The Albino Telepath Saga

by DBAinsw

Discontinued: I keep this long, long story around as an example of what NOT to do. Once this was my superfantasy played out in a forum others might read it in. Now I see it as typing practice with an embarrasing garystu focus.

17. GW3:The Night is Always Darkest

Gang Wars III: The Night Is Always Darkest…

Intro: I know, I know, this one was a long time in coming. I'm just going to say that the end of the term and the holiday conspired to make writing a little harder than usual and leave it at that. In any case, get ready for a rock-em sock-em action bonanza. This chapter is a thrill: action, romance, violence, drama, bloodspray…. and a cat? Read on!

Oscillogenerator Secret Construction Site

"What do you mean, 'setbacks'?" snapped White into the telescreen, Green's fair featured face cringing at the emphasis in his words.

"I'm saying that we have a rival for control of the city's underground operations. I heard he was dead when I took his businesses away, but apparently I was misinformed. His first strike took out my base of operations, buried drone factory one, and kicked the city's law enforcement into a fit that's not likely to quiet down soon."

"Green," and White's voice was carefully neutral and cold now, "When you told me you could bring this city under our control, I believed you. I believed that you wouldn't let me down, that I could count on you to maintain discreet flow of materials and build up our forces for when the generator is complete. I loaned you my mind slaves, my kill-bot designs, I placed my trust in you. Now you're telling me that your incompetence has cost us our anonymity, our main weapons factory, and the keystone resource pipeline to the mother base?!?!" His tone was a cold scream, emotionless and manically passionate at the same time, the voice of his madness.

"I didn't say—" Green began to protest his accusations, not even slightly intimidated by his unhinged screams.

"I don't care what you have to say! I want action! You will not call, you will not show your face, and you will not drag your bleeding carcass ANYWHERE near this base until you have reestablished control of the situation! Do you understand me?"

"Fine," and her voice was a warm indignation to his cold fury, "but I'll need men and materials. This Slade character has resources I can't track or disable yet, and the primary drone fleet was destroyed in my headquarters."

"Blue and Red are yours to command. If it takes more than the three of you and the second drone fleet to destroy this impudent little man, I'll be forced to take action personally. Green, you don't want that to happen."

"I understand. I'll call you when Slade is dead." With that final promise, the signal went blank, and White was left to contemplate how the changing situation would affect the progression of his timetables.

Green had been so far in advance of her quotas that they practically had enough supplies to complete the construction already, so that was truly of little concern. Getting enough laborers could be a problem, but there were other pipelines he could have Red run them through, and with the monetary end so very well covered already, he could even put Green onto that angle as well, cutting off her insipid plots by separating her from the independent power base she'd been building so very clandestinely. In the end, it would actually be kind of nice if this Slade fellow managed to off her somehow, and it occurred to him that he might have to arrange for such a thing to happen, or appear to happen, should the conflict last long enough. The others had too much respect for Green for him to allow her to continue living. As for the final special ingredients… he could get those himself, as he'd planned all along, and then there would be nothing between him and multi-universal domination. As he began to bask in the images of victory that danced though his mind, he was struck by a mild curiosity, and ordered his computer to bring up an image of the destroyed headquarters building.

When he looked at the way the stone spire had gutted the structure, he was actually mildly impressed, the elegant comprehensiveness of the massacre charming to say the least. He was just wondering how the man had managed to cause the seismic upheaval when a strange flash of white from the rubble below the spire caught his eye, and suddenly his heart froze in his chest as he gagged on his own tongue.

"Computer!" he snapped, when he could breathe again, "enhance image at quadrant twenty seven!"

The AI obeyed promptly, and the screen zoomed in on the almost imperceptible white splotch nestled between the stones. It was a face, a face that White despised, feared, respected, and was nauseated by all at once.

"HIM—HOW—WHY!" he demanded rather than asked from the universe, "What is HE doing here? Of all the people, the only one that can interfere with my plans is here! He's supposed to be dead! He's supposed to be chasing false leads across the cosmos! WHY IS HE HERE!" White was left to gasp for air after his shouting, his icy composure shattered by that face.

Then, almost as suddenly as he had been thrown into a panic, his wild emotion changed to exuberance, even happiness, his whole body lighting with some inner amusement. A grin stretched from one end of his face to the other as he noticed the particularly limp set of that face. He pressed a button on his desk and was placed instantly in contact with Yellow.

"Break out some of the prototype kill-bots, I have a priority target for them," he said without preamble to the gurgling pool of lemon colored slime on the other end of the line. The bowl of scum jiggled slightly as the web of nerves it contained processed some thought or another, then a bubbling slur of a voice answered as the robotic limbs attached to the jar continued to perform some nondescript task in the background.

"Ig will be no problem Whige. Whag is geir gargef?"

"The target is this young Terran," and White transferred the enhanced image to Yellow's screen with a quick gesture.

"Bug… ghaf loogs jusg lige—"

"I know who it looks like Yellow. Now stop torturing me with that speech impediment (White could never understand why the engineer didn't just fix his translator) and get moving. If this Terran boy isn't dead within fifteen minutes, I will personally cook that wigglingsack you call a brain in its own nauseating juices!" White hung up the connection with an emphatic gesture, then took his seat, gazing fixedly at the still image on his monitor. It was only a matter of time before his oldest and most hated nemesis was truly a thing of the past.

City Crossroads

The roaring of engines announced the coming of the Titans before anything else. When a supercharged hotrod of cutting-edge construction and an armored motorcycle designed for high-speed combat come charging down the road at breakneck speed, it's the kind of thing one is able to hear quite distinctly. Thus, when said vehicles come blasting through the streets, traffic parting like the Red Sea before upraised arms, only the deaf are caught unawares.

Robin was out-riding up front, his bike's headlight casting a lonely glare out into the streets as he urged the few cars still out over the side of the road so Cyborg could get by. The general state of emergency the Mayor had declared after the building collapsed had motivated most people into their homes or whatever cover they could find, but there was still the residual traffic of people hurrying to a safe place. Just above him, always sticking nearby as he wove all over the place, was Starfire, her hair streaming behind her as she kept pace easily with the machine's raging engine.

Starfire was caught by surprise then when Robin suddenly cut the acceleration and began to break steadily, the falling RPM rate sounding like the death throws of a powerful beast. She actually over flew him by quite a bit when he skidded the bike sideways to complete his stop, bringing the vehicle to rest in an abandoned crossroad of the shopping district. She turned and flew back, landing next to him just in time for Cyborg to roll up in the T-Car, his own brakes screeching wildly as he struggled to match the unexpected position Robin had taken up. He rolled down his window and stuck a very irate looking head out just in time for Robin to finish pulling off his helmet.

"Hey man, what're you doin? I thought you said this was urgent man?" he asked, annoyance in his voice at how close he'd come to scratching his ride in that last stop.

"It is urgent, but this is where we part ways. Cyborg, you and Beast Boy are going to head to the park at the pier. Starfire and I will head downtown." Robin offered no explanation for his orders, only their curt delivery with an unspoken understanding that they'd be followed without question. Cyborg looked simultaneously surprised at his answer and skeptical of the smaller man's plan.

"Hey, how come I get stuck with the furball and you get a pretty girl on your side?" Cyborg asked sarcastically, earning him a ringing punch of objection from B.B. that resonated on his chassis.

"Leader's prerogative," Robin answered smugly, a grin on his face, then slowly lost the humor in his countenance as something far more serious came to mind. "But listen guys, that's not important. There's something I've been meaning to tell you all."

"What is it Robin?" asked Starfire sweetly, after the enormous gravity of the issue began to bog down their leader's face abnormally. She felt a thrill of fear rising in her throat in expectation of news that could make him look like that, and the two guys now leaning out of the car mimicked the unsettled feeling.

"It's about Terra," he managed to begin, but choked up again as his face bunched up in a kind of pain. He looked as if what he was thinking about actually hurt him physically, and that, if nothing else, caused the others to begin to seriously panic.

"What about Terra man?" asked Cyborg, the urgent fear-edged tone giving his words a kind of life. Beast Boy meanwhile was paralyzed by the heart-stopping implications of Robin's pain, his eyes widening in horror as a reality he'd known in his heart of hearts began to creep its terrible way into his forebrain.

"Slade tricked us guys," Robin finally squeezed out, and the rest followed quickly, as though to delay would make it impossible to tell, "not only did he get out of that volcano without a hitch, but Terra didn't turn to stone. We've been hanging all over a statue, and he's had her this whole time."

"Oh no…" muttered Cyborg, who was the only one capable of articulating a response. Beast Boy was in shock, his eyes bulging out of his head as his mind tried to encompass what it was being presented with. Starfire simply didn't understand what Robin was implying, knowing that news of Terra's health should be joyous, but at the same time realizing that there was more here than she knew, and the uncertainty kept her silent.

"It's worse than you think—worse than I could even imagine. Skye and Raven told me about it when they saw him, and her, just before the attack. You know what she was like at the end… she didn't want to have anything to do with him anymore. He… couldn't persuade her otherwise… and now he's had her mindwiped. Her memories are gone… and he's using her body and powers as a weapon. It's how he knocked over the building."

"This—this is unacceptable!" shouted Starfire fiercely, the first to regain her breath after the agony of the revelation had passed. "We must rescue her! She is our friend, no matter what else has happened, that is the truth!"

"Slade! I'm going to…" and Beast Boy trailed off, animal rage bleeding into his eyes as he clenched his fists and growled with primitive fury. Cyborg actually edged away from him in the car, the pure malice coming off him making the metal man break out in a cold sweat and actually feel a little sorry for Slade should the young guy catch up with him. If the hate Beast Boy had boiling in him right now was any indication, homicide would be a release from what the masked man would suffer.

"Listen guys, this isn't the time for revenge. When that time does come, we'll all make sure Slade gets his, but until then there are people who need saving, Terra not being the least of them." Robin was deadly serious now, they all were, and he simply embodied the solidity of their common resolve. Only Beast Boy retained the hate, his whole body hardening like steel as he was possessed by one thought that Robin had expressed.

"What does it matter?" he snapped bitterly, his face distorted by hate, "Slade erased her mind… she might as well be dead." B.B. spat the final word like the promise that would seal Slade's fate in his own mind.

"Calm down, there's still hope." Robin spoke out of hand, empathizing with Beast Boy's homicidal desires quite totally. He wouldn't mind seeing the color of Slade's insides either, only the utmost of restraint (and Slade's obnoxiously complete ability to defend himself) had held him back in the past. "Skye said that if we can recover her body, he can probably put her mind back together. He wouldn't make any promises, and heck, after he took whatever dive that put him under, I wouldn't expect it soon, but I've got a good feeling that all that stands between us and having our friend back is quick rescue and a little psychic hocus-pocus."

"Damn it, why didn't you say that sooner?!" Beast Boy demanded harshly, "Cyborg, get this crate in gear!"

"Watch what you call my baby man!" Cyborg snapped back at the hyperactive emotion-high little imp, but was met with a look so full of deadly determination that he quailed in the face of it.

Beast Boy actually grabbed him by the shoulder, yanked him down with animal strength, looked into his eye with a wild fury, and said simply, "Drive."

The T-Car probably broke acceleration records with the peel-out Cyborg pulled, swinging the tail around and blasting down the road that would take them to the peer. Robin and Starfire were left to cough in the cloud of incinerated tire and road-dust that was left in the boys' wake, then spent a moment recovering their composure. Robin was left with a free moment to take a good long look at Star, and he felt the sudden urge to make some kind of meaningful statement. This would be their first battle as an official couple.

"Starfire," he began uncertainly, "this fight coming up is going to be dangerous and—" but he was cut off by a hand on his shoulder. Apparently she knew exactly what he would say and exactly what he needed to hear.

"Robin, we have been through much together already. I need no assurances that you will protect me, no more than you need any that I will protect you. We shall… 'view each other's rears' like all great warrior-couples." Robin looked into her angelic smile and felt reassurance, something inside him now complete for her statement, despite the oddly suggestive mistake she'd made.

"Right Star, let's go. There's no telling how long we have before things go south," and he put on his helmet before Starfire could ask him why things would be traveling toward the equator, kicking his bike into gear and revving in the opposite direction from the one Cyborg had just burnt down. Starfire was after him in a shot, a flash of red and purple behind his red and green.

Downtown, an alleyway

Slade stood stock still in the shadows of the buildings around him, the blank Terra maintaining a similar quietude to his side. He measured a matter of moments before the battle at the pier went hot, and so he dropped his magnificently still posture to briefly loosen his arms and back. Stalking around the corner, he knelt on the side of the darkened street, the fronting of his target's base a good hundred meters down the road, facing him across from an intersection where the road came to a T.

"Tripod," he said without preamble, and a small motion from his emaciated blond shadow produced a trashcan-sized pillar of stone directly in front of him. Slinging the enormous rifle off his back, he lay the barrel on the pillar and began to get a feel for the weapon's balance and mechanisms. Though he'd listened closely to the weapons dealer's instructions on how the rifle functioned, he'd yet to actually discharge it himself, and thus he found himself suddenly having to go through the disgusting creature's oddly slurred lesson again as he set it up to fire.

The weapon, though enormously powerful, had been manufactured by a species that averaged nine feet tall, and thus it was completely unsuited to use by the 6'4" Slade. The thing that had sold it to him had customized the grip and triggering mechanism as well as fitted it with a special harness so it could be fired from the hip like a heavy machine gun, but in order to make use of the weapon's accuracy, the braced stance he now held was key. As he played his left hand over knobs and buttons along that side of the weapon, he gazed through the incredible sighting mechanism with his one good eye, watching the readout change. After fiddling with it for a while, he got the indicator to target the building's entire front for the initial blast, setting up his ambush exactly the way he wanted it. With a final button press, he locked the targeting data in the weapon's computer and freed the sight for alternate use. Without hesitation, he zoomed in on his opponents and began once more to spy on their activities.

As he gazed into the open glass front of the building, the woman and the two odd men were just returning to the foyer from somewhere in the back. They were flanked by the blank civilians, all of whom wore heavy overcoats he could tell held all kinds of unpleasant surprises for him. Of course, the least of his worries were a few cannon-fodder mind slaves, and he dismissed them immediately as he concentrated on the interesting ones. The woman was talking to the other two, and he began to read her lips as she spoke.

"…well that's what White said, so live with it. You two are under my command until we've gotten this under control, so don't get any ideas about heading out to go night-clubbing. We don't know what kind of resources this Slade has, so we can't afford to take any chances." The other two seemed to take the news as either annoying or disturbing, and it as the smaller man who answered.

"I don't care who this guy is, if it takes all three of us to get rid of him, I'll give the fucker an award. I mean, do you honestly expect me to believe that one of these primitive apes actually has what it takes to challenge us? Sure the bastard pulled off a nasty little ambush, but failing to kill us in it is liable to be the last mistake he ever makes! Just give me a whiff of his scent, a trail to follow, and a little room to work, and I'll have the pretentious meat-sack watching me chew on his intestines within an hour. I never, ever, let my food get the better of me."

The big guy added some small comment or other as well, but he was facing away, and Slade could only see that the others took the words for granted. Apparently this was a stupid one, getting no respect at all from the others, and then Slade recognized him from what little intelligence he had on the enormously odd rampage that had occurred just a few blocks from here. Someone that could cause all that certainly deserved respect of another kind, and the strategy he worked out to deal with the brute almost had him miss the woman making another comment.

"…and I'm telling you not to underestimate these Terrans. Something about this planet makes weird stuff happen to the things that live here, changes them in unexpected ways. Those crime fighters that got the best of Blue are a perfect example: only one of them is of a higher species, all the rest are natives with peculiarly great ability. If you need any more evidence, take the fact that White is originally from this planet too, in a manner of speaking—"

The booming of an enormous explosion across the landscape announced the beginning of his diversion in earnest, the battle joined by two teams of lifeless, mindless, robots for no greater purpose than giving him less to deal with here. Though he would have loved to look in on more of that fascinating conversation, he pressed a button on his belt activating the comm-jammer and brought back the firing solution the rifle's computer had worked out. The time had come to join the battle in earnest.

In a quick succession of movements, he targeted and fired upon the three areas the computer indicated, the gun silent but for the sound of it's ammunition feeding mechanism working. Firing it caused nary a whisper, just a huge kick in the chest from the recoil and the sudden destruction of the target. After the first shot, the whirring and clanking of the ammunition feed was drowned out by the obscene explosions rocking the front building's structure, the glowing red cracks of disruption energy working their way through the building like a bloody spider's web, minor explosions following the intricate tracings of red after a moment's delay. By the time he'd pulled the trigger for the third time, projecting out his silent and invisible destruction, the target of the first shot had already disintegrated into an ever-widening blossom of fire and falling glass, the entire front of the building soon melting into a heap of slag as flaming debris rained down onto the area his targets had been.

"Neat," was his immediate comment upon seeing the destruction his newest toy had wrought. It was followed by a mild disappointment that it had been so easy and so quiet, the weapon having no bark to speak of despite the impressive bite, not to mention the absurd kick he could still feel in his shoulder. In all, it was a highly amusing and effective way of getting the job done, the slight drop in efficiency from simply having Terra destroy the place more than made up by the pure enjoyment of blasting it himself and watching the burning wreckage fall onto the streets and all the people below. Despite the warnings that had been sounding since he last made his presence felt, there were still plenty of people around, most likely mind slaves, to stare in stupefied terror as they saw death advance on them in a burning rush of hot stone, metal, and glass. Such was the stuff nightmares were made of, and he loved it.

Suddenly, the flames began to die out seemingly of their own accord, sputtering into silence like the maw of hell had just taken a deep breath and held it. The suddenly quiet and intensely hot pavement was littered with scorched corpses, but Slade looked past them all to examine three figures sanding alone and perfectly fine in the smoking ruin. He had a hunch, but looked down his site once more to try and target them with the disrupter rifle anyway. Sure enough, the weapon's sensors read all three as wearing disruption shields, as well as active-type mind shields and electromagnetic distortion fields, so he stood from his firing position and began to stretch idly once more. He handed the cumbersome rifle to his diminutive second, and she just barely managed to shoulder the firearm onto some suddenly growing stone pillars before the weight of it crushed her. You could almost hear the western-style showdown music whistling in the background as he stalked down the road toward his opponents, the ever-silent shadow of the earthmover just behind him.

A Ways Down the Left Side of the T-Intersection

When the explosions at the pier registered on his birdcycle's computer readout, Robin mouthed a silent prayer that the other two would be okay even as he cast a quick glance over his shoulder to see lights flashing in the cloudless black horizon of the night. Revving his engine harshly, he leapt his bike forward the next moment, kicking into a wheelie as the acceleration picked up in response to his renewed agitation. Suddenly, another flash of light blossomed from the buildings directly ahead of him, and he was forced to kill his acceleration in a hasty spin out, flipping into a full 360 as friction refused to cooperate, then actually leaping from the bike just instants before it went totally out of control and barrel rolled a dozen times tail over nose into an abandoned storefront, just a few feet away from where the new blast had already begun to rain fire down onto the street. As Robin rose into the air, the world seemed to slow down, time dilating with adrenaline's blessed assistance.

Robin braced himself in panic as he prepared to take the ground's harsh embrace as his penalty for such an impetuous move, his whole body going numb in anticipation of the sudden shock of impact and the subsequent flesh-stripping roll into the firestorm he had so abruptly encountered. Though he moved to try it, there was no time for a grappling hook, nor any convenient lampposts to deaden his inertia, only the uncompromising asphalt and his hope that his armor would hold out. His ballistic arc after the leap was long and low, the motorcycle leaping ahead to encounter the building almost a whole second before he saw the ground coming up to meet him.

To his credit, Robin stared into the face of his opponent the ground until the last instant, where prudence told him it would be best to close his eyes and attempt to save them from the coming impact, and thus it was with a cringe that he met his salvation. A sudden jerk at his back and waist was the instantaneous prelude to the shock of his body's inertia hitting his costume with all the force his now-totaled ride had given it, knocking the wind from his lungs and giving him a blow to the gut not unlike a mule's kick. The sudden jerk sent his head flying forward with a snap even as the intense gut-busting knocked his eyes open and sent them bulging near out of his head, giving him a perfect view of the asphalt a mere few centimeters from the tip of his nose. The next moment he landed on the ground with a feather's touch, his burning torso sending him into a fit of coughs as he tried to pull air back into his lungs and dispel the inferno of pain in his stomach. When time returned to normal, the distorted ringing in his ears became something far more desirable.

"Robin! Are you okay?" asked that angelic voice as he lay prone on the ground, his dream girl standing over him while he struggled to pull breath back to his body. Though he wanted nothing more than to assure her, he was forced to wait until he'd gotten back enough air to talk.

"I'm—" he choked out before one huge gasp, "okay Star—" he finished, before wheezing protractedly, his lugs finally beginning to work again as he shook the whiplash-induced disorientation from his head and got his feet back under him. She helped him to stand as he brought his gaze up to the inferno before him, the five feet of clearance he had from it not nearly enough as the flames licked and nibbled at the burning rubble that even now fell from the building's face.

"This must be the other place Slade was supposed to attack… but why the hell is doing all this? This is the corporate office district—there isn't anything here to steal, nothing of value at all. Pencil pushers and number crunches don't even work this late, so it's not like there was even anyone to kill in there. Why would Slade attack empty buildings? For that matter, where is he? This looks like the work of plastic explosives, but enough to do this would have shown up on the scanners, so he must have caused this some other way, maybe from nearby."

Robin continued to wonder out loud as he tried his best to look through the fire. Starfire held him up silently as she too examined the flames, content to just be near him as his mind crunched through the enigma of this apparently meaningless attack. Her heart had almost stopped when he'd lost control of the bike, and her grip on him now was more to assure her that he was still alive than to support his quickly recovering balance.

It came as a shock then when the flames, so unreasoning in their fury, died an instantaneous death, as though a great snuffer had fallen over the area and quenched the raging like the most ephemeral spark. Robin's ramblings died mind sentence as silence fell over the scene of devastation, his eyes glazing over as he tried to comprehend what had caused so many macrojules of heat and light energy to vanish from existence. It was Starfire that noticed the three, and her actions probably saved their asses.

With a jerk, Robin felt himself flying through the air once more, a tight grip on his arm flinging him around until his back impacted abruptly with a brick wall, a sudden petite hand over his mouth quelling his involuntary gurgle of protest. He clued in to what had happened and looked over to see Starfire leaning over to peek around the corner of the alley she'd flown them into, her hand coming off of his mouth without any signal from him. Again without comment, she floated slowly higher on the alleyway corner, giving him room to scoot down and take a peek of his own. He resisted the completely natural urge to look up her skirt forced on him by his inherent maleness and poked his spiky-haired head around the corner.

What he saw in the light of glowing-hot stones and a miraculously functional street lamp was more than enough to squeeze a silent prayer of thanks for Starfire's instincts out of his strictly pragmatic soul. Striding through the rubble was a tableu of pure danger that chilled his heart, the huge man from two days past joined by a pair of others that literally dripped with homicidal intent and capability. His own crime fighter's instincts were screaming that these people were beyond dangerous, beyond deadly, the kind of people you didn't play around with. Hell, these three were the kind you didn't even wiggle some handcuffs at without an army at your back.

His quail of cold fear passed quickly, replaced by a cool confidence in his own abilities and those of his teammates. They would not be taken by surprise again, and they would not loose… ever. It occurred to him then that they were all looking in the same direction with the blank look sociopathic murderers tended to favor. Of course then he knew where Slade must be, and he wasted no time attracting Starfire's attention with a quick tap on the side of her boot where it floated a few inches above his head.

With a quick gesture and a point upward, he was given a nod in reply, then grabbed by his offered arm and hefted at an incredibly silent and speedy rate up the building until he was set on its roof. He kept the grip on her arm and pulled her gently to the opposite side of the building, where its roof would look down onto the street that formed a T-intersection with the one he'd crashed on.

With a sudden jerk of panic, he stopped Starfire cold and looked over at her brightly illuminated eyes. By pointing at his own masked eyes and making a slicing gesture across his neck, he was rewarded with a barely visible blush as she extinguished the lamps that would have so utterly given away their position, then the two of them leaned forward together to look down into the dimly lit disaster site below.

Robin's body convulsed in anger and disgust as the familiar profile came into view, Starfire looking at him with a slight fear as the tension began to flow off of him in waves. He saw that guy, the one that had haunted his nightmares and tortured his memories, and he could barely contain the fury that filled him. For a brief moment, it was as though no time at all had passed since that one night, and he still stood in helpless livid rage as he donned that scumbag's accursed armor in exchange for his friend's lives. Now, he had outdone even that on Robin's "Top 100 reasons why he shouldn't live to see trial," the almost invisibly slight figure at Slade's side the only proof he needed to substantiate Raven and Skye's stories. He'd done unspeakable things to a person he'd once sworn himself to support, and for this he'd never forgive Slade or himself. Starfire noticed her the next moment.

"Terra!" she whispered harshly, fighting the urge to light up the night sky with the force of her own anger, "Robin, we must rescue her immediately!"

Robin answered her with a harsh look and a finger across his lips to signal silence from her. She balked in anger at his seeming hesitation, then realized the utter rigidity in his body, reading the tale it told of how very much self control it took Robin to keep from leaping down their right this instant himself. She quelled her own anger with an effort, realizing that she needed to honor his self-restraint by conforming to his orders. Without another word then he pulled out his communicator and flipped it open, trying to get the others over here as quickly as possible. If Slade and Terra were both here, the other attack must have been some kind of diversion, and he'd need help for no less than five super villains at once.

When he got nothing but fuzz on his screen, he knew that Slade was once more, as ever, one step ahead of him, and he resisted the urge to smash the communicator on the ground in frustration. Instead, he placed the device once more in his belt and leaned down to see the two groups stop about twenty strides apart. Without a single word, he took something else from his belt, a kind of mini-satellite dish on a gun grip with wires coming out of it, sticking one of the wires into his ear even as he offered another to Starfire. She mimicked his action in wonder as she watched him point the gun down at their adversaries, then jumped slightly when voices filled her ear. It was their voices.

"Ah, if it isn't the infamous Mr. Slade?" asked an eerily cold female voice that Starfire matched by default the spectacularly attractive blond standing next to the brute that had clobbered her not even forty-eight hours ago. "If it isn't too much trouble, might I ask why you have such a penchant for blowing up my bases?"

"Well," and this was Slade's unmistakably frightening calculated drawl, "I just can't seem to get the hang of knocking on the door when I'm the one who owns the building." Starfire felt a shiver as she noticed the way he conveyed murderous threat without placing any inflection at all in his words.

"HA!" barked the woman, a vicious smile distorting her otherwise pristine features, "Boys, it looks like the little Terran is angry that I stole everything he owned in this world—except, it would seem, for the armor off his back and his little girlfriend." The other two chuckled sadistically, and the complete still that overtook Slade made Starfire take a second look at Robin next to her, the posture they assumed for barely restrained bloodlust being another of those nagging similarities between the two.

(Green)

Green, despite the mild singeing she'd gotten in the inferno before Red had quenched it, despite the boundless fury she felt at falling for this impudent being's second surprise attack in the same night, despite even the cold fear she felt for the wrath of White should this night go less than perfectly, was in her element. Never before had someone so completely taken her, twice in fact, and a very small part of her mind was still reeling with admiration for the pure guts it took to make such a bold series of strikes with the pathetic resources she estimated this Slade creature had at his disposal. The rest of her, however, was fairly purring with vitality, all other concerns forgotten as she matched wits with this magnificent new opponent, the spirit of competition consuming her soul as she gazed down at the being who even now attempted to intimidate her. Even as she traded meaningless banter and taunts with the Terran mastermind, she calculated her resources, accounting for everything that could conceivably contribute to the showdown Slade had forced here. When her mind had finished the analysis, she couldn't understand the one-eyed man's confidence.

In the final accounting, he simply must not comprehend the extent of the force ranged against him right now. His weaponry, though hardly embarrassing, was already well countered by their EDFs, military grade laser shields she'd broken out of Yellow's shipments. As for his archaic Terran firearms, she'd love to see those ricochet from the synthar-tritanium blend armor she now wore, no problem with that. The only thing standing between her and utter confidence in her total victory were the variety of expertly hidden close-combat devices he carried, and the unknown factor of the small Terran girl that stood so quietly by his side. She knew this man, in a sense, and knew he was not the type to underestimate, to strike without confidence in victory, so it was this girl upon who her main concerns fell. He would not bring a useless child to battle, and this city had a reputation for 'special' striplings. Despite his particularly unique circumstances, White alone was enough to teach her that young Terrans could still be deadly.

"…and his little girlfriend," she finished her most recent taunt, coming out of her deep contemplation with a more or less even estimate of her chances for victory, far less than what she preferred to be sure of. The utter still in his body told her that she'd managed to get to him with her little reminder of what she'd taken from him, and she lowered her estimation of him slightly before he made his comeback. It was as he spoke that she noticed the blank look on the girl-child's face, and a creeping fear began to work its way insidiously into her mind.

"Allow me to educate you offworld garbage on who exactly it is you're dealing with. I am Slade. No one steals from me, no one keeps me from getting what I want, and anyone who attempts either, suffers for their crimes. Take for example this sweet little thing to my side. Once she was a loyal vassal of mine, as much my partner in crime as those oafish cronies of yours, until the day she tried to betray me. Since then, she's had a colorful little three-month trip through a land of flesh-hooks and electrocution, nothing terribly out of the ordinary you understand, just a little unfettered enjoyment. When I'd finally exacted my fine for her betrayal from her flesh, I had her mind destroyed, piece by piece, until all that was left is the loyal killing tool you now see. Of course, I liked her, I will not be kind with any of you."

At his announcement, Green felt the fear that had been tickling along her nervous column coagulate, her body reacting under the human suit. Her stomata contracted violently and the water ran cold in her vascular tissue as she was confronted by the very things White had held over them all since the moment they no longer needed him to escape from The Can. There was no way Slade could know that White threatened them all with mind erasure, but none the less she felt the same root-twisting fear the other Terran tyrant in her life inspired. Of course, she hid it well.

"Slade, if you seek to impress me with your terrible subjugation of a little girl-child, I fear you have grossly underestimated your opponents. As for this awful sting you feel at my 'appropriation' of your resources, well… I assure you that had I known you still drew breath, I would have killed you first and saved you the pain of humiliation at your defeat."

"Enough of this banter," he cut off the 'feeling out period' with a single phrase, still possessed of the same calculating tone as ever. "The time has come for me to remove you eyesores and get on with more pressing matters. Prepare to die."

Green heard Red and Blue prepare themselves on either side, and truthfully she was tempted to simply strike out with everything they had and kill these two quickly. However, she considered once more how very desperately she desired Slade all to herself, the consuming need to match her skill against his was actually threatening to overcome her composure. She made her decision quickly.

"Wait boys, just hold on a moment. I want the Terran male for myself, you two kill the child. Better yet—Slade, why do we even have to bring in our lackeys at all? Can't this just be between the two of us?" This was the turning point, she could feel it, feel the tension in the air as Slade's eye narrowed, his mind weighing her offer. He had to see it was his only hope, so she knew it would be her perfect chance to claim true victory over this primitive creature who'd so humiliated her.

She realized her mind was wandering just in time to notice something, an odd glowing of yellow from the girl-child's eyes, and her every instinct was set to action in that same instant. Of course, it was already too late.

"No," responded Slade stiffly, before the area exploded with action.

(Slade)

Exactly as he'd instructed her to, Terra spent the time he bought them with talk to select three small stones, one near the feet of each opponent. On his hand signal, carefully coinciding with his rejection of the woman's outlandish offer, she flung them like bullets into the shield generators each wore on their belts. The motion was quick and they were completely off their guards, so the three stones impacted with the three belt-mounted semi-spherical devices like marbles striking china, and the sound their simultaneous destruction was Slade's cue to draw.

As he threw himself into a full crouch, he yanked free a revolver in his left and a needle-laser in his right pulling them out to train on the two men simultaneously. Even as he began his flying leap from the spot they'd no doubt be eradicating mere instants from now, he already had two shots off, well aimed for the quickly reacting pair of henchmen. As his leap carried him away from the puddle of molten asphalt he'd been standing in and the wave of heat and expanding air caught up with him, he saw his laser hit the brute in the right eye, his bullet striking a red flare of light and lancing off to hit the smaller man's shoulder rather than his forehead. He had no more time for observation then, because the battle was joined in earnest.

He hit the ground in a roll while holstering his revolver, launching a grenade without looking to the spot they'd all be scattering from and moving instantly to a run as he pulled free a phaser and leapt once more. The grenade went off just in time for him to turn and get a glimpse of movement off to his right, so he rolled through his leap and planted his feet on a tall hunk of debris, lancing out with lasers as he traced the movement. He leapt again just in time for the boulder to split in two behind him, then he was firing again as a black blur dashed off on his right and a god-awful screaming filled the air.

In the next moment he was running again, off-handing another grenade to cover his back as he cleared himself from what had to be the woman and took an opportunity shot off to his left at the big one. He poured fire at the thing as it flailed around, seemingly blind, his lasers striking true and leaving vicious burns, but then there was an explosion behind him as his other bomb went off and another movement out the corner of his eye had him leaping into another roll. A flash of heat so vicious that the miss melted some of the armor on his hip whooshed by, and he knew that the small one, the pyrokinetic, had taken his shoulder-wound rather well.

He sprung out of the roll and was shooting again, tiny red lances leaping from his right hand as thick white globs of energy burst from his left, the tracers of incandescently incinerating air following the now red-glowing man as he leapt to the side. He couldn't be sure of a hit, but then he was coming back toward the ground and the purest of reflexes forced him to twitch his head to the side. A metallic 'ting' announced that something had scraped the side of his mask, so he went from his landing to a side kick that hit nothing but air and sprung away into a back flip while filling the area with hot light. His majestic firing maneuver left streamers of burnt air like the spokes of parallel tires, and he was rewarded with a hiss of pain as he finished his move by releasing the grenades he'd grabbed with the heels of his hands at the start of his flip in the general direction of his antagonist.

He turned to escape that blast radius just in time to see a pillar of rock leap diagonally out of the ground and strike the huge man in the chest, kicking him back like a golf ball before the swing and flinging him into the destroyed building, even as a wall suddenly rose out of the ground further to his left and intercepted a blast of heat that quickly melted it back down to slag. Terra was doing her part, and he took the moment to pop the power cells out of each gun and use the empty weapons to scrape two more off his back, reloading them each one-handed.

A movement of air at his side was just barely noticeable over some explosions, and he threw himself forward while swinging around and firing, sweeping a curtain of hot light through the area even as he saw the blur leap upward over his attack. He traced the indistinct form into the air, firing all the way, but saw his attacks begin to ricochet erratically as he got her in his sights, a spinning blade reflecting the shots in every direction imaginable. The next moment, she was crashing down and he barely got a hand up to stay his own execution.

A terrible jolt in his arm told him his gun barrel had intercepted the blow meant for his skull, and he twisted it precisely so the long, sword-like blade flashed over his shoulder and buried solidly in the rock he had landed on, splitting it in two down to the ground beneath it. As her weight hit his body and drove the breath from him in a massive blow to his abdomen, he dropped the useless butt of the gun her blade had cleaved clean though even as he twisted his other weapon to point at her head, an iron grip on his wrist fighting that off and making his first shot go wide, singing some blond hair and no more. His now free right hand came around to grip the blade hand as it twisted to the side, seeking to slit his throat, and this one he caught centimeters from completion. There they were then, stalemated.

"Well Terran," she said to him with a voice strained by her effort to bisect his jugular, "You've managed to impress me."

"That's a disappointment," muttered Slade back, his voice strained by an effort to paint her brains across the air, "I was attempting to kill you!"

He took that moment to shift his grip on the laser pistol and whack her across the face with it, pursing the advantage until he'd rolled over on top of her and pressed her to the ground, his blaster only inches from a kill shot on her head. She caught up her grip admirably and held off his advantage, threatening with the sword again.

"Well then I suppose you'll understand when I do this!" she snapped back at him, and twisted his wrist hard enough to slip the gun from his grip while simultaneously flipping him up over her head, following through until she was once again over him, one hand on the sword's hilt and the other on the blade as she pressed it down at his neck. His own hand still held off her blade by gripping her wrist, while the one that had held the gun was now employed parrying her sword with his forearm guard. She grunted with effort, pressing down even harder, and his armor split along the blade's unbelievably sharp edge, drawing blood from his arm and a hiss of pain.

"You'll have to do better than that!" he snapped at her, managing bravado even as her blade drew closer to his throat. Then he actually backed it up, pressing forward with his bloodied arm and driving her away. She looked shocked that her sword didn't go through his arm like a knife through a fresh carrot, then realized his broken armor was pinching the blade.

"Very well Slade," she gasped, and he could sense her summoning strength from her deep reserves and gathering her balance, unable to counter her coming attack, "You asked for it," and there was a manic grin on her face as she struck.

Rising ever so slightly, she bucked in place, driving home her knee directly to his groin with the sound of steel hitting brass. She'd landed a deceptively powerful blow, so much that he felt it through the armor and his whole body seized in pain, the blade slipping in for his throat as he convulsed. He snapped it back to a stop, but she had him now, he was completely unable to press her away with his arms so far back. The next moment, the blade slid to the side somewhat, biting deeply into his arm and slicing through the mesh of his collar, drawing blood there in a tiny rivulet as he spasmed in his effort to press her back.

"You see, I can play dirty too, 'Mr. Ambush'," she said as her perfect face leaned in over his masked one, and he could tell by her voice that she thought she was free to claim his head, and victory, at any time. That was okay by him, because she'd finally lined up correctly.

"I play dirtier," he choked out past the blade pressing on his neck, then activated a pressure switch in the glove he held her wrist with. Before she could so much as twitch, much less twist away, the holsters for his two SAAs both turned upward and pointed at her guts, firing three times each with a deafening roar. His special ammo made the guns buck, bark, and flash like dynamos of heat and sound, and just like that the woman had six enormously gaping holes in her belly.

"B-but… my… body… armor," she whispered, then collapsed onto him. The wounds had erupted like geysers of green and pink muck, splattering a cloud of said fluids into the air and allowing a torrent of them to pour down onto Slade before he could throw off her limp sack of a body. She lay bleeding on the broken ground as he regained his feet, and by the time he was looking down at her she'd begun to… laugh?

"Hehahmhmhm," she managed to chuckle, then coughed hard and expelled a splash of her vital fluids. "You think… you think you've got me… but you don't" she struggled to brag through a mouth and throat full of the gooey muck. He cast her a darkly indifferent look as he drew the SAA that still had three bullets with the hand of his non-sliced left arm and pointed it at her head. She ignored him and touched a nondescript part of her belt. As he watched in mild amusement, her face lit with panic, whatever effect she'd hoped to initiate apparently not working, and then the panic turned to fury before his eye.

"Traitor!" she snapped, choking up another gout of fluid with the word. She seemed to squirm with the desire to scream and rant that she was too weak to fulfill, and now the fluid was dripping from her ears, nose, eyes, and a great mess of it was dripping down her completely coated chin. "How dare that—" her concentrated fury is interrupted by another gout of fluid, "f-f-fuck deactivate my teleporter access?!"

The taint of internal strife Slade detected here intrigued him, so he held of on finalizing the woman. Perhaps he could learn something new from her yet. Just then a somewhat distant explosion altered him to the fact that Terra's task was not yet complete, and he took a quick glance at a readout on his injured arm as he discarded the ruined armor there and put a field dressing on his wound. Terra was a small distance down the road ahead of him, the burning wreckage and spreading fires giving him little visibility of the area. A sudden weight on his front brought his attention back to the woman, who was crawling up him and covering him with the disgusting crud that passed for blood in her.

"You've got—got t-t-t-to save me Slade," she begged for her life, disgusting him far more than any mere bodily fluid ever would.

"Get off of me!" he snapped, and punctuated the command by pistol-whipping her mercilessly to the ground; the sickening crack of the gun-butt hitting her skull like music to his ears. To his great surprise, she continued to mumble as she squirmed inhumanly in a puddle of the pink and green fluid, a blow meant to barely avoid killing her failing even to turn out her lights. He took his moment of mild admiration with grace, leaning down to pick up her discarded sword.

The blade had been moving too fast to see for most of the fight, but now that he looked at it he could be truly impressed. It was a one-edged slicing affair not unlike a katana, but it was sharpened to such a fine edge that he could scarcely imagine what a direct hit would have done to his body. The workmanship was so fine that he almost wished he'd spent more time on swords in his training, promising himself to look into that as the melodious sound of the woman's frantic gasps for air reached his ears.

"Well, I've decided to save your pathetic life freak, but you'll have to promise me something first." He spoke with a calmly amused tone as he watched her squirm, seeing that she was largely beyond the ability to answer, so he continued as though she had. "Stay here until I get back," he answered the unspoken question, and he jammed the sword through her shoulder and deep into the ground, eliciting a week scream and an incredible organic chopping sound as it slid home. She didn't move anymore, and he silently advised her to die before he returned, seeing how much better it would be for her in the long run.

That done, he took off at a quick run in the direction his tracker showed, mostly following the trail of broken ground, cooling slag, and random destruction that marked the progress of the battle. As he ran, he reloaded his pistols, humming a pleasant tune and appreciating the unique smell of a battlefield.

Former Site of the Green Construction Building, Field Medical Facility

Raven sat a few inches above the ground, her cloak trailing onto the dirty rubble as she floated low. She usually preferred something a bit higher up, but she was tired enough that the extra inches were a pain and she didn't really care much at this point considering the patina of dirt already ground into her costume. Of course, these thoughts were only to distract her from the matter at hand, and she scolded herself silently as she took another look over at Skye's prone body where it lay on a cot near her. Lacking anything more pressing to attend to, it was high time to see about how long this guy intended to hang out on another plane of existence.

"Azarath, Metrion, Zinnnthhhooosss," and with her final word, she exhaled slowly, her spirit floating free of her body at last. Tried as she was, it had taken some doing, but her aspect finally floated in the peacefully abstract ether of the astral plane. It was not her first visit here by far, but that didn't stop her from admiring it again as she reveled in the intensely light feeling of being a soul without the burden of a body. It was a pain in the ass to get here, but a fucking vacation to hang out in this souls-only phase of reality.

The world around her was no longer the same as it had been when she'd been in her body, and the alteration quickened even as she observed. She looked down at the empty shell of her corporeal form, the enormous distortion of her previous reality increasing exponentially as her soul's raven form disassociated from it. The colors bled into a symphony of blended rainbows and the world became a riot of random energy. It was all still there, it could even been seen, if you had enough ESP to peer back into actual reality, but now she was free of it all, and it felt very nice. It occurred to her why Skye chose to convalesce over here.

Leisurely, utterly unconcerned with anything for the time being, the raven hopped along a ground that wasn't there, approaching another indistinct point in the void of random color and searching for something. She found it quickly, and it was good.

Astral travelers, if they have one drop of sense in their freely-roaming souls, keep a tiny thread of energy connecting their bodies to their spirits, assuring that they do not get lost in the vastness of astral space. This left the risk of people being able to follow you, but generally the threads were imperceptible except where they connected to the body and where they connected to the soul, so most didn't worry about it. Raven had Skye's thread in her astral grip, and she intended to follow it to this Astral Beacon he so mysteriously mentioned. Intrusive? Yes, but he'd earned it.

An eye out for other astral beings then, the raven took flight, zipping off at a pace so fast that it simply doesn't translate to anything comprehensible for those of us in normal space. As she flew, she left the astral analogue of Earth and entered the sparse spiritual wasteland of empty space. She was cautious, such inhospitable climbs home to native predators of the astral plane that could make a meal of her soul and leave her body to die in its absence, but none the less managed to admire bits of astral real estate she passed on the way. She'd never had cause to venture so far out before, not in this dimension, and she began to wonder why. Just a glimpse of the magnificent and unique palettes of color that represented alien worlds dotting the void was far more interesting that quite a few of the books she'd read lately.

Then, seemingly just as it had begun to get interesting, her journey was over, the thread coming to an end abruptly. Had she not been gripping it so tightly, she might have lost it, but instead she was left to ponder where the hell Skye had gone. No one with any brains at all would ever cut themselves loose from their tether, and one thing Skye hadn't struck her as was brain-dead, so she looked around for what had gone wrong. Her search eventually brought her to the bit of thought-thread in her claw, and she immediately noticed the odd little sphere of white light there.

The sphere was no bigger than a marble, but it held vast intricacies of fine detail in silver and white engraving, stunning Raven for a long moment as she admired the meticulous artistic effort it must have involved. Her aspect molded down into a white-edged black silhouette of her, and she reached out to touch a finger to the marble without hesitation. Everything changed.

Skye's Astral Beacon

It was so sudden that it actually took Raven a long moment to realize she was no longer in astral form. With growing wonder, she looked around with her eyes, took a deep breath of pleasant but unremarkable air, and then was suddenly struck by the fact that she shouldn't have had to do either of those things without her body. Which of course, made her realize that she had her body back, a revelation accompanied by a frantic look down to confirm the rather obvious fact. This was getting weird.

She found herself, rather than floating in the painted infinity of the astral plane, standing on a gloomy doorstep to a rather big and distressingly creepy looking house. Behind her was a landscape done entirely in fog and scraggly dead tree, so she turned back to the gothic-suburban house and glanced at the charming gargoyle-head knocker. She had an indescribable sense that she'd already been here before, so familiar and homey did the place seem. It was almost like she was looking at her dream house, though that couldn't be true, because nothing pleasant ever graced her dreams. Hesitating once more, she allowed her mind to wander to other things, such as, what was she wearing?

"What am I wearing?" she was forced to express the question out loud for utter confusion at her garb. Her functional cloak and leotard combo, the one she'd worn pretty well constantly since leaving Azar, had been replaced by quite an impressive gown. The dress choked snugly around her neck before running down her shoulders into tight sleeves of intricately embroidered black swirls on a black background stopping at her wrists. The complex embroidering also ran down the front until a black leather girdle took over, pressing in and up and forcing everything she had forward better than any under-wire ever could, a series of black buckles down her abdomen keeping the snug but comfortable affair in place. At her waist and down was a black skirt with a simple pleated ruffle pattern that trailed loosely to her ankles. She could feel stockings that, if the theme continued, would be black, and her shoes felt like leather slippers rather than the custom-fit boots she usually sported.

Though her immediate reaction was to be disgusted by something she would never, ever wear, she couldn't help but think she must look drop dead amazing in it. The color scheme said she was ready for a funeral, but she felt like she was ready for her own wedding, or perhaps some kind of gala ball. This of course, simply reinforced the fact that she would never, ever wear it, but once again she couldn't help but feel good about it, a secret part of her wishing for a full size mirror. Then, the thought occurred to her that Skye had something to do with all this, and anger began to creep inexorably over her good mood. It was time to find out what was going on.

She tried the door and found it locked, so decided that the knocker was her next best bet. The garish thing made an impressively creepy sound, and a thrill of enjoyment ran up her spine, everything about this place perfectly done. After a long moment of waiting, the door swung open of its own accord and she stepped into the house, eager to see what else Skye had cooked up for the place. Her heart fell slightly when she found what the building actually contained.

The moment she stepped through the door, the theme that had persisted on the outside ended, and so did any semblance of spatial continuity. What had appeared to be a rather large building from outside was actually a single room, no more than twenty feet square at best. She stood in a tiny alcove with just enough room for the door to open in, beyond which was the crowded box room. The room was dominated by a enormous, glowing silver orb that hung from the ceiling, around which stood a circle of couches that almost completely choked off the rest of the space. The off-white walls were completely coated in framed pictures that Raven couldn't quite make out, and all in all, it looked like somebody's living room. As she stepped in then, she couldn't help but express her disappointment.

"This… isn't quite what I expected," she mumbled out loud, forgetting that there was obviously at least one person within earshot.

"I'm sorry if it isn't to your liking, I'm afraid I can hardly compete with your own imagination as far as decorating to your preferences is concerned," came Skye's voice, and Raven jumped slightly at the unexpected response. His voice came from one of the couches, and she began to walk to one side until he finally came into view. Indeed, he was lounging gracelessly, lying full out on one of his curving, gray leather couches, a handsome jet-black cat napping on his chest. He wore a pair of jogging shorts, an open, short-sleeved button-down, and nothing else (except the cat, which doesn't count), not even sunglasses. The black cloth contrasted sharply with the white gleam of his sharply defined muscles, and Raven choked down a blush by force of extreme willpower as her libido tried to hijack her brain.

"What are you talking about?" she asked him, changing the subject in her own mind as she forced herself to look to the walls, gazing with feigned interest at photos she didn't really see. "this place is yours, so didn't you make the outside along with… everything else?" She couldn't help but hesitate as she thought again of the dress.

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see him sit up and look over at her for the first time, dislodging the cat with an indignant yowl, and suddenly his whole body froze like someone had just struck him. When she realized it was because of her, she turned completely away from him with a jerk to hide the blush that she couldn't stop this time. Behind her was the sound of him recovering and standing up, then his response in that always-cool tone of his.

"I never bothered modeling the outside, so it takes on the form of whatever the person looking at it most wants to see. I control every other aspect of this place's appearance, except of course for anything pertaining to other spirits visiting. Now that I see what you cooked up for yourself… well, I feel a little underdressed." The quip coincided with a strange rushing of air, and Raven turned back to look at him with another jerk, the heat at her face forgotten with her curiosity and anger at his teasing. When she looked at him again, he had changed.

He now wore a very nice black tuxedo with sliver accoutrements, done in an old-fashioned style that included a vest and a spill of lace at his throat. If anything he looked even better, and Raven gulped down her embarrassment as she stood her ground this time. She was definitely getting more than she bargained for out of this visit, as now the two of them were dressed to kill for a night in high society (if it was a society of vampires—the gothic theme persisted, after all).

This fact seemed not lost on Skye, because even as she looked on the room itself morphed in a swirl of color and rushing air. In a moment, it was immensely larger. The ceiling was still dominated by that silver orb, now embedded in a gorgeous chandelier, but otherwise the space was completely transformed. The couches had vanished, the nondescript carpeting replaced by the intricate tiles of an enormous dance floor. To one side was a sweeping stairway that went straight up to a landing and split in a T to either side up to a set of twin balconies.

"What are doing?" Raven felt compelled to inquire, even as she continued to take in the altered surroundings.

"Hey, you're the one that came in dressed for a party, I'm just going with the flow here. We didn't match the décor in my crash-room anymore, so I inculturated my living space a little. Do you like it?"

"Hmph," she sniffed, "I didn't come here to play dress up with you!" and she successfully blocked his attempt at charm with a solid wall of indignant pride. She was finally getting over her shock and falling back into a safe state of mind.

"Okay," and Skye actually sounded a little disappointed at her rejection of his purely innocent posturing, "so what does bring you to my humble astral abode? I can't imagine you were simply 'in the neighborhood,'" and there was a quirk at the side of his mouth at some internal humor. That cat was back, and it leapt into his arms as he waited for her answer. Leave it to him to ask her a hard question, not that she wouldn't have done the same to him.

"I…" this was going to be tough, "I… I just wanted to see that you were okay." And she felt her pulse quicken with embarrassment, "I mean, you helped me out enough to warrant me at least checking up on you," she quickly clarified, not wanting him to get the wrong impression. She couldn't help but think that life would be so much easier if she could be sure of what she felt the wrong impression was at this point.

"I see…" he muttered uncertainly as he strode slowly toward her, petting the black cat slowly, prompting her to stiffen slightly at his advance, "well as you can see, I'm recovering. I had to pretty well break my brain to shake that… thing… out of your mind, and it'll take me a good long while to get back to full power, but I've been through this a couple of times now and I've got it down to a system."

"What do you mean?" she asked, genuinely curious to know what kind of a system one used to recover from near mind-death. He obliged her curiosity with one of those long explanations of his.

"Working solo is damn dangerous, especially when you're already in a profession with such a disgusting fatality rate. My powers give me a distinct edge, but I've had to push my limits quite a few times, and… well let's just say earlier was only my most recent and terrifying brush with the reaper. I discovered after an earlier and much less severe episode that there's a way to stop the disintegration of the psyche that comes with overreaching mental limits, and that would be the purpose of that orb up there, my astral beacon. Every time my mind is nearly eradicated, it ends up here, where I can piece the broke-ass thing back together again."

Raven didn't quite know how to respond to this, so caught up was she in what he'd said at the start. This guy she didn't even really know had shattered his own mind rather than leave her to the mercy of the Hate… he'd shattered his mind… for her!

"You didn't have to do that you know," she muttered, turning away from him as he drew within a few steps of her and stopped. She hadn't asked him for his help, she hadn't asked him for anything at all, the familiar complaint echoed through her mind once more. Why had he done that?

"Yes well, I guess I did take something of a risk on the rescue there, but there's really no big mystery to it." He paused and sighed slightly as though thinking something serious, and the cat yowled again as he let it leap to the ground before continuing.

"Raven, if nothing else, I already consider you my friend, and I would never leave a friend in the clutches of that which was using your body. My senses told me it was do or die to save you, that there wouldn't be another chance, and so I took the shot while I had it. I prefer a long recuperation by far to the thought of loosing you forever…" and he had the grace to sound embarrassed by the unflinching honesty of his statement, turning away from her even as she glanced in frowning, guarded surprise over her shoulder in response.

"You… you really mean that?" she asked, turning the rest of the way back toward him and unconsciously closing the distance between them another step, her dull tone lighting slightly with her shock. He turned back to her and gave her a good look in the eyes, his empty whites to her violet pools, and nodded slowly.

"If you don't believe my word, you can always take into consideration the fact that I coded my control core to allow you entry. A greater sign of trust I know not in this world," and his eyes never flinched from hers.

"So I take it you noticed my… 'borrowing' your powers," she admitted with a mild embarrassment. It was never comfortable knowing someone had been into the deepest part of your mind, and she was particularly uncomfortable with him knowing that she'd been in his.

"Before you ask, I did it for the very reason I just mentioned. I trust you, implicitly, and I knew that my fate as well as that of untold masses of other people hinged on that trust. I'm the type to trust my instincts more than common sense, you know?"

"Yeah, well just don't expect the same gesture from me any time soon," she muttered at him, her intense discomfort about the whole subject shattering the moment they'd been sharing as she broke eye contact and began to look around the room again. "I'm just glad you're not dead."

"Why Raven, I believe that's about the nicest thing you've ever said to me," he teased her, and she felt anger overcome her discomfort with ease. She was about to lash out at him when she realized he'd done it on purpose to quell her discomfort, the manipulative bastard. Left at a loss for words then, instead she asked a question about something that had caught her eye.

"Skye, who're the people in that portrait up there?" and he seemed a bit surprised by the change of subject. Said painting was an enormous affair done in a classical style like everything else in this manifestation of Skye's, it hung in a position that dominated the split in the T stairway, and it held three young people. A boy, pale as snow and with those empty white eyes, had to be Skye at some incredibly young age. He wore a nice blue suit, and on either side of him was a little girl, one wearing a white dress and the other wearing a black dress. The girls were twins, identical except that the one in black had long curly black hair and the one in white had long straight white and silver hair, an oddity at her age to be sure. They were not albino, each had a healthy pink coloration to go with their beautiful dresses and long hair. The most striking feature by far though were their eyes, the dark twin having irises as black as deep midnight, and the light twin having irises with a rainbow of different colors all radiating out like the spokes of a wheel. It was quite the imposing sight.

"Ah yes," Skye finally followed her gaze up to the painting, "that would be a family portrait. The strapping young lad is me, and the two beauties are my sisters. The dark one is Zeph, and the light one is Ora. Does that answer your question?"

"So they were twins, huh?" Raven commented idly as she continued to marvel at the way the painting put so much expression into the eyes. "What about the rest of your family? Your parents maybe?"

"I tend not to dignify my parents with an acknowledgement that they once existed… they never earned even that from me. As for him… never mind," and he cut himself off just as he was about to continue. Raven noted that he had more family still, then chided herself for prying where he obviously didn't want anyone looking. She had enough family problems of her own, and she wasn't about to start espousing them to him, that was for sure. Her thoughts were interrupted by an insistent rubbing on her leg, which along with a piercing meow, brought her attention once more to the cat. As she bent to obey its demand for attention, she wondered why Skye hadn't erased this thing when he changed the room.

"We didn't match your 'crash room,' but this handsome fellow did?" she asked him as she scratched the trim tom's head, and the cat purred as though it recognized her compliment.

"Hey," and there was a puff of amusement in his voice, "I told you already that I can't affect other spirits visiting this place." It took her a long moment to understand the implications of what he'd just said.

"So wait," and she couldn't keep the incredulity out of her voice, "you're telling me that this is the spirit of an actual cat? A cat? On the astral plane?" It was preposterous of course, and she knew he had to be pulling her leg. The thought annoyed her seriously, and the familiar feeling was a great comfort.

"Ben there is a very special cat Raven," Skye persisted, and she began to wonder how far he planned to drag this out. "He's a specter, a kind of extremely advanced spirit construction, and he's also most of the company I've had for the better part of five years, so I'd thank you not to insult him." Raven, despite having heard of such things before, couldn't bring herself to drop the comforting distrust, and spoke thoughtlessly in defiance of what he'd asked.

"He really doesn't look like much to me," she muttered, as she stood up away from the cat, and a sudden yowling from the animal surprised her and forced her a step back. Without further warning, the cat coiled and sprung at her chest, and she lifted her hands to defend herself only to watch in amazement as the animal passed right through her arms and disappeared into her stomach.

"Oh dear, you really shouldn't have said that Raven," admonished Skye amusedly as the oddest sensation began to spread through her body. She gave him an angry look that promised all kinds of retribution for this experience as the warm rubbing feeling really got into gear. It didn't hurt, and she didn't think it was causing her any harm, but it was terribly uncomfortable, and she wanted it to stop.

"Skye, get your cat off of me!" she snapped at him, as she pressed her hands over her stomach and fell to her knees.

"It's a cat, Raven, not an attack dog. I can't order it to do anything. However, he's a very compassionate and forgiving soul, so I figure you stand a good chance of getting off the hook if you apologize."

"You want me to apologize to a cat?" but he met her viciously skeptical gaze with a steady smile and those empty white eyes, and some of the anger left her. She somehow knew that he wasn't putting her on here, and decided that the feeling was obnoxious enough to warrant any measure to stop it.

"Ben, I'm sorry, you're a very handsome cat!" she tried her best for sincerity over the sensation of fur rubbing all over the inside of her skin, and was rewarded momentarily by a respite. In a smooth movement, a shadowy silhouette of a cat emerged from her skin like a pool of darkness standing up off of her body, then swirled around her a few times until it finally stood on her shoulder, the inky figure settling back into this odd sort of reality and becoming only a cat again. She grimaced, gave it another long rub, then pressed insistently until it leapt away from her. Her ordeal over, she glanced at Skye, who, though she couldn't be sure, looked like he was trying his best not to look smug.

"Why is your cat specter named Ben?" she asked him, voicing another random curiosity that had popped into her mind, considering anything preferable to standing in silence with this exceptionally strange young man.

"He's really my sisters' cat, and they named him Benvolio after the first time they saw 'Romeo and Juliet.' I don't remember what planet we were on at the time, but I had just gotten another big data file on earth culture from someplace or another and that was among the things I shared with them. I mentioned that he was my favorite character from the play and blamo, their kitten specter suddenly had a name."

Raven felt a sudden and confusing pang of simultaneous jealousy and sadness for Skye, his story of happy family memories something she could never imagine. At the same time, she knew he couldn't recall what he felt during those good times, and now his sisters were at the mercy of some mysteriously vicious organization she'd never even heard of until a few hours back. The two of them really were a pair of miserable souls.

He must have noticed how down she suddenly became, because he took immediate measures to liven the situation up. In retrospect, she would kind of whish he'd just left her alone.

"So, Raven, care for anything else while you're here?" he changed the subject with a cheerful question. "Perhaps you'd treat me to a dance—we are both dressed for it after all?" and he gave her a radiant smile as he bowed slightly to his prospective dance partner.

"What are you—" was all she got out before he gently gripped her hand and spun her through a graceful twirl, then put an arm around her and dipped her back.

"A waltz perhaps?" he asked, and suddenly 'Blue Danube' kicked up in the background like a soundtrack. It was just about then when her mind caught up with her body.

Crack! was the sound of her fist impacting with his jaw at high speed, and she slipped out of his grip even as his head whipped around from the force of the blow. The moment she hit him, the sound track vipped into silence like someone had just scratched a record off the player, and he fell to one knee as he held his jaw in shock.

"First of all, don't ever touch me without my permission!" she snapped lividly, putting all kinds of murderous threat into the tone, "second, how the hell did you touch me without the… you know… shock thing?" and her tone was a bit more subdued and uncertain as she wondered at that.

"Sorry, I got a little carried away," his voice distorted as he apologized from behind the hand that held his jaw, "and as for the shock thing, it seems to require our corporeal shells as a catalyst. Despite all appearances, we don't have them here."

"Well…" and now she was a little uncomfortable about being near him, searching for some response to cover how much he'd shaken her, "just… remember that in the future," she muttered, and turned away again, arms crossed over her chest in indignation. Only gods could know what would have happened there if her reflexes hadn't kicked in.

"Like I said, sorry… but you know, you really can't blame me for trying," and there was a hint of humor in his voice now.

"What do you mean?" she asked cautiously, not bothering to turn back.

"I mean my PV is so gorged on hate that I have nothing to mitigate the certain knowledge that you're the most attractive woman I've ever seen," he let the words out so smoothly that it didn't even sound like a line. She spun to look at him again, shock painted in volumes all over her face, but he refused to meet her increasingly defensive stare as he shrugged in hopeless abandon, continuing with, "I definitely deserved the facial readjustment, but I cant help but feel it was worth it. I mean, the way you look right now," and he took a quick glance as though to refresh his memory, "I'd have been crazy not to at least try for a dance."

"What—What are you talking about?" she asked, her voice now half panic and half confusion as he continued to act so incredibly different than before. All of his smarmy self-assurance and almost obnoxiously complete competence seemed to waste away under the lens of what he was feeling now, and without those grotesque features to iron out her own feelings she was thrown completely off guard. She wanted very little more than to escape this place, regretting ever bothering to worry about his weird, supernaturally attractive hide.

"Come now Raven, observe with me," he said calmly, apparently taking her question seriously, and the change in his tone to explanatory allowed her to cool off some herself. She looked where he indicated and a perfectly rectangular mirror suddenly grew out of the ground three feet in front of her and stretched out until it showed her whole body, accompanied by his question, "Is that not one of the most irresistible sights you've ever beheld?"

Raven's confused feelings were driven suddenly from her mind as she realized she'd been wrong about one thing: she wasn't drop dead gorgeous. The image that stared back at her right now possessed the kind of beauty that surpasses mere adjectives, and she really had to move around a little to make sure the reflection was actually her own. By far no narcissist, she'd still be the first to admit that what she saw now belonged in a magazine or on an artist's canvas, and she couldn't rightfully understand how it could be true.

"So you have to ask yourself Raven, not 'why did that prick Skye make a pass at me,' but rather, 'why did I manifest looking like this when I knew I would see him?'" He let the supremely arrogant question hang in the air, the sudden change in his whole persona registering in the small part of Raven's mind that wasn't blinded with shock at the stranger she saw in the mirror. Later, she'd recognize that she'd scared him off with her reaction, and he'd slid back into the mask of aloof IDP agent with which she'd been so much more comfortable. For now though, she could only wonder at what she saw as he continued, "In any case, I apologize once more. I honestly don't know what came over me back there…" Raven wasn't really listening anymore, and it was as Skye realized this that he trailed off.

"You know," he added, almost tentative in his manner now, as though afraid she'd hit him again, "this isn't the best view." She was only dimly aware of his words, so stunned was she by what she could look like with a little polish, and he walked up behind her, maintaining two steps of clearance for his own safety.

"I always preferred this one by far," and the image in the mirror changed completely. Raven almost fell over this time, because what she now saw was not a reflection of her body, but that of her soul. Her heart began to burn with a heat she couldn't recognize, her eyes teared up despite her best efforts, and she began to loose strength in her legs.

"This is how I usually see people," Skye continued to talk behind her, "it's what you might call 'inner beauty,' may it never be scoffed at again. Truly good people always look beautiful when you examine their souls, but ones like this, and like those of your friends, are rare beyond description."

Raven could barely hear him as she let the image before her burn into her memory. The figure was a cloak of shadow like inky midnight, but within the black was the infinite spectrum of color that exists beyond the cusp of pitch black, a whirlwind of purples, blues, greens, all tinged by the utter black they swirled within. Tracers of white that burned the eyes moved constantly, etching endlessly intricate patterns of arcane runes, mystic spirals, and shapes without name across her multicolor skin, only for them to fade into the dark surface and provide new space for the tracers to illustrate. Her face though, was the true marvel, four burning white eyes with brilliantly violet swirling pupils gracing a surface otherwise devoid of feature. A flash of silver struck her eye as she examined her reflection, and she looked up, catching sight of a second image to sear the senses.

Skye's soul was also reflected in the mirror, standing just behind her, and it was such a bright silver white that she could hardly look at it. The waves of brilliant energy hit the waves of dark energy coming off of her, and rather than explode as they had back on Earth, they twined and coiled about one another in a dance of mutualistic harmony. As she watched, they grew together, flowed through one another, and expanded into glowing clouds of breathtaking gray, a color she hadn't even imagined possible.

"BLLLLAAAHHHH" barked a sudden terrible siren, and Raven nearly jumped out of her skin. The sound came like a kick in the chest, accompanied by a flashing red light that seemed to permeate the whole room without regard for where shadows should be cast. Just like that, she was only herself and Skye was just himself, the spirit-insight he'd granted her evaporating as the alert sounded.

"DAMNIT!" he shouted, though whether it was at the moment that had been interrupted or at the nature of the interruption itself she couldn't be sure. "Not now… I haven't healed enough yet… goddamn, I'm so fucked…" he muttered then, barely audible over the siren. He collected himself quickly though.

"Raven!" he shouted at her, "our bodies are in danger, we've got to snap back now!"

Green's Secondary Base, a while earlier

Starfire and Robin were still listening when the battle broke out. The directional microphone shorted loudly when the gunfire started, and Robin cringed once for the squealing in his ear and a second time for the bloom of blood that sprouted from the swarthy looking man's shoulder as it exploded in gore. He'd had to restrain Starfire with a forceful hand since Slade had taken it upon himself to brag about what he'd done to Terra, and now that the fighting raged it was all he could do to keep her head down.

The dimly lit street below was alive with action, lances of laser light with the accompanying pop-crackle of burning air competing with spectacular explosions of flame and stone. Even as he watched, the wounded man glared at Terra, a quickly rising stone pillar before her exploding in flames as the heat leapt from the man's eyes. He somehow cast translucent globules of heat through the air that would strike and incinerate his targets, and Robin suddenly had him figured as a pyrokinetic.

On the right, the huge man from before was flailing in agony and holding his face, the surprise beam to the eye having taken him out of the fight faster than Robin could believe considering the punishment the Titans had dished out to no effect. His flailing kicked up a stupendous racket of pounding that shattered the street below his feet and sent wreckage flying every which way. A blindly pitched hunk of stone was launched like a cannonball directly at their building, and the two rolled away from the corner as it disintegrated into a shower of pebbles with the ground shaking impact.

When he next looked down, Terra had taken a perch on a raised pillar to stare down at the pyrokinetic, who's return gaze bore a barely dodged wave of incinerating heat that slaged the top of the pillar like a candle wick an instant after she leapt away. When she hit the ground, several tons of stone bounced up from the impact and suspended in the air, the veritable fleet of boulders pausing only an instant before they began to spear bullet-like at the pyro. The incoming rocks melted to glowing muck and fell in splattering streaks to the ground in front of him, the sheer volume of stone actually pressing him back until he was forced to run to the side, the streaks of molten stone dogging his steps as he dodged. He took cover behind a particularly large hunk of wreckage just as Terra's ammunition ran out, and she fell to her knee as she gasped for air after the exertion. Robin's heart leapt into his throat as she just barely avoided being crushed when another flailing slap from the brute sent a wall of broken road her direction.

"Robin, we can delay no longer!" pleaded Starfire, gripping the hand he held her back with fiercely, as though to remind him it was only by her consent that she staid her attack. He hesitated for only a moment before answering.

"You're right Star, we'll have to take our chances. Just remember that she isn't our friend right now, she Slade's weapon—she won't recognize us and she may try to kill us!" He waited for her to acknowledge this grim fact with a small nod, then it was up and over for the both of them.

Robin himself hooked a grapple to the building and used the wench to break his headlong fall, rappelling once halfway down then hitting the ground at a run. He took a quick glance around for Slade, but the man was nowhere to be seen, nor was the blond woman, so he took a chance and sprinted through the wreckage of the building's front, eyes open for the brute and his friend. Leaping around a pile of stone, he came face to equally surprised face with the pyrokinetic man, who was nursing his gory, busted shoulder, then made a snap decision and underhanded the guy an explosive disk as he used his momentum to round the next corner. He heard a yell of surprise followed by the sound of running, his explosive going off, then the sound of laser fire again, and he knew Slade had gotten some shots off at him after the guy had left his cover. He would have appreciated the humor more if he hadn't bumped into the brute the next moment.

The huge man had apparently regained enough vision to walk around, because he was currently marching his slow but unstoppable way toward Terra where she lie on the ground gasping for air. Robin was about to grab the guy's attention away from the helpless looking girl when a spike of stone leapt from the ground just in front of the brute, Robin's reflexes saving him from a beheading as his side-roll got him out of the way of the flying muscleman. He heard the guy hit a building behind him even as he simultaneously caught a glimpse of Slade disappearing behind a wall of smoking stone and an artificial wall of stone intercepting another heat blast on his right. The place had become a war zone, attacks happening so quickly in so many directions that he could barely keep track of them.

The next series of events came like a blur to Robin, but he would later recall them much like this. Terra was down, the last wall she threw up sucking down all she had left, a night of heavy lifting and building demolition leaving her dry in this high-power battle. Robin didn't have to look twice before he sprung from his prone position and closed the distance to her, practically able to hear the next heat blast closing in. As he dove in and swept her twig-light body off the ground, the pyrokinetic wave flash heated the air behind him, the gut-twisting agony of the singeing he received causing him to stumble and fall only a foot or two from where he'd grabbed his burden up, well within sight of the firebug.

As he hit the ground, he rolled off Terra and ripped his cape off before the white-hot alloy could touch his skin, the intense heat failing to slag it but easily fusing the fibers until it was a board-stiff slab of glowing metal. In the same movement, he drew some smoke grenades and had them out in the general direction of the pyro, obscuring them from his view and hopefully covering them from his next attack. Sure enough, the next heat blast when wide left and created a crater of melted asphalt a few feet down, and Robin took the opportunity to drag Terra's frighteningly light dead weight into some taller wreckage further down the road. One more near miss with a heat blast and Robin began to wonder where the hell Starfire had gotten to, which was of course the same moment that she decided to show up, streaking down from somewhere on his right.

"I am sorry for my absence," she gasped out, and he took from the filthy state of her costume that she had good reason, "I was trading fire with the heat-maker when I was intercepted by a very large piece of flying rock. It took me some time to escape. But hurry, we must now get away!" and she grabbed up both of them as she leapt into the air. Long training told Robin where his eyes needed to be, and he glanced back at the smoke screen just in time to see a glowing red figure stride through it.

"Starfire!" and his incoherent scream was miraculously interpreted, with a wrenching in his guts being Star dumping her passengers and climbing furiously while a heat blast arced between them. As he fell, he looked up to see another blast reach out for Starfire, a quick pair of blasts from her eyes splitting the attack and glancing it off to melt holes in the buildings to either side.

The nest instant, Robin bundled Terra up protectively and hit the ground in a roll, putting more distance between them and their assailant, then ducking behind the corner of a building at the next intersection as the sidewalk behind him erupted into glowing magma from the heat that struck it. Placing Terra gently on the ground, he drew some birdarangs and leapt out from behind the corner, ready to strike or dodge as need be. Instead he found himself spectator to an epic struggle.

Starfire and the pyro were currently head to head, a shimmering of intense heat blasting forth from the man's face to be met by an enormous green starbolt projecting from Star's eyes and hands at the same time. As he watched in awe, star fusion met psi-fire, two titanic powers struggling to incinerate one another in an orgy of projected energy.

At first they were even, the green and the shimmering heats colliding and annihilating one another directly between them as he stood on the ground and she flew about ten feet higher up. Starfire suddenly gained some ground, pressing the enormous beam a few feet closer to the man, until he braced his footing and took a step forward, forcing her beam back and actually gaining ground himself from the original position. She threw her energy into it again and fought back to the original position, but it was clear that she was no match for him as he began to chuckle audibly over the sound of frying air. The pyro's red aura grew then and Robin prepared to intercede, only to pause again when Starfire began to scream a terrifying war cry.

The piercing wail was literally painful, and he covered his ears as he knelt away form the source, looking up to see the green glow spread from Starfire's hands and eyes until it enveloped her whole body. The beam she was throwing quickly grew twice as thick, the enormous funnel of power putting off heat Robin could feel all the way back where he was standing. The man met the renewed burst with force, loosing ground steadily but only pressing all the harder into his own blast in response. Starfire's beam was quickly only a few feet away, and he began to scream himself as he pressed against it, his return blast defecting heat every which way until the lampposts, asphalt, and the sides of the buildings all around them began to light on fire or melt. Finally, the man's snazzy red suit began to be eaten away by licking flames of green fire that leaked through his pressing blast, his own flesh following in its turn. As the flames began to blacken his skin and peel it away, Robin was sickened, unable to believe he could continue with injuries like that. He actually began to fear Starfire would kill him before he gave up. Then Starfire's scream gave out, and he was struck by the opposite and much more immediate terror of loosing her.

Her blast faltered as her voice did, and the man, on his knees with weakness, yelled out in victory as his blast ate up the space between them and threatened to wipe Starfire from the sky. Robin could take it no more, and without further hesitation, he flipped a razor-sharp blade at the monster trying to incinerate his love, aiming for the carotid without compunction. The blade, able to withstand spectacular heat, none the less warped slightly from the blast-furnace the space in front of the man had become, arcing off course and slicing an awful gash in his arm, destroying his concentration and allowing the last of Starfire's green energy to zip through the unresisting air and hit him like a ton of ultra-hot bricks. He flew backward, hit the side of a building, and did not move again. Robin didn't really care though, because Starfire hit the ground the next moment.

He was over to her in a flash, and his heart didn't start beating again until he was sure that she was still breathing. From the looks of things, she'd just exhausted her power, and now she lay once more unconscious. Glancing down the street then, Robin did his best to glare through the darkness, the intermittent fires, the clouds of inky smoke, and the concealing wreckage, then wasted no time in making their escape. Slipping one arm under her neck and one under her knees, he lifted her up and dashed back over to where he'd stowed Terra, already wondering how he was supposed to move both of them and silently praying for Starfire to awaken.

(Slade)

When Slade cleared the edge of the area his disruptor rifle had lain waste to, he was much better able to see down the road, and immediately he noticed the blazing building to building fires and the drooping, melted street lights that marked the passage of that fire-powered fellow he'd winged earlier. What he did not se was the broken earth and piled stone he'd come to associate with his young charge, and the absence told him he'd either find her ashes or some similar remains quite soon, with death being the only explanation for her cessation of combat. The thought came with a wave of ambivalence on his part, since he'd written her off as expendable the moment the dark titan had gotten away with knowledge of her existence. Without the promise of seeing them when they first realized he'd tricked them all, the girl just wasn't as valuable a trophy anymore. He'd regret loosing the weapon, but then, there were other weapons in this world.

That was when he spotted the curious spectacle of a rather diminutive figure toting two other figures, and he expelled all other consideration from his mind. He recognized the scene after a moment of observation, and changed from his jogging stride to a much more stealthy movement as he drew nearer. This was an opponent who he hadn't expected, but who none the less promised him a spot more of surprise enjoyment out of the night.

Suddenly his prey cursed, leapt forward, dropped his burdens, and came out of his roll facing Slade, who was at a loss as to how the little bastard had detected him. Of course, he'd always been surprising Slade with his ability, it was just a bitch that this wouldn't go as smoothly as he'd planned.

"Slade, you can't have her back—never again!" Robin declared immediately, and Slade knew right away that the little shit was trying to steal away his weapon. As he glared silently back in response, he was forced to wonder how the hell these rugrats kept finding him, their constant interruptions of his business with Green's gang beginning to seriously annoy him. Then his annoyance faded somewhat as Robin answered his silence with a leaping kick, and Slade was back to his element.

With a sidestep and a quick throw, he launched Robin by the conveniently offered leg and sent him flying down the street and away from the two women. He caught himself from the fall, and flipped back to his feet, launching himself at Slade again and drawing his staff for this one. Slade quickdrew his phaser and put two beams into the twirling baton before Robin could close half the distance, and the boy was forced to falter and retreat as his weapon was melted apart on both ends. The shock in his eyes at Slade's display of marksmanship tickled the man, and he chuckled as the slight fear washed into the boy, his determination to overcome Slade making it all the more amusing. It was so good, in fact, that Slade decided it would be enough for this night.

"So you've resorted to using guns to get your dirty work done now, huh? With all the people you manipulated into serving you, I kind of thought you were allergic to getting your hands dirty like that," Robin attempted to taunt him as he held a fighter's stance, eyes watching the barrel of the gun so he'd know how to dodge when it came to shooting. Slade admired his tenacity, but really didn't have time to deal with the children right now, and so his twisted mind found a quick and intensely amusing method of extricating himself from the boy's petty designs at vengeance.

"Oh Robin… don't be so quick to judge!" Slade admonished him with a mocking tone that infuriated the already dangerously pissed boy, "That I've resorted to getting things done personally is only a measure of the respect I have for my opponents. You should feel proud that I've promoted you from something for my lackeys to deal with and up to something on my to do list."

"Damn you Slade!" he shouted, but any attack he planned was quelled by a shot Slade put through the few inches between his right hand and utility belt, burning both slightly and causing him to jump back, face red with impotent Rage.

"Now, now, Robin, let's not be hasty. I have to go deal with grown up business tonight, but I promise I'll take care of you and your pathetic little friends when I'm not so busy."
"You're not going anywhere!" Robin protested, and Slade warded him off with a second warning shot as he motioned as though to attack. This one burnt his hand a little more closely, and still Slade could see the way he tensed, so very much desiring to flip out some of those blades of his and strike at him. Equally the man could see the boy's fear, the fear that Slade was too fast for him. He'd always known the child had some sense in his head, because Slade was too fast for him, and would not hesitate to execute him here and now should he be stupid enough to attack. Slade was a glutton for self-denial, in his own unique way, and would not hesitate to cut off his chance of later having the boy at his nonexistent mercy should the situation call for it.

"Well Robin, I beg to differ— mueh heh heh heh," and his evil chuckle made the child's eyes go wide as he realized that Slade had something up his sleeve, "because it would seem that I have a bargaining chip!"

"What—" Robin began, but Slade cut him off, gesturing to his right even as he bellowed for his weapon.

"Terra!" he barked, and the girl, to all appearances unconscious, rose slowly from the ground in response. He marveled slightly himself at the power he held over her, then finished his orders while the boy was still distracted by his own surprise. "Take out your sidearm, place the barrel in your mouth, then prepare to fire," he said simply, and Robin had just enough time to scream his protest and rush past Slade to the girl before she finished complying.

"Stop right there!" Slade commanded, and Robin froze in his attempt to yank the girl's trembling hands away from her head. He was too late, and he stepped away as he realized this with an accompanying wave of horror that delighted Slade immensely. The girl stood wavering on her feet, her compulsion to obey Slade's orders only slightly more powerful than the exhaustion that malnutrition, extensive torture, tranquilizer overdose, and high-powered super combat had wrought on her body. None the less Slade had won again, and the feeling was quite the high as he watched Robin's face crumble in defeat.

"Now boy, I suggest you leave me and my toy to my other business, or else the next thing you hear will be this… husk… that used to be your friend ventilating her brains on my command!" and just saying the phrase made Robin wince to such an extent that Slade was tempted to give the order anyway. It was a brief struggle to decide if he was more interested in dragging Green's carcass away while it could still be salvaged or seeing Robin's face as Terra cooked her own brains, but the former won out decisively when he recalled that only one was actually time-sensitive. Robin would yet see Terra's shell motivate itself off this mortal coil, but he had more pressing things to attend to right now.

"You… you wouldn't give her up!" Robin struggled pathetically against the reality of the situation by accusing Slade of bluffing.

"Please boy, show a little more of that intelligence I once thought worthy of my legacy! I care little for this rag-doll, and will be quite pleased to continue making use of it only as long as I can have the satisfaction of keeping her from the insipid children that actually care for the mindless lump of flesh. In short, as long as you don't have her, I don't care what happens to her!" Slade's words rang true, and Robin fell to his knees in submission. Such was an intense delight to Slade, and he ordered the doll to follow him as he strode slowly away, confident that the boy would not strike at his back. Then, a final twisted thought crept into Slade's mind, he and turned himself and his puppet back toward Robin one last time.

"Oh Robin!" he shouted, gaining the defeated young man's attention, "something to remember me by!" and he quickdrew a needle laser with his left and fired a shot for the boy's shoulder. A shriek of pain annouced that he'd struck something, and when the dazzling trail of light faded, he couldn't have been happier. The other girl-child, the little alien bitch, had awakened at some point, somehow managing to trace the barrel of his pistol and get her arm between it and the boy. The black burn on her wrist was nothing compared to the tiny, fully-through hole it would have put in the boy's flesh and bones, but the shock and anger on his face at the woman's pain was reward enough to Slade.

"You bastard!" he shouted, and Slade caught the quick underhand movement just in time to grab his puppet and yank her over a few feet. The birdarang glanced along her pronounced ribs, cutting a deep gash in her side that began to bleed into her bodysuit before its special fibers could seal the wound. The mindless one choked out a groan of agony around the phaser pistol in her mouth, and he realized he'd probably have to carry her back to the van, but this inconvenience was well worth the way Robin had gone white as a sheet as he cradled his woman in his arms. The two of them looked at him with a kind of broken expression that once again recalled to him the battlefields of his youth, and with that, he considered his night complete.

He laughed uproariously into the darkness as he left, his great bursts of evil mirth barely audible over the sound of the blazing fires that now raged through the block. Without concern for her involuntary squeals of pain or the gun barrel still lodged in her mouth, he slung Terra over his shoulder and began to jog back through the fires toward his van, leaving behind his defeated opponents. His mind floated on a sea of victory, and he reveled in it.

Former Site of the Green Construction Building, Field Medical Base

(Snapback— By using the tether to his or her body, an astral traveler can return to the corporeal shell in an amount of time that is effectively instantaneous. This has the advantage of being far faster than regular astral travel, but has been reported to "sting like the dickens.")

Skye was stunned momentarily as he felt his spirit hit his body and nearly crack into pieces with the force of his arrival. For a terrifying instant, it felt like his soul would be shattered by the impact, and everything was a searing hot agony as he lay on his cot. He hurt so much he couldn't even think, and that is the true nightmare to telepaths. However, despite the agony, the sting of his danger sense going off like the fricken Fourth of July inside his skull pounded its way through, and his body reacted to that impulse without his agonizing mind's further consent, flipping his legs up off the cot and sending his whole body heels over head just in time for the sound of steel hitting stone at high speed to pierce his ears.

The agony passed its intense initial stage to call out less desperately from the background as his mind got back into kilter. Just in time, as another scream from his danger sense sent him rolling to the side and flipping backward blindly from the intense threat he'd yet to actually see. He used the space he'd bought himself to take a deep breath and force his ESP into functionality. It came with difficulty and an intense headache, but the restoration of sight was like some great opiate to Skye's mind, and he was able to deal with all the pain. What he could not deal with was the piece of really sharp metal heading directly for his skull.

A quick twisting dodge saved his head from being impaled, but whatever was attacking him didn't stop with that, and he let his ESP guide him through a series of dodges that soon even his own forebrain couldn't follow anymore. One moment he was flipping to the side to avoid a blade, the next he was throwing himself through a desperate roll to avoid another. Talloned claws and spears jabbed at him in a flurry so fast that he had to fall back, their speed far beyond his ability to dodge. All around him people were screaming, spirits flaring in terror everywhere threatening to disrupt his senses, no room left in his mind for anything but keeping a step ahead of the incessant attacks. His assailant wasn't letting up, and Skye retreated as quickly as possible through a series of nimble backflips, panic creeping up on him as he began to realize why exactly he was having so much trouble identifying his attacker.

The moment's reprieve bought by his retreat gave Skye enough time to pry open his eyes for a more mundane glance at the being able to attack with impunity through his ESP, to strike without him being able to see it at all, and to seek his head without a single malicious thought entering the ether. Though the floodlights and road flares the emergency personnel had brought in provided only dim light, his eyes still filled with tears against the pain of vision, the ordeal earning Skye a glance at the murderous beast even now staring at him. It was a robot.

"Why did it have to be a fucking robot?" he asked himself, desperation creeping into his voice as his senses began to tell him that the possible futures including his survival were evaporating like morning dew from the endless grassy field of what-might-be. The depth of the shit he'd landed in now could only be measured in fathoms, with the mechanical monstrosity taking a moment out, almost certainly analyzing his movement patterns to devise a way of trapping him. Skye used the moment for a number of different things.

First, he took in the monster's appearance while his eyes still held out. Before he snapped them shut against the burning the light was giving them, he knew that the thing was no ordinary attack droid. The light-frame beast was neither heavily armored nor particularly durable-looking, a fact that belied the terrifying effectiveness it had for its specially intended purpose. The lack of armor could be quickly contributed to the fact that the thing was constructed entirely of a jet-black plastic invisible to ESP, much as the mind trap Robin had once flaunted was. The remaining bunch of highly advanced pistons and other mechanisms were partially exposed through the minimalist design (that plastic is expensive!) but were none the less highly effective at moving the machine quite nimbly on its eight legs.

Each of its six, spindly, elongated upper limbs carried some kind of slicing or striking device behind the gripping claws that passed for its hands, with the two hind legs being much more sturdily built, dedicated to walking only. The body was a bundle of machinery enclosed in a frame of stiff pipes that would protect the inner workings from a bad fall or other such trauma, and the head was a nondescript spheroid with a single glowing eye. In all, it was around the size of really big horse. The overall construction told Skye that it was meant to be frightening, a weapon of terror that sacrificed pure efficiency for the unbelievable advantage of striking fear into foes, much like that he was feeling right now.

To be sure, the very next thing he did was ask Vera if she could hack the thing, always hopeful that it could be as easy as that. Much as he expected, she informed him that it was hardened against data assault, not even possessing a wireless connection port that she might attempt access through. Unless he could find a way to jack her into it, she couldn't even try, and the thing wasn't exactly going to stand still and let him attach his mini-hacker computer to its hard drive.

Next he went quickly through an inventory of his mind, trying to find out what was working after the beating he'd been putting it through. His PV was still shot, that endlessly hungry pit would be busy for a while yet clearing the sheer volume of hate he'd drawn from Raven, which was typical. The thing that plagued his existence wouldn't even be there for him in a situation where he could actually use it, a mind clear of terror being much preferable to the ice water that numbed his body right now. Other than that, his options were still limited.

Even if they would have some effect on this thing, (which of course, they wouldn't) Skye didn't have enough telepathic juice left in his whole brain to create a microthread of concentrated thought ribbon. The thing didn't have a brain of any sort that he could influence, besides which he didn't have enough telepathic energy for that either. Honestly, considering how much damage he'd done to his mind with the extreme overreaching he pulled with the demon, he was fucking lucky he could even move right now, not that it came as much of a comfort considering the way that thing was staring at him, adjusting its program for his dodging style. It left him with only one recourse, and he'd be hard pressed to use that when he couldn't even really see the thing.

Skye calmed himself without the benefit of his PV, remembering that more than just his life hung in the balance here. Slowly so as not to prompt the thing to give up its self-reprogramming by transforming himself into a threat, he drew his service blaster and concentrated all his ability on detecting the thing. He'd seen that it was about twenty feet in front of him, on the very perhiperal of where his clairvoyance had any real resolution, but the same space to his senses might as well have been empty. And hey, not that convenient kind of empty that was a void, a lack of everything that would define its location by absence—that would be too easy. No, this damn thing simply wasn't there, the place it was supposed to be like any other bit of timespace in the ether, the mark of a truly ingenious design. It was so still now that it wasn't even disturbing the air, something that, along with his danger sense, was all that had allowed him to dodge it before!

Deciding there was nothing to it but to try it the hard way, he opened his eyes again, the already tender nerves jolting him with agony, but granting him a vision of its position that he held firmly in his mind after he snapped his eyes shut. Without further delay, he pointed the blaster and opened fire in one quick movement. In an instant he had five shots off, dead on into the thing's eye, hoping to fry its circuitry with the hot beams. His senses could see the beams, could detect where the ultra-hot rays had left trails of ozone as they incinerated the air in brilliant flashes, and Skye recognized the other reason it went without armor as his heart dropped out of his chest. The beams had curved around the stationary robot, the twisting spears of light defining pathways that formed a spherical shell around it. The fucking thing had and Electromagnetic Defense Field.

Skye was not a religious person, he'd seen too much of the miltiverse to put all that much stock in such things. However, right then, as the machine began to stir slowly from its adjustments, he wouldn't mind a little divine intervention from any higher beings that might be listening. As he reluctantly tasted the possible futures with his ESP, he found that pretty well his only hope of survival would be for Raven to show up and pull his keyster out of the oven, though even that might be pipe dream at this point. He'd used the snapback the second he'd finished warning her, nothing else would have done to satisfy his danger sense, but he'd surprised her, and he knew that anyone would hesitate in that situation. With the temporal distortion between here and there, it could be minutes before her soul struck her body, and this thing was coming for him now.

That was it for his thoughts, because a silent leap from the thing had his danger sense flaring again. He flipped back, trying his best to vary his movements and confuse the thing's expectations, but as blow after lighting-quick blow shot in, the weakness of his technique became apparent. He'd trained his body to dodge on instantaneous command of his danger sense, something that served him extraordinarily well as far as just escaping harm went. However, now that it came right down to it, his reaction to any particular attack was extremely predictable, with this implacable opponent knowing all his moves back to front after its little time-out that he'd been so powerless to cut short. So it was that it didn't take long at all.

After a series of unseen blows that Skye did his level best to be unpredictable about dodging, the thing baited him to a backflip away from a leg-slash, then followed through with a lighting-quick spear stab that he had to roll across the round to escape. BINGO! The bastard was on him like no tomorrow, a huge claw coming down while he was helpless to evade, crushing his left shoulder and breaking bones with an awful crackling sound, pinning him to the ground as he screamed in agony. With no respite, he twisted his body away from a stab on the left only for its right leg to come around and cleave a decisive spear all the way through his guts until it hit the rock underneath him with a clang. He cried out in pain, but no sound came out, the shock to his body choking off his air as the thick metal spike in his gut twisted mercilessly, grinding his intestines.

That was it, he couldn't breath, he couldn't think, his ESP was blacking out, and there was nothing left for him to do. Vera shouted into his mind, urging him to do anything at all, but even that voice became distant after a moment. His eyes bulged open, taking in the emotionless circular eye glaring down at him as even his regular vision began to fade, a final bladed claw coming down on the right for a finishing skull-crusher. The last gasp of his ESP held a mysterious sensation, but he was too far gone to recognize it for what it was—Hope.

Suddenly, the weight of the thing was lifted from his body in an agonizing jerk, his gut exploding with bloodspray as the spike was ripped free, his hand reaching reflexively to cover the hole as he gasped in air past the blood in his throat. His ESP snapped back into clarity, and he got a vision of black energy flinging something across the room before he realized that Raven had indeed come through.

In the back of his mind, he could hear Vera directing the nanomachine reconstructors to maximum efficiency, but right then he was more worried by what he saw from Raven. She was kneeling on the ground, breathing heavily after the mild exertion of tossing that thing across the strewn rubble and boulders of the disaster site. In that moment, he knew her powers were tanked too, and that they were both a hell of a long way from safe. He would never know if it was the blood loss, the intense agony, or just some messed-up desire dredged from his subconscious, but the generic aura-vision he was using to see where she knelt some thirty feet away altered autonomously to show him her soul instead, and the breathtaking sight of that dark vision eased his pain somewhat. As he took in the four gorgeous lavender eyes, he couldn't help but wish he had a little more confidence in their ability to survive this to go along with that view, the sound of shifting rubble and the squeal of only slightly damaged servos telling him there wasn't much reason for any.

Cliffhanger? Yes. Too bad, I'm too tired to write anymore now, just feel lucky I didn't cut off when Skye was fading out like I wanted to. Look forward to the next installment in a week rather than two plus, at least hopefully. How will Raven save Skye? Will she even be able to? What the hell happened to Beast Boy and Cyborg? Will Slade get away scott-free!!?? Answers to all this and more in the final part of the 'Gang Wars'/'Long Night' story arc—Dawn.