(Author's Note: *GASP* ...NOT...DEAD. Lacking in self-discipline for ten months, sure, but dead? Nope! Rather than dwell on the details, I'm going to say I've gotten back to writing on a regular basis, and remark that it would be a big surprise if the next chapter takes nearly that long to complete...)

Sloshing through a shallow layer of sewage, following what appeared to be a reject from the Brave Little Toaster, he hoped the kids appreciated his sacrifice. Plugging his own nose would be a relief from the stench, but he'd have to dump one or both of the children to free his hand to do it.

Several minutes later, the entire group had ended up at a dead end, with brick walls blocking each direction. Before Cyborg had a chance to object, or even consider how well these machines would be able to interpret or react to any objection, a slightly irregular mass of bricks on the wall in front of him receded backwards. It then slid down and out of view with a soft grinding sound, leaving a well-sized opening to a passage beyond. The blender-looking robot didn't wait for the slight echo to stop before hopping over the threshold formed by the few remaining bricks at the bottom of the "wall".

Cyborg stepped through as well, and was quietly relieved that the smell hadn't penetrated this chamber even before the "door" slid back into place. When the wall was sealed, many red lights appeared in the darkness, to the left and right. Cyborg quickly turned to check the source of the red lights with his shoulder lamp, and what he saw were many robots. Similar to the two that had led him here in the first place, they all had a red "eye" and seemed to have been assembled from various pieces of household appliances. Most of them were small like those two, but a few human-sized and one larger shape were present. All seemed fixated on him.

It only took Cyborg a fraction of a second to put all the clues together. "Fixit?" he asked loudly.

"Yes," came the flat response from out the other end of the passage. "You may release the children."

Cyborg's tactile sensors detected the two kids pulling harder on his frame. "Maybe later."

"As you wish." Light began to shine from the far end of the passageway. "Enter."

The attached room was very different from the chamber Cyborg remembered from his first encounter with Fixit, which had strongly resembled a surgical theater. Suppressing the shiver that attempted to manifest itself in his spine, he noticed several kids and...police officers?

"Mr. Cyborg, you came back!" exclaimed a familiar young voice.

"Uh...close enough!" Cyborg answered the kid he'd only met a few hours ago, right before this nightmare struck. Technically they'd both managed to end up at the same spot...just like when they were at the same spot in the first place. Which did raise the question..."How'd you get here, anyway?" he asked, as he gently set down the much-less-reluctant kids in his arms.

One of the police officers answered. "You were there when we regrouped, right? Wasn't as secure as we thought; about an hour into all this a bunch of kids came by and trashed the cars. We thought we were goners when this red light led us here through the sewer."

"Sounds familiar. Hey Fixit, do you have those drones of your watching the entire city?"

"No," the non-capitalized cyborg answered. "The city is far too large for the limited number of drones available. While a drone could be relocated to monitor a specific location, given sufficient time...only prominent events can be reliably observed."

"'Prominent events?'" Cyborg repeated.

"Yes." And with that, the clear glass frame behind Fixit, which Cyborg had assumed to be an improvised wall decoration, revealed itself as a fully functional screen. Fixit's eyes glowed brighter as a black-and-white video sequence played on the monitor.

The grayscale sequence showed a solitary car driving at full speed down a city street, with what had to be a giant pumpkin chasing it. Cyborg recognized the vehicle as the car he was driving not that long ago, and the surroundings as the street he'd taken after getting off the bridge. The viewing angle suggested a camera, or drone, perched atop the corner of a building.

"Huh. Sure looks less hectic from a distance than from the driver's seat."

When the playback of the scene ceased, Cyborg took a moment to focus his thoughts. There were many things he wanted to ask, but time was still at a premium. The handful of people in the room were by no means the population of Jump City..."Are there any current...prominent events?"

Fixit replied in monotone, "The most recent such event was your departure, that eventually led to your arrival here."

"OK, so nothing newer. Do you know how those weird pumpkins are making kids do things?"

"It wasn't me!"a half-yelling, half-bawling girl's voice pierced the relative silence.

Cyborg turned, startled, and quickly recognized the girl he'd been hauling around. "It's alright, it's not your fault."

She sniffled a couple times. "It was like...thinking to myself, but not my voice. Like an animal, but with...words. I didn't know what they meant, but my arms and legs moved without me!" And she broke down, bawling once more.

"Don't worry, you're safe now." I hope.

He considered asking his other "passenger", but the boy was staring at the ground. Cyborg thought he detected tears forming in the boy's eyes.

So he turned back to Fixit. "Guess that answers that."

"Subjugated thought processes," Fixit summarized. "As to your inquiry, elaborate on 'weird pumpkins'."

"Well, almost all of these monsters have been pretty pumpkin-like. Except this last one, it was disguised as a kid and looked like...some kind of pumpkin-brain-jellyfish."

"That aspect of the event was observed. No similar creatures have been observed, due to the drones' inability to penetrate such a disguise."

He didn't know about them, then. Cyborg sighed in frustration as the "lead" kept getting poorer. "Do you know where the other Titans are?"

"Neither Robin, Raven, nor Beast Boy have been visually located. Starfire was observed being carried into Titans Tower unconscious, shortly after drone deployment."

"Wait, you were monitoring the Tower?"

"And presently monitoring the Tower, yes; it is highly visible."

The screen shifted to a black-and-white image of the Tower, the island...and many odd smudges that didn't quite blend with the water they were sitting in. Cyborg asked, "What are those weird spots on the water? Is this realtime?"

"Yes."

"Can you get a closer view, or a color image?"

"The drone will focus the view." The image in the display zoomed in on one of the spots.

The resulting shape with that level of detail appeared very gourd-like. And very familiar to Cyborg..."Umm, what about color?"

"The drones do not possess the ability to transmit imagery in color. They are capable of measuring light frequencies, however, and in this case the entire shape is strongly in the green portion of the spectrum."

Cyborg shuddered. "Man, we fought one of those things in the sewer, and it almost beat us. I don't know how I could deal with...however many of them are there."

"The drones count forty-three."

"Forty-three of them are out there?!"

"Forty-three have been counted. There is insufficient coverage to determine anything that could be behind the Tower or island."

"So at least forty-three."

"Correct."

Cyborg groaned. Even if it were only forty-three, and he could plot all their locations, he had no real knowledge of their mobility. He'd been submerged for most of that fight, and there wasn't much water for the thing to have maneuvered through anyway. The only person who might know would...

Wait. Fixit had listed the original Titans. Cyborg took a moment to ponder whether he really wanted the answer to this next question:

"Do you know if Jinx is alright?"

"Inconclusive."

"'Inconclusive?'"

"Her present status could not be determined." Once again, the grayscale image on the screen shifted; this time to a number of tall buildings. The car abruptly rising into the air in the image gave Cyborg a frame of reference. The quickly twisting shape launching itself from the car, towards the "camera", indicated Cyborg would soon be jumping in the opposite direction.

The twisting shape, which was clearly Jinx, rolled into a ball prior to making contact with a roof. It slowed as it rolled across; until it broke into a handstand and somehow twisted against the ground, leaving Jinx in a standing position facing the opposite direction, towards the car. Cyborg didn't have time to compare Jinx's acrobatic smoothness to Robin's utilitarian approach, as he saw himself fall through several floors of the building across the street; he recalled the cacophony of crashing so clearly he might as well have been hearing it again, and his joints ached slightly from the memory.

She pulled out some handheld object, but she lost her grip when the building violently shook, just before it started falling over, towards the right side of the "camera"'s view. Jinx, in the center of the roof, wasted no time in turning around and running in the same direction the building was going, keeping her feet in contact with the ever-tilting surface.

The screen started following her movement. The first building briefly stopped moving when it slammed the building behind it, but Jinx smoothly turned her fall into a handspring with little loss in momentum. She completed the leap to that second building right as it had started tipping over itself. Again, she simply added a handspring to the end of her landing, continuing her run undeterred.

For about a minute and several buildings, this pattern continued: she ran across a tilting roof, jumped across near the edge, and turned the otherwise harsh landing into a feat of acrobatics. She certainly seemed to be on par with momentum itself.

But then, her posture changed: She abandoned her controlled motion in favor of the full-speed forceful sprint that Cyborg tended to use himself; a change he could only feel was desperate. The "camera" had been rotating to the right, to keep Jinx in view...and now it revealed that the building she was aiming for was a tall building like the one he had landed in. Far too tall for a jump from the rooftop she was on.

As he watched her charge across a rapidly tilting roof, she threw a hex at that building, and a window...or maybe a section of wall, between the distance and the colorlessness of the playback he couldn't tell...flashed and crumbled. When she reached the edge of the room, she leapt, and managed to go through the opening after a second in midair.

Right before the falling building fell into the skyscraper, the edge of its roof hitting a few floors below Jinx's landing spot. Or rather, the building fell through it. The imagery was still insufficient for Cyborg to guess at materials, but the falling building wasn't noticeably slowed by the impact, and continued to fall through the space occupied by the taller building. It, in turn, succumbed to gravity and fell towards the other buildings.

The video didn't include sound, but that didn't prevent Cyborg from imagining the cacophony when he saw the top half of that building slam into the tops of the building-dominoes, spraying glass and raising dust everywhere.

Cyborg was still in shock when the display shut down, and when Fixit stated "she has not been observed since." He forced himself to think. It certainly looked horrid, but at the same time Jinx made improvisational avoidance an art. If anyone could avoid being crushed in that building without prior warning, it'd be her.

He took a deep breath. "So she could be alive and well, but inside what's left of the building where your drones couldn't find her?"

"Correct," Fixit answered.

Cyborg briefly clinched his eyes in concentration. He'd have to backtrack to find her, then he'd have to find her, and he could be assaulted while looking for her, but could he continue on his own, that she could be OK didn't mean she would be—

"Can your drones search the debris?" Cyborg interrupted his own train of thought. Time to drown the doubts with information.

"No. They have no means of ascending the supporting structures."

"Supporting structures? What supporting structures?"

The screen flared to life again, showing the site from the side. The shorter buildings, the ones Jinx had crossed, were certainly far worse for wear; cracks and large missing pieces abounded. But they still resembled their own rectangular shape, even if they were standing at oblique angles. And the pathetic looking mass of metal that used to be the taller building, while mangled where it met the other roofs at those angles, wasn't completely pulverized. Someone inside might not have been crushed!

Cyborg certainly felt that was an odd thought to find hope in, but he didn't expect this whole situation to start making sense now. He tried recalling the events he saw on the playback on Jinx's escape...or her unreasonable facsimile of an escape. The last building before the glass building didn't appear to have stopped when it hit that glass, so it would keep falling through, so it would, in theory, be flat against the ground except...

"Can you show me the far end of that, on the ground?"

The screen flickered briefly, before showing the requested area. Sure enough, most of the building was flush against the ground, but there was plenty of debris. A few chunks appeared tall enough to be within jumping distance of missing chunks in the building, and from there he could climb onto the wall that was now a roof. The glass building was clearly suspended in air at that area, presumably held due to whatever weight was concentrated with the rest of the buildings.

Since it wasn't crushed, there was a distinct possibility he could conduct a search of some sort, assuming he could get inside. And there was a visible path to climb to the outer edge of that building, at which point he'd just need to find a way in that could support his weight.

He decided that was a problem he'd simply have to deal with, if it came up. He still wasn't liking the odds of Jinx being in a condition that she could assist with the still-necessary liberation of the Tower, but they were still a heck of a lot better odds than trying to reclaim the Tower solo. "Any kids, bears, pumpkins, whatever?"

"Yes," Fixit answered, "but sparse. Many children are concentrated in a ring expanding away from the site."

So they still were trying to find where Cyborg had gotten off to. Probably weren't expecting him to be dumb enough to go back...which was perfect. "How close do these sewer entrances get to the location?"

"The one you entered is the closest."

Cyborg scratched his chin. "Wouldn't leave much time for dilly-dallying, then."

"Wait," one of the police officers interjected. "You're really thinking about going back there?!"

"Well...yeah," he answered.

"You could be caught," another officer said. "Or worse!"

Cyborg took a deep breath. It was all true, and yet..."So could Jinx. I'm not leaving her just because it'd be convenient."

"Who's going to save the city without you?"

Cyborg lowered his eyebrow at the misplaced guilt trip attempt. "Who's going to save the city if I can't do it all myself? Besides, she helped me get this far, she deserves my help."

I can take care of myself, I don't need your help.

He blinked at the odd recollection of her voice in his head. "No matter how much she may not want it," he muttered to himself.

"Scans are now complete," Fixit interrupted.

Cyborg looked askance at him. "Scans of what?"

"Your systems are damaged. Repairs are needed."

He frowned. The last time he'd heard that, Fixit's ideas of "repairs" was to literally remove Cyborg's flesh and blood. Hardly fun times. Besides which, his own sensors hadn't picked up any physical system damage. "What kind of damage?"

"Node failures in the audio processing cluster. False reception is possible."

Cyborg silently clenched his teeth. That system was responsible for both hearing and playback of recorded sounds, and sending them to his brain. The couple times he thought he heard Jinx could be memory recall going through the wrong "pipe", as it were. His own sensors wouldn't pick up this level of damage, either; only if it progressed far enough that his actual hearing was impacted.

Which was much more likely if the system had already taken damage, like it apparently had when he crashed through several floors of building. "How long would it take you to fix it?" Not that he was entirely comfortable with the idea of someone else working on him, much less Fixit, but he felt way past the point where he could afford to be picky.

"An hour is estimated."

He barely needed to consider it. "No thanks, then. I've got Jinx to find and a city to save; that'll take too long to risk."

Thanks.

That was odd, he didn't remember when she originally said that.

But now was not the time for recollection. "I suppose you don't have any drones to spare."

"Correct."

Cyborg sighed. Not that he was genuinely expecting reinforcements, but he would have gotten over being wrong rather quickly.

A young voice interrupted his thoughts. "But...Mr. Cyborg, aren't you scared?"

More than he was willing to admit. "Well I sure ain't thrilled about it. But there are gigantic pumpkin things running around out there, tearing things up, and right now I'm the only one who can possibly stop them. So I'm going to get out there and stop them, even if I am scared. Even if I'm not sure how I'm going to do it yet. I can fix myself after it's safe, you don't need to worry about that." Largely because if things went bad, his hearing would be the least of his problems.

No sense worrying about that now, though. Cyborg turned back to Fixit. "Before I go, let's see some of those earlier 'prominent events'..."