Intro: Get ready for a wild emotional ride. Well, maybe not all that, but I thought it was pretty dramatic. I always felt Robin was the one most likely to kill himself for his friends, or at least tied with Raven for that position, and here we have an interesting little take on that aspect of his personality. Don't quit before the end, otherwise you won't know if it's a happy one or not. Finally, I know that the Titan's auras were shown off in the "Switched" episode, but I felt those were totally unimaginative, so I wrote them my own way.

Chapter 6: Aftermath

When the search teams had finished going through the rubble of this most recent attack on the city, the toll turned out to be surprisingly light—not that that mitigated the absolute tragedy of the whole messed up situation. The civilian body count came out to a mere twenty people, four people crewing the news helicopter (including one famous reporter that would be getting quite a sendoff), eight people that had failed to heed the police's attempts to evacuate the monster-man's path, and eight more people that had been trapped in the building-to-building fires. In their attempt to delay the homicidal villain, nine police officers were killed, and another two firefighters died heroically attempting to rescue the group of eight trapped in the burning building. Due to the heroic police action and the timely arrival of the Titans, damage was largely limited to property, of which the better part of an old residential block was now gone. Homelessness would be rampant until the insurance companies could come out to check and double check the claims filed for collection on the Super Villain v. Superhero damage policy that everyone in Jump City, Gotham, and Metropolis was crazy to go without, but it was pretty clear cut, and everyone would likely be reimbursed for their cars and homes. In the meantime, the American Red Cross, as well as several disaster-relief charities and religious groups were on the scene to erect temporary shelters and provide food, blankets, and a helping hand.

The official story was that a super-powered man, fueled by homicidal mania with no known cause, had lost his head and attempted to kill everything around him. The Titans stopped him, but not before causing the city's protectors serious injuries, injuries that were now being treated at the Titans Tower med-bay by the most talent doctors in the city. The light that everyone on the western seaboard all the way out to the Midwest had seen ignite the sky was reported as the detonation of the high-tech gadget that gave the villain all his strength. The fate of the villain was never mentioned to the public, and when local authorities questioned Robin about it, he told them that the man had evaded capture, but wouldn't be troubling the city again for a long time—which was just about as far as Robin was willing to lie for the public's peace of mind. He didn't know what the heck had happened to Blue, or even that that was the alias the brute went by. The only person that might be able to enlighten Robin was still unconscious, along with half his team.

When the ambulances arrived, Robin had quickly directed them to Starfire and Raven, both of whom were covered in Starfire's blood where they lay in an embrace of mortality, Raven having fallen onto Stafire when she lost consciousness. The medics had treated the two as well as they could on the spot and got them careening toward the Tower med-bay without hesitation.

Concerned about the trustworthiness of the pale stranger, but owing too much to let himself deny aid, and having more questions than he thought his head could contain, he directed the medics to pick up the unconscious young man that had rescued them all and sent him to the tower as well, hoping to whatever higher power might be listening that this wasn't another Terra. The obviously super-talented young man would have some questions to answer, and a lot of trust to earn, but considering how close they all came to being eradicated today, Robin felt the guy was owed the benefit of the doubt.

Those three taken care of, Robin lead a search party of medics through the rubble, searching for the other two Titans and anyone else that might need help. A quick look around the area that Robin remembered seeing Beast Boy fly after being hit last turned up the skinny green elf without trouble. He was badly concussed, feeling far too disoriented to stand, much less to transform or even remember that a battle was going on at all. Leaving some medics with him, Robin took the rest to find their final errant ally.

After about ten minutes (it was a lot farther than Robin remembered now that he didn't have a homicidal super killer to contend with) they made their way back to where Cyborg had fallen, only to find an empty crater in a pile of stone and a path that something was dragged along. Following the path they found leaking mechanical fluids, bits of wire, and several other odds and ends that hinted at what had made the path, before finally tracking it to the source. Cyborg, it seemed from the evidence and his later confirmation, had taken some bad damage to his leg actuators and power core, effectively immobilizing him from the waist down after the last punch the brute laid on him. However, never one to sit around when needed, he had dragged himself along the ground, hand over hand, clawing his way toward the sound of battle. Eventually, the damage to his power core proved too much, and he was forced to deactivate himself or self-destruct, an end that wouldn't have helped anyone. Calling in a salvage helicopter, they airlifted him to Titans Tower.

Arriving in the Helicopter hours behind everyone else (except Cy of course), Robin's fatigue knew no bounds, nor any foreseeable respite. The only things that had allowed him to function through the long afternoon of searching were the bubble of fear for his friends' health that his consciousness floated upon, the enormous burden of responsibility that being team leader had always left him with, and a series of localized anesthetics he'd been steadily injecting into his ribs to keep the pain from laying him low. He knew, beyond doubt, that he would regret the damage he was doing to himself by continuing to move around with his ribs broken, but he never even considered doing anything else. As Starfire had taught him, the welfare of his friends had to come first—that was the only way to repay their deep trust in him, and he refused to let them down.

Once he was off the helicopter, he guided the men pushing Cyborg's trolley down to the repair bay in the metal man's room. Personally hooking the emergency power cord into a port on his big friend's back, Robin stood by as the lights came back on under the various circuits and armor plates, waiting for the red light of his artificial eye to blink on. With a jerk and some yelling, he came back online, reactivating at the exact moment he had turned off, with him desperately trying to get back into the battle and help his injured friends. After two seconds of frantic flailing that threatened to pitch him off the repair bed, he noticed his new surroundings.

Once he recovered from the shock of the translocation, he noticed Robin and the salvage helicopter crew, and realized what must have happened. Several questions later, he learned the rest of the story from around the time he shut off, and experienced a number of reactions to the delayed information. There was shame at not helping out on the rest of the fight, shock and fear at the news of Starfire's and Beast Boy's fates, wonder at word of Raven's valiant act and the surprise rescue from a mystery man, and bitter hate for the villain who had managed by some mysterious means to escape after doing all that damage. Sighing after the quick recap, he asked Robin to go so he could begin repairing himself. He rejected the offer of the helicopter crew to help, urging them to instead get home to their families, insisting that he preferred to be the only one doing body work on his body. With a promise to visit later, Robin left to move on to the other issues that were weighing on his mind.

Taking the elevator down to the med-bay, Robin walked in to a scene of what had doubtlessly been furious action not long ago. Despite the fact that he had seen it many times before, this time the med-bay struck him as a much less inviting place than it ever had in the past, almost certainly because it contained the potential of holding so much horrible information. Walking up to a group of tired-looking medical personnel, he asked after the fate of each of his friends in turn.

First he asked about Beast Boy, and was told that the green shape shifter, while still shaken up and having trouble with balance and double vision, was basically fine and would make a full recovery in a few days. They had been concerned after a period of nausea, but knew that he couldn't be too badly hurt when a young nurse had asked him "How many fingers am I holding up?" and he had answered "As many as you want to pretty lady," with a woozy version of his flirting voice.

Smiling in spite of himself, he next asked after Raven. She was probably the least badly hurt of all the Titans, physically speaking anyway. Her only real problem was a seriously low blood sugar level that they had a direct I.V. drip working on constantly, and would be over with in no time. The problem arose when one examined her brainwave scans, which showed irregularity often associated with severe trauma, making it rather uncertain when she would awaken. She had been improving toward normal (for Raven) brainwaves steadily though, so it was hoped that she would make a full recovery.

Next he asked about the stranger. Apparently he had begun talking in the ambulance, ensuring the medics that he was fine and that all he needed was rest. Finding nothing wrong with him besides severe exhaustion in the cursory examination that he had allowed them to give him, (as he gave quite a tongue lashing to the two when they tried to do and eye check and a few other things) they had done nothing but carted him to an empty bed in the med-bay. He was resting now, having left word to not be disturbed. Curiously, he had never moved a single inch while berating medics and dictating orders.

Finally, Robin felt he could bring up what was really worrying him without feeling like he was showing overt favoritism. He felt that it would be an irresponsible betrayal to rush directly to the side of the one person his heart truly pounded with fear for, the girl he would have sacrificed his life for six times over, even before any of his other friends. Shocked, he told himself off internally for even thinking such a treacherous thought with his friends all injured, even though he knew it was true. In any case, as bad, bad luck would have it, the one girl he was most concerned about was the one girl who was in true mortal danger.

When she had arrived, the doctors had done their best to stitch up the multiple cuts, including the bad stomach wound, treating everything with disinfectant and generally doing as much as they could on that front. There was the significant problem, however, that there were no doctors anywhere on the planet qualified to perform surgery on a Tamaranean girl, and surgery was definitely needed. The blunt force trauma from Blue's full force punch had caused mild but un-discountable internal bleeding that, if it didn't stop, would eventually bleed her dry, meanwhile playing havoc with her internal organs. Really all they could do was set up a steady supply of transfusion blood and hope for the bleeding to stop on it's own. Looking back now, Robin decided it was fortunate in the extreme that he had forced Starfire, despite her rather cute fear of needles, to store several spare blood bags worth of her own for an emergency like this. They all hoped that kind of thing would never be necessary, but the precaution now was the only thing keeping her with him, and so he thanked his lucky stars for the perseverance he'd shown on that issue.

"You really should calm down boy wonder," had said a nerdy looking orderly that had helped move extra medical equipment in with the doctors. "I mean," he'd continued, "those Tamaraneans are built a lot tougher than you and me—they got constitution, y'know? I mean, if it had been you, not even your armor would have kept you from having internal organs that look like my mother's goulash, y'know?"

After fighting off the urge to punch out the orderly for butting in, reminding him of his failure to protect her, and informing him that it wasn't him that was injured instead of her (as he'd whished a million times by now), he coolly thanked him for the reassurance. In the end, the orderly was right, Robin had tried to convince himself, because how many times had he seen her pick up a car, take a punch from a Slade-bot or from Mammoth, or incinerate something huge? She was a tough girl, and a few internal wounds weren't going to stop her, not as if that kept his legs from feeling like water when he walked into her room.

As he gazed at her still form where she lay on the hospital bed, his heart skipped a beat. She was so motionless that if it hadn't been for the beeping of the pulse monitor, he would have been sure that she had passed away while the doctors weren't looking. As he pulled up a chair, leaned forward against her bed, and took her hand in his, he let his true fear wash over him. Starfire had received an awful blow to the head when that fist sent her flying, and even now lay comatose, unresponsive to everything but thankfully still breathing. As his head rested against the side of her bed, he felt a pain deep in his heart, a pain that spread like a cancer through his soul at the thought of never again seeing Star's smile, never hearing her laugh, never watching her chug another bottle of mustard, never hearing her butcher another English idiom. But most of all he hurt at the thought of never telling her something he should have said ages back, "Starfire..." he whispered to her still form, "I love you."

This was his final act before a different kind of pain emerged, a familiar ache in his lower chest that he'd been chasing away all day. Wishing to spend more time with Starfire before he reported his own injury to the doctor, he pulled his last anesthetic mini-hypodermic needle from his utility belt. Before he could even get a decent grip on it however, the pain in his side began to balloon steadily to a burning agony. He dropped the needle and clutched his side, nearly fainting instantly form the stupendous pain. Staving off oblivion for a moment, he tried to cry out only to gag without warning, something choking him from within. Coughing and sputtering, he was horrified to see red flecks appear on Starfire's pure white hospital sheets.

Panic clawing at his heart, he tried to get up, to shout out for help, to make it out to the aid that waited beyond the nearby door, but simply couldn't motivate his body to this one last great effort. Robin had overdrawn himself, he'd spent ever bit of energy he had, and now there was nothing to sustain him. This day had left him with no strength, no confidence, and now that his Star was falling, he had no happiness either, nothing to inspire his ragged body to save itself. The only thing he had now was the white-hot searing in his chest, which had already begun to blank out his mind.

As the pain left, as everything left, he was suddenly alone, just him and one long, slow, lonely fall into the cold darkness that waited. Slumping forward onto Starfire's bed, he was able to see her angelic face from where it peeked out of the white covers. He could almost imagine her eyes opening, turning to gaze at him, her leaning down to kiss him, even as blood began to leak from his lips and trace a crimson path over the pristine white. There was something at the edge of his vision too, a kind of flickering at the corner of his eyes. He could tell it was a man, and it was one he should recognize, and he realized that he was annoyed because the figure was distracting him from how soft Star's lips were. He was angry then at himself, because he was getting such a stupid interrupted hallucination as his life ended. But then that was all.

Oscillogenerator Secret Construction Site

White was furious. Then again, furious was too soft a word to describe that which he was feeling just this moment. Perhaps if one imagined the burning, raging, all consuming super-novas of a thousand red giant stars, then one might have some small inkling of the extent of his rage. But of course he must not let the others see this, nooo. It was important that he remained outwardly calm and make it clear how very little this SPECTACULAR, MISREBLE, DISGUSTING FAILURE bothered him. White glared at the communicator built into his office's desk, eyeing it with suspicion as if the others could read his thoughts through the connection that it held to them. "Of course," he thought, calming somewhat, "You're the only one around here that can read thoughts."

Brooding over the matter that occupied his mind once again, he considered the mess Blue had made. Blue had been sent on a milk run. A cake walk. A pleasure cruise. A frolic through the garden. Any other comparable expression of a task so easy as to be impossible to mess up. But what had the stupid FUCK managed to accomplish? Nothing! Nothing but another embarrassment to himself and the syndicate, as well as a miserable little delay in the construction of the oscillogenerator.

Even now, the cavernous space outside his office was rumbling with activity as the foundations of his masterpiece work of evil genius got underway. The other members were doing their assigned tasks spectacularly, and already White had most of the raw materials and the beginning of a labor force to do the grunt work involved. This performance on their part was also a thorn in his side because it gave him no good reason to send one of them off to eliminate the nearly dead protectors of the city. "Bah," he scolded himself, "Any further attempts on their lives will be considered unusual, and real heroes will come to investigate before I'm ready for them."

With that thought, he gave up on rubbing out the "Teen Titans" for the time being, deciding instead to concentrate on getting the oscillogenerator up as quickly as possible. "I can eliminate those brats any time I choose, and it's not as if they have any real chance of finding us here and bringing in the truly dangerous Justice League."

Satisfied, White turned his attention toward the progress of his worker drones outside. Having complete control over their minds through a simple surgical process (a kind of lobotomy), he used a small portion of his brain's immense power to direct them about their tasks, turning the useless human apes into productive slave labor. Even as he contemplated his peons, another shipment of them arrived, ready to be processed. Red's abduction operation was going very well, and White already had dozens at his command, with eight to twelve more coming in with each passing day.

On the other side of the construction area, he could sense construction materials coming in by the truckload, bought up from the very human markets that would be first to taste the oscillogenerator's power. Green managed that end, her spectacular abilities showing their worth in the constant stream of capital she made oh so easily available with the human business she had started.

Finally, in another area, white could feel the stockpiles of special chemicals and highly advanced electronics that Yellow had been set to gathering for the generator's more intricate parts. Currently out on another black market run to whatever planets he went to for this trade, Yellow was also far ahead of his quotas. Wallowing in the success on this front of his plans then, White was aghast when a sudden explosion rocked the base.

Throwing out his telepathic senses, White quickly spotted the source of the disturbance. Blue was awake, and apparently the brute had gotten up on the wrong side of the regeneration tank he'd been floating in, because he was jumping around, destroying everything he could get his hands on. Furious, White reached out and exerted a massive amount of telepathic force on Blue's enraged mind, ignoring the incredible hazards that such attacks always mean. Within just a moment, the wall of rage in Blue's mind faltered before the obscene amount of power pressing on it, but not before force rebounding off the rage shield could fly off in random directions and explode the heads of four nearby mind-slaves. (The average mind simply couldn't take being touched by so much power, and the energy flowing between their ears creates an explosive force with very messy results.) Dozens of other slaves keeled over, puking their guts out at the massive disorientation that White's psychic assault was spreading through the construction area.

White didn't care about his expendable pawns however, and the task he had set his mind to was quickly achieved: Blue had crumbled under the unrestrained telepathic attack, and even now lay immobile on the ground. It hadn't been soon enough though, and the construction had been set back weeks in the few moment of unopposed raging Blue had gotten in, no doubt in reference to his unexpected defeat. White's invisible telepathic presence glared angrily at the stupid fool, even now contemplating the proper punishment.

His disguise had been removed, being too badly damaged to continue use, and now the alien was revealed in his true form. Vaguely humanoid, he was graced with two arms, two legs, and one head. However, that's about where the similarities ended. He was a dull red color all over, with random interspersions of rock-like purple blemishes speckling his skin at random. He wore no cloths—none of the parts he would care to cover showed through the thicker covering of blemishes from his waist down. Much like the human disguise White had painstakingly created for him, his shoulders, arms, and back were far larger than his legs would suggest, and every inch of his upper body was sculpted with muscles harder than most known metals. His alias came from the color of his eye, sitting in its huge cyclopean glory smack in the middle of his purple-speckled skull.

Not that that brain dead Klibnarian would ever understand, White mused to himself, but it wasn't these muscles that gave him power so much as the spectacular inner energy he harnessed. Humans would call it 'chi' or some such, and Blue had more of it than he would ever need, more than probably any one being in the known universe had ever contained. To make matters worse, Blue was possessed of a potential for indiscriminate homicidal rage that matched his inner energy dreadfully well, even magnifying it, giving him a talent for blind destructive force that was unmatched. Which made it all the more mysterious to White how he had managed to loose to some single serving-sized superheroes. He was too stupid and clumsy to be of use to White now that the syndicate was out of prison and now he wasn't even able to do what he supposedly did best—White was really incredibly unhappy about it all.

Having come to terms with the fact of the failure a moment ago, White decided it was time to discover its circumstances. Peering indiscreetly into the unconscious behemoth's mind he sifted through the recent memories until he had what he needed. And it worried him.

A cold nervousness broke out in the mastermind's stomach, the first he'd felt since this whole scheme had set off those months ago in lock up. He reviewed the battle in his head again, just to be sure, but the repetition didn't change the outcome, and the unmistakable memory of undergoing 'the draining' was once again the finale to the bloody brawl. His nervousness was based on uncertainty, that and a very bad memory of his own. Because, the IDP agent that had captured him was the only being he knew of capable of that particularly fell attack, and he didn't appreciate the fact that he couldn't tell from Blue's memories who exactly had used it on him. There was the possibility that one of the Titans, or maybe some other unexpected hero that had been present in the city, could use it, but that didn't eliminate the chance that HE was here now, looking for White. In fact, since the probe had not yet returned with information on the assassination attempt, there was nothing at all to discount that very dangerous happening, and it was the first thought he'd had in ages that truly scared him.

Snapping out of his reverie, he assigned some of his drones to put Blue in crystal stasis while he thought over this new information. White was certain beyond doubt that his cover job on the assassin's ship and mind were flawless, but he hadn't gotten as far as he was now by being careless of such very real threats. Considering the fact that the IDP fleet wasn't already knocking down his door, he knew that even if it was THAT agent, he wasn't totally aware of his presence. Thinking this, he damned himself for using the teleporter to recover Blue (it being a dead giveaway to a higher technology presence), then changed his mind and praised his own foresight in steeling away Blue before he could be read for all the sensitive information he'd been exposed to. Finally, he decided on taking some extra precautions, and as much as he hated to, he gave the orders for a new priority item to be placed at the top of the list of things for Yellow to buy on the black market: zappers.

White so far had avoided ordering their procurement, happy to have the other's minds open for his own viewing pleasure, knowing that this would keep them honest. However, the others were complaining and growing restless about this hole in their security, using fear of enemy mental attacks as an excuse to have walls to think freely behind, no doubt aching to hatch a plot to usurp him. "Fat chance of that happening," he thought with malice.

Suddenly, a devilishly sneaky thought crept into White's evil mind. He could safely satisfy those backstabbers' desire to plot against him with their zappers AND protect his operation from a telepathic infiltration at the same time. All it would take was some simple tampering with the zapper shipment...

Titans Tower med-bay, Skye's room

Since the incident, Vera had had very little contact with Skye, his consciousness mysteriously absent for all but a relatively minor portion of their trip back from the battlefield. After getting over her anger at his inability to pay attention to her and her important insights into their opponent's disappearance and the image in the energy blast that Skye had vented, she had finally become concerned for his health. Well... mildly concerned. It didn't really make sense to become too concerned about weather or not an IDP agent would recover from pretty much any injury. The IDP, having invested so many resources in training and equipping its agents, invested just as much in giving them staying power. Having gone through numerous treatments involving nanomachine colony implantation and biological optimization, Skye could, and had before, regenerated from injuries far worse than the ones he had sustained from the bodily stress overload earlier. As well, he was immune to disease, infection, poison, and low levels of radiation.

Knowing this AND having complete access to his implant's nanoregenerator (the tiny machines that reconstruct his cells when he's injured) and life signs monitor, Vera could be more than a little sure that he would be okay. But for Skye, whether his body recovered and whether his mind recovered were quite possibly two different things, and the lack of responsiveness to her constant questioning of his presence was managing to get her a little worried. In fact, she hadn't heard a peep from him since a few minutes after he fell down, when he had told her to hold down the fort for him while he took some time to repair his mind from the astral plane.

Since then, she'd done a number of things she hadn't thought possible before, another situation that was contributing to her current stress. On the list of things Skye had given her to watch over were several items that she was aware this planet's level of medical practice involved, so when Skye's eyes (which he kept open for her before projecting out) saw what were pretty clearly medical personnel coming to aid him, she was forced to act fast. Searching the implant's features more closely than she had in the past, she tracked down a file that she had only glazed over earlier, and which Skye had told her would be very useful in watching over his prone body.

Marked "Emergency motor controls: only enabled during lack of host consciousness," the file contained protocols that allowed someone manipulating the implant's programming to control Skye's body while he wasn't able to. Having never seen anything like it, Vera could only wonder at where Skye had gotten it and what exactly kind of situations he and Alice had been in that had prompted him to get a hold of it in the first place. Acting at the speed only an electronic brain like hers could manage, she integrated the program's tutorial into her neural net, getting a general sense of how it worked, then had control, of a sort, by the time the medics had gotten her and Skye into the ambulance.

"Hey, guys, how ya doin?" she said congenially, using the mechanism that forced his mouth to move, testing out the system. Pleasantly surprised when the voice that spoke the words was about three octave's deeper than the one she chose to synthesize as her own, she smiled to herself (A.I.s, having no faces, treat smiles as more of a state of mind) and quickly worked out her story, even as the two medics in the back of the ambulance started in surprise.

"I appreciate the ride, but really, I'm fine. I'm just a little tired after helping the others take on that big monster. So, if you two would just be so kind as to let me rest, I'll be up and ready for the victory celebration in no time."

"Uh, okay kid," spoke a twenty something medical technician, even as he pulled out some basic first aid equipment and got ready to do a quick check for injuries, as if he hadn't heard at all. "I'll just be giving you a once over to be sure nothing's wrong, make certain all the bits and pieces are still working right."

"Fine, whatever, just don't touch the shades, mess with my cloths, or bring a needle anywhere near me, and we'll be good."

"I'm sorry kid," stated a now irate med-tech, still not turning from his efforts on getting all the necessary parts out of small compartments in the back of moving vehicle, "but I have to check your eyes for responsiveness and get your shirt off to check your breathing, so you'll just have to bear with me."

Not about to stand for this for a second, Vera launched Skye's voice into a tirade of epic proportions, chewing out the medic mercilessly about everything from his lineage to his scruffiness, all along making damn sure they didn't do anything Skye wouldn't have approved of. Quickly getting fed up, the man had told her off right back, finishing a string of rude comments with the observation that Skye nagged like an old lady.

"Just give it up Jim, let's just do what we can and leave the guy alone if he's gonna be a baby about it, okay?" the second medic had cut in at last. He had remained quiet so far, but couldn't take the noise anymore. This was not lost on the younger medic, and knowing an unspoken threat of a pay cut was on the table if the bickering didn't stop, he agreed to do some tests that wouldn't involve any of the things Vera had prohibited.

The rest of the trip passed in complete silence other than the sound of the ambulance's siren, none of them feeling like making small talk after the bad scene of moments ago. It seemed like ages passed before they arrived at the bay the Tower stood in, the specially secured automobile tunnel opening to allow them through after the lead ambulance used the medical override on the security system. After a short jaunt under the bay, they were in the tower garage, ambulances unloading injured superheroes right next to Robin's Birdcycle and the T-Car. The two medics carted the gurney with Skye's body to a private room in the med-bay, then left without a word, leaving Vera alone with Skye's vacant body at last. Relieved to be past that crisis, Vera relaxed and deactivated most of her systems, preparing for what could be a long wait. All she had to do now was hope, and maybe pray, that Skye's spirit returned from the astral plane safe and recovered. She really needn't have ever worried.

Sky outside of Titans Tower

Skye's spirit form was quite an impressive sight—to anyone that could see it anyway. Spiritual energy exists on a wavelength that most people and instruments simply can't perceive, and that the vast majority of whom never even considered. Because, and this is important, this energy vibrates on a dimensional axis, oscillating with respect to the fabric of existence rather than any mundane medium that things like eyes and cameras can detect. Therein, if you wanted to have a chance at being impressed by the magnificent appearance of the pale telepath's spirit form, one would have to do one of two things. Either get a hold of spectacularly advanced trans-dimensional sensor equipment, or be born with some kind of mystical energy in one's blood that, with training, would give one aura vision.

Achieving either of these massive feats of determination would be worth it, to glimpse the swirl of white light and sparkling brilliance that was Skye's consciousness incarnate. The way its ever-shifting amorphous form flowed and eddied was mesmerizing, speaking of unimaginable power and superlative control all at once. As it danced through the air, for a while it appeared to be an eagle in full flight, then a horse galloping over the clouds, then a man's muscular silhouette sprinting between the stars. In truth though, all these things were illusions, tricks of the mind's eye trying to attribute form to the formless, desperately attempting to box a wonderful impossibility into something understandable, lest the observer loose his or her sanity to the brilliance.

Unlike lesser telepaths, who used the form of an aspect focus (a bird, a plant, some mythical beast, anyhting that they associated with strongly enough to concentrate on) to maintain their sense of individuality and being against the rigors of out of body travel, Skye operated on a different level. Having achieved the pinnacle of telepathic development, Skye traversed the astral realm and cruised the ether of space unbound by any recognizable aspect, instead moving as only the truly skilled could—in the form of pure thought, colored only by the sparkling pristine silver-white of his soul's true form.

He was returning from a trip to the astral plane, a dimension parallel to all others in which a person with Skye's talents could do many things impossible in the real world. On this particular trip, Skye had traveled to the spirit focus he had planted in his own personal corner of that dimension long ago. Because the mechanism would take forever to describe, and is really quite boring anyway, let it suffice to say that through great concentration upon his astral spirit focus, Skye was able to draw together all the scattered pieces of his tattered psyche, reconstruct them like a psychedelic four-dimensional puzzle, and fuse them back together as good as new. It had been a rather desperate gambit to project out of his body with his mind all shredded to pieces like that, but it had been his only chance, and it had paid off, so he allowed the truth of how spectacularly close to dying he had come to slip from his thoughts as he basked in the glory of his spirit flying freely over the green waters. Turning his mind's eye to the city, he watched the latent psychic energy produced by the busy people there radiate into space, warming the cosmos with waves of telepathic power produced by the collective unconscious of a living settlement full of intelligent beings. Admiring the beauty of the multicolored clouds of iridescent smoky emissions, a view rare in the reaches of space that his work kept him in, he knew that deep down, there were more important things to be done.

Wrenching his senses from the beauty of the night, he turned his attention to the imposing T-shaped tower that his body had been moved to while his mind recovered itself. Following the imperceptibly tiny thread of telepathic energy that all spirit travelers use to keep an anchor to their bodies, he tracked his corporeal shell to a discreet medical room within the Tower. Flying through walls like they weren't there, (because to his spirit, they really weren't there) he reached the small, private room and cast his perceptions down at his body.

He was about to make contact with his body and reunite with Vera and every other part of mundane existence when severe psychic disturbances began to emanate from nearby—disturbances that piqued his concern and sent him questing for their source. The invisibly flashing silver specter that was Skye traversed several rooms in turn, noting their contents as he passed on his way to the source.

In the room next to his, a badly injured spirit lay sedated in bed, slowly recovering from a blow that had clearly almost winked out the glowing green flame of his soul. A quick examination of his aura revealed the spirit of an animal and a man combined, forming a whole much more powerful than either part. The young man's aura projected a feel of jungles, oceans, savannas, tundra, mountains, and every kind of forest under the sun, all at the same time in a brilliant spectrum of psychic sensations that fascinated Skye. Curiously, Skye noted, as he wished the young man a silent 'good luck' for recovering, there was also a pervading sense of...soy beans? In any case, this all took place in the instant it took Skye to pass that room and on to the next.

As he turned his perceptions to the contents of this room, Skye received quite a spectacular little surprise. Lying in this bed was a female aura that, to Skye's experienced senses, was one belonging to a being with no small mental abilities (psychic powers and brains both). A casual examination of this aura as he passed revealed little to nothing other than that her soul's energy was spectacularly jet black with white highlights ("Which says something significant about the nature of her lineage," Skye's momentary suspicion flashed), and little wonder he gleaned so little considering the magnificent mental shield the woman maintained. Unlike the shield of rage that the brute had used as a side effect of his berserk fury and the artificial zapper shield the subspace assassin had used, skilled minds like his and this woman's erected barriers of thought energy around their psychic cores. These shields served to keep out attackers, keep in excessive power that could potentially harm nearby people, and for Skye at least, to filter out the annoying background buzz of thought that people projected into the air without realizing it. Taking a guess based on the currents of the telepathic ether around her bed, Skye supposed she was regenerating her mind and powers in much the way he had done on the astral plane (where he found it much easier to do than on the physical plane). Intrigued almost more than he could ever remember having been before, Skye nonetheless passed by and on to the source of the disturbance.

Focusing his senses at last on the room he felt the mental anguish coming from, Skye was granted a scene of grisly and heart-rending horror. Taking in the situation by absorbing the cacophony of stressed thoughts lingering in the room and combining them with his limited memory of the battle, Skye pieced together the soul-crushing tale of broken hearts and cruel fate in instants, leaving even his experience-jaded mind momentarily stunned from the dire cruelty blind chance had dealt the young man and woman beneath him. When he could think again after his mind had finally encompassed the disgusting irony playing out before him, he took in the rest of the situation quickly.

Below his sparkling spirit lay an aura of royal blue so deep and majestic that Skye knew instantly that it's owner was a hero of no small mettle. The color in question would only come to a person who lived their lives by a code of honor, protected the week, aided the needy, fought against injustice, and placed the lives of his friends and loved ones before his own. Even as he thought this however, he noted that this mind was the source of the dissonance in the room, filling the air with despair as the majestic blue of his life force gradually faded away. The departing life was pitching such a fit of bleak discontent in fact, that it received a pulse of resonating sympathy from the room's other occupant.

This second spirit was a female one, non-human (though that didn't make a whole lot of difference in aura) and noteworthy both for its spectacular beauty and the enormous extent to which it had been dimmed by life-and-death struggle. The phantasmal green-and-orange ghost of an aura surrounding her was still beautiful beyond description, despite it's wavering and flickering. The resplendence of one's aura denotes a combination of one's telepathic ability and inner character, and lacking any telepathic ability, Skye assumed the girl must posses a spiritual purity usually reserved for saints and higher-dimensional beings (angels). As the dying blue aura railed against the spectacular injustice of the situation, a resonate pulse leapt from the faded green/orange one, and before Skye's amazed senses, a specter of spiritual energy was released from the woman with a flash.

Rising up, the spectral form acquired the shape of the nearly dead woman, duplicating her form perfectly in a riot of orange and green blurs, with her face and resplendent ruby-ochre hair done in absolute photo-realism. Immediately, the form twisted around, faced the dying man, leaned down, and pressed her ghostly lips against his bloody ones. Skye meanwhile was amazed beyond thought. He had heard of such occurrences of course, but never before had he witnessed such a spectacular, beautiful, heartbreaking, soul-wrenching, mind-numbing sight as a union of sympathetic spirits. Knowing that this moment of absolute spiritual magnificence would live on in his mind forever imprinted upon his perfect memory, Skye suddenly felt an unbreakable and all-enduring bond with these other young people, and with that came a new and entirely natural sensation. Like molten steel flowing into the core of his mind, unstoppable determination focused him upon a single thought: "I will not let them die."

Snapping back into his body in the infinitesimal speck of time that exists between one thought and the next, he looked through his already opened natural eyes to see the blackness that comes from a darkened room and sunglasses combination. Brushing off Vera's sound of surprise at his sudden return and her subsequent attempts to question him with an override command that she couldn't deny, Skye immediately sat up in bed. Thereafter, he immediately wished he hadn't. Though his body had been regenerating constantly since his fall after the battle, he was far from healthy again, and his abused systems protested every attempted movement.

When Skye tried to stand, he fell immediately to his knees, a piercing pain stabbing into his lower back and taking his feet right from under him. Apparently the medics, who hadn't checked him over before placing him on the gurney, had lain him down with his laser blaster still under the back of his shirt. Pressing into his back for hours on end, it had created a spectacular bruise that made even the thought of walking unbearably painful. The pain playing with his mind, he sacrificed dignity for haste and crawled over to the door. It opened automatically when he got near, and after throwing himself through and collapsing onto the floor, he was gratified to gain the attention of several medical personnel that had been on standby outside.

"Dying...over there..." he managed to squeeze out through the haze of pain he floated on, as six people rushed over and began to check on him. They didn't seem to hear, becoming absorbed in the task of 'saving' his life. As he tried futilely to grasp their attention with his suddenly feeble voice, a bar of pure fury at their lack of understanding blasted through the haze of pain and gave him the clarity he needed for an act of desperation. Pulsing a powerful and poorly designed compulsion into all of their minds simultaneously, he caused each and every one of them to turn on their heels and rush to Starfire's med-bay door, nearly tripping over each other in their collective attempt to open it (it was courtesy locked from within, so didn't auto-slide like his). After some fumbling, one hand prevailed, and a collective gasp went up as the doctors saw what had happened within. Unlike Skye, who even as unconsciousness threatened could see vague outlines of the embracing auras through the intervening wall, the doctors gasped at the sight of fresh blood flecked across the sheets, streaming along the side of the bed, and pooling on the floor beneath a clearly dying Robin.

"PREP THE O.R.!" shouted the first doctor to regain his senses, and the med-bay degenerated into a fury of action as a gurney was wheeled in and Robin was carted off to get another chance at life. The second he was moved, the lingering image of loveliness evaporated, and with it went Skye's only reason to struggle against unconsciousness.

"You idiot," he thought to himself as he let the world fade away from where he lay on his chest on the floor, "Why the hell didn't you just use a compulsion from the bed?"

And with the knowledge that he had done all he conceivably could have to try and save these strangers that he had known for only a handful of hours, he dipped into the blackness that was deeper than sleep.

Preview: Ug... I know it was dirty to string you all along like that, but honestly, I didn't even know who would survive this chapter until I had nearly finished writing it. In the end, it would be a greater service to my long-term plot for everyone to be available for moving the story along. Plus...I'm just not the death-fic kind of guy. At least not for the MAIN characters ha HA HAHAHAHA! (Loud Maniacal Laughter). Next chapter Skye and Vera get a chance to recap after all that craziness, a pair of psychics have a pair of prophetic experiences, said psychics meet (quite a scene that), and we see why this story is called The Albino Telepath Saga (if you hadn't guessed yet). What could this be? Is a romance Blooming in an unexpected place? Find out in: Consideration, Confrontation, and Convalesing.