Chapter 10: Chasing After an Echo

A/N: Special guest appearance by the Dark Knight starting with this chapter. Welcome to the team, Batman!


"Where will we start? We were all separated during the battle," Raven asked as they sped along. Suddenly, a blip flashed on Robin's scanner.

"Torque!" Robin cried. "I had a lock on her and then the signal went dead. I've got the coordinates! Follow me!" Robin took a shortcut down an alley, around a corner and up the next street. He jetted along for a while and then made another sharp turn, this time to the right. Deftly, the girls kept up, Starfire soaring up above the buildings, skimming the rooftops and Raven hovering low and using the shadows. When they reached the place where they had last seen Torque's signal, it looked as though there had been a devastating battle. The dust was still settling and burning debris still floated in the air as if they had just missed a massive explosion. Robin stopped the T-Cycle and proceeded through on foot as the girls touched down on the ground behind him.

"Robin, what has happened here?" Starfire asked softly.

"Are you sure this is where you saw the blip?" Raven asked.

"Positive. I don't get it. We should have heard the explosion," Robin replied.

"Wait," Raven said suddenly. She dropped to one knee and picked up something off the ground.

"Torque's sweatshirt!" Starfire gasped.

"She was here. But what happened to her?" Raven asked. It didn't matter if she was wearing khakis, jeans, or shorts—Torque never went anywhere without that same black, hooded, zip-up sweatshirt.

"Oh dear!" Starfire whimpered. As they stood and wondered what to do next, Raven caught a movement in the shadows out of the corner of her eye. Raven whirled to see what it was and Starfire shrieked in fear. Raven cried out, "Azarath, metrion, zinthos!" as she summoned a large wooden crate and threw it at the shadow-shrouded stranger. The crate didn't miss its target. The man went down with a cry of pain as the wooden box hit him square in the back and he hit the ground hard. He lifted his torso a little on the support of his forearm and appeared to wince in pain. Raven sailed up over the top of him and poised herself to strike again when the man spoke.

"Nice shot," he grimaced. Raven didn't respond and was about to ask who he was when Robin and Starfire caught up. Starfire was charging her energy bolts and the light from them inadvertently told her friends who their mysterious stranger was. The masked, black clad, heavily muscled man rose from the ground and Robin suddenly dropped his bird-a-rang.

"Bruce!" Robin cried, running to embrace the Dark Knight. A chuckle emanated from beneath the black mask and pointed ears of Batman. Starfire and Raven stood amazed as Robin stood back and shook hands with the man who raised him.

"Your friend is a crack shot...literally," Batman said. "I think she put stress fractures in three vertebrae. By the way, you can tell your wife she can put down her starbolts. I'm not a threat." Raven blushed at the compliment as Robin looked up at Batman with a look of surprise.

"How did you know?" Robin asked as Starfire lowered her hands.

"It was pretty hard to miss the announcement in the paper that your friends made sure was there," Batman grinned. Robin and Starfire blushed for embarrassment. They had no idea that the team had done that.

"That must have been Torque's idea," Robin muttered.

"Actually..." Raven said, letting the rest of the sentence say itself. Robin gave Raven a good natured scowl.

"Anyway, I heard about Slade and his plan to pull a jailbreak. I'd like to help if I could," Batman offered.

"We'd like that. We need to find the rest of our friends. Slade likes an audience and usually waits until we're watching, but the last time he—"

"I know, Robin. I read the report," Batman said somberly. He rested a hand on Robin's shoulder as the Boy Wonder hung his head. Batman knew how much his boy protégé hated to fail.

"You performed well on that mission. There are grown men that would not have been able to deal with what you took out there. As a matter of fact, I don't think even I could have taken that kind of punishment," Batman remarked. Robin shrugged his hand off.

"You're just saying that," Robin said softly. "You're just trying to make me feel better."

"Robin, he made you watch us all die. When we found you, you were pressed up against a corner and you were clutching things that Slade made you believe were a part of us. My cloak, Starfire's ring, Beast Boy's..." Raven couldn't bring herself to finish.

"I know. I was there. Remember?" Robin replied coldly. Raven shrank back a bit, her blue eyes narrowing behind the shadows in her hood.

"They're only trying to help you and so am I. I saw your friend Torque twenty minutes ago. She's got talent, but she wasn't holding up very well tonight. She looked like she'd been through a fist fight or two already tonight," Batman said. Suddenly putting aside the dispute over Robin's ordeal, the Titans followed Batman into the moonless night in the direction of where he had seen Torque.

As the Titans approached the pier and the broken down ship builder's warehouse, they heard a scream and then froze as one of Slade's robot henchmen was hurled through one of the large, age-yellowed windows. Batman's jaw dropped, Robin pulled back in surprise and the girls froze midair.

"Okay..." Robin said for lack of anything better to say.

"I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say I think we found Torque," Raven added.

"It was not a very long branch—Look!" Starfire pointed as the large bay doors of the warehouse burst open as if they were paper and fire rained out into the expansive paved lot outside. Torque backed out of the doorway with the mechanical tentacles of three of the robots around her limbs. Amazingly, she was still fighting. She indeed looked as bad as Batman had suggested and with this, the Titans and the Dark Knight swung into action.

A fourth robot came charging out of the warehouse and threw a large object at Torque. She was hit and went down hard, crying out as she slid across the asphalt.

"Starfire! Raven! Shockwave!" Robin shouted.

"Yes!"

"You got it, Robin!"

The girls circled high in the air, Raven summoning her powers and Starfire hers. When the girls flew higher, they suddenly rushed head-on toward one another and slammed their hands together and then turned to face their opponents. The resulting shock wave shattered the rest of the windows of the frail old warehouse and rocked the ground below where Robin and Batman were running. The robots never knew what hit them.

"In your faces!" Raven cried triumphantly.

"Take that!" yelled Starfire.

"Nice job, girls!" Robin cried, pulling his staff from his belt and joining Batman in decimating the remaining robots. Just before the shockwave hit, Raven used her powers to grab hold of Torque and pull her out of harms way. With her in tow, Raven jetted past the battle field and set down on one of the docks. Gingerly, she placed Torque on the ground and the girl moaned softly before passing out.

"Torque!" Raven cried. Raven used her powers to heal Torque's broken wrist and then waited for her to wake up. As she waited, the others caught up to her.

"I can't believe she was still fighting through all that," Robin said softly.

"She was in a lot of pain. Her wrist was broken in three places," Raven added.

"At least she's all right. Now we can concentrate on finding the others," Robin said, starting to recover his leader-of-the-team attitude. He had been secretly afraid that Batman would try to play the role of the leader when this was a Titans mission. Robin was grateful that Bruce was respecting his newfound leadership role.

Torque came around a minute later, her blue eyes blinking open slowly.

"What happened?" Torque mumbled, her head still spinning from the pain. "I thought I broke that wrist."

"Raven's pretty good with her hands," Robin quipped. Torque smiled and looked over at Raven.

"Thanks, Rae," she said.

"No problem," Raven replied.

"Torque, did you see where they took the others?" Batman asked.

"No. I tracked them here and then lost them when they flew out over the bay in some sort of cargo helicopter. It got pretty brutal. The boys wouldn't go without a fight," Torque replied. She stood with the support of Raven and Starfire's arms before she continued. "Beast Boy took a really nasty hit. Slade blurted out what he was going to do to Raven and he went ape-shit. Literally. One of the robot foot soldiers gave him the shock treatment of his life. He was really hurtin' when they managed to get him on the chopper."

"Why didn't you stop them?" Raven growled. "You could have held back the helicopter. You could have saved them!"

"Whoah! Hey! In case you can't remember, I had four bots of my own to worry about. Even if I had tried, I couldn't have done both and I sure as hell couldn't have saved them if I was dead," Torque shot back. Raven buried her head in her hood and turned away. She didn't want the others to see her cry.

"There aren't many places that are reachable by helicopter once you leave the bay," Robin said. "We need to get the T-Sub. C'mon!"

With this, the Titans took off for Titans Tower to reorganize. An hour later, they were off again; this time in hot pursuit of their three remaining friends.

"I've got another echo! It's Cyborg's repair beacon! He installed it just in case his battery died in the field. He didn't want to be stranded and not have us be able to find him. Now I'm really glad he did! Titans, launch!" Robin announced.