Chapter Five: Blood, Sweat And Tears

It was late in the afternoon when Raven woke up; she had been more tired than she had thought. Walking into the Titans' rec room, she was half-surprised to find that apart from her, Blackfire was the only one awake, staring out the window into nothing.

"When you have almost a quarter of the known galaxy after you, you learn how to control your sleep patterns," she offered by way of explanation. "About last night, Raven, I wasn't trying to, to...you know what I mean. It's just that I feel more at ease around other women, you understand?"

"I thought you said outcasts," Raven said.

Blackfire let out a small laugh. "Guess I should learn to keep my mouth shut, shouldn't I?"

Then growing solemn, she continued, "You know I'm right."

"My friends-"

"It's not because of your friends, but because of you. Isn't it?"

Raven wanted to respond, but she knew Blackfire was right. In the two years that she had been with the Titans, she did become closer to them, but despite that there was still a gulf between her and the others; even with Starfire and Cyborg, her two closest friends among the Titans.

Blackfire broke the silence. "Raven, I'm sorry for what I said, but-"

"No, you're not sorry." Raven said abruptly. "You were never sorry."

"Raven, wait-"

Raven held up a hand, her tightly shut eyes conveying how hurt she was, before she walked slowly out the door.

Blackfire just stood there, a far cry from her aggressively cheerful self. She never meant for this to happen. She never meant to hurt Raven, the only person to show her anything even resembling kindness since she left Tamaran.

But she did.

And it was her fault.

Outside, Raven was worried. Why had she acted like that? Why was she so hurt? She should have been able to control her emotions better, but instead, she threw what was the closest thing to a temper tantrum she had to offer.

Maybe it was because she was right that it hurt more than it should have. But then again, she should have been able to control her emotions nevertheless.

And then another thought occurred to Raven, one a great deal more disturbing.

She hurried to her room, to find a small mirror.

A mirror to her mind.

(scene change)

"Hey! Be careful with that, willya!"

"Look, y'wanna do this?"

"Y'wanna die, numbnuts?"

Foreman Joseph Williamson rubbed his gradually aching forehead. It was the night before his week off, for Chrissake! You're not supposed to have this kind of crap on the night before your week off! The fact that he and the crane operator were the only ones working there did not make anything better.

He had been looking forward to his holiday. Seven days of not seeing the damn dock, of seeing Vegas, of his wife maybe getting lucky at the roulette tables (and maybe with him getting luckier in his hotel room while Sally did that), that sorta thing.

And then this had to come up. A shipment of heavy weapons munitions, bombs, missile launchers, LAWs, et cetra, just because some ding-dong in D.C. thought that the troops down here didn't have enough toys to play with. Joe didn't mind giving the troops an extra gun or two, he was in WWII and 'Nam, and times was that a little more firepower would've helped, but…jeez! You could blow up Ho Chi Minh twice with what was coming in!

And to make matters worse, this joker on the crane almost dropped a whole crate of the stuff. Joe was almost fifty, and he didn't need another goddam heart attack. PETA musta had something to do with this guy working there, 'cos there was no chance in hell Joe woulda allowed this jackass to work there.

He raised his walkie-talkie to his mouth. At least with that last crate, he could hand it over to the soldiers waiting at the dock gates.

"Sergeant Berman? This is Foreman Williamson, we've got the last of your crates down here. You can come and pick them up now."

No answer. He tried again. "Sergeant Berman? Your crates're all offloaded. Pick'em up so we can all go home."

Still no answer. "Sergeant Berman?"

"Maybe the walkie's out," the crane operator supplied.

"Maybe your brain's out," Joe snapped.

"Or maybe they're all dead," an English woman's voice sounded from the roof of a warehouse. "Legion, will all of you load up the weapons?"

"With pleasure, Shift."

From the darkness, a group of twenty masked men, also in grey trenchcoats ran out of the darkness towards the crates, while Shift jumped down in front of the terrified foreman.

"I'll thank you to be silent, Mr.…," she glanced at his tag, "Williamson."

"Halt! Stop what you're doing, or we'll shoot!"

Shift glanced over her shoulder. On the transport ship, a group of sailors had their weapons drawn.

"Oh look, it's the Navy. Legion, be a darling and handle them, won't you?"

"It was getting a little boring."

As the sailors prepared to fire their weapons, eight masked men picked up two crates of weapons while the other twelve ran up to the ship, each pulling out a pair of obsidian machetes, which they stabbed into the ship's hull, and proceeded to scale up the ship as if it were a mountain. Legion himself took refuge behind a warehouse.

The sailors fired at their assailants, but as each grey man was struck, a trail resembling black smoke trailed from their wounds instead of blood, and as they received fatal injuries, they simply dissolved into a cloud of that same smoke.

After the first twelve were dispatched, the sailors prepared to take careful aim at the bandits carting off the weapons, but their attention was soon drawn to another group of twelve men emerging from the darkness behind the warehouse, all as equally alike as the first group.

Except this time, Legion had not been wearing a mask when he duplicated himself.

However, this time Legion did not have the element of surprise on his side, as he did with the soldiers at the gates, and his clones were mown down like chaff. Not that it mattered to him; they were just there as distractions.

Eventually, the sailors realized this, and a few of them started taking shots at the Legions transporting the crates, while the rest gave their friends firing support.

"Oh for- You, be a good boy and stay here, alright?" Shift asked the terrified foreman, who managed a nod. "Good. Legion! All of you take the weapons! I'll deal with the sailors!"

With that, she dropped Joe on the ground, and turned into a bolt of lightning, burning through one of the sailors. When the bolt hit the ship's deck, it turned back into Shift.

"Surprised, lads?" Without awaiting an answer, she turned again into something that resembled nothing more than a red outline of her. When the sailors fired, the bullets passed right through the invisible cloud. She set her sights on the closest sailor, a young man made no less good looking by the look of sheer terror on his face.

Pity I have to kill him, Shift thought, as she slapped the man, who immediately keeled over dead from the massive radiation poisoning that boiled his brain and left a hand shaped mark on both his cheeks as Shift's hand passed straight through him.

His compatriots were either frozen in terror or running away to the ship's hold. Do they think they could run away from me? Shift asked herself. How cute. Changing her form, this time one of ice, she drew one arm back and threw it forward, where it formed a pillar of jagged ice that flew toward her prey, running through each victim, and Shift did this repeatedly, pursuing the sailors and bringing her arm back and throwing it forward again like a whip. Only one sailor survived this onslaught, an older black man who had managed to reach the one of the waterproof doors and shut it.

Had he done it quicker, or at least quieter, Shift would not have found him. He was dead before he hit the ground.

Somewhat more merciful thoughts were running through Legion's head as he watched the quivering foreman. The crane operator had been dispatched easily enough, a nice bloody mess, just like the soldiers, but there was something about leaving witnesses that stoked his ego.

Besides, tempus fugit, and all that.

(scene change)

As Legion and Shift drove away in their trucks, he asked her over his two-way radio, "Right then, we got the weapons. Now what?"

"Now, my good Legion, we find the Titans."

Legion nodded. Then raising the radio again, "Shift?"

"Mm-hmm?"

"What do we need with so much bloody ordinance? I mean, the Titans are children! They're barely out of short pants! Isn't this a little overkill?"

"For the last time, Legion, stop worrying!"

"It's not me I'm worried about! It's Raven! Last I remember, we're supposed to bring her back alive! Can't do that with all this now, can we?"

"Relax, Legion. We're only going to take a crate or so of weapons for our own personal use. The rest, we'll sell to the boss. We will leave these trucks in a nearby depot, where our employer's made arrangements for their transport as well as arrangements for a little extra pocket money."

"And therein lies the other rub. Who is this, our mysterious employer?"

"Does it matter? So long as we get paid, I don't mind."

"But the job's getting more complicated. This little arms affair wasn't what I signed up for!"

"Oh please, two things: One, we are getting paid for this, and two, I know that you enjoyed it, didn't you?"

She could almost hear his smile as he replied, "That is quite beside the point, Shift, and you know it."

(scene change)

It was around half past ten when the call finally came in.

"Titans, we have a situation at the docks." Robin said, coming into the main room. Starfire, Beast Boy and Cyborg were watching some late night horror-romance movie, while Blackfire sat at the table reading what appeared to be one of Raven's books.

Starfire, Beast Boy and Cyborg looked up from the TV to Robin. "What happened?" Beast Boy asked.

"Seems like there was some kind of terrorist attack. They stole a big shipment of weapons, but managed to escape."

"Rob, I know how this sounds, but doesn't that make this a police, maybe even FBI investigation? I mean, we're usually called in to stop the bad guys, not track them down." Cyborg said.

"I know, but apparently the thieves were able to take down a small Army detachment and a shipful of Navy sailors."

"Are they all right?" Starfire asked.

"I'm…I'm afraid not, Star. There is only one survivor," Robin said solemnly, while Starfire reacted with a shocked gasp. "The FBI is calling for all the help we can give-speaking of which, where's Raven? I haven't seen her all day."

"In her room. I'll go get her," Blackfire said abruptly, before she walked off in silence in the direction of Raven's room.

"Ookay, that was weird," Cyborg said.

"You know what's weirder? She's been like that all day." Beast Boy added.

(scene change)

Blackfire walked up to Raven's door apprehensively. After the events of that morning, she did not know how Raven would react to her coming there. But all the same, this was something she had to do herself, and the longer she delayed, the worse she knew it would become.

That just left the question of what to say. Maybe a little teasing: "Hello, Raven? How are you? Listen, Robin's got something really exciting for us to do!"

No.

Definitely not.

Maybe "Raven, I'm so sorry for what I had done to you. Whatever it was. I think."

What was happening to her? She was usually so good with comebacks and witty repartee.

Maybe it was the fact that unlike before, this time the other person mattered to her, a feeling she had not experienced for five years. A feeling she did not know whether to cherish or dread.

Fortunately for Blackfire though, she did not have to do any talking. When the door opened and Raven stepped out, she held up a hand for silence before Blackfire had a chance to speak.

"I got the signal. Let's go. We don't have much time," Raven said.

Blackfire's face fell as Raven proceeded briskly to where the other Titans had gathered. Obviously, Raven still had not forgiven her for what had happened that morning.

Perhaps Raven sensed some of this as she stopped, and without turning around, said, "It's not your fault, Blackfire. It's just…just that I had a lot to think about. I'm sorry if I was harsh earlier."

"So…friends, Raven?" Blackfire asked in an unusually subdued voice.

"…Yes," Raven replied as she turned and briefly gave Blackfire what looked like a small troubled smile before she proceeded down the corridor again, Blackfire following.

(scene change)

The wail of police sirens provided an unwanted soundtrack to the scene playing out on the dockyard, where regular police officers and MPs carried out their work under the watchful eye of the FBI. Near the ship, Starfire was busy trying to console the traumatized foreman, although considering what she had seen on the way in, she felt like breaking down herself.

"It was terrible! Terrible!" the foreman cried. "When she- and he- Oh God!" he said, breaking down once more.

"It will be all right, we will make sure of that," Starfire said with a conviction she did not really feel as she tried to comfort the wailing man. At another end of the docks, Raven and Blackfire were talking to one of the MPs who had been called to the scene.

"It was real bad when we arrived," he said, his face still pale from both what he saw and the throwing up he did afterwards, "Half those guys, we'll only be able to ident if we can find their fingers, the others once we match dental records, or DNA." He clutched his stomach. "Excuse me," he finished, before heading to a nearby trashcan.

Raven looked at the body bags being loaded into the forensics van, some of them bending and sagging in places that a human body shouldn't. At least, one that was whole. The smell of burnt flesh mingled that with the pools of blood still congealing on the road outside.

Blackfire looked as if she was going to vomit herself. "You look okay, Raven, what's your secret?" she said, as cheerfully as a shampoo advertisement, or at least as cheerfully as she could manage.

"I'm used to it."

"What?" Blackfire asked incredulously. "What have you guys been up to?"

But the answer was one she had not expected.

"I have nightmares about my father. Sometimes, they feel like memories." Raven said quietly, before turning to Blackfire. "You get used to the smell of blood and burning flesh."

Blackfire raised an eyebrow. Blood? Burning flesh?

It was then Robin came back, along with Beast Boy, whose eyes and nose were watering. "What happened?" Raven asked.

"Beast Boy ran into some sort of scent bomb," Robin offered by way of explanation.

"I vollowd a zend drail indo a barehouse, bud az zoon az I godh id, I godh hidh by der words sbell ebber, dood! Id waz lige habbing bire and jalapedio pebber stubbed ub by dose!" Beast Boy added, before blowing his nose.

"We did however, find these," Robin finished, holding out two videotapes, each tied with a shiny red ribbon. "They look like the security tapes that were missing from the cameras."

"That's stupid." Blackfire said. Seeing the looks on the others' faces, she clarified, "The first thing a good thief does, or rather, doesn't do, after they steal something is leave anything that could lead people to them. I should know," she added smugly.

"Which means that whoever left this wanted us to find it," Robin mused.

"It's still stupid." Blackfire said.

It was then the Titans noticed the approach of Starfire and Cyborg. "Anything?" Robin asked.

"Some real strange stuff, Rob. My sensors indicate, and the forensics team will back me up on this, that some of those guys were stabbed to death with something like a jagged spike, while two of them died from extreme radiation poisoning. The weird thing is, that with the amount of radiation damage they suffered, my Geiger counter should have been ringing like a church bell, but, well, I got nothing. It should have been Chernobyl up there if they used that much radiation," Cyborg summed up.

"Robin," Starfire said in a small voice.

"Yes, Star?"

"Whoever did this…" she trailed off.

Robin placed his hand on her shoulder. "Don't worry, Star, we'll find them, and we'll stop them."