After Terra left, Starfire carried Robin up the stairs since climbing up on his own hurt his knees. The remaining titans gathered in the med bay so that Beast Boy could join in the team meeting. Beast Boy paid no attention to them. His mind was still reeling from when he had met Terra. The moment he saw her and she called out his name, something weird changed within him. The rest of Terra's visit was just a blur in his mind. He could not remember a single thing she said. All that he could remember was that the girl he once idolized had returned and that she idolized him. Beast Boy knew that he loved Raven now, yet seeing Terra made him wonder if he had any lingering feelings for her.
"Beast Boy!" yelled Robin sternly. "Have you been paying attention?"
"Yeah, BB! Stop spacing out!" exclaimed Cyborg. In the past half hour, Beast Boy had apparently not heard a word that they said.
"Heh." Smiled Beast Boy nervously as he was jolted back into reality. "Sorry. What were we talking about?"
"We were thinking about reinstating Terra back in the team." Sighed Robin.
"What?" exclaimed Beast Boy. "But we promised Raven we wouldn't replace her!"
"Let's not think about it as 'replacing' Raven. We're merely adding a new member to the team." Reasoned Robin.
"We're adding a new member to replace her! What happened to not breaking promises?" cried Beast Boy, making up his mind in that instant that Raven was much more important to him than anything else.
"Look, we get it if you still have feelings for Terra and it hurts you to always be around her. But the team needs her at this point." Robin said pragmatically.
"It's not about me and Terra! Trust me, I've gotten over her!" Beast Boy protested.
"If that's the case you should be alright with having her on the team." Concluded Robin, who knew that arguments with Beast Boy were usually easy to win.
"Why do we need her anyway?" cried Beast Boy, feeling the hurt of betrayal almost as though he were Raven herself.
"Beast Boy!" cried Robin angrily. "You won't be able to get out of bed for the next six months! I'm so fat I've lost my agility and my ability to practice all forms of martial arts! Cyborg runs out of power quickly unless we drive ourselves crazy working out! Nobody knows when Raven will return and Starfire is the only one who is actually mission-ready! How can you expect her to stand alone against Slade?"
"How do you know Terra won't betray us again?" yelled Beast Boy hysterically.
"Her story held up." Said Cyborg calmly. Unlike Robin, he actually knew why Beast Boy was standing up for Raven and opposing Terra's reinstatement to the team. "Besides, she eventually realized that she did wrong and turned herself to stone to save the city."
Beast Boy was silent for a moment. He knew that what Cyborg said was true, yet he really wanted the team to honor their promise to Raven.
"When Raven comes back, she'll still have a place on the team." Robin assured him.
"Where will Terra stay if she joins us?" asked Beast Boy.
"Raven's room." Answered Robin instinctively.
"Aha!" cried Beast Boy. "You're replacing Raven with Terra!"
"Beast Boy!" exclaimed Robin indignantly. He had not expected so much resistance from him. He decided to finalize things quickly before things got out of hand. "Let's take a vote. Who votes to ask Terra to join the team?
"I vote for Terra!" cried Starfire happily.
"As do I," echoed Robin.
"I vote against it!" Beast Boy said stubbornly. Everyone turned to Cyborg. The final decision rested on his shoulders.
"If you don't vote for Terra, Starfire and I will work out in our rooms." Said Robin.
"Man! That's blackmail!" cried Cyborg indignantly. Deep in his heart, he cared for Raven and he wanted to vote for her. However, his trip to the fortuneteller had shaken him up. "Fine, I vote to ask Terra to join the team." He said defeated. The hurt look in Beast Boy's eyes was too much for him to bear. Immediately, Cyborg got up and left the room. He did not want his friends to see how upset he was.
Robin contacted Terra as soon as he could and asked her to join the titans. The others listened as Robin put her on loudspeaker.
"Why do you want me back?" she asked curiously.
"Well, we need your help." Replied Robin cautiously.
"Help for what?" asked Terra, perplexed.
"We're fighting a powerful villain." Robin hinted.
"I heard." Said Terra. "Is that why you guys got kicked out of titans tower? Did you lose or something?"
"We're fighting Slade." Robin said finally, since it was obvious that she could not see what he was getting at.
"Slade?" cried Terra, the anger in her voice evident. "I thought I killed him with lava!" she yelled.
"He may or may not have been resurrected?" said Robin as he and the others cringed..
"I'm in!" she cried furiously. "When can I join?"
"You can join right now." Replied Robin with a pleased smile as Starfire jumped for joy. Beast Boy on the other hand wore a mutinous expression on his face. Cyborg stayed very calm. This was a very delicate situation. He knew the team needed help, but he did not know if this was the right move or not.
Terra spent the next month training with the titans. Her fighting skills were a bit rusty, but with practice, she improved considerably.
Robin had Cyborg move Raven's things to the basement to make way for Terra. Beast Boy had repeatedly suggested that Robin and Starfire move in together so that Terra could have one of their rooms and Raven would have one in case she returned, but Robin adamantly refused. He never told the others this, but before Slade had supposedly released him, he had promised him that now that he was so fat, he was no longer worthy of Starfire and that she wouldn't love him anymore. He feared that sharing a room with her would highlight to her how fat he now was. Because of that, Robin no longer wore his fitting uniform, even when Cyborg made larger ones for him. Instead, he chose to wear baggy and loose clothes that made him look thinner when he wore them. Robin was painfully aware that he was no longer handsome and dashing and that Starfire was still as beautiful and slender as ever. As time passed, Robin steadily began to develop extreme self-esteem problems.
Unknown to Robin, his relationship with Starfire was worsening because of his problems with his image. He no longer wanted to hold her hand because he was afraid she would notice how pudgy his hands were. He no longer wanted to snuggle up beside her on the couch during a movie because he feared that she would feel the extent of his obesity. He no longer wanted to hug her – let alone kiss her - because he feared that she would feel his ginormous potbelly. Starfire felt her boyfriend pulling away from her and it bothered her greatly that Robin no longer showered her with as much affection as before. She gradually became confused as to whether he loved her or not and bit by bit, her powers waned.
Beast Boy too was suffering emotionally. He knew deep in his heart that he loved Raven, yet when Terra threw herself at him, he could not bring himself to bluntly reject her. Beast Boy wanted to be upfront with her about his feelings, but was afraid that if he rejected Terra too directly, she would leave the team because of him, inciting Robin's wrath against him. He had always loved attention from women and now that an incredibly beautiful girl like Terra was practically begging to be his girlfriend, Beast Boy found himself being increasingly conflicted. He vowed to remain loyal to Raven, yet Terra temptation came knocking on his door every single day. He became more withdrawn and lost the sparkle in his eyes. Cyborg noted that Beast Boy's recovery was becoming increasingly slow and he knew it was because of the stress his friend was under.
Cyborg himself felt his stress levels mounting. He felt indebted to Robin, Starfire and Terra as they were the ones who worked out to keep him running and Robin took full advantage of this; like when he used it against Cyborg to make him vote for Terra. Cyborg felt more and more like an actual robot with each passing day.
Cyborg also missed Raven terribly. Her maturity, wisdom and gravity brought a sense of balance to the team, something the happy-go-lucky Terra was unable to accomplish. Terra deeply upset the group dynamics, yet they had no choice but to accept her, since they needed her help to fight Slade.
As the days passed, Robin increasingly hounded Cyborg to find an antidote for his condition. This grated Cyborg's metaphorical nerves. Robin bluntly told him that if he did not create the antidote within a month, he would get the others to stop working out to shut down Cyborg. Robin felt that all Cyborg needed was a little push to find the antidote and that his inability to find one was because he was lazy.
Cyborg saw things very differently. Robin was his friend and he did wish to help him. However, no matter how hard he tried, he was unable to create the antidote. He tried every alternative he could think of and even considered liposuction. He immediately scrapped that idea when he realized that the substance that coated each fat molecule was sticky, sticking the fat molecule securely to other normal cells. This meant the liposuction would probably kill Robin by sucking out every cell in his body. Defeated, frustrated and stressed, Cyborg worked himself into a frenzy trying to create the antidote. He became very terse and goal-orientated, very much like the robot that he was not.
And so it was that everyone in the house was in a foul mood. Beast Boy was caught in a love triangle with Raven and Terra making him very confused. Starfire sensed that she and Robin were drifting apart and that broke her heart. Robin was so stressed about his image that he became extremely self-conscious, choosing to lock himself in his room where no one could see him when he was not busy hounding Cyborg for the antidote. Frustrated that all doors where being slammed in his face with regards to the antidote, Cyborg himself was extremely upset. Terra on the other hand, was upset because Beast Boy now ignored her. The tense atmosphere in the house made life very unbearable. Finally, one of them snapped.
"That's it!" cried Cyborg as he threw the syringe in his hand to the ground. Stalking over to Robin, he looked down at him and stared him down. "You've been treating me like your robotic slave for the past few months! Do ya actually think that I do not want to find the antidote as much as ya do? Ya keep saying that I am not trying hard enough when all I've done is to try! Ya keep blackmailing me with the whole power thi- ya know what? Just shut me down! I think I'd be much happier that way!" he spat out.
"Cyborg, I didn't mean it like that." Said Robin, quite taken aback by his outburst.
"Didn't mean it? Didn't mean it! Is that all ya can come up with? I'm sick and tired of being ordered around like a robot! Is that what ya see me as, a robot? A robot that works nonstop to earn money to feed ya and to cure ya?" yelled Cyborg. Starfire and Terra entered the main room, watching with frightened eyes. From the med bay, Beast Boy could hear their shouts.
"No! I see you as a friend!" shouted Robin in reply. "Now would you please shut up? Beast Boy is upstairs sleeping!"
"Ya don't see me as a friend! Ya see me as a robot that does your bidding! Even as you're trying to tell me that I'm your friend, ya order me around!" Cyborg had enough. "Ya know what, I quit!" he yelled. "If you guys don't want to work out to create power for me, fine! I QUIT!" he cried before stomping out of the main room. Terra looked frightened while Starfire began to cry. Robin just stared angrily at Cyborg's retreating figure. He still thought that Cyborg was just plain lazy.
Following Cyborg's outburst, things became even worse. Terra, Beast Boy and Starfire begged him repeatedly not to leave but he had made up his mind. Only when Starfire sat outside his bedroom door and cried for close to six hours begging him to stay did Cyborg relent out of pity for her.
Robin started working out in his room and he ordered the others to do the same. Being his girlfriend and still being in love with him, Starfire complied, despite the fact that she was the one who persuaded Cyborg to stay. But Terra did not and for that, Cyborg was grateful.
For her defiance, Terra's relationship with Robin worsened, causing her to be ostracized by Robin and sadly, Starfire as well. Starfire shed many tears over the situation as waves of tension crashed against the house. The titans had truly gone from being in trouble to being troubled.