First, a note or two:

Very long chapter, because I've got a lot of ground to cover if I want to finish this any time soon (And I do).

This is the second of my stories, and once again, I beg those of you who know everything about the included series not to complain. I am not trying to be as faithful to the comics or TV series as possible, so if you want accuracy, I suggest you look somewhere else.

KEY:

'Blah' thought

"Blah" speech

I don't own the Teen Titans or any of the undermentioned items. Teen Titans is a trademark of some large comic company and Cartoon Network. Students may not open until date printed on cover. It is preferable not to use canned dates. However, if you cannot find fresh dates, you can always get canned. (Another brilliant double entendre by author Richard Lederer)

Please review if you've read this story. I will not continue to update unless I get reviews.

Aren't Formics Fun (OSC, again)? I have as of now officially decided upon the ending of this enormous epic. No more here though, except that it will be appropriately sad and depressing (Yay!).

I think it's Cyborg's left hand that's the ion cannon. If it's not then oh well, I don't care. So there. (Throws turtle. Cyborg blasts turtle out of air with ion cannon. Author wipes turtle off face and goes and makes turtle soup.)

And yes, "nyctophile" is a word. Nox 'night' Phobia 'love'

And now, on with the show.

Raven woke up a few hours later. Her head still ached slightly, like some annoying little sibling about whom you couldn't forget. She shuffled slowly down to the kitchen and made herself some breakfast. She didn't even see what she was eating. It didn't really matter.

She shambled over to the tracking computer that showed the current location of all five Titans. She was quite surprised when she learned that the rest of her team was currently off-planet. Namely, Starfire's planet. Tameran.

"Guess I'd better see what's up," said Raven to no one in general, and herself in particular. She dumped her dishes in the sink and shuffled back into the center of the lounge room. Raven stood there, muttering incantations, when she suddenly frowned. She looked down at herself. Blue and white stripes. 'Not very diplomatic to show up in my pajamas,' thought Raven, and she went to change into her usual outfit.

A few minutes later, Raven stood once again in the center of the lounge room, muttering in Latin. "Caelam irrumpo et stellas impero portae mihi esse," she said softly, and a space about five feet in front of her began to vibrate slowly. It wasn't just the floor and ceiling vibrating; the very air inside that space seemed to move in unison with the vibrations, as if that particular area of the universe was being destabilized, which it was.

A brilliant flash of light rent the dark stillness, casting harsh shadows on the furniture. Something akin to the center of a large star floated in the center of the room for a fraction of a second before it faded out and began to shrink at an exponential rate. Raven began to mutter more loudly as the object, which was now no more than a point, began to emit more brilliant flashes of light. Suddenly, the singularity stopped flashing, and seem to struggle angrily for a second. It quivered, floating on the edge of existence, before a hole of impossible blackness appeared. The hole emitted one final blast of energy before stabilizing itself at about a diameter of two meters. Raven, still muttering, grabbed a small backpack, and jumped through the wormhole.

"I'm just gonna put the idea out there that we have no clue in hell where we are," suggested Beast Boy in what he hoped was a helpful manner.

"D'you know, Star?" asked Robin hopefully.

"I do not, though I believe we may be in the valley of the Hy –"

Suddenly, a brilliant flash illuminating the rocky clearing in which the four Titans were standing, and a hole appeared in the middle of the air. A few seconds later, a purple-cloaked girl tumbled headfirst out of the hole.

"Hello Raven," said Robin. "Nice of you to join us."

"Have a nice trip?" inquired Beast Boy jestingly.

"Fuck you," responded Raven, a little more angrily than she meant to, still clutching her head in pain.

"Should you be here?" asked Beast Boy.

"Just cut it out Beast Boy. If you're going to be a prick the whole time, then –"

"Actually," said Beast Boy, cutting her off, the most infinitesimal bit of hurt in his voice, "I was being serious. I meant are you well enough to be here? You're still clutching your head, and you look like someone after about a week-long party."

"Ah," said Raven, reddening slightly, "I'm well enough, I suppose. Thanks."

The green changeling and the purple sorceress stared into each others' eyes, both with indefinable expressions on their faces. Time seemed to drift by languidly as the two Titans seemed to have an extemporaneous staring contest, each refusing to move. Worlds seem to drift by in their eyes, being born and destroyed in seconds. In Raven's case, however, the world was actually being damaged, as random rocks kept exploding in clouds of dark energy. Still, the two didn't notice, and continued to stare strangely at–

"If you two have finished having your Moonlight Sonata moment," interrupted Cyborg suddenly, "I think we had a bug to find."

Raven and Beast Boy started clearing their throats, looking around in random directions, and generally attempting to hide the fact that they had just been staring at each other like frogs at flies.

Robin shook his head, smiling, and began to lead the group along the stony path. As they walked, Raven and Beast Boy kept stealing sidelong glances at each other, daring their eyes to see. Finally, the group came to the mouth of a small cave, perhaps a meter in diameter, that was in the side of a small brown hill.

Robin looked expectantly at Starfire, his expression clearly asking her if she knew anything about large round holes in the middle of hillsides. Starfire shook her head: she didn't know any more than the rest of them what this was. "Well then," said Robin, "as our friendly neighborhood Tameranian doesn't know what this is, I think I can trust that it's not from around here. I say we find out what's digging holes in Star's planet."

The rest of the team responded with a chorus of various agreeds, yeses and sures and strode forth into the gloom of the cave. The first thing they noticed was that the cave seemed to refuse to end. It was obviously not simply a cave, but the entrance to a serious of roughly-carved underground passageways. The warm, dank air closed around them like an unpleasant hand, seeming to draw the entrance farther away at the same time as it drew them inward and downward.

Robin glanced at a device on his wrist that superficially resembled a watch. He tapped it, pressed a few buttons, and watched as two green and red lights oriented themselves on opposite sides of the "face". The screen of the watch showed a constantly changing graph that looked like the wave pattern from some heavy metal song. Robin spun around, looked this way and that, and oriented his wrist in every possible direction. Finally, a large spike appeared in the graph, and Robin smiled grimly.

"Ok, I've got a lock on something," he said, starting down the left-hand path. Every few minutes the team came to another split in the path and Robin had to repeat his act, dancing around almost drunkenly until he had determined like some diviner the team's correct next choice of path.

When they had been walking for what seemed like hours, the team finally arrived in a huge, cavernous room. Like everywhere else in the tunnels, it was pitch black, and the only illumination was offered by Starfire's glowing hands and eyes. None of the five Titans liked the pitch blackness. Robin peered around cautiously, squinting at the darkness and trying to see what was on the other side. Cyborg, slowly and cautiously so as not to disturb anything that might be lurking in the shadows, morphed his arm into an ion cannon, adding the brilliant azure light of the weapon to the illumination. Starfire was clearly slightly upset, her green starbolts flickering slightly. Beast Boy was completely out of his element – no animal that was acceptably big enough to deal with hidden threats in the shadows could also see anything in this blackness. A bat would be too weak – a Chihuahua would be able to rip that apart – and a dolphin would be just as useless, flopping around on the floor and squeaking. Even the dark-haired nyctophile Raven was slightly perturbed by the vibes of the room. She wasn't fully recovered from her illness, and besides, she couldn't mentally explore that which she had no idea about. Raven could only penetrate into spaces with her mind when she either already had some idea what was in that space or was piggybacking in the mind of someone else who knew something about whatever it was she wanted to explore. Since no one else in the room knew any more than she did, and since she knew nothing about the space except that there was no local light, Raven's power's were, for the moment, completely useless.

"Shed a little light for us, Cyborg," said Robin said absentmindedly. A moment later, the room was flooded by the blinding light of Cyborg's shoulder-mounted halogens.

The five teens saw in front of them a small device that was humming slightly. It was spherical and stood on a pedestal. Screens on the pedestal showed various graphs, some two-dimensional, some three-dimensional. Strange symbols – Robin assumed that they might be numbers in an alien language – changed repeatedly at the base of the graphs.

"Star?" asked Robin.

"Yes, I do know. These are the letters of the Pismirian system. Though they are generally peaceful people. I do not see how they could willingly have anything to do with such an atrocity."

"Well, looks like they did," said Raven and Beast Boy in unison.