Robin got up and tried to shake off the dark liquid that he had landed in, simultaneously looking around. There were two separate tunnels connected to this larger one. As the rest of the team unpiled themselves and reacted in various ways to the stench and consistency of their surroundings, he began giving orders. "Slade's lair could be in either of those tunnels. Looks like we're going to have to split up to look for Starfire."
"Aw, dude," Beast Boy groaned, "haven't you watched a movie, like, ever? That's how everybody always gets caught."
"We don't have a choice, Beast Boy," Robin replied. "Kim and Ron, we'll go to the left. Cyborg, Raven, and Beast Boy, you go right. Everybody okay with that?"
"Sounds like a plan to me," said Cyborg as he switched on his built in flashlight. "Y'all take care of yourselves. Call one of us the moment you find something."
"Same to you," Robin told him.
The two groups of three split and walked down their respective, dark tunnels, one lit by Cyborg's flashlight, and one illuminated by the glowing parts of Kim's white and blue battle suit. They tread as silently as they could through the dirty sludge, looking and listening for any signs of other life. Ron was especially anxious as he trailed behind Kim and Robin.
He shivered, then opened his pocket and took out Rufus and held him in his gloved hand. "Don't worry, buddy, nothing to be scared of here. Except the dark. And booby traps. And whatever we're walking in."
"Ron, come on," Kim whispered back to him. "This is just another rescue mission. We've done this a hundred times before."
"Easy for the girl in the power suit to say. Hey, did Wade ever answer my question about getting one too?"
"Timing, Ron," Robin said, trying to hide his own anxiety. "We can worry about that later. Right now, all that matters is finding Starfire and getting her out of here."
"Got it. Sorry. Ow!" he exclaimed as he stubbed his toe on something below the sludge's surface. "I just wish we had any clue where we're going. It's so dark that we could bump into a wall right now and never know it until it hit us."
"Good point, Ron," Kim responded, pulling him and Robin over to the side of the narrow space. "Stay here. Wade," she spoke to her Kimmunicator, "do you have enough signal for a surroundings scan?"
"Think so," the genius replied. "Fire away."
A thin, green beam of light shot out from the front of the device. Kim slowly lowered it from the ceiling to the ground until it had touched every inch of the darkness. On her screen appeared a three dimensional map of the tunnel as the scanner had picked it up. "Thanks, Wade," she said. "It looks like there's a door of some kind in about twenty feet. Glad I scanned for it."
"I'll bet it leads to Starfire," Robin guessed.
"Only one way to find out." Kim stuck the little blue device inside of one of her many pockets. "Let's go!"
Meanwhile, Cyborg, Beast Boy, and Raven trudged through their own assigned path. Well, Cyborg and Beast Boy did. Raven primarily floated just above it. "We're getting closer," she said softly after briefly closing and again opening her eyes. "I can feel Starfire's emotional energy. She's always been strong in that area."
"What kind of emotions are we talking about, Raven?" Cyborg asked.
"It's a little fuzzy," she replied, "but I think I can make it out." She shut her eyes again and hovered in a seated position. "I sense…fear. Definitely fear."
"Poor Star," BB said, shaking some gunk out of his boot.
"But…there's more. I can't quite identify it, but it feels positive. Not happy. More…hopeful." She opened her eyes and looked at her teammates. "That's the best I can get at this range."
"That's definitely Starfire, though," Cy pointed out. "She's probably the one person on this team who could manage to pull off a strong negative and positive emotion at the same time."
"Got that right," his green friend agreed. The kept walking together for what felt like a millennia, although it was really more like five minutes. Eventually, Beast Boy pulled out his cell phone to check it. "Aw, dude," he said, "no signal."
"No kidding," Raven said sarcastically. "We're underground in the sewers. What would you need your phone for down here anyway?"
He blushed, which turned his skin more brown than red, and stuffed it back into his pocket. "Nothing." Raven raised an eyebrow in suspicion. "Okay, okay. Tara said she'd call me later and I was checking to see if I'd missed it."
Raven's usually calm expression darkened in frustration. "Are you serious? Right now? Your teammate's life could be at stake and you care more about some stupid girl you just met?"
"She's not stupid!" Beast Boy shouted, his voice echoing off the curved walls. "And I wan't going to call her. I just wanted to see if she'd called me yet so that I can call her back after we rescue Star. But she's not stupid, and she's a vegetarian too."
Cyborg, who was far ahead of the bickering Titans, looked back at them and said, "BB, put the phone away. Y'all can argue about this later. What matter now is Starfire and getting the heck out of here."
"Of course! Let's go get her!" Beast Boy agreed, shooting an indignant look at Raven's glare and splashing ahead of them both.
The three powerless teammates in the adjacent tunnel finally reached the door. It was shaped like a circle and could only be opened by turning the wheel attached to its front. Ron grabbed the rusty wheel and tugged at it with all his might, but it would not budge no matter how hard he tried.
"This thing must be locked or something," he decided, stepping back. "I guess that leaves us at a dead end."
"Let me try," Robin said. He gritted his teeth and pushed the wheel the opposite direction as Ron had. Slowly, it creaked around and the door clicked open, revealing another, smaller, drier tunnel.
Ron felt the sudden need to inform Robin and Kim of his abilities. "You know, that was a very deceptive wheel. It could have easily turned the other way."
"Righty tighty, lefty loosey, Ron," Kim reminded him. "Come on, this could be it." She dropped to her hands and knees and began crawling through the smaller space.
Robin gestured for Ron to go next. Before following his girlfriend, the blonde sidekick added, "If I'd used my monkey powers, it wouldn't have mattered which way that thing turned. I mean, I get super strength and…"
"Sure you do. Go on."
Robin followed Ron into the tunnel, both of them crawling carefully behind Kim. Meanwhile, Cyborg, Raven, and Beast Boy were still finding their way through the other route. Something caught Cy's electronic eye on the wall and he jogged over to it. Someone had put a large scratch into the hard material, and the was some green glowing residue inside the resulting dent.
"Y'all better get a look at this!" he called to his partners.
Both of them hurried over, Raven still glaring at Beast Boy. "This has to be from either Starfire or Shego," Cyborg decided. "There's some other scratches near it too, so there was probably a fight."
"Dude, do you think Star got hurt?" BB asked.
"No way to tell. These might not even be hers scratches. Who knows what Shego's been up to down here?" He slid his robotic hand about halfway down the wall. "This area's wet too," he noticed. "And everything under it. Looks like somebody filled this place with water, but recently drained it. I'm gonna look around for any more information. Y'all should too." He trudged away, scanning the ground and walls for more clues.
Beast Boy scratched his head. "Well, I guess if there was a fight, Starfire would be okay. She's the strongest girl I know, no offense." He added the last part when he noticed Raven's glare. When that comment did not soften her expression, he asked, "What's wrong, Rae?"
"Let's just say I'm glad somebody's finally showing a little more concern for his teammate than some girl he just met," she replied, her voice betraying no emotion.
"Hey, it was just one time. Chill out. I wasn't even going to call her until we got out of here."
"It's not just one thing," Raven pointed out. "You've been practically obsessed with this Tara person for the past two days now. You barely know her. All you know is that she's vegetarian, a cheerleader, and has the same name as…"
"That part's not important!" Beast Boy snapped. "She could be named anything for all I care. Tara's awesome, and maybe if you got to know her a little better, you'd see that."
"But this isn't healthy," Raven insisted. "You can't just transfer your feelings from Terra One to Tara Two and expect something good to come from it. I know it's not easy to talk about, but you need to accept that the Terra we all knew is gone, and this new Tara isn't going to replace her just because she has similar looks and the same name."
"Nobody's replacing anybody!" Beast Boy shouted, his voice bouncing back off the tunnel walls. "I'm not stupid! This Tara isn't the old Terra. Nobody's the old Terra except the old Terra. I thought you'd be a little bit happy for me that I've finally moved on to someone else, but no…"
"Sh!" Cyborg hushed them from where he stood, several feet down the tunnel. "Do you want to wake up Slade?" he whispered. "Quiet down and look for clues."
"And don't pretend I'm the only one seeing Terra where she isn't," Beast Boy seethed, though he was now much quieter. "I know what you all thought when Kim first joined us. You were all so worried that she'd turn out to be another Terra, especially Robin. Then there's Starfire. She looks at Shego, and she sees some warped combination of Terra and Blackfire. I'm sorry that I was thinking about something other than Starfire during her rescue mission, but don't think that maybe, just maybe, I'm mature enough to deal with my own feelings without any of your creepy mindreading mumbo-jumbo?"
Before Raven could react, Cyborg returned and announced, "Y'all, there's a ton of footprints all over the ground, and by the looks of them, they were made by something metal. My bet is robots, and mean a lot of them."
"Slade bots?" Raven asked, remembering the Titans' experiences during Robin's apprenticeship.
"Maybe a new version," Cy nodded. "But seriously, we've gotta move. If they were here before, they could definitely…" A metal wall suddenly shut behind the trio. All three could here a rumbling sound approaching. "…be back," he finished, turning slowly around to see many tall shapes emerging.
After much crawling, Kim finally reached the end of the tiny tunnel, which was another circular hatch. This one opened with one well-placed kick and landed all three of her group in a large, darkened room that appeared completely empty. "Well, this is…interesting," she remarked.
"Wrong way?" Ron guessed.
"Maybe," Robin replied. "Slade's very cunning. It would be just like him to set up a dead end like this just to trick us."
"But?" Kim said, anticipating that there was more to the situation than there appeared.
"But it would also be just like Slade to set traps along the way, which he has yet to do, so that makes me think that this could just as easily be an…"
Suddenly, the door they had entered through slammed shut. A few dim lights suddenly flickered on to reveal ten robots standing in a line along the opposite wall. One shorter, dark haired figure walked out from behind them.
"An ambush?" Shego smirked.