(Disclaimer: No, I don't own the Titans; nor Batman, either. I probably don't have to keep saying this, but it gives me a narcissistic little thrill to think that there's some DC comics lawyer out there just watching my every move, waiting for me to slip up with these disclaimers. It makes me feel important.)

-Chapter Four: Hide and Seek-

"Sounds serious," Batman said. His masked face was up on the main viewscreen in the Titans' living room, stretched to nearly ten feet tall—Robin was speaking to him over the video communicator.

"You have a knack for understatement," Robin said as he leaned back in his seat, his arms crossed in front of him. "The cops didn't seem to care too much, but by the time they got there Raven had already healed the worst of it—honestly, if she hadn't been there Jinx would have died on the spot."

"Are you sure you have everything under control there?" Batman asked. Robin bristled at this, and had to bite back a snide response.

Typical Bruce—first sign of trouble and suddenly I'm not capable of handling things on my own, he thought, but out loud he said: "Yes, of course. I've spoken to Starfire and made it clear that that sort of behaviour won't be tolerated. She's been confined to her room for a full week, so hopefully that will give her time to cool off and think about things."

"And if she does it again?"

"Then she's off the team."

"Hmmm." The image of Batman's face grew smaller on the screen as he leaned back and steepled his fingers in front of him, touching his two forefingers to his lips as he considered this for a moment. "That's your final word? She does it again, she's off the team, just like that?"

"Yes. This behaviour makes her a liability, and if she's a liability then she's off the team, and that's it," Robin replied, trying to sound as confident as possible, but this was Batman he was talking to, and he knew it wouldn't be enough.

"Hmm. Easy to say—will you actually be able to carry through with that, though?"

Robin scowled and broke eye contact. He could feel the undertones of the question, could see that somehow—although he had never even mentioned Starfire as anything other than a valuable team member in any of his extremely infrequent correspondence with his mentor—somehow Batman still knew what she meant to him, or had at least guessed with his usual frightening accuracy. Robin sighed and answered the question within the question.

"If this is what Starfire is really like then she isn't who I thought she was, and anything that has happened between us up to now is meaningless," Robin stated flatly, his voice devoid of emotion. "If she's a liability, she's off the team. Period."

"I see. Well, for what it's worth, I hope things work out," Batman said, his tone uncharacteristically positive. "I know how unpleasant dealing with betrayal can be."

Robin's eyes widened in mild shock at such unexpected well wishes from his otherwise dour mentor, and he only managed to mumble a quick "Thank you" before Batman cut the connection. He sat in the semi-darkness of the deserted living room for a few minutes, lost in silent contemplation, before getting up and setting off for the infirmary with a purposeful stride.

Cyborg was waiting for him there, bent nearly double over a series of monitors, all of which displayed a dizzying array of numbers and graphs and charts, all undoubtedly related to a certain Tamaranean's vital signs in some way. Other than Cyborg, however, the infirmary was deserted—the tests had long since been completed, and Starfire had returned to her confinement in her room. All that was left to do was process the data.

"Well? Anything so far?" Robin asked. Cyborg looked up at him, a grim look on his face.

"Nothing conclusive. Her brain chemistry is slightly different from what we have on file, but I don't know what's causing it, and for all I know about Tamaranean biology it might even be perfectly normal," he said and shook his head ruefully. "There is definitely something wrong with that girl, though—she was mouthing off to me the whole time, and then when the tests were done she just stormed out without even saying goodbye. Some of the stuff she said, too, was just…It was like she was a totally different person." Robin sighed.

"Keep on it," he said, putting an encouraging hand on his mechanical friend's shoulder. "Let me know if you find anything."

"Will do," Cyborg agreed, but then frowned thoughtfully. "Hey, Rob, most of these tests will take at least a couple of hours for the computer to fully process—mind if I take a break from this and continue looking into those robots?"

"That depressing, huh?" Robin asked with a small grin. Cyborg grinned back. "Not a problem. I know you prefer surfing the 'net anyway—I'm going to follow up on those robots another way, try to figure out where they were going. I'll see you in a few hours."

Cyborg nodded in acknowledgement, and he and Robin parted ways, Cyborg heading to the super-high-speed internet connection in his room, and Robin heading into the city to search in a much less high-tech way—good old-fashioned legwork.

OOO

Robin parked the R-Cycle in an alley, stowed his helmet, and fired a grappling hook up onto one of the surrounding buildings, locking down the bike with the remote control even as he rocketed up onto the roof. He executed a perfect forward flip in mid-air and landed lightly on the balls of his feet, right on the edge of the roof, and quickly dropped into a low crouch, sitting on his haunches. His cape fluttered around him in the breeze, and he grinned to himself.

After all these years of training, the dramatics just sort of happen, Robin thought as he pulled a small pair of binoculars from his belt to get a better look at the warehouse across the street. According to the records in City Hall, it was abandoned, and by the look of it, it had been for some time—in fact, the last building inspector who had been through had recommended that it be condemned.

Well, abandoned or not, this is the last building even remotely within Jump City limits that the prison robot could have been headed for with Starfire, given the route it was taking, Robin thought. He finished his initial survey, put his binoculars back on his belt, and grappled over to the warehouse. He swung in through one of the many broken windows and landed with a deft roll, rising with two birdarangs ready, but there was no need—the warehouse was deserted.

Robin slipped the birdarangs back onto his belt and thumbed the switch for the night vision filters in his mask. He looked around, the night vision tingeing everything a sickly shade of green, and took in his surroundings—he was standing on a decrepit wooden gantry that extended about ten feet away from the outer walls on all sides, and was the closest the warehouse had to a second floor. Sections of the gantry had already collapsed, and from the way it creaked under Robin's feet it seemed like the rest of it wouldn't be far behind. It looked like parts of the roof were caving in, too, as Robin could see that the floor of the warehouse was littered with more bits of wood and masonry, as well as lengths of what appeared to be rebar, obviously left by the warehouse's old and long since gone owners.

No wonder this place is being recommended for condemnation, Robin thought wryly. It looks like it could fall apart at any second—it's certainly not safe to hang around for too long. I'll just give it a quick once-over and…

Robin's thoughts were interrupted by a particularly loud creak, and the gantry floor beneath him suddenly gave way. In less than an instant he had grabbed his staff and extended it so that it caught on either side of the hole in the floor. It bent a bit under his weight and the force of his fall, and he used this tension as an impromptu springboard to help him flip up and back out of the hole. He angled himself towards the wall next to the window he had entered from and jammed a birdarang hard into the masonry, catching himself so he hung by one hand off of the wall. He carefully craned his neck to peer into the newly created opening in the gantry, seeing that a pile of jagged pieces of wood, bricks, metal, and broken glass had been waiting for him should he have fallen all the way through.

"Well, that wouldn't have been very fun," Robin muttered to himself as he pulled his grappling hook from his belt once again. He fired it at what he hoped was a reasonably reliable section of ceiling, tested the line gingerly, and then swung down to the warehouse floor, having given up entirely on the irredeemably unsafe gantry. Despite his reservations about standing even briefly under the still creaking gantry, he approached the pile of debris that lay underneath the new hole, looking for signs that it had been a trap, but found none: the pile was one of many others like it, apparently formed in an ad hoc fashion as bits of the gantry and ceiling fell in, and perhaps pushed out of the way by squatters who found themselves unfortunate enough to have to spend a night or two in the crumbling warehouse. The wood of the gantry showed no signs of stress other than that of sheer age, although it disintegrated still further at his mere touch, so unless someone had been setting it up as a trap since long before the Titans had even formed, or even before Robin had been born by the looks of it, it probably wasn't a trap.

Any satisfaction that Robin could have gained from this was diminished, however, by the fact that this was the last building in the city that the prison robot could have been heading for, so if it wasn't the hideout of whoever was behind Starfire's abortive kidnapping the lead was a dead end. Robin frowned at this thought and pulled a small device from his belt. It was a miniaturized sonar imager—it worked along the same lines as the various sonar devices used to find gas, oil, water, and other deposits underground, except that this particular device was bleeding-edge technology, and like all other such advanced tech it was both incredibly tiny and far more convenient to use. With a couple of quick sweeps, Robin had scanned the entire floor of the warehouse, as well as an area of about twenty feet around it, but found nothing except the usual gas and water pipes. There was nothing hidden beneath the floor of the warehouse. Robin sighed and picked his way over the rubble strewn throughout the warehouse towards the door. He kicked it open irritably, only barely registering that his kick had knocked the door clean off of its rusted hinges, and headed towards the alley where the R-Cycle waited for him. He took one last look at the warehouse over his shoulder as he came to the entrance to the alley and swore colourfully under his breath before disappearing into the shadows, only to come roaring out only seconds later on his distinctive red motorcycle, on his way back to Titans Tower.

OOO

"Well, Robin—find anything?" Cyborg asked casually as Robin flopped down on the couch in the Titans' living room. Cyborg was sitting in front of the main computer screen, having switched over from the super-high-speed internet connection in his room to the sheer processing power of the Titans' mainframe while Robin was away. He was busily absorbing fifteen-by-twenty feet of information, and hadn't even turned around to address his friend.

"Nothing. Nada. Bupkiss," Robin growled irritably. "Zilch, zero, goose egg, squat…Not a single building along the route I projected for that prison robot had any trace of anything even remotely similar to a villain's hideout, so unless we're dealing with a big-time villain with some kind of secret hidden lair outside the city, that's a completely dead end." He rose and walked up behind Cyborg, staring over his shoulder at the massive screen. "How about you? Did you find anything?"

"Actually, yeah, I did," Cyborg said with a smile. "Just give me a second to finish up."

Robin waited patiently as his mechanical friend closed down every single one of the dozens of information windows he had open—he noted that nearly half of them showed some variation of the S.T.A.R. labs logo. Cyborg swivelled in his chair so that he faced Robin.

"I've still got nothing so far with those tests on Starfire," he began, "but I've started running some of the data in a couple of different ways, looking for slightly different things, so hopefully that will turn up something. I'm having to tap into a few different places, including S.T.A.R. and one of those new supercomputers WayneTech has up and running in Seattle, so it'll probably take at least a day to finish that up. But I've made a lot of progress in looking into those robots."

"That's great," Robin said. "If we find the guy behind this, we might not even need those tests."

"Right. Anyway, here's what I found so far," Cyborg continued. "Five robots of the models we encountered have been sold recently to buyers in Jump City—one each of the 'slasher', 'stabber', and 'shooter', two of the prison bot models, all from different sources, mostly area militias, although one seller was from Montana. Out of all of the sellers, I only found two who ever met their buyer face-to-face, and from their descriptions it was probably the same guy, even if a lot of details were lacking. Pretty basic stuff, nothing unusual: brown hair, about five-and-a-half feet tall, glasses, late thirties or early forties, that kind of thing. I ran it through a few databases anyway, and while they of course gave me huge lists of names, one in particular stood out. I had heard it before: Dr. Jonas Havelock."

"That name sounds familiar," Robin mused aloud. Cyborg nodded.

"Yeah, he was a research geneticist for S.T.A.R. labs a few years ago, supposed to be some kind of super genius," he said. "He was fired, though, amidst rumours that he was performing so-called 'unethical experiments'."

"I remember that," Robin said. "There was a big scandal for a while, and it landed Gothcorp some major genetics contracts once S.T.A.R. was effectively put out of the running."

"Exactly. It gets better, though," Cyborg continued. "Havelock's specialty was xenogenetics—aliens—and while S.T.A.R. was his main employer, he had strong ties to—get this—Cadmus, particularly something called 'Project: Big S'. Three guesses what that was."

"Hmph. No kidding," Robin snorted. Cyborg grinned for a moment before becoming serious again and continuing.

"When he got fired from S.T.A.R., Cadmus cut its ties to him too—he was too public a figure for them, I guess—but before that he had full access to the database they had collected on alien lifeforms. I managed to hack into their system for a little while, and before their defences kicked me out I saw one species name I think you'll find very interesting."

"Tamaraneans," Robin said flatly. Cyborg nodded.

"Got it in one. And the date the sample was collected was listed at about two years ago, just a few months before Havelock got let go. Blackfire hadn't shown up yet at that time, and no other Tamaraneans have ever come to Earth to my knowledge, so…"

"…so this Havelock had access to a genetic sample taken directly from Starfire," Robin finished for him, then frowned. "And if Cadmus let him go it must have been for more than just some 'unethical experiments'. Some of the people they had working for them...let's just say I wouldn't be surprised to hear that they had the Joker running their chemical warfare division. If Cadmus put Havelock out to dry, he would have had to have been a threat to them in some way, maybe they thought he was going to do something that would blow their cover. And if he had become obsessed with the idea of experimenting on Tamaraneans…" Robin paused and frowned again. "Wait, I'm getting ahead of myself, here. We don't even know for sure that this Dr. Havelock is out guy."

"Way ahead of you, Robin, my man," Cyborg said with a grin. "I looked into him, and found some hidden bank records of his showing a series of transfers of funds that are exactly equal to what each of the five robots had been sold for. He didn't even try to disguise the transfers."

"That's great, Cyborg! We know who we're looking for, so now we just have to track him down!" Robin said, enthusiasm clear in his voice, his excitement completely overriding his own disappointing investigations, but then a thoughtful look crossed his face. "Wait, the five robots? We only fought four."

"Yeah, there was one extra prison bot, unless he bought something else for exactly one hundred and fifty thousand, five hundred and twenty dollars," Cyborg replied. "Maybe he wanted a backup or something."

"Hmmm…I wonder…" Robin mumbled to himself, but Cyborg interrupted him as he continued.

"So, yeah, Havelock bought the robots, and with his knowledge of Tamaranean biology he could have easily created something to mess with Starfire's head and make her do whatever he wanted," Cyborg said. "And since he worked at S.T.A.R. labs, he would know the capabilities of the medical equipment we have here, since it comes from S.T.A.R.—whatever he did to Starfire, he probably could have made it so that we can't detect it easily."

"Hmmm…" Robin mumbled again, then turned on his heel and marched off towards the door. "Good work, Cyborg," he called over his shoulder. "I just have to ask Starfire something. I have a weird feeling about all of this."

"Yeah, uh, sure thing," Cyborg said, slightly mystified by Robin's behaviour. "You want me to keep looking into Havelock, see if I can find him?"

"Sure, if you don't mind. Take a break first, though—it'll do no good if you're exhausted," Robin replied just as he stepped through the door out into the hallway. He let the door slide shut behind him and quickened his pace so that he was standing outside Starfire's room in a matter of seconds. He knocked on the door, but got no reply.

"Starfire? Are you in there?" Robin asked. "I want to ask you something. I'm coming in."

He punched the lock override command into the small keypad next to her door and stepped cautiously into Starfire's room. While he was far more worried that he might have caught her 'indecent', he felt his hand stray towards his belt anyway—if she was being manipulated by some madman he couldn't afford to let his guard down, especially considering how strong she was. He had gotten a good look at what she had done to Jinx.

He needn't have bothered with such precautions, however. Starfire's room was empty.

OOO

Starfire lay strapped to what looked suspiciously like a dissection table, although even if she knew what that was she was far too panicked to notice. She struggled helplessly against her restraints, but even her alien strength could not break them. Starfire brought forth all the righteous fury she could muster and stared hard at the thick metal band covering her left wrist, but instead of the familiar heat behind her eyes and the bright green energy beams that followed there was nothing. She tried again, concentrating harder this time, but still nothing happened—her starbolts were not working. The shock of this realization cut through her panicked state like a razor, but even that could not compare to the cold, emotionless voice she heard an instant later.

"You'll find that you are quite helpless, alien," it said. Starfire turned to look where the voice had come from, but all she could make out in the shadows was the glare off of the speaker's glasses.

"There is nothing you can do. I am in control," the voice continued, still betraying no hint of any emotion. "Everything is going entirely according to my plan—I have you to do with as I please, when I please, and your friends will be none the wiser."

Starfire began struggling again, thrashing about even more franticly than before. The voice chuckled humourlessly.

"It is futile, alien. Your struggles mean nothing. The experiments will proceed," it stated flatly, then the glare of the glasses shifted as the man in the shadows turned his head to address some other unseen person. "Fulton! Begin the first battery of tests."

There was no response, but the small sounds of several switches being flipped came from further back in the shadows, followed by an ominous hum from the various pieces of machinery that surrounded Starfire. Suddenly, electricity arced across the metal table, and Starfire screamed.

OOO

Robin stepped back into the hall outside Starfire's room and flipped open his communicator. Cyborg's image popped up on the screen.

"Cyborg, Starfire's not in her room," Robin said hurriedly. "Can you run a search of the Tower, maybe check the security records for…"

"Looking for me?"

Robin spun and came face to face with Starfire. She was walking down the hall towards him, looking bemused.

"Where were you?" Robin asked, eyeing her suspiciously. "I thought I told you to stay in your room."

"I merely had to use the bathroom. I am permitted to do that, am I not?" Starfire replied with an innocent smile. Robin said nothing, but continued to glare at her.

"Really, Robin, are you so mistrustful of me that you think that I will sneak away at the first possible moment?" Starfire continued in an almost scolding tone. Robin was having difficulty reading her expression, and he didn't like it.

"Robin? What was that you said you…?" Cyborg's voice said from Robin's communicator.

"Never mind, Cyborg, it's nothing," Robin mumbled and closed his communicator. "Starfire, I need to talk to you about something."

"Of course, Robin. What is it that you would like to talk about?" Starfire said with an unconvincing smile, pushing past him and opening her door. "Please, come inside—I assume that you wish to keep it private."

Robin nodded absent-mindedly, lost in thought as he stared down the hall in the direction Starfire had come from, then followed her back into her room, letting the door slide shut behind him.

-End Chapter Four-

Author's Note: Not really much to say about this one. I hope the little segment with Robin investigating the warehouse and the conversation with Batman helped to make up for the masses and masses of exposition in this chapter. I also hope that what is happening with Starfire isn't super-super-obvious. I'm trying to give some false hints and misdirection to keep it interesting, but I can't really be all that up-front about them, so they might just slip by unnoticed. The best I can hope for at this point is probably just ambiguity. Oh, well.

A number of people have mentioned to me that Starfire's 'out of character' stuff isn't really all that out of character for the comic book version of Starfire. This is quite true, but then I'm not posting this under the comic book Teen Titans section. I know a lot of people mix elements of the characters from both the comics and the cartoon—I do this myself to some extent—but for this story I am very much working under the assumption that Starfire is as she appears in the cartoon. That is, she is a very passionate person, and comes from a warrior culture, but she is also quite naïve (even in the ways of her world, if you ask me) and generally good-natured. She is very much the tall, skinny, awkward foreign girl. This violent streak she's shown in recent chapters is out of character for this version of Starfire—as destructive as she might get when she's really angry, her attempted murder of Jinx (because that's what it was) was done purely in cold blood. She weighed the options, decided that the world would be a better place if Jinx were dead, and set about to make that so. Emotions, normally Starfire's main driving force, had nothing to do with it. Furthermore, her resentful comments towards her friends (although we didn't see what she said to Cyborg while he was conducting the tests) is even more out of character. Finally, I would just like to clarify that Starfire being out of character here isn't a bad thing. It's actually what I set out to do. Something really is wrong with her, so I can't have her acting like she usually does, now can I?

This might be the place for a self-indulgent little note as to what my agenda is with this story. As I've said before, Starfire isn't my favourite character in the show—why, then, am I focussing an entire story on her? Well, my aim is to darken her character a little, get her questioning her notions of right and wrong, but I can't just say "Hey, presto!" and make that so without showing how she got there from where she is in the cartoon (at least, my personal sensibilities won't let me do that). So my agenda for this story is to show how the Starfire in the cartoon gets to be the Starfire I want to write about. Once I get her there, options open up for me address certain issues of her warrior upbringing, what it means to be a warrior versus a defender, and so on, with Blackfire and the Warlords of Okaara playing major roles in this, but that's still way in the future, and those of you who read my author's notes for 'Watched' will know what tends to happen to my far-future plans (i.e. they die tragic little deaths). So I don't want to get people's hopes up about these possible future developments by doing something like mentioning that fan favourite Red X will probably appear in them—dammit, I just did, didn't I?

It's hard to believe that I started this out by saying that I didn't have much to say about this chapter.

To My Reviewers:

samanthe2121: Thank you. I will try.

Valda: Unfortunately, the Joker will not be making any further appearances. I like him as a villain too, but a) I don't really trust myself to write him well, and b) he doesn't fit into the plot from here on. Oh, well.

hhgbh: Yes, Starfire is definitely off her nut at the moment. I actually find that hesitation to kill that Sladebot interesting, because in one of her early appearances in the comics Starfire had to be reined in during a fight because she was destroying every robotic minion in sight when Robin wanted at least one intact to use as evidence. She also learned English by kissing Robin, but that's beside the point.

cutterforthecause: Evil Starfire, eh? Well, we'll see. Things definitely won't be getting particularly fluffy, since that is not really where my interest in these characters lies. As for where I get my comics, most (if not all) of my knowledge of the older ones comes from titanstower dot com. As for the current ones, I get them at a comic book and hobby store in my home town. I've been thinking of getting subscriptions, but I move back and forth between home and school (which is out of town) fairly regularly, and having to continuously change my address is a pain in the ass.

Blackbird: What triggered it indeed…Muwahahahahaaaa! Ahem. Sorry. Yeah, so like I said above, I'm not trying to find a middle-ground for Starfire here (at least not yet). It actually kind of disturbs me that people are so willing to accept the difference in her personality. She tried to murder Jinx, for God's sake! Murder! Not manslaughter, not accidental death, murder! I know kids these days are desensitized to violence, but Jesus tap dancing Christ! This isn't the Punisher, this is Starfire! Cute, innocent Starfire! Murder!

aotrs. commander: Man, writing scripts for something like Teen Titans would be a dream come true. Having to deal with the censorship and other content restrictions might blow a little, but still, being paid to write scripts that everyone would see for a show I like would be awesome. See my author's note for my thoughts on Starfire's out of character-ness (as well as my response to Blackbird). Don't get me started on pairings. The fact that so many fan fiction writers start out by telling you who's going to end up with who, even in the summary of their story, just bugs the hell out of me. Beast Boy ends up with Raven? Okay, sure. Now I don't have to read your story, buddy. Thanks. Why do people think this is a good idea? Crap, I'm starting on pairings, aren't I?