A/N: Remember, this is still the back-story; this chapter will end this one and get back to the present.

Disclaimer: I do not own Teen Titans.

Black Thorn stared at Ariel in confusion. He was smirking at her, a devious gleam in his eye.

"We're gonna steal a gargantuan building?" She asked sarcastically, waving her arm around in a gesture to indicate it and then placing her hands on her hips.

"No," he said, chuckling, "think about it. Before it became a huge tourist attraction, the Vatican was a fortress designed to protect the church and its assets." He continued after leaning against a pew.

"Fortresses have more than just surface structures to keep secure what they're guarding…" She said, seeing where he was going. "Places like tunnels and vaults in which these articles are kept."

"And the Vatican has some of the most tunnels, catacombs, crypts, vaults, secret passageways, dusty corridors, cobwebbed corners, and poorly lit rooms in the world…"

"A perfect place to find some obscure and valuable items in some of the forgotten places in the darkness."

"You got it." He said, pointing his finger at her.

The sound of footsteps and muffled voices signaled to them that their time without prying eyes or overhearing ears was over. The got up to leave, making their way past the group of German college students, all speaking in hushed voices but still having a rather lively conversation.

The stepped back out into the sunlight and Ariel began to walk back towards the main entrance.

"So, what exactly are we going for here?" She asked him, quickening her pace to get alongside.

"We'll go back to the hotel, get ready, and I'll tell you all about it." He responded as they both melted into the churning crowd.

After a few more minuets of walking at a casual distance apart and several on a bus in different seats they were outside the hotel doors. They entered separately, with about five minuets between them, so as to attract as little attention to themselves as they could.

Black Thorn had entered first; therefore Ariel was waiting outside, in the day that was quickly changing form sunny and pleasant to overcast and what looked like it could be rain. The humidity was already at a noticeable level and was now markedly rising. He looked up towards the rapidly darkening heavens not with out a dearth of clouds; then, after checking his watch, walked inside.

The doorman pulled aside his ward and greeted him, to which he smiled politely and gave a small wave of his hand. The lobby was mildly busy with just the everyday workings of a hotel: guests and patrons checking in and out, the lounge bar filled with a mixed and mingling crowd who knew it was midnight somewhere, along with an acrid layer of smoke from assorted cigars, pipes, and cigarettes; bellboys running to and fro, carrying bags, pushing carts, and delivering messages.

He walked up to the concierge behind the front desk.

"Good evening, Mr. Chance." The man behind the desk said. Ariel motioned for him to lean in then whispered something to him, then handed him a note and walked towards the elevator.

As he stood inside the elevator he took disinterested notice of the other man in the elevator—early middle aged, thin, with thick black hair combed over, a pair of black metal-framed glasses resting on his nose and a business suit. The man looked over at Ariel and smiled pleasantly, then readjusted his view to the reflective door.

The elevator stopped at the sixth floor, there was a ding, and the doors slid open.

The doors closed and Ariel was now alone in the elevator, with the smooth, low music, playing in the background. He put his hands behind his back, and waited for the elevator to hit his floor. With a recognizable ding, the elevator door slid aside to reveal an immaculate hallway into which he stepped, turning left and glancing at the door on the right side until he spotted his room number.

He pulled out his card, scanned it through the lock and pushed the door open.

Ariel walked over to the left side of his room, with the door at his back, unlocked, then opened a door in the wall, and knocked on the door adjoining the room next to his, moments later a latch was heard being undone and the door swung backwards to reveal his—quite literal—partner-in-crime.

"Now I need to know…what, exactly, are you planning to steal from the Vatican?" Black Thorn asked, placing her hands on her hips.

"Ah, well, you're making it sound hard." He said grinning as he sat on the corner of her bed.

"I'm serious, we didn't just come to Rome for a vacation; we've got to pay the bills…" She managed to get out before losing control of her laughter.

"You never were a good liar…" He said, resting his chin on his palm.

"Come on, damnit!" She was beginning to get frustrated.

"Alright, but I need something first…" He got up and walked back into his room, disappearing for a minuet while the sounds of rummaging could be heard coming from inside.

He reappeared with a large, rolled-up piece of paper and a thin black laptop. He set the laptop on the bed, opened it up and turned it on.

"Ok," he was now pointing at a floor schematic of what appeared to be the deepest catacombs "this is where it is, it has a relatively light guard, considering what it is-"

"Where'd you get the floor plans? Why would it have floor plans, it was built hundreds of years before modern architecture." She interrupted him.

"During World War II, the church didn't know if Germans, or the Italians might try to destroy them, the had to make modifications and expansions to make this place safer and more secure."

"Ok, so finally, tell me what this thing is?"

"A small black wood box…"

"A box?"

"…A box that is said to contain the sword the Apostle Peter used to cut off the ear Malchus."

"Wait, why are we stealing that?" She looked at him incredulously.

"Because…while it may have no 'price' it is quite valuable, one of a kind, with great historical significance; and there are more than enough of interested collectors."

"How many?"

"A fair few, and all indicating a high payout."

"Good enough for me. What else do you think is down there?" She asked him, as she unrolled the paper to reveal a hard copy of the schematic.

"Plenty of ancient church, and some not so holy, relics, things of legend, used by legends, cursed and blessed alike…but we're not there for any of that; you know the deal, we—"

"—Only get what we came for. Yeah, I know."

"Right. There's going to be some pretty heavy stuff down there, I think it's best if we don't temp God, especially when we're in his house."

"No arguments here. When do we go?"

"It'll be dark by nine, but we'll give it until ten-thirty. There's no moon tonight, either, so less chance of being spotted."

"Yeah, we did do a sort of case when we were there today. How long? In and out, I mean."

"We do our stuff right, two minuets to get inside, sixteen getting down to, and finding, the target, and then two out."

"Four minuets of exposure…"

"I know, it's a little high for such a public and well guarded place but it is worth the risk, and at night, with no tourists or moonlight, we're in, we're out; we can do it, no sweat."

"No doubt!" She said confidently as she fell backward, arms outstretched, onto her bed."

Ariel closed the laptop and stood up.

"I'll leave you to prepare, then." He had the laptop in one hand but made a low bow and a sweeping gesture of mock deferment with the other, then made his way to the door, and out of her room, his door closing the link between them.

Black Thorn sat up, swung her legs over the side and laid her face in her palms, with her elbows on her knees. She glanced over to the other corner of the bed. He had left the hard copy of the schematic to look over.

"One of these days I'm gonna have to start planning some of our jobs." She uncoiled it, it having rolled back up of its own accord, and began to study it.

'You know, he didn't say anything about an entrance plan. Maybe with both of us on it, we can put them together and do and even better time…' She thought.

She scrambled over to the nightstand and fumbled around in the drawer for a pad of paper, and having found it, proceeded to check the same drawer for a pen or pencil.

She began to take notes as she poured over the extremely detailed schematic, jotting down good ideas and little things she noticed about door placement, the quickest apparent route and whatever else caught her eye.

---

Ariel closed the door behind him, walked over to the desk and set the laptop down on it. He opened it back up, and turned it back on.

He looked over the desk for a notebook or a pad of paper, but then remember that he had one in his bag.

"I always take one, but just as often forget that I did…" He laughed to himself.

'She must have started making her own entrance plan by now. I guess it's worth letting her try, she's watched me for two years, she just hasn't really ever tried to plan many things until recently, or at least she says she wants to.' He chuckled to himself slightly 'between the two of us we'll come up with something good."

He also always kept a pen with the notebook, he could have gotten one from where he was staying—it being a relatively nice hotel—but he loved this type of pen, it was perfect, but not rare, one of the few times he didn't feel guilt about purchasing something he could have easily stolen; it was worth it.

He sat on the chair at the desk and went over the digital layout, making notes on his own pad of paper as he went.

---

Black Thorn was beginning to loose her concentration. It had already been two hours and she had gone over every detail, looked at every option, and plotted every course she could possibly think of or see.

She was not one to give up easily or lose concentration and focus too soon, but she had exhausted every option on this particular task, and she knew she was done, he thinking capability depleted, for now.

She uncrossed her legs, stretched for a moment and then rolled herself off the bed and effortlessly onto her feet. She stretched out completely and left no knuckle un-cracked and no joint un-popped.

On the dresser near the bed there were four tennis balls, she strolled over to them and picked two of them up with her left hand and two with her right.

"I'll just take a bath now, and relax a little bit before this whole thing goes down." She began to juggle the ones in her left hand, then separately in her right, training her reflexes and making all the mussels in her arms, wrists, and hands, as well as the ligaments and tendons stronger and better.

She tried to switch them over between her hands but they collided and she missed catching them and they all fell to the ground and rolled away just as she reached the bathroom door.

"Damnit. I'll get better at this someday…" she laughed.

---

Ariel put down his pen and shut down the laptop. He leaned back in his chair and let out a sigh of relaxation. He reached forward and picked up his notebook, a full page was covered in writing; he glanced at it, scanned it front and back for no more than a few small fractions of a second before he folded it twice into a square, and laid it in the ash tray.

He produced a plain; sliver Zippo lighter from his pocket, flipped it open and snapped his fingers over it to light it. He held it near the paper for a moment and it quickly ignited and burned into ash.

He turned in his chair and stood up, reached with his arms for something above his head that was not there, tilted his head pointedly from side to side, and headed for the bathroom.

'I'll take a shower and relax a bit…' He thought, he still had the lighter in his hand and he was flipping it open and closed repeatedly. Bringing it back against his jeans to open the top then forward to spark the flint and light it, then closing the wind guard with his thumb.

He set it on the dresser and opened the bathroom door.

'I don't need a lucky lighter, or lucky 'anything' but I've gone this far with it, why fix what ain't broken?'

Ariel knocked on the door.

"Have you suited up yet?" He yelled through the door

"Yeah, I've been waiting for you."

"Ok, so we go in though the side maintenance entrance."

"Yeah, and then take the corridor it's on, right down to the stairs,"

"And then onto the old elevator."

"It's probably going to be somewhere on the left…"

Ariel nearly lost his lunch as the putrid stench washed over him with almost palpable force. Nonetheless, he climbed down the ladder after Black Thorn and began to trot with just behind her down the concrete tube.

"My god. 'We can go through the sewers almost all the way!' What a great fracking idea, Thorn! Just wonderful! This is the last time I ever let you plan anything!" He yelled at Black Thorn.

"Oh, because hiding out inside that garbage truck in Istanbul was just a magnificent plan!" She retorted, but neither stopped their trot down the tunnel.

"A whole mile of this! You're lucky it's only ankle deep."

"Lucky we wear boots." She said breathing hard and laughing.

They ran down the sewage tunnel for 20 minuets before they came to a halt where the large tunnel ended and in the middle concrete face of the wall ahead of them was a three-foot diameter pipe with raw sewage flowing out in a small but stead stream.

Ariel grimaced at the pipe, then looked up.

"Than god we don't have to go though that," he said, putting his hands on his hips.

"Definitely… I went down first," she conjectured, indicating the ladder far behind them by pointing backwards "It is definitely you turn."

"Wilco." He sighed, moving towards the ladder in front of him, he began to climb up and Black Thorn followed soon after.

He pushed aside the manhole cover and sprung up onto the grounds, Black Thorn came up moments later and they both dashed across the blacked plaza with the city illuminated in the background all around them.

Once inside, Ariel produced a small aerosol bottle and began to spray himself with it.

"For the smell, it's destroying the particles, breaking them up at the molecular level." He whispered an answer to her quizzical stare "It's government issue, I've got a connection." He added when he saw that she was unsatisfied. He finished quickly and passed the bottle to her.

They ran quickly but with an uncanny lack of sound in their steppes as they went. After racing down two stories worth of stairs they came to a very old elevator with a heavy wrought ion gate and a lever at one side. They boarded and Black Thorn pulled the lever down for the only other floor it could go to.

After a quick descent they pulled the weighty gate aside and stepped out into the catacombs. The air that met them was stale and dry, obviously quite old.

There was only the small light of the 60-year-old bulb in the elevator, and the darkness refused to be penetrated by it more than a few feet. They each broke out a red stick in the soft yellow light, and twisted the top end. The two flares igniting concomitantly brought the range of visible objects out several more feet, giving them ample, if red, light.

They again took to running and followed the main hall, through all it's twists and turns; never stopping to gaze upon ancient relics, long forgotten in the side tunnels. No, their objective was at the end of this long tunnel, they ran as fast as they could.

They came to the end of the tunnel but the wall in front of them was bare rock.

"It's got to be this tunnel off to the left." Ariel said, holding his flare higher.

"Yeah, come on."

Then ran down this hall, but after only a few seconds Ariel stopped.

"This is it," he said confidently, looking at the makeshift shelf which contained a some small trinkets, a small statue of the Virgin Mary, and a black box with a small red insignia on the lock "yeah, no doubts, this is it."

"Good, get it and lets get out of here. I'm not liking the feeling I'm starting to get."

Ariel produced a large black disc, about the size of a coaster and affixed it to the box.

"And you're sure this will work?" Black Thorn asked skeptically.

"Positive, I trust my supplier completely, he says 'they'll work', then they'll work."

He took a few steps back a produced a small black remote, he flipped an arming switch and a small charge could be hard building; at its pinnacle, he pressed the red button. A flash was seen, and lit up the hallway, and the box was gone.

"Wow,"

"Yeah."

Black Thorn had moved forward, towards where the box had been, as if she was checking to make sure her eyes weren't lying to her. She looked it over for a moment and when she seemed satisfied she asked

"Why do you suppose there's a relatively new looking, rather small, statue of the Virgin Mary, all the way down here?" She was reaching out, as if drawn to it, doing it almost without thinking.

"BT, I wouldn't touch it, it's down here for a reason…BT."

"I'm just curious," she said, turning her head towards him as she reached out and grabbed hold of the statue.

There was a bright flash and Black Thorn was thrown backwards into the opposite wall, her flare's light now lessened by the ground.

"Jesus! Black Thorn," He yelled, running over and crouching down beside her "are you alright?" It was a stupid question and he knew it.

She coughed once and sat up, against the wall.

"Yeah, actually." She said, surprise clearly in her voice, while she rubbed the back of her neck with one hand.

"Well, what the hell wa—" Ariel was cut off as he began to convulse violently and let out a scream and fell to the ground.

Black Thorn bounded to her feet and was able make out three men in silhouette, security who had been alerted to their presence by the opening of the manhole cover.

A spark was seen in the darkness, as she realized too late that she was standing in the light of a flare. She felt the impact of two small needles but did not feel the excruciating shock she was expecting to follow.

Instead all she felt was the small prick of the needles but not their imbedding, they had bounced off. Black Thorn didn't feel the need to question a good thing so she charged forward and attacked the stunned men, one of whom managed to fire off another shot from his weapon, but it again bounced off.

She quickly beat them unconscious and ran back to Ariel who was lying face up on the ground, moaning slightly.

"You alright?" She asked, returning the stupid question to him.

"Uh, not really." She helped him too his feet. "Man, those Tazers really pack a wallop."

"I wouldn't know…" she said smiling.

"Let's go." He said, picking up a flare and catching a glimpse of Black Thorn's face before she took off ahead of him.

They ran down the corridor they were in and as they ran Ariel thought

'Were her eyes gray back there? Couldn't be…I'll know soon enough.'

The Present

"Let's get the hell out of here, shall we?" Black Thorn said, after having turned around, produced a new pair of sunglasses and faced Ariel once again.

"Sure," he said, as they both began to walk out of the vault if only I could remember the incantation that breaks the spell…" He said jokingly, scratching his head.

"I swear to God Ariel, I will kill you."

"No, you won't." He said, barely containing his laughter.

"No," she sighed, and continued through gritted teeth "I will not. Say it."

"Only if you ask with less malice in you voice…"

"Stop right there!" Demanded Robin.

A/N: Wow, that was without a doubt the absolute hardest chapter to write I have had yet. And the longest too, but it had to be so, it could have been much longer but that would have to be two chapters together. So I leave you with another cliffhanger, but not too big a one I think. Nothing too surprising I hope. Hope you enjoyed.