, it had grown from a speck in the distance to a sleek fist-sized triangle looming over Jump City. Cyborg used his left eye to determine it was about ten meters in length and five wide—roomy enough to hold a decent-sized group of Tamaranians as long as they weren't all as big as Galfore.

Unfortunately, just as it cleared the city and started over the bay, Collin's visor blipped suddenly and an ominous red laser sliced into the port engine and dragged along the ship's hull, causing it to whir out of control.

"What was that?" Beast Boy blurted.

As if in answer, more lasers blasted out from somewhere across the bay, several of the beams tearing through buildings. Explosions were heard.

"It came from the city," Robin gasped, tracing the beams to their point of origin.

"My visor has a lock on its location," Collin said.

"But what are we to do about the ship?" Starfire said, trying to placate the suddenly frenetic mood.

Robin took out a pocket computer and switched it to receive news reports. He quickly found what he was looking for: a news crew shooting live footage of Dr. Light and Professor Chang together in downtown Jump City. Light was robbing a jewelry store while Chang covered for him with some sort of laser cannon mounted on a truck—a Zynothium laser cannon.

"Crap!" Robin swore. "Must they always be a thorn in our side?"

"What do we do, fearless?" Cyborg asked.

Robin thought for a quick moment and then said. "Starfire, Beast Boy, and myself will stay here and handle the ship." He looked at Cyborg. "Victor, take Raven and Collin and stop Chang and Light before somebody gets killed." Collin saw Raven smirk. Which she didn't do a lot, except when it came to Dr. Light.

"Agreed," Cyborg said. As Raven's soul self began to teleport them, Collin heard him mutter, "Of course he gives himself the easy job."

A flash beam slammed into the window of the jewelry store and Dr. Arthur Light burst out of it, wearing a suit similar to the one he had worn when he had encountered the Titans on the oilrig… and then he decided he didn't want to think about that embarrassing incident.

"I have the jewels!" he proclaimed to his current partner, Professor Chang.

"Good. Now hurry up and let's get out of here."

"Uh-oh," Dr. Light gasped as he pointed to the sky.

"What?" the psychotic oriental man asked whirled around in the swivel chair mounted atop his Zynothium laser-cannon truck.

"Titans."

Three of the now six-strong teenage superhero group appeared in a wave of black energy. "You know," Cyborg said, "for villains who base their powers off light, you guys aren't very bright."

"We were outside the Tower," said Collin.

"And had no idea you were even in town," finished Cyborg

"Then you shot down that ship." Raven raised her hands and dark energy encased them. "It didn't take long to figure out where you were."

Dr. Light looked over at Chang. "I told you that ship wasn't them! I told you to leave it alone, that it would serve as a great distraction for us to operate under! You're an imbecile."

"Do shut up," said Chang. His gun hummed with activity, and the Titans dodged away as a red laser flashed out and tore up some asphalt. "You won't stop me this time! I will soon be more than you can handle! Even Slade won't hold a candle to me!"

Down in hell, Slade looked up, his remaining eye flaring. "I beg to differ," he said.

Trigon chuckled.

The Titans dodged randomly as Light and Chang shot at them, until Cyborg assessed the situation and gave orders. "Raven, Light is scared to death of you. Take him out. Me and Rag will get Chang."

The two gave an affirmative, and Collin charged at Chang's truck, through up a rock in defense as Chang shot at him, and then hurled several more stones, which Chang unfortunately shot out of the air.

Cyborg opened up with his sonic cannon, but it had little effect on the solidly built machine. "Crud!"

…

Meanwhile, Raven was encountering her own difficulties. "I thought I convinced you to stay in jail, Light," Raven said as she hovered closer.

"Well, with the help of much therapy, I've finally completely recovered, and I no longer fear you, child." With a wave of his hand, Light caused a flash of white radiation to blind Raven, and he followed up with a flash beam that hit her in the torso and sent her flying into a brick coffee shop across the street from the successfully robbed bling store.

"Azarath, Metrion, ZINTHOS!" Raven's dark energy surrounded some chairs in the coffee shop, and they flew out, pelting Light. After two or three hit him, he fired flash beams at the others, breaking them apart.

"Zinthos!" Raven said again, and a wave of darkness shot forth from her hand and slammed Light in the chest. With a grunt, Light blasted another stream of radiation in defense, and then the beams collided, exploding with a flash.

…

Cyborg rolled away, and gasped in horror as Chang's laser tore through the coffee shop, and he hoped that nobody had been inside.

"Well," Chang mused, "it seems this method is getting me nowhere." Change pressed a button on his console, and suddenly the high-tech laser went through a series of transformations, the basic gist of which was the core focusing tubes splitting into seven separate smaller cannons, effectively making Chang's weapon a laser chaingun. "This should do quite nicely," he said.

Cyborg swore and ducked behind a car, which was soon riddled with holes—he managed to dive away just as the car exploded, and his shaved head felt the heat and his metal body detected shrapnel impacts. That was far too close.

Ragnarök tried again, this time by using a hundred smaller rocks mixed in with a few big ones to tear through Chang's defensive blasts and disable the cannon, but no such luck as just the opposite happened and Rag almost got blasted as the lasers tore through his rocks like tissue. He dived next to Cyborg who was firing his sonic cannon, and quickly erected a rock-shield several feet thick. Then he poured all the energy his Tamaranian armor could spare into holding it together under the continued laser bullets from Chang's gun.

"How do we beat this thing?" Collin yelled back at Cyborg.

More lasers impacted the rock, and Collin continually had to pull the dust they kicked up back into the rock face or it would collapse—and it was making him very tired.

"Beats me. I could use my missiles, but that might kill him."

"Normally, I'd say that was a bad thing, but if you don't do something, he's going to kill someone else. Namely US." Chang must have switched his laser power up to high because each blast was taking more and more of his shield away, and it was getting harder and harder to collect it; Rag naturally lost a little each blast anyway from what ever portion Chang was vaporizing. "I'm going to give you cover. When I say go, jump. Fire your missiles as soon as you see a break in my shield!"

"Right!"

Collin focused his efforts and thinned the rock shield, throwing it up in an increasingly thin tower, and leaving a tiny break about six meters up. But he continued to form the wall higher for about ten meters.

The ploy worked, and Chang continued to fire at the upward moving top of the tower while Cyborg appeared in the middle, his missiles armed, and unleashed the lot of them. Chang realized too late he couldn't get the laser back down fast enough to stop all of them…

They slammed into Chang's truck, and he dived away from it with frantic haste, and rolled to a stop, ironically, near a stop sign, as the laser-vehicle exploded into a brilliant ball of fire.

Cyborg landed with a grunt.

"Score one for effective misdirection!" Collin gave Victor a thumbs-up, and the half-machine teen returned it.

"Boo-yah!'

Back at the tower, it became increasingly clear that with whatever control they had left, the Tamaranian vessel was going to crash land on Titans Island, and no attempts at communication had been made. "Get ready," Robin ordered.

The vessel came in low, and the ground shook from the roar of the remaining engine. The gyrating ship slammed into the ground with enough force to knock Robin and Beast Boy down, and it continued to skid across the island…

"Not the tower! Not the tower!" Robin said. He couldn't be heard over the roar of the ship, and he knew it, so he added "Bruce and Silas will kill me if it's damaged!"

The ship slid to a halt, digging up ground. Much to his detriment, the starboard glider-fin had punctured the side of the T-Tower, and Robin was ready to go postal.

"Tim," Starfire whispered. "Calm yourself. Let us rejoice that our home was not toppled."

"Right." Robin realized she indeed was. It could have been worse.

The three Titans slid down the hill and approached the ship, where Starfire led them to a hatch big enough for Galfore, still holding a feint red glow from the heat of entering the atmosphere. Starfire hovered, starbolts ready to fly, while Garfield prepared to assume the shape of a gorilla or elephant…

Robin drew his bo-staff and some knockout gas Birdarangs. Batman had taught him to be prepared for anything, especially having to fight people he thought were friends, and together, though Robin had found it terribly distasteful, they had researched methods of taking out Tamaranians. (Which would have been really good if Robin had been able to remember them when Blackfire showed up on Earth the first time; unfortunately he had not taken them seriously and therefore forgot them.)

"Be ready for anything."

"Define 'anything'," Beast Boy demanded.

"If rabid Furbies crawl out that door, I don't want you to flinch," Robin said. Gar and Kori looked at him like he was crazy. But their looks were quickly diverted when the door of the ship hissed, and began to open.

Starfire wondered if rabid Furbies would indeed emerge…

Down, but not out, Chang flipped across the street where the battle between him the Titans Cyborg and Ragnarok continued.

"Since when can he do THAT?" Cyborg complained.

"Take this!" Ragnarök hurled a series of stone daggers at Chang with his geokenisis powers, and Cyborg shortly followed up with a shot from his sonic cannon, but all the projectiles missed and struck the road.

"Let me demonstrate the folly of thinking you can win!" Chang tapped a button on his belt, and suddenly, in several bursts of incandescence, an armored exo-skeletal battle suit formed around the deranged doctor. The arms transformed into some sort of weapon… one that proceeded to shoot at the Titans hollow cylindrical laser beams.

"AH!" Cyborg and Ragnarök dived out of the way and kept having to do so has Chang did not let up on his constant blasting.

Chang began laughing maniacally as he shot, and then… He turned one of the lasers towards Raven.

"Raven!"

"Rae!"

Alerted at the last minute, Raven formed a wall of black energy behind her, three feet thick, and held it. It held back Chang's laser, but it took all her concentration, leaving her open to attack by Dr. Light.

"Well, my dear," Light said, "It seems you're preoccupied. Then he punched Raven I the face, and continued to do so, his fists glowing with light energy. "Nobody messes with Professor Chang and Dr. Light!" He hit her again.

"Is it just me," Collin said as he hurled a rock at Chang, "…or do villains have a rather limited title selection. Professor, Lord, Doctor, Master… Did I leave any out? Ah yes. Count."

Collin jumped again as Chang's free hand blasted away the rocks. The laser continued, and passed right above Collin as he ducked, his heart skipping multiple beats.

"ARHG!" Cyborg screamed behind him.

"Cy!" Ragnarök shouted. The beam had caught him in his metallic abdomen and pushed him back into the coffee shop, and Colling gasped as the laser, finished with cyborg. Thinking quickly, Collin coated his feet in rock, and leaped ON TOP of an incoming laser beam, and dashed down it, somehow supported by the non-solid energy.

Chang gasped and turned it off, but not soon enough to avoid getting kicked in the face by Ragnarök, and the psycho professor staggered back into a car and spat up blood. "You insolent!" Rather than finishing the insult, Chang took one arm off Raven and fired both cannons at Ragnarök, who broke into a dead run, zigzagging throw off Chang's aim…

…

Thankfully for Raven, this distraction gave her the ability to drop the dark shield behind her… And unleash her rage. A black cloud of power consumed her, and her eyes split into four red piercing slits. "I should break you. I should tear your intestines out and string them across the street still attached!"

"NO! NO! Please, don't hurt me!" Doctor Light screamed. Raven could feel his fear; it was real.

The daughter of the eighth devil raised her hands, and a burst of dark power consumed Dr. Light—she tore into his mind and poured her power to one specific section.

"What did you do to me?" he asked the girl when it was over.

Raven, normal again, wiped a rivulet of blood from the cut her mouth and smirked. "I've made you completely dyslexic. You'll never be able to design and build any light weaponry. Ever again." She raised her hands, repeated, "Azarath Metrion Zinthos," causing the stop sign from earlier to break off and wrap around Dr. Light. "You aren't going anywhere."

…

Collin, on the other hand, was going places. Until he tripped and fell, slamming his chin into the ground and then skidding for half and inch, acquiring a bruise, a scrape, and a nasty headache in the process.

"It's time to say goodbye, my geokinetic friend," Chang said with a deranged laugh. The cannons on his arm seemed to whir in slow motion as they charged up, the glow gradually getting brighter.

SKRRWW!Collin rolled away, and the laser slammed into the asphalt where Collin had been, and through his excessive pain, he flicked out a rock that slammed into Chang's legs, and caused him to stagger backwards—where Cyborg burst with amazing speed out of the laundromat next to the coffee shop and tackled Chang.

"I don't care if I have to take your arms off," Cyborg said, having his hands transform into their buzz saw form, "I'm gettin' these things off!" Vic proceeded to drive his cutting tools into Chang's laser cannons, tearing apart the metal, cutting wires, and generally causing havoc with Chang's toys. Satisfied the lasers were unusable, Victor reverted his hands to normal and grabbed Chang by the collar with his left hand, and drilled him in the face with his right, knocking the scientist unconscious.

Raven, Cyborg, and Ragnarök gathered next to the smoldering remains of Chang's Laser Truck, dropped their criminals, and contacted police and S.T.A.R. Labs.

"Report," said Cyborg.

"A few, cuts, and a nasty headache," Collin said. "I think I'm alright."

"I'll be fine in time," Raven said, though the bruises on her face argued otherwise "My healing techniques don't work on myself, unfortunately."

"What about you, big guy?" Collin said. "That looks a bad." Ragnarök pointed at the melted circle on Cyborg's abdomen, which had some charred wires hanging out.

"Just a flesh wound," he said. "It's fixable."

Back at the tower, Starfire prepared to shoot the rabid Furbies that Robin believed would emerge from the crashed Tamaranian vessel.

The door finished hissing, and slid away to reveal a dark interior. And then, a young Tamaranian male stepped out, his eyes and hair and skin color identical to Starfire's…

"AHHRGH!" She yelled and almost hurled her starbolts… until his face became visible, upon which event, her battle cry mutated into a squeal of delight. "RYAND'R!"

"KORIAND'R!" The figure screamed back. The two collided with such force that Robin and Beast Boy were knocked on their butts. Robin drew his bo staff and dashed towards Starfire to discover….

That they were hugging.

"What is going on here?" Beast Boy demanded, and the two barely noticed another Tamaranian man get off the ship. Starfire was totally oblivious to that fact.

"Friends," Starfire said, "I wish for you to meet Ryand'r. He is my brother."

"You have a brother?" Robin arched an eyebrow.

Starfire smiled and nodded. "Mm-hmm."

"And who is that?" Robin asked, pointing to the other man. Starfire's confused look turned into happiness and what looked like mild embarrassment when she saw to whom Robin was pointing.

"Karras!" She blurted, and hugged him too, though not as powerfully as she had her brother. "These are my friends," she explained, "The Teen Titans. Robin, Karras is, how do you say, my first boyfriend?"

Robin goggled. But he couldn't find anything to say.

"That was… a long time ago," Karras said, also blushing.

"Does that mean there are Tamaranians left?" Beast Boy asked.

"We should wait for Victor and Collin and Raven to get back, and then Ryand'r and Karras can explain everything," said Starfire.

So they did…

Since they'd played games all their lives, Collin and Gar developed the ability to both Mangle and listen to the conversation between the more mature Titans and the Tamaranian visitors at the same time.

"I find you're lack of challenge disturbing," Collin quipped as he drove a knife through the level boss's skull.

"Ahem," Robin growled at them. They became silent.

"Please, Ryand'r," Starfire intervened, "Begin your explanation of this visit."

"Well, when we heard of what happened to our homeworld, we began searching the system and all over the galaxy for Tamaranians who had escaped or survived somehow. A lot of us were off world at the time because we were playing Thanagar in a blur-ball championship."

Starfire goggled. "And what of Galfore?"

"He was on the planet." Ryand'r said sadly.

Karras picked up, "We didn't know where you were, since nobody told us you had gone to earth. Komand'r knew, but she never told us before she also left for Earth three years ago. We haven't seen her since."

"Then you weren't there when she took over and became Emperor of the place, either," Cyborg said.

"No," stated Karras. "Anyway, my group, which roughly translates into English as the Omega Men, found your brother and began searching. Eventually, Blackfire contacted us by subspace radio and told us you were here, so we came."

"What?" Starfire, Robin, and Ragnarök all blurted at the same time.

"How long ago was this?"

"Five Earth Days," Karras said, "why?"

"That is impossible!" Starfire blurted.

"Why is it impossible?" Ryand'r looked worried.

"Because," said Collin, "Blackfire is dead. I killed her…"