Titan's tower, just a minute ago.

Robin sat at a computer terminal in the top floor of Titan's tower. He typed away endlessly on the keyboard, pulling up police reports, criminal records, maps, and bios on people at that party. He was so enthralled in his work that he barely registered his communicator buzzing next to him.

"What the, oh, yeah." He grabbed the yellow device and flipped it open with a star trek sound effect. "Yeah?"

An electronic device warbled over the speaker. "Hey kid."

Robin's eyes widened under his eyemask. "Red X! How did you get this frequency! What do you want?"

"Whoa, slow down there chuckles. I'm just calling to tell you to get your ass down to the morgan apartments, your friend's been hurt."

"What? Who?"

"The green one, you better hurry, he's a bleeder." And the device clicked off.

Robin seethed, he gripped the device and angrily threw it at the ground.


"What the hell do you mean?" I kept staring at the leering skull face, holding BeastBoy's arm.

"I mean that me and you are going after Jim, thats what." He crossed his arms impatiently. "Now let's go, he's getting away."

"Follow him yourself, I'm staying here with BeastBoy." I applied more pressure on his arm.

"I can't take him myself, as much as I hate to admit it, I need you."

"And he needs me, now get the fuck away from me."

"Listen, this is more important, we need-"

"NO! I'm not letting BeastBoy get any worse than he already is!"

"Calm down, be rational, Jim is a bigger threat right now. We have no idea what he is capable of with that damn guitar. The two of us should be able to bring him down. Now he's getting away dammit." A threatening edge came to his electronic voice.

"Go without me Robert, I'm not letting BeastBoy get hurt anymore because of me." I turned away from the black clad man, and a moment later there was a sound like the flutter of locust wings and he was gone.

I sighed and resumed maintaining BeastBoy, waiting for aid.

I didn't have long to wait because the rest of the Titans burst into the scene about three minutes later, with Robin in the lead.

He came onto the scene via grappling hook from the ground. He swung up and planted his metal boots onto the ruined ground. The Boy Wonder took in the scene almost instantly, and his face twisted into a look of focused concern.

The next few minutes passed as a blur to my tired eyes. Robin pushing me out of the way and standing over BeastBoy with a roll of gauze from his belt. Starfire's gasp of surprise when she saw what had happened to her friend. Cyborg's look of grim determination as he tended to BeastBoy's broken body. Raven's blank concentration as she channeled healing energy into BeastBoy. It all sort of muddled together into one big Titan soup in my mind.

I just sat there across the room, in a state of limbo, barely registering what was going on around me. I was numb, tired, and still a little wounded. I was left like that for a good fifteen minutes before they decided it was safe to move BeastBoy. I vaguely recall getting in the T-car, with BeastBoy in the Bronco, and driving back to the Tower. I think at some point I passed out.

When I woke up I was in a familiar room in the Tower, the infirmary. BeastBoy was lying on the bed, several tubes coming out of him and even more wires leading to machines. The only noise was the rhythmic hiss of the breathing machine as it pumped air into his lungs.

I shook some of the cobwebs out my head and walked up to the bed and looked down at the little man. I noticed for the first time that his arm was completely covered up in thick layers of gauze and tubes. I briefly considered reaching out to touch it, but didn't.

I heard the door open up and in walked Starfire. She was wringing her hands in front of her nervously. She stopped when she saw me standing there. I said "It's fine Starfire, come on in." The orange girl walked in slowly, as she got closer I saw that her face was streaked with lines from salty tears, or maybe there was silicon in a Tamaranian's tears, I don't know. At that time I was still freaking out a little bitover the fact that she was a space alien. Either way seeing proof that she had been crying was enough to tug at even my stony heartstrings.

"Has there been any change at all in our friend's condition?" She whimpered.

"You tell me, I just woke up."

"Oh..." She just turned and longingly gazed down at the sleeping changeling.

"So... what's the verdict?"

She just cocked her head to the side in confusion.

"What's wrong with him? How badly is he hurt?"

"Oh, Cyborg tells me that his arm is very badly hurt, but beyond that he is mostly fine. He also says that... his arm... may ... never recover." At that she turned away and began to shudder lightly.

If seeing evidence of her tears tugged at my heartstrings, then actually seeing her cry cut them. I stared down at BeastBoy and felt very, very guilty. Guilty for letting him get hurt, guilty for yelling at Robin and then turning around and fucking up like this, guilty for both Red X and HardRock getting away, and guilty for making Starfire and the others upset like this. Oddly enough I didn't know which one I felt guiltiest about.

I ran out of the room and down the hall. I tore up the stairwell and onto the floor with my room on it, but I didn't go there. Instead I turned down the opposite hallway and opened up Raven's room. I looked around the very macabre main room before I dashed over to one of the book cases and began scanning titles. When I didn't see any of the books I was looking for I moved on to another shelf.

After a few minutes of looking through books I had a few tucked under my arm. All I needed was one more and I would be ready.

"Do you mind telling me exactly what your doing?" came a deep, feminine voice. I didn't even have to look to know that it was Raven.

"I need to borrow a few books Raven, I have a spell in mind."

"If there was anything in those books that could help BeastBoy don't you think that I would have already done it."

"Yes, but that was with your type of magic. Mine is very, very different."

"Really, what can you possibly do that I wouldn't be able to?"

"An essence transfer, simple as that. I'll transfer my magical essence and regenerate BeastBoy's arm, that should take care of it."

Raven shook her head. "Reaver, you couldn't possibly do an essence transfer. It takes years of study to be able to perform an essence transfer without anyone dying. Either you'll kill yourself draining out your essence or kill BeastBoy draining yours back or kill the both of you doing it."

"I'll be able to pull it off Raven, I just need to draw a casting circle, work a little bit on my ancient Germanic, and then cast the spell."

"Why dare take such a risk?"

I leaned heavily on the bookcase and sagged my shoulders, "Because it's worth it Raven. If anything goes wrong I'll shunt the negative effects onto me. I can take having a little bit of my essence removed. Now I need some diamond dust if you have it."

"Reaver, now is not the time for this. You need to control your emotions, your panicky and you feel guilty about BeastBoy. Such a state is not proper for the casting of such a high end spell, you'll only hurt yourself."

"What are you talking about? I'm in perfect control of my feelings, I'm fine for spellcasting."

"Reaver, I'm an empath, you can't hide anything from me."

"I'm fine, now where the hell is your copy of The Guildbook of the Illuminati, I need it." I started grabbing books and pulling them out of the shelf. One of the random tomes fell down and crushed my foot. My eyes widened in shock and I clutched my foot in pain. "AHHH, FUCKING GODDAMMIT!" In grabbing my foot I dropped the books I had collected so far. "RRRAAUUGGGH SONOVABITCH!" And I angrily kicked a nearby chair, shattering it against the opposite wall. I stood there for a few moments, staring at the wrecked piece of furniture.

I felt petite hands on my shoulders pushing me down to the ground. I let them. "But it would seem you can hide things from yourself." She calmly droned, not even startled at my outburst.

I sat crosslegged on the warm blue carpet, Raven standing over me. "Shit, I'm sorry Raven. I'll get you a new chair, don't worry about that."

"I'm not worrying, and neither should you. You don't have to try and fix everything Reaver, doing that will only get you killed very, very quickly."

"It's all my fault that BeastBoy got hurt Raven, I should have been more alert, sensed HardRock coming and been ready. It's only right of me to try and help him. If he loses his arm, I think I'll have to kill somebody."

"The only place he could get better medical care is the Justice League's Watchtower. He's going to be just fine, you need not concern yourself. You should be focusing on finding HardRock and Red X, not getting upset for no reason."

"Red X, I forgot about him. Raven, I know who Red X is!"

And for the next hour or so I told Raven all about the events that had occurred so far that night. Since retelling the previous events would be redundant, I won't rewrite everything here. Just go reread the last two chapters instead.

Raven finally spoke again after I finished my retelling. "So, Red X is just some selfish street urchin managed to break into the tower and get away with the suit, and HardRock is his fellow miscreant."

"That about sums it up."

"Interesting, do you know where any of these people are right now?"

"Sorry, but no."

"That shouldn't be too much of a problem. With everyone here searching for them they should be found easily enough."

"Don't be too sure. These two grew up on the streets, they probably know how to hide if they need to."

"So what do you recommend we do?"

I thought for a moment. "Okay first of all, we sleep. I'm dead tired and I'm sure you are too."

"What do you recommend after that?"

"I'll tell you when I figure it out. Gnight." And I walked out of the goth girl's bedroom.

I went back to my room and went to sweet, sweet sleep.