"Beast Boy!", Robin yelled. The floor in question of the office building was bubbling outward with glowing blackness and infernal ooze. And he had no idea where what was left of his team was.
A green gopher poked his head out of a storm drain. Morphing back, Beast Boy landed on the street. Robin glared at him. "I wasn't hiding!", Beast Boy asserted. "The sewers were the only way back that didn't have debris clogging it."
Robin snorted. "Cyborg!", he called out.
"Yeah, yelling's gonna make me get over this heap faster!", came Cyborg's faint reply. After a moment, Cyborg climbed over the piece of street that was displaced from the crater that Starfire occupied.
"Where's Star'?", Cyborg asked.
"She's not going to...be able to help.", Robin said while trying to keep the sadness out of his voice.
"What!", exclaimed Beast Boy.
"If she's hurt that bad, we gotta go help her.", Cyborg stated.
"No!", Robin commanded. "Raven's our top priority. With what she did to Starfire, imagine what's going to happen to this city-this planet-if we don't stop her now. This isn't a time where the targets escape and we catch them the next time they try something. We have to stop Raven now."
"But how?", Cyborg asked. "Starfire and Raven are our heavy hitters. You and me are more idea men when it gets to this level. And Beast Boy's more of a distraction at this point."
Beast Boy was about to take offense until desks hidden in clouds of glowing black energy creatures started floating out of the building and disintegrating under thier claws."Then I guess I better change into something that gets some notice.", Beast Boy suggested. In an instant, a green Tyrannosaur was standing next to the other surviving team mates.
Cyborg showed his agreement by changing his arm into a sonic cannon.
Robin nodded. Drawing three birdarangs he shouted, "Teen TItans! Go!"
On the way to the Epicenter
Robin remembered the acrobatics he was performing now, like the shadow constructs were forcing him through some sort of lethal deja-vu. Even one of them took the form of his mentor...as criminals feared him. The glare told him what words could not. He wasn't hero material. He was a failure waiting to happen. Others' victims would only blame him for his failure. He'd never be good enough to the Batman.
Cyborg felt as if he couldn't breathe. It was the accident all over again. His heart flipping a coin-heads it explodes, tails it stops. Air coming in and out of his lungs through violence made holes. The machines plugged into him keeping him from flatlining, not alive. He'll never be alive again. He'll never compete again. Undead would be better than the hospital bed.
Beast Boy saw only a reflection of himself in the shadows. That self. Not the kid who'll never grow up. Not the avid vegitarian. Not even the back against the wall, one for all hero. But the inner beast. Its fangs extended. Its claws scraping. Its ears, eyes, nose, even the prickly fur itching out for a victim.
Epicenter
The three boys would never speak of how they got to Raven. Beast Boy would claim never to remember, but no longer had doubts on why he was bald in the future. Robin also would state he didn't remember, but understood why the persona of Nightwing could be so much more affective than Robin. Cyborg's robotic brain couldn't actually go temporarily insane and suppress its memory for its own good, so he had to shut down a part of it and delete the file without ever examining it ever again-just like after Raven had captured him when she was frightened by Wicked Scary only a hundred times more. Never the less, he didn't hesitate to make his repairs afterward in blissful ignorance.
But they had made it to the monster. A circle of the shadow constructs surrounded her and the three boys. Robin's titanium weave cape was haggard, his kevlar uniform ripped to shreds, and more than most of his blood held inside by some very creative field medicine. Beast Boy's bleeding alligator form showed that while an alligator could regrow its tale, it would take some time. Cyborg was holding his detached left arm in his right, claw and teeth and beak and horn marrings scarring the armor that remained in place. And they realized they were lucky.
"We wouldn't have made it this far if you didn't want us to, Raven.", Robin told the beast before him. The shadow constructed, red eyed ravens in the circle of creatures argued with him all at once with jagged cawing. "I can reason with/"
"No you can't, Robin.", Beast Boy told him. "She's no longer human enough to reason with."
Then Beast Boy morphed into the animal Raven had become, only green. The infernal creature glared at her green counterpart, which glared back at her. She raised a hand to claw her duplicate, but the duplicate raised its claw in mirror image of her. She startled Robin and Cyborg with a quick dash to the right. Beast Boy matched her. And her dodge to the left.
The office building shook with a split second of demonic laughter. Then, as if waved away by magic wand, the shadow constructs dissappeared. The laughter instantly changed to anguished crying. The demon half of the monster started shifting away to reveal the human form underneath. Beast Boy changed with her until the form was too human, then fell into his human form exhausted.
Raven had reverted into a six or seven foot tall or long female something. Her claws were still inches in length. Her teeth were still well beyond knife points. Her previous form had destroyed her clothing, so her ropy muscles were before the world to see. A long mane of purple hair cascaded down her shoulders and back. And while her four eyes were still red with untold demonic rage, the brow that bore them had a pleading expression. In a raspy, grating voice Raven pleaded."Please.", she huffed. "Take me home."
Robin nodded. He picked up a long stretch of the office' carpet that had been ripped from the floor. The boy wrapped what he could around her. "Cyborg, get the T-car. Beast Boy, pick up Starfire. The med lab has a long night ahead of us.", he said as a piece of the flesh glued to his face threatened to give way.