Chapter 12: Battlefield Blitz

Starfire was awakened half an hour later by the dissonant din of the monitor's alarm. Beast Boy wasn't breathing. She rushed back down to the medical bay and stopped short before Beast Boy's bed. Starfire couldn't help feeling helpless: she remembered little of the lifesaving CPR that Robin had taught the team months ago. Feeling that no matter what, she ought to try, Starfire gave it her all. Minutes later, Starfire was sitting down in the chair beside Beast Boy, holding his hand as she cried. She had managed to get Beast Boy to breathe again, but the monitor showed that what breath he did have was shallow, and that his blood pressure and pulse were weak at best. Even though she understood little about what all of those things meant, she knew that it definitely wasn't good.

"Please" she whimpered. "Please don't give up. Keep fighting, Beast Boy, you must liveâ€Raven will surely die of a broken heart without youâ€the Teen Titans will beâ€incomplete without you. Youâ€don't have to let go"

Far away, inside the island fortress, Torque and Raven met up with Robin and Batman in the junction that led to the innermost room, the one that they had tracked Cyborg's signal to.

"How are we going to get in?" Raven hissed to Robin.

"We really can't just waltz in, can we?" Robin quipped in return.

"Waltz?" Torque murmured. "That's it! Robin, you're a genius!" The others looked at her oddly. "Our primary obstacle is that there are security cameras all up and down the main hall. It's just like the surveillance setup in the halls in Titans Tower. If you move at just the right time, you can hide in the blackout areas of the camera arcs."

Robin folded his arms over his chest and Raven settled her hands on her hips.

"And how would you know that?" Robin asked.

"My parents were spies. Taught me everything they knew," Torque replied, pulling a pin from her hair. "Raven, gimme a lift, wouldja?" Torque picked the panel on the camera that swept around the area of the tee shaped crossing in the hall. She rewired the camera and then signaled Raven to let her down.

"I rewired the camera for a continuous feedback loop. It will repeat everything it saw on the last sweep but it won't pick up anything new. We should be able to sneak in between the arcs of the first two cameras any minute now. Just wait for my signal and follow my lead. The tricks your mother can teach you," Torque said, dusting off her hands. Robin scratched his head in amazement. Batman just chuckled.

One by one, the heroes ducked and stopped, ducked and stopped, all the way down one side of the hall until they reached the large steel door. Torque pulled the panel away and tripped the cameras off. They heard a voice from inside call, "Hey! What's going on? The surveillance system in this corridor isn't working!" With this, the Titans waited with nervous anticipation for the guards to come out to fix it, and one by one, the team silently defeated them. Once this was finished, the team triggered the door and Robin motioned for them to move silently into the room and keep to the shadows.

Brother Blood and Slade were alone inside the expansive inner sanctum with their prisoners. Cyborg's arm was on the floor, but the rest of him was strapped down to a raised metal platform in the center of the room. He screamed as Slade removed the cybernetic arm and Jinx screamed with him. She was chained to a wall across from him, forced to watch them disassemble him one piece at a time.

"Stop it! Stop it!" Jinx screamed. "Cyborg, no!"

"You brought this on, Jinx. Troublemakers cannot keep it from themselves," Brother Blood replied.

"I'll do anything you ask! Just please stop hurting him! Let him go! You got who you wanted!" Jinx wailed.

Slade stopped what he was doing and Brother Blood extended a hand and made the chains around Jinx's wrists and ankles disappear. She dropped to the floor and Cyborg watched in horror as Brother Blood walked up to Jinx, bearing something beneath his cloak.

"You are a liability, Jinx. We cannot afford to have any loose cannons in our organization," Brother Blood said gravely. Jinx seemed to intrinsically understand. She rose to her knees and looked up at Brother Blood as he brandished a long, wide-bladed sword.

"No!" Cyborg screamed, renewing his struggle to get free. Slade backhanded the robotic man and Robin had to hold Raven's hands to keep the villains from seeing how they were glowing with black energy. They would only watch seconds more before

Jinx took a deep breath, swallowed hard and then bowed her head to Brother Blood. Brother Blood raised the sword and it glinted in the dim light. Raven was practically hyperventilating. Robin watched the scene and then suddenly said, "Raven!" She concentrated on the sword and whispered, "Azarath, Metrion, ZINTHOS!" Robin released her hands and the sword in Brother Blood's hands suddenly became lodged in the air as Robin cried out, "Titans! Go!" The others bounded out of the shadows and joined him as he pulled his staff from his belt and charged his oldest nemesis.

As Robin approached, Slade, too, produced a staff and seconds later, all one could see was the blur of staffs and the strained expressions on their faces. Robin jumped and flipped over Slade and Slade turned to meet him again and swept his feet out from under him. Robin rolled and brought his staff across again, making contact behind Slade's knees. The villain came down like a ton of brick and Robin leapt into the air, coming down with the intent to slam his staff down across Slade's back. The older man moved just milliseconds before Robin would have hit him and the Boy Wonder had little time to react. Robin hit the floor but kicked out of the position and was back up seconds later.

Across the room, Raven soared into the air and pushed off the wall to fly at Brother Blood. He was still pulling at the sword, trying to get it to come down on its target. As Raven approached, she didn't see two new people entering the room out of the corner of her eye. Gizmo and Mammoth wasted no time. Mammoth picked up a large steel crate from the edge of the room and threw it at the young Azarian, hitting her before she could reach her destination. The inertia of the hit sent Raven flying across the room with the crate and slamming into the wall. When she lost consciousness, her hold on the sword released and Brother Blood inadvertently slammed the blade down.

When this happened, Cyborg, who was still watching from the plateau he was restrained to, screamed out for someone to help her. Robin managed to throw Slade across the room and turned for just a few seconds: just long enough to see the blade come down and to see the body of the pink haired villainess-turned-heroine go limp on the floor. Most of the top half of her body was hidden behind more of the crates in the room, but Cyborg was sure of what he saw. Pushing his mechanical musculature to the limits, Cyborg screamed as he popped the metal bands that held him down and sprang off the tabletop. He picked up his disembodied arm and reattached it to his body. As he did this, Brother Blood turned to him, a look of sheer, unadulterated malice in his gaze. But before Cyborg could attack, a black streak came out of the shadows, tackling the man from behind and taking him to the ground. As Cyborg stood shocked beneath the spotlight, he watched as Batman wrestled Brother Blood for the sword. Cyborg turned his attention to the girl laying not 20 paces away.

Torque had seen it when Raven was hit. It was a core part of Torque's philosophy that her friends were off limits. No one touched them unless they were asking for trouble and that was a line that most if not all of the villains that Torque had faced never crossed. Gizmo and Mammoth had just crossed it. Torque made a running leap across the room and landed on the back of Gizmo's arachnid-like backpack and used her enhanced strength to crush it as he screamed for her to get off. He tried to buck her off, but dexterous Torque wouldn't be moved. The blinding orange glow of her hands told Gizmo that he was in big trouble but he couldn't move her. She screamed out as she let go of Gizmo and jumped backwards, using her powers to twist and contort the spider legs of Gizmo's suit and send him crashing to the ground.

Torque hit the ground and rolled. When she opened her eyes, Mammoth was bearing down on top of her, having jumped down off the lofty rafters of the room. She raised her hands in defense but she need not have. Mammoth was suddenly surrounded by black energy and yanked back up into the air. Raven gritted her teeth as she slammed Mammoth up against the wall and then took the crate he had thrown at her and threw it back at him. Mammoth screamed and then groaned as he bore the attack.

By now, Robin had maneuvered himself into a position of power and Slade was on his knees. Robin, in his fury, came across and lowered the bow onto Slade's back. The sickening crack told him the Slade wasn't going anywhere for a while. When he looked up, he saw Batman slam Brother Blood against the floor and begin to punch him. The sword that Brother Blood was holding was in the hand that Batman was holding against the floor with his knee, and the old man's face was taut with fear. As well it should have been, for the last conscious thing Brother Blood saw was Batman's angry face before his fist made contact with Brother Blood's face.

Despite the fact that the older man was blatantly incapacitated, Batman continued to beat Brother Blood until Robin cried out, "Batman, stop!" His breath heaving in his chest, Batman looked up at his Boy Wonder and then in the direction he pointed. Batman's anger was clearly due to the attack on Jinx, but when Batman turned around, he knew why Robin told him to stop. The Dark Knight punched Brother Blood one more time for good measure and then stood.

Cyborg was coming back toward the spotlight carrying Jinx. She was in one pieceâ€and alive! Her eyes blinked open as he walked into the ring of light and she looked at Cyborg in wonder.

"What happened? Have I died?" Jinx whispered hoarsely. Torque arrived seconds later, limping along as she leaned on Raven's shoulder.

"No, kiddo. You made it. We all did," Torque replied. Raven smiled and with her, one by one, so did the others.

"Titansâ€and Batmanâ€let's go home," Robin said, welcoming Batman's hand on his shoulder. As they headed for the door, the communicators went off. It was Starfire. In seconds, their victorious revelry was sent crashing to the ground: Beast Boy was dying.