The entire room was silent, save the sounds of heavy breaths and heartbeats. The two teams stared at each other in bewilderment, quietly studying the horrifying likeness between them.
"Dude," Beast Boy whispered. "They look like… Us!"
"Who are you and what do you want?" Robin demanded.
Blazefire smirked, gazing at Robin mischievously. "Look at them. Aren't they adorable?"
Robin winced at her words and gritted his teeth. "Who. Are. You?"
"Take a guess," Android mocked and fired his sonic canon, but Robin swiftly avoided it.
"Titans GO!"
Both teams collided in an explosion of battle. Robin found himself dodging the blazebolts thrown at him and attempted to hit Blazefire with his staff. He leapt to the air, but only to be tackled to the ground.
"You," Blazefire teased and gestured at his "R" insignia, "must be Robin."
"Excellent guess," Robin grunted, trying to break free from her grasp.
"I didn't guess." Blazefire's eyes turned into menacing ones. "And I know all your moves."
Robin twisted and pulled himself free, then gave her a hard kick, pushing him away from him. "Not all of them!"
In another corner of the common room, two rhinoceros were taking each other down, one green and the other blue. Savage gave a fierce strike, sending Beast Boy flinging to the wall. He immediately morphed back to his human form, and Savage soon followed suit. He grabbed Beast Boy by his collar and chuckled.
"Is that really the best you can do? I thought you heroes of Earth 1 are all mighty and powerful."
Beast Boy groaned in pain. "Who are you, anyway? Failed experimental clones?"
Savage growled in fury and slammed him to the wall. "Weaklings."
But it wasn't long until he was struck down by Cyborg's sonic canon. "Damn right you are," he muttered. He quickly assisted Beast Boy to get up carefully.
"You okay?" Cyborg asked in concern.
"Yeah, thanks." Beast Boy dusted himself off. "Really though, who are these guys?"
Cyborg shook his head. "I don't know. I only received an intruder alert from the tower's security system before it blacked out. I have no idea where they're from."
It took a moment before Cyborg realized he was suddenly wrapped in Onyx's violet energy and was thrown across the room.
"I thought I got rid of you," she sighed in exasperation, her eyes glowing threateningly.
Cyborg fired up his sonic canon. "It'll take a lot more than that to get rid of me."
Standing above and away from the chaos, up on the threshold of the elevator, Falcon observed his team opposing the Titans. His eyes followed each and every one of the Titans, studying their moves and techniques. Despite the familiarity, they were all strong and persistent.
The Teen Titans were not to be underestimated.
Falcon stumbled back in slight surprise when Robin suddenly swooped down in front of him, pressing the tip of his staff to Falcon's neck.
"I really hate repeating myself," Robin mumbled angrily. "Who are you?"
Falcon gave him a devilish smirk. "You still haven't figured it out? You see but you don't observe."
"I don't like riddles." Robin swung his staff, but Falcon quickly whipped out his own and blocked the attack.
"Did Blazefire tell you that she knows all your moves?" Falcon continued to strike. "That's because she knows all of mine."
"I defeated her."
"She let you."
Robin let out a battle cry and charged towards Falcon, but Falcon got to him first, sending Robin crumpled to the ground with a round of punches.
"Look at us," Falcon announced, confidently approaching Robin with his staff still in his grip. "Look at your team and mine. Look at their powers, look at their matching techniques. Me and my team – we – are you."
Robin's eyes wavered behind his mask. The sight of Falcon became terrifying to him. His rough black hair, his glinting cape of black and gold, his red uniform almost like Robin's only with a little dash of green in a triangular shape around his neck – it was almost as if he was Robin himself.
A version of Robin that, like he had feared for himself sometimes, had succumbed to the dark side.
He could almost see the piercing blue eyes behind Falcon's mask, matching his own.
Robin jumped to his feet and released his explosive disks on Falcon, but Falcon was quick to clear out of the way. They found themselves in a combat battle, until Falcon slipped behind Robin and gave him a hard, blunt strike to the back of his head. Robin cried out in pain as his vision blurred momentarily, and took a cautious step backwards.
"Hello," Falcon whispered. "We are the Teen Tyrants. And this tower is no longer yours."
Robin glared at him in pure rage – nobody takes away his home. But he couldn't fight back now, for the Tyrants are as good as them, if not better. It would not end well.
He needed a strategy.
He straightened up and made his way to the common room, away from Falcon. He successfully regrouped with the other Titans who were still drowning in battle. Cyborg managed to approach him while still dodging attacks.
"Got any plan?" Cyborg asked in between shots from his sonic canon.
"Yeah," Robin muttered to him, silently gesturing to the other Titans amidst the battle to regroup. Slowly but surely, they moved away from their opponents and closer into each other.
"Titans, fall back!"
Cyborg was slightly taken aback at the command to retreat, but he trusted his leader. Robin knew what was best. Falcon stood from afar, slightly narrowing his eyes. Were they just scared or did they have a strategy?
"What are you playing at?" Falcon muttered to himself with a light patronizing chuckle.
In an instant, the entire room was filled with thick smoke. The Tyrants recoiled in shock, coughing violently and retreating away. When the smoke cleared, the Teen Titans had disappeared.
"Cowards!" Savage screamed to the air.
Onyx caught Falcon's eyes. "You want me to look for them?"
"No, let them go," Falcon commanded. "We're not going to need them and they won't know what's coming. Android, I want that computer fixed when I get back."
"And where are you going?" Android asked.
"I need to do some research."
Falcon went back to the elevator as a plan started to form inside his head. He knew the Teen Titans wouldn't give up so easily.
They would be back.
"What was that?"
They had escaped from the tower, gathering in an abandoned warehouse in the city. It wasn't too far from the tower, they were still dangerously close, but no one would find them there – it would have to do.
"The Teen Tyrants," Robin recalled. "He told me. That's what they call themselves."
"But what do they want?" Raven questioned.
"And where did they come from?" Starfire chimed in.
Beast Boy shuddered. "Those guys give me the creeps. Did you see what they look like?"
Robin turned to Cyborg. "What happened during the intruder alert?"
"I didn't get much. The tower's security system shut down seconds after the alert. It's still offline but I'll try to see if I can get anything from before that."
"Can you connect to the system now?"
"Nope. Still disconnected. Freaking Cyborg wannabe blasted down the mainframe," Cyborg muttered in annoyance.
Robin let out a long sigh. "They're dangerous. We have to know everything there is to know about them before we can take them down."
Cyborg spent a few more minutes fiddling with the buttons on the panel on his arm. "Here, I got something. Sensors picked up a burst of energy – high-frequency burst of waves that were vibrating for only about less than ten seconds – creating a portal. That," Cyborg pointed out as he switched to play a footage from one of the security cameras, "is where they came from."
The Titans gathered around him, watching the footage in curiosity. Sure enough, there was the sudden formation of a portal, right in the middle of the common room, and the alarm rang out immediately. They watched as the Tyrants panicked momentarily, and as Android shot the tower's mainframe impulsively.
Then everything went black.
Beast Boy was the first to break the silence. "So… They're aliens?"
Robin stared at the screen for a few moments, letting the gears turn in his head, until something clicked in his mind.
"They're not aliens. They're from a parallel Earth."
"…A what?"
"It's something my, uhm, mentor told me," Robin continued. "He had an encounter with an alternate version of himself once. They're from a parallel Earth, an Earth in a different reality where our existence varies with different characteristics and life histories."
They were silent again. "…I still don't get it."
"So there's another Earth, just like ours, but it has a different version of ourselves?" Raven asked, trying to make sense of it.
"There isn't just one, there are hundreds of them. Maybe thousands," Robin whispered as the thought itself began to overwhelm him. "Each one can differ only very slightly or too greatly that we may not even exist there. At least, that's what he told me. I've never actually been in one myself."
Beast Boy glanced around. "So… Not aliens?" Raven rolled her eyes until Beast Boy made another remark, "Oh! That explains it."
"Explains what?"
"The other me. No, he's not me; I mean their version of me. He told me that we are "heroes of Earth 1". Now I get what he meant."
Raven quirked an eyebrow. "And you didn't tell us earlier because…?"
"I didn't think it was important! How was I supposed to know?" Beast Boy responded in defense.
"Well, what do we do now? Shouldn't we get back in there?" Cyborg asked, gesturing to the direction of the tower on the island.
"Not now." Robin shook his head. "If we're going to strike, we're going to have to do it at the right moment."
"And what do you think they're planning?"
Robin bit his lip. "We'll have to wait for them to make a move. They have our tower, they are definitely going to keep the entire city under observation."
"They're going to have every detail about everything."
"And about us," Starfire realized weakly.
"Dude! We need to get our tower back!"
Robin straightened up. "We will, but not now."
Cyborg nodded. "We're going to need a strategy."
"But we can't stay here either. They'll find us, sooner or later, we'll have to keep a low profile as long as possible until we find a way to get to them."
"And now?"
"Now, we need to move."
With that, the Titans slipped out of the warehouse and out into the darkening sky, disappearing into the night.
