Chapter 18: Training and Attack
"NO!" Robin shouted.
There on the video screen, was Slade. He laughed evilly. "Hello, Robin. Miss me? Trigon owns me now."
"I didn't think you would stoop that low, Slade," Robin said maliciously, practiacally spitting out his arch-nemesis's name. "Becoming enslaved by your opponent's father?"
"I have no choice," Slade replied. The screen fizzed and Trigon's face appeared. "As you see, I have immense power. You have no hope," he said to Robin and the Titans, who were staring at the screen as if they were frozen. "You have three days. Then I will return to you to enslave this planet." Then the transmission ended.
"Well, let's turn in. We've got work to do in the morning," Robin said. He was deep in thought as he walked to his room. 'Slade?' he thought. 'How did Trigon control Slade? He must be more powerful than I thought.' He fell asleep to nightmares of Trigon killing Raven, waking up whenever she died, and screaming.
Raven's room was just down the hall. She heard him screaming and went to comfort him. As she entered his room, she heard him talking in his sleep.
"No! Don't kill her! Please! Leave Raven alone! No! RAVEN!" he was tossing and turning.
"Robin, it's ok. I'm here." Raven said, and she placed a cool hand on his forehead.
"What? Oh, Raven! It was terrible," Robin told her, finally awake. "Trigon picked you up and you couldn't use your powers and none of us could help you and I couldn't move and I was shouting for him to stop but he made us watch as he r...as he ripped off your head!" Robin summarized his dream without stopping to take a breath.
"It was just a dream Robin. We'll be fine," Raven comforted him. Her voice assured him of something he didn't believe. "If it will help, I'll stay with you tonight, Robin. Maybe your nightmares will go away," she offered.
"Thanks, Raven," he said sleepily, and scooted over to make room for her in his twin bed. She laid down beside him and rested her head on his chest, in that one place where she seemed to fit perfectly. It took Raven a while to fall asleep, but she didn't mind. She loved being so close to Robin. Finally her eyes shut, and she slept dreamlessly.
-
Light streamed in through the window. Raven got up, waking Robin. "Did you sleep well?" she asked.
"Wonderfully. I didn't have any more nightmares once you came in. I did have a dream though," he answered, smiling.
He and Raven went to the kitchen to make herbal tea and breakfast. One by one the other Titans came in, until finally all of them were there, and done eating.
"Ok, team. Trigon is dangerous, and now he has Slade working for him. We need to train like never before for the next three days," Robin said to the other Titans. They nodded in agreement.
"Beast boy, I want you to research different animals. You should find ones with special abilities, not only big animals. Got it? See if you can morph a dragon or liger or something," Robin said to him.
He turned to Cyborg. "You can try upgrading yourself to have more power and more weapons. I don't know much about your anatomy, but see what you can do."
He looked at the two girls. "You two need to get good at hand to hand combat. Both of you rely on your powers too much. You'd be sitting ducks if you were to lose them. So, you'll be training with me. Raven, you and I will need to work more than Starfire. We have vampiric abilities that we need to hone in on. I don't know about you, but I still don't know the full extent of my powers. And Kuro might have been lying about some stuff. We'll just have to experiment and find out."
Finally he addressed the whole team, "Ok, let's start training!"
a few hours later
"Whoa! Did you know you could do that? I didn't know you could do that. Do you know if I can do that? How did you do that?" Robin was babbling.
Raven was lying on her back, arms at her sides, looking entirely normal. The strange thing was, her back was against the cieling, not the floor, or even the wall.
"Friend Raven, how is it that you are lying down on the cieling? Is gravity different in this one place?" Starfire asked.
"Uh..." Raven said. She wasn't quite sure how she got up there. "I don't know, Star. I'm not sure I know how to get down. Robin?"
"Do you know if I can know how to...or would it be lying up? Instead of lying down?" Robin was still babbling. "...Oh, what? Sorry. Uh, I don't know how to get you down." Then he started babbling again. "I don't know how to get up. You don't know how to get down. I don't know how to get down..."
"Can you give me a hand, Robin!" Raven shouted, exasperated. She had been stuck to the cieling for 5 minutes now, and for some strange reason, all her blood was rushing to her head, as if she were hanging upside down.
Robin reached up, finally silent, and grasped her hand. She fell on top of him.
"oof! Sorry Robin! Thanks for unsticking me. C'mon, let's experiment with this!"
three days later
"Trigon will be here any second now. Let's share what we've learned. Cy?" Robin said.
"I have new weapons, my energy supply lasts longer, and I have a device that allows me to fly around, but only for a few minutes before I need to re-calibrate it. I didn't have much time to work on it," the android answered.
"Good, good." Robin nodded. "Ok, BB? What have you got?"
"I can morph a dragon! I can do centaurs, phoenixes, and several other legendary animals. It's so cool! Wanna see me do a hydra?"
"Wow, a hydra? Well, maybe another time, when we have more time. Ok, Star, I know you've accomplished a lot of martial arts in just a few days. Now, Raven and I have a few new abilites. Rae?" He gestured for her to show them one.
She jumped up, flipped upside down, and landed feet first on the cieling. And stayed there. "Heehee, I found this by accident a few days ago." she giggle uncharacteristically. To be truthful, standing on the cieling frightened her a little. So she pretended like it was funny.
Robin nodded. Then he demonstrated another skill. He spun around in circles for a few seconds, and vanished from sight.
"Where'd he go?" Beast boy asked, looking around.
"He's still there. He's moving to fast for you to see him. You can feel the wind he's making." Raven explained. Robin appeared again; he had stopped spinning. "Raven? Want to do the honors?"
"How about you show them?" she offered. Robin nodded in agreement. "Ok, this is our newest and coolest ability. We..."
His sentence was cut short as a huge explosion caused the cieling to cave in on them.
"Ahhhh!" someone screamed. A life was lost. One of the Teen Titans was dead. But who?
(A/N) Guesses, anyone? Any comments on how evil I am, ending a chapter with a cliffhanger and a character death? MUAHAHAHAHAHA! Review! Review! I want three more before I upload chapter 19! I want to have at least 25 by the time I post chapter 20.
