This soon enough for yall? I just finished with the One Act Festival at my school, which was marvelous. Everyone did incredibly well, so of course I went home and sobbed for hours because my performance was so terrible compared to theirs. Yay for theatre. And yay for comics! I went out and bought two new comic books this weekend: Bleach 3 and Courtney Crumrin. Huzzah! Fine, you want the story? You got it.

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Cyborg woke up. It was hard to see by the dim blue light, but he could make out the faint walls of the cylinder, covered with intricate robotic tools and wires that were barely visible. The repair chamber.

How'd I get back here? Out loud, Cyborg commanded, "Unlock,", and restraints that had been holding him in place chunked open at the same time as a hairline of light blasted in. The sides of the cylinder rolled away smoothly, the thin line growing to a large opening. Cy stepped out rolling his shoulders and groaning as his back popped.

"Hello? Anybody home?" The lower floor where the repair cylinder was located seemed empty. Machinery hummed quietly, and the buzz seemed to fill the too-large room. "Heh. Guess not."

Upstairs wasn't much better. Sun streamed into the huge main room with its panoramic window, but Cyborg felt edgy. Normally after a mission, Beast Boy would be playing a video game and eating, Starfire might be cooking some too-horrible-to-imagine concoction. Robin should be over there by the computer, checking his weapons. Raven should be floating by the window, meditating. But they weren't.

"Ooo-kaayy…" Talking seemed awkward and too loud. Cyborg headed over to the smaller, safer kitchen to think. Tapping on the counter and absentmindedly looking in the fridge, he tried to figure things out.

"I'm back here, and safe. So that means someone hadda have brought me back. That means that at least one of em's safe. If they aren't here, then there's still trouble, 'cuz they had to leave without dropping a … a note."

Cyborg raced back down the stairs to the repair room and started scouring the walls, worktables, floors, everywhere. Nothing. Back upstairs, around the computer, the window, the couch, and—right there on the coffee table was a scrap of paper with just two words:

Downtown hospital.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

The receptionist started at the sound of squealing brakes, and several people in the waiting room turned to look at the blue-and-silver car that had become well known throughout Jump City. Seconds later, Cyborg burst in the door, looking panicked.

"Okay, what's goin' on with my friends?" he demanded of the worried-looking receptionist. "When were they here and what happened?"

"Please, calm down. I don't know much, but the situation seems fine."

"WHAT situation? Can you just tell me- what- is going- on!"

"Please, please," the woman leaned back nervously from Cyborg's glaring face, which was by now inches from her own. "I'll have a nurse take you up immediately. I can assure you that everything is fine." She hurriedly reached for a telephone that connected to a nurse's office, spoke a few quick words and hung up. "Head to the tenth floor. There will be a nurse waiting for you there."

Sheepishly, Cyborg backed off. "Oh. Er, thanks, lady. Sorry about that."

She smiled sympathetically. "It's perfectly alright. I understand."

Cyborg nodded a quick thanks and rushed to the elevator area around the corner, wondering which of his friends was stuck on the tenth floor of a hospital and what could possibly be going on.

The sign that greeted him when the elevator doors opened on the tenth floor was anything but reassuring: Short-Term Blood Storage. Even as Cy read the sign, the door it hung on opened, and a harried-looking doctor stepped out carrying a large bag of—what else—blood.

"Aw, damn," Cyborg muttered under his breath. His stomach clenched as his imagination started running wild, providing him with grotesque images of all the other Titans dying in pools of their own blood, covered in horrible injuries.

"There you are. Come this way, please." The calm, professional voice of a young male nurse jerked Cyborg out of his nightmarish reverie. As the nurse lead him down the hall, he talked casually to Cy, although the Titan's mind was continually drawn in other, disturbing directions as they passed rooms with fatal-sounding notices of car crashes and construction accidents on the doors.

"I'm glad you're able to come. The other Titans had to rush off. Maybe you can provide some help," the nurse stopped. "Here you are. Please come to the desk at the end of the hall if you need me for anything." Then he was gone and Cyborg was left to enter the room alone.

"Please be okay." He opened the door quietly and entered the dimly-lit room before him.

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"Cyborg?"

"Ohhhhh, god. What…Whadid you do to yourself?" Cyborg stared in horror at the ghostly face, the way too pale skin.

Beast Boy grinned back. "A whole lotta crap, apparently. So are you…" his voice trailed off and he fell asleep, right in the middle of a sentence.

"Gaah!" Cyborg crashed forward in a panic, stopping himself just short of grabbing Beast Boy's shoulders. A moment of blank horror, and then Cyborg ran out of the room down the hall. The nurse sat at his desk, filing a set of papers, and looked up to see Cyborg's terror-stricken face, his huge metal hands making dents in the countertop.

"He—what—what just—"

"Calm down! Please, calm down. I know it's odd, but your friend is alright."

"Alright! How is that alright? He just—passed out, or somethin'! That's my best friend in there that looks like he's gonna—gonna…die…"

"Trust me. Sit down, and let me explain. Then we can go back to the room and I'll show you the situation more fully."

Reluctantly, Cyborg sank down against the wall, confused and defeated. The nurse came over and sat on the floor beside him.

"Beast Boy lost a lot of blood. We were able to patch up most of the injuries, and those will heal, but for now, he tires easily. It's only been two days since he was brought in. He's made a remarkable recovery already. But… Well, with most people, we can get a blood transfusion right away. Beast Boy is a bit different. There is no blood type to match his exactly. He was perfectly normal when he was very young, but after those…" the nurse frowned, "…experimental cures, there's no telling what regular blood might do. We took a risk and gave him some regular human blood, but considering the gamble, we only gave him enough to keep him alive. He still has much less blood than he should have, but it's the best we could do without more knowledge."

Cyborg stared at the floor. What had happened to cause this? All that time in the cage, unconscious, knowing nothing about what was happening to the other Titans. What had happened that nearly killed Beast Boy, that caused Raven, Robin, and Starfire to disappear into thin air?

Slowly he got up and wandered dazedly back to the dim room that held his friend. In the room, he walked across to the window and opened the curtains, letting in a bright, warm wash of sun.

"Hey… Erg… Light…"

Cyborg turned to see BB squinting out towards the light. The direct sun made him seem even more pale, his green skin almost white and colorless.

"Hy, Cy… Do you know where anyone else is? All I've got is this note." Beast Boy tapped the table by the side of his bed.

"I dunno. I was hoping they'd be here." It was so hard to believe that this fragile, pale person was Beast Boy. He looked like he'd crumble into dust if you poked him, shivering away on the wind like so many dead leaves.

"Geez, you look so grim. You make me feel like I'm waiting for the apocalypse, here." BB flashed another grin, showing off his fangs for a second. It helped, in a way.

"So, are you gonna tell me what happened? I've gotta find the other Titans. They might be in trouble."

"Hey, you're going without me? Man, you're crazy. You know you can't survive out there without my help." A short laugh escaped, but some pain or other cut it off, and Beast Boy closed his eyes. He'd fallen asleep again. There were purple circles under his eyes that Cyborg hadn't seen in the dark. Cy got up tiredly to close the curtains again, but he stopped at the sound of Beast Boy's voice.

"Take me with you. If I guessed right, it's the only way we can help."

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Wababababawabawaba…. Gneeshmuck? Harbleflat! ((This is my brain at one in the morning…))

Thank you so much to all reviewers:

Unlikely-to-bear-it

The Mad shoe

Golden-Sama

Alanna-the-tai-youkai

Snow Werewof

UrbanOphelia

scathac's warrior

Festering Demon

IllegalDayNightSnappingIguana

Phonetic Intensive

Kiya

Mav Gauntlet

I bake you all cookies!