Author's note: Sorry about the delay...real life invades again. Hopefully the next chapter won't take so long.

Clash of the Titans by CidGregor

Disclaimer: I do not own the Teen Titans.

Chapter 2

"So let me get this straight," Beast Boy said. "You've got surveillance all over the Tower, all the time?"

"For the most part, yeah…" Cyborg said.

"So…" an evil grin came over the changeling. "So…if you looked at the tapes, you could, oh, I don't know, say…check out the shower-cam when Starfire--OW!"

Robin slammed a fist over Beat Boy's head. "Shut it!" he growled, turning red.

"Yeah, man, get your mind out of the gutter," Cyborg added. "There ain't no shower cam. Heck, I usually keep the cameras in the girls' rooms off entirely. Heh…they'd probably kill me if I didn't."

Robin glared. "What do you mean, 'usually?'"

"I only turn on full surveillance when we aren't in the Tower," said with an annoyed sigh. "That way, in case something happens while we're gone, we'll have it on home video. But while we're here, the cameras in our rooms deactivate, for all the obvious reasons. Jeez, Rob, relax, I ain't watchin' your girlfriend changing with this thing."

"She's NOT my--…ugh, could we just focus on the task at hand, please?" Robin said, trying to shake from his mind the images that Cyborg's comment had summoned.

"Here we go," Cyborg said, all business again as the screen flickered. "This is Rae's room right after we left to…stop Mumbo…"

"What the…?" Robin muttered, staring at the screen.

"Duuuuude…" Beast Boy added.

The video feed showed a large, ornate trunk at the foot of Raven's bed, and it was glowing an odd, sickly shade of purple. It was lurching unpleasantly as well, as though something was kicking around inside of it.

"That's not normal…is it?" Beast Boy asked.

"Who knows, with Raven's stuff?" Cyborg said. "Sure doesn't look normal, though…"

The trunk continued to glow and lurch…and the boys looked on…
Raven slowly gathered her books and returned them to their shelves, not bothering to put them back in any sort of order; she'd get everything organized later, when she wasn't shaken to her core. She didn't like having her personal properly manhandled like this, and she sure as hell didn't like not knowing who or what had done it. She could only hope that Cyborg and Robin had caught the perpetrators on camera, so she could personally remove the unlucky punk's spine. But who had gone through the trouble to mess up her room, only her room, and nothing else? From what she could tell so far, nothing was missing.

The really unusual thing was the broken window that she hadn't noticed until a few minutes after she'd started cleaning. It hadn't caught her eye sooner because the entire pane of glass was gone, but when a chilly breeze swept into the room, she finally noticed it. At first she guessed that the perpetrator had come in that way, but then she realized something that made her realize Robin's detective skills were rubbing off on her: there was no broken glass on the floor. All of it, as she noticed when she looked out the window, was littering the earth below her, glinting with reflected light. Which meant that it had been broken from the inside outward, and forcefully. However the perpetrator had gotten in, it looked as though this was how they'd gotten out. But why had the culprit snuck in so secretively and then so carelessly broken back out?

Raven gathered another handful of books and stuffed them into the shelf, then turned to her trunk. She started gathering things to put back inside, but froze as she bent over the trunk and looked within it; the fake bottom had been blown clean off, and the hidden compartment beneath it was not only charred black…but completely empty.

The load in her hands fell to the floor as Raven's hands went limp at her sides. She bolted around the room, scouring through every corner that she hadn't yet cleaned up, overturned every pile of clothes and books, searching, but finding nothing.

At last she came to a rest beside the trunk again, her heart and mind racing. Malchior's book was gone. That was not a good sign. Who could have wanted to steal it? Who could have known about it in the first place? And most curious of all, who could have known exactly where it was hidden?

She whipped her Titan communicator up and clicked it on. "Cyborg, whoever did this to my room, they stole the prison book Malchior was trapped in!" she reported. "Have you gotten anything from the surveillance tapes yet?"

"Ahh…well, we've got SOMETHING, but…well, you better come take a look at this yourself," Cyborg's voice crackled back.

"You found who stole it?"

"Uhh…not exactly…"

Raven entered the security room to find the three male Titans sitting deep in thought. Well, two of them were, anyway. Beast Boy just looked confused. Starfire came in right behind her, looking as puzzled as Beast Boy.

"Okay, so what's this about?" Raven cut to the chase. "Did you see who stole Malchior's book or not?"

"That's sorta the problem, Rae…" Cyborg said. "No one stole it…"

"It kinda…stole itself," Beast Boy finished.

"Excuse me?" Raven said.

"Take a look for yourself," Robin said. He flicked a pair of switches on the control panel, and the video footage they'd just been watching played again. Raven watched in stunned silence as her bedside trunk glowed and jerked unnaturally.

"I take it your trunk doesn't normally do that?" Robin said.

"No. Definitely not normal," Raven agreed, shaking her head.

"How unusual…" Starfire commented. "Whatever could be the cause?"

"Just watch…" Robin instructed.

The team did watch – the boys for the second time – as the trunk's glowing and jolting grew stronger and stronger, until at last the lid burst violently open. The contents exploded out of it in every direction, including the fake bottom, and littered her room. From within the trunk, hurricane-force winds rushed out, explaining the rest of the mess; the gale threw books off the shelf, blew her clothes all over the place, and everything else that she'd found wrong with her room. And finally, out from the bottom of the trunk, a strange purple light shot out, almost faster than her eyes could follow. It crashed straight through the window, and out of sight of the cameras. The moment it left the winds settled and died, leaving her room the utter mess that she'd found it in upon her return.

"Obviously we figured whatever that light was, it had something to do with this," Cyborg stated. "So we took a closer look at it." He backed up the video and then played it again frame-by-frame. When the light shot out, he jammed a metal thumb on the pause button. "Zoom in and enhance the image," Cyborg uttered.

The computer complied; the picture zoomed in on the light, and digitally enhanced the picture, revealing…

"Look familiar, Rae?" Cyborg said.

"It…it can't be…that's not possible…" Raven muttered.

But it was. Her eyes didn't lie. She would recognize that pale white tome anywhere.

It was Malchior's prison book.

And it was moving all on its own.