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.

20. Puting it Together pt1: Diagnosis

Intro: Greetings readers, and welcome again. I would like to start by mentioning that it would seem my muse has returned to me considering how quickly I managed to churn this one out. At the same time, I managed to put together what I must admit is one of my favorite stretches of writing. As I constructed the long, first person section wherein Skye diagnoses the extent of Terra's mental destruction, I let my creativity, and my inner nerd, reign with complete freedom. In lieu of this, you may want some reference material handy to keep track of the biology vocabulary. Enjoy, I sure as hell know I did.

(New numbering system. Eventually I'll apply it in retrograde to my earlier stuff)

Section 5: Putting it Together

Chapter 20 (Section 5, Part 1): Diagnosis

Titans Tower Med-bay

The stark and sterile room was the only med-bay space that hadn't been used recently, and had been the home of Terra's body for some few hours now. Somewhere, somehow, the decision was made to keep this one strictly inside the Titans family, and so there were no doctors, no nurses, only a few teens gathered around the very motionless breathing corpse on its high-tech dais. Right now, only Robin and Beast Boy were present, though at one time or another each of the five had seen her and spent a little time watching over her. What they saw was something that takes a little description.

As of yet, there had been little in the way of time or experience available to apply to Terra's aid, and so she had received only the most general medical attention that Cyborg and the med-bay's automated medical program were able to throw together when she came in at the crack of dawn. The advanced diagnostic equipment was capable of detecting subtle neurotoxins and performing complex genetic analyses, but when it came to actually aidful treatment to the ailments afflicting the young woman, its abilities were limited. Basically she'd been given an intravenous drip to begin combating the malnutrition and extreme exhaustion and gotten another coat of disinfectant on the lesion to her ribcage that Robin had unwittingly caused, but was otherwise so far unattended. When someone had complained that they should do more, Cyborg put on an inscrutably sour countenance and explained that, if one discounted the clear lack of a guiding intelligence, there was little more she needed other than twenty good meals, some exercise, and a bath. Of course, he used a much more… 'colorful' expression, but you get the idea.

So it was that Terra wound up looking very much the same as she had the night before… if somewhat less conscious. She still wore the Slade model bodysuit, and it still clung to her curves a little more tightly than was strictly appropriate, and so Robin had pulled a thin white sheet up over her to her neck. In the end, this was more directly necessary to hide the way her ribs stood out than anything else, as not even Beast Boy had had anything but sickeningly severe concern on his mind since she'd first gotten back. There had been the initial exuberance in having wrested her from Slade's grip, and the natural elation to have physical proof that she wasn't lost forever as a transmuted slab of silicone, but as it became clear that the person they knew had not returned with her body, that had all dissipated into something of the same shock Raven had eventually experienced. They would never know the true horror of feeling that an old friend's essence, her core being, had been ground into a featureless stump of its former glory, but they could certainly feel the sting of loss as fresh and new as the evening after the battle in that volcano. In fact, at this point, there was only a single thread of hope remaining, and the way Beast Boy had been harping on it for the past two hours of watch duty on Terra's body was driving Robin to his wit's end.

"So do you really think that Skye dude can help Terra?" Beast Boy asked, the most pathetically hopeful/depressed tone imaginable coloring his voice with what he wanted the answer to be. Considering that this was about his thirtieth rendition of the inquiry this hour, he should really have known what the answer was, because Robin wasn't exactly varying his responses.

"Damnit B.B. stop asking me that!" Robin demanded in exasperation, sleep deprivation and the constant churning of his plethora of concerns combining to jerk forth an unusually violent response to Beast Boy's needling. He'd pulled third watch when they were deciding the shifts for following Raven's instructions, which meant he'd only had four hours to sleep since Raven had gotten back with Terra and Skye in tow. He'd spent more than half of that making sure Starfire was comfortable (arranging for a heating blanket and some extra comforters to make it onto her bed and staying with her until she was asleep) and the other half on the mainframe consulting with city officials about recovery from the extensive damage caused by combat between Slade, this mysterious bunch Skye was after, and themselves, doing his best to calm down his superiors in the city government and his opposite number in the mundane police force. He'd had to lie far more in the past few days than he was even remotely comfortable with, but he couldn't exactly go around telling people they were subjects of a minor alien invasion, at least not yet.

Hell, just trying to contemplate the enormity of the problem that this Skye character had drudged out of the shadows of their city was more than enough to bend his mind on, but the added stress of worrying about Star was seriously making him sick. To have, at the same time as all of this, Beast Boy's constant and insufferable desire for reassureance on a subject Robin knew nothing about was simply too much, and he still seethed with the force of his released stress for some seconds after he'd finished shouting. The green on was understandably shaken, but recovered to face Robin's ire with indignation that his own exceptional exhaustion did nothing to blunt.

"Hey, don't blow up at me man, I'm not the one who destroyed the town and I'm definitely not the one who put Starfire into hypo-whateveria! I just… I just wanted to know what you thought okay?" His response was surprisingly cutting, and Robin felt his anger melt into the pool of fatigue in his chest without further motivation, releasing it all with a single exasperated sigh as he leaned back onto one of the rather blank walls.

"God… I know B.B., and I'm sorry, it's just that you asked me the same thing twenty nine times since I started counting halfway through my watch, and every single time I said the same thing: 'I have no idea Beast Boy, I've only known the guy as long as you have.'" Robin's tone was heavily burdened with his worries, and now it was Beast Boy who regretted blowing up, putting it down to their mutual lack of sleep as Robin continued.

"I mean, what do you think? You've been here with her since she arrived, what, six hours ago? You probably know more about what's wrong with her than I do. Great idea too, staying up through every watch instead of just taking your own, shows a lot of commitment—"

"I don't have to take that from you Mr. 'I'll go to sleep when I know the city is safe.'"

"Yeah, okay, sorry. I'm just saying, all I know about her condition is that she takes orders from Slade without words and without considering her own life. Raven and Skye said her mind's been erased, Skye said he can probably reverse the process, but he wouldn't promise me anything. Raven also said that we have to watch her in case Slade slipped some secret commands into her mind and she goes rogue on us in the middle of the Tower. That is the full and total extent of my knowledge on this situation, so would you just stop asking me already?"

Beast Boy looked on mildly wide-eyed in the face of Robin's almost frantic admission of ignorance. To hear the guy say he was out of the loop on anything was rare, and Beast Boy suddenly realized the heart of Robin's previous explosion was just how much this lack of knowledge was bugging him. With all the other stuff on his mind, his uncertainty on whether or not one of his friends was really and truly gone forever must be just a little too much to handle. He knew it alone was more than he himself could handle by far.

Always in the past there had been some hope of finding a cure for that statue, of getting Terra back that way. He'd relied on this hope to keep the thought of loosing her for good out of his mind and allow him to function—it was the only thing that had let him even begin to… what had Cy said?... 'make eyes' at Raven. Now his last hope, the one tiny ray of light that held off the dark, crushing certainty of never speaking with Terra ever again, was some guy he didn't even really know, who was currently as still as death upstairs on the couch. Only Raven's assurances had kept them from putting him down here too, and this, along with the none too small coating of his own blood he'd sported, completely failed to inspire Beast Boy with confidence. He expressed this depressing thought as a long sigh that Robin couldn't help but notice.

"Sorry B.B. I really whish there was more I could say to cheer you up—" just then, Robin's communicator began to beep out that theme with, after so very long without sleep, what seemed like a great deal more volume than usual. He practically jumped out of his skin before realizing it was the alarm he set and explaining as much to the green one. "That's it for me man, I've gotta get the mayor back on the line. He smells something rotten, and it's all I can do to assure him that we're not withholding any information. I hate to lie, but if you recall—"

"Terra's still technically a criminal, right?" Beast Boy finished for him, and the two exchanged looks of mutual deep sadness.

"Yeah… well, we'll get that all cleared up man, don't worry. I'm sure Skye can read her mind or something and we'll find out it was all a deeply involved brainwashing scheme by Slade. If we take evidence like that to court… well, we're the Teen Titans… they'll pretty much have to believe us. So hey, cheer up, you get the next watch alone again, so kick back and try not to fall asleep."

"HA! Like I could really sleep with all this crap on my mind," Beast Boy responded in exasperation as Robin pulled himself together and walked over to the door. He stopped before leaving and looked back with a half-serious half-joking look on his face and responded.

"I have a lot of experience with stress, and let me tell you this: never underestimate what you can sleep through. The night Slade caught me—after the sparring and mouthing off and so forth—I passed right out while trying to think of a way to escape that wouldn't kill all of you in the process. So really man… try to stay awake." And then Robin was gone.

Beast Boy contemplated this knowledge for a moment, feeling the gravity of the warning heavily on his shoulders. Then, that pretty well faded away as he dismissed the whole thing as some kind of leadership motivational bullshit. That Robin could really ham it up sometimes. In any case, Beast Boy decided that it was better to be safe than sorry, and was soon in the form of a very large German Sheppard, pacing back and forth at the foot of the bed. His eyes felt unusually heavy.

(Terra)

It was the insignificantly tiny bit of personal volition still clinging to the inside of Terra's skull, and It was currently confused. Confusion being one of the three states It was still capable of experiencing, this was not particularly unusual, except for the fact that this stretch of confusion was by far the longest (not to say It posses any real ability to remember any previous states, but the extended confusion was producing a response of a kind). It wanted the voice or the master to return, for then It could be content again. At the same time, either of these forces also meant a return to pain

, and so It was caught in a quandary miles beyond its miniscule ability to contemplate.

The Voice had not completely abandoned It, but was muffled to such an extent that It could not comprehend the orders the Voice had for It, and so It could take no action beyond the original orders to keep breathing etc. It was like a silver fog had drawn between It and the Voice, a fog that would not be penetrated by the Voice's greatest efforts. The Master had been absent since It had recovered from the blackout, and so the overriding orders that he might provide also were absent. As long as both of these things remained true, It would continue to lie still and hover on the brink of consciousness.

It was aware of the other forms sharing the area with it, but It had not the Voice to tell it if they were friend, foe, or collateral, and so It could take no action along those core orders either. It was counting off the last hour until it would attempt to contact the base on its own, to get into communication with the Master, but it was otherwise without task. This changed suddenly.

"Terra…" whispered the Creator directly into the back of its mind, one source of command that It had not encountered yet, but which was every bit as dominating as any of the others. "The time for rest is past dear child. Arise and come back to the base… what's this? A mental block on my compulsions? Who could have… this isn't the work of that little mystic whore… what the hell is going on?"

It didn't know what the Creator was talking about, but they weren't orders, and thus of no concern. In turn, the Creator didn't bother to break the connection to Its mind while talking with someone else. Considering that there was no one else in Its universe, that would have to be the Master.

"That would explain why the command sets you requested haven't taken effect yet. Those insufferable children seem to have obtained the aid of a mental surgeon of some ability, though the work shows little real power or creativity. Well OF COURSE I can override the block, do you think me some rank amateur? Besides, as I just mentioned, the block is barely sufficient to contain my compulsions, it is a trifling to strip it away. Please, don't rush me. You'll have your toy back soon enough."

With that the Creator's voice ceased, and It felt his hand on its mind once more. There was a time when this touch would have been repugnant, another time when it would have been terrifying, but It was far gone from being able to feel these things, and the touch was merely one more alteration on the malleable pap left of a consciousness. A red heat swept away the gray fog without effort, and suddenly the Voice was back with full force. In an instant It was once more in a state of silent, dead contentment, for It had orders again.

Terra, or rather, her body under the control of the various forces within it, opened her eyes to orient herself to the world after so long on the edge of consciousness. The next moment, she was up and out of bed, slowed momentarily by the pain in her ribs before she suppressed this and steadied herself for the task ahead. Her face held the empty viciousness imposed by the same thing that gave her eyes the unsettling red glow, and she strutted and stretched for a few moments, giving the bodysuit ample opportunity to show off her mid-pubescent assets. Pity or a blessing that there was no one around to see the display.

Without further delay she armed herself, yanking three lonely flower pots away from the window and stripping them silently of their soil. Immediately she was deadly again, three orbiting globes of soft soil holding oh so very much potential for destruction in her yellow, telekinetic grip. Striding purposefully toward the door, she glanced down to notice a very large green dog sleeping peacefully at the foot of the hospital bed. There was nothing left in Terra's head capable of recognizing the familiarly colored animal, and only the pressing urgency of her other orders stayed her hand from executing a being so clearly marked as 'enemy' by the network of compulsions functioning as her mind.

She was out and into the hallway, the space completely abandoned since the urgent business of just a day and a half past. It had not been cleaned, and so she added to her arsenal from every spec of dirt in the grout as well as a few more potted plants that enjoyed the sun of the huge panoramic windows, and now she had coiling spirals of soil circling her in randomly resizing loops from her feet up to her head, not unlike a giant snake flying around her body in lazy circles.

Easily she formed two pry bars from the dirt and jammed them into the elevator, yanking it open with irresistible force on the solidified soil. As she stepped out into the vacant shaft, a perfectly smooth platform formed beneath her feet and conveyed her downward so quickly that her hair was blown up above her. In no time at all then she'd reached the mainframe floor, only a few very secure floors below the entrance dock and parking garage. Prying those doors open as well, she found herself in the hallway outside the mainframe room.

A dozen automatic cannons deployed from the ceiling and walls, training on her along with a recording of Cyborg's voice advising her to stand down unless she 'wanted her ass cooked blacker than a Harlem block party.' She ignored the advice with a forward handspring that threw off the targeting system completely while she struck out with her counter attack. As plasmised hydrogen splashed around her in furiously hot beams, the snake of soil threaded between the cannons, sprouting dirt spines that pierced energy regulators and clogged focusing nozzles, silencing the entire attack array before she'd finished her fourth front flip. As she recalled the spiraling halo of deadly grime, her body remembered a habit that transcended her conscious mind, and she pushed the excess hair over her shoulder as she finished striding calmly down the hallway. The silent alarms would have gone off now, and Cyborg would no doubt gather whoever was functioning to see what was going on down here. That gave her only moments to complete her mission and escape.

Without delay, she dug six, one foot long spines of dirt into either side of the vault-like doors at the end of the hall, each one hitting with the resounding crack of irresistible force meeting immoveable object, forming a powerful grip on the reinforced titanium by piercing it with diamond hard prongs. Groaning with the effort, she pulled back on the prongs with every bit of power she'd managed to recover so far, her eyes and hands glowing an iridescent yellow with the effort. There was a long moment of strain, then the sound of buckling metal, a terrible screeching as the hinging and locking bars shattered the less durable material of the walls. She released her grip with a gasp and the door fell in on itself, limp, soft soil scattering gently across the space as her power left it. Allowing herself two deep breaths as she knelt in weakness on the floor, she pulled herself up and took the last steps into the mainframe room.

The computer equipment within ranged from one side of a 20' by 20' room to the other, with multiple terminals free standing in long rows all through the middle. A small dirt storm in here would cause enough damage to require a complete overhaul, costing the city at least as much as the property damage to the city in the past week would, and crippling the Teen Titan's crime fighting efforts, as well as the research programs of several major universities and private firms that rented processing time (had to get full use out of it after all). Terra's otherwise fair face was tainted by the sadistic grin provided by the presence riding within her at the thought of such sweet, if sadly indirect, revenge. Had she recovered further, this entity would simply have had her shift the Tower's foundations and dump the structure into the bay, annihilating the Titans and everything else here in one fell swoop. Alas, there was naught the time for such deviltry, and a blow at the soft underbelly here would simply have to do before she made good her escape.

Terra's eyes glowed a disconcerting combination of yellow and red as she lifted her arsenal of dirt off the crumpled vault door and prepared to pepper the sensitive electronics with a billion tiny missiles. Suddenly, there was a flash of silver behind the red and yellow, and the grin evaporated. First the dirt fell from the air, then Terra's body fell to the ground as limp as a sack of potatoes and as motionless as a dropped doll.

Slade's Secret Base

"GAAHHHAGAHHHH!" Blood screeched and gurgled incoherently as he thrashed about in his seat. With his hands gripped on his skull and uncontrollable spasmodic motions wracking his body, he was the very picture of burning agony. Slade was transfixed momentarily by the inherent beauty of Blood's pain, but leapt into action to protect his investment right around the time Blood's spasming forced him from his seat and set him to rolling on the ground.

With one powerful hand, Slade gripped the slight man's upper arm and held it perfectly still as, with his other hand, he stabbed a hypodermic needle full of powerful sedative mercilessly into his arm. It was three seconds from when he finished depressing the plunger before Blood was quiet on the floor. In disgust, Slade threw him where he gripped him with enough force to turn him over and roll him away slightly before Slade stood back up.

There was a moment of quiet contemplation for Slade. The red haze began to creep up behind his eyes as his mind churned over the situation, and when he could contain it no longer, it boiled out into an explosion to rival any volcano. With an ear piercing bellow of fury, he turned in the small room and thrust his fist into the wall with all the considerable strength in his body. There was a terrible screech as the soft metal gave under his fist, insulation bubbling forth in foamy waves to automatically seal the gaps as he pulled his fist away, rage not entirely dissipated but at least momentarily satisfied by the delightful throbbing in his knuckles. The dent would join its twin from a few feet down, the one born of a similar outburst involving a certain message etched into his back that he hadn't noticed till he'd seen a security feed of the room he was in. As he continued to seethe in silence over these continual mysterious defeats, Slade pressed a button on his belt that would call robots to attend to Blood. After a few moments, he pressed it again.

"Computer, what's wrong with the robots?" he asked annoyedly as he pressed the button multiple more times and continued to receive no response. The computer's audio function also failed to respond, and now his suspicion was powerfully aroused. Sliding into a command chair in this, his operations control room, he ran his hands over a keyboard with ease, long used to the effect of his armored gloves on typing. Making several diagnostic queries he was met with the same error message over and over again, and his heart froze in a combination or hate, uncertainty, and oddly enough… joy. The message returned by every command he attempted was simply: ready for round two?

Titans Tower Mainframe Floor

The elevator reached the mainframe floor and dinged, revealing immediately the three young men for the simple reason that the door was jammed open. This situation pretty well ruined their entrance, witch more or less hinged on the way elevator doors open all slowly and allow for a great deal of flourish upon egress, but they managed to recover quickly enough and the three came in with a bit of style none the less. Cyborg's huge metallic frame provided a barrier of sorts as his firing stance took up the entire narrow security hallway. On his left an enormous green tiger skulked and growled dangerously, and on his right, Robin's stacked form sported an array of weaponry ready to be flung from behind the cover Cy provided. It took them an extended pause after their dynamic opening before they realized there was no threat present.

Cyborg advanced first, taking in the destruction afflicted on his precious security lasers along with the pitting and scaring to the walls and floor, and then basically trying his very best not to think about what was left of the mainframe after this. Even to think about a tragedy like that would have sent him into forced shutdown to stave off fatal processing malfunction.

Robin was quick on his heels, an undeniably sour expression matching his dark thoughts as he considered the magnitude of the screw up they'd managed here. The one thing they'd had to do in the process of fixing Terra, i.e. keep an eye on her, and they'd managed to fail with flying colors. Raven and that other guy, Skye, who didn't even have a good reason he could see, had pretty well killed themselves getting her back, then asked them to do ONE thing, and they couldn't even manage that. His professional pride burned with his internal embarrassment even as his mind burned with fatigue. In the end though, he didn't necessarily blame anyone, though this didn't stop him from knowing exactly whose fault it was.

Beast Boy… well, lets just leave how he's feeling to the imagination. Simply take massive inferiority complex and add in continued failure to appease his protective nature and you have a cocktail of turmoil that would bake anyone's emotions. He continued to sulk in tiger shape as he brought up the rear, reluctant to see what his own undeniable foul up had resulted in.

"Oh my sweet lord!" Cyborg exclaimed suddenly, and he instantly drew the attention of the other two, who began to search frantically for what had shaken him so. "Look at all this DIRT! Do you know what happens to this equipment when dirt gets in it man? —nothing good let me tell you!" and Cyborg continued to lament the layers of filth all over everything as the other two rolled their eyes at the false alarm and continued to carefully make their way toward the shattered doors to the mainframe vault.

"I didn't know she could do that… not with a few pounds of potting soil," Robin commented idly as he pulled ahead of Cyborg's steadily slowing pace and advanced on the broken metal, unwilling to wait for the bigger man to finish gazing in horror at his busted toys. There was no motion anywhere, no sound, and so it was rather clear they didn't need to use him as a shield from flying blades of murderous grime. "For that matter, I didn't know she could explode a building and drop it on thousands of innocent people, so I suppose we have Slade's unique brand of creativity to blame for these new applications of her powers."

"Dude…" Beast Boy finally took his own shape again to add his two cents, "I am so going to make Slade pay for using her like this. I… I can't believe I fell asleep… she didn't… I mean, how did she get up? You saw her, she was completely out of it. Raven said Skye's treatment was supposed to keep this from happening!"

"Give it a rest B.B., Raven also said Skye felt it was essential she was watched," admonished Cyborg as he poked a piece of automatic plasma cannon he'd yanked the rest of the way off the wall. "Just face up to the fact that you overreached yourself, fell asleep at your post, and now probably handed Slade a fantastic counterstrike on a silver platter, as well as more than likely letting Terra slip back into his hands after Raven and Skye bled their powers dry getting her back to us."

"JESUS!" exclaimed Beast Boy in horror as Cyborg meted out his heartless evaluation in a disinterested tone as he prodded at the circuitry in his automatic cannon. "How can you say stuff like that? She's Terra, our friend, and I know I messed up but DAMN!"

"I can say things like that…" and Cyborg grew a slight grin and fed a little bit of humor into his tone, "because unlike you two chumps, I have a direct feed from the security cameras."

"CYBORG!" Beast Boy leapt up and landed a resounding smack on the back of the plated side of his skull, the ringing clang adding an odd note to the big man's deep laughter at the combined relief and fury possessing the small man. They went through a series of familiar motions involving slaps and name callings as the tension diffused from the dirty, torn up hallway, the joke actually lifting B.B.'s spirits considerably… up until the point Robin dampened it all.

"Stop it you two," he snapped out authoritatively, and the two ceased their antics immediately, the gravity of the situation coming back to them with unpleasant immediacy. "Cyborg, next time, don't wait to tell us that the situation has diffused, this is serious and I don't care how much you want to see the look on Beast Boy's face, the mission comes first."

"But… her vitals were fine and I just…" he tried to explain himself, to make it clear that he hadn't been taking any unreasonable risks, but Robin cut him off in an exhausted monotone as he knelt over something hidden by the bulk of the broken doors, most obviously Terra.

"I don't think you've realized it yet, but just because there's nothing immediately wrong with Terra in a medical sense doesn't mean she isn't in very real danger of some kind of mental death that Skye can't cure. I don't know, you don't know, and I don't think either of us is willing to take any chances on this."

"Oh… yeah… I…" Cyborg had no more excuses, his face going pale at the thought of just how stupid what he'd just done really was. Perpetuating a ruse like that in this situation was pure folly, and he'd done it for kicks and to distract him from what a bummer all the destroyed equipment was. Internally, he put it down to his relief that something had stopped her before she could annihilate the mainframe, then took a great deal of interest in his synthetic legs as he considered his mistake in silence.

"Well, I guess you shouldn't really sweat it man," Robin continued, "we've all been making mistakes, mostly because we all need rest. You thought this would be funny, Beast Boy fell asleep at his post, and I let Beast Boy pull quadruple shifts without even offering him the stimulant pills I've been using to keep myself going. A lot of stupidity to be sure, but thankfully no one's suffered any permanent…"

"Robin?" Beast Boy asked, concern blossoming on his face as he watched Robin's expression change, unable to stop his heart from starting to race as his leader gained a particularly panicked visage.

"Jesus, her pulse is fading!" Robin snapped when he finally got over his shock, never having truly believed anything like that could have happened. He'd kind of figured Skye would have a contingency for Slade trying something like this, he just struck him as that kind of guy, and so Robin hadn't worried unduly and had been ticked more that they weren't able to contain her till the contingency kicked in. Now his heart was pounding out of his chest, masking the undeniable sensation of Terra's pulse fading under his finger with each consecutive beat.

Leaping up, he dashed over to the elevator, calling back to his stunned friends for them to bring Terra up to the medical floor. He had to wake Skye, there simply was no way they could wait any longer. He'd probably be feeling a little less panic if he had the slightest clue how he was going to manage it.

Titans Tower Common Room

Robin stumbled off the elevator, his haste conspiring with his fatigue to overcome him with uncommon clumsiness. He regained his feet with practiced agility that thankfully refused to abandon him despite the condition he was in, rolling to his feet and into a dash that carried him out of the dorm hallways and toward the common area. Not bothering to kill any of his momentum, he burst into the larger room and leapt from halfway across the space through an arc that cleared the couch by quite an appreciable amount and landed him between it and the TV in a crouch. He wasted no time turning to face their houseguest.

Skye was stretched out in exactly the same position he'd held when Robin had personally dragged him in here and dumped him. Cyborg had escorted Raven to her room (she'd been semiconscious at best by the time she'd finished a very rough recounting of the night she'd just had), Beast Boy had naturally hefted Terra down to the med-bay, and Starfire had been able to get herself to bed (with a highly appreciated and very discreet offer to wait up for him before passing out), leaving the leader with the none too pleasant task of dragging (for his static lift ability didn't lend itself to guys bigger than he was) Skye's completely motionless and badly injured lump of self down to the couch he'd requested.

Robin had been plagued by a myriad of concerns, not limited to the evidence of extensive bleeding (which had dried up completely by the time the hover pad arrived) and the crazy numb feeling he got in his fingers when he gripped the man under the shoulders and yanked him to the roof access, but had dropped these in favor of haste. Raven's words had been quite specifically 'Don't worry about him, just dump him on the couch and he'll be fine.' Who would he have been to object when there was a pretty girl, scratch that, two pretty girls, both seriously injured, both in need of his immediate attention?

These memories passed through Robin's hazy mind in a flash as he advanced on Skye's body, more than a little leery about how to wake a complete stranger from an induced regenerative coma, but way too worried about Terra to let it stop him. Deciding to start with an classic, he reached out to place a hand on the guy's shoulder, as a good shake usually got things like this done in his experience. However, he wasn't prepared for just how this would work out.

No sooner had he lain his hand against the incredibly soft cloth of the guy's open, black button down than a strong grip whacked him in the back of the head with a crushing squeeze and smashed his face into the upholstered backing of the couch, all quicker than he could even begin to follow considering what an utter, absolute surprise it was. His belated reflexes were about to flip him out of the grip while scattering various pointy bits when the cold metal barrel of a weapon suddenly pressed into the soft bottom part of his chin next to his throat, freezing him in place, face firmly pressed into couch. He couldn't breath that well, but that was his least concern as his mind was still trying to catch up with his reflexes, which had switched him from full combat to full freeze-for-his-life inside of a second point five.

Two whole seconds ticked out in motionless strain before anything changed even the slightest quiver from that deadly static position. Then the grip was released and the weapon removed from its painfully harsh pressure against the bottom of his chin.

"Robin… what the hell?" Skye asked, more of himself than of his host, who was currently too busy rubbing his aching neck and trying to catch his breath to answer anyway. "I'm sorry, reflexes… I'm sure you understand," he tried to explain away almost blowing Robin's head off, his tone oddly different than it had been the last time Robin had spoken with him. Robin wondered why something so trivial as his tone would even occur to him when there were so many more important things to be done, and dismissed the odd thought from his mind as he motivated himself to speech.

"Whatever, there's no time!" Robin choked out, having spoken before he'd fully recovered his senses. He hadn't realized how much Skye's grip on his spine had disoriented him until such a simple and urgent message came out half-sputter. "Gah.. I mean, Terra—her condition has worsened!" He finally had it out, and he was more than a little gratified to see Skye take him completely serious.

The slightly larger guy peeled himself off the couch slowly, but by the grimace of pain on his face it was a great deal faster than he probably should have, and Robin could appreciate that. Gripping his crusted red undershirt in the place he'd apparently been wounded, he yanked himself to his feet without question and forced himself to take a step, then another. Robin apparently needn't explain any further, and this was confirmed when Skye waved him to silence when he tried to begin describing what had happened. Robin ended up deciding to keep his mouth shut, simply assuming that Skye was already getting a much better handle on this by utilizing those odd psychic powers of his than Robin could ever provide with words.

Despite the clearly achy, and thus badly slowed, manner in which Skye moved, the two of them were on their way down to the med-bay again within the minute.

Titan's Tower Med-Bay

"Damnit! What the hell is going on with her?" Cyborg asked in terrified frustration as the enormous computer terminal he was working at continued to return error messages and useless suggestions rather than action to help Terra's rapidly fading vitals. As it yet again advised him to seek professional medial aid, he smashed his fist into the keyboard in pure frustration, shattering the keys and readouts and badly denting the casing. The screen fuzzed and blipped out to blankness in perfectly reasonable response to his most recent imput, and then he had Beast Boy to contend with.

"You BROKE it! Terra's on that bed, DYING and you BROKE IT!" the little guy was nearly pulling his hair out in worry as the medical computer began to spark lethargically where Cyborg had dented it, gasping out with fizzling flashes his most immediate hope for Terra not expiring at the very moment he was supposed to have her back.

"Yeah, I did break it, because the useless piece of junk wasn't doing anything!" Cyborg shouted back, only marginally less frantic than Beast Boy. He could almost sense his friend's life slipping away, and he somehow felt the blame and ensuing guilt for that action landing most squarely upon his armored shoulders. His artificially enhanced ticker was rapidly exceeding it beating parameters as the various mechanical and organic fluids within him reached threshold pressures for his safety valves to pop. All that was boiling up within him and the green guy was quickly loosing his composure on the outside.

"My god, don't just stand there!" Beast Boy demanded, hopelessness quickly tainting his voice. "We've got to… we've got to do something!" he may not have known up from down just then, but this was one thing that was quite certain in his mind.

"I… I…" was all Cyborg could muster in reply, but it was enough, clearly indicating he was gone. Beast Boy left him in disgust to proceed into the other room, the one containing Terra, shutting the door behind him. At almost the same moment, the elevator door opened at the far end of the lobby space.

Robin was barely restraining his own perfectly reasonable desire to devolve into a frantic mess, a silent elevator ride with the super ice-cold Skye being the only thing keeping his head on his shoulders. A quick look at the statuesque Cyborg with his expression of complete emotional destruction and the badly damaged medical computer told Robin exactly how his efforts had gone, and he was burning with the urge to hurry Skye's conservative pace over to the room containing Terra.

Skye, for his part, looked totally unconcerned. He was actually the picture of reservation and tranquility (the emotionless kind, like death, not the pleasant kind, like a peaceful springtime field). Without quickening his pace, he walked over toward Terra's hospital room (never having been told which one it was) making a slight detour to pass close to Cyborg and give him a soft tap on his metal back. With the sound of that bloody metal glove hitting the big guy's armor plating, Cyborg's whole shape relaxed remarkably, as though all the spectacular, valve-bursting tension had been expelled in that single slight touch.

"She's going to be fine, so chill," muttered Skye, and once again Robin couldn't help but notice how different his voice sounded, once again wondering why that kept jumping out at him. With that however, Skye was on the move again, striding toward Terra's room and opening the door with a calm, efficient motion toward the keying mechanism. As it slid open to reveal a despondent Beast Boy leaning over a familiarly motionless Terra, Robin suddenly realized that Skye had said something important a second ago, and his powerfully stressed heart skipped a beat as the words tried to properly register in his brain.

As he muddled through that process, Skye proceeded into the room, unfazed by the horrendous beeping and buzzing of the vitals monitor next to the bed as everything finished fluctuating toward flatline. The ethereal calm of the man seemed to transcend the noise, even permeating the room as he reached out and placed a hand on Beast Boy's shoulder, interrupting him midway through muttered promises along the lines of 'never again if you just wake up,' and 'every single time if you just please don't leave me again.' Much as with Cyborg, the instant he touched Beast Boy, the younger guy froze as all the tension and stress left him in a cool instant, stranding him quite speechless after the sneak attack emotion draining.

"Try not to make any promises you can't keep, because she'll be fine, and you're going to have to honor them," muttered Skye calmly as he guided the green one away with the hand on his shoulder and took up the position he'd held next to Terra's bed. That was what he'd said, and with the repetition, Robin felt the words slam home into his own mind. She was going to be fine.

"Wait, does that mean you know what's wrong with her?" asked Robin, suddenly terribly curious as he rushed into the room and took up the opposite position from Skye on the other side of Terra's bed.

"I've know what was wrong with her since I first peeked down here from upstairs with my spirit vision. I fully diagnosed the problem during the elevator ride. And now, if you'll excuse me for a moment, this part, at least, will only take a moment." Skye's voice was not arrogant, it was not condescending, and it was not lecturing… nor was it friendly, jovial, or pleasant. It wasn't much of anything really, and its emptiness, Robin suddenly realized, was what had changed so much and drawn his attention so fiercely. While he'd fluctuated rather oddly between all of those things the day before (lord, was it really only yesterday?) he'd always had some edge or another in his voice. Now… nothing. It was one of the creepiest things Robin had ever seen, and he marveled at this until he was given a much more immediate reason to marvel the next moment.

In a smooth motion, Skye flipped Terra onto her stomach, revealing the back of the bodysuit with its mysterious curve-hugging contours and odd metal studs that traced down her spinal column. Without a word of explanation, Skye held out his right hand, the intricate silver meshing of his glove and the enormous gemstone on the back of the palm sparkling in the bright fluorescent lighting. A glow of impossibly fine silver threads began around the gem, the infinite loops and spirals growing out at an alarming rate. In a moment, these strands, more like bundles of spider silk than ribbons as all the previous manifestations Robin had seen had been, had crawled forth to envelop Skye's right index finger in a glowing sheath of finely interlaced threads.

In one quick motion, Skye placed his gloved finger at the very bottom base of Terra's spine, just above the buttock, then swept it up her back in a slow, deliberate movement. Robin could see Skye's hand move as it bounced over every vertebral disk in her back, reaching the base of her skull after a long moment of this rhythmic motion. Having made it that high, Skye changed his grip, ever more threads pouring out and down his finger, seemingly flowing from his hand and into her body as he wrapped his hand around the back of her head so that his index finger was behind one ear and his thumb was behind another. The glowing reached crescendo, the threads flowing out in finely attuned waves that pressed into the back of Terra's skull and vanished within, then the whole process cut off at once. The vitals monitor read everything as perfectly fine, excepting of course the brainwave indicator, which had obviously never moved. Skye sighed heavily as he stepped back from the bed, then began to talk calmly, as though he'd just cleaned a toilet rather than saved someone's life.

"So…" began Skye, an inscrutably empty tone reminding Robin disturbingly of some of Raven's worse days, "Fill me in. I have a good idea of what happened here, but thorough postcognition isn't one of my powers." The request was made simply, and Robin geared up to respond as the last dregs of heart-freezing panic faded from his system. It seemed inconceivable that the situation could have changed so quickly from dire to 'fine' (sort of), but Skye had handled it like waking up to find someone's life in his hands was everyday business. Robin was impressed.

"Uh, right," he stumbled into his explanation as he continued to recover from his shock, "So Raven told us what you said, about watching her in case Slade had an extra surprise or two tucked away in her head. We put her down here and began treating her for malnutrition and extreme exhaustion," this received an agreeable nod from Skye, who'd retreated to a corner and had begun to check himself out as he listened, "and we set up a watch rotation to make sure she wouldn't be alone while the rest of us attended to other things. Cyborg suggested we put her downstairs in the quarantine room and shut it up tight, but I reminded him that it still hasn't been repaired after… well it suffered some damage a few weeks back that the contractors still haven't shown up to fix. Beast Boy wouldn't have stood for it anyway."

As Robin got into full dictation, the words seemed to flow as sort of an inverse effect to how worried he was. As it became clear that things might actually manage to turn out alright at last, he began to perk up noticeably, and this corresponded to an increasing talkativeness in Robin and quite the tale for Skye. The other guy, in the meantime, was stretching out his kinks, flakes of dried blood falling from his clothing and hands as he went through some kind of wake up ritual.

"The first three shifts went fine, without incident, but against protest of clearer heads, this guy," and he jerked a thumb at the green one, who still stood aside in disorientation from Skye's draining touch, "Stayed by her side through all three cycles, so that he hadn't had a lick of rest by the fourth, which started about ten minutes ago. I don't know if Slade had some kind of intelligence that told him this, or if he just had the devil's luck… again, but that was when Terra came to. She made her way downstairs and within three minutes had penetrated to the state-funded community supercomputer mainframe held here to keep it secure and support the Titan's crime tracking network. Just as he was about to score a major blow by trashing the place, Terra just… stopped. Cyborg has the videos if you need to see them, I don't know why but I was hoping—"

"That I'd know what had happened?" finished Skye as he pulled his black over shirt off, quickly followed by his bloodstained white tank top. "Yes, as a matter of fact, I can tell you exactly what happened, and then explain why she almost slipped off this mortal coil in the process."

He stopped talking for a moment, but Robin was so captivated by his systematic actions that he didn't mind the delay in getting in on his insights. He was doing the most morbidly fascinating things. When he'd pulled away his shirt, he revealed the tightly wrapped and utterly red bandages underneath, so completely saturated with blood that it looked like he was wearing some kind of crimson vest, the contrast shocking against his ghostly pale albino skin. Almost immediately he pulled a small, pencil-sized rod out of his belt. Twisting it, he caused a light to blip to life on one end, then ran the lighted end down the side of his bandage. It split like it had been cut with a razor, but the pieces clung to his front and back on the dried blood.

"Last night, when I could feel myself hinging on the border of oblivion from blood loss and massive overextension of my powers, I was able to scrape together some last few insights into what threats today would hold," he finally continued as he established a firm grip on the bandage and set his jaw in determination. With a grunt of effort, he tore the bandage, dried blood and all, completely off his body, yanking it around until he'd peeled off the clinging area on his back as well. His explanation was cut short by the deep breaths he swallowed down in an attempt to quell the pain, and Robin didn't blame him. He hadn't been able to keep from grimacing in sympathy at how much that must have hurt.

"Anyway," he picked up where he left off, "I got the feeling that all the dangerous compulsion programs still encased in Terra's subconscious were completely latent, there really isn't enough of a guiding consciousness left in her for anything more advanced than that."

"Oh…" Robin couldn't help but be a little put off by that news. He'd hoped the fact that she'd gotten up over whatever Skye had done to keep her down was good news in the sense that it showed there might be something left in her. So much for that. Skye continued to explain in that unsettlingly detached way as he grabbed a rag from the sink in the room's corner and wet it, beginning to rub down the awful purple bruises that had been under the bandages, apparently all that was left of his extreme injuries.

"So, naturally, I set up a mental block that would separate her subconscious controls from the rest of her system, stopping just short of affecting her automatic organic systems like breathing, heart beat, and the like. That was the best I could do to protect us from her in my weakened state, and its likely what held off that explosion of violence for so very long." Skye paused there to rinse out the rag after having moped off most of his upper body, the blood and grime draining into the sink as an almost continual flow.

"So if you had that covered, then why did you tell us to keep an eye on her, and why was she able to awaken and bust up our home?" Robin asked, not unreasonably, but with an edge that was closer to the third degree than it was to friendly inquisitiveness. Skye didn't turn around as he answered, but rather pulled off those gloves of his (practically the first time Robin had seen this since he'd met the guy) and began to wash the blood and grime off of those.

"Unfortunately, that countermeasure only covered half of the potential threat I foresaw last night. Doubly unfortunate was the fact that, by that point, I lacked the power by far to lay a complete defense against the rest of it. Having little in the way of options, I did the next best thing… I placed a very discreet mental construction underneath my mental block as a sort of compromise measure." Robin was getting a little ticked at this guy again, getting the sense that he was being talked down to even though there was nothing in Skye's tone to suggest anything of the sort. Robin supposed it was more Skye's odd habit of speaking to people without facing them combined with just how much more he knew about all this than Robin did rather than any actual condescension, but that didn't stop the anger from manifesting.

"So, I don't get it, what was the compromise? What are you talking about?" and Robin's inquiry continued to gain heat, though Skye hardly seemed to notice considering how perfectly calm his response was.

"The secondary threat was that whoever perpetrated this… disgusting… disfiguration… (Robin's ears were almost stung by the enormous spikes of contempt and anger in these two words considering Skye's otherwise vacant tone) on your friend would come to investigate when his—for this is definitely a man's work—compulsions failed to bring her back into his clutches. I lacked the power to outright block a Telepath of this man's talents should he attempt remote access to her mind… I mean I was quite totally out of power by the time I was planning this last night. So instead I did the next best thing—I set a booby trap."

"Wait… you put a trap… in Terra's mind… to stop the guy who messed up her head from puppeting her around again?" Robin was less incredulous than he was merely confused, having no real experience with the subtleties of psychic combat. Skye finally turned back to him and this time had an expression on his face… a wide grin (that somehow still managed to express more a thought than an emotion).

"It was a simple trap, I couldn't manage much more than that at the end of my rope last night, or this morning, or whatever. However, sometimes it's the oldies that are the most effective, and if there's one thing I can say about a psi-burn trap, it's that they're effective."

"Psi-burn?" and Robin couldn't help but begin to mimic Skye's grin slightly as he started to realize why what he was explaining was a good thing rather than a confusing or concerning thing.

"Psi-burn is pretty well the most painful thing that can happen to a telepath. I can't really express what it feels like to someone who's incapable of ever experiencing it, but a rough analogy would be that it's not unlike having your brain popped out of your skull, impaled on a red hot poker, then reinserted, glowing metal spike and all. I can say with some certainty that it was the detonation of said trap that halted Terra's process toward the destruction of your mainframe. I can also say with some certainty that immediately afterward, whoever was riding around in her head was paralyzed in blinding, sanity-shattering pain, of which he could not have possibly deserved more. The major compromise I was talking about was simply that, in order to prevent it from being detected, I had to disguise it among the refuse of the poor woman's savaged personality, and this led to unavoidable delays in its activation."

"I see, so that's why you wanted us to watch her. You knew the telepath that broke Terra's mind would try to get her back and you needed someone to contain her while your booby trap took effect. Well, I guess we have no one to blame but ourselves that she got so close to causing irreparable damage to our systems… ourselves and this guy, that is," Robin said this almost happily, so completely overjoyed that things were at last going their way that he didn't even care about Beast Boy's blunder.

"You have quite a talent for insight Robin, I'm impressed," Skye complimented Robin as he finished up with his cleaning. "Now as for why she started to fade afterward, that would be an unforeseen side effect of my sadly jerry-rigged defense, and I blame myself that her body had to endure that extra trauma. As near as I can figure, the cocksucker who did this to her, before being expelled in a paroxysm of utter agony that he'd so richly earned for himself, managed to press out with some rather nasty mental strikes, one of which managed to nail her hypothalamus quite perfectly. As you're no doubt aware, that particular portion of the brain regulates a myriad of essential bodily functions automatically, and the trauma to it would have quite certainly led to her demise had you not gotten me up and down here. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to correct my mistake." And he was completely sincere.

"Woah, woah, I should be the one thanking you! In forty eight hours you've saved lives, protected the innocent, and stopped the bad guys in ways I never even considered possible! If you hadn't shown up, half of the people I care about in this world would be lying in fresh graves, including, if my suspicions are correct, myself! I have other suspicions too, ones that involve certain… dreams I've been having." He raised his eyebrows at the other, making it clear exactly what he meant. Skye continued to be inscrutable, but before he turned and started shaking out his shirts over the sink, Robin was positive he saw the slightest twitch at the corner of Skye's fixed grin. So it had been him.

"Seriously Robin," and at last there seemed to be some kind of feeling in Skye's voice, though Robin wouldn't care to hazard a guess at what it was, "you don't owe me anything. To actually work with people I can trust, people my own species, on my home world… it's been fantastic. Grievous injuries and power burnouts aside, I've never felt so alive in my entire existence. I guess what I'm trying to say is… if you want to pay me back… don't do it with accolades or the like. Just… you know, show me around, give me a place to stay… help me brush up on my hand to hand, that kind of thing. I have a feeling, and by that I mean a precognitive perception, that we don't have much to worry about in the way of villainous attacks in the moderate future. The actions of last night have cleared the board, and while the air still stinks with threat, there isn't a time tag on it anymore. For now, at least, we're in the clear."

"Really?" and Robin, though he already trusted this guy's words almost implicitly, couldn't help but wonder that they'd managed so much in one night. "I mean, god, I'd be glad to show you around the city, and I bet I could learn as much from you as you could from me, but do you really think Slade and those guys you're after are just going to sit around? I don't know about the others, but Slade's not the type to take defeat lightly. After this most recent attempt at payback was stopped, who knows what he might try?"

"My targets have had their operations crippled by Slade and your two buddies, they're going to lay low and lick their wounds, that's the type they are. As for Slade, I hear you, and though I've hardly had any contact with him, I agree with your assessment completely. However, I can tell you with some certainty that he's got more imminent problems on his plate than getting back at us. No, no," he waved away Robin's inquiry, "I can tell you all about it later, but there are other things to get to. I mean, I intend to have all kinds of fun on what's basically a working vacation away from my IDP taskmasters, but I've got a feeling I know what most of my time will be devoted to for the foreseeable future." It didn't take much of Robin's impressive perceptive ability to know who he was referring to, and the almost jovial atmosphere that had built up in the room evaporated as the subject returned to Robin's downed friend.

"So, I guess I've kind of been avoiding the subject," Robin began, his voice burdened by severity, "but I have to know… can you… fix her?" He braced himself for the answer as Skye considered the question in silence. The silence stretched out, and out, and then out some more before he finally responded.

"Well, I can't promise anything until I've completed a full diagnosis of the damage, but my preliminary prognosis stands. It won't be easy and it won't be fast, but her case is far from hopeless. I've known from the instant I laid senses on this woman that she was tough, a true survivor. In her own way, she's got more grit than you and I combined, and I doubt a little thing like having her body degraded, her soul raped, and her mind obliterated would ever manage to quell the spirit even now lying dormant within this shell."

Robin was speechless, but after a moment, he realized Skye was completely correct. Terra had survived on her own for an unknowable amount of her life, had weathered torture that the mere thought of already threatened to give him nightmares, and had now survived truly inhuman amounts of strain without even a mind to call her own. She would be fine, he could feel it now.

"Skye man, you have no idea what a huge relief it is to hear you say that," admitted Robin as he felt the world brighten, a weight lifting off of his shoulders, and a great deal of fatigue catching up with him all at once.

"Actually, I think I have a pretty good idea," Skye responded cryptically, tapping the side of his head to communicate that he had a decent idea how everyone felt all the time. "Anyway, there are a few more things I wanted to talk to you about, but I'm going to make it quick. You need sleep, badly, and don't try to deny it. I can tell these things about people."

So for about a half hour, Skye and Robin talked. They talked about how Skye felt about being on his homeworld for the first time in his life, and they talked about what he wanted to see while he was here. Robin asked how he'd managed to get his cloths clean and Skye explained again about synthar smart fibers. Robin asked what it was like seeing in every direction at once, and Skye admitted that it was utterly impossible to explain, managing to make the analogy of trying to describe color to the blind without being at all condescending. Skye asked what it was like to be surrounded by people that cared about him, people he could trust, and Robin explained that there was nothing quite like it.

Robin then asked about the new firearms Skye was sporting, giving the other guy a perfect opening to recount the fall of Slade the night before. Robin was tearing with laughter even as he almost glowed with envy as Skye described how he'd managed to get the drop on the villain, beating him to the ground at his moment of ultimate victory. Even after he explained the integral importance of complete surprise and Slade's towering overconfidence at the night's end, Robin still couldn't help but feel a little bested by the other man. He squished this feeling as one unworthy of someone who'd done so much for him, then gave him a rather grim warning about what tended to happen to people who stole from Slade. Skye took him completely seriously, but seemed undisturbed none the less.

As the conversation wore on and Robin's yawns became more and more frequent, they eventually came to the relationship between Robin and Starfire. Though he wasn't sure why exactly he felt okay about talking to a relative stranger on a subject he had yet to discuss with his closest friends, he none the less waxed quite eloquently about what an intense sensation love could be. Skye admitted his ignorance on the matter and whished them luck, but not before getting Robin to promise and remind him to give him a chat on comparative xenobiology before too long, as that was the kind of thing one would want to know in a relationship like that between the leading lady and most eligible bachelor of Jump City.

Finally, as he turned to leave and get some sleep, Robin noticed that Beast Boy was still standing there in a daze, never having moved from where Skye had so gently placed him. Drawing Skye's attention to this fact (though he was positive the highly perceptive man had simply been waiting for him to notice) Robin asked what the heck Skye had done to keep B.B. quiet and unresponsive for forty minutes. Skye made a great show of examining the shorter, green furred man before 'noticing' that he suffered from something he called hypnotic hyper-susceptibility. Robin thought back to various encounters with Mad Mod and had to agree that this explained a lot about the guy. In any case, Skye woke him with a snap next to his ear—a much simpler gesture than what was usually required—and dissipated his confusion and time-displacement with the news that Terra was going to be fine.

As they waited for the young man to stop bouncing off the walls in joy, Robin commented that he should explain the good news to Cyborg as well. Skye responded that it probably wouldn't be necessary, then met Robin's confused look with a discreet point into the corner at the security camera there. Robin merely grimaced and nodded, promising himself to talk with Cyborg about his Big Brother privileges. That was it then, and Skye forced the two young men out with orders to get some sleep (it was closing in on noon after all). Beast Boy was reluctant to go, but Skye would have nothing of it, and an amusing little struggle ensued. When it got to the point that he was clinging to either side of the doorway with tentacles in his octopus form, Skye got fed up, snapped out the word 'eggs' and shoveled the suddenly panicking chicken out the portal, sliding it shut with finality. He left it to Robin to take it from there, and the leader took it upon his highly responsible shoulders to persuade B.B. to get to bed, implementing a tried and true technique involving a headlock and lots of shouting.

(Skye/Vera)—all dialogue is internal

"I had a feeling that compulsion would come in handy," Skye commented idly within his own mind as he turned from the locked door and sidled calmly back toward the hospital bed containing his newest patient.

"I'll just bet you did," Vera sighed into his mind with exasperation, something he'd been getting a lot from her as of late. "You knew this kind of thing would happen and you set that up on purpose." The accusation was not unreasonable, but Skye could not, in good conscience, let it stand. It simply wasn't true.

"Sorry Vera, I may have a good grip on the future, but I'm not that good. I got the sense that Beast Boy was the type to refuse to listen to reason, and this brought on a hunch that a mild control compulsion like that would streamline my dealings with him. I hadn't the slightest idea that what's going on right now was going to happen."

"I don't see that as an excuse for manipulating him like that," and Vera's exasperation magnified palpably at the way Skye completely ignored the point about ethics she was trying to bring up. "You just go too far sometimes. Like that thing with Robin and Starfire… you really had no right."

"Don't start on that again Vera, I mean, did you see that guy? He's practically apoplectic with joy that their relationship finally exists. Would you really have had me keep my powers off such an idiotically hung situation?"

"I'm just saying that it should have been their choice. It's not your place to go around matchmaking and otherwise sticking your mind into other people's business!"

"Vera, come on, you say that like I climbed into their heads and forced them to love one another! I sense things that others don't, and those two were linked, mated on a level that transcends mere thought and biology. Their very existence is a universal expression of unity at the spiritual core of life, to continue to let circumstance keep them uncertain and apart would have been a far greater crime than any meddling imaginable. In the end, all I did was provide an environment outside of the fantastically inhibiting everyday life they lead here and let them notice what was so painfully obvious to me—so please, just drop it."

"Well… I still think you're taking a fantastic risk with their lives by involving them in your work here. If you hadn't freed me…" and now Vera became quiet, solemn to the very cove of her expression, "I would have already organized the report that would include death warrants for all of them, and you, and your sisters."

"Thus why I freed you. I've been pickling the IDP's checks and controls for the better part of a decade, and I'm not about to let them catch up with me so close..."

"Close? Close to what?" Vera pressed him when he trailed off to silence, and after a moment, he responded.

"It's getting near Vera, the moment when I snatch my sisters and make a break for it. The signs and quantum reality pathways are lining up like dominoes, and the grand prize of my life, my ultimate goal for longer than I care to remember, is finally within reach. As soon as we're done here, it'll be time to organize the full revolt of the IDP Involuntary Service."

"Are you sure? I don't pretend to understand what all that would involve, but there have been past revolts Skye, and nothing good ever came of them." Vera's concern touched Skye, and he appreciated the support immensely as he felt himself on the precipice of the rest of his life. Of course, all of this hinged upon his success here, something that was far from certain considering the presence of that man and his ilk. Thought of his nemesis quite simply ruined Skye's contemplation, and brought him back to the present immediately.

"Never mind all that, it's a ways off yet. This should be the entire focus of my being for a while—this poor, poor woman. I'm not even sure I know where to begin on a case this bad, but I'll be damned if I'll let a travesty like this stand." Skye had turned from contemplative to determined, in that coolly reserved way of his, and Vera let the subject drop. She'd never seen him work on a mind before, not in the deep, precise way this would involve, but one thing she'd know since she was applying for partnership with him was that, in the whole of the universe, there were few better than he was at what he was about to do.

Suddenly, Skye's vitals took a weird dip, his pulse slowed, his blood vessels contracted, and generally his parasympathetic nervous organization took full control in his body. In her short experience as custodian of his body, Vera had already learned that this meant a single thing. He'd iced his emotions. She felt compelled to confirm this.

"Skye… did you just—"

"Yes."

"Umm… why?" Somehow, she couldn't help but feel like she was prying unnecessarily as he geared up to begin work on his patient, but she couldn't stop her curiosity. In the end, there was little else to take interest in considering her limited universe.

"I did what I could to hide it from Robin lest he worry, but I have to admit that cases like this disturb me enormously. It won't do for me to loose my composure while exploring delicate area's of Terra's mind. Now if you please, I'm going to get to work. Feel free to follow my notations." Skye's response was as icy neutral as his first words with Robin had been immediately after his awakening. The difference was that this was intentional while the earlier case had simply been Skye before he could work up a semblance of emotions (always hardest first thing in the morning).

"You're not going to use your gloves?" Vera added one last curious inquiry as Skye hovered his hands palm-down just inches over the prone woman on the bed.

"Please, I wouldn't dream of touching this young lady's mind with those mauls. This is no simple case of cerebral hemorrhaging, swelling, or other manifestation of blunt force trauma. This is an intentional disruption, a malicious and extremely violent and vicious attack upon the very fiber of her sentience, specifically targeted to destroy those parts of her soul that gave her personality and autonomous will while leaving intact her reflexes, problem-solving ability, and power focus. The gloves have come off now Vera, because this is the big leagues."

Skye's diagnostic dissertation as recorded by Vera

Today I'll be examining a young female humanoid type 37 organism from sector 24407.4. Her name is Terra and her case is a surgical mindwipe. This intentional violation of her mind was based upon a quite obvious utilitarian objective, that being to create a weapon out of a living, sentient being. However, as I now begin to delve into the deep detail of exactly which areas of her mind that were erased, overwritten, or mauled into oblivion, I must also admit a certain ulterior motive becomes apparent. The person—for despite extensive evidence to the otherwise, I must admit that it was a living being and not an emotionless machine that perpetrated this monstrosity—who executed the operation on her mind was not only out to create an emotionless killer out of a young woman, but also evidently trying to cause the maximum amount of suffering in the process. I thank my vampiric core for the ability to overcome the debilitating nausea this information would naturally cause me.

I draw this conclusion from the following evidence. First, there are clear tells that every telepathic incision and manipulation left jagged, uneven marks upon the psychic fabric of the subject's mind, indicating with absolute certainty that the subject was awake, fully conscious, and struggling hopelessly for the entire mindwipe process up to and including such a point as her consciousness was degraded into nonexistence.

Second, extensive tracts of damage to the midbrain and corresponding access pathways in the temporal, occipital, and frontal lobes have no evident purpose other than to have been exceptionally painful and terrifying. Each of these brain areas was struck at for other, purposeful reasons, but a significant amount of the trauma to her sentience was entirely extraneous.

Third and finally, the most severely damaged portion of the subject's brain, having sustained far beyond any necessary trauma, are her left and right amygdalate structures. These structures would necessarily require debilitation to ensure an emotionless soldier, being the areas most responsible for basic emotional responses to stimuli, but the extensive mauling they received disturbs me deeply, even under the influence of my PV. Such damage can only conceivably have resulted from extensive and sustained emotional torture involving direct and extreme over stimulation of the amygdala, most likely to produce excessive terror.

Such treatment extends far beyond the bounds of cruel and unusual. Thusly I would like to pause this record momentarily to comment that, had I been aware of the nature of the person responsible for harming this young woman's mind, and equally, had I been possessed of enough psychic power at the time, the trap I set for him would not have merely singed his brain with overwhelming agony. I would have trapped him in a spirit snare, nailed his consciousness up in a tiny psychic prison, and then let his personality degrade until only a feral ghost remained. Then I would have destroyed the remains. This is the only fit punishment for such a travesty against the miracle of consciousness. I shall now resume.

To aid my future repair efforts, I will now begin a list of the damage and relative data to its effect on the subject's mind. As the objective of this mindwipe was to erase personality without affecting combat ability, the vast majority of damage would clearly be in those areas related to memory and higher reasoning capacity. Examination reveals this to be largely the case.

The temporal lobes of either hemisphere, centers of long-term memory control, have both been the subject of extensive activity. The general telepathic technique for locating memories, whatever one's desired use for those memories may be, is to trace from the hippocampus in the limbic system out through the temporal lobes and through the extensive networks of neurons all over the brain involved in encoded memory. The specific method of erasure in this subject's case is recall-pathway destruction, indicating a great deal of patience on his part, but not extreme power or artistry. Had he used recall-pathway scrambling or neuron destruction to wipe the memories, restoration would become difficult or even impossible. In any case, the obliteration of her memories, as in all cases of mindwipe, is the largest part of her loss of self, but not the core of the affliction.

As a side note to temporal lobe damage is the presence of extreme damage to language centers on the left hemisphere. It is my theory that this was the major route of access to the amygdala and hippocampus, and the telepath (though I hesitate to grant the animal such a lofty title) who engaged these manipulations seems to have made his greatest blunder here. Apparently, in his horrifying desire to blast her mind with terror, he used far too much power in these areas, and the result is the most severe case of general aphasia I have ever witnessed in a humanoid nervous center. While this easily explains the otherwise mysterious lack of verbal responses (which are usually quite standard in this type of manipulation) from Terra while taking orders from Slade, it also provides me with my deepest concern. Assuming everything else is fixable, or at least operable, I cannot say with certainty that this damage can be reversed, leading me to question if she will ever regain the ability to talk.

The next most seriously afflicted area is her forebrain, including the frontal lobe of both hemispheres. Here the destruction is much more restrained and surgical, and I feel obligated to express my surprise that the same disgusting thing that could rape this young woman's amygdale could so precisely manipulate her frontal lobes. Engaging in what is best described as a kind of non-invasive prefrontal lobotomy, he removed with exceptional selectivity the neural pathways involved in personal willpower and high-level emotional processing. Here at last he shows uncommon ability, having acted with such precision as to eliminate the portions of the forebrain that control personal inhibitions while putting only moderate strain on those portions governing problem solving and high-level sensory processing. The person who did this work is surely then quite the dangerous opponent, and I feel myself fortunate that the rather poor trap I prepared earlier actually put a stop to him, however temporary.

With the elimination of the memories that constitute personality and the reasoning processes that constitute individuality, what one has left is a near-vegetative blank slate with nothing but the most primitive of organic needs to motivate it. In the process of telepathic reprogramming this is where the destruction ends and the reconstruction begins. This man-monster chose a rather typical template to complete the process that proceeds in a twofold manner.

In the first is a strategy of reconnecting all the intact physical capabilities into a central construction capable of mimicking the functionality previously reserved to the integration of memories with the active reasoning in the forebrain and other areas. This construction serves as a kind of control panel for the subject, voice activated to be unquestioningly responsive to certain persons, and then supported by extensive lists of compulsions to govern behavior in situations where a command-giver is not present. Through this method, the subject could be controlled with the utmost ease, Slade simply having to designate the opponents and give the order for Terra to fight with the maximum of her ability and base cunning unto death. This structure will have to be carefully removed as it is almost certainly trapped. In the interim period until I can reconstruct her personality, it may also be necessary to create a new structure of my own so Terra can function, in however limited a manner, to combat her malnutrition and other health issues.

The second form of control is an inhibition of the biological, engaged lest unconscious processes interfere in the subject's ability to follow orders. Through extensive manipulation of the brainstem, including a rather lengthy and unpleasant reconfiguration of the thalamus and spinal nerve gate, one can transform a mere slave mentality into a super soldier. The constructions here allow the subject to ignore pain, hunger, and any other conceivable organic demand from the body short of utter exhaustion (which causes unavoidable collapse). Without these things to concern her, Terra would quite willingly throw her life away in pursuit of the goals given her by Slade. No fear, no pain, nothing would stop her. This is my second greatest loathing, after the fact that this manipulation was sadistic in nature. To transform a sentient individual into a thoughtless automaton is one of the greatest crimes of all.

This concludes my diagnosis. My prognosis is: Good. With the possible exception of speech, Terra should make a full recovery with treatment. I will now proceed to dismantle and replace the control mechanism. End recording.

(Skye)

As he 'felt' the file being saved to his microcomputer implant, Skye reflected on why he kept up those logs as he rested his mind in preparation for the initial operation. He had a photographic memory, so it wasn't as though he himself would ever refer back to it, but there was still a very good reason to keep them. As one of the foremost telepathic surgeons currently living, it was his obligation to pass on his knowledge to others who might develop their own skills. The Galactic School of Telepathic Medicine, the place he'd learned his own basics, before he'd moved on to higher-order teachers and finally struck out to develop his own techniques and a personalized style, was always in need of additional source material, and Skye had been supplying as best he could as he sharpened his skills across the cosmos. His position in the IDP had him in contact with grievous injuries on a regular basis (his own, an unfortunate amount of the time, in fact) and so he took a little extra time out to expand the school's database of mental maladies whenever he came across a unique case like Terra's. The only problem he had with them was his habit of dictating from his personal stream of consciousness, requiring extensive editing afterward to get personal information and extraneous commentary out of the way.

In any case, he was finally ready, and so he organized his mind with the process of disassembling the control mechanism, stretched out his back and arms, then placed his hand gently on Terra's forehead. In a moment, his consciousness, rather than merely his senses, was deep within her mind.

Approaching with the utmost care, he examined the magnificent complexity of the control structure with an odd mixture of contempt and respect. He could feel nothing pleasant toward the living garbage that had destroyed this woman, but at the same time, he could not deny the precision work the control center represented. Wrapped tightly about the once-radiant jewel of spiritual energy that had been Terra's control core before her violent eviction from existence, the structure was a blood-red pustule pierced a billion times with interconnecting wires of thought energy. As he focused every fiber of his extensive concentration on the structure, he began to unravel the wires' purposes and connections. The task would have taken an eternity if he hadn't known exactly what he was looking at, his experience with such things allowing him to identify the wires in long braces and chunks, chewing through the inconceivable numbers inside of an hour. When he had a mental label for every single one, he disengaged momentarily to rest before moving on past the easy part.

Back inside Terra's mind, the control structure sat there like a malignant eye, staring out at Skye in defiance of its impending eradication. Ever wary of the traps he had a very distinct feeling that he would encounter, Skye began the process of disassembling it. As mentioned once, Skye had very little power to use direct telepathic force, it was why he was so dependent on the amplification gems. None the less, using what little ability he had, he was able to begin severing the crimson threads in vastly long tracts, working through them in a very specific order that would ensure there was no adverse effect on what was left of Terra's mind. This continued for about thirty minutes before he came to his first impasse.

While reaping through the connections that integrated her gross and fine motor controls with those compulsion strings and memories concerning combat tactics, he stumbled into the first trap. His danger sense was almost useless for such things, seeing as they contain no malicious psychic resonance to speak of, and so it was more a quick observation by his spirit vision, a slight inconsistency in the thread of power, that tipped him off before he sprung the deadly construction. After he finished dissipating the spike of panic (he'd let the draining fade and was working in a regular state of mind) he examined the trap and quickly discovered its nature. When he knew what it was supposed to do, he once again cursed the soul of the scum that had engineered this nightmare.

The trap was not designed to attack whoever tampered with the control structure, but rather to sabotage any attempt to reverse the villain's handy work by bombing Terra's mind. Had Skye tripped the trap, the control core would have popped like a rotting cow, saturating her mind with enough pure psychic force to liquefy her neurons. With the utmost of care, Skye disarmed the trap and memorized its structure to expedite discovering the others. There was no way this guy planted only one.

This went on and on, Skye only able to proceed at a rather deficient ten thousand threads per second because of the extreme but necessary hassle of examining each individual thread anew lest it hold an unwelcome surprise. With more than three billion connections… well, it took a while. However, it was not so long that Skye couldn't handle the continuous concentration, and just under an hour after he stumbled across the first trap, he had severed the last connection. Without any anchor in the maintaining energy of her life force, the knot of compulsions bundled around her control core disintegrated, the minute quasi-intellect within it screaming out in primal fury as its short existence was brought to a decisive end.

That task completed, Skye felt his fatigue catching up with him in a big way. His powers were still weak from the night before, and more than two and a half hours of sustained effort had left him on his last legs, but he had enough left in him for one last task. Drawing all the telepathic energy he had left into a single point of concentration, he pressed it out of his mind and into the void within Terra's. This was a technique he'd been perfecting himself for some months now, and the purpose was quite unique.

As the power struck the dull remains of Terra's control core, it instantly took form and blossomed outward in every direction. Shooting out vast webs of connecting filaments, it crawled forth from the core of her mind in a leaping, exponential explosion of motion. In seconds, it had formed into a brilliant doppelganger of her mind's previous occupant. This structure was not built to control however, rather it was a matrix of regenerative energy, radiating pulses of benign power that would prepare Terra's mind for the long process of reconstruction. Granted it would also serve the same purpose as the previous one had as far as linking together the disparate portions of her mind to allow her to fulfill simple commands, but Skye knew this would be essential. First, she would recover much faster if they could get her up and around and recovered from the extensive degradation of her body. Second… mind or no, Terra was a resource that might well prove vital in surviving the storm that had, due to their efforts the night before, been delayed for some unknown period.

As the core percolated away in her mind, Skye backed off and stumbled away from the bed. Drained beyond his ability to cope, he staggered across the room and fell into a chair. No sooner had he touched the chair than he'd passed out, entranced as his soul left his body to begin rebuilding his power… again.

Preview: So now we know what all is wrong with Terra. She's on the road to recovery, but what about the other Titans? How will they respond to having puppet Terra on their side while Skye pieces her mind back together? Much more interesting is the question of how Raven will cope when she wakes up and goes over everything that took place last night with a clear head. All this and more next chapter. I don't have a title yet.