Cyborg stared at the pods as Changeling morphed into a dog and curled up beside him. There had been no change in the forms held within the glass prisons except for their steadily growing more solid, they still remained asleep. He hated feeling so helpless. For the first time he found himself up against an enemy he could neither face nor name, and for someone like Victor who always welcomed fights head on this drove him mad. He couldn't help Raven, couldn't make her better. There was no villain to hunt down no mission to plan, everything was happening inside his friend's head and all he could do was watch the Emoticlones and wait.

"Will Cyborg and Changeling please report to the Medical Bay immediately. I repeat: Cyborg and Changeling to the Medical Bay." Zantanna's panic rang clear as a bell over the intercom. As the last echo of her voice faded away six pairs of identical eyes snapped open and the projections spoke as one.

SHE IS AWAKE.

Changeling in cheetah form raced at Cyborg's side to Raven's hospital room worst case scenarios spinning through his mind, his wild imagination fed by the ominous tone with which the Emoticlones had spoken. Even with horrors he had managed to invent nothing could have prepared him for this.

Most of the medical staff had barricaded themselves in the observation room their pale faces staring out from behind the glass at the few left behind. The medical bay itself was littered with fallen bodies scattered about like rag dolls. In the very center, like a vengeful goddess, Raven hung suspended in mid-air as various pieces of medical equipment spun around her, mini planets orbiting a dark sun, occasionally smashing into one another with small explosions. Her thin face was almost beast-like as she screamed a continuous stream of words neither Cyborg nor Changeling understood. Throwing open the door to the observation room, Changeling and Cyborg found Zantanna frantically flipping through several ancient looking books and chanting hurriedly under her breath.

"What's happened?" Changeling demanded, shifting back to his humanoid form. "What did you guys do to Raven?!"

Zantanna spun to face them, gripping her books like a shield. "We don't know what's happened." her eyes were wide with panic and she chewed her lip nervously. "She went into cardiac arrest and after a struggle we managed to revive her. When she woke up we thought for a moment that she had healed herself but then a psychic blast took out some of the staff and none of us have been able to get near her since. We don't think she killed the ones still in there, but there's no way to tell. Her powers are quite honestly completely out of control. I-I've tried everything I can think of to stop her before she hurts herself but they all seem to just bounce right off. The only thing I managed to successfully use is a translator spell so we can at least understand what she is saying. I hoped it might tell us something, a way to help her, but none of it makes any sense. Listen for yourselves." Lightly tapping their glamour bracelets to add the spell, Cyborg and Changeling's eyes went as wide as Zantanna's as the now crystal clear translated words bored into their skulls.

"...with wings of void Death's favourite son comes barring sharpest tongue and tender claw pouring honeyed poison. O children of Lyssa and Maniae as one cry out in woe, how well thee art heeded. Trice cursed cursed cursed bare ye all thy sin as highest praise..."

Changeling and Cyborg flung the bracelets from themselves and clapped their hands to their ears. Raven's words were like knives hacking away inside their heads the pain making them unable to keep listening.

"Isn't there something you can do?" Gar asked Zantanna a slight whimper in his voice. "She sounds in pain! Like, like something is tearing at her from the inside."

Zantanna shook her head sadly. "The only thing I recognize are the names Lyssa and Maniae. They're from Greek Mythology, personifications of madness, but other than that I can't say. I feel that it only makes sense to Raven, or at least the part of her that's in control now."

Cyborg's com screen chirped, Dr Fate's face flashing into view amid technicoloured flashes and explosions. "Cyborg the Clones are becoming unmanageable I seem unable to return them to sleep and they are getting more frenzied by the second. The tubes seem to be holding for now but something has disturbed them. Except for one, the Gray. She seems strangely out of sync with the others. She's been begging me to ask for you and Changeling."

Without a word Changeling shifted back to his cheetah form and nodded to Victor. "Gar and I are on our way, Fate."

xXx

The sterile room was a cacophony of colour and sound. Gar and Victor stared about in horror as five of the Clones screamed in a multitude of tongues and thrashed against their glass prisons. The Yellow one, Intelligence, seemed the most panicked. She beat her fists against her temples crying It's impossible! Impossible! with every strained breath. Next to her Wrath was the picture of gleeful madness, leering wickedly out at them as she clawed at her own skin spouting sinister sounding latin proclamations. A small pool of black blood congealed at the bottom of her pod. Love, Happy, and Brave were likewise manic caricatures of themselves. Purple clothed Love lewdly snaked herself against the glass, calling out to Gar in French while Brave smashed her fists on unyielding glass in time to Germanic threats and Happy manically twirled about, dancing and singing to music only she could hear.

"... and we all fall down"

Only the timid Gray, Shy, sat calmly in her pod, her chin resting on her knees as she watched them with despairing eyes.

"I can see Dr. Fate called you, for all the good it will do," she called out, her melancholy voice barely carrying over the other Clones'.

Cyborg's robotic eye flickered frantically as he surveyed the wreckage, hardly knowing where to look first. "What's happened? Why are they all like this and why aren't you affected?!"

"Yea!" Changeling chimed in, suspicious in the face of a daunting situation he couldn't understand. "How do we know this isn't all an act and you asked for us to make us go all crazy too!"

Shy hunched her shoulders as if physically wounded by Gar's accusation. "I knew I couldn't make you believe me, I'm not clever like Intelligence." Anxiety was etched on her face. "And it's so important too. I knew I'd mess everything up." She dissolved into gloomy mutterings, the former Titans managed to catch the words "hopeless" and "useless" being repeated every so often.

Victor held up his hand cutting off Shy's customary self deprecation. He remembered how negative she could be from the time that he and Gar had taken that accidental trip into Raven's mind and had learned that when it came to Shy you had to read between the lines.

"Woa hold up. What's important?"

Shy nervously fidgeted with the hair hanging in her face before answering. "You won't like me when I tell you, you'll get mad."

"Come on, dude!" Gar snapped, waving his arms in frustration. "Didn't we prove before in Raven's head that we won't hate you when bad stuff you can't control happens? Just spit it out."

The Gray Emoticlone shuffled her feet and looked down at her boots. "Red X is inside Raven's mind."

She winced as Victor's and Gar's vehement curses rose over the already loud commotion. Wrath seemed to quite enjoy their suggestions that Duncan knew someone's mother quite well and his own mother was of canine origins.

"How the hell did he get in there?!" Victor demanded once he had exhausted his repertoire of damnations, slamming his fist against Shy's pod making her shrink back. "Her mirror is nowhere near here and Raven was in no state to do it herself!"

Shy looked close to tears and seemed to be mouthing I told you you'd hate me over and over again. Gar saw their only chance to help Raven slipping away and stepped between Cyborg and the glass.

"Shy," he said softly, mentally entreating for her to remain focused. "Please, tell us everything." Shy fidgeted and avoided their eyes for so long Victor thought for sure that they'd never get another word out of her until finally she spoke.

"It was Wrath who first said we ought to escape. She said she was sick of Raven using us whenever she couldn't manage on her own and being the puppet of what she called 'such a weak Host'. But it was really Intelligence who was pulling the strings, she does that you know. I guess she'd always been tired of Raven pulling power from emotional reactions to problems instead of logic, but what happened between her and Richard seemed to be the last straw. It was then that Intelligence started to whisper in Wrath's ear. Raven was such an internal wreck when Nightwing rejected her that Intelligence was overshadowed, mostly by Wrath and Love, and she couldn't stand it."

Her eyes flitted between them, making her look even more like a caged, wounded animal. "Intelligence is the only one of us that differs in that way, she feeds off of the rational parts of Raven. The rest of us get stronger when our emotion is at the forefront of Raven's mind, and as an empath, Raven can get very emotional, so logic is often put aside."

Changeling rubbed the back of his head, deep in thought. The Raven that Shy was describing sounded nothing like the one he and the rest of the team knew. When the rest of them had flown off the handle in one emotional direction or the other, Raven was always the steady eye of their storms. For someone so constant and stable it was hard to picture the internal struggles Shy was describing.

"But Raven's always been so calm," he said as Cyborg nodded in agreement. "I've hardly ever seen her be anything close to emotionally impulsive. We always thought of her as the most well, I would say logical, of the group."

"Even after the disaster of her relationship with Nightwing," Cyborg added. "We all suspected what had happened, but Raven was completely stoic about the whole thing."

Shy morosely shook her head. "I said we get stronger, I didn't say we win. One of us might be the loudest voice in Raven's head at any given time and she might pull power from that, but that doesn't mean she ever gives us free reign. That's how Wrath convinced the others. All of us, even good for nothing me, want nothing more, exists for nothing more than for Raven to become us, to let us be free. Wrath claimed that if we all escaped we could have that freedom and never struggle against Raven's will again. Brave and Love both agreed right away but Happy and I were unsure. Happy because she feared the sadness it might cause Raven, and me because I'm so… timid. The two of us managed to resist the others till Raven and Nightwing fought outside Silidons."

She let out a slow breath, limbs shaking with the memory as she pulled her legs tighter to her chest. "Wrath was so strong that night, feeding off all the hurt Raven felt that she seized the moment and put Love, Brave, Happy and I under her control. Only Intelligence was immune, being so different from the rest of us. So, while Wrath controlled us, she controlled Wrath. They began forcing us through Raven's mental cracks, slowly making us more real to Raven, and thus more real to the world until the heavy injuries she received from the bomb blast gave them the chance they needed. She was momentarily weak and we broke through, starting to become solid as Raven's mind and soul grew weaker. But, Intelligence for all her planning, underestimated Raven's ability to survive. At some point Raven's soul came in contact with another's and resonated."

Gar glanced at Victor to see if he understood anymore than himself. Seeing a similar blank expression to his own, he asked "Resonated?"

Shy nodded slowly. "Meaning it latched on and absorbed the other soul, desperately trying to keep Raven alive. However, because this soul doesn't belong, its causing unrest, the ripples of which made the others." She gestured towards the rest of her sister Clones. "Snap."

Victor crossed his arms the still flesh half of his forehead creased in thought "But why not you?"

The Gray clone shrugged her hunched shoulders. "My emotion must not be one that Raven's subconscious associates with Red X. I don't really get it myself. I'm not..."

"Clever like Intelligence, dude we get it." said Gar, waving away Shy's self esteem issues away with a dismissive hand. "What will happen if Duncan's soul stays inside Raven's?"

Shy's gaze once more dropped to her boots, her arms hugging her knees tighter. Cyborg spared a moments thought on how it looked like the Clone was desperately trying to curl into herself and disappear. "It'll kill her and end any chance you have of locking us back inside Raven's mind," she whispered.

Stoney silence filled the room as her soft words sank into the very depths of Victor and Gar's hearts. Death on the battlefield was not a concept unknown to the pair. Every hero both new and veteran knew that each fight could be their last, but to think of Raven just simply fading away in a hospital bed like sand through and hourglass seemed more tragic somehow. Cyborg was the first to shake off the despair. There may not be a discernible villain but at least there was finally a definable goal, a mission to plan. He was back in his element. "What can we do?"

"You need to send me back through her meditation mirror. It probably won't work because it's me… but maybe I can help stabilize her enough to release Duncan's soul. Maybe even make the other Clones return."

Cyborg punched in a code on the keypad of Shy's prison cell and stood back as the glass slid upwards with a hiss. "Done."

Changeling helped Shy down from the pod's pedestal, hoping that maybe a little kindness would give her the boost she needed to save Raven. "You know, you're pretty brave for being Shy."

The Clone blushed.