Chapter 3

Robin sat on his high chair in the middle of his dark, gear-filled cavern, overlooking his 200 Robin-bots. Each droid was roughly Robin's size, built with a mask similar to Robin's and was armed with a laser gun on each wrist. Off to the side stood four other robots. Each of these were exactly like Robin, resembling him in every way, with the same yellow cloak, black spiky (fake) hair, white mask, utility belt, green gloves and boots, and a yellow "R" on the chest. Robin sat sewing together what seemed to be a black diving suit.

One of the doors swished open and Starfire hovered in. Robin looked up, drawing a freeze disk from his utility belt before recognizing a friend. He refocused on the plans written on his desk and started thinking again.

"Robin, I am worried for you. You have been staying up late at night for many days now and you—"

Robin cut her off again. "I'm fine Star!" He suppressed a yawn and continued going over the plans for the next heist.

"Please, Robin, you must stop obsessing over this Slade, it is affecting your health!" Starfire continued, the concern evident in her voice.

"I don't care. I'm going to bring down the Teen Titans, no matter what the cost."

"But—"

"Now's not a good time!"

Starfire sighed to herself. Her boss always seemed a workaholic and far too obsessed with bringing down Slade for his own good. Robin was often up nights generating plots and his repeated failures had only been making him more determined to pursue his nemesis. Knowing there was no more hope, she withdrew from the chamber.

The Titans scattered in the face of Cyborg's sonic cannon. Slade, Mammoth, and Jinx made the mistake of dodging left and were promptly buried by a massive swarm of black-glowing tables and chairs. Beast Boy charged as a green rhinoceros at Plasmus, sinking into Plasmus's stomach and getting trapped. Gizmo flew around on his wings, ducking Cyborg's sonic cannon, until suddenly a black halo surrounded him.

Gizmo fired up his rocket pack, but to no avail; the dark energy held him motionless in the air. "What the-- beep !(Author's Note: This fanfiction is auto-censored)" Cyborg smiled and took his time to aim his sonic cannon in Gizmo's face before firing. Beast Boy became a T-rex and burst from Plasmus's stomach, smashing him into a puddle of sludge. Eyes opened in the sludge and Plasmus rose back up, unfazed.

The pile of chairs and tables collapsed and Mammoth leaped out, followed by Slade and Jinx. Beast Boy quickly resumed normal form and jumped next to Cyborg. Mammoth charged forward with his fists in the air, dodging a sonic cannon shot, only to punch against a solid black shield. He withdrew his broken hand, roaring in pain. Slade's freeze disks and Jinx's hexes were similarly repelled. Raven stopped the shield to send a beam of black energy at an approaching sludge crab, vaporizing it, while Slade was already drawing an explosive disk. Cyborg quickly fired his sonic cannon at the disk, creating a massive explosion. When the smoke cleared, Slade, Jinx, and Mammoth were lying unconscious a block away.

Plasmus looked around and realized that he was alone. Meanwhile, these images played on the large screen within Robin's headquarters.

"This is going better than I anticipated," he said to himself, looking down at the nearly finished black suit on his table. "Maybe I won't need this after all." And he decided, for the first time in months, to take a break. He left his large, dark chamber and went up to the surface world to take a walk, breathing in the fresh air and sunlight. The Titans wouldn't be anywhere near his location.

Plasmus blasted out massive globs of sludge, which the HIVE agents dodged easily. Then he reshaped into a long river of purple sludge, flowing to Gizmo's unconscious body. Gizmo started floating in the sludge river as it continued rapidly receding down the street away from the three villains. Plasmus retreated down the block, picking up the other Titans as well, and fled.

"What now?" Beast Boy asked. "Should we report back to Robin?"

"In my understanding, 'destroy' means drown the Teen Titans in the ocean," Cyborg said. "We'll have to take the Tower. Come on!"

"Drown them?" Raven asked contemptuously. "They're superheroes! They'll survive a simple drowning! If we don't want them to come back to haunt us, we should hack them to pieces!" Raven demonstrated by stretching out her right hand. A black circle appeared around her hand as she activated her powers, then the circle elongated gradually into a wafer-thin triangular blade with serrated black edges and a sharp point.

"No!" Cyborg and Beast Boy both shouted at the same time in disgust.

"Robin explicitly instructed us not to draw any blood!" Cyborg reminded her. "I know we might not kill them completely, but we have to remember that we're under the media spotlight! There are going to be children watching this battle—we can't make them see things like that!"

"Fine, don't say I didn't warn you…"

"I won't. Now let's move!"

The three HIVE agents walked briskly down the street, the same way Plasmus had gone earlier.

Several blocks away, Robin was walking back to the entrance of his dark, dank hideout.

At Titans Tower, Plasmus brought up all his teammates and dumped them into the living room. Soon enough, they started to come around.

"Where are we?" Mammoth asked, confused.

Gizmo looked around. "Hey, how'd we get back to the Tower?" As the words left his mouth the realization came to him. "Crap, we lost, didn't we!" he screamed. Plasmus nodded.

"We need a plan quickly!" Slade said, "They'll try to hit us while we're still demoralized. They're probably on their way here right now!"

"Why don't we use the brand-new security system?" Jinx asked. "We could hide in the trees next to the Tower, let the HIVE agents come in here…"

Slade nodded eagerly. "Then, while they disable our security, we can sneak up behind them!"

Suddenly there was an explosion from downstairs.

"Everyone, hide quickly!" Slade ordered, then he ran up to the computer console and activated the security system.

Laser guns sprouted from the walls and roof, aiming at the HIVE agents who were entering the lobby. As the guns fired, Cyborg jumped aside, while Beast Boy ducked. Raven produced a black shield that absorbed the lasers. Cyborg aimed his sonic cannon at a laser on one of the wall, when a wave of pink hexes slammed into his chest from above, knocking him back into Raven and knocking them both to the ground. Raven lost her concentration and her shield dissipated. The lasers promptly fired, ejecting both of them from the Tower. Outside, a massive sludge river caught up with them and enveloped them both. Beast Boy was now dodging lasers and pink energy in the form of a green pterodactyl. From a ceiling beam high above, a massive hairy fist, followed by the rest of Mammoth's body, slammed down on the pterodactyl's back. The pterodactyl fell to the ground unconscious and transformed back into Beast Boy.

Robin was disappointed, but not so much as to slam his fist on the table. He returned to his black suit and placed the white skull mask on the head part. Then he began to work on the weapons for the suit. He reached for the small container of zynothium under his desk and, using a medicine dropper, dripped a small amount into an equally small hole in the top of a rectangular device. Then he took up the device and pointed it forward, pressing a button. A sticky red semi-liquid substance shot out and splattered onto the opposite wall, making a neat red "X".

A few hours later, the Headmistress returned.

"I apologize for the failure of our students today. I assure you…"

Robin waved her off. "No apology is necessary," he said. "I am quite satisfied with your students. They certainly do not lack talent. You may leave the discipline to me."

The Headmistress bowed and walked out, the door swishing shut behind her.

Robin drew his communicator from his belt and started to call Aqualad, before he remembered that Aqualad was still in jail. He thought it over and realized that almost all of his subordinates were imprisoned. As a plan slowly formed in his mind, the same plan had already formed in Slade's, and Slade was in fact well on his way to creating a counterplan of his own. Using 90 of his brain was Slade's major advantage over his nemesis; it was why he was the leader of the Teen Titans, as he had been, at some point or another in his life, the leader of every organization he ever joined.

Robin pressed a button on his communicator. A few seconds later Starfire's face appeared on the small screen.

"What is it, friend Robin?" she asked.

"At this point," Slade said to himself in his room in the Titans Tower, "there's several bad guys in jail. The three we caught today, Speedy, Aqualad, the twins…It's probably high time for Robin to think about rescuing his people. Knowing that we've seen that, he'll probably try and distract us first. He'll send a villain somewhere else, and then go down to the jail himself…So the next alarm we get, I'll wait at the jail instead." Slade made up his mind and went off to tell the other Titans.

"I'll send some robots downtown and distract the Titans," Robin said into his communicator. "While they're downtown, you need to break into the jail and get anyone you can free. Bring them all back to my headquarters and wait there. Please, try to be quick!"

End Chapter…